politics

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News/Politics 6-2-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. By now you’ve heard about the prisoner swap for an American POW held by the Taliban. The more details we get, the worse the deal sounds. And it looks like it may have been another illegal move by the White House.

From TheBlaze  “Two Republican lawmakers said President Barack Obama violated U.S. laws when he approved the exchange of an American soldier believed held by Islamist insurgents for five years for five Afghan detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Congressman Howard “Buck” McKeon of California and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma said Saturday in a statement that Obama is required by law to notify Congress 30 days before any transfer of terrorists from the U.S. detention facility.

In response, the White House says that officials considered what they called “unique and exigent circumstances” and decided to go ahead with the transfer despite the legal requirement.

Lawmakers weren’t notified of the Guantanamo detainees’ transfer until after it occurred, according to the Washington Post.”

And the detainees swapped were the worst of the bunch.

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2. The White House is also dodging questions about just how it was he came to be a POW in the first place.

From TheHill  “Top Obama administration officials on Sunday avoided question about whether Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was released by the Taliban in exchange for five detainees on Saturday, deserted the Army. 

ABC News “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked National Security Adviser Rice whether such allegations would be “investigated.”

“If it is found that he did, will he be disciplined or has he already paid the price?” he asked.

“Certainly, anybody who has been held in those conditions in captivity for five years has paid an extraordinary price, but that is really not the point,” Rice said. “The point is he’s back. He’s going to be safely reunited with his family. He served the United States with honor and distinction.”

Oh well, I guess we should be happy. At least she didn’t blame it on a video this time.

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3. But others are talking about it.

From TheTelegraph/UK  “But hopefulness soon gave way to despair after his unit began to take casualties and he saw how US troops treated the Afghans they were supposed to be saving. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid,” he wrote in an email to his parents on June 27, 2009.

Three days later, according to Rolling Stone, the 23-year-old soldier simply walked off his base in Patika province, carrying a knife, his diary and a small camera.”

“Chuck Hagel, the US secretary of defence, said the first priority is to restore his health before American intelligence officers begin to debrief him in the hope of extracting valuable information on the Taliban. He declined to comment on the possibility that Sgt Bergdahl could face a court martial for desertion when he finally returns to the United States.”

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4. Things are worsening at the southern border. 2,000 a day in Texas alone. Overwhelming the system, classic Cloward/Piven.

More on that here, from FoxNews

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5. Oh boy. The Epic Fail continues to.. well, fail.

From IJReview  “A new study was released which shows that Obamacare will both increase the cost of health insurance and increase the number of uninsured.

Professor Stephen Parente and Adjunct Professor Michael Ramlet did an analysis of Obamacare and its projected effect on the number of uninsured over the next ten years. He found that the number of uninsured will go up starting in 2017, due to the declining purchasing power of the government subsidies.

Parente & Ramlet also found that health insurance costs will increase by nearly $1400 for those individuals with “silver” plans and $4200 for families with “silver” plans.”

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6. And since we’re on the subject of failures….. As always, revised down.

From HotAir  “For the first time in three years, the American economy contracted over the course of a quarter. In the interim report on GDP, the BEA estimates that the US economy shrunk by a full point in 2014 Q1, a downward revision of the advance estimate of 0.1% growth:

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — decreased at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the first quarter according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 2.6 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “advance” estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, real GDP was estimated to have increased 0.1 percent. With this second estimate for the first quarter, the decline in private inventory investment was larger than previously estimated (see “Revisions” on page 3).”

“The decrease in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected negative contributions from private inventory investment, exports, nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a positive contribution from personal consumption expenditures. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.”

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News/Politics 5-30-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The sad state of American politics. This is part of the reason good people don’t waste their time with politics. Why bother, when this is what you get for your troubles?

From BizPacReview  “Annette Bosworth, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in South Dakota, held an adults only press conference on Tuesday due to the graphic matter that served as a backdrop.

According to the local NBC affiliate KDLT, the physician asked graffiti artists to paint her campaign signs with the same graphic names she said she has been called since entering the race, which she then displayed on the walls around her. “What you see around you are the words which have been written about me on blogs, on the internet, throughout this campaign,” she told shocked attendees, KDLT reported.

A tearful Bosworth also spoke about her 10 year old son, and how this “filth” shows up “when he Google’s his mom’s name.”

“The Democrats talk about a war on women, but much of what you see here is written by the supposedly tolerant liberals, Bosworth said. “They are hateful, they are hurtful and no person should have to endure it.” “It is its own form of abuse,” she added.

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2. A new tool in the fight against abortion. This one targeting the country’s abortion leader.

More here, from HotAir

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3. While vets die from a lack of timely care, some VA employees do nothing for vets. Their work in no way benefits vets, yet taxpayers pay for their full-time union activities.

From NationalReview  “In 2012, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs paid at least $11.4 million to 174 nurses, mental-health specialists, therapists, and other health-care professionals who, instead of caring for veterans, worked full-time doing union business.

