The President as Sergeant Schultz – Tea Party Nation

The President as Sergeant Schultz – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

How is it that, time and again, the most powerful man on the planet doesn’t seem to have a clue what is happening in his own government? Famed for never accepting blame for anything, the more I see President Obama these days, the more I am reminded of Sergeant Hans Schultz of the TV sitcom, “Hogan’s Heroes”, that ran from 1965 to 1971.

The wonderful Hans Banner the actor who played the prisoner of war guard left an indelible legacy with his repeated denials, “I know nothing. I hear nothing, and I see nothing”; often all three at the same time to avoid being implicated in Col. Robert E. Hogan’s manipulation of Werner Klemperer’s Col. Wilhelm Klink, the camp commandant of Luftwaffe Stalag 13.

Obama’s way of dealing with everything has been to talk it to death and he has been responding to questions from the press, claiming that the accusations are all “a sideshow” or that “there’s no there, there.” It is not working. In the case of Benghazi-Gate, his lies are so blatant that it has gone from an embarrassment to a full-fledged cover-up.

Similarly, the Attorney General, Eric Holder, has relied on claiming ignorance and putting distance between himself and his Department of Justice’s increasing list of scandals, from Fast and Furious that earned him a citation for contempt of Congress in June 2012 for his lack of candor. His latest “I know nothing” testimony regarding the DOJ’s seizure of the phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters makes one wonder why the President continues to retain him in office or, for that matter, why he isn’t in jail for stonewalling about Fast and Furious, an ATF gun-running scheme that got a border patrol and ICE agent killed.

Those of us who follow the President closely know that he has been lying consistently before and since being elected–twice. His two “memoirs” have been picked apart by reporters who have written their own books on the subject. It would appear that Obama picked up the habit of lying early on in life as the son of a Kenyan who had abandoned his mother, the step-son of an Indonesian whom his mother also divorced, and a man who remarkably was a friend or associate of a long list of shady characters you might more likely find in a detective novel.

He dismissed his close friendship with former 60s Weatherman terrorist, Bill Ayers, as someone who lived in his Chicago neighborhood. He had to throw his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, under the bus when it became known he said many bad things about America over the course of the many years Obama was a member of his church. The man who conducted Obama’s wedding and christened his children said of 9/11, “the chickens have come home to roost” as if it was America’s fault it was attacked.

Even so, this is small potatoes compared to the way the many “renewable energy” companies received billions in government loans and rapidly went bankrupt. It turned out that many of the many of the men who created those companies where major “bundlers” and contributors to his 2009 presidential campaign. Of the most famous bankruptcy, Solyndra, Obama said, “That was not our program, per se. Congress-Democrats and Republicans—put together a loan guarantee program…” Maybe so, but we have not seen such a program lose so much money in such a short time, betting on solar and wind power projects. The taxpayers got stuck with the bill. The number of actual “green” jobs ended up costing over a million dollars each to create.

Of his failed “stimulus” package, Obama said “Apparently there weren’t as many shovel ready jobs as we thought.” Before spending millions to allegedly revive the economy, you are supposed to know such things.

If not Benghazi-Gate, than the IRS targeting of conservative, patriot, and constitution education groups could provide the fulcrum to bring down Obama’s presidency. Despite his denials of knowledge about the program within the IRS to harass and deny these groups non-profit status, vital to raise donations and funding, and the firing of the IRS commissioner, this is a scandal with which ordinary taxpayers can identify, fearful of audits. Imagine now as the realization sinks in that it is the IRS that will be administering Obamacare!

Up to now Obama could count on the mainstream media to ignore much of the blunders, failures and lies that characterized his first term, but the scandals coalescing as his second term begins have a weight that includes the growing unhappiness of the White House press corps who are tired of being lied to or having to listen to press secretary Jay Carney speak to them as if they were a bunch of witless clowns.

It is said that “the fish stinks from the head” and what we are witnessing is an administration whose corrupt political practices have seeped deep into the government agencies for which Obama is responsible.

It is still too soon to know which scandal or combination of scandals will bring down his presidency, but it will only take a few more eye-witnesses and whistle-blowers to turn Obama into the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain and pulling the levers to fool Dorothy and her pals or, in our case, those of us who still believe laws should be obeyed and power should not be abused.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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A massive case of double standards – Tea Party Nation

A massive case of double standards – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

As the IRS scandal bursts upon America, there is a lot to talk about.  Tea Party and conservative groups are ordered to produce reams of evidence to support their request for non-profit status.  Some of the requests go well beyond what the IRS needs to determine if a group is a legitimate non-profit.

