Much to the chagrin of the left and of the global warming alarmists (but I repeat myself) more and more people are beginning to question the settled science of the climate change agenda. It started a few years ago with Climategate when scientists were caught fudging the numbers in order to hide the decline, but the recent cold snap coupled with the story of the ship that sailed to the Antarctic to prove the ice was melting only to get stuck in the non-existent ice has many people openly mocking and laughing at the whole notion the earth is warming. Support for cap and trade legislation is at an all time low.
This is not sitting well with those in the establishment who still wish to push Barack Obama’s radical cap and trade agenda, but what are they to do when nobody takes them serious any more?
Barack Obama has a pen and he is not afraid to use it!
Barack Obama has a pen and he is not afraid to use it! That is the message he sent in a recent press conference when he said the following:
But one of the things I’ll be emphasizing in this meeting is that we are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help that they need.
I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward in helping to make sure our kids are getting the best education possible, making sure that our businesses are getting the kind of support and help they need to grow and advance, to make sure that people are getting the skills that they need to get those jobs that our businesses are creating.
And I’ve got a phone that allows me to convene Americans from every walk of life, nonprofits, businesses, the private sector, universities, to try to bring more and more Americans together around what i think is a unifying theme; making sure that this is a country where if you work hard, you can make it.
And so one of the things that I’m going to be talking to my cabinet about is how do we use all the tools available to us, not just legislation, in order to advance a mission that I think unifies all Americans, the belief that everybody’s got to take responsibility, everybody’s got to work hard, but if you do, that you can support a family and meet the kinds of obligations that you have to your self and your family, but also to your communities and your neighbors.
In other words the Congress be damned! He intends to do whatever the hell he wants to do and if the Congress is not on board he will simply act on his own to get what he wants. One way or the other Barack Obama will pass his radical agenda. He seems to have no concern about the checks and balances built into the constitution, or the separation of powers contained within, which went out of its way to limit the powers of the president and of the Federal government.
It is clear to me that Barack Obama has no concept of, or doesn’t give a damn about, the difference between being a president and being a dictator or king. And this man was a constitutional lawyer…..
Declassified interviews prove the Obama regime knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack from the very beginning
I do not intend to spend too much time on this story because we pretty much knew that Barack Obama knew the attack in Benghazi which left Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods dead was a terrorist attack from the beginning (I previously reported he knew the truth within 24 hours) yet lied to the American people for two weeks, but now we have the proof.
The proof comes in the form of the newly declassified interviews with General Ham and Colonel Bristol.
The new information comes in the form of transcripts of previously classified interviews with General Carter Ham and Marine Corps Col. George Bristol. In June, Rep. Howard McKeon asked AFRICOM Commander Gen. Ham if there was “any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?” Ham replied that there had been “peripheral” discussion about this. When pressed by Rep. Brad Wenstrup on the same point, Ham answered “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”
Rep. Wenstrup raised the same question with Col. Bristol whose title at the time was “Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region.” Wenstrup asked “So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack -” Col. Bristol replied “Yes, sir. … We referred to it as the attack.”
Barack Obama opposes Obamacare transparency bill
The House is scheduled to vote on a bill which would require the Obama regime to provide the Congress with certain Obamacare information once a week. This is an effort at providing the American people with some transparency about the Obamacare numbers, here is a list of some of the information which the Obama regime would be required to report on a daily basis:
This includes a state-by-state breakdown of unique website visits, individuals who create an account, how many individuals successfully enroll in a qualified health plan or Medicaid, a detailed description of problems identified with website functionality, actions taken to address those problems, and a list of all navigators and certified application counselors that have been trained and certified by the exchanges.
As Lee Terry points out, this bill is necessary not only because of the Obama regime’s unwillingness to be forthcoming with much of this information but also because various scandals, and Barack Obama’s penchant for hiding the documents related to them, has made the most open, honest, and transparent president in United States history not quite so transparent and certainly not trustworthy.
Does Obamacare include a bailout for insurance companies?
As bad as Obamacare appears to be on the surface it might even be worse than we think if this story is true, for it is being reported that the Unaffordable Care Act includes a taxpayer funded subsidy to insurance companies:
Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.
For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers,through Washington, to health and life insurances companies that offer the best life insurance. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.
But that’s exactly what it will do—unless Republicans take action. As Laszewski explains, Obamacare contains a “Reinsurance Program that caps big claim costs for insurers (individual plans only).” He writes that “in 2014, 80% of individual costs between $45,000 and $250,000 are paid by the government [read: by taxpayers], for example.”
So, in addition to paying higher premiums as a result of mandated coverage which many Americans do not need we will also be on the hook for subsidies given to the insurance companies to help offset their losses. Tell me again how this make healthcare more affordable, and tell me again how this makes Barack Obama the middle class warrior he claims to be. Talk about a double whammy!
The IRS has harassed Sarah Palin’s father six times since 2008
Lois Lerner, formally of the IRS, admitted and apologized for what she called the inappropriate targeting of conservative groups. Eventually it was learned that Lois Lerner was feeling pressure from above to right what the Obama regime felt was a wrong Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case and this is how she decided to go about it.
Since that time several people have reported being harassed by the IRS after speaking out publicly against Barack Obama, and Christine O’Donnell’s tax records were illegally accessed by an IRS employee while she was running for the Senate.
