Vote breakdown: How lawmakers voted on the budget deal

SENATORS:
Voting yes were 52 Democrats, 27 Republicans and 2 independents.
Voting no were 0 Democrats and 18 Republicans.


HOUSE MEMBERS:
Voting yes were 198 Democrats and 87 Republicans. Voting no were 0 Democrats and 144 Republicans.

Todd Starnes: American taxpayers betrayed by chicken-hearted RINOs

American taxpayers have once again been trampled by establishment Republicans – a thundering herd of chicken-hearted Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) galloping to the Left.
The debt ceiling deal struck between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is a victory for President Obama and Democrats.
ObamaCare is still the law of the land. The government is still spending money it does not have. And thousands of government workers just got a two-week vacation courtesy of the taxpayers.
I’m sure we will hear establishment apologists calling the events of recent days a compromise. But seeing how the president refused to compromise, it’s more likely the Grand Old Party was the only one bending.
Establishment Republicans always talk about doing the right thing for the nation, no matter the price. But when push comes to shove, they always throw in the towel. And Wednesday, McConnell and his band of merry moderates heaved their towels in an epic demonstration of lily-livered cowardice.
But you’ve got to hand it to Sen. Ted Cruz for standing his ground. He held the line and ultimately paid the price. His good name was smeared by Democrats as well as McConnell’s band – most notably Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Bob Corker.
This band of bullies brushed aside Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment – the one about not speaking ill of any fellow Republican. If only the moderates debated Democrats with the same ferocity reserved for conservatives.
“The nastier they get, the more it demonstrates how scared they are of the American people holding every elected official accountable,” Cruz told me in a telephone call Wednesday afternoon. “It’s not surprising the Washington establishment pushes back. We knew when we took on the Washington establishment that it would fight back.”
Sen. Cruz told me Wednesday was not a good day for America.
“Today’s deal is a classic example of the Washington establishment turning a blind eye to the American people,” he said.  “It does nothing for all of the young people coming out of college right now who can’t find jobs because of ObamaCare. It does nothing for all the single parents forced into part time work who can’t feed their kids on 29 hours a week.”
The gentleman from Texas had nothing but praise for the House of Representatives. He said they held the line. They stood strong for the American people. The Senate is another matter.
“The outcome of this fight would have been very, very different if only Senate Republicans had made the decision to stand and fight alongside House Republicans,” he said. “That didn’t happen. That was the critical piece.”
Rush Limbaugh told his millions of listeners that the GOP has been hoodwinked.
“I have never seen a major political party simply occupy placeholders, as the Republican Party is doing,” he said on his national radio program.
“There hasn't been any opposition, not any serious opposition.  There may have been votes against this or that, votes against ObamaCare. There may have been votes against the stimulus, but in terms of a package of policies, a package of principled beliefs, of opposition expressed daily by party leaders against what's happening in this country, there hasn't been.
Wednesday’s  epic surrender was much like King Arthur in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” hollering, “Run away, run away.”
I can imagine the minstrel strumming a lyre in the middle of the Rotunda, warbling, “Brave McConnell ran away. When Obama reared his liberal head, he bravely turned his tail and fled. Yes, Brave Sir McConnell turned about and valiantly, he chickened out.”
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin took lawmakers from both political parties to task on her Facebook page.
“When life gives you lemons, at this point make margaritas,” she wrote in an essay titled, “Thanks a Lot for Caving, Politicians."
“Caving on debt could drive one to drink.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham still appears to be distressed that conservative lawmakers would actually follow through on their campaign promises and represent the interests of the people.
“This has been a very bad two weeks for the Republican brand,” he said.
What about the American brand, sir? Is anybody in Washington concerned about that?

Budget Cartoon

Activists resort to chaining themselves to buses, buildings to protest all deportations

