Everything's Up in Obama's America: Poverty, Taxes, Debt, and Gas Prices

Donald Lambro / Townhall Columnist

 

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama participated in a panel discussion this week about poverty in America, but failed to acknowledge the central reason why it has remained so high under his presidency.

And that reason has to do with anti-growth policies that have held back tens of millions of low income Americans, and destroyed entry level jobs that would help the poor get on the first rung of the economic ladder.

The Census Bureau, which gathers the nation's poverty data, said that more than 45 million Americans were stuck below the poverty line, according to figures released late last year.

This means that nearly 15 percent of all Americans live in poverty.

Obama never misses an opportunity to brag about how much better life in America is under his presidency, often cherry picking numbers that leave out other statistics that show how bad things really are in Obama's economy.

He can't do that with the poverty numbers we've seen under his administration. With a little more than a year and a half remaining in his presidency, poverty rates are much higher than the 12.3 percent level under his predecessor in 2006, before the Great Recession began.

You might think Obama would have reached one or two conclusions about why poverty remains so high under his presidency.

But he hasn't a clue, as he fully demonstrated during a panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University on Tuesday.

Consider his odd observation that racial segregation in America has since been replaced by "class segregation," a societal change that, he said, needs to be addressed.

That sounds very much like the class warfare themes Obama has demagogued throughout his two campaigns for president. But how can we lift the poor out of poverty? He didn't say.

Here's a sampling of Obama's muddled thinking about all this:

Obamacare Exchanges on Life Support

Michelle Malkin / Townhall Columnist

At a recent White House science fair celebrating inventors, a Girl Scout who helped design a Lego-powered page-turning device asked President Obama what he had ever thought up or prototyped. Stumbling for an answer, he replied:

"I came up with things like, you know, health care."

Ah, yes. "Health care." Remember when the president's signature Obamacare health insurance exchanges were going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread, the remote control, jogger strollers, Siri, the Keurig coffee maker, driverless cars and Legos all rolled into one?

The miraculous, efficient, cost-saving, innovative 21st-century government-run "marketplaces" were supposed to put the "affordable" in Obama's Affordable Care Act. Know-it-all bureaucrats were going to show private companies how to set up better websites (gigglesnort), implement better marketing and outreach (guffaw), provide superior customer service (belly laugh), and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse (LOLOLOL).

You will be shocked beyond belief, I'm sure, to learn that Obamacare exchanges across the country are instead bleeding money, seeking more taxpayer bailouts and turning everything they touch to chicken poop.

Wait, that's not fair to chicken poop, which can at least be composted.

The ISIS death fatwa
 

By Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch

 

A message from Pamela Geller: You know what happened in Garland, Texas. Two jihadists wanted to replicate and ramp up what happened in Paris, by murdering scores of patriotic Americans who were standing in defense of free speech. They were met with an utterly authentic response. The media has been waging jihad against the defenders […]

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NEWSMAX
Trey Gowdy: State Dept. Blocking Clinton Benghazi Testimony

The chairman of the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, said Thursday that he can't set a date for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to testify before his panel because the State Department has been slow in producing needed documents.                                                      

In a letter Thursday to Secretary of State John Kerry, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., complained that the department has delayed providing emails and other documents involving Clinton, a former secretary of state.

"Simply put, the committee must have the records of communication requested more than six months ago before the secretary's appearance can be scheduled," Gowdy wrote.

The State Department pushed back, saying the department has provided 300 emails from Clinton, 19 witnesses and more than 4,000 pages of documents from the initial State Department investigation.

The Benghazi committee "doesn't know how to take 'yes' for an answer," said State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach.

Gowdy had initially called for Clinton to testify next week on the attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, but he told Kerry that no longer appears possible.

Democrats have complained that Gowdy and other Republicans are drawing out the Benghazi hearings in order to disrupt Clinton's presidential campaign, but Gowdy said the State Department is to blame for any delays. The committee must have a complete record before lawmakers can effectively question Clinton, Gowdy said.

"The only thing standing between the committee and the former secretary being able to discuss her tenure as secretary of state as it relates to Libya and Benghazi is the Department of State's failure, in more than half a year, to produce a single, solitary email responsive to our request and subpoena," Gowdy wrote.

Gerlach called that claim inaccurate. In addition to the 300 Clinton emails, the committee has had at its disposal at least 40,000 pages of documents since August, he said.

