Conservatrolling Topic

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www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/23/it_s_official_obama_s_recovery_weaker_than_bush_s_recession_yet_news_is_all_on_ben_affleck_as_batman

It's Official: Obama's Recovery Weaker Than Bush's Recession, Yet News is All on Ben Affleck as Batman

The economic news. "Incomes Have Dropped..." Get this now, this is from the Weekly Standard. Listen carefully to this. "Incomes Have Dropped Twice as Much During the 'Recovery' as During the Recession." According to Obama and the official recession agency out there... the recession ended in 2009, and that's when the recovery began. But -- as you know and I know -- there hasn't been a recovery, but in official Washington vernacular the recovery from the Bush recession began in June of 2009. This is a powerful statistic. Incomes have dropped twice as much during Obama's recovery as they dropped during the Bush recession.

It's bad out there. New home sales have taken their biggest plunge since 2010. "New Home Sales Hammered, Prompting Doubts About Recovery." That's the CNBC headline.

But this, my friends, is the real state of the nation. This right there. Have you heard that Ben Affleck has gotten the role as the next Batman? The movie to debut in theaters in 2015. That's the news that has really upset Americans. Of everything going on, that's the news. I kid you not. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people have signed petitions to remove Ben Affleck from the role, and there is a petition at the White House calling for Obama to denounce the selection of Ben Affleck. I'm not kidding you.

So here are the relevant facts. Incomes, personal income, take-home pay has dropped twice as much as it did during the recession. The recovery began in June of 2009, we're told by the officials. So we've been in a recovery. Now, you and I both know that there's no recovery going on. The American people have been told we're in a recovery, and they read AP every week, the jobs report, and it's right there on Yahoo News, that the recovery is chugging along. The jobs aren't coming quite as fast, but they read about the recovery and they see it on CNN and they see it wherever they watch that the recovery is happening, but it's sluggish.

There is no recovery. You know it as well as I know it. The truth of the matter is that Obama's recovery has done more harm to personal income than the recession we're recovering from. This is unprecedented. There has never in this country been anything like this where people's personal income fell twice as fast during a recovery as it fell during the recession that preceded it. And then the added fact here is that incomes falling in this recovery correspond almost exactly with the span of time we've been living with the looming specter of Obamacare.

Single-family homes, Commerce Department, the regime reports that the sale of new single-family homes dropped 13 and a half percent, widely missing expectations. New home sales, biggest drop since 2010, the lowest reading since October of 2012, the biggest drop since May of 2010. And yet they tell us we're in a recovery, and people say, "But Obama's got all these programs to help people recover from their mortgages and their underwater status. Obama's really working hard to get people back into their homes and get their home value up."

Isn't it amazing how everything Obama's working really hard on is getting worse?

blog.heritage.org/2013/08/22/eric-holders-mounting-war-against-texas/

In its mounting war against commonsense election integrity efforts, Eric Holder’s Justice Department announced today that it will be filing a new lawsuit against Texas, claiming that the state’s voter ID law “violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as well as the voting guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments” to the Constitution. This is no surprise given Eric Holder’s polemical and unsupported claims that voter ID laws are intended to “suppress voting rights.”

The constitutional claim is certainly at odds with the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court held in 2008 that Indiana’s voter ID, which is similar to the Texas law, was not a violation of the Constitution, including the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court held it was a reasonable requirement to protect the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.

Holder’s claim that voter ID is discriminatory under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is also problematic. Section 2 prohibits any voting qualification that “results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizens of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” The lawsuit that was filed against Georgia’s voter ID law in 2006 also claimed it violated Section 2, but the plaintiffs lost that case—the federal judge ruled that voter ID was not discriminatory under Section 2. As a result, the Georgia law has been in place since the 2008 presidential election. The turnout of voters in Georgia in the last five years of federal and state elections show that Holder’s claim that such laws discriminate against minority voters is patently untrue. Indiana’s experience shows the same.

During the past five years of the current Administration, the Civil Rights Division filed exactly one Section 2 lawsuit, in 2009—and that was a case that was started and investigated during the Bush Administration. Yet not a single critical word has been heard from the same civil rights groups about the Obama Administration’s complete lack of enforcement of Section 2.

So when the Administration finally files a Section 2 lawsuit, it is over voter ID—over the type of law that is supported by a majority of Americans, has been upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court, has been found by other federal courts not to violate Section 2, and that election turnout evidence shows does not “suppress” minority or any other voters, as has been falsely claimed.

Justice also announced it was intervening in a private Section 2 lawsuit filed against the 2011 Texas redistricting plans for Congress and the Texas House of Representatives. DOJ will ask the federal court to reimpose the equivalent of Section 5 preclearance coverage on Texas so that Texas would have to get the approval of the Justice Department for the next 10 years for any other changes in its voting laws.

Another example of Eric Holder wasting taxpayer funds and Justice Department resources.

"Those dirty rotten white folk must be up to no good somewhere!"

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/23/what_health_insurance_policy_would_have_saved_shorty_and_chris_lane_from_being_murdered

You know, if I had a father, he would look like "Shorty" Delbert Belton, and, if I had a son, he'd look like Chris Lane. Nobody's gonna say that. Obama has not called the parents of Chris Lane. I don't know if Obama has called anybody related to "Shorty" Delbert Belton, but these two were people killed by bored, thug-wannabe African-Americans. There still has been more outrage over a rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask than either of these two events combined. It's this kind of thing -- this cultural rot, this decay -- that you can't even address without being called a racist...Pat Buchanan, by the way, does a great job. He's got a great paragraph in a column that ran at World Net Daily.

"Teenagers who can shoot and kill a man out of summertime boredom are moral barbarians, dead souls. But who created these monsters? Where did they come from? Surely one explanation lies in the fact that the old conscience-forming and character-forming institutions -- home, church, school and a moral and healthy culture fortifying basic truths -- have collapsed. And the community hardest hit is Black America."

I love that paragraph. And I love this paragraph because I love brevity. The fewer number of words to make a point, the more powerful the point. The old conscience-forming, character-forming, character-building institutions -- home, church, school -- have collapsed. There's no argument about that. It's gotten so bad you can't talk about morality to people 'cause it's not your business. You can't talk about right and wrong to people. It's not your business to tell somebody else what's right or wrong because you don't understand their socioeconomic circumstance, and you don't understand their rage, and you don't understand the culture they come from. So you take your morality and you stuff it. And this is the result of that.

No souls. There is nothing bigger than yourself. Nothing more important than you. You are the biggest thing out there, the center of the universe, and whatever you want to do is fine. This is the kind of stuff that exists now. But this is exactly right. The Wall Street Journal had a column long ago that described morality as the guardrails on a highway. And ours are down. There aren't any guardrails and we're off the road, and there is no right or wrong because nobody's got the right to proclaim it, and if you do want to insist on a common morality or a common right and wrong, what are you? You are a heathen Christian pro-life hick, is what you are, in America today.

If you want to stand for a common morality, a common decency, a common sense, ordinary, everyday definition of right and wrong, you are public enemy number one. Is it any wonder, then, that churches are public enemy number one? Is it any wonder that the schools have been co-opted by the left and all these institutions that used to form character and morality and build character and morality are under assault and have been for years? Buchanan's right on the money here.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324165204579028771723069750.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

President Obama recently concluded a five-year campus speaking tour in which he explained to students how his financing programs were making college more affordable. Then on Thursday he kicked off a new campus speaking tour to tell students that college is unaffordable, and that the financing program he has championed faces increasing defaults.

"We've got a crisis in terms of college affordability and student debt," said Mr. Obama, without a trace of irony at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The same man who three years ago forced through a plan to add $1 trillion in student loans to the federal balance sheet over a decade said on Thursday, "Our economy can't afford the trillion dollars in outstanding student loan debt, much of which may not get repaid because students don't have the capacity to pay it."

Naturally, the President blamed somebody else and demanded more authority over higher education.

Mr. Obama specifically blamed colleges and universities for charging too much. "Not enough colleges have been working to figure out how do we control costs, how do we cut back on costs," he said. His solution is for the federal government to rate colleges on their effectiveness and efficiency, and then to allocate federal subsidies to the schools that Washington believes are providing the best education at the lowest cost.

Particularly jarring for Mr. Obama's fans in the faculty lounge, he talked about them on Thursday in the same disrespectful manner that he normally reserves for entrepreneurs.

Conservative readers may be tempted to chuckle here. And we concede that this latest Obama regulatory onslaught couldn't happen to a nicer bunch than the university elite who did so much to elect him. But while shifting control of universities from lefty professors to the U.S. Department of Education may seem like a transition between six and a half-dozen, it is not.

As maddening as it can be to see how liberal academics spend the wealth created by hard-working citizens, Americans should think long and hard before allowing the federal government to dominate a system of higher education that is still by all accounts the envy of the world. If the feds are deciding what a quality education is in order to dole out billions in annual aid—in an era when most students can't afford to matriculate without some form of aid—Washington will certainly dominate. Tying aid to whatever the bureaucrats decide is the right tuition is a back-door form of price controls. Even more disturbing is the idea that a federal political authority will decide which curricula at which institutions represent a good educational value.

Mr. Obama is trodding a well-worn political path. Politicians subsidize the purchase of a good or service, prices inevitably rise in response to this pumped-up demand, and then the pols blame the provider of the good or service for responding to the incentives the politicians created. Think housing finance and medical care. Now President Obama is attacking colleges for rationally raising tuitions and padding their payrolls in response to a subsidy machine that began in 1965.

That's when the feds launched a program to make college "affordable" by offering a taxpayer guarantee on student loans. Federal grants and loans have been expanding ever since and it's no coincidence that tuition prices have been rising faster than inflation for decades...The better answer is to stop the increases in grants and subsidized loans that Mr. Obama has so greatly accelerated. Let educators, students and their parents decide which courses and campus amenities provide the most educational value. As fervently as many professors abhor the idea of free people operating in a free market, they may decide it's better than federal politicians running their universities.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/23/irrelevant_obama_declares_your_host_his_1_obstacle_as_eib_inks_deal_with_cumulus_gets_new_station_in_the_big_apple

So I got in here at the usual time after working very early this morning, late into last night on show prep and stuff, and at about ten o'clock I get an e-mail from Greta Van Susteren, and I thought, "No, no, no, no, I just did her show. She can't be asking me back." And it wasn't that. Her e-mail was, "Man, oh, man, do you live rent free in Obama's head." And I said, "What's this?" So I read further, and she just assumed that I knew what she was talking about, and I didn't, but I keep scrolling her e-mail and she'd finally attached a Mediaite story in which President Obama, in an interview this morning on CNN with Chris Cuomo, once again blamed me for the gridlock in Washington.

I am the reason he can't move his agenda forward, which of course is silly because he's getting everything he wants. He blamed me again. I mean, it's like a broken record. You know what I think is happening? I think that nobody's listening to Obama anymore. I don't think he commands nearly the attention or the interest that he did. So what he's doing is going back to the greatest hits, kind of like if you're at a radio station and losing audience, play the hits, you know, stop the New Age stuff and go play the hits. Well, he's going back and he recycled this idea that the Republicans are not cooperating with him because they're afraid of what I'm gonna say about them...Today, I am back to being his number one obstacle.

The president has blamed me more than he blamed Boehner or McConnell or anybody else in the Republican organizational chart...Here I just leapfrogged over George W. Bush, over the Republican Party, over the speaker of the House. I leapfrogged over the rich. I am at the top of the enemies list.

Chris Cuomo interviewing Obama on CNN's New Day today. The question: "Syria! You've seen the images, Mr. President. You know the situation very well. You believe at this point that you need to investigate in order to say what seems obvious, which is the US needs to do more in Syria?"

OBAMA: Republicans, after having taken 40 votes to try to get rid of Obamacare, uh, see this as their last gasp. Nobody thinks that's good for the middle class! And I've made this argument to my Republican friends privately. And, by the way, sometimes they say to me privately, "I agree with you, but I'm worried about a primary from, y'know, somebody in the Tea Party back in my district," or "I'm worried about what Rush Limbaugh's gonna say about me on the radio -- and so you gotta understand, I'm... It's really difficult." I can't force these folks to do what's right for the American people. But what I sure as heck can do is stay focused on what I know will be good for the American people.

RUSH: I mean, that is... That's embarrassing. I mean, that is so cliched and predictable, that's embarrassing. Here he gets a question about Syria, and isn't it obviously we need to do more, and he starts beating up on the Republicans and basically calls them a bunch of cowards. They're either afraid of the Tea Party or they're afraid of me. What Obama's doing there... You know this as well as I do.

What Obama is doing there is actually focusing on the people he considers his biggest threat -- and believe me, that's the Tea Party. I'm gonna tell you something: These people, the Democrats, they do not want to debate anybody. They do not want to sit down in the arena of ideas and have a talk, debate, compromise. They want to eliminate opposition, and their way of doing that is discrediting it with people.

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online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324619504579028923699568400.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsTop

Barack Obama's foreign policy failure

Iraq continues to unravel, the Syrian War grinds on with violence spreading to Lebanon and allegations of chemical attacks this week, and Egypt stands on the brink of civil war with the generals crushing the Muslim Brotherhood and street mobs torching churches. Turkey's prime minister, once widely hailed as President Obama's best friend in the region, blames Egypt's violence on the Jews; pretty much everyone else blames it on the U.S.

President Obama (whom I voted for in 2008) and his team hoped that the success of the new grand strategy would demonstrate once and for all that liberal Democrats were capable stewards of American foreign policy...With the advantages of hindsight, it appears that the White House made five big miscalculations about the Middle East. It misread the political maturity and capability of the Islamist groups it supported; it misread the political situation in Egypt; it misread the impact of its strategy on relations with America's two most important regional allies (Israel and Saudi Arabia); it failed to grasp the new dynamics of terrorist movements in the region; and it underestimated the costs of inaction in Syria.

