The Founders’ Great Mistake – Garrett Epps – The Atlantic

English: Barack Obama delivers a speech at the University of Southern California (Video of the speech) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…..Understandably, most Americans today are primarily concerned with whether Barack Obama can clean up Bush’s mess. But as Bush leaves the White House, it’s worth asking why he was able to behave so badly for so long without being stopped by the Constitution’s famous “checks and balances.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the problems with the Bush administration, in fact, have their source not in Bush’s leadership style but in the constitutional design of the presidency. Unless these problems are fixed, it will only be a matter of time before another hot-rodder gets hold of the keys and damages the country further.

 

 

 

All the President’s Drones: Don’t reprove the drone war, improve it.

All the President’s Drones: Don’t reprove the drone war, improve it.

 

National Review ^ | 02/08/2013 | The Editors

 

Posted on Friday, February 08, 2013 9:58:04 AM by SeekAndFind

 

obamadash (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

There are a number of problems with this administration’s conduct of the War on Terror in general, and with its drone campaign in particular. But the elimination of Anwar Al-Awlaki — an al-Qaeda militant with a demonstrated commitment to the destruction of the United States who happened to have been born in New Mexico — is not one of them.

 

NY Times reporter: Bush White House didn’t listen to 9/11 warnings

 

English: Official photograph portrait of former U.S. President George W. Bush. Português: Foto oficial de George W. Bush, presidente dos Estados Unidos da América. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

“CBS This Morning” co-host Norah O’Donnell said, “Then when a lot of people hear this, aren’t they going to say, ‘This is another example of where, not just the Bush administration, but our intelligence community dropped the ball. They failed to heed the warnings that were in a number of these (documents) that went all the way up to the president of the United States.’”

 

The Police State Is Here by Tim Kelly

The Police State Is Here

by Tim Kelly, May 21, 2012

“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”

Those are the words of Garet Garrett, the 20th-century journalist and writer, who lamented the collapse of the old Republic and the rise of the American managerial/administrative state — the consummation of which he had witnessed in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Cover of Franklin D. Roosevelt

(Ron Paul) Prison Planet.com » Demolishing Due Process

It is ironic but perhaps sadly appropriate that Attorney General Eric Holder would choose a law school, Northwestern University, to deliver a speech earlier this month in which he demolished what was left of the rule of law in America.In what history likely will record as a turning point, Attorney General Holder bluntly explained that this administration believes it has the authority to use lethal force against Americans if the President determines them to be a threat to the nation.

He tells us that this is not a violation of the due process requirements of our Constitution because the President himself embodies “due process” as he unilaterally determines who is to be targeted. As Holder said, “a careful and thorough executive branch review of the facts in a case amounts to ‘due process.’”

That means that the administration believes it is the President himself who is to be the judge, jury, and executioner.As George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley wrote of the Holder speech:“All the Administration has said is that they closely and faithfully follow their own guidelines — even if their decisions are not subject to judicial review. The fact that they say those guidelines are based on notions of due process is meaningless. They are not a constitutional process of review.”

Ron Paul Goes Full Metal Truther

Ron Paul Goes Full Metal Truther

Image via Wikipedia

Red State ^

Posted on Saturday, December 10, 2011 6:53:36 PM by mnehring

I’ve been waiting for quite a while for Ron Paul to just come out and admit he’s a 9/11 truther. Frankly, I thought it would happen a long time before now. It has taken so long, in fact, that I had started to doubt whether he would ever do it. However, I guess his Iowa polling numbers must have him feeling his oats, because he finally let slip (apologies to those who cannot view the video in IE, we are working to fix the technical issue. Original video may be found here):

And it’s… just think of what happened after 9/11. Immediately, before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq. So the war drums beat…

Perfect. Just great. Remember that the less crazy truthers out there don’t get bogged down in scientific nonsense like “fire can’t melt steel.” They don’t necessarily believe that the Bush administration actually put bombs in the WTC to help it come down (although they’re not precisely ruling it out). What they DO believe is that the U.S. government was warned by the Israelis/Saudis/French/whoever that the attacks were coming and deliberately ignored it because they wanted 9/11 to happen so they could go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Economic Quackery

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s Economic Quackery

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE ^ | November 22, 2011 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on Tuesday, November 22, 2011 3:50:28 PM by neverdem

Obama’s Economic Quackery

Obama has learned how to turn a natural recovery into a serial slowdown.

