Politics in permanent state of Armageddon Excerpts from E.J. Dionne article with comments

Politics in permanent state of Armageddon

Excerpts from E.J. Dionne article with comments

We now seem to be living in the Age of High C, a period when every fight is Armageddon, every foe is a monster, and every issue is either the key to national survival or the doorway to ruin. [ high C is a euphemism for screechy editorials]

This habit seems especially pronounced in the way President Barack Obama’s adversaries treat him. It’s odd that so many continue to see Obama as a radical and a socialist even as the Dow hits record levels and the wealthy continue to do very nicely. If he is a socialist, he is surely the most incompetent practitioner in the history of Marxism.

[Obama's behavior is demonstrative of his ideology.  His failures are demonstrative this remains a conservative nation.]

The reaction to Obama is part of a larger difficulty that involves pretending we are philosophically far more divided than we are. In all of the well-off democracies, even people who actually call themselves socialists no longer claim to have an alternative to the market as the primary creator and distributor of goods and services. The boundaries on the left end of what’s permissible in the public debate have been pushed well toward the center. This makes the hysteria and hyperbole all the more incomprehensible.

[Simply not true. The left has moved further left and that creates an equal reaction from conservatives.]

But let’s dream a little and assume that the American left signed on to the proposals put forward by Lane Kenworthy of the University of California- San Diego in his challenging (and, by the way, very pro-market) book “Social Democratic America,” published this year. Kenworthy’s argument is that we can “successfully embrace both flexibility and security, both competition and social justice.”

[History has proven that giving our government more power in the areas named by Kenworthy has put us on the road to fiscal insolvency. Social programs are consuming over 60% of our spending]

His wish list is a straightforward set of progressive initiatives. A few of them: universal health insurance and early education, extensive new help on job searches and training, a year of paid parental leave, an increased minimum wage indexed to prices, expansions of efforts that supplement wages such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the government as an employer of last resort.

[Substitute the word Socialism for Progressive.  This is still a massive transfer of wealth in our economy. One the Kenworthy nor Dionne can explain away]

His program, he says, would cost around 10 percent of our GDP. Now that’s a lot of money and the debate about whether we should spend it would be anything but phony. Yet would such a level of expenditure signal the death of our constitutional system? Would it make us like, say, Cuba? No, and no. It might make us a little more like Germany, the Netherlands or the Scandinavian countries. These market democracies happen to share with us an affection for freedom and enterprise. And when it comes to High C, there’s nothing quite like our culture wars in which disagreements about social issues are seen as battles between libertines and bigots. When I look around, I see a lot of liberals who live quite traditional family lives and even go regularly to churches, synagogues and mosques. I see a lot of conservatives who are feminists when it comes to their daughters’ opportunities and oppose bigotry against gays and lesbians.

[Another liberal seeing the world he wants to see, rather than the world as it is.  Liberals are not Conservatives and visa versa. Period!]

The ideological resolution I’d suggest for the new year is that all sides stop fighting and pool their energies to easing the marriage and family crisis that is engulfing working-class Americans. This would require liberals to acknowledge what the vast majority of them already practice in their own lives: that, all things being equal, kids are better off with two loving and engaged parents. It would require conservatives to acknowledge that many of the pressures on families are economic and that the decline of well-paying blue-collar work is causing huge disruptions in family formation. I’d make a case that Kenworthy’s ideas for a more social democratic America would be good for families, but let’s argue it out in the spirit of a shared quest for remedies.

[Do you recognize the disguised Keynesian Economics? The liberal Democrats created the issues Dionne complains about and now he advocates tired old liberal strategies to deal with them: More and bigger government with even higher taxes!]

Maybe it’s asking too much, but might social conservatives also consider my friend Jonathan Rauch’s idea that they abandon their campaign against gay marriage in favor of a new campaign on the value of committed relationships for all of us?

[Notice how he slips this non sequitur in? Disregard this and don't let it distract you]

Disagreement is one of the joys of freedom, so I am all for boisterous debate and tough political and philosophical competition. It’s how I make my living. But our democratic system would be healthier if it followed the Greenfield rule and reserved the harshest invective for things that are genuinely monstrous.

