Headlines

Ginsberg’s death gives GOP an edge in 2020 legal fights

Trump to pick nominee to fill Ginsberg Supreme Court seat this week and the candidate will be a woman

Because the first one went so well, Pelosi floats Impeachment 2.0

Iran vows revenge for Solemani killing

Pelosi: No one has ‘any interest’ in government shutdown

Trump agrees to TikTok deal with Oracle and Walmart, allowing app’s U.S. operations to continue

Judge halts Trump’s ban on downloads of China’s WeChat

Sweden spared surge in virus cases

Former British cyber chief warns of Chinese data grab

Biden maintains 8 point national lead over Trump after tumultuous month of news

Dems threaten to pack the Supreme Court if GOP votes on RBG replacement

Moroccans make up nearly 25% of all juvenile inmates in Spain


STAND UP FOT AMERICA!

Headlines

Obamacare signups surge despite Trump's claim of 'repeal'

SCOTUS keeps rebuking lower courts that rule against Trump

Schmidt steps down at Google

Mexican cartel hangs six bodies from overpass in Cabo

House passes bill to avert government shutdown

Pence makes surprise visit to Afghanistan

[Mexican] Wall builders face boycotts from Dem-led cities ...

Report: Apple 'slowing down' older IPhone models

U.N. votes 128-9 to criticize U. S. decision on Jerusalem

Canada firm wants to seize Citgo after Venezuela misses a settlement payment

Georgia approves first new US nuclear reactor since '78 ...

Erdogan anti-Trump vows to teach a 'very good lesson ' to U.S.

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites. Guess which ones came from Politico?

ISIS attacks Paris on eve of election

Lights out San Fran

Sanctuary cities face cuts as DOJ tightens screws

Resistance group says Iran is violating nuclear agreement

Poll: Voters support allowing Syrian refugees

Majority of French armed police support Marine Le Pen

Fox [O'Reilly] staffers express relief, anger, uncertainty

How Trump blew up the conservative media

WH asks agencies to prepare for government shutdown

Clinton knocks Trump on LGBT rights 'Let's remember 2018'

MasterCard tests credit card with embedded fingerprint reader

Trump: White House will release tax reform plan next week

Headlines

These headlines are real ... they have all been discovered on Internet news sites. Guess which ones came from Politico?

[NKorea] possesses 10-25 nuclear weapons ...

Russian journalist and Putin critic dies after brutal beating

Trump plans executive order on steel imports

Calexit leader moves to Russia permanently

GM closes operations in Venezuela after plant seized

Blood from babies to restore memory?

Ryan says Congress is close to deal on health care

Tillerson takes aim at Iran in rare press appearance

Mystery over 730,000 missing elephants ...

CNN: Trump's North Korea policy might just be working

Congress likely to avoid gov't shutdown

Netflix users have watched half a billion hours of Adam Sandler movies

Dirty Little Secret

The Obummer administration has once again circumvented the Constitution in dramatic fashion ... this time by end-running this cherished document's provision about Congress setting national debt limits. It has enlisted the help of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to enable it to ignore statutory spending constraints. I have in the past wondered that the government seemed to keep operating when theoretically it should be shut down ... see: Verklempt. Now we find out how this fiscal trick was played in cahoots with the supposedly "independent" Federal Reserve Bank ... see: Daily Caller Article.

Basically, together with the New York Fed, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew worked out an accrual schedule of not paying government bills while continuing to "spend" far beyond the debit limit that had be set by Congress FOR NINE MONTHS.  So, the day that the debt ceiling was once again upped, our national debt jumped $339 billion ... IN ONE DAY! (See: USA Today Article.) This financial slight of hand proves two things:

1) The Obummer administration has been circumventing the Constitution by using the scheduling of payments of government obligations so as to allow actual total spending to far exceed what the statutory debt ceiling would otherwise allow.

2) Obammer's government "shutdowns" have been public relations stunts to embarrass the Republican Congress into giving it free rein over its sprawling spending. In other words, our founding fathers notion that the "power of the purse" gives Congress a balancing power has been neutered by this administration's financial accrual jiggering ... with the help of the Federal Reserve Bank.

Maybe Rand Paul's notion that the Federal Reserve Bank needs to have some of its power cut back makes a lot of sense. It also might be worthwhile for a law to be enacted restricting the administration's accrual spending.

