Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Sunday, October 13, 2013

OBAMA PRIORITIES: Veterans Greeted With Barricades and Riot Police; Illegal Immigrants Welcomed with Open Arms

Javier Manjarres relays photos of riot police engaging veterans at the #1MVetMarch:


Riot cops even showed up at the Lincoln Memorial to fend off dangerous interlopers like Sarah Palin:


Oh. And they needed armored vehicles to make their point.


Now I ask you to step back and consider the priorities of President Obama:

Immigration rally allowed on Mall despite shutdown


A week after World War II veterans struggled to gain access to a memorial on the National Mall due to the government's partial shutdown, thousands of people pushing for a new immigration law have been cleared by the government to proceed with a concert and rally Tuesday on the Mall.

The march, dubbed the "Camino Americano", or "American Road," is hosted by groups including the Service Employees International Union and Casa de Maryland...


..."It's bad enough watching these marches when we watch illegal aliens breaking our laws. Now they're being given free range on these public parks while we've seen the greatest generation military vets being turned away from their sacred memorials," said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that opposes proposals in Congress to legalize the nation's undocumented immigrants. "It's offensive and it shows where their loyalties lie."

This administration appears to be something unique in American history. It continually flouts Constitutional limits, rewrites individual laws, defies American traditions, and undermines Judeo-Christian morals.

We have never seen its likes before and it could well take a miracle for the civil society to survive it.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

OH, MY: New York Times and Chicago Tribune Roast Obamacare

Or, as I prefer to call it, ObamaCouldn'tCareLess. Both articles are must-reads (as well as the comments, which are hysterical - accusing, for instance, the Times of acting at the behest of Fox News or Rush Limbaugh).

[Link]: “These are not glitches,” said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. “The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, ‘It’s awful, just awful.' ” ...

...Administration officials dug in their heels, repeatedly insisting that the project was on track despite evidence to the contrary...

Dr. Donald M. Berwick, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2010 and 2011, said the time and budgetary pressures were a constant worry. “The staff was heroic and dedicated, but we did not have enough money, and we all knew that,” he said in an interview on Friday.

Not enough money? Apparently, borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends isn't enough for this government. There's never enough money to get a doddering, incompetent, bloated, obese, monopoly of a federal government to work as efficiently as the free market.

[Link]: Adam Weldzius, a nurse practitioner, considers himself better informed than most when it comes to the inner workings of health insurance. But even he wasn't prepared for the pocketbook hit he'll face next year under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

If the 33-year-old single father wants the same level of coverage next year as what he has now with the same insurer and the same network of doctors and hospitals, his monthly premium of $233 will more than double. If he wants to keep his monthly payments in check, the Carpentersville resident is looking at an annual deductible for himself and his 7-year-old daughter of $12,700, a more than threefold increase from $3,500 today.

Gee, who could have predicted that a 2,200-page bill that no one read before voting on would have resulted in an unworkable disaster?


Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt.

Friday, October 11, 2013

Why is the government shut down? Here's why.

I don't know much about this Steve Stockman fellow, but I like the cut of his jib.



Last night, Mark Levin counseled our feckless, disappearing act of a Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "Try to get your Republicans under control and try to get yourself under control. Because you're panicking."

Please call your representative and tell them to stand firm. The House is in the position of power. The longer the non-essential bureaucrats in Washington (don't you love that term?) remain furloughed, the more their shrill cries will pressure Obama for relief.

Remember, the administrative state is the Democrat Party and the Democrat Party is the administrative state. The furlough hurts Democrats where it counts.

Stand strong, Republicans.


Screw the Debt Ceiling: How About the Debt Collapse?

Free Enterprise offers an infographic depicting the dire situation in which we find ourselves.

5 Alarming Facts about Entitlement Spending
by

Screw the damn debt ceiling. A collapse is coming. We need some sane leaders in Washington, which excludes all Democrats and RINOs.

Good intentions, Marxism, and other collectivist Utopian fantasies always succumb to mathematics. That's not my opinion, that's an immutable fact.


GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT: IRS Gave White House Confidential Taxpayer Info; Punishable by Five Years in Prison

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Scandal: The IRS official in charge of tax-exempt organizations when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare and may have illegally shared confidential tax data.

