Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Stella Disheartened! Obama's SOTUS -Same Old Same Old! Condell Gets It!



                                                                                                 Stella After SOTUS
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I did watch some of the commentary after the various speeches and I caught an ad from the Liberal State of New York inviting the business community to locate a new plant and/or business in New York and pay no taxes.

I assume the point the liberal State of New York was making was that not paying taxes  would result in attracting new businesses.

Yet, in his SOTUS Obama wants to raise taxes.

I guess Obama never learned increased taxes turn off economic activity and generally results in producing less tax revenue.  When capital gains taxes were reduced by G.W more money from capital gains came into government coffers. (See 1 below.)

It also became evident from listening to those who did hear Obama's SOTUS  it was the same old Obama engaged in a total disconnect with reality.

What I am surprised about is that Obama did not have Al Sharpton sitting next to Michelle!

Every once in a while a line from a SOTUS  becomes memorable, ie. "ask not..."  by Kennedy but most are boring, staged and trite.  It would appear this one followed that worn pattern.

Now we are back to reality and Yemen is about to fall to that group of terrorists Obama said no longer existed, the stock market is being rattled by conflicting economic news, America's energy dependence remains a fact, we still have the lowest number in the work force in decades, take home pay is not back to where it was and yet the cost of living continues to rise along with our nation's debt
(See 1a below.)

Notwithstanding Obama's commitment to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear bombs it appears they are moving towards that capability. Meanwhile, ISIS continues to spread its wings even though we continue dropping bombs on them.  More disconnect?

I understand the desire of presidents to wear rose colored glasses when they go before the nation but one would hope a semblance of truth and/or reality would be allowed to creep in as well.(See 1b below.)

Guess we will have to wait two more years unless Hillary runs and wins .

Soaring rhetoric, still low poll numbers! (See 1c below.)
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More heroism from Islamism! (See 2 and 2a below.)
Condell again:
You Have to Love this bloke! 
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SOTUS commentary! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1) Obama & his Democratic followers Take Note: Here’s What Happened When France Raised Taxes on the Rich

2012, President Francois Hollande of France put into effect his 75 percent top tax rate on the rich . What happened then, and has happened since, should be instructive to President Obama and his Democrat followers who think the answer to budget woes is to raise taxes on the rich. 
Immediately, wealthy families began leaving France. Some of them went to Belgium, from which they could commute to Paris in an hour. Gerard Depardieu, the great French actor, went to Russia, where there is a flat 13 percent tax rate, and only nine percent on dividends.
Many people moved to London, particularly to the pricey neighborhood of Kensington. London is now often described as the sixth-largest French city in the world. French financiers, French chefs, and French football players are now all giving their tax moneys to the British Exchequer rather than the French treasury.
Dan Hanna, a British Conservative member of the European Parliament, writes in the Washington Examiner:
Not since the expulsion of France’s Protestants in 1685 has there been such an exodus of entrepreneurs to the Anglosphere; and this wave, like that one, has been a transfusion of talent, leaving the English-speaking world more energetic and France more anemic. Nicolas Sarkozy, well understanding where the relatively small free-market-minded section of his population could be found, launched his presidential election campaign in London.
Hollande’s tax, levied on incomes above one million euros, has been a miserable failure. Over its lifespan, it raised around $500 million, a tiny fraction of the original projections. Why? Well, the Paris bureaucrats who made those projections overlooked something rather important. Rich people don’t sit around waiting to be taxed. They have all sorts of ways of beating the system, not necessarily involving accountants. The two most straightforward forms of legal tax avoidance are earlier retirement and emigration, and wealthy Frenchmen have made ample use of both.
When rich people emigrate, they leave others to pick up their share of the tax bill. Even in 1685, the loss of revenue hit the French state badly, setting it up for a series of defeats in the wars with the English-speaking peoples that were to follow over the next century. These days, friendlier tax jurisdictions are a Gulfstream flight away, and financiers can often open their businesses abroad simply by opening their laptops…
The best way to maximize your tax revenue, though, involves neither harmonization nor secrecy. On the contrary, it involves lower, flatter, simpler taxes.
The complexity of a tax system is every bit as damaging to competitiveness as the overall tax rate, yet we take it almost for granted. If there is an American who understands the tax code in its entirety, I have yet to meet him.
The super-rich, who can afford ingenious tax advisers and high upfront fees, turn complexity to their advantage, sheltering their assets in various pockets unintentionally created by government schemes. Again, the rest of us then have to cough up to cover their portion.
Three years later, President Hollande is now getting rid of the 75 percent rate. He has learned what Conservatives have always known: taxes on the rich do not redistribute wealth; they redistribute people. The very best thing a country can do is to simplify tax rates and let wealthy people do what they do best, generate money for the economy.
Question is:  Is he doing this to continue destroying America?


