Epic Fail -Boehner And RINOs Cave, Join Dems to Push Through 'Clean' Debt Ceiling Increase

 


Republican Speaker John Boehner, and his allies in the House have made an astonishing and disgraceful retreat. After President Obama and congressional Democrats had said they weren't even open to discussing spending cuts in exchange for Republicans in the House agreeing to  raise the debt ceiling, Boehner  caved in and presented a 'clean' debt ceiling increase to the House for a vote.

Boehner and his allies in the GOP caucus originally were thinking about tacking on something modest like approval of the Keystone pipeline in exchange for the debt ceiling increase, but conservatives in the House appear to be tired of this game and wanted Boehner to insist that the White give up a lot more in exchange for raising the limits on the federal credit card.

So instead, the Speaker decided to throw in the towel, and he and Only 18 Republicans, many of them retiring after this term voted with the 200 House Democrats to push this through  and raise the debt ceiling without any quid pro quo.That essentially destroys the so-called 'Boehner rule' that pledged to quash any bills that didn't have the support of the majority of the Republican caucus. It also destroys his speakership, for all intents and purposes.

As a contrast, when the disgraceful House bill went to the Senate, it was Senator Ted Cruz who forced a vote to end cloture  by 60 votes before voting on  approval of the bill, thus forcing a lot of gutless GOP senators, some facing primary challenges out into the open. Once the vote for cloture was passed, approval was automatic since the Democrats control the Senate. And of course, some of the same Republican senators who voted to end cloture tried their usual trick and cast a cosmetic vote against the bill. But thanks to Ted Cruz, they were forced to out themselves.

President Obama and the Democrats weren't even willing to allow the GOP to add on a provision to reverse the veterans' benefits cuts that were in the Ryan-Murray budget deal. Remember that the next time our commander-in-chief mouths all those fine sounding platitudes in one of his interminable speeches about vets and the military.

Instead, the House will hold a largely cosmetic vote on this item separately, and will have to bargain hard with the White House to even have a chance of getting it through. Speaker Boehner is proposing
additional sequester cuts in 2024 as an opening gambit..otherwise know,  for those whom remember the old Popeye cartoons, an offer to pay Thursday for a hamburger today.

This really is the end of an era, when a GOP-led House would abdicate its constitutionally mandated power in such a craven fashion.It really is all about leadership and strategy, and Republican leadership that understood that  would have been bringing relevant bills  out almost weekly and forcing Democrats to vote against it, ready made campaign fodder for November. Instead, we get this cowardly, clueless headlong retreat.

As for John Boehner, it's the end of his speakership as well. The Obama Administration has no respect for him whatsoever, and neither does the majority of his caucus. If he had any real regard for the country and his party, he'd either resign as Speaker right now or at least announce his intention to resign, so the House could begin vetting someone to replace him. 

The reason Boehner even became Speaker in the first place  is because Republican conservatives and the Tea Party elected a House majority that they had every right to expect to represent those views.Instead, the man who began his tenure as Speaker by reading the Constitution on the House floor betrayed them, as well as the basic precepts of that document. Whether he did it intentionally or out of weakness and fear doesn't matter at this point.

Get you gone, Cataline, get you gone.

Obama Campaign Sues To Suppress The Military Vote

The Obama Administration has had a lot to say about voter ID laws 'suppressing people's votes', and Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice have engaged in widespread lawfare to try and keep those laws off the books.

Voter fraud, of course is a lot more widespread than they'd like us to realize, and they're depending on it to help them win this year's election.

As you might guess, the democrats are not really all that concerned about voter suppression. They just want the right votes suppressed,if you know what I mean.

One constituency they'd rather didn't vote at all is active duty military, who vote predominantly Republican when their votes actually get counted.

So the Democrats have actively been involved in suppressing those votes.

In 2010, Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice prior to the 2010 midterms engaged in a systematic campaign to encourage states to seek waivers not to comply with the Federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (the MOVE Act), which among other things mandated that ballots be in the hands of ourtroops overseas no less than 45 days prior to elections. in order to suppress the military vote. Congress found out in a subsequent investigation when it was too late to do anything about it that the worst offenders were states and counties run by Democrats. In fact, the Justice Department employee who was the chief contact person in encouraging jurisdictions not to comply with the law and seek waivers was actually promoted.

The pattern is repeating itself this year, as Mike Flynn over at Breitbart reports:

On July 17th, the Obama for America Campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Ohio Democratic Party filed suit in OH to strike down part of that state's law governing voting by members of the military. Their suit said that part of the law is "arbitrary" with "no discernible rational basis."

