Barack Obama supports Harry Reid’s attempt at changing the filibuster: His position has apparently “evolved”
Yesterday I wrote about Harry Reid’s “evolving” position on the filibuster–he was against the “arrogance of power” when the Republicans threatened to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees when George Bush was president before he was consumed with the “arrogance of power” now that the Democrats are in the majority. Today it is time to look at Barack Obama’s “evolving” position on the filibuster.
Earlier today the White House announced that Barack Obama has endorsed Harry Reid’s attempt to change the filibuster rules:
The President has said many times that the American people are demanding action,” read the statement from White House Director of Communications Dan Pfeiffer. “They want to see progress, not partisan delay games. That hasn’t changed, and the President supports Majority Leader Reid’s efforts to reform the filibuster process
More questions than answers after three Republicans meet with Susan Rice over the Benghazi terrorist attack
After having voiced their disapproval of the prospect that Susan Rice would be named as Hillary Clinton’s successor as Secretary of State the three Republican Senators–John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Lindsey Graham–met with Susan Rice today and the consensus among these three was that the meeting left them with more questions than answers.
Said McCain: “We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn’t get, concerning evidence that was overwhelming leading up to the attack on our consulate, [and] the tragic deaths of four brave Americans.”
Said Ayotte: “I can say I am more troubled today…having met with Ambassador Rice. Because it’s certainly clear from the beginning we knew those with ties to Al Qaeda were involved in the attack on the embassy…and that the information that was given to the American people was wrong.”
Said Graham: “I’m more disturbed now than I was before. [Ambassador Rice’s Sept. 16 statement] was a statement disconnected from reality.”
Susan Rice has stated that she didn’t intentionally mislead the American people and I am willing to take her at her word on this and am willing to concede this point at this time. (If an investigation proves otherwise I reserve the right to “evolve” my position and unconcede this point.)
However, Barack Obama admitted it was the White House which sent her out to the television talking heads on September 16th with the talking points which she used and David Petraeus admitted UNDER OATH that the CIA’s talking points were edited before Susan Rice made her media tour, so the questions remain; who edited the talking points and for what reason were they edited?
We don’t know the answer to the first question, it will be left up to an investigation to determine the answer to that question, but the answer to the second question appears obvious to me at this point.
Barack Obama was running for a second term based in part on what he considers to be his successes on foreign policy; the fact that the Middle East is more stable than ever before and the fact that al Qaeda is on the run. However the CIA’s initial report punctured a large hole in both of those facts so a decision was made somewhere within the regime to downplay al Qaeda’s role in the attack by lying to the American people shortly before the election, and Susan Rice was sent out there to do just that and it worked for the time being.
New Hampshire’s elected transgender felon resigned today
As I wrote about in this post yesterday New Hampshire elected the first open transgender person to office in the November election. This was an historic moment for the GLBT community but unfortunately it became known that Stacie Laughton was in violation of state law and was ineligible to run for elected office.
It turns out that Stacie Laughton was a convicted felon who served 4 1/2 months in prison and the prison time made her ineligible to run for office.
And coupled with the fact that she was still on probation, so technically she was still serving her sentence, any doubt about her eligibility to run for state office was removed.
Amid growing criticism from both Republicans and Democrats in the state, and with the beginning stages of an investigation from the state Attorney General, Stacie Laughton consulted with the New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman and other party leaders along with her own attorney, who stated she didn’t really have a defense. After exhausting all options she did the right thing and announced her resignation today.
Harry Reid’s “evolving” position on the filibuster
Harry Reid–who during the campaign said there was no way his Senate would work with Mitt Romney if he won the presidency–is now complaining that Republicans are unwilling to work with Barack Obama and because of this he is seriously considering changing the filibuster rules. This is an idea which now seems to be gaining steam within Democrat circles and in all honestly they have the right under Article 1 Section 2 of the constitution to determine the rules of proceedings so I am not going to complain about Harry Reid’s decision but rather point out his hypocrisy.
The Democrats are now calling this the “constitutional option” but it wasn’t all that long ago when George Bush was the president that they referred to the Republicans’ attempt at changing the filibuster rule for appointing judges as the “nuclear option.” Funny how attitudes change with the change of power, isn’t it?