While the IRS is putting conservative groups through the wringer, there is one gigantic example of double standards at the IRS.   This case alone is compelling enough to demand at the very least a lot of IRS employees be fired or perhaps even the IRS be disbanded.

 What is it?

 While the IRS causes as many problems for conservative organizations as possible, liberal organizations get a completely free pass on everything. 

 Liberal groups or groups with connections to Obama are quickly approved for non-profit status.  Liberal groups that violate the rules governing their non-profit status get a free pass.

 No group more exemplifies this problem than Media Matters for America.

 Media Matters for America is a 501c3.  As such it is described as an educational non-profit, which means that its purpose must be to support the public good and it must, for the most part, avoid partisan activities.

 Media Matters has been nothing but partisan.  In fact, one would be hard pressed to find anything Media Matters has done that a sane person could call educational.

 Instead Media Matters has led a coordinated attack on Fox News.  It has colluded with the Obama Justice Department to smear anyone who dares to speak against the Obama Regime. 

 Media Matters engaged in a war against Fox News, that was called a guerilla warfare campaign of sabotage against Fox.

 edia Matters is one of a number of left wing tax-exempt groups that should be investigated for a violation of their tax-exempt status. 

 When Media Matters coordinated with the Justice Department to spin coverage of the Fast and Furious scandal, many experts viewed that as a complete violation of their status as a non-profit organization.

 Unfortunately for America, we will not see an investigation anytime soon.  The left has a simple philosophy.  The government exists to help the left grab power, maintain power and punish those who would oppose the left.

 The other culprit here is the tax code itself.  Neither Media Matters nor many of these other left wing groups would exist but for the fact the tax code allows for the creation of these non-profits.    The left learned long ago how to control and use non-profits to their advantage.

 The tax code is seven times longer than the Bible and unlike the Bible; there is no good news to be had.  It is time we abolished the entire Byzantine tax code.  If groups like Media Matters want to survive, let them do so without taxpayers subsidizing them. 

 While conservatives also use non-profits, that is still no reason to keep non-profits or the tax code.

 A tax code that gives someone like Barack Obama the tools to oppress those who disagree with them, is a tax code that is antithecal to liberty. It is a tax code that must be abolished in favor of a tax code that embraces and expands liberty.

It is time for the IRS to be disbanded.

 

Is the Obama Dam of Lies About to Burst? – Tea Party Nation

Is the Obama Dam of Lies About to Burst? – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Usually there are signs a dam is about to burst. Tiny cracks show up, the structure makes strange noises, and then, whoosh! That’s what we are witnessing as the President, the former Secretary of State, and the Attorney General struggle to keep the bulwark of lies and half-truths they have built intact. It is showing signs of collapse.

Liberals say absurd things all the time—mostly because they either don’t know the facts or because they prefer to ignore or obfuscate them. The current example is the shout-it-from-the-rooftops claim that Republicans are “politicizing” the events in Benghazi that left a U.S. ambassador and three security personnel dead.

In the wake of the House hearings on May 8th, the most elemental politics is at work within the White House and that is the decision to abandon Hillary Clinton. The decision to appoint her Secretary of State was political and, since the President sets foreign policy, it kept her wing of the party in the tent while affording the White House the opportunity to keep her conveniently on the road and largely out of the spotlight.

Name a single treaty or significant foreign policy achievement of Hillary Clinton’s time as Secretary of State. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nienta.

Consider the meltdown of influence the United States has had in the Middle East where the single act of a Tunisian peddler who committed suicide as a response to the harassment of the police set off a revolution that drove its dictator from office and then spread rapidly to Libya where Gaddafi was killed and to Egypt where its dictator (and ally of the U.S.) was driven from office with the President’s blessing. And, for two years, the U.S. has stood on the sidelines and watched as the Syrian dictator has slaughtered 70,000 Syrians, driving some 2.5 million to flee to Turkey and Jordan.

It has taken eight months since the September 11, 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate and a House committee hearing to learn the truth as to why repeated requests for increased security assets were denied in a nation that is still essentially a war zone between the north and the south. We still do not know who told available forces to stand down. The President and his regime call this “politicizing.”

Beyond Benghazi, every decision the President makes or chooses not to make has political implications. The choice to go to bed the night of the attack and then fly to a fundraiser the following day was political. As Commander-in-Chief he had responsibility to issue the orders to protect his diplomats—our diplomats—but he is also the Great Delegator and, as the noose tightens around Hillary, she is very expendable.

It’s a political decision to exploit the murders in a Connecticut elementary school to attack the Second Amendment and gun ownership. The response of ordinary people was to go out and buy a gun. Indeed, fear of the White House’s intentions has made the President the greatest gun salesman in the nation.

