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On Thursday, President Obama told the world he didn’t yet have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic Front in Syria. Although it’s never good to let an army who beheads your citizens and is hell-bent on your destruction know you don’t know how to deal with them – yet, or otherwise – Josh Earnest, the president’s press secretary “clarified” his comments the next day. We do have a plan, it turns out. And the plan is awful.

Before we dive into the new statements, let’s take a look back at some older ones.

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

The terrorist group making the biggest waves at the time was ISIS. Was the president referring to ISIS as part of a “jayvee team?” It went relatively unnoticed by the mainstream media then. But in the eight months since, ISIS has become the little jayvee team that could. It has taken over a landmass the size of Indiana – and growing. It has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and amassed a fortune to fund its continued terror campaign.

But our posture toward this outfit has not changed.

When ISIS beheaded American journalists James Foley and posted the video on the Internet, the media remembered the quote and asked about it. Earnest went on to claim the president wasn’t talking about ISIS, just other groups, and that the White House always has taken the ISIS threat seriously.

That claim, on its face, would be insignificant, perhaps even believable, were it not for the president’s statement Thursday. If, as the White House now insists, it always has taken the threat seriously, how can it have no strategy for dealing with ISIS in Syria, or anywhere, 8 months later?

Perhaps the political advisors in the White House have yet to calculate how to use this threat to influence the November elections or to at the very least blame Congress for it. But we already know the president has a phone – right next to his pen – and that the Pentagon has phones, too. If he has taken the threat of ISIS seriously for eight months, why has he not used his phone to call the Pentagon and ask the military to formulate some possible strategies for any number of scenarios?

It’s clear the White House has not been interested in the threat posed by ISIS, either abroad or here in the homeland, or else we wouldn’t still be without a plan.

Which brings us to the “clarification” on Friday.

Josh Earnest, appearing on Morning Joe, said, “We don't have plans in place right now for what we want to do and what we could do militarily in Syria. But when it comes to confronting ISIL, the president has made very clear we do have a comprehensive strategy for confronting that threat that is posed by ISIL. That begins with supporting Iraq’s political leaders as they form the kind of inclusive government that can unite the country to confront the threat that their country faces right now.”

First, there they go again using ISIL—Islamic State in the Levant—as opposed to ISIS, the Islamic State in Syria. This is to sow confusion and distract from the administration’s record in dealing with this crisis.

Second, so our strategy is dependent upon Iraqi Shia, Sunni and Kurds coming together, putting aside centuries of hatred, forming a drum circle and singing “Kumbaya”? Hmmm … why didn’t we think of that before? Wait, we did.

Earnest wasn’t done. “It includes beefing up our support to Iraqi and Kurdish security forces in the form of training and equipment to help them take the fight to ISIL on the ground in their country.” This makes sense, but it would have made more sense before ISIS was the fully armed, disciplined and funded outfit it is now.

Earnest then added that the president has dispatched Secretary of State John Kerry to the area to “engage” with the region’s leaders but wasn’t clear on the goal of that engagement beyond engagement for its own sake.

Plus, he threw in that we’re bombing them in Iraq at least, so there’s that.

See, we do have a strategy. It’s a muddled, rudderless, leaderless strategy with no clear directives or goals. But really, is that such a surprise?

Once again, our Chicago-style Attorney General has proven that corruption is the basic foundation upon which the modern Democrat Party is built. Eric Holder, the nation’stop extortionist officer, has been running around the financial sector suing banks for anything (and everything) he can get away with. Ally Bank paid millions for alleged racist lending practices (an allegation the DOJ made without ever looking at loan portfolios), JP Morgan has shelled out billions for various anti-Obama comments regulatory infractions, and Bank of America just paid a $16.6 billion fine for their government-mandated role in the financial crises of 2008.

Aside from the fact that these onerous fines have not been coupled with any sort of actual criminal charges against any bank executives (I guess evidence of wrong doing is required for those pesky criminal cases), the DOJ’s handling of the fines is now raising even more serious questions. Apparently, Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder has been using the record breaking settlements to shore up the war chests of Progressive, Liberal, and Democrat non-profit organizations.

Social Justice, to our Department of Justice, means using the power of America’s top enforcement agency to bankroll the groups that help put Democrats in power. According to Judicial Watch, Holder’s so-called “Justice” Department has been “redistributing” these record breaking settlements to groups like La Raza, ACORN (remember that cute group that was ousted as a Democrat voter fraud machine?), and Operation Hope… Oh, and not that it really matters, but none of these groups were connected to the lawsuits that led to the record-breaking settlements. Heck, I was shocked to see that Obama’s Organizing for America wasn’t on the list.

Eric Holder’s penchant for extorting billions from banks would make Al Capone rethink his career as a bootlegger. It turns out, being an “activist” AG is far more profitable than selling prohibited substances, trafficking arms (although there’s apparently no reason not to do both), or orchestrating St Valentine’s Day “parties”.

Threatening everything from lengthy investigations to criminal charges, Holder has managed to squeeze over $16.6 billion dollars from Bank of America. But, really, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. In recent years, Holder has been accelerating his feverish attempt to hold faceless corporations “responsible” for allegations that may, or may not, have any roots to reality. So, why do banks pay? Well, for Bank of America, HSBC, JP Morgan, or Ally, it’s a whole lot easier to agree to a fine than fight the world’s most deep-pocketed plaintiff (the DOJ).

A portion of all those funds were supposed to be redistributed to groups that had been adversely impacted by whatever vague actions were allegedly taken by those evil (read: wealthy) corporations. So… Did you get a check from the DOJ for your under-water mortgage from Bank of America? Yeah, most people didn’t. You better go check with your local Democrat-friendly non-profit; because it’s pretty likely a check was sent to them for your suffering. (You can recognize the Democrat friendly non-profits pretty easily: They’re the ones that aren’t getting audited by the IRS.)

Of course, this is probably a godsend to those Liberal advocacy groups that would otherwise have to depend on donations from the general public. I mean, who needs to actually prove your worth to a community, when you have your very own Attorney General redistributing protection money to your cause?

Eric Holder, the self-admitted “activist” Attorney General, has repeatedly proven that there is no depths to which he will not slouch, if given a pass by the main stream media. Refusing to investigate the IRS scandal, running guns to Mexico (while simultaneously fighting for stronger American gun laws), “choking out” certain industries, and specifically targeting politically-dissenting journalists, was apparently just the beginning of Holder’s venture into government-sanctioned corruption. Now acting as a supplemental slush fund for progressive causes (with the cash of questionably targeted financial institutions), our Extortionist AG is proving that it pays to be in bed with the guys who call the shots.

In Al Capone’s time, we called those guys a part of La Cosa Nostra. Today, we call it Obama’s Democrat Party.

Yes, the Democrats are that desperate. Smacked with the guy who has made his business to lead the loyal opposition to policies that hurt the country, the Democrats did something so foul, so mind numbingly stupid and so desperate that it out Nixoned Nixon in his worst of days. And in doing so, they’ve completed the transformation from political party to caricature.

Does Rick Perry's indictment disqualify him for 2016?!!! asks CNN, while fronting for the Dems. No, the indictment probably does not disqualify him. But Marco Rubio’s sip of water during a televised address should, right? Rubio’s problem was that he couldn’t get a grand jury to indict him on anything after he sullied the republic with a parched throat.

“The indictment and possible trial of Texas Gov. Rick Perry for allegedly applying illegal coercion to a district attorney will complicate -- but not kill,” writes Errol Louis at CNN, “his all-but-certain run for President in 2016. It's a sure bet that voters outside of Texas will forgive, ignore or overlook any outcome short of a conviction.”

With analysis like that, he should be named Error Louis.

Look, the indictment by Perry is a stupid move by the Dems, and nothing will come of it that needs forgiving—at least for Perry.

In fact, he’ll be applauded, lauded and lionized by the many people who rightly think government is out of control.

Perry, it seems, committed the unpardonable sin of holding the DA responsible for drunkenness. How dare mere mortals hold the people responsible for prosecuting crimes to a standard that applies to the rest of us?

Getting past the fact that this is the same DA’s office that indicted Tom DeLay on wholly political charges—charges that have been subsequently overturned by a higher court—the indictment only served to prove the point: You can’t trust these guys.

Because the people who indicted Rick Perry are the people who are going to decide if you complied with Obamacare, or Dodd-Frank, or the 70,000 pages of corrupt tax code that’s aimed at you. Or complied with any one of a number of mind-boggling rules and regulations that come out in the federal register every single day.

Heads they win and tails you lose, as long as you keep voting for them.

And don’t even think that you can make a case that a grand jury is responsible, not the DA for the indictment. The DA had to put on a case for the grand jury. And the only way they could do that was by bending, breaking and botching the law so badly that it can only be interpreted politically not legally.

“Perry did not want to influence the DA,” writes legal scholar Henry Mark Holzer on his blog, “He wanted her gone. The governor of Texas was commendably trying to coerce the drunken, abusive, irresponsible, literally unethical DA to resign.”

The indictment, says Holzer, should be quashed.

It won’t be.

Because in the contest to run America for the foreseeable future, the Democrats have so mismanaged and bungled their chance to make a case for themselves that their only choice is to criminalize the opposition.

They think that makes them the more powerful party.

But they are wrong.

In the book Primary Colors, political idealists are turned from purely idealistic opposition to Richard Nixon, into power-hungry presidential wanna-bes who would force the country to eat more filth than even Watergate generated in order to gain power.

And yes: In the book they did gain power thereby. The Clintons-- upon whom the story is based—gained power that way too in real life.

And in real life the same mechanisms that brought them to power will deprive these Democrats of power.

Because the desperation the Democrats are showing isn’t a policy. It’s an indictment. And yes, they really are that dumb.

Investopedia defines a “zero sum game” as “a situation in which one person’s gain is equivalent to another’s loss, so the net change in wealth or benefit is zero.”

If a political leader wielding power sees the world as a zero sum game – gains to one must mean a loss to another – it is likely that this leader will promote policies that will limit growth, wealth creation and innovative problem solving.

What a zero sum worldview will produce more of is political, class, and ethnic resentment and strife.

It so happens we have a leader today that has this worldview and his name is Barack Obama. It is not surprising that today’s world over which he is presiding, at home and abroad, increasing shows these characteristics.

President Obama was very candid in a recent interview with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in which he stated his zero sum view of the world.

“Obama made clear,” Friedman writes, “that he is only going to involve America more deeply in places like the Middle East to the extent that different communities there agree to an inclusive politics of no victor/no vanquished.”

There you have it. No suggestion that there is right and wrong, or better answers that make everyone better off and worse answers that don’t. No, in our president’s take on the world, if there is a winner who winds up better off there must be a loser who winds up equally worse off.

The president then made clear that he views the world through this zero sum lens at home as well as abroad.

According to him, notes Friedman, “…we (America) will never realize our full potential unless our two parties adopt the same outlook we’re asking of Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds or Israelis and Palestinians: No victor, no vanquished and work together.”

This “inclusive” world view, devoid of right and wrong, true and false, better and worse, stands starkly in contrast to what Abraham Lincoln had to say when confronting a nation torn apart by the question of whether it would tolerate slavery.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” said Lincoln. “I believe this government cannot stand, permanently, half slave and half free...It will become all one thing or all the other.”

The president’s “no victor, no vanquished” take on the world is turning up the flames of the Israeli Palestinian conflict by legitimizing the falsehood that if Israelis are better off it means that Arabs will be worse off.

It perversely forces the Israelis to sit and negotiate with Hamas – an organization that even the United States officially designates as a terrorist organization.

Author George Gilder characterizes the Middle East conflict as “not between Arab and Jews but between admiration for achievement, along with a desire to replicate it, and envy accompanied by violent resentment.”

Gilder describes how the inflow of Jewish settlers in the last century transformed Palestine for the benefit of all.

“Between 1921 and 1943,” he writes, “Jews quadrupled the number of enterprises, multiplied the number of jobs by a factor of 10, and increased the level of capital investment a hundredfold.”

“Far from displacing Arabs,” continues Gilder, “ they (Jews) provided the capital for a major expansion of Arab farms and enabled a sevenfold rise in Arab population by 1948.”

Zero sum politics plays out in similarly destructive ways in our own country. Instead of building a culture of achievement and responsibility, politicians of the left stoke grievances of low income Americans, inspire envy and resentment, and teach that the poor are poor because the rich are rich.

By stoking these politics of envy and victimhood, it’s the politicians, at home and abroad, who grow powerful and wealthy. The disenfranchised languish as political pawns, never hearing the truth that life is about making correct personal choices in an imperfect world.

The political world has been abuzz with speculation about the Senate races and whether the Republicans will take over majority of the Upper House. While this was happening, I spent my time finding out what was really afoot within the Republican world.

This all started when I had the opportunity to see a presentation by Andy Barkett, the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) first Chief Technology Officer. What I was listening to piqued my interest. It is as if the RNC had finally come alive. I wrote a column about the challenges facing the party during the turmoil after the 2012 election and the election of Reince Preibus as the Chairman of the RNC, reinstalling Mr. Preibus as the head of the party. Having actually worked on the past four presidential elections, I have seen first-hand the capabilities of the party and what was needed to win. In that column, I advocated a vertically-integrated system that used the assets of the RNC to aid in the election of offices down to the local sheriff with information flowing back up to the national party. This seemed to be what I was hearing from Barkett, but I wanted to explore the status of the party’s information capabilities more.

