Friday, July 31, 2015

Ready for Hillary

tinyupic (dfu) ^ | 7-2015 



Cruz

While you're in prison...

NEWS!

If...

Hey Liberals

EXCLUSIVE: Trump attacks Hillary's right-hand-woman Huma Abedin as he calls her husband Weiner...

(UK) Daily Mail ^ | July 30, 2015 | David Martosko 

Complete headline: EXCLUSIVE: Trump attacks Hillary's right-hand-woman Huma Abedin as he calls her husband Anthony Weiner 'the worst deviant in the United States' and claims the pair had access to Clinton's secret classified emails
  • Donald Trump argues Hillary Clinton's chief of staff is a security liability because of her marriage to disgraced sexting lawmaker Anthony Weiner
  • 'The person seeing her emails more than anybody else is Huma. And who's Huma married to? The worst deviant in the United States of America'
  • Hillary shares 'confidential, top-of-the-line secrets' with confidante Huma Abedin, Trump says, who then likely spills them to her husband
  • Weiner was forced out of Congress after carrying on online relationships with women including an adult film actress
  • He now has a six-figure contract advising a public relations firm that specializes in 'crisis communications'

Trump told DailyMail.com during a wide-ranging interview in his New York City Office that 'the person seeing her emails more than anybody else is Huma. And who's Huma married to? The worst deviant in the United States of America, right? Weiner!'
Challenged on whether the former New York congressman is actually the nation's 'worst deviant,' Trump retreated an inch: 'Well, he's right up there.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...

THE LEFT'S FIGHT-FOR-$15 SCAM

Frontpagemag.com ^ | July 31, 2015 | Mathew Vadum 

The current feel-good push for a $15 an hour minimum wage has nothing to do with helping workers and everything to do with advancing the goals of the left wing, especially the labor movement.

This is true despite the occasionally soaring rhetoric of President Obama amid the Left's incessant whining about "income inequality," itself a particularly un-American concept, an imaginary evil that dwells only in the nightmares of left-wingers.

The fact gets lost that the minimum wage itself and continuing increases in the minimum wage hurt working people.

(Excerpt) Read more at frontpagemag.com ...

Summary of Obama’s IRS scandal, as of July 31, 2015

wordpress ^ | July 31, 2015 | Dan from Squirrel Hill 



In May 2013, the Washington Post reported that the IRS had illegally targeted conservative groups for additional reviews. Organizations with the words “tea party” or “patriot” were singled out for harassment, such as requiring them to provide a list of donors, details about their internet postings on social networking websites, and information about their family members.