Afterward: As smart as they were, I'm not sure that the framers of the Constitution knew the difference between cash and accrual accounting.

After afterward: In order to restore our federal balance of powers, we might even need an amendment to the Constitution that decrees that the entire federal government use the cash accounting method.

Bluffing

For months now President Obama has been using his bully pulpit to bully Republicans into overreacting about his pledge to grant, by executive action, amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.  (I happen to believe that the mass influx of Central American immigrant children this summer was also part of this stratagem.) This time the Republicans didn't bite at this obvious attempt to sidetrack their path to sweeping legislative victories in this fall's elections. Despite a few hot-headed threats of impeachment or a government shutdown, Republicans mostly kept their powder dry ... and so our fearless leader has now postponed his immigration action until after the election ... see: Associated Press Story. He was clearly bluffing then ... and is probably bluffing now.

So, if the Republicans do win a sweeping victory in November and, if Obama is foolish enough to actually act unconstitutionally on immigration, then the Republicans will have many more options to counter this presidential tyranny. If Dirty Harry Reid can no longer block any Senate action, then all sorts of bills can be presented to the president for his veto ... hopefully many reflecting the will of the American people ... nothing vindictive or petty ... just good clean legislation meant to purge the Aegean stables of the mess that this administration has created. The areas of health-care reform, immigration reform, tax reform, infrastructure improvements, energy policy reform, reduced government regulation, military preparedness, etc. ... all are prime candidates.

The more of these popular actions that Obama vetoes, the deeper the hole he will be digging for the Democrat party ... and the more defections from its ranks might occur ... possibly even enough to override some of Obama's vetoes. Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants. And wouldn't that also grease the skids for a possible Republican win in the 2016 presidential race. That happy event might be called a royal flush.

Sadist-in-Chief

Anyone with a pulse should understand our Administration’s strategy regarding the government shutdown and the consequences of not increasing the government’s debit-limit.  That is to inflict maximum visible pain on the American public … generally on those people who have the least ability to fight back … and to where our Snidley-Whiplash President (now at a 37% approval rating) and a cooperative media can shine a tsk-tsk spotlight.  

Thus, veterans are excluded from an open-air World War II memorial and those violating this ban are arrested, National Institute of Health monies to treat children with cancer are eliminated, death benefits are denied for soldiers killed in Afghanistan, money generally available for fuel-oil assistance is cut, motorists are forbidden from stopping at roadside pull-offs to view Mt. Rushmore, dire warnings are given by our Treasury Secretary as to how the world will end on October 17^th unless the debt limit is raised, etc.  (For many more instances, see:  Breitbart Story)

The fact that Republicans in the House of Representatives have daily been passing bills to eliminate most of these petulant public punishments (only to be killed by Harry Reid in the Senate) doesn’t seem to make it into the nightly network news. Meanwhile, illegal immigrants are given free-access to the National Mall, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting just got a $445 million grant, Obama-phones are still being given away en masse, etc. … see: Daily Caller Story

It seems that President Obama and his minions want the American public and the Republicans to cry “uncle” rather than to have them chant “Uncle Sam.”

Wait a Minute!

Today starts the government shutdown as a result of the impasse between the White House and Congress over the contents of the continuing resolution on federal funding. The media is beginning to gnash their teeth and wear sack cloth over this event.  I'm however looking forward to a number of deserving things that I hope happen as a result of this fiscal hiatus:

- Stopping all bribes to the President of Afghanistan, Karzai
- Closing the Congressional Country Club
- Ceasing all government grants to favored eco-companies
- Stop sending arms to the radical Syrian rebels
- Eliminating Pelosi's weekly private flights to/from California
- Eschewing future White House galas
- Stopping NSA's Internet snooping
- Closing the IRS's Cincinnati office
- Stop recharging EBT cards
- Ceasing Eric Holder's gun-running purchases
- Curtailing of the Obama's extravagant  family vacations
- Shuttering the Congressional barber shop
- Stopping all government bank bailouts
- Closing all Obamacare federal healthcare insurance exchanges

And I'm sure there are many other worthwhile possibilities ...

Backfire?

Harry Reid's refusal to convene the Senate until Monday afternoon clearly indicates that the Democrats crave a government shutdown ... after reading polling that shows that the American people are opposed to same. However, the House Republicans' newest proposal to keep the government running includes a one year delay for the individual mandate as well as the removal of the tax on medical devices ... see: AP Story.