That brought me to an interview with Chuck Defeo, the Chief Digital Officer and Deputy Chief of Staff of the RNC. Defeo, a Political Science graduate of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, somewhat fell into being a tech guy. He started working for then-Senator John Ashcroft in 1996, when all those late nights of computer geeking led him to organizing the computer side of the Senator’s operations. Defeo used that as a springboard to other political tech gigs, which then landed him as the person who organized the digital efforts for the 2004 Bush reelection campaign. Those were the days when the Republicans were ahead in the organizing game. Since then, the Obama campaigns have left the Republicans behind in their efforts to turn out voters, raise money and win elections.

So what did Defeo find when he came on board last July? Surprisingly, he found a very positive attitude -- a willingness to change and improve with the goal of helping Republican candidates win in 2014, thus building toward 2016.

The perception of the Republicans falling behind was because of two reasons as stated by Defeo. First, the RNC has had four different leaders since 2004 and there was a perceived underfunding in the technology area over that period. Second, in the two Presidential election cycles, Obama had a billion dollars. In 2012, they had barrels of money plus they had a four-year run-up to the election to put their team and strategy in place. I spent 12 days in Columbus, Ohio, just prior to Election Day, and one could see and feel the advantages the Obama team had over Romney’s -- just 90 days in existence since winning the nomination. As for looking ahead, Defeo told me “The DNC just received the data from the Obama campaign last year, and they will not have a billion dollars in 2014.”

The test case for the work being done by Defeo and his team was this year’s March 13^th special election in Florida for the 13^th district Congressional seat. In this race David Jolly, a Republican, beat the favored Democrat Alex Sink, a former gubernatorial candidate. The voter contact done by the RNC was very precise as Defeo told me they got within 415 votes of their targeted absentee votes from a list of over 20,000. This very effective campaign and the turn out the vote effort allowed Jolly to surprise Sink and take the seat by almost 2%.

Defeo and his team now have their focus on ramping up that effort to compete in thousands of races across the country. It is a large task, the results of which we will see on November 4^th. As for integrating the network from the RNC down to the local races, Defeo stated “The database has been built. We need to improve access to the data for our candidates and reception of data back from those candidates and their campaigns.”

It is clear that the RNC has taken the commitment to create a first-class technology base to provide the tools for Republican candidates to compete in every race in the country. We will soon see whether the fruits of their efforts overcome the prior technology advantage Obama’s team created for the Democrats. These things swing like a pendulum and we will know soon whether they have swung back.

ericynot1: Ransom once again has lambasted the BO admin, this time for its policies vis-a-vis Russia's Ukraine adventure. That's fine. But I'm left wondering what he thinks the right policy would be if we had a different president. It sounds as though Ransom thinks it's some sort of military operation ("force"). But what exactly? Bomb Russia? Bomb eastern Ukraine? Mass U.S. troops along the Belarus-Ukraine border (as though anyone would allow that)? Send a flotilla of Navy ships into the Black Sea? Drone attacks on Donetsk? Criticism is OK -- so long as you have a better idea about what to do. But I haven't seen that here today. And, frankly, I'm not sure there is a better idea.- A Policy So Bizarre, So Obama

Dear Comrade Y1,

The better idea would be to have a president who has some gonads and some sense of proportion.

Obama’s a guy who wears a bike helmet for safety reasons—for him—while telling the rest of us to disarm—for safety reasons—for the government.

Speaking of disarming, the time to have discouraged Russia would have been before they started trouble in Eastern Ukraine.

There were a number of ways we could have done that. Instead we choose to unilaterally disarm.

We should have built the missile defense system in the Ukraine. We should have admitted Ukraine to NATO. We should have completed a status of forces agreement with Ukraine that pushed the West’s NATO frontier from Germany into Poland and Ukraine. We shouldn’t have given the Russians a “reset” button on US-Russia relations. We should have helped them be less dependent on Russian energy, by supplying…wait…American energy to the country.

Those were all policy alternatives open to the administration, but since we can’t seem to even supply Americans with American energy resources, it’s no wonder Obama rejected these common sense proposals.

What would I do now?

I’d commit a division of troops, say the Third Infantry Division, to the parts of Ukraine not currently involved in the fighting. I’d speed up war material and aid to Ukraine including training in counter-insurgency operations. I would order the shootdown of the next Russian military aircraft that “accidently” penetrates into US airspace probing our North American defenses.

I’d ban commercial flights from Russia into the United States. I’d seize Russian state assets here in the US, including marketable securities in Russian owned companies. I’d make it illegal for Russian companies to raise money in American capital markets. I’d kick the Russian ambassador out of the country, close down their consulates.

I’d encourage a group of radical, free market economics students who are studying Austrian economics at George Mason University, under the leadership of professor Peter Morici at the University of Maryland, to seize and hold hostage for 444 days the entire Russian embassy compound including the staff even to the Russian janitors.

Pusillanimity is not a substitute for policy.

Obama says he wants peace. But Obama’s version of “peace” includes war thrown in for good measure, at the most disadvantaged circumstances.

Syria, Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine: These are all victims of a president who has no testicles.

If I had a million dollars I'd pay a million dollars tomorrow* for a reporter to ask Obama is he even still has a set of balls. I mean for playing basketball.

*This offer expires at midnight August 15th 2014 and is contingent upon the author, me, John Ransom, receiving donations in the amount of $2 million, which can be directed to this publication's corporate offices.

Thank you.

Today marks the 33^rd anniversary of the signing of the Economic Recovery Tax Act by President Reagan at his beloved Rancho del Cielo.

The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 was one of the signature pieces of legislation during Reagan’s tenure as President. The bill cut taxes by 25 percent for every American, the largest tax cut in American history.

President Reagan made it a point to sign this historic piece of legislation at his humble ranch home nestled away in the mountains outside of Santa Barbara. He recognized that the power rested with the people and not the bureaucrats in Washington. By signing the document at Rancho del Cielo, he sent the message to the country that he was a President who had the people’s best interests at heart.

Once these tax cuts were implemented, youth unemployment plummeted. Youth unemployment began at 18.8 percent under Reagan and fell to 10.7 percent by the end of his Presidency. Reagan believed in economic freedom and the idea that every individual should have the opportunity to prosper if they worked hard.

Compare that to today. Youth unemployment sits at a high of 18.1 percent with no hope of improvement. Millennials are now realizing their post-graduation employment opportunities are slim. Currently six million young people are idle, which means they are neither attending school nor working. Others are living at home, working part-time jobs, barely able to afford their monthly student loan payments. How will this generation be able to prepare for retirement or save to buy a house or achieve their “American Dream?”

Today’s young people deserve better than the current President offers with his detrimental economic policies. Young people were some of Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters, but now the reality of their support is burdensome. The promises of free healthcare and employment after college never came to fruition. The reality is that Reagan’s signature piece of legislation helped young people and led to a long period of economic growth, whereas Obama’s signature legislation, Obamacare, is killing jobs and creating economic hardship for many Americans-- especially millennials.

Reagan recognized that Washington’s power needed to be limited and controlled which is vastly different than the viewpoint of the current President, who constantly puts more power in the hands of federal bureaucrats. Ronald Reagan is quoted as famously saying, “The government isn’t the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.” Obama’s policies have created little to no opportunity for America’s youth. His policies are the problem.

President Reagan was a champion of young people and truly believed in enacting initiatives that created a bright future for them. On this anniversary of the largest tax cut in American history, let us renew our commitment to Reagan’s lasting accomplishments by advancing the principles of economic freedom, individual liberty, and opportunity.

WASHINGTON - We haven't heard the last of Hillary Clinton's attempts to separate herself, and her expected presidential candidacy, from Barack Obama's policies.

After listening to excuses from IRS officials about why they cannot produce "lost" emails requested through a Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered the IRS to come up with a better explanation as to why the agency cannot produce valid documentation. He's also asking for details about IRS hard drive destruction policy and wants verification from an outside source that IRS hard drives in question were in fact destroyed as officials have claimed.

"In an extraordinary step, U. S. District Court Judge Emmett Sullivan has launched an independent inquiry into the issue of the missing emails associated with former IRS official Lois Lerner," President of Judicial Watch John Fitton said in a statement. "Previously, Judge Sullivan ordered the IRS to produce sworn declarations about the IRS email issue by August 11. Today’s order confirms Judicial Watch’s read of this week’s IRS’ filings that treated as a joke Judge Sullivan’s order."

From Judge Sullivan's order:

In light of [26] the Declarations filed by the IRS, the IRS is hereby ORDERED to file a sworn Declaration, by an official with the authority to speak under oath for the Agency, by no later than August 22, 2014. In this Declaration, the IRS must: (1) provide information about its efforts, if any, to recover missing Lois Lerner emails from alternate sources (i.e., Blackberry, iPhone, iPad); (2) provide additional information explaining the IRS's policy of tracking inventory through use of bar code property tags, including whether component parts, such as hard drives, receive a bar code tag when serviced. If individual components do not receive a bar code tag, provide information on how the IRS tracks component parts, such as hard drives, when being serviced; (3)
provide information about the IRS's policy to degauss hard drives, including whether the IRS records whose hard drive is degaussed, either by tracking the employee's name or the particular machine with which the hard drive was associated; and (4) provide information about the outside vendor who can verify the IRS's destruction policies concerning hard drives.

The IRS has one week to come up with some answers.

Well Obama’s had a son after all.

It’s a strapping, weighty and very unhealthy mixture of the pent up discontent that is Obama’s America.

Yes, the man who once race-baited by pretending that Trayvon Martin was his own son, now dead and gone, is definitely the father of this version of our country. The likeness and resemblance is too striking for him not to be.

Congratulations Daddy!

“On Wednesday night,” reports the New York Times, “scores of police officers in riot gear and in armored trucks showed up to disperse protesters [in Ferguson] who had gathered on the streets near the scene of the shooting [of Michael Brown, 18]. Some officers perched atop the vehicles with their guns trained on the crowds while protesters chanted, ‘Hands up, don’t shoot.’”

Hands up, don’t shoot is good advice. Even for a big mouth president.

Because in my lifetime I’ve never seen a president shoot off his mouth so recklessly than Obama has…except of course in times when he all he does is shoot himself in the foot.

When he’s too busy for example dancing, vacationing, campaigning, or raising money—which, not coincidentally, are all activities that look alike to Obama—then the man whose mouth operates like Joe Biden’s shotgun, isn’t necessarily saying anything reckless, but rather doing reckless things instead.

“President Obama must really be teed off,” writes Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, “Hillary Rodham Clinton, his once-loyal secretary of state and his likeliest successor, has gone rogue, criticizing his foreign policy as too timid.”

So Obama got mad and went to play golf. Twice.

That’s because Obama’s on a vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, “a decision that, if not in the category of stupid stuff,” concludes Milbank, “could fit under the heading of ‘tone deafness.’”

I’m trying to decide which is worse for the country: Obama saying reckless things or doing reckless things?

Because as stupid and harmful as his inane chatter is to the country, the president has difficulty accomplishing even the tasks he presumably cares about, like a foreign policy that works. So “doing reckless things” has not always been very effective for Obama.

But, I gotta go with the “doing reckless things” option as the worse of the two right now.

I think that going on vacation is the best thing that Obama can do today. Because this child that is the Ferguson riots was not born of talk, but in the hosing of America by Obama and the rest of his firemen. The riots are the violent fruits of the womb that are born when a country gets screwed—hard.

And guess what? It only takes one time for the country to get a little bit pregnant. What’s being born of our times ultimately, however, no one can really tell as of yet.

Yet this much is true though: Angry children tend to give birth to angry children, and the sins of the fathers are visited on the latest generation.

“A nation like a woman is not forgiven the unguarded hour,” wrote Karl Marx, in one of the few true statements Marx got right, “in which the first rake that tries can take her by force.”

Obama hasn’t gotten what he wanted by talking. He hasn’t gotten what he wanted by actions either, reckless or otherwise because he's too lazy.

There always remains force however as an option of any government in crisis, especially a government too lazy to be legitimate.

And make no mistake: This is a government deep in crisis and too lazy to be legitimate.

So guard the hour my friends.

And keep Obama on vacation. Let him screw his handicap and not the country.

The Middle East isn’t just a foreign policy problem it’s another one of the man-caused disasters that has become the hallmark of the Obama administration’s version of Moe, Larry and Curly.

And the cause of the disaster is transparently clear: These stooges are all campaign and no common sense.

Because the amigos tres in this instance haven’t just been poor executives-- as they have shown in other policy-- they’ve been poor thinkers as well. That they are hurting Muslims in Iraq and the Middle East -- a group they say they stand in solidarity with-- is immaterial to them. Campaigning for these stooges has always come before common sense.

That’s why secretary of state John “Larry” Kerry-- who was for the Iraq war before he was against it while he was campaigning for president-- is secretary of state; and perhaps the worst secretary of state ever if you discount the last secretary of state, who also was for the Iraq war before she was against it.

“This is not a combat, boots-on-the-ground, operation in Iraq,” said Defense Secretary, Chuck “Curly” Hagel—another guy who was for the war before he was against it-- all while he ordered 130 more US boots on the ground.

So let’s just say that the campaign is never ending, and thus common sense is still quite uncommon with our foreign policy stooges.

So uncommon in fact that Barack “Moe” Obama can’t even admit what we all know to be facts.

