Obama

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News/Politics 12-12-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The Tea Party members of the party are not a big fan of the budget deal.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Tea party and conservative groups pounced on the budget proposal that congressional leaders carved out behind closed doors, saying that the plan is based on the faulty premise of increasing spending now in exchange for future spending cuts that will never materialize.

They said that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the GOP budget negotiator, can kiss goodbye any chance of winning over grassroots activists if he chooses to run for president in 2016 after he surrendered ground on across-the-board “sequester” cuts to spending rolled back in the new deal.”

“Mr. Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, Washington Democrat, announced late Tuesday that they had reached a two-year budget deal that would reduce the deficit by $23 billion over ten years without raising taxes.

The proposal restored $63 billion on the across-the-board “sequester” cuts to defense and non-defense programs. It also included higher fees on airline travel and requires federal employees to contribute more for their retirement benefits.”

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2. Democrats are making use of the change in filibuster rules. This was their motivation, to stack the court that most directly oversees the White House with like-minded liberals.

From HotAir  “Senate Democrats revealed their primary motivation for changing the filibuster rules today when they confirmed Obama nominee Patricia Millett to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on a 56-38 vote:

Senators voted 56-38 to approve Washington lawyer Patricia Millett to join the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the nation’s second most powerful court.

Both sides saw Millett’s appointment as pivotal. It will give Democratic-appointed judges a 5-4 majority over those chosen by Republican presidents for that court, which rules on the legality of White House actions and federal agency regulations.

That last part is the important part: the DC Court of Appeals has jurisdiction over regulatory and executive matters. The last few years have shown us that blurring the lines on exactly what constitutes regulatory and executive authority has been a key tool of the Obama Administration.”

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3. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn) has fired his chief of staff Ryan Loskarn after his home was searched in a child porn investigation.

From NBCNews  “Alexander, a veteran senator who’s up for re-election in 2014, said that law enforcement agents had conducted a search this morning of the residence of Ryan Loskarn. Alexander announced earlier in the day that Loskarn had been placed on administrative leave, and later released a statement to announce had been let go.

“The courts will judge Mr. Loskarn’s guilt or innocence, but under these circumstances, he cannot continue to fulfill his duties as chief of staff of this office. Therefore, as of today, I have removed him from the payroll,” Alexander said in a statement.”

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4. Told ya’ so. Why do liberals always have to learn the hard way?

Any aid you give ends up in the hands of the radicals Islamists. It’s who the rebels are. This is a good start, now make sure you turn off ALL of the weapons supply too.

From BuzzFeed  “The United States has suspended delivery of non-lethal aid into northern Syria due to concerns over gains by Islamist rebels there, a U.S. official said on Tuesday.

The suspension halts direct U.S. assistance to Syria’s rebel-held north, long an opposition stronghold and the focal point of U.S. efforts to support the country’s moderate opposition. The affected aid includes supplies such as food and medicine, as well as vehicles and communications equipment.

The official said that humanitarian aid — which the U.S. channels through international and non-governmental organizations — will continue “and is not impacted by this suspension.”

The suspension comes in response to a worrisome development for the Free Syrian Army, or FSA, the moderate rebel coalition backed by the U.S. and its western allies. The FSA has been losing ground steadily to hardline rebel factions, including local affiliates of Al-Qaeda and a powerful rival coalition called the Islamic Front. On Friday, Islamic Front fighters overtook several key FSA headquarters and warehouses in Atimeh, a town near the Turkish border, dealing the FSA a bracing blow — and drawing alarm from the U.S.”

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5. Yet another ObamaCare navigator nailed by Project Veritas.

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6. Grinch Alert!!!

This lady thinks Santa needs a PC makeover, so the kids don’t get scarred for life. 🙄

From Slate  “When I was a kid, I knew two different Santa Clauses. The first had a fat belly, rosy cheeks, a long white beard, and skin as pink as bubble gum. He was omnipresent, visiting my pre-school and the local mall, visible in all of my favorite Christmas specials.

Then there was the Santa in my family’s household, in the form of ornaments, cards, and holiday figurines. A near-carbon copy of the first one—big belly, rosy cheeks, long white beard: check, check, check. But his skin was as dark as mine.”

“And so I propose that America abandon Santa-as-fat-old-white-man and create a new symbol of Christmas cheer. From here on out, Santa Claus should be a penguin. That’s right: a penguin.

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News/Politics 12-11-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Looks like a budget deal been reached.

From TheWashingtonPost  “House and Senate negotiators unveiled an $85-billion agreement late Tuesday to fund federal agencies through the fall of 2015, avoiding another government shutdown and ending the cycle of crisis that has paralyzed Washington for much of the past three years.

In a rare display of bipartisan cooperation, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) stood side-by-side in the Capitol with Senate Budget Committee chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to announce the deal, which would cancel half the sharp spending cuts known as the sequester for the current fiscal year.”

