Sunday, November 03, 2013
Tribune Expose: 12 Horrifying Secrets of Chicago's Imminent Fiscal Collapse
Its report is worth reading in its entirety, but 12 salient details summarize the imminent collapse of Chicago's finances:
• Chicago has more general obligation debt per capita than any of the 10 largest U.S. cities except New York
• Chicago even has more general obligation debt per capita than Detroit
• When the city does reveal its spending plans to the public, the information often turns out to be inaccurate or misleading
• 63 percent of all property taxes went to debt payments last year
• The dependence on bond money has created a massive debt burden even as the city wrestles with chronic deficits and a pension crisis. Chicago's outstanding debt on general obligation bonds has quadrupled during the past 18 years, reaching $7.2 billion last year. With interest, that amount nearly doubles.
• Most of Chicago's debt woes can be traced to the long reign of former Mayor Richard M. Daley, but the borrowing he relied on so heavily has continued under Rahm Emanuel.
• The billions in bonds issued under Daley allowed him to cut ribbons, plant trees and hand out large contracts — helping him become the longest-serving mayor in Chicago history.
• The Tribune provided former mayor Daley details on its analysis, but he declined repeated requests for interviews.
• Rahm Emanuel has done virtually nothing to address the situation since taking over as Mayor. Just like Daley, Emanuel has used bond money for short-term budget relief.
• Chicago leaders routinely use bond proceeds to make interest payments on the bonds themselves, borrowing more than $450 million since 2000 just to pay interest.
• Daley and Emanuel have used $1 billion in bond money to pay for legal judgments and settlements. The practice not only forces future generations to pay a huge price for the city's misdeeds but also is likely illegal under the tax code.
• For a series of bond issues, Rahm Emanuel's team had to pay higher interest rates than most of the bonds they replaced; they did so to push payments out to the year 2039 (an expert says "this suggests the noose is tightening"). It also means taxpayers in 2039 will be paying off bonds from 1993. Some of that original money went into public housing that was torn down more than a decade ago.
Ain't the infernal alliance of public sector unions and Democrat hack politicians great?
In the ongoing battle between mathematics and Democrats, math has extended its perfect record to about 75 bazillion to zero. But, hey, ain't you Chicagoans happy you voted to keep Sandra Fluke flush with contraceptives?
Hat tip: BadBlue 24x7 News Service.
Saturday, November 02, 2013
Lies, Damn Lies, and Obamacare
It's one thing for Obamacare to fail, as many conservatives expect and we are currently witnessing. It's another to be lied to by Barack Obama, his administration and Democrats in Washington. This gap between what we were promised and reality will haunt Democrats in the 2014 election because the American people no longer feel the Democrats can be trusted.
Let's go through some of the lies we've been fed throughout the years related to healthcare.
This lie has been perpetrated for years and continues to be said by Obama and his administration to this day. They knew Americans would lose their current coverage, affecting millions of people, and yet they went forward nonetheless. This shows that they are not really serious about the effects on the American people but are driven by an ideological pursuit of big-government, socialized medicine.
Amazingly, the administration seems to have been caught flat-footed by deluge of stories showing how millions of people are losing coverage. It's as if they didn't believe it would actually happen or they believed the American people would just roll over and accept it, assuming the Obama-mania media would be reluctant to report on it. Well they assumed incorrectly. So now the administration has taken a two-prong approach: Use the bully pulpit to strong-arm insurance companies into hushing up and then blaming the insurance companies themselves.
Obama and Sebelius in recent days have made “substandard” insurance plans the boogie man, rather than the law that decides what coverage people need. Can't the American people decide for themselves what kind of coverage they need and what is “substandard” for their own family? As Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn said yesterday, some people drink out of red solo cups and some out of crystal stemware. Either way you are achieving the same result but how you do it is up to the individual and not the government.
“Obamacare will cut the cost of a typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year."
The actual name of the law – the Affordable Care Act – is a joke.