America's Middle East policy in the past few years depended on the belief that relatively moderate Islamist political movements in the region had the political maturity and administrative capability to run governments wisely and well. That proved to be half-true in the case of Turkey's AK Party: Until fairly recently Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whatever mistakes he might make, seemed to be governing Turkey in a reasonably effective and reasonably democratic way. But over time, the bloom is off that rose. Mr. Erdogan's government has arrested journalists, supported dubious prosecutions against political enemies, threatened hostile media outlets and cracked down crudely on protesters. Prominent members of the party leadership look increasingly unhinged, blaming Jews, telekinesis and other mysterious forces for the growing troubles it faces.

Things have reached such a pass that the man President Obama once listed as one of his five best friends among world leaders and praised as "an outstanding partner and an outstanding friend on a wide range of issues" is now being condemned by the U.S. government for "offensive" anti-Semitic charges that Israel was behind the overthrow of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi...Tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorists and incompetent bumblers make a poor foundation for American grand strategy. We would have done business with the leaders of Turkey and Egypt under almost any circumstances, but to align ourselves with these movements hasn't turned out to be wise.

The White House, along with much of the rest of the American foreign policy world, made another key error in the Middle East: It fundamentally misread the nature of the political upheaval in Egypt. Just as Thomas Jefferson mistook the French Revolution for a liberal democratic movement like the American Revolution, so Washington thought that what was happening in Egypt was a "transition to democracy." That was never in the cards.

I can still remember the brown-nosing journalists asking people on the streets of Cairo how much they loved Obama for freeing them. The government propaganda arm known as our media was quite surprised when they found people asking wtf Obama had to do with anything. It's how the Dems thought though: Obama was healing the planet and we were just gonna come together, world peace would spring up everywhere and everyone would love us again.

The break with Israel came early. In those unforgettable early days when President Obama was being hailed by the press as a new Lincoln and Roosevelt, the White House believed that it could force Israel to declare a total settlement freeze to restart negotiations with the Palestinians. The resulting flop was President Obama's first big public failure in foreign policy. It would not be the last.

The breach with Saudis came later and this one also seems to have caught the White House by surprise...Many Americans don't understand just how much the Saudis dislike the Brotherhood and the Islamists in Turkey. Not all Islamists are in accord; the Saudis have long considered the Muslim Brotherhood a dangerous rival in the world of Sunni Islam. Prime Minister Erdogan's obvious hunger to revive Turkey's glorious Ottoman days when the center of Sunni Islam was in Istanbul is a direct threat to Saudi primacy. That Qatar and its Al Jazeera press poodle enthusiastically backed the Turks and the Egyptians with money, diplomacy and publicity only angered the Saudis more. With America backing this axis—while also failing to heed Saudi warnings about Iran and Syria—Riyadh wanted to undercut rather than support American diplomacy.

Today a resurgent terrorist movement can point to significant achievements in the Libya-Mali theater, in northern Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. The closure of 20 American diplomatic facilities this month was a major moral victory for the terrorists, demonstrating that they retain the capacity to affect American behavior in a major way. Recruiting is easier, morale is higher, and funding is easier to get for our enemies than President Obama once hoped.

Finally, the administration, rightfully concerned about the costs of intervention in Syria, failed to grasp early enough just how much it would cost to stay out of this ugly situation. As the war has dragged on, the humanitarian toll has grown to obscene proportions (far worse than anything that would have happened in Libya without intervention), communal and sectarian hatreds have become poisonous almost ensuring more bloodletting and ethnic and religious cleansing, and instability has spread from Syria into Iraq, Lebanon and even Turkey. All of these problems grow worse the longer the war goes on—but it is becoming harder and costlier almost day by day to intervene.

But beyond these problems, the failure to intervene early in Syria (when "leading from behind" might well have worked) has handed important victories to both the terrorists and the Russia-Iran axis, and has seriously eroded the Obama administration's standing with important allies. Russia and Iran backed Bashar al-Assad; the president called for his overthrow—and failed to achieve it. To hardened realists in Middle Eastern capitals, this is conclusive proof that the American president is irredeemably weak. His failure to seize the opportunity for what the Russians and Iranians fear would have been an easy win in Syria cannot be explained by them in any other way.

If American policy in Syria has been a boon to the Russians and Iranians, it has been a godsend to the terrorists. The prolongation of the war has allowed terrorist and radical groups to establish themselves as leaders in the Sunni fight against the Shiite enemy. A reputation badly tarnished by both their atrocities and their defeat in Iraq has been polished and enhanced by what is seen as their courage and idealism in Syria. The financial links between wealthy sources in the Gulf and jihadi fighter groups, largely sundered in the last 10 years, have been rebuilt and strengthened. Thousands of radicals are being trained and indoctrinated, to return later to their home countries with new skills, new ideas and new contacts. This development in Syria looks much more dangerous than the development of the original mujahedeen in Afghanistan; Afghanistan is a remote and (most Middle Easterners believe) a barbarous place. Syria is in the heart of the region and the jihadi spillover threatens to be catastrophic.

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So I'll use more sources now that I'm places.
Hmm BBC is nearly useless, probably should cut that one off the bookmarks.

radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/pentagon-labels-founding-fathers-conservatives-as-extremists.html

George Washington would not be welcome in the modern U.S. military. Neither would Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, according to Department of Defense training documents that depict the Founding Fathers as extremists and conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

“This document deserves a careful examination by military leadership,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton told Fox News. “Congress needs to conduct better oversight and figure out what the heck is going on in our military.”

Included in the 133-pages of lesson plans is a student guide entitled “Extremism.”

The DOD warns students to be aware “that many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights and how to make the world a better place.”

So it's like the IRS again: screw groups that want to make America a better place! We don't allow those under Obama!

“It’s disturbing insight into what’s happening inside Obama’s Pentagon,” Fitton told Fox News. “The Obama administration has a nasty habit of equating basic conservative values with terrorism.”

The document relied heavily on information obtained from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leftwing organization that has a history of labeling conservative Christian organizations like the Family Research Council as “hate groups.”

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/24/Christian-Airman-Claims-Fired-by-Lesbian-Commander-Due-to-Gay-Marriage

Senior Master Sgt. Phillip Monk has served in the U.S. Air Force for 19 years with a clean service record. But his new lesbian commander has relieved him of duty and is threatening his career, allegedly because of his Christian beliefs regarding gay marriage. Officials are investigating as Monk appeals his punishment.

Now the career of an airman with 19 years in the Air Force is threatened, evidently because of his orthodox Christian beliefs. The First Amendment protects religious liberty, and forbids government from compelling a person to express any opinion they do not share.

These unprecedented issues regarding troops’ First Amendment rights have led Congress to move new legislation that would protect troops against such hostility, which has passed the House and is pending in the Senate. President Obama threatens to veto the legislation if it reaches his desk.

Remember when the military was about winning wars?

www.nomblog.com/37324

85% of Americans Say Christian Photographer Has Right to Refuse Same-Sex Ceremony

We've heard a lot of stories recently about people of faith being forced to compromise their religious beliefs over same-sex marriage (bakery owners in Oregon, a florist in Washington state, innkeepers in Vermont...). But a new Rasmussen poll shows the vast majority of Americans are highly opposed to business owners being penalized or sued for running their business according to their own personal beliefs and values.

In fact, just 8% of the population answered "no" when asked the question "Suppose a Christian wedding photographer has deeply held religious beliefs opposing same-sex marriage. If asked to work a same-sex wedding ceremony, should that wedding photographer have the right to say no?"

More Republicans (96 percent) than Democrats (77 percent) agreed with the photographer's right to deny a gay wedding request. Ninety-seven percent of evangelical Christians and 92 percent of weekly churchgoers said the same. But even 88 percent of atheists agreed that the photographer has the right to say no.

I really don't know why Republican politicians aren't coming out more strongly to defend marriage.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579035360893940826.html

When we and others urged Mr. Obama to form a coalition of the willing against Damascus in 2011, opponents declared that such intervention would cause Assad to use chemical weapons, while running the risk of empowering jihadists, destabilizing Jordan, and spreading Sunni-Shiite conflict to Iraq and Lebanon. All of those fears have become reality after Mr. Obama failed to act and ceded the advantage in the Syrian conflict to the malign influence of Iran and Russia.

On Sunday a series of terror attacks struck Iraq as its sectarian conflict approaches levels not seen since before the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. Sunni jihadists from Syria are pouring into Iraq to fight Shiite militias mobilized by Iran. Suicide bombs are also going off with increasing frequency in Lebanon, as Sunnis fight back against the Shiite Hezbollah militiamen helping Assad in Syria. Meanwhile, refugees by the hundreds of thousands flow into Jordan and other neighboring countries.

No one knows if U.S. intervention two years ago would have prevented any of this, though we think it had a good chance of doing so. But one argument no one can credibly make is that U.S. action would have made things worse. Doing nothing made it worse.

www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/26/switzerland-to-experiment-with-drive-in-sex-boxes/?test=latestnews

Pretty much admitting legal prostitution remains unsafe, remains in the hands of organized crime, after decades of statist attempts to smack a happy face on it and profit off the abuse of women. All the money in the world cannot make right the souls damaged by the government's barbaric policies.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324165204579029421047567620.html

Chavez's Inflation Bites His Successor

Nicolás Maduro needs a circus because there is no bread in Venezuela.

Must be the Jews' fault, or a secret US embargo! Or a CIA cancer gun! Anything but bad leftist policies!

Hyperinflation and political witch hunts seem to go together. Just ask the Venezuelan opposition.

With the bolivarcollapsing and prices spiraling higher, the government alleged this month that its No. 1 adversary, former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, is linked to a prostitution ring that was using minors in the state of Miranda, where he is governor.

Lest that not be enough to turn Venezuela's socially conservative working-classes against the popular Mr. Capriles, a leading congressman from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) used gutter talk on the floor of the national assembly to accuse the governor of homosexuality.

Don't suppose for a minute that this mudslinging is merely about destroying Mr. Capriles. The ruling chavistas, led by President Nicolás Maduro, need a circus because there is no bread—and that's not a metaphor. At times in Venezuela, there really is no bread. Earlier this year there was, for a time, no toilet paper. Mr. Maduro knows he is in trouble.

The "proof" of the allegations against Mr. Capriles's chief of staff, who is accused of running the sex ring, cannot be shown to the public, according to Mr. Maduro. He says that the "videos and photos" that the government confiscated in a raid are of "un-publishable orgies." Venezuelans will have to use their imaginations while trusting the courts—now controlled by the military government—and the government itself to get to the bottom of it all. Developments will be reported on television, which is almost exclusively state-controlled and where most Venezuelans get their news.

The government forecasts that inflation will hit 40% this year. But Johns Hopkins University economist Steve Hanke, director of the Cato Institute's Troubled Currency Project, says that the soaring cost for the bolivarin the market translates into an implied annual inflation rate of more than 250%.

Earlier this month Caracas-based economist José Manuel Puente described the perfect storm to the Los Angeles Times this way: "The slowdown in economic growth, high and persistent inflation and high levels of scarcities [of basic foodstuffs] will combine to make Venezuela's the worst-performing economy on the continent, despite the extraordinary oil boom that the country is still benefiting from."

Because the allegations against Mr. Capriles by the PSUV included a pejorative term for a homosexual, gay-rights groups took offense. But Venezuela's homosexuals needn't feel special. Hate speech as a political tool has been common practice in Venezuela's military government for more than a decade. Catholics, Jews, entrepreneurs and the bourgeoisie have all been on the receiving end.

Mr. Maduro, coached as he is by Fidel Castro, immediately recognized that gay rights are a priority for many members of the international left. So in the aftermath of the impolitic comments by his colleague in Congress, he quickly seized a gay-pride flag to wave while he continued his verbal assaults against Mr. Capriles.

Political nonconformists regularly singled out by chavista politicians for ridicule and acrimony won't get off so easily. This week Mr. Maduro is expected to try again to force through congress an "enabling law" that will allow him to rule by decree.

Opposition Congressman Richard Mardo has already been stripped of his congressional immunity and is slated for trial on corruption charges. Other opponents are being investigated. The Venezuelan daily El Nacional reported this month that more than one third of congressional sessions in the first half of the year were spent "harassing the opposition," including with physical violence.

The goal is to drum up mass hysteria against opponents. Apparently Mr. Maduro has decided that if inflation cannot be contained, Mr. Capriles and his allies will be.

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www.weeklystandard.com/articles/assad-calls-obama-s-bluff_750054.html?utm_campaign=Washington+Examiner&utm_source=washingtonexaminer.com&utm_medium=referral

The timing was probably not a coincidence, falling as it did on two anniversaries. August 18, 2011, was when President Obama first demanded Syrian president Bashar al-Assad step aside, and August 20 last year was when Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus.” It was a year to the day after Obama’s warning that Assad launched what is to date the regime’s largest chemical weapons attack. At least a thousand people are dead, likely more, in several Damascus suburbs and outlying towns. The video reports from Syria are chilling—children foaming at the mouth, their unblinking eyes full of terror, their contorted limbs frozen like broken dolls.

Yes, yes, it’s terrible, say many, but why would Assad be so foolish as to use his unconventional arsenal when a U.N. investigating team is already in the country collecting evidence on past use of chemical weapons? Well, Assad is not a fool: The purpose of waging an attack under the watchful eyes of the U.N. is to show his adversaries that the international community, the Europeans, and even the Americans are not going to help them, no matter what. Assad’s message to the rebels is: In spite of their moral posturing, their stern admonitions, even their revulsion and horror at watching children paralyzed by nerve agents, your Western friends won’t help you. Indeed, they are so craven, so eager for a reason to do nothing, they will suggest that the chemical attack was perhaps a ploy—that to get them to enter the war on your side, you killed your own children.