Sometimes the wrong medicine can make a struggling patient far sicker than he would have been had he been allowed to recover naturally. Western medicine began with the premise that the physician either must know how to cure the patient or simply leave him alone — but above all not make him worse through harmful treatment.

Thanksgiving Time for NWTO (Nothing Worse Than Obama) Mode

If there is anything to be grateful for on Thanksgiving 2011, it’s the narcissism of one Barack Hussein Obama.

It is thanks to Obama’s narcissism, ego and arrogance that We the People know where they stand: Trapped in a nation where everything’s changed for the worse since 2008.

For all of those who want to argue that the change has been wearing down America for the past 100 years and particularly during the 8-year administration of George W. Bush: that ship already left port; it’s far too late to do anything about the past but prime time to deal with Obama over the coming year.

Jump into the present. Barack Obama’s headed for re-election, even if it’s re-election courtesy of suspended elections.

Media Pulled Kicking and Screaming Into SolyndraGate

I can hear them right now in newsrooms across the country—

“Are you sure we need to cover this story about a possible fraudulent solar power company?”

“Won’t we look bad when we promote ‘Green Week?’”

“Should we show that video of the Obama at the Solyndra plant, or just act like we lost that file video?”

“But we have been saying for years that Green Jobs will save our future and our economy, how do we walk this back?”

“Won’t this make the Stimulus look bad?”

“If we just ignore it, it’ll go away, besides, we have the Michael Jackson doctor story to lead with!”

“How much did Obama know and when did he know it?” Wait, forget that last question, they won’t be asking that.

These questions might not be asked out loud at meetings, but they don’t have to be.

Don’t worry my media friends, I know how you roll, I’ve been in those meetings, you are hoping the public is much more stupid than they are (they are not) and hoping that they are not paying attention (and they are.) Some of those viewers actually have the internet and they know how to use it. They might even (gasp) listen to Evil Talk Radio.

The Obama connection with Solyndra is an easy one to make. Perhaps that’s why we’re not seeing the story. Protect Dear Leader.

Other than great work by Jake Tapper at ABC, the activist old media has virtually ignored this story because it destroys many of their templates and does so all at the same time. 1) Green jobs, 2) overreaction to supposed “global warming,” 3) Obama is not corrupt, but he is different than other politicians, 4) the stimulus will save us, 5) government knows best … and there are probably a few more I have left out.

This scandal is getting deeper every day and is ablaze on the Internet. This story is being powered by something, and it aint solar; it’s being powered by the truth. It’s being powered by a public that wants to know how a company can squander more than $500 million dollars of our money and why the President would give it to them in the first place, when apparently the White House knew this company had serious problems. E-mails are now out there. Yep, they knew and they still went along with the half-a-billion dollar ruse.

Let’s do the comparison game here for a moment. In 2003 the media was looking for a scandal to take down the Bush White House. “PlameGate” was born. For four years the media blasted the Bush administration for supposedly leaking the name of a CIA agent. Investigations were demanded, accusations made, David Schuster of NBC said Karl Rove would be indicted. CBS did an expose on how both CIA agent’s safety, and national security could be threatened because of the supposed leak. Patrick Fitzgerald conducted an investigation and the media demanded answers. FOUR BLOODY YEARS of hell is what the media put the Bush White House through and inflicted falsehood after falsehood on the public. Many days Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann did nearly their entire hour on the non-issue. Of course, the story flamed-out. Nothing to see here. It was Richard Armitage who leaked the name. Whoops. Sorry, no,actually, they weren’t sorry—there was never an apology.

Four years of “might be’s,” “could be’s,” and “maybe’s,” led to flame-out. Some of us could see the foolishness of that story at the time and I recall vividly some spirited conversations I had in newsrooms about my desire to keep that story in its proper context. For what it’s worth, I was right—but that was easy to see at the time if your eyes were open.

As wrong as the media was during that four year period, they are just as wrong now as they look to protect Dear Leader. Eventually–they will be pushed into doing this story. The facts demand it.

