Tuesday, September 24, 2013

The war on terror is back — and we remain leaderless.

Those very, very, very loose cannons, known as Muslim jihadists, have been shooting off around the world — massacring Christians in Pakistan, Africans in Nairobi, and all kinds of Syrians, and in the process, reminding serious Westerners (we still have a few) of the need for clear leadership amid clear and present dangers.
So far, we can be sure only of one thing: We have no line on what’s happening. Accordingly, we don’t know what to do.
One might suppose we had figured out some of the essential matters 10 years ago, starting with the attack on the twin towers, followed by the U.S. counter-attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq. We were on the right track. We knew that a crazed — I used the adjective deliberately, in its dictionary sense, without theological overtones — faction in the Muslim world wants us dead or submissive on account of our disgusting commitment to human freedom, made worse by our outrageous instinct to defend and pursue that freedom abroad.
It has come to this: If you believe in freedom or in Jesus Christ or in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you’re a target for elimination at the hand of the crazies. (Aren’t people who blow themselves up, and others with them, just a little, you know, tetched in the head?) The world is at war in a way unfamiliar to most of its 7 billion people, but we are at war, nonetheless, and are in need of strong leadership, as I was saying.
We seemed for a while to be waiting out the crazies, hoping they might find more fruitful pursuits, especially if we assured them of our good intentions and democratic instincts. They fling our patience back in our faces. These are villainous people, which is what they think of us, but so what? They are wrong. A concerted worldwide effort against them is of the essence.
An effort led by whom?

GOP launches race war to boost the 1 percent


CONSIDER THE SOURCE OF THIS STORY!!!


From Newt's epithets to the gutting of food stamps, Republicans try to unite white people to serve a hideous agenda


recent vote of House Republicans to cut $40 billion from the food stamp program reflects a deep-seated and insidious racial resentment toward Americans of color. This racial resentment rears its ugly head within the provisions for the bill that demand that non-employed participants in the program get a job, job training or do community service activities. Though the bill in its current form will most likely die in the Senate, the fact that Republicans would even pass it should concern us.
Conservatives continue to lead under the aegis of a deliberate and willful ignorance about the long-term existence of a group known as the working poor, people who work long hours in low-wage paying menial labor jobs, and therefore cannot make ends meet. Moreover, there is a refusal to accept that the economic downturn in 2008 created conditions of long-term unemployment, such that people simply cannot go out and “get a job” just because they will it to be so.
I often wonder if government officials actually talk to real human beings about these policies, because if they did, they would find many people with a deep desire to work, but a struggle to find well-paying jobs. Some of those people would gladly take jobs that pay far less, but are frequently told that their education and years of work experience make them over-qualified.
This is not a race-based problem. The American middle class itself is shrinking dramatically each year in relation to a poor economy, an insistence on austerity measures from the right, and a capitulation to these measures on the left. However, the complete irrationality and utter severity of the legislation, and the total lack of empathy and identification that inform contemporary Republican social advocacy is tied to a narrative about lazy black people and thieving “illegal” brown people.
In 1976, Ronald Reagan invented the term “welfare queen,” to characterize the actions of exactly one person in Chicago who had bilked the welfare system out of a staggering amount of money. Buttressed by an underlying white racial resentment of the liberal pieces of legislation that emerged during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations – laws that had attempted to change conditions, but could not change hearts and minds around racial inequality issues — white conservatives latched on to a narrative about lazy African-Americans stealing from taxpayers and living lavish lives financed by the welfare state.

Kerry to sign UN arms treaty opposed by Senate, NRA

Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to sign an arms trade treaty opposed by the Senate and the gun lobby as early as Wednesday, and Republicans aren't happy about it.

Kerry's plan to sign the treaty on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in New York City this week has sparked immediate criticism from GOP opponents. 

“This treaty is already dead in the water in the Senate, and they know it,” said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services. “The Administration is wasting precious time trying to sign away our laws to the global community and unelected U.N. bureaucrats.”

A majority of Senate oppose the treaty because it covers small arms, making ratification impossible in the short term.

Kerry had already announced in June that the administration would sign the treaty as soon as it was satisfied with its translations into the different official U.N. languages. Reuters reported that he is likely to sign the treaty this week.

