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For the record, my official prediction is Obama will lose the 2012 election. He will be a one-term President. These are the reasons why.
All the above is well and good and to quote Abraham Lincoln
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Obama campaigned on being a unifier but the end result is the nation is horribly divided. Talk is one thing but a real understanding how to fix things is another.
In the end Obama will lose the 2012 US presidential election because elections are won or lost on economics. The New Deal I did not work and the New Deal II did not either. President Obama does not understand how money and markets work.
If you want to know what makes a bad President read this: What makes a bad president. If you disagree, I am open and here you can read more about President Obama in a more positive light. But please tell me what you think of these 101 reasons.
Here is the real reason Barack Obama does not stand a chance.
The ideals on which the United States was established and the way the market works comes from the ideals of the enlightenment. The enlightenment thinkers believed, as did the founding fathers, that when each of us is given the freedom to act on our own enlightened self interest, society as a whole benefits in ways government can never envision by itself. The ideal was ideal outlined by Adam Smith but championed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. This is the way society moves forward and the economy gets fixed. Not through government re-engineering from above, but by you being empowered with freedom. Let the markets work.
Help influence the US Presidential election now. If you think Obama is in over his head or simple this is an interesting list, please share this on Stumbleupon or Facebook or better yet link to me. To create this it took a lot of work to think these up and it needs to be spread. Let this post become a self fulling prophecy. Take my poll. Also comment if you can think of some more reason why Barack Obama will not have a job after the next election.
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May 7, 2009 by Chip Wood
If you’re as tired as I am of all the hoorays and hallelujahs an adoring press has bestowed on Barack Obama for his first 100 days in office, here’s a welcome respite.
To help counter all that saccharine applause, one of the left’s sharpest critics in Washington, D.C. prepared a different sort of list. Gary Bauer, who heads the Campaign for Working Families, compiled a list of Obama’s 100 mistakes, misstatements, and missteps since he assumed our nation’s highest office.
Granted, not every one of the items listed below threatens the foundations of our Republic. But taken together, they reveal that we are witnessing the transformation of a limited, Constitutional government into a socialist morass.
Gary has divided his list into four categories, starting with values and going to national security, free enterprise, and personnel. See if you don’t agree that it’s quite a litany.
Undermining Our Values
1. Calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act on the White House website.
2. Calling on the White House website for the expansion of federal hate crimes to include homosexual behavior.
3. Calling on the White House website for policies like the “Fairness Doctrine” that could silence conservative and Christian talk radio.
4. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of human embryonic stem cell research.
5. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of abortions overseas.
6. Pledging $50 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund, which supports China’s draconian one-child policy.
7. Proposing new rules to gut conscience clause protections for pro-life doctors and other medical personnel who don’t want to be forced to perform abortions or other procedures that violate their values.
8. Proposing increased funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.
9. Calling on the White House website for “a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year,” (mandatory volunteerism).
10. Inviting homosexual families to the White House Easter Egg Roll.
11. Allowing his attorney general to call for the reinstatement of Clinton-era restrictions on the Second Amendment.
12. Breaking his promise not to appoint lobbyists to his administration. He hired 17 in his first two weeks.
13. Breaking his promise to sign legislation only after a five-day period of public comments.
14. Asking that the monogram for Jesus Christ be covered up during a televised speech at a Catholic university in which Obama quotes the Sermon on the Mount.
Undermining Our National Security
15. Apologizing for America in Europe and Latin America.
16. Bowing before the Muslim king of Saudi Arabia.
17. Pledging to base America’s foreign policy toward Iran on “mutual respect” in a video to the Iranian people and Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator.
18. Returning the bust of Winston Churchill given to George Bush after 9/11 by our British allies.
19. Giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leader of America’s most loyal ally, a box of DVDs that don’t work in British DVD players.
20. Ordering Guantanamo Bay closed without any idea of where to send the terrorist suspects held there.
21. Suggesting that some of those terrorists now at GITMO may kill again, but may also be released onto U.S. soil and set up with welfare benefits.
22. Caving to communist Cuba by relaxing travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban Americans before any Cuban political prisoners have been released.
23. Shaking hands with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
24. Sitting silently though a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by Nicaragua’s communist president, Daniel Ortega.
25. Releasing Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is suspected of masterminding the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.
26. Releasing classified CIA memos outlining our interrogation techniques.
27. Telling our CIA agents not to be discouraged when he acknowledges their “mistakes.”
28. Declaring a new openness to “truth commissions” and prosecuting intelligence officials involved in enhanced interrogations of terrorists.
29. Proposing to send a $900 million foreign aid package to Palestinians in Gaza.
30. Asking Congress to relax the law so that some of that money could go to the terrorist organization Hamas.
31. Calling for the U.S. to eliminate its nuclear weapons.
32. Telling Russian President Demitri Medvedev that America’s commitment to missile defense is negotiable.
33. Dropping the term “enemy combatants” for GITMO detainees.
34. Dropping the term “terrorism” for “man-made disaster.”
35. Dropping the term “Global War on Terror” for “overseas contingency operations.”
36. Giving his first interview as president to the Arab language network Al-Arabiya.
37. Telling the Muslim world that his “job” was to communicate “that the Americans are not your enemy,” when it’s Muslim extremists who have declared war on us.
38. Proposing that military veterans use private insurance for the cost of a service-related injury before they would be eligible for coverage through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Undermining Free Enterprise
39. Signing the trillion-dollar plus so-called “stimulus” bill, which the Congressional Budget Office said would actually hurt long-term economic growth.
40. Saying Caterpillar wouldn’t lay off workers if his trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed Congress. Obama signed the bill on Feb. 17th. On March 17th, Caterpillar laid off nearly 2,500 workers.
41. Hosting a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” one week after signing the trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill.
42. Railing against “outrageous recklessness and greed” of AIG bonuses that were legally protected in the so-called “stimulus” bill he signed four days after it passed, not five as he promised.
43. Breaking his promise on earmark reform by signing the $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill with billions in earmarks.
44. Proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten years.
45. Proposing a “carbon cap and trade” scheme that will raise energy taxes by hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars.
46. Burning more than 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa for Earth Day to promote “wind power.”
47. Proposing $634 billion in higher taxes for socialized health care.
48. Proposing to raise taxes on small business owners.
49. Saying the White House is open to the idea of taxing employer-sponsored health care benefits as income.
50. Signing a massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, calling it “a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American.”
51. Establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research to give bureaucrats the power to ration health care and tell your doctors what care you can and cannot have.
52. Signing the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which the Sierra Club praised specifically because it “will safeguard millions of acres … from oil and gas leasing.”
53. Suggesting he has found $1.5 trillion in bogus “savings” by not spending money in Iraq that we were not planning to spend years from now.
54. Ordering his Cabinet to “cut” $100 million in spending in 90 days, after proposing nearly $5 trillion in spending in his first 90 days.
55. Proposing to limit tax deductions for home mortgage interest.
56. Proposing to limit tax deductions for charitable donations.
57. Refusing to allow banks to repay TARP money.
58. Bailing out AMTRAK with a 10% increase in its taxpayer subsidies.
59. Bailing out the United Auto Workers Union with billions of taxpayer dollars to GM and Chrysler.
60. Bailing out the United Auto Workers by giving it a majority ownership stake in Chrysler. Yes, the union will own the company.
61. Bailing out Big Labor by issuing an executive order mandating that infrastructure projects paid for with “stimulus” funds must use union labor, guaranteeing higher costs for the taxpayer.
62. Bailing out Big Labor again by repealing regulations requiring the disclosure of how union dues are spent. So much for “transparency.”
63. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM, “then vowing that the government will back auto warranties.
64. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM, “then firing the CEO of General Motors.
65. Allowing states to set their own fuel efficiency and emissions standards, making it harder for struggling auto makers to compete.
