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Sep 11 11 4:33 PM
The Cult of Obama
By Robin of Berkeley
We're playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers,
Planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla
Chanting the mantra, peace on earth
- John Lennon
It's a chilling moment when the light goes out in someone's eyes. A once-radiant child hardens from abuse. A woman's heart shrinks after her husband's abandonment.
The person looks the same, maybe acts the same. But something is gone, and what's lost is irretrievable. It's like when a person dies: in a heartbeat, the soul vanishes.
I see this phenomenon every day: a light dimming. The friendly shopkeeper snaps at me. My cheerful neighbor seems flattened.
And you hear it in the news: people acting strangely, going off the deep end. The most bizarre behavior becoming the new normal.
A thug bites off a finger. Sarah Palin's church is torched. Black Panthers intimidate voters.
An esteemed Columbia University black architecture professor punches a white female coworker in the eye for not doing more about white privilege. He has no history of violence. Why now?
Meanwhile, liberal leaders, such as Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden, incite attacks on political opponents by using incendiary language, such as "barbarians," "Nazis," "tea-baggers." Perhaps not coincidentally, flash mobs of blacks attack innocent whites all over the country; black youths injure or even kill non-whites in "knock out" assaults. Then there is the online game where players kill Tea Party "zombies."
In the past week or so, a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus tells the Tea Party to go to hell, and the head of one of America's biggest unions incites union members to violence: "Let's take these son of a bitches out." When Barack Obama takes the stage to follow this incitement, he says he is "proud," and the following day his press spokesman refuses comment.
Why now? This may be the most important question of our time. Why are some people reaching the boiling point? Why do many others look vacant, like in an Invasion of the Body Snatchers? The shootings at military bases, from Little Rock to Fort Hood -- why now?
It's Obama, of course.
Liberals will excoriate me for writing this. They'll insist that bad behavior is not Obama's fault. He's a man of peace.
But study the phenomenon of cults, and the dynamics are always the same. The leader can incite violence without ever getting his hands dirty. Obama is controlling the marionette of the masses.
If Obamamania is a cult, then Obama is the cult leader. Cult leaders routinely pull the strings of their followers. The most extreme example is Charles Manson. He rots in prison for murders he never committed. He didn't have to do the dirty work. His brainwashed charges did his bidding.
I'm not saying Obama is a Charles Manson. There are varying degrees of manipulation, from using sexy blondes to entice men to buy cars all the way to hypnotizing them to drink poisoned Kool Aid. But there's a common denominator in all mind-control: manipulating people through mind games.
As soon as Obama came on the scene, the programming began. His face was plastered everywhere, like Mao's. In his speeches, Obama lulled audiences with a melodious voice and feel-good phrases repeated over and over. And he began inciting people with his charming smile.
First, the vultures starting swooping down on Hillary. Obama chose not to call off the dogs.
Then thugs invaded caucuses. Again, silence.
Which led to vicious misogyny against Sarah Palin and threats on her life. From Obama: not a peep.
We even saw armed thugs at polling places. Ignored and not prosecuted by Obama's attorney general.
The moment Obama became president, he upped the signals. At the Grant Park rally celebrating his victory, the entire family eerily chose to wear black and red, colors associated with communism and black nationalism. Obama's first radio address was broadcast in the Arab world.
Obama returned Britain's gift of a Winston Churchill bust while embracing dictators. He gave a white police officer a dressing down for doing his job, in effect calling the officer a racist.
Obama's greatest magic trick? Brainwashing the masses to believe that racism is a greater danger than radical Islam, and that Obama himself is in constant peril.
Opposing health care means you oppose Obama. Oppose Obama and you are the enemy.
Thus, more and more people are finding themselves on the receiving end of a fist, figuratively or literally. After the White House released a directive for his followers to strike back hard, a frail, diabetic black man at a Town Hall was beaten up.
Even women can get slugged in the face. Obama signaled during the primary that women were fair game.
Obama and the left are making sure that there is an increasing number of persuadable people. By displacing workers, panicking business owners with draconian laws, and whipping up rage and paranoia, they amass more lackeys. And people go along with the programming because they know that, as with all cults, they'll be ostracized if they balk.
The American hard left knows how to create a cult because it is a cult, one with a violent history. The Black Panthers, Symbionese Liberation Army, Weathermen, Black Muslims -- all nefarious cults.
And lesson number one of cults: group members must have their spirits broken. The young Weathermen, for instance, were required to participate in forced wickedness, such as animal abuse. Patty Hearst morphed into bank robber Tania after weeks of isolation, rape, and beatings by the SLA. Huey P. Newton sent his Black Panthers to the hospital or to the grave if they didn't practice total obedience.
Isn't the left doing the same thing to the masses today, albeit in a more clandestine manner? Aren't people's spirits being broken by the helplessness and horror of Obama's acting as our king, with little regard for the Constitution -- of beholding our economy in free-fall and the world exploding in flames?
So what's the endgame here?
The first goal is power. The left has an insatiable need to control every aspect of our lives.
But there's a deeper reason, one much more insidious.
The left wants to tear Americans down. Just as the Weatherman did to those naïve lost kids, they want to break our spirits. This goal of degradation is more crucial than their one-world government.
The Leftists want to turn us into them, to make us feel as deprived and depraved and deadened. It's the only way that they can silence the roar of shame and self-loathing.
What they don't understand is this: it's not going to happen. There are too many of us who won't be hypnotized, who have a light in us that will not be extinguished.
We see right through them. We know who they are: the most piteous of human beings, and the most dangerous. Men without a country, orphans far from home. The forsaken and disowned.
They're "hungry ghosts," to use a Tibetan phrase: tormented beings who are starving to death from an inner void that they cannot fill, no matter how much they try.
Mother Teresa was once asked how she coped with serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. She responded that what she saw in the cities of the United States was much more disturbing, because it was a "poverty of the spirit."
Poverty of the spirit. No truer words can be spoken of the left. And they want nothing more than impoverishing your spirit as well..http://www.americanthinke...9/the_cult_of_obama.html
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Posts: 6839
Oct 7 11 12:28 AM
By George Neumayr 10/6/11
He takes pride in his inferior administration.
Asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if he regretted his promotion of the bankrupt solar panel maker Solyndra, Barack Obama said, "No, I don't." This cavalier answer provides yet another snapshot of the arrogance and ideological fixation that drives his presidency.
Clinging to an idea in defiance of reality defines the ideologue, a definition to which Obama conforms perfectly. No failure ever gives him pause. He can squander over a half billion dollars of taxpayer money and then use the occasion to brag about what he considers glorious forays into innovative risk-taking.
Most hack pols are reluctant to admit errors, but hack pols who also fancy themselves deep ideologues on the "right side of history" take open pride in them. Obama falls into this latter category. In his mind, the supposed purity of "green jobs" not only absolves him of any complicity in the Solyndra scandal but confers upon him a permanent halo. He has seen the future and it works.
To the extent that he acknowledged the Solyndra failure, he cast it as a minor misstep on the ascending road of progress. He claimed that the green jobs loan guarantee program is humming along nicely -- "if you look at the overall portfolio of loan guarantees that have been provided, overall, it is doing well" -- even as media outlets report that the program has yielded an anemic number of jobs and a growing list of busts.
In his past boosterism for green jobs, Obama has described them as an indisputable boon to the economy and environment and a safe bet on the future. But in the Stephanopoulos interview, he blithely acknowledged the risk of investing in them: "And what we always understood was that not every single business is going to succeed in clean energy." Always understood? Did he inform the taxpayer of this?
A gross dereliction of duty dressed up as brave risk-taking has become the administration's audacious new stance on Solyndra: at first, White House officials professed innocent ignorance of its risk to the taxpayer; now they acknowledge awareness of its wobbliness and dismiss such foreseen failures as the price of progress. "This program was established by Congress to support innovative, cutting-edge projects that by their nature carry a degree of risk," Energy Department spokesman Damien LaVera said to the Washington Post.
"Hindsight is always 20/20," said Obama to Stephanopoulos, even as his remarks indicated that he would gladly make the same mistake again. He offered no apology to taxpayers while promising more grand gambles with their money in the future: "… the fact of the matter is that if we don't get behind clean energy, if we don't get behind advanced battery manufacturing, if we're not the ones who are creating the cars of the future, then we're not going to be able to make stuff here in the United States of America. And one of the most important things that I want to do over the next several years is restore a sense that America can manufacture, but we don't just purchase stuff from someplace else, but we're also exporting to other countries."
According to this ludicrous attempt at uplift, Obama is making America more competitive in the global marketplace one bankruptcy at a time. The idea that green jobs would ever prove beneficial to the economy was the first deception involved here, as foreshadowed by Obama's appointment of Van Jones, a de facto Marxist, as his "green jobs czar." Marxists have never been known for their job creation.
Nevertheless, Van Jones thrilled White House officials with his "green collar economy" drivel. The Valerie Jarretts listened with rapt attention as he urged environmentalists to move beyond just hyperactive conservation and regulation and explore new avenues of "investment" at taxpayer expense.
Solyndra has smudged the administration's green collar and raised the prospect of a new crime category, green collar crime, while throwing light on a loan guarantee program that looks like something hatched in a socialist dystopia of Van Jones's imagining. It has come out that former administration official Lawrence Summers, commenting on Solyndra's shakiness, warned that government is a "crappy" venture capitalist, but such reservations were never going to register with Obama no matter how loudly expressed, as he was simply not interested in the normal workings of capitalism and was fixated upon green jobs at all costs.
Like a good socialist ideologue, he is impervious to reality and treats any setback as a reason to expand rather than end the cause. Last week, his Department of Energy shoveled out the door more money for green jobs. What will happen with those billions is anybody's guess. But if the gallows humor contained in the leaked OMB memos about Solyndra are any indication of the fitness of future projects, taxpayers shouldn't hold their breath. The Washington Post quotes an analyst saying to a colleague: "What's terrifying is that after looking at some of the [loan guarantee projects] that came next, this one [Solyndra] started to look better." http://spectator.org/arch.../obamas-solyndra-complex
http://cultbustersgalactica.yuku.com/
Oct 8 11 9:46 PM
*Posters Note: As many of us knew all along. Just another Jimmy Carter. Another wasted 4 years of America going backward. Never admit failure, blame the American people instead. How pathetic!
