What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Every 96 seconds Planned Parenthood ends a life. With the aid of 540.6 million taxpayer dollars.
From CNSNews “In its latest annual report, released in December, Planned Parenthood says it did 327,166 abortion procedures in the course of one year and 2,197 adoption referrals. That works out to approximately 149 abortions for each adoption referral.
The data comes from an accounting of “patient care” Planned Parenthood says its “affiliate health centers” did in the year that ran from Oct. 1, 2011 to Sept. 30, 2012.
Planned Parenthood says in it new annual report that it received a total of $540.6 million in government grants and reimbursements for the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2013. That accounted for almost 45 percent of the organization’s total revenue of $1,210.4. “
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2. The Benghazi transcripts further expose the lies from the Obama admin.
From FoxNews “Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.
Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief. “
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3. The justices voiced their doubts yesterday on some of the Obama admins claims relating to executive authority.
From TheNYTimes “In an extended argument that contained large doses of constitutional history and practical politics, the Supreme Court on Monday seemed skeptical of the Obama administration’s contention that it could bypass the Senate to appoint officials during short breaks in the Senate’s work.
Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared prepared to rein in the ability of presidents to make appointments without obtaining the Senate’s advice and consent by invoking the Constitution’s recess-appointments clause, which says “the president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate.”
“Justice Elena Kagan said the clause may be a “historic relic” from “the horse and buggy era,” when presidents needed the authority to fill vacancies because lawmakers were out of town and could not return on short notice. More recently, she said, presidents of both parties have used the appointment power “as a way to deal, not with congressional absence, but with congressional intransigence, with a Congress that simply does not want to approve appointments that the president thinks ought to be approved.”
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4. Obama deciding to bail out insurance companies will cost taxpayers up to a trillion dollars due to the rollout debacle. Affordable Care Act? I think not.
From TheWeeklyStandard “Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.
For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses. “
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5. Darryl Issa is saying the Obama admin is waging a war on guns, and like with Fast and Furious, using questionable methods.
From TheDailyCaller “California Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, accused the Obama administration of waging “a war on guns” after new reports of “rogue” sting operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) conducted during 2013.
Issa spoke to Fox News’ Shannon Bream Sunday about a report by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which claimed that ATF agents operating firearm stings in 6 separate cities “took advantage of the mentally ill, set up stings near churches and schools and made decisions which some claim actually increased crime in their neighborhoods.” Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to ATF Director Todd Jones this week to demand answers on the tactics and how often they’ve been used.”
“This is ‘Fast and Furious’ revisited,” he began, referencing the infamous gun-running operation that saw thousands of small arms fall into the hands of drug cartels. “You finally have a confirmed director, Todd Jones, who was supposed to clean up these operations. And instead — what you see in many of these cases — they’re continuing. They’re continuing to have this be what’s called a ‘rogue organization.’ But I think for the members of the ATF, I want to make sure I make one thing clear. The ATF never acts alone. The FBI and the U.S. attorneys in each of these areas — political appointees — they work hand in hand… This is the president, President Obama’s Department of Justice that continues to support these sting operations, these ‘rogue operations’ as they’re called, that lead to harm in communities.”
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Wandering Views 
The US government is the world’s leading promoter of abortion. It is also the world’s leading promoter of perversion. Russia, India and other more traditional countries are starting to complain.
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Would there even be a Planned Parenthood without the money it receives from the US government?
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I see in The Times-News where Obama is goingt make a speech on the economy in Raleigh Wednesday.
Things should start buzzing now.
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Maybe we should all buy stock in health insurance companies?
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Kudos to USA Today’s editorial:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2014/01/usa-today-urges-obama-to-grant-religious-freedom-the-wide-berth-it-deserves/
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You know my refrain by now … avoid insurance companies all together …. single payer.
Chris Hedges has become one of my favorite American socio-economic commentators. He’s almost as far left as me and views both parties in much the same way; enablers of the elites.
Here’s his take on Gov. Christie.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_trouble_with_chris_christie_20140112
And a nice column by Enrenreich (another author who has no time for either parties), author of Nickel and Dimed, on why its actually expensive to be poor and why mobility is difficult.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/it-is-expensive-to-be-poor/282979/
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HRW, the Ehrenreich article is excellent!
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