Even in the Obama Justice Department there is the odor of deception that still reeks from the bungled gun-running program called “Fast and Furious” which allowed guns purchased In the U.S. to be transferred to various Mexican drug cartels. The result, in one case, was a dead U.S. Border Patrol officer, an ICE agent, and an unknown number of Mexican cartel victims. It took a presidential executive order to throw a blanket of silence over the role of the Justice Department in this lethal debacle. That’s political.

Now we learn that the Justice Department obtained Associated Press phone records in a probe to discover the source of a leaked story. AP officials called it a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how a news organization gathers news. The ever-reliable, politically-correct, liberally oriented AP has become a crack in the dam.

The revelation that the Internal Revenue Service “targeted” the Tea Party, patriotic, and pro-Israel groups for special attention regarding their tax status now adds to a growing sense of a regime without any internal limits on its exercise of power.

The result is a period in which the barely concealed scorn of the President, his wife, and those around him in appointed and elected office has half the population outraged while the other half is content to live parasitically, not paying taxes, and receiving an amazing array of benefits which a bankrupt nation cannot afford.

When enough people—citizens, voters, taxpayers—think they are being lied to and betrayed by those in high office, the dam of lies will begin to show signs of bursting under the pressure of their pent up anger.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

 

Amnesty Bill is a Multi-Million Dollar Fraud – Tea Party Nation

Amnesty Bill is a Multi-Million Dollar Fraud – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Native-born and naturalized Americans who are currently seeking work are already competing with illegal immigrants—a term that the Associated Press says it will no longer use—or standing in line behind them as they sign up for all manner of welfare benefits. The official estimate of the number of illegal aliens—oops, undocumented aliens—in the nation is estimated to be eleven million, but if the “Gang of Eight” amnesty bill becomes law, it will act as a magnet to attract millions more.

As Roy Beck, the founder and president of NumbersUSA, points out, “If Congress passes the Senate Gang of Eight bill, it would be like re-creating ALL of the Top 20 cities in the United States, filling them entirely with foreign citizens and giving them lifetime work permits to compete with America’s struggling workers—in just ten years’ time.”

NumbersUSA analysts spent two weeks reading the 844-page bill, concluding that 33 million lifetime work permits would be given to foreign citizens in the first decade if the bill passes. A revised bill has 867 pages and, according to a Daily Caller article, “contains 999 references to waivers, exemptions, and political discretion”, more even than Obamacare.

That’s a lot of competition for jobs and it will hit those graduating from high school and college the hardest. Right now, the youth unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds is 11.7% and, among them, the African-American cohort’s rate it 20.1% and Hispanics’ rate is 12.6%. An additional 1.7 million young adults are not counted as “unemployed” because they are not in the labor force, meaning that they have given up looking for work due to lack of jobs. Do we really want to add millions of formerly illegal immigrants to the work force at this time?

The Center for Immigration Studies also analyzed the Gang of Eight amnesty bill and discovered that it is essentially a Get Out of Jail card:

The report, by Ronald Mortensen, a Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, shows that the token penalties, when they do exist, are not commensurate with the employment-related felonies committed by the majority of illegal aliens, nor are they commensurate with the benefits received by illegal aliens.

Just as unfortunate is the fact that millions of victims of these crimes are ignored while the amnestied illegals are rewarded and even benefit from the so-called penalties, as the monies actually go into a fund that provides services to the very people who paid the “penalties”.

“Illegal aliens will be rewarded for breaking laws for which American citizens are routinely punished,” said Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “For example, an American citizen would face a maximum penalty of ten years in prison and fines of up to $250,000 for using a fraudulent Social Security card, but under this bill the illegal alien would face a $1,000 penalty covering all his many offenses, a penalty which in many cases will be waived. Then, they would be issued a new Social Security number without any past bad credit or arrest records.”

View the full report at: http://cis.org/immigration-reform-amnesty-illegal-aliens-and-their-…
Dr. Mortensen discovered the following amnesties for illegal aliens and their employers:

Amnesty for the estimated 75 percent of illegal aliens committing Social Security fraud.

Amnesty from returning to home countries for 10 years before adjusting status.

Amnesty for illegal aliens committing Identity theft.

Amnesty for illegal aliens by officially authorizing them to continue committing identity theft by using fraudulently obtained Social Security numbers belonging to American citizens.

Amnesty for illegal aliens who have committed perjury on I-9 forms.

De-Facto amnesty from the token $1,000 penalty, since it effectively pre-pays services provided to illegal aliens.