The news sparked immediate criticism from Republicans. 

An Inhofe amendment to the Senate Budget resolution in March blocking the U.S. from joining the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty garnered 53 “yes” votes.

The National Rifle Association insists the pact is a U.N.-backed gun grab. Advocates of the treaty say it's only aimed at regulating international sales to prevent terrorists and other rogue actors from getting their hands on weapons.

Lois Lerner retires---courtesy of the American taxpayer


And Her Troubles are Just Beginning.

Top IRS official Lois Lerner has now "retired."  
Lerner, under fire since she confessed on May 10, 2013, that the IRS had singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for extra scrutiny, had been on paid leave while revelation after revelation demonstrated that she was not only instrumental in targeting Tea Party groups, but she also misled the American public when the agency "confessed" to IRS wrongdoing.
In fact, nothing about her original story has proven true.  In May, she claimed that low-level officials applied extra scrutiny to conservative groups, that this scrutiny was “wrong,” and that the IRS put a stop to it when it learned of the abuse.
All these assertions were wrong.
Leaked documents show that Lerner, former Director of IRS Exempt Organizations, saw the Tea Party applications as "extremely dangerous,"
The documents show she took the lead in yanking their applications for tax exempt status from Cincinnati to Washington, D.C. -- where they were ultimately scrutinized in the IRS Chief Counsel's office -- and she hoped that the Federal Election Commission  would "save the day" from conservative electoral gains.
Yet no other federal agency had to "save the day," as the IRS conducted its systematic targeting of conservatives and then kept targeting them even after approving their applications for tax exemption, actions that had an undeniable impact on conservative advocacy.
In other words, rather than providing the solution, Lerner was a key part of the problem. 
As the evidence of her wrongdoing quickly piled up, Lerner improperly pled the Fifth Amendment before a congressional panel, proclaiming her innocence before refusing to speak – a move that would never work in federal court.
Via: Fox News
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DOJ, IRS Grant True the Vote Tax-exempt Status

The scandal-scarred IRS has agreed to grant tax-exempt status to True the Vote, the Texas-based “election integrity” group that became one of the tea party and conservative organizations targeted by the tax collector.

True the Vote announced Monday the IRS and the Justice Department consented late Friday to grant its application for 501(c)(3) status.

Editor's Note: Should ObamaCare Be Defunded? Vote in Urgent National Poll 

True the Vote calls itself a voters' rights organization, and was involved in efforts cleaning up voter rolls in some states, deterring fraud in Texas elections and verifying signatures in the Wisconsin governor recall election, according to the Washington Times 

But earlier this year, the group discovered it was among a slew of applications the IRS had been scrutinizing and turned around to sue the agency to force it to approve the application.

News of the Internal Revenue Service decision came the same day the retirement of Lois Lerner, the IRS official at the center of the agency's tea party scandal, was announced.

True the Vote lawyer Cleta Mitchell said the fight with the IRS is far from over.

“This lawsuit is about getting to the truth and we are not going to stop until we find out the answers to these and many other questions,” Ms. Mitchell said.

Mitchell said the IRS still needs to answer for the costs and damages that resulted from the three-year delay, and to explain why they were  looking at information the IRS's internal auditor says wasn't necessary for them to make a decision.

“We are pleased and relieved that the IRS and the DOJ are finally doing what should have been done three years ago, which is to recognize TTV as a charitable and educational organization, which we have always been and will continue to be,” True The Vote President Catherine Engelbrecht said in a statement to Breitbart News.

The group first filed for tax-exempt status in July 2010. With the belate

Via: Newsmax


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Green Energy Co. Folds after Obama gives it $99.8 Mil

For the third time in just a few months, another one of President Obama’s alternative energy ventures has failed after getting tens of millions of dollars from American taxpayers. It’s a tired old story that nevertheless keeps repeating itself as the administration moves forward with an aggressive plan to make America green.

This month’s failed green experiment du jour features a company (ECOtality) that makes charging stations for electric cars. Like many of the other bankrupt businesses that have received government handouts, it’s situated in northern California and Uncle Sam gave it $99.8 million before it collapsed. The cash was doled out by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which has distributed hundreds of millions of dollars for similar projects.

