Thoughts on the administration’s creeping fascism:
One doesn’t systematically twist and mutilate the language as Obama and all of his underlings do, all the time and on nearly every issue, without some purpose in mind. They downplay the war both to obscure the real enemy and to build up another one. They call significant scandals “phony” to deflect from their responsibility and pin back the ears of the victims, who are this administration’s enemies. The enemy that Obama’s administration consistently targets is people who oppose his political agenda here at home. His IRS singles them out. His EPA punishes whole states. His NLRB tries to force union rules on right-to-work states and non-union enterprises. Obamacare forces the heavy, central planning blue state model on red states whether they want it or not (and they don’t). Increasingly, no one but Obama’s union friends and bloodless bureaucrats want Obamacare, and they only support it as a means of power — they don’t want to live under it themselves.
Barack Obama’s administration is unmoored from the institutions that have long kept the imperial tendencies of the American presidency in check. That is partly the fault of Congress, which has punted too many of its legislative responsibilities to the president’s army of faceless regulators, but it is in no small part the result of an intentional strategy on the part of the administration. He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park. Barack Obama is a Harvard Law graduate, and he knows that he cannot make recess appointments when Congress is not in recess. He knows that his HHS is promulgating regulations that conflict with federal statutes. He knows that he is not constitutionally empowered to pick and choose which laws will be enforced. This is a might-makes-right presidency, and if Barack Obama has been from time to time muddled and contradictory, he has been clear on the point that he has no intention of being limited by something so trivial as the law.
Unfortunately, the Founders expected that Congress would be more concerned about its own powers and prerogatives than this one seems to be.
Kevin thinks it will be easy, but I don’t see it. Do we get rid of the employer mandate, which will be super expensive? Do we raise the limit to 35 hours a week, which would probably result in somewhat less dumping, but would still cost a bunch of money? And which program would Democrats like to cut to pay for the extra expense? Because Republicans would definitely not be on board with raising taxes for it.
This isn’t just politically hard; it’s actually hard.
One of the many reasons the legislation is such a disaster.
It’s like squaring the circle. Of solving a Rubiks cube that’s been taken apart and put together the wrong way.
…the US needn’t be too complacent either. The shale boom has been partly stoked by the same forces, which are now potentially waning. Oil prices have gone from $20-28 per barrel at the start of the decade to a sustained $100-$105 today. Right now, these prices are being held up by chaos in Middle East and Libya. If circumstances change, price shifts could give US drillers major headaches.
Oil over a hundred a barrel has always been unsustainable over the long haul.
Apple has patented a piece of technology which would allow government and police to block transmission of information, including video and photographs, whenever they like.
All the coppers have to do is decide that a public gathering or venue is deemed “sensitive”, and needs to be “protected from externalities” and Apple will switch off all its gear.
Egyptians are enraged by it. They should be. I am, too.
And someone needs to primary McCain:
McCain’s remarks and actions in Egypt have further confirmed the popular narrative — as memorably displayed by countless anti-Brotherhood and anti-Obama placards raised during the June 30 Revolution — that U.S. leadership is aligned with the Brotherhood, and thus ultimately a supporter of terrorism.