Personnel Is Policy
66. Nominating Timothy “The Turbo Tax Evader” Geithner as Treasury Secretary to oversee the IRS.
67. Nominating as attorney general Eric Holder, who urged Bill Clinton to pardon tax evader Marc Rich and 8 FALN terrorists.
68. Nominating David Ogden, a prominent attorney for the pornography industry, to be Deputy Attorney General.
69. Nominating Tom Daschle, who owed more than $140,000 in back taxes, as Health and Human Services Secretary.
70. Nominating Kathleen Sebelius, who is ardently pro-abortion and owed $8,000 in back taxes, to be HHS Secretary.
71. Nominating Janet Napolitano, who said, “crossing the border is not a crime per se,” as Homeland Security Secretary.
72. Nominating Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Last September, Chu said, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which at that time were roughly $8.00 a gallon.
73. Nominating Ron Kirk, who owed more than $6,000 in back taxes, as Trade Representative.
74. Nominating Bill Richardson, who was embroiled in an ethics scandal, as Secretary of Commerce.
75. Nominating Nancy Killefer, who also owed back taxes, to be the government’s “Efficiency Czar.”
76. Nominating Rosa Brooks, a leftwing acolyte of George Soros, as an advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy.
77. Nominating Harold Koh, an ardent supporter of using international law in the interpretation of our Constitution, to be the top legal advisor to the State Department.
78. Nominating Carol Browner, who was a member of the Socialist International, to be “Climate and Energy Czar.”
79. Nominating John Holdren, an environmental extremist and advocate of population control, as the White House Science Advisor.
80. Nominating Dawn Johnsen, who is so pro-abortion she once compared pregnancy to slavery, to direct the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
81. Nominating Charles Freeman, an anti-Israel, pro-Arab apologist, to be head of the National Intelligence Council.
82. Nominating Tony West, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh and exposed the Bush Administration’s terrorist surveillance program, to the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
83. Nominating Annette Nazareth to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, who withdrew after a month-long probe into her taxes.
84. Trying to nominate pro-abortion Catholics to be ambassador to the Vatican, a move even John Kerry opposed.
85. Appointing Ellen Moran of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director.
86. Appointing Melody Barnes, a board member of Emily’s List and Planned Parenthood, as his director of the Domestic Policy Council.
87. Appointing Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign (the largest homosexual rights lobbying group) to the White House’s Faith Based Advisory Council.
88. Appointing Adolfo Carrion as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, even though he is under investigation for kickbacks in a scandal nearly identical to one that cost GOP Senator Ted Stevens his election.
89. Nominating David Hamilton as his first appointment to a federal appeals court. Judge Hamilton has issued a number of controversial rulings, including prohibiting the Indiana House of Representatives from opening sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus.
Other Obama Outrages
90. Telling congressional Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.
91. Coordinating attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer out of the White House.
92. Hosting weekly parties at the White House, serving up $100-a-pound Waygu beef during what Obama called, “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
93. Laughing it up on 60 Minutes as the country is mired in a recession.
94. Allowing Air Force One to buzz the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, creating panic in New York City.
95. Disparaging Special Olympians on the Tonight Show.
96. Allowing his Department of Homeland Security to issue a report accusing pro-life, smaller government conservatives and returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans of being “rightwing extremists.”
97. Promising to push for comprehensive immigration reform, i.e., amnesty.
98. Killing the school voucher program in the District of Columbia, while sending his two daughters to an elite private school, rather than D.C.’s public schools.
99. Moving the Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House.
100. Relying too much on his teleprompter.
Thanks, Gary, for reminding us of many of the things an adoring press has already swept into the dustbin of history.
If you’d like to receive Gary Bauer’s insightful and sometimes biting commentaries each day, go to http://www.cwfpac.com/cwf_eod_request.php. As he says there, his Campaign for Working Families is unapologetically pro-family, pro-life, and pro-growth. He is definitely (and sometimes defiantly) on the Right side of the issues of the day.
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Something's happening to President Obama's relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, "Nothing new there," but actually I think there is. I'm referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.
It's not due to the election, and it's not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn't happening.
What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who's not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it's his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it's a big fault.
The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!" Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest—not wrongheaded, dishonest—charges that those who defend the church's religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.
What a sour taste this all left. How shocking it was, including for those in the church who'd been in touch with the administration and were murmuring about having been misled.
Events of just the past 10 days have contributed to the shift. There was the open-mic conversation with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in which Mr. Obama pleaded for "space" and said he will have "more flexibility" in his negotiations once the election is over and those pesky voters have done their thing. On tape it looked so bush-league, so faux-sophisticated. When he knew he'd been caught, the president tried to laugh it off by comically covering a mic in a following meeting. It was all so . . . creepy.
Next, a boy of 17 is shot and killed under disputed and unclear circumstances. The whole issue is racially charged, emotions are high, and the only memorable words from the president's response were, "If I had a son he'd look like Trayvon" At first it seemed OK—not great, but all right—but as the story continued and suddenly there were death threats and tweeted addresses and congressmen in hoodies, it seemed insufficient to the moment. At the end of the day, the public reaction seemed to be: "Hey buddy, we don't need you to personalize what is already too dramatic, it's not about you."
Now this week the Supreme Court arguments on ObamaCare, which have made that law look so hollow, so careless, that it amounts to a characterological indictment of the administration. The constitutional law professor from the University of Chicago didn't notice the centerpiece of his agenda was not constitutional? How did that happen?
Maybe a stinging decision is coming, maybe not, but in a purely political sense this is how it looks: We were in crisis in 2009—we still are—and instead of doing something strong and pertinent about our economic woes, the president wasted history's time. He wasted time that was precious—the debt clock is still ticking!—by following an imaginary bunny that disappeared down a rabbit hole.
The high court's hearings gave off an overall air not of political misfeasance but malfeasance.
All these things have hardened lines of opposition, and left opponents with an aversion that will not go away.
I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. I'm only saying he's made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.
In terms of the broad electorate, I'm not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.
From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity—unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending, its taxing, its regulating, is America over, can we turn it around?
That's what the American people were thinking about.
But the new president wasn't thinking about that. All the books written about the creation of economic policy within his administration make clear the president and his aides didn't know it was so bad, didn't understand the depth of the crisis, didn't have a sense of how long it would last. They didn't have their mind on what the American people had their mind on.
The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the 'Is America over?' part.
And so the relationship the president wanted never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle, which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago, the machine, the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books they've read, largely written by people like them—bright, credentialed, intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them, which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.
If you jumped into a time machine to the day after the election, in November, 2012, and saw a headline saying "Obama Loses," do you imagine that would be followed by widespread sadness, pain and a rending of garments? You do not. Even his own supporters will not be that sad. It's hard to imagine people running around in 2014 saying, "If only Obama were president!" Including Mr. Obama, who is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but who doesn't seem to like his job that much. As a former president he'd be quiet, detached, aloof. He'd make speeches and write a memoir laced with a certain high-toned bitterness. It was the Republicans' fault. They didn't want to work with him.
He will likely not see even then that an American president has to make the other side work with him. You think Tip O'Neill liked Ronald Reagan? You think he wanted to give him the gift of compromise? He was a mean, tough partisan who went to work every day to defeat Ronald Reagan. But forced by facts and numbers to deal, he dealt. So did Reagan.
An American president has to make cooperation happen.
But we've strayed from the point. Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many, and a worsening relationship with some.
Really, he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans, still, can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.
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V.P.BIDEN IS A COMPLETE ASSHOLE AND MORON
On March 19,speaking at a Morris Township,New Jersey Democratic Party fundraiser,Vice President Joe Biden provided what may be the mother of all election year bumper stickers when he asserted,“Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. Think about it.” To help wrap our minds around these two facts,referring to the May 1,2011 raid that killed Bin Laden,the Veep boasted,“You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan.”
Indeed the raid succeeded. No Americans were killed. On the down side,the United States left behind a stealth helicopter for the Chinese and Russians to reverse engineer. Nevertheless,President Obama made the right call. Seal Team Six performed magnificently.
