Blogger Update

Sorry. I haven't been blogging recently and have been avoiding politics for a couple of weeks. I'm involved in a personal project right now-- writing again-- and have been distracted from the rest of the world.

I have to tell you, it's really a relief to ignore politics for a while. It's so inviting to just sit back in blissful ignorance.

Of course, that's not a healthy attitude to put put forth-- particularly unhealthy right now. I'll be back in the next few weeks, though how often depends on the progress of my writing. I get things done before deadlines, but the actual rate of the writing is unpredictable at best.

Anyway, I'll be posting again soon.

Thanks,
Yukio Ngaby

Study: 89% of Nation's Food Stamps Buy Junk Food

File this one under N for "No shit, Sherlock." Did a bunch of people not actually know this?

From the National Report:

A recent study has uncovered that nearly 89 percent of food stamp recipients frivol [sic] away their welfare aid on unhealthy, overpriced convenience store junk food.  

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP for short, was originally designed to help the needy become more self-reliant in times of economic strife. However, judging by what these individuals are choosing to purchase, it is evident that the majority of those who receive benefits are criminally milking the system for all it’s worth.  

The Malbeck Data Institute released the results of their study which set out to determine what types of foods were being purchased with food stamp benefits, and the results were startling for many tax payers. Only 11 percent of welfare recipients used their cards to purchase basic ingredients for healthy meals.

The wording of this article is silly at best, but the upshot is quite correct. Most people use their food stamps-- no longer stamps of course, but the name continues-- to buy T.V. dinners (another antiquated term, so I'm not 20 anymore, sue me), junk food like Slim Jims, and fast food. Look around and see how many fast food joints accept EBT.

Why did people think obesity is such a problem among the poorer people in the U.S.? Why do the Dems occasionally go on these tirades about how many fast food places are in poorer sections of cities? With so much money being doled out in America (even after the skimming administrative costs), what did people expect many of those in the poorer neighborhoods to pay with?


UPDATE: I corrected a couple of typos including one in the title. Although I have to admit they were accidental, I kept them up after noticed them because I thought they were funny. My wife has finally won out and I have corrected them.

Tensions Simmer and Ships Clash in South China Sea

We'll probably see more of these sort of incidents as China expands its territories from the necessity of an inefficient economy, the U.S. continues to show apathy weakness. Without the stability of America's military presence and with Obama's legacy of betraying allies China's neighbors must either stand-up to the giant under very uncertain circumstances or back down to China's bullying.

From The Wall Street Journal article by Brian Spegele:

Strains between China and its neighbors burst to the surface in two parts of the South China Sea, taking the high-stakes struggle for control over the waters to new levels of friction.

Off Vietnam, dozens of Chinese military and civilian ships clashed with the Vietnamese coast guard, with Vietnamese officials complaining its vessels were repeatedly rammed. On the same day, Philippine police apprehended Chinese fishing vessels loaded with hundreds of sea turtles in disputed waters.  

About 80 Chinese vessels moved into an area near the disputed Paracel Islands, where Hanoi has sought to prevent China from deploying a massive oil rig, said Rear Adm. Ngo Ngoc Thu, vice commander of the Vietnamese coast guard. He said the flotilla included seven military ships and that it was supported by aircraft. 

He said the situation, which started brewing over the weekend, was "very tense" and said six Vietnamese officers had been injured in the standoff.  

The confrontation—by far the most serious in recent years between the two neighbors—marked a significant escalation in Beijing's willingness to press its natural-resource claims, analysts said.  

[...]  

A senior administration official said the White House views the latest escalation as part of a pattern of behavior as China continues to try to advance its territorial claims. "We're obviously very concerned about it," the official said. "We have conveyed our concerns to the Chinese."

With a strongly written letter that might have used the word "dude,"  no doubt. Seriously, Obama has shown repeatedly that his words are hollow-- if not outright lies-- and that he's most concerned about shifting rather than protecting allies or even American lives.

President Barack Obama toured the region last month, stressing U.S. security cooperation. The latest escalation of tensions in the South China Sea reinforces that the disputes "are not going to be solved with one trip or one speech," said Michael Green, senior vice president for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "And it shows that the Chinese side is not fazed by the negative reaction in the region," Mr. Green said.

If China's not careful, the First Lady might hashtag them with a sad face. That'll show 'em.

Security scholars said the latest escalation in tensions is the cumulative result of deep-seated mistrust over China's intentions among smaller regional players combined with Beijing's increased assertiveness as well as a lack of mechanisms to prevent and manage crises. 

The confrontation also illuminated the role of China's state-owned energy companies in helping advance China's territorial ambitions, despite frequent assertions by executives that they are driven by profit and not politics.  

[...]  

The Philippines on Wednesday apprehended a Chinese fishing vessel "carrying large numbers of endangered species" near Half Moon Shoal, a sandbar in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea and a hotbed for illegal sea-turtle poaching. Philippines police senior inspector Dante Padilla said an inspection of the boat yielded around 500 sea turtles, some of them dead.  

He said the police had arrested the captain of the Chinese vessel and its 10 crew  

The Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement it seized the Chinese fishing boat "to enforce maritime laws and to uphold Philippine sovereign rights over its [exclusive economic zone]." 

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying urged the Philippines to release the fishermen and to refrain from taking further provocative actions. Ms. Hua said the Chinese Embassy in Manila had complained to the Philippine government. 

