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Authors: David Limbaugh

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BOOK: The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic
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Then in March 2012, after the Senate had again defeated Obama’s beloved Dream Act the previous December, the Obama Department of Homeland Security proposed a new rule to make it easier for illegal immigrants who are immediate family members of American citizens to apply for permanent residency, which experts say could affect more than one million illegal immigrants. Republicans accused Obama of bypassing Congress again. “President Obama and his administration are bending long-established rules to grant backdoor amnesty to potentially millions of illegal immigrants,” observed Congressman Lamar Smith.
24
When Congress refused to pass Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill, including one of its provisions to create a $1.5 billion summer jobs fund, Obama would not be denied, and launched a summer jobs initiative to create 110,000 unpaid “volunteer jobs” that would supposedly help create 180,000 “work opportunities” in 2012. The administration also plans to create a “jobs bank” to facilitate more hiring of youth for summer jobs. Heralding the initiative, the White House declared, “Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of executive actions the Obama administration is taking to strengthen the economy and move the country forward because we can’t wait for Congress to act.”
25
The Obama administration’s federal interventionism and lawlessness knows no bounds. Consider these further examples:
* According to columnist Debra J. Saunders, Obama may have begun an undeclared war on states that are imposing the death penalty, using the Food and Drug Administration to withhold approval of drugs used to execute convicted killers.
26
* Obama plans to boost “gun safety” via executive order. He is exploring potential changes in gun laws that can be secured through executive action and has directed the attorney general to form working groups with “key stakeholders” to identify commonsense gun control measures “fully respecting Second Amendment rights.”
27
* Four-star general William Shelton testified at a classified congressional hearing that the White House pressured him into changing a political briefing to reflect support for a wireless project by Virginia satellite broadband company LightSquared, a Democrat-backed firm, despite the Pentagon’s concerns that the project could interfere with GPS.
28
LightSquared is owned by the Harbinger Capital hedge fund, which is led by billionaire investor Phil Falcone. According to the National Legal and Policy Center, after Falcone visited the White House and made large donations to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the FCC granted LightSquared “a highly unusual waiver that allows the company to build out a national 4G wireless network on the cheap.”
29
* The administration unilaterally implemented a new waiver plan that makes major changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, flagrantly thwarting the intent of the law and Congress.
30
The administration will grant waivers to states from the law’s requirement that schools become proficient in math and reading by 2014, provided they adopt education policy changes the administration deems necessary.
31
Heritage expert Mike Brownfield says Obama’s fiat amounts to “NCLB on steroids—ballooning the federal role in education.”
32
* At a “Jobs Council” meeting in October 2011, Obama pushed his advisors to approve stimulus projects “without additional congressional authorization.” He ordered them to “scour this report, identify all those areas in which we can act administratively without additional congressional authorization and just get it done.”
33
* Obama “recess-appointed”—when the Senate wasn’t actually in recess—three new members for his controversial National Labor Relations Board, ignoring pleas from Republicans that he respect the NLRB’s traditional bipartisanship.
34
* In the crucial swing state of Nevada, Obama announced one of his many schemes to help “responsible underwater homeowners” refinance their mortgages. This time, they won’t need an appraisal or a new full credit check, and “risk-based fees” will be eliminated. He had already announced up to one-year forbearance for homeowners who had lost their jobs.
35
* Obama announced a plan to initiate a taxpayer-funded stimulus through the student loan program he had earlier commandeered on behalf of the federal government. Loan repayment rules would be severely relaxed on the absurd theory that students would spend the money they saved and thereby stimulate the economy. In making this move, Obama ignored the staggering potential losses on individual loans that taxpayers will eat, as well as economists’ warnings of an impending college debt bubble that is pushing up tuition rates and jeopardizing credit markets.
36
* Obama’s senior appointees at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget ignored a document subpoena from the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations related to the Solyndra debacle.
37
This was part of a pattern of the administration defying congressional oversight; Obama’s attorney later told congressional investigators that the administration would not cooperate with a document subpoena on Solyndra because the request was allegedly driven by partisanship.
38
The Department of Homeland Security similarly snubbed GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa’s document demand concerning allegations of political interference with FOIA requests to the agency. Issa claims the DHS also instructed career employees not to search for the requested documents.
39
* Although federal employees are banned from soliciting money for an election while in any room or building occupied in the discharge of official duties, the White House produced a fundraising video, apparently in the Map Room, to offer Obama and Vice President Joe Biden as dinner guests for a raffle winner.