But the most audacious plan in 500 years? No way. Just keeping it to raids,the November 20,1970 Son Tay Raid conducted by U.S. Army Special Forces in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Service was far more audacious in concept,planning,and execution. The Son Tay Raid involved two C-130E assault transports,an HH-3E Jolly Green Giant,and five larger HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopters flying at night,at altitudes below 500 feet for 200 miles across northern Laos into North Vietnam to a prison camp located 28 miles north of Hanoi. The objective:free American prisoners of war thought to be held in the camp.
Planning for the raid started in June 1970 with practice conducted at night on a collapsible replica of the Son Tay prison located deep inside the swamplands that are part of Eglin Air Force Base,Florida. Every morning,the “prison compound” was dismantled to prevent Soviet reconnaissance satellites from discovering it. Dubbed “Operation Ivory Coast” to divert speculation from Southeast Asia to Africa,the raiders were not told of their objective until hours before the raid,which departed Udorn Royal Thai Air Force Base,Thailand just after dark.
The raiding party arrived intact. Enemy radio intercepts indicated a major invasion was under way and,perhaps,the United States had used a nuclear weapon. I know. I was one of two intelligence watch-officers on duty at Udorn when the raid took place. Unfortunately,the prisoners had been moved out of Son Tay months before the raid,leaving behind a small contingent of guards who died that night. The raiders also killed up to 200 enemy sappers undergoing training at a school located a quarter mile from Son Tay. The only losses were the HH-3E,which was purposefully crashed into the compound so that Special Forces troops inside could neutralize the defenders before they had a chance to kill the prisoners,and an F-105F Wild Weasel badly damaged while attacking a surface-to-air missile site. Before departing Son Tay,the raiders destroyed the chopper,and a returning Jolly Green Giant picked up the two-man crew of the F-105. A North Vietnamese MiG-21 was lost after a rescue chopper it was pursuing at tree-top level hopped over a mountain ridge into which the pursuing MiG plowed.
The raid showed Hanoi’s leadership how vulnerable it was to attack and focused the world’s attention on the plight of American POWs held in North Vietnam. It also increased the morale of prisoners who knew they had not been abandoned. Finally,fearing the United States might attempt another raid;the North Vietnamese moved all POWs from outlying camps into two or three central complexes in Hanoi. This afforded the prisoners more contact with each other and helped establish who remained alive.
Just as audacious was the 1976 Entebbe Raid,Operation Thunderbolt / Operation Yoni,conducted by the Israelis to rescue Jewish passengers being held captive in Uganda by Palestinian and German terrorists. Operations Ivory Coast and Thunderbolt/Yoni are just two recent raids conducted within the past few decades. The action in Pakistan last May did not begin to approach in audacity the larger—and far more complex—operations like the Inchon landing in September 1950 or D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6,1944,in planning or execution.
What is audacious is Biden’s indefensible claim. But,then,what else can the administration point to with pride? Doubling the national debt in three years? Half-a-billion dollars wasted on Solyndra? The Chevy Volt subsidized at $240,000 a copy? The administration might brag about the withdrawal from Iraq if the country weren’t edging toward anarchy. There’s no lauding the strategic ineptitude of declaring a withdrawal date from Afghanistan,an act giving the Taliban every reason not to negotiate. Can the administration brag about the unpopular healthcare reformthat Biden dubbed such a “big [expletive] deal?”
For an administration with lots of failures and few successes,bumper-sticker history may be all they’ve got.
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THANKS TO COMMUNIST OBAMA MAKING THE USA THE WORLDS HIGHEST TAX RATES AND KILLING ALL USA JOBS AND FORCEING BUSINESSES OVERSEAS.
The End Of Exxon's Reign?
PetroChina Now The Biggest Oil Producer
Everybody likes to compare themselves to the biggest and the best. For years, Exxon Mobil was the largest publicly traded company in the US and the biggest producer of oil and natural gas. Many have challenged its dominance, and on Thursday a new contender emerged. The challenger is PetroChina, a state-controlled giant that just announced its oil production has topped Exxon’s.
PetroChina can now say it produces more daily barrels of oil than Exxon Mobil. The Chinese company produced 2.43 million barrels of oil per day in 2011, climbing above Exxon’s 2.3 million barrels. Chevron, for example, saw production slide to 1.8 million barrels last year.
Even though those figures appear troubling for Exxon’s shareholders, they don’t tell the full story, as the American company’s massive natural gas numbers take its consolidated oil-equivalent production well above all of its competitors. Its profits are up there too, even as it loses the top spot as the world’s largest private oil producer.
Exxon’s combined oil and gas production, captured by what is known as oil-equivalent production in the industry, was 4.5 million barrels per day in 2011, up 1.3% over 2010. While that’s well above PetroChina’s 3.5 million daily barrels, the Chinese company grew its total production 4.7%, which is more than 3 times as fast as the American company.
The companies, though, are inherently different. PetroChina’s largest shareholder, with an 86% stake in the company, is the Chinese government. Thus, the company faces a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it can pursue less profitable but still productive enterprises that increase its production, on the other, regulated sales prices limit top-line growth.
Comparing PetroChina to Exxon Mobil makes sense in the context of publicly-traded companies. If we grouped it with national energy producers. When put on the same plane as Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, the largest oil company in the world, PetroChina can’t even compete: Saudi Aramco produces about 7.9 million daily barrels of oil, more than tripling the Chinese company’s production (and essentially doubling Exxon’s).
Comparisons are always difficult. But some numbers are beyond debate. PetroChina’s 2011 profits slid 5% to $21 billion as the company grew its productive capacity. Exxon Mobil saw profits surge 35% to $41.1 billion on falling production. Clearly, Exxon and PetroChina diverge when it comes to their business model.
Among Exxon’s strengths is its prowess in natural gas. The largest US oil company produced 13.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas, and has proved reserves for another 76.2 trillion cubic feet, making it the US’ largest producer of natural gas. PetroChina’s production jumped 7.9% in 2011 but was still 2.4 billion cubic feet, well below Exxon’s. But, with proven reserves of 66.7 trillion, PetroChina can begin to tap unconventional production methods such as fracking to dramatically increase its production and play catch-up.
Exxon has been among the elite of global companies for quite some time. Recently, Apple surpassed it in terms of market cap in the US, taking the top spot as the largest publicly traded company. Being the biggest and the best means everyone’s out for your lunch, and from all angles. Beyond PetroChina, others like Brazil’s Petrobras are trying to take a stab at Exxon.
CFO Almir Barbassa has told
Forbes
on several occasions that their goal is to become the world’s largest publicly
traded oil company. Petrobras is in the middle of a massive-$225 billion
investment plan that should take oil-equivalent production from about 2.8
million barrels today to about 4 million in 2015 (around Exxon’s current
production) and hopefully 6.4 by 2020.
PetroChina’s rise, along with Petrobras’ aspiration, proves
the world is an increasingly globalized place where competition is no longer a
privilege of the so-called advanced economies. While Exxon Mobil remains the
biggest dog in the block, the puppies are growing up.
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THE TRULY EVIL RACIST OBAMA HYPOCRITE
WHY DIDN’T OBAMA SAY THAT THESE BLACK CHILDREN WOULD LOOK LIKE HIS CHILDREN TOO? SAME STATE AS ZIMMERMAN EVENT. SO IF BLACKS KILLED BLACKS-ITS OK !
NORTH MIAMI -Fourteen people have been shot and two are dead in what may be one of the worst mass shootings in South Florida history.
The shooting took place around 9:30 p.m. outside the Funeraria Latina Emanuel funeral home at 14990 W. Dixie Highway Friday night.
One of the victims, a 43-year-old man, died outside the funeral home, authorities said. The other, a 27-year-old man, died at the hospital. Witnesses at the funeral home had said one of the two people killed was shot in the chest. Their names have not been released.
Family photo of Mckayla, the 5-year-old girl shot in the leg in the North Miami funeral home shooting. (Source: Someta Etienne)
A 5-year-old girl, identified by her family as Mckayla Bazile, was shot in the leg and hospitalized at Jackson Memorial Hospital along with eleven other victims.