ECOtality was supposed to make charging stations for electric cars but instead it filed for bankruptcy which means that, once again, American taxpayers have been fleeced by another one of Obama’s alternative energy ventures. Get this; the company attributes its financial problems to “disappointing sales” and “a suspension of payments from the federal government.”

In the last few months two different fly-by-night companies went down after getting large sums from the government for their failed ventures. The first was Fisker Automotive, which received nearly $200 million to develop a wheelchair-accessible “green” van. The startup had been heavily touted by the administration as an innovator that would develop two lines of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that could run up to 300 miles on a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. In fact, the Obama administration planned to give Fisker $528 million but the cash finally stopped flowing when the company laid off three quarters of its employees and announced it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Soon after Fisker’s collapse another startup called Vehicle Production Group (VPG) went under after losing $50 million in taxpayer funds. VPG was supposed to create special vans for the disabled that run on compressed natural gas. Here’s how the Obama administration justified funding this experiment with public dollars: “This project invests in a socially and environmentally responsible product that will create new jobs, promote the use of alternative fuels, and help the U.S. maintain its competitive edge in the automotive industry.” The DOE has since taken the page down, but we got the quote straight from the agency’s announcement touting VPG.

There have been many other clean energy ventures that have also failed miserably after receiving exorbitant allocations from American taxpayers. Remember Solyndra, the northern California solar panel company—bankrolled by Obama fundraiser George Kaiser—that folded after getting $529 million from the government?

Despite the “serious concerns” of U.S. Treasury officials about the risky infusion, a federal audit exposed how the controversial deal was suspiciously rushed through for a politically-connected entrepreneur that had raised large sums for Obama. Judicial Watch is investigating the Solyndra scandal and has sued the administration for records related to the shady deal.

Then there’s the administration’s multi-million-dollar investment in “green jobs’ that will never exist. A few months ago afederal audit revealed that the government has blown half a billion dollars to train workers for the fantasy positions to fulfill Obama’s promise of creating 5 million green jobs over the next decade. It’s simply not happening and only half of the trainees in the program get work, most in areas unrelated to renewable energy.

Via: Judicial Watch

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Sarah Palin is Right

This is not some sort of bait-and-switch where the Palin-hating liberal swoops in with a zinger, this is for real: Sarah Palin is actually right about something. Furthermore, she’s not just a little bit right, she doesn’t just have a point, the former Alaska Governor is absolutely, 100% right. While you arrange your lambs in snuggly positions with your lions, let me explain. Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace revealed, yesterday, that “top Republicans” had sent him unsolicited oppo research and questions for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).
Former Governor Palin (R-AK) tweeted, on Sunday, that Wallace ought to reveal which sources had sent him the dirt on Cruz. She tweeted “@FoxNewsSunday Keep it TRULY fair & balanced. Release the GOP names encouraging you to trash @SenTedCruz. No more anonymous sources.”
Many Republicans are angry with Cruz for engineering a strategy that has the House GOP demanding a government shutdown and/or default if Obamacare is not de-funded. Presumably, the research sent to Wallace was intended to undercut Cruz, and perhaps trip him up. Palin’s tweet appears to have been motivated, in part, by affinity for Cruz, but also a well-earned contempt for anonymously-sourced news. Regardless of her motives, though, Palin is on firm journalistic footing with her demand.
Oppo research like this typically makes its way too a reporter in one of two ways: either as a general blast to journalists, with no attempt to hide the source, or as a specific package delivered to a particular reporter. Wallace’s is obviously in the latter category. Oppo deliveries like this are usually appended with language like “off the record” or “not for attribution,” or are generally understood to be off the record. They don’t need to be on the record because they typically don’t consist of new reporting, but rather, point the reporter toward existing reporting that he can verify independently.
The catch is that an unsolicited email, even if marked “off the record,” or understood to be off the record, isn’t actually off the record until the reporter agrees it is. We generally don’t burn sources in these cases because it isn’t usually newsworthy, and a source that feels burned won’t ever be a source for you again. There are rare exceptions. It was less newsworthy that Barack Obama once wore a Muslim-y outfit than it was that Hillary Clinton‘s campaign wanted people to know that.
This might be the reasoning that Wallace used in not revealing the source of the information, that even if it wasn’t technically off the record, he wished to honor the spirit of that unspoken agreement. If that’s the case, though, then he had no business revealing that the research even existed; that, in and of itself, would be a violation of off the record communication.
The reason he revealed it was that the source itself was newsworthy, that “top Republicans” were trying to undercut Ted Cruz. If the public has an interest in knowing that, then they surely have an even greater interest in knowing which top Republicans were doing it. Simply put, something can’t be a little bit off the record, any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. If Wallace concealed his source because they were off the record then he shouldn’t have mentioned it at all. If he was serving the public interest in revealing it, then he abdicated that interest by not revealing the source of the oppo research, and the contents of it. Sarah Palin is right, he should come clean.

