Obama ties military's hands with stricter rules of engagement than the law of war requires or even France follows, leaflets the enemy before attacking

From the story here on Christmas Eve:

"We will do everything we can to prevent civilian casualties," said Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren on Wednesday. ... Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, said the leaflet drops actually started last week, but it has been difficult for people to leave.  ... The Obama administration has come under fire from critics for adhering to restrictive rules of engagement and trying to avoid any civilian casualties in the fight against ISIS. Some say the rules are allowing ISIS fighters to escape.  ... A U.S. defense official said the current U.S. rules of engagement for airstrikes, which are more restrictive than what the law of war requires, would remain the same as Iraqi forces push into Ramadi. Other coalition members — such as France — adhere to looser rules of engagement, however, and it's not clear who will be doing the striking in Ramadi.

In 7 years Obama more than doubled a debt it took all other presidents combinded 233 years to pile up

The debt when Obama took office

The debt after 7 years of Obama in office

The debt held by the public is up 116% in just 7 years of Obama, going from $6.3 trillion to $13.6 trillion.

To Tim Carney, the soul of the Republican Party in 2015 and beyond boils down to (mere) materialism

Here, without the mere:

"More broadly, the rising tide against Ex-Im exemplified a nascent Republican move away from corporate welfare. Marco Rubio led the fight to block an insurer bailout through Obamacare. Ted Cruz is leading in Iowa polls while unambiguously pledging to kill the ethanol mandate. Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina and most of the rest of the field also feel compelled to inveigh against corporate welfare, even if they don't oppose it in every specific instance. There's a long way for the party to go, but they're at least marching in the right direction, because they're no longer always marching to K Street's tune. ... Dole, Lott, subsidized exporters and ethanol executives will have all the material blessings they need at Christmas. But conservatives will have a much stronger hold on the soul of the Republican Party than they did just 10 years ago, and that's something they can be happy about."

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"Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people 'I offer you a good time,' Hitler has said to them 'I offer you struggle, danger and death,' and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet." -- George Orwell, 1940

New York Times Magazine discusses the history of "radical" in America without mentioning Obama's and Hillary Clinton's devotion to Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

Here in "Who’s Really ‘Radical’?" by Emily Bazelon, who does discuss the pair:

"President Obama and Hillary Clinton live in the world of politics, where rhetoric is often more heated, but they avoid using ‘‘radical Islam’’ or ‘‘jihad’’ to describe the terror driven by ISIS."

What else do you call wanting to fundamentally transform America if not radical?

DHS missed San Bernardino terrorist's social media posts threatening attacks because it was official policy not to look

The fault lies with Obama and Jeh Johnson, total incompetents, or worse.

Of course our crack media at ABC here don't tell us when the policy not to look was implemented, but you can infer from the story that the Obama Administration made it official policy not to look in the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations in the summer of 2013 in order to make the regime look respectful of privacy rights.

Too bad it's the privacy of foreigners Obama cares about instead of ours.

The guards of a tyrant are foreigners.

Obama Friday signed stop-gap funding expiring December 16, but why hasn't this been an issue in the Republican debates?

The giant spending bill betrayal which gave us Paul Ryan as Speaker has been stoppable all during the presidential debating season, but we have heard narry a word about it.

If Republicans in the Congress wanted to, they could already have returned to "regular order" and debated every dollar of outlays, one by one, but NO. These cowards push on with one giant bill under Paul Ryan's "leadership", an omnibus spending package, which will take spending off the political calendar and put it into the nebulous never-never land of the indeterminate future, safely out of reach of "politics", fleecing the taxpayers as usual.

Meanwhile the candidates for president say nothing about spending in any way critical of the current Congress. They apply no pressure. They throw down no gauntlet to House and Senate leadership. But Donald Trump must endure a rare rebuke from a comedy lookalike.

A bunch of losers. Hollow men. And cowards.

And conservatism lies decomposing.

First GAO and now House Armed Services Committee finds Obama broke law in Bergdahl swap, and Democrats agree

Impeach the bastard.

