What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The Holder DoJ is using financial lawsuit settlements to pay off community organizers. Another end run around the no funding of ACORN law.
From HotAir “It seems Attorney General Eric Holder has created a multi-million dollar backdoor kickback for activist groups in the $13 billion JP Morgan Chase subprime loan deal recently settled, WND reports.”
“But wait… you can’t just take the penalty money and hand it out to your friends, can you? According to the breakdown from Investors.com, apparently you can.
Just when we thought its post-crisis probe of banks couldn’t get more corrupt, the Obama administration has cut radical Democrat groups in on the record $13 billion JPMorgan Chase subprime loan deal.
On Page 5 of “Annex 2″ of the recently released consent order, you’ll find this little gem: The Justice Department mandates that JPMorgan fork over any unclaimed or unpaid consumer damages to a nonprofit group that finances Acorn clones and other shakedown groups.”
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2. Now who’s cherry-picking data to justify an unpopular war? Can’t blame Bush for this one.
From YahooNews “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has dropped yet another bombshell allegation: President Obama wasn’t honest with the American people when he blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a sarin-gas attack in that killed hundreds of civilians.
But in a long story published Sunday for the London Review of Books, Hersh — best known for his exposés on the cover-ups of the My Lai Massacre and of Abu Ghraib – said the administration “cherry-picked intelligence,” citing conversations with intelligence and military officials.”
“A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening. The distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam. The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’
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3. Is the President stacking the DHS Immigration Enforcement Office with pro-amnesty lawyers so they won’t enforce US laws?
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4. A disturbing opinion piece from a Lt. Col. on gun rights in America. The Obama admin is purging leaders who don’t play along, especially Christian ones. This is the type he’d like them replaced with. One who advocates disarming the citizenry and tossing the Supreme Courts opinion on the matter because he disagrees. Dictators love military leaders like him.
From Esquire “We crossed the line some time ago, it has just taken me a while to get around to the topic. Sadly, that topic is now so brutally evident that I feel shame. Shame that I have not spoken out about before now — shame for my country, shame that we have come to this point. People, it is time to talk about guns.”
“Guns are tools. I use these tools in my job. But like all tools one must be trained and educated in their use. Weapons are there for the “well regulated militia.” Their use, therefore, must be in defense of the nation. Shooting and killing somebody because they were not “upset enough” over the loss of a college football team should not be possible in our great nation. Which is why I am adding the following “Gun Plank” to the Bateman-Pierce platform. Here are some suggestions:”
“2. We will pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers. That is because I am willing to wait until you die, hopefully of natural causes. Guns, except for the three approved categories, cannot be inherited. When you die your weapons must be turned into the local police department, which will then destroy them. (Weapons of historical significance will be de-milled, but may be preserved.)”
“4. We will submit a new tax on ammunition. In the first two years it will be 400 percent of the current retail cost of that type of ammunition. (Exemptions for the ammo used by the approved weapons.) Thereafter it will increase by 20 percent per year.”
He’d also limit approved weapons to muskets, shotguns, and bolt actions with 5 round max capacity.
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5. Uncle Omar and the “culture of lies.”
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6. What’s that ticking noise?…
From TheNYPost “The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far.
The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments.
Medicaid is already America’s third-largest government program, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, as a proportion of the federal budget. Almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid. That’s more than $265 billion per year.
Indeed, already Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for 48% of federal spending. Within the next few years, those three programs will eat up more than half of federal expenditures.”
And who’s on the hook for it?…. Yep, taxpayers. 🙄
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7. Ruh-roh.
From TheLATimes “Raising concerns about consumer privacy, California’s health exchange has given insurance agents the names and contact information for tens of thousands of people who went online to check out coverage but didn’t ask to be contacted.
The Covered California exchange said it started handing out this consumer information this week as part of a pilot program to help people enroll ahead of a Dec. 23 deadline to have health insurance in place by Jan. 1.
State officials said they are only trying to help potential customers find insurance and sign up in time. But some insurance brokers and consumers who were contacted said they were astonished by the state’s move.
“I’m shocked and dumbfounded,” said Sam Smith, an Encino insurance broker and president of the California Assn. of Health Underwriters, an industry group.”
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8. A little poetic justice.
From Politico “Capitol Hill staffers are hitting multiple obstacles in trying to enroll in the Obamacare exchange just days before the federal government’s deadline for getting coverage.
They and lawmakers have until Monday to sign up on DC Health Link, the District’s insurance exchange, if they want to maintain the government’s generous employer contribution to their health insurance.”
“But as crunch time approaches, Democratic and Republican staffers are getting error messages, denials, notices that they’re enrolled in multiple plans and incomplete confirmation — as well as a website that went down briefly Thursday.”
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Wandering Views 