Currently, Ohio allows the public to vote early in-person up until the Friday before the election. Members of the military are given three extra days to do so. While the Democrats may see this as "arbitrary" and having "no discernible rational basis," I think it is entirely reasonable given the demands on servicemen and women's time and their obligations to their sworn duty.

Felons, illegal aliens, dead people and people too inept to score a photo ID even when they're given out free? That's the Democrat's preferred constituency, for very obvious reasons.

Active duty military? Not so much.

And every American whose either served in uniform or has a family member or someone close to them who has ought to outraged and vote accordingly.

President Obama loves the military when he can pose with them for photo-ops,or pound his chest and take credit for their achievements.

Just not when they vote.

Simply disgraceful.

AG Holder And The DOJ Strike A Blow To Help Voter Fraud

True to form, Attorney General Eric Holder has doubled down on his racist rant last December attacking voter ID laws.

The Department of Justice has blocked the new voter ID law in Texas, on the grounds it discriminates against Hispanics:

“Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver’s license or a personal identification card,” wrote Thomas Perez, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, in a letter to Keith Ingram, director of elections for the Texas Secretary of State.

Now, I wonder why the DOJ would claim that such a large proportion of Texas Hispanics lack these things. Could it be because a substantial part of the Hispanic population of Texas are there illegally? Say, 6% of the state's population as a whole, and almost 20% of the Hispanic population in Texas, according to the latest estimates?

Holder and the DOJ used the same strategy to block a voter ID law in South Carolina, saying the law discriminates against blacks.

The loophole they're using is in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, passed almost 50 years go. It requires 16 states or parts of states with a history of discrimination to receive federal “pre-clearance” on any changes to their voting laws. Sins of the fathers indeed.

This is the first time the Department of Justice has directly intervened to block voter-identification laws in nearly 20 years.The Texas law isn’t substantially different than the Georgia and Indiana voter ID laws, both of which have been in place more than five years.

In fact, the Supreme Court already ruled the Indiana law constitutional by a mere 6-3 majority. Texas and South Carolina are going to court to contest this, but it's uncertain whether the matter will come to trial before the 2012 elections.

Holder's assault on these laws is pretty simple to explain.President Obama is up for re-election, the Senate is at stake and for the Democrats voter fraud is the only way they have a shot at maintaining and turning out large enough 'majorities' in the large Democrat ruled urban machines like Chicago and Los Angeles to offset votes from other parts of Blue states, 'win' elections and stay in power.

Needless to say, the Democrats and their media allies aren't going to say that. So they cite two seriously flawed arguments to cover for it. The first one is that minorities, people who don't drive, are poor or whom are elderly are somehow discriminated against if they are made to obtain a photo ID.

The truth? A photo ID is free for the asking to the poor in every state, because it's a law in every state of the union that valid ID needs to be presented to any peace officer that asks to see it. In many cases, it's necessary for basic operations like obtaining a library card, opening a bank account or cashing a check at the local market. As for the elderly, most municipalities have transportation available for retirees and the elderly either in the form of taxi coupons, special buses or vans paid for by tax dollars.

Having never been working class themselves for the most part, the elites pushing this don't realize that a lot of people simply aren't interested in voting, or deliberately don't vote to keep themselves off the jury duty rolls to keep from losing a few days work they can ill afford to miss.

The second argument is that the problem of voter fraud is 'minimal', a problem that doesn't exist. There's even a demonstrably cooked 'study' or two to cite. Are they right?

First of all, 'minimal' is a subjective judgment, based on who's counting. For instance, in 2009 there were a total of 13,257 new cases of AIDS originating from heterosexual contact reported in the US. As a percentage of the US population, that works out to about .000043%, something most mathematicians would call negligible. However, the government spends millions of dollars each year promoting the safe sex message and urging condom use, and if you notice, the ads almost always feature heterosexual couples or females, who have an even lower incidence of AIDS from heterosexual contact then do males. Of course, if you or one of your loved ones is part of the statistic, it's tremendously important to you and if you were to ask someone from the Department of Health and Human Services, they'd undoubtedly tell you that even one case is too many and justifies the most stringent methods at prevention.

Since voter fraud is an infection of our democracy, shouldn't we be just as concerned about preventing it?

Actually, the incidents of voter fraud, particularly when it comes to fraudulent registration are rampant and easy to find with a simple internet search. And another item of interest is that the reported instances are a lot lower than they might be simply because elected officials and their appointees charged with enforcing the laws in these matters ( almost always Democrats) frequently refuse to investigate and prosecute.

