Obama didn’t exactly give amnesty to everyone.  He gave amnesty to a rather narrowly defined group of people low on anyone’s deportation list.  In doing so, he virtually eliminated any possibility of immigration reform during the rest of his term in office.

Some people have already figured this out. There are already loud protests from people who quickly figured out that they were left out of the deal.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2014/nov/21/protesters-both-sides-immigration-issue-turn-out-o/

When the president acknowledged that parents of DACAmented would not benefit from the new policies, the man cried out from the audience, apparently yelling in protest. According to members of the audience, the man was brought to tears and did not stop his protests until a security guard came over and quieted him after Obama addressed the interruption

We should have expected this. ObamaCare is an unmitigated disaster. His foreign policy is in meltdown. The economy still sucks after six years of failed stimulus programs.  Democrats suffered the worst mid-term election defeat in about 100 years. Obama is consistently wrong about everything. Days after he announced that global warming is a threat to national security, Buffalo, NY was buried under 8 feet of snow.  The sad reality is that Obama has numerous failures and zero accomplishments after six years in office.

In addition to setting off a constitutional crisis with Republicans, Obama didn’t actually do much for the illegal immigrants covered by this order. What exactly have they gained? They really weren’t in danger of being deported anytime soon.  Many of them have been here for years.  All they have really gained is the requirement to get a federal ID and the requirement to get a work permit. Once that happens they have to start paying taxes and they are no longer eligible for benefits. Nice!

Congress isn’t about to fund any of this.  This will make the ObamaCare rollout look smooth and organized. Many people currently celebrating will soon discover that they were better off with the status quo. At least some of these people will wake up in a few months with an enormous Obama amnesty headache.

Obama violated his oath of office and set off a constitutional crisis to accomplish almost nothing. He did succeed in creating a huge additional problem. Misinformed people will now flood our borders in search of the Holy Grail of amnesty. All over Mexico and South America people are gathering up their things and heading to America. This is unlikely to end well.

So, instead of photo shopping Obama with the crown of an emperor, it might be more appropriate to picture him in a wooden chair with an Imperial Dunce cap.

TDM

President Obama delivered a little mini sermon, arrogantly sitting on his desk in the Oval Office, not even wearing a suit coat, bragging that he is going to fix immigration with Executive Orders.  He asked everyone to watch as he explains all this tomorrow night from Del Sol High school in Las Vegas high school.  I am not making this up. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Perhaps the President might want to check out what happened earlier this month in the socialist State of Oregon.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/14/didn-t-obama-hear-oregon-s-warning-shot-on-immigration.html

Oregon may be the most liberal state in the Union, but when voters got a chance to vote on giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses they didn’t say no, they said hell no. Governor John Kitzhaber signed Senate Bill 833 in May giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. That, by the way, is the same thing Democrats did in California. But 70,000 people in Oregon signed a petition called Measure 88 repealing Senate Bill 833.  Measure 88 passed 66% to 33% while liberal Democrats were getting re-elected to the Senate and the Governor’s mansion. This means even liberals have figured this out.

Supposedly smart people, like Jeb Bush, keep talking about how Republicans need to compromise on immigration to attract Hispanic voters.  Earth to the Republican establishment you have been trying this approach for years and it has never worked.  But there are places where Republicans are actually gaining support among Hispanic voters.  How about Texas for example?  Republicans got 40% of the Hispanic vote in Texas and not one would describe Rick Perry, Ted Cruz or Greg Abbot as pro-illegal immigration.  Standing up for traditional conservative values works.  Embracing failed Democratic policies has never worked and never will work.  This is also incredibly insulting to Hispanics. It is naïve to assume that Hispanics who worked hard to get here legally are enthusiastic about letting millions of illegal immigrants get in for free.

When Obama sat on his desk this morning he probably intended to thumb his nose at Republicans. He succeeded in doing that, but he also insulted a huge percentage of the voting public. Every poll shows a majority of voters are angry about this.  With this latest stunt, Obama risks turning anger into outrage. Do we really want to risk finding out what happens to this country if people lose faith in our system of democracy.

