Subject: Here's a shocker!
The United States is currently 3rd from the top in Murders throughout the World.
But if you take out Chicago, Detroit, Washington DC, and New Orleans, the United States is 4th from the Bottom for Murders in the World.
These 4 Cities also have the toughest Gun Control Laws in the United States.
And all 4 Cities are controlled by Democrats.
===However, it probably would be absurd to draw any logical conclusions from this data!
Obama and Netanyahu are meeting and it will be about Obama letting Iran off the hook. Obama will do everything in his power to convince Bibi it ain't so.
Based on Israel's dependent relationship, Bibi will have no choice but to trust he can believe President Pinocchio. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
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The Success of Obamascare hinges on one main factor- will young healthy people be dumb enough to sign up so they can subsidize the demands made upon insurance companies that they accept all applicants, regardless of health status, while having their profitability monitored by the government.
The whole purpose of structuring the health bill as it has been is to drive private enterprise insurance companies out of business so the government will ultimately have a single payer system they control.
Obama knew what he was doing when he lied to the American people to get them to buy into his ruse and they were dumb enough to believe he was sincere and had their best interest at heart.
Play on their guilt and emotions - it is the age old trick of liberals and progressives.
It is all a Ponzi revisited game and if you do not believe me I hope Obamascare is allowed to pass and then watch the howls begin as the law's impact starts to shred the budgets of most Americans in order to benefit others.
Obamascare is another piece of liberal legislation based on the fairness concept of transferring wealth because those who achieve and have earned are bad bad heartless people and do not deserve what they have unless they share with others. The health care bill is Obama's morality play!
I repeat what I have said. If the government shuts down for any length of time there will be some pain and the press, media and Democrats will be all over highlighting these episodes but it could all backfire because Americans will find out we can do without a great deal of the government and get along better than the fear mongers would have us believe.
This is why the unwashed are being scared because they might finally realize how they have been held hostage to deceit and manipulation. (See 2 below.)
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Disregard facts, play on emotions and ignorance. That's how you win votes and unskilled people lose jobs! (See 3 below.)
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He told you so but you were too enamored with his style and color to believe him. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama and Israel: looming confrontations
By Isi Liebler
One might have hoped that U.S. President Barack Obama's calamitous mishandling of recent Middle East crises, climaxing with his disastrous response to the Syrian use of chemical weapons, would have taught him a few lessons on regional politics.
Regrettably, his address to the U.N. General Assembly last week proved otherwise. By reverting to his original Cairo speech — insisting that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian peace “would have a profound and positive impact on the entire Middle East and North Africa,” Obama has caused many Israelis to question not merely his competence but also his real intentions towards Israel.
The notion that the stability of the entire Middle East region hinges on the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is utterly absurd. Our conflict has no bearing on the complex and far more problematic conflicts and pressure points surrounding us: the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites, the resurgence of al-Qaida, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, the persecution and murder of Christians throughout the Muslim world, the threat of a nuclear Iran, the chaos in Libya and Yemen, the upheavals in Egypt, the global Islamic terror attacks extending from New York to Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Mali and most recently Kenya, and above all, the carnage in Syria. To place responsibility for regional stability on Israel in the midst of this chaos is a terrible misreading of reality.
To compound matters, Obama linked the Iranian nuclear threat and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, treating them with equal importance — a clear signal that the U.S. expects Israel to make major concessions to the Palestinians in return for “undertakings” to prevent the Iranians from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must have been bitterly disappointed. He has bent over backward in efforts to please Obama. At Obama's urging he extended a humiliating apology to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan for the killing of the Turkish terrorists seeking to violently breach Israel's maritime arms blockade against Gaza. Yet, when Erdogan subsequently refused to fulfill his undertakings, Obama failed to even reprimand him.
Netanyahu outraged most Israelis by capitulating to extreme U.S. pressure by releasing Palestinian terrorists, many of whom were mass murderers.
He also encouraged the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to support the president in Congress on the Syrian issue — an act that backfired after Obama equivocated, and then withdrew his request for congressional support.
Yet Obama disregarded all of Netanyahu's efforts and once again left him in the cold. Ignoring the asymmetry of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, he complimented both parties for “having demonstrated a willingness to take significant political risks” — explaining that Israel had released large numbers of hard-core terrorists (an act that no U.S. government would conceivably contemplate) and bracketing this with the reciprocal Palestinian “concession” — to engage in negotiations with the Israelis! Does he really believe that Israel releasing mass murderers and the Palestinians consenting to engage in negotiations amount to equivalent political risks?
When Obama glibly proclaimed that “friends of Israel, including the U.S., must recognize that Israel's security as a Jewish and democratic state depends upon the realization of a Palestinian state,” he ignored the dangers Israel would face, if as is almost certain, Palestine became a failed rogue state and served as a launching pad for terrorists and states like Iran committed to Israel's destruction. Nor did Obama even mention the visceral hatred and incitement to violence which continues to be promoted at all levels of PA society, making genuine peace inconceivable.
