Obama’s Massive Land Grab

The Obama administration is going on a land grab. Not content for the Federal government to poorly control 1/3 of the land in our nation, the Obama administration wants even more. They’re going after land in two ways, both of which circumvent Congress. The first is for the Interior Secretary to simply grab land via executive action. The second is for the EPA to write rules giving the Federal government massive control over privately held property. This unprecedented action by the Obama administration ought to disturb us all. Not content destroying the healthcare industry, Obama is after our land now.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell wants the Federal government to control more land in the United States. According to Jewell the President will not hesitate to take more land if Congress refuses to authorize such land grabs. Jewell claims there is growing support for her land grabs, odds are it’s all in her imagination. In the alternative, perhaps conservationists talk about these land grabs all the time and Jewell, having surrounded herself with such people, confuse their demands with the public. Nevertheless Jewell wants the Federal government to take land, presumably via eminent domain, without any authorization from Congress. Historically Congress passed laws allowing for land purchases, authorizing how much could be spent on each parcel of land. How does the Interior Secretary plan to pay for land without Congress opening up the purse?

Over at the EPA they’re proposing new rules which would vastly expand the definition of waterway. The definition expansion would allow Federal regulation of land for little more than a mud puddle on property. These rules would subject not just businesses to massive Federal regulation but average home owners and farmers. The slightest puddle would allow for Federal regulation. New buildings would have to be approved by the Federal government, lest your waterway puddle be destroyed or negatively affected. Yours truly has seen this sort of madness in practice in Michigan where the spreading of wood chips over an 8×8 mud puddle on privately owned acreage has been prosecuted as a misdemeanor for “destroying” a “wetland.” Do we really want the Federal government to make criminals out of landscapers and other Americans annoyed by small puddles on their property?

The Obama administration does not believe in the historic American view of property rights and freedom. They view everything in this country as something that requires government oversight, approval and ultimately control. Private property means nothing to them, in fact many on the far left not only oppose private property but will make the argument that it has never existed. This administration at least partially shares in these views. They don’t want you to own land which they cannot in some way control directly. This administration doesn’t want you to be free to do on your land what you see fit, they only want you to be free to do what they see fit. Sound familiar? They hold the same position on healthcare and any number of other issues.

Land grabs and land control fall under Obama’s pledge to fundamentally transform America. Of course, land grabs like this didn’t start with Obama. They may accelerate under his watch but we can hardly blame him for creating them. Ever since Nixon approved the EPA, that agency has steadily attacked private property rights. They’ve done absurd things in the past but under Obama their rules are about to shift to the point of absurdity. Mud puddles do not require Federal oversight. The Interior Department has been mismanaging 1/3 of the land in this country for decades. Never before has it sought to do what it wishes without Congressional authorization. Is this the sort of Federal government we want? One in which land grabs are as simple as writing a new rule and making declarations without any authorization from Congress? Obama is taking us there.

Obamacare An Electoral Disaster For Democrats

Less than 50,000 people have actually enrolled for Obamacare. The Obama administration needs to have 7 million signed up by March 31st and expected nearly half a million to sign up in October. They aren’t anywhere near where they expected to be. Expect the administration to fudge numbers at the end of the week by counting as “enrolled” those who left an insurance policy in their shopping cart but haven’t yet purchased or paid for the policy. With all the lies the Obama administration has told us about Obamacare, they might as well lie about how many people actually signed up for the program.

Bill Clinton has chimed in on Obama’s massive “you can keep your policy if you like it” lie. Clinton believes Obama should let people keep their policies. Obviously Bill is trying to separate Obama from Hillary by coming out against the Obama administration’s massive lie. In doing this he puts Obama in a terrible position because half of the Democrats in Congress will listen to Clinton on this issue. Obama can’t afford to have people keep their own plans because it guarantees Obamacare will fail immediately. Obama needs everyone in the exchanges, which is why his administration passed rules banning insurance companies from continuing to sell what they’re now calling “junk” insurance policies. (read: the policy you like and want to keep)

Not only does Obama have to contend with Bubba stirring the pot but now he has to contend with fraud committed by the Obamacare navigators. The navigators are basically ACORN for healthcare. They’re “community organizers” who lie and cheat to get poor people qualified for Obamacare. As one navigator told a potential insurance buyer “you lie because (if you don’t) your premium will be higher.” Moral hazard anyone? Smoke? Keep quiet! Have secret cash only business? Don’t report that! So the navigators are cheating the system. They’re also working for Obama and other left-wing political groups contrary to Federal law. Who wants to bet Eric Holder isn’t interested?