Mckayla’s grandmother told CBS4’s Maggie Newland that the girl has a bullet lodged in her leg bone that doctors do not plan on removing, however, she should fully recover. The grandmother said she was on the phone with Mckayla when the barrage of bullets began and the girl said, “Grandma, I’ve been shot.”
Aventura Police Sgt. Chris Goranitis told CBS4 News the funeral was for 21-year-old Morvin Andre who died on March 16th, one day after he jumped from the 4th to 2nd floor of the Aventura Mall parking garage in an effort to escape pursuit by Bloomingdale’s loss prevention employees.
The Medical Examiner ruled his death a suicide because he chose to jump rather than be apprehended, according to Goranitis.
Meantime, a senior police commander told CBS4 investigative reporter Jim DeFede that Andre had some connection to several South Florida gangs and some of those gang members were in attendance at his wake to pay their respects.
The commander said someone at the wake touched Andre’s body in the casket in a way that other gangs took as disrespectful. This led to an argument inside the funeral home which spilled out to the street.
Members of one gang retrieved an assault rifle and a handgun from a car and opened fire at other gang members in front of the funeral home, according to the CBS4 source.
Investigators believe that a white vehicle may be involved, according to Miami-Dade Police.
Pastor A.D. Lenoir Sr., who presided over the funeral service for Morvin Andre, said it was a chaotic scene after the shooting and he tried to calm everyone down.
“It was horrific, people were going crazy, screaming, running, just chaos.”
Pastor Lenoir was with the victim who died on the scene. “It’s horrible seeing someone pass on like that.”
Lenoir had a message to community following the shooting.
“It’s horrible the way our young people are responding to anger, to frustration, to their fears, to whatever issues they’re experiencing, it’s a low-down shame and I think it should quit. If you have problems, I think you should talk to your pastor, talk to someone that can help you, not to respond violently.”
Witness Jacques Leonet agreed.
“It’s more than crazy. They are destroying the community.”
No arrests have been made.
A total of 14 people were shot which makes it one of the worst mass shootings in the history of South Florida.
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OBAMA PROUDLY MARCHES WITH THE
NEW BLCK PANTHER PARTY SELMA ALABAMA MARCH-2007
Newly resurfaced photographs show President Obama appearing and marching with members of the New Black Panther Party as he campaigned for president in Selma, Ala., in March 2007.
Images were captured from a Flickr photo-sharing account before they were scrubbed.
The photos are reportedly featured in a book set to be released tomorrow by J. Christian Adams, the Department of Justice whistleblower in the New Black Panther Party, or NBPP, voter intimidation case.
The book is titled “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.”
Among the people visible in the pictures with Obama is NBPP Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz, a defendant in the voter intimidation case that Attorney General Eric Holder dismissed in 2009.
Also present was the Panthers’ “Minister of War,” Najee Muhammed.
While the photos present new evidence of a possible relationship between Obama and the controversial black extremist group, WND was first to report in March 2008 that Obama met Shabazz.
Shabazz boasted he met Obama when the politician attended the 42nd anniversary of the voting rights marches in Selma in 2007.
“I have nothing but respect for Obama and for his pastor,” said Shabazz, referring to Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor of nearly 20 years.
Shabazz said in 2008 that aside from promoting black rights, he also supports Obama because he may take what he called a “less-biased” policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I have hopes he will change the U.S. government’s position toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because our position has been unwarranted bias. Time and time again the U.S. vetoed resolutions in the U.N. Security Council condemning [Israeli] human rights violation. … I hope he shifts policy,” Shabazz said.
But the extremist added he doesn’t believe Obama could change America’s policy regarding Israel very much, since, he said, “other, powerful lobbies” control U.S. foreign policy.
The NBPP is a controversial black extremist party whose leaders are notorious for their racist statements and for leading anti-white activism.
Shabazz himself has given scores of speeches condemning “white men” and Jews.
The NBPP’s official platform states “white man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind,” refers to the “white racist government of America,” demands black people be exempt from military service and uses the word Jew repeatedly in quotation marks.
Shabazz has led racially divisive protests and conferences, such as the 1998 Million Youth March in which a few thousand Harlem youths reportedly were called upon to scuffle with police officers and speakers demanded the extermination of whites in South Africa.
The NBPP chairman was quoted at a May 2007 protest against the 400-year celebration of the settlement of Jamestown, Va., stating, “When the white man came here, you should have left him to die.”
He claimed Jews engaged in an “African holocaust,” and he has promoted the anti-Semitic urban legend that 4,000 Israelis fled the World Trade Center just prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
When Shabazz was denied entry to Canada in 2008 while trying to speak at a black-activist event, he blamed Jewish groups and claimed Canada “is run from Israel.”
Canadian officials justified the action stating he has an “anti-Semitic” and “anti-police” record, but some reports pointed to what was termed a minor criminal history for the decision to deny him entry.
He similarly blamed Jews for then-New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani’s initial decision, later rescinded, against granting a permit for the Million Youth March.
The NBPP’s deceased chairman, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, a former Nation of Islam leader who was once considered Louis Farrakhan’s most trusted adviser, gave speeches referring to the “white man” as the “devil” and claiming that “there is a little bit of Hitler in all white people.”
In a 1993 speech condemned by the U.S. Congress and Senate, Muhammad, lionized on the NBPP site, referred to Jews as “bloodsuckers,” labeled the pope a “no-good cracker” and advocated the murder of white South Africans who would not leave the nation subsequent to a 24-hour warning.
All NBPP members must memorize the group’s rules, such as that no party member “can have a weapon in his possession while drunk or loaded off narcotics or weed,” and no member “will commit any crimes against other party members or black people at all.”
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OBAMA THREATENS AND INTIMIDATES ALL THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICES
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A federal appeals court is striking back after President Obama cautioned the Supreme Court against overturning the health care overhaul and warned that such an act would be “unprecedented.”
A three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the Justice Department to explain by Thursday whether the administration believes judges have the power to strike down a federal law.
One justice in particular chided the administration for what he said was being perceived as a “challenge” to judicial authority—referring directly to Obama’s latest comments about the Supreme Court’s review of the health care case.
The testy exchange played out during a hearing over a separate ObamaCare challenge. It marked a new phase in the budding turf war between the executive and judicial branches.
“Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?” Judge Jerry Smith asked at the hearing.
Justice Department attorney Dana Lydia Kaersvang answered “yes” to that question.
A source inside the courtroom, speaking to Fox News afterward, described the questioning by Smith as pointed.
Smith also made clear during that exchange that he was “referring to statements by the president in the past few days to the effect ... that it is somehow inappropriate for what he termed unelected judges to strike acts of Congress.”
“That has troubled a number of people who have read it as somehow a challenge to the federal courts or to their authority,” Smith said. “And that’s not a small matter.”
Smith ordered a response from the department within 48 hours. The related letter from the court, obtained by Fox News, instructed the Justice Department to provide an explanation of “no less than three pages, single spaced” by noon on Thursday.
The Justice Department had no comment when asked about the exchange.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, though, told Fox News that there’s no dispute from the administration regarding the courts’ authority to strike down laws.
“Of course we believe that the Supreme Court has, and the courts have, as their duty and responsibility the ability of striking down laws as unconstitutional,” Carney said Tuesday.
However, he said the president was specifically referring to “the precedent under the Commerce Clause” regarding a legislature’s ability to address “challenges to our national economy.”
The most significant Supreme Court case hinges on the question of whether the individual mandate to buy health insurance violates the Commerce Clause. The administration argues it does not.
Though Carney said the president did not misspeak when he discussed the case on Monday, Obama was not quite so specific.
“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said on Monday. “And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this court will recognize that and not take that step.”
Obama reiterated his stance on Tuesday, saying the court has traditionally shown “deference” to Congress and that “the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.”
