Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted. ~ Article III, Section 3
How about ALL of America and the world witnessing?! But don't count on Congress holding her anymore accountable than her President.
$40 million over five years to hate America. If she can't have your guns, then you can't have your security...and Feinstein will instigate terrorists overseas with a tired argument to make certain of that! Of course, like too many in Washington, she nonetheless profits off of the strife. So in essence, the question isn't necessarily what purpose does this report serve, but who? And that's not too difficult to expand upon when the modern Democratic statist is all about party first, second and third. Politicize anything and everything. To hell with the country. Furthermore, the CIA is the remaining entity that must be crippled and controlled under Dear Leader's iron fist. What better way than to neutralize it with one final embittered, treasonous act before being forced out of the Senate Intelligence Committee chairmanship...
PowerLine: The risk that Feinstein’s report will prompt attacks on the U.S. should not be exaggerated. It’s been clear to the public for many years that the U.S. engaged in the interrogation techniques Feinstein and her Senate collaborators describe. The focus of her report is on trying to demonstrate that the tactics didn’t work and that the CIA lied about them.
Those who wish to attack U.S. interests don’t care about these issues. Indeed, they aren’t motivated to attack us by our former use of harsh interrogation techniques, any more than by videos about Islam. However, if Feinstein’s report serves as the pretext for an attack against us, that’s bad enough.
The most significant damage wrought by Feinstein, though, is the undermining of the CIA’s effectiveness. ...
In sum, Feinstein’s attack on the CIA presents both short term and long terms threats to our security, with the short term threat acknowledged by the White House. What are the offsetting benefits of her report? There are none.
...the debate is stale... one side says “enhanced interrogation”; the other side says “torture.” It’s the same tyranny of labels style argument we’ve endured for a decade. ...
By now, many Americans, unlikely to believe either side, will probably rely on their own intuition. In any event, because Feinstein failed to interview CIA personnel and failed to get a single Republican member of her committee on board, the issuance of her report will not advance the debate.
In the end, it’s difficult to see any public value in Feinstein’s report — much less, value that outweighs its potential harm. The value of the report is personal to Feinstein and some of her fellow Democrats. It furthers her vendetta against the CIA and provides a fig leaf with which to cover the complicity of Senate Democrats, including Feinstein, in the interrogation techniques that, after the fact, seem abhorrent to them.
For Feinstein, $40 million, long-term damage to the CIA, and the potential for deadly attacks on Americans overseas apparently are a small price to pay for this satisfaction.
And where some say the release of Feinstein's report is reckless...
WaPo: So the Feinstein report comes in the middle of a war, targeting many Americans who are still engaged in it. It is an act of exceptional congressional recklessness. ...
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the outgoing chair of the committee, was thought to be more responsible. But her legacy is a massive dump of intelligence details useful to the enemy in a time of war. And she knows the likely results. Secretary of State John Kerry expressed the concerns of allies about increased violence. A National Intelligence Council report warned of threats to embassies, installations and individuals, and explored how partners would react to the disclosure.
So why has Feinstein donned her Guy Fawkes mask? Tension with the CIA? Simple stubbornness? The main reason, I suspect, is different. Democrats who approved of enhanced interrogation at the time (such as Feinstein) must now construct an elaborate fantasy world in which they were not knowledgeable and supportive. They postulate a new reality in which they were innocent and deceived — requiring a conspiracy from three former CIA directors, three former deputy directors and hundreds of others.
...I don't think it's a stretch to label this closer to what it appears to be: treasonous.
Well, they reached some kind of agreement on a bill that very few Americans can decipher or will have time to read...SSDD...
TRS: For those of you who don’t know, cromnibus stands for ‘continuing resolution’ + ‘omnibus’. But I like to think of it as ‘crony omnibus’. Either way, it’s a 1603 page $1.1 trillion dollar spending bill that funds the government through September of next year. However it only funds Homeland Security through February. And lawmakers have just agreed to it and a vote on it will come THIS WEEK.
The link is here where you can read the entire bill.
