If You Don't Build It, They Will Come?

More: You didn't build it website

The Most Arrogant Man in the World is...

Or maybe he's the least interesting man in the world:
"Stay ignorant, my friends."

ObamaCare Supreme Court Prediction

Prediction time--Blogger Ben Hart thinks that Justice Ginsberg inadvertently spilled the beans, or the broccoli, that the high court has thrown out the individual mandate in ObamaCare, a.k.a. the absurdly named Affordable Care Act:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg did not mean to, but she appears to have said that the Supreme Court has, at a minimum, ruled that the individual mandate in ObamaCare is unconstitutional.

As reported by POLITICO, the liberal Justice told the American Constitutional Society on Friday, June 15 that the one remaining ObamaCare question the Court must decide is is whether the whole law must fall if the individual mandate is unconstitutional — “or may the mandate be chopped, like a head of broccoli, from the rest of it?”

But they would not need to decide this question if they had already ruled that the individual mandate passes Constitutional muster.

This suggests, at a minimum, that the individual mandate is gone.  But it may well be that the court has ruled that the entire ObamaCare law is, therefore, null and void because there is no severability clause...

The High Court's decision, regardlesss of how it goes, is expected to be released next week.

In the meantime, if you want to stay healthy, eat your broccoli.

Added: Per Intrade, there is almost an 80% chance that the individual mandate gets ruled unconstitutional.

Fast and Furious: Executives Have Their Privileges

With the 11th hour assertion by Barack Obama and Eric Holder of executive privilege, it looks like the mainstream media will finally have to cover the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.

Prof. William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection has an excellent summary of the issues:

First Holder pretends he will cooperate, but doesn’t.  Then he stalls with negotiations.  Then he stalls some more by promising to cooperate again, but doesn’t.  Then, when his back is up against the wall because a vote is scheduled to hold him in contempt, he runs to Obama for some legal protection, which will result in the matter being thrown into the courts for more delay.

 As with most things damaging to Obama, all they care about is pushing the bad news off until after the election.

What all this means, of course, is that Holder has been withholding documents responsive to the House subpoena which have not been turned over.  So he has not complied with the House subpoena, since it only was today that he obtained the protection of an Executive Privilege claim from the White House.

 Darrell Issa and his Republican committee members deserve a medal.  Keep pushing.

 Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy of PJ Media weighs in:

Axelrod was Against Presidential Golf Before He was Fore It

Remember when the media went bananas over George Bush's workout regimen? The president even ultimately gave up golf entirely during his the bulk of his presidency.

Yet as far as Obama's record-setting presidential golf outings, once again the sound you are hearing is crickets:

The next time President Obama hits the links, it will be his 100th round of golf since coming to the White House. That’s quite a milestone in just 3 1/2 years. As it takes him about six hours to drive to the greens and complete 18 holes, Mr. Obama has spent the equivalent of four months’ worth of work time golfing. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy has been stuck in a sand trap...

Mr. Obama had no sense of the inappropriateness of playing 99 rounds of golf while 99 percent of the country couldn’t even afford the cost or time to go once. Now he wants a second term to finish what he started. After the 100th round, voters may want to think twice about giving him a mulligan.

Ironically, back in 1994, future Obama top adviser David Axelrod criticized President G.H.W. Bush for playing too much golf and therefore being too out of touch with the American people:



Note that Axelrod admits that "beating up on Bush is the only thing we have left."

The more things change, the more they stay the same.


 

"One-Term Proposition"

Would you believe a one-term presidency?

Executive Disorder on Immigration

Will Obama's political pandering on the immigration issue via his executive order pay off in November?

NRO's Victor Davis Hanson doesn't think so:

Politically, Obama calculates that some polls showing the current likely Hispanic support for him in the high 50s or low 60s would not provide enough of a margin in critical states such as Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado, or perhaps also in Florida and Virginia, to counteract the growing slippage of the independent vote and the energy of the clinger/tea-party activists. Thus, what was not legal or advisable in 2009, 2010, or 2011, suddenly has become critical in mid-2012. No doubt free green cards will quickly lead to citizenship and a million new voters. Will it work politically? 

