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Friday, June 29, 2012

Secret Wiretaps Implicate Holder's DOJ in 'Fast and Furious' Scandal

Note: And to think his Liberal sidekicks are protecting him??? Vote all the Goofballs out!

 

 

One day after the historic vote that held Attorney General Eric Holder to be in criminal contempt of Congress, Darrell Issa (R-CA) revealed details of secret wiretap applications from the Justice Department that implicates them even more in the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal that resulted in the murder of a U.S. border patrol agent.

Issa submitted these details to the Congressional Record by submitting a letter to Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Cummings have denied any wiretap applications contained details that would have tipped off those in the know, according to Roll Call, but Issa’s letter suggests Holder and Cummings were not truthful about what was in the wiretap application, which was signed by some of the most senior officials in the Department of Justice.
According to Roll Call:
The wiretap applications are under court seal, and releasing such information to the public would ordinarily be illegal. But Issa appears to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause in the Constitution, which offers immunity for Congressional speech, especially on a chamber’s floor.
According to the letter, the wiretap applications contained a startling amount of detail about the operation, which would have tipped off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used.
Holder and Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap applications did not contain such details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy.
The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials in the department’s criminal division, including Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Blanco and another official who is now deceased.
Roll Call further reported the “application included details such as how many guns specific suspects had purchased via straw purchasers and how many of those guns had been recovered in Mexico,” in addition to describing how “ATF officials watched guns bought by suspected straw purchasers but then ended their surveillance without interdicting the guns.”
Issa excoriated the DOJ's lack of oversight:
Although ATF was aware of these facts, no one was arrested, and ATF failed to even approach the straw purchasers. Upon learning these details through its review of this wiretap affidavit, senior Justice Department officials had a duty to stop this operation. Further, failure to do so was a violation of Justice Department policy.
The coverup is always worse than the crime, and the question at the heart of the Fast and Furious scandal has been what the Department Justice knew and when they knew it.
After Issa’s letter implicating the Department of Justice in the Fast and Furious scandal, those questions are about to get a lot more intense, pressure on Holder will increase, and the public’s demand for answers will intensify.
Now if only the mainstream media would do its job and put pressure on the DOJ, not the Congressmen investigating them.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/29/Secret-Wiretaps-Implicate-Holder-s-DOJ-In-Fast-and-Furious-Scandal

Obamacare: Seven New Taxes on Citizens Earning Less than $250,000 (A Must Read)

While we were all debating the cost to our liberty due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), we were ignoring the cost to our pockets. If there ever was a reason for bipartisan rage about this law, it should be on the twenty - yes, twenty - hidden new taxes of this law. Making matters even more relevant is that seven of these taxes are levied on all citizens regardless of income. Hence, Mr. Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 is just another falsehood associated with this legislation.

The first, and best known, of these seven taxes that will hit all Americans as a result of Obamacare is the Individual Mandate Tax (no longer concealed as a penalty). This provision will require a couple to pay the higher of a base tax of $1,360 per year, or 2.5% of adjusted growth income starting with lower base tax and rising to this level by 2016. Individuals will see a base tax of $695 and families a base tax of $2,085 per year by 2016.
Next up is the Medicine Cabinet Tax that took effect in 2011. This tax prohibits reimbursement of expenses for over-the-counter medicine, with the lone exception of insulin, from an employee’s pre-tax dollar funded Health Saving Account (HSA), Flexible Spending Account (FSA) or Health Reimbursement Account (HRA). This provision hurts middle class earners particularly hard since they earn enough to actually pay federal taxes, but not enough to make this restriction negligible.
The Flexible Spending Account (FSA) Cap, which will begin in 2013, is perhaps the most hurtful provision to the middle class. This part of the law imposes a cap of $2,500 per year (which is now unlimited) on the amount of pre-tax dollars that could be deposited into these accounts. Why is this particularly hurtful to the middle class? It is because funds in these accounts may be used to pay for special needs education for special needs children in the United States. Tuition rates for this type of special education can easily exceed $14,000 per year and the use of pre-tax dollars has helped many middle income families.
Another direct hit to the middle class is the Medical Itemized Deduction Hurdle which is currently 7.5% of adjusted gross income. This is the hurdle that must be met before medical expenses over that hurdle can be taken as a deduction on federal income taxes. Obamacare raises this hurdle to 10% of adjusted gross income beginning in 2013. Consider the middle class family with $80,000 of adjusted gross income and $8,000 of medical expenses. Currently, that family can get some relief from being able to take a $2,000 deduction (7.5% X $80,000 = $6,000; $8,000 –$6,000 = $2,000). An increase to 10% would eliminate the deduction in this example and if that family was paying a 25% federal tax rate, the real cost of that lost deduction would be $500.
The fifth new tax on the middle class, and all Americans, is the Health Savings Account (HSA) Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10% currently to 20% beginning in 2013. This provision actually sets these accounts apart from Investment Retirement Accounts (IRAs) and other tax advantaged accounts, all of which remain with a 10% early withdrawal tax.
Another regressive tax that is part of this law began in 2010 and that is the Indoor Tanning Services Tax, which places a 10% excise tax on people using tanning salons. While some may regard this as insignificant, the broader implication is that this act of taxation is a blatant move by the federal government to control the behavior of citizens. This provision, as does the Individual Mandate and as Justice Kennedy said during the oral arguments on the constitutionality of the law said, “….fundamentally changes the relationship between the federal government and the citizen.”
The seventh new tax that directly impacts the middle class, along with all citizens, is the Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans or the “Cadillac” Health Insurance Plan Tax. These are plans that provide extensive coverage and that are generally fully paid for, or largely paid for, by employers. This provision imposes a 40% excise tax on the employer-paid premium on taxpayers who are covered by such plans, beginning in 2018. The reason it begins in 2018 is because most unionized workers are covered by plans that fall under this definition and a deferral was made to spare union members from this tax for at least a period of time.
There are thirteen other taxes that apply to businesses and that apply to high income (over $250,000 per year) households. While these additional provisions will not impact the middle class directly, they can have serious indirect consequences for middle and low income earners. Beginning in 2014, the Employer Mandate Tax will impose an annual non-deductible tax on employers with more than 50 employees who do not provide health insurance for their employees.
The impact of this provision on low and middle income earners, and really all working Americans, is that employers will be confronted with three choices. The first is provide some level of health insurance, as many do today, and there would be no impact on employees. The second choice is to pay the penalty, which would most likely be less expensive than providing health insurance, and force employees to seek their own health insurance or purchase it through federal government controlled state exchanges. Studies have estimated that 20 million Americans will lose their employee funded health insurance as a result of this provision and employers electing this option. The third choice is for employers to lay off employees, or not hire additional employees, because Obamacare forces them to either provide health insurance or pay the new tax.
Another new tax, the Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers that begins in 2013, places a 2.3% excise tax on all items retailing for more than $100. This provision will not only drive up the cost of various medical devices ranging from mobility assistance devices to personal testing supplies, but will also impact an industry that employs 360,000 people in 6,000 plants across our country. This tax, while not a direct tax, would have significant negative impact on the middle class.
The Surtax on Investment Income for households earning $250,000 and more, beginning in 2013, will raise the Capital Gains Tax from 15% to 23.8% on investment income for these households and will raise Taxes on Dividends from 15% to 43.4% for the same households. Aside from the impact on retired citizens dependent on dividends, this provision will pull income from the private economy. In addition, the tax rate on Other Investment Income earned by Subchapter S Corporation (which many small business are organized as, allowing the owners to claim all business income as personal income) will rise from 35% to 43.4%. This part of the provision would place additional pressure on small businesses resulting in more layoffs and less hiring, impacting all American workers.
All but one of the remaining new taxes in Obamacare are directed at health industry businesses and while they will not impact middle income families directly, the additional costs will most likely be passed on to the public. The last new tax is really interesting, it is a tax on certain biofuels!
These are the facts. It does not matter if you support Mr. Obama and his new law or if you oppose it, the new taxes on the middle class or real and all Americans should understand their impact on their families and the economy. Citizens, regardless of political beliefs, should recognize that Obamacare was passed with almost no sunlight shined on these middle class tax increases and need to understand that the new law was sold with the promise that there would be no new middle class taxes. This is not partisan, it is simply the reality of politics.
For more information, read ATR's analysis of the Affordable Care Act's taxes here.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/29/Seven-new-taxes

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Awesome speech!

