Conservative Happenings

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Charter Snags Time Warner Cable in $55 Billion Deal

Charter Communications Inc. has struck a $55 billion cash-and-stock deal for Time Warner Cable Inc., giving cable mogul John Malone the prize he has been chasing for two years.

The offer is valued at about $195 a share, a 14% premium to Time Warner Cable's last closing price. Including debt, the deal is valued at $78.7 billion.

Shares of Charter gained 3.2% to $181 in premarket trading, while Time Warner's shares gained 11.3% to $190.50 a share.

The acquisition by Charter, which is backed by Mr. Malone's Liberty Broadband Corp., would vault the cable operator into the ranks of the biggest U.S. broadband and pay-television companies.

The deal comes only a month after Time Warner Cable went back on the block after Comcast terminated the companies' planned $45.2 billion merger in the face of serious pushback from Washington regulators. A Charter-TWC deal could be in for a stringent review in Washington as well, some analysts have said.

As part of the transaction, Charter will also merge with small operator Bright House Networks. The combined cable giant would have 23 million total customers, second only to Comcast's 27 million among cable operators.

Charter, which has 5.9 million residential subscribers in more than 25 states, and Mr. Malone are betting that increased scale will help the company navigate the industry's choppy waters. Operators must contend with the onset of cable "cord-cutting" as frustrated consumers drop connections, the rise of streaming-video competitors from Netflix Inc. to Apple Inc. and expected fights with TV-channel owners over which networks are worth keeping in a bundle.

Via: Fox News

REP. ALAN GRAYSON TWEETS PHOTO WITH ‘F*** THE POLICE’ GRAFFITI

Tweet posted by @AlanGrayson.

The profanity in the photo was noticed by Palm Beach Post political reporter George Bennett.

Via: Breitbart

Four Words That Imperil Health Care Law Were All a Mistake, Writers Now Say

WASHINGTON — They are only four words in a 900-page law: “established by the state.

But it is in the ambiguity of those four words in the Affordable Care Act that opponents found a path to challenge the law, all the way to the Supreme Court.

How those words became the most contentious part of President Obama’s signature domestic accomplishment has been a mystery. Who wrote them, and why? Were they really intended, as the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell claim, to make the tax subsidies in the law available only in states that established their own health insurance marketplaces, and not in the three dozen states with federal exchanges?

The answer, from interviews with more than two dozen Democrats and Republicans involved in writing the law, is that the words were a product of shifting politics and a sloppy merging of different versions. Some described the words as “inadvertent,” “inartful” or “a drafting error.” But none supported the contention of the plaintiffs, who are from Virginia.

“I don’t ever recall any distinction between federal and state exchanges in terms of the availability of subsidies,” said Olympia J. Snowe, a former Republican senator from Maine who helped write the Finance Committee version of the bill.

Via: NYT

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The 15 Benghazi Emails You Need to Read

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is shown | Getty

The State Department released close to 900 pages of emails from Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary on Friday, providing a detailed looked at how an embattled agency responded to terrorist attacks in Benghazi and how Clinton, the frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, deals with her inner circle of advisers and well-wishers.

POLITICO read the documents to find the most insightful and telling emails. There are deadly serious moments — Clinton learning of the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, for instance — and light-hearted ones, as when she jokes about her concussion. And there are political moments, with glimpses of top officials’ concerns about how the attack on the Libyan compound would affect the 2012 elections. While there doesn’t seem to be the kind of “smoking gun” that many Republicans imagined, the exchanges provide plenty of one-liners that will surely be used against Clinton when she testifies before a House panel later this year.

Here are the emails you should read:

‘The public face of Libya’

Clinton’s critics are sure to seize on this email. Jake Sullivan, a former Clinton deputy chief of staff, wrote Clinton outlining what appears to be talking points on her leadership in Libya. In that memo he declares that Clinton has been “the public face of the U.S. effort in Libya.” Sullivan, it seems, was referring to the American-led efforts to topple former Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. “She was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition and tightening the noose around Qadhafi and his regime.”

The document that was eventually classified

Clinton has insisted she didn’t share classified information through her email account, but the State Department concluded that one email exchange on potential arrests after the attacks was indeed classified. The document appears to have been formally classified Friday by the State Department.

Her “cracked head”

In December 2012, Clinton was scheduled to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Benghazi, but her appearance was scuttled after she fainted and suffered from a concussion. In a Dec. 20 email, Clinton joked that she was still “nursing my cracked head” in an email to two aides, William Burns and Thomas Nides. Burns responded that he felt “very luck to serve in your State Department” — one of many notes of flattery contained in the documents.