“I am very proud to stand here today with Chairman Ryan to say that we have broken through the gridlock,” said Murray, calling the agreement “an important step in helping to heal some of the wounds here in Congress and show we can do something without another crisis around the corner.”

Ryan called the agreement “a clear improvement on the status quo” that protects the Pentagon from fresh cuts set to hit January while trimming deficits by more than $20 billion over the next decade.”

Call me unimpressed.

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2. I told you the other day about Holder’s DoJ was steering settlement money to community organizers. Seems the USDA has a similar program to steer large piles of cash to questionable individuals and groups.

From TheBlaze  “Between 2008 and 2011, the U.S. government awarded roughly $6.12 million in federal farm subsidies to several groups in the Chicago area, including a charity owned by Louis Farrakhan’s The Nation of Islam, according to a report released by government watchdog group Open the Books.

The report, titled “Farm Subsidies and the Big Dogs,” is based on data released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture & information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. The report examines total farm subsidies that have been paid into selected cities and urban areas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, federal farm subsidies are being poured into several non-farming metropolitan areas, including New York City and Chicago, according to the report.

Several entities in Chicago, for example, “receive the federal subsidies at their downtown loop office buildings or residential mansions,” the report reads. “Nearly every neighborhood in the city receives federal farm subsidy payments — including the Gold Coast, Downtown — Loop, Lincoln Park, and even the President’s neighbors in Hyde Park.” A total of 930 entities in the Chicago area received farm subsidies between 2008 and 2011.”

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3. A Dem pollster has been shocked to find no racism in Tea Partiers. So they had to make some up. 🙄

From Mediaite  “The Democratic pollster Democracy Corps, commissioning research from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, recently dug into that foreign species commonly referred to as “the conservative voter.” In a dispatch that reads like the curious field notes Charles Darwin scribbled while observing the natural wonders of the Galapagos, the Democratic pollsters have found that the family Republican is made up of a variety of genera, including moderates, tea partiers and socially conservative evangelicals.”

“We know that Evangelicals are the largest bloc in the base, with the Tea Party very strong as Well,” the memo reads. They feign shock at the notion that Republicans view President Barack Obama as a “liar” and a “manipulator,” two designations that the majority of American voters would agree with but to which the Democratic base’s Pavlovian response is to point and shriek “racism.”

Indeed, the pollsters even confess that they “expected” to find more racism among Republican voters. “We expected that in this comfortable setting or in their private written notes, some would make a racial reference or racist slur when talking about the African American President,” they confess. “None did.”

“But this response by the voters they surveyed is viewed by Democracy Corps pollsters more as a clever evolutionary response to a history of predation. The Republican voter, the pollsters declare, harbors racial consciousness that is only masked by an effective camouflage:”

They couldn’t find any, but just know it’s there. Why else would they be against Obama, right? 🙄

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4. More Common Core indoctrination masquerading as education.

From EAGNews  “Next month, the organization, Creating Balance in an Unjust World, will hold its annual conference on “math education and social justice”.

The conference is sponsored by Radical Math, an organization founded by Jonathan Osler, a math and community organizing teacher at a Coalition of Essential Schools high school in Brooklyn, NY.

The Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) is the progressive education reform movement expanded by President Obama and domestic terrorist William Ayers through their work with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in the 90′s.”

“Radical Math’s website provides over 700 lesson plans and other resources covering a wide range of political and social issues (with extreme bias), including globalization, the redistribution of wealth, and various ways the poor are discriminated against and oppressed by whites, banks, corporations, the rich, and the government. One such resource, Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers, contains chapters titled, “Sweatshop Accounting”, “Racism and Stop and Frisk”, “When Equal Isn’t Fair”, “The Square Root of a Fair Share”, and “Home Buying While Brown or Black”.”

Yeah…..

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5. Hey Canada…. what gives, eh? 🙂

From MyFoxNY  “Canada plans to make a claim to the North Pole in an effort to assert its sovereignty in the resource-rich Arctic, the country’s foreign affairs minister said Monday.

John Baird said the government has asked scientists to work on a future submission to the United Nations claiming that the outer limits of the country’s continental shelf include the pole, which so far has been claimed by no one.

Canada last week applied to extend its seabed claims in the Atlantic Ocean, including some preliminary Arctic claims, but it wants more time to prepare a claim that would include the pole.”

“Countries including the U.S. and Russia are increasingly looking to the Arctic as a source of natural resources and shipping lanes. The U.S. Geological Survey says the region contains 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 15 percent of oil. If Canada’s claim is accepted by the U.N. commission, it would dramatically grow its share.”

Will Santa’s workshop be in the claim too? 😯

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News/Politics 12-10-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Fast and Furious was bad. This might be worse. And I also find it interesting that the same admin calling for further restrictions on folks with possible mental issues, is the same admin who is arming people with mental issues to prove their point about the necessity of such restrictions. Create the solution and then create the problem.