The list of these taxpayer-funded union representatives at VA offices around the nation and their salaries was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Georgia representative Phil Gingrey’s staff and provided to National Review Online.

“So many health-care providers were on that list — nurses or physical therapists or whatever they may be — when so many veterans are falling through the cracks,” a Gingrey aide tells me. “It’s kind of shocking that these paid employees wouldn’t be fully dedicated to patient care.”

In total, the VA spent at least $13.77 million on 251 salaried employees performing full-time union work. Others, who were not included on the list provided by the VA, work part-time for unions at the taxpayer expense. In fiscal year 2011, the latest on record, the VA used 998,483 hours of this “official time,” costing taxpayers more than $42 million.”

Disgraceful.

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4. It seems the VA and ObamaCare aren’t the only govt run healthcare debacles.

From GreatFallsTribune  “Misdiagnosed illnesses, denied payments and a shortage of trained medical personnel in government-run clinics are wrecking the federal health care system for Native Americans, tribal leaders said Tuesday as they pressed officials to overhaul a system beset with problems.

With the head of the Indian Health Service listening on, representatives of seven Montana and Wyoming reservations delivered a litany of health care woes suffered by their members during a U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee field hearing in Billings. They described an agency compromised by a bloated bureaucracy and unable to fulfill its core duty to provide health care for more than 2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives.

“All too often, tribal members complain of ailments but get sent home from the Indian Health Service with cough medicine or pain killers. Later we learn the situation is much more serious, like cancer,” said A.T. “Rusty” Stafne, chairman of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of northeast Montana’s Fort Peck Indian Reservation. “We have lost fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers and future leaders because they were unable to get the health care they need,” he said.”

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5. Here comes the pain for millions more Americans.

From USAToday  “More employees are getting hit with higher health insurance premiums and co-payments, and many don’t have the money to cover unexpected medical expenses, a new report finds.

More than half of companies (56%) increased employees’ share of health care premiums or co-payments for doctors’ visits in 2013, and 59% of employers say they intend to do the same in 2014, according to the annual Aflac WorkForces Report. It’s based on a survey of 1,856 employers and 5,209 employees at small, medium and large-size companies.

In 2013, 19% of companies implemented a major medical plan with a high deductible (more than $1,000) and Health Savings Accounts as an alternative to a traditional medical plan, the study finds.”

That $2500 savings for a family thing the President talked about was yet another lie.

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6. A problem of their own making. And amnesty doesn’t fix this, that’s part of the problem, not the solution.

From Reuters  “Tens of thousands of children unaccompanied by parents or relatives are flooding across the southern U.S. border illegally, forcing the Obama administration and Congress to grapple with both a humanitarian crisis and a budget dilemma.

An estimated 60,000 such children will pour into the United States this year, according to the administration, up from about 6,000 in 2011. Now, Washington is trying to figure out how to pay for their food, housing and transportation once they are taken into custody.

The flow is expected to grow. The number of unaccompanied, undocumented immigrants who are under 18 will likely double in 2015 to nearly 130,000 and cost U.S. taxpayers $2 billion, up from $868 million this year, according to administration estimates.”

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7. Things have gotten so bad in some places that federal authorities are flying them, and then releasing them elsewhere.

What do we call this? Illegal alien redistribution maybe? Everybody gets their fair share I guess.

From AZCentral  “Scores of undocumented immigrants from Central America have been released at Greyhound Lines Inc. bus stations in Tucson and Phoenix over the past several days after they were flown to Arizona from south Texas, officials acknowledged.

Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in Tucson, confirmed that over the weekend federal officials flew about 400 migrants apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to Tucson to be processed. He said the migrants were flown to Arizona because the Border Patrol does not have enough manpower to handle a surge in illegal immigrants in south Texas.

The release has drawn criticism from those on both sides of the immigration issue.

Border enforcement groups are concerned that the migrants will now disappear into the U.S., spurring even more to come illegally.”

Gee, ya think? 🙄

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News/Politics 5-29-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. It’s system wide.

From TheDailyBeast  “Last week, President Obama pledged to address allegations of corruption and dangerous inefficiencies in the veterans’ health-care system. But before the president could deliver on his pledge, the scandal has spread even further. New whistleblower testimony and internal documents implicate an award-winning VA hospital in Texas in widespread wrongdoing—and what appears to be systemic fraud.

Emails and VA memos obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast provide what is among the most comprehensive accounts yet of how high-level VA hospital employees conspired to game the system. It shows not only how they manipulated hospital wait lists but why—to cover up the weeks and months veterans spent waiting for needed medical care. If those lag times had been revealed, it would have threatened the executives’ bonus pay.

What’s worse, the documents show the wrongdoing going unpunished for years, even after it was repeatedly reported to local and national VA authorities. That indicates a new troubling angle to the VA scandal: that the much touted investigations may be incapable of finding violations that are hiding in plain sight.  