Assad has no reason to fear escalating against the rebels because the actor most capable of ending the regime’s 40-year reign of terror won’t lift a finger. Sure, the United States could destroy the Syrian Air Force, as Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, explained in a letter to congressman Eliot Engel. “The use of U.S. military force can change the balance of power,” wrote Dempsey, “but it cannot resolve the underlying and historic ethnic, religious and tribal issues that are fueling this conflict.” So, according to the Obama-Dempsey doctrine, if all the “historic ethnic, religious and tribal issues” that are fueling a conflict can’t be resolved, there’s no point in doing anything. The Obama-Dempsey doctrine would have meant doing nothing in the 1990s in the Balkans. It would have meant—it did mean—doing nothing in the 1930s. It will always be an excuse for doing nothing.

Looking through the fog of doubletalk, the reality is that the rebels are getting no arms from the United States. Dempsey admitted as much in his letter to Engel: “We continue to deliver humanitarian and security assistance to Syria’s neighbors,” wrote Dempsey, “as well as non-lethal assistance to the opposition.” Rebel leaders have said the same for two months; there is no lethal military aid coming from Washington. The administration simply has used the press as part of an information campaign to obscure the fact that Obama is not enforcing his red line—if indeed he ever really had one to begin with.

More than two years after Obama first demanded that Assad step aside, the United States is now facing a unique moment in its long history of involvement in the Middle East. What makes it unprecedented is less the violent furies raging across the region than the fact the commander in chief has to an unprecedented degree weakened America’s hand and sullied America’s reputation. With all his empty talk, the president who says he does not bluff has made America’s word cheap.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579037880644807254.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond

In 2009, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded Mr. Obama the Peace Prize, citing his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." That was quite an accomplishment for someone who had served a partial Senate term and less than a year as president.

It would be a grand understatement to say that much was expected of this president and his foreign-policy team...What a difference between 2009 and today, when we find foreign policies that are inept, misguided or both. Former CNN producer Frida Ghitis summed things up nicely when she wrote that "America's foreign policy has gone into a tailspin" and our nation "looks weak and confused on the global stage."

While Russia's recent decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden is rightly seen as a slap at the U.S., it should not have been surprising. It is doubtful Vladimir Putin ever took this administration seriously. In retrospect, the early efforts of Mr. Obama and Vice President Biden to seek more cooperation with Russia simply by a "reset" of our relationship were probably always doomed to fail.

It's not just Mr. Putin, as terrorists and tyrants in the Middle East and elsewhere seldom take us seriously. The "leading from behind" approach used in Libya is emblematic of the administration's approach to foreign policy, with the unfortunate result being a lack of influence in the world and no good options to deal with the unrest and death in Syria and Egypt. There has been little in the way of effort to stop Iran's nuclear program or to punish it for supplying weapons used in attacks on our soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was the terrible tragedy in Benghazi and the dismal subsequent behavior of the administration. There has been dithering and worrying about political correctness at the expense of security. The recent temporary closings of 19 of our foreign embassies might well have been the right thing to do, but the broader question has to be how we ever found ourselves where such a humiliating retreat was necessary.

overall the Obama foreign policy team seems to suffer from a Pollyannaish approach to the world. They do not seem to understand that those who hate America will hate us, and will try to harm us, whether our president is Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama. They do not seem to understand that the U.S. president simply declaring the war on terror to be over or that al Qaeda is decimated and on the run does not make such things true. They do not understand that, while it's good to extend an offer of peace to those who hate us, those who continue to abuse that effort and harm others need to know with certainty that they will feel the appropriate unpleasant consequences. They fail to understand it's OK to "speak softly" only as long as our enemies know we've got that "big stick" and are not afraid to use it.

The great sorrow is that the damage caused by this administration will take years to repair, and America and the world will be less safe, less peaceful and less secure.

radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/atheists-call-9-11-memorial-cross-grossly-offensive.html

Just another story of Christians being barred from any public place in violation of the first amendment, ho-hum

washingtonexaminer.com/is-obama-the-worst-president-ever/article/2534688

Is Obama the worst president ever?

"If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." — President Obama, Aug. 11, 2009

So said President Obama again and again through 2009 and 2010 as he sold Obamacare to the country. He promised. He put his personal integrity on the line. His word.

How many UPS employees voted for the president in 2008 and again in 2012? Because on Friday, UPS announced it was dumping 15,000 spouses of UPS employees from their UPS health plans despite the president's many, many promises to the contrary.

The UPS spouse-dump followed by a few days the news from New Jersey that Obamacare's rollout there will end the low-cost, high-deductible plan that more than 106,00 Jersey folks liked and which presumably many of them would have preferred to keep.

Oh, and the cost of individual plans are set to rise on average 41 percent in Ohio, and another major insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, has pulled out of the California market for small businesses.

Let a thousand stink bombs go kaboom. Obamacare is the train wreck that just keeps arriving on an ever-more prolonged schedule.

Most Mainstream Media refuse to catalogue the consequences of the epic bill that went unread when it was passed without a single Republican vote in 2009. Most journalists just avert their eyes.

But now that that the bodies of hundreds of gassed Syrian children are piling up in Damascus and scores of Christian churches are burned-out shells in Egypt, it is getting harder and harder to find anything to write about the president that doesn't underscore his incompetence.

Obama's tenure is a vast desert of anti-achievement, a landscape of waste and ruin on every front at home and abroad, save on the ability to mobilize voters who don't know or don't care about the state of the country or the world.

The president rolled to re-election on the strength of technologies that enabled his minions to tap and turn out folks who simply are clueless that that nice fellow in the White House hasn't the foggiest idea of how to run the country...the prospect of 39 more months of the anti-president at the helm is daunting. No plans for anything except bus tours and college campus speeches, no idea how to invigorate a sputtering economy or trim a bloated budget.

Since 1979 and the acquiescence of the transfer of Iran to religious zealots with world-enders and Hidden Imam-summoners among them, I didn't think it was possible for an American president to be ranked below Jimmy Carter on the competence list.

But now we have Obama, with double the years that Carter had to more than double the wreckage of the Carter era. Obama is working on his place in history every day, and every day he is making that ranking more secure.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/08/27/GUT-CHECK-RACE-POKER

Last week on The Five, I observed that the race card had been replaced by race poker. I see your “Trayvon Martin” and I raise you a “Delbert Belton.”...it is our responsibility as moral human beings to hold the media’s feet to the fire. When an incident of gruesome violence occurs, one that does not fit the approved story-line, it behooves us to make it their story line. White-Hispanic on black violence cannot be their only forte (seeing as how they got that wrong, it sure as hell better not be).

CNN devoted nearly a year to Trayvon Martin--but how much will they devote to the horrible killing of Chris Lane, or the murder of an 88 year old World War 2 vet named Delbert Belton? Or a young girl murdered over her bike? Or the ongoing case of a couple raped and mutilated over a course of several hideous days?

From here on in, we should shine our flashlights on each and every sickening case - tweet them to people like me, and demand the same consideration from our political leaders and media mavens that was given to the Martin case. I never knew about the horrible, horrible Knoxville torture/murder case (in which Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom were savagely killed) until I was inundated with tweets about it.

Is there a silver lining to the Trayvon Martin case? No. But it was the case that galvanized a media bent on pumping up racial tension, and it is that coverage that now must justify its scope by covering every hate crime, every murderous deed, equally.

So, what do you do now, fingers of the race card? Your slip is showing. Your deliberate blindness to other problems in the world is exposed.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323407104579037020495325310.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Holder thinks vouchers are racist now, too, despite historically helping out minorities.

"Those inferior creepy-ass cracka vermin must be up to no good somewhere!"

[Chromeo]

pbs.twimg.com/media/BSs3Ch9CAAE506U.jpg:large

[Tails82]

Is everyone here arguing for teen sexual autonomy forgetting that it says the kid killed herself in like the first paragraph? Yeah, clearly she was really happy with how the relationship for working out.

Lots of gays kill themselves, even if it's like a kiss someone gets on camera >.>

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/27/why_are_feminists_judging_miley_cyrus

Oh those pervs. The things that count as "education" among libs.

lol at the subtitle: "How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things That You Don't Understand"

"I'm going to describe the antics of ten professors, official campus groups, and invited campus speakers in North Carolina and let you decide which constitutes the biggest embarrassment to higher education. 1. In the early spring semester of 2013, a women's studies professor and a psychology professor at Western Carolina University co-sponsored a panel on bondage and S&M. The purpose of the panel was to teach college students how to inflict pain on themselves and others for sexual pleasure.

"When you called me the biggest embarrassment in higher education, you must not have known about their bondage panel. Maybe you were tied up that evening and couldn't make it. 2. At UNC Chapel Hill, there is a feminist professor who believes that women can lead happy lives without men. That's nothing new. But what's different is that she thinks women can form lifelong domestic partnerships with dogs and that those relationships will actually be fulfilling enough to replace marital relationships with men."

"I can't make this stuff up, Ed. I don't drop acid. Well, at least not since the late 1980s. But I promise this story is real and not an LSD flashback. 3. At Duke University, feminists hired a 'sex worker' (read: prostitute) to speak as part of an event called the Sex Workers Art Show. After his speech, the male prostitute pulled down his pants, got down on his knees, and inserted a burning sparkler into his rectum. While it burned, he sang a verse of 'the Star Spangled Banner.'

"I believe that stripping incident was almost as embarrassing as the other one involving the Duke Lacrosse team." Each of these incidents actually happened, and are taught. Remember now, it was suggested that this guy buy fired because he says marriage is that between a man and a woman. "4. A porn star was once paid to give a speech at UNCG. The topic was 'safe sodomy.' After her speech, the feminist pornographer sold autographed butt plugs to students in attendance.

"I'm not sure whether the ink could contribute to rectal cancer. I'm no health expert. But I do know it was pretty darned embarrassing when the media picked up on the story. 5. A few years ago at UNC-Chapel Hill, a feminist group built a large vibrator museum in the middle of the campus quad as a part of their 'orgasm awareness week.' I think that was probably the climax of the semester, academically speaking. But they certainly weren't too embarrassed to display a vibrator that was made out of wood back in the 1920s. Keep your batteries charged, Ed. We're about halfway done."

"6. A feminist administrator at UNC-Wilmington sponsored a pro-abortion event. During the event they sold tee shirts saying 'I had an abortion' to students who ... well, had abortions. That's right, Ed. The students were encouraged to boast about the fact that they had killed their own children. That's how the UNC system is preserving the future of our great Tar Heel state. 7. The following semester, that same UNCW administrator sponsored a workshop teaching students how to appreciate their orgasms.

I mean, this is just North Carolina...It's a red state. Now, here are the other three examples that he cited: "8. A few years ago, a UNCW English professor posted nude pictures of under-aged girls as a part of an 'art exhibit' in the university library. The Provost then ordered the nude pictures to be moved away from the library and into the university union."

Not taken down. Moved.

"This decision was made after several pedophiles had previous[ly] been caught downloading child pornography in the university library just a few yards away from the location of the display. The English professor was incensed so she asked the Faculty Senate to censure the provost for violating her 'academic freedom.' The faculty senate sided with the feminist professor. The provost was later pressured to leave the university."

The next little factoid referenced in Mike Adams' letter: "9. A different feminist professor at UNCW accused a male professor of putting tear gas in her office. She was later caught putting her mail in a microwave oven. She did this because she thought people were trying to poison her with anthrax and that the oven would neutralize the toxins. She was not placed on leave for psychiatric reasons.

10. And then there is Mike Adams. He thinks marriage is between a man and a woman," and he is the biggest embarrassment on campus. "So those are the choices, Ed. You can simply write back and tell me which of these professors, groups, or guest speakers has caused 'the biggest embarrassment to higher education'..."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579039011328308776.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Loose Lips on Syria

U.S. leaks tell Assad he can relax. The bombing will be brief and limited.

Well, it's something anyway. Then again, the Bay of Pigs was something too.

It's always possible that all of this leaking about when, how and for how long the U.S. will attack Syria is an elaborate head-fake, like Patton's ghost army on the eve of D-Day, poised for the assault on Calais. But based on this Administration's past behavior, such as the leaked bin Laden raid details, chances are most of this really is the war plan.

Which makes us wonder why the Administration even bothers to pursue the likes of Edward Snowden when it is giving away its plan of attack to anyone in Damascus with an Internet connection. The answer, it seems, is that the attack in Syria isn't really about damaging the Bashar Assad regime's capacity to murder its own people, much less about ending the Assad regime for good.

"I want to make clear that the options that we are considering are not about regime change," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. Translation: We're not coming for you, Bashar, so don't worry. And by the way, you might want to fly those attack choppers off base, at least until next week.

So what is the purpose of a U.S. attack? Mr. Carney elaborated that it's "about responding to clear violation of an international standard that prohibits the use of chemical weapons." He added that the U.S. had a national security interest that Assad's use of chemical weapons "not go unanswered." This is another way of saying that the attacks are primarily about making a political statement, and vindicating President Obama's ill-considered promise of "consequences," rather than materially degrading Assad's ability to continue to wage war against his own people.

It should go without saying that the principal purpose of a military strike is to have a military effect. Political statements can always be delivered politically, and U.S. airmen should not be put in harm's way to deliver what amounts to an extremely loud diplomatic demarche. That's especially so with a "do something" strike that is, in fact, deliberately calibrated to do very little.

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/28/california-tax-exempt-boy-scouts/

Lara told reporters earlier this month that the Boy Scouts' decision was not good enough for him, and continued to push the bill.

