Author Topic: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken  (Read 218656 times)

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2075 on: October 15, 2014, 09:41:22 AM »
Obama Is Risking a U.S. Ebola Outbreak for His Own Ambitions
The Fiscal Times ^  | 10/15/2014 | Liz Peek

Posted on ‎10‎/‎15‎/‎2014‎ ‎12‎:‎27‎:‎18‎ ‎PM by Rusty0604

Six years ago he put his legacy-building healthcare legislation ahead of the need to create jobs and reboot our fragile economy. Today, his ambition to be a hero to Africa is undermining common sense approaches to protecting Americans from the Ebola virus.

At issue is the enormous popularity of George W. Bush in Africa, a love affair that highlights how little, by comparison, Mr. Obama has done for that continent. As The New York Times reported in 2013, Bush “is seen as a lifesaver who as president helped arrest a deadly epidemic [AIDS] and promoted development of impoverished lands.” As The Times noted, “During a final trip as president in early 2008, Mr. Bush was warmly greeted by huge crowds of the sort he never saw at home anymore.”

That’s a bitter pill for Mr. Obama, who makes little secret of his dislike for his predecessor and who, as our nation’s first black president, was expected to make great contributions to Africa. It must gall him that U.S. approval ratings in numerous important African countries have tumbled under his leadership.

The president, who opened his 2013 speech at the University of Cape Town by saying, “Some of you may be aware of this, but I actually took my first step into political life because of South Africa,” is desperate to rebuilding his standing. He is trying to do so in foolish and dangerous ways.

Sending 4,000 American troops to the epicenter of the viral outbreak, to help build medical facilities and generally contribute manpower to the stricken and chaotic nations, can only end in tragedy. This is not what our troops signed up for.

At the same time, President Obama is refusing to cancel flights to the United States from the most stricken nations.


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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2076 on: October 17, 2014, 01:35:27 PM »
Meet America's New Ebola Czar
Zero Hedge ^  | 10/17/2014 | Tyler Durden

Posted on ‎10‎/‎17‎/‎2014‎ ‎2‎:‎00‎:‎05‎ ‎PM by tired&retired

Forget medical experience, what the USA needs to combat the worst Ebola pandemic ever is "an American lawyer and political operative best known for serving as Chief of Staff to two Vice Presidents - Al Gore (1995–1999) and Joseph Biden (2009–2011)."

Ronald A. "Ron" Klain is an American lawyer and political operative best known for serving as Chief of Staff to two Vice Presidents - Al Gore (1995–1999) and Joseph Biden (2009–2011). He is an influential Democratic Party insider. Earlier in his career, he was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Byron White during the Court's 1987 and 1988 Terms and worked on Capitol Hill, where he was Chief Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination. He was portrayed by Kevin Spacey in the HBO film Recount depicting the tumult of the 2000 presidential election.

Lobbying Klain helped Fannie Mae overcome "regulatory issues".

Klain apparently signed off on President Obama's support of a $535 million loan guarantee for now-defunct solar-panel company Solyndra.

Clinton administration Klain joined the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1992. He ultimately was involved in both of Bill Clinton's campaigns, oversaw Clinton's judicial nominations, and was General Counsel to Al Gore's recount committee in the 2000 election aftermath. Some published reports have given him credit for Clinton's "100,000 cops" proposal during the 1992 campaign; at a minimum, he worked closely with Clinton aide Bruce Reed in formulating it. In the White House, he was Associate Counsel to the President, directing judicial selection efforts, and led the team that won confirmation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.


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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2077 on: October 20, 2014, 07:39:23 AM »
Ron Klain and Solyndra: The administration’s point man on a solar fraud is now in charge of Ebola.
National Review ^  | 10/20/2014 | Andrew McCarthy

Posted on ‎10‎/‎20‎/‎2014‎ ‎10‎:‎36‎:‎07‎ ‎AM by SeekAndFind



Ron Klain is a sharp-elbowed Democratic political operative with no medical expertise. Tapping him as “Ebola czar” may not be the president’s best move when, as it is, no one can believe a word the Obama administration says. And that’s not just because Mr. Klain is yet another lobbyist recruited despite Mr. Obama’s vow that his administration would shun lobbyists.



Klain was also a central player in the president’s Solyndra fraud, which soaked taxpayers for over half a billion dollars for the benefit of Obama cronies.



In Faithless Execution, I recount the Solyndra fraud. It never got the attention it deserved — involving, as it did, potential felony fraud violations of federal law. Even for people who did give it attention at the time, Solyndra is so many Obama scandals ago that its unseemly details are tough to recall. The story is thus worth retelling. As our nerves fray over the Ebola crisis, it is a valuable window into the administration’s priorities and an indicator of the level of trust we can put in the new czar’s assurances.



Solyndra was a solar-energy company backed by the family foundation of George Kaiser, an Oklahoma oil magnate and major Obama fundraiser. Prior to Obama’s coming to power, Solyndra had sought government funding under the economically absurd 2005 Energy Policy Act. That law lets the government play venture capitalist, investing taxpayer money in private “green energy” boondoggles that cannot attract adequate market financing.