Carney said that Obama was expressing the point that on national economic challenges, “there should be due deference paid as a matter of precedent to our democratically elected officials.”
RUSH: Obama and his attack on the Supreme Court yesterday. It happened toward the end of the program in the last half hour and it was happening on the fly. I didn’t really have enough time to listen in detail to what Obama said, and thus I didn’t have a chance to, in detail, reply. I’ve now listened to what Obama said. I’ve got three sound bites here.
When I got home yesterday at about six o’clock last night I got a flash
encrypted message from a friend who says, “You know, somebody in the court
leaked to Obama. That’s why he went out there and did this today. Somebody
called him. He lost the vote, the preliminary vote on Friday. He lost it, and
somebody leaked it.” And that became an active theory that began to be bandied
about amongst a lot of people that I know. Because people were saying,
”Why go out,” as Obama did yesterday...? It was in the form of a question. We
must remember that he was asked a question about this. He didn’t launch into
this on his own, but once he got the question, it was, “Katie, bar the door,”
and he was off to the races.
And the question everybody was asking is: “Why do this? Why attack the court? Why intimidate them, why threaten them if they had voted to uphold the mandate?” And I have an answer for that. See, I know these people. I know liberals. I don’t want that statement to sound bombastic. You people here—new listeners to the program—that’s not a braggadocios statement. It’s not bombastic. It’s not outrage or any attempt to shock. I just know them, and so when somebody asks me, “Why would Obama say that if he didn’t have to? If he had been told that the preliminary vote on Friday was in his favor, why take the attitude that he took?” There is an answer to that. I don’t know if it’s right, but there is an answer.
And again, I’m not trying to be provocative when I say this. I’m just quoting Bill Clinton, folks. Bill Clinton referred to Barack Obama as a Chicago thug during the 2008 presidential campaign. This after Clinton some years earlier had told Juanita Broaddrick, “Put some ice on that lip” after she said he raped her. (I mentioned that for this “war on women” that supposedly the Republicans are waging.) But there’s every possibility that Obama feeling his oats, being told that the vote went his way, would still go out and do this, ‘cause he knows there are more votes to come. I’m not predicting it. I’m just saying I could understand it.
It’s easier to understand that somebody leaked to him that the preliminary vote went against him and that the mandate fell by whatever the preliminary vote was and that explains his attitude yesterday. But I can see him saying what he said if the vote went in his favor as well, as a means of further intimidation, making sure they don’t change their minds or whatever. You might say, “Well, how would that work? Wouldn’t that just kind of make them be more resistant?” The reason this is all a crock in the first place is that (and we will go through this as we play the Obama sound bites) it is obvious that to the left this is an entirely political process.
There’s nothing judicial going on here. There’s nothing legal. This isn’t even really about the Constitution. This is about politics, pure and simple, and Barack Obama’s reelection. It’s all it is. But he says things in these sound bites which you’ll hear coming up and they’re chilling to me. “The court has to understand...” “The court must understand,” is one of his sound bites. No, the court must not—does not have to—listen to you. What is this, “The court must understand”? That is a threat! How many of you think it possible that Obama will make a trip to the Supreme Court before the vote, before the final vote? Can you see it happening? I can.
I’m not predicting it. (interruption) You’re shaking your head. You don’t think it would ever happen? Why would he be...? Why would Obama visiting the Supreme Court between now and June be any more unconscionable than what he did yesterday? (interruption) It’s a visual? No! He’s just going up to say hi to Kagan. He’s going up to say hi to Kagan and Sotomayor, to see how they’re doing. (interruption) He called ‘em out of the State of the Union right to their face. Remember that with Justice Alito? Anyway, let me take a break. We’ll come back and we will get into some of these sound bites and we’ll tear this down as it happened sometimes line by line. Mike, be prepared when I say, “Stop.” There might be some frequent stops and starts as we go through this.
RUSH: Reuters was just as excited as they could be over what Obama did. “Obama Takes a Shot at the Supreme Court Over Health Care—President Obama took an opening shot at conservative justices on the Supreme Court on Monday, warning that a rejection of his sweeping health care law would be an act of judicial activism that Republicans say they abhor.” Warning? Warning? And Reuters is happy! (That’s right! You take it to these conservatives!) Judicial activism? You know, the debate is constantly held: “Is he really this ignorant or naive, or is this just strategic?”
Everybody knows that judicial activism is not what Obama is explaining it to be. Judicial activism is the court MAKING law. Judicial activism is the court WRITING law. What Obama is trying to say here is that the court will be engaging in judicial activism if it judges the law according to the Constitution. That’s not what judicial activism is. I know exactly what they’re doing. They’re trying to take this term, and they’re trying to redefine it publicly to fit their needs and redefine the language (as they constantly are). But, folks, I’m gonna tell you something. It is preposterous, and it’s even a little scary to hear such abject ignorance from a supposed constitutional scholar.
This is a man, Barack Obama, who was once paid to teach law, constitutional law, and he doesn’t even know the meaning of the term “judicial activism.” No one ever accuses any judges of judicial activism for following the Constitution! Judges are accused of judicial activism for not following the Constitution, for legislating from the bench, for writing their own law. This is basic knowledge. Now, maybe this is why we’ve never seen Obama’s grade transcripts, if he really doesn’t know the difference. But I suspect that he does know the difference, and I suspect that he’s trying to redefine terms here to fit. Because this has become a template argument for the left.
You remember Jeffrey Toobin? You talk about a guy who’s done a 180 here, turned on a dime. During the week of oral arguments, Jeff Toobin, CNN legal analyst, was in an abject panic. These people on the left... And again, ladies and gentlemen, this is the solid truth. They do not expose themselves to any ideological thinking other than their own. They have assumed that conservatism is racism, sexism, bigotry, homophobia, all of these cliches they attach to it. And they’re not interested in talking to anybody that they think is a conservative. They really are not familiar with other ideas. They don’t speak the language. We, of course, can speak liberalism as well as they do. We understand it.
How can we not? We’re exposed to it from the time we’re born. They shield themselves, their families, their friends from conservatism as much as possible. Liberalism is a gated community. Not only is liberalism a gated community, there’s a moat before you get to the gate. They simply don’t understand it. And so Jeff Toobin literally was having a cow when he heard the justices on the court question the government lawyer from a conservative constitutional point of view, and he was shocked. He was unfamiliar with it. Now, you may find it hard to believe. “Rush, these guys are in the news media and they talk about conservatives all day long.”
They really are strangers to our core beliefs, folks. So after the shock of being exposed to it wore off, then Toobin and the rest of ‘em (including Obama) had to come up with a way to feel right about everything again. They had to come up with a pacifier. And so what they have done is construct this notion of judicial activism to throw it right back in our faces. And now their definition of judicial activism would be the court throwing out something that the United States Congress did. Because, as far as they’re concerned, if the Congress did it, and the Congress was Democrats, it’s constitutional. No questions asked. No argument possible. That’s it. If the court throws that out, that’s judicial activism. Judicial activism cannot possibly exist if the court is following the Constitution. This is really a teachable moment here.
RUSH: I’m gonna set the table here because I like to have a foundation established when we start the audio sound bites. And I’ll tell you: It is hilarious to hear Obama arguing, threatening, warning justices of the Supreme Court that the individual mandate is constitutional. It isn’t. There is no permission for the federal government to order Americans to sign contracts with anybody, to buy something, or to not buy something. There is no provision for this in the Constitution. In a cut-and-dried, right-down-the-middle-way. In a sane world, this thing doesn’t get out of Congress because somebody there realizes it’s unconstitutional.
Remember, Obama argued against the mandate in 2008. Now, he didn’t say it was unconstitutional in 2008, but he implied it. ‘Cause he said it would mean that the government would have unlimited power to mandate anything, and he chided Hillary, his primary opponent. “I mean, if a mandate was a solution we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody buy a house.” So he knows. He knows full well. He also warned and threatened the justices that the mandate exists so everybody has skin in the game, to make sure that everybody’s paying for his health care bill. But he also, as you’ll hear, blatantly rewrites the history of Obamacare legislatively.
