What - Me?

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Obama Needs More Cash – Asks Congress to Raise Debt By Another $1.2 Trillion

by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, December 27, 2011



Obama wants to ask Congress for another $1.2 trillion.

Flashback: Obama called Bush “unpatriotic” for raising the debt limit by $4 trillion during his eight years. It took Obama 3 years.

And now he wants more cash.

Reuters reported:

The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling to allow the United States to pay its bills on time, according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.

The debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current cap by December 30, when the United States has $82 billion in interest on its debt and payments such as Social Security coming due. President Barack Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, part of the spending authority that was negotiated between Congress and the White House this summer.

Under the agreement struck in August during the showdown over the government’s debt limit, the cap is automatically raised unless Congress votes to block the debt-ceiling extension. Lawmakers have 15 days within receiving the request to vote, which is largely symbolic because the president can veto it and Congress would be unlikely to muster the two-thirds majority to override it. Moreover, the U.S. House of Representatives also is in recess until January 17.

  

For the record… Every single Senate Democrat voted against raising the debt limit in 2006.

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On a $4M Vacation, Michelle Seeks $3 From Backers

by Keith Koffler on December 30, 2011

Speaking from her paradisical $4 million Hawaii vacation, Mrs. Obama wants to know: Do any of President Obama’s supporters have $3 to spare for his reelection?

This is approximately like coming upon Warren Buffett on a street corner with a McDonald’s cup asking if he can have 15 cents.

Michelle’s request was part of an email sent to the Obama 2012 list today.

Over the next 11 months we’ve got an organization to grow, voters to register, and people to get fired up.

I hope you’ll close out this year by donating $3 or more now to help make sure we’re ready for the next one . . .

Thank you so much, and happy new year,

Michelle



The obscene juxtaposition of the first lady on a $4 million vacation while asking what would have to be middle to low income earners for three bucks – who else would they be targeting with such an appeal? – is yet another example of lack of perspective the Obamas seem to be gaining while in power.

Mrs. Obama takes extravagant vacations to Spain and southern Africa. The president golfs obsessively and is currently dining at Honolulu’s ritziest restaurants. All while asking their fellow Americans to “sacrifice” during this time of not plenty.

And they blow $4 million – mostly taxpayers’ money – on a vacation, while wondering if the small people can come up with $3.

What about renting a beach house next year at the Jersey shore? I mean, if we’re all going to sacrifice.

For the first time in my life, I am really proud of this country.

"Let the little people eat their peas, right Barry? Someone want to pass some more of that $100/lb Wagyu Beef?"

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OBAMA SURRENDERS TO THE TALIBAN

Obama Recruits Qaradawi

By Andrew C. McCarthy

December 31, 2011 4:00 A.M.

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.

I wrote about Qaradawi at length in The Grand Jihad and, here at NRO, have regularly catalogued his activities (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here; see also Andrew Bostom’s “Qaradawi’s Odious Vision”). For those who may be unfamiliar with him, he is the most influential Sunni Islamist in the world, thanks to such ventures as his al-Jazeera TV program (Sharia and Life) and website (IslamOnline.net). In 2003, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq. As he put it,

Those killed fighting the American forces are martyrs given their good intentions since they consider these invading troops an enemy within their territories but without their will. . . . Although they are seen by some as being wrong, those defending against attempts to control Islamic countries have the intention of jihad and bear a spirit of the defense of their homeland.

Qaradawi urges that Islam must dominate the world, under a global caliphate governed by sharia. He maintains that Islam “will conquer Europe [and] will conquer America.” He sometimes qualifies that the conquering will be done “not through the sword but through da’wa,” but the qualification is a feint.

Da’wa sounds harmless — it refers to missionary work to spread Islam. Islam, however, is not like other religions. The idea is not to spread a set of spiritual principles but incrementally to impose a full-scale social system with its own authoritarian legal code, covering all aspects of life and instituting a caste system in which women and non-Muslims are subjugated.

Nor is da’wa like other missionary work; it is the use of all available means of pressure — political campaigns, lawfare, infiltration of the media, control of the education system, etc. — to advance (a) the acceptance of Islamic principles and (b) the evisceration of principles (e.g., free speech, economic liberty) that undergird competitors, in particular, Western civilization. Moreover, the claim that da’wa is non-violent is frivolous. Much of the mission of da’wa is to rationalize terrorism as divinely mandated self-defense.

