Thursday, October 10, 2013

KOCH INDUSTRIES SEND LETTER TO THE SENATE: REID LIED ABOUT US

On Tuesday, Koch Industries, the company run by the left’s favorite bugaboo, the Koch brothers, sent a letter to the Senate denying that they had anything to do with the government shutdown. Members of the mainstream press, including The New York Times, have attempted to blame the Kochs for the shutdown. So has Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

“A great deal of what you read and hear about Koch Industries is erroneous or misleading,” Philip Ellender, president of government and public affairs at the Koch Companies, wrote to Reid. “Indeed, there was false information presented about Koch on the Senate floor by Senate Majority Leader Reid, who claimed yesterday that Koch was behind the shutdown of the federal government in an effort to defund the Affordable Care Act or ‘Obamacare.’….Koch has not taken a position on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defunding Obamacare nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding Obamacare.”
The left, however, is still operating from the 2012 anti-Romney playbook; if something is wrong, it must be the Koch brothers’ fault.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).

Michele Bachmann to Fox: ‘We’re Not Interested in a Lecture’ From ‘Professor Obama’

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told Fox News Channel host Eric Bolling on Thursday that she believes the position of Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama is not productive. Bachmann said that it was right of House SpeakerJohn Boehner to send only a small group of Republicans to the White House because the House GOP is “not interested in a lecture” from the president.
“I think John Boehner made exactly the right call,” Bachmann said of the House GOP’s decision to only send a handful of Republican House members to meet with Obama as opposed to the entire conference. “He’s been making a lot of very good calls recently, and one of the calls is that he refused to have 200 Republicans go to the White House where would we all sit through a lecture from, with all due respect, Professor Obama.”
“This is a president whose administration’s position has been, again with all due respect, we’re going to hold our breath until we turn blue,” Bahcmann continued. “That’s not a position.”
Bolling asked Bachmann to react to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who said on Thursday that Republicans in Congress “do not know what they want.”
Bachmann said that the Democratic position has been “hilarious.” She summarized it as, “We win, and then after we win absolutely everything, then you can come over and we’ll talk.”
“That’s an insulting comment to make to the American people,” Bachmann continued. “Now it’s time for the president to actually lead and not be a passive participant and be a part of these talks.”
Watch the clip below via Fox News Channel:

Video: For Nine Minutes, Former Obama Spokesman Dodges Simple Shutdown Questions

The buzzworthy segment from last night's Hannity was Anthony Weiner's weird appearance, but a separate exchange might have been more telling and relevant to current events. Former Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt -- regular readers may recall his slipperiness -- simply would not answer any direct questions from host Sean Hannity. LaBolt had a single administration-approved message, and he repeated it ad nauseam, eventually provoking an exasperated Hannity to implore him to "focus his attention" and actually address a specific inquiry. No sale. As a talking points robot, LaBolt is far better programmed that Obamacare's exchange websites:


Yes, Ben, it's true that re-opening the federal segments that are currently closed down (roughly 17 percent of the whole leviathan) would address all of these issues. What LaBolt wouldn't answer is why Senate Democrats and the president refuse to exercise their discretion to adopt targeted, House-passed bills to ameliorate some of the least-desirable effects of shutdown. The administration obviously has no problem flexing its muscle to make things more painful for folks; why won't they agree to bite-sized efforts to alleviate the damage -- which, by the way, the overwhelming majority of Americans aren't experiencing? The reason LaBolt can't respond to that challenge truthfully is because the answer is exceedingly unflattering to his former boss. The president admitted in his press conference that he needs the anguish to continue in order to exert maximum political leverage over his opponents. Without that "heat" and "pressure," Obama explained, Republicans would be less likely to bend to his will. In other words, he's rejecting the House's common-sense funding bills for the purposes of "hostage-taking" -- based on his own definition of the term. As of this afternoon, the president hasapparently agreed to sign a short-term "clean" debt ceiling increase that could open a window for serious negotiations over resolving both the shutdown and borrowing limit man-made crises. But will Democrats actually agree to any sort of compromise, and will the negotiations be genuine? Obama's been stiff-arming meaningful talks for weeks:.

