The ‘Before Obama’ and ‘After Obama’ history lesson for school children

Teaching your children well is your best defense against the anti-American Barack Hussein Obama

With Common Core spoon-feeding school children a steady school-day diet of anti-American propaganda, it’s prime time for parents to school their own children in the true chronicled History of the one nation the rest of the world still cherishes as the escape hatch to freedom and liberty.

Only yesterday, it was revealed that the Obama administration is planning on gutting the U.S. military to pre-World War II levels.

Parents should turn the tables by using this latest Obama move as the impetus to teach their children how America can legitimately claim guardian of world freedom status.

Make a homemade ledger marking it under just two simple categories: ‘Before Obama’ (BO) and ‘After Obama’ (AO).

America detractors repeat ad nauseum that America was late coming into World War II. While this is true, were it not for the Americans knowledge of the full horror of the evil of the Nazis may have been late in coming, too.

Via: Canada Free Press

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ObamaCare stars fade

The Obama administration is short of star power as it begins its last public relations blitz for ObamaCare.

President Obama’s celebrity supporters are not in the forefront as they were during the star-studded campaign-style videos that hogged the airwaves in 2008.

Contrary to expectations, the White House’s A-list backers have mainly stuck to Twitter to voice support for ObamaCare, while others have appeared in inexpensive online videos, or chosen to promote California’s insurance marketplace instead of HealthCare.gov, the notoriously troubled website for the federal exchanges.

It seems that not even the president’s most fervent and committed supporters want to get too close to ObamaCare. Some of Obama’s most powerful allies — figures including Oprah Winfrey, Bruce Springsteen and Beyoncé — have stayed in the wings for the enrollment push.

Less than a year ago, Jennifer Hudson, Amy Poehler, and representatives for Winfrey and Alicia Keys were guests at the White House to discuss a strategy to promote the healthcare law.

Many expected this would lead to an advertising blitz full of famous faces. But, with limited exceptions, stars have largely failed to participate in a substantial ad campaign to promote Obama-Care’s new coverage options.

To date, the only noteworthy celebrities appearing on behalf of ObamaCare in national ads are retired NBA players Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning, who left professional basketball in 1991 and 2009, respectively.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sought to leverage the National Football League’s massive outreach, but that effort was scuttled by Republicans, who pressured the league to stay out of it.

Via: The Hill
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‘The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive action’: Rahm Emanuel backs Obama’s executive overreach ‘one thousand percent’

Democratic Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel went to bat for his former boss Monday, claiming he supports President Obama’s strategy of bypassing Congress “one thousand percent” and comparing Obama’s executive orders on healthcare to the Emancipation Proclamation.

Emanuel — the former White House chief of staff in Washington DC on Monday to receive federal money for a new “manufacturing hub” in Chicago — spoke with CNN’s Jim Acosta. The reporter asked if he thought Obama’s plan to use executive actions to ignore an unwilling Congress is the right approach.

“One thousand percent,” he declared. “He can’t allow America’s future to be held hostage by a Congress that won’t do anything.”

And what about worries over an imperial presidency? “So? Well, I dunno,” he began. “These are not equal, but the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive action. Integrating the armed forces was an executive action.”

“There are times which, if Congress would step up, the president would work with them,” he added. “But he has a responsibility not to let the future slip from our hands.”

Emanuel also waved away concerns about a looming Democratic defeat in midterm elections this November. “The one thing I know about politics,” he claimed, “is that anybody who tells you they know what’s gonna happen ten months from now doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

And he provided valuable insight into how a stateside Democratic politician views Washington DC. “I like coming here when I can take money back home,” he said, laughing. “And this is one of those opportunities.”

Via: Daily Caller

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Update: DOD aims to scrap A-10 to keep F-35 alive in new budget

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is unveiling the Pentagon’s proposed budget today—a budget that will dramatically scale back the size of the military. But in order to save the most sacred of cows in its ongoing modernization efforts, the Pentagon is proposing the elimination of what has arguably been the most effective combat aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory: the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

Known for its survivability, the A-10 is capable of flying with half a wing, one tail fin, one elevator, and one engine torn off. It’s also cheaper to fly and can fly more frequent missions than the aircraft that the Air Force proposes to replace it with: the F-35. But because of its low glamor and low-tech nature, the A-10 is assigned largely to Air National Guard squadrons these days. So with the Department of Defense now planning to re-shuffle the roles of reserve and Guard units in a shrinking fighting force, the A-10s are an easy target for the budget knife. The Air Force announced in January that it would eliminate a third of the existing A-10s in its inventory—102 aircraft—with the remainder to go when the F-35 finally arrives for service. The new plan will retire the entire A-10 fleet.

The A-10 was originally built in the early 1970s, and it was designed to combat Soviet tank columns with its enormous seven-barrel 30-millimeter Gatling-gun cannon. Known for its pugnacious looks as the “Warthog,” the A-10 could also carry a variety of guided and unguided weapons, and it proved its usefulness against a wide range of enemies while flying close air support for troops in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force reported that the 60 A-10s that flew in Iraq had an 86 percent mission success rate.