When this was first reported by the media in May 2013, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that had conducted these illegal activities, claimedthat only low level employees had known about it, and that no high level IRS officials had known about it. However, soon afterward, NPR reported that an Inspector General report showed that Lerner had been lying, and that she herself had actually been aware of it since June 29, 2011. Even worse, during March and April of 2012, Lerner herself had actually written such letters to fifteen different conservative groups. One of these letters can be read here.
While testifying in May 2013, Lerner said, “I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations. And I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.” However, afterward, she invoked her fifth amendment right to remain silent. The Washington Post reported that there was disagreement as to whether or not Lerner’s statement constituted a waiving of her fifth amendment right to remain silent. Soon afterward, she was placed on paid administrative leave. At a later hearing in March 2014, Lerner again invoked her fifth amendment right to remain silent.
In September 2013, a House committee released several of Lerner’s emails, which showed that she had targeted tea party groups, and that she had asked that their applications be delayed. In one of the emails from 2011, she had written “Tea Party Matter very dangerous.”
In September 2013, after having been on paid leave for four months, Lerner had still not been fired by Obama.
In September 2013, Lerner retired with a full pension.
In October 2013, it was reported that newly discovered emails proved that Lerner had violated federal law by giving the Federal Election Commission confidential tax information of several Tea party groups.
The Washington Post reported that IRS officials at the IRS headquarters in Washington D.C. had sent such letters to conservatives groups. Reutersreported that higher level IRS officials had taken part in discussions about it as early as August 2011. However, 21 months later, on May 10, 2013, the Washington Post reported that President Obama had not done anything to investigate or fire the IRS employees who had engaged in this illegal harassment. As of May 14, 2013, none of the IRS employees who engaged in any of this illegal behavior had been disciplined, despite the fact that higher level IRS officials had known about their illegal behavior at least since August 2011. Despite all of these media reports about the involvement of high level IRS officials, in February 2014, Obama said that these things had come from “a local office.”
On May 15, 2013, it was reported that Steven Miller, the acting IRS commissioner, had resigned. However, it was also reported that his assignment would have ended in early June anyway. He resigned – Obama did not fire him.
The IRS gave out confidential information about conservative groups. ProPublica wrote:
“The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year.”
“In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications or documentation for 31 groups. Nine of those applications had not yet been approved—meaning they were not supposed to be made public.”
“No unapproved applications from liberal groups were sent to ProPublica.”
President Obama either lied about when he first knew about this – or was too busy playing golf and attending fundraisers to read the memos that were sent to him. The Daily Caller wrote:
“White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a press conference Tuesday that the White House was notified about the IRS targeting tea party groups ‘several weeks ago.’ This comes a day after President Obama said he found out about it from news reports on Friday of last week.”
“During a press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday, President Obama was asked about the IRS scandal. He responded, ‘I first learned about it from the same news reports that I think most people learned about this. I think it was on Friday.’ 
“However, Carney said Tuesday that first a report had to be compiled by the IRS’s inspector general and then when it was completed, it was passed on to the administration.”
“‘A notification is appropriate and routine and that is what happened and that happened several weeks ago,’ Carney said.”
When Media Trackers, a conservative organization, applied to the IRS for non-profit status, after waiting 16 months, it got no response. But when it reapplied with a liberal sounding name, it got approval in just three weeks. Yahoo wrote:
“In May 2011, Drew Ryun, a conservative activist and former Republican National Committee staffer, began filling out the Internal Revenue Service application to achieve nonprofit status for a new conservative watchdog group.”
“When September 2012 arrived with still no word from the IRS, Ryun determined that Media Trackers would likely never obtain standalone nonprofit status, and he tried a new approach: He applied for permanent nonprofit status for a separate group called Greenhouse Solutions, a pre-existing organization that was reaching the end of its determination period.”
“The IRS approved Greenhouse Solutions’ request for permanent nonprofit status in three weeks.”
Politico reported:
“The same Internal Revenue Service office that singled out Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny also challenged Israel-related organizations, at least one of which filed suit over the agency’s handling of its application for tax-exempt status.”
“The trouble for the Israel-focused groups seems to have had different origins than that experienced by conservative groups, but at times the effort seems to have been equally ham-handed.”
The IRS asked conservative groups what books they were reading.
Although the IRS went 18 months or longer without responding to conservative organizations’ applications, the IRS demanded that these same organizations answer the IRS’s intrusive questions within a few weeks.
After the Waco Tea Party sent an application to the IRS, the IRS waited 19 months to respond. In its response, the IRS asked for printouts of its web page and social networking sites, copies of all of its newsletters, bulletins and fliers, and copies of all stories written about it. The IRS also asked for transcripts of its radio interviews.
As one example of how the IRS treated conservative organizations differently from liberal ones, Politico reported:
“Chris Littleton, one of the co-founders of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, said the group got a grilling from the IRS when it submitted its application, in letters the group has posted on its website. The IRS also gave him so much grief when he tried to apply for tax-exempt status for another group, American Junto, that ‘we just gave up on it,’ he said.”
“But when he submitted an application for a third group — Ohioans for Health Care Freedom, now renamed Ohio Rising — ‘it went through just fine,’ Littleton said. ‘They never asked a single set of questions.'”
After the Greater Phoenix Tea Party Patriots sent in their application, it took two years for the IRS to respond. The IRS response included 35 questions. When the group’s cofounder called the IRS, the IRS agent claimed that he had their group’s file right in front of him. But when the group’s confounder asked the IRS agent a question, the IRS agent asked, “What’s your group’s name again?”
Tea Party groups who spoke with each other said they were all getting the same questions from the IRS.
The Washington Post reported that some IRS employees were “ignorant about tax laws, defiant of their supervisors, and blind to the appearance of impropriety.”
In 2012, the IRS leaked confidential information about Mitt Romney to the co-chairman of President Obama’s re-election committee.
For a 27 month period that began in February 2010, the IRS gave exactly zero approvals to Tea Party organizations that had sent in applications. During that same time period, numerous liberal organizations with names including words such as “progress” or “progressive” did get approval.
After True the Vote, a conservative organization which was founded by Catherine Engelbrecht, sent its application to the IRS, the IRS went three years without responding. During that three year period, Engelbrecht and her family’s small manufacturing business were audited by the IRS, and were investigated by OSHA, the ATF, and the FBI.
Democratic U.S. Senators pressured the IRS to target conservative groups. In May 2013, U.S. News & World Report wrote:
“Over the last three years, Democratic senators repeatedly and publicly pressured the IRS to engage in the very activities that they are only now condemning today. At the same time, Republicans repeatedly and publicly warned against this abuse of government power and pointed to a series of red flags that strongly suggested conservative political organizations were being targeted by the IRS. Those warnings were deliberately ignored by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress.”
“From Max Baucus to Chuck Schumer to Jeanne Shaheen, key Senate Democrats publicly pressured the IRS to target groups that held differing political views and who, in their view, had the temerity to engage in the political process. The IRS listened to them and acted.”
In order to get approval, the IRS required members of Coalition for Life of Iowaa pro-life organization, to sign a promise to avoid protesting in front of Planned Parenthood.
The IRS asked Christian Voices for Life, a pro-life organization, questions about its prayer vigils.
According to the official White House visitor’s log, during Obama’s first four years as President, IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman made 157 visits to the White House. This is more visits to the White House – by a very large margin – than any other cabinet member during Obama’s first term. By comparison, during the four years that Mark Everson was IRS commissioner when Bush was president, Everson made only one visit to the White House.
Shulman donated $500 to the Democratic National Committee in October 2004.
During Congressional testimony that had taken place in March 2012, Shulman falsely said that the IRS had not targeted conservative groups.
Shulman’s wife, Susan L. Anderson, is the senior program advisor for Public Campaign, a liberal organization. The Dailer Caller wrote of this group:
Public Campaign receives “major funding” from the pro-Obamacare alliance Health Care for America NOW!, which is comprised of the labor unions AFL-CIO, AFSCME, SEIU, and the progressive activist organization Move On, among others.
Public Campaign also receives funding from the liberal Ford Foundation, the Common Cause Education Fund, and Barbra Streisand’s The Streisand Foundation, among other foundations and private donors.
Stephen Seok was one of the IRS agents who wrote threatening letters to conservative groups. After doing so, he was given a promotion.
