Illegal Immigration

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News/Politics 7-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Tone deaf.

From TheDailySurge  “The rather overused term “tone-deaf” doesn’t even begin to describe the performance from White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest today in defense of Team Obama’s actions to combat the current crisis on the border. In a rather shocking display of sheer lunacy, Earnest insisted that “we’re seeing the benefit” of the Obama administration’s investment in border security right before our very eyes (see the video above). If that’s the case, can we please get our taxpayer money back? Sheesh. We are indeed seeing the result of the administration’s efforts — or lack thereof — to address our porous border. But “benefit” is the last adjective in the world I’d ever use to describe it.”

“Earnest spent much of the remainder of today’s briefing defending the administration’s $3.7 billion dollar request in “emergency” funds to address the crisis, but offered few explanations for why it appears that the bulk of that money will go towards helping illegals, rather than actually beefing up the border to help stop all of this from happening in the first place. He repeatedly insisted that the money is needed so that the Department of Homeland Security can exercise “greater discretion,” whatever that means. The term is so vague that I can almost guarantee some questionable plans are afoot.

The Press Secretary also asserted that Obama will make no effort to try and offset that huge funding request with commensurate budget cuts. But that should come as a surprise to absolutely no one.”

Illegal immigrants may be seeing the “benefits” of Obama’s policies, but cities being overrun by them, not so much.

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2. So what do they plan on using the 3.7 billion they requested on, because you know it won’t be used to seal the border?

From TheWaPost  “The White House on Tuesday formally requested $3.7 billion in emergency funding from Congress to deal with an influx of Central American minors along the southern border. But the proposal was quickly met with broad skepticism among Republican lawmakers, who were doubtful that the package would be approved quickly — if at all.

Administration officials said the request is part of a comprehensive strategy aimed at building more detention centers, adding immigration judges, and beefing up border patrols and air surveillance. President Obama has said he hopes such steps will speed deportations and discourage adults from sending children on a dangerous, sometimes deadly, trip north.

But GOP leaders, who have called on Obama to take stronger action, said they were reluctant to give the administration a “blank check” without ­more-detailed plans to ensure that the money would help stem the crisis at the border.

The president “is asking to use billions of taxpayer dollars without accountability or a plan in place to actually stop the border crisis,” Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a statement.”

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3. The number of Americans receiving some type of welfare is at an all-time high.

From CNSNews  “According to the 2014 version of a report that the Department of Health and Human Services is required by law to issue annually, the percentage of Americans on welfare in 2011 was the highest yet calculated. The data for 2011 is the most recent in the report.

HHS has calculated the percentage of all persons in the United States who live in families that receive “welfare” going back to fiscal 1993. It has not calculated a percentage for years prior to that.

As defined in the report (“Welfare Indicators and Risk Factors”), a welfare recipient is any person living in a family where someone received benefits from any of just three programs—Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (formerly Aid to Families With Dependent Children), Supplemental Security Income, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or food stamps).”

“By this measure, according to the report, 23.1 percent of Americans were recipients of welfare in 2011. Since 1993, the earliest year covered by the report, that is the highest percentage of Americans reported to be receiving welfare. A startling 38 percent of all children 5 and under in the United States were welfare recipients in 2011, according to the report.”

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4. Another Obama foreign policy success story. 🙄

From YahooNews  “The Islamic State extremist group has taken control of a vast former chemical weapons facility northwest of Baghdad, where remnants of 2,500 degraded chemical rockets filled decades ago with the deadly nerve agent sarin are stored along with other chemical warfare agents, Iraq said in a letter circulated Tuesday at the United Nations.

The U.S. government played down the threat from the takeover, saying there are no intact chemical weapons and it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to use the material for military purposes.

Iraq’s U.N. Ambassador Mohamed Ali Alhakim told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a letter that “armed terrorist groups” entered the Muthanna site on June 11, detained officers and soldiers from the protection force guarding the facilities and seized their weapons. The following morning, the project manager spotted the looting of some equipment via the camera surveillance system before the “terrorists” disabled it, he said.”

“The last major report by U.N. inspectors on the status of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program was released about a year after the experts left in March 2003. It states that Bunker 13 contained 2,500 sarin-filled 122-mm chemical rockets produced and filled before 1991, and about 180 tons of sodium cyanide, “a very toxic chemical and a precursor for the warfare agent tabun.”

If there’s no threat from it, why were they still guarding it?

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5. The Navy is warning that it can’t meet it’s 30 year funding needs.

From Bloomberg  “The U.S. Navy can’t meet its funding needs for surface warships and a new class of nuclear attack submarines from 2025 to 2034, according to the service’s latest 30-year shipbuilding plan. 

The congressionally required blueprint, submitted late last week and obtained by Bloomberg News, says the Navy’s plan “requires funding at an unsustainable level” unless spending on shipbuilding is increased.

The document outlines challenges facing the plan to increase the Navy fleet to 306 vessels from the current 289 while building 12 new Ohio-class submarines, part of the nation’s nuclear triad of air, land and sea weapons.“

Here’s an idea… stop wasting money on this nonsense, and you’ll have all you need. Even with the cuts left in place.

From USNews  “Just about everyone agrees the purpose of the United States Navy is to protect the “freedom of the seas,” a time-honored tradition that effects not just America but just about every nation on earth. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, however, seems to have a different idea—which may be why he has been leading the charge on behalf of the Obama administration to show off the fleet’s green potential.“

“The military says it’s necessary to find alternatives to traditional energy sources. Others, including Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, have branded it a public relations stunt, and an expensive one at that. The fuels used in the exercise were anywhere from two to four times as expensive as standard fuel, a not inconsiderable expense at the time the Defense Department faces defense cuts and a previously unthinkable sequester of funds that will seriously impact military preparedness and effectiveness.”

The “Green Energy” scam is sucking resources.

From TheBlaze  “The Defense Department has 680 renewable energy projects in the works encompassing all five branches of the U.S. armed forces as part of President Barack Obama’s continuing effort to create a “green” military sustainable by alternative energy sources, TheBlaze has learned.”

“U.S. lawmakers, however, were up in arms last year over the Navy’s so-called “green fleet” where the cost of the alternative biofuel was a whopping $26 per gallon. The Navy spent $12 million for 450,000 gallons of biofuel to power a carrier strike group off the coast of Hawaii in 2012.

“That $26.6-per-gallon purchase is nowhere near the $2.50 the service pays for each gallon of petroleum. (It has been stated that it would be about $16 per gallon if it were mixed with standard jet fuel.),” National Defense Magazine wrote at the time.”