1a)The Collapse of Yemen

The country could split into two radical Islamist safe havens.



It wasn’t long ago that President Obama touted Yemen as a success in the fight against terrorism. “This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us while supporting partners on the front lines is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years,” he said in a major speech in September, outlining his approach to defeating Islamic State. Within weeks of that pronouncement, the Iranian-backed Houthi militia occupied the capital city of San’a. Now matters are getting worse.
On Tuesday Houthi forces seized the presidential palace along with the headquarters of the presidential guard, taking dozens of hostages and seizing an arsenal of tanks and artillery. The country’s nominal president, the U.S.-backed Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, was last seen inside his residence; his fate wasn’t clear as we went to press. The U.S. Embassy in San’a reported that Houthi gunmen fired on one of its diplomatic vehicles, though nobody was injured.
This comes days after the West was brutally reminded in Paris that it cannot remain indifferent to chaos in a poor Arab country. At least one of the Kouachi brothers had weapons training in Yemen, and the Yemen-based branch of al Qaeda took credit for sponsoring the attack on the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo. If the Houthi have now overthrown our partner government in Yemen, we’ll need either a new partner or a new strategy.

The Houthi are often described as a sect or a tribe. But it’s more accurate to say they are a radical Shiite political movement similar to Hezbollah, whose guiding slogan is “God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.” Last year, the Houthi gained control of the Yemeni port city of Al Hudaydah, just north of the Bab El-Mandab strait separating the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean. Along with the Strait of Hormuz, this gives Iran the ability to threaten both maritime chokepoints surrounding the Arabian peninsula.
One temptation will be to see a silver lining in the Houthi takeover, on the theory that the Shiite group is at war with al Qaeda and its radical Sunni affiliates. But the “let Allah sort it out” approach to foreign policy espoused by Sarah Palin won’t work, given that neither side is likely to defeat the other and a de facto partition of the country into two radical camps would complicate and multiply the dangers. The Hadi government cooperated with U.S. forces targeting al Qaeda in Yemen, but the Houthi won’t do the same. We could face two terrorist havens.
What should the U.S. do? The Obama Administration should insist that the Houthi guarantee Mr. Hadi’s safety and release him if he’s in custody. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia may also need to coordinate a strategy to dislodge the Houthi from San’a. The collapse of Yemen is another reminder, along with Iraq, that counterterrorism-lite doesn’t work, and that the U.S. has to do more to prop up its allies, if necessary with troops on the ground.
If it can’t be reversed, the fall of Yemen takes the Mideast closer to a regional war between radical Sunnis and radical Shiites, with U.S. allies caught in the middle. It’s an illusion to think that if we withdraw the carnage will stay over there.



1b) The Gaslight Presidency

Obama’s policies have crushed middle-class incomes, and he proposes more of the same.



In the 1944 film “Gaslight,” a con artist manipulates his new wife psychologically to make her doubt her own sanity in a scheme to steal her inheritance. That’s increasingly the way to understand President Obama ’s behavior toward Congress and especially the tax increase he floated in Tuesday’s State of the Union. The only plausible rationale is that he thinks he can gain politically by driving Republicans nuts.

Mr. Obama’s income-redistribution themes are familiar, though they are amusingly detached from the reality of the largest GOP majority in Congress since 1949. To Republicans who listened agog, remember: It’s not about you; it’s about him.