Obama's desperate renewed “appeal” to the Iranians, pleading with them to engage in dialogue and foolishly reiterating that he did not consider regime change as an objective, was also profoundly disappointing.
The new Iranian president, Hasan Rouhani, in stark contrast to his deranged predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has launched an extraordinary charm offensive. Cynically oozing goodwill, he referred to the employment of nuclear weapons as a crime against humanity and sought to divert attention from the Iranian nuclear threat by demanding that Israel join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty with other “enlightened” states like Iraq, Syria and Libya. With a forked tongue, he conveyed reassuring messages, encouraging protracted negotiations.
It should be recalled that in 2005, while serving as national security adviser and head nuclear negotiator, Rouhani brazenly lied concerning Iran's genuine nuclear intentions. And just prior to departing for New York, he was photographed speaking at a military parade in front of a sign that read “Israel must cease to exist.”
Nor, despite all his sweet talk, has Rouhani offered a single concession. Clearly he is eager to talk and negotiate. But unless the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, decides otherwise, the centrifuges will continue spinning until Iran achieves its nuclear objective.
Yet, sensitive to his master the ayatollah, or a backlash from his hard-line opponents in Iran, Rouhani humiliatingly spurned a pathetic U.S. effort to orchestrate an “impromptu” handshake at the U.N., stating that it would be premature. That did not deter Obama from telephoning him as he was about to leave for Iran, congratulating him on his election and praising his “constructive statements” on the nuclear issue.
The U.S. and Europe are desperate for a face-saving situation to avoid confrontation with the Iranians. They ignore the ultimate result of the buildup of underground nuclear facilities and ballistic missiles.
Further, the bitter reality is that after Obama's inept zigzagging in relation to Syria, his threat that the U.S. is “determined to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb” and will if necessary “use all elements of our power, including military force,” rings hollow and is unlikely to be taken seriously by the Iranians — or anyone else.
It must be deeply frustrating for Netanyahu to see the rogue state of Iran courted by the U.S. and Europe, while Israel, a democracy and genuine ally of the U.S., is treated so shabbily. The chilling parallels with the betrayal of Czechoslovakia and Chamberlain's policies of appeasement and “peace in our time” in the late 1930s will prey on our minds in the months to come.
Netanyahu will seek to pierce through Rouhani's sweet talk at the U.N. He will raise skepticism about Rouhani's tactics and urge the world to prevent the Iranians from emulating the North Koreans, who achieved their nuclear objectives by similar means. He will also demand full transparency and verification, should any agreement be reached with Iran. For these expressions of objective reality and bare security necessities, he will undoubtedly be depicted as a spoiler by naive and euphoric U.S. and global leaders seeking justification for their inaction against Iran.
He will also resist pressures from the Obama administration for additional fundamental unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. But unlike his political opponents on the Right accusing him of cowardice, Netanyahu — like all Israeli leaders since the time of Ben-Gurion — realizes that Israel is dependent on a superpower and that today the support of the U.S. both politically and militarily is crucial. Netanyahu also recognizes that for all his failings, Obama with the strong encouragement of Congress continues to provide Israel with the military necessities that no other nation could provide.
Israel has a vested interest in a strong America employing its superpower status to maintain global stability. We are not obliged to behave as a vassal state, but we must act prudently. While resisting pressures to concede on matters impacting on our security, we must demonstrate our appreciation of American support and be willing to make concessions on issues that Americans perceive as impacting on their interests.
The next nine months will be challenging, especially if Obama retains his fixation that he can resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by May 2014. There is no basis for any realistic settlement beyond an interim arrangement. Even aside from Hamas and the extraordinary turbulence in the region, it is inconceivable that an agreement could be achieved concerning issues such as the Arab refugee right of return. If Abbas himself was willing to compromise (and he is not), he would be assassinated within a matter of days.
This is a time for our leaders, including President Shimon Peres as well as the Likud hawks, to stand united. Repeated statements refuting the positions adopted by the prime minister, calling for annexation of territories or opposing a two-state solution, undermine our global position. Such behavior enables the Palestinians to distort reality and shift the blame on Israel for the inevitable breakdown which will result from their intransigence and refusal to genuinely coexist with us.
It is unconscionable that even during this turbulent period with the upheavals in Syria and Egypt, the Obama administration blinds itself to the real barriers to peace and exploits the Iranian nuclear threat as a vehicle to pressure Israel to maintain this Alice-in-Wonderland negotiation charade. By demanding that we make further unilateral territorial concessions in the absence of ironclad security (which is currently impossible), the U.S. is pressuring us to gamble with our lives and future.