Here are some highlights from Fox News reporter Chad Pergram:
Funds most of gov't thru Sept 30 '15, end of fiscal yr, but only funds DHS thru Feb 27 '15.
Notable there wasn't a big fight over funding Obamacare in this spending bill. Prompted '13 shutdown. But no "new" Obamacare $ in this bill.
Spending bill provides funding to comabt ISIS & $5.4 billion for Ebola
Spending bill restricts Clean Water Act in farm areas & curbs Fish/Wildlife Svs from putting sage-grouse on Endangered Species List
Spending bill bans Obama Admin's “light bulb” standard
Spending bill bans transfer or release of Guantanamo detainees into the U.S.
Spending bill doesn't fund high-speed rail. Cuts some IRS $. Pay freeze for political appointees.
Spending bill does not fund UNESCO. No $ for IMF.
Spending bill bans local/fed $ to implement DC ballot initiative for recreational marijuana. Doesn't touch medical marijuana.
Spending bill bans DoJ/DEA from using money to undermine local medical marijuana laws.
According to Pergram's reporting, the House Rules Committee will meet at 3 pm this afternoon to prep this spending bill for the floor. Floor debate is expected to commence on Thursday.
Though there appear to be some positive signs that Pergram noted, despite the enormous price tag, knowing the politicians behind it, it's hard to believe that this will ultimately benefit us...and that's even if the Senate accepts it and Obama signs off on it, which in its current incarnation is unlikely.
Here's a few differing opinions about the CRomnibus: optimism at HotAir, reality of knowing who these RINOs are over at RedState, and a bit of both from AmericanSpectator:
While the two parties did spend much of last week cutting out unnecessary spending and negotiating the details of the bill in order to avoid a shutdown, the very best, lowest number they could come up with to keep the government rolling on is $1.1 trillion, because everything is terrible and we've lost all sense of reality.
The magic of the CRomnibus is, that while it generally sucks all around, the only person who can shut the government down at this point is Barack Obama. And while he's had quite the "let it burn" philosophy since suffering a crushing defeat in the midterm elections, vetoing the bill right before the Christmas holiday would ensure nothing but constant shutdown coverage, with only minimal interest from Congress in ending the standoff. The Obama Administration is masterful at engineering distractions for the media, but two weeks is a lot of airtime to fill. The President can only have so many sore throats and colonoscopies.
The other magical result of the CRomnibus is basically everyone hates it, which in DC, usually means you've hit upon a fairly decent solution. If anyone were happy about it, it would be time to worry.
That exorbitant $1T cost added to our growing debt is what I worry over on behalf of my retirement years and my childrens' future.
UPDATES: Alright, what a piece of CRAP! ConservativeReview has dug into this and laid out 10 significant problems with the CRomnibus bill:
1. Rubber Stamping Amnesty As Obama unabatedly moves to enact amnesty – already beginning by hiring 1,000 new government employees to quickly process applications for illegal immigrants in a facility the administration has secured by the Pentagon, this bill fails to defund one penny of the process. Amidst the $1.1 trillion 1,603-page bill that contains roughly hundreds of policy riders, there is absolutely nothing prohibiting any of Obama’s illegal amnesty. GOP apologists for the bill point out that funding for the Department of Homeland Security is only funded until March, but that is irrelevant. There is no defund policy rider to prevent or restrict a single action at a time when we need it most, which is now. Moreover, Obama is using many other agencies to help aid and abet illegal immigration, such as the Justice Department and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Each of those other agencies will be funded for the entire remainder of the fiscal year – without any restrictions.
2. Accelerates Obama’s Amnesty Not only does this budget fail to defund amnesty, it actually helps accelerate Obama’s unconstitutional executive order. The bill contains almost $1 billion in additional funding for Health & Human Services (HHS) so that the recent illegal immigrants from Central America (who are not even officially eligible for Obama’s amnesty) can establish themselves in the country. The bill also contains $260 million in additional funding to aid poverty in Central America at a time when we should be withholding existing aid until they respect our sovereignty.