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The plan is DOA, though we’ll address the merits anyway because it’s our job. But first observe the irony: The President has suddenly discovered that middle-class incomes have plunged on his watch, and he’s demanding that Congress address this with more of the same policies that have done so much to reduce middle-class incomes.
White House aides are saying their boss’s plan for $320 billion in new taxes on savings and investment to finance more transfer payments is a bid to be remembered as a Robin Hood. This would be accurate if our hero and his merry men had shaken down Sherwood Forest for the benefit of the Sheriff of Nottingham. Mr. Obama has spent six years trying to redistribute income, but all he’s done is make the income gap between rich and poor wider.
ENLARGE
The nearby chart shows the real income of the median American household since 1984. Earnings soared 14.5% during the 1990s to $56,800, then dipped during George W. Bush ’s first term. They rebounded smartly in 2007 almost to the 1999 peak, and then plunged as expected amid the recession.
The brutal difference of the Obama years is that incomes continued to fall and didn’t rebound with the recovery as they did in every other expansion. Only in 2013 did they finally pick up, ever so modestly.
Wages stagnated despite—we’d say because of—a surge of economic ministration out of Washington. The Congressional Budget Office reports that total transfer payments to the middle 20% of taxpayers increased 25.9% on average between 2007 and 2011, the latest year for which data are available. The average tax liability for this group fell 24.4%. Yet their after-tax income nonetheless fell by 1.9% over the same period. That’s what happens with years of subpar economic growth.
Mr. Obama now proposes to remedy this growing gap between the middle class and those he defines as the affluent by increasing the prosperity that flows to everyone. Sorry, just kidding. The President wants to double down on redistribution by nearly doubling the capital gains tax rate over its 2012 level to 28% for couples earning more than $500,000. The 2013 fiscal cliff deal boosted the top rate to 20% from 15%, plus the 3.8% ObamaCare surcharge on “unearned income.”
The White House is describing 28% as “the Reagan rate,” because that is where it stood after the Reagan-Rostenkowski tax reform of 1986. But that came in the context of reducing the top marginal rate on ordinary income to 28% from 50%. Today that is 39.6%, and even higher with surcharges.
The truth is that Mr. Obama is repudiating 35 years of bipartisan tax policy. Part of the reason for differential rates on investment and regular income is that the former is already taxed once at the corporate level and again when it is passed through to individuals. Even Bill Clinton recognized this double taxation when he cut capital gains rates as part of his balanced-budget deal with the Gingrich Congress in 1997.
Mr. Obama even wants to change the tax treatment of inherited assets and eliminate a provision known as “stepped-up basis.” When someone dies before realizing a capital gain, his heirs pay the top 40% inheritance tax rate on the value of the asset at that time, not when it was purchased. The reason the step-up basis exists is to compensate for the death tax on a lifetime of saving and investment.
Celebrity intellectuals may lament the ravages of “capital,” but new taxes on capital formation harm labor. Less business investment slows productivity and thus wage growth. Steve Entin of the Tax Foundation estimates unmet capital investment needs of about $1.035 trillion since 2007, or about $400 per worker, which helps explain why income growth has been so lackluster.
Mr. Obama is also proposing to pump some of the new loot into a slew of “refundable” tax credits, which is the polite way of describing cash payments through the tax code. He wants to triple the maximum child-care tax credit to $3,000 a pop, expand the earned-income tax credit to childless adults, and create a new $500 “second earner” credit for households where both adults work.
If there was a virtue in Mr. Obama’s speech, it’s that we can now retire the lectures on “responsible governing.” With the exception of trade and the war against Islamic State, the President Tuesday sought no common policy ground with Republicans. He offered aNancy Pelosi agenda. Imagine if George W. Bush had proposed a $320 billion tax-rate cut in his 2007 State of the Union, following his rout in the 2006 midterm. He would have been hooted out of the chamber, followed by days of wondering if he’d wigged out.
If Mr. Obama won’t make any concession to political reality, then Republicans are under no obligation to take his agenda seriously. For their own peace of mind, they should ignore his gas lighting and prioritize something that really would help the economy.


1c) Gallup: Obama Plummets to Lowest Annual Approval Rating Ever
By John Blosser

With six years down and just two left in which to build a legacy, President Barack Obama has posted his lowest-ever average annual approval rating.

A Gallup poll finds that Obama, in the one-year period between Jan. 20, 2014, and Monday, posted an approval average of just 42.6 percent.

During their sixth year in office, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon showed their lowest approval rating as well, with the sixth-year approval rating of every president since 1945 averaging just 45.5 percent, Politico notes. 

President George W. Bush tapped out the lowest at 37.3 percent, while President Bill Clinton scored an average approval of 63.8 percent, just before the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Politico reports. Ronald Reagan, in his sixth year, averaged a 59.9 percent approval rating, Gallup reports.

Previously, Obama's lowest yearly average came during the third year of his presidency, 44.4 percent, and his current yearly average is below last year's average of 45.8 percent, Politico notes. 

Obama gets slightly better news from Real Clear Politics, which lists him as averaging a 44.7 current approval rating, according to the site's roundup of polls, which shows various polls giving him approval ratings ranging from a low of 38 percent, from Reuters, to a high of 48 percent, from Rasmussen Reports.

"President Obama certainly had a trying sixth year in office as he dealt with challenges abroad, such as the rise of Islamic militants in the Middle East, and faced continued partisan gridlock in trying to address key domestic issues," Gallup commented. 