At last, an Obamacare website that works: MyCancellation.com lets users post health care cancellation notices
TN Sen @BrianKelsey gave Kathleen Sebelius "Websites for Dummies" during #Memphis #healthcare event #news pic.twitter.com/LxUwUA9Yxx
— The Daily News (@memphisdaily) November 1, 2013
It turns out that someone has created a real Obamamcare website that functions properly.
That site is, of course, called "MyCancellation.com". It allows users to upload photos of health care cancellation notices and it's taken off like a rocket.
I hope the server running the site has a lot of storage capacity.
After all, the Obama administration predicted in 2010 that around 100 million Americans would have their insurance plans cancelled.
p.s., I wonder if any of the folks posting photos match up with the "We're Sorry" crew?
Friday, November 01, 2013
OH, MY: The Associated Press demands editors stop printing Obama’s staged "propaganda” photos
I thought not.
The Associated Press continues to express its utter disgust with the Obama White House. Which happens to be the first administration in American history to run its own news operation. Because **** you.
Editors of The Associated Press condemned the White House’s refusal to give photojournalists real access to President Obama, who prefers to circulate press release-style pictures taken by his own paid photographers.
These official photographs are little more than propaganda, according to AP director of photography Santiago Lyon.
The AP has only been permitted to photograph the president alone in the Oval Office on two occasions–both in his first term–and has never been allowed to photograph the president with his staff in the office...
...Previous administrations were less strict about photos, undermining Obama’s frequent claim that he strives to run “the most transparent administration” in history.
Lyon made his remarks at the AP Media Editors national conference in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll echoed Lyon’s concerns.
...Carroll advised newspaper editors who were present to stop using the White House’s preferred photos in their own stories, according to Lail and other attendees.
I commend the AP, and CNN, and CBS News -- to name but a few -- that have finally decided to begin speaking truth to power.
Hat tips: Poor Richard and BadBlue News.
When Memes Collide
The President was so perturbed about getting to the bottom of the Obamacare debacle, and the slaughter of his diplomats in Benghazi, and his IRS targeting conservative, evangelical, and pro-Israel groups that he went golfing for the 148th time this week.
Hat tip: BadBlue News
San Francisco Will Confiscate High-Cap Magazines; Bloomberg and McAuliffe Plan Similar Gun-Grab in Virginia
The radical Leftists running SF appear to have problems with reading comprehension at the third-grade level. After all, the nation's highest law reads, in part, "...the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
But that doesn't stop the would-be tyrants of the Golden State from urinating all over the Constitution:
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance that places a confiscatory ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammo on Oct. 29.
Those who are in possession of the high-capacity magazines or high-capacity ammunition feeding devices will have 90 days to turn them over to police, sell them out-of-state or render them permanently inoperable. Failure to do so will result in misdemeanor charges.
The NRA rightly protested, noting that these sorts of bans plainly conflict with the Second Amendment. In fact, the Supreme Court has already ruled that firearms and related accessories "in common use" are protected by the Constitution and cannot be banned.
And here's the lesson learned for my friends in Virginia. Michael Bloomberg has spent, by some estimates, over $2 million trying to elect radical leftists in Virginia like Terry McAuliffe. His aim is to extend his draconian gun-ban efforts into the Old Dominion, by hook or by crook.
So if you like your firearms, you won't be able to keep your firearms.
That's why I support Ken Cuccinelli for Governor of Virginia and I urge you to do the same.
Hat tip: BB.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
THEY LIED TO CONGRESS, AGAIN: After Three Days, HHS Knew Less Than 250 People Nationwide Had Signed Up for Obamacare
Marilyn Tavenner, head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, testified Tuesday before the House Ways and Means Committee... raising more questions about the administration's transparency on the project, she declined to cite enrollment numbers. She did not claim, as Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently did, that officials simply do not have those numbers -- rather, she said a "decision" was made to release them in mid-November.
They lied to Congress to hide their catastrophic failures.
One of the few real reporters left in legacy media is Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News. And her report is absolutely devastating, describing an administration whose first, second and third instincts are to lie.
For 31 days now, the Obama administration has been telling us that Americans by the millions are visiting the new health insurance website, despite all its problems... But no one in the administration has been willing to tell us how many policies have been purchased, and this may be the reason...