Problem solved? (This is a govt. press release, so I can post as much as I want without violating copyright restrictions)

From McClintock/House.gov  ” An amendment by Congressman Tom McClintock (CA-04) to the Defense Appropriation Bill to forbid defense dollars from being spent to meet the Administration’s “Green Energy” mandates was passed by the House in a voice vote.  The Congressman’s remarks in support of the measure are attached:

Mr. Chairman:

The amendment before the House forbids Defense dollars from being spent to fund two executive orders and several other provisions of law that require the military to squander billions of dollars on so-called “Green Energy.”

For example, according to the GAO, the Navy has spent as much as $150 per gallon for jet fuel.  In 2012, the Navy purchased 450,000 of biofuel for its so-called “Green Fleet,” at the cost of $26.60 per gallon, at a time when conventional petroleum fuel cost just $2.50.

What taxpayer in his right mind would pay $26 per gallon to fill up his car when next door they’re selling it for $2.50?    

Yet that is precisely what our armed forces are ordered to do – except they’re not just filling their cars – they’re filling entire ships and aircraft.  And this all comes out of our precious defense dollars.

The Air Force paid $59 per gallon for 11,000 gallons of biofuel in 2012 – ten times more than regular jet fuel.

It’s not just biofuels.

The Pentagon expects to purchase 1,500 Chevy Volts, at a subsidized price of $40,000 each – and a production price of $90,000 paid for by other subsidies.

As Sen. Coburn’s office points out, “EACH ONE of these $40,000 Chevy Volts represents the choice NOT to provide an entire infantry platoon with all new rifles, or 50,000 rounds of ammunition that cannot be used for realistic training.”

Under these “green energy” mandates, the Army and Navy have been required to install solar arrays at various facilities.  At Naval Station Norfolk, the Navy spent $21 million dollars to install a 10 acre solar array – which will supply a grand total of two percent of the base’s electricity.  

According to the Inspector General’s office, this project will save enough money to pay for itself in just 447 years.  (Of course, solar panels only last about 25 years).”

Here’s the video with the above and more.

Stop wasting money on agenda driven fantasies and use it for defense. You know, like you’re supposed to.

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by

News/Politics 7-8-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Most transparent administration evah!

From NationalReview  “Health and Human Services officials will allow reporters to visit a military facility housing some of the immigrant children who have arrived at the southern border in recent weeks, but only if the media promises not to record anything, not to ask any questions during the tour, and not to talk to any of the staff members or children.

“This violates the First Amendment,” Representative Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.), who represents the congressional district containing the housing facility at Fort Sill, said of the HHS invitation to the media.  “This is not transparent. HHS is trying to muzzle the media and hide the human tragedy that has resulted directly from the administration’s failure to enforce the law.”

HHS attached seven rules “in order to protect the safety and privacy of the children” for the media who come to the tour, according to an HHS invitation released by Bridenstine’s office:”

Oh. I see.

It’s for the children. 🙄

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2. This is why I don’t believe amnesty groups or the Chamber of Commerce when they say the visa program for foreign workers needs to be expanded. It doesn’t.

From TheAP  “The dream didn’t last long. Parker claims she was laid off one year later after she trained her replacement, a newly arrived worker from India. Now she has joined a federal lawsuit alleging the global staffing firm that ran Harley-Davidson’s tech support discriminated against American workers — in part by replacing them with temporary workers from South Asia.

The firm, India-based Infosys Ltd., denies wrongdoing and contends, as many companies do, that it has faced a shortage of talent and specialized skill sets in the U.S. Like other firms, Infosys wants Congress to allow even more of these temporary workers.

But amid calls for expanding the nation’s so-called H-1B visa program, there is growing pushback from Americans who argue the program has been hijacked by staffing companies that import cheaper, lower-level workers to replace more expensive U.S. employees — or keep them from getting hired in the first place.

“It’s getting pretty frustrating when you can’t compete on salary for a skilled job,” said Rich Hajinlian, a veteran computer programmer from the Boston area. “You hear references all the time that these big companies … can’t find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker.”

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3. The Hobby Lobby case continues to anger liberals, even the dissenters to the opinion.

From HotAir  “After the Hobby Lobby decision, a number of people pointed to a reference to the so-called “accommodation” for religious-oriented organizations in the HHS contraception mandate to conclude that the Supreme Court’s decision would be limited to the for-profit sector, and only to certain methods of contraception. A series of orders the next day showed the latter was not true, and a decision late yesterday suggests the former isn’t, either. An emergency injunction on behalf of Wheaton College sparked the ire of three Supreme Court justices, who issued an angry dissent to the unsigned order that temporarily sets aside the “accommodation”:

Today, the Supreme Court granted Wheaton College an injunction pending appeal against enforcement of the contraception mandate, even though Wheaton was eligible for the accommodation HHS has provided for religious non-profits.  Specifically the Court ordered:

If the applicant informs the Secretary of Health and Human Services in writing that it is a non-profit organization that holds itself out as religious and has religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, the respondents are enjoined from enforcing against the applicant the challenged provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and related regulations pending final disposition of appellate review. To meet the condition for injunction pending appeal, the applicant need not use the form prescribed by the Government, EBSA Form 700, and need not send copies to health insurance issuers or third-party administrators.

This prompted three of the four dissenters in Hobby Lobby to issue a statement scolding the rest of the court for ignoring what they claim had been decided on Monday:”

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4. ISIS is set to destroy some biblical history.

From YahooNews  “No trace ever has been found of the Garden of Eden, said to have lain near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, but one of the great prizes the excavators did discover was Senaccherib’s capital, Nineveh, which the biblical prophet Nahum called “the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!”

Last month, a new marauder descended on Nineveh and the nearby city of Mosul. He, too, came down like the wolf on the fold, but his cohorts brandished Kalashnikovs from pickup trucks, not shining spears; their banners were the black flags of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham.

Soon afterward the minions of the self-appointed caliph of the freshly self-declared Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, paid a visit to the Mosul Museum. It has been closed for years for restoration, ever since it was looted along with many of Iraq’s other institutions in the wake of the culturally oblivious American-led invasion of 2003. But the Mosul Museum was on the verge of reopening, at last, and the full collection had been stored there.

“These groups of terrorists—their arrival was a brutal shock, with no warning,” Iraqi National Museum Director Qais Hussein Rashid told me when he visited Paris last week with a mission pleading for international help. “We were not able to take preventive measures.””

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5. But the President said ObamaCare would shorten ER waits because folks would have a regular doctor. Guess that promise had an expiration date too.

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6. And since the other ObamaCare shoe (the employer mandate) is about to drop, the President is trying to pre-empt the sticker shock.