Notwithstanding the Bush administration’s zeal to hop on this politically correct bandwagon, it declined Solyndra’s application. As one private analyst later put it, the company was “an absolute complete disaster,” with operating expenses, including supply costs, nearly doubling its revenue



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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2078 on: October 20, 2014, 08:05:50 AM »
Obama's immigration plan worse than we think: Green Cards being printed for up to 11M illegals
American Thinker ^  | 10/20/2014 | Rick Moran

Posted on ‎10‎/‎20‎/‎2014‎ ‎10‎:‎41‎:‎55‎ ‎AM by SeekAndFind



Just how many illegal aliens is President Obama planning to amnesty and grant work permits to after the election?



An announcement to federal contractors that the government is seeking to print millions of Green Cards and Work Permits gives us an idea of what the president has in mind.




Daily Caller:




President Barack Obama deputies are secretly preparing to print work permits for up to 11 million illegal immigrants over the next two years, despite the nation’s high unemployment, stalled wages and increasing automation.



If Obama actually goes ahead with the plan that is sketched in a federal contract document, he would provide employers with the ability to legally hire 13 million foreign workers even as 12 million Americans turn 18 in 2015, 2016 and 2017.



The plan to print millions of work permits and green cards — dubbed “permanent resident cards” — is outlined in Oct. 3 and Oct. 6 federal announcements to contractors.



The contract plan was discovered by the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a lower level of immigration.



“The objective of this procurement is … to produce Permanent Resident Cards (PRC) and Employment Authorization Documentation (EAD) cards,” said the Oct. 6 official announcement at FedBizOpps.gov.



“The requirement is for an estimated 4 million cards annually with the potential to buy as many as 34 million cards total,” the document says.



But the proposed five-year contract includes a so-called “surge” capability to produce an additional five million work-permit cards in one year.





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

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2079 on: October 21, 2014, 05:38:27 AM »
The Blood on Obama’s Hands
FrontPage Magazine ^  | October 21, 2014 | David Horowitz

Posted on ‎10‎/‎21‎/‎2014‎ ‎8‎:‎10‎:‎48‎ ‎AM by SJackson

Reprinted from RedState.com.

When conservatives consider the casualties of Obama’s national security policies, their attention is drawn quite naturally to Benghazi. In this shameful episode, the Obama Administration sacrificed an ambassador and three American heroes to protect a deceptive presidential campaign message in which Obama claimed that the war against al-Qaeda was over and won (“Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda is on the run”). The facts are these: Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American heroes were sent into an al-Qaeda stomping ground that the British and other diplomatic consulates had already evacuated; they were denied the security they had requested; they were then left to die during a seven hour fire fight when their compound was attacked, and finally betrayed in death, when Obama and his representatives lied to the world about what had taken place and when he failed to bring their killers to justice as he had mendaciously promised he would.

Benghazi can be seen as the collateral damage caused by presidential lies – and worse – presidential denial that there is in fact a war that Islamists have declared on America. Instead Obama insists – in the official language he authorized and that is still in place – that America’s responses to acts of Islamic terror should be described as “overseas contingency operations.” If Islamic murders and beheadings take place in the homeland, Obama calls them “workplace violence.” Benghazi is also the most shameful presidential abandonment of Americans in the field in our history – a disgrace compounded when Obama justified his trade of five Taliban Generals for one American deserter by saying Americans don’t leave their countrymen on the battlefield, which is precisely what he did in Benghazi. All of which justifies the conservative focus on this terrible event.

But the casualties of Obama’s reign in Benghazi are dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of deaths his policies have led to in Syria and Iraq, and the millions of Iraqis, Syrians and Lybians that those same policies have caused to flee their homes and become homeless in Turkey, Tunisia and other places of refuge. Obama’s legacy is defined by his ideological aversion to American power, his rule as the most anti-military president in our history, and his deeds as an “anti-war” activist, opposed to the “war on terror” because he believes that America’s (and Israel’s) policies are the cause of terrorism and the hatred that Islamic fanatics direct against our country.

Because of his ideological opposition to American power, Obama deliberately and openly surrendered America’s gains in Iraq, which had been won through the sacrifice of thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of American casualties. By deliberately handing over America’s massive military base in Iraq – a country that borders Syria, Afghanistan and Iran – Obama turned that country over to the terrorists and Iran, as his generals and intelligence chief and secretary of defense warned it would. Obama disregarded the warnings from his national security advisers – as no other American president would have – because he regarded America rather than the terrorists as the threat. In abandoning Iraq and deliberately losing the peace, he betrayed every American and every Iraqi who gave their lives to keep Iraq out of the hands of the terrorists and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Obama’s stubborn refusal to use America’s military might – ground forces backed by air power – when Assad crossed the “red line” Obama had drawn in Syria created a second power vacuum that the terrorists filled, thus leading to the emergence of ISIS or ISIL – the Islamic State in Syria and the Levant. Defenders of Obama will claim that the American public would not have supported a military intervention in Syria even if Obama had ordered one. But why is that? It is because for eleven years, beginning with their assault on “Bush’s war” in Iraq, the Democrats have sabotaged the war on terror, claiming that America’s use of power for anything but “humanitarian” purposes is illegitimate, dangerous and the root cause of the terrorist problem.

Because it was “humanitarian” Obama felt justified in conducting an unauthorized, illegal intervention in Libya to overthrow an anti-al Qaeda dictator, saying it was to prevent an invisible threat to civilians there. The result? Al-Qaeda is now a dominant force in Libya, and 1.8 million Libyans – a third of the population – have fled to Tunisia. Another brutal Obama legacy. Yet, how firm is Obama’s commitment to humanitarian interventions? In Iraq he stood by while more than half a million Christians were either slaughtered or driven into exile by ISIS murderers on their mission to cleanse the earth of infidels. This was the oldest Christian community in the world, going back to the time of Christ, and Obama let it be systematically destroyed before bad press and pressure from his own party caused him to intervene to save Yazvidis and a Christian remnant trapped on a mountain top.

