Archive for the 'Obama Administration' Category

This is a very long video, but it’s necessary watching if you really want to know what happened in the Ukraine.  Glenn Beck connects all of the dots when he follows the money, and he’s got FOIA documents that started the process of connecting what appeared to be disparate events.

Don’t watch this unless you have the time, because you have to watch it all in order to see where he’s going with it.  You can’t lay charges like he does without the facts to back them up, and he has them.

BLUF: Obama’s administration was using dollars straight out of the U.S. treasury to conduct a proxy war with Russia, all through a corrupt Oligarch, corrupt banks and shell companies, and Joe and Hunter Biden.  This all bypassed the U.S. Congress, and this is what the democrats don’t want you to know.

This is a long but good interview.  If you don’t have time for the entire video, watch 1:27 – 1:34.

We all know that there were other assets to respond to Benghazi, and we’ve covered that in the past.  But here we learn straight from the guy who was there after the event that he had a “full platter” of potential responses for the perps, including kill-capture.

He was told that the political climate was “too sensitive” and we weren’t going to do anything.  Presumably because the cover-up (i.e., blaming it on a ridiculous video) was still in progress by the Obama administration.  You also learn from him that it was often said that there were no dangers in Libya prior to that event, and he clearly says he got the sitreps and knew there were many threats.

Threats that left the U.S. unprepared, all by intent.

News and views.

Do  you remember when Obama started purging the upper echelons in the Pentagon, sometimes under cover of law, sometimes under cover of darkness? After the pullout from Iraq, Obama had a little list of those people he didn’t want to see serving anymore in America’s military. Some he fired outright. Others he treated so shabbily that they had no option put to leave.

Just in the first five years of his presidency, Obama fired almost 200 military officers:

[W]hat has happened to our officer corps since President Obama took office is viewed in many quarters as unprecedented, baffling and even harmful to our national security posture. We have commented on some of the higher profile cases, such as Gen. Carter Ham. He was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi.

Rear Adm. Chuck Gaouette, commander of the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, was relieved in October 2012 for disobeying orders when he sent his group on Sept. 11 to “assist and provide intelligence for” military forces ordered into action by Gen. Ham.

[ … ]

Retired Army Major General Paul Vallely: The White House protects their own. That’s why they stalled on the investigation into fast and furious, Benghazi and Obamacare. He’s intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.

I know some readers have brought this up in the past, but it’s good to see some folks have gone public with Obama’s treachery.

One interesting factoid for me is that I’d never seen in publication before that General Carter Ham was relieved because he disagreed with the decision not to mount a rescue.

Benghazi is on the Obama administration’s shoulders.  God will hold them accountable in eternity.  They are murderers.

Harvard Law Review:

Criminal justice reform has been a focus of my entire career — even since before my time at the Harvard Law Review. As a community organizer, I saw firsthand how our criminal justice system exacerbates inequality. It takes young people who made mistakes no worse than my own and traps them in an endless cycle of marginalization and punishment. More than twenty years ago, I wrote about my experience in neighborhoods where “prison records had been passed down from father to son for more than a generation.”

Well, this is a mouthful, and he’s said too much, enough to indict his own argument.  First of all, I agree that we have criminalized far too many thing, with petty drug offenders sent to prison to be hardened by real criminals, turned into real killers and street thugs, and maybe converted to Islam in the prisons.  I have advocated against such things, and in fact I don’t believe in prisons at all because they are unbiblical.  The Scriptural prescription for wrongdoing is retribution and restitution.

Retribution is the death penalty for high crimes such as rape, kidnapping and murder, and restitution means that the perpetrator becomes the slave of the wronged until the debt is paid.  There is no biblical concept of a “debt to society.”  No one has a debt to society.  There is no biblical notion of the collective.

But by invoking fatherhood he has damned his own argument.  The absence of fathers, undergirded by the absence of true religion and public giveaway programs to hold the inner city black man in slavery, has led to the situation Obama laments.  He won’t admit it because he is of those who enslave.  He believes in the enslavement he laments.

We have a responsibility to act. And like the vast majority of Americans — including the vast majority of gun owners — I believe we can take commonsense steps to reduce gun violence that are consistent with the Second Amendment.

As an Administration, we’ve made some meaningful progress on keeping guns out of the wrong hands through background checks — whether it’s making clear that anyone in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks, or dedicating more resources to ensuring those background checks are conducted on time.  We’ve also jumpstarted the development of smart gun technology.  As long as we’ve got technology to prevent a criminal from stealing and using your smartphone, then we should be able to prevent the wrong person — including kids — from pulling the trigger on a gun.

But there’s a great deal of work left to be done. Congress should pass the kinds of commonsense reforms supported by most of the American people — from investing in access to mental health care, to expanding background checks, to making it possible to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists. The actions we take won’t prevent every act of violence — but if even one life is spared, they will have been well worth it.

He’s lying and he knows it.  The vast majority of gun owners do not in fact believe in his proposals.  His inability to enact further gun control is all the proof you need.