From HotAir  “And well they might. Insurers got a close look at the profiles of the enrollees in the individual health-insurance market this spring, and they turned out to be sicker than projected, as the “young invincibles” took a pass on ObamaCare in 2014. That means that premiums will go up in the fall in order to cover the added expense of the higher-risk enrollments — and that has the Obama administration spin team working extra hard this summer to cover their rear ends just before the midterms:

Most state health insurance rates for 2015 are scheduled to be approved by early fall, and most are likely to rise, timing that couldn’t be worse for Democrats already on defense in the midterms.

The White House and its allies know they’ve been beaten in every previous round of Obamacare messaging, never more devastatingly than in 2010. And they know the results this November could hinge in large part on whether that happens again.

So they’re trying to avoid — or at least, get ahead of — any September surprise.

This assumes that the problems with ObamaCare only have to do with messaging. That’s only true to the extent that the previous messaging from the administration has been proven either entirely wrong or flat-out lies. “You can keep your plan” ended up as the Lie of the Year for 2013 when millions of people who already had insurance got kicked out of their existing plans for 2014, and forced to pay more for less coverage in many instances. Barack Obama had promised that his reforms would lower premiums by $2500 a year for a family of four, but premiums have skyrocketed since the passage of ObamaCare, and they’ll do the same again in September.”

Messaging isn’t the problem. Your product sucks, and is too expensive. That’s the problem.

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by

News/Politics 7-3-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The plot thickens.

From TheDailyCaller  “Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner tried to audit Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley after Grassley blocked President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice (DOJ) tax division, an executive branch insider told The Daily Caller.

Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama’s political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010, just as Lerner and fellow IRS officials were mapping out their targeting strategy. The White House later withdrew Smith’s nomination.

The source confirmed to The Daily Caller that the White House and IRS officials “were very upset at Senator Grassley and Republicans for blocking a vote on Mary Smith’s nomination.”

The IRS relies on the DOJ Tax Division to prosecute both criminal and civil cases, and has entire legal teams devoted to making DOJ referrals. Placing a political appointee as assistant attorney general for the DOJ Tax Division was a top priority for the Obama White House.”

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2. Even Democrats aren’t buying the lies any more.

From RasmussenReports  “71% Think IRS Likely to Have Destroyed E-mails to Hide Guilt”

“Most voters think it’s likely the IRS deliberately destroyed e-mails about its investigations of Tea Party and other conservative groups to hide its criminal behavior. Two-out-of-three now believe IRS employees involved in these investigations should be jailed or fired, and most suspect the agency of targeting other political opponents of the Obama administration.”

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3. Say it with me now kids….. special prosecutor.

From TheWashingtonExaminer   “IRS attorneys will be even busier than normal next week, because another federal judge has told them to show up in court July 11 to defend the federal tax agency.

They will have to explain to U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton why the IRS shouldn’t be required to let an outside expert evaluate whether emails on the computer hard drives of former IRS official Lois Lerner and six colleagues really are lost forever, as the agency recently told Congress.

Responding to a motion filed Monday by True the Vote, a Houston-based conservative nonprofit at the center of IRS targeting during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns, Walton issued an order Tuesday to hear arguments next week.”

“The government asked Walton on Monday night to dismiss the motion for an outside digital forensics expert. But True the Vote argued that merely asking for the dismissal “does not give them carte blanche to destroy or permit the destruction of documents and discoverable information that are relevant to the IRS Targeting Scheme in general and the application of True the Vote for exempt status.”

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4. What are they trying to hide from the public?

From TheDailyCaller  “An Oklahoma Congressman who visited an Army base being used to house illegal immigrant children now wonders what the federal government is hiding after he was denied access to the facility.

“There is no excuse for denying a Federal Representative from Oklahoma access to a federal facility in Oklahoma where unaccompanied children are being held,” Rep. Jim Bridenstine said in a statement following his visit Tuesday to Ft. Sill Army base near Lawton.

The Department of Health and Human Services has set up housing at Ft. Sill and two other military bases – Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio and Ventura County Naval Base in Oxnard, Cali. – to house thousands of unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, who were apprehended at the southern U.S. border. Bridenstine went to Ft. Sill to observe the conditions under which the 1,200 UACs there are living and to find out to whom they would be released.

But when he showed up at the facility, Bridenstine says he was told by a guard with a security unit which calls itself the “Brown Shirts” that he could not observe the children or their living conditions.”

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5. Meanwhile, in cities where they’re dumping the illegal immigrants, people are choosing sides.

From TheLATimes  “After anti-illegal immigration protesters in Murrieta successfully forced buses full of migrants to divert to San Diego for processing, groups of immigration advocates have quietly galvanized.”

“Nicholas, who has lived in Murrieta for 25 years, has been working with local churches to coordinate relief for the migrants since she learned last week that they would be arriving in town.

Locals have been collecting bags of groceries, personal hygiene products and diapers in anticipation of the arrivals, she said.”

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Also From TheLATimes  “crowd of 200 to 300 people in downtown Murrieta surrounded three buses carrying immigrant detainees Tuesday afternoon, causing the buses to turn around before they reached a Border Patrol station in the Riverside County city.

Waving Americans flags and protest signs, the crowd refused to give way when the buses arrived with some 140 detainees from Texas, which has seen a flood of Central American immigrants cross the border in recent weeks without legal permission. A small number of Murrieta police officers stood between the protesters and the buses but could not keep the crowd from blocking the buses’ path.”

“The face-off came one day after Mayor Alan Long urged residents to protest the federal government’s decision to move the recent immigrants who had arrived in the country illegally — and have overwhelmed Texas border facilities — to the Border Patrol station here.

“Murrieta expects our government to enforce our laws, including the deportation of illegal immigrants caught crossing our borders, not disperse them into our local communities,” Long said Monday at a news conference. The city had defeated two previous attempts to send migrants to the facility, he said.”

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by

News/Politics 7-2-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Hobby Lobby hobbyhorse, and why liberals should get off of theirs.

From BloombergView  “After reading the Twitter reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case, I began researching a post on what women could do now that corporations have exactly the same rights people do, including playing power forward for the Miami Heat, and now that contraception has been outlawed throughout these great United States. Then I read the decision and, to my surprise, found that it didn’t quite say any of that.

So what does it say? The court found that owners of closely held corporations have the same rights as sole proprietors under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They cannot be forced to violate their religious beliefs unless the government can genuinely find no other way to achieve a compelling public purpose.

But that sounds so boring compared to War on Women! And so that’s the narrative the Internet chose. Here’s a representative tweet from my feed this morning:

So let’s all deny women birth control & get closer to harass them when they’re going in for repro health services. BECAUSE FREEDOM.

Logically, this is incoherent, unless you actually believe that it is impossible to buy birth control without a side payment from your employer. (If you are under this tragic misimpression, then be of good cheer! Generic birth control pills are available from the drugstore for about $25 a month.)“

Or Wal-Mart has them for $9. But I guess mentioning Wal-Mart to a liberal would upset them too, so they would just climb back on their hobbyhorses again.