Senator Tom Coburn bluntly warned about this today:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/19/usa-today-capital-download-with-tom-coburn/19263969/

I hope he is wrong, but fear he is right. If people stop believing in the system, what is the alternative? Democrats were voted out of power yet Obama just ignores that. It is time for Republicans to stop worrying about what happens if they take on Obama and start worrying about what happens if they don’t. It is quite simple.  If Obama is violating the constitution and usurping power, then stop him. If he isn’t, then shut up.

TDM

The following New York Times article reveals an ugly truth that should be equally troubling to both Democrats and Republicans.  For decades we have heard about how evil Republicans were totally in cahoots with big business while ignoring the plight of the little guy.  Liberals were right about politicians cutting deals with big business to rip off the little guy.  They just got the wrong political party.  Democrats, under the guidance of Obama, apparently cut a deal with the health insurance industry resulting in massive profits for them while sticking the little guy with outrageous premiums and unaffordable deductibles.

If you are a Liberal you should ask yourself a very important question.  Why were the health insurance companies demonized by Obama so willing to accept ObamaCare? The obvious answer is that they knew that he was lying.  He had no plans to stop health insurance companies from excessive profits.  Instead, he was guaranteeing them.  This just may be the worst rip-off in our nation’s history.

Not just millions, not just billions, but tens of billions in tax payer’s dollars were funneled to the health insurance industry.  Obama wasn’t just lying to stupid Republicans; he was lying to Democrats too.  At the same time he was arrogantly blaming rising health care costs on the evil health insurance companies, he was secretly increasing both health care costs and health insurance company profits.  At least Conservatives knew that Obama was lying.  That was really obvious to anyone paying attention. But Liberals lapped this up big time.  They must be very proud.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/us/politics/health-law-turns-obama-and-insurers-into-allies.html?_r=0

“Insurers and the government have developed a symbiotic relationship, nurtured by tens of billions of dollars that flow from the federal Treasury to insurers each year,” said Michael F. Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.

I guess the question I have for liberals is this: “what would it take for you to realize there might be a problem?”

TDM

We will be very lucky to avoid a full-scale riot in Ferguson, Missouri and all across the country.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-warns-ferguson-decision-lead-violence-extremist-protesters/story?id=26980624

This is all the result of irresponsible behavior by people like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Eric Holder.  It is disgraceful.  There should be an indictment in Ferguson. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Eric Holder should all be indicted for inciting to riot.

The narrative generating outrage in Ferguson is based on deliberate lies and distortions.  They are not just lying about what happened to Michael Brown.  They are lying about a non-existent epidemic of white offices shooting unarmed black kids for no reason.  The facts are quite the opposite. The following CNN article, clearly designed to provide evidence of a problem, instead documents the lack of a problem:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/14/us/ferguson-police-involved-shootings-killings-data/

Police only used force in .04% of police calls and in 99.6% of those, the amount of force used was reasonable.  The “partial” federal study mentioned in this report reviewed 45 million police calls over the period from 1991 to 2000. CNN is concerned over the sparse amount of data, but 45 million police calls seem to be a pretty good sample.

Odds are that police are even more careful today with regard to excessive force, because just about everyone has a cell phone capable of taking videos. The FBI reports that there are about 400 “justifiable homicides” a year by law officers in the line of duty. Since there are over 765,000 police officers, this means that police shootings are extremely rare. But that did not stop CNN from publishing the follow quote as if this somehow has merit:

“I think there’s a (data) gap because people don’t recognize that this is an epidemic in the country,” said Meanes, who heads the nation’s oldest and largest group of African-American lawyers. “It”s not a black and white issue. It’s a blue issue.”

Pamela Means leads the National Bar Association’s “War on Police Brutality.”  She is targeting 25 cities and 25 states with open records requests investigating every case where an unarmed person was either killed or injured by police while in custody.  Yet the only two cases mentioned are Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.  If she had better cases, we would know all about them.

We cannot, we must not turn over our justice system to out-of-control mobs fueled by lying racists with an agenda. The people who will be hurt by this are not angry white cops; it will be the majority of black Americans who just want to live in a safe and security neighborhood just like everyone else.

There is a problem in Ferguson and in a lot of other places.  It is black on black violence.  People like Officer Wilson are not the source of the problem; they are part of the solution.