Obama's Shrinking Presidency
Yet the messianic figure, who promised to lead the country out of the darkness of Bush’s imperial presidency, has kept stressing his weakness. Press Secretary Jay Carney: the president has “the biggest megaphone there is in politics, but it doesn’t have the reach it once had.” Obama to Hispanic leaders last week: “I think there’s been a great disservice done to the cause of getting the DREAM Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things. It’s just not true.” Obama on immigration at a town-hall meeting at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto last April: “I can’t solve this problem by myself.” Obama, around the same time, speaking to a group of climate-change activists at the White House: “I can’t do this alone.” Obama, last November: “The responsibilities of this office are so enormous… sometimes we lose track of the ways that we connected with folks that got us here in the first place.” Obama, at a press conference in April 2009, "I can't press a button and have the banks do what I want, or turn on a switch and Congress falls in line." Obama, speaking at the United Nations in September 2009: “[The world] cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone.” Obama, two years ago, on the military overthrow of the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras: “[I] can’t push a button and suddenly reinstate Mr. Zelaya.” Obama, in November 2008, shortly after he was elected: “I’m not a miracle worker.” Sometimes it seems as the president is passing the buck back to the people who elected him.
It’s striking to contrast this incessant declaration of relative powerlessness with FDR, who had to call a press conference at one point—after accusations that he tried to pack the Supreme Court—in order to promise the country that “A. I have no inclination to be a dictator. B. I have none of the qualifications which would make me a successful dictator.” Such reassurance was delivered on the occasion of a bill intended merely to expand the White House staff.
Obama’s by-now characteristically paternal reminder of reality is yet another instance of what is becoming his presidency’s comi-tragic flaw. There is a constant disjunction between political tact and political candor. The country needs to believe it is guided by a firm hand that is confident it will prevail and bring victory. Yet Obama keeps firmly and confidently declaring that he cannot prevail all by himself, and that victory is not at all certain.
To be sure, the almost surreal expectations of magical social and political transformation that were fueled by Obama’s election—expectations roused by both him and his supporters—needed to be tamped down in order to avoid the perception of constant failure. But by now, the failures—the humiliations by the opposition, the broken promises, Obama’s withdrawals and aloofness—have seemed so constant that, in lieu of concrete advances, some more sober version of the high expectations of yore might lift morale. But the president—again, admirably and correctly—must press his public lesson on the limitations of executive power. He must stress his weakness in the face of circumstances too overwhelming for the redress of one man over and over again.
Yet when he does assert the power of his office, as in the case of Libya, he is excoriated by the very people who lament that he does not assert the power of his office. At the same time, his professions of weakness seem directed just as much toward his rabid opposition as to his demanding supporters. No matter what he does to assure the former of the limitations of his office, they keep accusing him of dictatorial ambitions. And no matter what he does to remind the latter of the nature of political realty, they keep accusing him of not being ambitious enough.
We live in a time when people across the political spectrum crave single-figure authority but only seem to trust crowd-sourced authority. Consider the Wall Street protesters. Their very existence makes your spirit soar even as their weak, leaderless structure causes it to sink. Consider the GOP, which is caught in the teeth of the conflict between single-figure and crowd-sourced authority. The Republicans are desperate for a strong, magnetic, plausible figure to lead them, but the right-wing will only trust candidates who toe their collective line.
Keen intellect that he is, Obama has always grasped this growing paradox in American politics. During his last presidential campaign, he balanced a careful crafting of his single-figure mystique with avowals of his crowd-sourced legitimacy. Obama has been drawing down expectations and calling on the American people to help him since before he was elected president. He is absolutely right about the limitations of his office. But accuracy is not the same thing as truth. The truth is that the buck really does stop with him. The “people” have their limitations, too.http://news.yahoo.com/oba...residency-004209686.html
Oct 16 11 11:19 PM
Jackson, Jr: Obama should ‘declare a national emergency,’ add jobs with ‘extra-constitutional’ action
Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. told The Daily Caller on Wednesday that congressional opposition to the American Jobs Act is akin to the Confederate “states in rebellion.”
Jackson called for full government employment of the 15 million unemployed and said that Obama should “declare a national emergency” and take “extra-constitutional” action “administratively” — without the approval of Congress — to tackle unemployment.
“I hope the president continues to exercise extraordinary constitutional means, based on the history of Congresses that have been in rebellion in the past,” Jackson said. “He’s looking administratively for ways to advance the causes of the American people, because this Congress is completely dysfunctional.”
Watch:
“On several occasions now, we’ve seen … the Congress is in rebellion, determined, as Abraham Lincoln said, to wreck or ruin at all costs. I believe … in the direct hiring of 15 million unemployed Americans at $40,000 a head, some more than $40,000, some less than $40,000 — that’s a $600 billion stimulus. It could be a five-year program. For another $104 billion, we bailout all of the states … for another $100 billion, we bailout all of the cities,” he said.
Jackson added that his $804 billion stimulus plan is the only way to solve the unemployment crisis. “I support the jobs plan. I support the president’s re-election. I support Barack Obama,” he said. “But at this hour, we need a plan that meets the size and scope of the problem to put the American people to work.”
“We’ve got to go further. I support what [Obama] does. Clearly, Republicans are not going to be for it but if the administration can handle administratively what can be done, we should pursue it. And if there are extra-constitutional opportunities that allow the president administratively to put the people to work, he should pursue every single one of them,” Jackson suggested.
President Obama’s jobs bill was defeated in the Democratic-controlled Senate on Tuesday and has not been voted on in the Republican-controlled House.
Oct 19 11 11:00 AM
10-18-2011
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., drew heavy criticism from fellow Democrats and his Republican colleagues for demanding President Barack Obama suspend the U.S. Constitution and declare a national jobs emergency.
Jackson told The Daily Caller last week that the president should use "extra-constitutional" authority to resolve the employment crisis by creating jobs outside of the normal legislative process. His comments drew immediate criticism from his primary opponent as well as other members of the House of Representatives.
Former congresswoman Debbie Halvorson, Jackson's Democratic opponent in next year's primary election, said he has failed to introduce a jobs bill during his 16 years in the House.
Here are some of Jackson's more memorable public gaffes:
IPad is the Cause of U.S. Unemployment
From the floor of the House in April, Jackson accused iPad and the late Steve Jobs of causing high unemployment. The iPad -- and most cellular devices -- are manufactured in China and other foreign countries, a problem Jackson claimed has sparked the record number of unemployed Americans.
Most Corrupt Politician
The Black Collegian named Jackson one of the 15 most corrupt politicians in the House. Jackson achieved the designation over his alleged involvement in the sale of President Obama's old senate seat. His involvement led federal prosecutors to subpoena Jackson to testify in the corruption trial of impeached former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
At times, Jackson has introduced to eight constitutional amendments, each separate and distinct changes. His amendments often focus on education and health care and generally attract a few co-sponsors. None has yet to be made into law. http://news.yahoo.com/rep...stitution-223300250.html
Oct 19 11 2:53 PM
The committee’s review of the Chicago Democrat was temporarily on hold as federal authorities prosecuted then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Blagojevich is awaiting sentencing after being convicted on federal corruption charges, including his attempt to sell the Senate seat held by Barack Obama before his election to the White House. Prosecutors said Blagojevich angled to hand the Senate seat to Jackson in exchange for $1.5 million in donations promised by Jackson supporters. Jackson was not charged and has denied any wrongdoing.
A separate panel, the Office of Congressional Ethics, issued findings in mid-2009 citing possible violations of federal law and House rules, and referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee.
The House Ethics Committee said that on or before Dec. 2 it will make a further announcement, but House officials said that does not necessarily mean a decision on whether to clear or sanction Jackson.
Jackson had no comment, spokesman Frank Watkins said.
Democrat Debbie Halvorson, a former congresswoman running against Jackson for his seat, said Tuesday’s news was “proof that he continues to be plagued with distractions over his possible role in Rod Blagojevich’s pay-to-play scandal involving President Obama’s former Senate seat.”http://www.chicagotribune...-20111018,0,518978.story
Nov 11 11 10:25 AM
10 Nov 2011By Tammy Bruce
Nov 12 11 6:41 PM
President Opposes Addition of FDR’s D-Day Prayer on WWII Memorial
by Dave Bohon
8 November 2011
The Obama Administration, through the testimony of a Department of the Interior official, has expressed its opposition to legislation that would add the prayer offered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the onset of the 1944 D-Day invasion to the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC.
During House hearings on the World War II Memorial Prayer Act, introduced by Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio, left), Robert Abbey, director of the Bureau of Land Management, testified that the memorial should not be altered, arguing that the addition of the prayer through a plaque or inscription would "dilute" the memorial’s message.
"It is not a judgment as to the merit of this new commemoration," explained Abbey, "simply that altering the Memorial in this way, as proposed in HR 2070, will necessarily dilute this elegant memorial’s central message and its ability to clearly convey that message to move, educate, and inspire its many visitors." He said that the Interior Department "strongly believes that the World War II Memorial, as designed, accomplishes its legislated purpose to honor the members of the Armed Forces who served in World War II and to commemorate the participation of the United States in that conflict." Abbey argued that federal law actually prohibits such additions, noting that the "Commemorative Works Act specifically states that a new commemorative work shall be located so that it does not encroach upon an existing one."Johnson’s proposal would add to the WWII Memorial an inscription of the prayer FDR offered during an address to the American people on June 6, 1944, as American and Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy in an assault against Nazi forces. "Almighty God," began the President after announcing the beginning of the assault: "Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity."After asking God to give the soldiers strength and steadfastness in their endeavor, and to welcome those who were destined to die into His kingdom, Roosevelt concluded the prayer: "Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace — a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done, Almighty God. Amen."
