February 2, 2015 by the real Aj

News/Politics 2-2-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Lot’s to cover today.

1. Meet with your buddies in the Obama admin, two days later declare open jihad. Must be more of those “moderates” they keep raving about…..

From TheFreeBeacon “The Muslim Brotherhood called for “a long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt just days after a delegation of the Islamist group’s key leaders and allies met with the State Department, according to an official statement released this week.

Just days after a delegation that included two top Brotherhood leaders was hosted at the State Department, the organization released an official statement calling on its supporters to “prepare” for jihad, according to an independent translation of the statement first posted on Tuesday.”

““It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent in our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom,” it states.”

“The Brotherhood’s renewed call for jihad comes at a time when current Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is cracking down on the group and imprisoning many of its supporters, who notoriously engaged in violence following the ouster of Brotherhood-ally Mohamed Morsi.”

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2. About time. It’s amazing what you can do without Reid obstructing things, huh?

From TheWashingtonTimes “Senate Republicans on Thursday asked President Obama to turn over all communications he and his aides have had with the IRS since 2010, hoping to find out whether the tax collection agency shared private taxpayer information with political operatives at the White House.

The request, made in a letter obtained by The Washington Times, is signed by Senate Finance Chairman Orrin G. Hatch and all 13 other Republicans on the committee, and is addressed specifically to Mr. Obama, saying they want to see if his employees broke the law by acquiring or sharing private information.

“We have an obligation to conduct oversight of the federal government’s administration of our tax laws,” the lawmakers wrote. “As part of this oversight, we are seeking to determine the degree to and manner in which the Internal Revenue Service shares taxpayer information with the Executive Office of the President.””

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3. Also new legislation to deal with the Obama policy of releasing criminal illegals on US streets.

From TownHall “The Department of Homeland Security currently has a policy in place known as “catch and release,” meaning violent illegal aliens are arrested, processed and put back onto American streets if their home countries won’t take them back.

According to Judicary Comimittee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s office, the policy was “created by a 2001 Supreme Court decision (Zadvydas v. Davis), which prohibits immigrants who had been ordered removed from being detained for more than six months. The Court expanded this decision to apply to all illegal immigrants in Clark v. Martinez in 2005.”

This catch and release policy is not only demoralizing to Immigration and Border Patrol Agents, but it’s dangerous and deadly. There are countless examples of violent assault and murders committed by illegal aliens after being arrested and released by federal authorities. “

“According to Grassley’s office, more than 36,000 criminally convicted illegal aliens were released in 2013. Since their release, 1,000 of these criminal aliens have been convicted of crimes like assault with a deadly weapon, child-rape, rape, participating in street gangs, aggravated assault, robbery, DUI, terroristic threats and more.

“The Zadvydas decision ties the hands of the federal government, forcing law enforcement to release dangerous criminals onto our streets because their home country won’t allow them back. The Obama administration has relied upon this ruling to release thousands of criminally convicted aliens, yet they’ve done nothing to fix the problem. This legislation corrects a very real problem with serious public safety implications,” Grassley said in a statement.”

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4. Ted Cruz is seeking an investigation and documents about the White House’s interfering in Israel’s elections.

PDF of the letter, From Cruz.Senate.Gov

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5. Control the message, and the messengers….

From Politico “Reporters covering the House Democrats’ retreat in Philadelphia this week are having a much different experience than when they’re on their home turf on Capitol Hill.

Reporters are being escorted to and from the restroom and lobby and are being barred from entering the hotel outside of scheduled events, even if they’ve been invited by a member of Congress.

During Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks at the retreat Friday, reporters were required to have a staff member, usually a junior member of the press team, escort them when going to the bathroom or to the lobby. The filing center for reporters was at a separate hotel from where the retreat was taking place, so access was limited to members of Congress specifically made available to the press.”

“It was a police state. It was absurd how heavy handed the capitol police and Democratic staff were in trying to control everywhere the press went,” New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters said in an interview.

