Carve-outs and Exceptions

For those who have followed the Obamacare saga, you know of the many carve-outs and exceptions and waivers that the White House has created to benefit their favored friends.  How the law has become a patchwork of selective application and enforcement at the whim of the administration.

The Obama administration has now taken that one step further.  In seeking to stay an injunction against Obama's executive amnesty, the Justice Department has now formally requested that the judge carve-out and exception for Texas and let the amnesty apply to the other 49 states.

Dear Constitutional Scholar In Chief:  Could you please explain how this can in any way be constitutional?

January 20th, 2017 can't come soon enough.

Hat tip to Breitbart.

Patterico's response

Patterico has posted the following about the SOTU:

The GOP has entrusted me with the solemn responsibility of responding to the remarks of the President of the United States in his State of the Union address. My video response is below.

Well put, sir.  Sums it up nice and quick.  Accurate, too.

SOTU

As I get older, I learn to just avoid things that will be painful.  Call it the wisdom of experience.  One thing I avoid is the State of the Union speech - and that's no matter who is in the White House.

Luckily, there are folks out there to watch it for me and give me the after-action report.  From John Hayward over at Big Government:

By the time we hit the lame-duck phase of any two-term presidency, SOTU will inevitably feel like an aging rock band that keeps giving encores nobody asked for, the audience groaning and returning to their seats as each new tune tumbles from the dusty speakers. This is an especially acute problem for Barack Obama, who has essentially been giving the same speech since 2008, with minor topical modifications.

He’s still generous to a fault with other people’s money. He still has a very high opinion of himself, coupled with very thin skin. He remains confident that his supporters can’t remember anything he’s actually done as President, or how any of it worked out. His speechwriters are still cherry-picking out-of-context statistics to make his presidency seem less disappointing. He still over-promises and under-delivers. He’s still the little boy who screams about everyone else’s cookie-eating habits when he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Most importantly, President Obama has not lost faith in the magical power of his rhetoric. He thinks he can make problems including Yemen, Islamist terrorism, al-Qaeda, and his assorted scandals disappear by not talking about them. While he was busy trying to wish Vladimir Putin away to the cornfield, Russian and Ukrainian forces were exchanging fire. The regime Obama worked hard to install in Yemen is coming down in flames, to be replaced by some miserable combination of an Iranian satellite and an al-Qaeda fortress, but you’d never know it from Obama’s cheery blather about the glories of his “smart power.” By Obama standards, it’s a foreign-policy triumph that the evacuation of the last American from Sanaa wasn’t shown on a split-screen while he was patting himself on the back for his diplomatic skills.

Sounds like our Narcissist-in-Chief hasn't lost a step over the past six years.  It's still all about him and his view of how everything is wonderful thanks to The One.

This wouldn't be so bad if it was the 7th grade class president off on flights of delusion.  But this is the President of the United States of America.  Supposedly the most important man in the world.

From all reports, I saved myself pain and suffering by staying away from SOTU.  But I did enjoy Hayward's column.  You should read the whole thing yourself.

The Good...the Bad...and Three Branches

For your Sunday amusement:

Both stolen from Knowledge is Power.

Calling a spade

Senator Ted Cruz:

Lifted from 90 Miles From Tyranny

Obama and the March

Stolen from Powerline - a few graphics for your enjoyment:

Yes, the prime minister of Denmark...maybe Michelle had a say after their last encounter.
 

Back

Another break for the OC.  However, the deteriorating condition of the world lately has driven me back to the keyboard.  I know....each year of the Obama presidency we say "How could it get worse?" And The Man never lets us down.  He makes it worse.  Thank God Israel doesn't have a Jewish Obama in charge there.


Anyhow, from Andrew Klavan come these great words:

Fifty-six percent of American women voted for Obama’s reelection, for instance. And today, because of the president’s perfidious surrender of W’s Iraq victory (which closed down the “rape rooms” of Saddam Hussein) women in Iraq are being sold into slavery — sold into slavery — by the Islamist monsters who have taken up the power vacuum Obama left behind. But don’t worry, Iraqi slave ladies. American women have your back and are, even as you are being sold, taking to the streets to protest the fact that Hobby Lobby won’t pick up the check for some of their birth control.