Amnesty from existing exclusion, deportation, and removal orders:

While illegal aliens would be granted amnesty for crimes they have committed, government employees who discover Social Security fraud, identity theft, or perjury on I-9 forms while reviewing applications for provisional status would be prohibited from notifying victims, law enforcement, etc. with a threat of a $10,000 penalty. This is 10 times more than the $1,000 penalty paid by an illegal alien who has committed felony identity theft.

Amnesty for employers found to have employed illegal aliens or who are currently employing illegal aliens. Moreover, employers may continue to employ illegal aliens, accept fraudulent Social Security numbers, and renew falsified I-9 forms for those who apply for provisional status.

Amnesty for employers who did not withhold and/or submit payroll taxes for individuals illegally in the United States.

Amnesty for employers who violated labor laws by paying unfair wages, who failed to pay wages, etc.

Amnesty for employers who facilitated Social Security fraud and identity theft by providing or accepting false Social Security numbers.

While employers would be held harmless, government employees who find that employers violated the law while reviewing applications for temporary status would be prohibited from notifying the appropriate law enforcement authorities. If government employees do report tax or labor violations, they could face a fine of $10,000.

Thanks to the passage of Obamacare, the amnesty bill would increase the cost of the nationalized health care system. Betsy McCaughey, the lieutenant governor of New York from 1995 to 1998, in an April 29 letter in The Wall Street Journal, warned that “One looming cost is health care. Under the Obama health law, starting January 1, 2014 legal immigrants will be eligible for subsidized private health plans on the exchanges as soon as they arrive in the U.S.”

“The Senate Gang of Eight’s proposed bill will add $100 billion to the cost of Obamacare’s subsidies over the next decade by doubling the number of legal immigrants entering the country with green cards.” Ms. McCaughey noted that, in 2012, 484,072 immigrants entered that way. “The Gang of Eight plan will push it to about one million. About half of those green card holders will be eligible for the maximum assistance with premiums, subsidies and copays, totaling $9,000 per person, and more than 80% will qualify for at least some taxpayer-funded Obamacare subsidy.”

Little known or reported is the fact that the Schumer-Rubio bill includes two “slush funds” amounting to $150 million that would be used to fund groups like La Raza and the American Immigration Lawyers Association with taxpayer money.

The prevailing wisdom is that the amnesty bill will create more Democrat than Republican voters and that is precisely its purpose. Its victims will be every native-born and naturalized citizen paying taxes and trying to cope with a healthcare system that will be on life-support soon enough.

The proposed bill is a massive multi-million fraud. If it passes and is signed into law, the further destruction of America will be accelerated.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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• Holder: Amnesty is a Civil Right??? AYFKMOW? They are ILLEGAL ALIENS!!!!!! (therightofway.net)
• Senate Gang of 8 Legislation: Amnesty Now, Citizenship Later Without Border Security (heritageaction.com)
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Pulitizer Prize-Winning Idiot – Tea Party Nation

Pulitizer Prize-Winning Idiot – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

What kind of idiot would write, “Until we fully understand what turned two brothers who allegedly perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombings into murderers, it is hard to make any policy recommendation other than this: We need to redouble our efforts to make America stronger and healthier so it remains a vibrant counterexample to whatever bigoted ideology may have gripped these young men.”

“Whatever bigoted ideology”? This is what Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times wrote on April 21.

Friedman had spent years in Lebanon, first as a reporter for the United Press International from 1979 to 1981. From 1975 to 1990, Lebanon was convulsed by a civil war between its Christian population and Palestinian forces aligned with Syrian-backed Muslims. In 1981 he was hired by the New York Times and won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon after years of Katyusha rocket attacks on northern Israel. He also won the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting.

He would serve as the Times Bureau Chief in Jerusalem from June 1984 to February 1988, receiving a second Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the first Palestinian intifada. He witnessed Islamic terrorism first hand and learned nothing from it.

If that is not sufficiently moronic, his column, “How to Put America Back Together Again” was devoted to “healing our economy” and his answer was higher taxes in general and a carbon tax in particular. “We need to raise more revenues, in the least painful way possible.”

No, Mr. Friedman, what we need to do is stop spending more than the nation takes in by reducing spending, fixing the tax code, and reforming entitlement programs, but that is never part of the liberal agenda.

He called for a “‘radical center—one much more willing to suggest radically new ideas to raise revenues…the best place to start is with a carbon tax.” This tax is based on the false assertion that greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, are causing global warming and/or climate change. It would raise the cost of the use of energy for everyone. It would raise revenue for “investment” in more failed solar energy companies and other crony capitalism that has become the hallmark of the Obama administration.