Why is the FBI predicting violence?  Because they know the grand jury is not going to indict Officer Wilson.  They know this because they know there is no evidence supporting the wild unfounded accusations by people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. This is so very sad and so unnecessary.  No one wants racist white cops shooting unarmed black kids or anyone else.  Oops.  I got part of that wrong. That is exactly what people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson want. They feed off black outrage and if it doesn’t exist in the real world, they will try and invent it.  It is long past time someone started standing up to them.

TDM

A lot of people have fond memories of those wonderful muscle cars built by Detroit in the late 60s and early 70s. Did you ever wonder what happened to them?  Why did car makers suddenly stop making them? It certainly wasn’t because they weren’t popular. We loved muscle cars then just like we love them now. Yet almost overnight Detroit stopped making them.

The answer is in the magic vehicle identification number or “VIN.”  While muscle cars were popular with young males they were not popular with the insurance industry, particularly when operated by young males. But there was a problem.  The insurance industry had difficulty verifying what engine was in a vehicle.  A Ford Mustang with an anemic six cylinder engine is a very different creature from one with a 351 Cleveland V8. I speak from experience.  It is also a very different insurance risk. So the insurance industry managed to lobby for a law that required all vehicles manufactured or sold in the United States to have a 13 digit VIN number and that VIN had to identify the engine size.  Once that happened, the insurance industry KNEW what engine was in a car and they adjusted pricing to reflect the risk.  Within a very short period of time people stopped buying muscle cars because it cost more to insure them then to buy them.

The point here is that congress didn’t ban muscle cars, they didn’t need to. The problem was solved with the VIN. Sometimes if you just identify the problem, it becomes much easier to fix the problem. President Obama is apparently planning on giving ID cards to illegal immigrants. He thinks that will make them all life-long Democrats totally dependent on the benevolent federal government. But what happens if we suddenly give millions of people currently living in the shadows an ID card that identifies them once and for all?

We all know there are millions of illegal aliens, but no one knows who they are. That is because there is a huge black market in fake identification documents. A company I worked for had a location raided by Immigration.  They discovered several illegal immigrants.  Yet, my company was at not risk of a fine, even though it was against the law to hire an illegal immigrant.  We had all of the proper documents on file.  It was just that none of the documents were real. We didn’t get fined because we were totally in compliance with the law.  By the way, we had to fire these people, but none of them were deported. They just found new jobs using the same fake documents. I fail to see how this raid benefited anyone.

So when you read about how President Obama is going to issue ID cards to every illegal immigrant and let them stay in the United States keep the VIN in mind. This may work out very different than he intends. Once everyone has an ID card what if congress passes a law making it against the law to hire an illegal immigrant without a valid work permit?  Any employer who violates the law has to pay a huge fine. Suddenly a whole lot of illegal immigrants find it impossible to get a job. We won’t have to deport them; they will reverse the migration process because the only point in coming to the U.S. is to get a job. Of we also have to stop giving them free stuff for not working. We don’t have to be mean and cruel about this.  We treat them with love,understanding and a free ticket back home.

Liberals, like Barack Obama, are wrong about everything.  What if they are wrong about this too? Liberals like to refer to illegal immigrants as undocumented.  So, document them and see what happens. If I were an illegal immigrant I would be terrified by Obama’s plan. Sometimes your worst enemy is the person pretending to be your best friend. In addition, do you know what happens to an illegal immigrant who becomes legal, gets a job and starts paying taxes? They morph into Republicans.

TDM

The only thing more disgusting then Barack Obama is the way he still manages to out maneuver the Republican leadership. They should all just shut up and refuse to speculate on what President Obama may or may not do.  They should remind the main stream media that President Obama himself has made public statements with regard to the limits on his authority to arbitrarily change immigration law.

Republicans must avoid being intimidated by irrational and potentially illegal threats from an incompetent President who was just trounced in an election. They should keep in mind that President Obama is famous for setting red lines that he then ignores. If he chooses to issue irresponsible and potentially illegal executive orders, they can deal with them.The most important thing for Republicans to do at this point is to refuse to let poor planning on Obama’s part constitute an emergency on their part.