"During the fall months, he registered some of the lowest approval ratings of his presidency. That culminated with Republicans' strong showing in the midterm elections, giving them solid majorities in both houses of Congress.

"But since that time, aided by falling unemployment, plummeting gas prices, and generally solid economic growth, as well as resurgent support from Hispanics, things have started to look up for Obama."

Obama's approval rating, The New York Times notes, has increased lately to 46 percent from around 42 percent right after the mid-term elections in November.

"It is a relatively small increase, but it is more impressive in the context of the unusual stability of Mr. Obama’s approval rating, which hovered between 42 and 44 percent for 15 consecutive months," the Times notes. 

"There is a well-established relationship between the pace of economic growth and a president’s approval ratings, and Mr. Obama is clearly benefiting from signs of accelerating economic growth," the Times commented.

"The modest improvement in Mr. Obama’s standing suggests that the Republicans cannot count on an easy midterm-like victory if the economy continues to grow at a healthy pace.
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2)Terrorist attack in Tel Aviv

At 7:15 am (January 21) a Palestinian terrorist armed with a knife stabbed a bus driver and more than a dozen passengers in central Tel Aviv. He was shot and apprehended by Israel Prison Service officers present in the area. Four of the victims were seriously wounded in the attack.
Hamas has welcomed the attack as an "heroic and courageous act."

 "The terrorist attack in Tel Aviv is the direct result of the poisonous incitement being disseminated by the Palestinian Authority against the Jews and their state. This same terrorism is trying to attack us in Paris, Brussels and everywhere.

It is Hamas - Abu Mazen's partners in a unity government - that hastened to commend this attack. This is the same Hamas that announced it will sue Israel at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Abu Mazen is responsible for both the incitement and the dangerous move at the ICC in the Hague.
I just spoke with the head of the Israel Prison Service Nahshon unit, Menashe Ganish, and I praised the determined action by the unit's fighters, who saved many lives and prevented a worse attack.

We will continue to take strong action against the terrorism that has been trying to attack us since the founding of the state, and we will see to it that it does not achieve its goal."
* * *
 MFA:
  • This morning's terrorist attack is a direct result of the Palestinian leadership's campaign of incitement to violence and terrorism against Israel.
  • The Palestinian culture of hatred is directed at every Israeli citizen, whether man, woman or child, making them preferred targets for violence and terror.
  • Hamas' reaction to the terrorist attack - branding it "a heroic operation" - is yet the latest example of the organization's commitment to the path of terrorism.
  • It should be noted that the representatives of Hamas, which commits and endorses acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians, sit as full partners in PA President Mahmoud Abbas' "unity government.

2a) The Muslim population of America is expanding at warp speed
By Carol Brown

Even when Muslims are a minority population they can and do transform whole cultures and societies. And not for the better.

Why? Because their holy book is a totalitarian ideology founded on submission and world domination. And toward that end, Islam is on the march. Meanwhile, the West remains mired in cowardice and complicity. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in Europe, which is on the fast track to join the Caliphate.

Not to be outdone by Europe’s madness, the United States is traveling down the same bloody path, importing large numbers of Muslims from Islamic countries thanks to the Islamophile sitting in the Oval Office and a nation full of dhimmis.

Estimates on the number of Muslims living in the US vary, ranging from 3 million to 7 million. Whatever the precise number, it’s already outdated as it rises with each passing nanosecond.

Since 9/11, there has been a dramatic uptick in immigration from Islamic countries with a 66% increase in the past decade. And things are just warming up. Islam is now the fastest growing religion in America.

Strange, is it not? War has been waged against America in the name of Islam and we’ve opened our doors ever-wider to those who adhere to the very ideology that mandates our destruction.

Pew Research projects that by 2030, the Muslim population in the United States will more than double. In large part this will be attributable to immigration; to a lesser degree due to the size of Muslim families.
In his book Slavery, Terrorism, and Islam, Peter Hammond wrote a detailed analysis on the proportion of Muslims to the overall population and increased violence and adherence to Sharia law. Hammond’s research reads like a roadmap to ruin; a horrifying picture of the future of civilization. To summarize an oft-quoted section:
When the Muslim population remains at or under 2%, their presence tends to fly low under the radar. In the 2% – 5% range, Muslims begin to seek converts, targeting those they see as disaffected, such as criminals. When the population reaches 5% they exert influence disproportionate to their numbers, becoming more aggressive and pushing for Sharia law. When the population hits the 10% mark Muslims become increasingly lawless and violent. Once the population reaches 20%, there is an increase in rioting, murder, jihad militias, and destruction of non-Muslim places of worship. At 40%, there are “widespread massacres, chronic terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare.” Once beyond 50%, infidels and apostates are persecuted, genocide occurs, and Sharia law is implemented. After 80%, intimidation is a daily part of life along with violent jihad and some state-run genocide as the nation purges all infidels. Once the nation has rid itself of all non-Muslims, the presumption is that ‘Dar-es-Salaam’ has been attained – the Islamic House of Peace.
(Peace, of course, is never attained. Schisms among sects, starting with the rift between Shia and Sunni, erupt. The ideal of absolute power with divine authority always leads to internal conflict.)

