Posted in Abortion, Christianity, God, Liberals, M16, NRA, Obama, Pro-Choice, Pro-Life, Progressives, Second Amendment, Tea Party, United States Constitution
Tagged Abortion, Christianity, God, organizations, pro-life, republicans, Right to life, Roe v Wade, United States
Hat tip to Fox News for this report
WASHINGTON – Visitors to the nation’s capital looking for a White House public tour are out of luck starting this weekend, courtesy of what the Secret Service says is its own decision to deal with the sequester cuts.
But while the agency said it needed to pull officers off the tours for more pressing assignments, the budget ax didn’t swing early or deep enough to curtail a host of recent Secret Service-chaperoned trips like President Obama’s much-discussed Florida golf outing with Tiger Woods, first lady Michelle Obama‘s high-profile multi-city media appearances, or even daughter Malia Obama’s New York dinner outing with a group of teenage friends.
Obama’s pricey golf outings have been a particular target for Republicans who see them as examples of what they say are the administration’s rather selective concerns with running up the tab of Secret Service resources. On March 5, Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert filed an amendment to a House resolution that would prohibit federal funds from being spent on Obama’s golf trips until public tours of the White House resumed.
Gohmert referenced press reports pegging the cost of a recent Florida golf outing Obama took with Tiger Woods at $1 million. He also cited press reports saying 341 federal workers could have been spared furloughs if Obama had stayed home.
“The president’s travel expenses alone, for the golfing outing with Tiger Woods, would pay for a year of White House visits,” Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer said Thursday. “So I suggest that perhaps he curtail the travel.”
The price tag and draw on Secret Service resources involving promotional campaigns like Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative is less clear.
The Secret Service does not usually reveal how many agents and other resources are assigned to protective missions so it’s not known just how much it cost taxpayers to ferry the first lady to events like her dance routine on Jimmy Fallon’s show — the highlight of a Feb. 22 media blitz in New York — or her Feb. 27-28 visit to Mississippi, Missouri and her hometown of Chicago.
Those trips would all have involved Secret Service details traveling with the first lady, as well as advance work by teams of agents on location.
When asked by FoxNews.com if the first lady’s office or schedule would be affected by the sequester, the White House issued a 100-word statement that made no mention of any specific cuts that might affect Michelle Obama’s activities — while making a generic reference to cuts affecting the “Executive Office of the President,” which houses the first lady’s office.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, asked how the White House was cutting back, on Thursday declined to provide details about any potential furloughs or other cuts.
But on the decision to close the tours, he said “the President and the first lady have throughout the time that they’ve been here made extraordinary efforts to make this the people’s house, and it is extremely unfortunate that we have a situation like the sequester that compels the kinds of tradeoffs and decisions that this represents.”
It’s also not clear what Secret Service resources were dedicated to the New York visit by 14-year-old Malia Obama, who was spotted dining with a group of friends at the New York restaurant Buddakan less than 24 hours after President Obama signed off on the sequester. According to media reports, the group was chaperoned by four parents and five security guards who dined at the table directly next to them. There were also Secret Service agents in the restaurant, according to reports that said they stayed behind the group.
How much overtime these types of assignments cost the Secret Service may be an area of concern. Donovan told FoxNews.com that overtime costs factored into the decision to shut down the White House tours. By taking the 30 officers involved in the tours and assigning them to high-priority security posts, officers normally on those duties can log fewer hours — in turn saving the Secret Service money.
“It reduces overtime costs overall for us,” Donovan said.
The tours will not be rescheduled and will stay frozen until further notice.
That’s bad news for groups like the sixth graders at St. Paul’s Lutheran School in Iowa, who had been planning to take the White House tour on March 16. Fourteen students from that group and their teacher on Thursday took their frustrations to Facebook. In a web video
, they held up handmade posters and chanted, “The White House is our house.”
Some Republicans in Congress expressed their displeasure with the cuts more forcefully. “Canceling all self-guided White House tours is the latest shameless political stunt by the president, who is twisting basic government efficiency into an extreme consequence,” Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., said in a statement March 5th.
