News/Politics

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News/Politics 9-23-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The barbarians within our gates.

From Politico  “With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President Obama is doing more than to knowingly enter a quagmire. He is doing more than play with the fates of two half-broken countries—Iraq and Syria—whose societies were gutted long before the Americans appeared on the horizon. Obama is stepping once again—and with understandably great reluctance—into the chaos of an entire civilization that has broken down.

 Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism—the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition—than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed. The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays—all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both in its military and atavistic forms. With the dubious exception of the antiquated monarchies and emirates of the Gulf—which for the moment are holding out against the tide of chaos—and possibly Tunisia, there is no recognizable legitimacy left in the Arab world.

Is it any surprise that, like the vermin that take over a ruined city, the heirs to this self-destroyed civilization should be the nihilistic thugs of the Islamic State? And that there is no one else who can clean up the vast mess we Arabs have made of our world but the Americans and Western countries?”

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2. And no, barbarians is not too strong a word to use in describing them.

From TheNYPost  “Islamic State barbarians are raping thousands of women in Iraq and Syria to mass-produce spawn who’ll follow in their vile footsteps, The Post has learned.

Young militants are running wild to the chagrin of their more sophisticated and p.r.-savvy commanders, an Iraqi official told The Post.

The motivation of the rapists is twofold: They want to make ISIS babies — and they are just plain out for twisted thrills.”

“Each rapist’s goal is to impregnate multiple women and breed children within their villages and towns, he said, adding, “They want to intertwine themselves within the communities.

“They want to become part of the fabric of the cities they control so they can live on for generations.””

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3. ISIS is concentrating recruiting efforts in places like Minnesota. Maybe law enforcement should be concentrating their efforts there too.  

From TheStarTribune  “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has zeroed in on Minnesota, home to the largest Somali population in the country, as a target-rich recruiting ground for fighters such as the boy on Facebook.

Federal investigators, as well as community leaders like Farah, say a sophisticated new wave of extremism is trying to sell disaffected youth on joining militant brigades in Syria and Iraq.

In recent months, about a dozen Minnesotans, mostly Somali-Americans, have slipped away to fight or aid known terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. Federal authorities confirmed one Minnesota man died last month while fighting for ISIL. A second ­Minnesotan reportedly was killed in the same battle. Federal agents have intercepted young Somalis at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. At least three young women — including a 19-year-old from St. Paul — left the state three weeks ago and are believed to be in Syria.

As director of Ka Joog, a Somali youth outreach program, Farah is outmaneuvered, outspent and is quickly losing ground in the propaganda war being fought in cyber space.”

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4. So how much did it cost the Obama admin to buy Lois Lerner’s silence? About $100,000 a year.

From Politico  “Employers won’t hire her. She’s been berated with epithets like “dirty Jew.” Federal agents have guarded her house because of death threats. And she’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending herself against accusations she orchestrated a coverup in a scandal that has come to represent everything Americans hate about the IRS.

Lois Lerner is toxic — and she knows it. But she refuses to recede into anonymity or beg for forgiveness for her role in the IRS tea party-targeting scandal.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Lerner said in her first press interview since the scandal broke 16 months ago. “I’m proud of my career and the job I did for this country.””

“Lerner wants to work to help pay for her defense bills, though a source working on the congressional investigation said she’s receiving a $100,000 annual pension. But while even Miller, fired by Obama in the wake of the scandal, has landed on his feet at a Washington-based consulting group, Lerner is still untouchable.”

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5. The “dirt” on Hillary.

From Yahoo  “The annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, an initiative of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation dedicated to addressing “global challenges,” is taking place in New York this week. The Republican National Committee marked the occasion by dumping a huge opposition research file on Clinton to reporters.

Titled “Clinton Confab Complications,” the research briefing declared, “As Clinton World Gathers In New York, Problems Loom Over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Campaign.” It highlighted several issues Republicans think can hurt Clinton, including her ties to “heads of state, business leaders, and actors” and alleged “conflicts of interest,” business dealings of some of her staffers, and potential progressive opposition to Clinton.

The GOP has previously used some of these same attacks on Clinton. This briefing makes clear that Republicans hope the separate points will contribute to an overall narrative that Clinton is ethically compromised and overly cozy with big business. The RNC is also clearly eager to capitalize on any potential dissatisfaction with Clinton among the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party.”