“For lack of a better term, you’ve got an organized crime syndicate,” a whistleblower who works in the Texas VA told The Daily Beast. “People up on top are suddenly afraid they may actually be prosecuted and they’re pressuring the little guys down below to cover it all up.”

They have a lot more details and paperwork proof at the link. You should read it all if you have time.

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2. Everybody’s gettin’ in on the scam.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Retired military officers deeply involved in the climate change movement — and some in companies positioned to profit from it — spearheaded an alarmist global warming report this month that calls on the Defense Department to ramp up spending on what it calls a man-made problem.

The report, which the Obama administration immediately hailed as a call to action, was issued not by a private advocacy group but by a Pentagon-financed think tank that trumpets “absolute objectivity.” The research was funded by a climate change group that is also one of the think tank’s main customers.”

“One of the CNA panel’s vice chairmen, retired Navy Vice Adm. Lee Gunn, is president of a private think tank, the American Security Project, whose prime issue is warning about climate change.

The other vice chairman, retired Army Brig. Gen. Gerald E. Galloway Jr., is a prominent adviser to the Center for Climate and Security, a climate change group.”

The piece is long on details as to all the connections.

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3. They know they can’t do it thru proper channels, the legislative way, so they’ll try it thru regulation and executive order.

From TheDailyCaller  “Despite being soundly rejected a few years ago, cap-and-trade will soon get its U.S. encore — but not in Congress. The Obama administration will likely use its executive power to unilaterally impose carbon dioxide emissions trading systems.

The Environmental Protection Agency will unveil regulations for existing U.S. power plants early next month. For months, onlookers have been speculating about what could be included in the EPA’s rule for existing power plants.

But over the past few days it has become clear that the Obama administration will use the EPA to push cap-and-trade systems and other anti-fossil fuel policies on U.S. states. Administration insiders have told news outlets that cap-and-trade will likely be one of the options the EPA gives states to cut their carbon dioxide emissions.”

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4. It appears that stories of their demise have been greatly exaggerated, at least in some areas.

From CBSNews/Houston  “Republican voters appeared ready to push Texas even further to the right Tuesday, backing Tea Party favorites and casting out longtime Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for a state senator and firebrand radio talk show host who criticized the incumbent as too moderate for one of the state’s most powerful political jobs.

Dan Patrick, who emerged as the front runner from the first round of voting, easily beat Dewhurst in the primary runoff for the GOP nomination, ending the political career of a multimillionaire energy businessman who has been lieutenant governor since 2003. Dewhurst had said this would be his final campaign.”

“With Texas Democrats again the underdogs in November, many Tea Party-aligned candidates who won Tuesday are poised to pursue an aggressively conservative agenda that would likely include further spending cuts, expanded gun rights, and more restrictions on abortion and illegal immigration.

Tuesday’s Republican runoffs settled nominations for four major offices and nearly a dozen statehouse seats.”

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5. Time to shill for Hill. And of course, run interference.

From Politico  “An array of Democrats — including Hillary Clinton’s allies — are meeting this week to hammer out a united front on national security issues, including a clear response to Republicans over the Benghazi controversy.

They see an opportunity to wrest control of a narrative that some allies fear could be damaging to Clinton if she moves ahead with a 2016 presidential campaign.”

“A major milestone in the effort will take place this Friday, when a coalition of Democratic-leaning groups and influentials converges at the headquarters of the centrist think tank Third Way for a briefing that includes top Clinton adviser Philippe Reines.”

“Several people involved in the meeting say Reines was invited to speak at Third Way on Friday to discuss the chapter of Clinton’s upcoming book “Hard Choices” that covers the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead — including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. Reines is one of a few guests expected to speak on various topics. Other anticipated topics of discussion include President Barack Obama’s Wednesday speech about foreign policy.”

Let’s face it, the book will be nothing more than an attempt at CYB, and an attempt to list her “accomplishments,” pathetic as they are.

I say, what difference does it make at this point? The 3 am call came, and she and the White House ignored it. Attempts at revisionist history won’t change that.

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News/Politics 5-28-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Not surprising. This has always been part of the liberal playbook/plan. This way it’s easy to override the will of the people without suffering for it at the polls.

From FoxNews  “State-approved bans on same-sex marriage have been falling at a rapid clip since the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act last year. 

The changes — gay couples can now wed in 19 states and the District of Columbia — reflect shifting social and political attitudes toward same-sex marriage. But they also reflect, in several cases, the opinions of Democrat-appointed judges who single-handedly struck down state-approved bans.   

In a testament to the influence of judicial appointments, most of the judges responsible for the decisions over the past year were appointed by either President Obama or, two decades ago, Bill Clinton.”

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2. It’s also the reason for this.

From TheHill  “The federal judiciary has swung to the left as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has confirmed President Obama’s judicial nominees at a torrid pace in recent weeks.