[So the world that Dionne lives in would have conservatives agree with liberal socialism in the U.S. as long as it is not an "in your face" move away from capitalism.  Oh! notice he never talked about that.]

Diagnosing Cuba Derangement Syndrome

Diagnosing Cuba Derangement Syndrome

By George Will

Barack Obama has made a geopolitical irrelevancy suddenly relevant to American presidential politics. For decades, Cuba has been instructive as a museum of two stark failures: socialism and the U.S. embargo. Now, Cuba has become useful as a clarifier of different Republican flavors of foreignpolicy thinking.

The permanent embargo was imposed in 1962 in the hope of achieving, among other things, regime change. Well.

Fidel Castro, 88, has not been seen in public since January and may be even more mentally diminished than anyone – including his 83-year-old brother – who still adheres to Marxism. Whatever Fidel's condition, however, Cuba has been governed by the Castros during 11 U.S. presidencies, and for more years than the Soviet Union dominated Eastern Europe. Regime change – even significant regime modification – has not happened in Havana. Some conservative criticisms of Obama's new Cuba policy – which includes normalizing diplomatic and commercial relations, to the extent that presidential action can – seem reflexive. They look symptomatic of Cold War Nostalgia and 1930s Envy – yearnings for the moral clarity of the struggle with the totalitarians. Cuba's regime, although totalitarian, no longer matters in international politics. As bankrupt morally as it is economically, the regime is intellectually preposterous and an enticing model only for people who want to live where there are lots of 1950s Chevrolets.

Eleven million Cubans, however, matter. Obama's new policy is defensible if it will improve their political conditions by insinuating into Cuba economic and cultural forces that will be subversive of tyranny.

Sen. Rand Paul, a potential Republican presidential candidate, evidently considers this hope highly probable. He is correct to support giving it a try. But he may not understand how many times such wishes have fathered the thought that commerce can pacify the world. In 1910, 40 peaceful European years after the Franco-Prussian War, Norman Angell's book 'The Great Illusion' became an international bestseller by arguing that war between developed industrial countries would be prohibitively expensive, hence futile, hence unlikely. Soon Europe stumbled into what was, essentially, a 30-year war.

Angell's theory was an early version of what foreign-policy analyst James Mann calls 'the Starbucks fallacy,' the theory that when people become accustomed to a plurality of coffee choices, they will successfully demand political pluralism. We are sadder but wiser now that this theory has been wounded, if not slain, by facts, two of which are China and Vietnam. Both combine relatively open economic systems with political systems that remain resolutely closed.

Sen. Marco Rubio, a potential 2016 rival of Paul's, is properly disgusted that Obama, in striking his deal with Cuba, accomplished disgracefully little for the country’s breathtakingly brave democracy advocates. There are two reasons for questioning whether Obama really tried. First, he is generally congruent with, and partly a product of, academic leftism. Hence, he might be tinged with the sentimentalism that has made Cuba a destination for political pilgrims too ideologically blinkered to see the extraordinary sadism of Cuba's treatment of its many political prisoners. Second, Obama is so phobic about George W. Bush's miscarried 'regime change' in Iraq, that he cannot embrace, or at least enunciate, a regime change policy toward Cuba. Regime change, however, must be, at bottom, the justification for his new approach.

Cuba Derangement Syndrome (CDS), a recurring fever, accounted for the Bay of Pigs calamity, the most feckless use of U.S. power ever. After this, the Kennedys, President John and Attorney General Robert, continued to encourage harebrained attempts to destabilize Cuba and assassinate its leader.

Today, CDS afflicts those who, like Rubio, charge that U.S. diplomatic relations and economic interactions 'lead to legitimizing' Cuba's regime. America's doctrine about legitimacy has been clear since the Declaration of Independence: Governments derive their 'just powers' from the consent of the governed. America has diplomatic and commercial relations with many regimes that are realities even though they flunk our legitimacy test. Twenty-three years after Cuba ceased being a Soviet satellite, there is no compelling, or even coherent, argument for why Cuba, among all the world's repulsive regimes, should be the object of a U.S. policy whose rationale is to express the obvious – U.S. distaste.