The Philippines and China have overlapping maritime claims in several areas in the South China Sea. Amid China's recent aggressive assertions of its claims in the dispute areas, the Philippines had brought its case before an international tribunal to rally international support for its territorial claim.  

On his visit to the region last month, President Obama assured the Philippines that American military support is "ironclad," though he left vague whether the U.S. would come to the aid of the Philippines in its island disputes.

Of course Obama say "ironclad" and then not commit to defending the Philippines. Community organizers give speeches in which they make distorted claims and then give false reassurances. Then they move on to the next controversy and expect people to forget their first speech. It's crap. And Obama's been practicing it for decades. Did anyone truly believe that would all change after being elected following and ugly campaign?

I think there's little doubt China will continue to test the limit of what it's neighbors and the U.S. will tolerate. And the Obama Administration will tolerate quite a lot-- especially when others bear the brunt of the China's bullying. China's neighbors on the other hand... I don't know. There's a lot of trouble brewing in Asia.

Internationally, things look pretty bleak right now. Russia is invading Ukraine and stirring up a hornet's nest in the rest of Europe. Iran is practicing blowing up American ships. Islamic Extremism has taken a firm root in several Middle Eastern countries. And China is encroaching all along its oceans.

Unless there's a dramatic shift in the near future (1 year), I'm betting there will be a fair-sized conflict in either Asia and Europe. That is, of course, in addition to the Russia/Ukraine conflict.

Threats Against Gowdy for Leading Benghazi Hearing Being Investigated by Washington D.C. Police

Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.)

Because, you know, it's just a manufactured scandal or something.

From the NRO:

Capitol Police are currently undertaking “an active, open investigation” following e-mail threats toward Representative Trey Gowdy (R., S.C.) for his role as chairman of the special House panel investigating the September 2012 Benghazi attacks. 

Politico reports that it, along with other news organizations, received two e-mails on Tuesday that threatened Gowdy would be harmed for leading the select committee.

I'm sure the people threatening him are racist members of the Tea Party. Right?

N. Korea Nukes Can Reach U.S. and Russia Flies Military Aircraft Along Coast... Hey, the 80s called and they said: Don't Worry. Be happy.

Could a president depicted in this manner-- by the press-- possibly let you down?

So let's see here...

North Korea has nuclear warheads for its ballistic missiles capable of reaching the western United States.

From The Washington Free Beacon article by Bill Gertz:

North Korea has developed nuclear weapons capable of being launched on its ballistic missile forces, according to a new report by a defense analyst. 

The Obama administration is seeking to hide the fact that North Korea possesses nuclear missile warheads, according to a report by Mark Schneider, a former Pentagon strategic analyst and director for forces policy at the office of the secretary of defense. Schneider’s statement came in a report published April 28 in the journal Comparative Strategy. 

According to the 16-page report, “The North Korean Nuclear Threat to the United States,” the Defense Intelligence Agency stated in an unclassified assessment made public a year ago that “DIA assesses with moderate confidence the North [Korean government] currently has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles.” 

“This is disturbing news,” the report says. “The North Korean regime is one of the most fanatic, paranoid, and militaristic dictatorships on the planet. … While North Korea has long made occasional nuclear attack threats, the scope, magnitude, and frequency of these threats have vastly increased in 2013.” 

North Korea has in the recent months issued provocative threats to carry out nuclear strikes on U.S. cities and against American allies.  

[...]
The report on the North’s nuclear warheads stated that the assessment of a missile-delivered nuclear strike capability is not new. 

Based on a declassified 2001 National Intelligence estimate, North Korea’s Taepodong-2 ICBM can deliver a payload of several hundred kilograms up to 6,200 miles, distance enough to hit Alaska, Hawaii, and parts of the western Untied States. 

“If the North uses a third stage similar to the one used on the Taepodong-1 in 1998 in a ballistic missile configuration, then the Taepodong-2 could deliver a several-hundred-kg payload up to 15,000 km—sufficient to strike all of North America,” the report said.
North Korea also has acquired Chinese-made transporter-erector launchers that are now deployed with a new road-mobile KN-08 ICBM.

Russia is flying strategic aircraft along California's coast.

From Breitbart:

The Associated Press reported Monday that Gen. Herbert Carlisle, Commander of United States Air Forces in the Pacific, acknowledged a significant increase in the activities by Russian long-range strategic aircraft flying along the California coast.  

 There was no comment about whether the aircraft were nuclear capable, but it has not been since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s that Russian patrols have skirted the West Coast and California.       

Gen. Herbert J. "Hawk" Carlisle is the Commander of Pacific Air Forces; Air Component Commander for U.S. Pacific Command; and Executive Director, Pacific Air Combat Operations Staff, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii. As the PACAF, he is responsible for Air Force activities spread over half the globe in a command that supports 45,000 Airmen serving principally in Japan, Korea, Hawaii, Alaska and Guam.  

Speaking Monday, May 5th at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan Washington DC think tank, General Carlisle said there had been long-range Russian air patrols to the coast of California and a circumnavigation of the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. He noted that a U.S. F-15 fighter jet intercepted a Russian strategic bomber that had flown to Guam. 

General Carlisle linked the increased activity and incursions to the situation in the Ukraine. He said Russia was demonstrating its capabilities and gathering intelligence on U.S. military exercises.   

He further admitted that there has been a sharp increase in Russian air patrols around Japanese islands and Korea. General Carlisle added that there was more Russian ship activity in the area, too.