Trey Gowdy consistently delivers every single time he gets the mic. And this speech is both passionate and epic as he defends once again the need for this contempt vote. Best speech of the day:

http://www.therightscoop.com/trey-gowdys-epic-speech-on-holder-contempt-vote/

With-court-ruling-1-7-trillion-obamacare-tax-now-violates-obamas-2008-tax-pledge/

The Supreme Court’s move to uphold the individual health insurance mandate in President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul as a tax means that President Barack Obama’s far-reaching law massively violates his 2008 campaign-trail pledge to not raise taxes on middle-class and poor Americans.
“I can make a firm pledge – under my plan, no family making less that $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase,” he said in a September 2008 campaign speech in New Hampshire.
Prior to Obamacare’s passage in 2010, Obama denied it was a tax. In September 2009, Obama told ABC News that the law “is absolutely not a tax increase.”
The court’s conversion of the law into a huge tax may also boost the GOP’s ability to persuade voters to back GOP candidates in 2012. The Obamacare program may amount to $1.7 trillion over a decade, according to a Congressional Budget Office projection.
The court’s conversion of the mandate into a tax also suddenly eases the GOP’s practical problems of passing a reform through the Senate.
That’s because Senate rules allow a bare majority of 51 senators — not a super-majority of 60 Senators — to rewrite the controversial and unpopular law through reconciliation.
Senate Democrats won’t be able to filibuster a reform if they have less than 50 senators, especially if the Republican Party reclaims a majority in the Senate this November.
Seventy-five “percent of the [Obamacare] mandate penalty… falls on Americans earning less than $120,000 a year … [so] President Obama has imposed one of the largest tax hikes in American history on the middle class,” said a statement from the Republican minority of the Senate budget committee.
Twenty-one percent of the tax increase will fall of people who earn just above the poverty level of $11,800 per individual, or $24,000 for a family of four, according to a statement from the committee’s Republicans, who are led by Alabama’s Sen. Jeff Sessions, a staunch opponent of Obamacare and big government policies.
People who earn between two and three times the poverty level will pay 25 percent of the Obamacare tax.
People who earn between three and four times the poverty level will pay 18 percent of the law’s cost.
People who earn between four and five times the poverty level will pay 11 percent of the tax bill.
The wealthiest slice of the population, those who earn more than five times the poverty level, will pay 25 percent of the taxes.
The mandate-into-tax distinction was underlined by Ari Flesicher, a spokesman for former President George W. Bush.
The “press should stop calling the ‘fine’ a ‘penalty,’” he tweeted. “Now if you don’t buy insurance, it’s more accurate 2say your taxes get raised,” Fleischer tweeted.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/28/with-court-ruling-1-7-trillion-obamacare-tax-now-violates-obamas-2008-tax-pledge/#ixzz1z8Za1M8M

Rep-adams-on-holder-contempt-not-politics-its-personal/

Florida Republican Rep. Sandy Adams, a former law enforcement officer whose husband — also a law enforcement officer — was killed in the line of duty, said on the House floor that she doesn’t view, as some Democrats keep claiming, efforts to hold Holder in contempt as political.
“I am going to come to you from a different angle; one of a law enforcement officer,” Adams said. “I served over 17 years as a law enforcement officer. I worked many undercover operations. And as a law enforcement officer, we knew you don’t give guns to bad guys — the drug cartels, they are bad guys.”
“You know that if you let a gun walk with a bad guy, you’re going to see that gun whether it is at a crime scene, or you are going to be looking down the barrel of it,” she continued. “So when the attorney general came to our committee, I asked him: ‘Who approved this operation?’ ‘Why was it approved?’ And he said … he just wouldn’t answer, he didn’t know. Okay, well, what rises to the level of the attorney general if an international operation that allows guns to walk to another country, and are used to kill one of our agents, and used to kill and maim their citizens? Does it rise to his level of approval? Who approved it?”
Adams went on to say that Holder admitted “it was flawed from the beginning. And yet, we still have no answers.”
“Let me just say this: I have heard from the other side of the aisle and from my colleagues here today that this is political,” Adams said. “This isn’t political — to me, it’s personal. We have a law enforcement officer doing his job who was killed by a flawed operation that no one will take ownership of in the attorney general’s office.”


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/28/rep-adams-on-holder-contempt-not-politics-its-personal/#ixzz1z8YMbcCP

He's-in-contempt-house-votes-to-hold-holder-in-contempt-of-congress/

Note:  I watched these Liberal Idiots walk out before the vote...Kinda reminded me of the Wisconsin walkout where the Libs ran like scared rabbits! This is a coverup by the way Obama jumped in with his executive BS! A Botched program by this administration caused some deaths and the Liberal Idiots think its a political stunt. What a bunch off goofballs!  Tell the families of the murdered victims! He's been caught in flat out lies! Turn over the documents!