1a)Netanyahu's mission: Setting parameters for Obama's Iran diplomacy
By Raphael Aren
Any miscalculation of one’s position, and of course, of others, will bear historic damages; a mistake by one actor will have negative impact on all others.” These words were spoken Tuesday by President Hasan Rouhani, but they aptly reflect what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently thinking about the thawing relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America.
Netanyahu has made it abundantly clear that he doesn’t mind standing alone in his opposition to the Iranian overtures, and that he will continue to pour cold water on the budding détente between Tehran and Washington. He seems to embrace being the sole voice of dissent to a Western chorus that is willing to test Iran’s sincerity, and it wouldn’t be surprising if the prime minister makes a point about being a party-pooper during his speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
It has become a tradition for Netanyahu to insert some sort of gimmick into his major speeches to draw attention, be it a visual aid such as last year’s UN cartoon bomb or rhetorical shtick like the similarly awkward “nuclear duck” he discussed in a March 2012 speech to AIPAC delegates. So internet meme-makers, be prepared. A possible motif for his speech at the UN this week could be an image of Rouhani barely a week ago, presiding over a military parade which featured Shehab-3 missile trucks bearing anti-American messages and the slogan “Israel must be destroyed.” “And I’m the party-pooper?” Netanyahu might ask.
The unchanged anti-US and anti-Israel slogans at the military parade were first highlighted by Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the UN and longtime Netanyahu confidant. Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, is accompanying the prime minister on this trip, and is likely helping Netanyahu finalize the text for Tuesday’s speech, together with the prime minister’s outgoing senior adviser and incoming ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer.
Netanyahu and his speechwriters, as of Sunday, had said very little about its content, beyond that it will compare the Iranian regime to North Korea and warn of the inherent dangers in striking deals with rogue states. The prime minister will almost certainly mention the fact that Rouhani was Iran’s nuclear negotiator in 2003 and has reportedly prided himself on fooling the West into believing that the program had been halted. He may also highlight Rouhani’s place at the heart of the regime going back many more years. He could well point, too, to the Iranian who was recently arrested in Israel on suspicion of scouting ahead for a terror attack against the US embassy in Tel Aviv, news of which was conveniently released by the Shin Bet security agency just as Netanyahu landed in the US. Beware, President Obama, he will be intimating, that friendly man who wished you well on the phone the other day is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, the duplicitous messenger of a regime bent on America’s demise.
“I will tell the truth in the face of the sweet talk and the onslaught of smiles. One must talk facts and one must tell the truth,” the prime minister told this and other reporters traveling with him on the Boeing 767 that took him to New York. “Telling the truth today is vital for the security and peace of the world and, of course, it is vital for the security of the State of Israel.”
To that end, in his talks Monday with Obama and his address at the General Assembly the next day, the Israeli prime minister will likely reiterate his four demands that Iran halt uranium enrichment, remove already enriched material, close the Fordo nuclear facility, and discontinue the plutonium track in Arak.
But few at the UN will listen to Netanyahu — and not only because they won’t like his bleak message. He will be the final speaker of this year’s General Assembly, and most world leaders will have left town.
Last year, Netanyahu’s red line for Iran, and the cartoon bomb on which he drew it, dominated world headlines. This year, Rouhani was the General Assembly’s great attraction. But the real star — for better or worse — was that mechanism of statecraft called diplomacy, employed by both Obama and Rouhani. A friendly conversation between the presidents of Iran and the US was all but unthinkable just a week ago, yet a little sweet rhetoric from Tehran, encouraged by Washington, facilitated it
Just a few weeks ago, for that matter, no one would have believed that the UN Security Council could pass a resolution requiring Damascus to destroy its entire arsenal of chemical weapons. But what some analysts have started calling the “Obama doctrine” — which might be said to hold that even rogue regimes can be made to forgo their WMD, with the right mix of carrot and stick — had its impact there too. The key question in both cases, to which Netanyahu strongly believes the answer is no, is whether Syria and Iran will actually do what they are telling the international community they are willing to do.
Netanyahu knows all too well that the Iranian diplomatic train has left the station. Obama is already engaging with Rouhani, regardless of what “my friend Bibi” has to say. It’s too late to dissuade the president from at least testing Rouhani’s sincerity. Rather, at the White House on Monday, the Israeli leader will focus on the substance of that engagement, trying to define the parameters of a possible deal as tightly as possible.
Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry will all do their utmost to convince their bitter guest that Israel has nothing to fear, that they won’t be fooled by what Netanyahu calls the Iranian “smokescreen,” that they will not lose sight of their commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Netanyahu will present intelligence showing that the Iranian drive to the bomb has not slowed since Rouhani took office. In the end, the devil will be in the details: Will Iran allow surprise inspections by international observers at all its nuclear facilities and real-time monitoring of activities? How much uranium will it be allowed to enrich and retain, at what level, for its ostensible nonmilitary purposes? Will the Fordo complex be closed, and the plutonium route to the bomb abandoned? When will which sanctions be relaxed in return?