Ok, now both of these might be a little alarming, but hey, remember Obama said that something like "The eighties called and they want their foreign policy back"?

I feel better already!

Well here's an '80s video Obama may be humming in head-- or perhaps he'll need to foist it upon us as our foreign policies fail miserably (betrayal of Ukraine, bad-mouthing our ally Israel, Saudi Arabia's recent snub, etc.), our foes threaten (North Korea threatening nuclear strikes, Iran practicing attacking American ships, including aircraft carriers, , and our economy falters:

Is ObamaCare Still Unconstitutional?

"Would you stop arguing and just give in to my will?!"

The answer is yes, but the real question is "will it make any difference?" This a particularly sharp question for adherents "living Constitution" school.

From the NRO piece by George Will:

If the president wants to witness a refutation of his assertion that the survival of the Affordable Care Act is assured, come Thursday he should stroll the 13 blocks from his office to the nation’s second-most important court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. There he can hear an argument involving yet another constitutional provision that evidently has escaped his notice. It is the origination clause, which says: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.”  

The ACA passed the Senate on a party-line vote, and without a Democratic vote to spare, after a series of unsavory transactions that purchased the assent of several shrewdly extortionate Democrats. What will be argued on Thursday is that what was voted on — the ACA — was indisputably a revenue measure and unquestionably did not originate in the House, which later passed the ACA on another party-line vote.  

[...]  

The “exaction” — Roberts’s word — “looks,” he laconically said, “like a tax in many respects.” It is collected by the IRS, and the proceeds go to the Treasury for the general operations of the federal government, not to fund a particular program. This surely makes the ACA a revenue measure.

Did it, however, originate in the House? Of course not.

In October 2009, the House passed a bill that would have modified a tax credit for members of the armed forces and some other federal employees who were first-time home buyers — a bill that had nothing to do with health care. Two months later the Senate “amended” this bill by obliterating it. The Senate renamed it and completely erased its contents, replacing them with the ACA’s contents.

Case law establishes that for a Senate action to qualify as a genuine “amendment” to a House-passed revenue bill, it must be “germane to the subject matter of the [House] bill.” The Senate’s shell game — gutting and replacing the House bill — created the ACA from scratch. The ACA obviously flunks the germaneness test, without which the House’s constitutional power of originating revenue bills would be nullified.  

[...]  

The ACA’s defenders say its tax is somehow not quite a tax because it is not primarily for raising revenue but for encouraging certain behavior (buying insurance). But the origination clause, a judicially enforceable limit on the taxing power, would be effectively erased from the Constitution if any tax with any regulatory — behavior-changing — purpose or effect were exempt from the clause.

So ObamaCare survived because it was declared a tax, but could be doomed because it was a tax... Man, am I tired of these contortions to keep together the Left's dream of sentencing the middle class to government health care, and the shared misery of their supporters.

In a way, this is all useless. ObamaCare will crash. It's a that's law so badly written one wonder if that was not its intention in the first place. It simply cannot work.

The question has always been, how much damage will ObamaCare do before it collapses. And the answer is probably going to be many billions of dollars, higher health insurance costs, and worse health for Americans.

Maybe this lawsuit can shorten the suffering, but I have my doubts. I'm sure the Supreme Court will contort itself to allow ObamaCare to run its destructive course. Call me a pessimist.

Unemployment Decreases After RECORD Drop in American Workforce

Quite the recovery, huh? (Graphic from Zero Hedge)

But, hey the unemployment rate dropped! An all time high of 92 million people are not in the labor force! Obamanomics have won!

From CNBC (h/t Patterico's Pontifications):

Job creation accelerated in April as the U.S. economy added 288,000 new positions, while the unemployment rate plummeted to 6.3 percent amid a sharp drop in the workforce. 

Economists had been anticipating 210,000 new jobs and a 6.6 percent rate. 

Despite the big number, not all the news was good: The headline rate tumbled as 806,000 people left the civilian labor force, a development one market strategist called "shocking." The labor force participation rate slumped to 62.8 percent, its worst of the year and near 35-year lows. Also, the average work week was unchanged at 34.5 hours, as were average hourly earnings at $24.31. [emphasis mine]

Not all the news was good... No kidding. Labor force participation rate has the largest monthly drop since records have been kept. 288,000 jobs were added as 806,000 people left the job market for a net loss of 518,000. America currently has the lowest labor force participation rate since January 1978.

All this and the Senate Democrats are trumpeting victory? Seriously?

I guess putting the most amount of people on the dole is the goal of Obamanomics. All in the name of fairness and to combat racism, I guess.

Obama's Recent Foreign Policy Embarrassments and the Self-Delusion They're Based Upon

Why is Putin so bold? Has he not seen Obama being depicted in the manner of an Eastern Orthodox Saint?

Because counting through all the foreign policy embarrassments in Obama's six years as president would fill a good-sized book.

From The NRO piece by Charles Krauthammer:

Barack Obama’s 949-word response on Monday to a question about foreign-policy weakness showed the president at his worst: defensive, irritable, contradictory, and at times detached from reality. It began with a complaint about negative coverage on Fox News, when, in fact, it was the New York Times front page that featured Obama’s foreign-policy failures, most recently the inability to conclude a trade agreement with Japan and the collapse of Secretary of State John Kerry’s Middle East negotiations. 