Rob Kerby of BeliefNet noted that the absence of any mention of faith in God on the memorial, dedicated in 2004, is painfully conspicuous. "The monument highlights 12 famous speeches given as America was dragged into the worldwide conflict on December 7, 1941, then as U.S. GIs took the lead in both the European and Pacific theaters of the war," wrote Kirby. "But there’s not a hint of Christianity or faith in any of them—although prayer was a key part of the American way of life during the war."At least one Christian leader noted the apparently intentional oversight, however. "To think that nowhere on the memorial is there a reference to God, religion, faith, or Old Testament scripture is really reprehensible," said the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, shortly after the memorial’s dedication. "Faith and religion played as much a role as any other aspect in getting us through those dark and difficult times. It appears that there is a deliberate attempt to remove any reference to God."While the speeches included in the memorial — from FDR, President Harry S Truman, General Douglas MacArthur, and General Dwight D. Eisenhower — included copious references to God and faith, none of them made it into the memorial. For instance, noted Kirby: "Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s comments at the Japanese surrender are included: ‘Today, the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death — the seas bear only commerce — men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace.’" But deleted from the legendary general’s comments were these inspiring words: "Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always…."In a prepared statement following Abbey’s testimony, Rep. Johnson said that it was "unconscionable that the Obama Administration would stand in the way of honoring our nation’s distinguished World War II veterans. President Roosevelt’s prayer gave solace, comfort, and strength to our nation and our brave warriors as we fought against tyranny and oppression. These words should be included among the tributes to the Greatest Generation memorialized on the National Mall."Johnson noted that World War II veterans had expressed their support for the addition of the prayer to the 2004 memorial, singling out one soldier in particular, George "Poppy" Fowler, a veteran of the Pacific Theatre. A press release from the congressman’s office quoted Fowler as saying: "I feel, with no doubt, that it would be appropriate that this prayer be inscribed in some manner at the World War II Memorial. This prayer came at a perilous time, yet it was answered in victory at a dear cost of lives. It was only by the Grace of God that I returned to my family." Fowler added that "the addition of this prayer to the World War II Memorial may inspire people to look at our great nation and ask what they may do to keep this freedom alive."Johnson told Fox News that the Administration’s response to the proposal ought to be troubling to the American people. "For there to be objections to demonstrating a faith in God at critical points in our nation’s history — particularly D-Day — boggles my mind," Johnson said. "I was very surprised they were going to object."Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, however, thought the Administration’s opposition was in keeping with the President’s customary response to issues of faith — particularly those embracing Judeo-Christian values. "This is further evidence that the Administration has created an environment that is hostile towards American history — but in particular towards Christianity," Perkins told Fox News. "I hope America wakes up and realizes what this Administration is doing to this country and how they want to radically and fundamentally change America."Perkins argued that the Obama Administration wants "to erase every aspect of America’s heritage. Any President, any official in history that has embraced Christianity, is no longer welcome in this Administration. That’s the environment they are creating."While the White House has balked at his proposal, Johnson said he expects unanimous support from the full House for the legislation.http://www.thenewamerican...-prayer-on-wwii-memorial
Dec 8 11 10:47 PM
by Peter Ferrara
by Peter Ferrara|
12/08/2011
On Tuesday, President Obama went to Osawatomie High School in Kansas to deliver an address framing the economic issues for the 2012 election. He was following in the footsteps of turn of the century “progressive” Teddy Roosevelt, who spoke at that same site 100 years ago to rail against big corporations and the privileged, while calling for “fair play” for ordinary Americans.
But the speech only showed why Obama can’t lead America on the economy. Instead of leading us forward into the modern economics of the 21st century, he keeps reaching back into the economics and politics of old – the failed Keynesian economics of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the disastrous stagflation of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s, and the supposed promise of progressivism 100 years ago, before the demonstrated failures of Marxism worldwide in the 20th century.
He drew a picture of America as a struggling third world nation, saying at stake today “is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure a retirement.” He explained America before his coming as “Those at the very top grew wealthier from their incomes and investments than ever before. But everyone else struggled with costs that were growing and paychecks that weren’t.”
This sounds more like Indonesia, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua. But it is not America “long before the recession hit.”
He explained the roots of the problem as,
Over the last few decades, huge advances in technology have allowed businesses to do more with less, and made it easier for them to set up shop and hire workers anywhere in the world….Steel mills that needed 1,000 employees are now able to do the same work with 100, so that layoffs were too often permanent, not just a temporary part of the business cycle….If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs or the Internet.
This Luddite analysis fundamentally misconceives the role of technology in a modern economy. Such advancing technology increases worker productivity, and hence wages and standards of living. Technological progress over the decades is why the average American worker in 2000 enjoyed 7 times the standard of living of the average American worker in 1900.
He identifies the solution in the speech as increased government spending as the foundation for rising prosperity. He says,
Today, manufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, and communicate with the rest of the world. That’s why the over one million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed shouldn’t be sitting at home with nothing to do. They should be rebuilding our roads and bridges; laying down faster railroads and broadband; modernizing our schools – all the things other countries are doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.
Before Barack Obama as President, the rest of the world looked to America as the example for the economic model that works to achieve prosperity. But today Obama tells America “It doesn’t work. It’s never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar boom of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade.”
Instead he tells us to look at the basic infrastructure spending of other countries as the model that works. But American economic growth is not suffering because of a lack of basic infrastructure like a third world country. It is suffering because Obama is so doggedly pursuing the opposite of every policy that would free the economy to produce and boom. Under such Obamanomics, soon enough America will be suffering from the lack of a reliable energy grid like a third world country.
And of course, essential to that essential infrastructure spending, Obama tutors us, is to increase tax rates on the nation’s investors and job creators. He said in Kansas on Tuesday,
“But we don’t have unlimited resources. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices….Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education, and research, and high-tech manufacturing? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can’t afford to do both. That’s not politics. That’s just math.”So there you have the Obama formula for an economic growth. After the greatest runaway spending spree in American history during the Obama Administration, the answer is for government to increase spending even more, financed by increasing tax rates even more on the very investors and job creators that produce the jobs for the middle class and working people in America’s economic system. That is a perfect prescription for another recession, not the long, long overdue recovery America is still waiting for under Obamanomics.
Obama tells us, “It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody pulling in $50 million.” That would be wrong if it was true. But it is not.
What Obama is peddling to America on tax policy is only the ugliest example of his well-established rhetorical style of calculated deception. It is based on what he thinks the average voter does not know and will not know, and can be manipulated to believe to Obama’s political advantage. For the picture he is painting of the rich getting away without paying their fair share while working people bear most of the tax burden is the opposite of reality.
Even before Obama was elected, under those “failed policies of the past,” the top 1% of income earners in 2007 paid 40% of federal income taxes, while the CBO just reported that they earned that year 17% of the income. Moreover, that 40% of federal income taxes paid by the top 1% was more than paid by the bottom 95% combined, according to official IRS data. While the top 1% paid 40% of federal income taxes, the bottom 40% paid no federal income taxes as a group on net. Today 47% pay no federal income taxes.
Yet, Obama has already enacted under current law further tax increases on the nation’s job creators, investors and small businesses going into effect in 2013, when the tax increases of Obamacare become effective and the Bush tax cuts expire. Consequently, that year the top two income tax rates would rise by close to 20%, the capital gains tax would soar by nearly 60%, the tax on dividends would nearly triple, and the Medicare payroll tax would rocket up by 62% for these disfavored taxpayers. This alone would take us well beyond the Clinton tax rates, despite Obama’s outdated talking point that he is still repeating from 2008.
This is in addition to America suffering with virtually the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world at nearly 40% on average, counting state corporate rates. As I have previously noted, even China imposes only a 25% rate, with the rate in the EU even less on average. Our Canadian neighbors next year, now booming while America lags under Obama, will enjoy a 15% rate next year.
Yet, Obama barnstorms America calling for still more tax increases on American business, large and small, and the job creators and investors on which jobs and prosperity for working people depend. The galloping regulatory burdens he is now imposing effectively involve still further tax increases stifling production. It all adds up to a brew for another recession in 2013, unless the American people force a change in course in 2012.
http://www.forbes.com/sit...ant-lead-on-the-economy/
Dec 13 11 2:11 AM
How Obama's Campaign Went From Cashing in on Hope to Exploiting Fearby Elisabeth Meinecke Dec 12, 2011
Obama needs something or someone to run against, and he needs it quickly. His approval ratings have dipped below 40 percent, and his disapprovals are approaching 55 percent. His campaign’s most important goal in 2012 is to prevent the election from becoming a referendum on his presidency. If this means that “FEAR” must replace the iconic “HOPE” motto of his 2008 effort, then that is what his team will aim for. ...
What sort of hand will Team Obama have in 2012?
Obama's small inner circle is nearly the same, still containing [Davidl] Plouffe and [David] Axelrod. Obama is still the candidate. The re-election campaign begins with the same large list of donors and bundlers that the last campaign accumulated. It will rely on the same ideological and demographic core.
But the elements that conspired to create the 2008 magic are conspicuously absent in this new cycle, and therein lies the problem.
First, President Bush is long gone. The defining excuse of the Obama presidency--that Bush created all the problems of the Obama era--is becoming increasingly untenable to the point hat Democrats trot it out less and less frequently. The public has never let Bush off the hook for his role in the economy's ongoing difficulties, as many polls have shown. But in September 2011, for the first time since Obama's inauguration, a majority (53 percent) told Gallup that they now blame Obama as well. That number will continue to grow, at least until the economy improves.
Second, the old '08 slogans have lost their meaning for Obama. They are not only obsolete, but in fact counterproductive. No incumbent can run on a platform of "Change"--especially not an incumbent president who enjoyed a blank legislative check for much of his first tow years in office. Obama had his chance to change anything he liked. The changes he chose to enact inspired not Hope, but the tea party movement. ...http://townhall.com/tipsh..._hope_to_exploiting_fear
Dec 26 11 7:31 AM
Lurita Doan
There has been much ink spilled over President Obama's belief in God (or lack thereof), in the strength of his faith, in questioning what his faith is ( Christian, Muslim, other ?), and wondering what church he attends/ will attend. After almost three years, Americans do not yet have an answer to those questions. Nor are they likely to since Obama's calculating use of the clergy and religion is usually timed to garner a boost in the polls.
In deed and action, Mr Obama has actually projected a thinly disguised contempt towards people of faith, such as when he uttered his iconic "clinging to their guns and religion" speech during the 2008 presidential election campaign.
Our President is much like the fellow Narcissus, who, according to legend, was so in love with himself that he stared endlessly at his own reflection. Obama is a man quite full of himself and recently told Americans that he views himself as fourth on the list of great American Presidents-- a surprising list that doesn't include George Washington.
Meantime, Michelle Obama's Christmas gift to Americans was her comment to Barbara Walters about "putting herself as her first priority" which shows a narcissistic tendency but also a fundamental lack of understanding about the nature of public service and the "job" she signed up to as the First Lady of the United States.
Americans take great pride in American Exceptionalism. We are proud of this great nation, proud of our great history, proud of our unparalleled philanthropy as a nation, proud of our balanced, impartial system of justice, and proud of the American free market system which has made our nation so prosperous.
But, in our presidents, we prefer to see humility.
Think back on Arnold Friberg's great painting, George Washington in Prayer at Valley Forge. Or the insistence of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Ben Franklin that "God" be included in the Declaration of Independence. Or Abraham Lincoln's soaring, faith-based language in his Second Inaugural Address. Or Ronald Reagan's poignant speech after the Challenger tragedy, as they "slipped the surly bonds of earth to 'touch the face of God." And, despite political differences, after the tragedy of 9/11, Americans took comfort in the "quiet faith" of George W. Bush, tenacious and persistent in a time of war.
Americans, regardless of their faith, want presidents who recognize that our many blessings are bestowed and "endowed by our creator". We want to see presidents with their heads bowed with a bit of humility instead of being locked in a reflective gaze of their own image. http://townhall.com/colum...faith_problem/page/full/
Jan 14 12 12:12 PM
John Ransom
1-14-2012
It’s official: Obama lives on the other side of the Looking Glass.
Not that there was any doubt based on his performance to date, but it’s nice to know that the White House has acknowledged that fantasy plays a major part of this president’s platform, policy and procedure.