What makes Rubio uncharacteristically shrill, saying Paul has 'no idea what he's talking about'? And what makes Paul too clever by half when saying Rubio wants to 'retreat to our borders' and hence is an 'isolationist'? CDS does this. As they brawl about Cuba, a geopolitical irrelevancy, neither seems presidential. 

The pathology seen in many black communities is entirely new in black history.

Black progression is being undercut by retrogression

By Walter E. Williams

There is no question, though it's not acknowledged enough, that black Americans have made greater gains, over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short span of time, than any other racial group in mankind's history. What's the evidence? If black Americans were thought of as a nation with their own gross domestic product, they'd rank among the 20 wealthiest nations. It was a black American, Gen. Colin Powell, who headed the mightiest military in mankind's history. A few black Americans are among the world's wealthiest. Many black Americans are among the world's most famous personalities.

The significance of all this is that in 1865, neither an ex-slave nor an ex-slave owner would have believed that such progress would be possible in less than a century and a half. As such, it speaks to the intestinal fortitude of a people. Just as importantly, it speaks to the greatness of a nation within which such progress was possible. That progress would have been impossible anywhere except in the United States of America. The challenge that lies before us is how those gains can be extended to a large percentage of black people for whom they appear elusive.

A good start to meeting that challenge is to recognize that much of the pathology seen in many black communities is entirely new in black history.

 Let's look at some of that history. In the late 1800s, depending on the city, 70 to 80 percent of black households were two-parent. In 1925 New York City, 85 percent of black households were two-parent. As late as 1950, only 18 percent of black households were singleparent. From 1890 to 1940, a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. In 1940, black illegitimacy was about 14 percent.

Today it's an entirely different story. Black illegitimacy is 75 percent. Close to 50 percent of marriage-age blacks never marry. Close to 70 percent of black households are female-headed. If one thinks family structure doesn't matter, consider that the poverty rate among black female-headed families is about 47 percent but among married families it has been in the single digits for more than two decades. It's not just poverty. Children raised by single parents are likelier to be physically abused; use drugs; engage in violent, delinquent and criminal behavior; have emotional and behavioral problems; and drop out of school.

What about employment? Every census from 1890 to 1950 showed that black labor force participation rates were higher than those of whites. Today it's a mere fraction. Prior to the mid-'50s, the unemployment rate for black 16- and 17-year-olds was under 10 percent and less than that of whites. Who would argue that this more favorable employment picture was because there was less racial discrimination in the job market in earlier times? Labor laws such as the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 – a federal minimum wage law for construction workers – and the 1938 federal minimum wage law for all workers reduced work opportunities for blacks.

Then there's the high crime rate. Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they are more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. Along with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.

Older black people, who were raised in an era when there was far greater discrimination and who faced far fewer opportunities, need to speak out against behavior and excuses that their parents would have never accepted. Otherwise, the race hustlers, poverty pimps and white liberals will continue with the narrative that black problems are a result of racism and racist cops and condemn future generations of blacks to a lifetime of mediocrity. 

Black Lives Matter?

Black Lives Matter?

Maybe not to Blacks

"I find it very disappointing that you're not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks," Giuliani said in an appearance on television. His point was that the death of a black teenager at the hands of a white cop was "the exception," and if the country is concerned about black homicides, then it would do better to focus on African Americans.  That is 9,000 African-Americans killed each year.

Any candid debate on race and criminality in the United States must begin with the fact that blacks are responsible for an astoundingly disproportionate number of crimes, which has been the case for at least the past half a century.  Today blacks are about 13 percent of the population and continue to be responsible for an inordinate amount of crime; blacks commit more than half of all murders in the United States. The black arrest rate for most offenses — including robbery, aggravated assault and property crimes — is still typically two to three times their representation in the population. Blacks as a group are also overrepresented among persons arrested for so-called white-collar crimes such as counterfeiting, fraud and embezzlement.

Blaming decades-long, well-documented trend on racist cops, prosecutors, judges, sentencing guidelines and drug laws doesn’t cut it as a plausible explanation.

What is happening to the black culture?

Of the 27 industrialized countries studied by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. had 25.8 percent of children being raised by a single parent, compared with an average of 14.9 percent across the other countries.