It's bad enough that no one at the Internal Revenue Service has been meaningfully punished for the targeting of conservative groups before the 2012 election. Now we learn that, for some, the unconstitutional and illegal action was a good career move.
Sarah Hall Ingram, who served as commissioner of the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division from 2009 to 2012, was so good at her job of suppressing the political speech of administration opponents by using the tax code as a bludgeon that she was rewarded during her tenure with four bonuses totaling $103,390.

Her salary went from $172,500 to $177,000 during that period, and she would also be rewarded with the post of director of the IRS' Affordable Care Act division.

That the person who rode roughshod over Tea Party groups was put in charge of riding roughshod over our health care was entirely fitting. The Tea Party was a grass-roots response to the power grab and assault on the Constitution that ObamaCare represents. It had to be punished for its electoral success in 2010 and Obama-Care had to be saved at all costs.

As the IRS scandal was unfolding, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., prophetically warned that "the IRS part of administering ObamaCare, particularly in the wake of this IRS scandal with regard to suppressing the views of Americans who were critical of the IRS, raises further suspicions about their involvement in the administration of ObamaCare."

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Denninger Going Galt; First of Many?

Starting at midnight, Karl Denninger's Market Ticker site will go dark for the next three days. His is a peaceful protest of Washington's insane spending and borrowing policies that will result in certain collapse. Not possible collapse. Certain.

I've got about 8 hours here before this site goes dark for the next 72 hours.

Why is it going dark?

Because I'm done paying for the outrageous scam known as "Washington DC."

That's why.

I'm a producer. I'm a net payer of taxes. I have written many very large checks to the IRS. I have done so willingly.

I am no longer willing.

I am not willing because our Congress, in concert with our Administration, has together put this nation on a path to ruin and continues to ignore basic arithmetic which states quite-clearly that this entire game is going to come to a catastrophic end of it is not stopped, and it has already ruined far too many ordinary Americans.

These scams and frauds are on display daily from the banksters, including HFT abuse (as Nanex has documented tirelessly), foreclosure fraud (robosigning, destruction of land title systems, seizing the wrong house and more), SSDI fraud, food stamp fraud and the entire medical industry including the latest outrage in Maine with Pharma suing to enforce laws that were passed legalizing direct violations of The Sherman Act. And that's just a short list; talk to the Truckers headed to DC for the next three days and you'll find they've got a whole host of complaints as well.

In addition our monetary policies over the last five years caused the doubling of basic commodities -- like food -- in places such as Egypt, which were directly responsible for the political turmoil and deaths of innocent people over there.

Today Ryan stepped forward to claim that Ronald Reagan "worked with" Tip O'Neill (Speaker of the House at the time) to get a "deal" that cut our long-term deficits and debt. Oh really? Reagan, if you remember, cut a "deal" for $3 in spending cuts for every dollar in tax increases in 1982. What he actually got was all the tax increases immediately and none of the spending cuts -- and the punishment leveled on Congress for lying through their teeth was zero. Further, deferring Social Security's problems for 25 years did not fix them, and those changes were only made when the system was literally under the gun and facing immediate (within 12 months!) insolvency.

That was the problem then -- Congress.

That's still the problem.

Ryan and Boehner have no intention of actually balancing the budget -- ever. The so-called "Ryan Budget" calls out a fantasy world in which 5% GDP growth continues forever, with no recessions, which has never happened in the history of the United States. It also presumes that at the same time of such "economic prosperity" debt service costs will not explode higher, but they will if that growth was to happen because interest rates will go up and as such the cost of debt service ramping will decimate the "declining deficit" projections...

...The only solution is to accept what we have done. To stand before the American people and confess, ask forgiveness and promise to sin no more. To accept the economic hardship that will come including the fact that the very wealthy will take proportionately more of the hit than the working man and poor, but everyone is going to get hit because we have all been living beyond our means.

If we must provide three hots and a cot to people who are truly destitute then do that directly -- no more SNAP cards, no more Section 8, a literal soup line and a cot in a building with a place to take a dump and a shower we can provide to all who actually need it.

It's time to quit screwing around, not because we want to, but because our time with this game has expired, and we are headed straight for a fiscal and economic cliff from which we will not recover if we do not stop now.