The website launched on a Tuesday... at a meeting Wednesday morning, the war room notes say "six enrollments have occurred so far."
By Wednesday afternoon, enrollments were up to "approximately 100." By the end of Wednesday, the notes reflect "248 enrollments" nationwide.
The lies and cover-ups keep coming.
Where are the Select Investigative Committees, Speaker Boehner?
Where are the Select Investigative Committees, Chairman Issa?
Benghazi, the IRS and Obamacare all deserve their own.
We, the American people, demand them!
Hat tip: BadBlue News and David Freddoso
BANANA REPUBLIC: White House Intimidates Health Insurers to Prevent Them From Publicly Criticizing Obamacare
CNN reports that the White House is intimidating insurance companies not to publicly criticize Obamacare:
"What is going on is, behind the scenes attempt by the White House to at least keep insurerers from publicly criticizing what is happening on this Affordable Care Act rollout. Basically, if you speak out, if you are quoted, you're going to get a call from the White House, pressure to be quiet," reports CNN.
"Several sources tell me and my colleague Chris Frates that insurance executives are being told to keep quiet. [The head of] a consulting firm for big insurance and an out spoken critic of Obamacare says he is getting calls from these executives who want him to speak out, Anderson, for them about the problems because they feel defenseless against the White House PR team. ... the White House is exerting massive pressure on the industry, including the trade associations, to keep quiet. Sources telling us they fear White House retribution."
The accompanying illustration was not truly part of CNN's report, just me being a wise-guy.
That said, the insurance companies that employ hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of folks like you and me are effectively in witness protection.
Perhaps CNN could interview some insurance executives with their faces obscured and their voices disguised.
Because their own government is targeting them.
Seriously: did you ever think we would see this in America?
Hat tip: Mark Levin.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
SHOCKA: EPA Flaunts Rules, Seeks Feedback On Its Radical Policies Exclusively in Left-Leaning Areas
In a letter to the EPA, the Institute for 21st Century Energy and 13 state and local business organizations call out the agency for not living up to its own policies on the location of listening sessions on greenhouse gas emissions rules for existing power plants:
EPA has chosen to locate most of these hearings in states and regions that use very little coal, while neglecting states most dependent on coal for affordable and reliable electricity generation. For example, EPA is not planning listening sessions in any of the 10 states most reliant on coal for electricity generation, instead choosing states such as California (1% of electricity from coal), New York (4%), and Washington (4%).
There are no scheduled hearings in any of the ten states that generate the highest percentage of electricity from coal—states such as West Virginia (95% of electricity from coal), for Indiana (84%), North Dakota (78%), or Ohio (71%).
This ignores EPA's policy on public hearings:
When the subject of a public hearing, meeting or other information exchange process relates to conditions or facilities in a specific geographic area, EPA should hold the public hearing or meeting in that general geographic area.
So far, EPA isn’t living up to this standard.
The business organizations ask EPA to reach out to--not ignore--states that are most dependent on coal.
Greenhouse gas emission rules, expected to be released by EPA next year, will greatly affect coal producers and electricity users. It’s critical that all affected parties be able to give their input to the agency.
Read more at FreeEnterprise.com.
Obamacare in Three, Eh, Make That FOUR Pictures
Secretary Sebelius: Yes, sir, because we were anxious to get the website up and running and functional, which we clearly have failed to do to date, although I would suggest the website has never crashed. It is functional, but at a very slow speed and very low reliability and has continued to function. Having said that, they pared down some of the features, feeling that it would be better to load them in later. One was the shop and browse feature. Another was the Spanish version of the website and the Medicaid transfers. All three of those issues were pared down in September to not load the system.
While Sebelius was insisting -- under oath, mind you -- that the website had "never crashed", CNN used a split-screen to show the Healthcare.gov website in real-time.
And... surprise! It had just crashed again, for the umpteenth time, displaying an error message "The System Is Down At the Moment ... Please try again later."
Which prompted Twitchy commenter Red Pill to post the following trifecta explaining the true impact of Obamacare.