In June 2013, it was reported that two IRS employees had violated government ethics rules at a 2010 conference when they received $1,100 in free food and other items. One of them was Fred Schindler, the director of implementation oversight at the IRS Affordable Care Act office. The other was Donald Toda, a California-based employee. Obama did not fire them. Instead, he gave both of them paid leave. By comparison, in 1981, President Reagan fired 11,359 air-traffic controllers who had been illegally striking.
In June 2013, it was reported that The National Organization for Marriage, a conservative organization, had forensic evidence which proved that its donors’ private information had been illegally leaked by the IRS. The IRS employees who illegally leaked this private information could get five years in prison. However, Obama refused to file any charges against these IRS criminals.
The IRS illegally leaked the private information of Christine O’Donnell the same day that she announced that she would run for U.S. Senate as a tea party candidate.
According to White House visitor logs, Obama met with Colleen Kelley, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, on March 31, 2010. The very next day, IRS employees who belonged to that union union started to target tea party organizations.
In June 2013, Associated Press claimed that the IRS had targeted liberal groups, but refused to actually name any of those liberal groups.
In July 2013, it was reported that Obama had met with a key IRS official who was involved in the targeting just two days before the key official had told his colleagues how to target tea party groups. The Daily Caller reported:
The Obama appointee implicated in congressional testimony in the IRS targeting scandal met with President Obama in the White House two days before offering his colleagues a new set of advice on how to scrutinize tea party and conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, visited the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.
On April 25, 2012, Wilkins’ office sent the exempt organizations determinations unit “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS inspector general’s report.
In May 2013, Jon Stewart said of the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups:
“Well, congratulations, President Barack Obama. Conspiracy theorists who generally can survive in anaerobic environments have just had an algae bloom dropped on their f***ing heads, thus removing the last arrow in your pro-governance quiver: skepticism about your opponents.”
In May 2013, Michael Macleod-Ball, chief of staff at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, said of the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups:
“Even the appearance of playing partisan politics with the tax code is about as constitutionally troubling as it gets. With the recent push to grant federal agencies broad new powers to mandate donor disclosure for advocacy groups on both the left and the right, there must be clear checks in place to prevent this from ever happening again.”
In January 2014, it was reported that the Obama administration had chosen Barbara Kay Bosserman to head the investigation of the IRS’s targeting of tea party groups. Bosserman had donated more than $6,000 to Obama’s two presidential campaigns.
In January 2014, it was reported that since Sarah Palin had announced her candidacy for vice-President in 2008, the IRS had harassed her father six different times. Prior to that, the IRS had never contacted him during the 50 years that he had worked. The report did not specify how many of these six incidents happened under President Bush, or how many happened under President Obama.
In January 2014, it was reported that during the FBI’s so-called “investigation” of the IRS’s harassment of tea party groups, the FBI had not actually interviewed any tea party groups.
In January 2014, it was reported that the IRS had demanded that Friends of Abe (a conservative organization whose members work in the entertainment industry) give the IRS enhanced access to its security protected website (which included its secret membership list), even though such a demand was not standard IRS procedure. In addition, even though the organization had applied to the IRS for tax free status two years earlier, the IRS had still not made a decision regarding the application.
In February 2014, Obama said that there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” in the IRS’s actions.
In February 2014, it was reported that during Obama’s presidency, 100% of the established 501(c)(4) groups that had been audited by the IRS were conservative.
In February 2014, when Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly asked Obama about the IRS harassment of tea party groups, Obama said “These kinds of things keep on surfacing, in part because you and your TV station will promote them.”
In May 2014, it was reported that tea party donors had been audited by the IRS at ten times the rate of the general population.
In May 2014, it was reported that the IRS had illegally ignored four Freedom of Information requests from Judicial Watch between May 2013 and October 2013. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit in October 2013, and was finally able to get the information in May 2014. It showed that the orders for the IRS to harass tea party members had come from IRS headquarters in Washington D.C. It also showed that U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan) had pressured the IRS to shut down tea party organizations.
In June 2014, the IRS claimed that Lerner’s emails to outside agencies from January 2009 through April 2011 had been “lost” when her hard drive “crashed.” Also in June 2014, the IRS claimed to have “lost” the emails from six additional IRS employees who were relevant to this scandal when their hard drives “crashed.” One of these IRS employees was Nikole Flax, who had been chief of staff to former IRS commissioner Steven Miller. Flax had made 31 visits to the White House during the time that the IRS had been targeting tea party groups. However, a private company called Sonasoft had a contract with the IRS since 2005 to back up all of the IRS’s emails. The company keeps multiple and redundant backup copies of all the IRS’s emails. The company advertised itself by saying “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to back up their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your servers?” In addition, Norman Cillo, an Army veteran who had worked in intelligence, and who had also worked as a program manager at Microsoft, listed six reasons why the IRS’s claim about “losing” the emails must be false. Also, federal law requires the IRS to keep permanent, backup copies of all of its emails at an external location. And finally, the NSA has copies of all of the emails.
Although federal law requires the IRS to keep permanent, backup copies of all of its emails at an external location, in June 2014, it was reported that the IRS has canceled its email archiving contract with Sonasoft weeks after Lerner’s computer “crashed.”
In June 2014, it was reported that emails showed that Lerner had suggested that the IRS audit U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).
In June 2014, the IRS admitted that it had illegally given out information about the conservative group National Organization for Marriage.
In July 2014, it was reported that Lerner had called Republicans “crazies” and “assholes” in her emails.
In July 2014, it was reported that after Lerner’s hard drive “crashed,” the IRS deliberately destroyed it, without making any attempt to recover her emails. Top IRS officials told Congressional investigators that the hard drive was irreparably damaged before they destroyed it. However, IRS technical experts who had examined the hard drive before the IRS destroyed it said that this was not true, and that the data could have been recovered. Bruce Webster, partner at Provo, Utah-based IT consulting and expert witness firm Ironwood Experts, who has served as a consulting and IT expert in more than 80 civil lawsuits, said of this:
“… the IRS has no excuses for having handled this so poorly… This happens all the time… There are little storefront companies in just about every major city that can do this and there are forensic companies that can restore files and even do higher end recovery of data.”
In August 2014, the IRS admitted in a court filing that it had deliberately destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry after her computer “crashed.” In addition, an IRS official admitted, under penalty of perjury, that Lerner’s Blackberry had contained the same emails that had been on her computer.
In August 2014, the IRS finally admitted, under penalty of perjury, that Lerner’s emails had never really been “lost.” The IRS said the “missing” emails had been on its backup system all along.
On November 5, 2014, it was reported that the IRS had admitted to the court that it had not even tried to find Lerner’s “missing” emails in its backup system.
On November 21, 2014, it was reported that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration had obtained as many as 30,000 of Lerner’s “missing” emails from IRS disaster recovery tapes.
In February 2015, it was reported that Lerner had received a total of $129,300 in bonuses between 2010 and 2013.
As of April 2015, no criminal charges had been filed against Lerner.
On June 12, 2015, when the IRS missed a court ordered deadline for releasing 6,400 newly found emails from Lerner’s hard drive, the IRS said it would not be able to release those emails for another three months because it needed those three months to remove any duplicates.
In June 2015, government investigators said the IRS had “mistakenly” erased 422 backup tapes of IRS emails.
In July 2015, the House Oversight Committee released information which showed that in 2011, when Lerner’s hard drive was examined by John Minsek, a senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations unit, it contained “well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk.”
In July 2015, the House Oversight Committee released information which showed that the IRS had avoided searching five of six possible sources of electronic media for Lerner’s emails.
In July 2015, the House Oversight Committee released information which showed that some IRS officials, including some who were supervised by Lerner, had used a “wholly separate” instant messaging system called “Office Communication Server” that automatically erased its messages. None of these messages were archived. In an email conversation, Lerner had asked if the Office Communication Server archived its messages, and when she was told that it did not archive its messages, she responded by saying “Perfect.”
In July 2015, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan threatened to hold IRS employees, including IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, in contempt because they had illegally ignored the judge’s orders to release some of Lerner’s emails and other IRS documents. These same IRS employees had previously illegally ignored Freedom of Information requests and lawsuits for those same emails and other documents.