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2. The Supreme Court decision is already causing consequences for some other cases.

From HotAir  “Late yesterday, the first fruits of the Hobby Lobby decision fell into the lap of EWTN, the Catholic satellite television station which has fought the HHS mandate into the appellate court. Today would have been the first day that EWTN would have to start paying ruinous fines for refusing to provide free contraception and sterilization in its health insurance coverage. Fortunately, the Eleventh Circuit granted a stay not long after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby:

In a resounding victory for religious freedom, today EWTN was granted last minute relief from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, one day before the world’s largest religious media network would be forced to violate its deeply help religious convictions or pay crippling fines to the IRS on July 1.

After the district judge recently issued a disappointing ruling against the global Catholic media network, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an emergency appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Pending that ruling, the Becket Fund urged the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit to step in to protect EWTN from being forced to provide contraceptives and potentially life-terminating drugs and devices that violate its Catholic teachings. Thanks to the Eleventh Circuit’s decision today to grant temporary emergency relief to the Catholic network, EWTN can now freely practice what it preaches while it pursues its claims in court.

“On the same day as the Hobby Lobby decision, the Eleventh Circuit protected religious ministries challenging the same government mandate,” said Lori Windham, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund. “It’s time for the government to stop fighting ministries like EWTN and the Little Sisters of the Poor, and start respecting religious freedom.”

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3. So how’s the ObamaCare website working out now that they fixed the problems?

Oh wait, no, they didn’t. 🙄

From FoxNews  “The Obama administration is struggling to resolve data discrepancies that could jeopardize coverage for millions who sought health insurance on the federal exchange HealthCare.gov, according to a watchdog report on the still-rocky implementation of ObamaCare. 

Though the system’s troubles have faded from the headlines since the problem-plagued launch last October, a report from the health department inspector general provided the first independent look at widespread issues the government is having effectively fact-checking the information applicants are putting in the system. 

According to the report, the administration was unable to resolve 2.6 million so-called “inconsistencies” out of a total of 2.9 million such problems from October through December 2013. “

So much for that magic 7 million number huh?

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4. Once again, the Obama admin seeks to silence potential whistleblowers with threats.

Also From FoxNews  “A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.

In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.

“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”

The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.”

Wait a minute…. Baptists have a security force?

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5. Yesterday I posted a video about allegations of vote buying against the Cochran campaign in Mississippi. Here’s a very detailed breakdown of the evidence so far.

From RedState  “An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats.

Before I get into the weeds of what is in the audio interview and transcript, which are both below, let me set up the stage a bit. What is alleged to have occurred is illegal and very serious business. Under Mississippi law the alleged crimes could lead to Thad Cochran being removed from the Senate. Everything that follows comes from sources either on the ground in Mississippi, or those working closely with them.”

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by

News/Politics 6-30-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Pass the popcorn. this is getting interesting.

From Time  “Attorney General Eric Holder must appoint a special prosecutor to investigate IRS targeting of conservative groups or expect to face impeachment proceedings, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said on the chamber floor Thursday.

“When an Attorney General mocks the rule of law, when an Attorney General corrupts the Department of Justice by conducting a nakedly partisan investigation to cover up political wrongdoing that conduct by any reasonable measure constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Cruz. “Attorney General Eric Holder has the opportunity to do the right thing. He could appoint a special prosecutor with meaningful independence who is not a major Obama donor.”

The donor Cruz is referring to is Justice Department prosecutor Barbara Bosserman, who has given $6,750 to the Democratic Party and President Obama over the past ten years, according to the Washington Post. Bosserman has been chosen to lead the Justice Department probe into the IRS.

Cruz and other conservatives are dismayed that the Justice Department has yet to indict anyone 13 months after the IRS admitted that it targeted nonprofit political advocacy groups with the terms “tea party” or “patriot” in their names from 2010 to 2012.”

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2. A decision is expected today in the Hobby Lobby case against the contraceptive mandate. But it will it really solve anything either way?

From NationalJournal  “The justices are set to rule any day now in a challenge to the birth-control mandate, and any decision against the policy would have ripple effects far beyond the two companies that filed this lawsuit. Just how far, however, depends on how broadly the Court rules—and it has plenty of options.

No matter what happens, the Court won’t strike down the entire mandate. The two companies that brought their challenge to the Supreme Court—Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties—haven’t asked the justices to ax the entire policy.

The most sweeping option is a broad First Amendment proclamation that all corporations have a fundamental right to exercise religion, in this case by refusing to cover birth control in their employees’ health care plans. This outcome would be almost a sequel to the Citizens United case on campaign finance laws and free speech. It would probably open the door for any company to challenge a slew of state or federal regulations, and would allow any corporation to avoid the contraception mandate—potentially affecting millions of women.

But a sweeping First Amendment ruling might not be the most likely option, based on the questions Justice Anthony Kennedy asked during oral arguments and Chief Justice John Roberts’s general preference for narrower decisions. The Court could easily go smaller if it sides with Hobby Lobby.”

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3. In other ObamaCare news….

From TheLATimes  “rustration and legal challenges over the network of doctors and hospitals for Obamacare patients have marred an otherwise successful rollout of the federal healthcare law in California.

Limiting the number of medical providers was part of an effort by insurers to hold down premiums. But confusion over the new plans has led to unforeseen medical bills for some patients and prompted a state investigation.

More complaints are surfacing as patients start to use their new coverage bought through Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange.

“I thought I had done everything right, and it’s been awful,” said Jean Buchanan, 56. The Fullerton resident found herself stuck with an $8,000 bill for cancer treatment after receiving conflicting information on whether it was covered. “How am I going to come up with that much money?”

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4. So as I suspected, it was all for show. That’s why he walked around free and giving interviews to the press for 2 years after the attack. The trial should be a real dog and pony show.

From FoxNews  “Despite President Obama’s promise to stay focused on hunting down those responsible for the 2012 Benghazi attack — and despite a recent arrest touted as a major takedown — sources say little has been done to nab the other suspects. 

According to multiple sources on the ground, including some with direct knowledge of the operations to identify and hunt the Benghazi suspects, intelligence that could have been acted upon at times has been ignored or put on hold. Further, they say, the recent capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala — now on a ship bound for the U.S., expected to arrive this weekend — was an easy one.  “He was low-hanging fruit,” one source told Fox News. “We could have picked him up months and months ago and there was no change, or urgency to do this now.” 

“According to sources, the United States has a “target list” that initially contained about 10 suspects identified within days of the attack and eventually grew to more than 20 as American Special Forces conducted surveillance in and around Benghazi. 

