CarlB asks: But why would the voters continue to vote for the political party that has been "Hell Bent" on the destruction of this Republic since FDR's "new deal."
Because the New Deal was a raw deal, economically enslaving generations of Americans to near-permanent conditions of poverty and unproductivity. I blame this president, his predecessors, members of Congress throughout the same period, and the people they represent(ed).
Some corollary questions to those you so provocatively raise: Why are Obama’s supporters so unwilling to question his growth-averse economic policies and his incompetent, unnecessarily confrontational style of governance? Why the need for such blind devotion? Most opposition to Obama is not hateful or violent. It is motivated out of loyalty to the principles of freedom that infuriate him.
Any unpreparedness for catastrophe is the result of selling our souls (and our posterity’s’ future financial heath) for a mess of pottage. Spending trillions of dollars more than you take in is insanity. Our Roman appetite for luxury and ease is WWWTW. This republic wasn’t designed to sustain a state-controlled economy. Trusting bureaucrats and politicians more than trusting families and neighbors is WWWTW. My opposition to this trend is loyal and unyielding. What you label “violent hatred” is nothing more than loyal opposition of fundamentally flawed policies.
I posted a couple of questions earlier today that have gone unanswered. Those of you who have our beliefs should surely be able to answer them.
1.) What rights have any of you lost that you once had, before President Obama entered the Oval Office? and;
2.) What are any examples of power that the President has seized that threaten this nation, under any criteria?
I read such charges all the time from some of you. Now is your time to shine by enumerating them.
I posted detail after detail after detail, and you haven’t addressed a single one. You are willfully ignorant. No evidence will ever persuade you to abandon your infatuation with a naïve and ineffective president. Love is blind, and you are smitten.
It isn’t just punch-drunk Republicans who have noticed the antics of an aspiring emperor.
“Obama is the first president to use his unilateral powers so routinely, especially in the domestic sphere,” says University of Virginia presidential scholar Sidney Milkis, a self-described moderate Democrat. “And in some ways, that may be more insidious than what came before.”
“President Obama’s Executive Power Grab: The Obama power play that could forever change the way Washington works” by Andrew Romano and Daniel Klaidman (Newsweek, Oct 22, 2012)
“Obama: Already a Multiple Lawbreaker” by Brian Doherty (Hit and Run Blog at www.Reason.com, May. 17, 2013)
“Conor Friedersdorf continues his (alas, probably pretty futile) attempt to get fans of President Obama to wake the hell up! at The Atlantic:
“Yes, President Obama has broken the law on multiple occasions. Despite clearly stating, in a 2008 questionnaire, that the commander-in-chief is not lawfully empowered to ignore treaties duly ratified by the Senate, Obama has willfully failed to enforce the torture treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and duly ratified by the Senate, that compels him to investigate and prosecute torture....
“Obama also violated the War Powers Resolution, a law he has specifically proclaimed to be Constitutionally valid, when committing U.S. troops to Libya without Congressional approval....
“Has he ordered the assassination of any American citizens in secret without due process? Did he kill any of their teenage kids without ever explaining how or why that happened?
“Has he refused to reveal even the legal reasoning he used to conclude his targeted killing program is lawful?
“Has he waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers?
“Has he spied on millions of innocent Americans without a warrant or probable cause?
“Does he automatically count dead military-aged males killed by U.S. drones as "militants"?
“Did he "sign a bill that enshrines in law the previously merely alleged executive power of indefinite detention without trial of terror suspects"?....
“The OLC’s argument “will not do,” wrote Chief Judge David Sentelle in a stirring and chiding opinion rooted in constitutional originalism. He continued:
“An interpretation of “the Recess” that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction. This cannot be the law.”