Reid has put his foot on the gas to ensure that Obama will leave his imprint on the courts even if Democrats lose control of the Senate in November, which some political handicappers say is probable.”

“At the start of Obama’s first term, 10 of the nation’s 13 circuit courts had a majority of judges appointed by Republican presidents and only one, the 9th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over California, had a majority of Democratic appointees. The 2nd and 3rd circuits were evenly split.

Currently, nine circuit courts have a majority of Democratic-appointed judges while only four have a majority of Republican picks. The data was compiled by the Alliance for Justice, a group that tracks the third branch.”

It will be years before they’re finished with their activism, and Obama’s true legacy is known. It won’t be pretty.

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3. Interesting question, and yes, they clearly are. Just ask the guys from Duck Dynasty, the Clippers owner, Mozilla’s former CEO, Paula Dean, those 2 Christian brothers with the TV show, etc., etc., etc……

From TheDailyCaller/ViaYahoo  “Last week, Michelle Obama made headlines when she exhorted graduating high schoolers in a commencement address to monitor their families for politically incorrect thoughts and behaviors.

To one journalist, this was more than an off-hand comment made by the first lady. In the opinion of Cheryl Chumley, a reporter for The Washington Times and the author of “Police State USA,” Michelle Obama’s remark reflects a growing trend in America to target and attack individuals for committing “thought crime.”

“Michelle Obama’s push for kids around the nation to monitor their family members for perceived racist comments is just another way the government seeks to inject itself into an area it doesn’t really belong — the American home,” Chumley told The Daily Caller Monday.

“Having the first lady wag her finger at us and send America’s youth on some sort of quest to scour the homes and backyards of our nation’s families for any mention of a racist joke, slur or slight is nanny-governance run amok — something that belongs in a George Orwell novel, not the White House, Chumley said.”

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4. This could get really interesting. This was the problem many had with the Patriot Act. They predicted that sooner or later it would be used against the population, instead of to protect them. The critics had that part right.

My question though, and I hope it’s answered, is this. Did they use this to target conservatives and their political enemies as I suspect they did? After all, it seems every other agency has, so why not this one too?

From RealClearPolitics  “The man who helped bring about the most significant leak in American intelligence history is to reveal names of US citizens targeted by their own government in what he promises will be the “biggest” revelation from nearly 2m classified files.

Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who received the trove of documents from Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, told The Sunday Times that Snowden’s legacy would be “shaped in large part” by this “finishing piece” still to come.

“One of the big questions when it comes to domestic spying is, ‘Who have been the NSA’s specific targets?’,” he said. “Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we’d regard as terrorists?

What are the metrics and calculations that go into choosing those targets and what is done with the surveillance that is conducted? Those are the kinds of questions that I want to still answer.”

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5. Hospitals are hiking costs on the poor thanks to ObamaCare.

From HotAir  “There are multiple levels of irony in this New York Times report on the impact of ObamaCare on poor patients in the nation’s hospitals. Congress demanded the power to revamp the health-insurance industry and expand Medicaid in order to help the poor get better medical care for less money. In reality, the opposite appears to be happening, as hospitals attempt to force the poor into ObamaCare:

Hospital systems around the country have started scaling back financial assistance for lower- and middle-income people without health insurance, hoping to push them into signing up for coverage through the new online marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.

The trend is troubling to advocates for the uninsured, who say raising fees will inevitably cause some to skip care rather than buy insurance that they consider unaffordable. Though the number of hospitals tightening access to free or discounted care appears limited so far, many say they are considering doing so, and experts predict that stricter policies will become increasingly common.

Why did this unintended consequence occur? In part, because ObamaCare penalizes hospitals for extending charitable assistance:”

 Add this to the long list of lies and expired promises from Obama and Democrats.

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News/Politics 5-27-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. First up, a good story.

From FoxSports  “Three years ago, U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Liam Dwyer lost his left leg while on duty in Afghanistan.

On Saturday, he was standing in victory lane with co-driver Tom Long after winning the IMSA Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge race at Lime Rock Park in Connecticut.”

“Dwyer, who has served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was severely injured on May 22, 2011 when he stepped on an Improvised Explosive Device (I.E.D) while clearing a compound in Sangin Province. The blast sheared off his left leg above the knee and caused damage to his right leg and right arm. Four other Marines were also injured in the explosion.

The 32-year-old returned home where he underwent intense physical therapy after being fitted for a prosthesis on his left leg.”

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2. Just a reminder of where some of the blame for the VA scandal should fall.

From BizPacReview  “Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., sits on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee in the House and she told [Larry O’Connor] Wednesday on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., that the House has passed a dozen bills for reform of the VA and they are collecting dust on [Sen.] Harry Reid’s desk:

O’CONNOR: Are your colleagues in the House doing something about this decades-old problem so we can get something done for the vets?