Today, there are two arguments for cutting the A-10. The first argument from the Air Force is that in an era of shrinking budgets and pared-down ambitions, the military needs a more flexible, multi-role aircraft to do more jobs—not an airplane that's perfect for a smaller number of them. But considering the troubles that the F-35 has faced and the fact that not a single squadron of any of the variants of the F-35 has yet to be fielded, the wisdom of the Pentagon’s aircraft calculus is open to debate.

Via: ARS Technica

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Holder: You Don't Have to Enforce Laws You Disagree With

Attorney General Eric Holder has given the nod to his state counterparts that they do not have to defend laws they consider discriminatory -- effectively giving the green light for states to stop defending bans on gay marriage.

Holder addressed the issue during a gathering of state attorneys general on Tuesday, after detailing his position in a New York Times interview.

Speaking to the National Association of Attorneys General, Holder said that any decision not to defend individual laws must be "exceedingly rare" and reserved for "exceptional circumstances." He indicated that legal challenges to gay marriage bans would qualify as such a circumstance.

"In general, I believe that we must be suspicious of legal classifications based solely on sexual orientation," he said.

His remarks, while already generating backlash from conservatives, could fuel a wave of legal challenges at the state level. In the wake of the federal Defense of Marriage Act being struck down by the Supreme Court last year, several Democratic state attorneys general have taken the unusual step of abandoning their defense of state gay marriage bans.

Among the most recent is Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, who stood by as a U.S. District Court ruled against his state's prohibition on same-sex marriage. However, his office said Monday that it would appeal that ruling -- in the interest of expediting the appeals process.

The U.S. attorney general's comments could encourage other state officials to follow in Herring's footsteps.

Holder, in the Times interview, reportedly said that attorneys general should apply a high level of scrutiny on whether to defend a state law when constitutional issues are at stake.

Via: Fox News

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The Next Shoe To Drop: Obamacare Will Increase The Cost Of Employer-Sponsored Insurance

Yesterday, the Obama Administration’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a six-page report predicting that Obamacare could cause premiums to increase for nearly two-thirds of small- to medium-sized businesses. “This results in roughly 11 million individuals whose premiums are estimated to be higher as a result of the ACA and about 6 million individuals who are estimated to have lower premiums,” CMS writes. But CMS’ projections almost certainly understate the problem, one that will begin to affect millions of workers in the second half of 2014.

CMS: 11 million will see increased premiums

The CMS premium report was a requirement imposed by Congress on the administration under the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011. That law mandated that CMS “provide an estimate of the number individuals and families who will experience a premium increase and the number who will see a decrease” as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

But CMS only looked at one cost-increasing Obamacare provision:community rating. And they only looked at it for individuals employed by businesses with less than 100 employees: what’s called the “small group market.”

Here’s the background. Under Obamacare, all regulated insurance plans are required to charge people the same premium, regardless of health status. Insurers can charge different rates based on age (but only within a narrow range); tobacco use (smokers can be charged 50 percent more than non-smokers); geographic area (insurers can charge people different rates based on regional demographic variation); and whether the plan is for a single individual or a family.

Via: Forbes

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[CARTOON] Snowballing Voter Fury

Via: California Political Review

Why Obama is Uneducated

A few years ago I participated in a radio debate on "white privilege" with a certain man, whose name is unimportant, who had a Ph.D. in "ethnic studies." At one point he introduced an argument by saying, "If whites are 80 percent of the population...," which prompted me to interject and point out that whites (non-Hispanic) are now only 63 percent of America. Of course, you might think that someone with a doctorate in "ethnic studies" would know what the ethnic and racial composition of the country is.

While no one wants to be a real-life Cliff Clavin (of Cheers fame), mistaking trivia for intellectualism, facts matter because they're small snippets of reality. They're little pictures - and, as with a jigsaw puzzle - if you have enough of them, assembled properly, you can see the big picture. This is otherwise known as being in touch with reality.

This is why a certain trend in that liberal bastion called education is quite interesting. Educators will often say today, "We don't just teach kids facts [uttered dripping with derision]; we teach them how to think." This is quite convenient. After all, it's easy to test knowledge of facts; thus, such measures can reveal modern education as a fraudulent enterprise. But "how to think" is a bit more nebulous, and, if you define the expression of feelings-derived folderol as reason, your students cannot fail.

Yet there is a deeper reason why liberals eschew facts: they refute fiction. And since leftist agendas have no basis in reality, exposure to snippets of it is deadly; for, just as one small pin can pop a balloon, one little fact can shatter a rationalization.

This brings us back to Dr. Ethnic Studies. His field of expertise isn't about anything as old-fashioned as facts, but he can expound at length on oppression, white privilege, critical-race theory and "micro-aggressions." These things, you see, are the stuff of sophisticated modern men. Nev

Via: American Thinker

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IRS customer service leaves millions of calls unanswered

Have a question on your tax returns? Don't ask the IRS. 