To recap for the folks at home: Obama had a creepy, secret Halloween party at the White House produced by Hollywood’s head creepster, Tim Burton, which starred French resident-in-chief, Johnny “America’s a Big Dumb Puppy” Depp.
Why so secret?
Well, besides the little problem of having an anti-American expatriate like Depp at the White House, some in the president’s staff thought it might “look” bad to hold such an extravagant affair at a time that many Americans were out of work.
According to Jodi Kantor’s book, The Obamas, which publicly outed the party, “White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans — or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care — that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton’s and Depp’s contributions went unacknowledged.”
In fact, as a kind of life-is-stranger-than-fiction moment, Obama stole the premise from the movie A Few Good Men, and made sure that neither Burton nor Depp showed up in official White House logs that are supposed to record such visits, according to the UK’s Daily Mail. The White House claims that entertainers don’t log-in.
“White House visitor logs from 2009 do not list any of the stars that attended the party, but there certainly were some boldfaced-names that did make the cut,” reports the Daily Mail. “Actors George Clooney and Brad Pitt (listed under his legal name of William B Pitt) both visited the hallowed halls, Mr Clooney just a month after President Obama took office and Mr Pitt for a standard tour of the building.”
But missing in the outcry is this very simple observation: The White House staff understood how bad the party would look- it looks bad with good reason, too- yet instead of doing the right thing by NOT having the party, they decided to have the party and then lie to cover it up.
It only “looks” bad if you get caught, I guess.
Here’s a follow-up question for you: What else don’t we know that “looks” bad?
It’s a question that would have little consequence except that Obama’s whole presidency is predicated on one untruth after another.
I am daily reminded of this by volumes of bad news coming from the White House.
For example, Obama is now asking Congress for the power to merge certain federal agencies, he says, in a quest to make government “smaller.” I’m sure any day he’ll start “demanding” that Congress “act quickly” so he can make government “smaller.”
Obama? Smaller government? This guy’s no longer president of anything. He’s just a cartoon caricature of Warren G. Harding with a score of Tea Pot Domes: Stimulus, Solyndra, Soros, Fast and Furious.
A Do-Nothing Congress? Try a Say-Anything President.
In February of last year Obama presented a budget that asked for roughly another $1.5 trillion in deficit spending, but by July he was “demanding” that Congress cut the deficit by raising taxes.
Here’s a tip to Obama: You want to make government smaller, stop spending money; present a balanced budget; get off the backs of business in this country and let the economy do its proper job.
Or how about this: Fire ONE person at 1) the EPA; 2) The Department of Energy; 3) the IRS; 4) the Treasury, Education, Agriculture, Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, Justice Departments.
Making government smaller doesn’t really take an act of Congress.
But demanding that Congress give him the power to make government smaller is just another Through-the-Looking-Glass day for The Knave of Hearts. http://finance.townhall.c...and_president/page/full/
Jan 14 12 5:04 PM
Jeff Carter
Bill Daley leaving the Obama administration was big news for ten minutes. But as my friend Streetwise Professor and I discussed on Twitter after the news broke, this really signals a big change in direction on how Obama will campaign.
It’s going to get really ugly. How ugly? Think of the election cycle from 1796-1804. It will be that ugly. The culmination of those election cycles was a duel by Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, with Hamilton losing his life after the gun battle.
Both Hamilton and Jefferson manipulated the press of that time to scandalize the other side. Character assassination is a mild phrase to use when describing the vitriol that went back and forth. Look for more in the coming months.
It takes a thick skin to be a politician, but in Chicago, no one ever plays fair. The game is rigged before the ballots are printed. They say backroom politics are dead, but the political bosses in Chicago are alive and well. As Craig correctly points out, what you just saw in the White House was a street fight from Chicago manifesting itself into an internal power struggle in Washington.
Even though they are all Democrats, there are still big political divisions within Chicago. Mayor Daley’s special talent was mitigating the special interests of all the factions. Truly, it is a special skill that should be admired and not chided, even though he accomplished it on the back of the tax payer. Daley would be an excellent CEO of a large company. I have a lot of respect for him. He is an extremely bright and energetic person. He isn’t a political hack.
There are different kinds of Democrats in Chicago. You need to know the species before you jump to conclusions. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and nothing happens without a consensus.
There are the machine Dems that understand you need a really vital business economy to support all the union jobs and other enterprises they make money from. The machine Dems can’t wet their beaks without a continuing flow of both private and government money they can skim from. Culturally, these kinds of Democrats would describe themselves as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal”. They are fiscally conservative until you start cutting spending on government programs, or simply cutting out government programs because they mean jobs and pensions to their constituents. Dan Rostenkowski was the textbook example of this machine Democrat. Blagojevich was a machine guy that jumped ship. He got too big for his britches. If he would have followed orders, he would have been just fine. Instead, he is going to jail. Machine Democrats do play by some rules. Once you negotiate with them and have a deal, you have a deal. At least until the next negotiation where they will try to take a little more from you. But in the ensuing years, you will be great friends.
The next kind of Democrat works the system and plays racial politics all the way. This is where many ethnic politicians play. They make sure they use race to “get their fair share”. They have allies in their mission. In the case of the White House, it’s David Plouffe.
There is a part of Chicago politics that is really well known. However, it’s unspoken because of fear. The fear of being branded a racist when you are merely saying something everyone knows but social constraints make it taboo. The cost of silence is high. Practitioners of racial politics are very tough to negotiate with, and extract a high price for their support. Jesse Jackson is a good example of someone where the issue of race is forefront in the negotiation.
An example of how a person like Jackson was placated was when his family miraculously received the rights to all the distribution of Budweiser at city and county establishments. John Kass of the Chicago Tribune doesn’t call him the King of Beers for nothing.
Advocates of this brand toss around the “racist” brand liberally. Because they are ethnic, there is no way they themselves can be “racist” because they are “standing up for the people”. If the people knew how much money was skimmed off the top they might not be so understanding. These kinds of Democrats are very tough to negotiate with. There are always special cut outs for them, and they never are satisfied. Every issue comes down to one thing, race. They use that topic as a cudgel to get what they want. And unlike the Machine Dems, a deal is not always a deal with them. Not all ethnic politicians reside in this forest of politics, some are much more comfortable being machine Democrats. You have to feel them out to see where they live.
The last kind of Democrat in Chicago are the true believers. They are idealistic and actually think that systems of organizing people like socialism and communism are the best methods. They idealize China. The fact that huge cities can be built at the twitch of a government finger with no concern for property rights is enticing to them. The true believers don’t believe in a single class system like they say. There is a small cadre of hand picked ruling class people, and then the rest of the poor stiffs. Bill Ayers is one person at the idealogical center of a system like this. Ayers had many predecessors in Chicago and this sort of “true believer” Democrat culture runs very deep. The tentacles of the true believer culture reach all over Chicago. Recall, the Haymarket riots were here. Upton Sinclair did his best work here. Studs Terkel was a true believer. There is a DNA that runs very deep in certain parts of the city which exemplifies this sort of system. Barack Obama is a person that came from this part of city politics. There are many others, but for them a large government apparatus that directs all traffic and makes all decisions is the way to run a society. Many of the true believers ally themselves with the practitioners of racial politics because they see that as a means to an endgame.
The other problem with the true believers is they have credentialed themselves and put themselves into positions of respect and authority. Ayers as a university professor was entitled to a platform for his views, and many people allow him to air them in the spirit of public debate. This is exactly what they want, for as soon as they assume a position of respect, their twisted view of society becomes debated. In fact their views should be tossed out with the trash and their title stripped away.
An outsider cannot begin to comprehend the deep level to which machine politics have descended to in Chicago. There is virtually no job in government at any level, city, county and many state positions, where a person owes a person which owes a politician. You just don’t get there from here without paying a lot of dues, both in money and physical labor. By physical labor I mean going out on the streets and knocking on doors, campaigning, cajoling friends to elect certain people. To the untrained eye, one Democrat looks like another when nothing can be further from the truth.
From afar, the machine is a thing of beauty when it springs into action. There is intense coordination. It’s efficient. Opponents are mowed down. Like a band of army ants, it eats everything in its way. Not even the internet and software can stop the political machine. Employees will make sure they don’t adopt software that would cost precious jobs. City reorganization isn’t cutting budgets, it’s simply designating which private sector business will absorb the city jobs that were cut. Then the private sector gets intimately intertwined with the government and the machine spreads to ho hum businesses like florists and caterers. Chicago runs more like Russia or China with an American twist. The only way out is to escape. Chicago has lost population over the last twenty years.
Then there are the Democrats that are the connectors. David Axelrod is a true believer that is a connector. He is good with the turn of a phrase to mask what they truly want and turn it into something saleable to the American public. The Clinton’s had their own machine which some Chicago folks were a part of. But their idea of political combat was a scorched earth policy. Chicago operators are much more pragmatic than that.
Obama’s mission was to ingrain that sort of crony capitalist machine into the fabric of national politics. One look at all the waivers given to his cronies for Obamacare shows you where he is headed. If Obama and his compatriots get there way, every business, man, woman and child will have to bow their head and kiss a ring to get anything done.
Those true believers are dangerous. People like Ayers want the traditional America destroyed. Sometimes they do make mistakes. They believe so deeply in the idealistic nation state they envision, that they lose sight of what is really happening on the ground. I think Daley leaving the White House is one of those times. Valerie Jarrett and the practitioners of her style of politics are running the show. Let’s work hard to inform Americans so they don’t buy what she is selling. Had Daley held sway, we would have seen a different more palatable direction.
And, by the way, many of the Illinois Republicans are no better than the Democrats. That’s why they call it “The Combine”. http://finance.townhall.c...will_get_ugly/page/full/
Jan 30 12 10:54 PM
US President Barack Obama speaks at theUniversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich speaks in Tampa, Florida.
A casual observer on the Republican campaign trail could be forgiven for thinking President Barack Obama has traded in his American flag lapel pin for one with a hammer and sickle.
To some rightwing Republicans the US leader is a rabid socialist, to others, he's a card-carrying Marxist. But to most, mention the name "Obama" and they see red.
On the eve of Tuesday's primary elections, one of the loudest battle cries is that the incumbent Democratic president will bring America to ruin -- unless a conservative Republican is elected to replace him in November.
Former House speaker Newt Gingrich tried to convince voters late Saturday that he was just such a man, telling supporters at a rally in Palm Beach that unlike Obama he would run an "American campaign" for the presidency.
"I am for the Declaration of Independence," Gingrich proudly proclaimed. "I am for the Constitution."
Obama, by contrast, "is for European Socialism," the Georgia lawmaker said.