The true destructive impact of Obamacare -- even though 80 percent of Americans are covered by their employers and are not yet subject to the individual mandate (won't that be fun next year?) -- has become apparent to most Americans.
That's not me saying it. That's NBC saying it.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
OUCH: NBC Buries Own Reporter To Hide Obamacare Lies
RESTON, VA – In a bombshell report for NBC News.com, NBC News senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers found buried in the 2010 Obamacare regulations language predicting, “A reasonable range for the percentage of individual policies that would terminate is forty percent to sixty-seven percent.” Myers’ reporting shows that Barack Obama knowingly lied to the American people for more than three years when he regularly insisted that those who like their current health insurance would be able to keep it under Obamacare.
Yet, according to an analysis from the Media Research Center, this massive, deliberate breach of trust was worthy of only 21 seconds of coverage on NBC Nightly News, buried at the end of the show’s fourth story, with no follow up on Today. ABC and CBS completely censored Lisa Myers’ discovery with not one single second of coverage on either their morning or evening programs.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell reacts:
Read more at the Media Research Center.
CONGRATULATIONS, DEMOCRATS! Nearly Half of New York Doctors Bailing on Obamacare
New York doctors are treating ObamaCare like the plague, a new survey reveals.
A poll conducted by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of MDs said they are not participating in the nation’s new health-care plan.
...Only 23 percent of the 409 physicians queried said they’re taking patients who signed up through health exchanges.
“This is so poorly designed that a lot of doctors are afraid to participate,” said Dr. Sam Unterricht, president of the 29,000-member organization. “There’s a lot of resistance. Doctors don’t know what they’re going to get paid.”
...“Obama Care wants to start right away, but who see all these new patients???? Not me,” e-mailed one doc.
Another said, “I plan to retire if this disaster is implemented. This is a train wreck.”
“I refuse to participate in the exchange plans! I am completely opposed to this new law,” said a third respondent.
One doctor recycled the mantra used to attack addictions: “The solution is simple: Just say no.”
Oh, and all you residents of New York City?
Congratulations. You appear poised to elect the radical Communist Bill de Blasio as mayor.
What could possibly go wrong?
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
OUTRAGE: Nearly 200 Officers Purged From U.S. Military to Ensure Ideological Purity
Defense: What the president calls "my military" is being cleansed of any officer suspected of disloyalty to or disagreement with the administration on matters of policy or force structure, leaving the compliant and fearful.
We recognize President Obama is the commander-in-chief and that throughout history presidents from Lincoln to Truman have seen fit to remove military commanders they view as inadequate or insubordinate. Turnover in the military ranks is normal, and in these times of sequestration and budget cuts the numbers are expected to tick up as force levels shrink and missions change.
Yet what has happened to our officer corps since President Obama took office is viewed in many quarters as unprecedented, baffling and even harmful to our national security posture. We have commented on some of the higher profile cases, such as Gen. Carter Ham. He was relieved as head of U.S. Africa Command after only a year and a half because he disagreed with orders not to mount a rescue mission in response to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi.Rear Adm. Chuck Gaouette, commander of the John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group, was relieved in October 2012 for disobeying orders when he sent his group on Sept. 11 to "assist and provide intelligence for" military forces ordered into action by Gen. Ham.
Other removals include the sacking of two nuclear commanders in a single week — Maj. Gen. Michael Carey, head of the 20th Air Force, responsible for the three wings that maintain control of the 450 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, the No. 2 officer at U.S. Strategic Command.
From Breitbart.com's Facebook page comes a list of at least 197 officers that have been relieved of duty by President Obama for a laundry list of reasons and sometimes with no reason given. Stated grounds range from "leaving blast doors on nukes open" to "loss of confidence in command ability" to "mishandling of funds" to "inappropriate relationships" to "gambling with counterfeit chips" to "inappropriate behavior" to "low morale in troops commanded."
Nine senior commanding generals have been fired by the Obama administration this year, leading to speculation by active and retired members of the military that a purge of its commanders is under way.
Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, notes how the White House fails to take action or investigate its own officials but finds it easy to fire military commanders "who have given their lives for their country." Vallely thinks he knows why this purge is happening.
