Obama Touts 57th State, Lives Three Years in the Past and See Ghosts, Among Other Stupid Shit

[AlleyCat]

NOTHING Trump has said or done, remotely compares to the idiot-in-chief
YOU had as a President.

1. How many states?

"I've now been in 57 states-I think one left to go."



2. Hero soldier mix-up:

While commending troops at Fort Drum, N.Y., for their completed
deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama said, "A comrade of
yours, Jared Monti, was the first person who I was able to award the Medal
of Honor to who actually came back and wasn't receiving it posthumously."
Wrong hero. Sgt. 1st Class Jared Monti was killed in action, another
soldier, Staff Sgt. Sal Giunta, was the first living recipient of the
Medal of Honor that fought in Afghanistan.



3. What year is it?

During a trip to London's Westminster Abbey, President Obama signed the
guest book and dated it 24 May 2008. Oops. It was 2011. (Maybe he
was wistfully dreaming about his 2008 election campaign at the time.)



4. Look at the map:

Not only does Obama not know how many states there are, he also doesn't
know where they are. During the 2008 primary campaign, he explained why
he was trailing Hillary Clinton in Kentucky: "Sen. Clinton, I think, is
much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it's not
surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the
middle." Obama's home state of Illinois, and not Arkansas, shares a
border with Kentucky.


5. What language is that?

In April 2009, on one of his many foreign trips, President Obama mused, "I
don't know what the term is in Austrian" for "wheeling and dealing."
Oops, Mr. President. There is no Austrian language.



6. Twister casualties:

After a devastating tornado hit Kansas, Obama discussed the tragedy
without help from a teleprompter, saying, "In case you missed it, this
week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died-an entire
town destroyed." He was only off by 9,988 as the twister killed 12
people.



7. How old is Malia?

The President last month thought he was so clever, unfavorably comparing
Republican procrastination on the debt limit to his daughters finishing
their homework early. In his remarks, Obama made a reference to daughter
Malia, saying she was 13 years old, when at the time she was 12. Imagine
the press reaction if Michele Bachmann made a misstatement about any of
her five children or 23 foster kids.



8. Special Olympics insensitivity:

The President called and apologized to the head of the Special Olympics,
after making this insensitive comment following a game of bowling: "No,
no. I have been practicing. ... I bowled a 129. It's like-it was
like Special Olympics, or something." Maybe he should have also
apologized to bowlers for his feeble effort.



9. Faith confusion:

No wonder so many Americans are unsure of the President's faith, as he
seems to be confused himself. During the 2008 campaign, during an
interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Obama said, "What I was
suggesting-you're absolutely right that John McCain has not talked about
my Muslim faith," before Stephanopoulos jumped in to help, saying "your
Christian faith."



10. Health care inefficiencies:

During the health care debate, President Obama explained all the benefits
of ObamaCare, saying, "The reforms we seek would bring greater
competition, choice, savings and inefficiencies to our health care
system." Mr. President, we already have enough inefficiency in health
care and, yes, your "reforms" will only make it worse.



--

STILL can't understand why liberal Democrats are so in hate with Russia
these days. They LOVED Russian politics, i.e., Socialism/Communism until
Trump whooped that wide-load Clinton's fat ass. Fucking hypocrites.

https://i.imgur.com/pYRjq5A.jpg

[AlleyCat]

On Sun, 20 Jan 2019 04:52:38 -0800 (PST), Tom Sr. says...

> User-Agent: G2/1.0
> NNTP-Posting-Host: 196.52.2.38

[AlleyCat]

On Sun, 20 Jan 2019 12:51:20 -0600, Mitchell Holman says...

> Trump says San Antonio shows border walls
> works, despite city being 150 miles from
> border and having no wall

NOTHING Trump has said or done, remotely compares to the idiot-in-chief
YOU had as a President.

53 seconds that should have killed a Manchurian's Presidency:

https://youtu.be/T_AAMa_X2dM

[Siri Cruise]

In article <MPG.36aeda4ec...@news.eternal-september.org>,

Impeach Obama?

Otherwise, nice rant.

--
:-<> Siri Seal of Disavowal #000-001. Disavowed. Denied. Deleted. @
'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' /|\
The first law of discordiamism: The more energy This post / \
to make order is nore energy made into entropy. insults Islam. Mohammed

[AlleyCat]

On Sun, 20 Jan 2019 19:23:48 -0800, Siri Cruise says...