Add to this the collapse of not one but two Geneva conferences on Syria, American helplessness in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine, and the Saudi king’s humiliating dismissal of Obama within two hours of talks — no dinner — after Obama made a special 2,300-mile diversion from Europe to see him, and you have an impressive litany of serial embarrassments.

Obama has lost popularity in foreign circles mainly for betraying allies. People and countries who hate you, do not change their views simply because you say "I'm a coward, and I never really liked Israel/Mubarak/Ukraine/Iraq/Honduras all that much anyway."

Does Obama really believe that such an attitude gains him friends in Iran, or China, or Russia? Does he believe that radical Muslims-- such as those in al Qaeda or Hamas-- will suddenly decide  that since America now has a president who is half-African-American and is acting 'nice' that they'll change their minds? These groups believe that America and the West are an evil worthy of both wholsesale murder and the sacrificing of their own lives to defeat. Can anyone truly believe that they'll be so easily persuaded by weakness and an American subtlety of race?

I hate to break this to people, but the rest of the world is not impressed that a half-African-American is president, and it's ridiculous to set foreign policy around the premise that enemies will change their beliefs because of a skin color and a Muslim-sounding name.

Obama’s first rhetorical defense, as usual, was to attack a straw man: “Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?” 

Everybody? Wasn’t it you, Mr. President, who decided to attack Libya under the grand Obama doctrine of “responsibility to protect” (helpless civilians) — every syllable of which you totally contradicted as 150,000 were being slaughtered in Syria? 

And wasn’t attacking Syria for having crossed your own chemical-weapons red line also your idea? Before, of course, you retreated abjectly, thereby marginalizing yourself and exposing the United States to general ridicule.

Hey Krauthammer, stop talking about such things. That whole red line thing was several news cycles ago, and I'm sure any fallout from it is long since dissipated in the world... Uh, right?

But the worst aspect of Obama's foreign policy is correctly pointed out by Krauthammer:

Or does Obama really believe that Putin’s thinking [or, I would argue, the leader of any other country such as North Korea, China, Iran, etc.] would be altered less by anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons in Ukrainian hands than by the State Department’s comical #UnitedforUkraine Twitter campaign? 

Obama appears to think so. Which is the source of so much allied anxiety: Obama really seems to believe that his foreign policy is succeeding. 

Ukraine has already been written off. But Eastern Europe need not worry. Obama understands containment. He recently dispatched 150 American ground troops to Poland and each of the Baltic states. You read correctly: 150. Each. [emphasis mine]

Yup. Obama really believes that his foreign policy is working. In much the same way that Obama believes that ObamaCare can work, and that shoving money into the pockets of thieves, such as Solyndra execs, saves the environment. All are based on an inability to recognize obvious reality. But where does this inability come from?

Obama's Leftist ideals and fragile ego are two key foundations that shape this administration. This presidency is based upon the core beliefs that American Leftism works, and that Obama is extraordinary. As both of these ideas continue to be proven incorrect, reassurance is given to both the American people and the Obama Administration with delusion, the invention of uber-powerful enemies to thwart him (Bush, Fox News, the Koch brothers, phantom racism permeating our culture, etc.), (self-)deceptive analyses, and outright lies.

This tragic cycle of narcissistic reassurance would be pitiable if Obama wasn't president. As it is, the situation is terribly dangerous to our allies, to the American economy, and ultimately to the American people.

It's quite sad-- and not a little ridiculous-- that we have to sit here and watch this pathetic form of '70s reassurance therapy unfold around us as the basis of actual presidential policies.

The Mad Twerkers of Beaverton Oregon Are Arrested

Pic from Breitbart post linked below

And I don't mean "mad" in the good way...

From Breitbart:

Oregon police were called to the scene of an impromptu dance party on Monday afternoon that got a little too wild be going on in public. 

According to police, Christie Valazquez Coura went to Beaverton City Hall to pay a fine with two friends, Brittany Medak and Leokham Yothsombath. 

After Coura paid the fine, the three women went out to the parking lot and began twerking, the Oregonian reported. 

During the dance party, Medak allegedly began urinating between cars in the parking lot while Yothsombath recorded the whole thing with her cellphone. 

A court employee called the Beaverton police and the trio was arrested on multiple charges including disorderly conduct, cocaine and methamphetamine possession, and offensive littering. 

Medak and Coura are 20, while Yothsombath is 22.

These classy young ladies seem like a bundle of fun. Meth, twerking and public urination... what an unexpected combo.

Meanwhile, Beaverton police are clarifying that twerking is not a crime.

From Oregon Live article by Everton Bailey Jr.:

The Beaverton Police Department is clarifying charges against three women arrested near City Hall on Monday after witnesses saw some of them twerking outside the building and one allegedly urinating in the parking lot and officers found drugs in their possession. 

The department was contacted several times by the public Tuesday with questions about the arrests, said Officer Mike Rowe, a Beaverton police spokesman, particularly about the charges of offensive littering and disorderly conduct. 

"Some people just couldn't wrap their heads around how urinating in the parking lot is offensive littering," Rowe said. 

The department has listed the Oregon Revised Statutes for both misdemeanor offenses on its Facebook page. For the record, the department says, one woman was charged with offensive littering for urinating in a public place and two of the women face disorderly conduct charges because of the disturbance their alleged actions caused. 

Twerking is not illegal in Beaverton, Rowe said.

Well, that's a load off of my mind.