Samuel L. Jackson to Obama: ‘Stop Trying to Relate’ and ‘Be F*cking Presidential’

Samuel L. Jackson has some harsh criticism for President Obama in a new interview with Playboy. The actor was lamenting the fact that it now appears to be “politically cool” for “white guys” on TV to use terms like “Pump your brakes” and “I got you” when speaking to black people. “We do still speak English, right?” he asked. “How the fuck did we become a society where mediocrity is acceptable?”
“Or one in which President Obama or other highly educated Americans consciously drop gs off the ends of words to sound like Joe Average?” Playboy’Stephen Rebello suggested. This led Jackson to issue his tough words for the president:
“First of all, we know it ain’t because of his blackness, so I say stop trying to ‘relate.’ Be a leader. Be fucking presidential. Look, I grew up in a society where I could say ‘It ain’t’ or ‘What it be’ to my friends. But when I’m out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family who cared about me, who has a well-read background, I fucking conjugate.”
At the same time, Jackson reaffirmed that he would like to see Obama get “scary” in certain situations that call for some anger. “He got a little heated about the kids getting killed in Newtown and about the gun law,” Jackson said. “He’s still a safe dude.”
But, he also said, “If Hillary Clinton decides to run, she’s going to kick their fucking asses, and those motherfuckers would rather see the country go down in flames than let the times change.”

90% of Top Newspaper Headlines Censor Islam in Nairobi, Pakistan Attacks

Dare a top newspaper journalist to play connect-the-dots and chances are he’ll fail miserably – at least with drawing the line between Islam and terrorism. In Nairobi, Kenya last weekend, Islamist militants took over a high-end shopping mall and began executing non-Muslims. In Pakistan, Islamist suicide bombers detonated at a Christian Church on Sunday. 
Yet on Monday, September 23, 90 percent of the top ten (via circulation numbers) daily newspapers’ headlines in the United States censored the words “Islam” and Muslim” from Nairobi and Pakistan reports. One – the New York Daily News – didn’t even have a headline for the latest Islamic terrorist attacks. That’s journalism at its finest. 
The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) headline by Heidi Vogt announced that “Assault on Mall Stuns Kenya” and called the act a “terrorist attack” by “armed militants.” In a small reference to the Pakistan Christian fatalities, the newspaper credited a group linked with the “Pakistan Taliban.” 
As the second most popular newspaper after the WSJ, The New York Times proclaimed “Carnage In Mall Shows Resilience of Terror Group” for an article by Nicholas Kulish, Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt. In fact, on the front page the Times used every description but the Islamic connection to describe the aggressors: “the ferocious armed political movement known as the Shabab” – with ties to Al Qaeda and Boko Haram. 
Only USA Today (number three in circulation) broke Islam silence with a headline admitting, “Islamists kill dozens in Kenya and Pakistan” (under an even larger headline: “Two New Terror Attacks”). Jim Michaels and William W. Welch’s story detailed how “Islamic extremists unleashed bloody attacks.” For Pakistan, the reporters called Sunday’s two suicide bombers assault “the deadliest-ever attack against the nation’s Christian minority” and included a picture with a caption describing, “a relative of victims of the Christian church bombings.” 
Via: Newsbustrers

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Administration Has Not Verified Obamacare Security Claims

APCongressmen raised strong doubts about the security of the infrastructure undergirding the Obamacare exchanges in interviews with theWashington Free Beacon on Monday, undermining the administration’s claims that Obamacare is secure and will be ready to go on schedule.
The administration’s claim that the “data hub” is secure, for example, has not been independently verified, leaving Congress and the public reliant only on the administration’s word for updates on the law’s status and security. The data hub will route personal identifying information from several federal agencies to the state-based exchanges.
The congressmen’s complaints come as the exchanges are set to open in one week, on Oct.1.
“All we have are the statements that they’re ready,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan (R., Pa.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies.
“At the end of the day, HHS really feels like everything is going to be fine,” said Rep. James Lankford (R., Okla.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee’s health care subcommittee, referencing the Department of Health and Human Services, which is implementing much of the law.