One would think that these new Republican conditions would be popular with the American public ,,, if the majority of the media conveys this message to them.

So it is the media that hold the high cards in this political standoff.  If somehow in the next twenty-four hours this information leaks out to enough Americans to turn their collective opinions, then Harry Reid's and the Democrat's strategy might backfire.  I'm not predicting that it will, but there is a small chance that it just might. It all depends on the American media.

Afterward: The Republicans would have had a much stronger position in this battle if they had also included in their continuing resolution a provision that eliminated the subsidies and special treatment that Congress members and their staffs currently enjoy under Obamacare.

More afterward: It might also be interesting if the Republicans were to propose next delaying the individual mandate and the corporate mandate (the latter having been already decreed by Obama without legislative consent).  If Harry Reid then kills this new Republican proposal, would he then not also be negating what our President has already commanded?  How embarrassing ...

Screwing the Public

The federal government's spending sequestration is scheduled to take effect this coming Friday, March 1st.  This sequestration is nothing more than a decrease in the growth of government spending that Obama first backed … and then fled from … and is now desperately trying to pin on the Republicans.  These spending growth reductions total $43 billion (not the $85 billion as advertised) for fiscal 2013 (ends Sept. 30^th) out of a total federal budget of $3.8 trillion.  This is barely more than a 1% haircut on the baseline government spending that was already scheduled to increase by 0.2% (see: U.S. Federal Budget Detail ) … or as many pundits like to say, "it’s a rounding error."  But they are not even “cuts” … for federal government spending would still increase by 0.7%  even with this sequestration (after adding back the recent emergency appropriation of $64 billion for the victims of hurricane Sandy).  But, given the hair-on-fire rhetoric of the Obama administration … and the complicity of the main-stream media outlets in the United States, the American public generally hasn’t a clue to these meaningful facts.

So, the Obamanistas are out to make this sequestration look exactly like the government shutdown in 1995 when Bill Clinton humiliated Newt Gingrich into submission. It is nothing even closely resembling that.  The Obama administration is likely to go public with “furloughs” for as many government workers as they can in visible sectors of the U.S. economy -- air-traffic controllers, National Park rangers, TSA screeners, meat inspectors, etc. to try to inflict as much pain as possible on the American public (ergo, screw them) in order to pressure the Republicans into relenting on sequestration.  What is even more hypocritical is that these “furloughed” workers will then be paid any back wages due them once this sequestration is resolved.

This administration, using its hand-puppet, Jay Carney, is even saying that teachers, police and firemen will be laid off … employees that are not even paid for out of our Federal coffers.  Dear readers, if you ever want to know exactly what the word “demagoguery” means; this would be a perfect example … screw the naive American public and try to blame it on the other party.  I would love to see this type of despicable political misdirection be labeled the eighth deadly sin ... and come back to haunt Obama and his minions in Congress.

The Unraveling

Do you have the uncomfortable feeling that things around here are unraveling? I do:

- Iran is preparing its people for the emergence of the twelfth Imam (see: Mahdi Is Near ) signaling the apocalypse.
- Japan is handling the nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima a little like “Brownie” handled Katrina.
- The global-warming farce has devolved into “climate charge.” Does this then mean we are now headed into the next Ice Age?
- Many American states are facing the specter of bankruptcy as opposed to more public-union coddling.
- Regarding Libya, our man-child President, Obama, has now taken both sides of the Qadaffi-must-go and our-national-vital-interest issues.
- Bahrain, Syria and Yemen are in full popular revolt with other Middle Eastern nations teetering on the brink.
- Serious earthquakes are now rumbling around the world: Japan, New Zealand and Myanmar. The one in Japan shifted the island by a full eight feet!
- The housing and employment crises in the United States seem insoluble by an administration distracted by world events and vacation planning.
- Many people are distressed by the Mayan calendar’s indicating that the end of the world may occur late next year (see: Mayan Calendar).
- Back in the United States, Democrats are playing chicken with the Republicans about a government shutdown ... seeming to prefer national insolvency rather than losing the next elections.

So, “keeping our heads when all others are loosing theirs” will become much more difficult … particularly once Shiria law is endorsed by our Obama-packed Supreme Court.

Afterthought: If, as predicted, the twelfth Imam doesn't make an appearance in a reasonable period of time, will Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Iranian Ayatollahs take the Heaven's-Gate way out of this embassament.  Gee, I hope so.