Obama must assume lots of things: that all Hispanics vote as a block in favoring exempting more illegal aliens from the law, and are without worry that the high unemployment rate hits their community among the hardest; that black voters, stung by his gay-marriage stance, will not resent what may be seen as de facto amnesty, possibly endangering his tiny (and slipping) lead in places like Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. And because polls show overwhelming resistance to non-enforcement of immigration law, Obama also figures that the minority who supports his recent action does so far more vehemently than the majority who opposes it. 

Time will tell; but my gut feeling is that his brazen act will enrage far more than it will delight — and for a variety of different reasons. As with all his special-interest efforts — the Keystone cancellation, war-on-women ploy, gay-marriage turnabout, and now de facto amnesty — Obama believes dividing Americans along class, ethnic, gender, and cultural lines will result in a cobbled together majority, far more preferable than a 1996 Clinton-like effort to win over the independents by forging  a bipartisan consensus.

As far as the underlying policy itself, NRO's John Yoo argues that it is a huge overreach by the administration:

President Obama’s claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates the unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law. He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served. There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

Neil Munro, American Hero

Remember during the Bush administration how the president was being blasted interminably for "shredding the Constitution"?

Fast forward to 2012: What's more rude, a president disregarding separation of powers or a Daily Caller reporter interrupting the president to ask a legitimate question? What's more important, disrespecting Obama or disrespecting the U.S. Constitution?

As far as the media as the media's reaction of this president doing an end-run around the Constitution, it's generally crickets.

It does seem like that after a terrible week, make that a terrible month, on the economic front, the Obama administration wanted to do something to change the subject in a big way.



Leaving aside the merits of granting quasi-amnesty to illegals, does anyone really believe that this executive order will only involve 800,000 persons? When has a government projection--especially in immigration--ever been correct? And do you think the bureaucracy will be competent enough to root out fraudulent claims under this new program?

As far as governing by executive order, even some leftists don't like it:

The Dog Eater in Chief

The primaries have yet to officially conclude and the presidential campaign has already gone to the dogs...

For months now, the president's proxies in the Democrat-Media Complex have been obsessing (dare we say "crowing"?) about the 30-year-old incident in which presumptive 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney strapped a dog crate--with dog--to the top of the car for a family road trip.

But, the left-wingers seemed to have stepped in it, as it were, because it turned out that...well, you know how it turned out:



[Learn more about the Republican Party Animals here.]

Added: As Rex Murphy writes in the National Post, "So now the presidential campaign is down to basics. Americans are to be given a stark, unequivocal choice. Which is it to be? Dog in a Crate, or Dog on a Plate?I do not think we have seen such clarity of choice in any presidential race of our time."


 

Larry Conners, American Hero

The lazy and biased White House press corps went bananas when Bush went to his Texas ranch. But they have muzzled themselves when it comes to Obama's extensive golf outings or the first family's many lavish vacations on the taxpayer's dime. The sound you are hearing or not hearing is crickets.

That's what makes Larry Conners of St. Louis television station KMOV (News 4) an American hero:

 

By the way, in this video the president admits his official trips to international summits are scouting expeditions for his next family vacation:



On this one, we agree with Mitt Romney: "Start packing."


 

Keystone Pipeline is Shovel Ready, but Obama Blocks it Anyway

U.S. energy independence is both an economic and a national security issue. Canadian pundit Ezra Levant of the Sun News Network raises a basic question in this video: Why does the Obama administration prefer to buy oil from dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela rather than from our friend and ally Canada via the "shovel ready" Keystone XL Pipeline?

Does blocking the pipeline project make sense to anyone outside of radical environmentalists and other ideologues and cronies whose agenda supersedes the best interests of our country.

Levant: "Obama treats enemies like friends and friends like enemies."

If Prime Minister Stephen Harper does eventually go ahead and sell the oil to China instead, where does that leave us?

 

Writing at Forbes.com, Warren Meyer contends that that environmental impact concerns were exaggerated by those advocating "Medieval Socialism" and that "the Obama Administration could easily have approved the line with conditions or route modifications." Moreover...

The Keystone XL pipeline would have single-handedly carried more energy to the United States than the sum of all the green energy projects funded by the Obama Administration. And it would have done so entirely with private  funds rather than the [Administration's] increasingly ill-fated and ham-handed attempts at venture capitalism with taxpayer funds. The fact of the matter is that, for the foreseeable future, opposing fossil fuels is equivalent to opposing energy use.