REVEALED: President Obama intentionally, wantonly and systematically destroyed millions of health care plans.
The more interesting part of the analysis relates to the regulations that actually triggered the catastrophic destruction of 10 to 12 million individual health policies. As NBC reported (emphasis added):
The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.
As Ace notes, HHS operates at the behest of Obama.
They didn't have to tighten the regulations to make it impossible for Americans to keep their health care plans.
They, in fact, could have loosened the guidelines to ensure that the president's oft-repeated mantra ("If you like your health care plan you can keep your plan... period!") remained true.
The President refused to do so.
Why?
Because f*** you.
The real scandal isn't just that the president lied repeatedly to the American people. The real scandal is that the President, in fact, gave direct orders to HHS to destroy the health care policies of millions of Americans.
These regulations, being a creature of the Executive branch, can be rewritten by the executive branch at any time. We don't need a law for this (though one would be useful, to force Obama to do the right thing).
Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn't want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.
That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare...
Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than he did.
So he lied. And lied. And lied. And lied some more.
And even at this late date, he could still choose to honor his promise.
But he won't, because he can't -- he always intended to take people's insurance away from them. Always.
Ace concludes with the notion that the president "should be forced to explain why" he intentionally sabotaged millions of health care policies.
Hell, we can't even find out what President Obama did for eight hours as American diplomats were fighting for their lives in Benghazi.
Yeah, I know, he went to sleep after refusing to authorize a rescue.
But the odds that a reporter will ask him about this? Just a skosh less than Vern Troyer winning the Heisman.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Monday, October 28, 2013
California Democrat Cheers for One-Party Rule (Because Hitler Made the Trains Run on Time, Right @FromaHarrop?)
California has found a formula for ending the partisan warfare that once paralyzed its government: Get rid of one of the parties, in this case, the Republican. The state's famously dysfunctional government now hums with calm efficiency.
Yes, "calm efficiency". The trains run on time, one would assume. Oh, and Pol Pot had one-party rule, too. That didn't work out too well for, oh, a couple million of his subjects. Who we won't be interviewing for... the rest of their lives.
Democrats there hold a supermajority in the state Legislature, making it well-nigh impossible for Republicans to gum up their plans. The governor, Jerry Brown, is a Democrat, as well.
Plans like massive deficit spending, rampant illegal immigration, a collapsing welfare state, and a looming pension disaster? Congratulations! Let freedom ring!
...As districts become more politically diverse, Republican right-wingers — with their inflamed imaginings and inexplicable amount of free time — see their power to produce sure losers curbed...
Yes, those damnable Republicans with their inflamed imaginings. Like the Constitution matters. Like individual liberties matter. Like trying to control an IRS, an NSA, a DOJ, and a Beltway Elite who are completely out of control. Imagine the nerve!
...Sacramento is now a model of quiet efficiency. The state's new health insurance exchange is off and running with minimal drama. And there's even a move to ease some environmental regulations at the behest of business.
"The new California health insurance exchange is running with minimal drama"? Perhaps Froma (Gesundheit!) should ask those affected by Blue Cross canceling roughly 60 percent of its individual insurance policies. Or the thousands of other horror stories so egregious even the Los Angeles Times has been forced to take note. Or the more than 10 million people nationwide who have thus far lost their policies.
Now if we didn't have Detroit, and Chicago, and Sacramento, and dozens of other bankrupt, one-party, Democrat-run cities collapsing into miserable microcosms of third-world cesspools, she might have a point to consider.
Yo Froma, if that is your real name, I have two suggestions: first, lay off the acid; and second, head over to PensionTsunami, where the true economic toll of the Detroitocrat Party is laid bare. Don't worry, they use words at the sixth-grade reading level, so you should be okay.
In short, the infernal alliance of public sector unions and their Democrat toadies have set California on a course of fiscal destruction. Businesses and taxpayers are fleeing, illegal immigrants who suckle on the public teat are welcomed, and Shmenga Hadoop thinks that model's sustainable.
