Organizing for Action Tries to Generate Amnesty Support in Ohio (Only 5 People Show Up)

The Ohio arm of Organizing for Action (OFA) made a failed attempt to generate excitement for “comprehensive immigration reform” at an August 30 Statehouse rally. A “nonpartisan” rebranding of President Obama’s presidential campaigns, OFA is backed by former Obama staffers as well as a website and Twitter handle bearing the president’s name.

5 of the 6 rally attendees pose for pictures outside the Ohio Statehouse, in Columbus

Seemingly unnoticed by the general public, the OFA rally was a call for amnesty for illegal aliens who entered – or claim to have entered – the country as children. Commonly referred to as “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors” (DREAM) Acts, similar measures have been championed by liberal legislators and activists for more than a decade.

Organized by OFA’s Kate Kight, the August 30 event was attended by 5 OFA interns participating in the organization’s “Summer Fellows” program. A press release indicated OFA Ohio is partnering with DREAMActivist Ohio, an illegal-immigrant advocacy group which has held a series of similar rallies making similar demands.

According to the OFA release, “comprehensive immigration reform” will “create jobs, grow our economy, strengthen our middle class, and reaffirm the American dream for this generation and generations to come.”

Despite advertising the event to local media and like-minded organizations, no local TV or newspaper reporters were present and the event was not monitored by local police for security or compliance purposes.

Via: Media Trackers

Continue Reading....

Outrage over Outhouse Labeled 'Obama's Presidential Library'

TUCUMCARI, N.M. - Most Presidential libraries are constructed after the President completes his term. However, according to KOAT-ABC, a New Mexico man has determined the location for President Obama's library and has marked it with a sign that is sparking controversy in one small town. 

The sign rests on top of an outhouse. It reads: Obama's Presidential Library. 

Some in town view the sign as bad taste while others are supportive. One man told a local reporter that folks are treating it as a tourist destination and that it is frequently photographed. 

The man responsible for the sign would not reveal his name nor would he give any information as to his motivation but did say the following: "It's like watching TV. If you don't like what the hell you're watching, turn the channel.  I'm not even certain he even deserves that level of respect, but that's my opinion." 

He added "...and fortunately, that's one thing they haven't taken away from us ... is our right to our opinion," 

Via: Breitbart

Continue Reading....

California county votes for secession from state, cites overregulation

YREKA, Calif. –  Supervisors in a far Northern California county where residents are fed up with what they see as a lack of representation at the state capitol and overregulation have voted in favor of separating from the state.

The Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday for a declaration of secession, the Record Searchlight of Redding reported. The vote appears mostly symbolic since secession would require approval from the state Legislature and the U.S. Congress, but supporters say it would restore local control over decision making. They want other rural counties in Northern California and Southern Oregon to join them in the creation of a new state called the State of Jefferson.

"Many proposed laws are unconstitutional and deny us our God-given rights," Gabe Garrison of Happy Camp said at the meeting. "We need our own state so we can make laws that fit our way of life."

Garrison was among more than 100 people who attended the meeting, and most were in support of the declaration, according to the Record Searchlight.

The declaration does not launch any type of formal process toward secession, but only reflects the county's support, said Tom Odom, the county's administrative officer.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

Feds Spending $2.2 Million to Study Lesbian Obesity

The federal government has spent $2.2 million studying why three quarters of lesbians are obese despite sequestration-mandated budget cuts that critics warned could “delay progress in medical breakthroughs.”

The National Institutes of Health awarded an additional $682,873 to Brigham and Women’s Hospital for the study on July 17. The project had received previous grants of $778,622 in 2011, and $741,378 in 2012. Total funding has reached $2,202,873.

The project has survived budget cuts due to sequestration, which the NIH warned would “delay progress in medical breakthroughs.”

The study, being led by S. Bryn Austin, an associate epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, sets out to find the biological and social factors for why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not.

At the time this study was first reported, a spokesman for the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), which is administering the project, said its future was uncertain because of the sequester.

“The NIH is currently assessing the impact on funding due to sequestration,” said Robert Bock, press officer for the NICHD, in March. “It is not possible to say how this (or any other NIH grant) will be affected in the long term beyond the 90 percent funding levels already in place.”

Via: WFB

Continue Reading....

Free Govt. Cell Phones Will Create Jobs for Latinos

A fraud-infested government program that gives low-income populations free cell phones should expand in Hispanic communities because it will help bolster employment rates, according to a powerful Latino rights group working to save the program as Congress considers killing it.

The controversial cell phone giveaway, known as Lifeline Assistance, has grown immensely under President Obama and in fact has become known as “Obama Phones.” It went from costing American taxpayers $819 million in 2008 to $2.2 billion in 2012, according to figures provided to an Idaho newspaper by one of its U.S. Senators.