Ramirez nails it again

If there's a better editorial cartoonist than Michale Ramirez out there, please let me know.  I was a huge fan of the work of Jeff MacNelly, and I guess still am even though he is gone from our presence.  Steve Kelley, now at Town Hall, is also great.  But no one comes close to the work of Ramirez.

Here he notes the common theme of the players in the Obama administration, starting with The One.

Too bad the MSM won't run with this.

Catch all of his work at Investors  Business Daily.

Pre-website Obamacare commentary

With more and more rubble of the Obamacare edifice gathering around us, it's time to go back a few months.  Before the October roll-out, Obama publicly went on the attack, blaming Fox News for the bad news on Obamacare.  Neil Cavuto gave a great shot back to The One - a video that we should all remember, replay and share:



Neil sums it up nicely.  Imagine what an updated version with all of the post-October blunders and fixes would sound like.

On the Oregon Trail

News today out of Oregon courtesy of Fox News:

Some applicants for health insurance in Oregon have begun receiving robocalls from that state's health exchange warning that they will be forced to seek coverage elsewhere if they don't receive confirmation of enrollment by Monday.

The Oregonian reports that the robocalls from Cover Oregon consist of a woman's voice saying "If you haven't heard from us by December 23, it is unlikely your application will be processed for January 1 insurance coverage. If you want to be sure you have insurance coverage starting January 1, you have other options."

The phone call goes on to say that applicants who don't receive confirmation will be able to get coverage from an insurance company or agent, but will not be eligible for tax credits.

So....we make the insurance more expensive, but promise to offset it with tax credits.  But then we have a failed system which means you can't avail yourself of the credits.  Which means you pay more, and for a policy that fits some bureaucratic standard, not your preference.

That's what you get when government tries to get into business.  When government knows best.

At least someone remembers Harry Truman:

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber vowed in November to enroll all Oregonians who needed individual insurance by January 1. In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this month, Kitzhaber said that the process had been slowed due to incomplete applications, some of which had come back unsigned. However, he added "I'm certainly willing to be held accountable for the fact that everybody who wanted coverage by January 1 is not going to get it."

So, when are Sebelius and Obama going to be held accountable?  Or is it still George Bush's fault?

It continues

More narcissism from the Mandela memorial:

"We can choose a world defined not by our differences—but by our common hopes." —Obama at Mandela's memorial service: pic.twitter.com/GQdSdMLl8h
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) December 11, 2013

Amazing how the whole world revolves around The One.  It's all about his image, his persona, his cult of personality.

H/T to Patterico for the image.

Fill in the blank

 Tomorrow we may go to multiple choice.

The problem with this kind of humor is that it comes very close to the truth about Obama's public statements.  (Sidebar thought -- it's tough to use the words "truth" and "Obama's public statements" in the same sentence).  Yesterday it was your health plan.  Or your doctor.  Which of these will be the next thing that Obama will seek to control and destroy.

In a hundred years, history may just record how mass hysteria/hypnosis caused America to select such an enemy to be our own elected leader.  That is, if this Republic lasts that long.

From Legal Insurrection - Branco Cartoon – For Keeps Sake

Monday Afternoon Humor

Stolen from various spots on the Interwebs, a combination of graphic humor and commentary.

The New N-Word is an O-Word

From The Daily Caller comes news from the linguistic front:

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry suggested the term “Obamacare” and the N-word are interchangeable, claiming both were “conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed to . . . render [a black man] inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.”
Harris-Perry opened her show Sunday morning with a sober monologue on President Obama’s push to rebrand his failing healthcare law:

HARRIS-PERRY: “I want to talk today about a controversial word. It’s a word that has been with us for years. And like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of American history. A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man, to render him inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.

“Y’all know the word that I’m talking about. Obamacare! That’s right! I said it and I’m not ashamed, and neither is President Obama!"

The unhinged rantings are amazing.  Yet the left believes this is what passes for normal thinking.

Read the whole story HERE.

H/T to Weasel Zippers for the pointer.