As tax day looms, an annual watchdog report to Congress finds that the agency is falling short when it comes to answering Americans' questions about the convoluted tax code. 

The National Taxpayer Advocate found only 61 percent of people seeking to speak with a customer service representative last year got through to anybody -- leaving nearly 20 million calls unanswered. 

The report largely blamed budget cuts, and lamented the impact the poor customer service is having on taxpayers. 

"At the risk of vast understatement, it is a sad state of affairs when the government writes tax laws as complex as ours -- and then is unable to answer any questions beyond 'basic' ones from baffled citizens who are doing their best to comply," the report from National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson said. 

The study detailed how customer service has steadily declined over the past several years, including at its 400 "walk-in sites." In fiscal 2014, the office said, the IRS will only answer "basic" questions at those sites during filing season. And it will not answer any questions, "even basic ones," after April, even for filers who got extensions. 

"In addition, the IRS will discontinue its longstanding practice of preparing tax returns for low income, elderly and disabled taxpayers who seek help," the report said. 

Via: Fox News Politics

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10 in Union ‘Goon Squads’ Indicted for Violence, Arson in Philadelphia

Getty Images

Ten members of a Philadelphia ironworkers union are charged with conspiring to commit extortion, arson, destruction of property, and assault to force construction contractors to hire union workers, according to the FBI.

The FBI this week said the members of Ironworkers Local 401  collaborated with allies who sought out construction sites that employed non-union workers, threatening  personnel there with “violence, destruction of property or other criminal acts unless union members were hired.”

So-called “goon squads,” including a group calling itself “The Helpful Union Guys” (or THUGs) went into action. Some “set a crane on fire and cut steel beams and colts” at a Quaker Meeting House construction site in 2012, according to the indictment. In 2010, union members assaulted non-union workers with baseball bats at another construction site.

In   2013, they “threatened the contractor of an apartment complex . . . if he did not hire Local 401 members,” the indictment said. As a result, “the contractor relinquished his profits and turned the job over to a union-affiliated contractor.”

Experts say such incidents go both underreported and unprosecuted.  National Institute for Labor Relations research has documented over 9,000 reports of union violence since 1975, of which “barely 3 percent . . . have led to an arrest and conviction.”

The institute noted that in many cases, police and company reports “indicate that the actual number of assaults, threats and property damage is tens of times greater than the news reports collected” document.

In the Ironworkers Local 401 case, four of the 10 defendants face minimum prison sentences of 35 years if convicted of all charges.

Via: The Foundry

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Fascism and Socialism: Still Not Opposites The Eurasian movement of Putin and his allies draws from both Nazism and Stalinism.

Editor’s Note: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including the trenchcoat-wearing FCC minister with breath like he’s been sucking a urinal cake looking over my shoulder, tapping hisBIC pen on his glass eye, and sighing every time I write something he doesn’t like)

I’ve got to bang out this “news”letter pretty quickly. I’m sitting in a too-small fake wicker chair at the coffee shop at the Broadmoor (one of my favorite hotels, btw). The time difference here puts me two hours behind at six in the morning. Plus, I don’t want the housekeeping staff to find the body in my room. If I didn’t need coffee so badly I would have taken care of that already. But one must prioritize. I think the high altitude here is making my brain itch.

FASCISM, AGAIN

Timothy Snyder has written the best piece I’ve seen on what’s going on in Kiev. It’s worth reading just as a primer. But it’s also interesting in other ways. I had not read a lot about the “Eurasian Union,” a proposed counterweight to the European Union, in much the same way the Legion of Doom is a counterweight to the Justice League. Putin and a band of avowed “National Bolshevik” intellectuals are in effect trying to put the band back together. Snyder writers:

The Eurasian Union is the enemy of the European Union, not just in strategy but in ideology. The European Union is based on a historical lesson: that the wars of the twentieth century were based on false and dangerous ideas, National Socialism and Stalinism, which must be rejected and indeed overcome in a system guaranteeing free markets, free movement of people, and the welfare state. Eurasianism, by contrast, is presented by its advocates as the opposite of liberal democracy.

The Eurasian ideology draws an entirely different lesson from the twentieth century. Founded around 2001 by the Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, it proposes the realization of National Bolshevism. Rather than rejecting totalitarian ideologies, Eurasianism calls upon politicians of the twenty-first century to draw what is useful from both fascism and Stalinism. Dugin’s major work, The Foundations of Geopolitics, published in 1997, follows closely the ideas of Carl Schmitt, the leading Nazi political theorist. Eurasianism is not only the ideological source of the Eurasian Union, it is also the creed of a number of people in the Putin administration, and the moving force of a rather active far-right Russian youth movement. For years Dugin has openly supported the division and colonization of Ukraine.

Via: NRO

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