The Obama presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for Iraqis, Syrians, and Libyans. Now that ISIS is in control of territory the size of a state, has access to hundreds of millions of petrol dollars and advanced U.S. ordnance, not to mention chemical weapons that Saddam left behind, it is an impending disaster for the American homeland as well.

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2080 on: October 23, 2014, 10:46:19 AM »
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Obama Asserts Fast and Furious Executive Privilege Claim for Holder’s Wife
Judicial Watch ^  | OCTOBER 23, 2014

Posted on ‎10‎/‎23‎/‎2014‎ ‎1‎:‎19‎:‎50‎ ‎PM by Red Steel

Judicial Watch announced today that it received from the Obama Department of Justice (DOJ) a “Vaughn index” detailing records about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal. The index was forced out of the Obama administration thanks to JW’s June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A federal court had ordered the production over the objections of the Obama Justice Department.

The document details the Attorney General Holder’s personal involvement in managing the Justice Department’s strategy on media and Congressional investigations into the Fast and Furious scandal. Notably, the document discloses that emails between Attorney General Holder and his wife Sharon Malone – as well as his mother – are being withheld under an extraordinary claim of executive privilege as well as a dubious claim of deliberative process privilege under the Freedom of Information Act. The “First Lady of the Justice Department” is a physician and not a government employee.

This is the first time that the Obama administration has provided a detailed listing of all records being withheld from Congress and the American people about the deadly Fast and Furious gun running scandal. The 1307-page “draft” Vaughn index was emailed to Judicial Watch at 8:34 p.m. last night, a few hours before a federal court-ordered deadline. In its cover letter, the Department of Justice asserts that all of the responsive records described in the index are “subject to the assertion of executive privilege.”

The Vaughn index explains 15,662 documents. Typically, a Vaughn index must: (1) identify each record withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption. The Vaughn index arguably fails to provide all of this required information but does provide plenty of interesting information for a public kept in the dark for years about the Fast and Furious scandal.

Based on a preliminary review of the massive document, Judicial Watch can disclose that the Vaughn index reveals:

- Numerous emails that detail Attorney General Holder’s direct involvement in crafting talking points, the timing of public disclosures, and handling Congressional inquiries in the Fast and Furious matter.

- President Obama has asserted executive privilege over nearly 20 email communications between Holder and his spouse Sharon Malone. The administration also claims that the records are also subject to withholding under the “deliberative process” exemption. This exemption ordinarily exempts from public disclosure records that could chill internal government deliberations.

- Numerous entries detail DOJ’s communications (including those of Eric Holder) concerning the White House about Fast and Furious.

- The scandal required the attention of virtually every top official of the DOJ and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). Communications to and from the United States Ambassador to Mexico about the Fast and Furious matter are also described.

- Many of the records are already publicly available such as letters from Congress, press clips, and typical agency communications. Ordinarily, these records would, in whole or part, be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. Few of the records seem to even implicate presidential decision-making and advice that might be subject to President Obama’s broad and unprecedented executive privilege claim.

Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton criticized President Obama and his disgraced Attorney General in a statement today:

This document provides key information about the cover-up of Fast and Furious by Attorney General Eric Holder and other high-level officials of the Obama administration. Obama’s executive privilege claims over these records are a fraud and an abuse of his office. There is no precedent for President Obama’s Nixonian assertion of executive privilege over these ordinary government agency records. Americans will be astonished that Obama asserted executive privilege over Eric Holder’s emails to his wife about Fast and Furious.

Once again, Judicial Watch has proven itself more effective than Congress and the establishment media in providing basic oversight of this out-of-control Administration. This Fast and Furious document provides dozens of leads for further congressional, media, and even criminal investigations.

On June 28, 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder was held in contempt by the House of Representatives over his refusal to turn over records explaining why the Obama administration may have lied to Congress and refused for months to disclose the truth about the gun running operation. It marked the first time in U.S. history that a sitting Attorney General was held in contempt of Congress.

A week before the contempt finding, to protect Holder from criminal prosecution and stave off the contempt vote, President Obama asserted executive privilege over the Fast and Furious records the House Oversight Committee had subpoenaed eight months earlier. Judicial Watch filed its FOIA request two days later. Holder’s Justice Department wouldn’t budge (or follow the law), so JW filed a FOIA lawsuit on September 12, 2012.

But then the Justice Department convinced U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates to stay our lawsuit, in part to allow ongoing settlement discussions between the Holder’s government lawyers and the House Committee to continue. Unsurprisingly, the “negotiations” between politicians running the House and the Justice Department went nowhere.

Fed up with the interminable delay caused Holder’s gamesmanship and stonewalling, JW renewed its request to the Court to allow our transparency lawsuit to continue. Thankfully, this past July, Judge John D. Bates ended the 16-month delay and ordered the Obama administration to produce a Vaughn index of the alleged “executive privilege” records by October 1. Judge Bates noted that no court has ever “expressly recognized” President Obama’s unprecedented executive privilege claims in the Fast and Furious matter.