So I'll take a flyer and trust Milton Friedman over Yenta Maloop: he said that combining open borders and a massive welfare state would bankrupt a country. And that is where California is headed as surely as as Freda Maloof is destined to be a footnote to a footnote to a footnote when the history of America's great op-ed writers is written.
Yo, Maroof: stop destroying my country!
SWEET FANCY MOSES: NBC (!1!11!) annihilates administration's Obamacare lies; Obama knew 10 million would lose coverage
President Obama knowingly lied to the American people over and over and over again. And -- I repeat -- this is NBC News reporting on the scandal.
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
...the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”
...Those getting the cancellation letters are often shocked and unhappy.
George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was "perfectly happy" with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The "comparable" plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible... And the best option he’s found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month...
...Richard Helgren, a Lansing, Mich., retiree, said he was “irate” when he received a letter informing him that his wife Amy's $559 a month health plan was being changed because of the law. The plan the insurer offered raised his deductible from $0 to $2,500, and the company gave him 17 days to decide...
..."I heard him only about a thousand times," he said. "I didn't believe him when he said it though because there was just no way that was going to happen. They wrote the regulations so strictly that none of the old polices can grandfather."
Kudos to NBC's Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye for publicizing what most of us already knew.
Obamacare isn't about health care. It's about control. It's about changing the relationship between the government and the individual. It is designed explicitly to give the government control over every American family's mental and physical well-being, which it can use to reward its political allies and punish its enemies.
Anyone with an ounce of intellectual honesty would admit as much, which excludes Juan Williams and the rest of the drones who relentlessly cheerlead for their own destruction.
Hat tip: BadBlue 24x7 News
Sunday, October 27, 2013
ONCE AGAIN, DEMOCRATS LOSE TO MATH: Detroit pensioners to receive only 16 percent of their promised retirements
That's a stiff price to pay for electing Democrats.
On Friday, city financial consultant Kenneth Buckfire said he did not have to recommend to Orr that pensions for the city's retirees be cut as a way to help Detroit navigate through debts and liabilities that total $18.5 billion.
Buckfire said it was clear that the city did not have the funds to pay the unsecured pension payouts without cutting them.
"It was a function of the mathematics," said Buckfire, who said he did not think it was necessary for him or anyone else to recommend pension cuts to Orr.
"Are you saying it was so self-evident that no one had to say it?" asked Claude Montgomery, attorney for a committee of retirees that was created by Rhodes.
"Yes," Buckfire answered.
Buckfire, a Detroit native and investment banker with restructuring experience, later told the court the city plans to pay unsecured creditors, including the city's pensioners, 16 cents on the dollar. There are about 23,500 city retirees.
And this, my friends, is why I call them Detroitocrats. Everything they touch will turn into Detroit, and that includes America itself.
Hat tip: Zero Hedge.
The 25 Best Quotes Explaining the Obamacare "Glitch"
While some have proclaimed the 36,000 enrollment in The Affordable Care Act "a good start," the online marketplaces that Obamacare has become more infamous for have been plagued with problems in the brief two weeks since launch. Politico provides 25 of the most telling and colorful comments made about the "glitches" the online exchanges have faced...
1. “I hope they are working day and night to get this done. When they get it fixed, I hope they fire some people that were in charge of making sure that this thing was supposed to work.” — former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on MSNBC’s “Now with Alex Wagner,” Oct. 14
2. “A thousand Social Security numbers being sent to the wrong people is not a glitch!” — CNBC contributor Carol Roth on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Oct. 12
3. “How can we tax people for not buying a product from a website that doesn’t work?” — House Speaker John Boehner, Oct. 10
4. “Despite the widespread belief that the administration was not ready for the health law’s Oct. 1 launch, top officials and lead IT contractors looked us in the eye and assured us all systems were a go. Instead, here we are 10 days later, and delays and technical failures have reached epidemic proportions.” — Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) in a statement, Oct. 10
5. “We’re going to do a challenge. I’m going to try and download every movie ever made and you are going to try to sign up for Obamacare — and we’ll see which happens first.” — Jon Stewart to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on "The Daily Show," Oct. 7
6. “It’s a new rule: If something doesn’t work, you get rid of it! If the post office is late today, let’s get rid of the post office! If the plane is late an hour, get rid of airplanes! It’s ridiculous!” — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Oct. 12
7. “There’s so much wrong, you just don’t know what’s broken until you get a lot more of it fixed.” — Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini, Oct. 14
8. “They had three years to get this ready. If they weren’t fully ready, they should accept the advice Republicans are giving them: Delay it for a year, get it ready and make sure it works.” — CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Oct. 9
Saturday, October 26, 2013
HELLO! Meet the 72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered “Potential Terrorists” by the Obama Administration
Are you a conservative, a libertarian, a Christian or a gun owner? Are you opposed to abortion, globalism, Communism, illegal immigration, the United Nations or the New World Order? Do you believe in conspiracy theories, do you believe that we are living in the “end times” or do you ever visit alternative news websites (such as this one)?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are a “potential terrorist” according to official U.S. government documents.