The four groups on the “target list” include Ansar al-Sharia, with the top target being the “Emir of Ansar al Sharia,” Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu. He was a prisoner at Guantánamo Bay for more than five years and at the time was classified by analysts at the prison as “a probable member of Al Qaeda.” Despite this significant threat to American security and allies, bin Qumu was released as part of an amnesty for militants in 2008. Sources told Fox News that intelligence has shown his involvement in the attacks, and actionable intelligence has for some reason been ignored. “

The suspect arrested was at the very bottom of the list.

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5. Interesting. It seems that despite claims by Democrats, RINO’s, and the Chamber of Commerce, we have all the workers we need. And amnesty is hurting American’s  chances of getting jobs.

From NationalReview  “According to a major new report from the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), net employment growth in the United States since 2000 has gone entirely to immigrants, legal and illegal. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, CIS scholars Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler found that there were 127,000 fewer working-age natives holding a job in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000, while the number of immigrants with a job was 5.7 million above the 2000 level.”

“Other significant findings include: Because the native-born population grew significantly, but the number working actually fell, there were 17 million more working-age natives not working in the first quarter of 2014 than in 2000.

The share of natives working or looking for work, referred to as labor force participation, shows the same decline as the employment rate. In fact, labor force participation has continued to decline for working-age natives even after the jobs recovery began in 2010.

Immigrants have made gains across the labor market, including lower-skilled jobs such as maintenance, construction, and food service; middle-skilled jobs like office support and health care support; and high­er-skilled jobs, including management, computers, and health care practitioners.

The supply of potential workers is enormous: 8.7 million native college graduates are not working, as are 17 million with some college, and 25.3 million with no more than a high school education.”

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by

News/Politics 6-25-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. In testimony before Congress the National Archives head says the IRS did not follow the law.

More here from FoxNews  “Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero, speaking before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made clear that federal agencies are supposed to report whenever their records are destroyed or even accidentally deleted. But he said that after emails from embattled IRS official Lois Lerner vanished after a computer failure in 2011, nobody told the National Archives.  “They did not follow the law,” Ferriero said. 

The testimony comes as lawmakers dig for answers as to how Lerner’s emails disappeared and why they only found out about it earlier this month. Lerner herself twice has refused to answer questions before Congress, leaving lawmakers seeking answers from other officials who interacted with her or were involved in reviewing her documents. 

Also on the witness panel was White House attorney Jennifer O’Connor, whom Chairman Darrell Issa compelled to testify via subpoena. 

Republican lawmakers, though, struggled to get answers from O’Connor, who previously worked at the IRS, about the emails. She said she only found out the “week before last” that emails were gone. “

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2. The IRS has admitted their guilt in releasing private taxpayer information to the a gay rights group fighting Prop 8.

From TheFreeBeacon   “The IRS has agreed to pay $50,000 in damages to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) for unlawfully releasing its private information to a gay rights group that is a political rival, the Daily Signal has learned.

NOM expressed relief at the settlement agreement.

“Congress made the disclosure of confidential tax return information a serious matter for a reason,” NOM chairman John D. Eastman told The Daily Signal. “We’re delighted that the IRS has now been held accountable for the illegal disclosure of our list of major donors from our tax return.”

In 2012, the Human Rights Campaign posted on its website private information from the National Organization for Marriage that revealed private information including the identities and contact information for its donors. Then information was then published by multiple media outlets, according to the Daily Signal.”

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 3. This was obvious from his snarky testimony. He clearly acted like a partisan Democrat. Just another flunky who bought his position.

From PJMedia  “IRS Commissioner John Koskinen looks like he got the job atop the taxman agency the old fashioned way: He bought it.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, Koskinen has donated about $100,000 to Democrat candidates and committees since his first donation in 1979. His donor recipients include Gary Hart, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic nominee in each presidential campaign since 1980 (which would even include Walter Mondale, who stood no chance of beating President Ronald Reagan in 1984), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s campaigns. He most recently donated $2,500 to Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) in 2013.”

“He has given no money to Republicans. The taxman is a partisan Democrat.”

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4. The number of veterans that we know died awaiting care has grown greatly.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The problems at Veterans Affairs extend well beyond long wait lists, with a report Tuesday showing the department is plagued with poor care that has cost up to 1,000 veterans their lives and left taxpayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in malpractice settlements since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some of the problems detailed in the report by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma are downright ghoulish. They include the case of a former security chief at a New York Veterans Affairs medical center whom the FBI arrested on charges of plotting to kidnap, rape and murder women and children.

The VA has come under fire in recent months over reports that dozens of veterans died while stuck on secret waiting lists at a VA facility in Phoenix. Since then, an inspector general’s investigation has found widespread misuse of secret wait lists in a number of facilities. The department’s secretary has resigned.

But Mr. Coburn’s report, titled “Friendly Fire: Death, Delay and Dismay at the VA,” argues that problems go back well before the Phoenix scandal and run deeper than bogus wait lists and scheduling practices designed to help managers show that they are meeting performance goals.”

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5. The White House and ICE continue to release illegal immigrants into the US. Not surprisingly, they refuse to say how many.

From YahooNews  “The Obama administration has released into the U.S. an untold number of immigrant families caught traveling illegally from Central America in recent months — and although the government knows how many it’s released, it won’t say publicly.

Senior U.S. officials directly familiar with the issue, including at the Homeland Security Department and White House, have so far dodged the answer on at least seven occasions over two weeks, alternately saying that they did not know the figure or didn’t have it immediately at hand. “We will get back to you,” the Homeland Security deputy secretary said Friday.

The figure is widely believed to exceed 40,000 since October. It’s believed to be slightly below the roughly 52,000 children caught traveling illegally from Central America over the same period, an extraordinary increase since last year that is driving a humanitarian crisis at the border.

Despite promises to the contrary, this is how it looks when the image-conscious Obama administration doesn’t want to reveal politically sensitive information that could influence an important policy debate. The mystery figure is significant because the number of families caught crossing from Central America represents a large share of new immigration cases that will further strain the overwhelmed U.S. immigration courts system. It also affects federal enforcement strategy, such as where to deploy the border patrol, and political calculations about whether Congress or the White House will relax American immigration laws or regulations before upcoming congressional elections in November.”

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6. And now we know that the Obama admin ignored warnings about the ISIS offensive in Iraq.

From TheDailyBeast  “For months before the fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, Washington and London were getting detailed warnings about jihadist plans to exploit Sunni resentment toward Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and launch an ambitious takeover of northern and western Iraq.

Kurdish military sources say the strategy of the ultra-radical Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was telegraphed long in advance. The Kurds, who have their own autonomous region in northern Iraq and their own armed forces, monitored developing ties between the jihadists and tribal leaders as well as growing contacts with former Iraqi military officers.