From HotAir  “Twitter went crazy last night after an NYT editor teased a story they were working on for the a.m. as “very unusual” and “groundbreaking.” The result didn’t live up to the hype — it’s good, but not the world-rocking expose you’d expect when the Times braintrust is buzzing. This, on the other hand, is world-rocking. Not because it’s surprising to find the ATF engaged in dubious tactics, but because the tactics they used were so dubious even though the stakes were so, so small. If you strain very hard, you can semi-defend Fast & Furious as an idiotic response borne of desperation in trying to solve a serious problem. What’s the defense, though, when desperate and idiotic methods are used to catch penny-ante criminals, some of them profoundly mentally disabled?

I don’t often tell you to read the whole thing, especially when it’s as long as this, but I’m telling you now. The ATF’s M.O. was to open some sort of store, be it a pawn shop or a tattoo parlor, in a poor neighborhood and then try to bait the locals into committing drug or gun crimes. If some of those locals were handicapped, hey — that just makes reaching the monthly quota of guilty pleas and convictions easier. There’s no way to do it justice via excerpt, but here’s a taste of one instance where they recruited a guy with an IQ in the mid-50s to buy guns for them in the community:”

“That’s not all, but I’ll leave you to read about the ATF teaching people how to make sawed-off shotguns and fire machine guns. At least one machine gun went missing during these operations; in other cases, convicted felons were allowed to leave the store with guns they had just bought. But then, losing track of dangerous armed men is par for the course in ATF stings these days. Two exit questions for you. One: How soon before Darrell Issa holds hearings? And two, for legal eagles: How is there no entrapment in any of this? They might not have explicitly suggested the crime in each case but they clearly created incentives for committing the crime. The point of an entrapment defense, I thought, is to discourage overzealous cops from encouraging otherwise law-abiding people into wrongdoing. “Encouraging” can mean a lot of things, especially with a defendant who’s disabled.”

The report from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is here.

It’s very long, and it’s infuriating. They preyed on these poor people, while creating the problem in the first place.

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2. Grinch Alert!

Or as some like to call him, Mikey Whinestein.

From FoxNews  “The Baby Jesus has been kicked off Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, according to an organization who relishes any opportunity to eradicate Christianity from the U.S. military.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation praised officials at Shaw Air Force Base for removing a Nativity scene located near Memorial Lake on Friday. The traditional Nativity included plastic statues of Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus and an assortment of animals.

Apparently, an undisclosed number of Airmen were so emotionally troubled by the sight of a manger scene that they immediately notified the MRFF.”

“Loebe swiftly alerted MRFF President Mikey Weinstein who then called his BFF’s at the Pentagon. That led to an immediate investigation and more than two hours later, the Nativity had been removed.”

Of course it was. 🙄

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3. Yet another ObamaCare lie.

From InvestorsBudinessDaily   “The people most threatened by ObamaCare have pre-existing conditions, meaning health problems that make it hard to get insurance. To sell ObamaCare, the president actually lied, claiming he would protect these people.”

“The pre-existing conditions problem affects about 2 million people in the individual market. The best options for these sick people are being closed because of ObamaCare.

In 35 states, they currently get coverage through high-risk pools, where premiums are subsidized to help keep them within reach. Most of these pools have long waiting lists. But high-risk pools must close on Dec. 31, 2013, or shortly after, because the Affordable Care Act directs ill patients to enroll in ObamaCare exchange plans.

The problem is, most exchange plans severely limit their choice of hospitals and doctors, excluding academic hospitals and specialty cancer centers. State insurance commissioners are scrambling to delay closing the high-risk pools.”

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4. And yet another unintended consequences of ObamaCare. They never think this stuff thru. They were in too much of a hurry to get it passed.

From TheDailyMail  “Volunteer fire departments all across the U.S. could find themselves out of money and unable to operate unless Congress or the Obama Administration exempts them from the Affordable Care Act.”

“Since the Obamacare law doesn’t specifically carve out an exemption for them, fire departments where 50 or more people work – either as volunteers or real employees – are expected to provide health insurance for every one of them.

In towns with more than one volunteer fire department, all the staffers will likely be lumped together for tax purposes, pushing many above the 50-worker threshold.

That could cost department of life-savers hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. Those that dump their volunteers into the federal insurance exchanges would still have to pay an annual $2,000 fine for each ’employee’ after the first 30.”

There’s a cynical part of me that wonders if it’s an attempt to rid towns of these fire depts. to bring in unionized govt. employees paid for with taxes.

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5. The official loss to taxpayers on the GM bailout is $10 billion.

From HotAir  “And with that, it’s “Government Motors” no more. At least, not officially.

U.S. taxpayers no longer own any of automaker General Motors. The Treasury sold the last of its remaining 31.1 million GM shares today.