From the story at The Hill, here:

"A yearlong investigation by the House Armed Services Committee has concluded that the Obama administration broke the law in swapping five Taliban members for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — and went out of its way to hide the negotiations as they were happening. ... Last year, the non-partisan Government Accountability Office also found that the Obama administration violated the law on the Bergdahl swap. While Democrats on the committee agreed that the administration broke the law, they strongly objected in a dissenting report to the broader conclusions that the administration kept the swap secret for a political motive." 

Mollie Hemingway doesn't get it that Donald Trump IS the balance

If you can get through all the emoting, you reach this at the end, here:

"Yes, the media industry is just a way to make money via entertaining presentation of the news, and, yes, Trump is getting the media clicks we only dream about. But if there is any sense of gratitude for the role we’re allowed to play in the project of maintaining a civil society, could we just work to achieve a bit more balance? Neither self-abasing freakouts nor servile accommodations regarding Trump?"

When Barack Obama promised he'd transform America, no one knew that he meant with Donald Trump. The Donald is the Yang to Obama's Yin. When Trump is finished, the country might be ready to move along again after the male point of view has had its way with the country for a few years. Like Melania, I'm sure she'll enjoy it.

I'm not criticizing the girl for missing it. She's just a girl.

Obama's middle class economics at work: Middle class adults outnumbered by upper and lower classes for the first time in 2015

Pew reports here:

80.0 million middle income vs. 51.6 million lower and upper income in 1971, but 120.8 million middle income vs. 121.3 million lower and upper income in 2015.

The middle still outnumbered the lower and the upper by 3 million in 2011, but not anymore. This is what Obama meant by "Forward!" in 2012. Reducing the size of the middle class is the long-stated objective of the communists.

"[T]he lower middle-class masses are the most dangerous enemies of the dictatorship of the proletariat. ... Their special interests are absolutely incompatible with the economic disturbances which are the inevitable accompaniment of transitional periods."

-- Bela Kun

Piss off Obama: Buy a gun

wncn.com North Carolina

Trump isn't going to get Hillary elected, Obama is going to get Trump elected

Loretta Lynch Vows to Prosecute Those Who Use 'Anti-Muslim' Speech That 'Edges Toward Violence'

Obama uses National Prayer Breakfast to compare Christianity to Islamist killers

Obama calls for gun reforms in wake of San Bernardino shooting

Obama says it’s possible shooting was ‘workplace related’ . . . Giuliani: ‘you’re a moron’

White House: Obama wants to admit more Syrian refugees

ICE Director Struggles to Explain ‘Dramatic Decline’ in Criminal Alien Removals

Obama dropped leaflets 45 min ahead to warn ISIS before dropping bombs

Obama moves to give legal status to 5 million illegal immigrants

U.S. military opens combat positions to women

California massacre shooter pledged allegiance to ISIS: CNN

Obama regime tells Turkey to seal border to stop ISIS traffic but does nothing to seal the US border even though it says it could

Reported here:

“The game has changed. Enough is enough. The border needs to be sealed,” a senior Obama administration official said of Washington’s message to Ankara. “This is an international threat, and it’s all coming out of Syria and it’s coming through Turkish territory.” ... “This is really a question of their border security,” a senior U.S. official said of Turkish authorities. “They need to step up their game when it comes to this and they can’t necessarily look to us to fortify their border for them. Paris is a wake-up call to them that this is a problem they don’t have under control.” ... Before Paris, Turkish officials often rebuffed U.S. calls for a larger border force, saying the frontier was simply too long to effectively seal, no matter how many soldiers were deployed. Turkish officials pointed to Washington’s inability to seal off the U.S.-Mexico border as an example of how difficult such operations can be. U.S. officials chafe at the comparison. “If we were at war with Mexico, we’d close that border,” a senior administration official said of Washington’s response.

It's no joke: We WARN the ISIS enemy before we attack, strafe to shoo away, and then hold press conferences bragging about it

Not only are we unserious about killing ISIS people and breaking ISIS things, flying a leisurely seven sorties a day, most of which come back with 75% of their ordnance, under the traitorous pansy Obama we actually leaflet the targets before we attack.