Frontrunner Mitt Romney also has been fond of telling his supporters here that Obama is a modern-day Red Menace, warning in a speech this weekend that the president "wants us to turn into a European-style welfare state."
That fate, Romney said, would "poison the very spirit of America."
Even former White House hopeful Michele Bachmann -- who earlier this month abandoned her White House campaign -- took to the airways this weekend to predict the imminent demise of what she described as a radical Obama administration.
"Obama will be a one-termer, because all he has been about is redistribution of wealth and the rise of socialist principles," said Bachmann said in an appearance Sunday on US television.
Florida is a key battleground in the November election, as Republicans vie for their party's presidential nomination amid the hope of turning Obama into a one-term president.
Fears of a Communist scourge are deeply rooted in the American psyche, dating back to the "red scare" at start of the Cold War over half a century ago -- when thousands of Americans were accused of being Communist sympathizers, and many were persecuted, banned from working and in some cases forced to move abroad.
And little distinction is drawn in the United States between the ideological positions of Socialism and Communism.
Now in a time of economic uncertainty and political upheaval, such sentiments are finding some breathing room again.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found 60 percent of Americans respond negatively to the term "socialism."
In a Republican debate in New Hampshire earlier this month, Texas Governor Rick Perry was adamant that Obama is a socialist. "I make a very proud statement and a fact that we have a president that's a socialist," he said.
"I disagree with (the) premise that somehow or another President Obama reflects our founding fathers. He doesn't. He talks about having a more powerful, more centralized, more consuming and costly federal government," he said.
Back in Florida, at a campaign event at the Aloma Baptist Church in Winter Park, Niels Lobo said he appreciated the marked anti-socialist tenor of Gingrich's remarks.
Lobo, a professor of computer sciences at the University of Central Florida, said he is eager to see Obama voted out "because he is a Marxist."
"We really want him out," he said. "He is slowly driving the country towards Marxism."
Lobo added he takes particular exception to the president's landmark healthcare reform plan which comes a bit too close for his taste to socialized medicine. "'Obamacare' needs to be killed," he argued.
Tina Altic, another Gingrich supporter said she was backing the Georgia lawmaker because he was best able to turn back Obama, whom she accused of "running this country into the ground."
Obama has also run foul of many conservatives for being too deferential toward foreign leaders, they say.
"At least he won't apologize for the country and he will stop the spending," the 66-year-old retiree said of Gingrich at an Orlando rally.
Another Gingrich supporter, John, who only gave his first name, said he was convinced Obama's upbringing overseas -- he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia -- explains his alleged estrangement from centrist American values.
"Mom, baseball and apple pie," he said, citing what many think are the holy trio of American values -- something missing from Obama's world view. "He doesn't understand us," said John.http://news.yahoo.com/soc...eeing-red-222619464.html
Feb 22 12 11:34 AM
The Rev. Franklin Graham says President Barack Obama has “given Islam a pass,” including ignoring atrocities against Christians in the Muslim world — so much so that the evangelist says he cannot “categorically” say Obama is not a Muslim.
In a stunning interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, the renowned Christian leader and son of the Rev. Billy Graham expressed shock that Obama was doing little to protect Christians across the Muslim world against a wave of persecution.
MSNBC’s liberal hosts were flummoxed by Graham’s strong rebuke of Obama, and they asked him whether he believes the president is a Christian.
“You have to ask that of President Obama,” Graham shot back. “You can ask me do I believe you’re a Christian. I think people have to ask Barack Obama. He’s come out saying he’s a Christian. So I think the question is, what is a Christian?”
Graham said he asked Obama about his faith when he was first running for president.
Graham related their conversation: “He said that he was working on the south side of Chicago in the community and they asked him what church he went to.
“He said I don’t go to church. Then they said if you are going to work in our community you have to join one of the churches. Then, of course, he joined Reverend Jeremiah’s church. So that’s what his answer to my question was.”
Again queried about Obama’s faith, Graham repeated: “You have to ask him. I cannot answer that question for anybody. All I know is I’m a sinner and that God has forgiven me of my sins because I put my faith and trust in Jesus Christ.”
Graham added that he accepts Obama’s claim he’s a Christian at face value, but said ultimately only God knows his heart.
He did note that Obama has shown strong empathy toward Muslims, and the president has an Islamic background.
“Under Islamic law, under Shariah law, Islam sees him as a son of Islam, because his father was a Muslim, his grandfather was a Muslim, his great-grandfather was a Muslim,” Graham said.
“So under Islamic law, the Muslim world sees President Obama as a Muslim, as a son of Islam. That’s just the way it works. That’s the way they see him.”
Asked whether he believes Obama is “categorically not a Muslim,” Graham said, “I can’t say categorically because Islam has gotten a free a pass under Obama.”
Graham noted that Obama’s Middle East policies have helped Islamists while hurting Christian minorities throughout the region.
“We see the Arab Spring, and coming out of the Arab Spring, the Islamists are taking control of the Middle East. And people like [Hosni] Mubarak was a dictator, but he kept the peace with Israel and the Christian minorities in Egypt were protected.
“Now those Christian minorities throughout the entire Arab world are under attack. A Newsweek magazine cover story last week [was about] was the massacre of Christians in the Islamic world. From Europe all the way through the Middle East to Africa into East Asia, Muslims are killing Christians.
“The president can come out and make a statement demanding that if these countries do not protect their minorities, no more foreign aid from the United States. They are not protecting the minorities. The society in these Islamic countries is not protecting the Christians anymore.”
Graham added: “And hopefully, the people that are in power are going to protect the minorities, and Christians in the Muslim world are the minority. Egypt is like 13 million in the minority. Nigeria is 80-some million, but they’re still a minority.
“These Christians are having their churches burned. They’re being raped. Women are being raped. They’re being murdered. Because under Shariah law Muslims can take a Christian’s property, take a Christian’s life, can take his daughter. And this is what is happening. The governments are not able to protect the minorities in the society. And they’re unwilling to protect them. If a government is not going to protect the minorities, we should not give them one dollar of U.S. aid.”
Graham claimed Obama is doing little to nothing to help persecuted Christians.
“And he’s got the power of the White House,” Graham complained. “He could be speaking to these countries right now, demanding that they protect the Christians in those countries. He’s been quiet about it.
“We have an aid station in Southern Sudan. The Sudanese dropped bombs on it right before Christmas. We have a Bible school. Just two weeks ago the Sudanese air force dropped eight bombs on that Bible school. Why doesn’t the president come out and try to bring peace to the Sudan?”
Mar 18 12 6:21 AM
Obama face flags are new evidence of a disturbing possibility: that Barack H. Obama is building a personality cult based on himself. His disdain for the Constitution, and his calling it “a charter of negative liberties,” is bad enough. Now he has people believing that he is some sort of god. They are even willing to desecrate the American flag on the strength of that belief. That Obama does not put a stop to such behavior is the worst sign of all.
This Obama face flag turned up in Kokomo, IN. Photo from Atlas Shrugs site.
The first sign of Obama face flags turned up nearly two and a half years ago, on eBay. Some seller, whose name eBay does not record any longer, offered American flags with Barack H. Obama’s face instead of the fifty-star union, for under $5 US, plus shipping and handling. The Free Republic site highlighted the sale, which eBay has since stopped. Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs site picked the story up , and then WorldNetDaily (now simply WND) took it from there . The WND article includes a screen capture of the eBay sale, before eBay discontinued it. It also has a cropped image from Atlas Shrugs, showing an Obama face flag flying from a flagpole near a house in Kokomo, IN.
Obama face flags violate the US Flag Code. Public law 344, section 4G clearly says:
The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
Never before has any US flag appeared for sale having on it the likeness of a sitting US President (or man holding that office), or any other politician.
The Obama face flags story died then. eBay stopped the sale of such flags, and no one reported any further sightings.
Until today.
Today, The Daily Commercial (Leesburg, FL) reported that another of the Obama face flags turned up, flying from a flagpole next to the office of the Lake County Democratic Party. The flagpole carried a traditional US flag, plus an Obama face flag flying beneath it.
Jim Bradford, a veteran living in Leesburg, noticed the flag over the last weekend. He photographed it and sent pictures to his friends and to several veterans’ groups. Then fellow veteran Don Van Beck confronted Lake County Democratic Chairwoman Nancy Hurlbert (no relation to this correspondent) directly.
The chairwoman admitted that the Obama face flag had flown for two months, and then said:
We were given this flag as a gift. We are proud of our president, we’re proud of the United States, and we felt it was time to display that.
If her story is correct, then no one told her that Obama face flags are as illegal as they are unprecedented. Van Beck offered to take the flag down at once, to spare her the effort. In reply, she said,
No, this is private property. You’re not allowed to touch anything. I’ll call the police.
Van Beck then dared her to call the police to defend flying a defaced flag. She demurred, and said that she would check the Flag Code out for herself. Van Beck also offered her a white-on-black POW/MIA flag to fly in place of the Obama face flag. Later, Chairwoman Hurlbert admitted that the defaced flag was not according to code, and took it down. (See also here , here , and here .)
This is arguably the worst thing that anyone has done to an American flag. Burning the flag does at least have one good reason, according to the Flag Code: to dispose of an old, worn-out flag. Deliberately substituting a man’s face for the stars redesigns the flag to honor, not the United States of America, but the owner of the face. No sitting President has ever demanded, or gotten, such a favor.
Worse yet, the Obama face flag of Leesburg, Florida is not the first Obama face flag. And it won’t be the last. Note carefully what Chairwoman Hurlbert said to Don Van Beck: “We [received] this flag as a gift.” A gift from whom? From the same person who sold Obama face flags on eBay two and a half years ago, before eBay caught him and stopped the sale? From a customer of that person?
Even more stunning is Chairwoman Hurlbert’s attitude. For two months she flew that Obama face flag underneath the regular US flag, in front of her headquarters, and never checked the Flag Code to see whether what she was doing might be wrong. Either that, or she did not care what the Flag Code said, until Don Van Beck, Jim Bradford, et al. let her know, in no uncertain terms, that they did care, whether she cared or not.
(As an aside: Ms. Hulbert might not see the irony when she defends the concept “private property.” She is “proud” of a “President” who has signed on to an agenda that calls on governments to abolish private property.)
But once again, the Obama face flags themselves are the worst problem. A recent poll, using “robo-calling,” found that most respondents thought that Barack H. Obama is a Muslim, not a Christian as he claims. Considering that many of Obama’s policies violate Sharia law, in spirit if not in letter (like forcing employers to pay for oral contraceptive regimen for their female employees), Obama is far more likely to be an “Obamist,” building a personality cult based on himself. Obama face flags are consistent with such a cult, whether Obama himself, or someone other than he, is building it.
