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News/Politics 2-20-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread.

Here’s a few to start.

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The next crisis saga has begun. Fiscal Armageddon or something. Across the board(govt) cuts.

Let’s face it, there’s plenty they could have reasonably cut from our bloated federal budget. They don’t mind the Defense cuts. Liberals like them. But since they weren’t willing to cut social programs, this is the result, everybody gets it. And one more thing to keep in mind. In many cases these so-called cuts are only cuts in proposed spending increases, NOT the actual existing budget. They just get less of an increase than they hoped for. Only in govt. is that considered a budget cut.

From Politico

“President Obama sought to sound the alarm on sequester cuts once again and blame Congress for failing to avert them as the clock ticks down on their implementation.

Starting next Friday, he said, the cuts will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs and excoriate the economy. They were never designed to happen, he said.

“This was all designed to say ‘We can’t do these bad cuts, we need to do something smarter,'” Obama said at a White House event.”

Hmmmm…… and yet you didn’t Mr. President. You were too busy with your anti-gun thing and amnesty. But now it’s a crisis, or something. 🙄

And you forgot to mention these cuts loom because you negotiated this deal, and signed it into law.

From HotAir

“Via Charlie Spiering and Guy Benson, whose headline is better than mine. WaPo’s right that this is all about preparing the ground spin-wise for the coming budget standoff with the GOP. The more alarmist O is now, the more pressure in theory there’ll be on Republicans to agree to anything — like new tax revenues — to avert the sequester, which, as you’re hopefully by now aware, was actually the White House’s idea initially and which O himself stood by as recently as late last year. In a more honest world, he would have used the troops and defense contractors as his backdrop here. But he doesn’t want to make defense his anti-cuts showpiece. His base loves the idea of shrinking the Pentagon’s budget; O himself likes it enough to have nominated Chuck Hagel to serve as his Republican rubber-stamp for the practice. So the “potted plants” du jour are first responders, whose budgets will supposedly end up being slashed to put a small dent in annual deficits because Democrats still aren’t ready to address the real driver of unsustainability, mandatory spending. To get a better sense of what that means big-picture, follow the link to Benson’s post and note the graph at the bottom. John Sexton remembers that the whole point of the sequester when it passed was to impose cuts so unpalatable to both sides that they’d surely agree to a grand bargain to avert them before those cuts took effect. The GOP agreed to tax hikes at New Year’s as part of the revenue side of that bargain. Where’s the Dems’ agreement on the (mandatory) spending side?”

That noise you hear is the crickets. It’s the same noise you hear when budgets are mentioned.

And so you don’t forget, these are the same cuts Obama promised to veto any attempts to change. 

From WeaselZippers

“Via CBS News (11/21/2011):

President Obama is promising to veto any effort to undo the automatic spending cuts that are set to take effect now that the congressional supercommittee has announced its failure to strike a deal to cut $1.2 trillion from the deficit over the next 10 years.

“Already some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts. My message to them is simple: No,” Mr. Obama said from the White House briefing room Monday evening. “I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending.”

“There will be no easy off ramps on this one.,” he added.””

A crisis of his and Senate Dems own making. And now they want to save us from it. How convenient. 🙄

Meanwhile, back in the real world, real companies are preparing for the worst, as are their workers.

From TheWashingtonTimes

“Hundreds of Pentagon-related companies large and  small are preparing to lay off thousands of employees as Congress takes a recess this week, so far unable to agree on how to undo automatic military spending cuts set to begin March 1.”

““The biggest killer for us last year was the uncertainty,” Mr.  Kapoor said. “Even if there’s an eleventh-hour deal made [on sequestration],  it’s probably going to kick the can down the road.””

Of course they will. They’re not real leaders, they just play one on TV.

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John McCain had his hands full trying to sell the Senate Immigration/Amnesty Plan to his constituents.

From Yahoo

“Also Tuesday, McCain hosted two town hall meetings in Arizona, during which he defended his immigration plan to upset residents concerned about border security. A bipartisan group of senators — including Arizona Republicans McCain and Jeff Flake — want assurances on border security as Congress weighs what could be the biggest changes to immigration law in nearly 30 years. Arizona is the only state with both of its senators working on immigration reform in Congress, a sign of the state’s widely debated border security issues.”

“During a heated town hall gathering in the Phoenix suburb of Sun Lakes, McCain said the border near Yuma is largely secure, but he said smugglers are using the border near Tucson to pump drugs into Phoenix. He said immigration reform should be contingent on better border security that must rely largely on technology able to detect border crossings.”

Good luck convincing them they should believe you, and not their lyin’ eyes John.

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And lastly, never underestimate good ol’ fashioned American ingenuity. Liberals will absolutely hate it. Bonus! 🙂

From TheWashingtonPost

“Twenty minutes into his State of the Union address last week, President Obama entered the realm of uber-geekery — three-dimensional printing. The magical devices capable of printing prosthetics, violins and even aircraft parts have the potential, the president said, “to revolutionize the way we make almost everything.”

Forty miles away from the Capitol, in Glen Burnie, Md., Travis Lerol is proving Obama’s point — with guns.