Unhappy with having to produce the records prior to the elections, Justice lawyers asked the judge to give them one extra month, until November 3 (the day before Election Day!) to produce the info. Judge Bates rejected this gambit, suggested that the Holder’s agency did not take court order seriously. Rather than a month, Judge Bates gave Justice until yesterday to cough up the Vaughn index. Judge Bates issued his smack down on September 23.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced his resignation two days later.

Many share our opinion it was “no coincidence” that Holder’s resignation came “on the heels of another court ruling that the Justice Department must finally cough up information about how Holder’s Justice Department lied to Congress and the American people about the Operation Fast and Furious scandal, for which Eric Holder was held in contempt by the House of Representatives.”

The House had been separately litigating to obtain the records but had gotten nowhere until after Judge Bates ruled that the DOJ finally had to disclose information to Judicial Watch.

On September 9, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, citing Judicial Watch’s success, ordered the Justice Department to produce information to Congress by November 3.

Fast and Furious was a DOJ/Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) “gun running” operation in which the Obama administration reportedly allowed guns to go to Mexican drug cartels hoping they would end up at crime scenes, advancing gun-control policies. Fast and Furious weapons have been implicated in the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of other innocents in Mexico. Guns from the Fast and Furious scandal are expected to be used in criminal activity on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border for years to come.

Guns from the Fast and Furious scandal continue to be used in crimes. Just last week, Judicial Watch disclosed that a Fast and Furious gun was used in gang -style assault on a Phoenix apartment building that left two people wounded. We figured this out from information we uncovered through another public records lawsuit against the City of Phoenix.

Congress officially confirmed the AK-47 was used in the assault that terrorized residents in Phoenix. In an October 16 letter sent from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Rep. Darryl Issa (R-CA) to Deputy Attorney General James Cole discloses that “we have learned of another crime gun connected to Fast and Furious. The [Justice] Department did not provide any notice to the Congress or the public about this gun….This lack of transparency about the consequences of Fast and Furious undermines public confidence in law enforcement and gives the impression that the Department is seeking to suppress information and limit its exposure to public scrutiny.”

We have many other active lawsuits over the Fast and Furious scandal:

On October 11, 2011, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ and the ATF to obtain all Fast and Furious records submitted to the House Committee on Oversight.

On June 6, 2012, Judicial Watch sued the ATF seeking access to records detailing communications between ATF officials and Kevin O’Reilly, former Obama White House Director of North American Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council.

On September 5, 2013, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ seeking access to all records of communications between DOJ and the Oversight Committee relating to settlement discussions in the Committee’s 2012 contempt of Congress lawsuit against Holder. The contempt citation stemmed from Holder’s refusal to turn over documents to Congress related to the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal.

On May 28, 2014, Judicial Watch sued the DOJ on behalf of ATF Special Agent John Dodson, who blew the whistle on Operation Fast and Furious and was then subjected to an alleged smear campaign designed to destroy his reputation.

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2081 on: October 23, 2014, 11:31:17 AM »
The Obama Administration lied last year when they informed Congress and the public that the 2,200 people that the Administration released from incarceration to save money had only minor criminal records.

USA TODAY, gaining the data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the Freedom of information Act, reports that some of the illegal immigrants had been charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and homicide.







GOP members were furious when the data was released. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had told Congress that the inmates who were released were “low-risk offenders who do not have serious criminal records.” Records reveal that ICE was readying itself for budget cuts in February 2013 when it released the immigrants, only two-thirds of whom had no criminal records.







After the new information was released, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen protested, "Discretionary releases made by ICE were of low-level offenders. However, the releases involving individuals with more significant criminal histories were, by and large, dictated by special circumstances outside of the agency's control."







Sen. John McCain, R-AZ., weighed in that it was "deeply troubling that ICE would knowingly release thousands of undocumented immigrant detainees – many with prior criminal records – into our streets, while publicly downplaying the danger they posed."







Normally, ICE releases immigrants with serious criminal records only if their legal status has changed or if they cannot be deported. Every illegal immigrant held in jail costs ICE an average of $122 a day. Last year, GOP members asked ICE Director John Morton for specifics about the immigrants the agency had released. Rep. J. Randy Forbes, R-VA, asked Morton, "No one on that list has been charged or convicted with murder, rape or sexual abuse of a minor, were they?" Morton responded, "They were not." He added that none of the released immigrants had been charged with child pornography charges. White House spokesman Jay Carney echoed that the prisoners who were released were "low-risk, non-criminal detainees."







Yet an ICE spreadsheet reveals one immigrant from Texas had been charged with aggravated kidnapping and sexually assaulting a child, and others had charges including armed assaults or assaulting police officers. One immigrant had been charged with conspiracy to commit homicide. Two more had charges of aggravated assault using a weapon, amd another had been charged with sexual assault.







ICE will not confirm whether the charges resulted in convictions.



Morton had informed Congress that of the over 2,200 immigrants ICE released, 629 had criminal records, all of them misdemeanors "or other criminals whose prior conviction did not pose a violent threat to public safety."







Of course, Morton did not mention the 144 other released immigrants who were filed under "special issues." They were largely released because ICE had six months to jail them legally if the agency could not deport them.







Homeland Security’s inspector general went to great lengths to ensure the Administration would escape culpability, writing in August that ICE was so hurried from the budget cuts that neither the White House or then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano knew what was going on. The report went further than that, insisting that ICE officials acted "appropriately."