When confronted with the fact that he promised to remove US troops from Iraq, then kept that promise, and then claimed he ended the Iraq War by removing the troops-- while really he was destabilizing the country—Moe had this to say:

“What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision,” said Obama about the decision to end the US troops that stabilized Iraq. “Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. So let’s just be clear: The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because the Iraqis — a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there.”

Let’s just be clear, shall we?

It was Moe—and Kerry and Curly-- who claimed from the campaign trail in 2008 that Iraq was just a sideshow, the surge wouldn’t work, and that the real US troop surge needed to happen in Afghanistan. It was Moe—and Kerry and Curly -- who said the Bush administration made a mistake in not pursuing Osama bin Laden, like somehow bin Laden’s death would make a difference. It was Moe-- and Kerry and Curly -- who pulled troops out of Iraq after the surge worked and INTO Afghanistan, even though we know now that Moe— and Kerry and Curly -- didn’t want troops in either country.

So why are they sending troops in now?

Because they are stooges, that’s why.

I’m not sure what it is that theses stooges think they accomplishing for the Muslim world, or for America, but if Obama-- and Kerry and Curly—have something to offer in the Middle East besides an apocalypse now and more apocalypse later and even more apocalypse later still, they should cut the vaudeville routine.

Their slapstick is a painful substitute for statesmanship.

WASHINGTON - President Obama is on a two-week vacation in Martha's Vineyard, as wars rage across the Middle East and Ukraine, terrorists threaten to topple Iraq, and Republicans are on the brink of capturing the Senate.

Around the country, a deepening mood of anger and anxiety permeates America's electorate, with the midterm elections a mere three months away.

And in a brewing political civil war among Democrats, Hillary Clinton has unleashed a sharp attack on Obama's timid foreign policy, calling for a more muscular response to the spread of global terrorism.

The president's job approval scores remain in the low 40s and show no signs of improvement on the problems voters are angry about -- from jobs, incomes, the budget deficits and a rash of disturbing government scandals that have exposed an incompetent and corrupt administration.

"There is a lot of angst about whether this country is continuing to provide an opportunity to live the American dream," says Democrat Ted Strickland, former governor of Ohio. "The overarching concern is an economy that is not providing an opportunity for working people."

Hurtling toward the fall elections, the Democrats' political prospects, and Obama's presidency, were sinking fast.

Republicans have a political lock on the House and had a better than even chance of taking over the Senate where they need only six seats to make Harry Reid the minority leader.

Last week, those chances improved significantly when Democratic Sen. John Walsh of Montana announced he will not seek election in the wake of a story broken by The New York Times that said he had plagiarized portions of a paper he wrote at the U.S. Army War College.

According to the Times, the six recommendations he made in a foreign policy study were "taken nearly word-for-word without attribution from a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace document on the same topic."

Democrats will choose a new candidate next week, but the chances of mounting a credible campaign and raising enough money to be competitive were bleak. Before the scandal broke, polls showed GOP Rep. Steve Daines running ahead of Walsh by double digits.

This means Democrats were behind the eight ball in at least three seats their party held but that were now open due to retirements: Montana, West Virginia, South Dakota, and to some extent a fourth in Iowa.

So Republicans will need just three more seats to take control, and there were at least five (and possibly a dozen) competitive contests to get them there: Colorado, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alaska and Arkansas.

What is the coming midterm campaign going to look like when it gets underway on Labor Day weekend?

No doubt Obama will be fully engaged, but he is no longer the political force he once was. Indeed, many Democrats will not want to be seen with him in red states like South Dakota, Louisiana, West Virginia or Montana, to name but a few.

Democrats are desperately sinking piles of money into voter turnout to counter the GOP wave, but their turnout will be well below what it was in 2012.

Voter intensity is stronger in the GOP, and even among independent voters, than it is among Democrats. That'll be an overriding factor on Nov. 4.

Next will be the Democrats' message, if they have one that resonates. Right now, it doesn't appear they do.
Obama ground tested several carnival barker pitches this year -- including income inequality -- only to discover they didn't resonate with voters.

Neither does Obama's insistence that the economy is doing much better since the recession. Many Americans, including large numbers who have dropped out of the work force or who are in part-time jobs but need full time work do not believe that for a moment.

Then there's the pessimism factor. No matter what he says about an improving economy, he hasn't been able to persuade skeptical Americans who believe that economic conditions will be worse in the future.

Recent Gallup surveys reported that confidence in the U.S. economy fell significantly last month.

One attack line Obama will continue to hammer will be against Congress for not acting on his threadbare agenda. Or, he claims, not even offering any legislation of their own to deal with the country's problems.

In truth, House Republicans have sent more than 300 pieces of legislation to the Senate where they have been summarily shelved by Reid.

Obama wants voters to think that it's the Republicans in the House who are holding things up, as he threatens to take executive action, with or without Congress's support.

It is all play acting of course. Over the decades, most of the bills the House sent to the Senate have been routinely placed in limbo, according to GovTrack.us that has gone back and study the legislative flow.

The website's findings: More than 50 percent of the bills sent to the Senate in 11 of the last 19 Congresses had not received action by the time Congress finished its business and went home.

The Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, gave us a lengthy, delay-prone, legislative system filled with plenty of procedural obstacles to keep bad bills from becoming law. What Obama's complaining about is that Congress won't pass his bad laws.

But what about the GOP's election agenda? That's not getting anywhere near the public attention it deserves.
Partly because the national news media tends to ignore Republican proposals or distorts what they would do.

And partly because the GOP leadership has done a poor job of explaining, promoting and selling its ideas.

A national TV ad campaign explaining how their ideas would unlock the power of job-creating capital through tax reform, expand trade, lower gas prices, cut the deficit and step up new business formation would be a good place to start. Backed up, of course, by its candidates.

Wonder of wonders: The Washington press corps woke up.

Finally, mainstream journalists are onto Barack Obama's game. Their breaking-news shocker? Turns out all that "hope and change" stuff was just hot air. A new report from the D.C.-based press shows that -- gasp -- the White House is infested with Beltway lobbyists.

Good morning, sleepyheads!

According to Politico's analysis published on Monday, the "Obama administration has hired about 70 previously registered corporate, trade association and for-hire lobbyists. And many of these former lobbyists work at the highest levels of government."

Wait, there's more. The "most transparent administration ever" is playing disclosure-dodging renaming games to hide lobbyists' grubby paw prints. By officially de-registering as corporate lobbyists and morphing into "consultants," "counselors" or "advisers," Obama's K Street operators can maintain the fiction of upholding the Great Agent of Change's grand ethics pledge.

Remember: Back in the day, candidate Obama assailed the K Street crowd with righteous (or rather, left-eous) zeal. "I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over," he thundered in 2007. In one of his first executive actions, he declared that the White House had closed "the revolving door that allows government officials to move to and from private sector jobs in ways that give that sector undue influence over government."

But the reform-peddling candidate soon found it impossible to practice what he so sanctimoniously preached. Now, Obama depends on their "strategic advice" and Beltway wisdom. Here's the White House's chortle-inducing rationalization for elevating Broderick Johnson (husband of friend of the Obamas and NPR anchor Michele Norris, and longtime Democratic lobbyist for Microsoft, Pearson, JPMorgan Chase, Comcast, Fannie Mae and FedEx) as a top aide:

"The pledge does not bar anyone with prior lobbying experience from serving in this administration," an Obama spokesman told Politico.com. "Broderick has substantial experience working in the Clinton administration, on the Hill and in the private sector in a variety of capacities, as well as on the president's campaign. We welcome that mix of experience."

That "mix of experience" also includes veteran Beltway lobbyist Cecilia Munoz, formerly of the National Council of La Raza and consultant to the Mexican government, who is now assistant to the president and director of the Domestic Policy Council -- along with revolving-door beneficiaries Melody Barnes, Marc Berejka, Bradley Gillen and Sean Kennedy, all lobbyists turned Obama bureaucrats turned lobbyists again.

When Republicans hire lobbyists, it's a culture of corruption and influence peddling. When Obama hires lobbyists, it's a celebration of experience diversity.

Of course, these double standards and this double talk were clear from the outset. As I pointed out in my book "Culture of Corruption" five years ago this summer, the business-as-usual writing was on the wall from Day One. As soon as he was elected, Obama threw open his doors to the nation's leading lobbyists and professional D.C. back-scratchers:

Attorney General Eric Holder was registered as a lobbyist at Covington and Burling. Tim Vilsack, former Iowa governor and Obama's first agriculture secretary, was a registered lobbyist for the National Education Association. Ron Klain, Vice President Joe Biden's first chief of staff, was a lobbyist at O'Melveny and Myers. Leon Panetta was a lobbyist-lite who raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations in "consulting fees." Former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson served as chief of staff to former Treasury Secretary-turned-lobbyist Tim Geithner.

But now the K Street president is news?

Like the old saying goes: There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.

Obama and the Democrats are facing a disaster at the voting booth in November. His ratings have hit all-time lows. 70 percent of the public believes America is headed in the wrong direction. In fact, right now, polls are ranking Obama the worst president since WWII— lower than even Nixon or Carter.

And Obamacare also rates at all-time lows. Remarkably, it just experienced one of the biggest month-to-month opinion drops in the history of polling.

Yet Obama and his Kool-Aid drinking Democratic supporters are so ideological, delusional and out of touch with middle class America that they don’t understand why this is happening.

My new book, “The Murder of the Middle Class” is about how America is being destroyed by the “murder of the middle class.” It is important to note that this murder is not just due to misguided, inept, or amateurish policies. It is a deliberate, purposeful, and planned destruction. Every day, the middle class sees their jobs being destroyed and replaced by low wage part-time jobs and/or government checks. Every day, their bills for gasoline, electric, groceries, and health insurance goes up. Every day, their job prospects, income, and assets go down.

Little by little, the proud middle class is being forced to grovel for government checks or subsidies just to survive. It is not happening by accident, mistake, or coincidence. This is a purposeful plan and it is succeeding. How do I know? I was Obama’s college classmate at Columbia University, where we studied this exact plan that he has been implementing for the past six years.

It took a while, but middle class Americans are finally realizing—with friends like Obama, who needs enemies? They’re finally learning to watch what Obama does, not what he says. The middle class finally understands that when Obama says he wants to “save” the middle class, the proper reaction is to reach for our wallets.

Reagan famously said, “the government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.” That applies to Obamacare, green energy, amnesty for illegal immigrants, taxes, regulations and debt. Obama’s policies are helping the super-rich, the corporate elite, and the poor. But those same policies are murdering middle class opportunity and mobility, raising costs, and destroying the livelihoods of middle class Americans.

What made the light bulb go off? What turned the middle class against Obama? In a word…Obamacare. The reason is simple. Obamacare is no longer a theory in a campaign speech. America’s middle class is now living and experiencing it firsthand.

Here's a story that sums up what is happening in the real world—outside of Washington DC. I landed at the airport last week and hailed a cab. With no prodding, and as cab drivers are prone to do, the taxi driver wanted to vent. About what? Obamacare. He believes Obamacare has ruined his life. His words, not mine.

This taxi driver had just heard from his insurance agent. He and his wife are in their late 40’s. They just found out their premium will double starting January 1^st. But that’s only the start of their pain. Their co-pay istripling from $10 per doctor visit to $30. Their surgery coverage is going from 90 percent to only 80 percent. And their deductible is doubling from $500 to $1000. Add it up, and this middle class couple faces a tripling of healthcare expenses.

The reason, of course, is because Obamacare demands this middle aged couple pay to cover pregnancy, prenatal, sex change surgery, and abortions— none of which they’ll ever need in his remaining lifetime. And, of course, the middle class has to pay extra to cover the costs of the 30 million people receiving Obamacare for free.

While I don’t know if this cabbie understood the reasons why his healthcare costs were tripling, he certainly understands the effect these dramatic Obamacare cost increases will have on his middle class lifestyle.It will destroy it.

He also clearly understands his options. He said his options are to go without health insurance (now against the law) and pray no one in his family gets sick…or declare bankruptcy, give up his home in foreclosure, and move into a small apartment…or quit his job and live on the government dole. These are the choices left for middle class Americans because of Obamacare.

My personal story is similar. Before Obamacare my family’s health insurance was $500 per month. Today it’s $1,700 per month (but about to get much worse). Aetna just cancelled my policy (effective Jan. 1st). I've never been sick. They blamed it on the mandates and costs of Obamacare.

Will the new policy be $2500 per month? $3000? How high can it go? Few small businessmen can afford $30,000 or more per year for health insurance. This is a disaster. This is financial ruin. Small businessmen like me are being forced to close our businesses, or lay off employees to pay for Obamacare. That’s the death of full-time jobs in America.

This is “the murder of the middle class.” This same story is playing out across America. The middle class is being financially murdered—and now, they know it. It’s hitting their pocketbooks hard. Many conservative pundits may have predicted it before, but now, the cat is out of the bag. Obamacare is no longer a theory on paper, or political promises at a campaign rally. Obamacare is the law. People are experiencing it, and it is destroying middle class lives from coast to coast.

So finally the slumbering giant has awakened. The middle class understands the truth— Obamacare isn’t helping us. Obamacare is our enemy. We now know Obama committed fraud when he said “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.” We know he lied when he said our prices would go down. We know he lied when he said our quality of care would not go down. We know he lied when he said we could keep our current doctors. We know he lied when he said Obamacare would help the economy. We know he lied when he said it wouldn’t kill jobs. We now know that Obamacare is the death of our middle class quality of life.