(Breaking News!) U.S. Intel fears hundreds of secrets leaked in Hillary's e-mails!

The Washington Times ^ | July 31, 2015 

The U.S. intelligence community is bracing for the possibility that former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s private email account contains hundreds of revelations of classified information from spy agencies and is taking steps to contain any damage to national security, according to documents and interviews Thursday.
The top lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committee have been notified in recent days that the extent of classified information on Mrs. Clinton’s private email server was likely far more extensive than the four emails publicly acknowledged last week as containing some sensitive spy agency secrets.
A U.S. official directly familiar with the notification, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said the notification of possibly hundreds of additional emails with classified secrets came from the State Department Freedom of Information Act office to the Office of Inspector General for the Director of National Intelligence.
The inspector general, the chief oversight watchdog for the entire U.S. intelligence community, subsequently sent a letter to the Republican chairmen and ranking Democrats of the Senate and House intelligence committees, the official said.
“We were informed by State FOIA officials that there are potentially hundreds of classified emails within the 30,000 provided for former Secretary Clinton,” DNI Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III late last week wrote Sen. Richard Burr, North Carolina Republican; Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat; Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican; and Rep. Adam B. Schiff, California Democrat.
“We note that none of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings but some included IC-derived classified information and should have been handled as classified, appropriately marked and transmitted via a secure server,” Mr. McCullough wrote the four lawmakers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ..

Desperate Dems Recycle Planned Parenthood's Mammogram Lie

Townhall.com ^ | July 31, 2016 | Michelle Malkin 


The gruesome hits keep coming for the baby butchers of Planned Parenthood. President Obama and his top health officials have one last-ditch response left: Quick, hide behind the imaginary mammogram machine!
As more graphic, money-grubbing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood's for-profit aborted baby parts racket emerge thanks to the investigative work of the Center for Medical Progress, desperate Democrats are in full deflection mode. U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell defended federal funding for Planned Parenthood this week by invoking the women's health shield. "What I think is important is that our HHS funding is focused on issues of preventative care for women, things like mammograms," Burwell told the House Education and Workforce Committee.
Just one teeny, tiny problem with this defense: It's a completely calculated fabrication.
The breast-cancer screening charade casts Planned Parenthood as a life-saving provider of vital health services unavailable anywhere else. You may recall that during the 2012 presidential cycle, Obama himself falsely claimed during a debate that the abortion provider administers mammograms to "millions" of women -- and liberal CNN moderator Candy Crowley let him get away with it.
On cue, Hollywood activists Scarlett Johansson, Eva Longoria and Kerry Washington all attacked the GOP ticket for wanting to "end" funding for "cancer screenings" by cutting off government subsidies for Planned Parenthood's bloody billion-dollar abortion business. _The celebrities in the White House and Tinseltown took their script straight from Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood's senior director of medical services, who purported to speak for countless women for whom Planned Parenthood is "the only way" they can gain access to mammograms. __(If the name sounds familiar, Nucatola is the same wine-swishing Josephine Mengele who was exposed on tape by the Center for Medical Progress two weeks ago lolling through a business lunch negotiating payments for aborted baby parts.)
Once again, it was undercover pro-life journalists who unmasked the truth.
An investigation of 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, conducted by pro-life group Live Action, confirmed that the abortion provider does not perform breast-cancer screenings. "We don't provide those services whatsoever," a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona confessed on tape.
Planned Parenthood's Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kan., admitted: "We actually don't have a, um, mammogram machine at our clinics."
Even the liberal Washington Post doled out a three (out of four) Pinocchio rating for the White House's mammogram lies. "The problem here is that Planned Parenthood does not perform mammograms or even possess the necessary equipment to do so," the paper's resident fact-checker reported. "As such, the organization certainly does not 'provide' mammograms in the strict sense. Instead, its clinics provide referrals and direct low-income women toward resources to help pay for the procedure. These services are by no means unique to Planned Parenthood. In fact, the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the American Cancer Society provide them, as well."
As I've pointed out previously, Planned Parenthood's purported "referral services" to outside mammogram facilities are negligible -- especially given the widespread availability of these and other free and low-cost breast and cervical cancer screening services across the country supported by both private and public grants.
Reluctant to do its job and just call out the president as an outright liar, The Washington Post fell short of giving Obama the full four-Pinocchio treatment for his Planned Parenthood mammogram propagandizing, but acknowledged that he has repeated the lies "too many times in one form or another for this to be considered just playing with words to generate a misleading impression."
The Obama HHS apparently needs to be reminded of its own review exposing the mammography deception. In June 2012, the agency responded to a request for information about how many Planned Parenthood clinics were certified to operate mammogram facilities. "Our search did not find any documents pertinent to your request," HHS told the Alliance Defense Fund.
Zip. Zilch. None. Nada.
Pro-life investigative journalist Lila Rose of Live Action has it right: "It is an alarming dereliction of duty that the Secretary of Health and Human Services refuses to view investigative reports that clearly demonstrate that Planned Parenthood, who receives close to half a million taxpayer dollars a year from the federal government, is engaged in the selling and trafficking of aborted baby body parts for profit," she said this week. "Ms. Burwell should be investigating Planned Parenthood, not covering for them."
Ladies, open your eyes and hearts. Watch the videos for yourselves. Get the facts. Unmask the lies. The cackling profiteers of Planned Parenthood don't care about your breasts. They're too busy putting price tags on the baby hearts, livers, lungs and limbs swirling around in bloody pie plates, stacked in their "research" labs, subsidized with your tax dollars and sold to the highest bidders. For "preventative care," of course.

OBAMA SPENT $7 BILLION TO BRING ELECTRICITY TO AFRICA, FAILED MISERABLY!

Frontpage Mag ^ | 08/01/2015 | Daniel Greenfield 


You can take any Obama policy and boil it down to "Billions wasted" and "ultimately unsuccessful".
One of his lesser known plans involved electrifying Africa. You can guess how that went.
When President Barack Obama made his first presidential visit to Kenya over the weekend, he visited not just his ancestral home, but one of the target countries in his $7 billion signature foreign aid initiative, Power Africa.
Launched in 2013, Power Africa aims to boost electricity access in Sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative has prioritized expanding the continent’s capacity to generate electricity, with an additional focus on small-scale renewable energy investments.
Obama + Green Energy + Third World Aid is such a surefire formula for success that nothing could possibly have gone wrong.
In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to expand the grid across most of the countryside, leaving the majority of Kenyans “under grid,” or within a half-mile of power grid infrastructure. The same holds in several other African countries.
Yet the electrification rate in Kenya is still only 30 percent, and in our data just 5 percent of rural households and 20 percent of private businesses within a half-mile of the infrastructure have electricity. The low connection rate holds even years after the grid is in place.
At least, unlike most Obama policies, it didn't
1. Kill anyone