The prime minister of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, says he warned Baghdad and the United States months ago about the threat ISIS posed to Iraq and the group’s plan to launch an insurgency across Iraq. The Kurds even offered to participate in a joint military operation with Baghdad against the jihadists.

Washington didn’t respond—a claim that will fuel Republican charges that the Obama administration has been dangerously disengaged from the Middle East. Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki dismissed the warnings, saying everything was under control.”

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by

News/Politics 6-23-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The Democrats in Congress are trying an end around on local abortion restrictions.

From LifeNews  “Few Americans are aware that a “Gosnell Prerogative Act” has been introduced in Congress.  This bill would permit the grisliest abortion providers—like the now-convicted murderer, Kermit Gosnell—to set the standard of care for abortion.

Unsurprisingly, this bill is not actually called the “Gosnell Prerogative Act”—instead, S.1696 is deceptively titled the “Women’s Health Protection Act.”  However, it is difficult to imagine a bill less protective of women and their unborn children.

In spite of court interference, we have made great strides in the enactment and defense of state legislation that regulates and limits abortions since Roe v. Wade, with approximately 160 laws enacted across the country between 2011 and 2013 alone.

Now, imagine the laws in 32 states requiring varying degrees of informed consent prior to an abortion invalidated overnight.  Twenty laws prohibiting partial-birth abortion – gone.  Twenty-nine state laws requiring abortion clinics to meet some degree of safety standards—gone.  Other abortion bans, admitting privileges requirements, regulations on abortion-inducing drugs, ultrasound requirements, and limitations on the use of public funds and facilities for abortions and abortion training–all gone. Imagine the vast majority of pro-life laws wiped out with the enactment of a single piece of federal legislation.  That is the purpose behind S. 1696.”

Must protect their Precious, and the blood money it gives them. Disgusting.

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2. This one’s not shocking. More govt. waste, fraud, and abuse.

From TheTrib  “A new federal report says the government program that funds school lunches for low-income families nationwide misspent about $996 million, or 8 percent of its budget, last fiscal year.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has made several steps in recent years to prevent ineligible families from receiving free and reduced prices in the lunch line, but more can be done, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

Wyoming recently tightened the way it enrolls students for these benefits to increase the system’s accuracy, said Tamra Jackson, nutrition supervisor for the Wyoming Department of Education. The state requested $14 million in federal funds to reimburse free or reduced-price lunches for roughly 34,000 students during the 2012-13 school year. “

A billion dollars is no big deal, right? After all, it’s for the children. 🙄

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3. Further proof that the IRS scandal originated in the White House.

From TheDailyCaller  “An IRS official whose emails were “lost” visited the White House frequently during the agency’s targeting of conservatives and met with a top assistant to President Obama who exchanged confidential information on conservative groups with the IRS.

The IRS recently claimed that it lost emails from Nikole Flax, who served as chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller. Flax was one of seven IRS employees including ex-official Lois Lerner whose emails to and from White House officials and other Obama administration agencies were purportedly deleted and could not be handed over to congressional investigators.

Flax held personal meetings with a top assistant to President Obama and also colluded with Lerner to prosecute conservative activists.

Flax made 31 visits to the White House between July 12, 2010 and May 8, 2013, according to White House visitor logs. Flax’s visits started in the early days of the IRS targeting program and ended just two days before the IRS scandal broke on May 10, 2013.”

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4. The good news in ObamaCare only applies to the poor. Everybody else just gets to pay for it.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “To hear administration officials and their supporters in the press tell it, this is a great time for Obamacare. People who signed up for coverage are actually paying for it; more insurance companies are joining exchanges; some consumers have more choices than originally envisioned. “The news surrounding the Affordable Care Act has been so good this week, it’s almost hard to know where to start,” wrote MSNBC‘s Steve Benen in a recent post headlined “Everything’s Coming Up Aces for the ACA.”

Not so fast. Yes, Obamacare is a big help for those now receiving something substantial from the government — large subsidies for the lowest-income Americans who purchase coverage on the exchanges, free health care for people eligible for the expanded Medicaid program.

But for millions of other Americans, it’s a different story. In fact, one respected analyst worries that Obamacare, while helping some, is actually “creating a chronically uninsured class” of those ineligible for its taxpayer-paid assistance.

Of the much-discussed eight million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare, the “vast majority … are receiving financial assistance,” according to a Department of Health and Human Services report released this week. What that means is this: Of the eight million, about 85 percent, or 6.8 million, actually paid for coverage. Of those, about 87 percent, or 5.9 million, receive taxpayer-paid subsidies to help them pay.”

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5. The blame game has started over the White House created crisis at the southern border.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Central American governments are beginning to feel heat from Washington, which is increasingly blaming leaders in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala for failing their own citizens — forcing many to flee to the U.S., banking on uncertain promises or rumors of legal status.

Democrats urged those governments to “tell the truth” to their people, even as Vice President Joseph R. Biden prepares for a Friday meeting in Guatemala with representatives of the three nations.

That follows what one participant described as a “very testy” meeting Wednesday between Hispanics in Congress and ambassadors for the three nations, who exchanged blame for what all sides say is a humanitarian nightmare.

“I do not see the countries of Central America stepping up to take responsibility for the danger, dysfunction, death and despair in their own cities and towns,” Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, Illinois Democrat, said Thursday.

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6. Democrats can pretend they had nothing to do with it. But they orchestrated it, and knew it was coming. This, from January, proves they were preparing for it.

From TheConservativeWife  “On January 29, 2014, the Federal Government posted an ad on their BizOpps website seeking escorts for unaccompanied illegal alien children. If this doesn’t prove that the entire mess with all the illegals flooding our country was planned by this administration, nothing ever will. Here is the entire document that lays out the “requirements” to become such an escort:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has a continuing and mission critical responsibility for accepting custody of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) from U.S. Border Patrol and other Federal agencies and transporting these juveniles to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters located throughout the continental United States. ICE is seeking the services of a responsible vendor that shares the philosophy of treating all UAC with dignity and respect, while adhering to standard operating procedures and policies that allow for an effective, efficient, and incident free transport. The Contractor shall provide unarmed escort staff, including management, supervision, manpower, training, certifications, licenses, drug testing, equipment, and supplies necessary to provide on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent unaccompanied alien children ages infant to 17 years of age, seven (7) days a week, 365 days a year. Transport will be required for either category of UAC or individual juveniles, to include both male and female juveniles. There will be approximately 65,000 UAC in total: “

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by

News/Politics 6-20-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Good question.

From PowerLine  “What Happened to the 1.1 Million Pages of Data on Nonprofits that IRS Gave the FBI? “

“We wrote here and here about the IRS’s transfer of 1.1 million pages of documents about 501(c)(4) organizations to the FBI in October 2010. We now know that the documents included confidential taxpayer information, which means that it was a criminal offense for Lois Lerner to transmit them to the FBI. Presumably this is one reason (not necessarily the only one) why Lerner sought refuge in the privilege against self-incrimination.