The Americans “respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy,” Obama said last week. Netanyahu mission is to ensure that this is all they can ever access. His concern is that even the most effective presentation to Obama, and the corniest attention-grabbing gimmicks at the UN, may not be enough.
1b)
1b)
Obama/Rouhani: Peace in Our Time
By Jerrold L. Sobel
Poor President Obama and the beleaguered nation he leads. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, ObamaCare, the IRS scandal and his most recent diplomatic fiasco, Syria. Can it get any worse? Well, you may wish to hold onto your hats, this five-year roller coaster took another deep drop this Thursday when yet another smooth-talking tyrant pulled the wool over our exalted, Quixotic president.
Rumors of an impending encounter with Iran's newly-elected president Hassan Rouhani were quashed not at the behest of Obama but by Rouhani. Why the snub? According to senior officials, the Iranians felt a meeting and a handshake posed a significant risk for Rouhani, a new leader grappling with the anti-Americanism that remains a core tenet of Iran's political culture.
No embarrassment too great, Jay Carney, White House press secretary laconically deadpanned, "President Obama was not disappointed by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's decision to reject an offer of an informal meeting Tuesday at the United Nations." If he wasn't, Obama sure sounded like he'd tripped over the phone when Rouhani, like a lover playing hard to get, called him and expressed gratitude for the president's hospitality.
In what the media described as the first communication between the leaders of both countries since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the president claimed: "I have reiterated to Rouhani what I said in New York: while there will surely be important obstacles to moving forward and success is by no means guaranteed, I believe we can reach a comprehensive solution."
Although it's never easy separating truth from prevarication when discussing Obama and the obsequious media which supports him, let's give it a try.
To begin with, although they are both called presidents, from a policy standpoint they are not equal. Whereas Obama is unquestionably the elected chief executive of the United States, Rouhani is a frontman for Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran's Supreme Leader who really calls the shots. With this in mind it's still prudent to examine Rouhani's background and his relationship to Iran's nuclear program over the past 10 years.
A seasoned Muslim cleric and veteran of Iran's revolutionary government. Since 1989 this lawyer and former diplomat has served on the Supreme National Security Council. In 1991 he was appointed to the Expediency Council as an adviser to the Supreme Leader. Subsequent to that position he then headed the Center for Strategic Research, a think tank for political planning. Along with other prestigious positions, Rouhani also served as deputy speaker of the Majales, Iran's Parliament. Most germane to the nuclear issues, for 16 years he headed Iran's former nuclear negotiating team. With these credentials and the blessings of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Iranian rode into to the U.N. this past week astride a conciliatory Trojan Horse.
Based upon these credentials, experiences, and the bloody nose Obama suffered at the hands of Putin and Assad these past several weeks, it's safe to say our president has about as much chance of wresting a satisfactory nuclear agreement from Iran as I have beating LeBron James one on one.
Regarding Friday's highly touted phone conversation. It was the culmination of a kumbaya week in which President Obama, desperate for a win -- or should I say anything that even resembles a win -- told the U.N. Tuesday, "the U.S. and international community's disputes with Iran over its nuclear program can't be solved overnight but said he sees an opportunity to take a "major step down a long road toward a different relationship." Overnight?
Before issuing this statement the president should have consulted with a State Department's suit and tie. He would have been informed that Iran's quest for a bomb has been going on for over 24 years and has accelerated during his administration. He went on to say that he'd directed Secretary of State Kerry pursue a nuclear agreement with Iran and that he firmly believes "the diplomatic path must be tested." The diplomatic path must be tested?
This is either feckless naiveté or a belief the American people are out to lunch. By all accounts the Iranians began their quest for a nuclear power plant before 1989. With continued assistance from the Russians, her plans came to fruition when the Bushehr I nuclear power plant went on line in September 2011. According to a critical report issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that same year, Iran likely undertook research and experiments geared to developing a nuclear weapons capability as far back as 2003. The report detailed allegations that Iran conducted studies related to nuclear weapons design, including detonator development, the multiple-point initiation of high explosives, and experiments involving nuclear payload integration into a missile delivery vehicle. From that point on, the Ayatollahs and their main frontman Rouhani have engaged the IAEA and Western governments in a perpetual game of ring around the rosy. During this time they have accelerated more uranium conversion to plutonium along with developing a missile delivery system capable of delivering a bomb.
The following is an example of how long Iran has been stringing along the West, the IAEA, and the U.N. in countless meetings and pointless initiatives, this latest pretension part and parcel of the others.
