Daily Archives: January 16, 2015

01/16/15

Citizens’ Mandate: Stop the Fundamental Transformation of America

By: James Simpson
American Thinker

The pundits puzzle and debate reasons for the sweeping nationwide GOP victories in November, while Democrats en masse engage in an epidemic of unhinged denial. But for the rest of us, the reason is crystal clear: this president and the Democratic Party are ruining our country. November was not a victory for Republicans, but rather an historic, nationwide, sweeping repudiation of Obama’s leadership and policies. Nonetheless, the GOP did get a mandate:

Stop Obama in his tracks! NOW!

To make this unerringly clear, a veritable who’s who of the conservative movement have issued a Citizen’s Mandate to the GOP. It demands that Republicans:

  • Stop the President’s “Fundamental Transformation” of the country;
  • End Executive branch overreach;
  • Restore Constitutional balance of power among the three branches of government;
  • Bring an end to the perennially unpopular Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare;
  • Stop the President’s Executive Amnesty;
  • Hold the Executive branch accountable for its myriad abuses of power and its national security failures both foreign and domestic;
  • Insist Obama put the interests of the United States of America first among nations.

The Mandate states:

The November election was a repudiation of President Obama’s dramatic expansion of government power both through legislative and executive actions. The voters demanded that Congress stop this President’s fundamental transformation of America using every power at their disposal, restoring Constitutional balance of power, and ending the Executive Branch abuses against both the citizenry and the foundational concept that individual rights are derived from God, not government.

The GOP had a sterling opportunity to begin this process during the lame duck session immediately following November’s elections. Congress needed to pass some kind of spending measure to keep the government open past December 11. They could have simply enacted a short term continuing resolution (CR), keeping the government open until the new GOP majority Congress was seated. Democrats, including the president, indicated they would not oppose such a move.

Instead the GOP House leadership, in collusion with House Democrats and the Senate, put together a massive omnibus spending package for the entire federal government.  Dubbed “CROmnibus,” the bill included full-year funding for the entire federal government except the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which received a short-term CR funding the agency until February 28, 2015.

Incredibly, it gave Obama a green light for virtually all of his most onerous agendas. Obamacare is fully funded for all of fiscal year 2015, none of the EPA’s outrageous “greenhouse gas” regulations were even challenged and the EPA got a boost in funding to boot!

Obama hailed the measure, saying:

We are better positioned than we have been in a very long time. A new future is ready to be written. We’ve set the stage for this American moment. And I’m going to spend every minute of my last two years making sure that we seize it…

When Obama celebrates a Republican-sponsored spending bill from the House of Representatives, we should be horrified. When the GOP hands him his agenda on a silver platter immediately following an election repudiating same, it is time to panic.

GOP leaders promised to confront Obama’s executive amnesty, once the new Congress was seated, by denying funding for it in the DHS budget. They came through on Wednesday, passing amendments to the DHS appropriations bill that halt much of Obama’s amnesty through DHS This includes the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which motivated the mass migration from Central America over the past three years, Obama’s November “executive amnesty” for about 5 million illegals, and other actions – five amendments in all.

But there are two problems: 1. some or all of these measures could be stripped from companion Senate DHS funding legislation, thereby providing DHS full funding without any restrictions; and 2. at least some of the executive amnesty is implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Unaccompanied Alien Children program, and other agencies. HHS and the others were all fully funded in the CROmnibus.

Obama has promised to veto this legislation if it passes the Senate, and while it is theoretically possible that some Democrats may support these proposals, it is doubtful they would risk defeating the president given his reputation for vindictiveness. Furthermore, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already said Republicans will not risk shutting down government if they can’t get their way on immigration. So Obama is likely to win on this one too.

The Citizen’s Mandate says this cannot stand. Enough is enough! It is an articulate counterpoint to GOP cowardice.  It clearly and succinctly demands Members of Congress honor their oaths of office and their responsibility to the citizens who elected them:

Our Message to Congress:

Now is the time to use every power at the disposal of the legislative branch to fight for basic Constitutional freedoms and stop the expansion of the federal government…

It was the President’s agenda that was on the ballot, and the voters delivered a landslide mandate to fight and stop it…

Failure to fight Obama’s transformation using each and every means at Congress’ disposal is a betrayal of that mandate, and in a broader context, a betrayal of your oath of office to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.

The Mandate also lays out critical specific policy issues that must be addressed immediately. These are existential threats that must be addressed, all resulting from Obama’s disastrous leadership. For example:

  • Halt the National Labor Relations Board’s overreach and abuse of power
  • Define our enemy – no more “workplace violence”
  • Cease Guantanamo Bay releases – stop “repopulating the Global Jihad’s leadership”
  • Stop Iran from getting the Bomb
  • Support our military – the military has been crippled by constant deployments, drastic budget cuts, radical social engineering, purging leaders and lack of modernization, training and readiness.

The Mandate demands serious hearings to hold Obama, Holder and other administration officials responsible for their reckless, destructive and illegal actions. It also demands Congress return to regular order – i.e. no more thousand page bills passed in the middle of the night with no time for review. There is a legislative process that has been successful for 200 years that gives Congress and the people adequate time to consider legislation. We need to restore that process. Finally, the federal government needs to reduce its signature, drawing back to limits set by the Constitution.

The Citizens’ Mandate boldly speaks our concerns. Now we need to flood Congress with calls and letters to support it. You know what you have to do.

James Simpson is an economist, former White House budget analyst, businessman and investigative journalist. His regular column is DC Independent Examiner. Follow Jim on Twitter & Facebook.

01/16/15

The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher’s Council Results – 01/16/15

The Watcher’s Council


The ‘Surreal & Sinister’ World In 2015 (According To The Economist)

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.