Let's stop politicizing science.

How to Remove Your Obama Bumper Sticker

Order your BS removal kit (h/t HotAir.com)--operators are standing by:



But wait, there's more. In a follow-up video, Brad Stine responds to critics of the removal kit (which can actually be ordered from AmericanTees.com):

 

Obama's Media Wingmen and Women Continue to Give Him a Pass

Ever wonder how the journalists in the mainstream media look at themselves in the mirror in the morning? For example, the media went nuts because George W. Bush continued his fitness regimen in the White House when he should have been attending to--according to them--more serious matters.

Have they made a peep about the amount of time Obama spends on the links?

According to the White House Dossier blog, Obama's December 26 outing at Marine Corps Base Hawaii was the 90th time he played golf during his presidency (President Bush, in eight years, wasn't even close).

With this one, Obama reaches a new milestone, having gone golfing 90 times in less than three years as president. That’s about three months of golf, given that the excursions generally take about five hours – much of the useful portion of the day.

What’s more, it’s the 32nd time he’s been on the links this year, a record for the president. His 32 outings eclipses the 2010 mark of 30 and is far ahead of his 2009 tally of 28 rounds as president.

In addition to trotting the very debatable assertion that Obama takes less vacation time than Bush (and virtually ignoring the First Lady's lavish holidays on the taxpayer's dime), the media continues to cover for him in other, more substantive ways. Consider this from RealClearPolitics:

Over the past five months, the Republican presidential candidates participated in 13 debates where they fielded dozens of penetrating questions on every major issue facing the nation, and some not so major...

Yet, during all that time, the man they hope to defeat next November has rarely been asked by news reporters about many of these issues. Since August, President Obama has held only one formal White House news conference. That came on Oct. 6, nearly three months ago. It lasted 74 minutes, shorter than any single Republican debate, and the president was asked 17 questions, most of them softballs on the economy and his latest legislative proposals to create jobs...

Obama’s ability to avoid tough questions, skate above the fray and look presidential while his potential successors appear to be futilely flailing is not by accident. It is by White House design, abetted by a press corps that seems content with being shut out by the president and being spoon-fed the message of the day, rather than clamoring for more chances to ask him questions during this critical time.

Again, the media would be going bananas if a Republican president was ducking press conferences.

Although the infiighting is troubling (and we disagree to some degree with the premise of "flailing"), the GOP debates are only a warmup for what the the Obama reelection campaign a.k.a. the mainstream media will dish out against the eventual Republican nominee. So to the extent that the primary debates are psychologically toughening up and focusing the ultimate nominee, especially when most of America is paying little attention, they can be a good thing.

Barney Frank: Thanks For Nothing

In the 2008 presidential debates, Sen. John McCain inexplicably failed to inform the American people that Democrats--including then-Sen. Obama, former Sen. Chris Dodd, and Congressman Barney Frank--blocked any reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-government agencies that helped bring about the subprime mortgage meltdown. While the economy cratered thanks in part to those corrupt government-sponsored enterprises, Democrats continued to use them as as a massive slush fund.

Frank was the genius that claimed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under."

In the recent debates, Herman Cain appropriately remarked that the much ballyhooed Dodd-Frank financial reform statute still does not rein in either of these key agencies. (He also famously quipped that the other two problems with the bill were "Dodd and Frank.")




The former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, in late November Frank announced his retirement from Congress after serving 16 terms in office.

The Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American summed up Frank's career as follows:

With his fellow Democrat, former Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., shoulders much of the blame for today's economic catastrophe and the fiscal crises plaguing governments at all levels. They spent years pushing policies that ultimately required lenders, under the threat of government retribution and political demagoguery, to write mortgages, for borrowers with little or no down payment and no hope of repaying.

To backstop trillions in reckless borrowing, Rep. Frank and then-Sen. Dodd helped establish Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the No. 1 buyer of worthless mortgages and then blocked any number of attempts to reform those government-sponsored enterprises to keep them from failing.