But that was the plan all along. It was never about improving healthcare. It was always about income redistribution to shift the cost to the middle class. It was always about making the middle class poor and dependent on government.

Yes, Obama has been successful in his purposeful plan to murder the middle class. But wait until he sees what we’re going to do to him and his Democratic allies in November. The middle class will have their revenge.

President Obama claims that the extremism and reality-challenged nature of his political opponents explain his limitless policy failures, which, of course, he also refuses to acknowledge. This is truly rich but nothing new.

Obama told New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, "What you've seen with our politics ... is increasingly politicians are rewarded for taking the most extreme, maximalist positions." He continued: "Sooner or later, that catches up with you. You end up not being able to move forward on things we need to move forward on. ... We need to rebuild our infrastructure. You go to the Singapore airport and then you come back to one of our airports and you say, 'Huh?' We're not acting like a superpower."

Obama said we need "to revamp our education system." "All these things are doable. Our fiscal position, actually, now is such -- you know, the deficit's been cut by more than half -- where we're in a position to make some smart investments that have huge payoffs, that historically have not been controversial, historically have garnered bipartisan support. But because of this maximalist ideological position, we've been blocked. ... That ideological extremism and maximalist position is much more prominent right now in the Republican Party than the Democrats."

How did he describe the Republican maximalist extremism? He noted that while "the Democratic consensus" is "pretty common-sense, mainstream" and generally "fact-based and reason-based," the Republican position is "a lot of wacky ideological nonsense. He said: "We're not denying science. We're not denying climate change. We're not pretending that somehow, having a whole bunch of uninsured people is the American way."

Can you say "delusional"? Republicans are extreme? Not fact- or reason-based?

Obama simply will not accept responsibility for his own actions or the failure of his own policies. His latest jaw dropper is his denial that he had anything to do with completely withdrawing our troops from Iraq, though he campaigned on a promise to do so and refused to become engaged enough in the Iraq problem in 2011 to even try to achieve a status of forces agreement. As if auditioning for the "Saturday Night Live" character who would play him, he said, "What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision." Wow.

In Obama's defense, he has no choice but to blame others for his failures, because he is serving a lifetime sentence in the prison of his narcissistic psyche.

Fact-based, Mr. President? You mean like:

--Your refusal to recognize the global threat of Islamic terrorism, believing the only culprit is al-Qaida? Or your fantasy that terrorists are born as a result of the failure of governments to give them a seat at the table of power, as opposed to their ideological fervor, and that they can be won over with a little tolerance?

--Acting as though we don't have a crisis on our southern border?

--Dismissing the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups and the convenient, mysterious destruction of agency hard drives as a phony scandal?

--Claiming Obamacare is improving our health care system, improving the quality of care, increasing choice and reducing costs to individuals and the government?

--Contending that you've cut the deficit in half when you are basing that calculation on an artificially high base line based on your predecessor's last year in office, which included extraordinary items from the 2008 financial meltdown?

--Alleging that a deficit that has finally been reduced -- against your wishes, by the way -- to a figure twice as high as President George W. Bush's average deficit constitutes fiscal progress when we have $17 trillion of debt and $100 trillion of unfunded liabilities? Do you actually expect us to believe that just because our deficits are lower than during Bush's last fiscal year and your first term, which featured record-setting spending, we are now swimming in money and have surplus resources to spend on infrastructure and education? That's like a bankrupt individual's saying he intends to build a mansion because he only increased his bankrupt-level indebtedness half as much this past year as he increased it the year before. Do you really not yet understand the difference between deficit and debt?

--Claiming that your nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package, your war on business and oil, your avalanche of new smothering regulations, and your onerous tax policies have resulted in an economic boom throughout your term?

--Pretending that one incidental quarter of growth -- which fails to factor in that we have the lowest labor participation rate since 1978, anemic household income and record levels of people on government assistance -- sustains your claim that we're witnessing an economic boom?

--Your belief that if we just throw more federal money at education, we'll start seeing some results?

If the polls are any indication, people may finally be realizing that it is not Republicans but Obama's extremism, his unswerving ideology and his refusal to accept facts and draw reasonable conclusions from them that are perpetuating America's rapid decline.

November should tell the tale.

Six years into the worst administration for African Americans since Andrew Johnson sanctioned segregation in the South, it’s no surprise that riots have broken out in St. Louis.

“The police shooting of an unarmed teenager in a St. Louis suburb over the weekend triggered angry demonstrations Sunday morning and vandalism and looting Sunday night, local media reported,” says the LA Times.

The only question is: “What took it so long?”

With president Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, race-baiters Al Sharpton, Sheila Jackson Lee, and an assortment of others constantly fanning the flames of hatred-- and thus keeping the black community in the big state straightjacket-- it’s not surprising that the disenfranchised have now turned to the remedies available to the disenfranchised for eons: chaos, rioting and looting.

Self immolation is the last resort of those who have no other voice.

I’m going to be straight with you: If I were a black male in America I’d be a radical, I’d be angry, I’d be striking back.

Just not over this shooting only-- and not in this way.

Can you imagine any other population-- say Italians-- being OK with the same type of tragedy in their own communities that is decimating the black males?

I can't.

While the details of the shooting aren’t clear, what is clear is that a black youth is dead, another casualty to America’s insistence by people of all colors to use, exploit, and otherwise misunderstand race relations in this country.

While not getting into the argument about why this is true, it’s a fact that by every appreciable measure this country has failed and continues to willfully fail black males. And in my long-standing refrain, as conservative, I’m not OK with it.

And if you’re conservative who is OK with it, I don’t mind telling you that I’m not OK with you. We’re better than this, not just as conservatives, but as the People of Lincoln, as Americans.

In education, in life expectancy, in income, in employment, in health and in incarceration rates, the data tell a sad story of a whole segment of society—that is, the black male—that has been left behind.

And if you don’t acknowledge the fact that behind all the reform minded talk about education, income, employment, health and crime in America lies the haunted and hunted figure of the black male—especially the young black male—then you’re either stupid, or worse yet, you’re a progressive.

If you take the black male out of the statistics in healthcare, employment, income, education and incarceration rates, the picture of America doesn’t look quite as bleak.

Take healthcare, for example. One of the principle arguments that Dems have made as to the necessity of healthcare reform has been that mortality rates in the United States are worse than in Europe, even though we spend more money on healthcare. Yet, when one looks at life expectancies in the US of populations besides the black males, life expectancy doesn’t look that much different than in Europe.

The same thing apples in education. If we take the black male out of the stats, the story is much different—and thus more <snip>ing of our policies—than if we include the black.

So what are we talking about here?

We’re talking about how America has failed black males in this country.

And while Obama and Holder certainly share a lion’s share of blame for the plight of black males in 2014, I know that conservatives can do better.

That we don’t do better as conservatives, I’m not OK with that.

We’re smarter and our ideas are better.

HOW OBAMA'S LEADERSHIP CRIPPLES AMERICA, PART 2

Exclusive: Chuck Norris reveals why 'Iraq is only symptomatic of greater problem'

CHUCK NORRIS About | Email | Archive

Donjindrawrote: We're running huge deficits. Of course our tax bill will go up. It should go up. Do "conservatives" think there's a free-lunch? That money grows on trees? Apparently so. -Merry Christmas: This Tax Increase is for You, America

Dear Comrade Jindra,

OK, so now liberals are worried about the deficit? And you guys are lecturing the rest of us about fiscal responsibility and how money is created?

Typical tough talk from a group that can’t even pass a budget, yet alone balance one.

Here’s a good idea: Have your messiah present a plan to Congress that balances the budget, right now, not after the passage of time and some mythical increase in GDP created by “voodoo” tax increases on everyone.

Because Obama’s newest plan is basically the same, old plan he had last year- and the year before- that even Democrats wouldn’t vote for…not one vote.

“Even after granting all the phony spending cuts and similar gimmicks in Obama’s budget of last February,” writes Heritage’s J.D. Foster, ”federal debt held by the public rises by $8.5 trillion over the next 10 years without the tax hike and by $7.7 trillion with the tax hike. Expressed another way, allowing some of the Bush tax cuts to expire as Obama demands represents less than 10 percent of the projected debt increase.”

Only a true liberal would could come up with a plan to minimize the damage done to the economy by the expiration of $500 billion in tax cuts by raising taxes another $1.6 TRILLION, including $600 billion on ordinary, middle class Americans.

I really hope Obama gets his party to vote “yes” on these tax increases.

The language of the Obamacare legislation is unambiguous:

the monthly premiums for such month for 1 or more qualified health plans offered in the individual market within a State which cover the taxpayer, the taxpayer’s spouse, or any dependent (as defined in section 152) of the taxpayer and which were enrolled in through an Exchange established by the State under 1311 ^[1] of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

This language clearly and concisely provides that the Obama administration did not and does not have the right to provide subsidies to individuals enrolled in states that did not organize state exchanges (or prospectively states that eliminate their state exchanges). While the Obama administration has played fast and loose with effective dates, insurance requirements and the like, both the language and the history of this language should hardly be in dispute.

Note that while the Courts may currently be split on whether the Obama Administration can continue to pay these subsidies, Joel W. Hay argues that it is possible that all recipients of such subsidies may be required to repay their subsidies to the Federal government. So, while the Obama Administration can continue to pay, the President may be putting millions of families across the country at risk for repayments they will not possibly be able to afford. This possibility has not been discussed in the press. Is the Obama Administration or any of the insurance companies alerting anyone to this possibility?

There are two bona-fide witnesses that the language was no typo. Further, Democrats did not take the opportunity to try to change or "fix" the legislative language through a technical corrections act.

The first bona-fide witness was the then Leader of The Pack, Nancy Pelosi, who famously said that everyone would have to read the bill to know what was in it. This is the manner in which Ms. Pelosi chose to legislate. Shame on her, shame on the Democrats who were one hundred percent of the votes in favor of Obamacare for what they now portray as shoddy legislation (although most believe this was the intent of the Democratic Party's outside expert.) The legislation is what the legislation says, no more and no less.

The language is clear and specific. The Internal Revenue Service does not have the authority to provide tax subsidies to individuals and employers in the 36 states that opted out of creating state run health insurance exchanges. Perhaps if the legislation had been available for review, someone would have explained the risk of this explicit language to the then Speaker of the House. But, let's be clear, the language is the language and there was an affirmative decision to vote on that language before a reasonable period of time to review the legislation.

The second bona-fide witness is Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare. It has been widely reported that he publically indicated that the subsidies were only for states that formed their own exchanges. I remember reviewing this particular section of the law and concluding it was politically brilliant. I had thought that governors would be unable to resist the insurance subsidies for their constituents and virtually every state would accede to the creation of its own separate health insurance exchanges. Obviously, I was wrong and the thirty-six governors showed more character than I could have imagined. These governors' integrity is a wonderful thing.

Now The Empire (Courts) is striking back. The President, through his HHS, has lost every round with respect to the ability for his Obamacare to trump religious freedom. The Supreme Court will not be able to condone the insurance subsidy payments for the thirty-six states not operating state exchanges. This means that the four or so million Americans in those states likely need to repay subsidies already received and subsidies received before any Court case that determines such payments were incorrect. This is not a result I suspect many Americans want to see. Obamacare will become a regional program, again not an answer most wish to see.

But what now?

Republicans now have some serious arrows in their quiver. That quiver will be noticeably larger after the fall elections.

The issue for citizens is that Obamacare needs to be incredibly and dramatically reigned in or eliminated. The Democratic concern has to be that their "key legislative accomplishment" could be decimated by the Courts and this could, in reality, cause a significant part of their base to lose faith.

There may be a bi-partisan opportunity here. Could Republicans and the President live with

(a) elimination of all penalties under Obamacare making the entire program voluntary,

(b) a restoration of the ability of the consumer, whether that consumer be an individual or a business, to purchase health insurance covering whatever and not covering whatever they choose, (This would restore the opportunity for citizens to return to buying policies that they believed were and are sufficient for their needs.)

(c) creating the ability of insurance companies to offer insurance policies in whatever states they choose without restriction,

(d) creating the ability of insurance companies to offer polices that augment business insurance policies that individuals believe need augmenting,

(e) abrogating most of the rules released to date by HHS and the elimination of the corresponding federal jobs

(f) prospective capping (as to individuals and in total) of any health insurance policy payments for which subsidies are being paid by the Federal government and

(g) undoing any requirement for repayment of subsidies incorrectly paid by the Federal government where the recipient did not commit fraud in the recipient's application

This is, by no means, perfect and obviously the list could be supplemented and/or amended. That being said, most authors believe that leaving the other side the opportunity not to be humiliated is the way to get a transaction completed or a war ended. With the strong possibility that the Supreme Court will rule against the Obama Administration with respect to subsidies and the risk to Democrats that other law suits challenging Obamacare will be successful, Democrats have significant reason to reduce their downside and accept a deal that most citizens would find reasonable.

Recently, I heard a television host whom I like and respect lament that Congress left town without taking action on our border crisis. Members of Congress, the argument goes, just need to get together, put aside their partisanship and get something done. After all, even couples going through an acrimonious divorce can sit down in the same room, close the doors and work out some agreement.

But getting something done isn't always preferable to doing nothing, especially if the proposed action would make things worse. Would this host, for example, say that granting instant amnesty to every one of the people who have crossed our border illegally in this latest surge would be preferable to not acting? I pray not.