Gary Mead, who headed ICE's detention operation, claimed that if the wrong data had been fed to Congress or the public, it was just a mistake. He added, "We had been asking for some time whether we would have enough money to sustain the level of detention we had, and we didn't get an answer. When we did get an answer, it was that we had to start releasing people today."



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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2083 on: October 29, 2014, 02:43:35 PM »
Posted on October 29, 2014 at 5:18:10 PM EDT by Oldeconomybuyer

The Bay State’s former Obamacare czar is taking an executive job at the company that was awarded a no-bid state contract to fix the disastrous website, the Herald has learned.

Sarah Iselin — hired by the Patrick Administration in February to rescue the malfunctioning website — will become an executive-in-residence at Optum, which currently holds a lucrative state contract to re-launch the Health Connector on Nov. 15.

Iselin, who took a leave of absence from Blue Cross Blue Shield to oversee the Massachusetts Health Connector from February to May, told the Herald today she is leaving the insurer for a position that reports directly to Optum CEO Larry Renfro.

“I will not be working on Massachusetts-related work,” Iselin told the Herald.

Gov. Deval Patrick announced both the hiring of Iselin and of Optum to repair the broken site in February.

However, in a controversial Health Connector board vote in May while Iselin was still czar, Optum was granted a additional no-bid contract to develop a new site set to launch next month.

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

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2084 on: October 29, 2014, 07:18:55 PM »
Posted on October 29, 2014 at 9:27:54 PM EDT by Nachum

(CNSNews.com) -- As U.S. Marines withdraw from Operation Enduring Freedom (the Afghanistan war), CNSNews.com's database on casualties shows that 418 Marines gave their lives in the conflict and that 92% of those casualties, 385 deaths, occurred since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.

“U.S. Marines and service members from the United Kingdom left Regional Command Southwest in Afghanistan’s Helmand province today, turning their facilities over to the Afghan security forces,” reported the Department of Defense on Oct. 27.

“We lift off confident in the Afghans’ ability to secure the region,” said Army Lieutenant General Joseph Anderson, commander of the ISAF Joint Command. “The mission has been complex, difficult and dangerous. Everyone has made tremendous sacrifices, but those sacrifices have not been in vain.”

In the more than 12 years that have passed since U.S. troops first entered Afghanistan with the aim of removing al Qaeda from its sanctuary there, 2,226 U.S. service personnel have given their lives in and around Afghanistan in support of U.S. military activities in that country. Among those, 418 soldiers, or 18.8 percent of those service personnel were U.S. Marines.

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

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2085 on: November 04, 2014, 05:12:58 AM »


New emails show White House role in Sherrod ouster

By MARY CLARE JALONICK
Associated Press
 

 
 
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- A 2010 email from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says his department was "waiting for the go-ahead" from the White House before accepting the resignation of employee Shirley Sherrod, according to newly released documents, despite Obama administration assertions that her ouster was Vilsack's decision alone.

The email, which was made public Friday in an ongoing federal court case over the matter, shed more light on the evening of July 19, 2010, when the USDA hastily asked Sherrod to resign after a video showing her making supposed racist remarks surfaced on a conservative website. Her dismissal turned into a racial firestorm after it became clear that the video had been edited and her remarks were meant to tell a story of reconciliation.

Both the White House and Vilsack have repeatedly said the agriculture secretary made the decision to ask for Sherrod's resignation without White House input. The emails, along with earlier emails obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act in 2010 and 2012, make it apparent that Vilsack wanted Sherrod to leave the department and ordered her resignation. But a newly-released email sent by Vilsack himself suggests he was awaiting a decision from White House officials on how to proceed.

"She has offered her resignation which is appropriate," reads an email from the initials "TJV" to Dallas Tonsager, then the USDA undersecretary of rural development and Sherrod's boss. "The WH is involved and we are waiting for the go-ahead to accept her resignation. I suspect some direction from WH soon."

The USDA would not comment on the email and a spokesman, when asked, did not dispute that Vilsack wrote it. The email, sent at 5:37 p.m. on July 19, is in reply to an earlier email from Tonsager addressed to "Mr. Secretary." Vilsack's middle name is James.

The correspondence is evidence in a federal defamation case that Sherrod filed in 2011 against the late blogger Andrew Breitbart, who posted the video, and his colleague Larry O'Connor. The Justice Department has been pushing to keep the emails sealed, but lost Friday afternoon when U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled they did not have to be kept private.

Vilsack's email was brought up at a court status hearing earlier last week. According to a transcript, a lawyer for Breitbart's wife, who was substituted as defendant after the blogger died unexpectedly in 2012, said the email was "extremely telling" and "contains a statement that is arguably inconsistent with the public statements."

Justice Department lawyer David Glass replied to the judge that "when there is a reference to the White House was involved, what it means is the White House liaison was involved."

USDA's White House liaison, Kevin Washo, was in touch with the White House through the night, according to the documents. In another newly released email, a White House aide writes to Valerie Green of the White House presidential personnel office, saying "USDA is looking for direction - can someone contact Washo?" Green replies that she is "reaching out now."

Green writes Washo asking him to loop her in, "Please. Please. Please."

The department that night accepted Sherrod's resignation as a USDA rural development official in Georgia. When her full speech came to light the next day, it became clear that Sherrod, who is black, was speaking about overcoming her initial reluctance to help a white farmer decades ago.

As the administration came under fire, Vilsack reversed course, apologizing and asking her to return to the department - an offer she declined. President Barack Obama also offered Sherrod an apology.