“A phased-in carbon tax of $20 to $25 a ton could raise around $1 trillion over ten years, as we each pay a few more dimes and quarters for every gallon of gasoline or hour of electricity.” This is easy to say if you are a highly paid Times columnist, author, and public speaker. It is also a formula for inflicting pain on an economy that is dependent for its growth on the use of energy; a nation in which its total recoverable oil, along with Mexico, exceeds 1.7 trillion barrels. That’s the equivalent, based on current use, of enough oil for the next 242 years.

He covered his proposal saying “Yes, a carbon tax is not painless. We would have to, and easily can, cushion the poor from its impact.” Nonsense! Even the poor must purchase gasoline and electricity. And the poor to whom he refers includes the millions of Americans who are unemployed because of Obama administration policies that restrict economy growth. Obama isn’t helping the poor; he is increasing their numbers and increasing more government spending and dependency with food stamps and comparable programs.

Obamacare is already causing companies and businesses to not hire and to put existing staff on a part-time basis. It is driving up the cost of health insurance premiums. It will cause hospitals to close and physicians to stop practicing.

This is typical of the pie-in-the-sky liberal answer to all problems; suck more money out of the pockets of Americans in the name of “infrastructure, preschool education, community colleges and research…” Preschool education is liberal code for earlier indoctrination of a new generation raised to believe that America is the cause of the terrorism directed against it.

His column was laudatory of President Obama and his recent budget proposal, the first since he took office in 2009, but America is suffering as the result of his policies and Friedman thinks he is the answer to our problems, not the cause.

How can a reporter look at Obama’s America where one out of every five families is on food stamps, the actual number of unemployed is estimated to be twenty million or more, and see a nation in need of MORE taxes? Little wonder one of his books is titled “The World is Flat.”

A reporter who spent years covering the war between Muslims and Christians in Lebanon and then later reported from an Israel under siege from the PLO, still cannot comprehend “whatever bigoted ideology” is killing Americans and others around the world and should not be writing columns giving out advice on raising our taxes in the name of an utterly deceitful, environmental attack on energy use.

To understand everything that is wrong with liberalism in America, by all means, read Thomas L. Friedman.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

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Earth Day’s Big Lie – Tea Party Nation

Earth Day’s Big Lie – Tea Party Nation.

By Alan Caruba

Monday, April 22, is Earth Day. Begun in 1970, it led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, along with the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. It is the global platform for the Big Lie that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing the Earth to warm and the basis of the environmental movement’s ceaseless efforts to reduce the use of energy for any reason.

Carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has been increasing, but the Earth has been cooling due to reduced solar radiation. CO2 has virtually no relationship to the climate except to show up well after a significant change has occurred.

On April 18, the Wall Street Journal reported that the International Energy Agency had announced that, despite spending “more than $2 trillion in investment into renewable-energy projects…the world had made almost no progress over the past 20 years in reducing the carbon content of its energy supplies.” It has never needed reduction. How many hospitals, schools, bridges, and other useful things that could have been built instead?

According to Wikipedia: “Carbon is the 15th most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and the fourth most abundant element in the universe by mass after hydrogen, helium, and oxygen. It is present in all known life forms, and in the human body carbon is the second most abundant element by mass (about 18.5%) after oxygen.] This abundance, together with the unique diversity of organic compounds and their unusual polymer-forming ability at the temperatures commonly encountered on Earth, make this element the chemical basis of all known life.” (Emphasis added)

Not one single piece of vegetation can exist without CO2. Without vegetation all animals and all humans would die. The Earth would look like Mars. One of the pillars of environmentalism is that humans are the greatest threat to the existence of the 4.5 billion-year-old Earth. The essence of Earth Day is that you are the enemy, primarily for your use of energy (coal, oil, and natural gas).

A global propaganda campaign will glorify Earth Day and its message is that you must change your life to accommodate the lies that sustain the environmental movement and permit government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency to strangle the economic life of the nation.

On Earth day there will be thousands of events to promote its anti-energy, anti-technology, and anti-humanity message.

There are thousands, of environmental organizations. Here, for example, are some Earth Day recommendations from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

# Wash clothing in cold water. According to the NRDC, “this saves a great deal of money as the bulk of the energy tied to clothes washing is used to heat water.”

# Cut clothes dryer energy by 20 to 40 percent. “It is more efficient to spin water out of clothing than bake it out in the dryer.”

# Select the ‘normal’ or ‘standard’ picture setting on your TV.

An environmental group called the Food Tank recommends the following:

# “Get in touch with agriculture. “This time of year, many people are starting to plan vacations.” Forget Disney Land; instead choose a “farm-stay” in which participants spend a few days or weeks living with a host family…helping around the farm in exchange for free food and lodging.”

# “Buy food with less packaging.” This ignores the fact that modern packaging ensures the safety of the foods you purchase. Even ancient civilizations either burned refuse or created landfills.