Seems like there’s a lot of dirt left to be dumped.

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6. The number of Ebola cases continue to climb and officials say it could get much, much worse.

From USAToday  “New estimates from the World Health Organization warn the number of Ebola cases could hit 21,000 in six weeks unless efforts to curb the outbreak are ramped up.

Since the first cases were reported six months ago, the tally of cases in West Africa has reached an estimated 5,800 illnesses. WHO officials say cases are continuing to increase exponentially and Ebola could sicken people for years to come without better control measures.

In recent weeks, health officials worldwide have stepped up efforts to provide aid but the virus is still spreading. There aren’t enough hospital beds, health workers or even soap and water in the hardest-hit West African countries: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.”

“The CDC calculations are based, in part, on assumptions that cases have been dramatically underreported. Other projections haven’t made the same kind of attempt to quantify illnesses that may have been missed in official counts.

CDC scientists conclude there may be as many as 21,000 reported and unreported cases in just those two countries as soon as the end of this month, according to a draft version of the report obtained by The Associated Press. They also predict that the two countries could have a staggering 550,000 to 1.4 million cases by late January.”

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News/Politics 9-22-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. 8 ways the most transparent administration ever is blocking information.

From TheAP  “The fight for access to public information has never been harder, Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee said recently at a joint meeting of the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers. The problem extends across the entire federal government and is now trickling down to state and local governments.

Here is Buzbee’s list of eight ways the Obama administration is making it hard for journalists to find information and cover the news:

1) As the United States ramps up its fight against Islamic militants, the public can’t see any of it. News organizations can’t shoot photos or video of bombers as they take off — there are no embeds. In fact, the administration won’t even say what country the S. bombers fly from.

2) The White House once fought to get cameramen, photographers and reporters into meetings the president had with foreign leaders overseas. That access has become much rarer. Think about the message that sends other nations about how the world’s leading democracy deals with the media:  Keep them out and let them use handout photos.”“

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2. Ummm…. make that 9.

Also from TheAP  “The federal government refuses to say whether prosecutors in Yuma, Arizona, have scaled back a years-old program that guarantees jail time for most immigrants caught crossing the border illegally and which law enforcement officials say is crucial to public safety.

Reports that federal prosecutors have stopped some prosecutions under Operation Streamline surfaced nearly two weeks ago when Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder seeking information on the status of the zero-tolerance program that circumvents the civil immigration system and lumps together months’ worth of criminal proceedings into one day for immigrants caught crossing the border illegally.

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot said in a letter to the senators that he had been informed that federal prosecutors in Yuma are no longer going after first offenders.

But the government has been completely silent on the issue. Public affairs officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection have all refused to answer questions about whether the program has been scaled back.”

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3. Oh wait….. 10.

From TheNYPost  “Three and a half months have come and gone and the Pentagon has offered no clarity on what happened to alleged Army deserter and Taliban collaborator Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Fellow soldiers and other critics fear the military’s now-delayed investigation is shaping up to be a whitewash.

The case has become a political powder keg for President Obama.

Since he traded five imprisoned Taliban leaders for Bergdahl, the US Government Accountability Office has declared the swap illegal, and nearly two dozen House Democrats have joined Republicans in officially condemning the move for making “Americans less safe.”

In addition, the Taliban deal appears to have encouraged the Islamic State to put up American hostages as trade bait to free other terrorist detainees, namely “Lady al Qaeda” Aafia Siddiqui.”

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4. So what is the Obama admin doing about this? Or aren’t we allowed to know that either?

From TheFreeBeacon  “Rep. Tim Bishop (D., N.Y.) warned during a recent speech that up to 40 radicalized U.S. citizens who have fought alongside the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL or ISIS) have already returned to the United States, where they could pose a terrorist threat.

Bishop claims that of the 100 or so Americans who have traveled to the Middle East to join ISIL’s ranks, some 40 have returned and are currently being surveilled by the FBI, according to his remarks, which were filmed and uploaded to YouTube last week.

“One of the concerns is the number of U.S. citizens who have left our country to go join up with ISIS,” Bishop said during the speech. “It is believed there have been some number up to 100 that have done that.”

