Thursday, July 2, 2015

CDC Official Calls Obama Worst President, Amateur, Marxist After Influx of Illegal Alien Minors

Following the influx of illegal immigrant minors from Central America, an official at the federal agency charged with protecting public health describes Barack Obama as “the worst pres we have ever had,” an “amateur” and “Marxist,” according to internal emails obtained by Judicial Watch.

JW got the records as part of an investigation into the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) activation of anEmergency Operations Center (EOC) to deal with the barrage of illegal alien minors last summer. Tens of thousands of Central Americans came into the United States through the Mexican border and contagious diseases—many considered to be eradicated in the U.S.—became a tremendous concern. The CDC, which operates under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), responded by opening an emergency facility designed to monitor and coordinate response activities to eminent public health threats.
This special emergency division was created after the 2001 terrorist attacks and has responded to more than 50 public health threats, including hurricanes, food borne disease outbreaks, the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the Haiti cholera outbreak. Scientists from across the CDC are brought together to analyze, validate, and efficiently exchange information during a public health emergency and connect with response partners. The EOC also coordinates the deployment of CDC staff and the procurement and management of all equipment and supplies that agency responders may need during their deployment.

It’s a major and costly operation that can stick American taxpayers with a huge tab. That’s why JW launched a probe when the Obama administration took in the illegal immigrants, initially coined Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), with open arms last summer. JW has sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for planning records involving the border crisis as well as information relating to the solicitation of “on-demand escort services” for the 65,000 UACs that remain in the U.S. Last year JW also reported that the illegal immigrant minors have brought in serious diseases, including swine flu, dengue fever, possibly Ebola virus and tuberculosis.

The CDC records obtained by JW this week include email exchanges between agency officials directly involved in the activation of the EOC to handle the health threats created by the influx of illegal alien minors last summer. In an email dated June 9, 2014, CDC Logistics Management Specialist George Roark wrote to CDC Public Health Advisor William Adams that “no country in the world would allow” the influx. Adams replies that “in ten years or less, they’ll all be voting…Commander’s intent…” Roark fires back by describing Obama as “the worst pres we have ever had…he truly is ‘the amateur’ but a Marxist too.”


AVERAGE 128 UNACCOMPANIED ILLEGAL MINORS DETAINED AT BORDER DAILY IN MAY

Each day some 128 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) were detained illegally entering the U.S. during the month of May, according to CNS News.

Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) data obtained by CNS for the month of July show that 3,965 children were detained in May— representing the single month with the highest level of UAC apprehensions this fiscal year.
The level of UAC illegal immigration to the U.S. is lower than the record highs of last year, but still much higher than years prior. As of June 1, Border Patrol had apprehended nearly 23,000 UACs at the Southwest border.
In response to last year’s massive influx of UACs the Obama administration moved forward with a campaign to dissuade — largely Central Americans — from attempting the dangerous journey north.
Included in the campaign was a program to fly qualifying children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to the U.S. as as refugees or parolees, in a program that has raised many serious questions.
“In effect, the President’s answer to the ongoing run on the border is to order government officials to transport many of those same individuals from Central America into the U.S. with lawful paperwork and guaranteed access to federal benefits,” 
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
80%
 said of the program earlier this year.

According to a recent report from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, as of April 23, 2015, the Refugee/Parole Program for Central American Minors (CAM) had received 565 applications with 439 applications for El Salvador, 114  for Honduras, and 12 for Guatemala.

[VIDEO] Hillary Clinton: How much longer can she hide the truth?

In the course of my work at Fox News, I am often asked by colleagues to review and explain documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge, our chief intelligence correspondent, and Pamela Browne, our senior executive producer, I read the transcripts of an interview Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.
What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.
Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011, he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always will do what American government officials ask of it.
In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that might harm Americans and American interests, Congress has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or facilitating the sale of arms to them is a felony. They also can license dealers to sell.
Hillary Clinton lied to Congress, gave arms to terrorists and destroyed her emails. How much longer can she hide the truth?
Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of arms to the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of American government officials, were sold, bartered or given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list. Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that licensed the sales also prohibited them.

AEI: Obama White House Pays Women 15.8 Percent Less Than Men


The Obama White House pays its female staffers 15.8 percent less on average than its male staffers, according to an analysis by American Enterprise Institute. 


AEI economics scholar Mark J. Perry looked at the salaries of all White House employees, which are publicly available, and averaged out those who were male and female.

Female staffers earned on average $65,650 a year to male staffers' $78,000, Perry found.