That the United States is ramping up Muslim immigration is sheer insanity. A crucial step to putting the brakes on this frenzied march to our demise is to close the door to Muslims – whether those from Islamic countries or anywhere else.

Unfortunately, we’re doing the exact opposite.

In the last three years alone, 300,000 Muslims immigrated to the United States. And that’s just the beginning. The Refugee Resettlement Program is paving the way for a mass of Muslims to flock to our shores. With the United Nations in charge of determining who qualifies for refugee status and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference) as the power broker at the UN, you can count on a flood of Muslim refugees to be arriving at a town near you – if not your own town – soon.

And as one might expect, Obama is on board with any and all avenues to bring Muslims to the United States. I guess it’s part of his dream; our nightmare.

Who can forget the lie he told back in 2009 when he said the United States was one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. Taqiyya? Stupidity? Slip of the tongue? Wishful thinking? Whatever the reason, it appears he is doing everything in his power to make that lie a reality.

Part of the process of flooding this country with Muslims from Islamic countries involves transplanting entire communities from places like Somalia. And just as we see in Europe, the new arrivals don’t assimilate and they live off the public dole.

For example, Family Security Matters reports that Somali immigrants have overwhelmed many small towns in America, creating their own enclaves. In some cases they’ve become the majority population – a population distinguished by being the least educated and most unemployed in the country, with evidence to show some have little motivation to become gainfully employed. When they first arrive, they are urged to go to towns where welfare is easy to access – places like Lewiston, Maine, a city of about 30,000 people.

At least before the invasion began.

The town provided welfare and public housing to Somali Muslims, many of whom were mothers with lots of children. And the Somalis came at a rate of about 100 per day.

The Somali population of Lewiston now exceeds 40,000.
In addition to Muslims from Somalia, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, a new wave has started arriving from Syria. The State Department expects “admissions from Syria to surge in 2015 and beyond.” It is expected that 9,000 or more Syrian refugees will arrive this year with a plan to bring at least 75,000 over the next five years.

And as refugees flow in, our tax dollars flow out as the American tax payer funds the Muslim invasion, because when refugees arrive they are linked with a broad array of publically-funded services (food stamps, subsidized housing, subsidized medical care, tutors, interpreters, and so on). In addition, charities (many of which are Christian or Jewish) that assist refugees receive federal grant money to provide additional support.
And where do these new immigrants from Islamic countries settle once they arrive? Well, just about everywhere and anywhere. The five states with the largest number of refugees are Texas, California, New York, Michigan, and Florida. But the situation is very dynamic and as numbers are updated, demographic shifts occur.

There are also regions of the country that participate in what is called the Preferred Communities Program. The program considers small towns and rural areas to be most suited to refugees and immigrants because small communities are best able to offer the kinds of services this new class of imports need. Or so they claim. And so we’ve got Somali refugees flocking to Cheyenne, Wyoming, in order to get easy-to-come-by Section 8 housing vouchers they take to other states. Those states either pick up the tab, or bill Cheyenne. And Cheyenne is running out of money. Duh.

So much for the taqiyya on the Preferred Communities Program website waxing poetic about the contributions these immigrants make to our society: “Refugees help communities learn and appreciate the many ways newcomers’ talents contribute to a richer, stronger society.”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Maybe that was the case in another time in America. But not now in the age of multi-culturalism. Not with Muslim refugees with no skills, enormous needs, and a sense of entitlement. Oh, and for some, the desire to kill us.

So why are all of these Muslim refugees coming here anyway? Why aren’t they being taken in by Muslim majority countries? It would certainly make sense. After all, they’re much closer geographically, language barriers would be reduced, and local values and traditions are closer.

That Muslim majority countries have not opened their doors to these refugees is, I am confident, quite by design. This is about conquest. Otherwise known as Hijra, the Islamic doctrine of immigration. Hijra works in concert with violent jihad to overwhelm a society until Islam becomes the single dominant force.