At one time, the term “terrorist” was used very narrowly. The government applied that label to people like Osama bin Laden and other Islamic jihadists. But now the Obama administration is removing all references to Islam from terror training materials, and instead the term “terrorist” is being applied to large groups of American citizens.
And if you are a “terrorist”, that means that you have no rights and the government can treat you just like it treats the terrorists that are being held at Guantanamo Bay. So if you belong to a group of people that is now being referred to as “potential terrorists”, please don’t take it as a joke. The first step to persecuting any group of people is to demonize them. And right now large groups of peaceful, law-abiding citizens are being ruthlessly demonized.
Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents. To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link. As you can see, this list covers most of the country…
1. Those that talk about “individual liberties”
2. Those that advocate for states’ rights
3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”
Hysterical ManBearPig Claims Forest Fires Causing Global Warming!
Junk Science: Al Gore, patron saint of climate fraud, argues with Australia's prime minister that its brushfires are not caused by warming and that the record shows the koala bear, like the polar bear, is quite safe.
They were the largest Australian bushfires in a populous region in recorded history, consuming half the state of Victoria, claiming 12 lives and destroying an estimated 1 million sheep and thousands of cattle. And they occurred in February 1851 during one of the coldest years on record.Bushfires have been part of Australian life for centuries, long before the Industrial Revolution and the sale of the first SUV.
Since the 1851 fires, there've been the 1898 fires in Victoria, which consumed 2,000 buildings, fires in Victoria in 1938 that killed 71 and destroyed 3,700 buildings, and the Ash Wednesday fires in the early 1980s that left 71 dead in the state of South Australia.
Australia has been battling another round of massive bushfires west of Sydney for more than a week now, fires not unlike those that have occurred throughout its history. The difference is that this time we have Al Gore and his climate co-conspirators at the U.N., the corrupt and fraudulent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to blame the fires on climate change.
Gore is upset with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's insistence that the recent New South Wales wildfires are not linked to climate change and his statement on Australian radio that "these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they are just a function of life in Australia."
Abbott has also dismissed U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres' assertion that there was "absolutely" a connection between wildfires and rising global temperatures.
In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Monday, Figueres, the head of the U.N.'s climate change negotiations, said there was a clear link between climate change and bushfires such as those raging in New South Wales.
That global temperatures have flat-lined for the past 15 years or so doesn't seem to bother Gore or Figueres. Ignoring the historical record and current satellite observations and measurements, Gore equated Abbott's comments to the insistence by tobacco companies for decades that there was no link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.
"It reminds me of politicians here who got a lot of support from the tobacco companies and who argued to the public that there was absolutely no connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer," Gore said on ABC's Los Angeles affiliate Wednesday night.
This echoes the mantra of the climate scammers that climate change "deniers" have long had their science-based skepticism subsidized by energy companies.
Yet it is Al Gore and others like him who have gotten rich peddling their climate fiction, while leading governments to stunt economic growth and divert scarce billions to chase a mirage.
The inconvenient truth for Gore et al is that wildfires have been decreasing as have been instances of drought that cause them.






