Even if they jump on this story now, they are already too late, this story has been years in the making. Here are the questions newsrooms should’ve been asking long ago relating to Solyndra, Obama and solar energy.

“What is the veracity of solar energy for the future?”

“Is the planet really warming?”

“Who approved giving more than $500 million of our dollars to this company and why?”

“Where did the money go?”

“Where has that money gone from all the “stimulus” programs?”

“Which political campaigns did Solyndra management contribute to?”

Oh, and this one–“What did Obama know and when did he know it?”

Yeah–these questions are tough to ask. They hit a little too close to the media’s home.

via Media Pulled Kicking and Screaming Into SolyndraGate.

Barack Obama, Flim-Flam Man

Barack Obama, Flim-Flam Man

Barack Obama, Flim-Flam Man:

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has an important column in which he argues that the Solyndra fiasco is not just a garden-variety scandal, but a criminal fraud that should land someone, inside and/or outside of the Obama administration, in the slammer.

The facts are very bad. Solyndra was a money-loser from beginning to end. Its business model was untenable. The Bush administration turned it down for funding. Its owners wanted to do a public offering; for that purpose, they had to have their books audited and a report written by PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The report was more or less an obituary for the company:

[O]utside auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) found that condition to be dire. “The company has suffered recurring losses from operations, negative cash flows since inception, and has a net stockholders’ deficit,” the PWC accountants concluded. Even with the gigantic Obama loan, Solyndra was such a basket case that PWC found “substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

(Excerpt) Read more

via BLOGGER.GUNNY.G.1984+ NOW!: Barack Obama, Flim-Flam Man.

9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything? : Information Clearing House News

9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?

By Paul Craig Roberts

August 24, 2011 “Information Clearing House” — – -In a few days it will be the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. How well has the US government’s official account of the event held up over the decade?

Not very well. The chairman, vice chairman, and senior legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating themselves from the commission’s report. They said that the Bush administration put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice……………..

via  9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?  :  Information Clearing House News.

Prison Planet.com » An Economy Destroyed: The Enemy Is Washington

Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government.

There is no budget focus on the illegal wars and military occupations that the US government has underway in at least six countries or the 66-year old US occupations of Japan and Germany and the ring of military bases being constructed around Russia.

The total military/security budget is in the vicinity of $1.1-$1.2 trillion, or 70% -75% of the federal budget deficit.

In contrast, Social Security is solvent. Medicare expenditures are coming close to exceeding the 2.3% payroll tax that funds Medicare, but it is dishonest for politicians and pundits to blame the US budget deficit on “entitlement programs.”

Entitlements are funded with a payroll tax. Wars are not funded. The criminal Bush regime lied to Americans and claimed that the Iraq war would only cost $70 billion at the most and would be paid for with Iraq oil revenues. When Bush’s chief economic advisor, Larry Lindsay, said the Iraq invasion would cost $200 billion, the White House Moron fired him. In fact, Lindsay was off by a factor of 20. Economic and budget experts have calculated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have consumed $4,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs. In other words, the ongoing wars and occupations have already eaten up the $4 trillion by which Obama hopes to cut federal spending over the next ten years. Bomb now, pay later.

As taxing the rich is not part of the political solution, the focus is on rewarding the insurance companies by privatizing Medicare at some future date with government subsidized insurance premiums, by capping Medicaid, and by loading the diminishing middle class with additional Social Security tax.

via Prison Planet.com » An Economy Destroyed: The Enemy Is Washington.

When Liberals Kill

When Liberals Kill

When Liberals Kill

Vanity | 2 May 2011 | areukiddingme1

Posted on Monday, May 02, 2011 9:20:58 AM by areukiddingme1

Isn’t it ironic, when liberals kill they are able to pocket their pride and intellectual superiority and finally celebrate the war against terrorism — “by killing a terrorist” — “the terrorist.”

It reminds me of an Ann Coulter quote; “Here the country had finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism and they didn’t want to fight it. They would have, except it would put them on the same side as the United States.”

Do the liberals realize that they have now crossed over to our side in rooting for the US to win in the war on terrorism — How can they stand it, I bet they feel dirty.