"Therefore, female staffers in the Obama White House currently earn 84.2% of the median salary for male staffers, or 84.2 cents for every $1 men earn, and there is a 15.8% gender pay gap at the White House," Perry wrote. "That pay gap is slightly smaller than the 17.9% gender pay gap at the White House last year, but is still almost two times the average gender pay gap for Washington, DC of 9.2% according to the most recent data from the Department of Labor."


Still, Perry noted, President Barack Obama makes presidential proclamations annually for National Equal Pay Day. This year, Obama marked April 14 as the date at which a woman must work into 2015 to earn the same as a man earned by Dec. 31, 2014.

"On average, full-time working women earn 78 cents for every dollar earned by men, and women of color face an even greater disparity," Obama said at this year's proclamation. "I call upon all Americans to recognize the full value of women's skills and their significant contributions to the labor force, acknowledge the injustice of wage inequality, and join efforts to achieve equal pay."
Women working at the White House have to work only until March 14 to achieve parity with men, Perry said, but still might want to complain.


Perry said that Obama and gender activists constantly lecture the public on gender pay gap disparities being the result of discrimination. If that is true, he said, the Obama White House is being hypocritical on the issue.

"President Obama can’t have it both ways," Perry said, "either: a) there are gender pay differences throughout the economy and in any organization including at the White House, which can be explained by factors other than gender discrimination including age, years of continuous work experience, education, differences in positions, hours worked, marital status, number of children, workplace environment and safety, industry differences, etc., or b) any gender pay gap in aggregate, unadjusted salaries automatically exposes gender discrimination  including the White House — and Obama needs to explain why he is 'waging a war on his women staffers' by paying them less than men on average."



CA’s Remarkable and Powerful Gay and Lesbian Political Leadership – What is Next From Them?

 For some years Californian’s have given gay and lesbian politicians extraordinary leadership opportunities and power in the state. The power these politicians possess in state government is from stronger positions and relatively larger numbers than that of many other minority groups, including Asian elected officials, in a state where Asians comprise 14% of the population, and they arguably possess more political power than African-American politicians, whose affinity group represents close to 7% of the state population. California’s gay and lesbian elected officials have wielded this power even as those same California voters disapproved gay marriage at the ballot, as in 2008, when just over 52% of voters approved a ban on same-sex marriage.  (The same voters gave Barack Obama over 61% of their votes in the same election.) But times are changing, and California’s highly influential gay and lesbian elected officials, who have been so successful on civil rights issues for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and have worked so hard on issues like same-sex marriage, have surely played a role in the remarkable changes in California public opinion since 2008.  According to a September 2013 Public Policy Institute of California poll (taken well before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision approving same sex marriage as a Constitutional right), a record high 61% of Californians and 64% of likely voters favored allowing gay and lesbian couples to legally marry, and in apparent remorse for the 2008 vote on Proposition 8, solid majorities of Californians (59%) and likely voters (63%) approved of the U.S. Supreme Court’s earlier decision to let stand a lower court ruling that put a “stay” on Proposition 8′s ban on same-sex marriage in California. One might guess that public opinion in California in favor of same-sex marriage is even more popular today than in PPIC’s last survey.


Who are these notably powerful gay and lesbian leaders? They are almost all liberal Democrats, and have served in responsible leadership positions (some retired only because of term limits) in the last decade and include current Assembly Speaker (the state assembly’s most important position) Toni Atkins of San Diego, the state’s first out lesbian Speaker, and her immediate predecessor John Perez of Los Angeles, the state’s first out gay Assembly Speaker.  Included also are former State Senator Sheila Kuehl from Santa Monica, now serving in the significant position of Los Angeles County Supervisor, current State Senator Mark Leno of San Francisco, the State Senate’s first out gay State Senator and a possible successor for Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional seat,  former State Senator Carole Migden of San Francisco, along with retired State Senator Christine Kehoe of San Diego and retired Assembly member Jackie Goldberg of Los Angeles. Congressman Mark Takano of Riverside is an out gay, as is San Diego County Supervisor Dave Roberts. They are all Democrats and are joined by many more gay and lesbian elected officials throughout the state in other state and local offices.