● Spring 2003 Iranian Proposal
● Relief of all U.S. sanctions on Iran
● Cooperation to stabilize Iraq
● Full transparency over Iran's nuclear program, including the Additional Protocol
● Cooperation against terrorist organizations, particularly the Mujahedin-e Khalq and al-Qaeda
● Iran's acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 "land for peace" declaration on Israel/Palestine
● Iran's full access to peaceful nuclear technology, as well as chemical and biotechnology.
Since that time, there have been no fewer than 18 different proposals and 6 adopted resolutions passed by the Security Council to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. Unfortunately, even coupled with increasingly stringent economic sanctions, none have stunted her zeal for a nuclear weapon. According to the IAEA, Iran has amassed 16,600 functioning centrifuges, far more than necessary for civilian use. They continue to enrich low-grade fissile uranium into high-grade weapon-ready material. Iran has continued to develop its arsenal of long-range missiles, weapons capable of reaching Israel, parts of Eastern and Southern Europe, the Arabian peninsula, and American bases in the Middle East.
On May 2, 2005 the Bush Administration urged punishment of Iran for: "trying to build atomic weapons in secret and suggested the international community should respond by taking away Tehran's right to nuclear energy technology." Other world leaders dismissed the call for punitive action and instead called for incentives to encourage the Ayatollahs to "willingly give up the worrisome aspects of their energy program." How did that work out?
Following a meeting between the group of 6 -- the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran -- in Geneva, the July 20, 2008 New York Times headline read: "Nuclear Talks with Iran End in a Deadlock."
On December 6, 2010, the BBC News wrote: "Iran Nuclear Talks in Geneva End First Day Without a Deal." The article states: "On Sunday Iran said it had delivered its first domestically produced raw uranium and would now go into the talks with "strength and power."
Baghdad 2012, the New York Times: "Iran Nuclear Talks End with No Deal." The group of 5+1 wanted a freeze on Iranian production of uranium enriched to 20% purity which is considered a short step from bomb grade. Iran wished a release from sanctions and a recognition of their right to enrich.
● The Moscow Conference: June 24, 2012
● Istanbul Conference: May 16, 2013
● Geneva, scheduled for this October.
So when Obama says the diplomatic path must be tested, where has he been and what does he think has been going on for the past 10 years? On what date does this testing end? Is there a deadline? What concrete consequences will Iran face if such a deadline isn't met?
The evidence suggests this putative rapprochement is an insult to intelligent people. For a myriad of reasons this will never occur, amongst the most important is the theocratic motivation for developing a bomb. Iran has also vested enormous resources in development of weapon-grade material as well as a missile delivery system. It's asinine to believe after suffering increasingly severe sanctions for so long, they would abandon their quest for a nuclear bomb on the eve of attainment, particularly by its most ardent supporter and the man most responsible for its defense.
More likely, taking a clue from the Russian/Syrian playbook, Rouhani threw Obama a lifeline to declare "peace in our time" and go back to bullying the only country in that region that still shows him any respect, Israel.
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2)
The President's Fascistic Assault on Fox News for Reporting the Truth Must Stop
Mr. President, Fox News isn't what's making Americans sick about your healthcare law. Your healthcare law is. Welcome, everybody, I'm Neil Cavuto. And excuse this departure from form. But I think this is just poor form. So, it's time we set some things straight. Mr. President, we at Fox News are not the problem. I hate to break it to you, sir. You are. Your words are. Your promises are. We didn't sell this healthcare law. Sir, you did. Remember this? PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. Mr. President, tell that to tens of thousands of retirees at IBM and Time Warner and dozens of others, who've been dumped from their coverage and told to find their own coverage.
Fox News didn't break that news to them, Mr. President. Their companies did. Fox News didn't push more of those firms to hire part-time workers. Your healthcare law did. Fox News didn't incentivize fast food restaurants to scale back their benefits. Your healthcare law did. Fox News didn't make doctors want to opt out. Your healthcare law did. Fox News didn't make insurance premiums sky rocket. Your healthcare law did. Just like Fox News didn't grant hundreds of exemptions to companies that needed them. You did. And Fox News didn't delay one key provision after another, including online enrollment for those small business exchanges. You did. Just like it wasn't Fox News that said we had to pass this to see what was in this. You did. Or was that Nancy Pelosi? Sometimes I'm confused. But of this I am not. Fox News didn't re-do basic math. Sir, you did. Fox News didn't say you can cover 30 million more Americans and not see a hit in premiums. You did. Fox News didn't say you could throw in those with pre-existing conditions and not have to pay for it. You did. Fox News didn't all but say you could get something for nothing. You did. Fox News didn't come back years later and say, oh yea, we did raise some taxes. You did. Here's where you are right about Fox News, however, Mr. President.