Don't believe him? How about David Malpass, a former deputy assistant Treasury secretary?

At its core, the shutdown is part of a much bigger battle to restrain the federal government. It is spending $3.6 trillion per year without a budget, and its expenditures are expected to increase rapidly in the years ahead.

Meanwhile, the government has piled up $17 trillion in debt and $60 trillion more in unfunded spending promises. The Federal Reserve will borrow $1.1 trillion in 2013 alone to buy bonds—and it reserves the right to borrow unlimited amounts for future bond purchases without congressional or presidential permission.

These are crisis-level problems. Whether the government is open or closed, they are surely grounds for immediate talks between the president and Congress on ways to pare ineffective federal programs, restrain spending and reduce borrowing.

Ducking governance decisions year after year will leave the U.S. too weak to face global challenges. Big government has meant slow growth, painfully high youth and minority unemployment and falling median incomes—except in the Washington, D.C., area, which recent census data show is growing ever richer.

We need to be shouting this from the rooftops day in and day out. The system is headed for collapse. Not in 50 years, 20 years or even 10.

Find Your Representative, call them, and tell them to HOLD THEIR GROUND

The system is headed for collapse and every warning light on our nation's dashboard is blinking red.

Use the box at right.

Use it tonight, tomorrow and the next day.

Use it like the country depends on it. Because it does.

CONGRATS TO RAHM EMANUEL AND THE ENTIRE DEMOCRAT PARTY: Chicago Now More Violent Than During Capone Era

If Democrats weren't in power, they'd be useful only as comic relief. But the tragic fact is, when they are in power, their cities end up like Detroit and Chiraq (which is what the beleaguered taxpayers of Chicago call the Democrat haven for criminals):

Since Rahm Emanuel entered the political scene years ago, he’s been a master at manipulating the press to his benefit. A pliant media has largely gone along with whatever talking point Emanuel desired. Lately, some of the media has begun to put the spotlight on violent Chicago with its rather high murder rate. Banning or restricting handguns has not been very successful in combatting violence in Chicago. The website Big Government reports the bloody details:

After Chicago recorded a terrible homicide total of 53 in August, September wasn't much better for Rahm's "world class" city. The city suffered 41 homicides, 30 of which resulted from 184 total shootings

September brings more bad news for Chicago residents. While Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, and the Chicago media have continued to hammer the point that the "crime rate is down," and "murder is down," as of September 22, the homicide total for 2013 now exceeds the rate up to the same date in 2011 by two percent at 350, according to the Chicago Police Crime Data Portal.

How does today’s Chicago hold up at the violent memory of Al Capone’s Chicago of the 1920s? Not very well. WLS-TV investigated the data and the evidence is rather stunning report in February:

Let's compare two months: January 1929, leading up to the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and last month, January 2013. Forty-two people were killed in Chicago last month, the most in January since 2002, and far worse than the city's most notorious crime era at the end of the Roaring Twenties...

Even though the image of Chicago, perpetuated by Hollywood over the years, was that mobsters routinely mowed down people on the streets, the crime stats tell a different story. The figures from January 2013 are significantly higher than the January of Al Capone's most famous year.

It’s not just the Capone era violence that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Constantly we hear from the media and advocates of gun control that we don’t want things to become “the Wild West”. In the last several years, historians have begun to look at this long time legend that was promoted by Hollywood movies...

The old West with its minimal government and armed populace has never been too popular with progressives. But, the reality is it was never really violent according to Terry Anderson and Peter Hill. So, the murder rate of the Capone era and Dodge city of 1878 would be a major improvement for Mayor Rahm Emanuel.


Perhaps the Tribune or some of the other media dinosaurs in the Second City can use the phrase GRIM MILESTONE as a prefix to their headline. That is, if they decide to even cover this story.


Hat tip: BadBlue Gun News.

WOW - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS OPENS UP A CAN: Calls Out the Obama Administration for Acting Like Fascists

It's not often I quote bits of an AP article without highlighting the fabrications, omissions and spin, but in this case, I'll make an exception:

REPORT: OBAMA BRINGS CHILLING EFFECT ON JOURNALISM


The U.S. government's aggressive prosecution of leaks and efforts to control information are having a chilling effect on journalists and government whistle-blowers, according to a report released Thursday on U.S. press freedoms under the Obama administration.