SERIOUSLY? National Park Service spitefully removes handles from water fountains

A NPS barricade at Mount Vernon. LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Until very recently, the National Park Service was one of the least-loathed government agencies in the country. Now, with orders from on high to keep the public from visiting beloved parks and monuments the agency is developing a poor reputation. 

Park rangers have very diverse jobs, providing everything from policing to the janitorial duties required to keep public parks and memorials open, safe and enjoyable. However, they have recently been compared to the Gestapo (hyperbole) as they actively  work to keep people from enjoying public spaces.

According to a report in the Newburyport Daily News, tourists at Yellowstone National Park were actually detained under armed guard and locked in their hotels when the government shutdown started on October 1st. The paper explained that foreign tourists with poor English skills actually thought they were under arrest because of their harsh treatment. 

When the tourists were allowed to leave by bus, they were forbidden to stop anywhere during the 2.5 hour drive out of the park, not even at public restrooms along the way. 

In other places, park rangers have issued tickets to people who have ignored signs and barricades and threatened others with arrest. 

At Mount Vernon, the  privately-owned and managed historic home of George and Martha Washington, NPS authorities erected barricades to keep people from parking at the site. The site is privately owned and funded, but the NPS technically co-owns part of the parking lot and a bus turnaround. Of course, since it is a parking lot, it requires no maintenance. Nonetheless, the NPS is spending more money and resources keeping people out of such places than it would spend by simply allowing the public to use them. 

Republicans contend that the NPS, which is part of the executive branch, is under orders to make life difficult for would-be parkgoers as part of a broader political plan by the Obama administration to turn public opinion against Republicans.  Both parties blame the other for the shutdown and so far appear unwilling to negotiate. 


Via: Catholic Online

Continue Reading.....

‘Not Going to Happen’: Reid Says No Negotiations with GOP Before Shutdown Ends

Minutes after concluding a meeting with President Barack Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters outside the White House that there would be no negotiations with Republicans until the House passes a “clean” continuing resolution which ends the government shutdown. 
Reid began by saying that the government must reopen and the debt ceiling must be raised. “We, if that happens, will negotiate on anything. Anything,” he said.
Reid indicated that the Senate would consider a resolution from the House that extends the debt limit but does not reopen the government. He added, however, that the House has to act first before Senate Democrats could commit to a position.
“There is so much pain and suffering out there,” Reid said. “It’s really tear-jerking, to say the least.”
Roll Call reporter Steven Dennis noted that the Democratic position and the Republican position are at odds with each other. He asked if there was any way to reconcile the GOP’s request that there be negotiations on reforms before the government reopens.
“Not going to happen,” Reid said before leaving the podium.
Watch the press conference below via CNN:

Dr. Ben Carson explains on The Kelly File why Obamacare is part of a plan to socialize America

I wish I had time to write more but this is great. Carson really nails it in this interview with Megyn Kelly.
Watch:



Now It’s Time for Full Throttle Defund of Obamacare

The House plans to pass a bill to raise the debt limit by $117 billion, bringing the new deadline to November 22.  The bill will specifically prohibit the Treasury Department from using extraordinary measures to concoct an arbitrary crisis deadline.
Conservatives can debate the prudence of this particular strategy, but the more important question is what comes after the vote on this bill.  The establishment has been trying to conflate the budget battle with the debt ceiling and transform our priorities into extraneous policy issues that are not nearly as serious and as pressing as Obamacare.
Now they have no excuse to ignore the Obamacare fight.
[Parenthetically, this delay should also preclude any effort to bring up amnesty this year.]
Once the debt ceiling is pushed into November, Republicans must all unite behind full defunding of Obamacare.  No talk about taxes, Social Security, or Medicare.  No talk about a grand bargain or vague fiscal agreements. With premiums skyrocketing, implementation of Obamacare crashing, and massive dependency right around the corner, we don’t have time for other policy fights.  This is the one the public sees most, and this is the one we must message throughout the Democrat shutdown.
Our message is very simple: this law was passed using the budget process to circumvent a higher vote threshold.  Now that the law is proven to be unworkable, it will be uprooted through the budget process.  We are willing to fund every other aspect of government, including those functions we oppose, except for Obamacare and the agencies tasked with enforcing it.
Unfortunately, there are those in the party who are not only distracting us with other issues but are also watering down our messaging on Obamacare.  Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins are committed to making this fight about repealing the medical device tax.  Obviously, the end-point of the negotiations would be a mere delay of that tax.