“It is also believed that some 40 of those who left this country to join up with ISIS have now returned to our country,” Bishop said, eliciting shocked responses from some in the crowd.

These 40 individuals, Bishop said, “are under FBI attention and surveillance. So they are known and being tracked by the FBI.””

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5. Recovery huh? For the first time in 30 years more businesses are closing than are starting up.

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6. Here’s an interesting look into the differences in ideologies when it comes to teaching children.

From PewResearch  “As the public grows more politically polarized, differences between conservatives and liberals extend their long reach even to opinions about which qualities are important to teach children, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center.

People who express consistently conservative political attitudes across a range of issues are more likely than other ideological groups to rate teaching religious faith as especially important – and the least likely to say the same about teaching tolerance.

By contrast, people with consistent liberal opinions stand out for the high priority they give to teaching tolerance – and the low priority they attach to teaching religious faith and obedience.

These are among the key findings from a Pew Research Center survey conducted April 29-May 27 among 3,243 adults who are part of Pew Research’s new American Trends Panel, a nationally representative panel of randomly selected U.S. adults surveyed online and by mail. “

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by

News/Politics 9-19-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. So a guy with ZERO military experience thinks he’s qualified to make these decisions? They tried this in Vietnam. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

From NationalReview  “President Obama will take a hands-on approach to the United States airstrikes in Syria against the Islamic State and will personally sign off on bombing targets in the country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper reports that the president has put in place much stricter requirements for strikes in Syria – where the country’s ongoing civil war and President Bashar Assad’s government complicate the situation – than in Iraq, where the U.S. continues to carry out airstrikes. Officials told the Journal that President Obama views taking action in Syria as being similar to U.S. counterterrorism operations in countries such as Somalia or Yemen.”

He’s the most unqualified choice (as in most cases) to be making this type of decisions.

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2. That probably explains some of this.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Flashes of disagreement over how to fight the Islamic State are mounting between President Obama and U.S. military leaders, the latest sign of strain in what often has been an awkward and uneasy relationship.

Even as the administration has received congressional backing for its strategy, with the Senate voting Thursday to approve a plan to arm and train Syrian rebels, a series of military leaders have criticized the president’s approach against the Islamic State militant group.”

“The White House and Pentagon have scurried this week to insist there is no hint of dissent in the ranks, though in some cases their efforts have focused only more attention on the issue.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel tried to reassure the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that civilian and military leaders at the Pentagon were in “full alignment” and in “complete agreement with every component of the president’s strategy.””

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3. The CIA thinks his strategy, if you can call it that, is doomed to fail.

From HotAir  “I’m torn between thinking this is big news and thinking it’s so obvious that it doesn’t qualify as news at all. Show of hands: Who believes a war that’s been raging for three and a half years, with hundreds of thousands of people dead, between every degenerate Sunni and Shiite jihadi outfit in the Middle East is going to be won by a few thousand amateurs who’ve had a couple months of training from Uncle Sam?

We’ve got the 16 seed in this bracket, guys. Let’s bet what’s left of our foreign policy credibility on it, what do you say?

The opposition derives from a number of factors. First, the CIA has already been covertly equipping Syrian rebels at the instruction of the White House, but has come to find the fighters increasingly disorganized and radicalized as the conflict goes on, with U.S.-supplied arms winding up in the hands of more radical fighters…

“I have heard it expressed, outside of classified contexts, that what you heard from your intelligence sources is correct, because the CIA regards the effort as doomed to failure,” the congressman said in an email. “Specifically (again without referring to classified information), the CIA thinks that it is impossible to train and equip a force of pro-Western Syrian nationals that can fight and defeat Assad, al-Nusra and ISIS, regardless of whatever air support that force may receive.”

He added that, as the CIA sees it, the ramped-up backing of rebels is an expansion of a strategy that is already not working. “The CIA also believes that its previous assignment to accomplish this was basically a fool’s errand, and they are well aware of the fact that many of the arms that they provided ended up in the wrong hands,” the congressman said, echoing intelligence sources.”

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4. Gee I wonder why this isn’t getting more press? OK, not really….

From GatewayPundit  “Congressman Jason Chaffetz broke this shocking news Wednesday that four known terrorists were apprehended at the US border in Texas on September 10 – the day before the 13th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.