And then there is the story of Mitt Romney. When Mitt Romney was running for president against Barack Obama, Harry Reid made the claim that Mister Romney did not pay any taxes over a ten year period. At the time it seemed as though he was simply throwing out baseless claims but in light of the IRS scandal one has to wonder if he actually had inside information–which of course would be illegal.
Is the Supreme Court ready to rule Barack Obama’s recess appointments unconstitutional?
Today the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case involving Barack Obama’s non-recess recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, and according to this article the Court looks poised to rule against Barack Obama in a lopsided manner.
Liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan joined all the conservative justices and Anthony Kennedy in sharply questioning the legality of Obama’s actions.
While it is unclear whether the Court will rule narrowly or broadly, it does seem clear the Obama lost today at the Court, potentially by a lopsided 8-1 vote (if not unanimous against him).
Take this for what it is worth because it is based solely on appearances, or the interpretation of appearances, of people who watched the proceedings today.
I still remember the analysis of the Supreme Court’s Obamacare hearing; we were told the Obama regime did a disastrous job in defending the legislation, and we were told that at points the Justices appeared to be mocking the Obama regime. This led to speculation that the individual mandate was dead and we all know how that turned out, don’t we?
Over one year ago Barack Obama made four recess appointments even though the Congress was not technically in recess. Republicans held the Congress open using a gimmick called pro forma. Pro forma is nothing new, in fact Harry Reid used this tactic to block at least one Bush nominee and bragged about it. Of course he changed his tune about pro forma when the Republicans used it against Barack Obama. Nancy Pelosi also hailed Barack Obama’s decision to ignore the power of the Congress:
this is a political gimmick designed to ensure the president does not appoint people without the consent of the Congress but it is not without precedent and in fact this was a tool which was used against President Bush by the Democrats when Barack Obama was in the Senate. Harry Reid stated that he supported Barack Obama’s decision even though while he was the Senate majority leader he bragged about using pro forma to block President Bush from making recess appointments:
I had to keep the Senate in pro-forma session to block the Bradbury appointment. That necessarily meant no recess appointments could be made
And yet he now says that Barack Obama was justified in ignoring the pro forma session and precedent, but he is not the lone Democrat supporting Barack Obama’s decision; Nancy Pelosi has also come out in favor of Barack Obama’s decision:
I’m very proud of the president of the United States and the appointments that he made yesterday. I’m very glad that he did and it’s important for the American people to know what challenges face him as he tries to provide leadership for the agencies of government, which have been voted on by the Congress, are part of our public policy
Do you think Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi would have felt the same way if George Bush had stripped them of the power to approve political appointments? Never before has a president unilaterally decided he had the authority to declare the Congress in recess, this was an unprecedented power grab. Several lower courts have ruled that these appointments were unconstitutional and it has been appealed to the Supreme Court, which will take up the arguments tomorrow.
Here is the open thread for Sunday, January 12th; please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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January 12th holds special meaning to me as it just happens to be the seventh birthday of the blog which eventually became America’s Watchtower and it is hard to believe that so much time has passed since I started doing this. Long time readers here might remember the time when the blog was called ‘Wake Up America’ and they might remember when I posted under an alias before coming out of the closet, so to speak. (Extra credit will be given to those who can name the three variations of the alias I used before I came out of the closet.)
Thank you to all who continue to frequent this little blog for you and my family are what keeps me going when all I want to do is say to hell with it and throw in the towel–other conservative/libertarian bloggers know this feeling all too well, of that I am sure. But just knowing there are so many like-minded people out there is an inspiration to us all and I thank you again.
In all the years of doing this I hope that I have achieved two goals on a personal level. First; I hope that I have become more informed about the issues than I was in the early days for I have made it my goal over these last seven years to read as much American history as I can digest. And second; I hope that I have become a better writer than I was back in the day. When I started this blog I had not written anything in the 20 years since I left high school and I asked people to judge me on what I was trying to say rather than how I was saying it for this very reason. I look back on some of those early posts and laugh, partially–mostly–out of embarrassment. Punctuation is still not my strong point but I hope it doesn’t take away from the points I try to make here.
I have decided to celebrate America’s Watchtower’s birthday by giving you a version of a song by ‘The Cure’ called ‘All Mine/Forever.’ The Cure is my favorite band so I can think of no better way to celebrate than with this track as my musical selection of the week.
‘All Mine/Forever’ is a song which technically does not exist, at least in the discography of The Cure. ‘All Mine’ is simply an improvised and extended version of ‘Three’ from the ‘Seventeen Seconds’ album which The Cure used to end many shows in the early days–no two versions are the same.
Eventually ‘All Mine’ morphed into ‘Forever’, which got its name from an unnamed track the band recorded for the John Peel radio show. The track got its name with fans of The Cure because the only intelligible word in the song is the last one and you guessed it, that word was ‘forever.’
Hardcore collectors of The Cure pride themselves in collecting bootleg copies of the different versions of this song and I am one of them. There are two versions of this song which are must-haves for fans of The Cure, one has been dubbed ‘All I Have to do is Kill Her’ and the other is this one, which was dedicated to bass player Simon Gallup on his 20th birthday and it has been dubbed ‘Happy Birthday Simon’ by Cure fans.
Enjoy:
America's Watchtower 