The Committee to Protect Journalists conducted its first examination of U.S. press freedoms amid the Obama administration's unprecedented number of prosecutions of government sources and seizures of journalists' records. Usually the group focuses on advocating for press freedoms abroad. [Ed: Banana Republic, anyone?]

Leonard Downie Jr., a former executive editor of The Washington Post, wrote the 30-page analysis entitled "The Obama Administration and the Press" ... Downie interviewed numerous reporters and editors, including a top editor at The Associated Press, following revelations this year that the government secretly seized records for telephone lines and switchboards used by more than 100 AP journalists. Downie also interviewed journalists whose sources have been prosecuted on felony charges...

...To bypass journalists, the White House developed its own network of websites, social media and even created an online newscast to dispense favorable information and images...

...Kathleen Carroll, AP's executive editor, said the report highlights the growing threats to independent journalism in a country that has upheld press freedom as a measure of democratic society for two centuries.

It would appear even the AP has had enough of this administration's behavior, which resembles something in which a tinpot dictator would engage.

I commend Brett Zongker, Julie Pace, and the entire AP for their work.

And, guys, it's more than past time this administration's unprecedented series of scandals are revealed to America's pajama people, who are sleepwalking through the destruction of this country.


Hat tip: @Slone.

NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE: I Can Assure You That Obama Wants the U.S. to Default [Updated]

Updated 10/10/2013 20:19: Obama is intransigent. He will not negotiate on spending, on the debt ceiling, on Obamacare, on anything.


"You never want a serious crisis go to waste." --White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, February 9, 2009
I've heard no commentator ask the following question: What if President Obama wants a default?

This is, after all, a man whose starting negotiating position is that he "will not negotiate" with Congress on spending to raise the debt ceiling. This is a position unprecedented in American history since only Congress is granted the "power of the purse".

This is a man willing to use the instrumentalities of government to punish innocent Americans.

This is a man willing to torture World War II veterans, many of whom are terminally ill and trying to see their memorial for the first and last time.

This is a man spreading panic and fear about the debt ceiling, an utterly irresponsible, reprehensible and unprecedented step by a president.

Here are the facts:

There is virtually no chance of a default, unless Obama orders a default

In fact, Dean Clancy has done an exceptional job dissecting Obama's fear-mongering over the debt ceiling.

There is virtually no chance of a default, unless Obama orders a default.

...Mr. Obama is misleading the public by suggesting the question is whether to pay our bills. Of course we will pay our bills. No one is saying we shouldn't. The question is whether to raise the debt ceiling without also putting in place reforms to make future borrowing less necessary. Mr. Obama's resistance to such reforms makes him, not fiscal conservatives, the one holding the absurd position...
...As the chart above shows, if we hit the debt ceiling, we will still have more than enough tax revenue coming in to pay the most economically and politically sensitive obligations...

...In talking about "not paying our bills," Mr. Obama is hinting -- without openly saying -- that the US Government might fail to pay its creditors. This is highly irresponsible. He knows very well that, in the event we hit the debt ceiling, the US will continue to be able to pay all holders of US bonds (principal as well as interest). Even so deep-dyed a left-winger as Mr. Obama would never dare to miss a payment to bondholders. If he did, Uncle Sam's credit rating would almost certainly take an immediate hit, driving up interest rates and rattling world markets. In failing to make all this clear, the President allows those who are less knowledgeable to mistakenly assume that a debt default is a realistic possibility. It's not.

True, Dean, under normal circumstances, a default is not a realistic possibility.

But these are not, by any stretch, normal circumstances.

The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis

Author James Simpson has probably done the most comprehensive work in documenting "The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Manufactured Crisis". His seminal article, written before Obama's 2008 election, predicted what the community organizer had in mind for America. The strategy, first articulated by two Columbia professors -- who taught there during Obama's years as a student -- describes crushing capitalism by overwhelming it through massive expansion of the welfare state.

The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse...

...Cloward and Piven were inspired by radical organizer [and Hillary Clinton mentor] Saul Alinsky...