The U.S. House of Representatives voted Thursday to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his failure to provide Congress with subpoenaed Operation Fast and Furious documents.
Seventeen Democrats joined most House Republicans in the effort to hold Holder in contempt. Two Republicans — Virginia Rep. Scott Rigell and Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette — voted against the measure and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi led a walkout of many members of her caucus.
Pelosi held the hand of House oversight committee ranking member Rep. Elijah Cummings — one of Holder’s most ardent defenders — on the way out.
Holder is now in criminal contempt of Congress.
UPDATE 5:30 p.m.: The House has passed a resolution to hold Holder in civil contempt of Congress as well, again with bipartisan support. The civil contempt resolution allows the House to pursue legal recourse to enforce its subpoena because the criminal contempt resolution passed earlier in the day is referred to Holder’s deputy Ron Machen, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia for enforcement. Machen isn’t expected to enforce it.
House judiciary committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith said in a statement that the “vote to hold Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress is unprecedented, but unfortunately so are the obstructionist actions of this Justice Department.”
“The Attorney General continues to put himself above the law by refusing to cooperate with legitimate congressional inquiries,” Smith said. “For more than a year and a half, this Administration has blocked inquiries and delayed responses about what really happened in Operation Fast & Furious. The President’s recent assertion of Executive Privilege covers communication between top Executive staff. The Administration cannot claim that top officials were not aware of the program and then assert this privilege. They can’t have it both ways. Either no senior staff was aware of Fast & Furious, in which case Executive Privilege does not apply; or senior staff was aware, which means the Administration has not been truthful with Congress.”
Illinois Republican Rep. Joe Walsh — one of the House members demanding Holder’s resignation — said in a statement that it’s “regretful that it has reached this point.
“Questions have been dodged and left unanswered for way too long,” Walsh said. “Attorney General Holder’s lack of cooperation, accountability, and concern in this investigation is unacceptable. The bottom line is that many lives were lost – on both sides of the border. Today’s vote brings us one step closer to providing answers to Brian Terry’s family and the American people.”
Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who’s worked with House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa, said in a statement that this action was necessary to make sure Holder complies with the subpoena.
“When a person dies in service to his country, and his own government may have contributed to his death, covered up evidence about the circumstances, or both, the survivors’ families and the American people have a right to know the truth,” Grassley said. “That was the case with Pat Tillman, and it’s the case with Brian Terry. The government should own up to any policies and practices that led to the harm of Mexican citizens as well. Those who don’t seem to want the truth or accountability default to accusations of political motivation against those seeking answers.”
“Remember, the Justice Department insisted there was no gun-walking, then retracted that statement and reversed itself,” Grassley continued. “The Justice Department is proven unreliable on this topic. The only way to try to get an accurate, complete account of what happened to Agent Terry and why is to obtain every possible record and account of the facts. We can only draw fair, informed conclusions from the complete facts. The fulfillment of the House’s pursuit of complete records from the Justice Department is necessary. Without it, we might never know what happened to Agent Terry. That can’t stand.”
Cummings said he thinks “[t]his is a sad day for our democracy.”
“Today’s contempt vote against Attorney General Eric Holder is the culmination of one of the most highly politicized and reckless congressional investigations in decades,” Cummings said in a statement. “The Republicans’ actions have undermined the standing of the House, cemented the Speaker’s legacy as extreme, and will be recorded by history as a discredit to this institution.”
Before the resolution passed, House Speaker John Boehner said on the House floor that he doesn’t “take this matter lightly, and I frankly hoped it would never come to this.”
“The House’s focus is on jobs and on the economy,” Boehner said. “But no Justice Department is above the law and no Justice Department is above the Constitution, which each of us has sworn an oath to uphold. So I ask the Members of this body to come together and to support this resolution so that we can seek the answers that the Terry family and the American people deserve.”
Issa said in a statement that “[t]oday, a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for his continued refusal to produce relevant documents in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious.”
“This was not the outcome I had sought and it could have been avoided had Attorney General Holder actually produced the subpoenaed documents he said he could provide,” Issa said. “The Congressional inquiry into Operation Fast and Furious, and the cover-up by Justice Department officials of wrongdoing, has been a fair and fact based investigation. False and partisan allegations by the White House and some congressional Democrats about the Oversight Committee’s efforts were undermined by the votes of 17 Democrats. These Members resisted the pressure of their own leadership and the Obama Administration to support this investigation on the House floor.”
“Claims by the Justice Department that it has fully cooperated with this investigation fall at odds with its conduct: issuing false denials to Congress when senior officials clearly knew about gunwalking, directing witnesses not to answer entire categories of questions, retaliating against whistleblowers, and producing only 7,600 documents while withholding over 100,000,” Issa continued.
Holder released a statement after being found in criminal contempt, saying he thinks it’s a “regrettable culmination of what became a misguided — and politically motivated — investigation during an election year.”
“By advancing it over the past year and a half, Congressman Issa and others have focused on politics over public safety,” Holder said. “Instead of trying to correct the problems that led to a series of flawed law enforcement operations, and instead of helping us find ways to better protect the brave law enforcement officers, like Agent Brian Terry, who keep us safe — they have led us to this unnecessary and unwarranted outcome.”
After saying that he ended Fast and Furious and gunwalking, Holder said that the congressional vote will spark an “unnecessary court conflict.”
“My efforts to resolve this matter short of such a battle were rebuffed by Congressman Issa and his supporters,” Holder said. “It’s clear that they were not interested in bringing an end to this dispute or obtaining the information they claimed to seek. Ultimately, their goal was the vote that — with the help of special interests — they now have engineered.”
Holder said he plans to continue on in his post at the Department of Justice regardless.
“Whatever the path that this matter will now follow, it will not distract me or the men and women of the Department of Justice from the important tasks that are our responsibility,” Holder said. “A great deal of work for the American people remains to be done — I’m getting back to it. I suggest that those who orchestrated today’s vote do the same.”
Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, told The Daily Caller that the “contempt vote against the Attorney General underscores the serious nature of his refusal to cooperate with subpoenas issued to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious.”
“The vote sends a powerful message – there are consequences to stonewalling and to providing false and misleading information to Congress,” Sekulow said. “The Attorney General has no one to blame but himself. The American people deserve an Attorney General who serves as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, not an Attorney General who puts politics ahead of the rule of law.”
South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy – who’s been at the center of the Fast and Furious investigation – said that Holder being in criminal and civil contempt of Congress means it’s a “a sad for those of us who believe in the rule of law. The same rules should apply to everyone and the chief law enforcement officer has failed to do so.”
“We should not have to settle, compromise, or find any ‘extraordinary circumstance’ on the amount of documents we are entitled to,” Gowdy added. “We are wrong if we settle for anything less than all the facts.”
Arizona Republican Rep. Ben Quayle – the lead sponsor on a resolution pushing for a resolution for a special prosecutor for Fast and Furious – said Holder “has employed the tactics of delay, denial and obfuscation to avoid any sort of accountability for his disgraceful incompetence” with Fast and Furious and the contempt vote ended up being a “necessary step” in ensuring accountability.
The White House has responded too, accusing House Republicans of political motivations even though both contempt resolutions – the criminal and contempt ones – passed with bipartisan support. “At the beginning of this year, Republicans announced one of their top priorities was to investigate the Administration and to ensure that President Obama was a one-term President,” White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement. “Despite the major economic challenges facing the country, they talked openly about devoting taxpayer-funded, Congressional oversight resources to political purposes.”
Pfeiffer also blamed the Bush administration for Fast and Furious.
“The problem of gunwalking was a field-driven tactic that dated back to the George W. Bush Administration, and it was this Administration’s Attorney General who ended it. Attorney General Holder has said repeatedly that fighting criminal activity along the Southwest Border – including the illegal trafficking of guns to Mexico has been is a top priority of the Department,” Pfeiffer said. “Eric Holder has been an excellent Attorney General and just yesterday the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee acknowledged that he had no evidence – or even the suspicion – that the Attorney General knew of the misguided tactics used in this operation.”


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/28/hes-in-contempt-house-votes-to-hold-holder-in-contempt-of-congress/#ixzz1z8XU4oti

A good comment about Obamatax...I mean Obamacare!

Not my comment but a good one from a blog!



Before you look to do harm to Chief Justice Roberts or his family, it’s important that you think carefully about the meaning – the true nature — of his ruling on Obama-care. The Left will shout that they won, that Obama-care was upheld and all the rest. Let them.
It will be a short-lived celebration.
Here’s what really occurred — payback. Yes, payback for Obama’s numerous, ill-advised and childish insults directed toward SCOTUS.
Chief Justice Roberts actually ruled the mandate, relative to the commerce clause, was unconstitutional. That’s how the Democrats got Obama-care going in the first place. This is critical. His ruling means Congress can’t compel American citizens to purchase anything. Ever. The notion is now officially and forever, unconstitutional. As it should be.
Next, he stated that, because Congress doesn’t have the ability to mandate, it must, to fund Obama-care, rely on its power to tax. Therefore, the mechanism that funds Obama-care is a tax. This is also critical. Recall back during the initial Obama-care battles, the Democrats called it a penalty, Republicans called it a tax. Democrats consistently soft sold it as a penalty. It went to vote as a penalty. Obama declared endlessly, that it was not a tax, it was a penalty. But when the Democrats argued in front of the Supreme Court, they said ‘hey, a penalty or a tax, either way’. So, Roberts gave them a tax. It is now the official law of the land — beyond word-play and silly shenanigans. Obama-care is funded by tax dollars. Democrats now must defend a tax increase [the biggest tax increase in world history] to justify the Obama-care law.
Finally, he struck down as unconstitutional, the Obama-care idea that the federal government can bully states into complying by yanking their existing medicaid funding. Liberals, through Obama-care, basically said to the states — ‘comply with Obama-care or we will stop existing funding.’ Roberts ruled that is a no-no. If a state takes the money, fine, the Feds can tell the state how to run a program, but if the state refuses money, the federal government can’t penalize the state by yanking other funding. Therefore, a state can decline to participate in Obama-care without penalty. This is obviously a serious problem. Are we going to have 10, 12, 25 states not participating in “national” health-care? Suddenly, it’s not national, is it?
Ultimately, Roberts supported states rights by limiting the federal government’s coercive abilities. He ruled that the government can not force the people to purchase products or services under the commerce clause and he forced liberals to have to come clean and admit that Obama-care is funded by tax increases.
Although he didn’t guarantee Romney a win, he certainly did more than his part and should be applauded.
And he did this without creating a civil war or having bricks thrown threw his windshield. Oh, and he’ll be home in time for dinner.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/28/pelosi-on-supreme-court-decision-calling-obamacare-a-tax-is-washington-talk-take-yes-for-an-answer-video/#ixzz1z8TemM5w

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Stockton Goes Bankrupt; Los Angeles and CA Next?

Note:    More to come?  Illinois next?

I have a Liberal buddy that told me they should have raised taxes???? What a hack to keep wanting to tax people.

The city of Stockton, California, America’s 65th largest city, has filed for bankruptcy. While the media presents Stockton as a sad case of a city economy damaged by the real estate market and frivolous spending on various public works projects, the truth is far different: Stockton has been bankrupted by its government worker unions. And Stockton is important because it’s just the first – or rather second, after Vallejo – domino to fall. Next in line: Los Angeles, then California, then the United States.



Just take a look at the statistics surrounding Stockton. The city faced an annual deficit of $26 million; last year, it faced a $37 million deficit; the year before, it faced a $23 million deficit. By fiscal year 2014, it was supposed to grow to $48 million.


Now, how did Stockton pay for these deficits? By selling bonds. And at a certain point, bondholders stopped buying more bonds, because they realized they’d never see their money again. One good indicator that bondholders were going to lose their cash came this year, when Stockton defaulted on $2 million worth of bonds, instead turning over City Hall and several parking garages to Wells Fargo.


So, where was all this money being spent? On the unions. The city had over $800 million in unfunded pension liability and health benefits to union members; a full 81% of the city’s general fund budget was employee (read: unionized) services. Retirement costs constitute a full 17.5% of the budget.


In desperation, Stockton made cuts -- $90 million from the general fund over three years, including reducing the police department by a quarter and the fire department by 30%. No dice. And they couldn’t get a better deal thanks to mandatory mediation rules between unions and the city.