40
* Big Brother Obama approved a federal “anti-bullying” policy wherein Education Department officials have threatened school officials with legal action unless they monitor students’ lunchtime chat and even their Facebook posts for ideas and words deemed to be harassing of certain students.
41
* The pro-Israel group Z Street alleges in a lawsuit that an IRS agent said it might not be granted 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status because its position on Israel differs from the Obama administration’s official policies.
42
* Despite Obama’s repeated denunciations of the Bush administration for awarding no-bid contracts in the Middle East, under Obama’s watch the U.S. Agency for International Development awarded a no-bid, $266 million contract for a lucrative electricity project in southern Afghanistan.
43
* Obama’s closest allies have politicized completely inappropriate venues, such as the denunciation by Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett—with nary a peep from the leftwing ideologues of church/state separation—of congressional Republicans for blocking Obama’s jobs bill during a church service in Atlanta honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
44
* Obama’s EPA imposed an oppressive $75,000 per day fine on an Idaho couple after designating their property as “wetlands.” The Supreme Court rebuked the agency in a 9 - 0 decision for its high-handed and erroneous edict that the couple was not entitled to judicial review of the EPA’s compliance order, and allowed the suit to proceed.
45
Additionally, attorneys general from numerous states issued a memo detailing twenty-one violations of law committed by the Obama administration. The list includes, among others detailed in this book:
* The FCC’s regulation of the Internet in defiance of a court order;
* ObamaCare’s individual mandate;
* The EPA’s failure to comply with its own data standards, as revealed by the EPA inspector general;
* Without giving the state time to respond to the charge, the EPA included Texas in a regulation alleging that its air pollution affected a single air-quality monitor all the way in Granite City, Illinois;
* By enacting costly federal regulations, the EPA usurped Oklahoma’s authority in the Clean Air Act to determine its own plan for addressing emissions.
46
Crimes Against Liberty
set forth President Obama’s essential contempt for and rejection of America’s founding principles and much of its history preceding his presidency. While he professes allegiance to our Constitution, our free market economy, our military, and many of our cultural institutions, in office he has demonstrated an unmistakable disdain for all of them. While he holds himself out as a bipartisan conciliator willing to entertain all ideas, he has been more ideologically dogmatic, polarizing, and intentionally divisive than any president in history. While he wants the American people to regard him as a polished statesman who has brought dignity to his office, he has behaved as bully who, in the spirit of his community organizing mentor, Saul Alinsky, isolates, freezes, and demonizes his opponents rather than building a consensus with them. He has refused to accept accountability for his actions and still, preposterously, blames his predecessor George W. Bush for the havoc Obama has wrought on America.
While he would have us believe he is a quasi-messianic figure who will deliver us from despair, in fact, he has brought America to the brink of financial collapse. Instead of offering constructive solutions to our impending national bankruptcy, he goes back to the same, destructive tactics of scapegoating the so-called wealthy, and not only refuses to exercise leadership to navigate us out of our difficulties, but deliberately obstructs those who offer solutions that will work. While America’s financial house burns, Obama doesn’t merely fiddle, he pours on accelerants.
Unless we radically turn things around, stop our fiscal bleeding, implement policies to grow the economy and restructure entitlements, halt the systematic gutting of our military and national defenses, and stop attacks on our culture, our social fabric, and our religious liberties, America will indeed cease to be a shining city on a hill. But I am confident that the American people, as ardent lovers of liberty and of their country, will make their voices heard in November and replace President Obama with a president who can once again unshackle the American people and help lead us back to financial soundness, economic prosperity, and reliable national security, and restore a climate of liberty, including religious liberty, to this great and wonderful land.
CHAPTER ONE
THE WAR ON AMERICA
P
resident Obama has shown in both word and deed that he rejects America’s founding ideals, which is why he promised to fundamentally change this nation, and why he has embarked on a disturbing course to fulfill his promise. America’s greatness, for Obama, is not found in our freedom tradition and our protection of private property, rugged individualism, equal opportunity, merit-based achievement, and entrepreneurship. Instead, it depends on a hyperactive, benevolent government to stimulate the economy, initiate and control business activity, and distribute benefits and wealth to strive toward equality of outcome rather than of opportunity.