Which is not surprising to someone who knows libs. This isn't about ending discrimination. It's about any excuse for the pervy hand of government to reach in and touch anything it can. The scouts could go out flaming with pride parades 24/7 and bureaucrats still wouldn't be happy. It's part of their totalitarian nature.

“California does not tolerate discrimination and we certainly shouldn’t pay for it,”

Which is bull because little Bradley would get a free taxpayer-funded genital mutilation, while the state bans the far more sane option of therapy for peoples' problems. "Not squeezing confiscatory taxes out of them groups we don't like" is not equal to "paying for it." But again, not surprising under the mindset of a totalitarian: they assume all money belongs to the government and if you get a penny of your own, you're supposed to be thankful for the elitists who allowed you to have their money.

I figure California's blown through all its money and needs to take even more from others, by any means.

Now here's something

www.politico.com/story/2013/08/nypd-designates-mosques-as-terrorism-organizations-95985.html?hp=l16

NYPD designates mosques as terrorism organizations

Whoa whoa whoa, calling the scouts terrorists might fly, but doing that for people who actually inspire terrorists is just going too far

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579040983460563334.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Staged hate crimes

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/27/spokane_police_delbert_shorty_belton_should_ve_just_accepted_the_whoop_ass

Spokane Police: Delbert "Shorty" Belton Should've Just Accepted the Whoop Ass

CALLER: I called because I read this morning that the Spokane police chief said that "Shorty" Delbert Belton, the 88-year-old World War II veteran who was killed, beaten to death last week.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: It was really his fault, they say. They're blaming Shorty! They said... I've gotta read you this quote 'cause I'm so angry about this. "Our information is that the individual fought back and that may have made this, you know, a worse situation." So they're blaming the victim. Now, Trayvon Martin? Oh, no! Oh, no. But Shorty Delton? Yes, yes, he shouldn't have fought back. It was his fault. He enraged these teens by fighting back.

RUSH: Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. I've seen that a lot in rape cases, you know, where the women end up getting blamed because, "They resisted. They shoulda just taken it and they'd been okay." You know, you let that excuse be offered in a rape and you look what they call you.

CALLER: Oh-ho-ho-ho! You let that excuse be offered George Zimmerman protecting himself and find out what happens.

RUSH: Well, exactly.

RUSH: Where does this come from, though? Where is this taught that if something bad happens, just let it go? It can never be the perp's fault, see. There's always gotta be an explanation.

CALLER: Unless the perp is George Zimmerman, Rush. Then it's the perp's fault. If George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, then it's the perp's fault.

RUSH: Are you saying that there's a racial component to this, Kate?

CALLER: Oh, God forbid. God forgive me. Am I saying that to 20 million people? Yes, I am.

A bunch of stuff from Rush on the hypocrisy of Obama interventions. No one holds him to the Bush standard, or anything close to it.

SPOILER: Click to show

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/27/the_race_to_blur_obama_s_red_line

didn't Nancy Pelosi and her Botox travel to Syria in 2007 in spite of objections from the Bush administration and assure us that the road to Damascus is the road to peace? She did do that. I mean, all of these leftists, all these Democrats have told us what a great "reformer" Bashar al-Assad is. The Smartest Woman in the World, Hillary Clinton, assured us just two years ago that Bashar al-Assad is a reformer.

The current secretary of state, the haughty John Kerry (who, by the way, once served in Vietnam) referred to Bashar al-Assad -- in the past, anyway -- as his "dear friend." So Pelosi, Hillary, Kerry have all sung Bashar al-Assad's praises within the past two years. He's a reformer, great guy, the road to the peace goes through Damascus. So why should we think now that such a fine guy is lying?..."Well, we don't really know, Rush, because the UN weapons inspectors haven't been allowed in and when they are allowed in they probably won't be allowed out." (interruption) Well, I know. It is a dilemma, because leftists admire dictators. They do, folks. I mean, I know it sounds extreme. It's the kind of like that scares 24-year-old women to say that. But take a look.

Name your favorite Hollywood actor or actress, and they love going to Cuba to see Castro. They love going to Venezuela to see Hugo Chavez. People always wonder, "Why? What in the world do they see in these dictators?" It's power. They have a jealousy or lust, admiration for the all-encompassing power. Bashar al-Assad's a dictator...In the last two or three years everybody here who's claimed he used chemical weapons have sung his praises. What are we to believe?

Now, Bashar al-Assad might have used chemical weapons; our guys said he was a great guy two years ago! It still boils down to the real problem here -- and I'm only being the slightest bit cynical, just the slightest bit. The real problem is not what Bashar al-Assad's doing; it's how are the media and the Democrats going to handle Obama's red line gaffe? 'Cause if we do do anything...

Here Obama says, "If they do chemical weapons -- if they do X, Y, Z, whatever -- that's a red line. They cross that red line, and they're not gonna do it." Well, they've crossed it. You think the mullahs in Iran are watching this? Do you think the Muslim Brotherhood's watching this? You know damn well they are. We sit here and laugh about it. That's a powder keg over there. It's a powder keg. The reporting on it is utterly irresponsible. It's all about whether it's gonna have a pro or con impact on Obama!

Now, let me give you an idea what I'm talking about here with this red line and the media and Obama's allies doing everything they can to cover up for that gaffe. ABC is hilarious in their efforts here. In the middle of the their reports on this they say, "But what Obama said was a little less clear." This is how they're trying to water it down and make it sound like Obama did not commit to anything.

So what Obama said was a little less clear, and then they quote Obama, who starts off by saying that he means to be "clear," and as he always does. "We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation." That's a red line. He said it...Now, the gray area there is translating what "a whole bunch" means. That's where they're gonna play games here. "Well, we said if we saw 'a whole bunch' of these weapons."

So he could fire two or three chemical weapons and Obama would say, "That's not a whole bunch of. That's a few!" So after Obama says this... Let me read this to you again. It's the Obama quote. "We have been very clear to the Assad regime," and what that means is they got on the phone. They had somebody tell him, probably Kerry and maybe Hillary -- and granted, if you're Assad you're quaking in your boots when you hear from either of them.

It was "unclear what the consequences of crossing that red line would be." Now, how can we be sure that Obama isn't trying to get us into yet another war? I mean, we're in two. We're in Afghanistan; we've got the tail end of Iraq going on. And, remember, Obama needs to distract people from his domestic agenda falling apart -- well, falling apart from our perspective. From his perspective, it's right on schedule.

But he still needs people distracted from it. People don't like what's happening. They don't yet associate Obama with it. You know that drill. But even, so Obama doesn't want to run the risk that at some point people are going to associate what's happening with him, so just keep people distracted. It's exactly what he accused Bush of doing. You know, he made a speech in 2002 when he was a state senator, Obama did.

PLANTE: There is no longer any debate inside the administration about a military response to Syria. The only question now is when it will happen. President Obama has ordered preparation of a legal brief supporting military action without United Nations sanction.

RUSH: Ooh! So they're getting ready to light it up, getting ready to light it up, just exactly what Bush was reamed for by Obama himself back in 2002...You know, when you have a Democrat in office, the UN disappears. When you have a Democrat in office, the UN doesn't matter. To hell with Congress, too! You have a Democrat in office? To hell with Congress and to hell with the UN! We don't have to send in Hans Blix. You remember this guy, the weapons inspector?

Let's go back, by the way. This is John Kerry, September 6, 2014, Senator Kerry in Racine, Wisconsin, as presidential candidate at a campaign event speaking to labor union members.

KERRY: It all comes down to one letter: W. George W. Bush -- and the W stands for "wrong." It was wrong to rush to war without a plan to win the peace, and it was wrong not to build an international coalition of our allies so that Americans aren't carrying 90% of the casualties and 90% of the costs.

RUSH: And there is no coalition, there is no United Nations, there is no Hans Blix, there is no nothing. There's just Kerry saying that whatever's going on over is an indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children. They're innocent bystanders is a moral obscenity. Chemical weapons are being used! Well, Saddam Hussein did all of this. But because George W. Bush sought to correct it, we had to have lies, distortions.

You know what? When Bush went into Iraq... I don't even know what good this is gonna do to remind you. It isn't gonna change anybody's mind. There was a congressional resolution of force passed. And if you remember, the Democrats opposed the first one. This is leading into the 2002 midterms. The Wellstone memorial. The Democrats, they thought they had everybody convinced that Bush was illegitimate because of the Florida recount and the aftermath; the Supreme Court decision, which gave the victory to Bush.

It didn't give the victory to him, though. It stopped the recount because it was fraud. So, when the Democrats figured out that everybody was lining up behind Bush, they demanded a revote of the resolution of force authorization so that they could vote "yes" on it. It was one of the most shameless things. They voted "no" the first time, and then they said, "Things have changed so dramatically, and the situation on the ground in Iraq is such that we need to revote on the authorization of force resolution," and they got it.

Bush said, "Okay, fine. You want to vote again, go ahead," and they all voted for it. And that's what made every ensuing attack on this Iraqi operation ring hollow to me because these guys, these Democrats had all voted for it. Well, there is no use-of-force authorization here. There is no UN. There is no coalition. There's no nothing that they demanded of Bush. There's no Congress involved. There's no UN. They're just heading in. A least that's the indication, because they alone have the moral authority.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/27/democrat_hypocrisy_on_syria_and_iraq

The thing about this, the Syria argument, is I made the point earlier in sound bites that Obama and Kerry and all these Democrats are a bunch of hypocrites. Back in 2002, they were all accusing Bush of going into Iraq as a distraction because the recession was occurring and the economy was not that good and coming out of 9/11, and they were trying to paint the picture of Bush as an incompetent buffoon.

He was a stupid, dangerous, reckless cowboy. They were claiming that Bush didn't have any idea what he was doing. He was very, very dangerous. What was really happening back then in 2002 was that Bush did everything these guys are not doing in Syria. He went to the UN, he got a coalition, he put together partners. He went to Congress and got a use-of-force authorization. None of that has happened here. None of it!

In fact, in 2002, there were two use-of-force authorizations, because the first one the Democrats didn't all vote the "right" way on it. Public sentiment in 2002 was, by a vast majority, in favor of retaliating for 9/11. Iraq didn't start 'til 2003, but Bush was selling it in speech after speech, and the American public supported it. Well, the Democrats thought they were gonna win the 2002 midterms by opposing it all.

They found out they were on the wrong side. The Wellstone memorial backfired on 'em, and they lost big in the 2002 midterms, and they wanted a do-over on the use-of-force authorization, and they got it so that they could be on record as being on the same side as the American people. Even after that, it didn't take long before they were trying to destroy Bush on lying to them and misleading them, not just about weapons of mass destruction, but on everything.

They were ticked off about the Florida aftermath, the recount from the 2000 election. They were upset at the Supreme Court for stopping the recount. They thought Gore should have been president. They were just livid. I mean, they were so mad, they were insane to one degree or another -- and their hatred for Bush was boundless. But yet they still wanted to be on the right side of that use-of-force authorization.

So Bush gave 'em a do-over. He gave 'em a second vote and they voted for it and it was after that they then, including Hillary, all started acting like they didn't sign it or that they were lied to and that Bush didn't tell with he was gonna do any of this. It was just amazing, and now they are at least making noise about going into Syria because of Assad's crossed the red line here with chemical weapons.

There's no coalition. There's no involvement of Congress. There's none of the stuff they demanded of Bush. There's none of the stuff that Bush did on his own leading into Iraq. So I've been pointing out the hypocrisy.

The Iranians are threatening the Israelis. I don't think we have any adults in the room. Samantha Power at the UN wherever she is. This is a bad joke at a really dangerous time. And still, while all this is going on, the focus of attention on the domestic side is whatever it takes to protect Obama, whatever it takes to advance Obama, whatever it takes to make sure whatever happens doesn't hurt Obama.

To hell with what happens to people in Syria. The hell with what happens to people in Egypt and Libya. To hell with what happens to our ambassadors! To hell with what happens to the American people. We've got to make sure that it doesn't hurt Obama.

[Tails82]

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/28/Labor-Participation-Rate-Hits-34-Year-Low

Labor Participation Rate Hits 34-Year Low

A record 8,733,461 people now receive disability benefits, a figure greater than the population of New York City.

Today, nearly 90 million Americans are no longer in the labor force.

How many laws is Obama ignoring or pulling out of his butt today?

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/29/Obama-Uses-Executive-Actions-To-Bypass-Congress-Enact-More-Gun-Control

washingtonexaminer.com/kathleen-sebelius-extends-medicare-advantage-to-same-sex-couples/article/2534900

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/28/another_obamacare_delay

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/29/irs-issues-tax-rules-for-married-gay-couples/?test=latestnews

washingtonexaminer.com/justice-department-wont-sue-states-over-pro-pot-laws/article/2534911

I don't know whether Obama or Assad runs the country, with the rate of violations as it is, it's hard to tell the difference between third world gutter trash leaders.

Meanwhile who deserves the so-called Justice Department's attention? Blacks, apparently. Too much high-quality education going on with those voucher programs. Don't like all those uppity darkies getting off the inner city plantation.

And who really deserves to get benefits? Not victims of terrorism, apparently:

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324009304579040822709807800.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

On the heels of Nidal Hasan's death sentence for the Fort Hood massacre, Texas lawmakers plan to introduce new legislation that would formally label the 2009 attack as terrorism and make victims eligible for additional benefits.

Lawmakers, as well as Fort Hood victims and their families, are renewing the years-long push now that Hasan has been found guilty in the deaths of 13 people and received his sentence...The new legislation, called the "Honoring the Fort Hood Heroes Act," would do that by labeling the attack as terrorism, giving victims the same status as that given to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack and making them eligible for the Purple Heart.