3. Long-Term Funding for Everything Else At this point, no aspect of government, other than Defense, should be funded for the remainder of the fiscal year, especially by a lame duck Congress. Obama’s lawlessness will not end with immigration. He will remake American through the HHS, Labor Department, EPA, and IRS. All of those departments are now fully funded and Republicans will not have any leverage against more executive action until next October.
4. 72-hour Transparency Rule Once again, House leadership is breaking their 72-hour posting pledge and plans to vote on a bill less than 48 hours after posting the text online. But this is not just any bill. It’s a 1,603-page, 289,861-word budget bill that funds every aspect of government during a time of grave constitutional crisis. Even Politico noted the Appropriations Committee desire to obscure and suppress as much information as possible about the massive bill for as along as possible.
“The leadership would argue that the secrecy is justified given the political tensions in Congress. But the picture is of a committee so scared of outside disruptions that it’s forgotten the pride it once took as a public panel making public decisions about public money.”
5. Disenfranchising Voters Voters sent a resounding message in November: they want Obama’s agenda stopped. Not only does this bill consummate Obama’s agenda for another year, it was crafted, in part, by the same Senate Democrats who were voted out of office in November. The notion that they would override the will of the people and deny the new Congress from making these decisions is unconscionable.
6. Ebola Funding Not only is Congress planning on throwing in all of the regular appropriations for the reminder of the fiscal year into an omnibus, they are granting Obama even more emergency funding for combating Ebola. The White House requested a whopping $6.2 billion, and most of their request was acceded – roughly $5.4 billion. Most of the funds will go towards the already-bloated HHS and international aid programs.
As we already noted, the CDC does not need any more money; they already waste so much in taxpayer funds. This is a policy problem, not a funding problem.
7. War Funding The president asked Congress for an additional $5.6 billion to fund his incoherent foray into the Syrian civil war. This includes $1.6 billion to equip and train the feckless Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State, $165 million to work with the dubious Syrian opposition forces, and $500 million for foreign assistance programs. He got almost every penny.
Much like with Ebola funding, Congress could have used the power of the purse to tweak Obama on his wrongheaded foreign policy. Instead of focusing on destroying all terrorists, cutting off funding for terror entities, stripping citizenship from American Islamic State fighters, and holding Turkey and Qatar accountable, Obama’s has involved us in another Sunni-Shiite civil war with no good outcome. Yet, they are giving him the money for an open-ended engagement without debating a formal war authorization and long-term strategy. This is war by appropriation and it is cowardice.
8. EPA For all the talk about Republicans holding up the agreement to fight EPA regulations, none of the riders defunding Obama’s climate rules were included in the bill. The bill provides $8.14 billion in funding for the EPA, $250 million more than the president’s request.
9. Misplaced Priorities GOP leaders spent the entire month telling us you can’t defund amnesty in the budget bill. But as CQ’s Steven Dennis notes, the prohibiting language of “None of these funds” is mentioned 451 times in the bill. Sadly, defunding amnesty isn’t one of them. There are also seven instances in which agencies funded by fees are restricted, something the appropriators claimed was off limits as it relates to defunding Obama’s amnesty. They further tell us that we can’t “authorize” or “legislate” in an appropriation bill in order to restrict Obama’s unlawful behavior, yet they made sure to fight to include their own policy provisions in the bill.
Among the many policy provisions included in the bill was Mitch McConnell’s bailout for the NRSC, easing of Obamacare restrictions….but only on expatriated insurance plans (Cigna’s carve-out), and a rider delaying the placement of the Sage Grouse on the Endangered Species List.
10. Conscience Provisions Republicans promised to clamp down on Obama’s rule forcing businesses to offer all forms of contraception in employee insurance coverage plans. But evidently, Nancy Pelosi now has veto power over the House majority and demanded that the rider be removed from the bill.
BONUS: Budget Gimmicks
Like most budget bills, far from cutting spending, this bill actually adds to the deficit. While the bill is being advertised as adhering to the budget cap of $1.013.6 trillion, it actually authorizes billions more in spending. Managers of the bill employed a special budget gimmick, which allows Congress to shift around payments on programs outside of the annual budget bill and gives them cover to increase spending in this budget bill by $19 billion.