2. Leave everyone worse off
3. Lead to a civil war
But give it time...
Even after the households in our study had paid in full for their electricity connections, it took seven months on average for electricity to flow for the first time. Once connected, households experience regular blackouts — sometimes lasting days or weeks — due to a shortage of maintenance staff and materials. Given these conditions, it’s really no wonder that so few Kenyans have chosen to connect to the power grid.
I suppose that answers the question of whether Obama would do any better at running Kenya than he did America. But at least he was better at it than that idiot, George W. Bush. Right?
As President Obama’s motorcade pulled up on Sunday to a community health center run by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in this picturesque coastal city, people on the streets held signs that read “Thanks PEPFAR.” It was a reference to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started by President George W. Bush.
Obama has been widely applauded for distinguishing himself from Bush’s policies, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. But across this continent, many Africans wish Obama was more like Bush in his social and health policies, particularly in the fight against HIV/AIDS — one of the former president’s signature foreign policy aid programs.
Bush poured billions of dollars into the effort to combat the spread of the disease that once threatened to consume a generation of young Africans, and as Obama has spent two days touring South Africa, the shadow of his predecessor has trailed him.
Africa knows Obama is worse than Bush.

KERRY: IRAN'S "DEATH TO AMERICA" DOESN'T MEAN THEY WANT TO KILL US!

Frontpage Mag ^ | 08/01/2015 | Daniel Greenfield 

Secretary of State John Kerry is still seeking a nuanced explanation for Iran's government saying, "Death to America". He called the Iranian government's cries of "Death to America" "not helpful" and suggested that the Supreme Leader might not really mean it.
And now Kerry would like to emphasize that aside from the "Death to America" chants and the nuclear bombs and constant threats of war, at no timewas he made aware of an Iranian plan to destroy America.
When Kerry appeared before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday to defend the Iran nuclear agreement, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) asked him about Tehran’s policy in the light of the “death to America” chants common at events presided over by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hasan Rouhani.
“It is the policy of the ayatollah – if you can answer for him – that Iran wants to destroy the United States?” Poe asked Kerry. “Is that still their policy, as far as you know?”
[Kerry:]  “I don’t believe they’ve said that. I think they’ve said ‘Death to America’ in their chants, but I have not seen this specific.”
“Well, I kind of take that to mean that they want us dead,” Poe said. “That would seem like that would be their policy. He said that. That – you don’t think that’s their policy?” …
“I think they have a policy of opposition to us and of great enmity, but I have no specific knowledge of a plan by Iran to actually destroy us,” Kerry replied.
Well there are two options.
1. Iran's leaders keep saying things they don't mean... which means we probably shouldn't trust them not to go nuclear despite the deal
2. They do mean what they say... in which case we know why they want the nukes
So does Iran have a "Death to America" policy? Here you go, John.
In response to a question by a parliamentarian on how long this battle will continue, Khamenei said,“Battle and jihad are endless because evil and its front continue to exist. … This battle will only end when the society can get rid of the oppressors’ front with America at the head of it, which has expanded its claws on human mind, body and thought. … This requires a difficult and lengthy struggle and need for great strides.”
Sounds like a policy.
In case this is at all confusing, here's a Death to America mural in Tehran. (from Ali Abbas.)

Those are falling bombs and skulls.
Is there an actual plan? No of course not. It's all just hypothetical stuff. Metaphors. Words to appease the "hardliners". Just ask the Revolutionary Guard.
“America, with its strategic ignorance, does not have a full understanding of the power of the Islamic Republic,” Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami said in a televised interview. “We have recognized America’s military strategy, and have arranged our abilities, and have identified centers in America [for attack] that will create a shock.”
“We will conduct such a blow in which they [America] will be destroyed from within,” Salami said.
At no point in time was Kerry aware of this... or anything else.

Not Humans?

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Fleeing!

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Jobs!

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A person?

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A deal...any deal

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Worry?

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An E-Mail

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Just right!

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Another Deal

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Iran Deal

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Green!

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In the 1970's

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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Barack Obama Makes Birth Certificate Joke on Kenya Trip!

NBC News ^ | 07/25/2015 | ELIZABETH CHUCK 

If you can't beat members of the "birther" movement, join 'em.
That's the approach President Barack Obama took on Saturday night in Kenya, his father's homeland, when he made a wisecrack about his birthplace — which suspicious critics have harped on for years.
"Some of my critics back home might be suggesting I'm here to look for my birth certificate," Obama said while making a toast at a state dinner hosted by President Uhuru Kenyatta. "That's not the case."
In 2011, Obama made his birth certificate public after so-called birthers questioned his eligibility to be president, claiming he was not a U.S. citizen. The certificate lists Honolulu, Hawaii, as his place of birth.
But the controversy persisted, with birthers insisting the detailed birth certificate was a fake, and that the president was in fact born in Kenya. The issue resurfaced earlier this week when outspoken Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio told CNN he still believes the birth certificate was forged.
Obama's quip during the Kenyan state dinner was met with laughs.
His visit to Kenya marks the first time a sitting U.S. president has traveled to the East African nation, and fulfilled a wish of many Kenyans, who see him as one of their own. On Friday evening, Obama reconnected with Kenyan family, some of whom were present at Saturday night's dinner.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...

Clinton Lies: I did not send or get classified emails on private account!

Reuters ^ | 7/25/15 | Alana Wise 

U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Saturday that she did not use a private email account to send or receive classified information while she was secretary of state, in response to a government inspector's letter this week.
"I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time," Clinton said at a campaign stop in Iowa.
The email controversy has dogged Clinton's bid for the presidency, fuelling worries that the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination has tried to sidestep transparency and record-keeping laws.
At least four emails from the private email account that Clinton used while secretary of state contained classified information, Inspector General Charles McCullough, who oversees U.S. intelligence agencies, told members of Congress in a letter on Thursday.
Clinton said on Saturday she had "no idea" what were the emails mentioned in the letter.
McCullough's letter said a sampling of 40 of about 30,000 emails sent or received by Clinton found at least four that contained information the government had classified as secret.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...

Ted Cruz to GOP leader: You lied!

Washington Post ^ | July 24, 2015 | Mike DeBonis

Senators generally refrain from impugning their colleagues on the floor, a practice codified in Senate Rule XIX: “No Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.”