All the while, they combined to rake many tens of thousands in campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie, according to the Center for Responsive Politic

 Here is, in part, National Review Online's send off for the Congressman:

But though his private life spilled over into his public duties, it is as a champion of a different kind of pay-for-play operation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that the congressman did the most damage to the country. The government-backed mortgage giants were at the center of the housing bubble and the subsequent financial crisis. Representative Frank was a stalwart defender of the organizations, even after the government uncovered “extensive” fraud at Fannie Mae and found that Freddie Mac had illegally channeled funds to its political benefactors. Again, Representative Frank’s personal life intruded into the story: He was sexually involved with a Fannie Mae executive during a time when he was voting on laws affecting the organization. The final cost of the Fannie/Freddie bailouts will run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the real damage that the organizations did to the U.S. economy — and the world economy, for that matter — probably is incalculable.

In response to a financial crisis in which he was a significant figure, Representative Frank helped to craft a financial-reform law that bears his name. The drafting of Dodd-Frank began as a punitive measure, evolved into a dispensary of political favors, and in the end did little or nothing to address the problems that led to the 2008–09 crisis or to prevent similar crises in the future. Which means that we may have Barney Frank partly to thank not only for the last financial crisis but for the next one.

After 32 years in office advocating virtually every half-baked liberal policy, Frank finally got something right. He is apparently supporting the repeal of the Obamacare "death panels" (those same death panels that supposedly didn't exist in the socialized medicine scheme according to all the Palin bashers):

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank announced on [November 29] his support for the repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a significant portion of President Obama’s health care overhaul...IPAB is a 15-member board, appointed by the president, scheduled to convene in 2014. In order to reduce per capita Medicare spending, the board will recommend levels at which Medicare recipients, including seniors, can be reimbursed for health care expenses.

Newt Gingrich Speaks Truth to Power

He may yet implode as a presidential candidate, but "good on you" (as they say in Australia, at least according to one movie we just watched) Newt Gingrich for some candor about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. Jerusalem Post columnist and Middle East expert Caroline Glick supports Gingrich's "invention" thesis:

His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the "Palestinian people" was artificially carved out of the Arab population of "Greater Syria." "Greater Syria" included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term "Palestinian people" only became widely accepted after 1977.

Ron Prosor, Israel's U.N. ambassador, recently stated the following:

“From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was part of Jordan, and Gaza was part of Egypt.” Prosor stated. “The Arab world did not lift a finger to create a Palestinian state. And it sought Israel's annihilation when not a single settlement stood anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza.”

Despite recent anti-Israel remarks by Obama administration officials Howard Gutman and Leon Panetta, Obama vaingloriously praised himself (during yet another fundraiser) for protecting Israel's security. Given the actual track record, Charles Krauthammer says the president is delusional:

 

Prominent YouTube commentator and gadfly Pat Condell, apparently a former Israel basher (and an atheist) who has reversed course, discusses among other things in this video the "Palestinian public relations industry" otherwise known as the Western media:

Putting differing historical interpretations aside, lets say the two-state solution was implemented tomorrow. Does any reasonable person really believe that this would actually solve widespread Middle East turmoil?

Who or What Derailed the Cain Train?

 [Image Credit: Gage Skidmore]

Have you ever winged it when faced with a tough question in a job interview?

Of course you have. Everyone has.

That doesn't make you a bad person. It is often irrelevant to how well you would perform on the job if offered the position.

So at times, former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain seemed to be improvising during the debates, especially in connection with foreign policy.

That notwithstanding, he seems like a fine man with a glowing business resume--unlike the incumbent who has virtually no resume and zero private-sector job experience--which could be just what the country needs with the economy in the tank.

So it remains to be seen if Mr. Cain was smeared or he was a player/philander while he was on the road for the National Restaurant Association and his wife was back home in Atlanta. Then again, remember that during the Clinton administration all the liberal situational-ethicists insisted that lying about sex was okay.

The most unsettling/disappointing aspect about Cain dropping out of the campaign (technically a suspension of activity) is that Obama operatives have a track record of sabotaging rivals well before any votes take place. This was addressed back in 2008 by the zenpundit blog:

The model for this strategy is the previous Obama senatorial campaign in Illinois, where Obama’s two most formidible, centimillionaire, rivals, Democrat Blair Hull and Republican Jack Ryan were personally destroyed in the primaries when salacious details from their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked to the media, which then pressured for their full release, notably in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. Thus, ultimately permitting Obama to run against an out-of-state, clown candidate, religious conservative firebrand Alan Keyes, in the general election.