I think part of the problem is that this host assumes that President Obama shares the host's good faith -- that he wants to work with Republicans in Congress to enforce the border and properly deal with those who have entered illegally.

How do you compromise with someone who doesn't even share your goals and who has no intention of compromising with you, even if he pretends otherwise? President Obama arguably brought on this invasion himself by issuing his lawless executive order in 2012 declaring that he would stop deporting young illegal immigrants if they met certain requirements. He sent an unmistakable signal that children entering the nation illegally would receive amnesty -- and we have concrete evidence that this was a driving factor in the current border invasion.

That aside, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that Obama's other behavior and actions, despite his rhetoric, make clear that he has little, if any, interest in enforcing the border. He has vigorously attacked border states, such as Arizona, that have tried to enforce their borders because Obama's federal government refuses to do its duty. He refuses to work with Congress to take action to enforce the border, always insisting that as a condition to doing so, Congress agree to his version of "comprehensive immigration reform." It's not just Obama. For decades, Democrats have been promising Republicans they will cooperate to enforce the border, but they've steadfastly obstructed all efforts to do so.

Truth be told, Democrats mainly want to accomplish two things with respect to immigration policy: 1) to grant amnesty to as many illegal immigrants as possible because they are confident they will ultimately be Democratic voters and 2) to use the issue to slander Republicans as anti-Hispanic. If you doubt this, do a Google search sometime using the search word "nativism" -- barely a euphemism for racism.

If Democratic leaders don't actually want to protect the border, what room is there for compromise on this issue?

Most people who tout compromise and bipartisanship as wonderful goals in general are liberals, people who think like liberals or those not particularly on top of politics.

Democrats, under cover of liberal media distortion, routinely condemn the alleged partisanship of Republicans while exhibiting their own partisanship and uncompromising attitude. Obama demands that Republicans "stop just hatin' all the time" and work with him, all while mocking their proposals and fomenting public hatred against Republicans.

Obama casts Ronald Reagan conservatives as extremists, ridicules and taunts them, and then demands they work with him -- to achieve his ends, not theirs.

On this very border issue, Obama berated Republicans for not working with him and in the next breath said that all they need to do is pass his $3.7 billion bill to deal with the problem. He did not say, "We can start with my proposal, listen to the Republicans' suggestions to modify it and agree on a compromise." His idea of compromise is that Republicans accept his proposal in full, no changes. This is the type of man we are dealing with. There is no compromising in him.

Obama and his party use demands for compromise as a weapon against Republicans to achieve their own political ends -- without compromise. Just this week, Obama repeated that he doesn't want to issue executive orders on immigration but that he will be forced to if Republicans won't work with him. Has any other president advanced this absurd argument that Congress' refusal to bend to his dictates would justify his usurpation of Congress' Article 1 legislative authority? This is breathtaking in its transparent cynicism.

President Obama is anything but a bipartisan politician interested in compromise. He is an ideologue determined to accomplish his policy goals by whatever means it takes, including using compromise as a blunt propaganda tool to achieve his way -- period, rather than as a process to meet his political opponents halfway.

Compromise, especially when dealing with an unbending ideologue and propagandist like Obama, is no virtue.

Republicans should pursue what is best for America and the American people, and that means working within the system and rule of law -- though Obama refuses to -- to defeat and thwart Obama's destructive agenda.

In January, Barack Obama promised that he’d use “a phone and a pen” to institute presidential executive actions presumably on important issues like immigration reform, tax reform, Obamacare, the Progressive Global Issue-of-the-Day, and gender reassignment surgery in the military.

It’s now August, and right on cue, Obama’s beginning to research the federal statutes to figure out how to do it, especially in regards to illegal immigration, which Capt’n Obvious now says is a broken system.

Duh. He’s the one who broke it…more.

“In the face of that kind of dysfunction, what I can do is ... scour our authorities to try to make progress,” said Obama according to the Columbus Dispatch.

As usual our backward president has it backwards…again.

Fire! Ready! Aim!

No wonder the guy hates guns.

It’s a little late in the game to start researching options for executive action when you promised bold actions back in January…of 2009. But if we’ve learned to expect one rule from Obama that’s never broken, it is this: it’s never too early—or too late-- to pander to your base.

And that’s actually what’s going on here. No one is really burning the midnight oil reading laws in the White House. This White House? Reading laws? I don’t think they even know how to find the federal code, yet alone read it. They might be the only humans in existence who have mastered the art of not even reading the words they write and read aloud-- if one can judge from intel talking points, laws they’ve written, treaties they negotiate, and speeches the teleprompter gives.

Obama sucks as president, but he’s not a bad campaigner, assisted as he is by the almost Pavlov-type response he gets from the people he exploits. I’m not saying that Obama doesn’t love his base. He just loves his base like an alcoholic loves liquor: he abuses it.

In fact, constituent abuse is Obama’s favorite method of governing.

He abuses blacks, he abuses Hispanics, and he abuses women.

The statistics don’t lie. By almost every measure the only constituency that Obama doesn’t abuse are the backroom billionaires trying to get rich on crony energy deals…or richer, rather…again.

It’s harder today to make ends meet as a woman, as a black, or as an Hispanic than ever before if you look at the employment numbers, which is the only indicator that really matters.

I have this quaint notion that blacks, Hispanics, women, Iraqis, Syrians and Ukrainians care a lot more about things like, um, eating, educating their kids, and being safe in their communities—the normal impulses of normal humans-- than they do the burning issues that drive Obama every day.

But here’s the bigger point: I’m not sure, besides campaigning, what are the burning issues of the day for Obama.

If it’s immigration reform, there are easier ways of doing it; if it’s healthcare reform there are easier ways of doing it; if it’s soaking the rich, ask him about his billionaire friends.

Some are convinced that Obama’s real aim is a hidden one, like the collapse of the financial and governing system. It’s a normal reaction to the gothic stupidity that comes daily from the White House.

People just don’t want to believe that the group of men and women who make up Obama could be this dumb, this off target.

Not me.

For Obama it’s always: Fire! Ready! Aim!

The fact that innocent bystanders bear the brunt of the damage is just the cost of firing off his mouth, his policies, his teleprompter.

It’s a cheap cost for him too.

It’s only people, after all.

In the summer of 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama was asked if he was worried that his proposed withdrawal from Iraq would result in ethnic cleansing or even genocide.

He scoffed at the premise.

"By that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now -- where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife -- which we haven't done," he told the Associated Press. "We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea."

Obama glossed over a crucial distinction. The slaughter in Congo wasn't caused by our actions. The assumption behind the AP's question -- backed by countless experts -- was that a withdrawal from Iraq at the time would almost certainly lead to slaughter. Obama's remarkable answer was that even if you accepted the premise that leaving would ignite mass slaughter, it would still be right to bug out of Iraq.

Of course, as is his wont, Obama covered all of the rhetorical bases. He acknowledged that leaving prematurely would be bad.

"Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis," he insisted. "There's no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing U.S. presence there."

Then came the patented Obama take-back. "It is my assessment that those risks are even greater if we continue to occupy Iraq and serve as a magnet for not only terrorist activity but also irresponsible behavior by Iraqi factions," he said.

As grotesque as Obama's moral argument was, it was unknowable at the time whether his analysis was correct. It's now pretty clear he was wrong on all counts.

When Obama pulled American troops out of Iraq, they were not serving as a magnet for terrorists; they were acting as a deterrent not only to terrorists but to "irresponsible" Iraqi factions.

(By the way, what is it with Obama and the word "irresponsible"? In Wednesday's press conference, Obama said that by targeting civilians, Hamas was behaving "extraordinarily irresponsibly." This is only slightly less condemnatory than "inadvisable" or "unproductive" -- and far more conciliatory than the language he uses about Republicans daily.)

Admittedly, he couldn't have predicted the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2007 any more than he could have predicted the debacle of his Syria policy and his vacillating "red line" rhetoric, which partly led to the rise of ISIS.

But as recently as last November, Obama dismissed ISIS and other al-Qaeda affiliates as nothing more than a jayvee squad. While interviewing Obama, The New Yorker's David Remnick noted that "the flag of al-Qaeda is now flying in Fallujah, in Iraq, and among various rebel factions in Syria," and that "al-Qaeda has asserted a presence in parts of Africa, too."

The president shot back: "If a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn't make them Kobe Bryant."

Now, that same junior varsity team controls more territory than any terrorist organization in history, has some 5,000 battle-hardened jihadists with Western passports, hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal, and is earning millions more every day by selling oil on the black market. It is slaughtering Shiites, Christians and other "infidels" with a medieval abandon that makes the alleged A-team of al-Qaeda blanch with horror. At this moment it has cornered tens of thousands of Yazidi villagers on a mountaintop. ISIS presents them with a choice: convert to Islam at gunpoint or die of thirst.

To its credit, the Pentagon is reportedly contemplating airlifting food and water to the Yazidis, though you wouldn't know that from anything the president has said.

You have to give Obama points for consistency. He remains as blasé about mass slaughter today as he was in 2007. Back then he presented our options as a choice between doing nothing and "deploying unilaterally" to put American troops in harm's way. He plays the same rhetorical games today, insisting that critics who want to provide military aid to, say, the Kurds or the Ukrainians are really proposing war. And since no one wants war, we should accept our new role as bystander to slaughter.

It's quite a legacy you're working on there, Mr. President.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's last gasp strategy in this year's midterm elections is to paint the Republicans in Congress as obstructionists, accusing them of playing politics with America's economic welfare.

In his news conference last week, he insisted he had offered a number of new proposals to boost low-to-middle incomes, create jobs and strengthen the economy. But, he said, they had been stubbornly blocked by Republicans in the House and Senate.

In Obama's deeply partisan world, there aren't two sides to the legitimate policy issues that now divide Congress. There's only one side: his side. And anyone who opposes him and his party is doing it solely for political gain.

That's the whining, lame-duck message he's taking out on the campaign trail this fall in a rear-guard political bid to prevent the GOP, which now runs the House, from getting control of the U.S. Senate, too.

But Obama faces huge challenges with his petulant, sophomoric complaints. First and foremost, a majority of Americans no longer look to him as the answer to the many economic problems that still plague our country.

He's had five and a half years to get the economy fully back on track, but with very mediocre results at best, and that's why his job approval polls are among the lowest of his presidency.

A growing number of Americans no longer believe that he can ever deliver on his promises and with good reason.

Take family incomes. They've fallen from $55,600 in 2007 to $51,000, while the gap between families at the top and the bottom has widened.

About one-third of Americans have debts that were sent to collection firms, according to a new report last week by the Urban Institute and Encore Capital Group's Consumer Credit Research Institute.

"It's a stunning number. And it threads through nearly all communities," said Caroline Ratcliffe, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, who wrote the report.

It was also reported just last week that homeownership fell to a 19-year low in the last three months, as shrinking incomes and tighter finances forced more Americans into rentals. That's the lowest U.S. homeownership level since 1995.

Yet, in a speech at a Democratic fundraiser last month, Obama was boasting, with a straight face, that "There's almost no economic measure by which we are not better off now than we were when I took office."

A hefty majority of Americans know better. The Gallup Poll said last week that 57 percent of Americans now say the economy is getting worse.

At his news conference last week, Obama ran through a litany of long-ignored proposals he's sent to Congress, including the Democrats' widely-discredited idea of raising the minimum wage.

When Republicans gave it an immediate thumbs down, saying his proposal was dead on arrival because it was "a job killer," the White House accused the GOP of playing politics with the issue.

Obama is still peddling the idea in speeches, despite a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that said his minimum wage hike would eliminate between half a million and one million jobs, as small businesses would be forced to cut their payrolls just to survive. The president never mentions the CBO report.

Obama is having a very difficult time accepting divided government as an often necessary part of our democratic, two party system of competing political philosophies. In large part, because he has been unable to get his way, but also because he believes government is the solution to all of our problems, when, as President Reagan reminded us in his first inaugural address to the nation, "Government is the problem."

Congress is divided, as it's often been throughout our history, because the American electorate is deeply divided. This election isn't about petty politics. It is about the proper role of government in our society and whose policies will result in a prosperous, full employment economy and a wise and frugal government.

Obama, judging by all the polls, is on the losing side of that argument. And his constant complaints that he can't get what he wants out of Congress because of mean, old Republicans, looks immature.

Ronald Reagan swept into office with an agenda that called for lowering income tax rates across the board, beefing up our tattered defenses, expanding global trade, and cutting needless, wasteful and excessive spending.

Reagan faced a fiercely determined foe in House Speaker "Tip" O'Neill and a liberal Democratic majority. But instead of bemoaning the opposition, he formed alliances on Capitol Hill, rallied Americans to his cause, and won the legislation he needed to pull the country out of a deep recession in just two years.

He faced similar Democratic opposition in his second term against his plan to overhaul the tax code, clean out its needless loopholes and exemptions, and further lower the tax rates.

Reagan not only got much of what he wanted, he did it with the support of liberal Democrats like Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri and Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey.

Reagan came into office after two successful terms as governor of California. Obama took office with virtually no experience after just two years as a freshman senator who had never run anything. And it shows.

Reagan and his army of allies on Capitol Hill, led by tax cut crusader Jack Kemp, said they got their tax cut ideas from President John F. Kennedy whose tax cuts resulted in a decade of strong economic growth and, eventually, a budget surplus.