Sheriff’s Association Head Mocks Obama’s Call For ‘Soft Look’ Cop Uniforms

BALTIMORE — National Sheriffs’ Association President Danny Glick took offense to President Obama’s recommendation that American law enforcement wear “soft look” uniforms during large protests.
“The respect factor between law enforcement and this administration has eroded to the point that it has been recommended by them that we need to ‘soften our uniforms’ to be more acceptable to the public we serve,” Glick said during his speech to sheriffs attending the association’s annual summer conference Thursday night. He brought out a tan Kevlar vest with a fuzzy boa attached to the straps of the vest and a red target on the back.
“So here is the ‘softer uniform’ they’ve requested,” he said, displaying the modified vest. “This administration thinks this is what will work to solve the issues they have deemed important when in truth this is what they’ve done to us.”
Glick is the sheriff in Laramie, Wyo.
National Sheriffs' Association President Danny Glick
A White House panel released a report in March calling for officers to implement “a layered response to mass demonstrations that prioritize de-escalation and a guardian mindset.”
“These policies could include plans to minimize confrontation by using ‘soft look’ uniforms, having
officers remove riot gear as soon as practical, and maintaining open postures,” the task force wrote.

“I would present to you that this administration is looking through a glass rather than in a mirror when they are pointing a finger at sheriffs and law enforcement in general to blame for the issues confronting them today,” he said. The administration has “interjected a very dangerous addition into our profession — politics.”

Glick later told The Daily Caller, “If you want to have an important dialogue, invite us to the table, we’re willing to sit down, just like I said — anywhere have a discussion. If it’s an argument, fine, but we would prefer to come to a consensus where everybody benefits rather than just inflammatory statements being made.”

Nancy Pelosi’s Life As a 0.1 Percenter


Nancy Pelosi may be one of the most liberal members of the U.S. House, where she runs the Democratic caucus, railing against income inequality and the avarice of the 1 percent. But she also happens to be one of the body’s wealthiest members: In Washington, she lives in a multimillion-dollar Georgetown condo; she owns a 16-acre vineyard in Napa Valley and a 3,700 square-foot house in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights, according to her May 2015 financial disclosure statements.





















Her May 2015 financial-disclosure statements,showing income that places her in the top one-tenth of the 1 percent of Americans, may surprise some in light of the concern she’s expressed about income equality and the distribution of wealth.


“We’re talking about addressing the disparity in our country of income, where the wealthy people continue to get wealthier,” Pelosi said in 2010 at a United Steelworkers’ event. “That disparity is not just about wages alone,” she added. “That disparity is about ownership and equity. It’s all about fairness in our country.” But even as she’s publicly bemoaned the rich getting richer, Pelosi’s fortune has grown. RELATED: With Harry Reid Gone, Why Is Nancy Pelosi Hanging On?


 Though financial-disclosure forms list only ranges of assets and liabilities, Pelosi listed between $42.4 million and $199.5 million in assets in 2013, which was enough for Bloomberg Business to deem her the richest member of House leadership from either party. By 2014, she and her husband, investment banker Paul Pelosi, were doing even better: She reported between $43.4 million and $202 million in assets. (Pelosi’s husband, in fact, has done so well that he tried the quixotic hobby of investing in an alternative to the National Football League, losing between $100,000 and $1 million in 2014.)





CMS’ Secretive Settlement $1.3 billion in improper hospital claims paid out


The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services secretly paid out over a billion dollars in improper hospital claims earlier last month, despite auditors labeling them unnecessary previously.
The payments, which were quietly announced on June 1 by CMS, totaled $1.3 billion and involved 1,900 hospitals and 300,000 claims that had been already denied by CMS auditors on two different levels as medically unnecessary.
The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals settled hundreds of thousands of appeals for 68 cents on the dollar. The money used to cover the claims will be taken from the Medicare Trust Fund. The hospitals that received the settlements were also not announced by CMS.
Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement, and abuse in government, first noticed the payments.
The group says the process has been questionable from the beginning, with a majority of the claims related to short impatient stays—an area considered extremely vulnerable to improper payments.
“The settlement process was murky from its inception. On August 29, 2014, CMS announced the global financial settlement for hundreds of thousands of Medicare fee-for-service claims that had been denied twice and then appealed by providers to the third level of appeals, the administrative law judges (ALJ),” CAGW wrote. “The vast majority of these claims were related to short inpatient hospital stays (an area that had been identified by CMS as highly vulnerable to improper payments), and had been denied at two lower levels, including by Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs).”
Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals Chief ALJ Nancy Griswold testified in April before Congress about the drastic jump in OMHA’s workload.
During the testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Griswold said between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2014, the workload within the office increased by 543 percent. Additionally, the number of appeals OMHA received jumped from 384,000 in fiscal year 2013 to 474,000 appeals during fiscal year 2014.