Posted in Barack Obama, Dept Ceiling, First Ladies Staff, Fox News, Obama Vacations, Sequester, Sequestration, United States, White House, White House Aids, White House Press Conferrence, White House Scandals, White House Security Leaks, White House Staff, White House Tours
Tagged Michelle Obama, Obama, Politics, republicans, Secret Service, Tiger Woods, United States Secret Service, White House
Our nation has been flying without a financial plan for four years and look at the result, we are more than Sixteen Trillion in the hole and we are spending more than One Trillion in the red each year.
We have a spending problem. It makes sense to Rein in our Spending and that cuts be applied equally across the board where all must equally bear the Brunt of the Cuts.
Hat tip to The Blaze for this report
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate to fill vacancies on a labor relations panel, a federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Obama did not have the power to make three recess appointments last year to the National Labor Relations Board.
The unanimous decision is an embarrassing setback for the president, who made the appointments after Senate Republicans spent months blocking his choices for an agency they contended was biased in favor of unions.
The ruling also throws into question Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray’s appointment, also made under the recess circumstance, has been challenged in a separate case.
Obama claims he acted properly in the case of the NLRB appointments because the Senate was away for the holidays on a 20-day recess. But the three-judge panel ruled that the Senate technically stayed in session when it was gaveled in and out every few days for so-called “pro forma” sessions.
GOP lawmakers used the tactic – as Democrats have in the past as well – to specifically to prevent the president from using his recess power. GOP lawmakers contend the labor board has been too pro-union in its decisions. They had also vigorously opposed the nomination of Cordray.
The Obama administration is expected to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but if it stands, it means hundreds of decisions issued by the board over more than a year are invalid. It also would leave the five-member labor board with just one validly appointed member, effectively shutting it down. The board is allowed to issue decisions only when it has at least three sitting members.
On Jan. 4, 2012, Obama appointed Deputy Labor Secretary Sharon Block, union lawyer Richard Griffin and NLRB counsel Terence Flynn to fill vacancies on the NLRB, giving it a full contingent for the first time in more than a year. Block and Griffin are Democrats, while Flynn is a Republican. Flynn stepped down from the board last year.
Obama also appointed Cordray on the same day.
The court’s decision is a victory for Republicans and business groups that have been attacking the labor board for issuing a series of decisions and rules that make it easier for the nation’s labor unions to organize new members.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/25/court-rules-obama-actions-unconstitutional-which-ones/
Posted in Bill of Rights, Dictators, DOJ, Federal Court, Glenn Beck, NRA, Obama, politics, President, Presidential Appointments, United States Constitution, Vietnam Veterans, White House
Tagged Barack Obama, National Labor Relations Board, Recess appointment, republicans, Richard Cordray, United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, United States Supreme Court
Hat tip to Fox News for this report
WASHINGTON – As President Obama begins his second term, he is facing an increasingly pessimistic public who believes that America’s best days are behind them.
According to a recently released Gallup poll, 39 percent of Americans rated the current climate of the country as positive. That’s about the same as it was in 2010 — and has been the lowest recorded by Gallup since President Jimmy Carter’s term in 1979.
Gallup asked Americans to rate their feelings about the country today, five years from now and five years ago. Based on a scale of 0 to 10, the 39 percent of Americans gave a 6-to-10 rating when asked to evaluate the nation’s current climate.
Taken together with the 2010 reading, that’s just above where the country was at the end of the Carter term — when inflation was high and the economy was reeling. At that time, just 34 percent had a positive outlook.
Optimism steadily rose after 1979, peaking in about 2001 at 73 percent — since the 9/11 terror attacks, national optimism has steadily declined.
Now, with unemployment slightly below 8 percent and economic growth continuing at a meager pace, a similar malaise may be setting in. Even the outlook on the future is down. Forty-eight percent were upbeat about where the country will be in five years, also the lowest since 1979.