One-third of Obamacare Federal Exchange Enrollees Have Not Paid According to House

"I bestow upon all of you (except for the wealthy and politically connected who I allow to opt out) expensive, bureaucrat-directed health care that shall work mightily to save dollars at the cost of Americans' health. You're welcome."

Another shocking development that most people predicted...

From Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

A press release from the House Energy and Commerce Committee (emphasis added):

Data provided to the committee by every insurance provider in the health care law’s Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) shows that, as of April 15, 2014, only 67 percent of individuals and families that had selected a health plan in the federally facilitated marketplace had paid their first month’s premium and therefore completed the enrollment process. Nationwide, only 25 percent of paid enrollees are ages 18 to 34…. 

…bThe committee has compiled the data that provides a snapshot of the true enrollment picture as of April 15, 2014, after the official end of the open enrollment period. Due to the administration’s repeated and unilateral extensions and changes, as well as the fact that many insurers have reported that individuals will still have time to pay their first month’s premium, the committee plans to ask the insurers in the federally facilitated marketplace to provide an enrollment update by May 20, 2014. 

On April 17, 2014, President Obama declared the success of his law, claiming that 8 million Americans had signed up for health insurance, but data from the insurance providers reveals that the president’s figure is largely misleading. As of April 15, 2014, insurers informed the committee that only 2.45 million had paid their first month’s premium for coverage obtained through the federally facilitated marketplace. While the administration has relied on questionable nationwide figures to boast the law’s success, the state-by-state breakdown compiled by the committee underscores the serious problems facing some states. 

For months, the committee and members of the press have urged the administration to provide rudimentary details about enrollment under the law, including information regarding the makeup of the risk pool and who had actually paid for their health care plans. Administration officials repeatedly insisted they were incapable of collating that data and that the insurance providers are the only ones with those details. The committee followed the administration’s suggestion and went directly to the insurance providers.

So let's see here, ObamaCare forced like 5.5 to 6 million people off of their insurance, made them purchase coverage that was more expensive and often useless to them (pre-natal and birth control for senior citizens, for instance) under penalty of law, and only about 5.3 million have actually signed-up and paid. So we're at a net loss of insured. And the feds have paid paid billions of taxpayer dollars to screw-up people's insurance coverage, taken money out of their pockets as they are forced to pay for more expensive policies, and all for no appreciable gain in the numbers of insured. Congratulations!

But I thought Kathleen Sebelius retired because ObamaCare won or something...

We have yet to see the effects of ObamaCare on the majority of American who get their health insurance through their jobs, and those inevitable, cost-saving measures of denying effective treatments (tonsillectomies and such) haven't yet really kicked in. I can't wait to see the popularity of Democrats and Obama when all of that does take effect.

Poverty Rate Has Climbed then Remained Steady Under Obama

"Look, I can conjure light with my hands, but I cannot solve all of the poor's problems because of greed, Republicans, Israel, racism, Bush, and some obscure YouTube video. Otherwise folks everywhere would be living the good life."

But no one much cares. Obama and the Democrats now make their appeals to the middle-class, because they believe the poor are in their back pocket-- especially with the voting irregularities in poor districts. So give them bread (SNAP) and circuses, and forget them. Now the Dems can concentrate on bringing the middle-class under their heel-- I mean in the federal government's fold-- with ObamaCare and EPA regulations which will cause the costs of electricity to go through the roof, thus increasing production and transportation costs for goods you find at the store.

Oh, and what's a gallon of gas going for today? That used to be an issue when Bush was president, but I guess now we just have to be stifle oil refineries' output to fight global warming.

From the NRO piece by Mona Charen:

The great advantage of being a liberal/progressive in America is that you are always judged on your intentions (or stated intentions) and not on results. While the pundits are swooning for Piketty and Warren, may we have even a moment’s pause to consider how well Obama’s brand of progressivism has done for the poor and middle class? 

Poverty has increased under Mr. Obama’s watch. It ticked up during the recession, which is to be expected and was obviously not a result of Obama’s policies. But after the recession ended, and after the first much-vaunted “recovery summer” (2010) and then the second (2011), poverty continued to climb. The poverty rate has now been stuck at 15 percent for three consecutive years. This is a 50-year high. Enrollment in the food-stamp program (SNAP) has increased by 39 percent. 

So there are more Americans living in poverty under President Obama than under his predecessor. If he were a Republican, this reality would be widely acknowledged. It’s better to be a Democrat.  

Now, how is the class to whom the president so frequently panders doing? Jeffrey Anderson of The Weekly Standard looked at Census Bureau data and found that typical American household income has not only dropped during Obama’s tenure, it has declined more since the end of the Great Recession than it did during the downturn. Real inflation-adjusted income for the median household fell 1.8 percent during the recession. It fell 4.4 percent during the recovery.

Obamanomics' redistribution in action! But holding Obama accountable to the consequences of his policies is unfair and racist... or something. Besides Obama is a complete success. Just ask Obama cheerleader Matt Yglesias.

 Democrats know only one song, and it goes: Let’s make more people dependent upon government. They’re crooning it vapidly now in anticipation of an Elizabeth Warren candidacy or a Piketty tax in which the treasures of the George Soroses and Warren Buffetts of the world (oh, sorry, my mistake; they’re actually drooling over the fortunes of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson) will be widely distributed. 