Vicious Sid's State Department

The big find in the first dump of emails from Hillary Clinton's secret email server, aside from a few insulting comments about Cuban Floridians, is the fact that The New York Times was on to a much bigger story in May than it realized.
Sid Blumenthal, the former Clinton hatchet-man from the 1990s, was not just sending Secretary of State Clinton briefings about the situation in Libya, but was briefing her about nearly every corner of the globe. Though barred by President Obama's minders from any official job in the administration, vicious Sid had constant access to Clinton.
Blumenthal's sense of self-importance in these communiques is as absurd as his undue influence over Clinton is scandalous. Under the centered, all-caps header of "CONFIDENTIAL," he offers up one assessment after another of British, Iranian, Italian and Afghan affairs as if he were some kind of mobile CIA station chief.
At one point, he asked (or politely demanded) that the secretary expedite a hiring at State. He passed messages from former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, now the head of an African energy company, seeking access to America's chief diplomat for a business pitch. The emails also hint that he and Clinton had very frequent phone conversations. Who knows what sort of bad advice they contained? Was he the mastermind behind the botched reset with Russia?
The public learned from a New York Times report in May that Blumenthal had extensively advised Clinton on Libya, where he had financial interests that he now refuses to discuss. He would pass along often erroneous information. Clinton would remove his name and then pass his rumor-filled memos to senior officials at State as something from "a contact," as though they were credible.
Blumenthal was reliable as a friend, rather than as a source of information. He was loyal to Clinton, and in Clinton-world that's the golden ticket. He was put on the payroll of Clinton's family foundation, to the tune of $120,000 per year. George Stephanopoulos's donations apparently went to a good cause.
This international man of mystery schtick is a far cry from Blumenthal's real role in the life of the nation. He was a Clinton sycophant, brought into the White House in times of crisis, who would lie and defame freely to preserve the illusion of an ethical Clinton White House.
His greatest accomplishment came in the late 1990s, when he told reporters the lie that Monica Lewinsky was a slutty stalker who had demanded sex and even threatened (in the manner of Potiphar's wife and Joseph) to blackmail the poor, innocent President Clinton. He made the mistake of peddling this and his plans to smear alleged sexual assault victim Kathleen Willey, to the late Christopher Hitchens, who made the entire conversation part of the public record.

Judge Orders Government to Return $167,000 Seized From Motorhome Driver Visiting His Girlfriend

A federal judge in Nevada has ordered the government to return $167,000 that was seized from a man driving his motorhome on a highway two years ago. The man, Straughn Gorman, was traveling to visit his girlfriend. He was never charged with a crime.
The seizure originally occurred in January 2013, when Gorman was driving his motorhome from Delaware to visit his girlfriend in Sacramento, Calif.
Police stopped Gorman not once, but twice, within 50 minutes while he drove west on Interstate 80, according to documents filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada.
In the first traffic stop, which occurred near Elko, Nev., a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper stopped the man for driving too slowly in the passing lane. Gorman refused to let the trooper search his vehicle, and the Nevada Highway Patrol officer allowed him to continue on without issuing any citations.
Less than an hour later, Gorman was stopped again by an Elko County Sheriff’s Office deputy, who the highway patrol trooper had arranged to pull Gorman over once more, court documents show. The deputy had a drug-sniffing dog with him, and a search of the motorhome was conducted.
In the two-minute video originally posted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the officer searched the vehicle, where he found $167,000 in cash stored in different places throughout the motorhome.
The officer told Gorman that the cash, his computer, cellphone and vehicle would all be seized under civil asset forfeiture laws.
Though the Elk County Sheriff’s deputy said the dog detected drugs in the motorhome, none were found, and Gorman was never charged with a crime.
Instead, he became another victim of civil asset forfeiture, a procedure that gives local, state and federal law enforcement the power to seize money and property if it’s suspected of being related to a crime.

The GOP Congress refuses to use the power it has

Instead of wailing and bemoaning the imperial edicts issued this past week by the Supreme Court on Obamacare, housing discrimination, and gay marriage, the Republican-controlled Congress would do better to exercise its constitutional authority and fight back.  Here is one way.

Few powers given to the Congress are more clearly defined, and yet more rarely exercised, than its power to strip the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over almost any subject matter Congress chooses.  It is a mystery why the Republican leadership is so timid and weak in submitting to the clearly unconstitutional decisions handed down on a regular basis by the high court.