White House officials acknowledged weeks later they had been more involved than they initially let on and had stayed in close touch with USDA that night. They still maintained, however, that the decision to seek Sherrod's resignation was Vilsack's alone.

The newly released emails also reveal for the first time missives between White House officials that night. By law, members of the public and the press cannot request internal White House documents directly from the White House.

In one email, then-White House Director of Presidential Personnel Nancy Hogan writes to other White House officials that Sherrod has offered to resign and says they will "need to determine what we say about resignation."

After the full video came out the next day, frustrated White House officials vented to one another through emails. Senior adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that "I would not have fired her for it. We just don't need any of it."

"Agreed," Gibbs replied.

In another e-mail to Gibbs that next day, Jarrett notes that then NAACP President Ben Jealous had apologized for condemning Sherrod before knowing the whole story. "We need to do the same and this will do (sic) away. Even Fox said we railroaded Shirley." In another copy of the same email released by the court, Jarrett's same words are redacted, citing a FOIA exemption for "deliberative process."

Lawyers for Breitbart colleague O'Connor filed the emails in court to bolster their argument that government decisions were the reason for Sherrod's dismissal, not the blog post. The emails show that the officials were made aware there might be a longer video, and that they were concerned about political fallout from her comments. O'Connor's lawyers argue that the "deliberative process" exemptions prove their point.

"The government cannot assert a privilege to shield the production of decision-making communications, while simultaneously claiming to have had no role in a decision," the lawyers wrote in their filing.

---

Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2086 on: November 04, 2014, 11:43:48 AM »
US considering a nuclear deal with Iran reliant on Russia
Jerusalem Post ^  | 11/4/2014 | Michael Wilner

Posted on ‎11‎/‎4‎/‎2014‎ ‎2‎:‎34‎:‎01‎ ‎PM by Uncle Miltie

Iran might be willing to ship much of its uranium stockpile out of country to Russia as part of a comprehensive agreement with world powers over its nuclear program, US officials said this week.

Quoted in The New York Times, officials said that much of the 28,000 pound stockpile would be converted to fuel rods by the Russians for peaceful use in Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant.

Russia is engaged in talks with Iran alongside the US, United Kingdom, France, China and Germany, working toward a November 24 deadline for a final agreement.

"There's no doubt that the talks have benefited from constructive Russian involvement," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said on Tuesday during his daily briefing with reporters, noting that, "obviously, a lot more work needs to be done" in the negotiations.

Earnest's response came amid questions over Russia's role in US diplomatic efforts, a cause of strain ever since Moscow's annexation of Crimea led to harsh sanctions from Washington and Brussels.

Nevertheless, the US and Russia continue to collaborate on issues of mutual concern, including the Iranian program, Earnest said.

"The Russians have engaged in the international community to achieve important progress," Earnest added.

The Times report, citing "officials and diplomats involved in the negotiations," claimed the tentative agreement marked a significant development towards a comprehensive nuclear deal.

"If the Iran-Russia deal works, it could be the cornerstone of something much larger," according to one such official quoted.

Once converted, such rods would be virtually useless in a weaponization program. The current stockpile is enough for Iran to produce several nuclear warheads, should Tehran's leaders choose to further enrich the material to weapons-grade.

Russia would be compensated generously for its participation, the report claims, during a difficult financial period for the country. And Russian President Vladimir Putin would benefit politically, expanding his long-held argument that Moscow is an indispensable force on the world stage.

Wendy Sherman, chief negotiator at the table with Iran, has stepped in as acting deputy secretary of state—second in command at the State Department—after the retirement of William J Burns.

Continuing her role in the talks, Sherman will be in Vienna on Friday for a meeting of the political directors leading the negotiations. From that point, efforts will continue straight until the deadline on November 24.

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2087 on: November 10, 2014, 10:04:11 AM »
Obamacare Architect: Yeah, We Lied to The "Stupid" American People to Get It Passed
Townhall.com ^  | November 10, 2014 | Katie Pavlich

Posted on ‎11‎/‎10‎/‎2014‎ ‎12‎:‎31‎:‎37‎ ‎PM by Kaslin



Meet Jonathan Gruber, a professor at MIT and an architect of Obamacare. During panel event last year about how the legislation passed, turning over a sixth of the U.S. economy to the government, Gruber admitted that the Obama administration went through "tortuous" measures to keep the facts about the legislation from the American people, including covering up the redistribution of wealth from the healthy to the sick in the legislation that Obamacare is in fact a tax. The video of his comments just recently surfaced ahead of the second open enrollment period for Obamacare at Healthcare.gov.

"You can't do it political, you just literally cannot do it. Transparent financing and also transparent spending. I mean, this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes the bill dies. Okay? So it’s written to do that," Gruber said. "In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in, you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical to get for the thing to pass. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not."

GRUBER: "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage."