All of this was fun and games while the economy was good, and Stockton could keep raising taxes and selling bonds. But when the real estate economy tanked, Stockton quickly hit the skids.


Here’s the real problem: Los Angeles is next to go.


Los Angeles is currently facing a $238 million shortfall in 2012-2013; the city also faces $27 billion in unfunded pension liabilities. The annual budget is approximately $7 billion. So we have a problem.


And check out these percentages: for fiscal year 2011-2012, pensions will constitute some 15.4% of city expenditures. That’s not much lower than Stockton’s.


And the state of California has the same problem. The state reportedly has nearly $1 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities. Every year, California runs a massive deficit. According to certain calculations, well above 80% of California’s budget goes to state employee compensation. And the cuts Jerry Brown has suggested are Stockton-like – they don’t amount to a drop in the bucket.


Stockton is just the beginning. At a certain point, you run out of other people’s money – or they stop buying your bonds. When that happens, look for true fiscal ruin to set in.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/27/Stockton-bankrupt-CA-Los-Angeles

Florida Judge Smacks Down Holder over Non-Citizens Voting

Wow...Thanks goes out to the Judge for following the Law!


The Department of Justice tried to prevent Florida and its Governor, Rick Scott, from removing non-citizens from its voter rolls, asking for a restraining order and arguing that removing non-citizens would be a violation of the National Voter Registration Act. Today, a U.S. District Judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton denied the Department of Justice's request, according to the Miami Herald. Florida will now be able to rightfully remove non-citizens from its voter rolls.

Scott said in a statement that "the court made a common-sense decision consistent with what I’ve been saying all along: that irreparable harm will result if non-citizens are allowed to vote."
"Today’s ruling puts the burden on the federal government to provide Florida with access to the Department of Homeland Security’s citizenship database," Scott said. "We know from just a small sample that an alarming number of non-citizens are on the voter rolls and many of them have illegally voted in past elections."
Last year, Florida requested access to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database the state could use to identify non-citizens who are registered to vote in the state, but the federal government has yet to grant Florida access to the database.
"The federal government has the power to prevent such irreparable harm from continuing, and Florida once again implores them to grant access to the SAVE database," Scott said.


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/27/Judge-Says-Irreparable-Harm-If-Non-Citizens-Vote-In-Florida-Rejects-Justice-Dept-Voter-Purge-Challenge

More links of interest

Sharptons racial plans
http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/26/sharpton-has-secret-activities-planned-around-holder-contempt-of-congress-vote-video/

Obama might be losing white voters
http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/26/sharpton-has-secret-activities-planned-around-holder-contempt-of-congress-vote-video/

Obama co chair says they will tax the rich after the election!
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/06/26/Obama-Campaign-Co-Chair-Dem-Rep-Schakowsky-Of-Course-We-Are-Going-To-Tax-The-Rich-Afte-The-Election

Issa-to-obama-either-youre-involved-in-fast-and-furious-or-your-executive-privilege-claim-is-unjustified/

In a letter obtained by The Daily Caller, House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa pressed President Barack Obama directly on his assertion of executive privilege over documents related to Operation Fast and Furious.
“[Y]our privilege assertion means one of two things,” Issa wrote to the president in a letter dated June 25. “Either you or your most senior advisors were involved in managing Operation Fast & Furious and the fallout from it, including the false February 4, 2011 letter provided by the attorney general to the committee, or, you are asserting a presidential power that you know to be unjustified solely for the purpose of further obstructing a congressional investigation.”
Issa said Obama’s assertion of executive privilege “raised the question” about the veracity of how the “White House has steadfastly maintained that it has not had any role in advising the department with respect to the congressional investigation.”
Issa revealed in the letter to Obama that Attorney General Eric Holder had requested the president assert the privilege in a letter last Tuesday evening — shortly after Holder, Issa and other congressional leaders involved in Fast and Furious met to try to come a resolution before last Wednesday’s contempt vote in Issa’s oversight committee. The president’s decision to assert the privilege came via a letter from Deputy Attorney General James Cole to Issa minutes before Issa began the proceedings against Holder.
The California congressman told Obama that Cole’s letter stating that Obama has “’asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-February 4, 2011 documents’ raised concerns that there was greater White House involvement in Operation Fast and Furious than previously thought.”
Issa laid out that this is because the “Justice Department has steadfastly maintained that the documents sought by the committee do not implicate the White House whatsoever.”
“If true, they are at best deliberative documents between and among department personnel who lack the requisite ‘operational proximity’ to the president,” as legal precedent Issa cites requires. “As such, they cannot be withheld pursuant to the constitutionally-based executive privilege.”
Issa further breaks down how, “[c]ourts distinguish between the presidential communications privilege and the deliberative process privilege.”
“Both … are executive privileges designed to protect the confidentiality of executive branch decision-making,” Issa wrote. “The deliberative-process privilege, however, which applies to executive branch officials generally, is a common law privilege that requires a lower threshold of need to be overcome, and ‘disappears altogether when there is any reason to believe government misconduct has occurred.’”
The letter also shed new light on details of the Issa-Holder meeting last week. During that meeting, Issa told Obama that Holder said he wanted to “buy peace.”
“He indicated a willingness to produce the ‘fair compilation’ of post-February 4th documents,” Issa wrote to the president. “He told me that he would provide the ‘fair compilation’ of documents on three conditions: (1) that I permanently cancel the contempt vote; (2) that I agree the department was in full compliance with the committee’s subpoenas, and; (3) that I accept the ‘fair compilation,’ sight unseen.”
Issa said he refused Holder’s offer because he considered his “conditions unacceptable,” and said his “predecessors from both sides of the aisle” would have done the same. “I simply requested that the department produce the ‘fair compilation’ in advance of the contempt vote, with the understanding that I would postpone the vote to allow the committee to review the documents,” Issa wrote before detailing that is something Holder did not do.
Issa added that while Holder has provided about 7,600 pages worth of Fast and Furious documents to his committee, that’s hardly close to the 140,000 pages of documents he’s produced internally within his Department of Justice.
“As you know, the committee voted to recommend that the full House hold Attorney General Holder in contempt of Congress for his continued refusal to produce relevant documents in the investigation of Operation Fast and Furious,” Issa wrote. “Last week’s proceeding would not have occurred had the attorney general actually produced the subpoenaed documents he said he could provide.”
The full U.S. House of Representatives is set to vote on Thursday to hold Holder in contempt of Congress. He would be the first attorney general to be held in contempt in the history of the United States.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/26/issa-to-obama-either-youre-involved-in-fast-and-furious-or-your-executive-privilege-claim-is-unjustified/#ixzz1z2khTbrI

Exhausted? Jesse Jackson, Jr. Takes Leave After Blagojevich Link Arrested

Note:   I had to put this up. I have never heard of a congessman take a leave from being exhausted? Maybe from a stroke, or accident but exhausted?  All this investigation going on must have something to do with it maybe?  Stress?

Embattled Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL), fresh from a bruising primary battle this spring, has taken medical leave for "exhaustion"--one week after a key former associate was arrested by federal law enforcement officials for fraud.

The fundraiser, Raghuveer Nayak, was the key to allegations that Jackson was prepared to arrange a payoff in 2008 to then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in exchange for being appointed to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama, according to the Chicago Sun-Times:
For the last several years, Nayak has been the aching thorn in Jackson’s side after Blagojevich was heard on tape saying that Jackson’s emissary — Nayak — offered what Blagojevich believed was a $1.5 million offer in exchange for the Senate seat that was about to be vacated by Barack Obama following his 2008 election as president.
Jackson has repeatedly and vehemently denied he authorized anyone to approach Blagojevich on his behalf. Jackson has not been charged in the probe.
The recent arrest is unrelated to that controversy, and Jackson's lawyer has denied any connection between Nayak's arrest and Jackson's leave.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/26/Exhausted-Rumors-Fly-As-Jesse-Jackson-Jr-Takes-Leave-After-Blagojevich-Linked-Arrest

Team-obama-grooming-an-army-of-lawyers-for-election/

Note:   Why would he do this? We need voter ID to stop voting fraud like all the dead people that voted in the past elections. Oh but wait.......Maybe thats how some of these Liberal Hacks can win!