...Their strategy to create political, financial, and social chaos that would result in revolution blended Alinsky concepts with their more aggressive efforts at bringing about a change in U.S. government. To achieve their revolutionary change, Cloward and Piven sought to use a cadre of aggressive organizers assisted by friendly news media to force a re-distribution of the nation's wealth...

Are Obama's refusal to negotiate, his threats of economic collapse, and his incessant agitating all intended to set the stage for a default?

As a lever to achieve his oft-stated goal of "fundamental transformation"?

I leave that answer as an exercise for the reader.


"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." --Senator Barack Obama, July 2, 2008


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

IRS-GATE EXPLODES: White House and IRS Illegally Traded Confidential Taxpayer Info to Attack Political Enemies

Patrick Howley reports at The Daily Caller:

Top Internal Revenue Service Obamacare official Sarah Hall Ingram discussed confidential taxpayer information with senior Obama White House officials, according to 2012 emails... Lois Lerner, then head of the IRS Tax Exempt Organizations division, also received an email alongside White House officials that contained confidential information.

Ingram attempted to counsel the White House on a lawsuit from religious organizations opposing Obamacare’s contraception mandate. Email exchanges involving Ingram and White House officials — including White House health policy advisor Ellen Montz and deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew — contained confidential taxpayer information, according to Oversight.

The emails ... had numerous redactions with the signifier “6103.” ... Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code forbids a federal employee from “disclos[ing] any return or return information obtained by him in any manner in connection with his service as such an officer or an employee.”

Federal employees who illegally disclose confidential taxpayer information could face five years in prison.

“Thanks, David. Thanks for the information on [6103],” White House official Lambrew wrote to IRS official David Fish in a July 20, 2012 exchange. “I am still hoping to understand whether the 50 percent rule is moot if the organization does not offer goods and services for sale to the general public. Do we assume that organizations like [6103] do offer goods and services for sale?”

Another email from Montz to Ingram and others refers to the “[6103] memo” and the “[6103] letter” while discussing organizations that are not required to file 990′s.

Ingram appeared before Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee Wednesday and claimed she could not recall a document that contained confidential taxpayer information... Issa has requested unredacted copies of the emails, citing a prohibition from misusing Section 6103 “for the purpose of concealing information from a congressional inquiry.”

Ingram headed the scandal-ridden IRS office responsible for overseeing tax-exempt nonprofit groups before leaving to head the agency’s office in charge of Obamacare implementation.

Misuse of the IRS was one of the articles of impeachment to be used against Richard Nixon had he not resigned.

Heads need to roll at the White House and the IRS.


Hat tip: BadBlue News and BB.

The Impassionate, Indifferent, Apolitical, Stone-hearted Black Swan

Guest post by Lee Cary


The Black Swan is Arithmetic. She is coming and she is already here. In Detroit, you see her in the debris of a once great American city.

The Perfect Storm is the confluence of events that will wreak economic havoc on America. It need not have anything to do with the current debt ceiling controversy. Most don't see it coming. For them, it will bring shock and awe.

Nassim Nicholas Teleb is credited with developing the metaphor -- based on the sudden discovery that all swans are not white -- of the black swan, to refer to widely unexpected events that come as a surprise to most, and change everything.

Below are several of the Perfect Storm fronts, samples of how an increasingly desperate regime is likely to respond as the storm builds, and a brief glimpse into the coming storm damage to America.

The Converging Fronts of the Perfect Storm

Quantitative Easing (QE) will continue. This artificial economic stimulation may go on through the 2014 elections, particularly if Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, succeeds Ben Bernanke. In a November 2011 speech, Yellen described the difficulties of disconnecting QE from an economy experiencing a recovery "that has been less vigorous than desired or expected." Her solution: "I believe it is crucial for emerging market economies, particularly in Asia, to take further steps to boost domestic demand, providing support for their own growth and that of the global economy." Translation: The solution to America's economic problem is a change in the Asians' consumption habits.

As interest rates rise from near zero and USD (U.S. dollar) devaluation continues, inflation will increase, as will the cost of servicing the federal debt. Imagine all your credit cards are maxed out, and you struggle to just make the minimum interest payments. Then, you get a notice from the banks stating that their interest rates are going up three percent. Or, five. Maybe seven.  You look at your household budget for what can be cut. Seeing all the cuts are painful, you photocopy money. You go to jail - unless you're the Fed.