Mandela update

As an update to our prior post on Obama and Mandela:

The narcissism grows and grows.  The One keeps reading this own reviews.

Thanks to The Looking Spoon, and a H/T to Freedom Is Just Another Word.

Not the first time

Seems that the OC is a bit behind the times.  This is at least the second time this week that The One has interposed himself into the public memory of a noted figure.

Must be something to be so wonderful - and to know it's all about yourself.

It's all about The One

Nelson Mandela died today.  Grand talk about his impact on South Africa and the world.  All true.

But don't forget the associations with the Communist Party.  Don't forget about the terror tactics used by his African National Congress.

Finally, getting to our headline.

 

How else would a narcissist note the passing of a world-renowned leader? Yep, by posting a picture of himself.

Stolen from Knowledge is Power.

Post 1600

News is out on the future plans of Barack Obama.

No, we aren't talking about what to do with Obamacare.  Or Syria.  Or Iran.  Or Russia.  And not about North Korea, unemployment, stagnant wages, tepid economic results or national defense.

It turns out that Obama wants to transition from the most powerful man in the world, (though some say that's now Vladimir Putin), to host of SportsCenter.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

If you have any doubt as to how much of a sports junkie Barack Obama is, check in with the entertainment moguls who attended a private briefing with the president Nov. 26 before his speech at Jeffrey Katzenberg's DreamWorks Animation campus in Glendale.

At the end of the conversation -- which touched on a myriad of topics, from piracy to Iran -- Obama revealed what's at the top of his bucket list post-White House: "At least I know what I want to do when I retire … host ESPN SportsCenter's Top 10 list," Obama quipped as he turned to Disney's Robert Iger, whose empire includes ESPN.

 That day can't come soon enough.  Even the prospect of President Biden doesn't faze me.

Kickstarter for the White House

This video is a couple of months old, but it exemplifies the mindless Obamatron youth. Gotta play it a couple times to catch all the digs.




H/T to What If?

Oprah

While in the UK to promote her factually-inaccurate movie "The Butler", Oprah Winfrey decided to let the British people know a little bit about how things are here in the Colonies.  While on the BBC, Oprah blasted the American people.  According to her, the criticisms and falling poll numbers for Obama are the result of.....drum roll please.....racism.

Over at NRO Corner, Victor Davis Hanson takes apart Ms. Winfrey.  In part, he writes:

Aside from her historical ignorance, Oprah Winfrey has increasingly turned to the race card to explain the president’s plummeting polls. In her race-obsessed world, Syria, Benghazi, the NSA, IRS, AP, and ACA messes do not explain why a reelected president crashes from a recent 60 percent approval rating to less than 40 percent in less than a year.

Instead, in Oprah’s no-win, racialist world, to the degree that Obama is popular, Americans are considered for the time being as not racist; to the degree that he is not, the country suddenly is collectively under suspicion (e.g., “everybody’s thinking it”).

That Obama might be utterly inexperienced in the manner of Jimmy Carter, less than veracious in the manner of the impeached Bill Clinton, or suffering the same second-term blues of Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra or popularity crash of George W. Bush after Katrina simply cannot for Oprah be true of an African-American president, who for some reason must not suffer the same fate and treatment as almost all who have held the highest office. Instead, in this raciallyobsessed world of Oprah, that Obama is faring no different from his predecessors is now the country’s fault. And as remedy, he must be given deference if the country wishes to avoid the latest therapeutic rant from Oprah.

In fact, Oprah has no record of worrying about the level of disrespect shown the office. If she did, she might have said something a few years ago when her president was routinely being compared to a Nazi, and often by her own fellow celebrities, writers, politicians, civil-rights activists, and filmmakers. That she said nothing then, but now says a lot, explains not America’s problem with race, but her own race obsessions, which have blinded her to her own prejudices and hypocrisies.

Hanson calls it "The Moral Decline of Oprah".  I'll be a bit more direct.  It's the reverse racism of a privileged liberal who sees racism everywhere except in the mirror.

Read the whole NRO piece HERE.  And VDH has a regular column at PJ Media, Works and Days, which can be found HERE.