REP WALORSKI: In the past 18 months, since I’ve been a member of Congress, we’ve passed, on the House floor, at least 12 reform VA bills. Mandating the VA to fix different things, mandating the VA to report different things, mandating them to fix their website, bipartisan bills that went to the Senate, and they are DOA on the Senate side

The Indiana freshman went on to say, “We can pass bills all day long here on the House side, but if the Senate doesn’t get in gear and be held responsible and be held accountable for these veterans, it’s not going to work. … These things have been dead on arrival. Harry Reid has not moved one of these bills.”

Must be that do nothing Congress Harry always whines about. And here I thought he meant Republicans. 🙄

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3. Not shocking. Everyone knows this came from the top, and that it was a coordinated effort.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Republicans on a House oversight panel say the Justice Department asked former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner in 2010 to help them build criminal cases against nonprofit groups conducting political activity.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and subcommittee chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, have requested an interview with Jack Smith, who heads the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Unit, after a subordinate revealed the department meetings with Lerner in a closed-door interview.”

““The Justice Department convened a meeting with former IRS official Lois Lerner in October 2010 to discuss how the IRS could assist in the criminal enforcement of campaign-finance laws against politically active nonprofits,” Jordan and Issa said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. “This meeting was arranged at the direction of Public Integrity Section Chief Jack Smith.”

“Issa and Jordan said they believe the Justice Department, “contributed to this pressure” on Lerner and other IRS officials to stop right-leaning organizations from achieving tax-exempt status, following a Supreme Court ruling lifting restrictions on their activity.”

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4. A new low for Planned Parenthood, and that’s saying something.

From LifeNews  “In a Pastoral Letter to Patients, Planned Parenthood tells women and girls in a crisis pregnancy that there is nothing in the scriptures that says abortion is wrong and that many clergy think abortion is okay:

The decision to have an abortion is personal. Though your reasons may be complicated and private, you’re not alone. As religious leaders from a number of religious traditions, we’re here to support you in your decision.

Many people wrongly assume that all religious leaders disapprove of abortion. The truth is that abortion is not even mentioned in the Scriptures—Jewish or Christian—and there are clergy and people of faith from all denominations who support women making this complex decision.

The beliefs of each person are deserving of respect, and each person deserves care and compassion,
No one should be allowed to force their faith teachings on anyone else.”

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5. Your thoughts?

From CNSNews  “Rev. Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, said “Christians are under attack by Islam” and that “radical” Islam has nothing to do with it because “it’s just what it is.”

Speaking at the  Watchmen on the Wall National Pastor’s Briefing in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, Rev. Graham said,  “The church around the world is under attack. Christians are under attack by Islam.  They keep using this word ‘radical.’ It’s not radical, it’s just what it is.”

“Let’s stand up for our brothers and sisters in faith around the world who are being persecuted for their faith,” he said.  “Because if we don’t stand up for them, there’s no other voice for them.  There’s no other voice.”

“Rev. Graham’s remarks were part of his address “Standing Strong on the Controversial Issues,” in which he stressed the importance of pastors speaking out on controversial issues such as abortion and same-sex “marriage.”

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6. Just a reminder, as always, vote fraud is a myth.

From NewsDay  “Evelyn E. Burwell’s family was surprised to learn she voted in the 2012 general and primary elections. They knew she was an avid voter, but she’s been dead since 1997.

Burwell is one of about 6,100 deceased people still registered to vote in Nassau County, a Newsday computer analysis shows. The former Wantagh resident, who died at age 74, is also among roughly 270 people that records show voted in Nassau County after dying, a group that includes a man who voted 14 times since his death.

Newsday’s analysis of voter registration and U.S. Social Security Administration death records found more deceased registered voters in Nassau County than any other New York county, accounting for nearly a quarter of the 26,500 on the rolls statewide. Suffolk County has about 2,490 deceased people registered to vote, with roughly 50 listed as voting after their death.”

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7. The IRS has issued a ruling barring employers from dumping employees into the ObamaCare exchanges as a cost saving measure.

From TheNYTimes  ” Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling. Such arrangements do not satisfy the health care law, the administration said, and employers may be subject to a tax penalty of $100 a day — or $36,500 a year — for each employee who goes into the individual marketplace.

The ruling this month, by the Internal Revenue Service, blocks any wholesale move by employers to dump employees into the exchanges.

Under a central provision of the health care law, larger employers are required to offer health coverage to full-time workers, or else the employers may be subject to penalties.

Many employers — some that now offer coverage and some that do not — had concluded that it would be cheaper to provide each employee with a lump sum of money to buy insurance on an exchange, instead of providing coverage directly.“

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by

News/Politics 5-23-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Add another to the list, with a new twist.

From Miami/CBSLocal  “People are dying,” he finally said, “and there are so many things that are going on there that people need to know about.”