He claims, you’ll hear him say it, Obamacare “was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” In reality, there was no strong majority in support of Obamacare. In fact, there was strong bipartisan support against it! Thirty-four Democrats in the House voted against Obamacare. No Republicans voted for it. It was passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve 2009 by a vote of 60-39. They used budget reconciliation, any number of tricks. But he’s just up there blatantly rewriting the history of this. He’s rewriting the public support for this. He’s just blatantly making it all up. That’s why people think he got a leak. And as a friend of mine said: Why wouldn’t Kagan call him?
I’m not gonna tell you that, Mr. New Castrati. None of your business. But it’s not just my friends, thinking this. It’s all over the place that somebody musta called Obama. And the logical guess if it happened would be Kagan because she was in the administration. She was the solicitor general. And these people are playing for keeps. And it’s obvious based on what Obama did yesterday that traditional rules and standards of decorum and propriety don’t matter. So let’s go. Here’s the first bite. In total, this runs a minute 45. I doubt we’re gonna get it in that quickly. ‘Cause I doubt I’m gonna be able to restrain myself and not tell the broadcast engineer to stop it. So here we go. This is yesterday afternoon. He’s with the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, and the Mexican president, Felipe Calderon.
They had a joint news conference about NAFTA-type stuff, and an unidentified reporter with an obviously (to me, anyway), planted question, ‘cause Obama wants this. “Mr. President! Mr. President! After last week’s arguments at the Supreme Court, many experts believe that there could be a majority—a five-member majority—to strike down the individual mandate. And if that were to happen, if it were to be ruled unconstitutional, how would you still guarantee health care...?” There’s no question in my mind this is a planted question. “And if that were to happen, Mr. President, how would you still guarantee health care to the uninsured and those Americans who’ve become insured as a result of a law?”
(laughing) The question is just wonderful. Here’s the answer...
OBAMA: With respect to health care, I’m actually, uh, continue to be confident that the Supreme Court will uphold the law. Uhhh... And the reason is because, uh, in accordance with, uhhh, precedent out there, it’s constitutional.
RUSH: Stop tape. What precedent? There no precedent on this. There’s no precedent. There’s no legislation that required us to go buy something, enter into a contract, that the court has found constitutional. There’s no precedent. That’s what this is all about. Okay, let’s hit it.
OBAMA: That’s not just in my opinion, by the way. That’s the opinion of, uh, legal experts across the ideological spectrum, uhhh, including two very conservative appellate court justices, uh, that said this wasn’t even a close case.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Again, the construction here of the straw man in every instance such as this. “By the way,” he says, “that’s the opinion of legal experts across the ideological spectrum.” Whether it’s global warming or whether it’s the stimulus that’s gonna create jobs, “Ah, there are economists all across the spectrum!” No. He’s got two judges here, one of them was Laurence Silberman, who is conservative, and I’ll tell you: When Silberman ruled that the mandate was constitutional, I thought “Whoa!” I was taken aback, I’ll admit that. But there’s no broad-based consensus across the ideological spectrum of experts. That’s what this is about. Okay, keep going.
OBAMA: I think it’s important ‘cause I—I watched some of the commentary last week, to remind people that this is not an abstract argument. People’s lives are affected by the lack of availability of health care, the inaffordability (sic) of health care, their inability to get health care because of preexisting conditions.
RUSH: Stop the tape. It is precisely an abstract argument. That’s exactly what’s going on here. This was my point last week. This is a classroom discussion. This is a bunch of people on his side sitting around theorizing on how they would make it better if they had the power, if they had the opportunity. It is abstract. And then everything that followed that is irrelevant. The court is not to take into consideration who has health insurance and who doesn’t. That is not what is being argued here. This is not before the court because some people don’t have health insurance. This is not before the court because some people have health insurance that other people are paying for. The details of health care in America are not why this case is being argued.
This case is being argued because his administration is trying to violate the Constitution in securing the largest power grab by the federal government in the history of this country. That’s what’s being argued: Does he have the constitutional right to do it this way? All this other stuff is nothing more than tugging at our heartstrings. All this other stuff is trying to inject politics. All this other stuff about the uninsured and preexisting conditions, that’s an attempt to ladle guilt on the justices, and particularly the conservative justices. “If you find this unconstitutional, look at the pain you are causing! Look at the heartbreak you are causing! Look at the number of people who might even die because of you.” That’s what he’s doing here. That’s the degree of intimidation and threat that Obama is employing. All right, let me find my place in the transcript here and... Okay. Hit it.
OBAMA: The law that’s already in place has already given 2.5 million young people health care that wouldn’t otherwise have it.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Irrelevant. That doesn’t mean that if the law is unconstitutional, it should stand. It doesn’t mean that. If ten million people have health insurance now who didn’t have it... And I don’t even want to get into the argument of whether he’s telling the truth here or not because there’s no way to know. They just make these numbers up left and right, like there were three million homeless, like there were 45 million uninsured. The number’s 16, 15 or 16 million. The numbers don’t matter, which is why I’m not gonna get into ‘em. It’s irrelevant. If 30 million uninsured all of a sudden now had health insurance, that’s not germane to what’s being discussed.
OBAMA: There are tens of thousands of adults with preexisting conditions who have health care right now because of this law.
RUSH: Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. No, Mr. President, in fact, the rate of people signing up for this provision is way low, much lower than the government expectations. But again, that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter. It’s not what’s being argued. Whether or not people with preexisting conditions now have insurance isn’t relevant. Folks, all I’m doing here is telling you what is. I am not arguing politically. I’m not trying to stop Obama from having a political victory. I’m scared we are losing this country, and we are going to lose big if this thing is ever fully implemented. We have until 2014 to stop that, and the court here is just one step in this. I don’t mean to sound—and please do not infer that I don’t care about people who do not have health insurance. I do. This is not the way to fix our problem.
I’ll just ask you to look at our history yourself. We’ve had a war on poverty. We’ve had the Great Society. We’ve had every number of liberal-created social programs to fix problems and I ask you, is one of them fixed? Or are they all out of control and worse? And the answer is the latter. This is not the way to fix the problem, but it’s not germane to what the justices are deciding in the first place. I don’t care whether Obama knows that or not. I don’t care whether he’s so ignorant and ill-educated he doesn’t know it. All I know is he’s using threats and intimidation and trying to ladle guilt on these justices. Here’s what you’re going to be taking away from poor Americans if you do this. Here, he kept going.
OBAMA: Parents don’t have to worry about their children not being able to get health care because they can’t be prevented from getting health care as a consequence of a pre-existing condition. That’s part of this law.
OBAMA: Millions of seniors are paying less for prescription drugs because of this law.
RUSH: Stop the tape. That’s irrelevant, too. If anybody’s paying less for prescription drugs it’s because of George W. Bush and Medicare Part B. But again, none of this is relevant to what is being argued. We are talking about the Constitution. We do not have the right, these are people who have sworn an oath to uphold, defend, and protect the Constitution, and there’s no reason to abandon it. You cannot say, “Well, there are all these people without health care so the Constitution doesn’t matter.” Wrong. It’s not the only way to fix this problem. Keep going.
OBAMA: Americans all across the country have greater rights and protections with respect to their insurance companies and they’re getting preventive care because of this law.
OBAMA: That’s just the part that’s already been implemented. That doesn’t even speak to the 30 million people who stand to gain coverage once it’s fully implemented in 2014.
RUSH: Oh, 30 million now? It’s actually 15, but a couple years ago it was 45 million. Again, none of this is germane. Now, you go out and ask your average liberal and this is all that matters. “The Constitution, what Constitution? What a barrier. You mean to tell me the Constitution’s preventing people from getting health care? Well, to hell with the Constitution.” That’s what people on the left think. That’s what we’re up against. But none of this is relevant. The message here is, Justice Kennedy, do you want to take all this away from people? Do you want this on your head, Justice Kennedy? That’s the point of what he just said.