> Otherwise, nice rant.

LOL... lieberal calls the truth, ranting.

> Impeach Obama?

Once again, nerd fails to read both follow-up and OP. Is the topic about
impeachment, you drunk dumb ass?

Just to play along with your childish dumb ass... yes... impeach Obama.

=====

Can a former president be impeached?

Yes. Obviously a former president would not be subject to removal from
office, but scholars say that Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution,
which says that impeachment may result in "disqualification to hold and
enjoy any office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States," could
apply.

In practical terms, an impeachment would mean Obama could not serve in any
other federal elective or appointive office. Obama would not have automatic
protection against such a proceeding, because he was exercising his
constitutionally given pardon power.

Scholars say abuse of such power can be grounds for congressional action,
and we ALL know that Obama widely abused the power of his office¹. It is
less clear whether a conviction could mean the removal of his pension,
government-funded office, and other perks.

Although impeaching a former president would be a first, there is some
scant precedent for impeaching someone already removed from office. In
1797, Sen. William Blount of Tennessee was charged with treason for a
scheme to help the British take land from Florida controlled by the
Spanish.

(Fortunately, Florida land speculation is no longer considered a
treasonable offense.) Blount was unanimously impeached by the House, then
expelled by the Senate (a process separate from impeachment). The Senate
decided to go ahead with its impeachment trial although in the end it
acquitted Blount because he was no longer in office.

William Belknap, secretary of war under Ulysses Grant, was impeached by the
House on bribery charges and resigned from office. Though the Senate went
ahead with his trial, he, too, was acquitted because he was no longer in
office.

¹ "Where they won't act, I will."

President Obama promised to "wherever and whenever" possible "take steps
without legislation."

President Obama made good on these promises; his use of Executive Orders,
Executive Agreements, Agency Guidance, and Agency Rule-making unilaterally
to change domestic policy is unparalleled in modern times. Indeed,
according to "The New York Times," President Obama's two terms have been
characterized by "bureaucratic bulldozing, rather than legislative
transparency."

[...]

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/311608-obamas-
curtain-call-a-look-back-on-a-legacy-of

https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/top-10-ways-obama-violated-
constitution-during-presidency

1. The Chrysler Bailout

Building on the Bush administration's illegal use of TARP funds to bail out
the auto industry, the Obama administration in 2009 bullied Chrysler's
secured creditors-who were entitled to "absolute priority" - into accepting
30 cents on the dollar, while junior creditors such as labor unions
received much more. This subversion of creditor rights violates not just
bankruptcy law, but also the Constitution's Takings and Due Process
Clauses.

This blatant crony capitalism-government-directed industrial policy to help
political insiders-discourages investors and generally undermines
confidence in American rule of law. The Supreme Court ultimately vacated
the Second Circuit ruling that allowed this farce to proceed; Chrysler's
creditors are still out of luck, but there's no legal precedent.

2. Obamacare Implementation

One can, and many have, written whole articles about how the Affordable
Care Act is such an affront to the rule of law that its individual mandate
and Medicaid coercion-both of which Chief Justice John Roberts rewrote-are
just the tip of the lawless iceberg. On implementation, we can't blame
Congress or courts. Here's a sample:

The Labor Department announced in February 2013 that it was delaying
for a year the part of the law that limits how much people have to spend on
their own insurance. This may have been sensible, but changing a law
requires actual legislation.
Later that year, the administration announced via blogpost on the eve
of the July 4 holiday that it was delaying the requirement that employers
of at least 50 people provide complying insurance or pay a fine. This time
it cited statutory authority, but the cited provisions allow the delay of
reporting requirements, not the mandate itself.
The famous pledge that "if you like your plan, you can keep it"
backfired when insurers started canceling millions of plans that didn't
comply with Obamacare. So Obama called a press conference to proclaim that
people could continue buying non-complying plans for another year-despite
the ACA's language to the contrary. He then refused to consider a House-
passed bill that would've made this action legal.
A little-known part of Obamacare requires congressional staff to get
insurance from health exchanges, rather than a taxpayer-funded program.
Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management to interpret the law to
maintain the generous benefits.
Obamacare grants tax credits to people whose employers don't provide
coverage if they buy a plan "through an Exchange established by the State"-
and then fines employers for each employee receiving such a subsidy. No tax
credits are authorized for residents of states where the exchanges are
established by the federal government, as an incentive for states to create
exchanges themselves. Because so few (16) states did, however, the IRS
issued a rule allowing subsidies (and fines) for plans coming from "a State
Exchange, regional Exchange, subsidiary Exchange, and federally-facilitated
Exchange." Yes, we can also blame the Supreme Court for upholding this.
The Department of Health and Human Services granted more than 2,000
waivers to employers seeking relief from Obamacare's regulations. Nearly 20
percent of them went to gourmet restaurants and other businesses in former
Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district. Nevada, home to former
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, got a blanket waiver, while GOP-
controlled states like Indiana and Louisiana were denied. Beyond political
favoritism, such dispensations violate a host of constitutional and
administrative law provisions like equal protection and the "intelligible
principle" needed for congressional delegation of authority to cabinet
agencies.
HHS also continues paying insurance companies to compensate them for
losses caused by Obamacare's ignorance of basic economics. Alas, Congress
never appropriated these funds, so the House of Representatives is suing
the administration and won in the district court. Now on appeal, House v.
Burwell is stayed until the D.C. Circuit hears from the incoming Trump
administration. (Full disclosure: My wife joined the House general
counsel's office last month and is litigating the appeal.)

3. Political Profiling by the IRS

After seeing a rise in the number of applications for tax-exempt status,
the IRS in 2010 compiled a "be on the lookout" ("BOLO") list to identify
organizations engaged in political activities. The list included words such
as "Tea Party," "Patriots," and "Israel"; subjects such as government
spending, debt, or taxes; and activities such as criticizing the
government, educating about the Constitution, or challenging Obamacare. The
targeting continued through May 2013, with no consequences other than Lois
Lerner, the chief of the exempt-organizations unit, being held in contempt
of Congress-and then being allowed to peacefully retire despite erased
records and other cover-ups. Okay, this one qualifies as Nixonian.

4. Recess Appointments

In January 2012, President Obama appointed three members of the National
Labor Relations Board, as well as the head of the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, during what he considered to be a Senate recess. But the
Senate was still holding "pro forma" sessions every three days-a technique
developed by Sen. Harry Reid to thwart Bush recess appointments.
(Meanwhile, the Dodd-Frank Act, which created the CFPB, provides that
authority remains with the Treasury Secretary until a director is
"confirmed by the Senate.") In 2014, Supreme Court unanimously ruled that
the NLRB appointments were illegal, while last year the D.C. Circuit found
the CFPB's structure to be unconstitutional.

5. DACA and DAPA

Congress has shamelessly failed to pass any sort of immigration reform,
including for the most sympathetic victims of the current non-system, young
people who were brought into the country illegally as children.
Nonetheless, during his 2012 reelection campaign, President Obama directed
the Department of Homeland Security to issue work and residence permits
(Deferred Action to Childhood Arrivals) to the so-called Dreamers.

Then, after the 2014 midterms, the president decided that he had been wrong
22 times in saying he couldn't give temporary legal status to illegal
immigrants. The administration engineered this Deferred Action for Parents
of Americans in the wake of Congress's rejection of the same policies, in
violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, immigration law, and the
Constitution's Take Care Clause. A district court enjoined DAPA in February
2015, which action the Fifth Circuit twice affirmed, as did the Supreme
Court by a 4-4 vote.

6. Assault On Free Speech and Due Process On College Campuses

In 2013 the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, in
conjunction with the Justice Department, sent the University of Montana a
letter that became a national "blueprint" for tackling sexual harassment.
The letter urged a crackdown on "unwelcome" speech and requires complaints
to be heard in quasi-judicial procedures that deny legal representation,
encourage punishment before trial, and convict based on a mere "more likely
than not" standard.

As noted civil libertarian Harvey Silverglate explained this week, the
administration construed Title IX-the federal law barring sex
discrimination by federally funded schools-as a mandate to punish students
and faculty accused of sexual misconduct using procedures that make it
extraordinarily difficult for innocent people to defend themselves.