Article III, section 2 of the U.S. Constitution expressly states (emphasis added):
In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party, the Supreme Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.
This means exactly what it says: the Supreme Court (and by implication, the lesser federal courts) can be stripped from hearing and deciding any issue at all, save only those few issues granted to its original jurisdiction in the language above.  Cases in which “a state shall be party” is strictly limited to those controversies between two or more states, or between a state and citizens of another state, or between a state and foreigners (Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. 264 [1821]).




[EDITORIAL] God, a cop and gay marriage

Facebook

He just had to get it off his chest. In a Facebook post, an Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy wrote: “If it ever comes down to having to enforce any kind of laws regarding gay marriage … mark my words … I will not do it!”


He added: “I will not adjust to man’s standard over what the word of God says.”

Unfortunately for this irate deputy, the oath he took and the gun and badge he carries are all about “man’s standard.” And Sheriff’s Office policy says employees can express themselves on social media only as long as “their speech does not impair the working relationships of this agency.”

A law enforcer declaring he won’t enforce certain laws might indeed impair working relationships. So Sheriff Larry Ashley had the deputy take down his offending post.

That was the easy part. It’s a little tougher to square last week’s Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage with — as the deputy put it — “what the word of God says.”

We would suggest there is no need for conflict.

People of faith can still oppose gay lifestyles and the idea of gay marriage if they’re inclined to do so.

Churches are still free to decide whether or not to bless such relationships.

We are comfortable with the Supreme Court’s decision because it enlarges Americans’ sphere of personal liberty. This newspaper has long maintained that government should have little or no role in defining or regulating so intimate a relationship as marriage.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted last week with the minority, said the court ought to back off because “whether same-sex marriage is a good idea should be of no concern to us.” Bravo!

Via: NWF Daily News
Continue Reading....

[COMMENTARY] Export-Import Bank needs resurrecting by Congress by U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-McAllen

U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa, D-McAllen
The Export-Import Bank charter expired this week due to continued dysfunction and the misplaced priorities of the Republican majority in control of Congress who often sound like a broken record with their constant refrain of being the business-friendly party. Inexplicably, they just let the music stop on a crucial export financing source supporting home-grown businesses and their employees working hard to export American-made goods overseas.
For the first time since it was created 81 years ago, the Ex-Im Bank charter was allowed to expire at midnight on July 1. Inaction by Congress to renew he charter leaves thousands of small businesses without resources they need to export commodities to international customers. Continued inaction would be devastating to small exporters and entrepreneurs, in particular, who are looking to grow their businesses. The bank is particularly important because it gives them an edge by leveling the playing field between small firms and their larger counterparts. In fact, nearly 90 percent of the Ex-Im Bank’s transactions in 2013 were for American small businesses.
Still, congressional Republicans allowed their extreme, ideological-driven wing to adjourn without taking action, even though the Bank is a resounding market-driven success — sustaining 1.5 million jobs since 2007 at no cost to taxpayers, supporting hundreds of thousands of American manufacturing jobs and always enjoying the support of a bipartisan majority of Congress.
That was up until now.
Congress’ failing to renew the bank’s charter not only endangers small business financing but also surrenders jobs in the United States to our foreign competitors. With more than $34 billion in exports lost this year alone, tens of thousands of workers engaged in the exporting business could be laid off and thousands of exporters — mostly small business owners — including 730 in Texas, would incur a substantial financial loss, as will the suppliers who make or grow the products being exported.
In fact, Dr. Zhao Changhui, chief risk analyst for the Export-Import Bank of China, recently told a business forum in China that while he would regret the possible demise of the bank’s U.S. counterpart, it would help China’s competitiveness: “With respect to competition in strategy and policies between the U.S. and China, this is a good thing (for China),” he said.

But Republicans have dedicated their majority to a partisan, ideological agenda to the detriment of common sense and hard-working Americans who are in need of bigger paychecks and better jobs. In response, Democrats have advocated legislation to reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank’s charter four times in recent months but were blocked each time by House Republicans.

Ted Cruz Reminds Katie Couric that Hillary Created Anti-Obama Birther Movement

Faded, former-media darling Katie Couric hosted Republican Senator 
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
96%
 for a full-hour to discuss a wide range of issues Monday. The left-wing anchor, who is now perched at a place called Yahoo!, introduced Cruz as a historic candidate — potentially the first American president to be born in Canada. Later in the interview, she questioned Cruz on his citizenship.

The look on Couric’s smug face when he correctly reminded her that it was the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008 that birthed the anti-Obama Birther movement, is priceless.
It all starts at right around the 25 minute mark.
CRUZ: “You know it’s interesting, the whole Birther thing was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008  against Barack Obama…”

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