But redistribution doesn’t bring prosperity. Look around you. Obama has raised taxes on the rich several times (some taxes are buried in Obamacare). We spend seven of every ten federal dollars on sending checks to the poor and the middle class. Under Obama, the disability rolls have exploded, removing people from the world of work. Labor-force participation rates have declined steeply, and while the administration has blamed Baby Boom retirements, the percentage of adults age 25–54 in the workforce has declined as well. More than twice as many people have joined the ranks of the disabled under SSDI as have gotten jobs since 2009. According to the 2012 Social Security trustees report, SSDI may be out of funds as early as 2015. 

About 25 percent of the poor in America are working. Only about 2.9 percent work full time. Government largesse can keep people from destitution, but it cannot provide a ladder out of poverty. Only jobs can do that. [emphasis mine]

But hey, let's remember that only racists call for jobs to be created for the poor. And also remember job creation is all just a capitalist plot to get a cheap labor force. The only true freedom from capitalist serfdom is to be dependent on the government's largesse. Everyone knows that...

White House Emails Show Coordinated Lies to Protect Obama from Benghazi Fallout

Image from Instapundit

"That's cute, but let's all remember that I believe in a 'living Constitution,' which best translates to 'laws are for little people.'"

Because hunting for scapegoats is the hallmark of the Obama Administration.

From The Washington Free Beacon article by Adam Kredo:

Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.” 

Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans. 

Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack. 

The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.” 

Rice came under fierce criticism following her appearances on television after she adhered to these talking points and blamed the attack on a little-watched Internet video.
The newly released internal White House e-mails show that Rice’s orders came from top Obama administration communications officials. 

“[W]e’ve made our views on this video crystal clear. The United States government had nothing to do with it,” Rhodes wrote in the email, which was released on Tuesday by the advocacy group Judicial Watch. 

“We reject its message and its contents,” he wrote. “We find it disgusting and reprehensible. But there is absolutely no justification at all for responding to this movie with violence. And we are working to make sure that people around the globe hear that message.” 

Rhodes also suggested that Rice tout Obama’s reputation as “steady and statesmanlike.”
“I think that people have come to trust that President Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike,” he wrote. “There are always going to be challenges that emerge around the world, and time and again, he has shown that we can meet them.” 

Also contained in the 41 pages of documents obtained by Judicial Watch is a Sep. 12, 2012 email from Payton Knopf, the former deputy spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. 

In this communication, Knopf informs Rice that senior officials had already dubbed the Benghazi attack as “complex” and planned in advance. Despite this information, Rice still insisted that attacks were “spontaneous.” 

The newly released cache of emails also appear to confirm that the CIA altered its original talking points on the attacks in the following days.

By the way, Obama Administration official Ben Rhodes' brother  heads CBS News. And we all remember Sharyl Attkisson's well publicized split from CBS over their handling of her efforts to investigate the Benghazi affair.

And let's not forget that right Obama declared that those  responsible for the YouTube movie would pay, filmmaker Nakoula was very publicly arrested.

Congrats Obama! Between the political scapegoating, rampant and often inaccurate drone attacks, divisive language in written speeches, foreign policy bungling, struggling economy, out of control spending, use of government agencies like the IRS and EPA to target and intimidate political opposition, racial demagoguery, the betrayal of American allies such as Israel, the illegal selective enforcement of federal laws, a clearly racially charged Department of Justice, and the use of the Forest Service to intimidate American citizens visiting monuments and National Parks for political purposes, I just don't know what to criticize. It's vicious politics/incompetence overload!

But remember, any criticism of Obama is because of racism...

Washington Post-ABC News Poll: Democrats at Risk, Obama Ratings Drops

"According to this poll, it appears that a whole bunch of folks want to be audited this year."

Yeah, I know. A real shocker.

From The Washington Post  (via Drudge):

Democrats face serious obstacles as they look to the November elections, with President Obama’s approval rating at a new low and a majority of voters saying they prefer a Congress in Republican hands to check the president’s agenda, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. 

Obama’s approval rating fell to 41 percent, down from 46 percent through the first three months of the year and the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC News polls. Just 42 percent approve of his handling of the economy, 37 percent approve of how he is handling the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and 34 percent approve of his handling of the situation involving Ukraine and Russia.  

Obama’s low rating could be a significant drag on Democratic candidates this fall — past elections suggest that when approval ratings are as low as Obama’s, the president’s party is almost certain to suffer at the ballot box in November.

I would guess that his approval ratings come from people who believe that they won't be effected all that much by his policies. I can't wait to see Obama's ratings when people who get their insurance through their workplace fall under ObamaCare's regulations. There's a reason that Obama has been illegally delaying the implementation of much of ObamaCare until after the 2014 elections.

Egyptian Court Sentences Muslim Brotherhood Chief and 682 Others to Death

I'm sure Obama will explain how this is not 21st Century behavior, and how it's in both Egypt's and America's best interests to reinstate the Muslim Brotherhood to power.

From the AFP via Drudge:

An Egyptian court sentenced 682 alleged Islamists and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie to death on Monday, a lawyer and prosecutor said, after two brief sessions the defence partly boycotted.

  

The same court in the southern province of Minya also reversed 492 of 529 death sentences it passed in March, commuting most of those to life in prison. 

The court, presided over by judge Said Youssef Sabry, had sparked an international outcry with its initial sentencing last month amid an extensive crackdown on supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. 

The crackdown has extended to secular-leaning dissidents who supported Morsi's overthrow but have since turned on the army-installed regime.  

[...]  