“After appointing Cordray and the NLRB board members, President Obama said he “refused to take no for an answer,” and that he would “not stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve.” The President’s attorneys made a similar argument, claiming that the Senate was standing in the way of his duties as president. Sentelle’s response:
“It bears emphasis that “[c]onvenience and efficiency are not the primary objectives—or the hallmarks—of democratic government.” … The power of a written constitution lies in its words. It is those words that were adopted by the people. When those words speak clearly, it is not up to us to depart from their meaning in favor of our own concept of efficiency, convenience, or facilitation of the functions of government.”
“DC Circuit Overturns President Obama’s Power Grab” by Trevor Burrus (Cato at Liberty [blog], January 25, 2013)
“Today, in an important decision with far-reaching implications, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unconstitutional President Obama’s appointment of three members to the National Labor Relations Board.
“Slightly over a year ago, on January 4, 2012, President Obama appointed four people to high-level offices without the constitutionally required “advice and consent” of the Senate. Three of those appointees were placed on the NLRB, and the other was Richard Cordray, chosen to direct the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the “consumer watchdog” agency created by Dodd-Frank.
“The appointments were one of the most significant power grabs by a president in recent memory. The Constitution requires that certain “officers of the United States,” a category which indisputably includes NLRB board members and the director of the CFPB, be appointed by the president with the “advice and consent of the Senate.” Like many constitutional provisions, this is a “checks and balances” requirement that helps ensure the president does not unilaterally control the executive branch for his own purposes.
“As a precaution against crucial offices staying vacant while the Senate is not in session, the Framers included a clause that allows the president to temporarily circumvent the “advice and consent” requirement in order “to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” At the time of the framing, as well as for many decades afterward, senators would usually spend six to nine months out of Washington. In those absences, it was left to the president to keep the government going, and the Recess Appointment Clause gives the president the power to make temporary appointments during those long periods when the Senate was simply unavailable.
“Unfortunately, like so many constitutional provisions, the last 80 years have seen a gradual, bipartisan effort to whittle away the Recess Appointment Clause’s function and to concentrate more power in the president …
“Whereas previous presidents only had the gall to assert the power to determine what a recess was, President Obama’s innovation in executive power grabs was to assert the power to determine whether or not a pro forma session is actually a session for the purposes of the Recess Appointment Clause. According to the Office of Legal Council, the president has the “discretion to conclude that the Senate is unavailable to perform its advise-and-consent function and to exercise his power to make recess Appointments.”
“Director of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Is Obama Donor” by Eliana Johnson
(National Review Online, May 15, 2013)
The director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements, which oversees the determinatons of tax-exempt organizations, is a donor to Barack Obama. Holly Paz donated $2,000 to Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to Open Secrets, which maintains a database of individual political donations.
An inspector general’s report released yesterday concluded that the IRS improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for undue scrutiny, and Paz heads the office in which the wrongdoing is said to have occurred. National Review Online reported earlier today that agency officials are currently copying the hard drives of every employee on Paz’s watch. That data will be made available to investigators working on a second IG investigation into whether individual agency employees engaged in criminal activity.
The House Oversight Committee is requesting that Paz and four other employees be made available for transcribed interviews starting next week.
Data from the Center for Responsive Politics indicate that Paz’s donations are consistent with broader trends at the IRS, where agency employees donated overwhelming to President Obama in both the 2012 and 2008 presidential Elections.
“IRS Officials In Washington Were Involved In Targeting Of Conservative Groups”
by Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb (Washington Post, May 13)
“Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
“IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
“IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
“Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
“In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.
“Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.”
Relief
CarlB asks: But why would the voters continue to vote for the political party that has been "Hell Bent" on the destruction of this Republic since FDR's "new deal."
Because the New Deal was a raw deal, economically enslaving generations of Americans to near-permanent conditions of poverty and unproductivity. I blame this president, his predecessors, members of Congress throughout the same period, and the people they represent(ed).
Some corollary questions to those you so provocatively raise: Why are Obama’s supporters so unwilling to question his growth-averse economic policies and his incompetent, unnecessarily confrontational style of governance? Why the need for such blind devotion? Most opposition to Obama is not hateful or violent. It is motivated out of loyalty to the principles of freedom that infuriate him.