The taxpayer loss on the GM bailout finishes at $10.5 billion. The Treasury department said it recovered $39 billion from selling its GM stock, and had put $49.5 billion of taxpayer money into the GM bailout. …

GM and Chrysler both went through government-scripted Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganizations. Treasury put $12.3 billion into Chrysler and recovered $11.13 billion of that.”

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News/Politics 12-9-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The Holder DoJ is using financial lawsuit settlements to pay off community organizers. Another end run around the no funding of ACORN law.

From HotAir  “It seems Attorney General Eric Holder has created a multi-million dollar backdoor kickback for activist groups in the $13 billion JP Morgan Chase subprime loan deal recently settled, WND reports.”

“But wait… you can’t just take the penalty money and hand it out to your friends, can you? According to the breakdown from Investors.com, apparently you can.

Just when we thought its post-crisis probe of banks couldn’t get more corrupt, the Obama administration has cut radical Democrat groups in on the record $13 billion JPMorgan Chase subprime loan deal.

On Page 5 of “Annex 2″ of the recently released consent order, you’ll find this little gem: The Justice Department mandates that JPMorgan fork over any unclaimed or unpaid consumer damages to a nonprofit group that finances Acorn clones and other shakedown groups.”

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2. Now who’s cherry-picking data to justify an unpopular war? Can’t blame Bush for this one.

From YahooNews  “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has dropped yet another bombshell allegation: President Obama wasn’t honest with the American people when he blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for a sarin-gas attack in that killed hundreds of civilians.

But in a long story published Sunday for the London Review of Books, Hersh — best known for his exposés on the cover-ups of the My Lai Massacre and of Abu Ghraib – said the administration “cherry-picked intelligence,” citing conversations with intelligence and military officials.”

“A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening. The distortion, he said, reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam. The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: ‘The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, “How can we help this guy” – Obama – “when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?”’

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3. Is the President stacking the DHS Immigration Enforcement Office with pro-amnesty lawyers so they won’t enforce US laws?

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4. A disturbing opinion piece from a Lt. Col. on gun rights in America. The Obama admin is purging leaders who don’t play along, especially Christian ones. This is the type he’d like them replaced with. One who advocates disarming the citizenry and tossing the Supreme Courts opinion on the matter because he disagrees. Dictators love military leaders like him.

From Esquire  “We crossed the line some time ago, it has just taken me a while to get around to the topic. Sadly, that topic is now so brutally evident that I feel shame. Shame that I have not spoken out about before now — shame for my country, shame that we have come to this point. People, it is time to talk about guns.”

“Guns are tools. I use these tools in my job. But like all tools one must be trained and educated in their use. Weapons are there for the “well regulated militia.” Their use, therefore, must be in defense of the nation. Shooting and killing somebody because they were not “upset enough” over the loss of a college football team should not be possible in our great nation. Which is why I am adding the following “Gun Plank” to the Bateman-Pierce platform. Here are some suggestions:”

“2. We will pry your gun from your cold, dead, fingers. That is because I am willing to wait until you die, hopefully of natural causes. Guns, except for the three approved categories, cannot be inherited. When you die your weapons must be turned into the local police department, which will then destroy them. (Weapons of historical significance will be de-milled, but may be preserved.)”

“4. We will submit a new tax on ammunition. In the first two years it will be 400 percent of the current retail cost of that type of ammunition. (Exemptions for the ammo used by the approved weapons.) Thereafter it will increase by 20 percent per year.”

He’d also limit approved weapons to muskets, shotguns, and bolt actions with 5 round max capacity.

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5. Uncle Omar and the “culture of lies.”

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6. What’s that ticking noise?…

From TheNYPost  “The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far.

The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments.

Medicaid is already America’s third-largest government program, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, as a proportion of the federal budget. Almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid. That’s more than $265 billion per year.

Indeed, already Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for 48% of federal spending. Within the next few years, those three programs will eat up more than half of federal expenditures.”

And who’s on the hook for it?…. Yep, taxpayers. 🙄

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7. Ruh-roh.

From TheLATimes  “Raising concerns about consumer privacy, California’s health exchange has given insurance agents the names and contact information for tens of thousands of people who went online to check out coverage but didn’t ask to be contacted.

The Covered California exchange said it started handing out this consumer information this week as part of a pilot program to help people enroll ahead of a Dec. 23 deadline to have health insurance in place by Jan. 1.

State officials said they are only trying to help potential customers find insurance and sign up in time. But some insurance brokers and consumers who were contacted said they were astonished by the state’s move.

“I’m shocked and dumbfounded,” said Sam Smith, an Encino insurance broker and president of the California Assn. of Health Underwriters, an industry group.”

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8. A little poetic justice.

From Politico  “Capitol Hill staffers are hitting multiple obstacles in trying to enroll in the Obamacare exchange just days before the federal government’s deadline for getting coverage.