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Brian Terry's family deserves to know why Eric Holder is blocking a key ATF whistleblower's book on Fast and Furious

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Transparency: The Justice Department blocks a tell-all book by an ATF special agent on how Brian Terry, Jaime Zapata and hundreds of Mexican nationals were killed with weapons supplied by this administration.

ATF Special Agent John Dodson is a national hero who in 2011 blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious, the Obama administration's gun-running operation to Mexico.

Testifying before Congress, he disclosed that his supervisors had authorized the flow of semiautomatic weapons into Mexico instead of interdicting them, weapons that found their way into the hands of Mexican drug cartels with deadly results.

Dodson has put his intimate Fast and Furious knowledge into a book titled "The Unarmed Truth." It provides the first inside account of how the Obama administration permitted and helped sell some 2,000 guns to Mexican drug cartels, guns used in the murder of two federal agents and hundreds of Mexican citizens.

Just as Attorney General Eric "I didn't read the memo" Holder has stonewalled on providing information and documents to Congress and the American people, hiding under President Obama's invocation of executive privilege, the Department of Justice has denied Dodson permission to publish the book.

Dodson submitted his manuscript for ATF review, as is required, and was told in a letter from ATF ethics official Greg Serres, a representative of the most transparent administration in history: "This would have a negative impact on morale in the Phoenix Field Division and would have a detremental (sic) effect on our relationships with DEA and FBI."

The family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry stands behind Dodson and supports his attempts to publish his manuscript, according to Ralph Terry, president of the Brian Terry Foundation and Brian's uncle.

The operation was exposed when Brian was killed in December 2010 by an illegal immigrant working for the Sinaloa Cartel near Nogales, Ariz., just 10 miles from Mexico. Two Fast and Furious weapons were found at the murder scene.

Two such weapons also were used to murder Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011, came from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time.

"Do we really need to remind ATF leadership that the men that killed Brian Terry were carrying weapons supplied to them by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious," Terry wrote, not buying the ATF's morale excuse.

Virtue and Morality Turned Upside Down

Sad Hill News asks, "When Does America's 'Tolerance' Become Stupidity?"


George Washington once asked, "Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue?"

John Adams observed that "Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul."

Benjamin Franklin noted that only "a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."

And Frederick Douglass presciently warned that "The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous."

How brilliant these men were! And how unmoored have we become from the precepts of morality and virtue that underpin our precious society? Are we willing to simply let this nation slip from liberty into the dark pool of despotism which has ruled man from time immemorial?


OBAMACARE DISASTER: North Carolina Seniors Will See Health Care Premium Hikes Up to... 530 percent

What else would you call it if you found out your health care premium just got jacked from $228 a month to $1,208 except a "disaster"?

Across North Carolina, thousands of people have been shocked in recent weeks to find out their health insurance plans will be canceled at the end of the year – and premiums for comparable coverage could increase sharply.

One of them is George Schwab of Charlotte, who pays $228 a month for his family’s $10,000 deductible plan from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina... In a Sept. 23 letter, Blue Cross notified him that his current plan doesn’t meet benefit requirements outlined in the Affordable Care Act and suggested a comparable plan for $1,208 a month – $980 more than he now pays.

...“The President told the American people numerous times that… ‘If you like your coverage, you can keep it,’” Schwab said. “How can we keep it if it has been eliminated? How can we keep it if the premium has been increased 430 percent in one year?”

...[Chris] Blount[, a Blue Cross agent,] agreed with Schwab that the president shouldn’t have made promises he couldn’t keep... “That’s one thing that really bothers me about all of this,” Blount said. “He didn’t just say it once. He said it a lot.”

...Blue Cross spokesman Lew Borman said Friday that large premium increases will affect about one-third of the approximately 400,000 North Carolina customers who buy Blue Cross insurance in the individual market. Some of their policies were canceled because they didn’t meet the new federal standards, he said.

...Michael Hood, 46, who lives near Winston-Salem, is another of the Blue Cross customers who is suffering sticker shock after receiving a recent renewal letter... He and his wife, who is expecting their third child, now pay $324 per month for a plan with a $10,000 family deductible. The comparable plan suggested by Blue Cross for next year would cost $895.27 per month with an $11,000 family deductible. Their annual payment would rise from $14,000 to $24,000.