Peters said at one point he was also barred from entering the hotel where the retreat was taking place, despite the fact he had an invitation to eat breakfast with a member of Congress.”

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6. African nations are sending in peacekeepers to deal with Boko Haram.

From TheAP “African leaders agreed to send 7,500 troops to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in northeast Nigeria, an African Union official said Saturday, as the international community, including long-time foes the U.S. and Iran, rallied in support of Nigeria against the militants.

The move came after the council urged heads of state to endorse the deployment of troops from five West African countries to fight the terror group, said the head of the African Union’s Peace and Security Council, Samil Chergui.

African leaders who are members of the 54-nation African Union are meeting in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa for a two-day summit that ends Saturday.”

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7. John Podesta violates ethics? I didn’t know he had any….

From TheDailyCaller “In 2013, John Podesta was paid $87,000 by a shadowy foreign billionaire whose passion is preventing energy exploration on American land.

Just two years later, Podesta is a member of President Obama’s inner circle, and the driving force inside the White House to block 12 million acres of land in Alaska’s Artic National Wildlife Refuge from oil drilling.

The circumstances suggest Podesta may have run afoul of Obama’s highly-touted ethics pledge, which requires political appointees to disqualify themselves in matters relating to the interests of a former employer or client.

Podesta — who is preparing to leave the White House to take a top position with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign — has largely avoided public scrutiny during his time as a White House Counselor.”

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January 29, 2015 by the real Aj

News/Politics 1-29-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Meet the new AG, same as the old AG.

From Breitbart “President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General of the United States, Loretta Lynch, said on Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing that she thinks illegal aliens have the same right to work in America as American citizens do.

“Senator, I believe the right and the obligation to work is one that is shared by everyone in this country, regardless of how they came here,” Lynch said when asked by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) who has a greater right to work: Illegal aliens, or lawful immigrants and American citizens?

“Certainly, if someone is here—regardless of status—I would prefer that they be participating in the workplace than not participating in the workplace,” Lynch said.”

I think millions of unemployed American citizens who could fill those jobs would disagree.

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2. If you like your plan….

That’s too bad, because you might not be able to keep it.

From HotAir “The new CBO projection on ObamaCare’s impact has a couple of counter-narrative epiphanies, and the impact on employer-based insurance is just one of them. When Democrats pushed the ACA through Congress on a party-line vote and with plenty of legislative chicanery — remember “reconciliation”? — they insisted that ObamaCare would do three things:

The first became known as Politifact’s 2013 Lie of the Year. Not only did ObamaCare force millions of people out of their plans in the first year of enrollment, it’s doing the same thing in the second year with its recalculation of subsidies and the premium shocks that creates. Investors Business Daily points out that the CBO demolishes the second argument too:

“But the CBO report also shows that ObamaCare will be far more disruptive to the employer-based insurance market, while being far less effective at cutting the ranks of the uninsured, than promised.

Thanks to ObamaCare, the CBO now expects that 10 million workers will lose their employer-based coverage by 2021.”

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3. Well…. PA. voters did vote for the “progressive” candidate, so you asked for it.

From NewsMax “A transgender physician will soon become Pennsylvania’s new physician general, the Washington Blade reported.

Dr. Rachel Levine, an expert in adolescent eating disorders and behavior health, was nominated for the Commonwealth’s highest medical post by progressive Gov. Tom Wolf.

She made her transition from man to woman five years ago, and with her appointment will become “the highest-ranking transgender person to ever hold a position within state government,” the Blade said.”

“”Dr. Rachel Levine is well-respected in the fields of pediatrics, psychiatry, and behavioral health, where she has practiced for close to three decades,” the governor said in statement about her selection.

He added: “She has been a leading voice in efforts to treat teens with medical and psychological problems, as well as adults and children with eating disorders. It is important to me that we place equal emphasis on behavioral and physical health issues.””