Under Egyptian law, death sentences are referred to the country's top Islamic scholar for an advisory opinion before being ratified. A court may choose to commute the sentences, which can later be challenged at an appeals court. 

Of the 683 sentenced on Monday, only 73 are in custody, prosecutor Abdel Rahim Abdel Malek said. The others have a right to a retrial if they turn themselves in. 

Monday's hearing lasted just 10 minutes, said Khaled Elkomy, a defence lawyer who was in court. 

The verdict was the first against Badie, spiritual head of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, in the several trials he faces on various charges along with Morsi and other Brotherhood leaders.

Gee, you'd think this would be bigger news since the Obama Administration supported both the overthrow of Mubarak and Morsi's takeover. I guess when Obama backs the wrong horse, it's not news in the U.S.

Russia to Defend Missile Bases with Armed Robots

Why is it that when I first read that headline, I immediately saw the ED-209s?

From NewScientist (h/t Instapundit):

THE West has always been a little squeamish about the idea of arming robots. Despite decades of development, no systems have ever been deployed and a vocal human rights campaign means it's unlikely to happen in the near future. The Russians, on the other hand, appear to be rather less concerned. 

Last month, Dmitry Andreyev of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces announced that mobile robots would be standing guard over five ballistic missile installations. These robots can detect and destroy targets, without human involvement. Russia, it seems, is taking the lead in a new robotic arms race. 

The robot sentry, aka the "mobile robotic complex", was developed by Izhevsk Radio Plant, a company based 1200 kilometres east of Moscow. It weighs around 900 kilograms and has cameras, a laser rangefinder and radar sensors. For fire power it has a 12.7-millimetre heavy machine gun, with optional smaller weapons. It is quick too, hitting speeds of 45 kilometres per hour on a petrol engine. It can operate for 10 hours, or switch to sleep mode for a week. 

The makers put the sentry robot through its paces at an arms fair in Russia last year. Andreyev describes the robots as being able to engage targets in automatic as well as semi-automatic control mode. US policy, on the other hand, says a person has to authorise when weapons are fired. Drones don't fire missiles on their own, but act as remote launch platforms for human operators. Neither the makers of the Russian robot nor the Strategic Missile Forces responded to New Scientist's request for an interview at the time of going to press.

One commenter at Instapundit wrote: "With russian [sic] software to run it I would hate to be a soldier in any uniform anywhere near it." No kidding.

Well, I'm sure proper precautions will be taken, and that nothing can possibly go wrong.

Russians Won't Take Defense Secretary Hagel's Phone Calls

Obama stands with Ukraine-- or at least a plastic figure strikes a pose...

Probably because they see the Obama Administration as weak and irrelevant-- just how Obama has worked mightily to present himself and the U.S. for five plus years now.

From The Washington Times:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has been unable to get Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on the phone amid escalating tension near the country’s shared border with Ukraine. 

Mr. Shoigu announced Thursday that Russia planned to engage in a new series of military exercises near the Ukraine border. The military move, he said, is in response to ongoing NATO training exercises in Poland and the death of at least two pro-Russia insurgents in eastern Ukraine. 

Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Friday that Mr. Hagel has been trying to communicate with Russian officials but has yet to hear back from Mr. Shoigu or anyone else. Pentagon officials have reached out to Russia on Mr. Hagel’s behalf within the past 24 hours, according to Col. Warren.

Oh Mr. Shoigu, please accept the U.S.'s call so Hagel can whine about how Obama and the rest don't think what's happening is appropriate 21st Century behavior. Maybe he could add how Obama thinks that Russia is a fearful, regional power. That'll work. Is the State Department going to send more selfies to convince Russia to not invade the rest of Ukraine. And please note how serious talk about Russians pulling out of the Crimea has completely vanished.

At least the U.S. has put troops into Poland-- the Russians have been eyeing and training to invade Poland for years now.

Cover Oregon to Give Up-- Oregon to Likely Use National ObamaCare Exchange

The faithful have failed... after filling their pockets, of course.

Calling it quits after wasting how much money again? It's weird how some companies and individuals made bank off of this travesty. It all must be the Koch brothers or Dick Cheney's fault...


From the AP via Breitbart:

Oregon, once expected to be a national leader in the federal health care overhaul, on Thursday moved to become the first state to dump its troubled online health exchange and use the federal marketplace instead. 

A top Cover Oregon official, Alex Pettit, said fixing the existing system would be too costly at an estimated $78 million, would take too long to implement, and would be too risky. The state's site still isn't fully functional seven months after a failed launch. 

Pettit said switching to the federal system would cost $4 million to $6 million. 

An advisory committee made the recommendation to drop the glitch-filled site for private policies, but suggested that Oregon continue using its current technology for Medicaid enrollments. 

The Cover Oregon board will vote on the recommendation Friday. 

Oregon's exchange is seen as the worst of the more than a dozen states that developed their own online health insurance marketplaces. The state is the only one where the general public still can't use the website to sign up for coverage in one sitting — despite an early start building the site and millions of dollars from the federal government.  

[...]  

Oregon has received a total of $305 million in federal grants to fund its operations from 2011 through the end of this year. As of March, the state has spent nearly $248 million of that money, Cover Oregon interim executive director Clyde Hamstreet said. 

Most of that money went toward the botched portal: $134 million in federal funding was paid to Oracle Corp. for building the exchange, and an additional $7 million was spent on paper processing efforts. Currently, Oregonians must use a time-consuming, hybrid paper-online process to sign up for insurance.