“I am not afraid of retaliation. I have no kids, no wife, no car, no mortgage. It surely is a bit dramatic, but I’d rather die on my feet, than live on my knees” – Stephane (Charb) Charbonnier, Editorial Director of Charlie Hebdo

“They might have different names… but all of them are driven by the same hatred and blood-thirsty fanaticism. And all of them seek to destroy our freedoms and impose on all of us a violent, medieval tyranny. This is a global struggle. This is everybody’s battle… And the first rule in fighting terrorism is to refuse to be afraid. The people of Israel embrace the people of France as brothers and sisters. We understand we are in a common battle for our values and a common battle for future and we refuse to be intimidated.” – Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu

“This attack must instead free our speech about Islamic fundamentalism. We must not be silenced. – Marine Le Pen, Leader of France’s Front National Party

“In the past year, 7,000 Jews have already left France and after this there will be many thousands more. We are not safe in France any more. There is no future for Jews here in France. We are finished in France.” – Anonymous father of a Jewish survivor of the kosher supermarket killings

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_nEAkWOufFU/T366WMxCdrI/AAAAAAAABOg/easpV-8FMnM/s400/Joshua_Dali_Sun.jpg

This week’s winning essay, Jihad, Islam and The French Farce In Paris, is my reaction to the events last week in Paris. Here’s a slice:

By now the world knows about the latest atrocity carried out in Paris by jihad terrorists. The wholesale murder of the staff of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo including its editor ‘Charb,’ Stephane Charbonnier. The murders at the magazine, the shooting of a female police officer, a car bomb exploding at a local synagogue, a gunman invading a kosher supermarket filled with women and children and killing four shoppers and wounding a number of others..these have all been covered by the media and digested by the world at large.

For a couple of days, this made headlines, but by now the world has processed it. And it is last week’s news,because to really focus on it would mean we’d have to actually do something about it.

Beslan, 9/11, Boston, Bali, Mumbai, London, Itamar, Jerusalem, Nairobi, Fort Hood, Sydney, a never ending list..and those are just the ones we notice,because they’re either in the West, or involve the murder of Westerners. The ones that don’t barely rate a mention. In Nigeria last week for instance, Boko Haram, who have already pledged their support and allegiance to Islamic State attacked the city of Baga, near Lake Chad. The known death toll from that one attack alone is over 2,000. And it may go higher, once the final figures come in.

Chant with me, why don’t you..’black lives matter!’ Except when they’re murdered by Muslim terrorists.

I wonder if it has occurred to many of us how much our society has normalized terrorism committed by Islamist fascists? The limitations to our freedoms we’ve already accepted without complaint? The millions in additional tax dollars we’re forced to spend? The handcuffs we’ve put on ourselves and the forces we enlist to protect us because we’re unwilling to be honest?

We have become acclimated to accepting Islamist terrorism as the norm, as business as usual. We’ve been doing it for so long it barely moves us, let alone raises the revulsion and the resolve to stop it, the normal reaction. Instead, we hide behind inane rhetoric, insipid and cowardly rationalizations and yes, hash tags.

If we were really all Charlie Hebdo, or Theo Van Gogh, or Ayaan Hirsi Ali, or Molly Norris, or Kurt Westergaard, or Drummer Lee Rigby, or Daniel Pearl or the Fogel Family, this would have ended long ago, because we would have risen up en masse to demand that the political class do something to stop this once and for all.

We haven’t. We simply ingest the latest atrocity and continue to sleepwalk. After a few words from our sponsor, of course. And the usual ‘Muslims fear backlash’ stories, although somehow that backlash never seems to occur.

A case in point is the recent ‘Unity rally’ in Paris. No one, of course, would dare call it a rally against Islamist fascism, a rally against ‘radical Islam’ or even a rally against terrorism. No, it was all about unity, with signs saying ‘Je suis Charlie’ and flags and forty world leaders marching together in the streets of Paris. Nice, until you look behind the facade.

Among the participants was the Emir of Qatar which openly funds terrorism. Also at the rally was Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu, who country has more journalists in jail than any other NATO member for what’s labeled as ‘un-Turkish sentiments’, whose Islamist government is a haven for Hamas. It is also the country where at least one of the killers, Hayat Boumeddiene was allowed to enter France freely via a ticket from Istanbul to Spain and the country from which she was allowed to escape back to Syria.

And of course, Palestine’s unelected Dictator Mahmoud Abbas was there too. Yes, Abbas, the Holocaust denier with his history of terrorism as Arafat’s second in command, Abbas who is allied with the genocidal Hamas in a unity government. Interesting how that came about.

Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu had wanted to show up in Paris to take part as one of the world leaders involved. You would think he’d be a natural participant, given Israel’s history of combating Islamist terrorism, and especially since about a third of the victims of the attacks were Jews.

But the Israeli PM was told outright by the French government that he was persona non grata and unwelcome, since his presence was deemed ‘divisive’ and would ‘make having the rally difficult.’

After mulling it over for a day, Netanyahu simply told the French he was coming anyway. My sources differ on whether Abbas had already been expressly invited (the Palestinian Authority insists he was, and a private meeting between Abbas and Holland scheduled the next day seems to bear this out) or whether he was invited simply out of spite towards Netanyahu,but the fact remains that the leader of a democracy with a free press and an admirable record fighting exactly the forces responsible for last weeks’ carnage was insulted and initially shunned while nations that finance and support terrorism and rigidly repress any criticism were courted and invited.

Much more at the link. I guarantee you won’t be bored.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Andrew McCarthy with Don’t Blame the Charlie Hebdo Mass Murder on ‘Extremism’ submitted by Joshuapundit.

With his usual merciless logic, the former prosecutor shreds the Leftist pretense that what happened in Paris has nothing to do with Islam and is just ‘extremism.’ A worthy read.

Here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

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