We’ve dealt with smart guns before, and it’s an idea that will never obtain for reasons Obama himself understands.  His “investment” in mental health care is the same thing as his notion of keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists.  It’s all a red herring.

It’s a way to prevent people from having access to means of self defense by circumventing the constitution with so-called “health care professionals” and secret lists made by government employees who are accountable to no one and unreviewable even by courts.  It’s all a method to avoid due process.  He should be asked “why are there known terrorists in America at all?”  To which he can only answer that he’s referring to Americans who haven’t been convicted of any crime at all.

But even deeper than that, this is a great kabuki dance.  The constitution says “shall not be infringed.”  There is no point in having this conversation.  We will not submit by having our rights removed by statists.  On too many issues to catalog, Obama and his ilk broke covenant with the American people, from confiscating huge swaths of land (under the purview of the federal government) that wasn’t his, to taxing people for failing to purchase a product on the open market (Obamacare), to sending weapons South of the border to arm the drug cartels.

We can only hope and pray that the awful man’s legacy turns to dust and disappears from the earth.  He is a usurper and deceiver of the highest order.  Good riddance to the ass clown.  I wish I had never known him.

CNN:

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the House Select Committee on Intelligence Thursday he had submitted his letter of resignation on Wednesday night.

Well then, let me pay my very own respects.  Good riddance, you disgusting worm.  You almost certainly knew all about this, and you did and said nothing.  And you almost certainly knew all about this, and you did and said absolutely nothing.

I hope you sit in your retirement and ponder working for an evil monster like Obama, and I hope you ponder your own moral failings for a very long time.

The Daily Signal:

The stories of two businessmen who recently were denied banking services because they sell firearms suggest a secretive government program called Operation Choke Point still affects industries across the nation that the Obama administration considered undesirable.

In one case, a large bank in New England denied a line of credit to a former police officer who started a gun and tactical business in Monroe, Conn., saying it “no longer lends to firearms dealers.”

In the other case, a branch of a North Carolina bank refused to set up a new payment service for a firearms seller in Tryon, N.C., because of the nature of his industry, the business owner said.

The Daily Signal talked to both businessmen, who say they are being punished for their line of work despite efforts in Congress to end discrimination by banks against gun sellers.

Some experts believe that banks’ decision not to do business with gun sellers stems from Operation Choke Point, a Justice Department program that, according to government officials, aimed to “attack Internet, telemarketing, mail, and other mass market fraud against consumers, by choking fraudsters’ access to the banking system.”

Rich Sprandel, an 18-year police veteran, had to retire in 2011 from the force in Seymour, Conn., after being hit by a drunk driver while on duty in his patrol car. Sprandel, who is married and has two children, opened an online firearms and tactical business.

“I have a retirement pension, but it’s not 100 percent of my pay, so I need to make a living to support my family,” Sprandel, 48, who owns Blue Line Firearms & Tactical in Monroe, Conn., said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

On March 7, he got a voicemail message from a vice president at People’s United Bank in Fairfield, Conn., regarding his request for a new line of credit.

[ … ]

Another firearms dealer, Luke Lichterman, told The Daily Signal that HomeTrust Bank denied banking services to him March 11 because of the “high risk nature” of his business, Hunting and Defense, in Tryon, N.C.

Lichterman, a Columbus resident, said he was trying to open an automatic clearing house payment service with HomeTrust, where he had maintained accounts since 2012.

But, he said,  a treasury management sales officer at the Asheville branch of the bank denied his request on March 11 because of his line of work.

“He explained that he’s terribly sorry, but the banking industry is tightly regulated by the federal government and we cannot approve your [payment service] because of the high risk nature of your business,” Lichterman said. “I said, high risk? What risk? What’s the problem?”

Lichterman, 75, said the banker then said, “I’m sure your business is fine, but it’s your industry that we feel is too risky.”

It was supposed to be a dead program, this idea of Operation Choke Point.  But it isn’t, and there is only one place to point the finger of blame.  No, not Obama.  He is like most presidents – he would subsume too much authority and power to himself as a king of other men without the proper checks and balances.  The proper checks and balances in this case is supposed to be the House of Representatives and the Senate.

You see, they could easily shut down the government if they wanted.  They could pass a bill firing the people in the executive branch responsible for this, and when not signed by Obama, they could withdraw all funds for continued operation of any department.  They have the ultimate power.  They are the ultimate authority.

But they won’t do it because they believe in what’s happening.  They are culprits along with Obama.  You can point the finger of blame directly at your elected representatives for this outrage.  And no, don’t tell me anything about how much such draconian tactics would hurt this group, that group, national defense, the elderly, the young, education, and on and on and on go the tear jerker stories.  I’m uninterested.  I don’t jerk tears any more.  Shut it all down, or tar and feather them in the streets.  I’m fine with either option.

AP:

Right fight; wrong strategy.

That’s what many ranchers and sympathizers opposing federal control of public lands in the West concluded after the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon.