...“The president told us Obamacare would make health insurance affordable and reduce costs. It is now impossible for our family to afford private health insurance.”

Charles C. W. Cooke summarizes the litany of lies the President and his sycophants told Americans to jam Obamacare through Congress.

• “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Lies. All lies.

• “For people with insurance, the only impact of the health-care law is that their insurance is stronger, better, and more secure than it was before. Full stop. That’s it. They don’t have to worry about anything else.”

Lies. All lies.

• "If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is the amount of money you will spend on premiums. That will be less.”

Lies. All lies.

• "I want to be very clear: I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade."

Lies. All lies.

• "Health care reform will cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year."

Lies. All lies.

As Scott Johnson astutely observes, "If only we had a free press, Obamacare would be a bloody, unrelenting scandal, like Abu Ghraib, or Watergate. As it is, it is only business as usual for liberals and liberalism.."


Monday, October 07, 2013

There, I fixed it for you, Cory Booker

Spotted this ad on a website:


Which prompted me to repair it:


For those unfamiliar with the tale, New Jersey's hard left Senate candidate Cory Booker has an imaginary drug-dealer friend named "T-Bone", who he uses to add a little spice to his stories. Suffice it to say that T-Bone is about as real as Booker's record for good governance in Newark.

If you have the wherewithal, please consider supporting conservative Steve Lonegan for U.S. Senate. His website is a great resource for background on Booker, who has a sordid history of extreme and bizarre behavior.


Sunday, October 06, 2013

ONE STEP CLOSER TO JUSTICE FOR BRIAN TERRY: Judge Rejects Holder's Fast and Furious Document Cover-Up

Guest post by Investors Business Daily


Scandal: The truth about how and why Brian Terry and Jaime Zapata and hundreds of Mexican nationals were killed with weapons supplied by this administration may yet come out as a court lets a lawsuit proceed.

The most transparent administration in history suffered a defeat Monday, when U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson turned down the Justice Department's request to dismiss a lawsuit seeking "Fast and Furious" documents hidden by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department after President Obama invoked executive privilege.

The lawsuit was brought by Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee after the president asserted executive privilege to prevent records about the administration's response to the "Operation Fast and Furious" gun-running scandal from being turned over to Congress.

The administration's position was that the oversight committee's demand for information and documents was settled by a Feb. 4, 2011, letter to Congress in which Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious "gun-walking" program run out of ATF's Phoenix office, stated that the "allegation that ATF 'sanctioned' or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons . . . is false."

The Justice Department refused to turn over any documents after the date of the letter, contending there was nothing more to see and Congress should just move on.

Saturday, October 05, 2013

Network News Still Trying to Sell the U.N.'s Climate Change Scam

Guest post by Investors Business Daily

Global Warming: Temperatures have flat-lined for 15 years, the Arctic and Antarctic are gaining record amounts of ice, most computer models have been wrong, yet the networks are buying into the alarmists' narrative.

Earth might not have a fever but the media do, judging by their hyperventilating about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's quite fraudulent report (Fifth Assessment Report or 5AR) released Sept. 27. One network — CBS— even turned a blind eye to the truth and claimed that temperatures "could have risen by more than 200 degrees."

This fiction came from CBS' Ben Tracy, who said the carbon dioxide absorbed into the ocean is a time bomb already impacting sea life. Tracy said the oceans have absorbed much of the heat caused by increasing CO2 levels and claimed that had "all that heat gone into the atmosphere, air temperatures could have risen by more than 200 degrees," while "212 degrees" appeared in graphics.

In other words, were it not for the oceans, Earth would be Venus. But what Tracy should have concluded is our world is not all that fragile and is a self-regulating entity where temperatures are not a straight-line path to doom but rather a fluctuating condition over millennia. Similarly, ice ages, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes and the like come and go in cycles.

NBC and ABC were only slightly less hysterical. ABC flashed "big warning" onscreen as it announced the "landmark" report from "top scientists." NBC predictably linked strong storms such as Hurricane Sandy to climate change. They all swallowed the IPCC report whole, providing no time to "top scientists," such as Dr. Don J. Easterbrook, who question the "settled science" of climate change.