[CARTOON] Working with Obama

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Via: California Political Review

Minimum Wage Hike a Blow to Young Job Seekers

Governor Brown has indicated he will sign a two-dollar increase in the minimum wage, which he brokered in the Legislature. This is unfortunate news for young and unskilled workers, who will be hardest hit by the mandated 25% hike over the next two years. (In 2012, the California minimum wage was $8.00/hour, compared with the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour.)
According to the US Department of Labor, minimum wage workers tend to be young. Although workers under age 25 represented only about one-fifth of hourly paid workers, they made up about half of those paid the federal minimum wage or less. Among employed teenagers paid by the hour, about 21 percent earned the minimum wage or less, compared with about 3 percent of workers age 25 and over.
Our youngest residents are also those who are finding it most difficult to find work, even as the economy is in recovery. Young adults face an unemployment rate north of 15 percent, while teenage unemployment is nearly 35 percent.
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According to UC Irvine economist David Neumark, we can expect an increase in the minimum wage to be followed by a decrease in youth employment, as much as a 3.75% drop in employment as a result of this legislation. This mandated wage hike will make a terrible situation even worse.
Noted economist Robert Samuelson has written:
Companies that think themselves condemned to losses or meager profits won’t expand. Not surprisingly, a study by two economists at Texas A&M finds that the minimum wage’s biggest adverse effects are on future job growth, not current employment. To this defect must be added another: An excessively high minimum will attract more skilled workers, denying the less skilled an entry point to work and on-the-job training.
Last year, California public high schools graduated fewer than 79% of the 12th grade cohort that began in the 9th grade. The graduation rate for Hispanic and African American students was even worse: 73.5% and 65.9%, respectively.

What’s Next for Obamacare: Harry Reid’s Procedural Attacks

Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.COM“If you let me write the procedure and I let you write the substance, I’ll [beat] you every time.”
Representative John Dingell (D-MI), the longest serving member in the history of Congress, understands that congressional procedure dictates policy. It is important for opponents of Obamacare to understand Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) shares that approach, and he will be setting the procedure for the Senate’s upcoming debate on the House-passed year-end funding bill that permanently defunds Obamacare.
According to multiple media reports, Senators will engage in procedural gymnastics this week with the explicit goal of removing the defunding language from the House-passed bill. Over the weekend, Heritage Action explained the importance procedure would play this week:
Before Reid can move to eliminate the defunding language, he must first secure 60 votes to invoke cloture. That vote, which is likely to come late next week, is a procedural motion that would facilitate efforts by Reid and others to strip the defunding language from H.J.Res.59. If Reid uses this procedural trick, a vote on the motion to invoke cloture is a vote to undermine the House-passed bill.
At some point this week, the Senate will vote to end debate on the House-passed bill. (In Washington speak, they will vote to “invoke cloture.”) What does this mean? Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) told Politico he would “vote to end debate on it, because [he likes] the policy.” But there is just one small problem: The vote is not on the underlying policy, but rather the procedure Reid has dictated. On Twitter, NBC’s Tom Curry pointed out pro-Obamacare Senators would vote alongside Sen. Corker “So that Majority Leader Reid can offer a motion to strike the defund Obamacare provision from the [continuing resolution] CR & then vote on the clean CR.”