Additionally, war spending, known as “Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO),” are exempt from the budget caps. Last year, Congress authorized $85 billion in OCO spending, and due to the drawdown of forces in the Middle East, Obama initially requested only $59 billion. This bill authorizes $74 billion in war spending. There is also another $6 billion in disaster relief and the $5 billion in Ebola funding, which is designated as emergency spending and exempt from the caps. None of the extra spending is offset with spending cuts. Taken as a whole, this bill will total $1.119 trillion, over $85 billion more than the agreed-upon discretionary budget caps.
Furthermore, Erick Erickson lays out the stark reality of what's certain to occur if Republicans violate their oath to uphold, protect, and defend the constitution if the GOP is willing to fund illegal or unconstitutional acts of the President...
RedState: if the GOP is not willing to fight right now, they will not fight at all and will instead fund the President and move on. In fact, they are even saying so.
But a GOP majority that has vowed new levels of efficiency in governing is unlikely to allow DHS funding to lapse, meaning that Obama and Democratic leaders will very likely be able to call the Republican bluff.
Remember, in 2013, Republicans said the fight against Obamacare needed to be on the continuing resolution, not the debt ceiling. Once the debt ceiling was extended, the GOP leadership said it needed to fight Obamacare on the next debt ceiling, not on the continuing resolution. When Cruz and Lee and Bridenstine et al held their ground, Republican Leaders used the “wrong fight” mantra and said they needed to use the debt ceiling to stop Obamacare.
Once the government reopened, the GOP also gave the President a blank check on the debt ceiling while doing nothing on Obamacare.
Republican leaders are already signaling they are moving on. They will not fight on amnesty. They are moving the goal posts. So if the Republican Party will not stop the President now, with the continuing resolution, they will both be funding an action they claim is unconstitutional and also setting up a 2015 agenda that quickly moves past the issue without doing anything.
In other words, it is now or never. If you do not make your voice heard immediately, the GOP will move on doing nothing to stop the President.
On Monday’s Mark Levin Show: Mark discusses the recently passed $585 billion defense bill filled with pork which has nothing to do with defense. Finally, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell lied to Republicans about what they were really voting for by re-wording the bill just before voting on it. So much for Boehner’s pledge to not vote on a bill for 72 hours after its introduced.
Didn't take long, did it? It was only a month ago that they were ushered back into power, and even before they're sworn in come January, Republican leaders are showing us how their campaign promises turn out to be more dirty lies.
Let's follow Levin through this sordid tale of corruption, starting @ 60:15 into last night's Audio Rewind...
"You know what they did? You know what Boehner did with the help of his lap dancing friend there, Pete Sessions, not the good Sessions, Jeff, [but] Pete Sessions from Texas? At the last second, they changed the wording in the bill. They did not inform the other members of the House, including the Republicans. They thought they were voting on one bill, when these changes were made to the bill. Ladies and gentlemen, this is criminal what the Republican leadership is up to. Absolutely criminal."
A note to Texas Congressional District 32 voters: You had an opportunity to eject the feckless wonder, Pete Sessions, and install a rock-ribbed conservative, Katrina Pierson, but you FAILED. Think carefully in 2016, because he should be the first RINO to be primaried!
"I can sit here and say, 'Hey, Cassidy won in Louisiana, everybody!' Sorry, I'm not a Pollyanna."
"It's funny: Functional, Bipartisan Senate. Those words were never played in a single political ad that he ran in the great state of Kentucky, Commonwealth of Kentucky. So now Mitch McConnell is a bureaucrat. How 'bout saving the Republic?! How 'bout saving the Constitution?! How 'bout saving the nation from an ultimate financial default?! How 'bout securing the border?! How 'bout giving us our health care back?! No, no, no. He wants a functional, bipartisan Senate, and that means he's gotta work with Harry Reid and Schumer and all the losers and creeps who brought us to this point! But it sounds good, so the media loves it. So the Democrats, when they get in, they want victory, they want to roll us. When the Republicans get in, they want to show that 'we can govern.' Aaa, SCREW THEM!