We can do math. And did. You cannot. And did not. We said it, and proved it. You didn't. And we're all suffering for it. Take it from the numbers guy at Fox. Numbers don't lie. The number of Americans working part-time are nervous. The number of retirees days away from being dumped on exchanges are anxious. The number of company bosses with any news to pass along on those exchanges, but still clueless. The number of doctors who want out. The number of congressmen now opting out. No, Mr. President, none of those numbers lie. But with all due respect sir, I can only conclude you do know; I know, I know you hate us at Fox. But please take a look in a mirror, and fast. You think we're the skunk at your picnic. But that doesn't mean we're the ones that stink. Because that smell isn't coming from the folks reporting on your law. Mr. President, that smell is your law.
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3)
Despite evidence from around the world that minimum wage laws can price low-skilled workers out of jobs, the U.S. Department of Labor is planning to extend minimum wage coverage to domestic workers, such as maids or those who drop in from time to time to do a few household chores for the sick and the elderly.
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3)
Destroying Household Jobs
By Thomas SowellDespite evidence from around the world that minimum wage laws can price low-skilled workers out of jobs, the U.S. Department of Labor is planning to extend minimum wage coverage to domestic workers, such as maids or those who drop in from time to time to do a few household chores for the sick and the elderly.
This coverage is scheduled to begin in January 2015 -- that is, after the 2014 elections and nearly two years before the 2016 elections. Politicians show a lot of cleverness in protecting their own interests, even if they show very little wisdom as far as serving the public interest.
If making household workers subject to the minimum wage law is expected to produce good results, why not let those good results begin early, so that voters will know about them before the next election?
But, if this new extension of the minimum wage law opens a whole new can of worms -- as is more likely -- politicians who support this extension want to insulate themselves from a voter backlash. Hence artfully choosing January 2015 as the effective date, to minimize the political risks to themselves.
The reason this particular extension of the minimum wage law is likely to open a can of worms is that both household workers and those who employ them will face more complications than employers and employees in industry or commerce.
First of all, ill or elderly individuals who need someone to help them from time to time are not like employers who have a business that regularly hires people and may have a personnel department to handle all the paperwork and keep up with all the legal requirements when government bureaucrats are involved.
Often the very reason for hiring part-time household workers is that some ill or elderly individuals have limited energy or capacity for handling things that were easy to handle when they were younger or in better health. Bureaucratic paperwork and legal technicalities are the last thing they need to have to add to their existing problems.
The people being hired to do household chores also have special problems. Often such people have limited education, and may also have limited knowledge of the English language.
Why make it harder for ill or elderly people to get some much-needed help in their homes, and harder for low-skilled people to get some much-needed jobs?
Despite all the talk about how we need more people with high-tech skills, there is also a need for people who can help clean a home or carry groceries or do other things that need doing, and which do not require years of schooling. As the elderly become an ever growing proportion of the population, there will be a growing demand for such people.
More precisely, there would be more jobs for such people if the government did not step in to complicate the hiring process and price potential workers out of jobs, with minimum wages set by third parties who do not, and cannot, know what the economic realities are for either the ill and the elderly or for those whom the ill and the elderly wish to hire.
Minimum wage laws in general are usually set with no real knowledge of the economic realities and alternatives for either employers or employees. Third parties are simply enabled to indulge themselves by imagining what is "fair" -- and pay no price for being wrong about the actual economic consequences.
That is why countries with minimum wage laws usually have much higher rates of unemployment than those few places where there have been no minimum wage laws, such as Switzerland or Singapore -- or the United States, before the first federal minimum wage law was passed in 1931.
Government interventions in labor markets have already created needless complications, and not just by minimum wage laws. The welfare state has already taken out of the labor market millions of people who could perform work that would be well within the capacity of inexperienced young people or people with limited education.
With welfare, such people can stay home, watch television, do drugs or whatever -- or else they can hang out in the streets, often confirming the old adage that the devil finds work for idle hands.
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4)Transforming America
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” — Barack Obama, October 30, 2008
“We are going to have to change our conversation; we’re going to have to change our traditions, our history; we’re going to have to move into a different place as a nation.” — Michelle Obama, May 14, 2008
There certainly is no question that Barack Obama wants to change the United States. And there clearly is no doubt that such fundamental transformation is difficult, given our tripartite system of government — even though Obama entered office with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, an enthralled media, and a closely divided Supreme Court.
So to what degree, after nearly five years in office, has Obama succeeded in changing the United States?
Federal spending. We are $6 trillion more deeply in debt. And there are record numbers of Americans on food stamps, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance, or simply disengaged from the work force. Obama has also fundamentally changed Americans’ ideas about the redistributive state.
Whereas, under Clinton and Bush, the argument centered on whether federal subsidies eroded the work ethic, created dependency, and led to a permanent underclass, now the discussion is quite transformed beyond the safety net. Fairly or not, Obama is seen as expanding entitlements in part as a political tool, quite apart from the question of their efficacy in eliminating poverty.