Thus does Sheikh Qaradawi champion Hamas, mass-murder attacks, and suicide bombings. “They are not suicide operations,” he brays. “These are heroic martyrdom operations.” Indeed, he elaborates, “The martyr operations is [sic] the greatest of all sorts of jihad in the cause of Allah.”

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PART 2

Thus does Qaradawi urge the destruction of Israel, rebuking clerics who dare counsel against killing civilians. “I am astonished,” he inveighs, “that some sheikhs deliver fatwas that betray the mujahideen, instead of supporting them and urging them to sacrifice and martyrdom.”

As the Investigative Project on Terrorism recounts, when the imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque issued guidance against the killing of civilians, Qaradawi upbraided him: “It is unfortunate to hear that the grand imam has said it was not permissible to kill civilians in any country or state, even in Israel.”

Not surprisingly, then, the sheikh is also wont to invoke what the West refuses to acknowledge: the Jew-hatred that is endemic in Islam because it is rooted in scripture — not in modern grievances that could be satisfied if only the West changed its policies and Israel had the good grace to disappear. As Qaradawi puts it, echoing the charter of Hamas (the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch):

This is what is told in the Hadith of Ibn-Omar and the Hadith of Abu-Hurairah: “You shall continue to fight the Jews and they will fight you, until the Muslims will kill them. And the Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone and the tree will say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, Oh Muslim, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’ The resurrection will not come before this happens.” This is a text from the good omens in which we believe.

Qaradawi uses his al-Jazeera platform to preach this message to the Muslim masses. As the Middle East Media Research Institute and Robert Spencer document, in one memorable Friday “sermon” broadcast in 2009, he prayed that Allah would kill all Jews: “Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers and kill them, down to the very last one.” He added that throughout history, Allah had imposed upon Jews “people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Adolph Hitler.”

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan.

If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

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Obama Stops Water from Rising, but He Still Can't Create Jobs
Townhall.com ^ | January 10, 2012 | Bob Beauprez

The Obama Administration would have us believe that the newest jobs data(i.e. 200,000 jobs created in December, and 8.5% unemployment) is proof that the President’s economic policies are working. His top economic adviser dutifully said the newest report proves that “it is critical that we continue the (President’s) economic policies that are helping us dig our way out of the deep hole.” Who would expect Obama’s staff economist to say anything different?

But, a little more analysis of the data proves that rather than “healing” the economy, as Obama likes to say, his policies have worsened the recession and prolonged the recovery.

As a recent Investor’s Business Daily editorial explained, over the past 30 months the size of the labor force has actually shrunk by 843,000 people – 170,000 in just the past two months. That just doesn’t happen in America. At a similar point in the Reagan recovery of the 1980s the labor force had expanded by more than 4 million workers according to IBD.

The labor force participation rate (LPR) – the percentage of people employed or looking for work of the total age eligible population – is currently just 64%. As the following chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates, that is worse by far than when Obama took office in January 2009, and it is still trending downward. In fact, the current LPR is at the lowest level in nearly 30 years. It’s disingenuous to talk of recovery when continually more people are still leaving the work force, and it is nearly impossible to increase economic output until more – not less – people are productive workers.

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PART 2

Labor Force Participation Rate, 2009-2011

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Simply put, millions of Americans are still so disillusioned, disappointed, and disgusted that they aren’t even trying to get a job. When adjusted for the abnormally low participation rate, “unemployment would be more like 11.5%,” according to the IBD editors.

In addition to the unemployed, millions of Americans can’t find the full-time employment they need. According to the Labor Department, more than 8 million Americans have only part-time employment – twice the normal level of the work force and showing no significant sign of returning to normal levels.

Obama certainly knows the truth behind the numbers. Whatever spin the Obama campaign tries to apply; the reality is there are still 6.2 million jobs destroyed by this recession that haven’t come back.

As we previously explained on these pages, this is by far the deepest and already the most prolonged recovery of the eleven recessions since World War II. At the current rate of job creation, it will be May, 2016 before the economy recovers from the jobs deficit.