Any unpreparedness for catastrophe is the result of selling our souls (and our posterity’s’ future financial heath) for a mess of pottage. Spending trillions of dollars more than you take in is insanity. Our Roman appetite for luxury and ease is WWWTW. This republic wasn’t designed to sustain a state-controlled economy. Trusting bureaucrats and politicians more than trusting families and neighbors is WWWTW. My opposition to this trend is loyal and unyielding. What you label “violent hatred” is nothing more than loyal opposition of fundamentally flawed policies.
The Critic
alprova said...
I posted a couple of questions earlier today that have gone unanswered. Those of you who have our beliefs should surely be able to answer them.
1.) What rights have any of you lost that you once had, before President Obama entered the Oval Office? and;
2.) What are any examples of power that the President has seized that threaten this nation, under any criteria?
I read such charges all the time from some of you. Now is your time to shine by enumerating them.
I posted detail after detail after detail, and you haven’t addressed a single one. You are willfully ignorant. No evidence will ever persuade you to abandon your infatuation with a naïve and ineffective president. Love is blind, and you are smitten.
The Critic
”Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers.”
That’s right: It was a 21st century IRS Inquisitor’s chilling question for the Coalition for Life of Iowa.
The Critic
”Please detail the content of the members of your organization’s prayers.”
Which inquisitor uttered this line? And in what century? Anyone?
The Critic
It isn’t just punch-drunk Republicans who have noticed the antics of an aspiring emperor.
“Obama is the first president to use his unilateral powers so routinely, especially in the domestic sphere,” says University of Virginia presidential scholar Sidney Milkis, a self-described moderate Democrat. “And in some ways, that may be more insidious than what came before.”
“President Obama’s Executive Power Grab: The Obama power play that could forever change the way Washington works” by Andrew Romano and Daniel Klaidman (Newsweek, Oct 22, 2012)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/21/president-obama-s-executive-power-grab.html
The Critic
“Obama: Already a Multiple Lawbreaker” by Brian Doherty (Hit and Run Blog at www.Reason.com, May. 17, 2013)
“Conor Friedersdorf continues his (alas, probably pretty futile) attempt to get fans of President Obama to wake the hell up! at The Atlantic:
“Yes, President Obama has broken the law on multiple occasions. Despite clearly stating, in a 2008 questionnaire, that the commander-in-chief is not lawfully empowered to ignore treaties duly ratified by the Senate, Obama has willfully failed to enforce the torture treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan and duly ratified by the Senate, that compels him to investigate and prosecute torture....
“Obama also violated the War Powers Resolution, a law he has specifically proclaimed to be Constitutionally valid, when committing U.S. troops to Libya without Congressional approval....
“Has he ordered the assassination of any American citizens in secret without due process? Did he kill any of their teenage kids without ever explaining how or why that happened?
“Has he refused to reveal even the legal reasoning he used to conclude his targeted killing program is lawful?
“Has he waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers?
“Has he spied on millions of innocent Americans without a warrant or probable cause?
“Does he automatically count dead military-aged males killed by U.S. drones as "militants"?
“Did he "sign a bill that enshrines in law the previously merely alleged executive power of indefinite detention without trial of terror suspects"?....
“Yes. He. Has.”
http://reason.com/blog/2013/05/17/obama-already-a-multiple-lawbreaker
The Critic
(continued)
“The OLC’s argument “will not do,” wrote Chief Judge David Sentelle in a stirring and chiding opinion rooted in constitutional originalism. He continued:
“An interpretation of “the Recess” that permits the President to decide when the Senate is in recess would demolish the checks and balances inherent in the advice-and-consent requirement, giving the President free rein to appoint his desired nominees at any time he pleases, whether that time be a weekend, lunch, or even when the Senate is in session and he is merely displeased with its inaction. This cannot be the law.”