An example I'm personally familiar with involves Bob Dornan, a long time conservative California Republican congressman whose district was redrawn by the Democrat majority in Sacramento. In 1996, Dornan was narrowly defeated for re-election by Democrat Loretta Sanchez by a mere 984 votes.

Congressman Dornan charged that there had been massive election fraud in his district involving non-citizens. He did his own investigation and was able to prove that that there were at least 1,789 illegal voters, and perhaps more. According to John Funds' book Stealing Elections, the INS did it's own investigation in 1996 into alleged voter fraud in California's Forty-sixth Congressional District and found that based on registrations that didn't match up: "4,023 illegal voters possibly cast ballots in the disputed election between Republican Robert Dornan and Democrat Loretta Sanchez." (p. 24).

The House Contested Elections Committee in the Spring of 1997 did a cursory investigation of its own and came up with proof that 547 non-citizens voted in Orange County and that 303 more had been registered to vote in the 46th District by Hermandad Nacional Mexicana, a non profit funded with government grants that actively registered non-citizens to vote and instructed them
on how to mark their absentee ballots.

So at the least, you could say that Dornan had a case and that this called for a thorough investigation by the Department of Justice.

The end result? Democrat Attorney General Janet Reno formally declined to investigate, based on her subjective judgment that 'not enough fraud occurred' to change the results and of course, possibly unseat a Democrat member of Congress.

Want more? One of the most recent well-publicized voter fraud cases occurred in the Washington State governor’s race in November 2004 in which Democrat Christine Gregoire allegedly defeated Republican Dino Rossi by just 129 votes after weeks of vote counting.

Later, the Washington State Superior Court found that 1,400 felons voted illegally, along with illegal votes cast by 53 dead people, two non-citizens and 27 double votes. Since Washington State doesn't have party voter registration, there was no way of proving exactly how they voted, so the judge ruled there was not enough proof to void the election. However, it's worth mentioning that almost all of the violations occurred in the Democrat stronghold of King County. You might remember that one,because it involved a number of voters claiming the address of the State Democrat party headquarters in Seattle their 'residence'. A similar tactic seems to have been used in this recent case in Wisconsin.

There are numerous other incidents I could cite. For instance, you could spend hours just reading about President Obama's old friends at ACORN.

The core of the problem stems from a really bad piece of legislation, passed,of course by a Democrat-dominated Congress. President Clinton's National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) known as the Motor-Voter law makes voter registration virtually automatic when you apply for a driver's license and called for distributing registration applications in state welfare offices. Under this law, the information supplied by the applicant for a license doubles as information for voter registration unless the applicant indicates that he/she doesn't want to be registered. It also has restrictions that prevent states from culling the rolls in a timely manner to eliminate dead people and people whom may no longer be residents in the area or whom have lost their voting rights due to felony convictions.

With several states now issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens, the voter registration rolls have become contaminated with a number of people who are not legally entitled to vote. There was a move in Congress to change the law to not include voter registration for non-citizens in 1998. It was narrowly defeated, with nearly every Democrat in Congress voting against, so let there be no mistake that to Democrats, illegal aliens are a constituency.

It's also worth mentioning that for illegal aliens, a voter registration card is one of the proofs of citizenship legally allowed to be used to help establish identity for the purposes of 'legal' employment. That and a social security card are all you need.

Not only that, but theres absolutely nothing to stop indigent 'rent-a voters' , illegal aliens or even campaign workers from being trucked by interested parties with access to voter registration data to states with no photo ID requirements and same day registration to vote early and often. Yes, in more than one case the dead have been found to have risen and voted Democrat!

And then, there's my own experience. When I drove my elderly mother to the polls in California to vote I stood in line next to her. After my mom finished signing in, the poll worker asked me my name, to which I responded jokingly 'Chauffeur'. My mom told the pol worker "That's my son", after which the poll worker responded "I'll mark him down as living at the same address' and handed me a ballot. I was not even asked for an ID. And yes, I gave it back to the poll worker.

There's another side to voter fraud that's particularly odious - vote suppression. Again, the chief culprits are Democrats and the chief victims military voters stationed overseas.

It's pretty well known that Al Gore and his team used technicalities and friendly Democrat appointed officials to disqualify the ballots of almost 2,000 members of our military serving overseas in the 2000 Florida presidential election.

What's less well known is that this process wasn't limited to Florida, and was so egregious by the 2008 election that Congress passed the Federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (the MOVE Act), which among other things mandated that ballots be in the hands of ourtroops overseas no less than 45 days prior to elections.

Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice prior to the 2010 midterms engaged in a systematic campaign to encourage states to seek waivers not to comply with the law and to suppress the military vote, a constituency that was perceived by them as largely Republican. Congress found out in a subsequent investigation when it was too late to do anything about it that the worst offenders were states and counties run by Democrats. In fact, the Justice Department employee who was the chief contact person in encouraging jurisdictions not to comply with the law and seek waivers was actually promoted.

Voter fraud 'minimal'? Again, I guess it depends on who's counting. And of course, who benefits.

AG Holder Declares War On Photo ID Voting Laws

In a speech in Texas today, Attorney General Eric Holder essentially declared war on new laws requiring a photo ID to vote.He claims the new laws, passed in Texas and a number of other states disenfranchise poor and minority voters...by which he essentially means blacks, Hispanics and convicted felons whose voting rights have been taken away.

Holder claimed these laws violate the 1965 Voting Rights Act and pledged that the Justice Department will oppose the law in Texas and a dozen other states vigorously.

Holder also spoke out against the new proposed map in Texas of new congressional districts, claiming they under-represent Hispanics. Under the new census,Texas gained 4 congressional seats and Holder's reasoning is that since they account for most of the population growth in that state, by rights the new districts should be drawn so that the new congress members are mostly Hispanic.

The naked partisanship, racism and hypocrisy present in Holder's remarks makes it difficult to believe that someone like this could actually be the nation's top law enforcement official.

What the new photo ID laws really discriminate against is voter fraud, particularly widespread in Blue States but not limited to them. You see, in order to get a state issued photo ID or driver's license, one needs to present a birth certificate or other proof of citizenship. Since illegal aliens are perceived by the Obama Administration as a Democrat constituency, the last thing someone like Eric Holder wants is for them be denied a vote over a silly issue like citizenship.

His argument about the need for a photo ID discriminating against 'the poor' is likewise fallacious. Virtually every state in the Union has a program allowing American citizens in financial need to obtain a state-issued photo ID free of charge.

Holder's blast at the proposed map of the new Texas congressional districts likewise reveals exactly what kind of man we have as attorney general. He claims to be fighting against what amounts to the redrawing of the new districts by the elected representatives of the people of Texas, but what he's really saying is that he wants the new districts gerrymandered on racial lines to insure more Hispanic congress members..who he assumes, with the benefit of voters whose actual identification and citizenship hasn't been checked will likewise be Democrats. It should also be noted that the census on which this is based likewise does not take citizenship or immigration status into account.

Underlying this argument of Holder's is the outright racism that assumes that 'only a Hispanic' should represent Hispanics. because of course, all non-Hispanics are inherently racist and thus incapable. This resembles a similar argument used for years by the majority of black social workers in California and elsewhere that kept orphaned or unwanted black children from being adopted by otherwise qualified and loving non-black families because 'they couldn't properly raise a black child'.

The Attorney General's pretense about caring about voting rights for all Americans might have a lot more credence if it wasn't for his enforcement of voter intimidation laws on racial lines, and for the systematic and despicable efforts by the Obama Department of Justice to deny votes to our military serving overseas.

But then, our serving military is perceived as a largely Republican constituency, and Holder would rather those voters were disenfranchised. After all, why enforce the laws he swore to uphold if there are some votes to be had? And others to be suppressed?

Such an attitude merits the deepest contempt towards a public official so obviously unfit to serve.

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Study: At Least 5,000 Non-Citizens Voted in The Last Colorado Election

I personally would guess the total was a lot higher.

A Colorado study that found as many as 5,000 non-citizens in the state took part in last year’s election, and it has gotten some attention from Republicans on the House Administration Committee.

Guess which party they voted for.

Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), the panel’s chairman, called the study “a disturbing wake-up call” that should cause every state to review its safeguards to prevent illegal voting.“We simply cannot have an electoral system that allows thousands of non-citizens to violate the law and vote in our elections. We must do more to protect the integrity of our electoral processes,” Harper added.

Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler testified before the panel the panel that his department’s study identified nearly 12,000 people who were not citizens but were still registered to vote in Colorado.

What Gessler's department did was to compare voter registration records with the state's driver's licenbse and state issued ID records.

“We know we have a problem here. We don’t know the size of it,” Gessler said . Colorado is apparently looking into a registration system that would allow asking that some people provide proof of their citizenship in writing.

I guarantee you that if they do that, Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice will come running and sue them to block it.

A better system would be to demand photo ID at the polling places. The Democrats have been fighting legislation like that for years.

If the problem is this bad in Colorado, imagine how bad it is in Texas, California and New Mexico.

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