The administration has so far dealt with the shooting in the context of "workplace violence," a move that lawmakers have sharply challenged.

Staff Sgt. Shawn Manning, who was shot six times during the attack, told Fox News that while he's "relieved" that a "portion" of the ordeal is over in the wake of Hasan's sentence, he and his fellow soldiers are still "fighting the government and the Army to call this an act of terrorism."

"It's like a slap in the face," he said.

But whatever, screw the heros, the government only awards people who march in pride parades or rack up the sexual assault figures.

lol watch Obama squirm:

washingtonexaminer.com/white-house-discounts-comparisons-to-iraq-lead-up/article/2534903

White House discounts comparisons to Iraq lead-up

"Stop iiit! I'm different!"

The White House tried to fend off a mini press rebellion Thursday by decrying any comparisons between the rush to strike Syria with the lead-up to the Iraq war, which was opposed vigorously by President Obama, who was especially critical of the intelligence claims used to justify the invasion.

Earnest tried to push back by pointing out the the AP report was based on anonymous sources and was less credible because of it.

“You’ve got a handful of anonymous individuals who are quoted in that story,” he said. “And I have on-the-record statements from the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, an on the record-statement from the vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. I have on-the-record statements from the president of the United States, the vice president, the secretary of state...”

The press quickly pounced on the comment, pointing out that administration officials, including Earnest, frequently talk to reporters on an anonymous basis.

“You guys talk to us anonymously all the time and expect us to believe it’s credible,” AP reporter Julie Pace said, a comment that drew knowing laughter and words of affirmation from many gathered for the briefing.

More broadly, Earnest discounted any parallels to intelligence assessments before the Iraq invasion, arguing “there are very important differences” between the two situations.

Obama and top administration officials have made it clear that any military action in Syria is not designed to topple President Bashar Assad or even change the dynamics of the two-and-a-half-year civil war.

Then why are we doing it...

www.politico.com/story/2013/08/media-skepticism-iraq-syria-96051.html?hp=t3_3

After Iraq, media skepticism on Syria

On Thursday, The New York Times editorial board, which had initially endorsed a limited strike, said the Obama administration “has yet to make a convincing legal or strategic case for military action against Syria.” The Washington Post editorial page likewise called on Obama to consult Congress before ordering a military strike and warned, “Unless linked to a broader strategy for weakening the Assad regime — and forcing it either out of power or into real negotiations — the use of force might prove worse than useless.”

www.politico.com/story/2013/08/syria-congress-obama-96053.html?hp=t2_3

President Barack Obama’s “robust” consultations with Congress about Syria aren’t cutting it on Capitol Hill.

Even as a select set of high-ranking lawmakers are set to jump on a 6 p.m. conference call with top administration officials Thursday night, a growing and bipartisan group of rank-and-file lawmakers were demanding that Obama seek authorization before launching punitive strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Like Bush did...but I dunno if the Magic Negro has to play by the same rules.

“It hasn’t been communicated what the strategy is — what’s the end-state that any U.S. involvement is seeking,” said Rep. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), a 29-year Army veteran who taught a class about the presidency at West Point. “What’s the strategy to accomplish that end-state? What would be the objectives — including military objectives — that support that strategy and what would a campaign look like to pursue those objectives?

I think Obama calls it "leading from his behind" or something like that. Where you show up to war a few months late, declare victory after a few bombs, and then spend the rest of the term bowing and apologizing to Assad.

Or maybe the army will be sent in for a day to have a pride rally in uniform, wave a couple "social justice" banners and pull out. That'll really show them.

A bipartisan letter, spearheaded by Republican Scott Rigell of Virginia, demands that Obama seek congressional authorization before taking action. It has the signatures of 140 members...Lawmakers are beginning to apply pressure to tweak the War Powers Act — the law that governs the president’s ability to go to war. Gibson said he was swapping emails with the House Republican leadership Thursday morning about bringing up his War Powers Act Reform bill, which would require the president to seek authorization from Congress for military action more frequently.

Although lawmakers are fanned across the country, the impending Syrian crisis has reignited Congress’s desire to assert its power in matters of war.

But there are still some good old Obama cheerleaders:

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/28/democrats_why_should_obama_have_to_deal_with_an_illegitimate_gop_congress

Democrats: Why Should Obama Have to Deal with an Illegitimate GOP Congress?

Mary Anne Marsh is from Boston. She's "a Democratic consultant whose clients have included the late Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, our current secretary of state."

She showed up, as every Democrat on every cable TV show does, "Armed with the latest Democratic talking points, she dismissed any need for Obama to consult with what she dismissed as 'a special Congress.' Here's her full quote: "There is a special Congress that we’re dealing with right now that has the lowest popularity rating in history and Republicans who overwhelmingly would oppose taking any action. The president of the United States cannot be handcuffed by the same Republicans that are holding the rest of the country hostage on every other issue. That is wrong."

She's basically saying: "When we want to do what we want to do, there may as well not be a Congress. We don't have to deal with 'em."

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/28/kentucky-kids-first-lady-your-food-tastes-vomit/

Kentucky kids to first lady Michelle Obama: Your food ‘tastes like vomit’

[Tails82]

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579044962264410266.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Show of Farce

Obama's Syria approach defies satire.

Andy Borowitz, resident satirist at The New Yorker, summed it up with the headline "Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective." Here's his pretend Obama quote: "Let me be clear. Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave."

See if you can guess which satirist produced this fake quote:

"One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity 'just muscular enough not to get mocked' but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia."

No doubt most of you recognize a trick question: That is a passage from a Los Angeles Times news report. To be sure, as a tactical matter one always wishes any threat or threatening action to be "muscular enough not to be mocked." Sometimes that's all it takes to induce an adversary to back down. But a bluff only works when backed by a credible threat. The Times source's quote amounts to an announcement that any military action will be purely symbolic. Obama might as well say "Bashar, don't call my bluff."

Indications are that the Obama administration's response will be to drop a few bombs, break some stuff, and maybe kill a few bystanders. That comes nowhere near being a just punishment for the crimes alleged.

Nor does it seem likely to prove an effective deterrent. Other dictators will see that they can use chemical weapons without endangering their survival (in both senses of the word). Assad will have tested the resolve of "the world" and found it wanting: Even after using chemical weapons, he will remain in power, with no reason to expect any external response to any further atrocity that doesn't involve chemical weapons.

One similarity between the Syria effort and the Iraq one is that the U.S. is having trouble enlisting the support of its allies. Notwithstanding Obama's promises to "restore our moral standing," he couldn't even get the British on board...

www.politico.com/story/2013/08/rand-paul-syria-objective-is-stalemate-96075.html?hp=r1

Rand Paul: Syria ‘objective is stalemate’

Sen. Rand Paul on Friday said he thinks the Obama administration’s only objective in Syria is “stalemate” and he does not support “sending my son, your son or anyone else’s son to fight if your goal or objective is stalemate.”

“I think we have no strategic objective and I don’t think it’ll change the course of the war,” the Kentucky Republican told Fox News. “In fact, one of the things that troubles me is that we’ve already announced in advance well, it’s not going to be too much of an attack, it’s not going to last too long and we’re not for regime change.”

Taking military action “sounds to me like saving face” for Obama, Paul said Friday.

“It sounds to me like saving face because he’s made a promise so he’s going to follow through with his promise,” he said on “Fox & Friends.” “That’s why you ought to be very careful of drawing lines in the sand or red lines because now he feels that he looks weak to both his colleagues in the United States as well as his international colleagues. But I don’t think that’s enough reason to go to war.”

“When you go to war, Congress must authorize this,” Paul said. “Both the president and the vice president, once upon a time, before they became in power, understood this.”

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/30/america_s_chickens_come_home_to_roost_assad_s_kid_taunts_obama_on_facebook

Bashar Assad's kid (if this doesn't say it all)...has posted on Facebook a taunt of our president, daring him to attack. An 11-year-old kid! Now, as you read this, you do have to wonder whether the 11-year-old kid actually wrote it, but it doesn't matter. It has been posted in his name, and the story's in the New York Times.

"Facebook Post Said to Be by Assad’s Son Dares Americans to Attack -- 'Hafez Assad: 12 hours we waited... 48 hours, they said, we're waiting... [T]hey may have said the best army in the world, maybe the best airplanes, ships, tanks than ours, but soldiers? No one has soldiers like the ones we do in Syria[;] if you ask me what rank would I rank American 'soldiers,' I wouldn't rank 'em in the worst because the worst are soldiers[.]

"ut America doesn't have soldiers, what it has is some cowards with new technology will claim themselves liberators..."

So now Obama's gotta go it alone. What do we have, the French? The French are with us at least in spirit. The Germans have said no. The irony here is delectable, but, folks, I just want to remind you that all during the 2008 presidential campaign all we heard from the media and the Democrats was how the nation was despised.

America was no longer respected because George Bush the cowboy had ruined our reputation. George Bush had made everybody hate us. George Bush is the guy that had a coalition of 50 or more nations to go into Iraq. Obama can't even put together two...Here we have this Nobel Peace Prize winner, all of this smoke and mirrors. It was all a mirage.

Everything about Obama was phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock 'n' roll. Here he is now becoming obvious and apparent... (interruption) Yeah? The program observer has a question. What's the question? (interruption) "What is President Obama's foreign policy?" I don't know. It depends on the issue. It's issue by issue. (interruption) Yeah, it's kind of like the law. If he likes it, he obeys it. If he doesn't, he does an executive order.

So foreign policy, it's missile by missile, coup by coup. (interruption) No, I don't. I don't think there is a doctrine. For example, the Bush foreign policy could be clearly defined. Is this what you're getting at? The Bush foreign policy could be clearly defined. The Clinton foreign policy could be clearly defined, and that is "distract from Monica." The Obama foreign policy? I mean, if I had to say anything, the Obama foreign policy has been rooted in...

I don't want say apologizing for America, but downsizing America's role in the world. If there's been an Obama foreign policy, it's been to deemphasize the US role in the world, particularly in defending freedom and liberty. Just like there is a decline in the US economy, there is a decline in the country overall. So is there a decline in American foreign policy? We have general incompetence running it.

After telling the world that Bush didn't know what he was doing, after telling the world that Bush was a near criminal, after telling the world that Bush was so incompetent, the cowboy of the world, and everybody hated us, and Obama was gonna make us loved and respected and all of that?

The guy can't even put together a three-country coalition for a one-day cruise missile strike on a desert in Syria. This is called comeuppance, and there's a part of me that is delighting in it, and there's another part of me that says, "This is just not good for the United States of America," and then you've got ostensibly an 11-year-old kid taunting the president of the United States in the New York Times, as they republish a Facebook post.

www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/08/30/the_audacity_of_the_haughty

I just watched Kerry speak...He may be saying the truth, but this guy has a more convincing tone when he talks about the undeniable proof of mankind global warming. It's just pathetic. It's just... This bunch is just embarrassing. These are the same people who don't give a rat's rear end when Saddam was doing this.

They're the same people who can't be moved to do anything when four Americans are dead in Benghazi. But these are the people led by John Kerry, who called our military members terrorists and rapists. John Kerry accused Marines of busting down the doors of Iraqis in their homes, terrorizing their children, raping the women -- accepting as true any allegation made against the military in Iraq simply out of partisanship and opposition to George W. Bush...They were calling Bush a liar and joining with every one of his fellow Democrats and calling David Petraeus and anybody else that had anything to do with the United States effort in Iraq a liar.

These were the people who were the smartest people in the world. These were the people who could speak French and therefore had the ability to relate to Europeans. These were the people who, in fact, were Europeans in their roots! These were the people, the chosen ones! These were the best and the brightest. These are the people that said, "George W. Bush better get a coalition, he better go to the UN, he better go to Congress!"

These are the people that are not going to the UN, they can't put together a coalition, and are purposely ignoring Congress. These people are an embarrassment. I'm telling you, they really are to me. I know this is not the way to persuade the low-information crowd. I'm sorry, that's not what I'm doing. I am not engaging in the art of persuasion here. I'm just venting. This guy is an absolute... He's haughty, thinks he's the smartest guy.

This guy threw his fake medals over the fence at the White House, told lies about what our troops did in Vietnam, accepted lies and spread lies about our military in Iraq (I don't forget this stuff) all to advance a political agenda, all to oppose the political agenda of a Republican president. These people were trying to secure defeat in Iraq and hang that around the neck of George W. Bush. I remember telling people that on this program in 2007/2008.

I said, "If the Democrats win in 2008, they're not pulling out of Iraq. We're not gonna lose wars while they're in the White House. It isn't gonna happen. They're gonna become the biggest hawks on earth," and that's what's happened. But when they're out of power, they're perfectly fine with this nation being humiliated. They're perfectly fine with the American military losing. They're perfectly fine with it, as long as they can get away with blaming the Republicans for it. Well, this guy -- who has, in my book, zero credibility -- is still mouthing off about all these atrocities.

The only good thing that I can say about this is at least he's not criticizing this country, which is a new step for him.

Is it beneath the president of the United States to go on television to the American people and justify military action? I guess so, because remember Obama cannot appear to be governing. This cannot appear to be Obama's mission. It's beneath Obama to justify the attack, beneath Obama to persuade the American public and the world? You know, a real leader wouldn't send some long-faced secretary of state out there.

washingtonexaminer.com/nancy-pelosi-obamas-top-hawk-the-road-to-damascus-is-the-road-to-war/article/2534944

Pelosi flip flops

blog.heritage.org/2013/08/30/obama-grants-amnesty-to-illegal-immigrants-without-congress/

Obama Grants Amnesty to Illegal Immigrants Without Congress

[Tails82]

So Obama throws it up to Congress. It's a smart move, I'd say. If Obama wants to back out, he'll send the decision to them and then blame them for obstruction. If Congress approves and it remains unpopular, he'll blame them for the war. Sortof like passing the decision off to someone else at this point.

www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/09/01/Obama-Syria-Strategy

Obama's 'New' Syria Strategy: Blame Congress

President Barack Obama has no foreign policy or military strategy on Syria. So he has reverted to a successful domestic policy strategy: blame Congress. His last-minute decision to seek Congressional approval is a win-win politically: if the vote fails, he has an excuse for inaction on his "red line," and if the vote passes he will merely share the blame for whatever goes wrong in the attack.