“After appointing Cordray and the NLRB board members, President Obama said he “refused to take no for an answer,” and that he would “not stand by while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the people they were elected to serve.” The President’s attorneys made a similar argument, claiming that the Senate was standing in the way of his duties as president. Sentelle’s response:
“It bears emphasis that “[c]onvenience and efficiency are not the primary objectives—or the hallmarks—of democratic government.” … The power of a written constitution lies in its words. It is those words that were adopted by the people. When those words speak clearly, it is not up to us to depart from their meaning in favor of our own concept of efficiency, convenience, or facilitation of the functions of government.”
http://www.cato.org/blog/dc-circuit-overturns-president-obamas-power-grab
The Critic
“DC Circuit Overturns President Obama’s Power Grab” by Trevor Burrus (Cato at Liberty [blog], January 25, 2013)
“Today, in an important decision with far-reaching implications, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unconstitutional President Obama’s appointment of three members to the National Labor Relations Board.
“Slightly over a year ago, on January 4, 2012, President Obama appointed four people to high-level offices without the constitutionally required “advice and consent” of the Senate. Three of those appointees were placed on the NLRB, and the other was Richard Cordray, chosen to direct the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, the “consumer watchdog” agency created by Dodd-Frank.
“The appointments were one of the most significant power grabs by a president in recent memory. The Constitution requires that certain “officers of the United States,” a category which indisputably includes NLRB board members and the director of the CFPB, be appointed by the president with the “advice and consent of the Senate.” Like many constitutional provisions, this is a “checks and balances” requirement that helps ensure the president does not unilaterally control the executive branch for his own purposes.
“As a precaution against crucial offices staying vacant while the Senate is not in session, the Framers included a clause that allows the president to temporarily circumvent the “advice and consent” requirement in order “to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.” At the time of the framing, as well as for many decades afterward, senators would usually spend six to nine months out of Washington. In those absences, it was left to the president to keep the government going, and the Recess Appointment Clause gives the president the power to make temporary appointments during those long periods when the Senate was simply unavailable.
“Unfortunately, like so many constitutional provisions, the last 80 years have seen a gradual, bipartisan effort to whittle away the Recess Appointment Clause’s function and to concentrate more power in the president …
“Whereas previous presidents only had the gall to assert the power to determine what a recess was, President Obama’s innovation in executive power grabs was to assert the power to determine whether or not a pro forma session is actually a session for the purposes of the Recess Appointment Clause. According to the Office of Legal Council, the president has the “discretion to conclude that the Senate is unavailable to perform its advise-and-consent function and to exercise his power to make recess Appointments.”
http://www.cato.org/blog/dc-circuit-overturns-president-obamas-power-grab
The Critic
“Director of IRS Tax-Exempt Determinations Office Is Obama Donor” by Eliana Johnson (National Review Online, May 15, 2013)
The director of the Office of Rulings and Agreements, which oversees the determinatons of tax-exempt organizations, is a donor to Barack Obama. Holly Paz donated $2,000 to Obama’s 2008 campaign, according to Open Secrets, which maintains a database of individual political donations.
An inspector general’s report released yesterday concluded that the IRS improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for undue scrutiny, and Paz heads the office in which the wrongdoing is said to have occurred. National Review Online reported earlier today that agency officials are currently copying the hard drives of every employee on Paz’s watch. That data will be made available to investigators working on a second IG investigation into whether individual agency employees engaged in criminal activity.
The House Oversight Committee is requesting that Paz and four other employees be made available for transcribed interviews starting next week.
Data from the Center for Responsive Politics indicate that Paz’s donations are consistent with broader trends at the IRS, where agency employees donated overwhelming to President Obama in both the 2012 and 2008 presidential Elections.
The Critic
“IRS Officials In Washington Were Involved In Targeting Of Conservative Groups” by Juliet Eilperin and Zachary A. Goldfarb (Washington Post, May 13)
“Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved with investigating conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.
“IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
“IRS employees in Cincinnati told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.
“Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.
“In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed a lawyer representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.
“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.
“Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.”