The survey also found that most Americans’ attitudes toward the status of the country are connected to their political views. Republicans believe that when there is a GOP president in power, things are better. The same rings true of Democrats and their mood based on the party in power.
When it comes to the future, the polling agency found a 60 percentage-point partisan difference in optimism. Only 15 percent of Republicans felt positive about the future, compared to 75 percent of Democrats.
The Gallup poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 7-10, 2012, with 1,011 adults. There is a 4 percentage point margin of error.
The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of America is not over but has rather just begun. Do not give up Hope just because we lost an election. The American People have been Tested many times during our History and Freedom has always prevailed. In this fight we have an unsuspecting Ally that no one has given much thought to. The Liberal Agenda of Barack Obama will use this second term to flood the American People with new taxes and Government Regulations that will literally bring America to her knees. This time the cost of the Liberal Programs will come home to Roost on both Liberals and Conservatives alike and guess which one of us is going to scream the loudest when that begins to happen? That’s right, the Obama Liberal Agenda is going to be our greatest Ally in the Restoration of these United States of America…You Betcha!
Posted in 2012 Elections, American Dream, Barry Soetoro, Benghazi, Big Government, Capitalism, Class Warfare, Democrats, Egypt, Entitlement Society, Financial Collapse, Health Care Law, Iran, Israel, Jobs, Liberals, Libya, Marxism, Mitt Romney, politics, President Obama, Presidential Oath, Progressives, Redistribution of Wealth, Republican Party, Socialism, Taxes, United States Constitution, White House Scandals
Tagged Barack Obama, Big Government, freedom, Marxism, Mitt Romney, republicans, Socialism, United States, White House
How can anyone in their right mind trust the Democratic Party after all the Lies and Deceptions we have seen coming from them over the years?
It boggles my mind that there are still Americans out there preparing to Vote for Barack Obama a Second Time.
I could understand some of those who Voted for him the first time around. All his records were Hidden and Sealed from Public View.
No one really knew who or what he was.
But now that we have a Visible Record of his Failures and Lack of Experience, so how can anyone with a Sound Mind Vote yet again for this man?
Posted in 2012 Elections, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party, DNC, GOP Platform 2012, Mitt Romney, politics, President Obama, Republican National Convention, Republican Party, Transparency, United States, Vice President Joe Biden, White House, White House Scandals, White House Security Leaks
Tagged Barack Obama, Democrat, Democratic, Democratic Party, Democrats, elections, Mitt Romney, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Politics, President, Republican, republicans, United States, White House
Hat tip to The Blaze for this report
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Republicans emphatically approved a toughly worded party platform at their national convention Tuesday that would ban all abortions and gay marriages, reshape Medicare into a voucher-like program and cut taxes to energize the economy and create jobs.
The document opens by warning that while the American Dream has long been of equal opportunity for everyone, “Today that American Dream is at risk.“ It pledges that the GOP will ”begin anew, with profound changes in the way government operates; the way it budgets, taxes and regulates.”
Both parties routinely approve platforms at their conventions every four years, meant to encapsulate their principles and goals. Much of their details are customarily ignored when it comes to actually governing.
Even so, a poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found more people interested in the GOP platform than in the upcoming acceptance speeches by presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan. The survey found that 52 percent said they were interested in learning about the Republican platform, compared to 44 percent interested in Romney‘s speech and 46 percent interested in Ryan’s.
“This ambitious blueprint projects a sea change in the way that government works,” said Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, who led the party’s platform committee. “It offers a solution for workers without jobs, families without savings and neighborhoods without hope.”
Democrats lambasted the platform and immediately sought to tie it to Romney, who has differed from some of its details. For instance, he has said he would allow abortions in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is threatened.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who is among several Democrats in Tampa trying to get their party’s views heard, called the platform’s stances on abortion and immigration “draconian” and “extreme” and blamed Romney. “What you have seen from him is that he does one thing, he says another,” Villaraigosa said. “He has taken one position after another, time and again you know, and you can’t have it both ways.”