Looks like the doctor has issues of his own.

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4. Sex Ed instruction, Planned Parenthood style.

From TheDailyMail “Parents with students at one California high school recently learned that two Planned Parenthood employees who taught their impressionable children sex education also held down some controversial side jobs.

One of the sex-ed instructors at Acalanes Union High School in Lafayette also taught a class on sex toys at a nearby shop while the other identified herself as a ‘pleasure activist’ on her now-deleted Twitter profile.

The job history of the two teachers was revealed after parents learned about the school’s partnership with Planned Parenthood and demanded the curriculum be changed.”

“‘Planned Parenthood is a business. It’s a business that sells sex. It’s a way to get clientele and to sexualize young people and turn them into lifelong clients,’ parent Camille Giglio told CBS San Francisco in November.”

At least someone finally figured it out.

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5. I think some of you were just talking about this, and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. The Obama admin just loves the Muslim Brotherhood.

From TheFreeBeacon “The State Department hosted a delegation of Muslim Brotherhood-aligned leaders this week for a meeting about their ongoing efforts to oppose the current government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt, who rose to power following the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, an ally of the Brotherhood, in 2013.

One member of the delegation, a Brotherhood-aligned judge in Egypt, posed for a picture while at Foggy Bottom in which he held up the Islamic group’s notorious four-finger Rabia symbol, according to his Facebook page.

That delegation member, Waleed Sharaby, is a secretary-general of the Egyptian Revolutionary Council and a spokesman for Judges for Egypt, a group reported to have close ties to the Brotherhood.

The delegation also includes Gamal Heshmat, a leading member of the Brotherhood, and Abdel Mawgoud al-Dardery, a Brotherhood member who served as a parliamentarian from Luxor.”

““The State Department continues to speak with Muslim Brothers on the assumption that Egyptian politics are unpredictable, and the Brotherhood still has some support in Egypt,” he said. “But when pro-Brotherhood delegations then post photos of themselves making pro-Brotherhood gestures in front of the State Department logo, it creates an embarrassment for the State Department.””

Oh please…. The State Dept. IS the embarrassment….

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June 20, 2014 by the real Aj

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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April 29, 2014 by the real Aj

News/Politics 4-29-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Another “Phony Scandal” update. I recommend you read the whole thing, it’s pretty detailed. This is Obama/Clinton foreign policy legacy.

From TheMailOnline “The Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.

‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline.

She blamed the Obama administration for tacitly approving the diversion of half of a $1 billion Qatari arms shipment to al-Qaeda-linked militants.

‘Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,’ Lopez claimed. ‘They were permitted to come in. … [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed..

‘The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.’“

Nope, nothin’ to see there…. 🙄

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2. The political fraud about voter fraud.

From TheWSJ “The Obama administration has been ramping up its rhetoric about the evil of voter identification as part of the run-up to the midterm elections. In January, Attorney General Eric Holder told MSNBC that voter fraud “simply does not exist to the extent that would warrant” voter ID laws, adding that many who favor such measures do so in order to “depress the vote.” Vice President Joe Biden claimed in February that new voter ID laws in North Carolina, Alabama and Texas were motivated by “hatred” and “zealotry.”

In an April 11 speech to Al Sharpton‘s National Action Network, President Obama recited statistics purporting to show that voter fraud was extremely rare. The “real voter fraud,” he said, “is people who try to deny our rights by making bogus arguments about voter fraud.”

These arguments themselves are bogus.”

“The president’s speech may have been red meat for his base and good for fundraising. But it failed to engage the serious issues relating to election integrity. The coming months don’t promise an improvement.”

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3. In 20% of American families, no one works.

From CNSNews “In 20 percent of American families in 2013, according to new data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), not one member of the family worked.

A family, as defined by the BLS, is a group of two or more people who live together and who are related by birth, adoption or marriage. In 2013, there were 80,445,000 families in the United States and in 16,127,000—or 20 percent–no one had a job.