They and lawmakers have until Monday to sign up on DC Health Link, the District’s insurance exchange, if they want to maintain the government’s generous employer contribution to their health insurance.”

“But as crunch time approaches, Democratic and Republican staffers are getting error messages, denials, notices that they’re enrolled in multiple plans and incomplete confirmation — as well as a website that went down briefly Thursday.”

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News/Politics 12-7-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread, as always.

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1. First NY, now Cali. The revolt continues.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange and won’t participate, the head of the state’s largest medical association said.

“It doesn’t surprise me that there’s a high rate of nonparticipation,” said Dr. Richard Thorp, president of the California Medical Association.”

“California offers one of the lowest government reimbursement rates in the country — 30 percent lower than federal Medicare payments. And reimbursement rates for some procedures are even lower.”

“Independent insurance brokers who work with both insurance companies and doctor networks estimate that about 70 percent of California’s 104,000 licensed doctors are boycotting the exchange.”

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2. So who is really behind these grassroots  astro-turf wage protesters at Wal-Marts and McDonalds?

From TheNYPost  “These are busy — and profitable — times for rent-a-mobs. Just days after Black Friday protests against Walmart stores, many of the same agitators will be out again on Thursday protesting at fast-food restaurants in New York City and across the country.”

“At the forefront of this perpetual protest machine is New York’s Restaurant Opportunities Center, the union-founded “worker center” infamous for its protest shakedowns of nonunion restaurants.”

“In fact, ROC pioneered this model: A union front group organizes as a nonprofit “worker center,” which lets it skirt federal labor laws that set reasonable limits on union protests. A novel idea when it launched in New York in 2002, ROC is now one of hundreds of worker centers nationwide, including SEIU-backed groups with names like Fast Food Forward and Fight for 15. ROC itself has expanded to over 30 cities, with reported plans for a new, SEIU-funded chapter in Seattle.”

“Multiple congressional investigations are looking into just how smelly it all is. The House Education and the Workforce Committee has demanded that the Labor Department produce the documents it used in determining that ROC should be exempt from labor-law disclosures under the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. The same committee is separately demanding HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reveal how ROC managed to get named an ObamaCare navigator in New York. (ROC withdrew as a navigator just days after the program launched.)”

Right back to Democrats and the White House, who control both the Labor Dept and DHS. And ROC is just ACORN Version 2.0.

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3. Like I said, to the White House….

Oh, and I forgot one little detail…..  

We’re paying for it. 🙄

From WatchDog.org  “The Restaurant Opportunities Center, a union front and ACORN knockoff, is extending its reach by working with other groups to stage protests in 100 cities Thursday.

In a push for a higher minimum wage and more union members, ROC is also hiring a national campaign director to shepherd the center’s multimillion-dollar budget, partially plumped by taxpayer dollars.

Though registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a nonpartisan nonprofit, ROC is closely aligned with the Democratic Party and Big Labor, notably the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, said Mike Paranzino, spokesman for the group ROC Exposed.

“With her insider credentials, ROC co-director Saru Jayaraman was at the White House in May to participate in an unannounced strategy session on raising the minimum wage.”

They’ve received $1 million from the Dept of Labor, $200,000 from the CDC, and $500,000 from NYC, paid with federal stimulus funds. They completely ignore that it’s illegal to give taxpayer money to ACORN, and this IS ACORN.

And many of the people involved with this are the same people pushing for amnesty.

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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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News/Politics 12-5-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. More Benghazi testimony says the Obama admin had plenty of time to respond, but didn’t. This matches previous testimony on the matter.

From PJMedia  “Members of the House Intelligence Committee learned in a closed-door briefing yesterday that more contractors are corroborating the report that the Obama administration had plenty of time to respond to the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic facility.”

“And essentially what they were able to prove today, they basically backed up the other contractors who were on the ground in the two previous hearings. So this is an ongoing investigation,” Nunes said Tuesday evening. “And I think they gave us a lot of good leads today and I feel very comfortable moving forward with where we are at today.”

The congressman confirmed the White House claim that the attack was sparked by protest over a YouTube video “was a completely lie, and we always knew that.”

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2. They’re just wingin’ it now.

From HotAir  “President Barack Obama’s administration has found a short-term fix to pay insurance companies for plans selected on HealthCare.gov, the not-yet-complete government website used to shop for insurance required under Obama’s healthcare program.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not yet finished building the part of the website that would transfer billions of dollars in subsidies for plan premiums and cost-sharing payments to insurance companies. …

The administration is planning a “workaround” for payments, said Daniel Durham, vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at America’s Health Insurance Plans.

What will the “workaround” be? Well, the insurers will tell HHS what taxpayers owe them in subsidies, and, er … HHS will cut checks with no questions asked:”

Sure. What could possibly go wrong? 🙄

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3. Here’s another slick holiday weekend move, so the media is sure to mostly ignore it.