And speaking of power, this is what Harry Reid had to say back in 2005 about the Republicans’ attempt at eliminating the filibuster for judicial nominees: Read more…
New Hampshire makes history by electing the first ever transgender felon
When the Democrat tide swept back into New Hampshire in the November election the state made history by becoming the first state to ever elect an openly transgender candidate to any office in the country. This was hailed as a great victory by the left, and to be honest I really don’t care how Stacie Laughton decides to live her personal life because it is none of my business–if the people in her district believe she is the one who best represents them then so be it–but we are now learning that she was not quite honest about who she really was when she was a man.
Shortly after winning her election it was discovered that while she was a married man she was a convicted felon with a semi-lengthy criminal record and served jail time yet she didn’t disclose her past with the voters whose trust she hoped to–and did–earn.
She is now claiming that while she didn’t think it was necessary to share her criminal past with the people she hoped to represent that she decided she would tell the truth IF she was caught: Read more…
Barack Obama’s drone use: A human rights violation?
The New York Times is reporting that when Barack Obama felt he was going to lose his reelection bid he began drafting a “kill list rulebook” for drone use because he felt the next administration would abuse its killing power–unlike Barack Obama I suppose. This would mean that while Barack Obama was using drones to kill insurgents and enemies of the United States that he had no set rules in place for their usage and he wanted to ensure that Mitt Romney was bound by rules with which he didn’t find necessary to explain while he was president.
This news has drawn the ire of human rights groups and anti-war groups because they claim international law is a rulebook which Barack Obama has been violating with his drone policy.
Here is what the ACLU had to say: Read more…
Obamacare may be headed back to the Supreme Court
Today the Supreme Court reinstated a lawsuit to Obamacare which had been previously thrown out by a lower court. This means Obamacare is back in the court system and will likely make it all the way back to the Supreme Court sometime next year.
The issue this time around is the constitutionality of the contraception mandate as well as the mandate that all companies which employ 50 or more people be required to offer approved and adequate (according to the government) healthcare insurance.
I have one question about this issue and it is a simple one, what’s the point?
The “radical” Tea Party Republicans versus the establishment Republicans, what can we learn from history?
Since the mid-term elections of 2010 it has been reported that there was a growing rift in the Republican party between the establishment and the Tea Party and I am now going to state unequivocally that this is the case. There is indeed a battle for the heart and the soul of the Republican party and it is a rift which just might tear the Republican party asunder and cause them to lose the 2014 election and possibly the 2016 election as well. But it is a battle which needs to be fought if we are to stop the two major parties from becoming one in ideology, neither with the founding document as its soul.
The media has done its best to portray the Tea Party Republicans as radicals and as dangerous simply because this faction of the party wants to see the federal government return to fiscal sanity and its constitutional founding. Sure, there is part of the Tea Party which is focused on the social issues, but this is not the main goal of the Tea Party, and was vastly misrepresented by the mainstream media during the election. This tactic was quite successful in frightening a majority of the American people into supporting a president who has failed but I ask you this question; is it a bad thing to be labeled as a radical Republican? It isn’t the first time.
Open thread for Sunday, November 25th: Black Celebration edition
Here is the open thread for Sunday, November 25th: Please feel free to leave links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever might come up during the day.
As you might have heard, last Friday was Black Friday–the biggest shopping day of the year–and once again we saw images of some of the gimme crowd who feels they are more entitled to what is in the store than the other people in line act like animals because they feel somebody ahead of them is going to get something they won’t–and dammit, they are entitled to what they want.
Every time I see these images I can’t help but think of the mindset which has been taught to these people in the schools and the lessons they learned through government.
Anyway…..I thought I would celebrate Black Friday by posting a song by the band ‘Depeche Mode’ entitled Black Celebration. This is a live video from 1986, enjoy.
Many of us have found it to be curious that so much money awarded by the government under Barack Obama’s green energy initiative manged to find its way into companies with ties to the Democrat party. Mitt Romney even alluded to this during the first debate but then backed off it for some reason.
Now the head of the Government Accountability Institute (and it I am not mistaken wasn’t the GAI embroiled in a little controversy of their own?), Peter Schweizer, is making the claim that the Obama regime’s green energy initiative was a recycling project all right–but it was recycling green energy money to campaign donors as a reward before those campaign donors recycled the money back to Barack Obama’s campaign. Read more…
America's Watchtower 