In the African American community, 72 percent of Black children are raised in a single parent household. What is happening to these children? Turning to crime? Joining gangs? Blaming others on the plight of their lives?

Hanukkah's lessons for today

Hanukkah's lessons for today

Joseph Farah compares Maccabees' challenge to that of believers today

I love Hanukkah, as I probably made abundantly clear in my earlier column this week.

But there's more to be said about this holiday.

In fact, I would say Hanukkah holds great spiritual as well as political significance for us today – Jews and Christians alike.

First the spiritual:

Most prophecy teachers have missed the fact that Hanukkah contains one of the most amazingly detailed revelations of the end times, Cahn explains. The story of Hanukkah is a metaphor – a foreshadowing – of what we can expect before the return of Yeshua the Messiah.

But what about the political significance?

The political lesson of Hanukkah is that we can do all things through our faith and obedience to God.

There are many disillusioned Americans today. They are wondering if our election system has broken down. They are wondering if our culture has become degraded past the point of no return. They are wondering if America is being transformed from a self-governing society to one in which the people are ruled by government. They are wondering about whether all the false idols we worship are going to spell our doom. They are wondering if our collective sins – from same-sex marriage to abortion to child pornography to dismissing the Creator from our lives – places us beyond redemption as a nation.

Something similar happened in Israel 200 years before Yeshua the Messiah was born. A foreign empire sought to impose its false religion on Israel. It was largely successful. Most Israelis went along with the Greek orders. Idols were placed in the Temple. The altar was desecrated by the sacrifice of a pig. Jewish woman about to be married were forced to submit themselves to Greek officials for an evening of sexual entertainment.

But one family, the Maccabees, refused to capitulate.

They led a revolt that was far less likely to be successful than the one America's founders led against Great Britain. They were outnumbered. They were out-armed. The odds did not look good.

But the Maccabees had faith and swore obedience to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob rather than the Greek pagan myths.

The Greeks attacked with a massive army. They were routed by the Maccabees.

The Greeks attacked with a bigger army. They were routed by the Maccabees.

The Greeks attacked with all their power and might, determined to wipe out this uprising. And once again they were routed by the Maccabees.

The Temple was ritually purified. The Greek idols were removed. And that is the breathtaking story of Hanukkah in a nutshell.

The lesson? If God is with us, who can be against us?

Americans should take heart in this holiday commemoration and the miracles of Hanukkah – whether they are Christians or Jews – because God will work this same kind of miracle for us today if we are faithful to Him and repent of our sins and turn from our wicked ways.

And I don't mean the whole nation has to do this.

In 2 Chronicles 7:14, it makes very clear that only those called by His name need to humble themselves and follow this prescription.

What that means is that all the forces of hell can't defeat us if we take this one simple, vital step today.

We can overcome the darkness. But it all begins with the believers.

Joseph Farah

The Big Lie: "The economy is improving in every measurable way" - Barack Obama

The Big Lie: "The economy is improving in every measurable way" - Barack Obama

1.     The median U.S. income this year was $53,385, according to Sentier Research. That's down 4 percent from the $55,446 people earned in 2009.

2.     The median net worth in America fell to $81,400 in 2013 from $85,100 in 1989, the report said. Meanwhile, all of the economic gains during the recovery that have followed the housing crash have gone to top-income earners, statistics show.

3.     The bottom 90 percent of families -- already facing stagnant wages and salaries -- are suffering under a crushing debt load. Many of them have higher mortgages to pay and higher credit card and student loan balances.

4.     A vibrant middle class is the cornerstone of a strong national economy. America's middle class is getting weaker, however, with those on the lower rungs sliding into poverty. The middle class -- defined by the middle 60 percent of households -- collects about 45.7 percent of national income. That's down significantly from 53.2 percent in 1968, according to U.S. Census figures analyzed by the left-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund.

5.     In the numbers released today, covering the month of June, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for black Americans age 16 and over was 10.7%, reported the BLS. The unemployment rate for white Americans in the same age group and time-frame was 5.3%, said the BLS. 10.7% is more than double 5.3%.