Presidents of the United States do not have US flags sporting their faces in place of the union. This “President” now does. That is the real harm of the Obama face flags.http://www.conservativene...ags-explode-controversy/
Mar 19 12 5:28 AM
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
EXECUTIVE ORDER
NATIONAL DEFENSE RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. App. 2061 et seq.), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:
PART I - PURPOSE, POLICY, AND IMPLEMENTATION
Section 101. Purpose. This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense resource policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (the "Act").
Sec. 102. Policy. The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States.
Sec. 103. General Functions. Executive departments and agencies (agencies) responsible for plans and programs relating to national defense (as defined in section 801(j) of this order), or for resources and services needed to support such plans and programs, shall:
(a) identify requirements for the full spectrum of emergencies, including essential military and civilian demand;
(b) assess on an ongoing basis the capability of the domestic industrial and technological base to satisfy requirements in peacetime and times of national emergency, specifically evaluating the availability of the most critical resource and production sources, including subcontractors and suppliers, materials, skilled labor, and professional and technical personnel;
(c) be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate resources and production capability, including services and critical technology, for national defense requirements;
(d) improve the efficiency and responsiveness of the domestic industrial base to support national defense requirements; and
(e) foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, services, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsiveness.
Sec. 104. Implementation. (a) The National Security Council and Homeland Security Council, in conjunction with the National Economic Council, shall serve as the integrated policymaking forum for consideration and formulation of national defense resource preparedness policy and shall make recommendations to the President on the use of authorities under the Act.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall:
(1) advise the President on issues of national defense resource preparedness and on the use of the authorities and functions delegated by this order;
(2) provide for the central coordination of the plans and programs incident to authorities and functions delegated under this order, and provide guidance to agencies assigned functions under this order, developed in consultation with such agencies; and
(3) report to the President periodically concerning all program activities conducted pursuant to this order.
(c) The Defense Production Act Committee, described in section 701 of this order, shall:
(1) in a manner consistent with section 2(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2062(b), advise the President through the Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy on the effective use of the authorities under the Act; and
(2) prepare and coordinate an annual report to the Congress pursuant to section 722(d) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2171(d).
(d) The Secretary of Commerce, in cooperation with the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and other agencies, shall:
(1) analyze potential effects of national emergencies on actual production capability, taking into account the entire production system, including shortages of resources, and develop recommended preparedness measures to strengthen capabilities for production increases in national emergencies; and
(2) perform industry analyses to assess capabilities of the industrial base to support the national defense, and develop policy recommendations to improve the international competitiveness of specific domestic industries and their abilities to meet national defense program needs.
PART II - PRIORITIES AND ALLOCATIONS
Sec. 201. Priorities and Allocations Authorities. (a) The authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071, to require acceptance and priority performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, and to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, is delegated to the following agency heads:
(1) the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to food resources, food resource facilities, livestock resources, veterinary resources, plant health resources, and the domestic distribution of farm equipment and commercial fertilizer;
(2) the Secretary of Energy with respect to all forms of energy;
(3) the Secretary of Health and Human Services with respect to health resources;
(4) the Secretary of Transportation with respect to all forms of civil transportation;
(5) the Secretary of Defense with respect to water resources; and
(6) the Secretary of Commerce with respect to all other materials, services, and facilities, including construction materials.
(b) The Secretary of each agency delegated authority under subsection (a) of this section (resource departments) shall plan for and issue regulations to prioritize and allocate resources and establish standards and procedures by which the authority shall be used to promote the national defense, under both emergency and non-emergency conditions. Each Secretary shall authorize the heads of other agencies, as appropriate, to place priority ratings on contracts and orders for materials, services, and facilities needed in support of programs approved under section 202 of this order.
(c) Each resource department shall act, as necessary and appropriate, upon requests for special priorities assistance, as defined by section 801(l) of this order, in a time frame consistent with the urgency of the need at hand. In situations where there are competing program requirements for limited resources, the resource department shall consult with the Secretary who made the required determination under section 202 of this order. Such Secretary shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements to prioritize on the basis of operational urgency. In situations involving more than one Secretary making such a required determination under section 202 of this order, the Secretaries shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements should receive priority on the basis of operational urgency.
(d) If agreement cannot be reached between two such Secretaries, then the issue shall be referred to the President through the Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor and the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
(e) The Secretary of each resource department, when necessary, shall make the finding required under section 101(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(b). This finding shall be submitted for the President's approval through the Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor and the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. Upon such approval, the Secretary of the resource department that made the finding may use the authority of section 101(a) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(a), to control the general distribution of any material (including applicable services) in the civilian market.
Sec. 202. Determinations. Except as provided in section 201(e) of this order, the authority delegated by section 201 of this order may be used only to support programs that have been determined in writing as necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense:
(a) by the Secretary of Defense with respect to military production and construction, military assistance to foreign nations, military use of civil transportation, stockpiles managed by the Department of Defense, space, and directly related activities;
(b) by the Secretary of Energy with respect to energy production and construction, distribution and use, and directly related activities; and
(c) by the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to all other national defense programs, including civil defense and continuity of Government.
Sec. 203. Maximizing Domestic Energy Supplies. The authorities of the President under section 101(c)(1) (2) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(c)(1) (2), are delegated to the Secretary of Commerce, with the exception that the authority to make findings that materials (including equipment), services, and facilities are critical and essential, as described in section 101(c)(2)(A) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2071(c)(2)(A), is delegated to the Secretary of Energy.
Sec. 204. Chemical and Biological Warfare. The authority of the President conferred by section 104(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2074(b), is delegated to the Secretary of Defense. This authority may not be further delegated by the Secretary.
PART III - EXPANSION OF PRODUCTIVE CAPACITY AND SUPPLY
Sec. 301. Loan Guarantees. (a) To reduce current or projected shortfalls of resources, critical technology items, or materials essential for the national defense, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense, as defined in section 801(h) of this order, is authorized pursuant to section 301 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, to guarantee loans by private institutions.
(b) Each guaranteeing agency is designated and authorized to: (1) act as fiscal agent in the making of its own guarantee contracts and in otherwise carrying out the purposes of section 301 of the Act; and (2) contract with any Federal Reserve Bank to assist the agency in serving as fiscal agent.
(c) Terms and conditions of guarantees under this authority shall be determined in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The guaranteeing agency is authorized, following such consultation, to prescribe: (1) either specifically or by maximum limits or otherwise, rates of interest, guarantee and commitment fees, and other charges which may be made in connection with such guarantee contracts; and (2) regulations governing the forms and procedures (which shall be uniform to the extent practicable) to be utilized in connection therewith.
Sec. 302. Loans. To reduce current or projected shortfalls of resources, critical technology items, or materials essential for the national defense, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 302 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2092, to make loans thereunder. Terms and conditions of loans under this authority shall be determined in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of OMB.
Sec. 303. Additional Authorities. (a) To create, maintain, protect, expand, or restore domestic industrial base capabilities essential for the national defense, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093, to make provision for purchases of, or commitments to purchase, an industrial resource or a critical technology item for Government use or resale, and to make provision for the development of production capabilities, and for the increased use of emerging technologies in security program applications, and to enable rapid transition of emerging technologies.
(b) Materials acquired under section 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093, that exceed the needs of the programs under the Act may be transferred to the National Defense Stockpile, if, in the judgment of the Secretary of Defense as the National Defense Stockpile Manager, such transfers are in the public interest.
Sec. 304. Subsidy Payments. To ensure the supply of raw or nonprocessed materials from high cost sources, or to ensure maximum production or supply in any area at stable prices of any materials in light of a temporary increase in transportation cost, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303(c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(c), to make subsidy payments, after consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of OMB.
Sec. 305. Determinations and Findings. (a) Pursuant to budget authority provided by an appropriations act in advance for credit assistance under section 301 or 302 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, 2092, and consistent with the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, as amended (FCRA), 2 U.S.C. 661 et seq., the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority to make the determinations set forth in sections 301(a)(2) and 302(b)(2) of the Act, in consultation with the Secretary making the required determination under section 202 of this order; provided, that such determinations shall be made after due consideration of the provisions of OMB Circular A 129 and the credit subsidy score for the relevant loan or loan guarantee as approved by OMB pursuant to FCRA.
(b) Other than any determination by the President under section 303(a)(7)(b) of the Act, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority to make the required determinations, judgments, certifications, findings, and notifications defined under section 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093, in consultation with the Secretary making the required determination under section 202 of this order.
Sec. 306. Strategic and Critical Materials. The Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the Interior in consultation with the Secretary of Defense as the National Defense Stockpile Manager, are each delegated the authority of the President under section 303(a)(1)(B) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(a)(1)(B), to encourage the exploration, development, and mining of strategic and critical materials and other materials.
Sec. 307. Substitutes. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303(g) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(g), to make provision for the development of substitutes for strategic and critical materials, critical components, critical technology items, and other resources to aid the national defense.
Sec. 308. Government-Owned Equipment. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 303(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(e), to:
(a) procure and install additional equipment, facilities, processes, or improvements to plants, factories, and other industrial facilities owned by the Federal Government and to procure and install Government owned equipment in plants, factories, or other industrial facilities owned by private persons;
(b) provide for the modification or expansion of privately owned facilities, including the modification or improvement of production processes, when taking actions under sections 301, 302, or 303 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2091, 2092, 2093; and
(c) sell or otherwise transfer equipment owned by the Federal Government and installed under section 303(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2093(e), to the owners of such plants, factories, or other industrial facilities.
Sec. 309. Defense Production Act Fund. The Secretary of Defense is designated the Defense Production Act Fund Manager, in accordance with section 304(f) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2094(f), and shall carry out the duties specified in section 304 of the Act, in consultation with the agency heads having approved, and appropriated funds for, projects under title III of the Act.
Sec. 310. Critical Items. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 107(b)(1) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2077(b)(1), to take appropriate action to ensure that critical components, critical technology items, essential materials, and industrial resources are available from reliable sources when needed to meet defense requirements during peacetime, graduated mobilization, and national emergency. Appropriate action may include restricting contract solicitations to reliable sources, restricting contract solicitations to domestic sources (pursuant to statutory authority), stockpiling critical components, and developing substitutes for critical components or critical technology items.
Sec. 311. Strengthening Domestic Capability. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense is delegated the authority of the President under section 107(a) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2077(a), to utilize the authority of title III of the Act or any other provision of law to provide appropriate incentives to develop, maintain, modernize, restore, and expand the productive capacities of domestic sources for critical components, critical technology items, materials, and industrial resources essential for the execution of the national security strategy of the United States.
Sec. 312. Modernization of Equipment. The head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense, in accordance with section 108(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2078(b), may utilize the authority of title III of the Act to guarantee the purchase or lease of advance manufacturing equipment, and any related services with respect to any such equipment for purposes of the Act. In considering title III projects, the head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense shall provide a strong preference for proposals submitted by a small business supplier or subcontractor in accordance with section 108(b)(2) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2078(b)(2).