Chaffetz questioned Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on whether he is “aware of any apprehensions of suspected or known terrorists.”
Johnson dodged the question.

Tonight, Rep. Chaffetz told Megyn Kelly there were four terrorists arrested crossing the US border in Texas on September 10.

“There were actually four individuals trying to cross through the Texas border, who were apprehended at two different stations, that do have ties to known terrorist organizations in the Middle East.””

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5. This is disturbing for a lot of reasons.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Mysterious “interceptor” cellphone towers that can listen in someone’s phone call despite not being part of any phone networks have turned up near the White House and Senate.

A company that specializes in selling secure mobile phones discovered the existence of several of the towers in and around the nation’s capitol.

“It’s highly unlikely that federal law enforcement would be using mobile interceptors near the Senate,” ESD America CEO Les Goldsmith told the technology website Venture Beat on Thursday.

The towers are also capable of loading spyware onto a mobile device before passing off a victim’s call to a legitimate network. “My suspicion is that it is a foreign entity,” he told Venture Beat.”

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6. Not shocking. It seems the White House is exaggerating ObamaCare coverage gains.

From Forbes  “Glance at recent Obamacare headlines and you might think the healthcare law has turned out to be a smashing success, its initial glitches and legal foibles forgotten in the face of incontrovertible achievements.

The proof is supposedly in the data, and we’re told the latest data is a clear victory for the Affordable Care Act. “Another day, another survey showing that Obamacare is beginning to cure American’s uninsured problem,” led HuffPo’s coverage this week of two surveys showing a drop in the uninsured rate. “CDC: Uninsured rate now the lowest on record,” ran the headline at Vox, followed by the observation that, “This is, in part, a reflection of Obamacare.”

The surveys, one from the Centers for Disease Control and the other from the U.S. Census Bureau, do indeed show a declining uninsured rate nationwide. But as with so much of the data on Obamacare, they don’t really tell us much more than that. Considered in the light of other evidence, however, they do help illuminate the shell game surrounding Obamacare, whereby the administration and the media inflate the law’s achievements and hide its growing costs from American taxpayers.”

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by

News/Politics 9-18-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Eric Holder really doesn’t want those F and F documents made public. Gee, I wonder why? 🙄

From TownHall  “Back in July after a long FOIA lawsuit from government watchdog Judicial Watch, a federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to produce a detailed list or Vaughn Index of documents being withheld from Congress and the American people under President Obama’s executive privilege claim. A month later in August, a federal judge ordered DOJ to turn over a privilege log of withheld documents to the House Oversight Committee. Both orders were to be completed by October 1. 

Now, Attorney General Eric Holder is asking a federal judge to delay (again) an order requiring him to turn over thousands of Fast and Furious documents, not just a detailed list. More from POLITICO: 

Attorney General Eric Holder is again asking a federal court to delay the transfer of disputed documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious to a House committee.

In a new court filing Monday night, Justice Department lawyers asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson not to require Holder to turn over any of the roughly 64,000 pages of documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee until after her rulings can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.”

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2. Is Holder really the best person for this job? He cries racism at the drop of a hat. No doubt he finds what he wants to find, which of course will be racial bias.

From FoxNews  “Broadening its push to improve police relations with minorities, the Justice Department has enlisted a team of criminal justice researchers to study racial bias in law enforcement in five American cities and recommend strategies to address the problem nationally, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.

The police shooting last month of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri underscored the need for the long-planned initiative, Holder said in an interview with The Associated Press.

He said the three-year project could be a “silver lining” if it helps ease racial tensions and “pockets of distrust that show up between law enforcement and the communities that they serve.”

“What I saw in Ferguson confirmed for me that the need for such an effort was pretty clear,” Holder said.”

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3. No surprises here.

From HotAir  “No surprise to Hot Air readers, of course, but this allegation will come as a bombshell in a House hearing today on the VA scandal. This whistleblower claim will just be one of the issues that the Veteran Affairs committee will probe in the wait-list fraud that permeated the VA. Another will be the fact that the number of veteran deaths connected to those secret wait lists has skyrocketed from 40 to 293:

Our source, who works at VA headquarters and who spoke exclusively to CBS News, said officials inside the agency asked for a revision of the first draft. That’s standard practice, but in this case the source said it amounted to pressure on Inspector General Richard Griffin to add a line to water down the report.