The problem is not just that his critics accuse Obama of trying to create a permanent constituency, a loyal “47 percent” dependent on state money, but rather the way in which Obama himself envisions these programs as reminders of his them/us faultlines. After 2009, the regulations governing food stamps and welfare were liberalized and politicized as never before. These payouts were judged not just on whether they hurt or helped people, but also, in the Greek and Roman sense, of increasing the number of recipients so as to change political realities.
Taxes and debt. Democrats usually wish to raise them, Republicans to shrink them. Nothing new there. But under Obama, there is now a twist. Higher taxes are not a means to achieve a balanced budget, as under the Clinton-Gingrich deal of 1997. Indeed, the return of a 39 percent–plus federal income-tax rate on higher incomes will result not in a balanced budget as before (even with congressionally imposed sequestration). We will still have huge annual deficits of two-thirds of a trillion dollars or more.
Because nearly half of Americans will continue to pay no federal income taxes, and the old Clinton rates were imposed only on the upper brackets, we have the worst of both worlds: high taxes on job creators, along with continuing huge deficits. That paradox raises the question of whether Obama sees deficits not just as necessary to prime the economy, or as a tolerable consequence of huge increases in federal spending, but also as a mechanism to serially raise taxes on the upper brackets, as a desirable redistributive end in and of itself. Taxes are seen now not just as a way to fund expenditures, but as a punitive tool — hence the new phraseology of 1 percent, fat cats, corporate-jet owners, you did not build that, no time to profit, at some point you’ve made enough money, etc. A more equal but poorer America appears to be preferable to a more affluent but less equal nation.
Health care. Little need be said about Obamacare, an orphan now disowned by most of its parents. The purpose of this vast new entitlement was not to ensure all Americans better health care (if it had been, then pro-Obama business owners, unions, and congressional staffers would have wanted in), but instead a sort of health-care TSA bureaucracy, with more dependents, more federal workers, and higher redistributive taxes — in short, larger government.
Interest rates. Ostensibly, de facto zero interest rates are used as a stimulus for a moribund economy that so far seems oblivious to all the traditional liberal priming tools of massive borrowing, growth in federal spending, and more entitlements and public hiring. Yet almost nonexistent interest rates have sharpened the class divide. The very wealthy have benefited enormously as capital streamed into the stock market in desperate search of almost any return. The very poor do not depend on interest on savings as a hedge against inflation or as central to retirement.
That leaves the middle class, who so far have not felt the upside of zero interest rates — the interest on their credit-card debt remains sky-high, their student loans are steep, and their mortgage interest for the most part is not all that low. The banks loan at high interest and pay almost nothing on deposits; Wall Street welcomes in cash without much worry about competition to produce returns; and the poor are the beneficiaries of the vast federal borrowing that goes some way toward explaining why interest rates cannot climb, given that servicing the ever-rising federal debt would become almost unsustainable.
The presidency. An imperial presidency is not new. But rule by executive fiat that escapes audit from the media is. We live in an age when a president can arbitrarily nullify a law, like Obamacare’s employer mandate; ignore it, like the Defense of Marriage Act; or simply create it, as with partial blanket amnesties. Various wars — on coal, guns, non-union businesses, and political opponents — are waged by executive action. For now, the logic is that the president’s means are justified by the exalted ends that he professes. Obama has set the precedent of a president creating, ignoring, or defying laws as he sees fit to forward a progressive agenda.
Scandal. Bill Clinton gave us plenty of scandals; but, as in the case of the Nixon administration, the media galvanized public attention to the danger of a sometimes lawless administration. But whether it is the Benghazi deception, the IRS scandal, the NSA disclosures, the AP monitoring, or Fast and Furious, a new precedent has been established that the public is supposed to weigh two considerations in assessing scandal: the truth versus the damage that the truth can do to a progressive vision of a fairer America. So far the truth has lost.
Politics. In his political style, Obama seems to operate on the medieval concept of exemption. Through lofty spoken abstractions, he excuses low behavior. Praising “civility” allows you to call your opponents veritable terrorists; talk of unity means energizing supporters to get in their opponents’ face; advocacy of a campaign of principles reduces Romney to a veritable ogre. Plenty of presidents have proved vicious, but few so adept in attributing their own base behavior to others. Damning fat cats and corporate-jet owners allows a president to hold serial $50,000-a-head fundraisers. Ridiculing Romney’s elevator seems to make vacationing in Aspen, Costa del Sol, Vail, and Martha’s Vineyard perfectly natural.
Energy. Before Obama, natural gas and nuclear power were seen as preferable alternatives to oil and coal. If new restrictions on reactors and a de facto end to the new federal leasing of land for oil and gas exploration are any indication, neither energy source is now acceptable. Had Obama opened up federal lands for fracking and horizontal drilling, built the Keystone Pipeline, and encouraged natural gas as a transportation tool, power bills would not have climbed and gasoline prices would not have doubled. The U.S. would have enjoyed an even brighter energy future than what private enterprise alone has provided.