Frustrated by a lack of progress in Congress on immigration legislation, activists are demanding President Obama stop deporting all illegal immigrants -- not just those who arrived here as children.
Only now, they're using new tactics, chaining themselves to buses, jails and federal buildings to persuade lawmakers to let them stay.
In Tucson, Ariz., on Friday, protesters chained themselves to three buses that were deporting illegal immigrants as part of Operation Streamline, a program that prosecutes or deports every illegal immigrant caught at the border. The program is meant to prevent the revolving door that encourages illegal immigrants to re-enter the U.S. hours or days after their initial arrest near the same location.
"No one really sees what happens once people are picked up and how families are separated," said a Phoenix protester. "This is something that happens every day, and it's our mission to keep up the pressure because we're already at too many deportations, and how much longer until the Obama administration does something about this immigration crisis?"
In Phoenix on Monday, 250 protesters also marched to the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, though the office was closed due to Columbus Day.
Obama has said he doesn't favor a so-called "blanket amnesty" through executive action, but has instructed immigration control agencies not to break up families. Border Patrol sources tell Fox News it's no surprise, then, they're now seeing entire families -- not just young men -- busting the border in hopes of staying in the U.S.
Opponents say the administration is sending the wrong message.
"I say it isn't enough to deport them all," said Brandy Baron of Remember1986.com, which staged a counter-protest in Phoenix. "They knew when they came here illegally, they knew when they came here we have laws, and laws have consequences."
The Phoenix march was just one incident that underscores the growing frustration of Hispanics and immigration reform advocates over the last few months. Congress appeared ready to pass a bill before the budget and debt-ceiling impasse took hold in Washington. Since then, all other legislation has come to a virtual standstill.
On Monday at the Eloy Detention Center, one of the country's largest immigration jails, protesters chained themselves together in the entryway.
“I’m doing this to show my brother and all the other people inside that we support them and we will do what it takes to get them out," 16-year-old Sandy Estrada of Phoenix told Not One More Deportation.  "I want the president to know that everyone deserves to be with their families and that he can stop our pain.”
Last week, Tucson police pepper-sprayed a crowd that had surrounded a pair of Border Patrol agents who took two illegal immigrants into custody after a traffic stop.
"President Obama is approaching 2 million deportations. That's an all-time record," said Phoenix protestor James Lyall of the ACLU. "So in addition to all the other stuff going on, this is something that affects our communities on a day-to-day basis."
Immigration officials tell Fox News they are prepared to handle the disruptions and will make changes in handling deportations to avoid confrontations.

Are you kidding me again?

Ex-ACORN operatives helping roll out ObamaCare

A group formed from the ruins of ACORN is hard at work signing people up for ObamaCare, and may be collecting taxpayer cash for their work despite Congress' efforts to cut the organization and its affiliates off from government funding, a watchdog group charged.
The United Labor Unions Council Local 100, a New Orleans-based nonprofit, announced last month it would take part in a multi-state "navigator" drive to help people enroll in President Obama's health care plan. The labor council was established by ACORN founder Wade Rathke after his larger group was broken up amid scandal in 2009 and banned from receiving taxpayer funds.
“At a time when our government has ceased functioning due to an appropriations gap, it is ironic that America’s tax dollars are being doled out to an entity whose poor stewardship of our funds was well-established by Congress,” said Dan Epstein, executive director of Cause of Action, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Washington.

Are you kidding me?

Crash-prone ObamaCare site also includes voter registration option

The federal website that enrolls Americans in ObamaCare also asks applicants if they want to register to vote, raising questions about why the Obama administration would further complicate an already crash-prone website.
Thirty six states are using the federal site – also called exchanges or market places -- to enroll customers in government-mandated health insurance.
At least four other states -- California, Connecticut, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin -- also are asking or intend to ask customers if they want to register to vote.
“The [website] launch has not gone well,” Nick Novak, a spokesman for the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, which noticed the voter-registration question on the Wisconsin site, told FoxNews.com on Monday. “Why are they cluttering up the site?”
Novak, who has unsuccessfully tried numerous times over the past week to click through the site, also argues officials should have at least posed the question after customers sign up for insurance.
However, government officials have defended putting the question on the exchanges, citing federal law.
Brian Cook, a spokesman for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in August the exchanges must include the question, under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. The law requires states to offer voter registration at government offices that provide public assistance.
Brett Healy, president of the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute, suggests that including the question could backfire on Democrats.
"The president should be careful what he wishes for,” he said. "While he counted on young people to win the presidency, many are now experiencing ObamaCare sticker shock."

Al Qaeda kingpin Abu Anas al-Libi belongs at Guantanamo, not in New York

U.S. Commandos scored a tactical victory against Al Qaeda by swooping into Libya and capturing Abu Anas al-Libi earlier this month, a former Bin Laden confidant and terror kingpin. Now President Obama must follow through with a strategic win.
That means extracting valuable intelligence from al-Libi, whose name literally means “the Libyan,” about his two decades of terror insider experience as an Al Qaeda computer expert and co-conspirator of plots against U.S. interests. Al-Libi is believed to have been involved in plots across Africa and the Middle East, including against our Kenya and Tanzania Embassies in 1998 which killed 224 people.
But getting that treasure trove of information depends on our strategy to pry it from a hardened warrior.
And so far, the Obama administration is failing us.
Here’s why:
Instead of whisking al-Libi to Guantanamo where he could be interrogated by the military and CIA for as long as it takes to get actionable intelligence – and then try him by military commission as an enemy combatant, Mr. Obama first decided to hold him aboard the amphibious transport ship USS San Antonio, and later try him in a New York federal courtroom.