“The organization was worried that the report was going to damn the organization,” the whistle-blower said. “And therefore it was important for them to introduce language that softened that blow.” …

But that conclusion, that no deaths were caused by delays, seemed to conflict with the rest of the report. For example: “28 instances of clinically significant delays” were found, including delays linked to six deaths. And findings indicated either “treatment” or “an appointment for this patient might have changed the outcome.””

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4. I still think this is a bad idea.

From TheHill  “The House overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant President Obama authority to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels waging war against Islamic extremists.

Despite vocal opposition from both war-weary liberals and defense hawks who feel the Syria plan should include more robust steps, majorities in both conferences voted 273-156 to back Obama’s plan to give military aid to vetted members of the Free Syrian Army.

The “yes” vote was made up of 159 Republicans and 114 Democrats; opposition was just as bipartisan, with 85 Democrats and 71 Republicans voting no. The Syria language was considered as an amendment to a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

A coalition of unusual bedfellows voted against the amendment, including Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Steve Stockman (Texas). Members on such opposite sides of the ideological spectrum rarely vote together on major issues.”

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5. Up from 12 to 17. It’s not “rare” anymore.

From KTUU2  “Enterovirus D68 is likely coming — if it hasn’t already — to a state near you. 

Since mid-August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 140 cases of respiratory illness caused by Enterovirus D68 in 16 states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

New Jersey also has confirmed a case of EV-D68, according to Donna Leusner, director of communications for the New Jersey Department of Health.

And “in the upcoming weeks, more states will have confirmed cases of EV-D68 infection,” the CDC said in a statement Wednesday.”

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6. Anybody shocked? Didn’t think so….

From TheFreeBeacon  “Federal taxpayer funds continue to flow to a slew of U.S. universities that are spending the cash on programs that promote anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American viewpoints, according to a large group of Jewish and civil rights organizations that are now pushing Congress to rectify what they call a systemic problem.

Taxpayer funds have been allocated to universities under Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA) since 1965. However, Congress and the Education Department have exerted little oversight, leading these funds to be spent on biased educational programs that promote radical views about Israel and even America, according to the groups.

Funding for anti-Israel programs at U.S. universities has fostered a culture of fear among the Jewish state’s supporters on campus and fueled a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents at many schools, the groups warned.”

“Title VI of the Higher Education Act directs federal dollars to support the intellectually corrupt field of Middle East studies, among the most politicized academic disciplines, filled with professors hostile to America, Israel, and the West,” Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, said in a statement. “American taxpayers should not fund programs that aim to weaken resolve and thwart policy.”

The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has been among the top abusers of federal funds, according to AMCHA, which published an in-depth study on the university’s federally funded anti-Israel programs.”

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News/Politics 9-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Stop, Drop, and Roll Barry!

Someone please grab the President and roll him around. His pants are on fire again.

From CNSNews  “President Obama promised that under his health care plan, “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,” but that’s just another broken promise, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, which indicates that public funding of abortion is happening on a large scale.

“This confirms what we have long suspected,” Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) said in a conference call with reporters on Monday.

Pitts and other Republicans asked the GAO to find out which taxpayer-subsidized plans in the Obamacare exchanges fund abortion and if consumers know about that coverage.

The report concluded that in 2014, more than a thousand federally subsidized Obamacare policies paid for abortion on demand, sometimes unbeknownst to policyholders. And in five states, every plan offered on the exchanges included abortion on demand, giving consumers no alternative, as required by law.”

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2. Who didn’t see this coming…..

Also from CNSNews  “The cost of the Obamacare subsidy that the U.S. Treasury will pay on behalf of people who earn under 400 percent of the federal poverty level and who buy a government-approved health-care plan on a government-run health-insurance exchange will increase by approximately 8-fold in its first ten years of operation, according to the latest budget estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Medicaid spending will double in the first ten years of full implementation of Obamacare, according to the CBO estimates.”