Obama's hope is that the public will forget that he reversed every single anti-Bush position that propelled him to power over Hillary Clinton and then John McCain in 2008: the opposition to "dumb war," the rejection of unilateral action, the insistence on UN approval, the skepticism of WMD intelligence, and the adamant definition of the limits of presidential war powers. It is hard to remember a more striking example of hypocrisy in American history.

In any event, the defeat of David Cameron's war proposal in Britain last week makes it likely that Congress will vote down Obama's strike (perhaps even in the Senate, though a split between the two houses would suit Obama perfectly). The UK Parliament might have agreed had Obama sought, and won, congressional approval first. But defeat now begets defeat. Such is the cost of "leading from behind," which is now a euphemism for surrender, just as "tough diplomacy" on Iran fast became a euphemism for appeasement.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324009304579047431684838844.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Leading From Behind Congress

It's hard not to see this as primarily a bid for political cover, a view reinforced when the President's political consigliere David Axelrod taunted on Twitter that "Congress is now the dog that caught the car." Mr. Obama can read the polls, which show that most of the public opposes intervention in Syria. Around the world he has so far mobilized mainly a coalition of the unwilling, with even the British Parliament refusing to follow his lead...But what does anyone expect given Mr. Obama's foreign-policy leadership? Since he began running for President, Mr. Obama has told Americans that he wants to retreat from the Middle East, that the U.S. has little strategic interest there, that any differences with our enemies can be settled with his personal diplomacy, that our priority must be "nation-building at home," and that "the tide of war is receding." For two-and-a-half years, he has also said the U.S. has no stake in Syria.

The real political surprise, not to say miracle, is that after all of this so many Americans still support military action in response to Syria's use of chemical weapons—50% in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC poll. Despite his best efforts, Mr. Obama hasn't turned Americans into isolationists.

A defeat in Congress would signal to Bashar Assad and the world's other thugs that the U.S. has retired as the enforcer of any kind of world order...The world's rogues would be further emboldened and look for more weaknesses to exploit. Iran would conclude it can march to a nuclear weapon with impunity. Israel, Japan, the Gulf states and other American friends would have to recalculate their reliance on U.S. power and will.

These are the stakes that Mr. Obama has so recklessly put before Congress. His mishandling of Syria has been so extreme that we can't help but wonder if he really wants to lose this vote. Then he would have an excuse for further cutting defense and withdrawing America even more from world leadership. We will give him the benefit of the doubt, but only because incompetence and narrow political self-interest are more obvious explanations for his behavior.

The reason to...authorize the use of force is not to save this President from embarrassment. It is to rescue American credibility and strategic interests from this most feckless of Presidents.

www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2013/09/kristol-republicans-will-support-obama-171587.html?hp=r1

Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, predicts Republicans will back President Barack Obama's call for military action in Syria.

"I think the Republican Party will step up and do the right thing and support the president against a chemical-weapons-using, terror-sponsoring, Iran-backed dictator," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press.".

Kristol added that he wished the president had taken in action in Syria in 2011 or 2012 but said that he made the right decision in going to Congress to authorize military force. He said that the authorization of action for the first Gulf War is a good example for this, noting, however that then-Sen. John Kerry voted against it.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579045242540964528.html

If John Kerry had talked like this in 2004, he would have been President. We're referring to his press conference Friday when the Secretary of State laid out the Obama Administration's most complete case so far that Syria has used chemical weapons and why the world must respond.

"If we choose to live in a world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity, even after the United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will," Mr. Kerry declared.

George W. Bush and Tony Blair couldn't have said it better, though Mr. Kerry still couldn't resist taking a dig at Iraq. The Secretary was trying to distinguish his WMD evidence from that on Iraq, as if he also hadn't found the Iraq evidence compelling as a Senator before that war. The reality is that if Mr. Kerry and Democrats hadn't spent so much time trying to make the false case that the Bush Administration had cooked intelligence in order to start a war, perhaps he wouldn't be having such a hard time persuading a skeptical American public now.

On the one hand, Mr. Kerry says the U.S. must respond to Assad's use of chemical weapons or risk a world in which every rogue thinks he can use them. A U.S. response, Mr. Kerry said, is about whether Iran "will now feel emboldened in the absence of action to obtain nuclear weapons. It is about Hezbollah, and North Korea, and every other terrorist group or dictator that might ever again contemplate the use of weapons of mass destruction." Hear, hear.

Yet on the other hand, Mr. Obama is promising only a pinprick bombing attack that might do very little to punish Assad, much less degrade his capacity to continue waging war against his own citizens. If the stakes are as high as Mr. Kerry claims, and the goal of an attack is deterrence against the future use of WMD, the punishment must be serious enough to truly deter.

www.ncregister.com/daily-news/examining-the-cult-of-antihumanism/

Heard about this book, maybe I should add it to the list

If people are the problem, what is the solution? The answer in more or less explicit terms is: fewer of them. And the suppressed premise is: fewer of the poor ones, the ignorant ones, the dark-skinned ones.

In some parts of the world, it is “fewer of the Christian ones.” Three generations ago, in one part of the world, it was “fewer of the Jewish ones.”

Where do attitudes like this come from? Where do such attitudes lead? Answering those questions is the substance of Zubrin’s book.

The first half examines the intellectual origins of antihumanism... In 1798, Thomas Malthus said resources were finite, and that if poor people had too many babies, mass starvation would be the result.

In 1859, Charles Darwin said that since it is the fittest who survive, compassion toward the unfortunate is not merely useless, but morally wrong, because compassion interferes with the course of nature.

The next step was to believe that it is the state’s duty to assist nature, and advance the “superior stock”. By the late 19th century, the avant-garde in England thoroughly embraced eugenics —along with the avant-garde in the United States, who crafted miscegenation and immigration laws accordingly.

Zubrin documents how eugenics linked to environmentalism. In 1913, the neo-pagan tract, Man and Earth, which became the bible of the continental back-to-nature youth movement, “laid out in full the conservationist case against humanity, technological progress, industrial development, and advanced agriculture that has played a central role in the environmental movement ever since.”

Today, declares Zubrin, “Humanity…stands at a crossroads, facing a choice between two very different visions of the future. On one side stands antihumanism, which, disregarding its repeated prior refutations, continues to postulate a world of limited supplies…. On the other side stand those who believe in the power of unfettered creativity to invent unbounded resources, and so, rather than regret human freedom, insist upon it.”

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324165204579026631593290784.html

'The Bet' by Paul Sabin

Paul Ehrlich predicted an imminent population catastrophe—Julian Simon wagered he was wrong.

It is difficult to comprehend the hysteria about overpopulation that once gripped America. In 1965, the New Republic, one of America's foremost journals of public affairs, wrote that "world population has passed food supply. The famine has started." The magazine was so convinced of the coming cataclysm that it proclaimed world hunger to be the "single most important fact in the final third of the 20th century." This period, in which large portions of America's intellectual and political elites took leave of their senses and predicted something like the literal end of civilization, is the subject of Paul Sabin's brief, but valuable, book "The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble Over Earth's Future."

Mr. Ehrlich, a biologist specializing in butterflies, became famous in the 1970s after publishing "The Population Bomb" (1968), in which he updated the 19th-century projections of Thomas Malthus—people were overbreeding, the supply of food and resources couldn't possibly keep up—and dialed the calamity to 11. Within a few short years, hundreds of millions of people would starve to death as civilization unraveled. Or so predicted Mr. Ehrlich. "The Population Bomb" was reprinted 22 times in the first three years alone, and its author would appear as Johnny Carson's guest on "The Tonight Show" at least 20 times, becoming a national figure and an influential player in Democratic politics. Mr. Ehrlich's ideas attracted a remarkable number of passionate adherents. They also attracted the scornful criticism of a little-known economist named Julian Simon.

So in 1980 Simon made Mr. Ehrlich a bet. If Mr. Ehrlich's predictions about overpopulation and the depletion of resources were correct, Simon said, then over the next decade the prices of commodities would rise as they became more scarce. Simon contended that, because markets spur innovation and create efficiencies, commodity prices would fall. He proposed that each party put up $1,000 to purchase a basket of five commodities. If the prices of these went down, Mr. Ehrlich would pay Simon the difference between the 1980 and 1990 prices. If the prices went up, Simon would pay. This meant that Mr. Ehrlich's exposure was limited while Simon's was theoretically infinite.

Simon even allowed Mr. Ehrlich to rig the terms of the bet in his favor: Mr. Ehrlich was allowed to select the five commodities that would be the yardstick. Consulting two colleagues, John Holdren and John Harte, Mr. Ehrlich chose chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten, each of which his team supposed was especially likely to become scarce. As they settled on their terms, Mr. Sabin notes, Messrs. Ehrlich, Holdren and Harte "felt confident that they would prevail."

They didn't. In October 1990, Mr. Ehrlich mailed a check for $576.07 to Simon. Mr. Sabin diplomatically reports that "there was no note." Although world population had increased by 800 million during the term of the wager, the prices for the five metals had decreased by more than 50%. And they did so for precisely the reasons Simon predicted—technological innovation and conservation spurred on by the market.

Mr. Ehrlich was more than a sore loser. In 1995, he told this paper: "If Simon disappeared from the face of the Earth, that would be great for humanity." (Simon would die in 1998.) This comment wasn't out of character. "The Bet" is filled chockablock with Mr. Ehrlich's outbursts—calling those who disagree with him "idiots," "fools," "morons," "clowns" and worse. His righteous zeal is matched by both his viciousness in disagreement and his utter imperviousness to contrary evidence. For example, he has criticized the scientists behind the historic Green Revolution in agriculture—men like Norman Borlaug, who fed poor people the world over through the creation of scientific farming—as "narrow-minded colleagues who are proposing idiotic panaceas to solve the food problem."

Mr. Ehrlich may have been defeated in the wager, but he has continued to flourish in the public realm. The great mystery left unsolved by "The Bet" is why Paul Ehrlich and his confederates have paid so small a price for their mistakes. And perhaps even been rewarded for them. In 1990, just as Mr. Ehrlich was mailing his check to Simon, the MacArthur Foundation awarded him one of its "genius" grants. And 20 years later his partner in the wager, John Holdren, was appointed by President Obama to be director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

[Tails82]

www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/09/01/Obama-Argues-for-Syria-Intervention-with-Same-Rationale-He-Ignores-on-Iran

Obama Pushes Syria Intervention with Same Argument He Ignores on Iran

washingtonexaminer.com/house-republicans-poised-to-say-no-on-syria/article/2535027

House Republicans are poised to reject President Obama’s resolution to authorize military force against Syria absent the administration convincing a strong majority of typically anti-war Democrats to back the legislation.

“Republicans will expect the president to round up a lot of Democratic votes and show that he’s committed to his own request,” said a GOP operative with relationships in Congress.

Nunes predicted that hardline, anti-war Democrats would join in opposition with skeptical Republicans who might usually be inclined to support military action against Syria to sink Obama’s resolution. Nunes explained that there many Republicans troubled by the broader implications of a Syrian regime that deploys chemical weapons with impunity but opposed to attacking the Middle Eastern dictatorship because they lack confidence in Obama’s military and diplomatic strategy — and distrust his leadership.

“If you want the U.S. military to be involved, there better be a clear objective that involves regime change or containment of the WMD,” said Nunes, who did not attend Sunday’s briefing. “I’ve spent time on this issue, including spending time in the region, and have yet to speak to a military official that said either one of those objectives would be easy.”

washingtonexaminer.com/ted-cruz-abstract-norms-should-not-lead-us-to-war/article/2535021

Ted Cruz: ‘Abstract norms’ should not lead US to war

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, responded to President Obama’s statement on Syria by saying “abstract notions about international norms should never displace U.S. sovereignty to act, or refuse to act, for our national security.”

Cruz applauded Obama for agreeing to seek approval for any strike in Syria, but said that since Obama “did not request an emergency session of congress, that must mean that he agrees there is no imminent threat requiring the commander in chief to act without consulting the representatives of the American people.”

Cruz said the U.S.’s chief concern, if it goes into Syria, should be to make sure that chemical weapons do not fall “into the hands of al Qaeda or other terrorists who might use them against us and our allies.”

Cruz closed by saying “it is now incumbent upon President Obama to make his case and persuade Congress that his plan is necessary, and the best course to preserve our security and protect our liberties. Like the President, I welcome this debate and I agree this is an issue of the highest seriousness that transcends partisan politics.”

Cruz’s statement came on the same day that protests against the war in Syria were held in several cities across the country, including Washington, D.C. Anti-war protesters outnumbered war supporters, and many there had voted for Obama and didn’t expect him to be making a decision about starting another war.

“No I didn’t [expect this from Obama],” one protester told the Washington Examiner. “I’m very disappointed.”

Another protester said he didn’t expect a threat of military action against another country “so quickly,” (five years in?) but that “he’s a politician, you can’t really expect much.”

www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/01/Citing-Obamacare-40-000-Longshoremen-Quit-the-AFL-CIO

Citing Obamacare, 40,000 Longshoremen Quit the AFL-CIO

In what is being reported as a surprise move, the 40,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) announced that they have formally ended their association with the AFL-CIO, one of the nation's largest private sector unions. The Longshoremen citied Obamacare and immigration reform as two important causes of their disaffiliation.