6.     Low-wage jobs have dominated the economic recovery, placing people into fast-food and other service-sector positions that offer few benefits or opportunities for promotion. Since the recession, there are 1.2 million fewer jobs in mid- and higher-wage industries, while lower-wage industries have grown by 2.3 million jobs, according to a study from the National Employment Law Project.

7.     The share of first-time buyers has fallen to its lowest point in nearly three decades, according to a recent survey from the National Association of Realtors. Only about a third of people buying homes now are first-timers, down from the historical average of 40 percent.

8.     No one will be able to afford college in the future. Wrestling with college costs can tank a family's finances. Parents and grandparents have taken out loans to foot the bill, only to put their retirement nest eggs at risk. Students shoulder the burden as well, and more than two-thirds of college seniors graduate with student debt, some of which could take decades to pay off.

9.     Meanwhile, the median wealth of non-Hispanic black households fell 33.7%, from $16,600 in 2010 to $11,000 in 2013. Among Hispanics, median wealth decreased by 14.3%, from $16,000 to $13,700. For all families — white, black and Hispanic — median wealth is still less than its pre-recession level.

10.  At the median, black families made $39,715 in 2010, down from about $44,000 in 2000. As a percentage of white median family income, blacks made 61 percent in 2010, down from 63.5 percent in 2000.

11.  The Great Recession wreaked havoc on household incomes for blacks. From 2007–2010, the median black household’s income fell 10.1 percent, compared to 5.4 percent for white households

12.  Despite the significant decrease in the official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) unemployment rate, the real unemployment rate is over double that at 12.6%. This number reflects the government’s “U-6” report, which accounts for the full unemployment picture including those “marginally attached to the labor force,” plus those “employed part time for economic reasons.”

Mall slaying of teenager linked to robbery bid - death was in self defense.

Mall slaying of teenager linked to robbery bid

By Dan Sewell

Associated Press

A mall shopper shot and killed a 16-year-old boy who attempted a robbery on the sidewalk outside, police in southwest Ohio said Monday.

A Miami Township police official said the slain teenager and two other youths went to the Dayton Mall on Saturday morning to buy athletic shoes that were on sale in limited release. Sgt. Joe Phares told reporters Monday that details were still being investigated, but that the teens apparently got there too late to buy the shoes they wanted.

Police said the three juveniles from Middletown, Ohio, then approached two men outside and demanded their merchandise. They said one juvenile showed a gun, and one of the adults who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon then fired his own gun. It wasn’t clear whether the adults actually had the shoes the youths were seeking.
“This was a random act of, ‘I want something that person has, and I’m going to take it from him,” Phares told reporters. “It didn’t go down the way they thought it would.”

Phares said he didn’t have details on the kinds of weapons involved, but said investigators told him the juvenile’s gun was a real firearm. Two young people have been killed in Ohio in recent months carrying what turned out to be pellet guns.

Police responded Saturday morning to a reported shooting at the Dayton Mall just off Interstate 75 near the southern suburb of Centerville. The Montgomery County coroner’s office said the teenager died at 10:55 a.m. Saturday. The coroner Monday identified him as Jawaad Jabbar and said he died of a gunshot to the torso. Police said no one else was injured.

Police said the other two teens were being held in juvenile detention in Dayton. Phares said it’s too soon to say what charges could be brought.

News media outlets reported Jabbar was a Middletown High School student. A message was left at the school, which was on holiday break and at a Jabbar family residence. Jabbar and his two friends were black.

Ambush cop killings not uncommon

Ambush cop killings not uncommon

Fatal ambushes, similar to an attack this weekend on two New York City police officers, have been among the leading causes of firearm-related police deaths for the past several years, according to data maintained by a national law enforcement group.

At midyear, an analysis conducted by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, which closely tracks officer deaths, found that ambushes were the second-leading cause of firearm killings. As recently as 2012, ambushes accounted for the most fatal shootings involving police: 30% of the 50 firearm deaths that year were attributed to such attacks.

Though officer deaths, including fatal shootings, have been subject to dramatic swings over the years, one analysts say ambushes have remained among the most persistent and hardest threats.

“It really is all about awareness and paying attention to your surroundings,” said Darrel Stephens, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “There is an emphasis on being hypervigilant just because this threat is out there, but the ability to sustain that ... is very difficult.”