The penalty for breaching that rule is to be ordered to take one’s seat — in effect, to sit down and shut up. But no senator rose to make a point of order before Cruz left the floor.

“It’s unusual, certainly,” Betty K. Koed, the Senate’s official historian, said of Cruz’s remarks. “The Senate prides itself on being an environment of polite, respectful decorum, but this happens from time to time.”

In a 1995 speech on Senate decorum, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) denounced senators who accuse their colleagues of dissembling: “The use of such maledicent language on the Senate floor is quite out of place, and to accuse other senators of being liars is to skate on very, very thin ice, indeed.”
Rule XIX was nearly invoked in 1988 after Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) accused Sen. H. John Heinz III (R-Pa.) and others of being “spokesmen” for “special interest groups.” But after Heinz rose in protest, Gramm withdrew his remarks.

Cruz’s statement would seem to be a more serious breach of floor comity than Gramm’s. But they both fall well short of other, more distant floor antics — such as the time, during debate on the Compromise of 1850, that Henry S. Foote of Mississippi pulled a pistol on fellow Democrat Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, or the 1902 fistfight between South Carolina Democrats Benjamin R. Tillman and John L. McLaurin.
---
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

Be careful: Census Bureau database breached by hackers!

Washington Times ^ | 7/24/15 | Andrew Blake 

Hackers have breached a computer network used by the U.S. Census Bureau and have made off with “non-confidential” information from a government database that has since been published online, the agency admits.
“The U.S. Census Bureau is investigating an IT security incident relating to unauthorized access to non-confidential information on an external system that is not part of the Census Bureau internal network. Access to the external system has been restricted while our IT forensics team investigates,” Census Bureau spokesman Michael Cook said in a statement on Thursday first published by The Register.
“Security and data stewardship are integral to the Census Bureau mission. We will remain vigilant in continuing to take every necessary precaution to protect all information,” Mr. Cook said.
Earlier in the week, individuals affiliated with the hacktivist group Anonymous claimed that they had compromised the Census Bureau and had subsequently published the contents of a breached database, the likes of which included hundreds of usernames and addresses, among other sensitive details.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...

Friday, July 24, 2015

Kerry: Any action by Israel would provide justification for Iran’s pursuit of nukes!

Hot Air ^ | 12:01 pm | Ed Morrissey 

Secretary of State John Kerry sat down with Matt Lauer for an interview on Today earlier, defending the deal with Iran — and telling Israel to cool their jets, almost literally. In doing so, Kerry managed to turn Israel into the aggressor and Iran into a passive actor who might somehow decide they need a bomb only if Israel attacked them. It’s a strange reversal, and one that confirms the impression that the Obama administration has become the lawyers for the mullahs (via Jeff Dunetz):
Lauer points out to Kerry that opposition to the Iran deal encompasses practically the whole Israeli political spectrum. Kerry responds by noting that a few Israelis support it — “the former head of Shin Bet … the former head of Mossad.” Kerry opts to ignore the fact that representatives of both major alliances in Israeli politics, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his erstwhile opponent in the last election Isaac Herzog, both strenuously rejected Kerry’s deal. Herzog, whom the Obama administration and Kerry in particular hoped would be a more pliable partner in US-Israeli relations, said that Kerry and Obama would “unleash a lion from its cage” with the deal, and that it would “affect our borders. and it will affect the safety of my children.”
When Lauer hinted that the deal puts us at odds with Israel if they chose to take action, Kerry responded that any such action would provide justification for Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons:
Lauer: Do you think because many in Israel including the prime minister are very uncomfortable with the deal that the it’s now making it more likely than two years ago, for example, that Israel might attempt some unilateral action — military or cyber attack against Iran?
Kerry: Well I think that would be an enormous mistake. A huge mistake with grave consequences for Israel and the region, and I don’t think it’s necessary. The fact is we will have for 15 years a restraint on Iran that absolutely prevents it from developing a weapon. They can’t enrich beyond 3.67%. You can’t make a bomb at 3.67% they will have only 300 kilograms in a stockpile of enriched uranium. You can’t make a bomb with that. They would have inspections on a daily basis the in their facilities.
That assumes, of course, that the Iranians will never cheat on the agreement. That seems like a fair assumption, except if you take into consideration all of the times they’ve cheated on other agreements over the last 20+ years on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But other than that …
Lauer: If the Israelis are not convinced and they take action where would it leave us the? Would we support Israel? Would the treaty go up in smoke?
Kerry: If they bombed them, sure Matt. I presume Iran would have a reason to say this is why we need a bomb. And what Iran will decide to do is dig deeper because Israel doesn’t have the ability to stop, nor do we, unless we went to all out war and literally annihilated Iran which I don’t are hear people talking about. So if you proceed with a normal military operation, you are talking about rolling back the program for two to three years. Then what do you do? And if you did that what will Iran’s response be? They are likely to decide now you have proven why we need a bomb and they will dig deeper and go get it.
Er, what? Kerry seems to forget that it’s not Israel who has spent the last three decades-plus issuing threats to wipe Iran off the map. Iran’s mullahs and their handpicked politicians have repeatedly, even joyously, pledged to destroy Israel ever since the 1979 revolution put them in power. That’s been the purpose of their pursuit of nuclear weapons, along with imposing their own regional hegemony through nuclear terrorism on top of all the other forms of terrorism they have been employing since seizing power. In fact, Supreme Leader Ali Khameini codified the regime’s public posture on the “elimination of Israel” in November of last year, in what the Iranians must have thought would be taken as a sign of moderation.
Not surprisingly, the Israelis object to this idea, and they’re pretty sure that the nukes Iran has tried to build for two decades had Tel Aviv as their targets. They don’t want to wait until the missiles are in the air to ensure their survival. Their attempts to stop or slow down this nuclear pursuit aren’t why Iran thinks it needs the bomb, and to make that kind of statement is either willful obtuseness or astounding naïveté. Either way, it hardly makes “trust us” a great option for Israel — especially since Kerry and Obama refused to demand guarantees for Israel as part of the deal.
Kerry’s not going to be all alone in selling this crap-sandwich deal to the American public and Congress. Dave Weigel reports in the Washington Post that MoveOn will come out of mothballs to conduct protests at August town-hall meetings in favor of the deal, taking a page from 2009 Tea Party protests against ObamaCare. That comparison probably won’t last for long, though:
But MoveOn’s most ambitious goal is to turn the long August recess of 2015 into the summer of peace. The inspiration comes — just a little — from the other side. In 2009, the last Democratic Congress was almost brought to heel at town halls, a combination of grassroots activism and top-level strategizing by groups like Americans for Prosperity. Tea Party activists packed the once-sleepy meetings of their local representatives. Some viral videos made some voters into celebrities; others made congressmen into former congressmen. (The 60-day countdown for congressional action on the deal takes the recess into consideration; had the deal been finished earlier, the countdown would have lasted 30 days.) …
There are two new, stiff challenges for any effort like this. One: In 2009, members of Congress discovered that they did not like being yelled at and seeing the videos show up on TV. Since then, “tele-townhalls” and smaller, invite-only forums have become more popular, and traditional town halls have started to decrease. According to Legistorm, the 535 voting members of Congress held a total of 588 public meetings in the 2014 recess — down from an already paltry 792 the previous summer.
Problem two: MoveOn will have company. Galland framed its campaign as an answer an ongoing, expensive campaign by opponents of the deal. The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, is supplementing one ad campaign that could cost as much as $20 million. But the bulk of AIPAC’s effort is one-on-one lobbying, especially among safe Democratic members of Congress who balk at casting votes “against Israel.” Last week, at its annual Washington conference, Christians United for Israel announced the creation of a political fund to move Congress against the deal.
Good luck with that. The more that Kerry talks about this deal, the worse it sounds. They might do better to form a barrier outside of State to keep Kerry quiet.
Update: I changed “justify” to “provide justification for” in both the headline and the post, which is more accurately what Kerry asserted.