The money is collected nationwide from paying telephone customers and redistributed in the form of subsidies. Like all bloated government giveaways, this one has gotten out of control and is rife with fraud and abuse. Now lawmakers are scrutinizing it and some are using their legislative power to pull the plug, or at least cut the Obama Phone craze.

There are three bills pending in Congress that seek to nix the Lifeline program. The threat has created a big frenzy among leftist groups that claim the free government cell phones are crucial to the livelihood of many poor communities. Some powerful organizations have taken it a step further, actually pushing to expand Lifeline by asserting that it’s essential to survival.

For instance the nation’s largest and oldest Hispanic civil rights group, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), says that millions of Hispanic households in the U.S. depend on the wireless lifeline phones for work, health and safety. Killing or restricting the program, which LULAC itself refers to as “Obamaphone,” would hurt some 7 million Hispanics, the group says.  

LULAC’s executive director, Brent Wilkes, actually claimed in a recent news conference that Lifeline services could help create jobs for Hispanics, which he says are “under-enrolled” in the federal program. “Whether the focus is jobs, health or public safety, wireless Lifeline is critical to millions of low income Hispanics,” Wilkes says. Maintaining a sustainable wireless Lifeline program will allow pool Latinos to “better their lives,” he added.

To back up these claims, LULAC cites a preposterous study that says a wireless phone can play a key role in getting a job. The academic who conducted the study says in a LULAC press release that the free government phones are an important economic tool and a real key to jobs and incomes for poor Americans.

Via: Judicial Watch

Continue Reading...

New Abuse of California Special Funds Discovered

Only in government is borrowing considered a legitimate way to balance a budget. In California it has become standard operating procedure.

To address this growing problem, the state’s Special Funds were the subject of a hearing last week in the Legislature, which I attended. The 500-plus special funds have been routinely raided over the last several years to “balance” the state budget. The now-preferred budget gimmick is to shift “special funds” into the general fund in order to call the budget “balanced.”

The Senate Budget Committee conducted the oversight hearing to review this practice, but only covered what amounted to less than 0.5 percent  of the $4.6 billion in special funds that have been raided over the last several years.

Recent history

From 2007 to 2012, California had a $10.4 billion decline in its general fund, but a corresponding increase of $13.15 billion in its “special funds,” CalWatchdog.com’s Wayne Lusvardi reported in May 2012.

Last year, State Controller John Chiang reported California was patching its budget together by borrowing $4.3 billion from special funds accounts.

A few days later, the secret $54 million special parks fund was revealed.

Then-state Finance Director Ana Matosantos reported that the borrowing from special funds had ballooned to more than five times the borrowing amount since June 2008.

“Where are these dollars?” asked Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. Leno said it was a “big problem” that the special funds “clearly have not been getting enough attention.

Via: California Political Review

Continue Reading...

COMMUNITY ORGANIZER GOES TO WAR By: Ann Coulter

Oh, how I long for the days when liberals wailed that “the rest of the world” hated America, rather than now, when the rest of the world laughs at us.

With the vast majority of Americans opposing a strike against Syria, President Obama has requested that Congress vote on his powers as commander in chief under the Constitution. The president doesn’t need congressional approval to shoot a few missiles into Syria, nor — amazingly — has he said he’ll abide by such a vote, anyway.

Why is Congress even having a vote? This is nothing but a fig leaf to cover Obama’s own idiotic “red line” ultimatum to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on chemical weapons. The Nobel Peace Prize winner needs to get Congress on the record so that whatever happens, the media can blame Republicans.

No Republican who thinks seriously about America’s national security interests — by which I mean to exclude John McCain and Lindsey Graham — can support Obama’s “plan” to shoot blindly into this hornet’s nest.

It would be completely different if we knew with absolute certainty that Assad was responsible for chemical attacks on his own people. (I’m still waiting to see if it was a Syrian upset about a YouTube video.)

Via: Human Events

Continue Reading....

Intolerance Burns Out Oregon Bakers

Threats and violent protests forced Sweet Cakes by Melissa, a small bakery located in Gresham, Oregon, to close its doors this weekend.

In February, a lesbian couple asked Melissa and Aaron Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes, to bake a wedding cake for their commitment ceremony. Though the Kleins serve all customers on a regular basis, on this occasion, the request would have required them to actively support a same-sex commitment ceremony. Because facilitating such a ceremony would violate their beliefs, they declined to participate. Soon afterwards, Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industries notified the bakery that it was the subject of a formal investigation.

“The goal is to rehabilitate,” said the bureau’s commissioner, Brad Avakian. “For those who do violate the law, we want them to learn from that experience and have a good, successful business in Oregon.”