# Do-it-Yourself projects such as “turning old t-shirts into produce bags to save plastic, starting seeds in eggshells…”

Behind the many Earth Day suggestions is the environmentalists’ insistence on a general return to an era when household tasks were undertaken without machines that used electricity, before the ubiquitous benefits of plastic, and less cars were on the roads. In the 1940s my late mother had to wash clothes by hand and hang them in the back yard or basement to dry. Food was kept cool in an ice box before the invention of refrigerators. This is Earth Day’s idea of saving the Earth.

Everyone wants clean air and clean water. We have it. The Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 1970s have achieved their goals. Substituting “clean energy” such as solar and wind power has proven to be expensive and impractical as neither of these produce sufficient energy (about 3% at present) to power America. Taxpayers have lost billions in the government loans made to solar and wind power companies while traditional sources of power contribute billions to the economy.

The Earth is not endangered, nor should it be worshipped as a pagan religion.

Behind environmentalism is panoply of schemes intended to enrich those who advocate “global warming” and/or “climate change.” Governments around the world are abandoning “clean energy” programs and returning to traditional and abundant forms of energy.

The “science” behind climate change and the claim of a “consensus” among the world’s scientists is a lie. Computer models have been rigged to produce “warming” data while the planet has been in a natural cooling cycle for the last seventeen years!

On Earth Day, you will be assailed by these and countless other claims, but you will do yourself and the Earth a big favor if you ignore them.

© Alan Caruba, 2013

 

New Data on Border Crossings Could Change Immigration Debate – Byron York

New Data on Border Crossings Could Change Immigration Debate – Byron York.

There’s a confrontation coming between the Obama administration and Republicans in Congress over the most basic question of immigration reform: How secure is the U.S. border with Mexico?

Not only does the administration not know — and perhaps doesn’t want to know — but there are signs the border is less secure than some of the most skeptical Republicans thought.

Last year the Border Patrol began experimenting with a new drone-based surveillance system that had been developed for finding Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Starting in the fall, officials used the radar-based system over a fairly small portion of the Arizona border. The results were striking.

“According to internal reports, Border Patrol agents used the airborne radar to help find and detain 1,874 people in the Sonora Desert between October 1 [2012] and January 17 [2013],” reported the Los Angeles Times last week. “But the radar system spotted an additional 1,962 people in the same area who evaded arrest and disappeared into the United States.”

That means officers caught fewer than half of those who made the crossing in that part of Arizona. If those results are representative of other sectors of the border, then everything the administration has said about border security is wrong.

“These revelations are in stark contrast to the administration’s declaration that the border is more secure than ever due to greater resources having been deployed to the region, and that lower rates of apprehensions signify fewer individuals are crossing,” Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote in an April 5 letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

“Since the creation of DHS, Congress has provided significant funding increases in the number of Border Patrol agents, the building of nearly 700 miles of fencing and the deployment of advanced technologies to increase the nation’s ability to monitor the border,” the Texas Republican added. “However, we do not know if additional resources have produced better results.”

For years, Napolitano and other officials at the Department of Homeland Security have pointed to the declining number of border apprehensions as proof that the total number of illegal crossings is also declining. Now, it could mean the administration just isn’t catching most of the crossers.

“The results speak for themselves,” says one GOP Hill aide involved in border security issues. “We can’t really use apprehensions as an accurate measure when we’re not even seeing half the people.”

In light of the radar numbers, McCaul has asked Napolitano to provide data to back up her assertion that the border is more secure than ever. The answer could have a huge effect on the comprehensive immigration reform bills Congress will consider in coming weeks and months.

For example, there are reports that the Senate’s bipartisan Gang of Eight negotiators have added a border security provision to their proposal to give immediate legalization to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Before that legalization occurs, Homeland Security would have to submit a plan that would, within a decade, result in the apprehension of 90 percent of those who cross the border illegally. The department would also have to have 100 percent of the border under surveillance.

That’s not all. The Gang of Eight plan is then expected to call for greater border security measures — and results — before those newly legalized immigrants are placed on a path that eventually will lead to citizenship.

Both provisions will be met with a lot of skepticism, at least on the right. Will Republicans really agree to legalize 11 million currently illegal immigrants on the strength of Janet Napolitano’s promise to secure the border sometime in the next 10 years — especially after Napolitano claimed, on the basis of dubious evidence, that the border is already secure?

Some immigration reformers see the radar story as hopeful news, showing that there are new ways to use technology to secure the border. But of course it is the administration’s job to enforce border security, and DHS has spent years resisting even assessing the situation.