Stephens, a former Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., chief, said authorities have attempted to bolster their defenses by drawing from a series of incidents.

Among them: the sniper attack in September on a Pennsylvania State Police barracks that left one trooper dead and another wounded. The alleged shooter, Eric Frein, was elevated to the FBI’s list of most wanted suspects before his capture in October.

“We have learned a lot, but I don’t think we can prevent it altogether,” Stephens said. “It’s a big challenge.”

Following a rash of violence against police, Attorney General Eric Holder in 2011 created the National Officer Safety and Wellness Group to review incidents, including ambush attacks.

What we can expect is the hypervigilant police officers are going to hypertrigger pullers. Split seconds matter and if it is me or you....well we all know the answer to that.

The Dictatorial President Has Been Hiding Behind Memos

The Dictatorial President Has Been Hiding Behind Memos

 by Mark Horne 

Barack Obama has tried to avoid executive orders in order to obscure how much of a dictatorial President he is.

Back in July, when President Obama was giving a speech in Austin, Texas, he defended himself from the charge that he was a dictatorial president:

"The truth is, even with all the actions I’ve taken this year, I’m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years. So it’s not clear how it is that Republicans didn’t seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did."

With that in mind, here is a civics quiz that might make it more “clear” to everyone:

Which of these has the force of law:

1. Presidential executive orders
2. Presidential memoranda

(Hint: There is no wrong answer.)

That’s right, memorandums issued by the President have just as much the force of law as executive orders.

As USA Today explains:

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

For example, Barack Obama recently banned oil companies from exploring Bristol Bay, Alaska, to find oil and gas. (Thankfully, this probably won’t matter until gas prices go up. I doubt oil companies want to invest much in oil exploration until their profit margins increase.) Barack Obama has “used presidential memoranda to make policy on gun control, immigration and labor regulations.”

What makes all of this especially important to consider is that Obama’s defenders have been claiming that he cannot be a dictatorial president because he has issued fewer executive orders than many other Presidents. Correct, he has been using Presidential memoranda as a subterfuge.

As the USA Today story points out,

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

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

Here’s a graphic that puts Obama’s productiveness in historical White House perspective:

And notice, that chart is comparing Barack Obama’s six years in office to George W. Bush’s eight.

USA Today quotes Harry Reid and Jay Carney both making the same argument that they tell us that Obama made in Austin last July: that the president has been restrained because he has used so few executive orders.

It is all a big fraud.

Obama issues ‘orders by another name’

Obama issues ‘orders by another name’
He’s used presidential memoranda more than any president

He’s used presidential memoranda more than any president

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

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

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

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

Obama has made prolific use of memoranda despite his own claims that he’s used such power less than other presidents.

“The truth is, even with all the actions I’ve taken this year, I’m issuing executive orders at the lowest rate in more than 100 years,” Obama said last July. “So it’s not clear how it is that Republicans didn’t seem to mind when President Bush took more executive actions than I did.”

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

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

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

So even as he’s quietly used memoranda to signal policy changes to federal agencies, Obama and his allies have claimed he’s been more restrained in his use of that power.

The White House would not comment on how it uses memoranda but has previously said Obama’s executive actions “advance an agenda that expands opportunity and rewards hard work and responsibility.”

While executive orders have become a kind of Washington shorthand for unilateral presidential action, presidential memoranda have gone largely unexamined. Yet memoranda are often as significant to everyday Americans as executive orders.

• In his State of the Union Address in January, Obama proposed a new retirement savings account for low-income workers called a MyRA. The next week, he issued a memorandum to the Treasury Department instructing it to develop a pilot program.

• In April, Obama directed the Department of Labor to collect salary data from federal contractors and subcontractors to monitor whether they’re paying women and minorities fairly.

• In June, Obama told the Department of Education to allow certain borrowers to cap student loan payments at 10% of income.

They can also be controversial.

Obama issued three presidential memoranda after the Sandy Hook school shooting two years ago. They ordered federal law enforcement to trace any firearm that’s part of a federal investigation, expanded the data available to the national background check system, and instructed agencies to research the causes and possible solutions to gun violence.