And while Muslim refugees swarm into the United States as part of this conquest, Obama has twisted the knife even further by (1) easing requirements for potential immigrants who have links to “soft” terror, and (2) closing the door to persecuted Christians in the Middle East who have precious few options of where to flee. (Obama is also making it exceedingly difficult for French Jews to immigrate to the United States.) Per Investor’s Business Daily:
In another end-run around Congress, President Obama has unilaterally eased immigration requirements for foreigners linked to terrorism. (snip)
…By exempting five kinds of limited material support for terrorism, Obama instantly purges more than 4,000 suspects from the U.S. terror watch list and opens our borders up to both them and their families. (snip)
At the same time Obama opens the floodgates to them, he's closing our borders to Christians fleeing persecution by Muslims in Egypt, Iraq and other Mideast countries.
Leave it to Obama to make a good situation bad. And then make a bad situation worse. He isn’t satisfied until he’s upped the ante so far imminent danger is at hand.

So we’re importing Muslims from Muslim majority countries who are traumatized, who don’t speak English, who have few skills, who follow the teachings of the Koran, many of whom want to spread Sharia law, some of whom actively support terror, and/or others of whom are or will become terrorists, while we’ve abandoned Christians trapped in the Middle East as they are slaughtered en masse.

To be blunt: We are importing Islamic terror. Not because every Muslim is a terrorist. But because enough of them are. And plenty more who don’t commit acts of terror support it – quietly at home or loudly in the street.
Below is a snapshot of where American Muslims stand on a variety of issues based on polls conducted over the past few years (see here, here, and here):
·      13% agree that some frequency of violence to defend Islam against civilians is justified.
·      19% are either favorable toward Al Qaeda or aren’t sure.
·      40% support Sharia law and believe they should not be judged by U.S. law and the Constitution.
·      46% believe Americans who mock or criticize Islam should face criminal charges, with 12.5% in support of the death penalty for blasphemers, another 4.3% somewhat agreeing on the death sentence for those who insult Islam, and 9% unsure if the death penalty should apply.

In addition, to name a few additional points of concern among many (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here):
·      Mosques are proliferating across the landscape at breakneck speed, 80% of them preach jihad (through sermons and/or materials), and more than 95% of American Muslims attend such mosques.
·      Many American Muslims send their children to Islamic schools where they are indoctrinated in hate.
·      Many American Muslims have embraced Jew-hatred, as is written in the Koran.
·      There are compounds across America where Muslims receive jihad training.
·      Our prisons are breeding grounds for jihadists.
·      The Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated every arm of our government as well as other major institutions.

So all-in-all, there are a lot of Muslims in America who are on board with Islamic law/jihad. It doesn’t matter if all of them are. Enough of them are.

What are we doing?!

We’re carefully planning our suicide, that’s what.

As Michael Walsh wrote at PJ Media: “There is no assimilating invaders who wish to replace your society with theirs, whether they call themselves ‘immigrants,’ ‘refugees’ or ‘asylum-seekers’…When it comes to the soul of a country, there really can be only one.”
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3) New Page. Same Obama.

The president declares that the nation has finally turned the corner and is entering a new era. Then why does everything feel so familiar?
 In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Obama said he wants to "turn the page." He should worry whether a large swath of the public heard "tax and spend" instead.
The biggest challenge Obama faces in the aftermath of the hour-long speech lies not in enacting the bulk of policy proposals he outlined; the White House already knows that isn't likely to happen with this Congress. It's convincing those middle-class and blue-collar voters who have been most resistant to joining his electoral coalition that this president has their best interests at heart—and that he's not taking advantage of the economic recovery, the end of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his own modest rebound in popularity to push unabashedly liberal priorities in his final two years in office.
It's not that the stakes in that regard are large for Obama. As he noted himself near the end of his speech, he's on his way out. But for a Democratic Party now sharing coequal status with the GOP in Washington, it's crucial that the pockets of America that have never taken to this president believe that his party, from Hillary Clinton on down, can correctly read the country's cautiously optimistic mood and neither overreach nor fall back on recycled ideas that have no chance of success.
White House aides spoke at length of Obama's desire to lay out a new "vision" for middle-class prosperity while trumpeting the recovery from recession. But that vision largely consists of a proposal to raise taxes and fees on the wealthy and large financial institutions in order to finance tax breaks for middle-class workers, parents of young children, and students, as well as provide free tuition for community college. Philosophically, the president's where he has always been. (Remember the "Buffett Rule" anyone?) Thematically, it's the same old song.
Indeed, Obama seemed to suggest that the improved economy has given him license to renew his call for raising taxes on the top 1 percent, while placing his proposals squarely within the context of modern institutional liberalism. "At every moment of economic change throughout our history, this country has taken bold action to adapt to new circumstances, and to make sure everyone gets a fair shot," Obama said. "We set up worker protections, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to protect ourselves from the harshest adversity. We gave our citizens schools and colleges, infrastructure and the Internet—tools they needed to go as far as their efforts and their dreams will take them."


