EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Iran sends second monkey into space, president says http://t.co/SzEu9FybC1 #claustrophobic pic.twitter.com/dgQwcjluZy
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) December 14, 2013Hat tip: Biff Spackle.
EXCLUSIVE PHOTO: Iran sends second monkey into space, president says http://t.co/SzEu9FybC1 #claustrophobic pic.twitter.com/dgQwcjluZy
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) December 14, 2013QOTD: "A Chinese naval vessel tried to force a U.S. guided missile warship to stop in international waters recently, causing a tense military standoff in the latest case of Chinese maritime harassment, according to defense officials.
The guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens, which recently took part in disaster relief operations in the Philippines, was confronted by Chinese warships in the South China Sea near Beijing’s new aircraft carrier Liaoning, according to officials familiar with the incident.
“On December 5th, while lawfully operating in international waters in the South China Sea, USS Cowpens and a PLA Navy vessel had an encounter that required maneuvering to avoid a collision,” a Navy official said...
A State Department official said the U.S. government issued protests to China in both Washington and Beijing in both diplomatic and military channels." --Bill Gertz
The citizen control lobby keeps trying to strip Americans of their unalienable rights, and liberty lovers keep punching back twice as hard.
Two Republican legislators propose eliminating the license required to carry a concealed handgun in Ohio, a change one describes as an effort to put Second Amendment rights on the same footing as others in the Bill of Rights.
The bill, introduced Wednesday by Reps. Ron Hood of Ashville and Matt Lynch of Bainbridge Township in Geauga County, would allow any person who is at least 21 years old to carry a concealed firearm, so long as they are not legally prohibited for some reason from having guns...
Lynch said the bill is an effort to treat the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment with the same freedom as other rights.
“The right in the Second Amendment is the only one in the Bill of Rights that you have to get permission for,” Lynch said.
“You don’t have to have a speech license or a worship license or a freedom of the press license,” he said. “This is designed to put the Second Amendment on equal footing.”
The law would not end restrictions on taking firearms into certain restricted areas, but would end concealed carry licensing restrictions. Constitutional carry is becoming a more popular cause in the past year, as many Americans rebel against the thought of more citizen control laws. The common sentiment seems to be that not only are proposed citizen control laws counterproductive, but the current laws are too restrictive and should be rolled back.
This reality seems to be shocking to citizen control cultists, who can’t seem to grasp the basic concept that citizens want more liberty, not less.
Incredible. RT @AmrElGabry: For the first time in 112 years, it snows in Cairo pic.twitter.com/k738tbZvpW
— Karen Smith (@KarenCNN) December 13, 2013As anniversary of Sandy Hook tragedy nears, President offers solemn tweet of remembrance, urges sensible gun bans. pic.twitter.com/IB43pCV3pB
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) December 13, 2013QOTD: "Thomas Jefferson once said that “the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” In other words, he believed that government debt was the equivalent of stealing money from future generations on a massive scale.
Right now, the U.S. government is stealing roughly $100,000,000 from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day. And it is being projected that the U.S. national debt will more than double during the 8 years of the Obama administration. In other words, the federal government will pile more debt on to the backs of our children and our grandchildren during the Obama years than had been accumulated during all of the rest of U.S. history combined.
The federal government is literally destroying the future of America, and what we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is beyond criminal. If there was one thing that the Republicans in Congress were supposed to do, it was to do something about all of this debt. These days Republicans can’t seem to agree on much, but the one issue that virtually all “conservatives” were supposed to agree on was the national debt. The American people gave the Republicans control of the House in 2010 and 2012 for a reason. Unfortunately, nothing has been done. Our debt has continued to spiral out of control and now John Boehner and Paul Ryan are pushing a “budget deal” that will essentially give the free-spending Democrats virtually everything that they want for the next 10 years.
That is why John Boehner and Paul Ryan should immediately resign." --Michael Synder
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa sent a stern warning to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Wednesday night: Obstructing a congressional investigation is a criminal offense.
At issue are the “attempts by the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit contractors working on HealthCare.gov from cooperating with congressional investigators,” and Issa informed Sebelius in a letter that this obstruction is criminal.
“The Department’s hostility toward questions from Congress and the media about the implementation of Obamacare is well known,” Issa wrote... Issa called out an HHS instruction to a HealthCare.gov contractor, Creative Computing Solutions, Inc., to not comply with the Oversight Committee’s request for documents...
“The Department’s most recent effort to stonewall, however, has morphed from mere obstinacy into criminal obstruction of a congressional investigation,” he said.