Cruz on Senate Floor, accuses GOP Leader, McConnell of Lying (Ouch!)

AP / Yahoo News ^ | July 24, 2015 

In a stunning attack on a leader of his own party, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of lying to him and said he couldn't be trusted.
At issue were assurances Cruz claimed McConnell, R-Ky., had given that there was no deal to allow a vote to renew the federal Export-Import Bank — a little-known federal agency that has become a rallying cry for conservatives. Cruz rose to deliver his remarks moments after McConnell had lined up a vote on the Export-Import Bank for coming days.
"It saddens me to say this. I sat in my office, I told my staff the majority leader looked me in the eye and looked 54 Republicans in the eye. I cannot believe he would tell a flat-out lie, and I voted based on those assurances that he made to each and every one of us," Cruz said.
"What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie."
The majority leader was not on the Senate floor when Cruz issued his attack, and ignored reporters who tried to ask him about it in the Capitol's hallways. A spokesman said McConnell would have no response.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...

Mammoths killed by abrupt climate change!

http://phys.org ^ | July 23, 2015 | Provided by: University of Adelaide 


This image shows mammoth vertebrae in ice, Yukon Territory, Canada. Credit: Photo Kieren Mitchell, University of Adelaide
*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
New research has revealed abrupt warming, that closely resembles the rapid man-made warming occurring today, has repeatedly played a key role in mass extinction events of large animals, the megafauna, in Earth's past.
Using advances in analysing ancient DNA, radiocarbon dating and other geologic records an international team led by researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University of New South Wales (Australia) have revealed that short, rapid warming events, known as interstadials, recorded during the last ice age or Pleistocene (60,000-12,000 years ago) coincided with major extinction events even before the appearance of man.
Published today in Science, the researchers say by contrast, extreme cold periods, such as the last glacial maximum, do not appear to correspond with these extinctions.
"This abrupt warming had a profound impact on climate that caused marked shifts in global rainfall and vegetation patterns," said University of Adelaide lead author and Director of the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA, Professor Alan Cooper.
"Even without the presence of humans we saw mass extinctions. When you add the modern addition of human pressures and fragmenting of the environment to the rapid changes brought by global warming, it raises serious concerns about the future of our environment."
The researchers came to their conclusions after detecting a pattern, 10 years ago, in ancient DNA studies suggesting the rapid disappearance of large species. At first the researchers thought these were related to intense cold snaps.
*****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Abseiling into Natural Trap Cave, Wyoming -- Professor Alan Cooper descending the 100ft pitch into the cave to excavate ice age megafaunal bones. Credit: Photo by Laura Weyrich, University of Adelaide
*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
However, as more fossil-DNA became available from museum specimen collections and through improvements in carbon dating and temperature records that showed better resolution through time, they were surprised to find the opposite. It became increasingly clear that rapid warming, not sudden cold snaps, was the cause of the extinctions during the last glacial maximum.
The research helps explain further the sudden disappearance of mammoths and giant sloths that became extinct around 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.
"It is important to recognize that man still played an important role in the disappearance of the major mega fauna species," said fellow author Professor Chris Turney from the University of New South Wales.
"The abrupt warming of the climate caused massive changes to the environment that set the extinction events in motion, but the rise of humans applied the coup de grace to a population that was already under stress."
In addition to the finding, the new statistical methods used to interrogate the datasets (led by Adelaide co-author Professor Corey Bradshaw) and the new data itself has created an extraordinarily precise record of climate change and species movement over the Pleistocene.
This new dataset will allow future researchers a better understanding of this important period than has ever been possible before.
Explore further: Giant moa had climate change figured out
More information: Science, www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aac4315
Journal reference: Science
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-07-mammoths-abrupt-climate.html#jCp

Apology?

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Stop the excuses

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FINE, Fine!

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He'll call later!

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AXIS

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Trust

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Sluggish

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warm seat

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So Damn Stupid!

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Consider

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Reaching Out

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Real Indian

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FINALLY!

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Black Lives

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TIME

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Thursday, July 23, 2015

Obama: New US Citizens Can Skip the Part of Oath That Includes Defending Country!

Gateway Pundit ^ | 07/22/15 | Jim Hoft 

Under Obama America is becoming a country without borders. And now it’s becoming a country without loyalty or commitment.

US Soldiers take the oath of citizenship at Camp Victory in Baghdad in 2007.
Barack Obama’s US Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday announced they will no longer require new citizens to pledge to “bear arms on behalf of the United States.” It doesn’t fit with Obama’s vision of America. The Examiner reported:
US Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday said it will no longer require incoming U.S. citizens to pledge that they will “bear arms on behalf of the United States” or “perform noncombatant service” in the Armed Forces as part of the naturalization process.
Those lines are in the Oath of Allegiance that people recite as they become U.S. citizens. But USCIS said people “may” be able to exclude those phrases for reasons related to religion or if they have a conscientious objection.
USCIS said people with certain religious training or with a “deeply held moral or ethical code” may not have to say the phrases as they are naturalized.
The agency said people don’t have to belong to a specific church or religion to use this exemption, and may attest to U.S. officials administering the oath that they have these beliefs.
(Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...