In his defense, polls have consistently shown that a large majority of Americans are concerned about the gap between rich and poor. At the same time, however, the country is close to evenly divided as to whether government should serve as the tool to close that gap, with Democrats far more likely to support such action.
Prior to the speech, White House aides insisted that Obama wasn't simply floating policy balloons in order to set up a contrast with Republicans on the Hill over values, but it was difficult to conclude otherwise. If the GOP doesn't want to support Obama's middle-class agenda, "that's their choice," one senior official said. That worldview didn't seem to account for a Republican who could, say, support the idea of free community-college tuition but oppose the means by which the administration would pay for it.
Along that line, there was no talk of trying to reach any sort of large-scale compromise with the Hill in terms of increased revenues, entitlement reform, and deficit reduction. And while that might be unrealistic, it was also in keeping with a speech that announced a bold new chapter in the affairs of the United States but offered little in terms of brave ideas or creative new approaches.
As National Journal's Ronald Brownstein noted, Obama's recent surge in the polls has been largely due to his reclaiming support from voters in his coalition who had been abandoning him, particularly college-educated single women, young people, and African-Americans. The president is, surprisingly, also enjoying more backing from college-educated white males who had largely been aligned with the GOP. But as always, he struggles with blue-collar whites and older voters.

 After the 2014 midterms, talk was rampant in Democratic circles about finding ways to reach those hard-to-get populations. Assuming that it cares about who succeeds Obama, the White House seems to believe that including more of them in its progressive embrace will do the trick—rather than convincing them that the party holds nothing for them. Sure, the president doesn't have to apologize for staying true to his ideals and using his office to advance them. But don't suggest it's a new day, when the sky looks the same.
"Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns," Obama said Tuesday. "Imagine if we did something different."
Imagine.


3a) A fantasy for tweens: Obama’s State of the Union Address
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“We turn the page,” said President Obama last night in citing all the good news he could about the current state of the union. “The shadow of crisis has passed and the state of the union is strong.”
The state of the union is indeed strong, because even if you’re just talking in relative terms, what nation on this planet is in better shape than ours?
Europe remains in crisis. China is slowing down dramatically and arresting thousands. Russia is a tinpot empire. In Japan, more people expired last year than were born — a wildly dangerous death spiral.
Here, our economy is actually growing, oil prices are falling, consumer confidence is rising and if you have a 401(k), you’re finally back to feeling pretty good about it due to the stock market explosion.
The president is right to remind us of the unique good fortune Americans enjoy in the world, and you can’t blame him for trying to get the public to give him some of the credit for it.
But as for “turning the page” away from a time of “austerity” into a glorious left-liberal future filled with free college and child care and tax increases and the like, it seems like the book he’s reading can only be found in the section Amazon dedicates to fantasy fiction for tweens.
Politically, the page that turned in November 2014 was the page in which Democrats held majorities in legislatures. The page didn’t just turn — it was torn out of the book, crumpled up and tossed in the garbage bin.
The GOP took control of the Senate with a nine-seat gain, an outright slaughter. Republicans increased their margin in the House with the largest majority the party has held in more than 80 years. Of the 99 state legislatures, Republicans are now in charge of 68.
It’s interesting, to put it mildly, that the president should so resolutely ignore these results.
Interesting because, in the most substantive speech he’s given in a long time, he has committed his presidency toward policies that have no hope of a serious hearing from the legislatures whose job it is to turn policies into law.
And as for “turning the page,” what about American involvement in Iraq?
The centerpiece of his State of the Union last year was extensive back-patting about pulling all our forces out of Iraq.
And last night? He called on Congress to give him a new authorization for the war against the Islamic State — a war that is being fought in . . . Iraq.
As he put it: “In Iraq and Syria, American leadership  —  including our military power  —  is stopping ISIL’s advance.”
In order to preserve his back-patting, he followed that up with: “Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group.”
That’s a transparent absurdity; there are thousands of Americans on the ground in Iraq right now. So the page turned, and then it turned right back.
And what about turning the page next door when it comes to Iran?
The president claimed that the negotiations with Iran over its effort to acquire nuclear weapons have “halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.” This page-turning claim is simply a lie: Iran has enriched uranium and is building new reactors.
The problem with all this page-turning is that neither Barack Obama nor America has the power unilaterally to make it happen. There are other people in the world writing the book. Iran is a co-author, as is ISIS, as is Russia.
Here at home, the Republicans have been charged by the electorate with a mandate to — at the very least — edit the president’s attempt to write and rewrite history to his liking.
For not a single bright and shiny plan he proposed last night will ever be converted into legislation that will cross his desk