RUSH: How many people are homeless? Shouldn’t the government do something about that? Shouldn’t the government mandate that everybody buy or rent a house? And shouldn’t the Supreme Court uphold that because, how can you take a house away from somebody as we force them to buy it? This is what he’s arguing here. It’s figuratively speaking here. Obama’s put a bounty out on the Supreme Court, figuratively speaking, since bounties are in the news lately. There’s no question. This is a message to the conservative justices: Anthony Kennedy, look what you will be taking away if you strike down my law. Look at the people you will be hurting if you strike down my law.
Let’s go to the next bite. It’s about a minute 19 seconds uninterrupted. We’ll see how far we get into this one.
OBAMA: I think the American people understand and I think the justices should understand—
RUSH: Whoa, stop the tape. “I think the justices should understand.” The American people understand. Cue it back up to the top. I think the justices should understand. Well, it’s easy to detect the attitude here. You guys had better understand who you’re dealing with here. You guys had better understand what you are doing here. You’d better understand what your role is here. You better understand what I am expecting out of you. You better understand what you’re supposed to do here. Flat-out intimidation. No question about it. All right, let’s start at the top of this.
OBAMA: I think the American people understand and I think the justices should understand that, in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get health care.
RUSH: Stop the tape. Yes, you can. There’s only one way to do this. By forcing everybody else to go buy health insurance to pay for those who don’t. That’s the only way to do it. Redistribution of wealth? Coercion? Compelled, forced contract is the only way to do it? Justices better understand. I’ll tell you what the American people understand. They hate Obamacare, by over 60%, some cases up to 70%, every poll. Why shouldn’t the justices be afraid of the wrath of the American people, instead of the wrath of Obama? If they’re supposed to pay attention to politics, if they’re supposed to pay attention to elections and polls, the American people don’t want this. “The justices had better understand.” Whew, boy. That is amazing.
RUSH: Now back to our audio sound bites. Barack Obama yesterday in his obvious attempt to influence the vote at the Supreme Court. I’ve asked people if we can recall other presidents doing this. I frankly don’t, but I can’t say conclusively. I don’t know if Bill Clinton ever did. Campaign finance reform, I don’t know what happened with that. I know members of Congress go out and say things, but presidents, I just don’t recall. If it has happened, it’s not often and it’s not common. It’s not something that either of the Bushes ever did. Ronald Reagan never did it. I just can’t say for certain that this is unprecedented.
I don’t think a president has ever called out the Supreme Court in a State of the Union message, for example. Well, I know, Andrew Jackson said to John Marshall, “Okay, go ahead,” back in 1832, “go ahead, you enforce it if you want. I’m not going to.” But the Jackson thing could be a myth. Well, I know FDR went after him when he was running for reelection, but there are presidents who have attempted to run against the Supreme Court as a campaign prop. This is an attempt to influence the vote of a particular justice or two. I can’t honestly say it hasn’t happened before. I just know that, if it has, it’s extremely rare and it is a total violation of decorum and traditions, which are falling by the wayside anyway.
So let’s go back to the top. This is the bite where Obama tells the justices: I think you guys better understand. “The justices should understand.” Or else what? If they don’t understand, or else what? You guys better understand. You better understand what I expect. That’s what he’s telling them here.
OBAMA: I think the American people understand and I think the justices should understand that, in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get health care.
RUSH: Stop tape. Doesn’t matter. Not what’s being argued. Irrelevant. This is guilt ladling once again, trying to throw guilt up on all these justices. Look what you’re going to be doing to people if you vote the wrong way. Keep going here.
OBAMA: So there’s not only an economic element to this and a legal element to this, but there’s a human element to this.
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa. There’s a human element? And only he, only he has the connection to the human element? Right. That’s exactly right. That’s why he nominated Sotomayor because she has the ability to relate and understand the trials and tribulations of minorities. That’s not in any way relevant to the qualifications for somebody to be on the Supreme Court. We need somebody up there to understand the plight of Hispanics. It doesn’t matter. That’s not in the qualifications. Empathy is irrelevant here. But as far as Obama’s concerned, it trumps the Constitution. That’s what he’s saying. The human element. What offends me about that, incumbent upon that is that we don’t. Is that we’re not connected to the human element. We don’t care about human beings. That’s what he’s saying. He cares about people; we don’t.
Really? What do we stand for? We stand for individual freedom, individual liberty. We stand for people being able to use their God-given talents combined with ambition to be the best they can be, whatever that is. I said it at my CPAC address to the nation. We love people. We want the best for everybody. We don’t want to punish anybody for their success, for their failure, whatever. We don’t look at various pockets of this country that gotta be gotten even with or something like that. Human element? There’s that arrogance and conceit again, that only liberals care about people.
RUSH: Stop tape. There’s not a political debate. It’s a legal argument. It is not a political debate at the court.
OBAMA: I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.
RUSH: Wait just a second. Stop tape. Unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law? It happens every term. There’s nothing unprecedented about overturning an unconstitutional act of Congress. Can I remind you of Proposition 187 in California? The people of California voted to end welfare payments to the children of illegal immigrants. A statewide ballot initiative and the people of California said we’re tired and we’re not going to pay for the health care or for other welfare for the children of illegal immigrants. And a federal judge threw it out, said it wasn’t constitutional, said the people of California didn’t know what they were doing. Don’t tell me that judges don’t throw out laws. One judge in that case, Prop 187. And there are a number of others, countless examples. How about Obama refusing to enforce federal law in Arizona when it comes to immigration and instead suing the state.
So that’s a lie. That is not true. And of course this majority of a democratically elected Congress. He’s messing with the history of this again. Let’s review. Obamacare passed the Senate late on Christmas Eve of 2009, had a vote of 60-39. All Senate Democrats, two independents voted for it. All the Senate Republicans voted against it. It passed the House on March 21st, 2010, by a vote of 219 to 212. All 178 House Republicans and 34 Democrats voted against it. There was no bipartisan support for this. It barely won by seven votes. There was not an overwhelming victory by a majority of democratically elected Congress. And, in fact, if we’re gonna talk about democracy and majorities, I’ll again remind you of the polling data on this. Anywhere from 60, depending on the poll, to 75% of the American people oppose Obamacare. Shouldn’t the justices pay attention to that?
If we’re gonna politicize this, if we’re gonna tell the justices they gotta start paying attention to democratically elected politics, democratically elected this or that. How about democratically conducted polls? “That would be silly, Mr. Limbaugh, to say the courts should respond to polls.” It’s silly to say they should respond to legislation. It’s not what is being argued here. Here’s the next part of it.
OBAMA: And I—I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint; that, uhhh, an uninelected (sic), uhhh, group of—of people would somehow overturn, uhhh, a duly constituted and—and passed, uh, law. Uh, well, eh, uh, uh, is a good example. Uhh, and I’m pretty confident that this, uh—this court will recognize that, uh, and not take that step.
RUSH: Well, once again I’ll reiterate for you that he has totally incorrectly defined judicial activism. Nobody ever accuses judges of judicial activism for following the Constitution. Judicial activism is when judges do not follow the Constitution, when they legislate from the bench, when they write their own law. Which, by the way, is what they were asked to do in oral arguments. When the whole notion of throwing out the mandate came up, and Scalia said, “Well, wait a minute, you want us to go through all 2,700 pages here?” During oral arguments, the libs were asking for judicial activism! “Okay, you guys throw it out. You tell us what we can do and what we can’t. Scalia said, “I’m not gonna read this whole thing.” Members of Congress said, “I haven’t read this whole thing.”
That was stunning in and of itself. Everybody that has any power over this thing has never read it! The justices haven’t read it. Members of Congress haven’t read it. Obama hasn’t read it. We have. We don’t have a vote. How about Obama? His Justice Department just announced one day that they’re going to stop enforce the Defense of Marriage Act. Remember that, folks? Just announced it! We’re gonna stop defending it. The Supreme Court found it constitutional. Obama said, “I don’t care. I’m not gonna enforce it.” Holder, DOJ, whoever, said, “We’re not going to enforce it.” So they’re trying to redefine judicial activism here and turn that one upside down as well. We’ll get to the final bite we have from Obama yesterday afternoon at the White House.