With an election just ten months away, the 6 million plus jobs deficit apparently means very little to Barack Obama. He’s obsessively concerned about saving only one job – his. So, as IBD explains, “the only way Obama can make these mediocre results look good is by setting the country's expectations so low than even a tiny step forward seems like a giant leap. He mustn't get away with it.”

On the night that he secured the Democrat nomination in 2008, Barack Obama arrogantly proclaimed it as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” If true, that would put Obama in very exclusive company. “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help,” observed famed economist Irwin Stelzer.

The 2012 campaign version of Barack Obama has backed off the miraculous predictions. Now, it is all about lowering the bar – trying to convince voters to settle for less. That’s a pretty tough sell in America, and we think he’ll have about as much luck with that line as he did in getting the oceans to pay attention to him.

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MISERY INDEX RECORD UNDER THE "FOOD STAMP" PRESIDENT

WHILE OBAMA FIDDLES AND AMERICA BURNS

By Amir Avni On January 18, 2012 @ 12:19 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage

The above cartoon of Obama as Nero, fiddling while America burns, was created by Frontpage’s cartoonist Amir Avni. Amir graduated in 2010 from Sheridan College with a Bachelor’s in Animation and was awarded a Certificate of Merit by ASIFA-Hollywood in 2009. He is currently finishing his Master’s Degree.

On a $4M Vacation, Michelle Seeks $3 From Backers

by Keith Koffler on December 30, 2011

For the first time in my life, I am really proud of this country.

Speaking from her paradisical $4 million Hawaii vacation, Mrs. Obama wants to know: Do any of President Obama’s supporters have $3 to spare for his reelection?

This is approximately like coming upon Warren Buffett on a street corner with a McDonald’s cup asking if he can have 15 cents.

Michelle’s request was part of an email sent to the Obama 2012 list today.

Over the next 11 months we’ve got an organization to grow, voters to register, and people to get fired up.

I hope you’ll close out this year by donating $3 or more now to help make sure we’re ready for the next one . . .

Thank you so much, and happy new year,

Michelle



The obscene juxtaposition of the first lady on a $4 million vacation while asking what would have to be middle to low income earners for three bucks – who else would they be targeting with such an appeal? – is yet another example of lack of perspective the Obamas seem to be gaining while in power.

Obama Is 'President Zero - Zero Economic Expansion, Zero Jobs, Zero Ideas'

AUMENTA LA MISERIA BAJO EL REGIMEN MARXISTA DE OBAMA A NIVELES RECORD.

"El socialismo es la filosofía del fracaso, el credo de los ignorantes, el evangelio de la envidia y su virtud es el reparto igualitario de la miseria." Winston Churchill

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OBAMA’S CONTEMPT FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

(mandates coverage of sterilization & contraception)
Catholic League ^ | January 20, 2012 | Bill Donohue

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on today’s announcement from the Obama administration that it is going forward with its original “Obamacare” policy that mandates coverage of sterilization and contraceptive services in most healthcare plans:

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said today that aside from houses of worship, all other religious agencies and organizations will be required to provide sterilization and contraceptive services, including abortifacients, in their employee healthcare plans; none will be allowed to charge co-pays or deductibles. The policy goes into effect in August 2013 for these entities; all others will be required to provide these services in August 2012.

Sebelius explained how her directive applies to non-church religious entities such as Catholic hospitals and universities: “Employers wishing to take advantage of the additional year must certify that they qualify for the delayed implementation. This additional year will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule.” She also said, “I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”

Or, at least, that's the assertion cartoonist Glenn McCoy seems to be making with his new cartoon in which an evil-looking Obama is seen turning over a pregnant white lady to a Mengele-esque abortionist.

The language is Orwellian. With stunning magnanimity, Sebelius tells Catholic non-profits that they can take advantage of their one-year reprieve as long as they seek the blessings of the federal government. If they pass muster with the bureaucrats, then they have time to figure out how they can prostitute their religiously ground convictions, or prepare for bankruptcy.

To top things off, after shoving the radical secular agenda down the throat of Catholics—and other people of faith who share their concerns—Sebelius congratulates the Obama administration for striking a “balance” between religious liberty and Obamacare. But, of course, no balance was struck: the edict grants nothing to those who believe in religious liberty, and she knows it.