Obama the Storyteller

President Obama unwittingly disclosed his modus operandi in a single statement back in 2012. The sentence explains why he has been able to both win elections and been such a failure once in office.
In the summer of 2012, President Obama refused to take responsibility for failures during his first term. As is his wont, he blamed others.  In this case it was not the "usual suspect," Republicans,  but all Americans. He told CBS News; Charlie Rose that his biggest mistake of his first term was not being a good enough storyteller:
"The mistake of my first term. . .was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that's important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times."
Mitt Romney mocked his answer, "Being president is not about telling stories. Being president is about leading, and President Obama has failed to lead."
But why wouldn't Obama think that success was based on telling stories? After all, his ability to tell stories was key to his string of election victories. He never had much of a record to run on (many Americans overlooked or did not care that his career was marked by "voting present" when not claiming credit for work he did not do) so to fill up a sparse resume he created stories.
As many politicians have done, he published a book "Dreams from My Father; A Story of Race and Inheritance" that served as the foundation of his political biography. Many of his early supporters -- and later ones as well -- were inspired to support him after reading the book. But a book by the Washington Post reporter and highly-regarded biographer David Maraniss confirmed reports from others (including New York Times reporter Janny Scott in her own book,  "A Singular Woman," about Obama's mother)  that the book was filled with "errors" -- characters that never existed or were "composites," incidents that never happened, girlfriends that never existed, mentors that were misidentified, and more. There was a pattern in the book that became a pattern when Obama became a politician and then the President.

Via: American Thinker


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ACORN sowed seeds for de Blasio

ACORN sowed seeds for de Blasio
The leftist group ACORN has been plotting for more than a decade to install Bill de Blasio at City Hall, a Democratic Party source has told The Post.
“Without exaggeration, ACORN’s long-range plan since 2001 was to elect de Blasio mayor,” said the Democratic insider. “De Blasio was a big ACORN project.”
The Democratic mayoral candidate has marched in lock step with ACORN, now renamed New York Communities for Change, even before he took public office in 2001.
The group backed de Blasio that year over Legal Aid Services director Steven Banks in a six-way Brooklyn City Council race, despite Banks’ reputation at the time as a one of the city’s leading champions of the poor and liberal causes.
Eight years later, ACORN was back at de Blasio’s side and, with the union-financed Working Families Party, helped him become public advocate, a perch he used to become the Democratic nominee for mayor.
A key cog in the de Blasio political machine is Bertha Lewis, the former ACORN head who also co-founded the Working Families Party.
On primary election night earlier this month, when she stood on stage t next to de Blasio, Lewis made it clear ACORN’s work had paid off.
“We’re baaaack. The right wing will have to deal with it,” she chuckled.
But Lewis scoffed that she or the organization had a “master plan” to elect de Blasio as the city’s chief executive.

One Man’s ObamaCare Nightmare

Andy and Amy Mangione of Louisville, Ky. and their two boys are just the kind of people who should be helped by ObamaCare. But they recently got a nasty surprise in the mail.

"When I saw the letter when I came home from work," Andy said, describing the large red wording on the envelope from his insurance carrier, "(it said) 'your action required, benefit changes, act now.' Of course I opened it immediately."

It had stunning news. Insurance for the Mangiones and their two boys,which they bought on the individual market, was going to almost triple in 2014 --- from $333 a month to $965.

The insurance carrier made it clear the increase was in order to be compliant with the new health care law.

"This isn't a Cadillac plan, this isn't even a silver plan," Mangione said, referring to higher levels of coverage under ObamaCare.

"This is a high deductible plan where I'm assuming a lot of risk for my health insurance for my family. And nothing has changed, our boys are healthy-- they're young --my wife is healthy. I'm healthy, nothing in our medical history has changed to warrant a tripling of our premiums.

"Well I'm the one that does the budget,” said his wife. "Eventually I've got that coming down the pike that I gotta figure out what we're gonna cut what we're gonna do, to afford a $1,000 a month premium."

Cruz Kicks Off Filibuster

UPDATE: 3:32 p.m. Cruz asserted that if senators would only listen to their constituents, including Democrats, the vote to defund Obamacare would be 100-0. He openly called on all 46 Republicans, along with a few Democrats, would join in voting against cloture and continuing debate.

UPDATE: 3:30 p.m. A technicality: as cloture has already been filed, Cruz will be speaking for a maximum of fifteen hours. Senate rules dictate that the body must adjourn by noon on Wednesday. This will likely be a long speech, but it cannot block legislation.