In a spare bedroom, where an AR-15 rifle leans against the wall, Lerol is using a 3-D printer no larger than an espresso machine to make plastic rifle parts and ammunition magazines in between tea sets and chess pieces. The parts print, layer over layer, creating objects like an ink-jet printer etches words.”

“Three-dimensional printers offer a potentially easy way around restrictions and registrations — a source of growing consternation among gun-control advocates and some allies in Congress.”

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21 thoughts on “News/Politics 2-20-13”

  4. Ha! I posted her story a week or so ago. But at that point, they only knew she voted twice, absentee, and in person.

    And remember folks, Voter ID is racist. You’re just trying to disenfranchise her or something. After all, vote fraud is a myth, it never happens. Dems said so, and they wouldn’t lie, would they?

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  5. This story really is alarming (though I’m not hearing a lot of alarm from many quarters; I just saw it last night, missed it when AJ posted it earlier — it hasn’t apparently received much attention in the interim, has it?).

    Voter ID has been implemented in nearly every western democracy except in the U.S.

    Really, people on both sides of the aisle should have an abiding interest in making sure that our election process isn’t corrupted. We should all agree to having prudent safeguards in place.

    There will always be some amount of fraud, but the fact that this woman — a poll worker, no less — is so cavalier about the notion of voting more than once leaves me speechless.

    And it’s rather interesting, too, that the charge is always leveled against the Republicans. I remember before the last election hearing Dems say that if Romney won it would be a stolen election.

    Well, the incumbent won. And I didn’t hear any conservative (of any prominence anyway) accusing the left of “stealing” the election.

    This story now gives me a little bit of pause. How many “frequent voters” actually did show up for Obama?

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  6. As my kids in South Central LA said, “You’re a liar and your breath stinks!”

    Have you noticed that when Democratic vote fraud is shown your Dem friends just wave it off? The truth is not in them.

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  7. Donna,

    Here’s the one I posted on the 11th.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/340174/voter-fraud-never-happens-keeps-coming-back-john-fund

    “Well, lightning is suddenly all over Cincinnati, Ohio. The Hamilton County Board of Elections is investigating 19 possible cases of alleged voter fraud that occurred when Ohio was a focal point of the 2012 presidential election. A total of 19 voters and nine witnesses are part of the probe.

    Democrat Melowese Richardson has been an official poll worker for the last quarter century and registered thousands of people to vote last year. She candidly admitted to Cincinnati’s Channel 9 this week that she voted twice in the last election.”

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  11. here we go

    Jesse Jackson Jr. pleads guilty in campaign case
    February 20, 2013 10:24 AM

    Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/jesse-151258-pleads-campaign.html#ixzz2LSlCJg94

    Nothing new here, it is just another Dem in trouble.. Also remember his father set the example for his behavior. The non-rev Jesse Jackson was caught using his Charity Company money to pay off a woman he had an affair with which produce a child. An nothing happen to him, so little Jr. figure if daddy can get away with it why not me.

    Here is another sad part to his story he knew he was going to jail in November, the people in his district knew he was going to jail , but still voted him back into office.. What does that tell us of the voter in his district?

    ‘

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  12. Alot,

    None of it good. Same attitude in Cincinati, Cleveland, Philly, you name it. Any city where Dems are in charge. That’s why they’re always the first to attack Voter ID. They benefit from the fraud, they put it in place, and they must protect it.

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  14. It is no shocker the DHS is being used in such a fashion, remeber the email a few years ago in which anyone who is a Christian, Pro-Life, Pro-marriage is consider a home grown terroist.

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  15. US voter fraud is simple to generalize. The Democrats encourage as much voting as possible and the Republicans try to discourage voting. Hence the Democrats error on the side of too much voting whereas the Republicans will err on the side of denying the vote.

    DHS — bureaucracy run amok. Any time security concerns become paramount we have a problem. DHS and the Cdn equilivant also target environmentalist and other socially active groups. Essentially if you choose to be active outside the ruling party(ies) you will be targeted. Now stop paying attention and watch television and everything will be okay……..

    Rickyweaver — you mentioned the error of Big Pharma and the Bush era pharma plan yesterday. Obama and Bush made the same error — they “reformed” health care to the benefit of insurance companies. When you have a gov’t plan that refuses to take advantage of bulk purchasing you have a problem. The Ontario gov’t is the largest buyer of drugs in North America and demands a discount — thus the cheapest drugs are in Ontario. The US gov’t should be doing the same. Both Bush and Obama revealed themselves as corporate lackeys in their “reform”

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  17. Dear HRW,

    Most Republicans want those who are legally able to vote to do so. We are for reasonable limitations or cut-offs on when changes of voter rolls can be done. We are for responsible voter ID. Since DMVs are set up to finger print, photo and send out ID cards that are hard to counter-fit they seem to be the cheapest, best arm of the state to do voter IDs. A simple internet connection should be able to send an ID picture to most polling places.

    Remember, our SCOTUS has already come down on the side of “one man, one vote.”

    Why would anyone find a problem with this?

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