And notice the spokesman admits this is the first attack on oil shipments even though this war has been going on for well over a year already. The goal of warfare is to destroy the enemy's ability to make it, and until now Obama hasn't lifted a finger to deprive ISIS of its number one source of income, resulting in the deaths of thousands and thousands of Christians, millions of refugees, and terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere in the interim.

From the transcript featuring one Colonel Steve Warren, Operation Inherent Resolve Spokesman, on November 18th, here at the DOD:

In Al-Bukamal, we destroyed 116 tanker trucks, which we believe will reduce ISIL's ability to transport its stolen oil products. This is our first strike against tanker trucks, and to minimize risks to civilians, we conducted a leaflet drop prior to the strike. We did a show of force, by -- we had aircraft essentially buzz the trucks at low altitude. So, I do have copy of the leaflet, and I have got some videos, so why don't you pull the leaflet up. Let me take a look at it so I can talk about it. As you can see, it's a fairly simple leaflet, it says, "Get out of your trucks now, and run away from them." A very simple message. And then, also, "Warning: airstrikes are coming. Oil trucks will be destroyed. Get away from your oil trucks immediately. Do not risk your life."

And so, these are the leaflets that we dropped -- about 45 minutes before the airstrikes actually began. Again, we combine these leaflet drops with very low altitude passes of some of our attack aviation, which sends a very powerful message. ...

So, we spend some time developing some TTPs that I read out earlier -- the leaflets, the low pass. We did some -- I didn't mention in my open, but we did some strafe runs as well -- to kind of shoo people away without harming them. So we had to go through that whole process of one, determining whether or not we felt it was in our best interest to strike these trucks. And then once we determined that, yes, it is in our interest to strike these trucks, how do we go about ensuring that we're able to mitigate the potential of civilian casualties? ...

So these trucks were -- they were just sitting there, not moving. So, you know, we dropped the leaflets. We did a low pass. We chased any of the -- you know, the truck drivers away, and we destroyed them. So, they weren't moving. They were all, as you saw on the video, they were all stationary. Nothing was driving anywhere. So it was a pretty straightforward, you know, attack.

Turkey is not an honest player, whether as a member of NATO or in the fight against ISIS, funneling extremists to Syria

From The New York Times, here:

"Turkey wants Mr. Assad gone, and has allowed its border with Syria to be an easy crossing point for Syrian rebels, including those the West regards as terrorists or radical Islamists; Russia wants to prop up Mr. Assad and his government. While Moscow says it is attacking the Islamic State, for the most part Russian planes and troops have been attacking the Syrian rebels, some of whom are supported by the United States and the West, who most threaten Mr. Assad’s rule."

Obama is a complete hypocrite defending Turkey's right to secure its border against air incursions by Russia. Turkey's border is deliberately porous, feeding fighter after fighter into the flames of the conflict. Turkey is a main point of entry for ISIS volunteers.

No wonder it appears to Putin that the whole of NATO is in support of ISIS.

And to others it will appear to be a grand anti-Semitic conspiracy orchestrated by a pro-Islamic American president, with the notorious Jens Stoltenberg at the helm of NATO defending Turkey's downing of the Russian SU-24:

"At a huge demonstration in central Oslo to protest Israel's independence on April 20, 2002, former Labor Party prime minister Jens Stoltenberg addressed pro-Palestinian groups waving Nazi flags. Without blinking, he endorsed their cause. 'There is one occupant, and one occupier,' he told them."

In 2012 Obama called gasoline at $2.50 a phony promise, three years later it's $1.77

The promise of $2.50 a gallon gasoline was made by presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in 2012, which just shows you how a truly smart politician who knew what was coming, unlike Obama by the way, hoped to get elected and get the credit for predicting and delivering something which would have happened anyway.

But does it need to be repeated that oil and gasoline price reductions happened INSPITE of Obama's war on so-called fossil fuels?

Yes, it does.

Obama's done everything he can to stop the country from discovering and using fossil fuels, but private industry and initiative have done an end run around the president, a sort of payback for the president's end runs around the constitution.

This ain't over by a longshot.