UPDATE: 2:48 p.m. “I intend to speak until I can no longer stand,” Cruz said in his opening remarks of his filibuster, in an effort delay a cloture vote on the continuing resolution to defund Obamacare. Cruz was joined by his partner in his effort to defund Obamacare, Utah senator Mike Lee. Cruz has already played on the theme to “make DC listen” early on in his remarks and his Twitter account has started using the #MakeDCListen hashtag.


If Humpty wore glasses, Karl Rove he would be

“Karl Rove uses a whiteboard and marker
As he peddles his wares like a carnival barker.
The tea party knows he’s a political hack,
But the establishment lost millions as Rove they did back.
Though Fox trots him out at eight, nine and ten,
Bill, Sean and Greta can’t make Karl Rove relevant again.
Over the Republican Party he’s cast a pall,
But like Humpty Dumpty, old Karl must fall.”

The more I’m forced to watch this rotund little man scribble on his whiteboard like a toddler with crayons, the more he reminds me of the Humpty Dumpty character in Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass.  Look closely at Karl and what do you see? If Humpty wore glasses, Karl Rove he would be.

Mr. Rove’s scorn toward the Tea Party and the conservative base of the Republican Party is indicative of the fear he and other RINOS have of their destructive lurch to the left coming to an end. Their newest target, Sen. Ted Cruz, terrifies the elitist big government element of the party.  He has the audacity to stand with grassroots and follow through on the election promises he made to his constituents. This is not allowed in Karl Rove’s world where squishy, faux Republicans are the order of the day.

For those that may have forgotten, Rove and the GOP establishment backed David Dewhurst over Ted Cruz, Trey Grayson over Rand Paul, Bob Bennett over Mike Lee, Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio,  Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey and Gerald Ford over Ronald Reagan. While bashing candidates like Christine O’Donnell, Sharon Angle and Todd Aiken, they backed those big winners, Linda McMahon, Tommy Thompson and Carly Fiorina.


Kenya's president says his military has 'ashamed and defeated' Islamist militants inside mall

Kenya’s president says his military has “ashamed and defeated” Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in an apparent end to a standoff and hostage situation inside a popular mall that lasted for four days.
Uhuru Kenyatta said in a national address Tuesday that Kenya’s armed forces were able to kill five of the militants and took eleven into custody. 
"These cowards will need justice as well their accomplices and patrons, wherever they are," he said.
He said 61 civilians and six security officers were killed in the violence at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, and called for three days of national mourning beginning Wednesday.
Kenyatta added that three floors of the mall collapsed and that there are "several bodies still trapped in the rubble, including the terrorists."
FBI investigators are now waiting for forensic evidence, including fingerprints taken from inside the mall as well as dental records, to verify claims that some of the attackers were Americans, a federal law enforcement source told Fox News. 
Kenya's foreign minister, Amina Mohamed, claimed in a television interview Monday that two or three Americans and one Briton were among those behind the attack.
Amina Mohamed said in an interview with PBS' "NewsHour" program that the Americans were 18 to 19 years old, of Somali or Arab origin and lived "in Minnesota and one other place" in the U.S. The attacker from Britain was a woman who has "done this many times before," Mohamed said.
SMUG AS ALWAYS
President Obama told the U.N. General Assembly Tuesday morning that the “world is more stable now than it was five years ago.”
“Just as we reviewed how we deploy our extraordinary military capabilities in a way that lives up to our ideals, we’ve begun to review the way that we gather intelligence so that we properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share,” he said.
“As a result of this work and cooperation with allies and partners, the world is more stable than it was five years ago,” he added.
Obama did note, however, that “dangers remain.”
“Even a glance at today’s headlines indicates that dangers remain,” Obama said. “In Kenya we’ve seen terrorists target innocent civilians in a crowded shopping mall, and our hearts go out to the families of those who have been affected. In Pakistan nearly 100 people were recently killed by suicide bombers outside a church. In Iraq killings and car bombs continue to be a terrible part of life.”
“Meanwhile, al-Qaida has splintered into regional networks and militias which doesn’t give them the capacity at this point to carry out attacks like 9/11, but it does pose serious threats to governments and diplomats, businesses and civilians all across the globe.”
Shortly before Obama took the stage, according to the Guardian, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff offered a strong condemnation of America’s National Security Agency surveillance.

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