"Because you do not support the three that these millionaire, billionaire corporatists support! Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Mitt Romney. They want one of those three, or a couple others potentially, and they want to get him in there and get him in there fast, so they're gonna use these SuperPACs to do what they did in the primaries before. Relentlessly brutalize any conservative that dares to challenge one of these fools in the Republican presidential primary system. The Republican Party has been BOUGHT, the Republican Party has been PAID FOR, by these corporatists.
I like corporations, I said 'corporatists'. And since I've introduced this phrase into the public square, I will explain it for the hundredth time. These are men and women, extremely wealthy, who are extremely wealthy not simply because they may have invented something or improved on a service or a product, but because they need subsidies by government, directly or indirectly. They need welfare from you the taxpayer. They need TARP; they need bailouts. They want to defeat the competition through statute or regulation. That's who they are. They're not free market capitalists, THEY ARE CORPORATISTS, who use government, who use your tax dollars, to advance their own personal cause. That's who's behind Christie. That's who behind Romney. That's who's behind Jeb Bush. This is why they can never be constitutional conservatives. This is why they never supported a Ronald Reagan, and can never support a conservative in any presidential Republican primary. They don't want limited smaller government; they want access to government. They want power through government. There's a big difference between being a Republican and a conservative, [or] a Republican and a conservative Republican. But you need to know these things."
"...conservatives are griping that the current Republican leadership is using the Democrat Senate to quickly push through a massive federal budget. ... Do you remember, four or five years ago, when John Boehner gave speech after speech after speech before he became Speaker, denouncing Nancy 'Stretch' Pelosi, saying that she brings these spending bills to the floor and other bills to the floor without going through regular order? And that if he's the Speaker of the House, no bill will be spent, no bill will be passed, no bill will be voted on, unless there's 72 hours, a full three days, where the bill is on the table, where the bill is made public, so those who vote on it, and those who are affected by it, We The People, will know what's in it. He's not doing that anymore, because Boehner has lost his way.
You know that phrase, 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely'? Corrupt he's become. And as the Republican caucus goes along with him and goes along with all of this, it's one ugly spectacle."
Mark wrapped the discussion up into one summary on the absolute corruption of the Republican Party leadership...
"And so we keep electing Republicans.
This guy Cassidy who just won in Louisiana, I saw all kinds of conservatives campaigning for him. I didn't say a word in support of this guy. He's John Boehner's guy when he was in the House, and he'll be Mitch McConnell's guy in the Senate. What is the point of this?
What is the point of deluding ourselves when the country is on the precipice?! What is the point of deluding ourselves when the Republicans have joined in with the pro-amnesty crowd, with the Big Government crowd?! Well, let's spend, uh, you know, endlessly, crowd?!
'Well we can't do anything.' They run for office and tell us send them there and they'll stop it. We elect them and they say they can't do anything. Aren't you sick and tired of this follow-the-bouncing-ball crap?
The Republicans are now treating We The People as the Democrats treat We The People. The Democrats believe in Washington, in state capitols, the elected political Democrats and operatives believe that their constituencies are STUPID, and so they treat'em as stupid. Now the Republican Party thinks we're the same and treats us the same way.
And those of us who are independent, those of us who are rational when we look at this, we have the be CRUSHED, particularly if we join together in these little groups that we call [gasp] Tea Party groups, conservative groups, constitutional groups. We have to be crushed. Our voices cannot be heard.
They believe in a big tent, these Republicans. But not for us. Millionaires, Billionaires, liberals, rioters, media, whatever. You know, if you're just a hard working American, and you don't want to burn anything, and you don't want to protest against anything, you just want to be left alone and raise your family, YOU'RE NOT WELCOME!"
I've said this numerous times before, but I'll rephrase it: Waiting until the general election to participate in the process is too late! If we cannot win the PRIMARIES with genuine CONSERVATIVES, then we don't truly win anything, no matter the purported Republican landslide.