3b) Obama's disconnected, out of touch, in denial State of the Union

Perhaps the most striking thing about the 2015 State of the Union address was not the president at the podium but the audience in the seats. The joint session of Congress listening to President Obama Tuesday night included 83 fewer Democrats than the group that heard Obama's first address in 2009 — 69 fewer Democrats in the House and 14 fewer in the Senate. The scene in the House Chamber was a graphic reminder of the terrible toll the Obama years have taken on Capitol Hill Democrats.
Not that the president would ever acknowledge that. Indeed, in more than an hour of speaking, Obama never once acknowledged that there was a big election in November and that the leadership of the Senate has changed. Obama's silence on that political reality stood in stark contrast to George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, in which he graciously and at some length acknowledged the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterms. Bush said it was an honor to address Nancy Pelosi as "Madam Speaker." He spoke of the pride Pelosi's late father would have felt to see his daughter lead the House. "I congratulate the new Democrat majority," Bush said. "Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities."
If one cannot imagine Obama saying such a thing — well, he didn't.
Just as remarkable, against the backdrop of the Democratic electoral carnage of his years in office, was that the president's most memorable line of the night was a bit of ad-lib bragging about his own election victories. When Obama said, "I have no more campaigns to run," some Republicans snarkily began to applaud, whereupon the president shot back, "I know, because I won both of them." Some Democrats dutifully cheered Obama's comeback line, even though his victories ended up costing them a lot.
Beyond failing to acknowledge the new reality on Capitol Hill, Obama at times seemed equally out of touch with reality both in the nation and the world.
"In Iraq and Syria, American leadership — including our military power — is stopping ISIL's advance," Obama said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The claim left some foreign policy observers aghast, since there is a general consensus that the Islamic State is making progress in the face of limited American air attacks. "That just isn't the case, according to military officials I've been speaking to," NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel said of Obama's statement. "[The Islamic State] are taking new territory." Of Obama's description of a world in which the Islamic State is retreating, Afghanistan is on the road to peace, and terrorists are on the run from South Asia to North Africa, Engel concluded, "It sounded like the president was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in."
Obama sounded equally disconnected from reality on some domestic issues. For example, when discussing the nation's veterans, he said, "Already, we've made strides towards ensuring that every veteran has access to the highest quality care." A listener wouldn't know it from Obama's speech, but there has been a huge VA scandal since Obama's last State of the Union; his secretary of Veterans Affairs had to resign because of it. Veterans died waiting for treatment. All Obama said Wednesday night was, "We're slashing the backlog that had too many veterans waiting years to get the benefits they need." By "benefits," the president apparently meant "life-saving medical care."
At another point, Obama claimed credit for a "re-energized space program." The remark surely led to some jaws dropping among laid-off National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers who believe Obama has nearly killed the place.
The president's final disconnect was perhaps the biggest. After a "vicious recession … tonight, we turn the page," Obama said. "With a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production, we have risen from recession." For some Americans, that is the case, although even for them, "bustling" might be a bit much. For other Americans, the news is still pretty bad. When a recent Fox News poll asked, "For you and your family, does it feel like the recession is over, or does it feel like the country is still in a recession?" 64 percent of respondents said it feels like there is still a recession. Indeed, it's widely conceded that part of the reason the unemployment rate has fallen is because a core of discouraged workers dropped out of the job search altogether. So for many listeners, Obama's "turn the page" declaration will seem as out of touch as his claim that Islamic State's advance has been stopped.
Perhaps Richard Engel found the key to the president's nearly 7,000-word speech: Obama described the world as he wishes it were, not as it actually is. Indeed, in Obama's State of the Union, things are going so well that it's hard to imagine why voters would decisively turn control of Congress over to the opposition party — not that Obama would acknowledge that, either. Doing so would be a concession that something is still terribly wrong.





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