[ … ]

“We’re not backing off,” said Greg Whalen, a military veteran from Las Vegas who supports the Bundy ranching family that led the occupation. “We’re actually going to fight harder – peacefully.”

Whalen and others say protests must remain a key part of the strategy – but they must be civil to avoid giving a reason for arrests.

Others suggest the battle should shift to the courts to pry authority over open space from the federal government. State lawmakers, notably in Utah, are considering a legal way to take control of U.S. lands that account for a majority of the West, including most of Nevada; about two-thirds of Utah, Idaho and Alaska; and half of Oregon.

Oh how sad.  They may as well read nursery rhymes and fairly tales to themselves.  I’ve done my share of criticizing the tactics employed by the occupiers at Malheur, but relying on the black robed tyrants to protect you from the beltway tyrants is a bad strategy.  No one has shown any proclivity for stopping anything this president has done, and they won’t start now.  Just to show you how bad it is, consider this.

President Obama declared three national monuments in Southern California on Friday, creating the world’s second-largest desert preserve and nearly doubling the amount of land he has unilaterally protected while in office.

The new Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains national monuments cover more than 1.8 million acres of land and include sand dunes, Native American petroglyphs and one of the continent’s youngest volcanoes. The designations under the 1906 Antiquities Act connect an array of existing protected areas, including Joshua Tree National Park, Mojave National Preserve and 15 wilderness areas, creating a nearly 10 million-acre arid land reserve that is surpassed only by Namibia’s Namib-Naukluft National Park.

[ … ]

Obama has now conserved more than 265 million acres through the Antiquities Act, which allows him to put federal lands and waters off limits to development without congressional approval.

This is breathtaking.  Consider this again.  Obama has unilaterally confiscated 414,000 square miles of land for use of the elitists, rich, and corporate robber barons who make the deals with the politicians.  414,000 square miles.  This is equivalent to a square block of land 644 miles on each side.  By one man.  With no one objecting, no one with the backbone or moral fiber to stop him.

Too bad for those who think politics considers the common man.

After watching this, I’ve decided that The Captain’s Journal will call for a ban on guns for all one-armed men born on the third Thursday of April.  After all, you never know when they will become a terror problem.

Or not.

David Codrea:

Like the saying goes, haters gonna hate. They’re going to rage, they’re going to lie, they’re going to accuse and they’re going to demand. The less temperate and tactical among them, that is, the self-control-challenged who go nuts if they can’t control everyone else, will say some furious, ridiculous and desperate things that will both show all their cards and their impotence.

That’s because they know, deep in their cowardly and covetous hearts, that the final card is held by gun owners who, in the final analysis, will not be scapegoated and will not comply with subversive edicts that do nothing but give all advantages to the evil. That’s because they know that ultimately, they’re stopped in their tracks by one simple, defiant response:

No. Your move.

And it will probably all come down to that.  And be it known that this “gun show loophole” Obama is talking about doesn’t exist.  He and we all know what he’s really after: person-to-person transfers.  Vendors at gun shows already go through Form 4473.  Obama wants universal background checks as a predecessor to gun registration.

And he won’t get it, because we won’t comply.

Several Governors have gone on record opposing the immigration of Syrians to their states.  Let me focus on just one.

THEREFORE, I, BOBBY JINDAL, Governor of the State of Louisiana, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and laws of the State of Louisiana, do hereby order and direct as follows:

SECTION 1: All departments, budget units, agencies, offices, entities, and officers of the executive branch of the State of Louisiana are authorized and directed to utilize all lawful means to prevent the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the State of Louisiana while this Order is in effect.

SECTION 2: The Louisiana State Police, upon receiving information of a Syrian refugee already relocated within the State of Louisiana, are authorized and directed to utilize all lawful means to monitor and avert threats within the State of Louisiana.

SECTION 3: All departments, budget units, agencies, offices, entities, and officers of the executive branch of the State of Louisiana are authorized and directed to cooperate in the implementation of the provisions of this Order.

SECTION 4: The Order is effective November 16, 2015 and shall remain in effect until amended, modified, terminated, or rescinded by the Governor, or terminated by operation of law.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have set my hand officially and caused to be affixed the Great Seal of Louisiana, at the Capitol, in the City of Baton Rouge, on this 16th day of November, 2015.

This is mighty weak tea.  Here is how this works.  The U.S. government takes the state of Louisiana to court and gets a federal judge to say that Louisiana cannot use any means to prevent this from happening.  Done.  Then it happens because Jindal is too weak to stop it, has no moral compass, and cannot stomach what it will take to keep the people of his state from having to let Syrians ensconce there.

What he could have done if he actually believed what he said is promise that any federal agent or other federal employee who enters the state to ensconce Syrians in Louisiana will be arrested and thrown in the state penitentiary, with Syrians put back on buses to Washington, D.C.

But he didn’t say that, he won’t do it, and this order is as toothless as any other governor’s order who tries to stop this without using the power and force of his office without regard to federal judges.