The BLS designates a person as “employed” if “during the survey reference week” they “(a) did any work at all as paid employees; (b) worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm; (c) or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family.”

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4. An Egyptian court’s crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood leaders continues.

From YahooNews “An Egyptian court sentenced 682 alleged Islamists and Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie to death on Monday, a lawyer and prosecutor said, after two brief sessions the defence partly boycotted.

The same court in the southern province of Minya also reversed 492 of 529 death sentences it passed in March, commuting most of those to life in prison.

The court, presided over by judge Said Youssef Sabry, had sparked an international outcry with its initial sentencing last month amid an extensive crackdown on supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.”

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5. China has restarted it’s campaign against Christian churches within it’s borders.

From TheTelegraph “Demolition teams began destroying parts of a Chinese church that has become a symbol of resistance to the Communist Party’s draconian clutch on religion, activists and witnesses said on Monday.

Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, a wealthy coastal city known as the “Jerusalem of the East”, made headlines earlier this month when thousands of Christians formed a human shield around its entrance after plans for its demolition were announced.

Church members accused Communist leaders in Zhejiang province of ordering an anti-church crackdown and claimed there were plans to completely or partially demolish at least 10 places of worship.”

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6. Israeli Christians have seen what happened to their brethren in Muslim countries during the Arab Spring. Now they want to help protect theirs from the same fate.

From TheGlobalPost “For the first time in its history, Israel’s army is getting ready to send voluntary military enlistment notices to Christian Arab citizens when they turn eighteen.

The unlikely impetus behind the move is none other than the Arab Spring, the popular rebellion revolutionizing the Arab world and in the process recalibrating the relationship between Christian citizens and the State of Israel. Shocked by a new climate featuring violence against Christians in Egypt and Libya, among other countries, and displacement in Syria, some of Israel’s Christian Arabs are pushing for greater participation in their home state.”

“The name alone — “Israeli Christians Recruitment Forum,” rather than “Arab Christians Recruitment Forum” — is a strong statement in this region. Naddaf has lost patience, he says, “with the Arab world telling us what we can do and what we should feel.”

“In light of the persecution of Christians in Arab countries just because they are Christians,” Naddaf said in a meeting with journalists this week following the army’s announcement, “our youth feels they must make a sacrifice for the country that is protecting them.” He believes that these notices, which still aren’t equivalent to the obligatory draft others face, will “open the door … to full participation in society for Christians.” But apart from an explicit welcome, the notices will include details on a possible preliminary meeting at the individual’s nearest IDF enlistment office, and reduce the amount of energy Christian youths need to expend volunteering for a service other citizens are brought into automatically.”

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April 24, 2014 by the real Aj

News/Politics 4-24-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread. Here’s a few to start off with.

1. Just keep telling yourself vote fraud is a myth. First we had thousands of voters registered in 2 states that involved South Carolina, now we have thousands more. And there are more.

From WatchDog.org “A crosscheck of voter rolls in Virginia and Maryland turned up 44,000 people registered in both states, a vote-integrity group reported Wednesday. And that’s just the beginning.

“The Virginia Voters Alliance is investigating how to identify voters who are registered and vote in Virginia but live in the states that surround us,” Alliance President Reagan George told the State Board of Elections.

George acknowledged that the number of voters who actually cast multiple ballots is relatively small. In the case of Maryland and Virginia, he revealed that 164 people voted in both states during the 2012 election.

But George said his group will expand their search for duplicate voters in the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Georgia.”

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2. And yet another example.

From AL.com “Less than three months before the June primary, four Alabama counties had more voters on their rolls than what the Census Bureau says is their voting age population.

Officials give a number of reasons for that, including under-counting by the census.

Secretary of State Jim Bennett said the discrepancies create opportunity for voting fraud.”