“In fiscal 2013, the year before the health insurance exchanges opened, the federal government spent $265 billion on Medicaid, according to CBO. This year, fiscal 2014, the first year that the exchanges will be in operation, the federal government will spend $305 billion on Medicaid. By 2023, the tenth year that the Obamacare exchanges will be in operation, Medicaid will cost the federal government $539 billion—more than double the $265 billion it cost in 2013.

By 2024, the last year in the CBO estimates, Medicaid spending will climb to $570 billion.”

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3. Epic Fail

From TheDailySignal  “Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report on poverty. This report is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the War on Poverty has failed because we didn’t spend enough money. Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise.

Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.

The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These programs provide cash, food, housing and medical care to low-income Americans. Federal and state spending on these programs last year was $943 billion. (These figures do not include Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment Insurance.)

Over 100 million people, about one third of the U.S. population, received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013. If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.”

Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.

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4. The press leaving out relevant info? Not shocking.

From NewsBusters  “Legal battles against state governor’s with higher political aspirations keep cropping up. But looking deeper into attacks on Republican governors from Texas, Wisconsin and Louisiana reveals George Soros’ checkbook was behind it all – but the news media aren’t about to point that out.

The group that first filed an indictment charge against Texas Gov. Rick Perry was funded by Soros, the liberal billionaire, but the trail of his money didn’t end there. Both the recall election for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and an even less successful recall attempt for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal were rooted in Soros-funded groups. Between them, these three potential Republican presidential candidates were targeted by groups receiving more than $6.3 million from Soros.

The media should be reporting on this connection, but so far they have completely ignored it. None of the broadcast news coverage of Walker’s recall election or Perry’s indictment on ABC, CBS or NBC have mentioned Soros. Attempts to recall Jindal weren’t mentioned by the networks, although left-wing outlets like The Huffington Post tried to promote them.”

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5. A respiratory illness hitting children has now been detected in 12 states and officials expect that number to grow. Where do you suppose the source of this latest “rare” outbreak came from?

From MSNNews  “A serious respiratory illness sickening U.S. children has spread to 12 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday, as it predicted that more states will report cases in coming weeks.

The growing list of states with confirmed cases now includes Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, the CDC said.

Known as enterovirus D68, the somewhat rare virus can cause symptoms ranging from mild fevers to difficulty breathing and wheezing severe enough to require hospitalization.

Since mid-August, the CDC has received reports of 130 people with confirmed cases of the virus. There is no vaccine, and infants, children and teenagers have the greatest risk of infection. So far, there have been no reported deaths from the illness, which could be fatal in serious cases.”

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News/Politics 9-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Again, not a revenue problem, but a spending problem.

From CNSNews  “Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $2,663,426,000,000 for the first 11 months of the fiscal year this August, but the federal government still ran a $589,185,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement.

Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”

The largest share of the tax revenue so far this year has come from individual income taxes, which totaled $1,233,274,000,000 in the first 11 months of fiscal 2014.

The rest of the receipts came from corporation income taxes totaling $247,200,000,000, employment and general retirement (off-budget) totaling $674,338,000,000, employment and general retirement (on-budget) totaling $209,281,000,000, unemployment insurance totaling $54,591,000,000, other retirement receipts totaling $3,155,000,000, excise taxes totaling $73,051,000,000, estate and gift taxes totaling $17,702,000,000, customs duties totaling $30,902,000,000 and miscellaneous receipts totaling $119,933,000,000.”

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2. Of course they did.

From TheDailySignal  “As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”

“According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.

At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.

“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” Maxwell says.

He didn’t know it then, but Maxwell would ultimately become one of four State Department officials singled out for discipline—he says scapegoated—then later cleared for devastating security lapses leading up to the attacks. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered during the Benghazi attacks.”

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3. And it begins…..

From MSNNews  “U.S. officials said Monday the United States has taken the first step in its planned expanded fight against Islamic State militants, going to the aid of Iraqi security forces near Baghdad who were being attacked by enemy fighters.

The U.S. Central Command said it conducted a strike Monday in support of the Iraqi forces southwest of Baghdad. There was also an airstrike Sunday near Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The strike southwest of Baghdad represents the newly broadened mission authorized by President Barack Obama to go on the offensive against the Islamic State group wherever it is. Previous U.S. airstrikes in Iraq were conducted to protect U.S. interests and personnel, assist Iraqi refugees and secure critical infrastructure. Monday’s strike was in direct support of Iraqi forces fighting the militants, hitting fighters who were firing on them.”