Intel Advocates For More H1B Visas; Lays Off American Workers

ValueWalk ^ | July 22, 2015 | Aman Jain 

Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) recently laid off more American workers, sending a strong and clear message that the company will continue its policy of hiring many foreign workers.. However, laying off American workers in large numbers to replace them with foreign labor has become a political debate, notes a report from Breitbart.

Is Intel being unfair to employees?

Business Insider notes that even though the chipmaker is adamant about laying off American workers, it is advocating for an increase in H1B visa workers. Back in March, Sen. Jeff Sessions, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, rebuked Intel for swapping American workers with the cheaper foreign H1B visa holders.
It was also reported that Intel employees have been laid off based on a policy related to “the level of performance-based stock grants they received” instead of its standard annual review-based lay-off process. CEO Brian Krzanich reportedly acknowledged that this policy will create anger and dissatisfaction among some  devoted employees, but this is how a ‘meritocracy works.’ He went on to say that the company will continue this policy in future as well. What many employees do not know is if an employee is laid off at Intel, he will never be eligible for rehire by the company.

Intel and others favoring immigration reforms

Intel. along with other tech biggies such as Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). are advocating for comprehensive immigration reform, along with urging lawmakers to support these increases. Intel supports the I-Squared bill, which seeks to significantly increase the number of H1B visa immigrants allowed in the country.
CNN Money reported that Intel is expected to cut its total workforce of 107,600 by 5%, which is 5,380 jobs. In an internal mail to employees last month, Krzanich stated the company would undertake a restructuring plan that may again require trimming of the workforce. Krzanich did not mention any specific number of job cuts, but a report by The Oregonian stated it would be approximately 3% of the total workers worldwide.
As of 12 pm EDT Wednesday, Intel shares were down 0.79% at $28.49. Year to date, the stock is down over 22%, while in the last twelve months it is down over 18%.

Absent Strong Action, Medicare Goes the Way of Greece

RCM ^ | 07/23/2015 | Joseph Antos 

Greece owes $320 billion to its creditors and cannot repay the loans. Like Greece, Medicare is also accumulating an unaffordable mountain of debt. And both Greece and Medicare are more likely to default on their debts than to adopt the highly unpopular reforms needed to pay them off.
Wednesday's news from the Medicare Trustees may not seem that dire.
The headline is comforting, but misleading. Medicare's Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund-also known as Part A-will run short of money, but not until 2030. Starting that year, Part A benefits can be paid out only to the extent that money comes into the trust fund, mostly from payroll taxes. That's the same date predicted by the Trustees last year, so Medicare's financial situation does not seem to be worsening.
But the HI depletion date tells only part of the story. Medicare also pays for physician and outpatient services under Part B and prescription drugs under Part D. Because Part B and Part D automatically receive additional funding from general revenues, they remain solvent indefinitely. But that does not mean we don't have to worry about the rising costs of those benefits.
In fact, we are seeing a shift of Medicare services out of the hospital and into outpatient settings that are often more convenient for the patient and more cost-effective for the program. Part A services accounted for 50 percent of Medicare spending in 2008. By 2014, that share had fallen to 44 percent. That shift of spending makes Part A's financial outlook better because the money is being spent in other parts of the program that do not have insolvency dates.
We can see this more clearly by examining the funds flowing into and out of the program.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearmarkets.com ...

Thousands rally in Times Square against Iran deal

American Thinker ^ | 07/23/2015 | Rick Moran 


An estimated 10,000 people jammed Times Square in New York City to rally against the Iran nuclear agreement.

Apparently, that wasn't enough people to catch the attention of the New York Times, who feature a $15-an-hour minimum wage protest of a couple of dozen people on the front page, but not thousands rallying against the Iran deal.

New York Daily News:

Thousands protesters packed Times Square Wednesday to rally against the Obama administration’s controversial nuclear deal with Iran. Speakers, including former Gov. George Pataki, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), and conservative commentator Monica Crowley, called on Congress to scuttle the deal at the Stop Iran

 Daily News Chairman and Publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman was the first to address the crowd. “We have to stop the suicidal agreement that permits Iran to keep a nuclear infrastructure,” Zuckerman said. “We have to stop a terrorist state going nuclear when even now it menaces its neighbors.”

Many in the crowd held signs calling on Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to lead Dems against the deal. “Where’s Chuck? Kill this deal!” the crowd chanted.

Congress has 60 days to review the pact between six world powers and Iran. In Washington, top Obama officials spent the day pitching the deal to members of Congress, but some lawmakers said Secretary of State Kerry’s sales job rubbed them the wrong way.

Indeed, Google News shows only a handful of news outlets who bothered to cover the rally, most of them foreign sources.  CNN has nothing on the rally, either.  The Washington Post front page features a story about Kerry's salesmanship, but not a word about the rally.


(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...

White House acknowledges ‘side’ deals between Iran, IAEA

The Hill ^ | 07/23/2015 | Jordan Fabian 

National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Wednesday acknowledged the existence of so-called “side” agreements between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Rice said the deals involve Iran accounting for past military uses of its nuclear program, but rejected GOP assertions that this represented “secret” side deals to the Iranian nuclear agreement.
Rice said the documents between Iran and the IAEA are not public, but the administration has been informed on their contents and will share details with members of Congress in a classified briefing on Capitol Hill. “We’re satisfied with them and we will share the contents of those briefings in full in a classified session with the Congress, So there's nothing in that regard that we know that they won't know.”
Republicans have been demanding to see the Iran-IAEA agreements and have criticized the administration for not yet making the public.
“That we are only now discovering that parts of this dangerous agreement are being kept secret begs the question of what other elements may also be secret and entirely free from public scrutiny,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a statement.
Congress is reviewing the Iran nuclear deal, which lifts sanctions on Tehran in exchange for its concessions on its nuclear program.
President Obama has hailed the deal as a major win for the United States that will keep Tehran from getting nuclear weapons and make the Middle East more safe. Critics argue it does too little to prevent Iranian aggression and that it could leave Israel open to an attack.
The talk of secret side deals could hurt administration efforts to defeat legislation aimed at undermining the deal, and Rice took aim at the comments.
She said it was “no secret” that Iran and the IAEA were negotiating an agreement on possible military-related nuclear activities.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...

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