““Every duplicate name and every bad address is just an opportunity for crooks to attempt to manipulate our elections,” Bennett said.”

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3. Time for a special prosecutor. This relationship between the Obama admin and the MB was never in the country’s best interest. They’re a terrorist supporting group, and should be treated as one, not given the special access they’ve gotten.

From TheClarionProject “Newly declassified documents obtained by the Clarion Project show that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) misled members of Congress in 2012 about its involvement with Muslim Brotherhood-linked entities.”

“The story of the deception began when the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified to Congress on February 10, 2011 saying that the Muslim Brotherhood is “a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has described Al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.”

“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s denial of any government engagement with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities is even more shocking considering the history of internal emails sent around the ODNI.”

“The members of Congress – and the American people – have a right to know the truth: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence does have a relationship with domestic organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood – and, it is a truth that needs a formal evaluation and investigation.”

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December 6, 2013 by the real Aj

News/Politics 12-6-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Chaos for doctors, and bad news for Medicaid patients.

From CNBC “Right now that back end is in chaos. … We don’t even know if we should sign up for these plans, because we have a suspicion that many of [them] offer very little reimbursement or offer a loss to the physicians who are going to see these patients,” Grace told Larry Kudlow on CNBC’s “Kudlow Report”.

“No physician wants to take money out of his pocket and put it in the government’s.”

“The administration released a 50-state report Tuesday morning saying that nearly 1.5 million people had been found eligible for Medicaid during October, far outpacing enrollment eligibility in subsidized private coverage. But as Obamacare puts more people in the Medicaid system, Grace said fewer doctors are treating Medicaid patients.

“The problem is, who’s going to care for you when you have Medicaid?” he said. “For an hour-and-15-minute evaluation of a cancer patient, I get $6.50. That won’t even pay for the electricity. What kind of physician will you get … what kind of specialist will you get?”

I can answer that. This kind.

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2. Low-information leadership?

With a Hat Tip to Michelle. 🙂

From TheWallStJournal “It’s a shock for most people that it’s a shambles. A fellow very friendly to the administration, a longtime supporter, cornered me at a holiday party recently to ask, with true perplexity: “How could any president put his entire reputation on the line with a program and not be on the phone every day pushing people and making sure it will work? Do you know of any president who wouldn’t do that?” I couldn’t think of one, and it’s the same question I’d been asking myself. The questioner had been the manager of a great institution, a high stakes 24/7 operation with a lot of moving parts. He knew Murphy’s law—if it can go wrong, it will. Managers—presidents—have to obsess, have to put the fear of God, as Mr. Obama says, into those below them in the line of authority. They don’t have to get down in the weeds every day but they have to know there are weeds, and that things get caught in them.

It’s a leader’s job to be skeptical of grand schemes. Sorry, that’s a conservative leader’s job. It is a liberal leader’s job to be skeptical that grand schemes will work as intended. You have to guide and goad and be careful.

And this president wasn’t. I think part of the reason he wasn’t careful is because he sort of lives in words. That’s been his whole professional life—books, speeches. Say something and it magically exists as something said, and if it’s been said and publicized it must be real. He never had to push a lever, see the machine not respond, puzzle it out and fix it. It’s all been pretty abstract for him, not concrete. He never had to stock a store, run a sale and see lots of people come but the expenses turn out to be larger than you’d expected and the profits smaller, and you have to figure out what went wrong and do better next time.

People say Mr. Obama never had to run anything, but it may be more important that he never worked for the guy who had to run something, and things got fouled up along the way and he had to turn it around. He never had to meet a payroll, never knew that stress. He probably never had to buy insurance! And you know, his policies were probably gold-plated—at the law firm, through his wife’s considerable hospital job, in the Illinois Legislature, in the U.S. Senate. Those guys know how to take care of themselves! Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe that’s to his credit, knowing he was lucky. Too bad he didn’t know what he didn’t know, like how every part has to work for a complicated machine to work.”