Within a few days of transmitting the documents, Lerner met with Department of Justice officials to encourage them to prosecute 501(c)(4) groups and individuals associated with them. In view of these events, an obvious question is: what did the FBI do with the materials it got from the IRS?

On June 11, FBI Director James Comey testified before a House oversight committee and was asked that question. His answer was: nothing. Comey didn’t have first-hand knowledge, but based on discussions with others at the Bureau, a single FBI employee looked at the index to the documents and then did nothing, waiting for instructions from DOJ that never came. On this account, the documents sat in FBI headquarters for more than 3 1/2 years without anyone looking at them. Comey said that within the past week, the Bureau had sent them to DOJ.”

This is what happens when you ask the fox to investigate crimes at the chicken house.

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2. It’s about time states take the matter up on their own. After all, the White House will do nothing to stop it since it’s their plan that’s causing it.

From Time  “Texas can’t afford to wait for Washington to act on this crisis and we will not sit idly by while the safety and security of our citizens are threatened”

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders called Wednesday evening for a “surge” in law enforcement along the border, announcing plans to inject $1.3 million more into the effort every week in response to a recent influx of illegal crossings.”

““Until the federal government fulfills its duty, it falls on the State of Texas to address those obligations,” the state leaders said in the joint letter to the director of the Texas DPS.”

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3. So they knew it was a disaster, but Obama’s legacy was more important than a working website.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Under pressure from the White House, healthcare.gov was launched despite a wave of previously unknown warnings from consultants that the Obamacare website was insecure, untested and prone to crashing after just 500 people got on, according to a damaging new Senate report.

“The White House continually meddled in technical decisions and put pressure on [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] officials to launch the website on time, regardless of operability and security concerns. As a result, officials ignored countless red flags to launch a website with thousands of defects. In the end, the launch failed miserably, crashing on takeoff,” said the report from Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee.”

“”Both metaphorically and factually, the website was designed to be the public face of President Obama’s signature achievement,” said the report. As a result, it added, “No one wanted to be the messenger that told the White House that its signature piece of legislation was going to crash at takeoff. The administration prioritized political success over protecting taxpayers,” charges the report, provided to Secrets in advance of its Thursday morning release.”

Nobody wanted to tell the Emperor he had no clothes I guess.

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4. Has the Middle East’s own 30 Year War begun?

From TheSpectator  “Syria has fallen apart. Major cities in Iraq have fallen to al-Qa’eda. Egypt may have stabilised slightly after a counter-coup. But Lebanon is starting once again to fragment. Beneath all these facts — beneath all the explosions, exhortations and blood — certain themes are emerging.

Some years ago, before the Arab ‘Spring’ ever sprung, I remember asking one top security official about the region. What, I wondered, was their single biggest fear? The answer was striking and precise: ‘That the region will clarify.’ That is a fear which now appears to be coming true.

The Middle East is not simply falling apart. It is taking a different shape, along very clear lines — far older ones than those the western powers rudely imposed on the region nearly a century ago. Across the whole continent those borders are in the process of cracking and breaking. But while that happens the region’s two most ambitious centres of power — the house of Saud and the Ayatollahs in Iran — find themselves fighting each other not just for influence but even, perhaps, for survival.”

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5. More on the Obama/Muslim Brotherhood connections.

From GulfNews  “Dubai: For the past decade, two successive US administrations have maintained close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya, to name just the most prominent cases.

The Obama administration conducted an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2010 and 2011, beginning even before the events known as the “Arab Spring” erupted in Tunisia and in Egypt. The President personally issued Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ordering an assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood and other “political Islamist” movements, including the ruling AKP in Turkey, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa (that is, support for “stable regimes” even if they were authoritarian), to a policy of backing “moderate” Islamic political movements.

To this day, PSD-11 remains classified, in part because it reveals an embarrassingly naïve and uninformed view of trends in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.”

Naïve? No. Guided by MB insiders in the Obama admin, and Hillary’s MB connected right-hand-woman is more like it.

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by

News/Politics 6-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Is the VA punishing employees who speak out?

Of course they are, and they have been for years.

From TheNYTimes  “Staff members at dozens of Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals across the country have objected for years to falsified patient appointment schedules and other improper practices, only to be rebuffed, disciplined or even fired after speaking up, according to interviews with current and former staff members and internal documents.

The growing V.A. scandal over long patient wait times and fake scheduling books is emboldening hundreds of employees to go to federal watchdogs, unions, lawmakers and outside whistle-blower groups to report continuing problems, officials for those various groups said. 

In interviews with The New York Times, a half-dozen current and former staff members — four doctors, a nurse and an office manager in Delaware, Pennsylvania and Alaska — said they faced retaliation for reporting systemic problems. Their accounts, some corroborated by internal documents, portray a culture of silence and intimidation within the department and echo experiences detailed by other V.A. personnel in court filings, government investigations and congressional testimony, much of it largely unnoticed until now.

The federal Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistle-blower complaints, is examining 37 claims of retaliation by V.A. employees in 19 states, and recently persuaded the V.A. to drop the disciplining of three staff members who had spoken out. Together with reports to other watchdog agencies and the Times interviews, the accounts by V.A. whistle-blowers cover several dozen hospitals, with complaints dating back seven years or longer.”

I’m sure the President will be shocked when he reads about this. 🙄

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2. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.

From CNSNews  “Federal tax revenues continue to run at a record pace (in inflation-adjusted dollars) in fiscal 2014, as the federal government’s total receipts for the fiscal year closed May at an unprecedented $1,934,919,000,000, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Despite record revenue, the federal government still ran a deficit of $436.382 billion in the first eight months of the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2013 and will end on Sept. 30, 2014.

In the month of May alone, the federal government ran a deficit of $129.971 billion–bringing in $199.889 billion in revenue while spending $329.860 billion.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has estimated that in the full fiscal 2014, the federal government will collect $3.001721 trillion in taxes, spend $3.650526 trillion, running a deficit of $648.805 billion.”

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3. The White House story on the immigration surge is falling apart.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “But whether or not many people noticed, this was the week in which the Obama administration’s attempts to deflect blame for the border crisis fell apart.

Most of the illegal immigrants are what Border Patrol officials call OTMs. That is, while they are crossing into the United States from Mexico, they are actually from other countries — in this case, mostly Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — and are classified as Other Than Mexican immigrants.

Top administration officials have tried to attribute the surge in crossings to violence and poverty in those countries. “The situation is motivated primarily by the conditions in the countries that they’re leaving — El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala,” said Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday. “Violence, poverty — I believe that is principally what is motivating the situation.”