Two more recent memos directed the administration to coordinate an overhaul of the nation’s immigration system — a move that congressional Republicans say exceeded his authority.

Kenneth Lowande, a political science doctoral student at the University of Virginia, counted up memoranda published in the Code of Federal Regulations since 1945.

In an article published in the December issue of Presidential Studies Quarterly, he found that memoranda appear to be replacing executive orders.

“If you look at some of the titles of memoranda recently, they do look like and mirror executive orders,” Lowande said. The difference may be one of political messaging, he said. An “executive order,” he said, “evokes potentially damaging questions of ‘imperial overreach.’”

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5 revenue streams and more:

·        Residential (Interior and Exterior)

·        Commercial and office buildings

·        Real Estate-based programs

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Business Summary:
The painting service industry is a large one, at over $40 billion annually, and what makes our business unique in the  service category, is the fact that we drive revenue from both residential (B2C) and commercial (B2B) clients.

To be initially qualified, interested parties must:

·        Pre-approved for a business loan or cash: total capital requirement $100K or less

·        Demonstrate financial stability and liquidity

If you are interested, please contact:

Bill McAdory: Consultant, On behalf of Owner

Mobile:            513-703-5355

email:              billmcadory@earthlink.net

Fighting The Cromnibus Spin

Fighting The Cromnibus Spin

Cromnibus: Last week, Congress voted to pass the $1.1 trillion cromnibus bill (by 219-206 in the House and a cloture vote of 77-19 in the Senate). House Republican Leadership, working closely with the White House, managed to gain enough support for this government-inflating spending package that does nothing at all to combat the President’s unlawful amnesty actions. In the aftermath of final passage, many in the establishment are seeking political cover for their bad vote by putting forth a series of senseless and, in many cases, simply false narratives.

CLAIM: The President’s amnesty actions are not in the form of an Executive Order, therefore Congress cannot defund them.

This is not true. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has issued an official Directive to implement the President’s new policy, instructing the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and several other agencies to ignore the law. The services of these agencies are under the control of congressional appropriations. The House is completely empowered to restrict DHS’s amnesty initiatives; it simply chose not to last week. 

For any who doubt that the administration is moving ahead with the president’s policy, DHS is already working on hiring 1,000 new full-time employees at an “operational center” in Virginia to process applications and issue work permits to the 4-5 million illegal aliens who qualify – and “many of the openings were posted the day after” Obama’s speech. So Congress needs to act immediately if it wants to prevent DHS from using any funds that have already been appropriated to implement the president’s plan.

CLAIM: The cromnibus stopped the President from implementing executive amnesty.

This is a lie. This is precisely what the bill did not do. While DHS is only funded through February 27^th in the cromnibus, there was no rider attached to prevent the President from granting unilateral, unlawful amnesty. Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) is also mistaken when she says this bill “ended funding for CIS [Citizenship and Immigration Services], which is the agency that would be in control of [implementing amnesty].” USCIS has no restraints placed on it by this cromnibus, and is growing its capacity exponentially to begin the process of granting quasi-legal status to illegal immigrants. Executive amnesty is being enacted now. Congress has done nothing to stop it.

CLAIM: The cuts to Obamacare were strong enough to merit support of this bill.

In reality, the cromnibus makes very few—and no significant—changes to parts of Obamacare. While the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) sees a $10 million cut in funding, this board is not even currently operating and is not expected to be needed until a few years—and a few more appropriations bills—from now. The board has not yet received a single appointment. These members are celebrating a miniscule reduction for a team of bureaucrats that does not yet exist.

Another provision of the spending bill reins in the risk corridor payments. However, this change only prevents the use of appropriated funds from going to compensate for insurers’ losses; it still makes room for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to dip into other government sources to bailout insurance companies if need be. A true containment of the risk corridors would insist the program operate on a budget-neutral basis, preventing taxpayer bailouts of any kind. 

These changes do not go far enough and should not be a distraction from the larger spending provisions that are operating on autopilot: the Medicaid expansion and the government exchanges subsidies.