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — President Barack Obama’s campaign has recruited a legion of lawyers to be on standby for this year’s election as legal disputes surrounding the voting process escalate.
Thousands of attorneys and support staffers have agreed to aid in the effort, providing a mass of legal support that appears to be unrivaled by Republicans or precedent. Obama’s campaign says it is particularly concerned about the implementation of new voter ID laws across the country, the possibility of anti-fraud activists challenging legitimate voters and the handling of voter registrations in the most competitive states.
Republicans are building their own legal teams for the election. They say they’re focused on preventing fraud — making sure people don’t vote unless they’re eligible — rather than turning away qualified voters.
Since the disputed 2000 presidential election, both parties have increasingly concentrated on building legal teams — including high-priced lawyers who are well-known in political circles — for the Election Day run-up. The Bush-Gore election demonstrated to both sides the importance of every vote and the fact that the rules for voting and counting might actually determine the outcome. The Florida count in 2000 was decided by just 537 votes and ultimately landed in the Supreme Court.
This year in that state alone, Obama and his Democratic allies are poised to have thousands of lawyers ready for the election and hope to have more than the 5,800 attorneys available four years ago. That figure was nearly twice the 3,200 lawyers the Democrats had at their disposal in 2004.
Romney has been organizing his own legal help for the election. Campaign attorney Ben Ginsberg did not provide numbers but said the campaign has been gratified by the “overwhelming number of attorneys who have volunteered to assist.”
“We will have enough lawyers to handle all situations that arise,” he said.
The GOP doesn’t necessarily need to have a numerical counterweight to Obama’s attorneys; the 2000 election showed that experienced, connected lawyers on either side can be effective in court.
Former White House counsel Robert Bauer, who is organizing the Obama campaign’s legal deployment, said there is great concern this year because he believes GOP leaders around the county have pursued new laws to impede the right to vote.
“The Republican Party and their allies have mapped out their vote suppression campaign as a response to our success in 2008 with grass-roots organization and successful turnout,” Bauer said. “This is their response to defeat: changing the rules of participation so that fewer participate.”
Several states with Republican leaders have recently pursued changes that could make voting more difficult, including key states such as Florida and Ohio, despite objections from voting rights groups that believe that the laws could suppress votes from low-income and minority blocs.
Republicans dispute that the laws are political, pointing to cases of election fraud and arguing that measures like those requiring voters to show identification are simply common sense. Pennsylvania’s Republican House majority leader, Mike Turzai, however, told GOP supporters over the weekend that the state’s new ID law “is going to allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.”
Independent from the Romney team, a conservative group is prepping an Election Day team of its own to combat possible fraud.
Catherine Engelbrecht, president and founder of True the Vote, said the organization hopes to train and mobilize up to one million volunteers this year, many of them to serve poll watchers. One of the group’s main initiatives is to “aggressively pursue fraud reports.”
“Being a poll watcher is an age-old tradition and we’re fortunate that so many volunteers are ready and willing to take a day off, learn what they need to know and help out at the polls,” Engelbrecht said. True the Vote already has thousands signed up to help and had 500 trained election workers monitoring the Wisconsin recall vote earlier this month.
“They serve as volunteer guardians of the republic, to ensure that procedures at the polls are in keeping with state law,” she said.
It’s one of the efforts that have Obama’s team fretting. The Democrats fear that anti-fraud activity could get out of hand, with vigilante poll watchers targeting and intimidating voters who may not know their rights.
“We will have the strategy and the resources to address the threat and protect the voter,” Bauer said.
The Obama-aligned attorneys, most of whom are not election experts by trade, undergo training and have materials to show them how to help at the polls on Election Day.
Charles Lichtman, who is helping advise the effort in Florida this year after leading it in the last two cycles, first created the Florida Democratic Lawyers Council after the 2000 election, vowing that there would never be a repeat of that disputed vote. He contends Democrat Al Gore would have won the presidency over Republican George W. Bush if a similar legal infrastructure had been in place then.
Lichtman’s efforts have since been replicated for other states. He said that is vital to provide voter protection.
“My experience has been that, in every election, the other side has taken drastic measures to try to suppress the vote,” Lichtman said. The volunteer organization has not been involved in the 2012 legal disputes so far, though they are monitoring the developments.
Four years ago, the teams of lawyers organized by Obama and Republican candidate John McCain in 2008 went largely unused since the election wasn’t very close.
But this year may be different given all the changes to voting laws — and the closeness of the race in recent polling.
The states with the strictest ID laws require voters to show photo identification before casting ballots. If they don’t have proper identification or fail to bring it, they can cast a provisional ballot but must later go to meet with state elections administrators to sort things out before the ballot is counted.
Voting groups see a variety of potential problems, such as how voters are informed of the rule changes, how poll workers handle voters who fail to bring IDs and whether voters are provided adequate notice of the steps they need to take after casting an absentee ballot.
About 30 states have some form of an ID law, with varying methods of implementation.
Legal challenges typically start coming in the weeks before the election, but “litigation has started coming sooner and more vociferously” this year, says Edward Foley, an elections law expert with Ohio State University. That includes lawsuits surrounding Florida’s plan to purge ineligible voters from the rolls.
Foley said. “We’re in an era of increased litigiousness over the voting process.”
He said lawsuits after Election Day may occur only if votes in a battleground state are within the “margin of litigation.” That would probably be a difference of just hundreds of votes, a result that would be rare.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/26/team-obama-grooming-an-army-of-lawyers-for-election/#ixzz1z2iEuGFN

Wow.......He said he ws one of the 4 best ever......I don't think so! He was sworn in to up hold the Constitution If I remember!

Photo

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Rev. Al Sharpton: GOP ‘humiliating’ Eric Holder for fighting for civil rights

Note:   Sharpton is throwing the race card around again! I have a hatred for these idiots that use the race card when things don't go right for them! He does not care that people DIED in this BOTCHED liberal program!!


Leave it to the Reverend Al Sharpton to turn the crazy up a notch on false claims that the GOP’s investigation into the Fast and Furious scandal is somehow linked to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s quest to stop states’ Voter ID laws from taking effect.
At press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, Sharpton, host of PoliticsNation on MSNBC, condemned the upcoming House of Representatives vote to hold the AG in contempt, claiming Holder has “fought for voter rights, civil rights, women’s rights, and immigration rights,” and because of those actions, “he has been targeted with humiliation” by the GOP.
Sharpton’s speech was followed by National Urban League President Marc Morial, who shared Sharpton’s ridiculous view that the Fast and Furious investigation – which began more than a year ago and was began in response to border control agent Brian Terry’s death – was part of the GOP’s grand scheme to suppress voters. Sharpton and Morial join a growing list of Democrats who seek to downplay the seriousness of House Republicans’ investigation into operation Fast and Furious by linking it to GOP Governors’ attempts to reduce voter fraud by passing laws that require would be voters to show a valid photo ID at the voting booth.
Sharpton waged a blistering attack against House Republicans, claiming that in light of Holder’s cooperation, “the only thing contemptible is that they are going to vote a contempt citation on Thursday.”
He singled out Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who chairs the body that helps elect Republicans to the U.S Senate (the National Republican Senatorial Committee) in his tirade for daring to address the topic of voter fraud. Sharpton claimed that voter fraud does not exist, despite widespread evidence that it does, and insisted that Republicans are actually trying to implement “voter suppression rules.”
Morial labeled the investigation of Holder by House Republican’s as a “clumsy, naked, politically motivated, witch hunt,” and contended that Republicans are attempting to smear an “honest, hardworking, reputable man.”
Morial failed to mention issue at the heart of the investigation into the failed Operation Fast and Furious, that it was a blotched effort that resulted in the death of an innocent American citizen.
Ironically, the embattled Reverend Al has plenty of political motive himself to defend Holder, as the Attorney General recently praised him for his controversial involvement in the Trayvon Martin case at a ceremony in April.
Nevertheless, Sharpton charged that the scheduled contempt vote is something that will “reconfirm the civil rights community’s contempt for those on the right-wing that manipulate law and due process for politics.”

http://redalertpolitics.com/2012/06/26/rev-al-sharpton-gop-humiliating-eric-holder-for-fighting-for-civil-rights/


How Many Deceptive NBC Edits Before Steve Capus Is Fired?

Well, we know the answer isn’t five.