In an August 29 letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, ILWU President Robert McEllrath cited quite a list of grievances as reasons for the disillusion of their affiliation, but prominent among them was the AFL-CIO's support of Obamare.

"We feel the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along," McEllrath wrote in the letter to Trumka.

The Longshoreman leader said, "President Obama ran on a platform that he would not tax medical plans and at the 2009 AFL-CIO Convention, you stated that labor would not stand for a tax on our benefits." But, regardless of that promise, the President has pushed for just such a tax and Trumka and the AFL-CIO bowed to political pressure lining up behind Obama's tax on those plans.

One ILWU committeeman was even harsher on both the AFL-CIO and the President. ILWU Coast Committeeman Leal Sundet criticized the AFL-CIO telling LaborNotes.com that Trumka was marching "in lockstep" with Obama both on the "Cadillac healthcare tax" as well as immigration.

Private sector unions have fallen to an all time low participation rate in the US workforce.

[Tails82]

Totalitarians out against the private sector in Oregon:

www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/03/todd-american-dispatch-christian-bakery-closes-after-lgbt-threats-protests/?test=latestnews

Sweet Cakes By Melissa posted a message on its Facebook page alerting customers that their Gresham, Ore. retail store would be shut down after months of harassment from pro-gay marriage forces.

“Better is a poor man who walks in integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways,” read a posting from Proverbs on the bakery’s Facebook page.

“It’s a sad day for Christian business owners and it’s a sad day for the First Amendment,” owner Aaron Klein told me. “The LGBT attacks are the reason we are shutting down the shop. They have killed our business through mob tactics.”

Klein told me he received messages threatening to kill his family. They hoped his children would die.

The LGBT protestors then turned on other wedding vendors around the community...To make matters worse, the Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries announced last month they had launched a formal discrimination investigation against the Christian family.

In other words, Christians who live and work in Oregon must follow man’s law instead of God’s law. But in a show of benevolence, the state is willing to rehabilitate and reeducate Christian business owners like the Kleins.

Klein said the closing of their retail store was a small price to pay for standing up for their religious beliefs.

“As a man of faith, I am in good spirits,” he said. “I’m happy to be serving the Lord and standing up for what’s right.”

Klein said what’s happened to Sweet Cakes By Melissa should be a warning to other Christians across the nation.

“This is a fight that’s been coming for a while,” he said. “Be prepared to take a stand. Hopefully, the church will wake up and understand that we are under attack right now.”

Just last month, New Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled that two Christian photographers who declined to photograph a same-sex union violated the state’s Human Rights Act. One justice said the photographers were “compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.”

Denver baker Jack Phillips is facing possible jail time for refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

The Colorado Attorney General’s office filed a formal complaint against Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cake Shop. A hearing before the state’s civil rights commission is set for later this month.

In Indianapolis, a family-owned cookie shop faced a discrimination investigation after they refused to make rainbow cookies for National Coming Out Day.

A T-shirt company in Lexington, Ky. found itself at the center of a Human Rights Commission investigation after they refused to make T-shirts for a local gay rights organization.

Klein said it’s becoming clear that Christians do not have the “right to believe what we believe.”

Aaron and Melissa Klein tell me they will continue to bake wedding cakes from their home. He’s already taken a full-time job to pay the bills and feed their five children.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579042830303535934.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Obama's Economy Hits His Voters Hardest

Young people, single women and minorities have fared the worst during the past four years.

Five demographic groups were crucial to his victory: young voters, single women, those with only a high-school diploma or less, blacks and Hispanics.

(aka the uneducated/naive and "I voted for the black guy" folks)

According to the Sentier research, households headed by single women, with and without children present, saw their incomes fall by roughly 7%. Those under age 25 experienced an income decline of 9.6%. Black heads of households saw their income tumble by 10.9%, while Hispanic heads-of-households' income fell 4.5%, slightly more than the national average. The incomes of workers with a high-school diploma or less fell by about 8% (-6.9% for those with less than a high-school diploma and -9.3% for those with only a high-school diploma).

To put that into dollar terms, in the four years between the time the Obama recovery began in June 2009 and June of this year, median black household income fell by just over $4,000, Hispanic households lost $2,000 and female-headed households lost $2,300.

The unemployment numbers show pretty much the same pattern. July's Bureau of Labor Statistics data (the most recent available) show a national unemployment rate of 7.4%. The highest jobless rates by far are for key components of the Obama voter bloc: blacks (12.6%), Hispanics (9.4%), those with less than a high-school diploma (11%) and teens (23.7%).

Keeping people poor and stupid: the Obama way

This is a stunning reversal of the progress for these groups during the expansions of the 1980s and 1990s...Census data reveal that from 1981-2008 the biggest income gains were for black women, 81%; followed by white women, 67%; followed by black men, 31%; and white males at 8%.

Mr. Obama has often contemptuously, and wrongly, branded the quarter-century period of prosperity beginning with the presidency of Ronald Reagan as a "trickle down" era. For many in the groups that Mr. Obama set out to help, a return to the prosperity of that era would be a vast improvement.

What all of this means is that the stimulus-led economic revival that began officially in June 2009—Vice President Joe Biden's famous "summer of recovery"—has only resulted in lower incomes for at least half of Americans, the very ones who were instrumental in electing Mr. Obama twice.

Because I love magic negroes, I'm so 3094313ing racist that's all that matters as I continue to lose money, all I want is a black guy who is articulate and clean (shocking!) to flab his gums and send a thrill up my leg...no homo. Shut up and take what's left of my meal money for your campaign!

Downstaters at work again:

www.nomblog.com/37542

Back in 2011, then-New York Senator Jim Alesi betrayed marriage and his constituents by accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from gay marriage advocates and flipping his position on marriage. But no amount of money can buy the support of voters once you've lost their trust. Sen. Alesi was subsequently driven from his re-election race by NOM's pledge to defeat him, and later claimed that his vote for same-sex marriage was what sunk his political career.

So what is former Sen. Alesi up to these days? New York Gov. Cuomo has just appointed him to the state Unemployment Insurance Appeal Board. According to Albany Watch:

"The longtime lawmaker will make $90,800 annually on top of his pension, which totals $35,231, according to the Empire Center.

Besides being a bribe-taking sellout, you may also remember Mr. Alesi from this lawsuit

Well, he's probably still better than half our current perverts and thieves running downstate...there's your silver lining~

washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-lindsey-graham-obama-has-mismanaged-syrian-crisis/article/2535094

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday accused President Obama of mishandling the Syrian conflict, saying the administration's foot dragging on a response has increased the risk of an al Qaeda takeover of the Middle East country and more violence in the region.

"This is about the most mismanaged situation I've ever seen since World War II when they were trying to control the Nazis," the South Carolina Republican told CNN's "New Day" program.

"This is bizarre. We're going, we're not going, we don't need Congress, yes, we do."

Graham, who long has supported U.S. military intervention in Syria, said the president must "up his game" in developing a convincing response to country's bloody two-year-old civil conflict.

The senator added that if Obama doesn't "engage and persuade the American people" regarding his plans, then next week's expected vote in Congress authorizing a military response in Syria will be "too close to call."

"And if we lost this vote, oh, my God, I can only imagine how it would make us look throughout the world," he said. "But if we have a weak response, where it's just check the block response, that's just as bad. So the president needs to up his game."

Along with strategic military attacks inside Syria, Graham said the United States' strategy must include more arms to Syria's rebels and "getting the regional players more involved, like Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Arab States and, particularly Turkey, by marginalizing the al Qaeda members ... inside of Syria."

"To me, that is a strategy that might sell to Congress," he said.

Failure in Syria likely would result in an al-Qaeda-led toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime, putting the country's chemical weapons stash in the hands of terrorist groups intent on attacking Israel.

"If we get Syria wrong, if we show a weakness here regarding Assad's chemical weapons utilization, you're almost ensuring a war between Israel and Iran over their nuclear program and we would surely get drawn into that," he said.

"If we fail in Syria, if we fail to stand up for the right thing and to send the right messages, the whole region's going to go down in flames."

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323932604579051490605940608.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

When President Barack Obama on Saturday reversed himself about launching an attack against Syria, vowing to wait for Congress's approval, the move only confirmed what many in the Middle East believe about the president. Mr. Obama, they feel, continues to lead from behind, or more often not at all, in the Middle East; above all in Syria.

Among the Lebanese and Arabs in general, Mr. Obama is widely perceived as a man with little time for the dilemmas faced by the region's peoples. Even when it involves reacting to crimes against humanity, the president's thinking is defined by domestic considerations. Syrians have been dying in horrific numbers, and Syria's neighbors have endured hardship, but the president reacted only when he realized that not doing so would highlight his hypocrisy. Then he tossed the decision to Congress.

Mr. Obama never seemed to appreciate that the uprising in Syria provided an opportunity for him to reduce Iranian power in the Levant. In failing to exploit that opening by assisting the Syrian opposition, he allowed the Iranians to regroup after early gains by the rebels and, with Russia, prop up the Assad regime. One result is that any U.S. intervention today would be vastly more complicated than it might have been when the uprising against Assad began in 2011.

Until and unless the Syrian conflict is resolved in a way that addresses the aspirations of a majority of Syrians, the threat to the long-term stability of the entire region will persist. Mr. Obama may not want a part of the Syria war—but he can no longer seriously view the conflict there as containable.

washingtonexaminer.com/debbie-wasserman-schultz-says-dozens-of-countries-stand-with-us-on-syria-cant-name-them/article/2535112

Debbie Wasserman Schultz says 'dozens' of countries stand with US on Syria, can't name them

[kode54]

But following man's law is important, because man is real, and God is not.

PS. I have no faith. If I cannot measure it plainly with my five senses, then I don't need to worry about its existence. And then even if I can measure it with any of my senses, I have mental problems, so I don't trust my senses too much either.

[Tails82]

Get ready for today's pile of BS from BO

washingtonexaminer.com/obama-i-didnt-set-a-red-line-on-syria/article/2535154

Obama: 'I didn't set a red line' on Syria

www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/04/justice-department-to-require-va-to-provide-benefits-to-same-sex-couples/?test=latestnews

The Justice Department announced Wednesday it is requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide benefits to same-sex spouses of military veterans.

The DOJ said in a letter to congressional lawmakers it will no longer enforce a section in the VA’s authorization law which classified marriage as between a man and a woman...“We're not going to defend it in court. We're not going to enforce it.”

www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/09/04/Matthews-Democrats-Must-Support-War-to-Save-Presidents-Hide

Matthews: Dems Must Support War to 'Save President's Hide'

"When you hear Barbara Boxer, when you hear Jim Moran, you have to wonder what they would have said had it been a Republican president. Clearly people are changing sides. Just like the Democrats who supported Lyndon Johnson after the Vietnam war, after it was over they turned on Nixon. The same exact people. So partisanship shows its ugly head here."

blog.heritage.org/2013/09/03/obamas-unreal-new-realities-on-syria/

President Obama sent Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the use of military force in Syria...The trio has been sent to persuade lawmakers to support President Obama’s aims “to fire a shot across the bow” in an attempt to send a message to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for his alleged use of chemical weapons.

Assad will ignore the message.

Rubio and Risch emphasized that Assad is unlikely to receive the intended message of a “finger wag” strike and instead will become even further emboldened by U.S. military action. After all is said and done, Assad would be able to say he stood up to the greatest military power on the globe and continue the slaughter of Syrians. Secretary Kerry even reaffirmed this notion, leading one to question what the strategic goal of a strike is if it emboldens Assad further.

Despite the new dynamic, the Administration will likely continue its disjointed position on Syria, including its stance to not support regime change or robust arming of vetted rebels. Instead, the Administration, even in the event of a limited military strike, still believes a diplomatic settlement is possible and a feasible endgame. It’s unlikely Assad will be dining at the diplomatic table anytime soon.

www.foxnews.com/us/2013/09/04/massachusetts-court-hears-pledge-allegiance-challenge/?test=latestnews

A lawyer for an atheist family has asked Massachusetts' highest court to ban the practice of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in state public schools.

Last year, a state judge found that the rights of the atheists were not violated by the words "under God."

The family appealed the ruling.

It's discriminatory to love the country as well, so we'll have to take those parts out too. We shouldn't be able to support or oppose anything, because judging something is ungood. The pledge should just be turned into a nice long fart so the precious feelings of God/America haters aren't hurt.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579055030635685244.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinion

Obama goes Galt.

"First of all, I didn't set a red line," Barack Obama said today at a press conference in Stockholm. "The world set a red line. The world set a red line when governments representing 98% of the world's population said the use of chemical weapons are [sic] abhorrent and passed a treaty forbidding their use, even when countries are engaged in war."

Well, here's what Obama said at an Aug. 20, 2012, White House press conference in response to a reporter's question about Syria:

"I have, at this point, not ordered military engagement in the situation. But the point that you made about chemical and biological weapons is critical. That's an issue that doesn't just concern Syria; it concerns our close allies in the region, including Israel. It concerns us. We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people.

"We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation."

The context makes clear that when Obama refers to "a red line for us," the antecedent is not the world but the U.S. or the administration (which are interchangeable for the purpose of a discussion of executive action). He said the use of chemical weapons would change "my calculus" and "my equation," not the world's.

As The Weekly Standard's Daniel Halper notes, the president's denial that he set a red line contradicts previous statements from his own subordinates. "We go on to reaffirm that the President has set a clear red line as it relates to the United States that the use of chemical weapons . . . is a red line that is not acceptable to us, nor should it be to the international community," an unnamed "White House official" said during introductory remarks in an April 25, 2013 conference call with reporters.