Isn’t it ironic that everything that the Bush administration had put in to place to protect and defend the US is coming full circle…under a liberal president. The Patriot Act, Gitmo, and no civil trials for terrorists…all previously denounced by then candidate obama.

via BLOGGER: Gunny.G.1984.+: When Liberals Kill.

Obama = Bush and Clinton at the Same Time by Anthony Gregory

Looking at Obama as the simultaneous embodiment of Bush and Clinton might help to explain why everyone is so out of their minds right now. Politics is defined both by the rhetoric of the state and that of the opposition. The dizzying flip-flops on all sides are easier to understand in light of Obama’s peculiar style of governance.

Backing up almost twenty years to Slick Willy’s first term, the populist right was up in arms about Washington, about Waco, about nation-building and Hillarycare. Then the Republicans won Congress and by the end of the decade, the right calmed down a bit, probably predicting they would soon inherit the imperial executive they had pretended to oppose out of principle.

The anti-Bush movement was, at first, anti-state – in particular, opposed to war, imperialism, and unlimited executive power and corporatism. But after Katrina, the left once again reverted to its old ways, criticizing the administration for governing poorly, as opposed to flexing too much power. The problem was, once again, that Bush was not doing enough.

Today, the anti-Bush peace movement and Tea Party have both subsided, the first group placated by the 2008 election and the second pacified by the midterm Republican victory. They are both also probably simply fatigued from years of protest. I wish they’d both get out in the streets and join forces, realizing they are actually both opposed to power grabs by the same government. But that will, alas, probably never happen.

Yet the anti-Clinton right and the anti-Bush left should recognize that Obama sums up the horrors of both administrations. Instead, these groups are divided, convinced by the government they should fear each other more than the regime. We have the 1990s hysteria about populist rightwingers helping to bolster the police state. Alongside the fear of American patriots is the Bush-era hysteria toward Muslims and crackdowns on antiwar protesters. It is the perfect storm for both fascism and socialism of the American variety.

via Obama = Bush and Clinton at the Same Time by Anthony Gregory.

A Price on Our Heads…

Back in the American Wild West, federal and state governments often put a price on the heads of infamous outlaws like Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Sam Bass, Belle Star and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Today, our government is not so selective.

It’s seeking to put a price on the head of every American. Not because they’ve robbed a train, but for a different reason that could lead to a very bad end.Various government agencies have come up with formulas for determining how much we are worth.

The Environmental Protection Agency EPA has set the value of a human life at $9.1 million. It reached this determination while proposing tighter restrictions on air pollution. During the Bush administration, EPA calculated our value at $6.8 million. Was the difference in price caused by inflation? The EPA didn’t say.

The Food and Drug Administration FDA arrived at its own figure for the value of an American life. It says each life is worth $7.9 million. That, too, is an increase from the $5 million value FDA had assigned each human American life in 2008. The agency calculated our value while proposing new and tougher warning labels on cigarettes that include pictures of cancer victims.

The Transportation Department — yes, Transportation — put our worth at $6 million while seeking to justify recent decisions to impose regulations the Bush administration had rejected as too costly, such as stronger roofs on cars.

It’s nice to know that our government values its citizens beyond what it can extract in taxes. But given the Obama administration’s likely pursuit of health care rationing Dr. Donald Berwick, a wealth redistributionist who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is a proponent of rationed care it is easy to forecast where this could lead should human life be regarded as having only that value placed upon it by government, or an agent of the state.

The beauty of our form of government is that it begins, not with government, but with us: “We the People.” In our Declaration of Independence from Britain, there is a clause that sets us apart from virtually all other nations. Instead of……………………..

Continued…

Obama ‘Fake Terror’ Alert Story Hits #1 on Google

SEE ALSO Paul Joseph Watson’s article here on the most recent ‘fake terror’ alert, as it has been updated.

Efforts to warn the population that the Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, has engaged in issuing fake terror alerts has gone viral, with the search term “fake terror” reaching #1 on Google Trends. It is yet another success in the Infowar, initiated on the Alex Jones Show.October 29, 2010:As we are just days out from the 2010 midterm elections, voters must realize that the establishment has willfully engaged in hyping up false alerts to scare the public into believing that we are under siege by potential terrorist acts at all moments. Various “officials” have been warning that an attack is likely to occur for weeks now, and it is no surprise to see the Obama Administration trying to use the fear to its advantage.Recall that Obama advisor and former top Clinton official, Robert Shapiro, alluded to the idea that only a terror attack could save Obama’s presidency earlier in the year.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, adding, “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”Read the original story by Paul Joseph Watson here, as it has been updated.