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4. There’s no shortage and yet they use the lie to push for amnesty.

From USNews  “All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample supply, stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job. The real concern should be about the dim employment prospects for our best STEM graduates: The National Institutes of Health, for example, has developed a program to help new biomedical Ph.D.s find alternative careers in the face of “unattractive” job prospects in the field. Opportunities for engineers vary by the field and economic cycle – as oil exploration has increased, so has demand (and salaries) for petroleum engineers, resulting in a near tripling of petroleum engineering graduates. In contrast, average wages in the IT industry are the same as those that prevailed when Bill Clinton was president despite industry cries of a “shortage.” Overall, U.S. colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields.

In the face of these stark facts, we now see several studies that seem to be desperate Hail Mary passes, using rather unconventional means to find “shortages.” Some analysts do this by expanding the definition of STEM jobs – traditionally those involved in innovation, discovery and development – to include air conditioning technicians and even some retail jobs to make the case that this workforce is large and growing. Without any coherent meaning, such analyses now serve only rhetorical purposes to advance particular legislation.

Cries that “the STEM sky is falling” are just the latest in a cyclical pattern of shortage predictions over the past half-century, none of which were even remotely accurate. In a desert of evidence, the growth of STEM shortage claims is driven by heavy industry funding for lobbyists and think tanks. Their goal is government intervention in the market under the guise of solving national economic problems. The highly profitable IT industry, for example, is devoting millions to convince Congress and the White House to provide its employers with more low-cost, foreign guestworkers instead of trying to attract and retain employees from an ample domestic labor pool of native and immigrant citizens and permanent residents. Guestworkers currently make up two-thirds of all new IT hires, but employers are demanding further increases. If such lobbying efforts succeed, firms will have enough guestworkers for at least 100 percent of their new hiring and can continue to legally substitute these younger workers for current employees, holding down wages for both them and new hires.

 Claiming there is a skills shortage by denying the strength of the U.S. STEM workforce and student supply is possible only by ignoring the most obvious and direct evidence and obscuring the issue with statistical smokescreens – especially when the Census Bureau reports that only about one in four STEM bachelor’s degree holders has a STEM job, and Microsoft plans to downsize by 18,000 workers over the next year.”

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5. That’s what us global warming deniers have been saying for years. It’s not science driven, it’s agenda driven.

From TheDailyCaller  “Emails between top Environmental Protection Agency officials reveal they saw their fight against global warming as putting them at “forefront of progressive national policy.”

“You are at the forefront of progressive national policy on one of the critical issues of our time. Do you realize that?” former EPA chief Lisa Jackson asked former EPA policy office head Lisa Heinzerling in a Feb. 27, 2009 email.

“You’re a good boss. I do realize that. I pinch myself all the time,” Heinzerling replied that same day to Jackson, who was using an alias email account under the fake name “Richard Windsor.”

These emails, which were part of a batch obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, show what top EPA officials were thinking as the agency prepared to release its greenhouse gas endangerment finding. which would give the agency the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes and, eventually, from power plants.

“This is not about climate,” CEI senior fellow Chris Horner told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is the progressive agenda.””

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by

News/Politics 9-12-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Obama: I was against the authorization for war before I was for it.

From TheCable  “President Barack Obama’s plans to ramp up U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State targets inside Iraq and potentially launch new ones inside Syria rely on a thirteen-year-old law authorizing military force against al Qaeda and its affiliates that he has publicly stated he would like to see repealed.

In a landmark speech last year in which he pledged to take the United States off a “perpetual wartime footing,” Obama said that he would work with Congress to “refine” and “ultimately repeal” the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, a measure hastily passed in the chaotic, fear-filled days following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That measure authorized “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” responsible for the attacks.”

In his remarks Wednesday, Obama made clear that he believes he can take action against Islamic State militants without congressional approval but extended an olive branch to Capitol Hill, saying that he welcomed “congressional support for this effort in order to show the world that Americans are united in confronting this danger.” The White House is currently seeking congressional approval for a program to train and arm the Syrian opposition, one of the few things Obama doesn’t believe he can do unilaterally. To date, the administration has mostly sidestepped the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which mandates that the president seek congressional approval of any military action after 60 days of informing Congress that U.S. troops have been deployed in hostilities.”