A Message From The Onion's, Vice Chairman, Douglas Siegfried Zweibel
Wed, Dec 11, 2013 19:13 EST
To Whom It May Concern,
Please enjoy the latest print edition of the The Onion, America's Finest News Source, on newsstands now in every city on the planet. As but a mere speck of a crumb in the shadow of The Onion, you are no doubt aware that our newspaper's print revenues accounted for nearly 45% of the national GDP in 2013, making The Onion by far the most successful print-based media corporation in the world, and the vanguard of the burgeoning Print Media Revolution. May this most recent hard-copy issue serve as a subtle reminder of our disgusting wealth and prestige.
Cower before us, pathetic peon, and know that no matter what breed of calamity shall soon befall this doomed hellscape we call Earth, The Onion's print edition shall never die, shall never be rendered obsolete, shall never fall prey to a sudden and irreversible shift in the global media marketplace, and shall always be there, every week, until humanity itself has, God willing, passed from the cosmos.
Tu Stultus Es ,
Douglas Siegfried Zweibel
Vice Chairman
The Onion , America's Finest News Source
The Onion
730 N. Franklin, Floor 7
Chicago, IL 60654
The Federal Communications Commission is planning a broad probe of political speech across media platforms, an unprecedented move that raises serious First Amendment concerns.
The FCC’s proposed “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” which is set to begin a field test in a single market with an eye toward a comprehensive study in 2014, would collect a remarkably wide range of information on demographics, point of view, news topic selection, management style and other factors in news organizations both in and out of the FCC’s traditional purview.
The airwaves regulator would also subject news producers in all media to invasive questioning about their work and content.
A methodology (PDF) worked up by Silver Spring, Maryland-based Social Solutions International (SSI) says that in addition to its general evaluation of news content, the survey will include a “qualitative component” featuring interrogations of news organization owners, management and employees.
Among the questions federal contractors will be asking of private media companies... [f]or media owners:
“What is the news philosophy of the station?”
For editors, producers and managers:
...“Who decides which stories are covered?”
For reporters:
“Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers (viewers, listeners, readers) that was rejected by management?” (Followup questions ask the reporter to speculate on why a particular story was spiked.)
According to a May article in Communications Daily, Social Solutions International will be paid $917,823 for the study, which also questions news consumers about their habits and numerically codes news content according to how well, in the FCC’s view, it meets the “critical information needs” (CIN) of particular “communities.”
“In this study, the FCC will delve into the editorial discretion of newspapers, web sites and radio and TV stations,” Hudson Institute Fellow Robert McDowell, who served as an FCC commissioner from 2009 to 2013, told The Daily Caller. “This starts sticking the government’s nose into what has traditionally been privileged and protected ground. Regardless of one’s political stripes, one should be concerned.”
QOTD: Via LiberalLogic:
Obamacare is striking out with young people — those healthy folks who are suppose to actually make it work.
Young people are perhaps the most important demographic to the success of the Affordable Care Act, but most Americans under 30 are opposed to the law. They particularly dislike the individual mandate that requires them to buy insurance or pay fines in form of higher taxes.
A new survey from Harvard University found a large majority of young Americans do not believe the law will save them money, do not believe it will improve their health and do not intend to sign up for insurance through the new exchanges.If that’s all true – particularly the last part – it is very bad news for President Barack Obama’s signature policy achievement.
The Affordable Care Act hinges on getting young, mostly healthy people to sign up for insurance. That will help spread out the costs incurred by the older, more expensive enrollees who also will use the system.
This cost-pooling is central to the economics that underpin the law, and if young people decline to enroll, costs for everyone else could skyrocket.
“The data from the survey demonstrates a striking rejection of the ACA by millennials under 30,” wrote John Pulice of the Harvard Political Review, which provided analysis of the survey.
The 2013 Harvard Public Opinion survey included interviews with 2,089 Americans between the ages of 18 and 29. Interviews were conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 11, and the poll has a margin of error of 2.1 percent.
The results show many young people are not buying the promises of Obamacare. A mere 17 percent of those polled believe their quality of health care will improve under the Affordable Care Act, while 44 say it will get worse.
But millennials’ views on health care costs are even bleaker.
Only 10 percent of those surveyed said the ACA will decrease their health care costs, with 50 percent saying it will increase their costs and 36 percent expecting their costs to stay the same, according to the Harvard poll.
Of those surveyed, only 20 percent said they plan to enroll in a health care plan through an exchange, while 47 percent said they would not enroll.