Here are key elements of the Republican platform:
JOB CREATION:
It states that the best jobs program is economic growth. “We do not offer yet another made-in-Washington package of subsidies and spending to create temporary or artificial jobs.”
SMALL BUSINESS:
The GOP pledges to reform the tax code to make it easier for businesses to generate more capital and create more jobs.
“We reject the use of taxation to redistribute income, fund unnecessary or ineffective programs or foster the crony capitalism that corrupts both politicians and corporations.”
It says a Republican administration would extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, pending reform of the tax code. It says the party would strive to eliminate taxes on interest, dividends and capital gains altogether for lower- and middle-income taxpayers. It also would work to repeal the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax.
The party backs constitutional amendments to balance the federal budget and require a super majority for any tax increases.
MARRIAGE:
The platform affirms the rights of states and the federal government not to recognize same-sex marriage. It backs a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
VOTER INTEGRITY:
“Voter fraud is a political poison,” the platform says. It praises legislation to require photo identification for voting and to prevent election fraud.
GUN CONTROL:
The party says it opposes legislation intended to restrict Second Amendment rights by limiting the capacity of clips or magazines or otherwise restoring the assault weapons ban passed during the Clinton presidency.
The party states that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” It opposes using public revenues to promote or perform abortion or to fund organizations that perform or advocate abortions. It says the party will not fund or subsidize health care that includes abortion coverage.
ENERGY:
The party is committed to domestic energy independence and an “all-of-the-above” energy policy, backing the exploration and development of the Outer Continental Shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. It criticizes the Obama administration for picking winners and losers in the energy sector and expresses support for new coal-fired plants that will be low-cost, environmentally responsible and efficient.
It adds: “We will end the EPA‘s war on coal and encourage the increased safe development in all regions of the nation’s coal resources.“ It calls on Congress to prohibit the EPA from moving forward with new greenhouse gas regulations ”that will harm the nation’s economy and threaten millions of jobs over the next quarter century.”
MEDICARE and MEDICAID:
The platform pledges to move both Medicare and Medicaid away from “the current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model.” It supports a Medicare transition to a premium-support model with an income-adjusted contribution toward a health plan of the enrollee’s choice. Age eligibility in Medicare must be made more realistic in light of longer life spans.
Medicaid services for low income people would be transformed into a block grant program in which the states would be given the flexibility to determine the best programs for their residents.
IMMIGRATION:
The platform makes clear that “we oppose any form of amnesty for those who, by intentionally violating the law, disadvantage those who have obeyed it.” It demands that the Justice Department halt lawsuits against Arizona, Alabama and other states that have enacted tough measures against illegal immigrants. It says federal funding should be denied to universities that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. It advocates making English the official national language.
HEALTH CARE:
It states that a Republican president on his first day in office would use his waiver authority to halt progress in carrying out the health care act pushed through by President Barack Obama and that Republican victories in November would guarantee that the act is never implemented. It proposes a Republican plan based on improving health care quality and lowering costs and a system that promotes the free market and gives consumers more choice.
EDUCATION:
Republicans support consumer choice, including home schooling, local innovations such as single-sex classes, full-day school hours and year-round schools. It says Republicans renew their call for replacing family planning programs for teens “with abstinence education which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behavior.”
DEFENSE:
The platform says Republicans are “the party of peace through strength” and support the concept of American exceptionalism – “the conviction that our country holds a unique place and role in human history.” It criticizes the current administration for its weak positions toward such countries as North Korea, China and Iran and its reductions in military spending. The Republican national military strategy “restores as a principal objective the deterrence using the full spectrum of our military capabilities.”
Posted in American Dream, Ann Romney, Capitol Hill, DNC, Fiscal Conservatives, GOP Platform 2012, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, NRA, Paul Ryan, President, Republican Party, Republicans, Ron Paul, Tea Party, The Blaze, United States
Tagged American Dream, Antonio Villaraigosa, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, GOP, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Pew Research Center, Republican, republicans, United States
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