Flubbed name

On Sept. 11, a State Department employee named Sean Smith was killed in the attacks, along with Ambassador Chris Stevens. Smith’s death was confirmed by the Libyans, Clinton wrote in an email to top advisers, where she mistakenly called him “Chris Smith.”

Via: Politico

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Get Your Hillary Swag, The Hillary Clinton Store Is Open! Buy Your ‘Everyday Pantsuit T-Shirt’!

The Clinton campaign aims for hip in its new online store

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Cheeky, chic, youth-oriented, red pantsuit t-shirt. These are words that describe the items in Hillary Clinton’s brand-new presidential campaign store—and the tone that Clinton wants to set in the race.

The frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination launched her online store Tuesday morning. The store—which offer clothes, bumper stickers, and signs—will allow Clinton both to sell goods to bankroll her campaign, and more important, to build out her email list for heavy-duty fundraising down the road.

The overall look of the store items will also help define Clinton’s image among voters.

Visitors to the store can find a $30 “pantsuit tee” with the Hillary logo, or a t-shirt with the words “women’s rights are human rights are women’s rights,” which echoes Clinton’s 1995 speech in Beijing. A $55-stitched pillow in the store says “A woman’s place is in the White House,” and a coffee mug has the words “Red, white and brew.”

Many of the items in Clinton’s store point to the young, hipper audience that the campaign hopes to attract. There’s a pint glass with the words “made from 100% shattered glass ceiling,” a hoodie, a “canvass canvas” bag and an I <3 Hillary tumbler.

All the products in the store are American made, according to a Clinton campaign official. The models in the photos are Clinton campaign staffers.

On Monday night, the campaign offered a preview of the store.

Via: Time

Lower Minimum Wage To $0 by Katie Kieffer

If you love In-N-Out burgers and care about the workers who flip your burgers, then you should support a minimum wage of $0.

Deep down, I know you’re tired of seeing actors jump up and down for TV cameras while waving professional signs that read: “McGreedy! McStingy! McPoverty!” or “McShame. McDonald’s. Raise That Wage.”

You weren’t born yesterday. You doubt that these protestors come up with these slogans on their own or fashion them into makeshift signs with their own cardboard, sticks and markers. You suspect they were given signs and paid to wave them. Indeed, in recent protests, 84% of McDonald's "protesters" were not real McDonald's employees but paid and trained professional rioters.

Professional rioters pout and shout in public for a one-time cash payment—not a cause. Since rioters are not entrepreneurs, they do not empathize with the challenges of competing in the restaurant business where profit margins hover at 4%. Nor do they understand the feat of turning a profit while relying on a staff of over-paid and inexperienced high school students.

Greed clouds the intellect of many professional wage protesters. For, reason as well as the Fourth Amendment tell us that every American business owner has a natural right to spend their private property (or cash) on employee wages as they see fit.

Los Angeles’ current minimum wage is above the Federal minimum of $7.25. Last week, the Los Angeles city council voted to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour. Los Angeles is a city of nearly 19 million. According to TIME, a maximum of 800,000 people—or about four percent of the city’s population—will benefit.

Besides “benefiting” up to 800,000 people, the wage hike will eventually hurt an untold number of people. Prepare to see (and smell) more wrinkly clothing and shaggy hair when Los Angelenos delay trips to the dry cleaners and barber.

Joking aside, we have recent a case study of what happens when we jack up the minimum wage. After the city of Seattle, Washington raised its minimum wage to $15, Forbes reported: “Restaurants are closing at higher than normal rates.”

Via: Townhall

Sports Taking a Hit in Tax-Heavy Baltimore?

The anti-capitalist environment in Baltimore has left city sports in an uncertain state. Thanks to Charm City's high property taxes, Pimlico race track owners, the site where the Preakness is held, are considering moving their horses elsewhere.

Herein lies the problem:

In Maryland, regulators are like co-owners: Not only did you not build that, but you’re not free to run it, either. Of course, there are tracks elsewhere that would surely like to host a Triple Crown race and that are not subject to Maryland’s regulatory dictates.

In the past, when city governments have exercised extreme regulations over businesses, it has often had fatal results. Detroit's economy suffered under the highest property taxes on homes in the nation, in addition to the top commercial property tax, and the second-highest industrial property tax, before filing for bankruptcy in 2013.

The poor business environment in Baltimore is coupled with the attraction of other more business-friendly regions.

At the city’s current property-tax rate, for example, a $100 million investment at Pimlico — probably less than required to make the crumbling facility world-class again — would cost its owners almost $2.25 million in added annual property taxes.