That this dictatorial edict is being announced in an election year indicates both contempt for the First Amendment and plain stupidity.

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36 Obama aides owe $833,000 in back taxes

Andrew Malcolm 

1/26/2012

Pete Souza / White House (Obama addresses his White House staff, file)

How embarrassing this must be for President Obama, whose major speech theme so far this campaign season has been that every single American, no matter how rich, should pay their "fair share" of taxes.

Because how unfair -- indeed, un-American -- it is for an office worker like, say, Warren Buffet's secretary to dutifully pay her taxes, while some well-to-do people with better educations and higher incomes end up paying a much smaller tax rate.

Or, worse, skipping their taxes altogether.

A new report just out from the Internal Revenue Service reveals that 36 of President Obama's executive office staff owe the country $833,970 in back taxes. These people working for Mr. Fair Share apparently haven't paid any share, let alone their fair share.

Previous reports have shown how well-paid Obama's White House staff is, with 457 aides pulling down more than $37 million last year. That's up seven workers and nearly $4 million from the Bush administration's last year.

Nearly one-third of Obama's aides make more than $100,000 with 21 being paid the top White House salary of $172,200, each.

The IRS' 2010 delinquent tax revelations come as part of a required annual agency report on federal employees' tax compliance. Turns out, an awful lot of folks being paid by taxpayers are not paying their own income taxes.

The report finds that thousands of federal employees owe the country more than $3.4 billion in back taxes. That's up 3% in the past year.

That scale of delinquency could annoy voters, hard-pressed by their own costs, fears and stubbornly high unemployment despite Joe Biden's many promises.

The tax offenders include employees of the U.S. Senate who help write the laws imposed on everyone else. They owe $2.1 million. Workers in the House of Representatives owe $8.5 million, Department of Education employees owe $4.3 million and over at Homeland Security, 4,697 workers owe about $37 million. Active duty military members owe more than $100 million.

The Treasury Department, where Obama nominee Tim Geithner had to pay up $42,000 in his own back taxes before being confirmed as secretary, has 1,181 other employees with delinquent taxes totaling $9.3 million.

As usual, the Postal Service, with more than 600,000 workers, has the most offenders (25,640), who also owe the most -- almost $270 million. Veterans Affairs has 11,659 workers owing the IRS $151 million while the Energy Department that was so quick to dish out more than $500 million to the Solyndra folks has 322 employees owing $5 million.

The country's chief law enforcement agency, the Department of Justice, has 2,069 employees who are nearly $17 million behind in taxes. Like Operation Fast and Furious, Attorney General Eric Holder has apparently missed them too.

As with ordinary people, the IRS attempts to negotiate back-tax payment plans with all delinquents, whose names cannot be released. But according to current federal law, the only federal employees who can be fired for not paying taxes are IRS workers.

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Obama Tells The Catholic Church To Go To Hell
1/31/2012
My Catholic priest, Father Larry Swink, delivered a homily on Sunday that I told him would make headlines. In the toughest sermon I have ever heard from a pulpit, he attacked the Obama Administration as evil, even demonic, and warned of religious persecution ahead. What was also newsworthy about the sermon was that he cited The Washington Post in agreement—not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

What is happening is extraordinary and unprecedented. The Catholic Church is in open revolt against the Obama Administration, with Fr. Swink noting from the pulpit that priests across the archdiocese were joining the call on Sunday to rally Catholics to resistance against the U.S. Government. He said we are entering a time of religious persecution and that Catholics and others will have to make a final decision about which side they are on.

The issue is what the Catholic Bishops have called a “literally unconscionable” edict by the Obama Administration demanding that sterilization, abortifacients and contraception be included in virtually all health plans.

At a time when the media are full of reports about who is ahead and behind in the polls, and who will win the next Republican presidential primary, this incredible uprising in the Catholic Church is something that could not only overshadow the political campaign season, but also may have a major impact on the ultimate outcome—if Republicans know how to handle it. This matter goes beyond partisan politics to the growing perception of an unconstitutional Obama Administration assault on religious freedom. To hear the Catholic Bishops and Priests describe it, our constitutional republic and our freedoms hang in the balance.