To underline the seriousness of his complaint, Gowdy told Kerry that the committee has "shared it concerns" with lawmakers responsible for the agency's budget "in the event reprogramming" of some department spending is needed to ensure compliance with the committee's request.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, senior Democrat on the Benghazi panel, said Republicans were on "a fishing expedition for anything they can use against Secretary Clinton in her presidential campaign," adding that "every time they come back empty-handed, they extend their trip at taxpayer expense."

Cummings said the Benghazi committee has had Clinton's emails for months.

"This new claim that the department has not produced a single responsive document is completely baseless and appears to be yet another excuse to drag out Secretary Clinton's testimony until closer to the (2016) election," Cummings said.

SOUTH CAROLINA Democrats oppose legislation that would ban Islamic sharia law from state courts

Bare Naked Islam

 

Republican-sponsored anti-sharia legislation which would ensure that Islamic and other foreign laws are kept out of consideration by South Carolina courts is being stonewalled by Democrat panderers who seek to appease Muslim supremacists pushing hard to get sharia law recognized by American courts.

Post and Courier  A vote on the anti-Sharia law bill was postponed until Tuesday at the earliest after an hours-long debate over Charleston Republican Rep. Chip Limehouse’s proposal. Limehouse has said a law is needed to prevent radical Islamic beliefs from infiltrating state courts.

Democrats said the bill showed why the GOP was unfit to govern and why South Carolina is the butt of late-night television jokes. They accused Republicans of legislating off of Internet rumors.

 

Rep. James Smith, D-Columbia, called the bill “red meat” and “politics at its worst,” while Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, chastised Limehouse and others for having the wrong priorities.

Elibiary is a former Obama Homeland Security Senior Advisor

The Politicized False Narrative of Income Equality

Allen West / Townhall Columnist

 

We are starting to get into the 2016 election cycle already – after all, the 24 hour news cycle has to have something upon which to pontificate. Recent polls show that the top two issues concerning Americans are the economy/jobs and terrorism – which I classify as foreign policy/national security. However, in the world of political gimmickry the prevailing issue that liberal progressives wish to focus on is income equality. Their emphasis cannot be on the issue of record and concern for the American people. No, it must be on a made up, politicized false narrative of a grievance that serves to manipulate the populace purely for political gain.

This past weekend I was watching some of the NBA playoffs – especially since my hometown Atlanta Hawks have a shot at making it to the Eastern Conference finals. As I was watching the Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls game it hit me – what is the real issue of income equality?

Here I was, watching these ten fellas on the court--who are all millionaires--and just laughed, wondering if these are the ones the progressive socialists target with their inane class warfare rhetoric. I mean they are getting paid gross amounts of money to play a game and they get how many months off from work? Okay, some of you are going to tell me that they truly have no off season – they are constantly training. And just how long is a game? I do not think it is comparable to the small business owner who is struggling to make payroll and putting in some 60-70 hours a week, or more.

Now, I looked up the minimum starting salary in the NBA – the last scale I found, which was for the 2011-2012 season, put the starting rate at $490,180. And at 10+ years in the NBA, the minimum salary is $1,399,507. So, if you are able to make the cut and just sit on the bench for 10 years, role playing, you can make a lucrative career and become a millionaire – which I do not begrudge.

DHS caught busing in illegal Somalis from Mexican border

Immigration official: 'Asylum' is the new password

Leo Hohmann / WND Exclusive

 

DHS buses carry immigrants from the border to detention centers where they are processed, given a court date and released.

The U.S. is bringing in 100,000 Muslims every year through legal channels such as the United Nations refugee program and various visa programs, but new reports indicate a pipeline has been established through the southern border with the help of the federal agency whose job it is to protect the homeland.

They are coming from Somalia and other African nations, according to a Homeland Security official who was caught recently transporting a busload of Africans to a detention center near Victorville, California.

Somalia is the home base of al-Shabab, a designated foreign terrorist organization that slaughtered 147 Christians at a university in Kenya just last month. It executed another 67 at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2013, and has put out warnings that it will target malls in Canada and the U.S.

Dozens of Somali refugees in the U.S. have been arrested, charged and convicted of providing support to overseas terrorist organizations over the past few years.

Libya is also awash in Islamist terror following the death of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Christians on a Libyan beach in February.

So when Anita Fuentes of OpenYourEyesPeople.com posted a video of a U.S. Department of Homeland Security bus pulling into a Shell station in Victorville, on the night of May 7, admitting he had a busload of Somalis and other Africans who had crossed the southern border, it raised more than a few eyebrows among those concerned with illegal immigration and national security.

A man who appeared to be a Customs and Border Patrol agent was filmed at the gas station at 10:30 p.m. When questioned by Fuentes, he informed her that his large touring bus was full of Somalis and other Africans being transported to a nearby detention center.