Obama has repeatedly laid out his vision for stimulating the economy, including in a Denver speech in October 2011 when he was promoting his latest “jobs bill.” He said, “So the truth is, the only way we can attack our economic challenges on the scale that’s necessary—the only way we can put hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, back to work—is if Congress is willing to cooperate with the executive branch and we are able to do some bold action, like passing the jobs bill.” The same day, in Washington, D.C., Congressman Paul Ryan articulated a competing vision, declaring, “The American Idea belongs to all of us…. What makes America exceptional—what gives life to the American Idea—is our dedication to the self-evident truth that we are all created equal, giving us equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that means opportunity.”
1
That outlook was once dominant in this nation. And it is still dominant among the people—but not in the Oval Office.
I’M SO SORRY
President Obama has continued to indulge his fondness for apologizing to foreigners for the United States. When coalition forces inadvertently burned copies of the Koran—which had apparently been defaced by prisoners using them to convey messages to each other—Taliban insurgents called on Afghans to kill foreign troops in revenge. The Koran burnings led to seven straight days of violent protest in which at least forty people were killed, including two American soldiers.
This was part of a pattern. The
Japan Times
reported, based on a WikiLeaks cable, that in the fall of 2009, Obama sought to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki personally, to apologize for the nuclear bombings of those cities. This was too much even for the Japanese; their vice foreign minister, Mitoji Yabunaka, dismissed the idea as a “non-starter,” insisting that “both governments must temper the public’s expectations on such issues” and that if such gestures are to be made, they should be done “without fanfare.”
4
But Obama—peculiarly—was hellbent on showing contrition whether Japan wanted it or not. After the Japanese rejected the idea of Obama himself visiting Hiroshima, the administration reached a notch down the government chain and in August 2010 sent Ambassador John V. Roos to the annual atomic bombing commemoration in Hiroshima. Never before had the United States sent an official to the ceremony,
5
having always defended the bombings because they shortened a war that Japan launched against the United States with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and because the bombings ultimately saved thousands of American and Japanese lives by obviating an American invasion of Japan.
6
Obama seems to think it’s customary diplomatic practice to apologize for his own country or belittle her in front of foreign audiences, even though his foreign counterparts seldom feel the need to reciprocate. On Veterans Day 2010, instead of extolling America and our armed services, Obama was in Indonesia celebrating its “Heroes Day,” lauding its veterans “who have sacrificed on behalf of this great country,” and criticizing Americans for distrusting Islam. While Obama often seems alienated from America, he took pains to show that his connection to Indonesia is deeply personal, telling his audience, “When my stepfather was a boy, he watched his own father and older brother leave home to fight and die in the struggle for Indonesian independence.”
7
In March 2011, Obama claimed that Republicans are heartlessly blocking “comprehensive immigration reform.” There was nothing new in his statement, except for one thing: he made it on foreign soil, in El Salvador, which has over 2 million people who live and work in the United States, 30 percent of whom do so illegally.
8
El Salvadoran officials declined to return the favor by apologizing for running their country so poorly that hundreds of thousands of their citizens have illegally moved to America.
Obama’s habit of smacking America in front of foreign audiences has apparently rubbed off on his confidants. One of his spiritual advisors, Jim Wallis, chose Britain as his venue to attack American greed and nationalism. At the Hope Forum UK, Wallis unleashed a vicious class-warfare attack on Fox News and the “right-wing media in America,” which he denounced as “a media that has an ideological point of view, that America is best and the rest of you don’t even count, that the rich are our salvation, and that when I say the 1% of the country has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent they say, ‘that’s a good thing, that’s a good thing, just keep feeding the rich and the poor with their little tin cups hoping the rich are good tippers—that’s a good thing for the economy.’”
9
With his spiritual counselor harboring this worldview, is it any wonder Obama has openly identified with the Occupy Wall Street Movement and its bogus “99 percent” mantra?
Of course, Obama’s prodigious criticism of America is by no means confined to foreign settings. On July 4, 2010, at a White House cookout attended by military personnel, he deviated from the ordinary presidential practice of celebrating our founding principles and instead delivered a mini-diatribe with class warfare and racial themes. He said, “We celebrate the principles that are timeless, tenets first declared by men of property and wealth but which gave rise to what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom in America—civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, and the rights of every American.”
10
There’s Obama’s view of the Founding Fathers: a group of rich and privileged elitists.