PART IV - VOLUNTARY AGREEMENTS AND ADVISORY COMMITTEES
Sec. 401. Delegations. The authority of the President under sections 708(c) and (d) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(c), (d), is delegated to the heads of agencies otherwise delegated authority under this order. The status of the use of such delegations shall be furnished to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
Sec. 402. Advisory Committees. The authority of the President under section 708(d) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(d), and delegated in section 401 of this order (relating to establishment of advisory committees) shall be exercised only after consultation with, and in accordance with, guidelines and procedures established by the Administrator of General Services.
Sec. 403. Regulations. The Secretary of Homeland Security, after approval of the Attorney General, and after consultation by the Attorney General with the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, shall promulgate rules pursuant to section 708(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(e), incorporating standards and procedures by which voluntary agreements and plans of action may be developed and carried out. Such rules may be adopted by other agencies to fulfill the rulemaking requirement of section 708(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2158(e).
PART V - EMPLOYMENT OF PERSONNEL
Sec. 501. National Defense Executive Reserve. (a) In accordance with section 710(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(e), there is established in the executive branch a National Defense Executive Reserve (NDER) composed of persons of recognized expertise from various segments of the private sector and from Government (except full time Federal employees) for training for employment in executive positions in the Federal Government in the event of a national defense emergency.
(b) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall issue necessary guidance for the NDER program, including appropriate guidance for establishment, recruitment, training, monitoring, and activation of NDER units and shall be responsible for the overall coordination of the NDER program. The authority of the President under section 710(e) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(e), to determine periods of national defense emergency is delegated to the Secretary of Homeland Security.
(c) The head of any agency may implement section 501(a) of this order with respect to NDER operations in such agency.
(d) The head of each agency with an NDER unit may exercise the authority under section 703 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2153, to employ civilian personnel when activating all or a part of its NDER unit. The exercise of this authority shall be subject to the provisions of sections 501(e) and (f) of this order and shall not be redelegated.
(e) The head of an agency may activate an NDER unit, in whole or in part, upon the written determination of the Secretary of Homeland Security that an emergency affecting the national defense exists and that the activation of the unit is necessary to carry out the emergency program functions of the agency.
(f) Prior to activating the NDER unit, the head of the agency shall notify, in writing, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism of the impending activation.
Sec. 502. Consultants. The head of each agency otherwise delegated functions under this order is delegated the authority of the President under sections 710(b) and (c) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2160(b), (c), to employ persons of outstanding experience and ability without compensation and to employ experts, consultants, or organizations. The authority delegated by this section may not be redelegated.
PART VI - LABOR REQUIREMENTS
Sec. 601. Secretary of Labor. (a) The Secretary of Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of other agencies, as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, shall:
(1) collect and maintain data necessary to make a continuing appraisal of the Nation's workforce needs for purposes of national defense;
(2) upon request by the Director of Selective Service, and in coordination with the Secretary of Defense, assist the Director of Selective Service in development of policies regulating the induction and deferment of persons for duty in the armed services;
(3) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order, consult with that agency with respect to: (i) the effect of contemplated actions on labor demand and utilization; (ii) the relation of labor demand to materials and facilities requirements; and (iii) such other matters as will assist in making the exercise of priority and allocations functions consistent with effective utilization and distribution of labor;
(4) upon request from the head of an agency with authority under this order: (i) formulate plans, programs, and policies for meeting the labor requirements of actions to be taken for national defense purposes; and (ii) estimate training needs to help address national defense requirements and promote necessary and appropriate training programs; and
(5) develop and implement an effective labor management relations policy to support the activities and programs under this order, with the cooperation of other agencies as deemed appropriate by the Secretary of Labor, including the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the National Mediation Board, and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service.
(b) All agencies shall cooperate with the Secretary of Labor, upon request, for the purposes of this section, to the extent permitted by law.
PART VII - DEFENSE PRODUCTION ACT COMMITTEE
Sec. 701. The Defense Production Act Committee. (a) The Defense Production Act Committee (Committee) shall be composed of the following members, in accordance with section 722(b) of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2171(b):
(1) The Secretary of State;
(2) The Secretary of the Treasury;
(3) The Secretary of Defense;
(4) The Attorney General;
(5) The Secretary of the Interior;
(6) The Secretary of Agriculture;
(7) The Secretary of Commerce;
(8) The Secretary of Labor;
(9) The Secretary of Health and Human Services;
(10) The Secretary of Transportation;
(11) The Secretary of Energy;
(12) The Secretary of Homeland Security;
(13) The Director of National Intelligence;
(14) The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency;
(15) The Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers;
(16) The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and
(17) The Administrator of General Services.
(b) The Director of OMB and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy shall be invited to participate in all Committee meetings and activities in an advisory role. The Chairperson, as designated by the President pursuant to section 722 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2171, may invite the heads of other agencies or offices to participate in Committee meetings and activities in an advisory role, as appropriate.
Sec. 702. Offsets. The Secretary of Commerce shall prepare and submit to the Congress the annual report required by section 723 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2172, in consultation with the Secretaries of State, the Treasury, Defense, and Labor, the United States Trade Representative, the Director of National Intelligence, and the heads of other agencies as appropriate. The heads of agencies shall provide the Secretary of Commerce with such information as may be necessary for the effective performance of this function.
PART VIII - GENERAL PROVISIONS
Sec. 801. Definitions. In addition to the definitions in section 702 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2152, the following definitions apply throughout this order:
(a) "Civil transportation" includes movement of persons and property by all modes of transportation in interstate, intrastate, or foreign commerce within the United States, its territories and possessions, and the District of Columbia, and related public storage and warehousing, ports, services, equipment and facilities, such as transportation carrier shop and repair facilities. "Civil transportation" also shall include direction, control, and coordination of civil transportation capacity regardless of ownership. "Civil transportation" shall not include transportation owned or controlled by the Department of Defense, use of petroleum and gas pipelines, and coal slurry pipelines used only to supply energy production facilities directly.
(b) "Energy" means all forms of energy including petroleum, gas (both natural and manufactured), electricity, solid fuels (including all forms of coal, coke, coal chemicals, coal liquification, and coal gasification), solar, wind, other types of renewable energy, atomic energy, and the production, conservation, use, control, and distribution (including pipelines) of all of these forms of energy.
(c) "Farm equipment" means equipment, machinery, and repair parts manufactured for use on farms in connection with the production or preparation for market use of food resources.
(d) "Fertilizer" means any product or combination of products that contain one or more of the elements nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium for use as a plant nutrient.
(e) "Food resources" means all commodities and products, (simple, mixed, or compound), or complements to such commodities or products, that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals, irrespective of other uses to which such commodities or products may be put, at all stages of processing from the raw commodity to the products thereof in vendible form for human or animal consumption. "Food resources" also means potable water packaged in commercially marketable containers, all starches, sugars, vegetable and animal or marine fats and oils, seed, cotton, hemp, and flax fiber, but does not mean any such material after it loses its identity as an agricultural commodity or agricultural product.
(f) "Food resource facilities" means plants, machinery, vehicles (including on farm), and other facilities required for the production, processing, distribution, and storage (including cold storage) of food resources, and for the domestic distribution of farm equipment and fertilizer (excluding transportation thereof).
(g) "Functions" include powers, duties, authority, responsibilities, and discretion.
(h) "Head of each agency engaged in procurement for the national defense" means the heads of the Departments of State, Justice, the Interior, and Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the General Services Administration, and all other agencies with authority delegated under section 201 of this order.
(i) "Health resources" means drugs, biological products, medical devices, materials, facilities, health supplies, services and equipment required to diagnose, mitigate or prevent the impairment of, improve, treat, cure, or restore the physical or mental health conditions of the population.
(j) "National defense" means programs for military and energy production or construction, military or critical infrastructure assistance to any foreign nation, homeland security, stockpiling, space, and any directly related activity. Such term includes emergency preparedness activities conducted pursuant to title VI of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, 42 U.S.C. 5195 et seq., and critical infrastructure protection and restoration.
(k) "Offsets" means compensation practices required as a condition of purchase in either government to government or commercial sales of defense articles and/or defense services as defined by the Arms Export Control Act, 22 U.S.C. 2751 et seq., and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, 22 C.F.R. 120.1 130.17.
(l) "Special priorities assistance" means action by resource departments to assist with expediting deliveries, placing rated orders, locating suppliers, resolving production or delivery conflicts between various rated orders, addressing problems that arise in the fulfillment of a rated order or other action authorized by a delegated agency, and determining the validity of rated orders.
(m) "Strategic and critical materials" means materials (including energy) that (1) would be needed to supply the military, industrial, and essential civilian needs of the United States during a national emergency, and (2) are not found or produced in the United States in sufficient quantities to meet such need and are vulnerable to the termination or reduction of the availability of the material.
(n) "Water resources" means all usable water, from all sources, within the jurisdiction of the United States, that can be managed, controlled, and allocated to meet emergency requirements, except "water resources" does not include usable water that qualifies as "food resources."
Sec. 802. General. (a) Except as otherwise provided in section 802(c) of this order, the authorities vested in the President by title VII of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2151 et seq., are delegated to the head of each agency in carrying out the delegated authorities under the Act and this order, by the Secretary of Labor in carrying out part VI of this order, and by the Secretary of the Treasury in exercising the functions assigned in Executive Order 11858, as amended.
(b) The authorities that may be exercised and performed pursuant to section 802(a) of this order shall include:
(1) the power to redelegate authorities, and to authorize the successive redelegation of authorities to agencies, officers, and employees of the Government; and
(2) the power of subpoena under section 705 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2155, with respect to (i) authorities delegated in parts II, III, and section 702 of this order, and (ii) the functions assigned to the Secretary of the Treasury in Executive Order 11858, as amended, provided that the subpoena power referenced in subsections (i) and (ii) shall be utilized only after the scope and purpose of the investigation, inspection, or inquiry to which the subpoena relates have been defined either by the appropriate officer identified in section 802(a) of this order or by such other person or persons as the officer shall designate.
(c) Excluded from the authorities delegated by section 802(a) of this order are authorities delegated by parts IV and V of this order, authorities in section 721 and 722 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2170 2171, and the authority with respect to fixing compensation under section 703 of the Act, 50 U.S.C. App. 2153.
Sec. 803. Authority. (a) Executive Order 12919 of June 3, 1994, and sections 401(3) (4) of Executive Order 12656 of November 18, 1988, are revoked. All other previously issued orders, regulations, rulings, certificates, directives, and other actions relating to any function affected by this order shall remain in effect except as they are inconsistent with this order or are subsequently amended or revoked under proper authority. Nothing in this order shall affect the validity or force of anything done under previous delegations or other assignment of authority under the Act.
