This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 19, 2015:
In what the New York Times termed an “audacious” move, President Obama will use his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night to push for higher taxes on the rich and big financial institutions, and give the money to the middle class still caught in the clutches of a slow economic recovery from the Great Recession.
The details are straightforward:
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, January 19, 2015:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need
An anonymous source at the White House leaked the details of Obama’s State of the Union speech scheduled for Tuesday night. In a move deliberately designed to infuriate Republicans who thought they might hear from a repentant president sincerely interested in reconciliation, he will instead poke them all in the eye in a move that the New York Times called “audacious.”
Not happy with increasing the capital gains tax rate by 58 percent so far in his administration, from 15% to 23.8%, he will announce his plan to nearly double it, to 28%. Furthermore,
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 7, 2015:
In the days running up to the opening of the 114th Congress, speculation was rampant that House Speaker John Boehner’s bid for a third term as speaker was in jeopardy. So much so that Boehner launched a full-court press including meetings with those opposed to his reelection and phone calls to dissidents right up to the last minute before the vote.
In the end, a combination of bad weather, a funeral, and a popular Florida Republican’s reluctance to oppose the speaker until the day before the vote spelled victory for Boehner.
Under House rules, only a majority of those present — not a majority of the total House membership — is needed to elect the speaker. With many Democrats attending the funeral service of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, and bad weather delaying flights into Washington, those present numbered just 401 out of House membership of 434 (New York Republican Rep. Michael Grimm resigned last week after pleading guilty to felony tax evasion). In the end, Boehner secured his position for another two years with 216 votes.
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 5, 2015:
The poll taken the last few days of December by EMC Research, quizzing more than 600 Republican voters, added impetus to the growing movement to oust House Speaker John Boehner and replace him with someone newer and more conservative.
Serving as a member of the House, representing Ohio’s Eighth Congressional District since 1991, Boehner may have run out of time. He was previously the House majority leader from 2006 to 2007; and then the House minority leader from then until 2011. He assumed majority leadership once again in January 2011, with just 12 Republicans voting against him or voting “present.” Since then Boehner, in the eyes of those polled by EMC, has left conservatives and their principles twisting in the wind. Sixty percent of them want someone new while just one in six want both Boehner and Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to retain their jobs. Sixty-four percent said that Boehner has been “ineffective in opposing Obama’s agenda.”
Jeff Foxworthy
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 2, 2015:
Apparently the anti-gun group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America didn’t get the memo from November: You lost big in the midterms. Instead, MDA just announced it is targeting country music star Alan Jackson and comedian Jeff Foxworthy for agreeing to open the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, in April. In its Facebook announcement, MDA criticized the two for accepting the invitation from the NRA — the group which, according to the MDA, “pushed to arm convicted criminals, blocked federal gun violence research and [their] board members promoted armed insurrection.”
MDA then urged its members to “educate these celebrities on the dangerous and irresponsible policies of the [NRA].”
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, December 17, 2014:
If the Guinness Book of Records had a category for “political taradiddles,” this from Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland and the Senate’s Appropriations Committee Chairman, would certainly qualify for its top ten. After all was said and done, after all the back-room deals had been completed, after Senator Ted Cruz’s last minute attempt to stall the vote by claiming that the CRomnibus bill would unconstitutionally fund Obama’s immigration executive order without debate was quashed 74-22, Mikulski exulted:
It is remarkable in today’s era of slam-down politics that we, working on this committee, have been able to set aside our differences, work across the aisle, work across the Dome, to find a way to compromise without capitulation on principles.
The only word with validity that she used was “capitulation” – total and complete surrender – by the Republicans, the party still perceived by many to be the party of small government, fiscal responsibility, and personal liberty. The sell-out was nearly complete,
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, December 16, 2014:
Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican sellout
The so-called CRomnibus bill (a combination of a Continuing Resolution and an omnibus spending bill covering dozens of federal agencies) was passed by the Senate late Saturday night, 56-40, approving government spending through next September.