Obama should pop off to the golf course and clear the way for someone else to actually do the job he won't

So says Robert Tracinski here:

"And this, I suspect, is how he is going to end up being remembered as commander-in-chief: as the guy who, in a crisis, gave us petulant speeches about why he was doing nothing.

"This is one of those moments when you almost appreciate the parliamentary system, which can hold a vote of no confidence in the chief executive. You want to talk about popping off? If Obama is traumatized and overwhelmed by the job of being commander-in-chief, he can pop off to the golf course and clear the way for someone else to do it."

One Paris terrorist held Syrian passport, came through Greece in early October, meanwhile Obama wants to let in more of them

Reuters broke the Syrian passport story here.

Pledging to take 10,000 Syrian refugees in September, Obama now wants to take even more of these people.

Muslim terrorists slay 140+ in Paris, Obama says ISIS is contained

Story here.

Libertarian Paul Ryan, disgusting traitor, advances immigration bill to bypass cap on guest workers in order to employ Obama's illegal hordes

From the story here:

'The cap exemption on the H-2B expired in 2007. At the time, it doubled the number but it could as much as quadruple, legislative sources told WND. This is the same way the total number of existing H-1B visa workers got so much higher than the annual inflow. The H-2B visa program, though referred to as a “seasonal” guest worker program it is not an agricultural guest worker program. “These are explicitly non-farm jobs, often for lower-skilled work but also middle class jobs,” the source told WND. “Of course, because we don’t have a visa-tracking system and the president is not enforcing over-stay rules, it increases another avenue to add to the illegal population.”'

Commentary Magazine's Jonathan Tobin doesn't even read what he cites, making a hash of Obamacare story

Jonathan Tobin here:

"This is something of a misnomer because, as the Heritage Institute pointed out in a paper published last month, almost all of these people were simply added to the rolls of those receiving Medicare. If you only count those who are actually receiving insurance outside of Medicare, the net increase of those with coverage (the number of those buying these policies is offset by an almost equal reduction in the number of customers who have employer-based plans) is only 260,000 people."

Ah, no.

First of all the paper was from the "Heritage Foundation", not the "Heritage Institute". Perhaps he's heard of it? It's only been a Washington fixture since like the Reagan Administration. He does remember Reagan, right? Well, he is a neoconservative.

And it was the rolls of Medicaid which were expanded, not Medicare. What kind of a dummy gets that wrong? Medicare is for older Americans. Medicare is supposed to be paid for through payroll taxes, and it's blowing up as we speak, but that's another story. Medicaid used to be health coverage for the poor and the indigent, provided by the States. Leave it to Obama to expand it from DC and call it insurance.

The middle class of this country will end up poor and indigent and on Medicaid, too, if someone doesn't put a stop to this train wreck called Obamacare and soon.

Middle class people have just had their taxes raised dramatically to provide coverage and subsidies to pay for that coverage to about 9 million people who didn't have it before or didn't have what they're getting now. Middle class taxes went up in the form of health insurance premium increases, raised deductibles and skyrocketing pharmaceutical price increases. Middle class people buying the cheapest of plans now can expect to shell out over $13,000 in premiums and deductibles before their plans pay out one red cent of a big healthcare bill. The incentive for them is to avoid care even when they need it in order to save money.  

All Tobin had to do to get the article moving in the right direction was to actually read the title of the Heritage paper and the accompanying abstract, but apparently he didn't do even that. One wonders if he even wrote the story himself. He is Commentary's "editor" after all.

What a putz. 

Backgrounder #3062 on Health Care

October 15, 2015

2014 Health Insurance Enrollment: Increase Due Almost Entirely to Medicaid Expansion

By Edmund F. Haislmaier and Drew Gonshorowski

Abstract

Health insurance enrollment data for 2014 shows that the number of Americans with health insurance increased by 9.25 million during the year. However, the vast majority of the increase was the result of 8.99 million individuals being added to the Medicaid rolls. While enrollment in private individual-market plans increased by almost 4.79 million, most of that gain was offset by a reduction of 4.53 million in the number of people with employment-based group coverage. Thus, the net increase in private health insurance in 2014 was just 260,000 people.