"There is grievance politics in this country that's tearing the country apart"
Rush graced Fox News Sunday's presence (via the EIB Studio) with 15 minutes of candor and wit yesterday...a guiding light that Chris Wallace could definitely use more often. Pearls of wisdom, if you will. Check it out...
DailySignal: Seventy-three years ago today, on Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, an act that plunged the nation into World War II. The surprise attack that Sunday lasted less than two hours but killed more than 2,500, wounded about 1,000 and ruined 318 American ships and airplanes. Today we honor the lives lost and remember the terrible day that, in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words, will “live in infamy.”
Also remember, this was The Greatest Generation. A generation, who when attacked, took the fight to the enemy and decimated them into submission. There's a lesson to learn here, 21st century America.
To do full justice to Mark Levin's thought-provoking and motivating petition, please, just LISTEN, especially before drawing any conclusions...
Constitutional scholar, author, and radio talk show host Mark Levin delivers a passionate speech at the State & Nation Policy Summit at the American Legislative Exchange Council Conference, Dec 4, 2014. Levin is a powerful advocate for our state legislatures/legislators to use Article V of the Constitution, as intended, to rein in a runaway federal government. He is the author of "Liberty Amendments", a benchmark book on the use of Article V by We the People, through our STATE legislators, to take our country back from the overreaching, overtaxing, overregulating, and overbearing legislative-class elites in Washington, DC.
WashingtonExaminer: The building national movement for a constitutional convention of states to block President Obama’s executive orders got a huge boost Thursday when leading advocate Mark Levin urged state lawmakers to throttle all of Washington, including Republicans.
“Take your power back,” he demanded of the hundreds of lawmakers attending the American Legislative Exchange Council convention on Capitol Hill. “You are the last line of defense of liberty.”
Levin got star billing because a focus of the winter meeting of the limited government group is pushing for a convention of states, a project of the Citizens for Self-Governance, who sponsored the top talk show host who recently wrote a book laying out constitutional amendments the nation should consider. The process is offered in Article V of the Constitution.
He described a nation that is morphing into a “post-constitutional” crisis where state legislatures are “irrelevant,” and the president and Congress do whatever they want, and nobody in Washington provides checks and balances.
“We have a president of the United States who says, ‘Hey, Congress won’t act. I will.’ Excuse me? Well what’s that? Sounds like a runaway convention to me,” he said.
Ditto for Republicans. “Throw out the establishment Republicans and others who are stopping you from doing what you need to do,” Levin urged.
To applause, he pushed legislators to consider a convention of 2,000-3,000 delegates to review procedures for hosting a constitutional convention as a warning shot to Congress and the White House. “That alone would shake up this city,” he said.
And addressing the runaway convention naysayers, take Levin's advice, "Ignore these idiots! We’re not some cult over here; we’re the majority." Proponents of an Article V Convention of the States (NOT a 'Constitutional Convention', which is damn near an ongoing phenomena of what's occurring in Washington, D.C. right NOW!) are simply trying to save the country and the Constitution. Join US!
...and no color hides that. Talk about hitting the nail on the head! Bill Whittle does just that in this outstanding exposition...
TRS: Here’s another video from Bill Whittle that hits the nail right on the head. This time he elucidates what Obama’s illegal executive order on immigration means for our government and why he’s able to do it where no one would be – his “black skin privilege.”
Everyone knows it is true, and no one has the courage to say it. The American people are letting Barack Obama destroy this country through illegal executive orders for one reason and one reason only... Bill Whittle has the courage to speak out and make the case that no one else will make.
...and contrary to pop culture's belief, it's not racist to speak honestly, truthfully and civilly about it, particularly when you're referencing the man that led the genuine civil rights movement...
"I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
Shutdown schmutdown be damned (and only a fraction of government, mind you). I could say the same of Boehner's useless show vote in the House. There is absolutely no reason why every single Republican on Capitol Hill shouldn't fearlessly articulate Cruz's sentiment...