The Democrats have to be very concerned about the mid-term elections. Obama has become a cancer for the Democrat Party, just like Bush was for the GOP in 2006. People aren’t being allowed to keep their insurance and they’re blaming Obama for lying to them about it. By extension, they’re blaming the entire Democrat Party. It’s true, the GOP’s poll numbers are down substantially too. However the more unpopular Obamacare becomes the more likely it is that independent voters move Republican or that Democrat voters stay home. Hispanics, for example, now have a negative view of Obama. Even if Hispanics don’t vote for Republicans in 2014, their absence at the polls hurts the Democrats.

The Democrats have only themselves to blame for their impending electoral decline. They forced through Obamacare without any Republican support, despite the fact that there was Republican support to be had. The Republicans warned the country what Obamacare was going to be like, the GOP told everyone Obama wouldn’t let you keep your policy. Suddenly the much hated Republicans look like truth tellers. The biggest miscalculation of the Obama administration is believing people wouldn’t care when their health insurance got taken away and replaced with something more expensive and less desirable. The public might buy the Benghazi video lie, they might buy the IRS scandal lies. However when Americans get a policy cancellation in the mail after the President said they would get to keep their policy, you can bet it isn’t going to be good for that President or his party.

Obama Courting Disaster In Iran

The Obama administration appears to have secretly removed sanctions against Iran several months ago. In Geneva negotiations appear to be going very well for Iran. In exchange for stopping their nuclear program for a few months, the west appears ready to cave completely on sanctions. While Obama and the rest of the west is caving to Iran, that country’s state run television network is running shows about bombing Israel. Are these really the sort of people we want to negotiate with in good faith? It’s doubtful that anyone outside of the Obama administration and perhaps wishful thinkers in other western governments believe a word Iran says.

It isn’t just Iran that can’t be trusted. Obama can’t be trusted in this case either. It isn’t just that Obama lied to us about Obamacare, though if he lied to us about keeping our own policy then there’s no reason to believe him about anything else. The problem for Obama is that his track record in the middle east is a disaster zone. Everything he’s touched in the Muslim world has turned into a complete and total disaster for him and our allies.

Just take a look at all of Obama’s middle east accomplishments. He supported the Muslim Brotherhood’s revolution in Egypt only to watch them kill Coptic Christians and ultimately get overthrown themselves due to extremism and incompetence. In Libya Obama aided the overthrow of Gaddafi and it resulted in the US supporting al Qaeda which resulted in four Americans dying at the Consulate in Benghazi. More soldiers have died in Afghanistan under Obama than under Bush as that nation has become an ungovernable mess. Just a few months ago Obama drew a red line against Syria, threatened to commence bombing immediately and then completely caved before buying into a Russian chemical weapons inspection program that is likely not being adhered to in the slightest.

With this track record we’re supposed to believe the Obama administration is going to make headway with Iran. No doubt Obama needs the headline right now but the devil is in the details. From what we know so far, we’re looking at nothing more than a six month delay in an Iranian nuclear weapon in exchange for removal of all or most sanctions. While that sounds nice, it isn’t a dismantling of the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran isn’t giving up much of anything. In fact, odds are they won’t even be giving up their quest for a nuclear weapon. Does anyone believe the Iranians will actually stop work on a nuclear weapon for six days much less six months?

Considering how everything in the middle east Obama has touched has turned into a disaster, we can count down the days before Iran attacks Israel, Iraq or some other country. We can count down the days before Iran’s first nuclear weapon test. In six months, all the lofty talk of peace from Obama will blow up in his face. It has every other time he’s played around with middle eastern Muslims. Surely no one believes this time will be any different.

Transparent Obama Refuses Proper Investigations

You will be shocked to discover that Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi investigation failed to blame top State Department officials. Hillary’s investigation blamed four mid-level officials while absolving everyone close to or otherwise associated with her. No doubt you’re wondering why anyone would care why Benghazi went down the way it did, after all four Americans died. Hillary sure is wondering why anyone cares, per her testimony to Congress. Hillary’s Benghazi investigation is another in a long line of Obama administration investigations of itself. No one at the top is ever to blame for anything, it’s always the fault of career bureaucrats no one has ever heard of.

We expected Hillary to point the finger at anyone other than herself. Whether it was the administration’s lie about a You Tube video causing a riot or the failure to do anything in response to pleas for help from our consulate, we all knew Hillary would avoid blame. Surely you didn’t think that the 2016 Presidential candidate would investigate herself and admit to her own failure or the failure of people she directly hired did you? To do that would call into question her qualifications to serve as President. Hillary is after all a Clinton, she’s not politically foolish enough to do anything other than blame faceless State Department bureaucrats.