From TheFreeBeacon  “The Obama administration quietly finalized the Health Insurance Tax (HIT) over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, a provision in Obamacare that will cost nearly $60 billion over the next five years and raise health care premiums by 3 percent.

The final rule, published on Nov. 27, imposes a fee beginning in 2014 for health insurers with premium revenues over $25 million per year. The annual tax is levied for “United States health risks,” and is hidden from consumers since it is directly assessed on health insurance companies.

David R. Burton, a senior fellow in economic policy at the Heritage Foundation, said the tax will disproportionally impact small businesses.”

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4. Another Common Core lesson with questionable methods and no educational value.

From IllinoisReview  “An assignment sent home from an Oak Forest, IL high school government class is raising eyebrows among parents who are shocked by the questionnaire they and their children are required to fill out. The questionnaire (below) has the parents identify their positions on a number of highly-charged issues, and then places them on a “political spectrum.”

The survey is from the textbook “U.S. Government 2“, published by the “The Center for Learning”. It is part of Oak Forest High School’s Common Core curriculum, which according to the school district’s website is to …”provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them.”

I’m sure this will be used to profile students and parents who might be a problem.

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5. Here’s a group of students rebelling against liberal indoctrination. They’re white, so they must be…….?

From TheDailyCaller  “The politics of faux victimization are spiraling out of control at a community college in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where several white students, their black professor and irritated administrators have one-upped each other with complaints, reprimands and now a lawsuit.

The trouble began in English professor Shannon Gibney’s Introduction to Mass Communications class at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Though the class ostensibly has little to do with race, Gibney considers herself an activist on racial issues, and frequently invokes white privilege and oppression during class time, according to her students. (She has previously taught classes on race and gender.)

Recently, several white students announced that they had had enough with Gibney’s incessant racial screed. They interrupted her during a lecture, and said, “Why do we have to talk about this in every class? Why do we have to talk about this?” according to Gibney’s account of the incident, which was recorded by the City College News.”

“As a vocal black female younger looking… faculty member here, unfortunately this is no the first time,” she said. “I’ve actually had multiple verbal and institutional attacks on me by white males, whether they were students, faculty, administration or staff.”

How original. 🙄

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News/Politics 12-4-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. First up today an interesting study on the effects of daughters on political persuasions. It’s finding differ from some previous studies.

From HotAir  “In newly published findings that challenge earlier research, Dalton Conley of New York University and Emily Rauscher of the University of Kansas found that having more daughters than sons and having a daughter first “significantly reduces the likelihood of Democratic identification and significantly increases the strength of Republican Party identification.”

Not only is the daughter effect statistically significant, it’s substantively large.  They found that overall, “compared to those with no daughters, parents with all daughters are 14% less likely to identify as a Democrat….[and] 11% more likely to identify as a Republican than parents with no daughters,” they write in the journal Sociological Forum.

As a woman with a daughter, I’m perhaps qualified to theorize about this. But as a woman who’s been sure about her ideological and policy leanings from about the age of 8, I’m perhaps not a good analog for the average parent of daughters. This study challenges the findings of other studies, which have found at different times that politicians with more daughters vote more liberally or that having more daughters increases identification with the Liberal and Labor Parties in Britain.”

More here from ThePewReaserchCenter

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2. This is what decades of one-party rule will get you. The Democratic Utopia of Detroit.

From USAToday  “The city of Detroit officially became the largest municipality in U.S. history Tuesday to enter Chapter 9 bankruptcy after a judge declared it met the specific legal criteria required to receive protection from its creditors.

The landmark ruling ends more than four months of uncertainty over the fate of the case and sets the stage for a fierce clash over how to slash an estimated $18 billion in debt and long-term liabilities that have hampered Detroit from attacking pervasive blight and violent crime.”

“In a surprise decision Tuesday  morning, Rhodes also said he will allow pension cuts in Detroit’s bankruptcy. He emphasized that he won’t necessarily agree to pension cuts in the city’s final reorganization plan unless the entire plan is fair and equitable.”

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3. Issa has accused the FBI of impeding the congressional IRS investigation. Which means the Holder DoJ and Obama White House are orchestrating it. Shocking right? 🙄

From TheWashingtonTimes  “The House’s chief investigator says the FBI is stonewalling his inquiry into whether the agency and the Internal  Revenue Service targeted conservative group True the Vote for special scrutiny, and Rep.  Darrell E. Issa is now threatening subpoenas to pry loose the information  from FBI Director James B. Comey Jr.

Mr. Issa, California Republican, and Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, are leading the  House  Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s IRS inquiry. They also said the FBI is refusing to turn over  any documents related to its own investigation into the IRS,  which began in the days after an auditor’s report revealed the tax agency had  improperly targeted tea party groups for special scrutiny.”