Was the Cain Train "railroaded"? Time will tell. It's also worth noting that American law makes it very difficult for a public figure to recover damages in court for libel or slander.

Gov. Christie: What Are We Paying You For, Mr. President?

While delivering remarks from a commercial kitchen (apparently Denny's in Newark) may not be a good visual for the portly New Jersey governor, Chris Christie's remarks on failed presidential leadership seems on target:



Along similar lines, Donald Trump was less than pleased with the scheduling of a presidential fundraiser on the same evening of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting:



 Added: Investor's Business Daily also wasn't thrilled with the fundraiser with the crony capitalist 1% either:

President Obama jammed traffic in Manhattan on Wednesday. State business? No, he was raising campaign funds. It's just the latest example of his questionable strategy of running for re-election by taking from the public.

And no, the public was not invited. Three stops the president made were strictly for fat-cat donors who paid as much as $36,000 a plate for the privilege, while reporters weren't even permitted to cover the protests outside the hotels.

But the trip was hardly just between Obama and his donors. The three trips disrupted rush hour traffic in New York City and the annual lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, something that very much cost the public time and money. The only winner was Obama, who flew home with $2.4 million.

That's emblematic of the arrogance of this president and the kind of re-election campaign we can expect him to conduct: always leaning on the public and its government to get his.

ABC Reporter Questions Presidential Campaign Travel

Here's some breaking news: a member of the usually compliant White House press corps finally asks a tough question. Congratulations to Jake Tapper of ABC News who asked administration spokesman Jay Carney if Obama was "campaigning on the taxpayer's dime" after The Wall Street Journal wrote about Obama's record-setting swing-state visits.

Considering the Obamas charge the taxpayer for their lavish vacations and a never-ending series of fundraisers and White House parties, is this any surprise?

By the way, what is up with political hacks like Carney (and many others) relying on the thumb-index finger gesture for emphasis?

The Correct Answers are Barack Obama and Bill Clinton

                                                        [image credit: David Shankbone]

If you listen to the mainstream media (who, for example, aren't putting much effort into reporting the entire scope of the Solyndra green energy scandal), you would conclude that only Republicans are in the back pocket of corrupt Wall Street bankers and other crony capitalists.

Back in April at a Tea Party rally in Madison, Wisc., Sarah Palin told the sometimes too-quick-to-compromise GOP to "learn to fight like a girl" (a reference to the Univ. Of Wisconsin's championship women's hockey team). In a recent speech in Florida, she was equally frank with the left, noting that the so-called Occupiers should consider occupying the area outside the White House:

"Barack Obama is owned by Wall Street,” she said. “The fat cats, as he calls them, they’re his friends. They’re his pals. That’s where he gets his campaign donations. And he’s very generous about giving these cats their cat nip: bigger returns on their investments in bailouts.”

The Washington Examiner further explains:

 As the Washington Post recently reported, Obama has accepted more money -- more than $15.6 million -- from these people than all of the Republican presidential aspirants combined (aided significantly by the fact that contributors can give to both Obama and the Democratic National Committee). No wonder Opensecrets.org ranks the financial sector as one of the five most generous industries in contributions to the Obama re-election effort. By comparison, the most successful GOP fundraiser, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, has generated a mere $2 million from the Wall Street fat cats. Obama has even gotten more campaign money from Bain Capital, the consulting firm Romney managed before becoming a presidential candidate, than Romney has.

Filmaker Evan Coyne Maloney recently visited Zuccotti Park to give a pop quiz about who really gets the most campaign cash from the Wall Street greedheads:



Maloney explained to Mediaite.com the intent behind the filming:

Maloney...wanted to set the record straight that he was only trying to expose the hypocrisy of Democratic politicians championing the Occupy Wall Street movement while still receiving thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the banks...

Maloney said that the media “propagates this perception that Republicans are in bed with big business, and that Democrats are for “the little guy,” when in fact the establishment of both parties are corporatists."