Fiore, a criminal investigator for the VA police department in South Florida, contacted CBS4 News hoping to shed light on what he considers a culture of cover-ups and bureaucratic neglect. Among his charges: Drug dealing on the hospital grounds is a daily occurrence.

“Anything from your standard prescription drugs like OxyContin, Vicodin, Percocet, and of course marijuana, cocaine, heroin, I’ve come across them all,” he explained.

Even inside the hospital, he says he was stopped from doing his job – investigating reports of missing drugs from the VA pharmacy. When the amount of a particular drug inside the pharmacy doesn’t match the amount that the pharmacy is supposed to have, a report, known as a “discrepancy report” is generated. Normally it was his job to investigate the reports to determine if they were the result of harmless mistakes or criminal activity. But all that changed, he said, about two years ago.”

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2. Let the issuing of subpoenas begin!

From NBCNews  “A House committee will order three top officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs to testify later this month about why they have not turned over documents about a troubled VA hospital in Phoenix.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee asked for the documents in an investigation into why as many as 40 people died waiting for treatment from the Phoenix facility, and into allegations of a secret patient wait list to hide delays in care.

The VA told the committee that it will release the documents in batches, not all at once. The committee, which wants to see VA emails and other communications about the hospital, called that response inadequate.”

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3. This could get interesting.

From TheDailyBeast  “In 2012, the Obama administration produced a draft National Intelligence Estimate that reached a surprising conclusion: al Qaeda was no longer a direct threat to America. That classified assessment, which has never before been publicly disclosed, was in keeping with the message coming from the White House. President Obama rode to re-election in 2012 partly on the success of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. At rallies and in press conferences, the president and top officials publicly said al Qaeda was on the run.

But some senior U.S. intelligence officials, like Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Michael Flynn, fought hard against that assessment, which amounted to an official pronouncement of the American intelligence community’s collected wisdom. Flynn and his faction won a partial victory, striking the judgment that the terrorist group no longer posed a threat to the homeland. “Flynn and others at the time made it clear they would not go along with that kind of assessment,” one U.S. intelligence officer who worked on the al Qaeda file told The Daily Beast.  “It was basically: ‘Over my dead body.’”

Since that internal clash—and since Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union that “al Qaeda operatives who remain are scrambling, knowing that they can’t escape the reach of the United States of America”—the terror group has thrived throughout the Islamic world. In the last year alone, al Qaeda has established safe havens in Libya, Syria  and Iraq.

And so naturally, the White House has softened its earlier position, concluding that al Qaeda and its affiliates still represented a serious threat. But the tension between the White House and many top military and intelligence officials fighting the long war remain.”

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4. Even veterans not relying on the VA for health care are suffering because of decisions from the White House.

From TheFreeBeacon  “A California veteran is having trouble finding a doctor because of a faulty Obamacare plan.

Kyle, affected by chronic Lyme disease he contracted while on active duty, is frustrated with the lack of doctor availability on his Anthem BlueCross insurance plan. “I was on the phone with Anthem for two hours while they were trying to find me a doctor within 20 miles. Finally a supervisor came on the phone and said ‘Sir, we have to go, we have other people to help’ and advised me [that] I need to cancel my plan,” he told KPIX.

State law stipulates that insurers must have enough doctors to enable patients to get an appointment within 15 days within 15 miles of their home. Kyle was not able to find a doctor under these requirements and neither was Anthem. Inaccurately listed doctors are considered a violation of the law. The list of doctors given to CoveredCalifornia was incorrect.”

Insider emails suggest a worsening doctor shortage looms. Just like the VA.

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5. Just a reminder of what prominent voices on the left had to say about ObamaCare, and how the VA was the model.

From TruthRevolt  “And herein lies the problem for the left: the failures at the VA, including its bureaucratic incompetence, its waiting lists, and its deaths, all debunk the notion that a government-run healthcare system will work. It’s a fresh slap in the face to all those commentators who, in pushing Obamacare, endorsed the VA as a model.

There are some pretty big names on that list. Paul Krugman in 2011 wrote of the VA’s “huge success story”:

Multiple surveys have found the VHA providing better care than most Americans receive, even as the agency has held cost increases well below those facing Medicare and private insurers…the VHA is an integrated system, which provides health care as well as paying for it. So it’s free from the perverse incentives created when doctors and hospitals profit from expensive tests and procedures, whether or not those procedures actually make medical sense.

Krugman added, “Yes, this is ‘socialized medicine’…But it works, and suggests what it will take to solve the troubles of US health care more broadly.”

You can add Nicholas Kristof from the NY Times, Ezra Klein, from WashPost, and a Princeton “scholar” to the list as well.

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6. You gotta love it. Some federal workers aren’t paying their fair share.

From TheAP “From workers in Congress and at the White House to active duty troops, more than 318,000 federal employees and retirees owe just over $3.3 billion in back taxes, the Internal Revenue Service said Thursday.”