All this talk about the memorial for Nelson Mandela in South Africa. And Obama conducting himself in a reckless manner because that's what he does for which he's cheered on by the lib media. Honestly, I was surprised that Obama and Raul Castro didn't exchange spit. Really.
We all know Obama has an affinity toward these totalitarian regimes. I'm not surprised in the least. And he's bowing to them and shaking their hands -- almost the bigger the gulags that they have, the more deference he gives them.
And I was thinking about this, and I'm not going to waste a lot of time on it because folks, here's the truth, no one will remember what Obama said in South Africa. We don't even remember what he said today and he said it today. No one will remember much about that memorial other than it was for Mandela. So, take that to heart.
But, I was thinking. When Obama leaves office, there won't be tens of millions of people newly freed from behind the Iron Curtain, or under the thumb of some third world dictator, and so forth as they were under Reagan and Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher was responsible for -- along with John Paul II and Ronald Reagan -- the freedom of over a hundred million people behind the Iron Curtain, and with Reagan, also in our own hemisphere in toto.
Obama won't be in any such movements. In fact, I dare say more people will be imprisoned and enslaved when he leaves office then before he came to office. And it's a disgrace -- as I said maybe two weeks ago, but certainly last week -- how our government, the Obama administration, treated the passing of Margaret Thatcher, who is responsible for the freedom of more people than any of Obama's favorite leaders or what have you. Absolute disgrace.
And there they are clowning it up, acting goofy, in the stands, in the cheap seats. Just ridiculous. I listened to Obama for Obama for about fourteen seconds and there he was again, what effect Mandela had on him. He started with the I, I, I. I said that's enough, I don't need to hear this crap. And I didn't and I'm not playing any the clips either because I don't care what he said. It doesn't matter to me. It doesn't affect my life nor yours.
One thing that did happen there that should draw our attention, at least to a point, as pointed out in the White House Dossier website. When Former President Bush, George W. Bush, when his face appeared on the video monitor at the memorial, in Johannesburg, he was booed. He was booed according to the White House poll report, which cited local press outlets.
Now, when the images of Obama and his wife popped up there was a thirty-second deafening roar, the pool writer wrote.
George W. Bush did more for South Africa and Africa period than Barack Obama has ever done. Obama is better at crafting his public image and saying the right things.
Bush personally saved the lives of millions of South Africans with his President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, ensuring AIDS drugs are available to South Africa’s impoverished masses.
And he's booed. He's booed. The Washington Compost talked about the success of this program. It said:
In South Africa, the success ( of PEPFAR) was extraordinary. AIDS killed roughly 2.3 million in South Africa -- once one of the worst-affected countries in the world -- and orphaned about a million children there, according to the United Nations. Today, rates of infection have fallen to 30 percent, and nearly 2 million people are on antiretroviral drugs.
Meanwhile, Obama has cut this program and generally has been customarily inattentive to it, as The Washington Post essentially reported. He's cheered, Bush is booed, the media is slobbering all over Obama.
Obama said he'd change name "Redskins" to avoid offending Native Americans. How many Cuban-Americans were offended by the Raul handshake?
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) December 11, 2013Please note that the alleged $40 billion in cuts is really only $4 billion in a close to $80 billion program. They arrive at $40 billion by multiplying $4 billion by 10 years ... The cuts then are $40 billion in an $800 billion program. And I actually doubt we will ever see those "cuts" in the first place.
- SNAP benefits more than doubled between 2000 and 2007.
- Between 2007 and 2013 snap benefits went up another 150%.
- Trendline growth would have annual benefits at about $32.5 billion.
- Instead benefits are more than double.
- Liberals are whining about a 5% cut when a cut to the trendline would be a 50% cut
- Participation is nearly double what it was in 2007.
- Participation in 2013 is 275% of the 2001 total.
...Supposedly a 5% cut is draconian.
The Problem
- Growth in the number of participants is on an unsustainable trend.
- Growth in benefits per person is also on an unsustainable trend.
- Multiply the two together and you get the first chart.
As is typical with government programs, there is no incentive by the administrators to eliminate waste or fraud. ... The more funding for food stamps, the bigger the salaries and staffs of the administrators.
I suggest that we need a way to provide necessary safety-net benefits while simultaneously providing an incentive to get off the program and get a job.
I repeat my proposal...
- Prohibit food stamp purchases of potato chips, snacks, soft drinks, candy, pizza, frozen foods of any kind except juice.