OBAMA: As I said we are confident that, uh, this will be over—that this will be upheld. Uhhh, I’m confident that this will be upheld because it should be upheld. And, again, that isn’t just my opinion.
OBAMA: -- and judges—
RUSH: Everywhere, across the spectrum.
OBAMA: -- and lawyers who have examined this law—
RUSH: Yeah.
OBAMA: -- even if they’re not particularly sympathetic to this particular piece of legislation or my presidency.
RUSH: Ohhhh. So all across the spectrum, even people who disagree with it realize his law is constitutional. That’s another thing that just isn’t true, folks. Totally manufactured and made up. That’s the usual Obama straw man argument. All these nameless people. He never identifies them, never quotes them. He just says they exist. “People all across the spectrum—people who hate me, people who love me—liberals, conservatives, economists, experts, law review presidents like I was, legal analysts, pundits on TV—even Keith Olbermann—all agree.” Yada yada yada. Another reason people think he got a leak because of this faux pas here. “As I said, we’re confident that this will be over...” Uh, uh, uh, “ that this will be upheld.”
Did you catch that, Mr. Snerdley? Here play that again. Play the sound bite three here just from the top again.
OBAMA: As I said we are confident that, uh, this will be over—that this will be upheld.
RUSH: Uh, uh! Ooh! O oh! Some people are thinking, “Well, it’s on his mind that it’s been overturned and he doesn’t like it.” Here’s David Axelrod, who’s a former reporter who is now Obama’s consiglieri, capo di tutti capi, or whatever it is. And he was on with Charlie Rose today on CBS This Morning. Charlie Rose said, “The president had a message for the Supreme Court yesterday, David. Tell us what he’s saying when he talks about judicial activism. If he’s trying to send a message to the court as it considers this case.”
AXELROD: I don’t think he’s trying to send a message, Charlie. I think he was like answering a question about, uh, what his—his reaction to last week’s proceedings. The president believes that the Supreme Court will affirm the law because it’s in keeping with their precedent, uh, not to overturn a law that Congress passed, uh, of this magnitude, certainly on a 5-4 sort of vote.
RUSH: Ahhhh. We’re back to my theory over the last week. Can’t overturn this 5-4. It’s too much magnitude. Can’t overturn this 5-4 vote. No, no, no. The president is confident. He was just answering a question, Charlie. No, no, no.
Well, let’s go back to January 27th in the House chamber at the State of the Union show, Barack Obama attacking the Supreme Court after their ruling in Citizens United.
OBAMA: With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations to spend without limit in our elections. I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or, worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct—
RUSH: Oh, man—
OBAMA: -- some of these problems.
RUSH: I’ll tell you what, folks. That Citizens United case really bamboozled him. They hated it. That’s what gave us the super PACs, by the way. ‘Cause they’ll take money from foreigners. They’ll take money from unidentified people. They’ll take money from people that commit vote fraud. They’ll take money from people convicted of breaking campaign finance laws. They don’t care. You know what this is? “We had an unfair advantage until the court ruled, and now the court gave our opponents the same fundraising opportunity we’ve had always had and we don’t like that. We don’t like a level playing field.” But that was the assault on the court, and during that is when Samuel Alito, the justice, shook his head and was saying “no” right to Obama.
Okay.... Don’t go away.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: It’s really ironic to hear Barack Obama whining about legislation being decided by unelected judges. I wonder if he’s ever heard of Roe v. Wade. You talk about unelected judges imposing their own view of life on us? There’s no greater example than finding abortion to be constitutional. What about all of his czars who are unelected, who are unaccountable, who never have to be confirmed? We don’t know anything about them what they do or with whom they do it. Who elected Kathleen Sebelius to regulate one-sixth of the nation’s economy, our health care system? Who elected her? Who elected Steven Chu?
Who elected any of Obama’s czars? Who elected the EPA to rule by fiat on carbon dioxide emissions? You see, it’s okay to ram through Congress something of this magnitude, along party lines, using legislative trickery. That’s perfectly fine, but it can’t be struck down 5-4. It can pass 219-212, but it can’t be rejected 5-4. We can ram it through Congress all day long with nobody even having read the bill, but the justices can’t reject it by a vote of 5-4. This whole notion of the human element. Throughout our legal system, the human element is expressly omitted.
And by “human element,” I mean the emotion. Emotion, the human element is not part of a trial. It’s not supposed to be part of a trial. Now, lawyers do everything they can to sneak it in. But the law is not supposed to take that into account. The law is specifically to focus on the law, not the human element. Back in 2008 Obama said the mandate would hurt individuals. He said, “They may charge people who already don’t have health care fines or have to take it out of their paychecks. I don’t think that’s helping those without health insurance.” That was the human element, as far as he was concerned, in 2008. Now, it doesn’t matter.
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The whole purpose of a life
tenured, unelected, independent judiciary is to be anti-democratic; to preserve life, liberty, and property from the tyranny of the majority. Without such a judiciary, nothing but brute force would protect us from a Congress that recognized no limits on its authority.
Has he actually forgotten that an unelected group of people overturned segregated schools which was the beginning of the end of Jim Crow laws, ordered the government to try or to free people it has arrested, prevented the prosecution of unpopular speech, invalidated the federal regulation of guns near schools, and ordered a president who thought he was above the law to turn over subpoenaed tapes to a federal district court?
The Supreme Court firmly established in Marbury v. Madison in 1803 that government behavior that is repugnant to the Constitution is not valid, and it is the duty of the courts to make that determination and to invalidate such behavior. This is called “judicial review:” It is the power of the courts to review the acts of the other branches of the federal government, and to review the laws of the states, and to void them when they exceed the confines of the Constitution. No serious legal scholar has questioned this power in the past 175 years.
The president is entitled to his own opinions, just like everyone else is. He is free to argue and to predict that ObamaCare should and will be upheld. But he cannot seriously suggest, with intellectual honesty, that the Court is without lawful authority to invalidate an act of Congress that the Court determines is repugnant to the Constitution.
Nor can he, with intellectual honesty, issue veiled threats to the Court.
The Court is his equal, as a branch of government. But since 1803, the Court is superior to the president on having the final say as to what the laws and what the Constitution mean; and the president knows that.
This Court, which has no army but does have a rich and unbroken tradition of commanding fidelity from the other branches of the government, cannot be intimidated by him. He can criticize it to his heart’s content; but he cannot lay a glove on the Supreme Court.
Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written six books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is “It Is Dangerous To Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom”.
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GOP WARNING TO THE COMMUNIST DICTATOR OBAMA
BACK OFF SUPREME COURT JUDGES AND STOP DEM CHICAGO STYLE GANGSTER THUG POITICS
The Republican backlash against President Barack Obama’s health care-SCOTUS remarks shows no sign of subsiding.
In a noon speech today to the Rotary Club of Lexington, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell continued the GOP counteroffensive, telling the president to “back off” the Supreme Court.
“The President crossed a dangerous line this week. And anyone who cares about liberty needs to call him out on it. The independence of the Court must be defended,” McConnell (R-Ky.) said, according to the prepared text of his speech released by his office. "So respectfully, I would suggest the President back off. Let the Court do its work.”
Obama predicted Monday that the High Court would uphold the Democratic health care law. Repealing it, the president said during a Rose Garden news conference, would amount to judicial activism on an “unprecedented, extraordinary” scale.
“I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law,” Obama said. “Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.”
McConnell, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other prominent conservatives accused Obama of trying to publicly shame justices to rule in the administration’s favor.
And a three-judge panel 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reacted to the president’s remarks by ordering the Justice Department to clarify the administration’s stance on judicial review. The DOJ’s response is due today.
McConnell's full prepared remarks are after the jump.