...instead of going along with Boehner's scheming among Democrats to once again undermine not just conservatives on Capitol Hill, but the vast conservative constituency who dragged so many Republican carcasses across the finish line last month. YOU OWE US! But now it's too much to ask to fight for us, to save the nation, to save our society, to enforce the law? Just because a leftist media might not say nice things about you? Or ignorance beyond can't control insatiable appetites for more and more government?
FIGHT FOR US, OUR CHILDREN AND THE FUTURE OF THIS COUNTRY, DAMMIT!
ADDENDUM: And for those who still don't get what's at stake here...
TRS: Obama lied 22 different times about how he wouldn’t bypass Congress, suggesting he was for the founder’s vision of American government. 22 times he made the case that he didn’t have the power to ignore laws and that he didn’t believe in the presidency having too much power.
But Boehner, McConnell and all the other RINOs don't think impeachment or exercising the power of the purse that might result in a shutdown are viable options in restraining an out-of-control imperial president? Why the hell does what the media think matter more than national sovereignty and the rule of law?
Articulating principles and standing up for values will defeat them every time, Republicans. I know it's been a long time since you've seen it, but it exists...and there's a Senator from Texas who's doing it!
And throw away that big, fat styrofoam finger while you’re about it.
There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world. For the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, America is not the leading economic power on the planet.
It just happened — and almost nobody noticed.
The International Monetary Fund recently released the latest numbers for the world economy. And when you measure national economic output in “real” terms of goods and services, China will this year produce $17.6 trillion — compared with $17.4 trillion for the U.S.A.
As recently as 2000, we produced nearly three times as much as the Chinese.
To put the numbers slightly differently, China now accounts for 16.5% of the global economy when measured in real purchasing-power terms, compared with 16.3% for the U.S.
This latest economic earthquake follows the development last year when China surpassed the U.S. for the first time in terms of global trade.
Perhaps the idea between Democratic statists and the GOP Establishment, all with bundlers and donors in tow, is to infuse cheap labor (albeit, illegal) into the American market in a last ditch effort to increase goods and services? But what of added welfarism and citizen unemployment that's certain to grow with population boom in the Nanny State? (We know the truer intention is to drive Democratic Party enrollment, but these are also intended consequences) Our leaders are also missing a broader, yet dire historic lesson...
Yes, all statistics are open to various quibbles. It is perfectly possible China’s latest numbers overstate output — or understate them. That may also be true of U.S. GDP figures. But the IMF data are the best we have.
Make no mistake: This is a geopolitical earthquake with a high reading on the Richter scale. Throughout history, political and military power have always depended on economic power. Britain was the workshop of the world before she ruled the waves. And it was Britain’s relative economic decline that preceded the collapse of her power. And it was a similar story with previous hegemonic powers such as France and Spain.
This will not change anything tomorrow or next week, but it will change almost everything in the longer term. We have lived in a world dominated by the U.S. since at least 1945 and, in many ways, since the late 19th century. And we have lived for 200 years — since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 — in a world dominated by two reasonably democratic, constitutional countries in Great Britain and the U.S.A. For all their flaws, the two countries have been in the vanguard worldwide in terms of civil liberties, democratic processes and constitutional rights.
Good luck finding those liberties, processes and rights that have maintained our prolonged status in any other corner of the world.
Dot those i's and cross those t's...Texas is leading the legal charge with our new governor-elect who knows a thing or two about the law!
FoxNews: Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott announced Wednesday that Texas is leading a 17-state coalition suing the Obama administration over the president's executive actions on immigration.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Texas on Wednesday, and names the heads of the top immigration enforcement agencies as defendants.
Abbott, in a news conference in Austin, said the "broken" immigration system should be fixed by Congress, not by "presidential fiat."
He said President Obama's recently announced executive actions -- a move designed to spare as many as 5 million people living illegally in the United States from deportation -- "directly violate the fundamental promise to the American people" by running afoul of the Constitution.
"The ability of the president to dispense with laws was specifically considered and unanimously rejected at the Constitutional Convention," he said. Abbott specifically cited Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution which states the president "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed."
He said the lawsuit asks the court to require Obama to go through Congress before enforcing laws, "rather than making them up himself."