I do not know what Obama will or will not do.  I do know that by responding to ridiculous threats Republicans are giving Obama more credit that he deserves. Republicans have an easy and obvious answer to anything Obama says or does. They should remind everyone that Democrats still control the Senate until January. Perhaps the media might want to ask current Majority Leader, Harry Reid, what he proposes to do if the President persists in taking action he himself has said would be illegal.

TDM

The new Senate in January 2015 will be very different from the Senate that voted for ObamaCare. We all know that Republicans will be in the majority and they will determine the rules.  That alone is a huge change.  But there is much more going on here. There has been an even bigger change in the makeup of Democrats in the Senate.

In January 2009 there were 58 Democrats and 2 Independents who voted for ObamaCare.  Not one Republicans voted for it. There are 29 Democratic Senators who voted for ObamaCare in 2009 missing from the next Senate. Not all of them were replaced by Republicans, but all are gone. If Mary Landrieu loses in the run-off election, that will make it an even 30. That means the new Senate will have either 43 or 44 Democratic Senators and a maximum of 15 of those will have survived voting for ObamaCare.

To understand how completely this changes things, let us reverse the numbers.  Of the 100 Senators in office in January, 83 of them did not vote for ObamaCare.  Everywhere you look the bodies of Democratic Senators litter the political landscape.  Some retired, some lost re-elections and three of them died in office.  Yet the Republican leadership remains largely intact. Of the six oldest members of the Senate, five are Republicans. I doubt that there has ever been a time in our nation’s history with such a massive change in political power.

I suspect that Harry Reid is going to find it difficult to push anything through this lame duck session of congress. He is going to find it impossible to push anything through in the new congress. The best he can hope for is to gobble up some crumbs Republicans offer to throw in his direction. Since he spent the last six years giving them the finger, I wouldn’t expect that to happen very often.

Change is coming at the speed of light and it is not limited to the Republican Party. No one really knows where this is headed, but we do know this.  The show of hands when the next Senate takes over will be very significant.

TDM

The Republican establishment is convinced that Republicans made two huge mistakes.  The first was when they shut down the government in a showdown with Bill Clinton.  The second was when they shut down the government in a showdown with Barack Obama.  In both cases the wiser heads said Republicans lost more than they gained. That is true, if the only measurement is the reporting by the main stream media.  But a closer looks reveals very different results.

The Clinton shutdown happened in 1995. Some “experts” have blamed the defeat of Bob Dole on this shutdown. However I remember that election and Bob Dole ran one of the worst campaigns in modern history. At times it was difficult to detect a pulse. When is the last time you heard someone say: “I really wish Bob Dole had won?” Exactly! The rest of the Republicans did quite well, in spite of Clinton’s re-election.  They only lost two seats in the House, maintained the majority and actually gained two Senate seats.  In addition, the shutdown resulted in the 1997 balanced budget agreement. For the next four years Bill Clinton signed a balanced budget.  Hillary Clinton is campaigning today on the balanced budgets signed by Bill Clinton.  But those budgets only happened because Republicans literally made Clinton do it. Incredibly the main stream media gave Clinton the credit for doing something Republicans forced him to do under protest.

Once again the conventional wisdom is that shutting down the government last fall was a huge mistake. However a lot of those new Republicans in congress got there with the promise to stop Obama. Is that a coincidence? At the time of the shutdown I literally texted Fox News and Brett Baer read my text on the air. I wrote that Democrats were the big losers because the shutdown forced them to go all in on ObamaCare. ObamaCare was already a problem for Democrats, but by allowing the government to be shutdown rather than to even consider any amendments, Democrats showed their true colors. Those Republicans who ran against ObamaCare are now awaiting their new offices in congress. Those establishment Republicans in supposed tight elections used opposition to ObamaCare to get back in the race.

It sure looks like the 2013 shutdown of the government was a major factor in the 2014 Republican wave.  It is quite simple. One of the reasons people are fed up with Republicans is that they don’t appear to be willing to pay the price to stop Obama. The government shutdown showed them that there are at least some Republicans with a spine and the voters just send congress a lot more of them.  The establishment Republicans only squeaked by when they promised to grow a spine too. Every Republican Governor who stood up to the liberal media and the public sector unions won election by big margins. Scot Walker, who the Democrats vowed to destroy and who the main stream media reported was in big trouble, won again, and again and again.