Easterbrook, professor of geology at Western Washington University, wrote in a recent essay that "Mark Twain popularized the saying 'There are liars, damn liars, and statisticians.'" But, after he read the IPCC AR5 report, he said "we can now add, 'there are liars, damn liars, and IPCC.'"

Easterbrook reminds us a "vast published literature exists showing that recent warming is not only not unusual, but more intense warming has occurred many times in the past centuries and millennia."

Friday, October 04, 2013

LEAKS REVEAL: Obama Preparing to Destroy the Separation of Powers

Constitutional attorney and radio host Mark Levin has warned us repeatedly what is coming.

The President is preparing to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally -- like a dictator -- usurping the power of the purse granted solely to Congress.

OBAMA: “An economic shutdown, that results from Default, would be dramatically worse.”

LEVIN: You get it? You get it, folks? He’s laying the foundation for exactly what I’m saying.

He is going to break the debt ceiling. He is going to spend more than Congress has authorized. He’s preparing to do it... If he can’t get what he wants, he is going to circumvent the United States Constitution... And I smell this a mile away.

And he’s being encouraged repeatedly by pseudo-intellectuals, by Marxists dressed up as Constitutionalists, by people in his own party, he’s being encouraged to conduct himself as a dictator, and to bypass Congress and to bypass the Constitution, why work with him?

They want a full-blown Constitutional crisis. Please, listen to me, this is what they want! So they can continue to shred it!

This is why Obama won’t budge, like Clinton did and Carter did and Reagan did and Ford did and Nixon did. He’s the only one who won’t negotiate. This is why. This is his fundamental transformation. And I’m going to keep hollering this as loudly as I can because more and more people need to see it!

Oh, and it's not just conservative thought-leaders like Levin saying it.

Consider the most terrifying thing I've heard all week: on Fox News Special Report, Amy Stoddard -- the left wing writer for Roll Call -- said the following:

There is a report out that says the President believe he's going to "reorder" the [balance of] power in Washington between the branches with this exercise.

Such an act would be an unprecedented high crime against the Constitution. No less an authority than the left-leaning Professor Laurence Tribe of Harvard describes it as such in no uncertain terms.

Professor Tribe ... rejected the idea, saying it was proposed by ''otherwise very sensible law scholars'' who in this case had concocted ''a prescription for a free-for-all that abandons the rule of law.''

''We have no metric for comparative lawlessness,'' he said.

Mark my words well, Leftists: should your charismatic demagogue attempt such a wanton act of criminality, he will touch off far more than a "Constitutional Crisis". You have been warned.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

James Madison explains the Government Shutdown to Drones, "Journalists", Marxists, RINOs and other Progressives

But I repeat myself. The Machiavellian, writing at The Virtuous Republic, explains:

This little history lesson is for all the members of the Democratic-Socialist Party and their unpaid propagandists in the media who decry Republicans as terrorists in regards to the current government shutdown.

Simply, this is how our republic is supposed to work. There are checks and balances between branches, there are checks and balances between states, and there are checks and balances between factions as well.

From Federalist No. 58, penned by James Madison (for the lefties out there, he might just be considered the foremost authority on the Constitution):

Admitting, however, that they should all be insufficient to subdue the unjust policy of the smaller States, or their predominant influence in the councils of the Senate, a constitutional and infallible resource still remains with the larger States, by which they will be able at all times to accomplish their just purposes.

The House of Representatives cannot only refuse, but they alone can propose, the supplies requisite for the support of government. They, in a word, hold the purse that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British Constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government.

This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.

In other words, the Democratic-Socialist faction, also known as the “takers” have imposed an onerous piece of legislation known as Obamacare, upon the creators and workers. Simply put, the House of Representatives is addressing the grievance.

The Senate is not the House of Lords, and Obama does not rule by Divine Right. The only solution to the current shutdown is a redress of our grievances. Nothing else will suffice.


Sorry about that, Machiavellian, but I quoted the whole thing. To make up for it, here's your free Obamacare pink slip.


Apparently the Obama administration operates government websites powered by federal employees using hand-cranks

That's the only way I can offer a plausible explanation for this:


I'm marking this one down as Reason 8,604 that the federal government is simply too damned fat and bloated.