Lest there be any question, the official went on to say in response to a question: "The people in Syria and the Assad regime should know that the President means what he says when he set that red line. And keep in mind, he is the one who laid down that marker."

It's as if somebody in November 1973 had gone back and discovered a transcript from a few months earlier in which a White House official said: "And keep in mind, the president is a crook."

Setting a red line isn't the only thing Obama denied. As the BBC reports: "Mr Obama said he did not believe he had risked his credibility by asking Congress to vote--something he was not constitutionally obliged to do. 'My credibility is not on the line. The international community's credibility is on the line,' he said. 'America and Congress's credibility is on the line, because we give lip-service to the notion that these international norms are important.' "

So Obama evidently agrees with the conservative interventionist argument in favor of authorizing military force: that the president's inconstancy has destroyed his credibility, and therefore Congress must shore up America's credibility by giving its assent (even though he claims he does not need it) to him, so that he will back up his words with actions.

This column does not disagree with that argument, but we do have some difficulty wrapping our mind around it.

In the olden days, they used to call the president "the leader of the free world." Today the president disavowed responsibility for his own policies and told a reporter to take it up with "the world."

Obama shrugged.

I really don't get what's so hard about just being a good president. Seriously.

[Tails82]

radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/critics-say-non-discrimination-law-would-target-christians.html

A bill before the San Antonio City Council that aims to protect new groups from discrimination could instead encourage bias against Christians and those who believe in traditional marriage, critics are charging.

“This is breathtakingly broad and clearly an attack on religious freedom,” said Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver, one of the groups working with local churches to defeat the ordinance. “There’s no question people will lose their jobs as a result of this. Businesses owned by Christians will be targeted for complaints under this human rights ordinance.”

Staver believes the ordinance is written so broadly that holding the belief that same-sex marriage is wrong, or even attending a church where the pastor speaks out against it could be interpreted as a bias – thus disqualifying one from working for the city.

Staver also said the ordinance could be read as requiring churches, as part of the public accommodation law, to allow men to use women’s restrooms in certain situations.

A coalition of some 500 ministers organized to defeat the proposal including a number of African-American and Hispanic pastors. Steve Branson, the pastor of Village Parkway Baptist Church, said his 1,500-member congregation is frightened about the future.

“Some of us will pay a price,” Branson told Fox News. “There will be somebody going after our Christian business people. They will try to make a few people examples.”

He said the idea that Christians could be penalized for opposing gay marriage could prompt a backlash.

“The city of San Antonio will react strongly,” he predicted. “There will be recalls. This law is going to be very punitive towards believers – especially businessmen and it will have some effect on churches.”

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324577304579054891507543888.html

The Hawk's Case Against Obama on Syria

Changing the murderous regime in Damascus should be the goal. A 'limited,' 'tailored' attack doesn't merit support.

Perhaps historians will provide a clear understanding of Barack Obama's head-snapping decision to pause his administration's urgent case for military strikes in Syria to seek the formal authorization he says he doesn't need from a Congress he disdains.

Until then, the struggle to make sense of the Obama administration's ad hoc decision-making and confusing rhetoric on Syria will continue. The latest twist came Wednesday, when the president tried to explain away his declaration last summer that "the red line for us" would be Bashar Assad's use of chemical weapons. "I didn't set a red line," Mr. Obama said during a news conference in Stockholm, Sweden, claiming that he had been speaking for the entire world—even Congress.

At Georgetown University three months ago, Mr. Obama announced that he would bypass Congress to address what he described as the urgent threat of climate change...Even on matters of war and peace, Mr. Obama has ignored Congress. He didn't consult Congress before launching military strikes in Libya in March 2011, and on the same day a bipartisan group of lawmakers filed suit to force him to seek congressional authorization, the administration sent Congress a 32-page report that included an explanation as to why the president could act without legislative approval. The report argued that the limited campaign, which featured no U.S. ground troops, was "consistent" with the 1973 War Powers Act and does not "require further authorization."

It is therefore not surprising that congressional Republicans, once likened to "terrorists" by Vice President Joe Biden, are skeptical that Mr. Obama's decision to seek a legislative imprimatur on Syria grows out of a sudden interest in bipartisanship and the constitution. That the president's longtime adviser, David Axelrod, gleefully tweeted about the political implications—calling Congress "the dog that caught the car"—only feeds the cynicism.

It isn't at all unreasonable to wonder whether Mr. Obama's decision to go to Congress is little more than an attempt to share responsibility with Republicans for authorizing an intervention that goes badly, or to blame them for constraining him if they don't.

Nevertheless, the president's political maneuvering alone shouldn't keep Republicans from supporting intervention. What should stop them are doubts about his plans and competence. This is especially true for hawks who might otherwise be inclined to support him.

When administration sources first leaked two weeks ago the president's parameters for intervention, they said two criteria guided his thinking: Military action would neither seek to alter the course of the war on the ground nor target regime leadership. This was an odd declaration of self-imposed restrictions, especially for a president who has said for more than a year that Bashar Assad must go. And it invited an obvious question: What's the point? The president elaborated when he told PBS's "NewsHour" that any strikes would be a "shot across the bow" to the Assad regime.

But in announcing that his message is merely to send a message, the president undermined his primary objective. A "shot across the bow" implies further action if the warning is unheeded. In his repeated assurances that any U.S. action would be "limited" and "tailored" and "narrow," Mr. Obama has made clear that he has little appetite for escalation.

Even Syrians who might benefit from U.S. military intervention are apprehensive about the limited strikes telegraphed by the White House. "A light strike would be worse than doing nothing," Abdel Jabbar Akaidi, head of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo province, told Syria Deeply, a blog about the conflict, this week. "If it's not the death blow, this game helps the regime even more. The Syrian people will only suffer more death and devastation when the regime retaliates."

On Aug. 20, 2012, Mr. Obama described his "red line" on Syria. "We have been very clear to the Assad regime—but also to other players on the ground—that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons being moved around or being utilized. That would change my calculus."

But when U.S. intelligence confirmed in June that Syria had used chemical weapons, nothing changed. White House national security aide Ben Rhodes declared that this breach of Mr. Obama's red line would trigger "military support"—meaning lethal aid—from the U.S. to the Syrian opposition. On Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry testified that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons 14 times.

The U.S. aid never arrived.

To believe that an Obama-led intervention will end well requires disregarding everything he's done—or hasn't done—over two years in favor of an illusory expectation that he'll act with newfound determination to shape the outcome in a region ravaged by war. That's unlikely.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323324904579044771286022400.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

One irony of the Syria debate is that President Obama is now appealing for support on foreign policy from a Congress that he treats with contempt on domestic issues. Witness, in merely the latest example, his decision to suspend the enforcement of a federal drug law because it doesn't fit his political agenda.

In a sweeping memorandum last week, the Justice Department all but ordered U.S. attorneys nationwide not to enforce federal marijuana laws. The memo was a long-delayed response to voter referenda last November in Colorado and Washington states that legalized adult recreational use of marijuana, not merely in the usual fake "medical" context.

There's just one problem: All states are explicitly barred from regulating the possession, use, distribution and sale of pot and narcotics under the federal Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Like it or not, Congress declared marijuana to be a dangerous drug that should be banned.

California argued a decade ago that its medical marijuana law let individuals grow their own for personal use, but the Supreme Court ruled in Gonzales v. Raich in 2005 that federal law had supremacy. Defenders of ObamaCare even used the Raich precedent to claim that the feds could force all Americans to buy health insurance.

Now Attorney General Eric Holder says never mind all that, and Americans should mellow out about such legal nuances...A President can't simply make a blanket declaration that he won't enforce part or all of a law he doesn't like. He and the AG are effectively decriminalizing an entire class of narcotics crimes, rewriting a law passed by Congress. Imagine if a President decided to decriminalize securities fraud simply by decreeing that the government will devote no resources to prosecuting securities fraud.

Obama and Holder...have been happy to cite federal supremacy against state laws they don't like. Justice sued to overturn Arizona's immigration enforcement law in 2010, and it is now suing Texas over voter IDs and even, for heaven's sake, Louisiana for letting minority children get a voucher to attend private schools.

Not since Nixon have we seen a Presidency so disdainful of the law, but at least Nixon had enough respect for legal appearances to break the law on the sly. This Administration simply declares it won't enforce the laws it doesn't like and calls it virtue. The media then give this a pass because Mr. Obama's decisions mesh with their own policy preferences.

Don't be surprised if millions of Americans begin to follow the President's example and conclude that they also don't have to follow laws they don't like—and not merely smoking reefer on the front porch.

www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2013/09/why-science-doesnt-support-orientation-change-bans

Why Science Doesn’t Support Orientation-Change Bans

Christie’s press release reductively declared that “people are born gay.” Yet there is no firm scientific basis for this conclusion. The three studies in the early 1990’s which were hailed by the media as providing evidence for a “gay gene” (or at least for an innate and biological cause for homosexuality) have long since been discredited by the failure of any other researchers to be able to replicate those early results.

In fact, the American Psychological Association itself has actually moved away from asserting certainty about the origins of homosexuality, declaring in their most recent statement on this question that: “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. . . . Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles.”

If even the American Psychological Association says “there is no consensus among scientists” about the origin of homosexuality, then it seems presumptuous of politicians to act as though there is in order to stifle conservative viewpoints on the issue. And if “nurture” plays any role in the development of homosexuality, then it cannot be said that “people are born gay.” Indeed, researchers from Columbia and Yale found that evidence supports “the hypothesis that less gendered socialization in early childhood and preadolescence shapes subsequent same-sex romantic preferences.”

Evidence that sexual orientation can be fluid rather than fixed is particularly strong with respect to young people—the very people whose freedom to seek change has been crushed by the New Jersey law. Ritch Savin-Williams, who is the nation’s leading expert on homosexual teenagers, wrote in Current Directions in Psychological Science, “In the data set of the longitudinal Add Health study, of the Wave I boys who indicated that they had exclusive same-sex romantic attraction, only 11 percent reported exclusive same-sex attraction one year later; 48 percent reported only opposite-sex attraction, 35 percent reported no attraction to either sex, and six percent reported attraction to both sexes.”

Not only did those who were exclusively homosexual not all remain so, but only 11 percent did. Some measure of change in sexual orientation—which many homosexual activists say is impossible, and never happens to anyone—is not only possible, but it is the norm for adolescents with same-sex attractions, having been experienced by 89 percent of the respondents only one year later.

On the issue of whether sexual reorientation therapy can be effective, there is an abundance of evidence that it can. There are many psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and therapists who have reported success in treating clients for unwanted same-sex attractions. Much of this research and clinical experience has been reported in the peer-reviewed scholarly literature for decades. In addition, there are many people who have given personal testimony to changes in any or all of the measures of their sexual orientation. Even the APA acknowledged that “there are people who perceive that they have benefited from” SOCE.

The legislature declared in its findings that a 2009 APA task force “concluded that sexual orientation change efforts can pose critical health risks.” Here, however, is an excerpt of what the APA task force actually said [emphasis added]: “We conclude that there is a dearth of scientifically sound research on the safety of SOCE. Early and recent research studies provide no clear evidence of the prevalence of harmful outcomes among people who have undergone efforts to change their sexual orientation or the frequency of the occurrence of harm because no study to date of adequate scientific rigor has been explicitly designed to do so. Thus, we cannot conclude how likely it is that harm will occur from SOCE. However, studies from both periods indicate that attempts to change sexual orientation may cause or exacerbate distress and poor mental health in some individuals, including depression and suicidal thoughts.”

To say that “there are people who perceive that they have been harmed through SOCE” is essentially to say that the evidence of harm is largely anecdotal—and thus hardly sufficient to constitute scientific proof. Yet the legislature dismissed similar anecdotal evidence (as well as clinical and research evidence) of the effectiveness and benefits of SOCE.

It is disappointing that New Jersey officials were willing to invade the privacy of the counselor-client relationship on the basis of such flimsy evidence of (possible, occasional) harm. This takes freedom away not just from parents, but from therapists and from young people desiring help. A federal judge has already enjoined enforcement of a similar law in California, stating that “plaintiffs . . . are likely to prevail on the merits of their claim that [the law] violates their rights to freedom of speech under the First Amendment.”

Bans on sexual orientation change efforts represent an assault upon both truth and freedom. The law just enacted in New Jersey represents a bad example for other state legislatures and governors.

washingtonexaminer.com/democrats-fight-against-obamacare-privacy-oversight/article/2535242

Despite warnings of possible privacy violations from President Obama's own Department of Health and Human Services and California's Democratic insurance commissioner, House Democrats are fighting Republican efforts to provide congressional oversight to how third-party groups handle private Obamacare information...on Aug. 2, the HHS Inspector General released a report finding that the Obama administration has missed many key deadlines on the creation of a data hub that will be used to sign people up for Obamacare. These delays could compromise the security of the private data Americans give third-party organizations when they sign up for Obamacare.

The Upton letter asked, among other things, for Navigator-grant-recipients to identify how they were training Navigator-grant-funded staff, how they were monitoring said staff, and how recipients planned to safeguard the private information given to them while they signed people up for Obamacare.

Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee saw these oversight efforts as a complete abuse of congressional power.

"There is no legitimate predicate for these letters," Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wrote in a letter to Upton Aug. 30, "and no evidence of malfeasance from any of the organizations... The timing of these letters is particularly suspect."

Navigator program spending is already $13 million over budget and has grown 25 percent.

[Chromeo]

Russia, a staunch ally of Syria, also reportedly dismissed Britain as a "small island no one pays any attention to" as relations boiled over at the summit in St Petersburg.

oh no i know you didnt just go there

more power projection than you chumps