Obama’s comments, it should be noted, sound relatively mild compared to the views of Michelle Obama. In a 2010 speech to the NAACP, the first lady portrayed America as though it’s still dominated by Jim Crow-style inequality. “When so many of our children still attend crumbling schools, and a black child is still far more likely to go to prison than a white child … when African-American communities are still hit harder than just about anywhere by this economic downturn and so many families are just barely scraping by, I think the founders [of the NAACP] would tell us that now is not the time to rest on our laurels. When stubborn inequality still persists in education and health, in income and wealth, I think those founders would urge us to increase our intensity and to increase our discipline and our focus and keep fighting for a better future for our children and our grandchildren.”
11
President Obama doesn’t let the facts get in the way of his ideological pronouncements. In a speech to the Hispanic Caucus in September 2010, he was delighted to tell his audience that “Mexicans” were here in America long before the United States was even an idea—he was apparently unaware that Mexico gained independence decades after the United States did. Praising all those who have inhabited this “land of plenty” over the years—including the British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Mexicans, and “countless Indian tribes”—he declared that what eventually bound us together was “faith and fidelity to the shared values we all hold so dear.” He then began reciting the Declaration of Independence, but he conspicuously omitted the Declaration’s identification of who endowed men with unalienable rights—that is, “their Creator.”
12
Perhaps Obama considers the idea of a Creator to be insufficiently inclusive.
Obama sometimes seems incapable of restraining his urge to take irreverent swipes at America and American history. Even his picture book for children,
Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters
, contained an implied slap at America; in his choice of “13 famous Americans,” he included Sitting Bull, the Indian chief who defeated U.S. General George Custer at the battle of the Little Bighorn.
13
“ILL-CONCEIVED, ILL-CONCEALED CONTEMPT”
Obama’s presidency has seen its share of bad economic news. While immodestly taking credit for the occasional positive development, Obama tends to deflect negative economic news by blaming American business or the American people themselves.
At a September fundraiser in San Francisco, Obama shifted the blame to the entire American people, saying, “We have lost our ambition, our imagination, and our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge.”
15
Two days later, he declared that the United States “had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades. We need to get back on track.”
16
As if to prove he hadn’t misspoken, he used the occasion of the Asia-Pacific-Economic Cooperation summit in Hawaii to take another dig at Americans and American businesses. “We’ve been a little bit lazy, I think, over the last couple of decades,” he mused. “We’ve kind of taken for granted, well, people will want to come here and we aren’t out there hungry, selling America and trying to attract new business into America.”
Not only did this demonstrate Obama’s reflexive inclination to blame America; it was just plain false, illustrating that our president is woefully out of touch with American businesspeople. U.S. small businesses have made valiant efforts to attract foreign businesses to their communities throughout the United States. To the extent they’ve had difficulty, it is not their lack of industriousness, but the tax and regulatory obstacles that big government liberals have placed in their path, putting America at a comparative disadvantage, as described in chapter nine.
Columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer took exception to Obama’s gratuitous criticism, saying, “No one is asking him to go out there and to be a jingoistic cheerleader. But when you call your own country ‘lazy’ when you are abroad, and call it ‘unambitious and soft’ when you are home, I think what you are showing is not tough love, but ill-conceived, ill-concealed contempt.” Krauthammer also faulted the anti-business climate in the United States, rather than American laziness. “Look: Why are people reluctant to invest?” he asked. “We have the highest corporate tax rate in the world—in the industrialized world.” Krauthammer observed that the National Labor Relations Board tried “to shut down a $1 billion plant that was constructed as a favor to Obama union allies…. People look abroad and say, ‘this isn’t a place I want to do business.’ It’s his issues, his overregulation, over-taxation and all the red tape he has added. And now he blames Americans’ laziness? I think it’s unseemly.”
17
At a campaign event in November, Obama displayed his brand of “bipartisanship,” telling his supporters that Republican leaders, if left to their own devices, would ruin the United States as a land of opportunity—but that his daughters would thrive anyway. “Our kids are going to be fine. And I always tell Malia and Sasha, look, you guys, I don’t worry about you … they’re on a path that is going to be successful, even if the country as a whole is not successful.”
18
Uplifting sentiments for his children, perhaps, but for the nation he is supposed to lead?
ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA? YES, PLEASE!
“Unfiltered”? Al Jazeera is little more than a propaganda tool for the Emir of Qatar, who established and funds the network. Kayyem also took the opportunity to dutifully attack the Bush administration for trying to establish an alternative station to counter Al Jazeera “on the false assumption that the Arab world had little access to information from the outside world.” Kayyem whined that “then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used to verbally accost Al Jazeera’s war coverage as ‘vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.’”
BOOK: The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic
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