“As it turns out, the Republican explanation does withstand a whole lot of scrutiny. Recent days have been filled with anecdotal reports, from local news outlets in Central America to major American newspapers, citing immigrants who say they came because they believe U.S. law has been changed to allow them to stay. And now comes word that Border Patrol agents in the most heavily-trafficked area of the surge, the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas, recently questioned 230 illegal immigrants about why they came. The results showed overwhelmingly that the immigrants, including those classified as UACs, or unaccompanied children, were motivated by the belief that they would be allowed to stay in the United States — and not by conditions in their homelands. From a report written by the agents, quoting from the interviews:”

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4. Lies my President told me. There’s a lot.

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5. Speaking of lies……

Even CNN isn’t buying the White House story on Lois Lerner’s lost emails.

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by

News/Politics 6-12-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Of course they did. 🙄

They pander at any and all opportunities, and if it steers money toward their donors in the process, even better.

From CNSNews  “A $350 million grant opportunity announced Friday by the Department of Health and Human Services to provide shelter for unaccompanied alien children (UAC) states that recipients providing residential shelter to these children must provide them with “family planning services” and that residential care providers deliver services in a manner that is “sensitive” to sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Residential care providers are required to provide…family planning services,” says an official description of the grant program published by HHS.

“Residential care providers are required to provide or arrange for the program required services in a manner that is sensitive to the…sexual orientation, gender identity, and other important individual needs of each UAC [unaccompanied alien child],” says the official description.”

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2. This proves once again that they Obama admin always knew it was a terrorist attack, and that a video never had anything to do with it. They’ve lied since day one.

From FoxNews  “The terrorists who attacked the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 used cell phones, seized from State Department personnel during the attacks, and U.S. spy agencies overheard them contacting more senior terrorist leaders to report on the success of the operation, multiple sources confirmed to Fox News.

The disclosure is important because it adds to the body of evidence establishing that senior U.S. officials in the Obama administration knew early on that Benghazi was a terrorist attack, and not a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islam video that had gone awry, as the administration claimed for several weeks after the attacks.”

“Eric Stahl, who recently retired as a major in the U.S. Air Force, served as commander and pilot of the C-17 aircraft that was used to transport the corpses of the four casualties from the Benghazi attacks – then-U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods – as well as the assault’s survivors from Tripoli to the safety of an American military base in Ramstein, Germany.

In an exclusive interview on Fox News’ “Special Report,” Stahl said members of a CIA-trained Global Response Staff who raced to the scene of the attacks were “confused” by the administration’s repeated implication of the video as a trigger for the attacks, because “they knew during the attack…who was doing the attacking.” Asked how, Stahl told anchor Bret Baier: “Right after they left the consulate in Benghazi and went to the [CIA] safehouse, they were getting reports that cell phones, consulate cell phones, were being used to make calls to the attackers’ higher ups.”

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3. A bad omen for moderates? I’d be more inclined to agree had McConnell lost too.

From TheNYTimes  “The House Republican leadership, so solid in its opposition to President Obama, was torn apart Tuesday by the defeat of its most influential conservative voice, Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader. His demise will reverberate all the way to the speaker’s chair, pull the top echelons of the House even further to the right and most likely doom any ambitious legislation, possibly through the next presidential election.

Conservatives who have helped fuel some of the most contentious showdowns over the last three years on issues such as immigration and raising the federal debt ceiling are likely to be emboldened by Mr. Cantor’s shocking loss as they seek to replace him with someone even more closely aligned with their views.

Further, House Republicans began to immediately plot a new leadership structure that before Tuesday night had hinged merely on whether Speaker John A. Boehner would seek to keep his post next year.”

“One measure of the extraordinary defeat could be seen in the candidate’s finances. Since the beginning of last year, Mr. Cantor’s campaign had spent about $168,637 at steakhouses compared with the $200,000 his challenger, David Brat, had spent on his entire campaign. With Mr. Cantor out, members from solidly Republican states will almost certainly be vying for one of the top jobs, if not Mr. Boehner’s gavel. The current Republican leadership slate is filled with members from swing states where the pressure to moderate views on topics such as immigration looms.”

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4. Not surprising. I think a lot more people would choose this option given the choice.

From Breitbart  “An upset last night in the Democrat primary for governor of Nevada was almost as stunning as the Brat win in VA-7. 

“None of the Above” won with 29.96% of the vote. Nevada was the first state to institute a “none of the above” line to its ballot in 1975, as a way for voters to protest weak, unqualified candidates.

Senator Harry Reid, who runs the Democrat party in Nevada with an iron fist, told reporters earlier this year, that the candidate to run against the popular Republican Governor Brian Sandoval, would be “a respectable Democrat and someone that people know.”

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5. 20 years ago I’d have said this could never happen here. Now I say it will happen here within the next 20 years. Wedding cakes were just the first step.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “Gay Danish couples win right to marry in church“

Homosexual couples in Denmark have won the right to get married in any church they choose, even though nearly one third of the country’s priests have said they will refuse to carry out the ceremonies.”

“The country’s parliament voted through the new law on same-sex marriage by a large majority, making it mandatory for all churches to conduct gay marriages.”

“Under the law, individual priests can refuse to carry out the ceremony, but the local bishop must arrange a replacement for their church.”

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6. You mean the anti-gun folks lie to push their agenda? Say it isn’t so…..

From NationalReview  “This map, which purports to show that there are have been 74 “shootings at schools” since the abomination at Newtown, is currently doing the rounds.”

“Tuesday’s school shooting in Oregon is at least the 74th instance of shots being fired on school grounds or in school buildings since the late-2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., according to a list maintained by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for policies it believes limit gun violence.

There have been at least 37 shootings on school grounds this year, which is just barely half over. All told, there has been nearly one shooting per week in the year and a half since Newtown. Everytown identifies a school shooting as any instance in which a firearm was discharged within a school building or on school grounds, sourced to multiple news reports per incident. Therefore, the data isn’t limited to mass shootings like Newtown—it includes assaults, homicides, suicides and even accidental shootings. Of the shootings, 35 took place at a college or university, while 39 took place in K-12 schools.

The Post is admirably clear that the map includes both colleges and schools, that it counts “any instance in which a firearm was discharged within a school building or on school grounds,” and that the data isn’t “limited to mass shootings like Newtown.” This point has also been made forcefully by Charles C. Johnson, who yesterday looked into each of the 74 incidents and noted that not only did some of them not take place on campuses but that “fewer than 7 of the 74 school shootings listed by #Everytown are mass shootings,” that one or more probably didn’t happen at all, that at least one was actually a case of self-defense, and that 32 could be classified as “school shootings” only if we are to twist the meaning of the term beyond all recognition.”

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