Obama drew his $800 billion big spending stimulus plan and higher taxes from FDR's New Deal agenda to pull the country out of the Great Depression which lasted 10 long years until we entered World War II.

I wonder how the Ebola doctor feels now that his humanitarian trip has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered.

What was the point?

Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan's Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America's premier hospitals. (This trip may be the first real-world demonstration of the economics of Obamacare.)

There's little danger of an Ebola plague breaking loose from the treatment of these two Americans at the Emory University Hospital. But why do we have to deal with this at all?

Why did Dr. Brantly have to go to Africa? The very first "risk factor" listed by the Mayo Clinic for Ebola -- an incurable disease with a 90 percent fatality rate -- is: "Travel to Africa."

Can't anyone serve Christ in America anymore?

No -- because we're doing just fine. America, the most powerful, influential nation on Earth, is merely in a pitched battle for its soul.

About 15,000 people are murdered in the U.S. every year. More than 38,000 die of drug overdoses, half of them from prescription drugs. More than 40 percent of babies are born out of wedlock. Despite the runaway success of "midnight basketball," a healthy chunk of those children go on to murder other children, rape grandmothers, bury little girls alive -- and then eat a sandwich. A power-mad president has thrown approximately 10 percent of all Americans off their health insurance -- the rest of you to come! All our elite cultural institutions laugh at virginity and celebrate promiscuity.

So no, there's nothing for a Christian to do here.

If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.

If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World.

Of course, if Brantly had evangelized in New York City or Los Angeles, The New York Times would get upset and accuse him of anti-Semitism, until he swore -- as the pope did -- that you don't have to be a Christian to go to heaven. Evangelize in Liberia, and the Times' Nicholas Kristof will be totally impressed.

Which explains why American Christians go on "mission trips" to disease-ridden cesspools. They're tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S., tired of being called homophobes, racists, sexists and bigots. So they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting that the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream.

America is the most consequential nation on Earth, and in desperate need of God at the moment. If America falls, it will be a thousand years of darkness for the entire planet.

Not only that, but it's our country. Your country is like your family. We're supposed to take care of our own first. The same Bible that commands us to "go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel" also says: "For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.'"

Right there in Texas, near where Dr. Brantly left his wife and children to fly to Liberia and get Ebola, is one of the poorest counties in the nation, Zavala County -- where he wouldn't have risked making his wife a widow and his children fatherless.

But serving the needy in some deadbeat town in Texas wouldn't have been "heroic." We wouldn't hear all the superlatives about Dr. Brantly's "unusual drive to help the less fortunate" or his membership in the "Gold Humanism Honor Society." Leaving his family behind in Texas to help the poor 6,000 miles away -- that's the ticket.

Today's Christians are aces at sacrifice, amazing at serving others, but strangely timid for people who have been given eternal life. They need to buck up, serve their own country, and remind themselves every day of Christ's words: "If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you."

There is also the issue of the financial impact this has on our country. More than a decade of war and trillions more in debt lands us in a precarious economic position no matter what the Democrats and liberal economists might say to the contrary. The United States government must, hopefully sometime very soon, start paying back the trillions we have borrowed against the country’s future. The only way to do this is to stop spending more than it receives in revenue. Perhaps not in our lifetime, but as conservatives, our calling is to leave the world better than we found it. Entitlements are obviously the largest part of the equation, but that is a subject for another column.

And finally, there are the obvious geopolitical implications, as China and to a lesser extent Russia stand on the sidelines with Cheshire cat grins on their face, hoarding resources for the future, loaning us money to fight the permanent war, waiting for the right time to turn off the faucet of easy money, and watch the illusion come to an end.

McCain has an admirable record of service and a great life story. But every great life story includes a chapter where the torch is passed. McCain is up for reelection in 2016. It is never too early to begin identifying a real conservative in Arizona who recognizes both the value of our men and women in uniform and that a conservative defense policy doesn’t include American boots on every inch of land across the planet. It is about time McCain take a bow and exit stage left, I hear Arizona is nice this time of year. •

Tell me: Has any other United States president ever goaded the opposition party to bring impeachment proceedings against himself? Has any other so sneeringly mocked and taunted the other party?

President Obama is not only not the uniter he promised to be; he is the agitator in chief. Just consider the contrast with President George W. Bush, who didn't even defend himself often, much less deride, needle and dare Democrats to oppose him.

It's just like Obama, the dutiful disciple of 1960s leftist radical Saul Alinsky, to divert our attention from his official misconduct by demonizing Republicans and conservatives rightfully challenging his lawlessness.

Obama knows he has habitually exceeded his executive authority, but it's not so much the frequency of his overreaches that is unique. He boastfully claims he hasn't issued so many executive orders as his predecessors did. But that's just more of his misdirection.

It's not unlike his absurd statement that there has been more oil drilling under his administration than under others. What tripe. He conveniently omits that most of the drilling has occurred on private, not government-owned, land.

It's the substance of his executive orders -- their dangerous scope and magnitude -- that makes them so dangerous and troubling. Even liberal law professor Jonathan Turley notes that it is not the number of his executive orders that matters but their content and reach.

We must recognize that he is doing this premeditatedly. Shortly before issuing his executive order to implement parts of the Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, he openly acknowledged -- in lobbying for passage of the DREAM Act -- that he had no constitutional authority to do it on his own. But when he couldn't get Congress to go along with his ill-advised bill, he issued the order anyway, in total defiance of Congress' legislative prerogative and of his own admission that he couldn't do so.

The law is no obstacle to him. He will not be denied. His latest ploy is to ridicule Republicans for blocking his various amnesty schemes, which he euphemistically describes as "comprehensive immigration reform." He says he wouldn't have to act on his own if Congress would do its job. His adviser Dan Pfeiffer said, "The president has no choice but to act" on immigration.

Excuse me? Congress' job is not to rubber-stamp his statist policies. It is not to get along with him. Its duty is not to President Obama, his agenda or his legacy. It is to do what it believes is best for America and to check his power when he is acting beyond his authority.

There is nothing in the Constitution or case law that empowers a president to act unilaterally when Congress won't go along with him. If this were the case, the Constitution and its entire system of separation of powers would be meaningless.

How cynical this man is to tell the American people that he has a right to act outside the scope of his authority if his intention is "to help people" -- as if to turn lawlessness into a virtue. How can members of his own party not be sickened by his contemptuousness toward the Constitution? This isn't just a matter of Obama's jabbing the Republican Party. It's a calculated assault on the Constitution that transcends partisan politics and will come back to haunt all Americans.

Obama realizes that his egregious record in office has finally come home to roost and that in November, assuming things continue on their current course, his party is going to receive a shellacking at the polls because of him.

This is why he is willing to go to any lengths to distract attention from his failures. He figures the best way he can do that is by further vilifying Republicans as irresponsible extremists, racists, bigots, homophobes and the rest, hoping that he can dupe Americans into ignoring his disastrous record by convincing them that Republicans would be even worse.

He desperately needs to gin up his base and energize his own extremists, and his tried-and-true method for the past six years to accomplish that has been to use fear-mongering against Republicans.

So he is not only ratcheting up his rhetoric to accuse Republicans of a plot to impeach him, though House Speaker John Boehner has clearly indicated that is not in the cards, but also trying to force their hand into .actually impeaching him. To this end, he is planning on upping the ante by issuing a far-reaching unilateral order granting amnesty to millions

That's right. The leader of the Free World is trying to provoke Republicans into impeaching him or otherwise stirring a constitutional crisis.

This is stunningly unprecedented. But more and more people are wising up to his serial abuses of power and his partisan agitation.

I don't have a great track record as a prognosticator of elections, but I am strongly sensing his party, as a direct result of his policies and lawlessness and its shameless refusal to rein him in, is going to get a titanic comeuppance in November.

In the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf lays out both the reasons why President Obama should fire CIA director John Brennan, and the reasons why it would be dangerous for him to do so. Essentially, they’ve both been doing some really shady stuff, regarding both the US Constitution and international law, which they’ve both been covering up and lying about. Firing Brennan could bring more of these activities into the light, which would hurt Obama’s reputation. However, what we already know about Obama should eviscerate any shred of respectability he might have in anyone’s mind.

Brennan is currently under fire for bugging the computers of the Senate committee tasked with investigating the legality of CIA “enhanced interrogation” techniques. The CIA was mining Senators’ computers and emails to gather information on the investigation so they could begin working to discredit their reports. Brennan also lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee about it, saying, “That's just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.”

Now he’s apologized, weeks ahead of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report. It’s expected to be a scathing indictment of the CIA, showing that they exaggerated the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques to the public, fed journalists fake “leaks” and lied to members of Congress, downplaying the brutality of their information extraction practices and the extent to which they used them.

Now several Senators and even the New York Times editorial board is calling for his resignation. As Friedersdorf points out, Brennan's CIA “broke laws and undermined the separation of powers core to our democracy.”

While firing Brennan would be the best thing for the American people, it would also open up the possibility that he would start talking. He could talk about Obama’s secret drone killing program.

The President has repeatedly illegally used the state secrets justification to prevent information about extrajudicial killings from coming out into the public. Even Congress isn’t properly briefed on who Obama is killing or why. Obama blocked the release of a memo on the justification for killing two American citizens without trial, even though upon its eventual releaseit became clear that the information posed no threat to US safety. So the President is trampling on the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution and then refusing to acknowledge it or explain what the legal justification might be.

The latest abuse of the state secrets privilege is Obama’s DOJ refusing to explain why they’re refusing to allow a PhD student back into the US. And what was the reason both for the refusal to let Rahinah Ibrahim back in the country and for refusing to acknowledge why she wasn’t allowed? An FBI agent had checked the wrong box. The “state secret” was a coverup for incompetence.

The entire drone war in Pakistan could only be legal if the country consented to the killings, and there’s little evidence it has, and public statements indicate it hasn’t.

NSA spying has far exceeded its legal and Constitutional bounds and President Obama has lied about both the scope of the spying and what he knew and when. Trade alliances with allies such as Germany are in jeopardy because of NSA spying, and along with them billions of dollars in economic growth.

In fact, as NSA director James Clapper has repeatedly lied to Congress, with zero reproach from the Obama Administration, the only way anyone knows anything about just how far illegal NSA wiretapping and surveillance of American citizens who have not been accused of any crimes has gone is due to whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. And how has the Obama Administration, the “most transparent administration in history” dealt with these heroic individuals, the only check against lying and law-breaking government agencies? The Administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any administration in US history.

I guess what I don’t get is what in the world John Brennan could reveal about President Obama which could possibly tarnish his reputation any further. He’s literally trampling on the Constitution, killing citizens without trial, disregarding the Fourth Amendment and allowing his goons to lie about it with zero consequences. And that’s what we know about! Fire John Brennan, Obama. You can’t get any lower

I'm not a psychologist, but I'm intrigued by the work of those who study the mind and behavior, especially when it accurately explains why people do what they do -- or can't do what they would like or are expected to do. Case in point, President Barack Obama.

In 2008, I wrote a column titled "A Personality Profile of Barack Obama's Leadership." The warnings of mental health professionals then have come to fruition today. And other brain and personality experts, many of whom cast their votes for Obama at the ballot box, have since learned the nation appointed a man to the highest position in the land who cannot lead in or out of crisis, especially in the face of opposing forces.

Six years ago, I pointed to the research of the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, at St. John's University and the College of St. Benedict, which did a professional personality profile "for anticipating Obama's likely leadership style as chief executive, thereby providing a basis for inferring the character and tenor of a prospective Obama presidency." The study concluded: "The combination of Ambitious, Accommodating, and Outgoing patterns in Obama's profile suggests a confident conciliator personality composite. Leaders with this personality prototype, though self-assured and ambitious, are characteristically gracious, considerate, and benevolent. They are energetic, charming, and agreeable, with a special knack for settling differences, favoring mediation and compromise over force or coercion as a strategy for resolving conflict. They are driven primarily by a need for achievement and also have strong affiliation needs, but a low need for power."

Samuel Barondes, a leading psychiatrist and neuroscientist, explained in his 2011 expose of President Obama: "Obama's temperament, his combination of dispositional traits, is emphasized in psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi's essay 'Maybe Washington Needs More Craziness.' As Ghaemi puts it in his opening sentence 'If President Obama stumbled in his handling of the debt crisis, in my view, it was because he is too normal: too rational, willing to compromise, a rule follower, conventionally wise.' And he then goes on to contrast Obama with Franklin D. Roosevelt whose greater success he attributes, in part, to Roosevelt's 'hyperthymic temperament ... such people have very high energy levels, and are extroverted, talkative, sociable, humorous, charismatic, productive, libidinous, and workaholic.' To Ghaemi the more moderate temperament of 'no-drama-Obama' keeps him from confronting his adversaries in the manner of FDR.

"Drew Westen, a psychologist with interests in both personality and politics, emphasizes Obama's sense of identity. In 'What Happened to Obama's Passion?' he raises the possibility that Obama hasn't figured himself out yet: 'Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in "Dreams From My Father" appended a chapter at the end that wasn't there -- the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.' Later Westen suggests that Obama is conflicted about his identity and 'ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue.' But in the end he concludes that Obama is really most comfortable 'consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.' This, then, appears to be an essential element of what Obama stands for."