Republicans have a historic opportunity, unless they listen to the Republican establishment that remains terrified of criticism in the main stream media. Fortunately for all of us, Obama is stupidly making it nearly impossible for establishment Republicans to compromise with him on any issue. The Republican establishment is not all that smart, but the easiest strategy on earth is to just oppose Obama on everything. The odds of success using that strategy are extremely high.

TDM

If on this Veterans Day you happen to see a Vietnam Veteran, please be aware of something important. Vietnam Veterans were not exactly welcomed home during the anti-war protests. Instead, they were more likely to be attacked.  I was personally spit at by war protestors who called me a war criminal and a baby killer.  Around 1995 I won a nice jacket at a trade show, but didn’t like the logo. So my wife bought me a Vietnam Veteran patch and sewed it on the jack to hide the other logo. I actually debated whether I would even wear it.  Then one day while we were out shopping I felt a tug on my shoulder.  I looked down and there was an older woman. She looked me in the eye and said: “thank you for your service.”  I was absolutely stunned.  That was more than 25 years after I had returned from Vietnam and to the best of my knowledge it was the first time anyone ever thanked me for my service. Granted for much of that time period I wasn’t about to wear anything that would identify me as a Vietnam Veteran.

Thinks have changed a lot since then and it is no longer unusual to have someone do that. But keep this in mind.  At least now some of those naive anti-war protestors admit they were awful in the way Vietnam Veterans were treated. But just saying thanks for your service ignores the issue. Many Vietnam Veterans never experienced closure because they were never felt welcomed home. Almost any person who regularly works with Vietnam Veterans knows this.  That is why they don’t say thanks for your service, they say “welcome home.” It is still a work in progress. I remember the first time someone from the Vietnam Veterans of American said that to me. I was shocked. I suddenly realized that here was someone who really understood how I felt.  So, I have a simple request.  If you see a Vietnam Veteran on this Veterans Day go ahead and thank them for their service.  Then.do one more little thing.  Tell them “Welcome Home.”  It will mean more than you think.

TDM,

We are about to learn whether any Democrat currently in the Senate has residual elements of character.  Following is the alleged game plan of Harry Reid for the lame duck session of congress:

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/223289-reid-plots-final-days-in-power

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to confirm 50 of President Obama’s nominees and move an omnibus spending bill in a last hurrah before Democrats give up power in the Senate.

The nominees are part of a packed lame-duck schedule that Reid is furiously planning and that will be a topic at Friday’s White House lunch meeting between Obama and congressional leaders.

It has long been a tradition in this country for a peaceful and orderly transition of power. That is true even after a bitter election defeat.  It is the recognition that elections matter. That is what distinguishes us from the rest of the world.  But now we apparently have a Democratic leader in the Senate planning to poison the well as much as possible before leaving office. This should not surprise anyone, as it is consistent with the way Harry Reid has operated for the last 8 years.

Democrats would be wise to stand up to Obama and Harry Reid and put the country first. They should limit the lame duck session to that which is absolutely necessary and end the politicking now. But of course that would assume that Democrats are capable of putting the country first or of even recognizing common sense.

Obama is also threatening to ignore the election. He refuses to realize that this election was all about him and he lost. Republicans were prepared to govern responsibly and Obama slide into retirement. However, the combined arrogance of Harry Reid and Barack Obama risk pushing this country into a constitutional crisis that will be devastating for the country. If they do that, Republicans will have to go to war with them. Democrats are acting like political terrorists. You cannot negotiate with terrorists, because they never consider abiding by any rules. That, unfortunately, describes the current leadership of the Democratic Party.

War is the worst way to solve any problem. But sometimes it is the only way to solve a problem. The alternative is to sacrifice our liberty and our democracy. In any war, there are always casualties on each side. That will be true in this war too, which is why if you fight a war you must be willing to do whatever it takes to win. As Douglas McArthur said: “there is no substitute for victory.” If Harry Reid and Barack Obama take the action they are promising today, Republicans have a duty to stop them, without regard to the political cost. They have the power, thanks to this election to do exactly that. The only question is do they have the character and resolve required to do the necessary.

TDM