“Those behind in their tax payments include 714 of the roughly 17,000 people working for the House and Senate, the agency said. IRS officials said the data used to compile the report did not indicate whether any of those delinquent taxpayers were members of Congress.

In addition, 36 of the nearly 1,800 people who work at the White House and its various agencies owe taxes, according to the IRS. The IRS provided no further breakdown of exactly where those delinquent taxpayers worked.”

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News/Politics 5-22-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Let the bailouts begin! More illegal changes to ObamaCare. And more money out of the taxpayers pockets.

From TheChicagoTribune  “The Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature healthcare law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if companies providing coverage through the Affordable Care Act lose money.

The move was buried in hundreds of pages of new regulations issued late last week. It comes as part of an intensive administration effort to hold down premium increases for next year, a top priority for the White House as the rates will be announced ahead of this fall’s congressional elections.”

“On Capitol Hill, Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee began circulating a memo on the issue and urging colleagues to fight what they are calling “another end-run around Congress.”

Obama administration officials said the new regulations would not put taxpayers at risk. “We are confident this three-year program will not create a shortfall,” Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said in a statement. “However, we want to be clear that in the highly unlikely event of a shortfall, HHS will use appropriations as available to fill it.”

Sure. I mean all their numbers have been dead on so far, right? 🙄

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2. Meanwhile, the investigations into state exchange failures begins.

From OregonLive  “The federal criminal investigation of Oregon’s health insurance exchange took a step into public view Tuesday when the U.S. Attorney’s office issued broad subpoenas seeking information from Cover Oregon and the Oregon Health Authority.

While the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s interest in the exchange debacle had been previously reported, the legal demands dated May 13 indicate things may have moved beyond a preliminary inquiry to a full-blown investigation.

The investigation, led by federal prosecutors and the FBI, is seeking documents, memos, and emails between the two state entities that oversaw the botched health exchange with U.S. authorities in charge of dispensing federal money for the project.

Oregon has spent $250 million and three years on an ambitious IT project that failed to produce a fully functional exchange. Instead, what was produced was bug-ridden and largely unfinished, documents show.”

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3. I’m shocked. It appears that proponents of expanding immigration laws haven’t been honest about the need.

From NationalReview  “The idea that we need to allow in more workers with science, technology, engineering, and math (“STEM”) background is an article of faith among American business and political elite.

But in a new report, my Center for Immigration Studies colleague Karen Zeigler and I analyze the latest government data and find what other researchers have found: The country has well more than twice as many workers with STEM degrees as there are STEM jobs. Also consistent with other research, we find only modest levels of wage growth for such workers for more than a decade. Both employment and wage data indicate that such workers are not in short supply.

Reports by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the RAND Corporation, the Urban Institute, and the National Research Council have all found no evidence that STEM workers are in short supply. PBS even published an opinion piece based on the EPI study entitled, “The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage: How Guest Workers Lower U.S. Wages.” This is PBS, mind you, which is as likely to publish something skeptical of immigration as it is to publish something skeptical of taxpayer subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

 RAND’s analysis looked backward in time and found, “Despite recurring concerns about potential shortages of STEM personnel . . . we did not find evidence that such shortages have existed at least since 1990, nor that they are on the horizon.”

It’s unnecessary and it will make things harder for unemployed Americans.

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4. The National Association for the Abortion of Colored People?

FromLifeNews  “A pro-life legal group is having to go to court to help the state of Arizona protect its law it passed to ban race-based abortions. Here’s the ironic rub: the NAACP filed a lawsuit against the bill, which stops abortions done specifically if the baby is African-American (or any other specific race or gender).

It makes one wonder if the NAACP, which, for years has held a pro-abortion position and which recently won a court order to silence a black pro-life who was writing at LifeNews to expose it’s abortion advocacy, should be called the National Association for the Abortion of Colored People.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit urging it to reject the NAACP’s lawsuit against an Arizona bill that prohibits sex- and race-based abortions.”

“A district court dismissed the lawsuit in October of last year, but American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing the Maricopa County branch of the NAACP and the National Asian-Pacific American Women’s Forum appealed that decision.”

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5. I’m sure it was just a slip of the tongue, right?

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “A State Department official struggled to discuss the religious import of Boko Haram’s ideology, despite the group’s repeated attacks on Christians, a rhetorical hesitancy that created tension during a rather bipartisan House hearing on the threat from the terrorist group.

Rep. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., asked whether Boko Haram specifically targets Christians.

“I wish there was such discrimination in Boko Haram attacks,” State Department undersecretary Sarah Sewall replied during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing. “Boko Haram attacks everyone who is Nigerian. Boko Haram is an equal-opportunity threat for all Nigerian citizens.”

That answer irritated Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the subcommittee panel on global human rights. “You said you wish they would differentiate or discriminate — they were so discriminating. Yes, they’ll hit other Nigerians, they’ll hit other westerners, but Christians are their main target,” he countered.”