Though it won’t speak the truth of why out loud, even the New York Times admits the NBC News brand is in trouble, and late yesterday Reuters gave us another example as to why:
Lawyers for Jerry Sandusky sought a mistrial before his conviction for child sex abuse on the grounds that prosecutors showed jurors an inaccurate version of a bombshell NBC News interview with the former football coach, and the mistake may now form part of the basis for an appeal.
In response to a subpoena, NBC News turned over three versions of Bob Costas' NBC News interview with Sandusky, which aired last November on different NBC shows.
One of those versions, which was broadcast on the 'Today' show, contained an erroneous repetition of a key question and answer - about whether Sandusky was sexually attracted to young boys, Nils Frederiksen, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania attorney general said on Sunday.
The repetition, Sandusky's lawyers contend, made it appear to jurors that he was stonewalling.
Steve Capus runs both NBC News and MSNBC. Therefore, the most troubling part of the glossed-over-in-denial NYTs' piece should be this:
Mr. Capus won a significant endorsement this week: he signed a new long-term deal to continue as the top executive in the news division.
And yet, Capus has not only overseen the NBC News brand's decline; under his watch NBC has piled up a series of scandals based on outright fraudulent editing the likes of which even CNN can't lay claim to.
Just last week, Andrea Mitchell was caught red-handed in an attempt to edit Romney into what could've been a defining gaffe (which you can bet was the whole idea).
Earlier this year, NBC's once-legendary "Today Show" was caught editing a 911 tape to make the caller, alleged Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman, look racist.
In August of 2011, NBC's Ed Schultz used deceptive editing to make Texas Governor Rick Perry, who was running for president at the time, look racist.
In August of 2009, NBC's Contessa Brewer was caught deceptively editing a piece of video to portray the Tea Party as racist, but only after she edited out the fact that the Tea Partier carrying a sidearm was a black man.
If you look at the timeline here, you'll see that the frequency of these fraudulent edits is increasing at a rapid rate. Which is probably no accident when you consider how close we are to voting Obama out of office.
In summation: NBC's brand is in trouble, the man behind the decline just got his contract renewed, and the frequency of brand-tarnishing frauds is increasing.
What are we to conclude from this?
Simple: NBC is willing to lose gobs of money and whatever is left of its reputation to get Barack Obama reelected. Capus has created an atmosphere in the news division in which this kind of outright fraud is not only tolerated but probably winked at. Feel free to believe this is all just coincidence, but I do not.
And where are our so-called media watchdogs: Howard Kurtz, Politico's Dylan Byers, and the Washington Post's Erik Wemple?
Like Capus, they are also doing their jobs as nothing more than figurehead toadies

Former Katie Couric Producer Asks NBC News: 'What the Hell Is Wrong with You Guys?'

Wow.......NBC is making more news about their liberal crap!

Katie Couric’s former producer who has worked in the mainstream media in New York and Washington for 26 years wrote a scathing blog post last week denouncing NBC News, writing he could not defend the organization anymore from accusations of liberal bias.

Deacon Greg Kandra, who has won Emmy and Peabody Awards, said that he used to defend mainstream media organizations from these sorts of accusations. But after NBC News edited George Zimmerman’s 911 tapes to make him look like a racist and again misled its viewers by editing a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania by Mitt Romney to make him look out of touch, Kandra has had enough.
I’ve grown weary of trying to defend the indefensible and explain the inexplicable,” Kandra wrote, noting that he had for years told people to calm down when they “stomped their feet and pounded their fists” while snorting “liberal media bias!”
Kandra said he could not believe Andrea Mitchell, who aired the edited Romney tape and joked about it with The Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza, “failed to acknowledge what the ‘criticism’ entailed” and “neglected to point out how the editing misrepresented the event being covered,” while offering “nothing resembling an apology or an admission of responsibility for something that was, as a matter of fact, irresponsible.”
Mitchell’s failure to apologize to her audience seems to have been the last straw for Kandra, who then wrote:
Forget it. I’m done. You deserve what they’re saying about you. It’s earned. You have worked long and hard to merit the suspicion, acrimony, mistrust and revulsion that the media-buying public increasingly heaps upon you. You have successfully eroded any confidence, dispelled any trust, and driven your audience into the arms of the Internet and the blogosphere, where biases are affirmed and like-minded people can tell each other what they hold to be true, since nobody believes in objective reality any more. You have done a superlative job of diminishing what was once a great profession and undermining one of the vital underpinnings of democracy, a free press.
Good job.
I just have one question:
What the hell is wrong with you guys?
That is a question many have been asking of NBC, an organization that even omitted the most damning evidence against convicted child abuser Jerry Sandusky in a much-touted and now infamous interview conducted last November.

CNN Ratings Plunge, Lowest in a Decade

Note:   Liberal Garbage also MSNBC mentioned...  no more said!


The cable news network is absorbing another round of dismal ratings numbers, with primetime viewership down 35 percent and falling off a cliff with a 42 percent drop with viewers aged 25-54, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Daily ratings are now the lowest in more than a decade at 319,000 for the average total viewers, a 35 percent drop and 129,000 adults 25-54, a 45 percent drop.

The primetime shows of Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan are getting especially battered, seeing overall averages down to 446,000 and just 129,000 with adults 25-54, the Reporter said, which represent 35 and 41 percent drops from the second quarter in 2011. In individual primetime broadcasts, Cooper's 8 p.m. show was down 23 percent in the demo and Morgan sank to 33 percent in adults 25-54.

MSNBC and Fox News Channel also were down in primetime, but by much less. Fox held 1.79 million viewers and MSNBC had 689,000 total viewers, according to the Reporter.

Time Warner is reportedly looking to replace executives at CNN in order to curb the unprecedented ratings slide. Those who run the publicly traded Time Warner, the second largest media and entertainment conglomerate in terms of revenue, have no choice but to take action. Senior executives at the multinational media corporation have put together a list of possible candidates to head CNN Worldwide, according to the New York Post.

© 2012 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


Read more on Newsmax.com: CNN Ratings Plunge, Lowest in a Decade
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Media to Mitt: It's Not the Economy, Stupid

Note:   It is the economy you Dumb*sses! You all blame Bush for the economy till you realize its not working no more so the AP comes out and says the President has no control over the economy?? What a bunch of idiots! These people have their heads so far up Obama's *ss its pathetic!


RUSH: The Associated Press: "When it comes to the economy, half of Americans in a new poll say it won’t matter much whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney wins -- even though the presidential candidates have staked their chances on which one would be better at fixing the economic mess." Do you believe this? Do you believe this? This is the latest propaganda point from the White House and from the AP, that a president really has no effect on the economy. That's what this story says.
Can you imagine...? Let's say it's 2004, and Karl Rove calls up someone at the AP. "You know what? Really, the president doesn't have any say over the economy."
Can you imagine the AP running that, as stenographers? When's the last time you heard anybody in the media say that the economy is irrelevant to a presidential election? 'Cause that's what the AP is trying to tell people. And what does that tell you? It tells you that they know the economy is it not gonna be seriously rebounding. And it tells you that they know that there's nothing they can do about it with their policies, and that they don't intend to do anything with different policies.
So they don't intend the economy to get any better. So the obvious conclusion from AP is, "Weeell, presidents really can't do anything." And by the same token, whatever's wrong with the economy, Obama had nothing to do with it. "Presidents don't have anything to do with the economy!" I go back to the review of The Newsroom: Create this delusional fantasyland and have your news executives and your journalists do it for you. Doesn't that kinda throw the "Bush ruined the economy" inheritance out window?
If you're gonna say that presidents have no control over the economy, if you're gonna say that presidents have nothing to do with it, then it doesn't matter what Bush left Obama with, does it? Do you think the AP would think of that? Somebody from the AP gets a call from the White House: "By the way, here's what we want you to cover today: The economy, presidents have nothing to say about it."
You think somebody in the AP would say, "Wait a second! For the last 3-1/2 years you've had us blaming Bush for the rotten economy you inherited. Now you're telling us that Bush had nothing to do with it?"
"No. We're just telling you that from this day forward, presidents have nothing to do with the economy."
The guy at the AP says, "Oh, okay. Yeah, we can make that work."
And then they do the story.
Well, if they want to stick with this, then it's bye-bye Bush being blamed for all this rotten economy stuff that poor Barack Kardashian inherited. I marvel. I marvel at this stuff. "Back on May 10th," a little over a month ago or a month and a half ago, the same poll, AP-GfK... Whatever organization that is. I think it's some German bunch. AP-GfK found that "Americans are growing more pessimistic about the economy and handling it remains President Barack Obama's weak spot and biggest challenge in his bid for a second term."
So back on May 10th, they had a poll showing the American people "are growing more pessimistic about the economy" and Obama's handling of it is his "biggest challenge." On June 14th, Gallup had a poll: "Americans Still Blame Bush More Than Obama for Bad Economy." Now today on June 26th, AP-GfK poll, guess what? Presidents have nothing to do with the economy! I guess blaming Bush isn't working. And I guess Obama getting credit from non-improvement ('cause there isn't gonna be any) isn't gonna work.
It's kind of like in the mid-nineties we got stories that said white lies are actually good for us. These lies protect people's feelings from being hurt and keep everything on a smooth, even keel. "Whatever we have to do to shield our young president from being blamed for all the stuff that he's done. Whatever we have to do, we at the AP will be right in there. You can count on us!" Gallup: "Gallup tracks daily the percentage of US adults in the workforce, ages 18 and older, who are underemployed, unemployed, and employed full-time for an employer, without seasonal adjustment," and here's the number.
The number of American adults who are in the workforce but are either out of a job completely or working only part time 'cause they can't find a full-time job is 17.8%. It's essentially the U-6 number in the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics number.
17.8%.
That's the number that Romney needs to be using.
That's the number that Romney needs to be talking about, not this 8.1% or 8.2% stuff.
17.8%.
That's the number of American adults in the workforce, either out of a job completely or working only part time 'cause they can't find full-time jobs.
17.8%.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: By the way, that same AP story says the deficit is not the president's fault, either. That 55% of the American people say, "Eh, the deficit, that's not a big deal. The president doesn't have any control over the deficit." So the AP: A majority of Americans say the president has nothing to do with the economy. And a majority of Americans, 55%, say that he has nothing to do with the deficit.
TIME Magazine, a guy named Michael Crowley: "One-Note Mitt: Is Romney Too Focused on the Economy?" It's a concerted effort out there. The media's gotten together, Romney scoring too big on the economy. Obama getting hurt too much by a bad economy. Media gotten together, and now, the economy doesn't matter, presidents have nothing to say about it, and Mitt, you're overdoing it on the economy, buddy. You're too focused on the economy. It ain't gonna help you, Mitt. You better shut up about the economy. You're just one-note samba out there, Johnny One Note. Mitt, you gotta move on to the social issues or something. What a bunch of pathetic, incompetent, blatant, pure partisans.
END TRANSCRIPT