Eric Holder has done the same thing within the Justice Department. He investigated Fast and Furious even though his name appears on various subpoenas. He was personally involved in various media subpoenas, including Fox News’ James Rosen. Initially Holder suggested he wasn’t involved in the media subpoenas, until his name appeared all over them. Investigating himself, Holder determined the Justice Department didn’t do anything wrong in Fast and Furious or the media subpoenas. Holder has since supported a bill that would define what a journalist is, as though we need such a law to stop the Justice Department from harassing the press. At the end of the day, Holder never took any blame while shifting blame to bureaucrats and Congress.

The IRS spent years harassing conservative, Tea Party groups by refusing to grant them tax exempt status. Lois Lerner and Dan Shulman of the IRS investigated themselves and blamed a bunch of rouge agents in Cincinnati. Obama and company found this an acceptable excuse and tried to move on. Unfortunately emails have made it clear the upper levels of the IRS knew exactly what was going on and either ordered the targeting or created an environment where targeting conservatives was acceptable. To date neither Lerner or Shulman have blamed anyone other than career bureaucrats within the IRS. No one at the top is to blame.

The Obama administration has been anything but transparent over the last five years. They investigate themselves and declare that no political appointees or top officials are ever to blame for anything. If there is blame, it goes on the faceless bureaucracy that apparently cannot be controlled by anyone. This could be true of most administrations, it’s more glaring with Obama. The executive branch cannot investigate itself without bias. Everyone in the executive branch wants to protect themselves, their power and the power of the person who put them in their position. Most of all, they want to protect the President because in protecting him they protect themselves. There are half a dozen issues that should be in the hands of a special prosecutor, including Benghazi, the IRS scandal and a number of Justice Department scandals. We’ll never know what really happened because the Obama administration won’t allow for a proper investigation.

Obama Needs To Answer Questions Before Bombing Syria

Our Nobel Peace Prize winning President seems hellbent on war against Syria. The anti-war left is of course silent. While Britain appears willing to ask the United Nations for permission to bomb Syria, the Obama administration appears ready to go at it alone. Chuck Hagel said we don’t need a UN resolution to bomb Syria. The anti-war left attacked George W. Bush for finally going to war against Iraq after well over a dozen UN resolutions and deadlines were ignored by Saddam Hussein. These folks will be largely silent when Obama bombs Syria, because at the end of the day they were never anti-war they were anti-Republican. The media hyped their efforts because the media is anti-Republican. It was a cozy relationship.

Putting the left’s anti-war hypocrisy aside, we have to ask ourselves what our goal is in bombing Syria. Do we want Assad out of power? If so, who will replace him? One of the problems with the Syrian rebels is that one of their bigger groups is al Qaeda. Odds are most Americans aren’t prepared to enter a war in which al Qaeda has the potential to become the victor. Of course, most Americans wouldn’t be happy to learn that Benghazi was really about gun and weapons running to al Qaeda in Syria. No doubt the press will largely ignore the al Qaeda connection. They wouldn’t want Americans to understand that Obama is supporting a long time enemy.

Removing Assad likely isn’t the goal of the Obama administration. If it was, they wouldn’t be leaking to the press information about the upcoming attack. It will last a couple of days and is limited to 50 sites according to leaked information. The Obama administration has done everything short of telling Assad the specifics. All of these leaks are intentional, they’re directly from the White House. As such you won’t see Obama or anyone else in the administration stamping their feet over security breaches.

With all the information out there about these attacks, one begins to wonder what the point even is. Obama apparently doesn’t want to remove Assad from power. Yet two days of bombings at 50 sites that can be easily figured out and defended or at least have all the important contents removed doesn’t exactly accomplish much. What Obama is threatening isn’t the sort of lesson Assad won’t soon forget. Obama’s threats are weak, passive and meaningless. Sort of like the overwhelming majority of Obama’s foreign policy.

Assad is a bad guy, there’s no doubt about it. His use of chemical weapons is an outrage. You have to wonder though what Obama’s point is in bombing Syria. He hasn’t spoken to the country about this since May, you would think the people he’s leading to war might want to be told why we need to bomb Syria and why it’s in our interests. Our interests are muddled, which is part of the problem. There isn’t a point, there isn’t a plan. At least in Iraq and Afghanistan there was a clear military purpose and a clear end goal: Regime change. What is the plan here in Syria? If we don’t want to get rid of Assad, what is the goal? Why is it important to American interests? What interests internationally could be negatively affected by an attack? These are the questions Obama needs to answer before he launches an attack. Perhaps he’s gazing too much at his Peace Prize to speak with the people.