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News/Politics 5-21-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The VA has known about the records manipulation since at least 2010. But Obama just heard of it.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Robert Petzel resigned last week as the top health official for the Department of Veterans Affairs, just one day after testifying before a Senate committee that he knew VA health clinics were using inappropriate scheduling practices as early as 2010.

Whistleblowers claim the schemes continued until this year, leading to a recent wave of outrage that sent the VA and White House scrambling to correct the alleged problems and restore confidence in the department.”

“Petzel admitted that he knew of the issue after Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) questioned him about the memo below, in which a top VA executive warned the directors of all VA health networks that questionable scheduling practices would “not be tolerated.”

The message summarized at least 17 tactics that VA hospitals were known to have used to hide treatment delays and give the impression they were meeting the department’s goal of seeing patients within 14 to 30 days.”

Just heard about it on the news. Sure Barry. 🙄

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2. Just how dumb does he think we are? Pretty dumb apparently.

From NationalJournal  “News quiz: President Obama and his communications team hope that Americans are: 1) Dumb; 2) Distracted; 3) Numb to government inefficiency; 4) All of above. Answer: 4, all of the above.

That answer along with utter incompetence are the best explanations for why the White House thought it could get away with claiming that the departure of Veterans Affairs official Robert Petzel was a step toward accountability for its scandalous treatment of war veterans.”

“Well, Secretary Shinseki accepted Dr. Petzel’s resignation this afternoon. He was due to retire early next month, and obviously there has been a nomination made for his replacement,” White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough told CBS’s Major Garrett last week. “I leave to Rick the explanation of his decision, but there is no question that this is a termination of his job there before he was planning to go.”

No. This was neither a termination nor a housecleaning. It was a scapegoating. For all of its 21st-century savvy in the field of campaign technology, the Obama White House has repeatedly proven that its communications philosophy is stuck in the 20th century. Before the Internet gave voters instantaneous access to information, including every public utterance of the president and his team, White House strategists could hope to wear out the truth: If you said a lie enough, people might believe it.“

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3. Another extensively vetted choice by the President. Oh wait….. never mind. Nothing like giving the fox the keys to the hen house.

From HotAir  “In a changing world, it’s good to know that some things don’t change … like the ability of this White House to vet it Cabinet-level appointments. Barack Obama named Julian Castro as the new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development last week, but no one checked with the Inspector General at HUD first. Late yesterday, Politico also named Castro as a subject of criticism in a 2012 IG report that alleged San Antonio misused HUD funds while Castro was mayor:

San Antonio failed to properly spend funds approved by Congress to combat the housing crisis while President Barack Obama’s expected nominee to run the Housing and Urban Development Department was mayor of the city, according to a 2012 report from the agency’s inspector general. …

San Antonio was awarded $8.6 million from HUD in 2008 as part of the national Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The city used the money to buy, refurbish and resell homes left vacant after eviction and to also renovate large apartment complexes in the city that were rented out to lower-income tenants.

The HUD IG audited how the money was being spent from 2009 to 2011 and found that city officials had awarded $2.5 million in renovation contracts without a competitive bidding process. Castro, 39, became mayor in May 2009, a job he continues to hold.”

Another million was misused elsewhere.

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4. And now you know why Obama insisted on a nation-wide database with everyone’s info stored together.

From CNSNews  “The federal government is piecing together a sweeping national “biosurveillance” system that will give bureaucrats near real-time access to Americans’ private medical information in the name of national security, according to Twila Brase, a public health nurse and co-founder of the Citizens Council for Health Freedom. The Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response is currently seeking public comment on a 52-page draft of the proposed “National Health Security Strategy 2015-2018” (NHSS).”

“Health situational awareness includes biosurveillance and other health and non-health inputs (e.g., lab/diagnostics, health service utilization, active intelligence, and supply chain information), as well as systems and processes for effective communication among responders and critical health resource monitoring and allocation,” the draft states.

But Brase warns that the NHSS proposal would allow the federal government to monitor an individual’s behavior before, during and after any government-defined health “incident” – which could be anything from a local outbreak of the flu to a terrorist anthrax attack.

“It’s very broad. It doesn’t seem to have any limits, except they say something about, you know, properly protecting the data. But from our perspective, if the government gets access to this kind of data, [and] is allowed to do research with the data…then our privacy has already been compromised. The government has already said that our data is their data for their purposes of national health security,” Brase told CNSNews.com.”

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5. Think he’s right?

From TheHill  “President Obama said Americans were “better off now than when I came into office,” during a fundraiser Monday night outside of Washington.

Obama also slammed congressional Republicans for their focus on the terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, and the implementation of ObamaCare.”

“The president told attendees at the high-dollar soiree in Potomac, Md., that his Republican opposition in Congress had been “captured by ideologues” whose principal focus was on “how to make people sufficiently skeptical, so they can win the next election.”

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