Call to Action: Members of Congress must be held accountable for their decision to fund the President’s executive amnesty actions. The cromnibus sets up another opportunity to defund these policies in the new year. Only through continued accountability efforts and a sustained focus on the fight on the horizon will the Republican Party be encouraged to stand up to the President’s lawlessness. Voters should find out how their members voted and remind them that the new GOP majority will only be successful if it is willing to represent the interests of the people who made that majority possible.

Read the Stupid Thing Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Said

Read the Stupid Thing Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy’ Said

Bill Nye was best known for hosting the science program “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” The funny thing about Nye is that he’s not a Ph.D.-credentialed scientist. He has a number of honorary Doctor of Science degrees. In 2010, Nye received the 2010 Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association.

Nye enhanced his public notoriety by debating Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis on February 4, 2014. Since then, Nye has been saying some rather ridiculous things about people who are skeptical of molecule to man evolution. Here’s his latest:

“The biggest danger creationism plays, according to Bill Nye the ‘Science Guy,’ is that it is raising a generation of children who ‘can't think’ and who ‘will not be able to participate in the future in same way’ as those who are taught evolution.”

Prior to the Nye-Ham debate, I suggested the following strategy for Ken Ham to take with Nye. Unfortunately, he did not take my advice. Here’s what I wrote:

“Evolutionists must demonstrate (1) the origin of matter out of nothing (a topic they rarely want to talk about), (2) how inorganic matter evolved into organic matter (abiogenesis, life from non-life, spontaneous generation which was disproved more than 150 years ago), (3) the origin of complex information and its meaningful organization (DNA programming for millions of life forms), and (4) a genetic explanation for why it is mandatory that anyone be moral or how morality can arise out of matter. If these four points cannot be demonstrated scientifically as well as observationally, then evolution is nothing more than a modern-day form of alchemy.”

What does Nye mean when he says that the tens of millions of people who are skeptical about the claims of evolutionist won’t be able “to participate in the future in same way”? Is he trying to say that laws will be passed to keep skeptics of evolution out of certain jobs? Will he and his fellow evolutionists work to make it mandatory for colleges only to allow full-fledged evolutionists to attend?

Will people who deny the theory of evolution be denied teaching positions at the university level? You may not know that this is already happening. Ph.D.-holding professors have been denied tenure because of their creationist or intelligent design beliefs. A professor who even hints that he’s a creationist of any type will come under suspicion.

Is Nye saying that someone who denies evolution can’t be an engineer, medical doctor, surgeon, chemist, pilot, musician, computer programmer, or graphic artist designer?

The thing of it is, I know people in each of these fields, and they are all creationists. In fact, it’s the creationists who are more rational and scientific than the evolutionists. In each of these fields the four points I listed above operate. No one expects life to generate from non-life. No one believes that complicated systems like computer programs will run without organized information.

It’s evolutionists like Nye who are irrational and ideologically schizophrenic.  They live inconsistently with their operating assumptions in a world that can’t be explained by the major tenets of evolution.

I’ve been reading Ed Catmull’s book Creativity, Inc. Catmull is president of Pixar animation and Disney animation. I don’t know where he stands on the creation-evolution debate. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science. Catmull, with training in physics, describes how watching Donald Duck being drawn and coming to life in the 1956 Disney feature "Where Do the Stories Come From?" shaped his desire to enter the animation field:

“The definition of superb animation is that each character on the screen makes you believe it is a thinking being. Whether it’s a T-Rex or a slinky dog or a desk lamp, if viewers sense not just movement but intention—or, put another way, emotion—then the animator has done his or her job. It’s not just lines on paper anymore; it’s a living, feeling entity. This is what I experienced that night, for the first time, as I watched Donald leap off the page. The transformation from a static line drawing to a fully dimensional, animated image was sleight of hand, nothing more, but the mystery of how it was done—not just the technical process but the way the art was imbued with such emotion—was the most interesting problem I’d ever considered. I wanted to climb through the TV screen and be part of this world” (8-9).

This descriptive story explains a great deal about the creation-evolution debate.  Donald Duck didn’t just appear on paper. Lines did not converge to create him. An animator— designer—had to conceive and draw him and put him in motion. As simple as an animated feature is to conceive and create, it’s a complicated process, but not as complicated as claiming that nothing became something and that something evolved into the animator that conceived and put “emotion” into Donald Duck.