Obama's glaring and greatest weakness -- namely his inability to make hard decisions in crisis and lead opposing forces through or out of them -- has cost America on every front. It has further divided Washington and our nation and jeopardized our standing with the global community and even our allies, leaving us in a much more unstable place in our world.

Though most people in 2008 seemed to laud Obama's personality as a needed polar opposite to George W. Bush's, especially in an era that required the repairing of international relations, I posed to readers that Obama's personality pendulum swing was way too far to the other side. An "accommodating-agreeable-conciliator-favoring compromise" type of personality might be good for closing a used car deal when all parties are amicable, but it's not the one that can lead our country through war, divisive crises or emergency conflicts, which often require unpopular actions.

Obama's voting record as an Illinois state senator showed his inability to take a stand in a crisis. His own Democratic colleagues couldn't understand why he had voted "present" (instead of "yes" or "no") 129 times, including a number of noncommittal tallies on gun rights and abortion.

Gone are the days when strong leaders and personalities, such as House Speaker Tip O'Neill and President Ronald Reagan, reached across the aisle in order to lead our country. En vogue today are pitching polarities, demonizing your opposition and casting blame to justify one's own divisiveness and inability to bridge gaps.

But what we need now more than ever are leaders like those three decades ago who knew how to agree to disagree agreeably, confronted tough challenges together and advanced our nation forward despite their differences. That is particularly true of our president.

God doesn't grant us do-overs, but He does give us abundant try-agains.

Netanyahu is acting to defeat Hamas. Obama is acting to save Hamas. The interesting question is which option would better serve the life and interests of ordinary Palestinians?


Fed up to the gills with assertions of racism as a unique American sin. Rubbish. Show me any society on earth that gives minority cultures and subcultures a better shake.

America didn't invent slavery. But it fought a civil war to eradicate it; passed three constitutional amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and established state and federal civil rights offices throughout the land to enforce equal opportunity.

The ridiculous cries of American racism call to mind a Puritan flagellating himself because he's tempted by sin. The fellow isn't perfect, but he sure is trying.

If you are unclear about the importance of Separation of Powers for your personal liberty, imagine fighting a traffic ticket while the cop who cited you sits in black robes in the judge’s chair. Then use your imagination to consider whether this scenario has any applicability to the policy and enforcement powers of federal agencies.

I was about to click and read why George Takei and William Shattner don't like each other. But then I decided maybe life was better before the internet existed.

Here's what I don't get--what we aren't talking about.

Liberals thought Bush sucked, and especially in his second term, wished he'd go away. Fair enough.

But, today, Americans don't just think Obama sucks. It's pretty clear he's illegally using federal agencies to persecute his enemies. Audit them. Raid them. Put them in jail.

No serious person doubts it.

Where in the infierno is any serious and honest liberal to say this man is a plague that needs to be cleansed?

There has never been anything in America as cynical and outrageous as the Obamacrats saying: "Those dirty Republicans are going to impeach Obama!" while the cowed Republicans say "Who us?! We are not! Whatchu talkin about?!"

Meanwhile, Obama tries to think of the most insidious things he can do that either A. Will force Republicans to impeach him; or B. He will get away with and set new lows for conduct of the President of the United States.

Our union is becoming a pathetic joke.

If voter ID laws are a racist plot, then why does minority turnout increase everywhere they pass?

Couldn't be the proponents really are worried about vote fraud, while fraud-apologist opponents play the race card because that's the only card they got?

I love all dogs. Just can't understand why people choose some of the prissy ones. There are cats for that.

I love cats, too. Two, precisely.


Big props to Sonic Burger for giving me an ice water bigger than a communion sip.

Stop being jerks, fast food America.

No, Local News Broadcaster, the debate over the EPA's power grab to gut American energy is not between those who care about the environment and those who think jobs are more important, as if defenders of plentiful energy don’t care about our environment.

Of course jobs are important, but the main opposition to the EPA's initiative to kill coal is that we just don't believe the computer model scenarios predicting disaster if humans keep using traditional energy. And we know that more expensive energy will make life harder and more of a struggle for millions of American families today.

US science establishment: "Sorry. We were wrong about fat. We were wrong about carbs. We were wrong about salt."

"But don't you dare question us about carbon, you deniers!!"

"IT'S SETTLED!!!!"

Every Luddite prediction about technology was wrong. We kept getting richer. Now we're getting poorer because the parasite political class has mastered the art of wringing our throat.


Do the sheep realize that when Sen. Udall says wind and sun create jobs, he really means tax payer subsidies are the critical factor?

Mr. Udall, if sun and wind created wealth and enterprise, why does Washington have to suck us to keep it going?

The Libertarians who think it a pittance's difference between Romney and Obama haven't a clue the deliberate damage Obama is doing.

Do they know how many lawsuits his mini-me Holder is filing against companies for the sin of competing?

Do they know how many for-profit colleges Obamatrons are shutting down, simply because they hate the idea of for-profit education?

Do they grasp the private universities that Obama/Holder are trying to defund and dis-accredit because the schools won't toe Obama's liberal line.

Do they know Obama means to make our traditional energy as scarce and expensive as possible?

Do they know the difference between flawed policy and direct, malicious, transformative assault?

These Liberty Utopians are self-defeating and delusional.

No one believes Obama is protecting America’s best interests.
Everyone knows he’s pursuing his own agenda.
No one knows what it is.

• Question: How can you tell it’s a difficult campaign season for Democrats?

Answer: They are already running ads accusing Republicans of wanting to destroy Social Security and Medicare.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is financing an Iowa ad saying that GOP nominee Joni Ernst has “proposed privatizing Social Security [and] gambling our savings in the stock market.”

In Arkansas, Senator Mark Pryor accuses his opponent, Representative Tom Cotton, of trying to “undermine the integrity of Medicare and Social Security.”

And in Kentucky, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes has ignored press criticism to launch a new round of attacks on Mitch McConnell for supporting the Ryan budget, which Grimes falsely claims “increases Medicare costs and privatizes Social Security.”

House campaigns are also featuring their share of Social Security and Medicare demagoguery: In Arizona’s second congressional district, Nancy Pelosi’s Democratic Majority PAC has run ads accusing GOP candidate Martha McSally of wanting to “raise the retirement age” and supporting “a plan that the AARP says privatizes Social Security in the stock market.” Similar ads are running in Florida and elsewhere.

As the election gets closer, we can undoubtedly expect still more.

In fairness, of course, it should be noted that it’s not just Democrats who peddle this nonsense. In Montana, the Republican senatorial candidate, Representative Steve Daines, is running an ad claiming that embattled Democratic incumbent Senator John Walsh “believes that privatizing Social Security should be on the table.”

Unfortunately for those candidates, the trustees for those troubled programs just injected some inconvenient truths into the debate.

Start with Social Security. Last year, the program spent $75.6 billion more than it took in. This year’s gap is expected to be more than $80 billion. This cash-flow shortfall is being covered by interest payments on the bonds in the Social Security Trust Fund.

Soon the interest payments will not be enough, and Social Security will have to make up any shortfall by redeeming bonds from the Social Security Trust Fund. But the Trust Fund holds no actual assets — it’s only government bonds held by the government itself, essentially an accounting measure of how much the system is owed out of general revenues. Thus, when the Social Security system redeems bonds in order to cover its deficit, the money to redeem them. like today’s interest payments, comes from general revenues, meaning that it simply increases our annual budget deficits and growing national debt.

This accounting gimmick will be irrelevant anyway after 2033, when the Trust Fund will be exhausted. By then, Social Security will have redeemed $2.8 trillion in bonds. Of course, you may have noticed that the federal budget doesn’t really have $2.8 trillion to spare.

From there on out, Social Security’s unfunded liabilities top $24.9 trillion. Add that to the $2.8 trillion needed to redeem the Trust Fund, and Social Security is running roughly $27.7 trillion in the red. That’s $1.8 trillion more than last year. It’s not getting any better, folks.

Yet Social Security’s finances actually look pretty good compared with Medicare’s. According to the trustees, Medicare’s Trust Fund will run a deficit this year as it has for the last six years. The program may briefly return to solvency next year, as a result of Obamacare tax hikes, but will be running deficits again by 2021.

Medicare’s Trust Fund will remain technically solvent until 2030, which represents a four-year improvement over last year’s projection. But, as we saw with the Social Security Trust Fund, this is a meaningless accounting measure that doesn’t affect the nation’s overall finances. The program’s total unfunded liabilities exceed $48.1 trillion, an increase of $5.2 trillion since last year’s report.

It should also be noted that the trustees estimate that the total cost of Medicare will increase from approximately 3.5 percent of GDP in 2013 to 5.3 percent of GDP by 2035, and thereafter to about 6.9 percent of GDP by 2088. At that point, Social Security’s costs will consume an additional 6.1 percent of GDP, meaning that these two government programs alone will eat up one-eighth of everything produced in this country. Medicaid and Obamacare will consume another 4.6 percent of GDP. With interest on the debt equaling 9.9 percent of GDP at that point, government will consume 27.5 percent of our economy before it does anything else … national defense, human services, infrastructure, anything. By way of comparison, all federal spending today amounts to 20.8 percent of GDP, and the post–World War II average has been just 19.3 percent.

In the face of this undeniable crisis, proposals to give future seniors more choice of Medicare plans or to allow younger workers to privately invest a portion of their Social Security taxes through personal accounts hardly look radical.

None of this seems to matter to candidates who think they can find a little temporary advantage by frightening senior citizens. Perhaps they are right when it comes to the politics, although such attacks have proven less and less effective in recent years. But when it comes to the future of the country, such irresponsible demagoguery should be all but disqualifying.

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The language in the Obamacare statute has always been crystal clear. Eligibility for the "affordability tax credit," or subsidy, requires enrollment "through an Exchange established by the State under 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Identical language appears in the definition of a "coverage month," and every, single place subsidy eligibility is mentioned in the law.

States would, liberals assumed, all create state exchanges to get the money. It never occurred to them that some states would want to stop the subsidies and the employer taxes, 30-hour workweek, and associated penalties that come with them.

The only exception was eleven Democrats who were pretty sure their state would turn down the cash and warned: "In Texas, we know from experience that the dangers to the uninsured from greater State authority...millions of people will be left no better off than before Congress acted."

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) wrote in April 2010, right after the law passed, that subsidy eligibility required "residing in a state that established an exchange," but simply assumed: "Under PPACA, state-established 'American Health Benefit Exchanges' will have to be established in every state by January 1, 2014."

But something funny happened on the way to those 50 state exchanges.

The American people rose up against Obamacare - ultimately resulting in one of the biggest landslide elections in history. They wanted the law repealed, but obstinate Senate Democrats refused to consider even modest changes. Most states, however, were in no mood to cooperate.

Rather than accept the verdict of the American people, the Obama administration turned to the IRS to come to Obamacare's unlawful rescue. I say unlawful because CRS had issued a legal opinion on the matter, based on standard textualist principles of statutory construction: "An IRS interpretation that extended tax credits to those enrolled in federally facilitated exchanges would be contrary to clear congressional intent, receive no Chevron deference, and likely be deemed invalid."

Yet the IRS, in a May 23, 2012 regulation, did extend subsidies.

Some states still didn't believe it. At least three - Oklahoma, Alabama, and Indiana- cited the illegality of the IRS rule as a reason not to establish an exchange. They didn't want the subsidies.

With lawsuits challenging the IRS rule moving through the courts, Obamacare had a problem. They were wrong on the facts and wrong on the law, so they pounded the table.

Foremost among them was Obamacare's architect: Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who helped write the law. He relentlessly attacked the personal integrity of the honest men and women who put together the legal challenges to the IRS rule. He told the ultraliberal Mother Jones magazine in January 2013 that limiting subsidies to state exchanges was a "screwy interpretation." of the law. "It's nutty. It's stupid," he said, pounding that table hard. "They're desperate."

Well, somebody was.

"What's important to remember politically about this is if you're a state and you don't set up an exchange, that means your citizens don't get their tax credits," Gruber himself explained in a January 2012 video found by Rich Weinstein.

"I hope that that's a blatant enough political reality that states will get their act together and realize there are billions of dollars at stake here in setting up these exchanges." And then, perhaps hedging that politics might trump the law, he added: "But, you know, once again the politics can get ugly around this."

When he was caught, Gruber told the liberal New Republic the "statement was just a speak-o-you know, like a typo."

Then more tapes emerged. In one he said: "Now, I guess I'm enough of a believer in democracy to think that when the voters in states see that by not setting up an exchange the politicians in a state are costing state residents hundreds of millions and billions of dollars that they'll eventually throw the guys out, but I don't know that for sure. And that is really the ultimate threat, is will people understand that gee, if your governor doesn't set up an exchange, you're losing hundreds of millions of dollars of tax credits to be delivered to your citizens."

The Obamacare apologists of the left will somehow try to explain away the Gruber tapes. But no honest person should listen to them anymore.

•  y Big Fat Greek Wedding," the daughter Toula complains to her mother about her stubborn father being the "head of the house," Maria replied, "Let me tell you something, Toula. The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants."

Welcome to America, "We the People" are supposed to be informed and in control, but the media is the "neck," she can turn the focus of Americans to what it wants them to see and believe.

Ever since news programs were required to pay their own way, market share and advertisers who want to reach those viewers took control of what news gets into our homes on mainline media news shows. If it bleeds, it leads. The only requirement is that they have video footage. Whether it's domestic violence in your city or war carnage around the world, we see what gets the eyeballs of viewers to watch.