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2. John Kerry says we’re not at war.

From CNN  “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration’s strategy includes “many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war.”

“What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation,” Kerry told CNN’s Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.””

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3. Congress says authorization from them is needed.

From HotAir  “What started as a trickle is starting to feel like a flood. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are demanding that President Barack Obama seek their explicit approval for a new war in the Middle East, and it would be shortsighted for the president to ignore them.

The first and most salient reason why the president should seek out a congressional vote on a resolution authorizing force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is that no such authorization currently exists. Though it remains on the books, the White House considers the 2002 Iraq resolution authorizing force to be defunct and has requested that it be repealed. It would be a perversion of the 2001 AUMF, which allows the President of the United States to attack al-Qaeda, to use that as authorization to attack the Islamic State. These terrorist organizations are two completely distinct entities and, at times, even adversaries.

Moreover, the president’s current justification for expanded “sovereignty strikes” in Iraq is particularly flimsy. The threat ISIS poses to American diplomatic and military assets in Baghdad and Erbil originally justified limited airstrikes, but using that logic to justify strikes on ISIS positions around strategically key sites like the Haditha Dam (The administration claims that the dam’s bursting could create a biblical flood which would eventually swamp the Green Zone in Baghdad) strains credulity.

Obama’s administration claims that the Constitution provides the president with the authority he needs to execute strikes in Syria, but the president did not believe he had that authority one year ago. When he sought strikes on targets in Syria in 2013, the president insisted that Congress would need to explicitly authorize that action. Today, Obama says he would welcome a congressional “buy in” in support of airstrikes inside that sovereign country, but his hand will not be stayed if that tacit consent is not forthcoming.”

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4. ISIS brothels full of kidnapped women are being run by British female jihadists.

From TheDailyMail  “Thousands of Iraqi women are being forced into sex slavery in brothels run by a ‘police force’ of British women jihadis, it has been reported.

As many as 3,000 women and girls have been taken captive from the Yazidi tribe in Iraq as Isis militants continue their reign of terror across the region.

Sources now say that British female jihadis operating a religious police force called the al-Khanssaa brigade, that punishes women for ‘un-Islamic’ behaviour, have set up brothels to for the use of Isis fighters.”

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5. And yet they’re allowed to vote….

From RasmussenReports  “Over one-third of Likely U.S. Voters remain unaware which political party controls the House of Representatives and which has a majority in the Senate – less than two months before an election that may put one party in charge of both.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 63% are aware that Republicans have majority control of the House. An identical number (63%) know that Democrats run the Senate.

Twenty percent (20%) mistakenly believe Democrats control the House, while 17% are not sure. Similarly, 18% think the GOP is in charge in the Senate, but 19% are not sure. (To see survey question wording.”

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6. Deportations of illegal immigrants is down.

From TheAP  “President Barack Obama has quietly slowed deportations by nearly 20 percent while delaying plans to act on his own potentially to shield millions of immigrants from expulsion.

The Homeland Security Department is on pace to remove the fewest number of immigrants since 2007, according to an analysis of its data by The Associated Press.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for deportations, sent home 258,608 immigrants between the start of the budget year last Oct. 1 and July 28 this summer, a decrease of nearly 20 percent from the same period in 2013, when 320,167 people were removed.

Over 10 months in 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 344,624 people, some 25 percent more than this year, according to federal figures obtained by the AP.”

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7. All the more reason to send them back home.

From TheWashingtonPost  “All summer, Central American children caught at the U.S.-Mexico border have been trickling into the Washington area, sent to live with relatives in Latino communities. Now, they are descending en masse on the region’s public schools, bringing an array of problems that school officials are scrambling to address.

Ripped from distant worlds, most of the new students speak no English, and some are psychologically scarred from abuse by gangs or smugglers. Reunited with parents or other relatives they barely know, and still grieving for family and friends back home, they may feel depressed and resentful.

“Some of these kids arrive feeling very angry,” said Rina Chavez, a counselor with the Montgomery County schools. “After years of living with their grandparents, suddenly here they are with mom and a new stepdad and two younger siblings. Then they are expected in a heartbeat to sit down and learn, but they may not be ready.”

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