“Six months after it began, the FBI’s  investigation has resulted in no release of information. The congressmen said  the FBI even rescinded an  offer for an in-person briefing with the assistant director in charge of the  investigation. The reversal, after the FBI consulted with the Justice  Department, suggests political meddling, the two investigators said.”

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4. The White House is also refusing to brief Congress on the security flaws in the ObamaCare website, not even in closed session.

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5. The Obama admin is also trying to buy compliance from insurance companies as it relates to his “fix” for cancelled plans. Taxpayers will pay for it, of course. The first of many “bailouts” to come I’m sure.

From TheNYTimes  ” The White House is offering more money to insurance companies as an incentive for them to let people keep insurance policies that were to have been canceled next year.       

The administration floated several proposals on Monday to “help offset the loss in premium revenue and profit” that it said might occur if insurers went along with President Obama’s request to reinstate canceled policies.”

“To reduce this risk, the administration said it could provide financial assistance to certain insurers through a program under which the government will share in their losses and profits for the next three years.       

Any such assistance would come on top of federal subsidies that the government plans to pay insurers to make coverage more affordable for low- and middle-income people under the new law. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that those subsidy payments will exceed $1 trillion over the next 10 years.”

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6. Some Republican doctors are running for office, hoping their expertise will help solve this mess.

From TheHill  “Eleven Republican doctors are running for the Senate, hoping that voters will see their medical expertise as an asset amid the administration’s botched rollout of ObamaCare. 

“Doctors are in a very unique position to look at the financing of healthcare,” Rep. Paul Broun, a family physician running for the GOP nomination for Georgia’s open Senate seat, told The Hill.”

““We go into medicine for one reason, and one reason only: Because we care about people, we want the people who we serve to have a productive, happy, healthy life,” he added. “That’s the kind of policymaker we should have in place in dealing with healthcare policy.”

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News/Politics 12-3-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. I read a lot of news. It takes quite a doozy to shock me. This one did. Talk about overreach.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers. 

Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.”

“The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian  who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental   breakdown. 

The baby girl, now 15 months old, is still in the care of social services, who  are refusing to give her back to the mother, even though she claims to have  made a full recovery.”

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2. So is the ObamaCare site fixed? Depends who you ask.

From FoxNews  “Despite the Obama administration’s claim that HealthCare.gov is “vastly improved,” insurance companies are still grappling with error-riddled files fed to them from the flawed website. The lingering glitch could cause major problems weeks down the road, resulting in people thinking they’ve signed up when insurance companies have no record of them doing so. 

These so-called “back-end” problems were largely glossed over when federal health officials confidently claimed over the weekend they had met their own goals for improving the website by Dec. 1. “

“But insurers continue to deal with the same set of problems that have shaken their confidence for weeks in the system they have to rely on to enroll new customers. 

“Until the enrollment process is working from end-to-end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage,” Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said in a statement. “

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3. Does this sound fixed?

From TheHill  “A back-up system was deployed for HealthCare.gov on Monday at a lower traffic rate than federal officials projected, signaling there could be further trouble with the system.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) acknowledged that the site’s try-again-later system was initiated as roughly 35,000 users tried to access HealthCare.gov at the same time.”

“CMS had previously said the back-up system would be used only when HealthCare.gov was coping with 50,000 simultaneous visitors.

Officials said the decision came in response to a slight rise in error rates and response times across the site. CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille sought to downplay the move, suggesting it was unrelated to the site’s overall functionality.”

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4. And what about safety? Yeah….no.

From CNBC  “It could take a year to secure the risk of “high exposures” of personal information on the federal Obamacare online exchange, a cybersecurity expert told CNBC on Monday.

“When you develop a website, you develop it with security in mind. And it doesn’t appear to have happened this time,” said David Kennedy, a so-called “white hat” hacker who tests online security by breaching websites. He testified on Capitol Hill about the flaws of HealthCare.gov last week.

“It’s really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn’t built into it,” said Kennedy, chief executive of TrustedSec. “We’re talking multiple months to over a year to at least address some of the critical-to-high exposures on the website itself.”

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversaw the implementation of the website, the components used to build the site are compliant with standards set by Federal security authorities.”

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5. You know they’re gonna attempt to delay this, but it is coming.

From TheWaPo  “Democrats are praying that this weekend’s relaunch of the Obamacare Web site will save them from an electoral bloodbath in 2014. Their hopes are misplaced. Here are five numbers that suggest that public anger over Obamacare will only grow as Election Day 2014 approaches:

5.5 million. That is how many people the administration needs to sign up in just 23 days because Obamacare drove them out of their health-care plans. That’s some 240,000 sign-ups every single day, just to break even. Getting that many enrolled in a few weeks would be extraordinarily difficult even if the Web site were working perfectly, which it isn’t. According to the New York Times, the system is still sending insurers inaccurate or incomplete information, and the companies are being “deluged with phone calls from people who believe they have signed up for a particular health plan, only to find that the company has no record of the enrollment.” As a result, many Americans could find themselves without insurance on Jan. 1. Their anger at those responsible for putting them through this panic and disruption is not likely to subside by November 2014.”