If the media can get that video from a citizen's smart phone or from a reporter on the front of breaking war, we are drawn to see what is "really" happening first hand. The media wants what sells.

So with violent Jihadist terrorists burning churches and killing Christians who refuse to convert to Islam in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria, why isn't the Western media sending images of that carnage into your home every night?

The first reason is understandable. Islamic Jihadists will not just kill Christians and moderate Muslims. They will kill any media they can get to that in any way tells a story they do not want told. Reporters and cameramen have been raped and killed. The media "neck" turns our attention to conflicts where the media can safely have access.

We are being fed 24-7 coverage of the conflict in Gaza, because they know that Israel targets its attacks on Jihadists and does everything possible to spare innocent civilians...AND the media covering that war.

The media needs carnage for their nightly news. Only Israel's commitment to spare as many citizens as possible and the joy Hamas has in showing the media any examples of where they fail gives them what they want.

But that does not explain why the media rails against the collateral damage and deaths attributed to Israel's "immoral war" against Gaza while failing to adequately cover the barrage of missile strikes by Hamas that started the war, the UN schools and Mosques that hide weapons and tunnels, and the actions by Hamas that have broken ceasefire after ceasefire.

The reported 1,400 deaths in Gaza are regrettable, but they are a direct result of the actions of the terrorist government that is responsible for their safety and their future. In addition, there is no attempt by the media to provide any perspective of the horrors of any war in the modern age.

When the Western allies carpet bombed Dresden, Germany in 1945, an estimated 25,000 civilians were killed. When America dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, within the first two-to-four months of the bombings, the acute effects killed 90,000–166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000–80,000 in Nagasaki. Roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day. With those numbers of innocents dying, was not America "immoral?" War is hell, now and then.

If our media is going to turn "the neck" of American citizens to cover the war in Gaza, at least they should do their job of providing balanced coverage. They should stop letting the Jihadists' strategy of using citizens as shields cause them to lose sight of who is primarily responsible for the carnage.

Never before has America been more in need of a responsible, fair media in understanding the numerous hot spots around the world. Demand that your media give you balanced coverage on Gaza and ask them to start covering the violent attacks on Christians throughout the Middle East and Africa.

1) Republicans ahead of him on the golf course wouldn't let him play through; so he missed calls telling him ISIS was overrunning Iraq.

2) Obama has been too busy reliving his choom gang days by getting high and watching old Cheech and Chong movies to fix the economy.

3) Don't blame Obama for Obamacare. It's George Bush's fault!

4) Obama was completely unaware that there is more to being President than giving speeches blaming Republicans for causing all of America's problems.

5) What failed presidency? Chris Matthews says Obama is the most successful President ever!

6) He's distracted all the time because Michelle won't let him eat anything other than carrots, beets and arugula.

7) Joe Biden said something dumb? That's George Bush's fault!

8) The mainstream media only gives Obama more credit than he deserves 90 percent of the time instead of 100 percent; so it’s not doing its part!

9) Going on frequent vacations to take a break from not working is a lot more stressful than you’d think.

10) As we all know, Obama learns about most of the problems in his administration by watching the news and he has been too busy golfing to watch TV.

11) He doesn't want to say all those nasty things about Republicans, but they keep appearing on his teleprompter; so he has to read them.

12) A lot of the white people who voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 figured out he is black and went all racist on him!

13) People don’t like Barack Obama’s executive orders? That’s George Bush’s fault!

14) That liar Putin never came through with the magic beans he promised Obama in exchange for allowing him to invade Ukraine.

15) It was just too creepy to get any work done with Hillary Clinton in the building. There were broomsticks in the corners, flying monkeys everywhere, and Hillary peeping out of the corners screaming, "I'll get you, my pretty!"

• Bipartisanship is dead. That's the conventional wisdom, and there's a lot of evidence to support it.

But there's evidence to the contrary as well. On two important issues, veterans' health and job training, congressional Republicans and Democrats have, with little notice, reached constructive bipartisan agreements.

These are both issues on which everyone agrees government should be involved. The country certainly owes something to veterans. And no one's proposing to eliminate job training programs altogether.

But government is also not doing a good job on either. The Veterans Affairs Department scandals have revealed a culture of lying and incompetence that comes as little surprise to those who have been scrutinizing the agency for many years.

And think-tank analysts both liberal and conservative have been concluding that government job training programs don't do much to prepare people for work or help them get jobs.

The best job training, many experts agree, is a job. But job-training programs have appeal to voters, and they do probably help some not insignificant number of people move ahead.

So there's an obvious need for legislation. And on these issues, as on so many others, Republicans and Democrats are in principled disagreement.

Nevertheless, Senate Veterans Affairs Chairman Bernie Sanders and House Veterans Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller managed this week to come to an agreement.

Sanders, a self-described Socialist, did not get all the money he wanted. And he accepted a provision that at least some veterans could get funds for medical treatment at private non-VA facilities.

Miller, who has being doing dogged oversight work that was not much noticed until last year when the Washington Examiner's Mark Flatten began highlighting it, made concessions as well.

The bill includes $5 billion for hiring more medical professionals and $1.7 billion for new VA facilities -- more than many House Republicans might like.

The Republican-controlled House overwhelmingly approved the bill Wednesday on a 420-5 vote, and the Democratic-majority Senate is expected to pass it quickly as well.

Both houses have already passed, the House by 415-6 and the Senate by 95-3, significant legislation reauthorizing and consolidating government job-training programs.

It eliminates 15 existing programs, consolidates others, gives states more flexibility and attempts to orient job training programs to "in-demand skills."

This represents some hard work at the subcommittee and committee level, notably by House Education and the Workforce Chairman John Kline and ranking Democrat George Miller.

Miller, who is retiring from Congress this year, also helped to fashion the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, working with a committee chairman named John Boehner. Both have shown that you can be strong partisans and still successfully negotiate bipartisan agreements.

I doubt that these are perfect pieces of legislation, and I suspect that none of their lead sponsors would claim they are. There's always a danger that bipartisan agreements turn out to be mush and that negotiators put aside bolder reforms that would produce better results.

But they probably represent at least incremental progress toward better policy. And they refute the conventional wisdom that bipartisanship is dead, even in this politically polarized Congress.

What they also share in common is that the Obama White House seems to have had little or no involvement. Members of Congress and their staffs were left to do the hard work of analysis and negotiation themselves.

When the Obama administration does get involved, this kind of bipartisan compromise doesn't seem to happen.

Second-term presidencies are ordinarily a time when the stars are in alignment for bipartisan reforms. Examples include the 1986 tax law and the 1997 Medicare reforms.

But not in Barack Obama's second-term presidency. The Obama administration has ignored House Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp's tax rewrite, which would cut rates and eliminate many preferences.

When Camp was negotiating with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, Obama removed the latter by appointing him ambassador to China. Baucus' successor Ron Wyden is a skilled bipartisan legislator, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Obama White House have given him little running room.

Even on the one tax issue, which Obama recognized as reform-worthy -- cutting the U.S.'s highest-in-the-developed world corporate income tax -- the administration has eschewed bipartisan discussion.

Instead it's trying to make a campaign issue with a bill somehow barring companies from moving their corporate domiciles to lower-tax nations. Sort of like ordering water not to flow downhill.

Some people like to denounce Congress for partisan legislative gridlock. But the real problem is at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

In June, President Barack Obama sent a letter to Congress asking for help to address the surge of illegal crossings at the Texas-Mexico border. Among other items, Obama asked Congress to grant him the legal authority "to exercise discretion in processing the return and removal of unaccompanied minor children from non-contiguous countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador."

The administration blamed a 2008 anti-human-trafficking law signed by President George W. Bush for preventing officials from promptly deporting minors not eligible for asylum.

House Republicans were happy to oblige. Speaker John Boehner maintained that voters would not accept spending more money on unauthorized migrants without fixing the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008.

So what did Obama do? He left that reform out of the $3.7 billion emergency border package he sent to Congress.

"Suddenly, magically, there was no reform," observed Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "There was just money."

What happened? Early on, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., an author of the Wilberforce law, maintained that the law includes an "exceptional circumstances" clause, which would allow authorities to modify how they process the more than 50,000 unaccompanied minors who are here now, largely from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

Having witnessed the chaos at the border, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, crossed the aisle to work with Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to offer a bill to treat unaccompanied minors from Central America's Northern Triangle the same as children from Mexico. As Cornyn argues, a bill that was supposed to shield children from human traffickers has had the unintended consequence of boosting business for human smugglers to use children as "commodities."

A July Pew Research Center poll found that 53 percent of those polled want Washington to speed up deportations of asylum seekers, whereas 37 percent oppose a change in policy.

But this White House doesn't move to the center. Ditto the Democratic leadership. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., maintains that the 2008 law has had no role in the surge of unaccompanied minors. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi protested to MSNBC, "The baby Jesus was a refugee from violence."

In Majority Leader Harry Reid's Senate, there are no enemies to the left. Once a Democrat opposes an item because it's not liberal enough, moderate Democrats shut up and back off.

Reid spent the week threatening to add last year's big Senate immigration bill to any measure passed by the House, apparently just to poison the well in the House.

Though the Senate forwarded a $2.7 billion emergency bill in a procedural vote Wednesday, it will fail absent a Wilberforce reform. Already, GOP senators and three at-risk Democrats have announced their opposition.

As Congress is scheduled to begin a five-week recess, don't expect Obama or Reid to support the White House's erstwhile request. In Obama and Reid's Washington, there is no crisis that cannot be prolonged for politics.

The Obama administration often denies any responsibility for the current global chaos or claims that it erupted spontaneously. Yet most of the mess was caused by, or made worse by, growing U.S. indifference and paralysis.

Over the last five and a half years, America has had lots of clear choices, but the administration usually took the path of least short-term trouble, which has ensured long-term hardship.

There was no need to "reset" the relatively mild punishments that the George W. Bush administration had accorded Vladimir Putin's Russia for invading Georgia in 2008. By unilaterally normalizing relations with Russia and trashing Bush, Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton only green-lighted further Russian aggression that has now spread to Crimea and Ukraine.

There was no need for Obama, almost immediately upon assuming office, to distance the U.S. from Israel by criticizing Israel's policies and warming to its enemies, such as authoritarian Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and Hamas.

Any time Israel's enemies have glimpsed growing distance in the U.S.-Israeli friendship, they seek only to pry it still wider. We see just that with terrorists in Gaza who launch hundreds of missiles into Israel on the expectation that the U.S. will broker a favorable deal that finds both sides equally at fault.

Sanctions had crippled Iran to the point that it soon would have grown desperate to meet U.S. demands to stop its nuclear enrichment. Instead, Obama eased trade restrictions just as they were coming to fruition. Iran is now on its way to acquiring a bomb, while supplying missiles to Hamas and Hezbollah.

We had an option in Libya to let the tottering but reforming Muammar Gadhafi government fend for itself. Or we could have taken out Gadhafi and then sent in peacekeepers to ensure a transition to ordered government. But the Obama administration did neither. Instead, the U.S. participated in a multi-nation bombing campaign and all but guaranteed that a failed state would be left on Europe's doorstep. Now we have just closed our embassy in Tripoli and fled the country entirely.

There were once viable choices in Egypt. Instead, the administration managed to alienate the old Hosni Mubarak regime, alienate the elected Muslim Brotherhood that immediately tried to subvert the democracy, and alienate the military junta that stepped in to stop the Islamization of Egypt. All of these rival groups share one thing in common: a distrust of the U.S.

We could have made a choice in Iraq to negotiate a bit more with the Nouri al-Maliki government, leave behind a few thousand token peacekeepers and thereby preserve the calm achieved by the surge. Instead, the administration pulled out U.S. soldiers to ensure that a withdrawal would be an effective re-election talking point. The result of that void is the present bloodletting and veritable destruction of Iraq.

The U.S. once had choices in Syria. We could have loudly condemned the Bashar al-Assad government and immediately armed the most pro-Western of the anti-Assad rebels. Or we could have just stayed quiet and stayed out of the mess. Instead, we chose the third -- and worst -- option: loudly threaten Assad while doing nothing. Both a bloody dictatorship and its bloody jihadist enemies share a general contempt for a perceived weak America.

There were choices on our own border as well. Obama could have advised Central American governments that our southern border was closed to any who would cross illegally, while attempting to remedy the violence in those countries. Instead, the administration opened the border, welcomed in thousands without scrutiny, and has all but destroyed federal immigration law. The result is chaos.

The Obama administration apparently has assumed that calm, not conflict, is the natural order of things. The world supposedly can run on autopilot without much guidance from its only superpower.

If conflict does arise, the U.S. counts on sermonizing without the need to back up tough and often provocative rhetoric with any action. When occasional decisions must be made, the U.S. usually chooses the easiest way out: withdrawals, concessions and appeasement.

Behind these assumptions also lie the administration's grave doubts that the U.S. has in the past played a positive role in postwar affairs, or that in the present and future America can claim the moral authority -- or has the resources -- to confront aggressors.

In 2017, Obama may well leave office claiming to have reduced our military while avoiding conflict during his tenure. But will he also be able to assure us that China, Iran and Russia are less threatening; that the Middle East, the Pacific and the former Soviet republics are less explosive; that our own border is more secure -- and that America is safer?

To paraphrase the poet Robert Frost: Two roads diverged in the world, and we always took the one of least resistance -- and that has now made all the difference.