(b) Nothing in this order shall affect the authorities assigned under Executive Order 11858 of May 7, 1975, as amended, except as provided in section 802 of this order.
(c) Nothing in this order shall affect the authorities assigned under Executive Order 12472 of April 3, 1984, as amended.
Sec. 804. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect functions of the Director of OMB relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE,March 16, 2012.
http://www.whitehouse.gov...e-resources-preparedness
I normally don't post this stuff, but I am concerned on the direction this is taking our country. First came the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA which was signed into law on New Years Eve 2011. This law could allow for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism.Under the NDAA the president may imprison for life any American citizen for an alleged ties to international terrorism against coalition partners of the United States on his say-so alone — the very definition of tyranny articulated by James Madison, father of the Constitution, in Federalist No. 47.What happens if the president decides that American people, who are standing up against the government (peaceful protests) are considered domestic terrorists? They could be held indefinitely without representation. That means no court, no counsel, no rights.Then H.R. 347, known as the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, was passed last week. This law will be used to shunt protesters at major political events into “free speech zones,” isolated from the crowds—and cameras—that might give their constitutionally-protected demonstrations some heft. Another issue is that the Department of Homeland Security has fairly wide latitude in what areas it can declare off-limits.This worries me with all the protests that are taking place in Washington DC in the next few months. If you accidentally cross the off limit areas, will you go to jail? What if D.H.S. decides you can't protest near the capital building? Where are our rights of free speech and the right to assemble? Now we have the National Defense Resources Preparedness Act. The president is the person who decides when to enact this Executive order. The act is for national defense, but it is a complete takeover of the country, from fuel to food, from Energy to health care. Pay attention, read these questionable Executive Orders and stay informed. What will come next?
Mar 20 12 10:30 AM
By Joe Herring
Almost immediately, the blogosphere exploded with the news. Citizens began calling their TV stations, radio stations, and newspapers, demanding coverage. At the time of this writing, the furor has yet to abate.
The NDRP traces its origin to the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950, which attempted to establish a framework for placing the nation on a "war footing" as quickly and in as efficient a manner as possible should events warrant. In an age of highly industrialized warfare, the basic building blocks of military success are composed of mundane elements such as supply chains, resource availability, parts, access to raw materials, and skilled labor.
Over the years, the DPA has seen many revisions, and the executive orders issued to implement those revisions presupposed an imminent threat of war. In 1994, then-President Clinton issued Executive Order 12919, which expanded the provisions of the DPA rather dramatically, declaring its applicability to peacetime.
The need for the DPA is legitimate. A great deal of our energy infrastructure, utilities, and financial system are in fact entirely private enterprises, not public/government entities. Getting the government running again in the event of a catastrophic attack is one thing, but not providing the same reconstitution effort for the privately owned elements of the nation's infrastructure would still leave us without electric power generation, food distribution, etc.
In the event of cataclysmic war or a natural disaster of similar scope, we could not afford to wait on the private sector to recover at an ordinary pace with purely private funds. Under such circumstances, the need would be urgent and the resources few.
The issue is how to balance the necessity of granting sufficient power to the only entity large enough to do the job -- government -- while still maintaining the private ownership and control of the means of production and the economy as a whole.
The Executive order issued by Obama on 3/16 is largely a restatement of the 1994 Clinton order with a few functional changes. It moves the authority for implementing the provisions of the DPA from the director of FEMA to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not exist at the time of Clinton's presidency. There have been pedestrian additions of renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, to the purview of the secretary of energy (as well as a curiously specific redefinition of bottled water as a "food resource" rather than a water resource), but nothing is particularly out of step with the order Obama's EO supersedes.
So what is the problem? Well, considering that the authority of the DPA has never been meaningfully exercised, and that the pre-emption of authority claimed by the Clinton-era EO 12919 has been similarly dormant, why would the Obama administration choose this particular time to update an obscure and unused authority? It is this question many believe must be asked and answered, and sooner rather than later.
In an attempt to provide that answer, allow me to don an appropriately stylish tinfoil hat before I present a plausible scenario.
1) In early March 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it is the position of this administration that international organizations such as NATO or the United Nations have at least as much, if not more authority to deploy U.S. troops, with or without congressional notice or permission.
2) A week later, the NAACP petitioned the U.N. Human Rights Council to involve themselves in our election process -- specifically our November presidential election, in order to monitor the vote for instances of voter suppression. It is the fantasy of the NAACP that laws requiring presentation of a photo ID to cast a ballot are in actuality thinly veiled efforts to keep the poor, elderly, and non-white populations from voting, presumably for Obama.
3) Attorney General Eric Holder has spent his tenure creating a hair-trigger system of race-conscious prosecutions, most notably in reference to cases involving voter fraud. His previous employee, J. Christian Adams, has built a second career from simply exposing the injustice of Holder's Department of Justice.
4) Most recently, Holder struck another blow against the concept of verifiable voting by forestalling Texas's proposed Voter ID law, saying it "goes against the arc of history." Aside from the attorney general basing his decisions on perceived "historical arcs" rather than clear and established law, the end result is the same: the creation of an air of uncertainty surrounding the upcoming election.
Now (as I adjust my tinfoil hat to a jauntier angle), let me tie these points together.
By employing repetitive reporting of "uncertainty about the reliability of the presidential election tally" by the major media, compounded by expressions of the same uncertainty by administration officials, the left could install that narrative amongst the segments of the population that pay little or no attention to the day-to-day practice of politics.
Could the NAACP then, with support from the Department of Justice and the administration, make the case to the U.N. that the election was in fact tainted, and subsequently persuade the member nations of the U.N. to declare the election invalid? It is possible, and such a declaration is certain to bring chaos to the streets of every major city in our country, as well as a great deal of smaller ones. To restore order, the president might need to deploy troops. Should the Congress resist the move, the administration might simply appeal to the U.N., which could request/order the deployment of troops by a willing and complicit Secretary Panetta.
And of course, President Obama would simply continue in office, for the sake of stability, until this could all be sorted out.
Perhaps it now makes sense for the administration to have updated an unused executive order, preparing their legal argument and framework for the imposition of peacetime martial law. Liberty, once lost, is seldom regained.
Yes, it is far-fetched, but it is also distressingly possible. The sad fact in America today is that we have a president so disdainful of our foundational law and freedoms as to make the far-fetched seem queasily reasonable.
The timing of this executive order is jarring, even if the specific changes to the order are not. The power it conveys is staggering and cannot be safely entrusted to a single branch of government, much less to a single man. The Congress needs to reassert control over the exercise and implementation of the Defense Production Act before it can be utilized by a power-hungry cabal of leftists eager to fundamentally transform America. There is a door no one has locked, and our home is not secure. Close the door, lock it, and throw away that key.
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http://www.americanthinke...versy.html#ixzz1pfg6ne00
Apr 6 12 8:17 AM
Obama Is Making the Case For His Own ImpeachmentTony KatzApril 4, 2012
The President’s latest tactic, taking on the Supreme Court's power of judicial review with a preemptive striking against justices who might contemplate an unfavorable ruling on ObamaCare, following on the heels of last week’s "open mic gaffe" in which he explained Russian President Dimitri Medvedev that he’d have more "flexibility" to sacrifice American security after his re-election, lead to one question: Is Barack Obama making his own case for impeachment?
Obama is no longer fit for the job. I don’t say this lightly. I don’t say it with glee or joy. And I don’t say it with malice. But rather with recognition that the Office of the President must be protected. And the citizens of the United States must protect themselves from a president who is either incapable or unwilling to fulfill his responsibilities to the American people and respect the Constitutionally proscribed limitations on his powers.
Obama’s pronouncement about the Supreme Court was so disingenuous and divisive as alone to warrant impeachment proceedings. Obama, a one-time senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, told a group of reporters at a Rose Garden news conference that since the Affordable Care Act was passed by a "strong majority," a finding of unconstitutionality would constitute "judicial activism." Nothing could be further from the truth. Judicial activism is when judges exceed their appropriate powers and legislate from the bench. Judicial review, in contrast, is one of the Supreme Court’s primary functions.
As Leon Wolf of RedState asks, has the professor never heard of Marbury vs. Madison (the 1803 case affirming the Court’s right of judicial review)? Further, if Obama believes the Court has no right to review - - and invalidate if necessary - - a law, so long as it was duly passed by Congress, what does he believe IS the Court’s role? What exactly did he teach his students at the University of Chicago?
On the international stage, Obama stunned US citizens and allies with his thinly veiled promise to Medvedev that he would put the missile shield - - a key component of our defense strategy - on the back burner after he’s re-elected, said with disdain for Americans. This stunning statement is worthy of a conversation about treason. A conversation that should take place in front of Chief Justice John Roberts.
Obama was undaunted by the fact the mic was open, and every disgusting word was caught on tape. Since then, he has twice joked about the conversation and the open mic. TWICE! Once, though completely improper, could have been dismissed as self-deprecating humor; trying to make the best out of a bad situation (it would not have worked, but it could have been dismissed.) Twice means not only does Obama not think it's a big deal, but no one around him thinks it's a big deal. How is that not dangerous?
Obama sees himself as above the law, and sees the Law as a detriment to his "moral" goals. As Ben Shapiro (also a Harvard educated lawyer) pointed out:President Obama has made it his mission to wield the club against the other two branches of government in a manner unprecedented in American history. Yesterday, Obama, rejecting the heart of judicial review for purposes of his own power, stated, "I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress." That, of course, is precisely what the Supreme Court does on a daily basis....But for Obama, the Supreme Court is an obstacle to his own power.In August, 2011, I wrote:President Obama is actively engaging in a pre-meditated attack on the United States Constitution, and the American way of life. His words are not missteps, like 57 states or the insulting inability to properly pronounce the word corpsman. Obama is attempting to plant the seed into the already vitriolic and boisterous Progressives that the problem with America is the thing that makes America great – the rule of law that does not allow government to rule us.Nothing has changed. In fact, with this latest round of assaults on the Court, they have gotten worse. Add to this Obama's unconstitutional recess appointments. How long until we say aloud - The Nation Is Under Attack From Within?
May 11 12 6:57 PM
Uh, I hate to burst your bubble, but the whole issue was about federal tax dollars (our money) to be used for paying for birth control. Had nothing to do with women's rights. Men and women have been paying for their own birth control for over a half century now and no one ever brought up the bogus claim that anyone's rights were being denied. Should Americans' tax dollars be spent to pay for birth control? No! Condoms are cheap. The whole blown out of proportion, twisted issue was just another lame attempt of Obama to buy votes with another giveaway like L.B.J.'s failed "Great Society"! Our national debt is 15 trillion, much of it owed to Communist China. And you want to add to that debt? I say no way!
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