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3. As I’m sure you’re aware, Nelson Mandela has died. Mary Katharine Ham has written a good piece on him and his impact on the world.

From HotAir ““Our nation has lost its greatest son,” [South African] President Jacob Zuma said in a televised address on Thursday night, adding that Mr. Mandela had died at 8:50 p.m. local time. “His humility, his compassion and his humanity earned him our love.”

The Internet is awash with remembrances of Mandela from people who never knew him. Some will be self-important and tiresome, but most are just the honest, gut feelings of millions—each a testament to the reach of this towering, touching figure of the 20th century. I never knew him, but I knew the power of his inspiration and his example. As a kid, attending majority-black schools in North Carolina less than a generation removed from segregation, my classmates and I knew we were there, together, because of the bravery and leadership of good people who came before us. It was a hard thing to grasp at 7 (likely easier for my black classmates), vague at first. We played hopscotch under the arc of the moral universe, rarely looking skyward to see where it was bending. But there were moments when, in our innocence, we could feel the weight of what happened before we were born— a trip to Woolworth’s in Greensboro just minutes away or the release of Nelson Mandela on the other side of the world.”

“Greater awareness and hormones intervened, turning middle school into a place of racial tension where old friendships were taboo and anger reigned. Mandela’s example of a man supremely wronged who did not let bitterness overtake him seemed amazing, otherworldly. I’ll always be thankful he was the leader who rose while a bunch of confused teenagers in North Carolina were hurting from wounds old and new. Mandela’s life and death, of course, are not about me or my experiences. But the enormity of what Mandela did gave so many the opportunity to discover the beautiful joys and challenges we experienced alongside all God’s children. And, he gave my friends and me an idea of the giant people and giant sacrifices required to allow us to live in a neighborhood where “little black boys and girls” literally, routinely held hands with “little white boys and girls.” It was a gift and it wasn’t always a given. But it’s easy to take for granted what seems impossible after it’s already been done.”

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4. Huh. It seems the new Egyptian govt is smarter than ours when it comes to the Brotherhood. They’re not afraid to admit the obvious, unlike the Obama admin who funded them.

From TheJerusalemPost “Egyptian media reported Thursday that the government is preparing to deem the Muslim Brotherhood “a terrorist organization,” as pro-Morsi organizations sent out a call for protests to be held over the weekend.

The Egyptian El-Watan newspaper, which tends to support the military and oppose the Muslim Brotherhood, reported that interim Prime Minister Hazem el- Beblawi discussed in a closed meeting with a number of ministers a detailed directive that declares the Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

The government blames the organization for violence and terrorism that has taken place since Mohamed Morsi was removed from power on July 3.”

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5. And last, a really bizarre story on numerous Russian diplomats arrested for Medicaid fraud. An attempt to blacken their eye in retaliation for Syria?

From NBCNews “Dozens of Russian diplomats and their spouses living and working in New York have been charged with defrauding the Medicaid system of about $1.5 million in benefits over a nine-year period, federal prosecutors say.

A federal criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan says the alleged scheme by 49 diplomats and their spouses included submitting false applications for Medicaid benefits associated with medical costs for pregnancy, birth and young children, benefits they were not entitled to receive. The 18-month investigation by the FBI revealed a pattern of fraudulent Medicaid application submissions by the defendants, including under-reporting household income and false statements about the citizenship status of children in order to continue dependents’ health care coverage, prosecutors say. Court papers say 92 percent of the births to Russian diplomats and their spouses between 2004 and 2013 in New York City were paid for by Medicaid benefits.

While collecting Medicaid benefits, prosecutors say the Russian diplomats and their spouses spent tens of thousands of dollars on luxury vacations as well as jewelry and clothing at Bloomingdale’s, Tiffany’s and other retailers. They also spent thousands of dollars online to buy merchandise including Apple products and concert tickets.”

11 of the 49 have diplomatic immunity.

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