McCaul and others are expected to introduce legislation that would require Homeland Security to come up with a comprehensive strategy to secure the border — and then carry it out. The problem is that such demands have been made many times in the past, and the border is still not secure. Given the Obama administration’s record, is there any reason to believe that things will be any different this time, no matter what promises are made?

Endgame – Tea Party Nation

Endgame – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

We are rapidly approached the endgame in American politics. 

 

The endgame is the place the liberals want us to be.    There is only one thing stopping them from hitting the endgame point.

 What is it?

 Republican control of the House of Representatives.

 What is their endgame point?

 It is socialism. It is the end of freedom and liberty. 

 The left is engaged in the strategy known as Cloward-Piven.  It is named after two Marxist professors who wanted to bring down the government first in New York City and then eventually in America.

 The strategy is simple.  Overwhelm the system with demands that it cannot meet.  Then the system will collapse.

 We are seeing that today.  From America’s overwhelming debt, to amnesty, to Obamacare, the left is trying to create so many demands on America’s economic system that it will collapse.

 There is one last hurdle they have to overcome to get there.

 That is Republican control of the House of Representatives. 

 As this year opened, one of the biggest topics of conversation in DC was whether Harry Reid, the bordello child from Nevada and erstwhile majority leader for the Party of Treason in the Senate would change the rules to abolish the filibuster. 

 Looking back on it now, it seems obvious he would not do it. 

 Why?

 Because it would have been a meaningless point. 

 Harry Reid can get the Party of Treason to pass as many bills as it wants but as long as the Republicans control the House, most of those bills would be DOA.

 But what happens if the Party of Treason gains control of the House again in 2014?

 Then you can count on Harry Reid eliminating the filibuster so that a simple majority vote gets bills passed in the Senate.

 This of course assumes that the Party of Treason maintains control of the Senate.  At this point, things look good for the Republicans to take control of the Senate.  However, in 2010 and 2012 things also looked good.  Never underestimate the ability of the Republican Party to blow an election.

 If the Party of Treason takes control of the House, Reid will abolish the filibuster in the Senate by rule change and then you will see the all out, final assault on liberty.

 Liberals openly talk about the need to limit freedom and liberty.

 Melissa Harris Perry is a left wing nut job on MSNBC, the official channel of the Party of Treason.  She caused controversy with comments recently about how children should not be raised by their parents but by a collective community.

 Now she has doubled down on her comments.  In a promo airing on the Channel of Treason, she says:

 “This isn’t about me wanting to take your kids, and this isn’t even about whether children are property. This is about whether we as a society, expressing our collective will through our public institutions, including our government, have a right to impinge on individual freedoms in order to advance a common good. And that is exactly the fight that we have been having for a couple hundred years.”

 Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao would have loved her.  After all, they impinged on the individual freedom of life and liberty to advance a “common good.”

 If the Party of Treason ends up controlling the House and the Senate after the 2014 elections, we will see the impinging of individual freedom for the advancement of the “common good.”

 Freedom of speech and religion will be gone.  The Second Amendment will be gone.  The 7^th Amendment will be at best curtailed if not eliminated.  The 10^th Amendment will simply be a museum piece and state boundaries will be little more than lines on a map. 

 We will no longer be the United States of America but the United State of America, with a tyrannical, massive central government.

 This is what our founding fathers feared. 

 This is the end game for liberals.

 The 2014 election comes down to one simple point.  Either real Americans win the election or we all lose our freedom so the left can advance their “common good.”

 But as we know about liberals, their ideas never benefit the common people nor are they good.

 

Democrats poke real Americans in the eye – Tea Party Nation

Democrats poke real Americans in the eye – Tea Party Nation.

Posted by Judson Phillips

The level of outrage from the action of the Obama Regime doesn’t seem like it could get any higher.

 Then they do something else. 

 Conservatives accuse the Obamas of acting like they are royalty not the family of the elected leader of this nation.  Is there some truth to this and if there is will the Republicans finally do something about it?

 The Obama’s have been outdoing themselves on vacations.  They have been averaging more than one a month.  Now, they have done two in one week. 

 The Obama daughters (possibly with Michelle Obama, though the coverage on this has not been clear) started the week at the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas.  Now they have gone to the slopes of Idaho for skiing.

 Must be nice to be able to take two vacations in one week. 

 Barack Obama could certainly afford for his family to take two vacations in one week.  He is a millionaire.  The problem is not the family going on vacations.  The problem is the millions of dollars it costs to protect them while they are on vacation.

 Not to be out done, Vice President and brain donor Joe Biden has gone on vacation to the beach as well.

 Cost to the taxpayers?  Unknown.