$305 million plus for an utter failure. Way to go guys!

Dan Riehl has a more complete list of Cover Oregon's failures here.

I hope we can all expect this kind of machine-like precision when to comes to the quality of the health insurance, and in their responses to various complications that inevitably arise from medical coverage!

UPDATE: Oregon is a part of the $1 billion dollars of taxpayer money wasted on bad state health insurance exchanges.

The five worst health care exchanges:
Hawaii – $205,342,270
Oregon – $305,206,587
Maryland – $171,013,111
Massachusetts – $179,036,455
Vermont – $172,641,081
Total – $1,033,239,504

Numbers from cms.gov (via Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit linked above)

Way to go Dems!

Japanese MP Claims Obama Cheats and Obama's Coming Divorce "An Open Secret"

"Mr. Hamada will not reap the benefits of low-quality, high-cost ObamaCare coverage-- even if he begs. Oh, and he's not American, but that doesn't normally stop us."

Do you get the feeling that Obama is not exactly revered by the Japanese? But why is he not? After all Obama has laid down a pretty record of betraying Americas allies... I mean, what gives?

From The Daily Mail:

A prominent Japanese politician has raised hackles as Barack Obama visits Tokyo by claiming it's an 'open secret' that he and the first lady are headed for divorce, and that the president has been using Secret Service agents to cover for him as he pursues extramarital affairs. 

Kazuyuki Hamada, who sits in the upper house of Japan's parliament, earned his PhD a half-mile from the White House at George Washington University, and emerged as a shrill commentator on America's economy and foreign policy. 

In 2009 he also joined the ranks of the so-called 'birthers,' arguing in a book titled 'Who is Obama?' that the president likely wasn't born in the United States

Of course only uneducated hicks dare to criticize Obama. So take that Mr. PhD-thinking-you're-so-smart Hamada. And when China starts seizing more freighters because of the 1930s, don't come crying to Light-bringer.

ObamaCare's Narrow Networks Reduces the Availability of Health Care for Many Americans

"Hey, do you folks remember when I said 'if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor'? Yeah, that was a good one. Now it's if you can find a doctor you can keep that doctor-- maybe."

Another not-a-surprise difficulty for those us who actually read the law.

From Wynton Hall at Breitbart:

California Obamacare enrollees are struggling to find doctors who accept their newly purchased health insurance plans. 

UCSF Dr. Kevin Grumbach calls the phenomenon "medical homelessness."  

CBS San Francisco says that many of the health care clinics for low-income individuals that helped people enroll in Obamacare are now seeing those same people "coming back to the clinic begging for help." 

"They're coming back to us now and saying, 'I can't find a doctor,'" Rotacare clinic  

staffer Mirella Nguyen told CBS San Francisco. "What good is coverage if you can't use it?"  

The problem stems from Obamacare's "narrow networks" – extreme restrictions on access to doctors and hospitals in an effort to cut costs.  

California single mother of two Thinn Ong experienced the pain of Obamacare's narrow networks when she realized that her $200-a-month Obamacare plan is not accepted by many of the doctors in her area.  

[...]  

Breitbart News contributor Scot Vorse experienced the reality of Obamacare's narrow networks when he discovered that the closest dentist who accepted the required dental plan he was forced to purchase for his children was over 100 miles away.  

Californians are not the only ones coming to terms with the reality of Obamacare's narrow networks. In Staten Island, New York, Margaret Figueroa, who suffers from a neurological disease that has required four brain surgeries, says her Obamacare plan denied vital medications and dropped all her doctors. Figueroa's congressman, Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), said he's already received similar complaints from at least a dozen of his constituents.  

Concerns that Obamacare's narrow networks would spawn a medical homelessness crisis have been building for months. The Washington Post warned in January that "Obamacare's narrow networks are going to make people furious."

ObamaCare was designed to centralize health insurance, creating a D.C. bureaucracy whose main job is to keep costs down. ObamaCare was never truly intended to make health care more readily available, nor to make insurance coverage better.

The Democrat shill Melissa Harris-Perry over at MSNBC has pretty much said as much.

Partial transcript of Harris-Perry via Newsbusters:

You know — Democrats. You know, the same party that passed and defended and implemented the most sweeping social policy in decades, who can say that millions of people now have affordable health insurance that they didn’t have before. And they’re not even owning it. No confidence, no swagger. No, “Yeah, you can’t keep your crappy plans. Just deal with that!”

From “it’s going to be the best thing ever” to “just deal with it”? Perfect.

It it any wonder Pelosi famously said that we'll have to pass the bill to find out what's in it? Believe the Democrats did not want you to read what was in this economically Fascist law.

Make the Democrats pay at the polls, and hold the GOP to their promises to disassemble this disastrous law named after our Lightbringing organizer-in-chief.

Monday Funnies: Not the Best Performance of "Go Tell It On the Mountain" AND NOW with Bonus Videos!!

I came across this yesterday, but I thought it might be a little insulting to post it on Easter.

Anyway here's Henrietta and Myrna. Enjoy:

UPDATE: I just found this video of a public access psychic being absolutely bombarded by prank calls. It's NSFW due to strong language.

Enjoy:

Wow, this psychic, "The Flaccid Ego Psychic" apparently, is a fella that just keeps on giving. At least the camera set up did a slightly better job of centering him.

Check out this video (Also NSFW due to language):