http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/06/26/media_to_mitt_it_s_not_the_economy_stupid


AP: Poll: Half Doubt Next President Will Alter Economy
  • AP-GfK poll: American Optimism on Economy and on Obama’s Ability to Handle it Well is Fading - 05.10.12
  • Gallup: Americans Still Blame Bush More Than Obama for Bad Economy - 06.14.12
  • Monday, June 25, 2012

    More links of interest


    Smells like a cover up

    http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/24/hume-on-fast-and-furious-the-scent-of-a-cover-up-is-pretty-strong/


    More Race accusations debunked
    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/24/Obamacare-the-Tea-Party-Racists-Were-Right-Pelosi-Was-Wrong

    Pelosi must be a blond?
    http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/22/pelosi-if-mandate-ruled-unconstitutional-rest-of-health-law-wont-work-video/

    Blaming Citizens United for Obama's Problems
    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/21/blaming-citizens-united-for-obamas-problems



    Self Explanatory
    http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/23/david-brooks-obamas-use-of-executive-privilege-politically-stupid-a-winner-for-the-gop/

    Again? Second Time in Two Days Washington Post Hammers Team Obama for False Claims
    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/again-second-time-in-two-days-washington-post-hammers-team-obama-for-false-claims/

    Debbie-wasserman-schultz-getting-booted-as-dnc-chairwoman-after-november/

    Note: This is great ,because she was one of these Hacks that every time she opened her mouth , you smell a wiff of poop!





    Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz may be “getting booted” from her chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.
    Javiar Manjarres of the Shark Tank political blog reported Sunday that “Wasserman Schultz will not be back as DNC Chairwoman after the November elections.”
    “According to our source within the Democratic Party, who is also a close associate of Wasserman Schultz, the arrangements have already been made for her to leave DNC regardless if President Obama wins re-election or not,” Manjarres wrote.
    “This same source believes that Wasserman Schultz will be forced to resign behind closed doors and then stage an press event in which she tells Americans that her job as the DNC chair was a temporary one and that she is moving on with her congressional career.”
    DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse has not immediately returned The Daily Caller’s request for comment on Wasserman Schultz’s future.


    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/25/report-debbie-wasserman-schultz-getting-booted-as-dnc-chairwoman-after-november/#ixzz1yr1xXreA

    Rush-limbaugh-obama-is-living-out-a-dictators-wet-dream/

    On his Monday program, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said that President Barack Obama’s decision to temporarily impose his own version of the DREAM Act is evidence he prefers the rule of one man over the rule of law.
    “So once again we see which side Obama comes down on, on the question of a country of the rule of law or the rule of man,” Limbaugh said. “With Obama, it’s not the rule of law. He is implementing law that the Congress defeated. And then the legalization of the amnesty for 800,000 young illegals — Congress defeated that, the DREAM Act.”
    Limbaugh said Obama’s legal cherry-picking would make a dictator blush.
    “Obama wants the enforcement of every federal law to hinge upon whether he agrees with it,” he continued. “And if he doesn’t agree with the federal law, he’s not going to enforce it — like the Defense of Marriage Act. It’s the law of the land. The regime announced within the past year they were no longer were going to enforce it. It’s a dictator’s wet dream to do what Obama is doing. If he doesn’t agree with a law, voila — it’s no longer enforced. It may as well not even exist. That’s who he is, folks.”


    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/25/rush-limbaugh-obama-is-living-out-a-dictators-wet-dream/#ixzz1yr1F7qPe

    Atf-leaders-email-could-be-fast-and-furious-smoking-gun-and-holder-admitted-obama-cant-shield-it/

    A single internal Department of Justice email could be the smoking-gun document in the Operation Fast and Furious scandal — if it turns out to contain what congressional investigators have said it does.
    The document would establish that wiretap application documents show senior DOJ officials knew about and approved the gunwalking tactic in Fast and Furious. This is the opposite of what Attorney General Eric Holder and House oversight committee ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings have claimed.
    It appears that email would also prove senior DOJ officials, likely including Holder himself, knew in March 2011 that a Feb. 4, 2011 letter from the DOJ to Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley falsely denied guns were permitted to “walk” into Mexico. The DOJ allowed that false letter to stand for nine more months, only withdrawing it in December 2011.
    During the June 24 broadcast of Fox News Sunday, House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa cited the email as a “good example” of a specific document his committee knows Holder is hiding from Congress.
    “The ATF director, Kenneth Melson, sent an e-mail. And he had said to us in sworn testimony that, in fact, he had concerns,” Issa said. “And we want to see that e-mail because that’s an example where he was saying, if we believe his sworn testimony, that guns walked. And he said it shortly after February 4, and [on] July 4. When he told us that, we began asking for that document.”
    But the details of it surfaced first when Grassley mentioned it for the first time publicly during a June 12 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where Holder was testifying.
    “He [Melson] immediately sent an email warning others, ‘back off the letter to Sen. Grassley in light of the information in the affidavits,’” Grassley explained.
    Ken Melson, now the former acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, purportedly sent that email to several DOJ leaders in March 2011. According to Grassley, Melson wrote that he had reviewed the wiretap applications — the same documents Cummings and Holder claim do not show senior DOJ officials knew of or approved gunwalking tactics in Fast and Furious.
    “ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson described reading those same wiretap affidavits in March of last year,” Grassley told Holder during the Senate hearing. “He said he was alarmed that the information in the affidavits contradicted the public denial to Congress.”
    It appears Republican congressional investigators first learned of the Melson email’s existence on July 4, 2011, when Melson chose to give a lengthy deposition on Fast and Furious without DOJ and ATF lawyers present. Grassley told Holder during the Senate hearing that congressional investigators first requested that the DOJ provide Congress with that email during July 2011, shortly after Melson made his then-secret trip across town to Capitol Hill.
    The wiretap documents themselves are under federal court seal, leaving Grassley and Issa to tussle with Holder and Cumming about what they might show. Issa has said a whistleblower provided copies to his committee.
    Holder has declined to ask the federal judge who sealed them to unseal them. The March 2011 Melson email, then, may be the only legal way — without violating a court order — to document the agreement of some senior Obama administration members with Issa’s and Grassley’s characterizations of the documents.
    Melson’s email could also prove that although senior DOJ officials knew in March 2011 that the Feb. 4, 2011 letter was false, they chose to continue misleading Congress with gunwalking denials for several months.
    “We need to see it [the email] to corroborate his testimony,” Grassley said during the June 12 hearing. “But the Department is withholding that email along with every other document after Feb. 4, 2011.”
    Grassley pressed Holder on the question of how DOJ had the authority to withhold Melson’s email from Congress, a full week before President Obama indicated that he would invoke executive privilege to shield requested documents. At that time, Holder claimed the Melson email would not be protected by executive privilege.
    “On what legal ground are you withholding that email?” He asked. “The president can’t claim executive privilege to withhold that email, is that correct?”
    “Well, let me just say this: We have reached out to Chairman Issa to work our way through these issues,” Holder filibustered. “We have had sporadic contacts and we are prepared to make – I am prepared to make – compromises with regard to the documents that can be made available. There is a basis for withholding these documents if they deal with the deliberative …”
    “But not on executive privilege?” Grassley interrupted.
    “No,” Holder responded.
    Holder spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler wouldn’t answer when The Daily Caller asked her if the DOJ was planning to provide the Melson email to Congress.