Obama’s view of energy — whether we cite former energy secretary Steven Chu’s lunacy on the desirability of raising U.S. gasoline prices to European levels, or candidate Obama’s own promises to bankrupt coal companies — is elitist to the core. His signature energy achievement is to change the terms of the debate: The chief energy issues for the Obama administration are not national security, not energy independence, not greater competitiveness for American business, not savings for the American consumer, and not jobs. Instead, whether a fuel might heat the atmosphere seems the sole concern.
Race. Had Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell been elected president, race would have been incidental rather than essential to their governance. Nothing in Barack Obama’s past suggests that such a statement could ever have been true of his presidency.
From the beer summit to “punish our enemies” to the two occasions of pop editorializing about Trayvon Martin, and from Eric Holder’s “my people” to “nation of cowards,” the Obama administration has sought at opportune times to emphasize racial differences, mostly to secure the base for Obama’s own reelection and for midterm elections.
The result is that race relations have become more polarized than at any other time in the last 30 years. Under Obama’s leadership, celebrities, political analysts, and politicians traffic more in racial animus than at any other time in our recent history. Obama has had an uncanny ability to energize the Black Caucus to voice unusually inflammatory charges. How did it happen that suddenly Chris Rock and Jamie Foxx sound racially biased? When did the post-election commentary of pundits (e.g., “too old, too white, too male”) become so race-based?
From the trivial — dropping his g’s and clumsily transforming his cadences — to the fundamental — weighing in in mediis rebus on pending court cases — the president’s goal has often been division, not unity. We have reached a surreal situation of reading daily accounts of black-on-white crime in the media, reported by politically correct journalists who dare not mention the perpetrator’s race, followed by enraged readers’ comments that are the most patently racist in modern memory.
Illegal immigration. Before Obama, the debate over illegal immigration was mostly an argument between two schools that transcended politics and ideology: literalists who believed the law had to be enforced to its full extent, postfacto as well as preventatively, and realists who agreed in theory but felt that many of the 11 million who resided illegally in the U.S. could be given a pathway to citizenship, so long as they have no criminal record, have avoided public assistance, and could claim long residence — contingent on closing the border.
Not now. Under Obama, illegal immigration has become a political if not a racially charged issue. Supporters of blanket amnesty saw an evolving demographic process of fundamentally transforming the electorate of the American Southwest, resonating with Obama’s own unfortunate lead, as in his advice to Latinos to “punish our enemies.” Perhaps this vision was best summarized by ACORN’s former CEO, Bertha Lewis. She recently urged African-Americans to support increased immigration on the following rationale: “We got some Latino cousins, we got some Asian cousins, we got some Native-American cousins, we got all kind of cousins. . . . Cousins need to get together, because if we’re going to be [part of the non-white] majority, it makes sense for black people in this country to get down with immigration reform. . . . Everyone, even all white folks in this country, acknowledge that in a minute, [the] United States of America will be a new majority, will be majority minority, a brand-new thing. . . . For the first time ever in history, African-Americans outvoted white Americans. Pooh. That’s the fear of the white man. That could change everything. That’s why [immigration] should matter to us.”
Foreign policy. What is the common theme to the euphemisms about terrorism and radical Islam, the failed reset with Russia, withdrawal from Iraq, confusion in Afghanistan, lead-from-behind in Libya, pink lines and pseudo–“game changers” in Syria, the faux deadlines with Iran, mesmerization with Turkey, peace feelers to Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela, as well as the rhetorical tropes found in the Cairo speech, the U.N. addresses, and the Al-Arabiya interview?
Just as, in Obama’s worldview, the 1 percent exercise undue influence in the United States, so too abroad America has exercised exceptional power and influence that either are not warranted by its traditions and history, or do not contribute to stability and social justice in the world at large. Fundamentally transforming the role of the U.S. means tilting toward countries that are suspicious of the Western tradition, and favoring groups and countries like Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Palestinians that have supposedly legitimate grievances against the United States. The goal? Probably, the transformation of the U.S. into something like the EU, whose democratic socialism is manifested abroad with soft-power lectures.
Guns. There is no new restrictive legislation on firearms; and yet never has the ability to buy reasonably priced ammunition and firearms in quantity been more curtailed. In loudly threatening to enact more gun control after each publicized tragic shooting, the Obama administration has created a climate of fear, which has prompted hoarding, shortages, panic buying, and paranoia, which have accomplished what the federal government could not.
To what degree these changes will be reversed or institutionalized depends on the 2014 and 2016 elections. For now, Obama’s transformations are not to be found only in his legislative record, but far more in his use of the presidency to change the way we envision and talk about America.
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