7. The Clean Power Plan

In June 2014, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new rule for
regulating power-plant emissions. Despite significant criticism, it
finalized the rule in August 2015, giving states until 2018 to develop
plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, with mandatory compliance
beginning in 2022.

The EPA cites Section 111 of the Clean Air Act as justification for this
Clean Power Plan, but that section can't give the agency such authority.
Section 111 doesn't permit the government to require states to regulate
pollutants from existing sources when those pollutants are already being
regulated under Section 112, like those deriving from coal-fired plants.
The late Justice Scalia's last public act was to join an order staying the
rule pending further litigation (or, as is likely, a rescinding of the
rule).

8. The WOTUS Rule

In May 2015, the EPA announced its new Clean Water Rule, which aims to
protect streams and wetlands from pollution. The agency insists that the
rule doesn't affect bodies of water not previously regulated, but several
groups have sued on the basis that the rule's definitions of regulated
waters greatly exceed the EPA's authority under the Clean Water Act to
regulate "waters of the United States" (WOTUS).

The Supreme Court has thrice addressed the meaning of that phrase, making
clear that, for the EPA to have regulatory authority, a sufficient nexus
must exist between the location regulated and "navigable waters." The Clean
Water Rule, however, purports to give EPA power far beyond waters that are
"navigable" by any stretch of the word's definition. Litigation is ongoing.

9. Net Neutrality

In the works throughout the Obama presidency, the Open Internet Rule was
adopted in February 2015 and went into effect that June, forbidding
Internet-service providers (ISPs) from prioritizing different kinds of
Internet traffic.

The real issue, beyond this "net neutrality," is the Federal Communications
Commission's manufacture of authority to regulate the Internet despite
clear congressional instruction that the Internet remain unregulated. In
2014, courts struck down the FCC's 2010 self-aggrandizement under the 1934
Communications Act and 1996 Telecommunications Act, so the agency doubled
down by writing a new rule that equated the Internet with telephony.

That creative interpretation allowed the FCC to claim the sweeping
discretion it had used to manage the AT&T phone monopoly throughout the
20th century. Moreover, while the FCC touts the regulation as ensuring that
the Internet remains free of censorship, the rule impinges on the First
Amendment rights of Internet-service providers.

10. EPA's Cap-And-Trade

In October 2015, the EPA issued a carbon-emissions cap-and-trade
regulation, establishing for each state limits on carbon dioxide emission,
with four interim steps on the way to the final goal. EPA says that this
rule, too, is authorized by Section 111 of the Clean Air Act, but Congress
considered and rejected such a cap-and-trade program in 2009. Far from
being authorized by the Clean Air Act or lying in some zone of statutory
ambiguity, this massive new regulatory scheme contradicts the express will
of Congress.

That's Only The Beginning

It was obviously difficult to narrow that enumeration to just 10-and I
cheated by putting all the Obamacare shenanigans under one item. Some may
complain that I should've prioritized other kinds of executive actions,
whether regarding guns or transgender bathroom access or electricity
regulation. Others may prefer to invoke President Obama's decision not to
subject the Iran nuclear treaty to a Senate vote-aided by Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Bob Corker's naïve complicity-or engaging in the Bowe
Bergdahl prisoner swap without notifying Congress. Sadly, the possibilities
for this parlor game are nearly endless.

Then, of course, there's the administration's abysmal performance before
the Supreme Court, where its win percentage hovers around 45 percent (as
against a historical norm of 60-70 percent). The Justice Department has
even suffered nearly 50 unanimous losses, half again as many as under
George W. Bush or Bill Clinton. These cases have come in such disparate
areas as criminal procedure, religious liberty, property rights,
immigration, securities regulation, tax law, and the separation of powers.
They have nothing in common other than incredible assertions of federal
power. The government's arguments across this wide variety of cases would
essentially allow the executive branch to do whatever it wants without
constitutional restraint.

Are these really the kind of powers President Obama and his progressive
enablers would want their worst enemies to have? As my colleague Gene Healy
writes in the latest issue of Reason, "the very idea of 'President Trump'
seemed like a thought experiment a libertarian might have invented to get a
liberal friend to focus on the dangers of concentrated power. Now it's an
experiment we're going to run in real life, starting January 20, 2017."

If you live by executive action, you die by executive action-whether that
means reversing President Obama's policies or pocketing his constitutional
excesses for future use.