 It would never occur to the Obamas, the Bidens or for that matter any member of the Party of Treason to lead by example.  In case they don’t remember, real America, namely America that is outside of the Washington DC bubble, is still suffering from the Great Obama Depression.

 If you believe the statistics from the Obama Department of Labor, unemployment is around 8%.  The labor force participation rate is a better indicator of how the economy is doing.  It is at an all-time low.

 Millions of Americans are out of work or are forced into part-time work because of the Obama Regime’s policies.  Millions of Americans can’t even do a weekend getaway much less a full fledged vacation. 

 What does Obama do?

 He does not care.

 After all, he thinks he is royalty. He thinks he is entitled to this.

 With millions of Americans unemployed and a stagnant economy, the question is, are the Republicans ever going to do anything about this?  Are they ever going to fight?

 The Obama White House costs Americans  $1.4 billion a year.  This includes a quarter of a million dollars a year for calligraphers and over $100,000 a year for the Presidential dog groomer.

 Why can’t those positions be eliminated?

 And while those positions are being eliminated, perhaps the GOP should pass a rider to the budget that says Obama gets one vacation a year.  If he wants more than that, he foots the bill for all of it.  He pays for Air Force One.  He pays for the hotels.  He pays for his own security.

If someone were doing a real job as poorly as Obama is doing his, do you think he would even get one paid vacation, much less several?

 There are millions of real Americans who are suffering.  To watch the Obamas vacation like royalty, on their tax dollars is adding insult to injury.

Sebelius Finally Admits Premiums Will Rise as a Result of ObamaCare – Katie Pavlich

Sebelius Finally Admits Premiums Will Rise as a Result of ObamaCare – Katie Pavlich.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is finally admitting that the Affordable Care Act isn’t actually that affordable. Think tanks have been warning for years about the expensive cost of ObamaCare and many have already seen their health insurance premiums rise as a result of its implementation yet, the administration has denied the bill will actually increase costs for consumers until now.

Some people purchasing new insurance policies for themselves this fall could see premiums rise because of requirements in the health-care law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday.

Ms. Sebelius’s remarks come weeks before insurers are expected to begin releasing rates for plans that start on Jan. 1, 2014, when key provisions of the health law kick in. Premiums have been a sensitive subject for the Obama administration, which is counting on elements in the health law designed to increase competition among insurers to keep rates in check. The administration has pointed to subsidies that will be available for many lower-income Americans to help them with the cost of coverage.

The secretary’s remarks are among the first direct statements from federal officials that people who have skimpy health plans right now could face higher premiums for plans that are more generous. She noted that the law requires plans to provide better benefits and treat all customers equally regardless of their medical claims.

“These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market,” she said. “But we feel pretty strongly that with subsidies available to a lot of that population that they are really going to see much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.”

Most people who have “skimpy plans” have them because they either a) don’t need a fancy health insurance plan b) can’t afford a health insurance plan. Forcing consumers into plans they don’t need or can’t afford is counter productive. Not to mention, Sebelius argues consumers will see a “much better benefit for the money that they’re spending.” Better benefits? Does she mean better benefits of having fewer doctors?

Most physicians have a pessimistic outlook on the future of medicine, citing eroding autonomy and falling income, a survey of more than 600 doctors found.

Six in 10 physicians (62 percent) said it is likely many of their colleagues will retire earlier than planned in the next 1 to 3 years, a survey from Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found. That perception is uniform across age, gender, and specialty, it said.

Another 55 percent of surveyed doctors believe others will scale back hours because of the way medicine is changing, but the survey didn’t elaborate greatly on how it was changing. Three-quarters think the best and brightest may not consider a career in medicine, although that is an increase from the 2011 survey result of 69 percent.

“Physicians recognize ‘the new normal’ will necessitate major changes in the profession that require them to practice in different settings as part of a larger organization that uses technologies and team-based models for consumer (patient) care,” the survey’s findings stated.

About two-thirds of the survey responders said they believe physicians and hospitals will become more integrated in coming years. In the last 2 years, 31 percent moved into a larger practice, results found. Nearly eight in 10 believe midlevel providers will play a larger role in directing primary care.

Or how about the better benefits of fewer life saving medical devices thanks to the innovation and job killing medical device tax in ObamaCare?

Biomedical or medical device engineering firms are already laying off workers who develop crucial medical products due to the “unforeseen” costs, or in other words, the costs of ObamaCare. Not to mention, the more money these companies pay to the government, the less money they have to invest in research and development.

The Obama administration is no longer trying to lie about ObamaCare, instead they’re simply trying to justify the lies by making everyone feel better about the so-called benefits ObamaCare will offer at a much higher price.

Related articles

• HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius admits Obamacare is raising some peoples insurance rates… (bluegrasspundit.com)