“50 million. That is how many Americans will be surprised to find their employer-based health plans dropped or substantially changed next year because of Obamacare. Some will see their plans canceled; others will lose their doctors and see premiums or deductibles rise dramatically. If Democrats think the public is mad about 5.5 million cancellations in the individual market today, imagine the outrage when tens of millions lose their plans in October 2014, right before Election Day.”

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6. Why doesn’t this shock me? 🙄

Apparently it’s now un-ethical to NOT provide abortions.

From TheWaPo  “The American Civil Liberties Union is taking aim at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and its ethical guidelines for Catholic hospitals.

The ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court in Michigan accusing the bishops of being negligent for barring certain treatments or the mention of the treatments such as abortion.

The lawsuit was filed in the case of a pregnant woman whose life was at risk from premature labor. The ACLU says Mercy Health Muskegon hospital didn’t tell her that she should consider terminating her pregnancy because the bishops’ guidelines barred mention of abortion.”

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News/Politics 12-2-13

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The IRS is continuing to harass, and still attempting to silence conservative groups. And yes, it’s still being orchestrated by the White House and Democrats.

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2. More here on their war on the Tea Party.

From USNews  “One of the reasons why this may have happened became widely known  only after the election: the IRS had singled out tea party and other  conservative groups for special treatment when they applied for  tax-exempt status, leading to costly delays and the elimination of part  of the Republican Party’s ground game. After initial claims that  low-level employees in the IRS’ Cincinnati office had been solely  responsible for this targeting were shown to be false, two acting commissioners of the IRS, Steven Miller and Danny Werfel, and the head  of its section on tax-exempt organizations, Lois Lerner, were forced to  resign. In the aftermath of the revelations, President Obama referred to  the IRS’ activities as “outrageous,” claimed that had been unaware, and  called for accountability, “so that such conduct never happens again.”

That was then. This Tuesday, the administration decided that instead  of making sure the 2014 midterm elections will not be tainted by similar  restrictions on the activities of 501(c)4 organizations, it was going  to legalize and institutionalize the IRS’ practices.  I guess that’s one  way to do it. British comedian Harry Enfield first suggested this  strategy in a skit about police officers in Amsterdam, a city well known  for its lax attitude toward the consumption, possession and sale of  soft drugs. In the skit, one of the Dutch policy officers explains that  burglary used to be a major problem in Amsterdam, but then it was  legalized, and the problem was solved.”

“That was arguably funny. The IRS’ actions, of course, were deeply  frustrating to the conservative activists involved, and went to the  heart of people’s trust in government and electoral competition. The tea party movement had, after all, had a major impact on an election just a  few months before it became subject to the tax service’s targeting.”

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3. The ObamaCare Medicaid expansion will worsen the doctor shortage.

From TheNYTimes  “But now, as California’s Medicaid program is preparing for a major expansion under President Obama’s health care law, Dr. Mazer says he cannot accept additional patients under the government insurance program for a simple reason: It does not pay enough.       

“It’s a bad situation that is likely to be made worse,” he said.       

His view is shared by many doctors around the country. Medicaid for years has struggled with a shortage of doctors willing to accept its low reimbursement rates and red tape, forcing many patients to wait for care, particularly from specialists like Dr. Mazer.       

Yet in just five weeks, millions of additional Americans will be covered by the program, many of them older people with an array of health problems. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that nine million people will gain coverage through Medicaid next year alone. In many of the 26 states expanding the program, the newly eligible have been flocking to sign up.”

And who pays for all this without the paying customers they currently lack? Why taxpayers of course.

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4. George Will is predicting bad news for Democrats when the other shoe drops.

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5. A new book on the Fast and Furious scandal is coming out.

From  TheNYPost “How the US gave guns to Mexican cartels”

“By John Dodson from the forthcoming book “The Unarmed Truth”

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6. The media is still not happy about the propaganda photos the White House is forcing them to use.

From TheTelegraph  “Barack Obama’s White House has been accused of producing Soviet-style   propaganda by press photographers who are furious at being denied access to   the US president.

Mr Obama’s aides routinely block independent photographers from capturing him   at work, before distributing flattering pictures shot by Pete Souza, his   official photographer.

During a tense meeting at the White House, the practice was described by Doug   Mills, a veteran photographer for The New York Times, as “just like TASS,”    the Soviet Union state news agency.”

If you’re on Twitter, check out Dear Leader’s latest propaganda shot for the 58th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ protest. Obama sitting alone on a bus (the bus?) looking thoughtfully out the window. Because no matter the subject, it’s always about Barry…

Commies got nothin’ on this guy. 🙄

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