    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/25/atf-leaders-email-could-be-fast-and-furious-smoking-gun-and-holder-admitted-obama-cant-shield-it/#ixzz1yr0iKLjc

    Don't let the liberals feed you bs about this! (fast and furious

    Sunday, June 24, 2012

    Issa Predicts Contempt Vote on Holder for 'Clear Cover-Up'

    Note:  All these liberal hacks are saying that this investigation is a political move. I dona't look at it this way. Two people were murdered along with Mexicans were murdered with these guns.


    U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over documents related to a failed gun-smuggling operation was “clearly a cover-up” by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration.
    “It was deny, delay and recuse,” Issa, a California Republican, said on ABC’s “This Week” of his panel’s clash with the administration.

    “Lying to Congress is a crime,” he said. “We have every right to see documents that say, did you know, when did you know, what did you know, including even the president.”

    Appearing later on Fox News, Issa also predicted that Republicans and Democrats would vote to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress this week.

    “I believe they will, both Republicans and Democrats will vote that,” Issa said on Fox News Sunday. “There are a number of Democrats, 31, who wrote to the administration asking them to be forthcoming. Many of them will stay with us now that the administration has not been.”

    Issa has previously said as many as 31 Democrats could vote to place Holder in contemp. Still, no Democrats on his committee last week voted with Republicans.

    But Issa said it was still possible for Holder to avoid a contempt charge.

    If the president and Holder “would simply start producing the documents they know they could produce to us that are not by any means going to be covered by executive privilege, this could be delayed or even eliminated," Issa said.

    Issa’s committee is seeking documents related to Operation Fast and Furious, which allowed guns illegally purchased in the U.S. to be smuggled across the border to track them to Mexican drug cartels. Democrats are accusing House Republicans of engaging in an election-year “fishing expedition” with their probe.

    In a June 20 party-line vote, the panel brushed aside President Barack Obama’s last-minute assertion of executive privilege to shield the documents and held Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for them.

    The committee’s action marked an escalation in a standoff between Republican lawmakers and the Obama administration that began last year. House Republican leaders set a vote by the full House on the contempt citation for this week, setting up a potential referral of the case to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington to determine whether prosecution is warranted.

    Executive Privilege

    Republican lawmakers say that Obama’s assertion of executive privilege raises questions about the extent of what he knew about Fast and Furious. The principle of executive privilege says the executive branch can’t be forced by the legislative branch to disclose confidential communications when they would harm operations. This is the first time Obama has invoked executive privilege, according to the White House.

    Issa is seeking documents describing internal Justice Department discussions about a February 2011 letter to lawmakers that Holder later said mistakenly contained incorrect information.

    The Justice Department says it already has provided more than 7,600 pages of documents in the case. In a June 20 statement, Holder called the panel’s action “unwarranted, unnecessary and unprecedented.”

    ‘Lost’ Guns

    Guns in Fast and Furious ended up “lost” and will turn up at crime scenes on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border for years, Holder told lawmakers last year.

    Two of about 2,000 guns that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed to be carried away were found at the scene of the December 2010 murder of U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in Arizona, according to a congressional report.

    Holder has said that he didn’t learn of the tactics in the operation until after it was the subject of news reports. Since then, he has banned the use of similar law enforcement methods.

    The attorney general told a Senate hearing last year that he regretted a Feb. 4, 2011, letter the Justice Department sent lawmakers that indicated ATF hadn’t “knowingly allowed” the tactics in the law enforcement operation to be employed. Information in the letter turned out to be inaccurate, he said.

    Department Memo

    Issa said today that his panel is particularly concerned about a Justice Department memo generated weeks later that may have shown agency officials were aware at that time Congress had been given false information. The panel seeks the memo, drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein, as part of the probe.

    “How can you presume that it is or isn’t a cover-up of something wrong, when in fact there clearly is a cover-up of some information that should have been shown to us?” he said.

    Issa said that he will send a letter to Obama today or tomorrow detailing why lawmakers say the president is taking an overly broad approach to executive privilege in the matter. If the administration changes course and releases the documents, “we’ll delay contempt and continue the process,” he said.

    Dozens of Republican lawmakers have called on Holder to resign over his handling of probes into the gun operation and leaks of classified national security information. Republicans have also criticized how the Justice Department under Holder has prosecuted terrorism suspects and challenged state immigration and voting laws.



    Read more on Newsmax.com: Issa Predicts Contempt Vote on Holder for 'Clear Cover-Up'
    Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!


    http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/BNALL-BNSTAFF-BNTEAMS-CNG/2012/06/24/id/443282

    Embattled Maxine Waters Challenges Tea Party to a Fight

    Note:  Maxine is another Top of the List Liberal Hack! She is a liar and carrying on the B.S. about the gop's war on woman!  I don't see how she can retain her position with all this display of stupidity!


    At a speech to fellow Democrats in Denver, the California congresswoman said Republicans are waging a war against women and relentlessly attacking President Barack Obama, the Denver Post reported. “We cannot allow the opportunities that America stands for to be eroded by those who simply want to bring this president down,” she said, according to the Post. “After a good night sleep, I wake up the next day, and I say, ‘Come on, Tea Party, let’s get it on.’”

    Waters is the target of a House Ethics Committee inquiry into allegations that she attempted to facilitate federal bailout financing and do special favors for a bank when her husband had stock in the company worth about $200,000.

    This isn’t the first time Waters has tried to provoke the Tea Party. Last month she accused the party of harboring a “mean spirit” in a video posted on Youtube. “I don’t know what party they’ve been to — that must have been some bitter tea,” she said. “They came with a mean spirit, and now they want to cut the food stamps. They don’t want to fund education. They want to give all of the tax breaks to the richest people.”

    And last year she roused the ire of conservative activists in August when she told a gathering in Inglewood, Calif. that the tea party “can go straight to hell.”



    Read more on Newsmax.com: Embattled Maxine Waters Challenges Tea Party to a Fight
    Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

    http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/waters-tea-party-fight/2012/06/24/id/443287

    Saturday, June 23, 2012

    Call Holder! Obama Demands ID for Rally Entrances

    Note:  What a racist Hack! By him wanting ID he prevented people from comming in that can't go and get ID!!!  What a  Bias Moron  !


    At a recent Obama rally in Ohio, prospective attendees were told to brandish their photo IDs if they expected admittance to the rally. No word yet on whether Attorney General Eric Holder plans to file suit against the Obama campaign for infringing upon Ohioans' right of peaceful assembly by way of a racist photo ID rule.

    Jessica Kershaw, the Obama campaign's Ohio Press Secretary, confirmed in a statement to BuzzFeed that the campaign checked every supporter's identification at the door.
    "We checked every ID at the door to make sure it matched with the name on the ticket that supporters filled out," she said. "We did this for every person who came in."
    Since President Obama sides with Holder in thinking it's Racist™ for states to require photo identification to vote, he must be apoplectic at himself for discriminating against those who don't get state-issued photo IDs. By asking for rally-goers to provide photo ID before entry, the Obama campaign is silently sanctioning the effectiveness of photo identification.
    What makes a rally different from voter integrity? What makes buying cigarettes, alcohol, renting a car, a hotel room, cashing a check, opening a bank account, membership at the Y, buying cold medicine, or entering a club any different? You check photo identification to protect the thing which such an exchange accesses and to confirm that you are the age you claim. Is a person's vote less unworthy of protection than buying Sudafed -- or attending an Obama rally?


    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/23/Call-Holder-Obama-Demands-IDs-For-Rally-Entrance