- Limit food stamp users to generic (store brand vs. name brand) dried beans, rice, peanut butter, pasta, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, frozen (not bottled) juice, canned vegetables, canned soup, soda crackers, poultry, ground beef, bread, cheese,
powdered milk, eggs, margarine, and general baking goods (flour, sugar, spices).- Calculate a healthy diet based on current prices, number in the family, ages of recipients, and base food stamps allotments on that diet.
- In the interest of health and cleanliness, expand the food stamp program to include generic soap and laundry products.
My proposal will not only lower the cost of the food stamp program, the resultant healthier diets would lower Medicaid and Medicare costs as well.
Moreover, my proposal would give people a strong incentive to get off the food stamp program without intrusive, costly big-brother ideas like drug-testing which cannot possibly work...
EXCLUSIVE: Christmas Postcard From the White House http://t.co/lFNzHYEGci @instapundit @ron_fournier @michellemalkin pic.twitter.com/PGmI6z3xPL
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) December 12, 2013QOTD: "The Gold Plan... that’s when you have to sell your wedding ring in order to pay the deductibles.
The Silver Plan... is the color of your hair by the time you finally get signed up for it.
The Bronze Plan... that’s the color your finger is going to be after you give yourself a prostate exam." --Larry the Cable Guy
Since the president was reelected in November of last year, a good deal of poison has been poured into Washington’s grimy alphabet soup. Among the departments that have become embroiled in scandal are the IRS, the DOJ, the DOE, the EPA, the NSA, the USDA, and, of course, the ATF. This week, the lattermost is back in the news — and for good reason.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is probably best known these days for the failure of its disastrous Fast and Furious scheme — a botched initiative that aimed to give American guns to Mexican cartels first and to ask questions later. Under pressure, the administration was quick to imply that the mistake was an aberration. But a watchdog report, published last week by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, suggests that the caprice, carelessness, and downright incompetence that marked the disaster was no accident. In fact, that it is endemic in the ATF.
After a bungled sting attracted the suspicion of the Milwaukee press earlier this year, reporters started to examine similar enterprises in the rest of the country. What they found astonished them. Among the tactics they discovered ATF agents employing were using mentally disabled Americans to help run unnecessary sting operations; establishing agency-run “fronts” in “safe zones” such as schools and churches; providing alcohol, drugs, and sexual invitations to minors; destroying property and then expecting the owners to pick up the tab; and hiring felons to sell guns to legal purchasers. Worse, perhaps, in a wide range of cases, undercover agents specifically instructed individuals to behave in a certain manner — and then arrested and imprisoned them for doing so. This is government at its worst. And it appears to be standard operating procedure.As with Fast and Furious, the primary objective of the ATF’s stings seems not to be to fight a known threat but instead to manufacture crime. Across the country, the agency has set up shops in which it attempts to facilitate or to encourage illegal behavior, and it has drafted citizens into the scheme without telling them that they were involved. It is fishing — nonchalantly, haphazardly, even illegally. And the consequences can go hang.
Some of the stories are heartrending. Tony Bruner, a convicted felon with an IQ of 50, was hired in Wichita to work at “Bandit Trading,” a fake store that agents had established as a front. Bruner didn’t realize that he was working for the ATF — he thought he had finally found a steady job. But the agents knew how valuable Bruner could be to them, recognizing immediately that he was disabled (or “slow-headed,” in one agent’s unlovely phrase) and that he would therefore be easy to manipulate. Having established his trust, agents asked Bruner to find guns for them, which he agreed to do...
■ Agents in several cities opened undercover gun- and drug-buying operations in safe zones near churches and schools, allowed juveniles to come in and play video games and teens to smoke marijuana, and provided alcohol to underage youths. In Portland, attorneys for three teens who were charged said a female agent dressed provocatively, flirted with the boys and encouraged them to bring drugs and weapons to the store to sell.
■ As they did in Milwaukee, agents in other cities offered sky-high prices for guns, leading suspects to buy firearms at stores and turn around and sell them to undercover agents for a quick profit. In other stings, agents ran fake pawnshops and readily bought stolen items, such as electronics and bikes — no questions asked — spurring burglaries and theft. In Atlanta, agents bought guns that had been stolen just hours earlier, several ripped off from police cars...
■ Agents pressed suspects for specific firearms that could fetch tougher penalties in court. They allowed felons to walk out of the stores armed with guns. In Wichita, agents suggested a felon take a shotgun, saw it off and bring it back — and provided instructions on how to do it. The sawed-off gun allowed them to charge the man with a more serious crime.
"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it." Sadly, that appears to be the approach that the Obama administration and the mainstream media are taking with the U.S. economy.