Mr. Obama’s resistance is entirely based on politics, which he is putting above national security. Again.

First, let's look at the move to put him on the Navy ship.
While holding key terror suspects captured overseas on a Navy ship makes sense temporarily, therein lies the long term problem -- everybody knows it’s just a temporary landing place, including the detainee. Al-Libi has likely been inclined to bide his time and wait till he arrived in the United States to speak with a civilian lawyer.
Second, about justice.
Obama’s counter-terrorism strategy often resembles a hybrid of police work and war. Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a leader of Somalia’s Al Qaeda ally, Al Shabaab was captured in 2011 and held aboard a Navy ship for two months.  But then Obama ordered his transfer to federal court in New York where he would be afforded a full range of Constitutional Rights.
Ironically, Obama champions a concept that gives foreign enemy combatants trying to kill Americans, with generous legal protections designed by our Founding Fathers to protect Americans. 
What would George Washington would say?
Third, on the interrogations.
Let’s face it, al-Libi’s time on a ship likely didn't require much toughness. Mr. Obama banned coercive interrogation techniques within 48 hours of his January 2009 inauguration. -- Al-Libi could face rougher treatment from police departments across the country for robbing a liquor store.
Sure, he may decide to cooperate with investigators over a hamburger and fries. Some FBI agents have the knack of getting guys to reveal meaningful information via polite conversations, but that strategy can take considerable time as the interrogator-detainee form a tight bond. While that’s great to help prosecutors secure convictions in court, it could take years, and won't stop imminent attacks.
So what’s wrong with sending al-Libi to Guantanamo?
Actually, nothing. 
Mr. Obama’s resistance is entirely based on politics, which he is putting above national security.
Again.
Let’s understand that although Gitmo had a rocky start in 2002, it remains in the crosshairs of history’s largest propaganda campaign.
Left-leaning defense lawyers, so-called human rights activists, key media and politicians, both in the U.S. and overseas, worked tirelessly to convince the world that Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists at Gitmo were actually the victims. 
They conveniently ignore the fact that detainees collectively killed countless thousands of civilians worldwide, including on Sept. 11, 2001, in the mass-casualty bombings at our East African Embassies, at a Bali nightclub, and the Jakarta Marriott, and during Afghanistan’s civil war.
And with the exception of isolated incidents impacting a grand total of 1% of the total detainee population, the rest have been treated with kid gloves.
Gitmo and military commissions have played a vital role in defending America as we remain at war.
Just as we held Nazis as enemy combatants in 1943, we should continue holding Al Qaeda terrorists and affiliates in the same status.
Al-Libi should join them at Gitmo -- starting today.
J.D. Gordon is a retired Navy Commander who served as a Pentagon spokesman in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2005-09. He serves as senior adviser to several Washingtonbased think tanks.

 

Will this administration ever lose?