Obama Just Made a Terrible Mistake on Egypt

In a certain sense, the Obama administration’s decision to withhold much of the $1.3 billion in annual aid given to Egypt isn’t surprising. U.S. law mandates cutting off aid to countries in which a coup has taken place, and the Egyptian military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi this summer was, analytically speaking, exactly that. Moreover, the Egyptian military’s behavior during the three months since Morsi’s removal has made Egypt’s slide towards enhanced autocracy impossible to ignore: Over 1,000 people have been killed in the military-backed government’s crackdown on pro-Morsi protests; journalists who criticize the military have been prosecuted in military courts; and the new constitution will likely further shield the military from any kind of civilian oversight.
Indeed, the generals are not democrats, and never have been. They are bureaucratic actors who selfishly guard their bureaucratic privileges, which include autonomy over their internal affairs and control over vast economic assets (for example, among other consumer products, the Egyptian military produces bottled water), and they know that true democracy could cost them these perquisites. But cutting off aid won’t make the military democratic, and it will come at a substantial cost: namely, the ability to encourage the military in a more progressive direction down the road, when the environment might be riper for a more assertively pro-democratic U.S. policy in Egypt.
he calls to cut off military aid in the aftermath of Morsi’s ouster reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of what transpired in Egypt this past summer. To say, as is frequently said, that the military removed a democratically elected president from office is to overlook a very basic reality: that by the time unprecedentedly mass protests against the Muslim Brotherhood’s rule commenced on June 30, Mohamed Morsi was a president in name only. Morsi’s November 2012 constitutional declaration, which put his own edicts above judicial scrutiny, and his subsequent ramming of an Islamist constitution through to ratification, severely undercut his popular legitimacy, and shrunk his support in a country of 85 million people down to the Brotherhood’s base of approximately 500,000 members. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to dispatch its cadres to brutally attack and torture protesters outside the presidential palace on December 5 led many Egyptians to view the Brotherhood—an organization that they had elected only months earlier—as an emerging fascist regime. From that point forward, protests against Morsi’s rule became so frequent and destabilizing that by late January, the military—at Morsi's request—assumed control over the three major Suez Canal cities.  

Obamacare causes insurance companies to scrap some plans, create new ones - 800,000 to lose coverage in NJ

Hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans opened the mail last week to find their health insurance plan would no longer exist in 2014 because it does not cover all the essential benefits required by the Affordable Care Act.

The news surprised some who were unaware that provisions in the new law known as “Obamacare” were forcing insurance companies to scrap some plans they had previously offered.

“The Affordable Care Act is driving many changes to products and pricing,” said Thomas Vincz, a spokesman for Horizon. “Horizon BCBSNJ is actively working to help our members find new insurance plans that meet their needs and budget.”

The changes will impact more than 800,000 people in New Jersey who purchase insurance on the individual and small-employer markets, according to Ward Sanders, president of the New Jersey Association of Health Plans.

Horizon, Aetna and others have had to create new plans to meet the requirements mandated by the law.

“Aetna has updated its product portfolio for individuals as well as small group customers to ensure our plans were in compliance with the Affordable Care Act and state laws and regulations for 2014,” said Susan Millerick, a spokeswoman from Aetna. “Generally speaking, the products will dock to a similar product that will be available in 2014, but there will be some difference in benefits and price.”


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