They seem to believe that if they just keep telling the American people over and over that things are getting better, eventually the American people will believe that it is actually true. On Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to "7 percent", and the mainstream media responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation. For example, one USA Today article declared that "with today's jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial crisis nightmare is over." But is that actually the truth? As you will see below, if you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent. There has been absolutely no employment recovery. The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row. But most Americans don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth.And of course the reality of the matter is that we should have seen some sort of an economic recovery by now. Those running our system have literally been mortgaging the future in a desperate attempt to try to pump up our economic numbers. The federal government has been on the greatest debt binge in U.S. history and the Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazed lunatics. All of that "stimulus" should have had some positive short-term effects on the economy.
Sadly, all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at all. The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row. Anyone that claims that the U.S. economy is experiencing a "recovery" is simply not telling the truth. The following are 37 reasons why "the economic recovery of 2013" is a giant lie...
#1 The only reason that the official unemployment rate has been declining over the past couple of years is that the federal government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans no longer want a job and have "left the labor force". As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated, if the labor force participation rate returned to the long-term average of 65.8 percent, the official unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.
#2 The percentage of Americans that are actually working is much lower than it used to be. In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job. In fact, as you can see from the chart posted below, there has been absolutely no "employment recovery" since the depths of the last recession...
#3 The employment-population ratio has now been under 59 percent for 51 months in a row.
#4 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006. Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.
National Security: The theft of a truck carrying dangerous radioactive material combined with terrorist group activity in the hemisphere shows that the need for a secure border involves more than illegal immigration.
Mexican authorities said Wednesday they found the stolen truck and likely recovered all of the radioactive cobalt taken by a group of thieves who were probably after the truck, unaware it carried a deadly cargo.
Cobalt-60, which is used in radiation therapy to treat cancer, was being transported from a hospital in the northern city of Tijuana to a radioactive waste storage center. But what if the thieves were terrorists who knew what the truck was carrying and targeted it to gain material for a so-called "dirty bomb"?
At a nuclear security summit in South Korea last year, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), identified cobalt-60 as one of the materials that could be used with conventional explosives to make such a weapon.
"A dirty bomb detonated in a major city could cause mass panic, as well as serious economic and environmental consequences," Amano said, according to a copy of his speech. Detonation of such a bomb in a big city, he warned, "could cause mass panic, as well as serious economic and environmental consequences."
Bombs made with cobalt-60 "pose a threat mainly because even a fraction of a gram emits a huge number of high-energy gamma rays; such material is harmful whether outside or inside the body," according to a 2011 report by the Congressional Research Service.
The U.S. government has sensors at border crossings and seaports to prevent radioactive materials from entering the country. But nuclear terrorists are not likely to check themselves through customs or show up at border checkpoints. They'd more than likely cross through porous openings in our border with Mexico, or maybe through one of the sophisticated tunnels that have been dug under the border.
We know state sponsors of terror have nuclear material and that terrorist groups have plans for such material. We know OTMs — other than Mexicans — have been coming across our border with the flood of illegal immigrants. We also know that cross-border tunnels capable of smuggling more than drugs, guns and people have been uncovered.
Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., recently sent a letter to the Homeland Security Department asking that a task force investigate growing ties between Hezbollah and the drug cartels as well as growing evidence of a Hezbollah presence in Mexico. If the cartels can smuggle drugs and people into America, Hezbollah and al-Qaida have to know they can smuggle in trained terrorists or the makings of a dirty bomb.
QOTD: "The Constitution assumes that the different branches of government will protect their institutional turf. That is, the Framers calculated that, faced with a Democratic president who usurps legislative prerogatives, a Democratic congressman would see himself, first and foremost, as a congressman. Valuing the duties of his office over party loyalty, he would join with other legislators to rein in executive excess.
Today’s Democrats, however, are less members of a party than of the movement Left. Their objective, like Obama’s, is fundamental transformation of a society rooted in individual liberty and private property to one modeled on top-down, redistributionist statism. Since statism advances by concentrating governmental power, Democrats — regardless of what governmental branch they happen to inhabit — rally to whatever branch holds the greatest transformative potential. Right now, that is the presidency. Thus, congressional Democrats do not insist that the president must comply with congressional statutes. Laws, after all, must be consistent with the Constitution to be valid, and are thus apt to reflect the very constitutional values the Left is trying to supplant. Democrats want the president to use the enormous raw power vested in his office by Article II to achieve statist transformation. If he does so, they will support him. They’ll get back to obsessing over the “rule of law” if, by some misfortune, the Republicans someday win another presidential election." --Andrew C. McCarthy