Will this administration ever lose?
History has several examples of political success that has occurred in different political environment, we know are fact.
The destruction of Russia by the advancement of the Society in the Red, White war—where the communist with abject brutality succeeded in killing more people at a greater rate than ever known in mankind’s history to dominate a nation. Then followed by the Communist destruction of China, where once again the barrel of a gun advanced the domination of a nation with abject destructive force.
Yet these are nothing to the success of the communist intrusion occurring in this nation—using guile and fraud—to advance this demented agenda to dominate this nation.
As an American observer, just one of the millions of citizens in this nation who are stunned what is occurring there is only one question that can be asked; why? Why is this nation surrendering to the dementia of communist, under the assault of the most incompetent individual ever elected to political office?
I’m not sure how many are sick and tired of watching ‘Boner aka Boehner’ hold a press conference, turn around, expose his backside, drop his draws, spread his cheeks and show us the latest dildo the Democrats have shoved up the cavity of the anatomy we identify as where the sun never shines. Is there ever a time he could possibly, just once, say we are standing on principle, and we are going to do whatever it takes—even if it means we shut this government down until this nation can have another election and replace this nihilist, even if it means three more years!
All we have to review is the latest catastrophe of the communist intrusion destroying American health care. Think of the reality. This absolute absurdity, advancing a concept that has never worked, can never work, and has no objective of providing health serving—only to give the government control of yet another segment of our economy…advancing the central planning agenda of communist domination…to government dictation. Often I can’t help but wonder if the government would have spent 1/10^th the effort on improving medical servicing, instead of advancing government communist central planning dictates, what we possibly could have today.
Why are those who should be in abject opposition to government domination, the Republican Party, acquiescent in accepting that communist medical servicing is inevitable? What irrational logic can possibly lead to such a conclusion? How demented in acknowledging reality that this concept has never worked, will never work, and is the most destructive ideology ever from the dementia of mental distortion ever known to man yet requires not modification, not application, not more time in application of this destruction; but the elimination of government having anything to do with being a player, or participant in the medical servicing of this nation’s health servicing!
How many examples are needed to realize that government intrusion into anything in society results in the only possible conclusion it can—abject failure. Using just this nation’s failures should be example enough. Look at the failures, we can list them: social security, never designed for anything security, and the farthest thing from social possible…but designed for one purpose and one purpose only…to reduce the communist infusion of money under Keynesian communist monetary policy—that did not work under Franklin Roosevelt any better than it is working under our current elected communist—to remove the same money being injected into the business environment, by a new tax—the tax of social security. Once again confirming that government intrusion into any segment of society, in any activity of that society, is doomed to the only result possible; abject failure.
Let’s take the next advancement of communist doctrine; the destruction of all wealth in the nation—replacing it with the dictates of government discretion of determining what the currency of the money in this nation is worth. Think of that little reality—the epitome of communism—done with absolute stealth, a nation so damn ignorant, they did not know it happened, understand what it meant, and are now subjects to economic domination of government that makes every communist nation on the face of this planet envious. This is the apex; the absolute domination of society, for government has usurped the power, to by their whim dictate the value of your life, your life’s effort and the accumulation of that effort over a lifetime. With this one action, the first three points of Marx’s ten point plan of communist domination was accomplished. So stealthy, without rejection, because of our nation’s citizen’s ignorance, they don’t even know it occurred.
Why is it that we as a nation, as the citizens don’t remember the communist actions that led to the beginning of the medical servicing insanity this nation is now experiencing? Who doesn’t remember the little beginning; the wage and price controls of communist intrusion in the Second World War. Where to circumvent the government dictates of wages, the concept of business provided health insurance was born. When the war was over, did the government then abstain from intrusion into health servicing, and allow the market system to work? No they did not. It is the curse of government that once its cancerous advancement occurs in any venue they choose—the society is condemned. Never, never in the history of man is there an example of government once intruding in anything ever backing off, unless forced to. And don’t use the prohibition as an example, for that was insanity at an unprecedented example.           
The result, not only did we continue the intrusion into medical servicing, they put it under the most devious form of government intervention ever conceived by man; the tax code. For if we use the tax code, by allowing the people, to reduce the tax burden by the expenses the people have—is that not the epitome of communist central planning? Of course it is. Sadly it occurs with the absolute stealth of society’s ignorance. Led like the sheep to the slaughter, never once stopping to think, to engage their collective mental processing to even acknowledge the domination of government over society.
The list goes on and on, finally reaching the absolute domination of the medical servicing itself. The goal the objective and the path our nation is currently on.
The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that there are two things one must know in order to survive. Simple really, know yourself, and know your enemy. IN this nation today we know neither of these. The citizens of this nation know not what type of government we have. Know nothing of the form of government, the concept we are a republic of laws, not the democracy of mob rule. Know nothing of the reality of man, that equal by definition can ever result in equality. That our nation, this wonder of the States united in America is so exceptional in concept there is no known comparative in the history of mankind. That the philosophical ideals of this nation are ‘the protection of the unalienable rights, those rights endowed by the laws of nature and nature’s God, to be protected and preserved by the actions—the dictates—of government. Not the domination of society as is presently occurring by the advancement of the dementia of the current communist intrusion.
We must know the enemy. Currently that enemy is the very government that is dictating to the people the domination of society, while destroying the very vestige of the wonder of this miracle of a nation.
Montesquieu the French philosopher identified long ago that society must have ‘mores, morals, and the religion of the people’ before civilization will flourish.
Today all of these foundations are under attack—some actually removed from our society—and we wonder why our society is more of a jungle than the society of man.
Our enemy is those who will destroy and dismantle this nation; they are communist. The longer this nation ignores that simple reality; the faster our acceleration to the darkness of the domination of government and the end of our society—this absolute wonder of a nation—based on such simplicity; liberty and the preservation of man’s freedom.