A few points. 1.Notice how lying to the American people is completely justified by Obama administration standards so long as the ends justify the means. Gruber would "rather have this law than not," and therefore purposely lying about what the law actually is in order to get it passed is completely acceptable. regardless of the negative effects it has on the lives of Americans. 2. Lack of transparency might be a huge political advantage in the short term, but long term there are consequences from voters, which is exactly what we saw last week during the Democrat blood bath at every level of government across the country. 3. Insulting Americans as stupid and deceiving them is a really good way to lose your power on Capitol Hill, which is again exactly what we saw last week in the 2014 midterms. Twenty-eight Senators who voted for Obamacare are now out of the Senate for one reason or another. 4. Obamacare in its entirely was "sold" on lies. From the promise to keep your doctor to claims insurance rates would go down, not up -- to hiding that the legislation was in fact a tax until of course it was necessary to argue it was a tax to save the legislation at the Supreme Court. Government bureaucrats promising an expansion of care knowing care under Obamacare would be limited, etc. Hell, even the official name for Obamacare, "The Affordable Care Act," is a lie. Obamacare isn't affordable. 5. The process through which Obamacare was shoved through and down the throats of the American people happened as a result of Harry Reid changing Senate rules and without the support of voters. The legislation didn't receive a single Republican vote in the House or the Senate. Also, remember this?

Nancy Pelosi - What she is willing to do to pass Healthcare

Or this?



"Absolutely not a tax increase."

Obama in 2009: "Absolutely Not a Tax Increase"

Obamacare is a sham and the American people have been lied to and deceived every step of the way. Further, Obamacare has never been popular with the American people. Not when it passed and not now. It should also be noted that since before Obamacare was passed conservatives have been rightly screaming about its true contents and impact on American families and the economy. They've been right all along and were called racists for sounding the alarm.

Overall, a lack of transparency has been key to the Obama administration's existence on a whole range of topics, which is why it is one of the least transparent administrations in history despite President Obama's promises.


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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2089 on: November 10, 2014, 12:02:45 PM »
Government slashes 2015 Obamacare sign-up forecast by 30%
cnbc.com ^  | November 10, 2014 | Dan Mangan

Posted on ‎11‎/‎10‎/‎2014‎ ‎1‎:‎03‎:‎26‎ ‎PM by John W

So the number "13" apparently is bad luck for Obamacare, too.

Federal officials on Monday sought to lower expectations for upcoming enrollment in Obamacare, announcing that they now believe that only between 9 million and 9.9 million people will be enrolled in Affordable Care Act health insurance plans by the end of 2015.

That is well below the 13 million people that the Congressional Budget Office has projected for Obamacare enrollment by the end of 2015. Open enrollment for 2015 plans resumes Saturday.

The new projection, more than 30 percent reduced from the CBO estimate, comes from the Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the Obamacare health reform program.


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


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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2091 on: November 14, 2014, 08:27:46 AM »
President Obama: Where Are Your Manners?
FrontPage Magazine ^  | November 14, 2014 | Ronn Torossian

Posted on ‎11‎/‎14‎/‎2014‎ ‎10‎:‎09‎:‎24‎ ‎AM by SJackson



President Obama: Where Are Your Manners?

Posted By Ronn Torossian On November 14, 2014 @ 12:10 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 13 Comments


President Barack Obama has continually made terrible decisions – domestically and internationally – and has left America in a worse place than when he started.  In China, Obama chewed gum and outraged Chinese citizens with his behavior.  This has been a constant throughout his administration.  Some meaningful quotes on the absolute failures of Obama when it has come to diplomacy:
•“As far as is known, Obama became the first President, the first Commander-in-Chief, not to salute the living recipient of the Medal of Honor after presenting the medal.” — Rees Lloyd
•“Obama is inexperienced and lacks a proper understanding of how he should handle himself as President.” — Casey Carmical
•“Who can forget the moment last year when Obama took a selfie during a memorial service for anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela?” — Amie Parnes
•“However one feels politically, it is questionable to salute Marines while holding a coffee cup – Could not someone have held it for him?” — Eric Vainer
•The GOP is taking the public outrage over Obama’s salute to Marines while holding a coffee cup and running with it.” — Lisa Fine
•“In an unprecedented breach of diplomatic etiquette, President Obama once again sandbagged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.” — Isi Leibler
• “President Obama was the most liberal and most incompetent president in my lifetime ever since Jimmy Carter.” — Bobby Jindal
•“It was seen as a slap in the face when Obama got out of his U.S. supplied transportation chewing gum.” — Roz Zurko
•“To see a leader like Bibi Netanyahu treated so shabbily by someone [Obama] who treats us the same way was too much to bear.” — William A. Jacobson
•“Obama’s awkward encounter with Akihito – bows are not meant to accompany physical contact – is not the first time the president has been criticized for his greeting of a foreign leader: Critics accused him of genuflecting to Saudi King Abdullah at a world economic summit this year.” — Foster Klug
• “Yes, President Obama has just gifted the queen an iPod.” — Chris Matyszczyk
•“Obama presented former Prime Minister Gordon Brown with DVDs of American films that couldn’t be played on British machines. Our classy president gave the queen an iPod loaded with his speeches.” — Robert Hanusa
•“Instead of rendering the traditional salute, after fumbling as if all-thumbs in trying to affix the blue-ribboned Medal of Honor, Obama, equally awkwardly, tried to ‘hug’ the Sergeant. Yes, a ‘hug’ for the soldier who remained at attention with eyes front in military bearing.” — Rees Lloyd
•“Mr. Obama’s manners at the event were on a par with those of Clark Griswold’s cousin Eddie from the 1989 movie Christmas Vacation.” — Larry Clifton
• “Barack Obama makes us look patronizing, rude, and condescending.” — Doug Wead
•“Gordon Brown has been snubbed repeatedly by Barack Obama during his trip to the United States, as the fall-out from the release of the Lockerbie bomber appeared to have left ‘the special relationship’ at its lowest ebb for nearly 20 years.” — Andrew Porter
•“What is also more consistent with the Limbaugh and D’Souza thesis are such personal quirks as Obama’s gross rudeness to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House and his otherwise inexplicable public debasement of himself and the United States by bowing low to other foreign leaders.” — Thomas Sowell
•“One of the important considerations for the leader of the free world has to be inter-personnel relations.” — Jonah Engler
•“We made this meeting so luxurious, with singing and dancing, but see Obama, stepping out of his car chewing gum like an idler.” — Yin Hong
•“He [Obama] made the mistake of both shaking hands and bowing at the same time, a big breach of etiquette. The truth was that he was supposed to choose one or the other.” — David E. Sanger
•“President Obama has very poor personal relations with most world leaders.” — Ed Lasky
•“But the quintessential dissing of our mother country had to be Obama’s return of a bust of Winston Churchill bestowed on the U.S. by former Prime Minister Tony Blair after 9/11.” — Robert Hanusa
•“Benjamin Netanyahu was left to stew in a White House meeting room for over an hour after President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of tense talks to have supper with his family.” — Adrian Blomfield