Via: Townhall

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Three ways Obama and Kim Jong Un are eerily similar

I’m not really sure who’s emulating whom, or if it’s just a creepy coincidence, but have you noticed how our own Dear Leader, Barack Obama, shares some eery similarities with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un? We’ve come up with three so far.

1. Very secretive youth.

There seem to be information gaps in both Obama’s and Kim’s formative years.
Apparently no official biography on Kim has ever been released, so the only known information on his early life comes from those who have defected from North Korea or people who have claimed to have seen him abroad. He apparently studied in Switzerland in several schools where he was described as an ambitious student who liked basketball, but his grades and attendance ratings were poor.

Of course we’re well-aware of the question marks surrounding Obama’s younger years, including his druggie days as member of the Choom Gang, the nature of his travel to Pakistan, and most recently, the stinging criticism from a University of Chicago professor who said “the other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings.”

2. Passion for basketball

High school friends of Kim noted that he “worshipped NBA players” and proudly showed off pictures of himself with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.

And unless you’ve been living under a rock, you must be well aware of Kim’s much publicized bromance with Dennis Rodman.

Of Obama’s obsession with basketball, the Washington Post said breathlessly, “to say that President Obama loves basketball understates the role of the sport in his life. He has been devoted to the game for 40 years now, ever since the father he did not know and never saw again gave him his first ball during a brief Christmastime visit. Basketball is central to his self identity. It is global yet American-born, much like him. It is where he found a place of comfort, a family, a mode of expression, a connection from his past to his future. With foundation roots in the Kansas of his white forebears, basketball was also the city game, helping him find his way toward blackness, his introduction to an African American culture that was distant to him when he was young yet his by birthright.”

Um, really? I feel a bit queasy right now.

3. Purging the military

We’ve written here on many occasions about how Obama seems to be doing his best to dramatically reduce the might and strength of our military. Estimates of how many officers have been relieved of command since he took office range around the 200 mark with at least nine generals and 157 Air Force majors losing their posts.

Kim also seems intent on purging his top brass, except instead of just firing them, he fires AT them.

We reported recently about the official executed for falling asleep in a meeting. Hyon Yong-Choi was apparently blasted by an anti-aircraft gun in front of a gallery of observers.

“In the latest cull, the North Korean despot is said to have ordered the death of his vice armed forces minister, So Hong-chan, and several others close to him for not following his orders.”

So that’s our top three…for now. Please let us know if we’ve left anything on the list.

Via: Allen B. West

Noteworthy Millennial Political Highlights from this Past Week

This week a 19 year old Republican, Yvonne Dean-Bailey, won a highly contested race in the swing state of New Hampshire.

Dean-Bailey, a 19-year-old college student, becomes one of the youngest women elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

The race attracted a disproportionate share of attention on the eve of a presidential primary season.

Republican presidential hopefuls Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry attended events with Dean-Bailey, while Democrat Martin O’Malley helped promote Mann, who is a former state representative.

The election drew enormous interest, and support for and against each candidate, from outside of the district. In Deerfield, for example, turnout was about 26 percent. In Candia, it was 16 percent.

She won despite dirty tactics from Democrats.

The state’s Republican Party plans to file an election law complaint today with the Attorney General’s Office after a former campaign worker for Democrat state representative candidate Maureen Mann admitted to emailing a hoax news release claiming her Republican challenger, candidate Yvonne Dean-Bailey, had dropped out of the race.

While Republicans are promoting young stars through our Rising Stars program and through local elections, the Clintons are making our schools pay exorbitant prices to hear them speak.

The Clinton Foundation has disclosed that it received up to $26 million in payments that had not been previously disclosed, with about 20 colleges and universities on the list of organizations and institutions that paid fees for speeches by one of the Clintons —Bill, the former president; Hillary, the former U.S. senator and secretary of state; or Chelsea, their daughter.

The total amount paid by the colleges and universities is between $2.8 million and $6.7 million — a range based on the way the fees are reported. For example, the top fees were reported in a range from $250,001 to $500,000.

Here, taken from the Clinton Foundation’s website, is a list of the college and universities that paid to have one of the Clintons give a speech from the time the foundation was founded in 2001 through 2014.

As Millennials are learning more about Hillary Clinton they are liking her less as Pew found out this week. Last year 82 percent of 18-25 year old Democrats had a favorable view of her now only 65 percent do.

Not only are young Republicans succeeding, we are also taking positions of leadership. Just this week 30 year old RNC Chief of Staff, Katie Walsh, was named one of The Washington Post’s “40 Most Interesting Women In Politics”

Via: GOP.Com

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

The Clinton campaign aims for hip in its new online store

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