The general scare of the fake terror alert is all the more alarming, as President Obama has gone on to contradict announcements from his own administration, claiming that the suspicious package “did apparently contain explosive material” in a press conference. This, after it was already admitted the suspicious package, which originated from the UK, was harmless and contained no explosives.

Know what’s important: Having a Healthy Food Supply like eFoodsDirect is Essential ADThanks to readers, listeners and supporters for helping to get out this vital information.

Memo To Nancy Pelosi From Cindy Sheehan Cindy endorses Republican opponent

Open MemoTo: Nancy PelosiFrom Cindy SheehanHey Nan,How’s that “liberal agenda” going for you these days?You have had quite a run as the first female Speaker of the House, haven’t you?

In that almost four years now, you have fully funded the wars; rammed through the bankster bailouts and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Modernization Act; refused to hold the criminals of the Bush administration accountable; supported the torture policies of George Bush and wanted even stricter measures against suspected terrorists; obediently supported and defended the murderous Israeli oppression of Palestine; presided over the worst jobs’ hemorrhage since the Great Depression can you see all the jobless and homeless from your mansion on the hill in Pac Heights? and the only “victory” that you can claim is a feeble health care “reform” bill that you admit you had no idea what it contained, when in reality, it was just a massive welfare program for your corporate buddies in the industry.

You are going to become a lame duck Speaker early next month when your party loses its majority–now don’t think I am thrilled that the Republicans are returning to a majority, at least in your House, because I think your party and the GOP are just different sides of the same coin–but you can’t say I didn’t warn you back in 2006 that if you and your party didn’t end the wars and hold BushCo accountable that your euphoria would be short-lived…

Maybe Joe Knows « JDs Bunker

For some reason, whenever I see the President reading to us from the Presidential Teleprompters I get an image of George Soros sitting in a dark room in his Stars Wars Emperor suit typing away at the keyboard.

I do not know for sure if that is true, but I have no evidence that it is not. Maybe Joe knows.© 2010

Obama wants unfettered access to your Internet activity

Despite outrage over George Bush‘s limited ability to wiretap into American phone calls, Obama wants to take it a step further and be able to monitor every single form of communication any American citizen uses.

The same kind of authority the government has to wiretap into phone calls could be coming to Facebook, instant messaging, and every American’s browser history, thanks to a push from the Obama administration.

The White House plans to introduce a bill into Congress next year that would give Obama the ability to tap into literally every communication any citizen makes online.

The move causes a whole new level of privacy concerns. After the outrageous uproar of the Bush administration’s tapping into American phone records, privacy advocates should be all over this.In a report on the New York Times, Center for Democracy and Technology VP James Dempsey was quoted as saying,

“They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”

Excerpt

How about this pledge: “I will not swallow any more crap sandwiches”

Making pledges is easy. Keeping them? Not so much. Just ask Mr. Hope and Change.

The new GOP pledge is fine as far as it goes — especially the upfront acknowledgment that government’s powers derive from the consent of the governed, not from the penumbras emanating from the fingertips of all President Obama’s czars.But actions speak louder than words.

And no action bespoke of the gap between conservative rhetoric and reality louder than the hysterical votes of 91 Republicans who voted with Chicken Little Democrats under the Republican Bush administration to pass the TARP all-purpose banking/auto suppliers/life insurance/AIG bailout.

For a depressing look at how so many supposedly limited government Republicans caved in the face of panic fomented by naked-emperor financial bureaucrats, see my liveblog of the Crap Sandwich vote on October 3, 2008.

Here is the roll call vote from that day….excerpted….Print and save it. It’s a useful reminder of which Republicans stood by their principles — and which ones abandoned their fine pledges to uphold the Constitution, laws of the United States, and free-market principles in the heat of battle.Words that will live in infamy:

“This is not a time for ideological purity.”

Excerpt