Passage, although delayed slightly by complaints from Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that it funded President Obama’s illegal immigration executive order without debate, was guaranteed when 24 Republicans, including every GOP leader, voted for it. This allowed some Democrats the opportunity to vote against it as a sop to constituents or to build their resumes in contemplated runs for the White House in 2016. They included newly inducted Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.), along with Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Amy Klobucher (D-Minn.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).
Others whom Republicans bailed out with their “yea” votes included naysayers
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, December 15, 2014:
Life has lately been hard for the anti-gunners and those opposed to the Second Amendment. According to Pew Research, it isn’t likely to get easier any time soon. For 20 years, Pew has been asking Americans a simple question:
What do you think is more important – to protect the right of Americans to own guns, OR to control gun ownership?
In 1993, the Second Amendment guaranteeing American citizens the right to keep and bear arms had few friends. According to Pew, just 34 percent of those polled thought it was more important than passing more gun control laws, while 57 percent favored more gun control legislation.
Its popularity hit bottom in March, 2000, about a year after the Columbine High School massacre in a Denver suburb, with just 29 percent supporting it compared to 66 percent wanting more controls.
Since then, however, Pew has been measuring a resurgence of support for the beleaguered guarantee,
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, December 12, 2014:
President Barack Obama holds a conference call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in the Oval Office
At the very last minute, with time and funding for government agencies running out, the House voted 216-206 to pass the so-called “omnibus” bill on Thursday, opening the way for the Senate to pass it on Friday. President Obama has promised to sign it before the day is out.
It was sausage-making at its finest. Even Arizona Republican John McCain said “I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it” with many expecting him to vote for it on Friday anyway.
Instead of attempting to create and muster support for a temporary bill which would have left the heavy lifting to the newly elected incoming congress in January, House Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) and President Obama decided that
This article first appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, December 8, 2014:
The Louisiana runoff election on Saturday for U.S. Senate was closer than many polls indicated, with Congressman Bill Cassidy defeating three-term incumbent Senator Mary Landrieu by 56 percent to 44 percent. Coupled with Republican victories in two Louisiana House districts, Republicans will have 54 votes in the new Senate (out of 100) and 246 votes in the new House of Representatives (out of 435). Remarkably, Democrats will be without a single governor or U.S. senator across nine Old South states, from the Carolinas to Texas.
Louisianans didn’t so much vote for Cassidy as they voted to get rid of Landrieu, once considered one of the Democrat Party’s strongest incumbents. She has been a staunch supporter of most of Obama’s policies, including
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 17, 2014:
Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski
Alaskan Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, soon to chair the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, is already setting the table for a serious conversation about getting rid of at least one archaic law dating back to the mid-1970s: the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975.
That law bans the export of crude oil (with some minor exceptions) and could endanger the oil shale boom as a result. Said Murkowski:
The price American drivers pay for gasoline at their local station is linked to the price of oil set by the global market.
Exporting U.S. oil to our friends and allies will not raise gasoline prices here at home and should, in fact, help drive down prices.
As the price of crude oil drops, it increases the chances that smaller marginal crude oil producers will be forced to close unless they are allowed to find buyers outside the United States willing to pay more for their product. One of the bottlenecks has already been opened:
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, November 17, 2014:
Matthew Dowd, George W. Bush’s campaign strategist, saw it coming almost a month before the midterms, telling ABC News on September 15th that the president is “fast becoming irrelevant in Washington” and noting further that Obama was at precisely the same point George Bush was in 2005:
That point in time it was basically the beginning of the end of President Bush’s presidency.
I think the president [Obama] is a very big fan of history. He watched that go on with [Bush]. Unless the president changes his trajectory, he is on the road to irrelevancy.
He hasn’t, and he is. The Baltimore Sun used the “R” word (relevance) in its review of the demolition of the Democrats on November 4th:
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 17, 2014:
Keystone XL demonstration
In the first major vote in the House during the current lame duck session, on Friday a bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline passed by a vote of 252-161. In an ironic twist, the bill — the ninth one approving Keystone — was sponsored by Rep. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican facing Democrat Senator Mary Landrieu in a runoff election on December 6. Landrieu has been moving heaven and earth in the Senate to approve Keystone in an attempt to salvage her career.