This NY PR firm owner has said it before and shall say it again – Obama’s legacy is one of disaster.

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Re: Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken
« Reply #2093 on: November 17, 2014, 05:03:51 AM »
Another ObamaCare Deception

As Jonathan Gruber knows, the health-care law is a tax machine. The ‘Cadillac’ levy will hit the middle class.
 By
Tevi Troy
 
Nov. 16, 2014 6:12 p.m. ET
 
 www.wsj.com


   
 
Jonathan Gruber, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist, is making himself a household name, and not in a good way. A series of videos have emerged in recent days showing Mr. Gruber—an architect of the Affordable Care Act—telling college audiences that major parts of the law were designed purposely to mask its true cost to individual Americans.

As Mr. Gruber put it, speaking last year at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania: “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

One example cited by Mr. Gruber is the so-called Cadillac tax, as the ObamaCare excise tax on high-value employer health plans is known. The tax, which he helped devise and will take effect in 2018, imposes a 40% levy on individual health plans worth more than $10,200, and on family plans worth more than $27,500. As Mr. Gruber’s remarks were unearthed last week, economist Mark Wilson and I released a study of the excise tax that shows he is right about its deceptive design. The tax is likely to hit many people who don’t have high-end coverage.

Mr. Gruber says in one video that his real aim was to reduce the tax break available to those who get employer-sponsored insurance, about 170 million Americans. He lamented that it would be hard to persuade Congress to reduce people’s tax breaks: “You just can’t get through. It’s politically impossible.” True enough—the excise tax does the job instead. It is a stealthy way to reduce the tax preference for health care without taking it away from employers.

Mr. Gruber also noted that the real impact of the tax would fall on individual Americans: “We just tax the insurance companies, they pass on higher prices that offsets the tax break we get, it ends up being the same thing. It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.” In another video that surfaced on Friday, he explained that the only way to get rid of the tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance was “by mislabeling it, calling it a tax on insurance plans rather than a tax on people, when we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”

Our study bears this out. While the tax is designed to be paid by companies, employees or consumers will see significant increases in costs. These cost increases will be passed on in several ways. Large employers who are subject to the excise tax in 2018 will pay an average of more than $2,700 per employee a year from 2018 to 2024. As Mr. Gruber admits, and basic economics confirms, this cost will be passed on to consumers or to employees in higher prices and lower compensation.

Employers, being rational actors, will not want to pay these taxes and will reduce their health-care benefits to limit their potential exposure to the tax. Doing this will cause employees to be hit by the excise tax in at least two other ways. If employers increase taxable wages to compensate for reducing the value of their plans, then employees will be paying more in taxes for the same compensation levels, and more after-tax out-of-pocket expenses for their health care.

From 2018 to 2024, the excise tax could cost 12.1 million employees an average $1,050 in higher payroll and income taxes a year, if employers increase their taxable wages as they reduce the cost of health-care benefits. Alternatively, if employers only reduce the value of their offerings without increasing wages and salaries, these employees could see up to a $6,150 reduction in their health-care benefits and little or no increase in pay.

Mr. Gruber also implicitly acknowledged that calling the excise tax a “Cadillac” tax is misleading, as the tax’s reach will expand. “Over time it’s gonna apply to more and more health-insurance plans,” he said, elaborating in a separate speech that the “tax that starts out hitting only 8% of the insurance plans essentially amounts over the next 20 years [to] essentially getting rid of the exclusion for employer-sponsored plans.”

This means that eventually the excise tax will affect an increasing number of workers who don’t have top-flight health insurance. By 2031 the cost of the average family health-care plan is expected to hit the excise-tax threshold. The tax’s creeping reach is reminiscent of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was originally designed to hit only the wealthiest taxpayers but now nails the middle class.

The all-too-candid MIT economist is not likely to have a hard time paying for his own health care—Mr. Gruber reportedly received $400,000 for advising the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act. But he is having a hard time explaining his unguarded comments about the law. His views may be obnoxious, but Mr. Gruber has performed a public service by finally telling the truth about ObamaCare and providing a glimpse of the mind-set of those who foisted it on the country. The American people are smart enough to see Mr. Gruber and the Affordable Care Act for what they are.

Mr. Troy is the president of the American Health Policy Institute and a former deputy secretary of Health and Human Services.

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