How would government authorities “rehabilitate” the bakery owners? An Oregon judge could assess civil penalties. In a very similar situation, after New Mexico–based Elane Photography declined to participate in same-sex commitment ceremony in 2006, the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ordered Elane Photography to pay $6,637.94 in attorney’s fees to the lesbian couple who filed a complaint.

Sweet Cakes in Oregon has also been the subject of vicious protests and boycotts by activists. For the past few months, the Kleins have received hundreds of phone calls and letters—some reportedly even including death threats to the family.

Via: The Foundry

Continue Reading....

[CARTOON] Sounds Like It’s Working

Via: California Political Review

Planned Layoff Surge, May Reflect 'Widening Cracks' in Economy, Challenger Reports

The number of planned layoffs at U.S. firms surged in August to their highest in half a year, with industrial goods manufacturers the hardest hit, a report on Thursday showed.

Employers announced 50,462 layoffs last month, up 33.8 percent from 37,701 in July, according to the report from consultants Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

The August job cuts were up 57 percent from the same time a year ago.

Editor’s Note: 5 Reasons Stocks Will Collapse . . . 

For 2013 so far, employers have announced 347,095 job losses, close to the 352,185 that were seen in the first eight months of last year.

Industrial goods manufacturers saw the biggest layoffs, cutting 22,162 employees, the largest total for the sector since January 2009.

"Heavy job cuts in the industrial goods sector are never a good thing, as they can be indicative of widening cracks in the economy's foundation," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

"However, the August surge in industrial goods job cuts was driven largely by falling global demand for mining equipment," he said.

The computer sector came in second, letting 4,663 workers go.

The figures come one day ahead of the key U.S. non-farm payrolls report, which is forecast to show the economy added 180,000 jobs in August, keeping the unemployment rate flat at 7.4 percent.

Via: Newsmax

Continue Reading....

Labor Unions Turning on Democrats

Criticism mounts as labor 

continues to be ignored by 

President Obama

Health care reform and a flurry of Obama administration regulations have caused internal divisions within the labor movement and led one of the Democratic Party’s biggest supporters to publicly rebuke the president.

The implementation of Obamacare, which received major union support when it was passed in 2010, has soured relations between labor groups and the White House and splintered labor coalitions.

More than 40,000 workers with the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) left the AFL-CIO in August, blasting the union for being “in lockstep” with Obama on health care and immigration reform.

“We feel that the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along,” ILWU President Robert McEllrath said in a letter announcing the split. “President Obama ran on a platform that he would not tax medical plans. … Yet the Federation later lobbied affiliates to support a bill [Obamacare] that taxed our health care plans.”

The break-up occurred just weeks after the AFL-CIO’s Nevada chapter issued a resolution stating that Obamacare would eliminate full-time jobs and endanger generous health care plans that unions have negotiated for their members.

Via: WFB

Continue Reading....

The 45-Minute Walk as Comedy

Under our acting president, comedy is all we have left.

WASHINGTON — It was one of the most comic, presidential moments in recent American history: President Barack Obama’s solitary walk across the South Lawn of the White House. Supposedly it made history.

I would put it right up there with President Bill Clinton’s solitary walk down Normandy beach in 1994. The sun is setting. The great man stands alone (in his baggy suit). The bluffs made historic by our soldiery in World War II are on one side of this famous draft dodger and the sea dotted with warships is on his other side. Bill becomes reflective. Then, ever so perceptibly, he panics. Three network cameras are whirring, dozens of photographer’s cameras are click-clicking, and Bill has completely drawn a blank as to what he is to do next. He glances down in the sand and catches himself. He espies the stones that have been carefully laid in his path by his clever advance personnel and, ah ha, he falls to his knees! He arranges them in a cross! He composes himself as in prayer! Perhaps he is thinking of a callipygian rump he glimpsed half an hour ago. Surely his advance men had the sense to get her name. At any rate, the columnist Maureen Dowd captured the scene for the New York Times before she too went over to the dark side.

As for our community organizer who is the acting president of the United States, he did not actually galumph across the South Lawn in total solitude. He left his blood-thirsty advisors back in the White House and strutted for forty-five minutes with his Chief of Staff Denis McDonough. Moreover, no advance team left stones in his path. His walk was not that well planned. Actually it was pretty muggy out there on the lawn, but the President and his Chief of Staff kept right on trucking. Back at the White House all of his advisors, save perhaps for senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, thought his mind was made up. He was going to attack Syria without a congressional vote. Secretary of State Jean-François Kerry had even given the most bellicose speech in his whole life. Yet upon finishing his walk a sweaty Prophet Obama dialed up his advisors and told them the attack would await Congress’s leisurely return from holiday. The next day he told the nation. Not even an early morning bath would dissuade him.

Via: American Spectator

Continue Reading....