Said Cassidy:
Here we are on the ninth attempt. It has been 539 days, about a year and a half, since the House first sent a Keystone approval bill to the Senate in this Congress. We are going to make it as easy as possible for the Senate to finally get a bill to president’s desk.
And there it will die, if it makes it that far, as President Obama has repeatedly stated. Which raises the question:
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, November 11, 2014:
Insignia of the United States Navy Chaplain Corps.
Gordon Klingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain and host of his own TV show, Pray In Jesus’ Name, rolled over his Democrat opponent last week in Colorado’s District 15 race 70-30. Klingenschmitt, referred to by friends as “Chaps,” celebrated his victory by supporting everyone’s right to an opinion even if he doesn’t agree with it:
I owe a great debt to our volunteers and donors, and I am humbled by the voters’ support.
As perhaps the only ordained minister elected to our state Republican caucus, I will work hard to represent all [the] people of my district, regardless of political or religious belief.
As a Chaplain, veteran and PhD in Theology, I will defend everybody’s First Amendment rights.
Klingenschmitt was probably thinking specifically of the right of the Colorado GOP to distance itself from his campaign, both financially and ideologically. GOP Chairman Ryan Call had told the Denver Post,
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Monday, November 10, 2014:
John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime
Last Friday, the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs announced that its totalitarian Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) will become effective on Christmas Eve. The good news is that the treaty has no chance of being ratified by either the lame duck Senate this year or the 114th Senate next year.
Its terms are positively evil:
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, November 10, 2014:
Residential area in Helena, Montana)
The latest Gallup Poll results announced on Friday that, for the first time since 2006, a majority of Americans think having a gun at home makes their home safer. Further, the gain is all across the board, politically and demographically. The poll results also serve to diminish still further the likelihood of additional gun control measures by governments, local and federal, as more and more Americans now have a vested interest in gun freedom.
According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who believe having a gun at home makes the home safer has nearly doubled just since 2000, from 35 percent to 63 percent, while the number of those who think that the presence of a gun at home makes it more dangerous has fallen from
English: Official Congressional portrait of Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, November 7, 2014:
For the first time since the policies of Republican President Herbert Hoover so enraged West Virginia voters that the state shifted to the Democrats, newly enraged voters there have tossed the Democrats out in favor of the Republicans. While the shift was seismic when it comes to party labels, in political ideology, not so much, but an improvement nonetheless.
The first observation from West Virginia, when viewed as a microcosm of the national election on Tuesday, is the power of an enraged electorate in determining political outcomes.
Before the election, Republicans in the state’s House of Representatives trailed Democrats by six seats. After the election, Republicans now hold a 30-seat majority, a monumental shift of 36 seats.
In the state Senate, the shift was just as remarkable.
This article first appeared at The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, November 7, 2014:
Criticisms of Harry Reid fill one-and-a-half pages of his own Wikipedia entry. Imagine how many others he failed to mention. He earmarked funds to build a bridge close to land that he owned while calling it “incredibly good news for Nevada.” He failed to note that it was also incredibly profitable for himself.
He used campaign funds to buy Christmas gifts for the staff at the condominium where he lives. He pressured regulatory agencies to promote the business interests of one of his business partners, Harvey Whittemore, who also just happened to be a major campaign contributor.
And so on.
His final infliction on the American people is likely to take place over the next couple of months
This article first appeared at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, October 6, 2014:
In anticipation of the Republican sweep in the elections on Tuesday, Senators Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in September warning him not to offer any significant legislation during the lame duck session following the elections. Knowing Reid, they presumed the worst from him:
Presumably, a lame duck session would be used [by you] to try to pass partisan, unpopular bills in November or December that might be indefensible before the … election….
Deliberately planning to reconvene the Senate in a lame-duck session to address major new legislation would subvert the will of the American people, lessen accountability and do lasting damage to the dignity and integrity of this body’s proceedings.
Libertarian economist Donald Boudreaux no doubt thinks Lee and Cruz have understated the danger:
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