Obama: Corruption, Deception, Dishonesty, Deceit and Promises Broken

[Soul Crusher]

Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises

www.huffingtonpost.com

Posted: 06/13/2012 9:17 am Updated: 06/13/2012 12:22 pm



WASHINGTON -- A critical document from President Barack Obama's free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises.

The leaked document has been posted on the website of Public Citizen, a long-time critic of the administration's trade objectives. The new leak follows substantial controversy surrounding the secrecy of the talks, in which some members of Congress have complained they are not being given the same access to trade documents that corporate officials receive.

"The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of [trade] negotiations," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch in a written statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been so incensed by the lack of access as to introduce legislation requiring further disclosure. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has gone so far as to leak a separate document from the talks on his website. Other Senators are considering writing a letter to Ron Kirk, the top trade negotiator under Obama, demanding more disclosure.

The newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration's advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.

Under the agreement currently being advocated by the Obama administration, American corporations would continue to be subject to domestic laws and regulations on the environment, banking and other issues. But foreign corporations operating within the U.S. would be permitted to appeal key American legal or regulatory rulings to an international tribunal. That international tribunal would be granted the power to overrule American law and impose trade sanctions on the United States for failing to abide by its rulings.

The terms run contrary to campaign promises issued by Obama and the Democratic Party during the 2008 campaign.




"We will not negotiate bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment, food safety, or the health of its citizens; give greater rights to foreign investors than to U.S. investors; require the privatization of our vital public services; or prevent developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life-saving medications," reads the campaign document.

 Yet nearly all of those vows are violated by the leaked Trans-Pacific document. The one that is not contravened in the present document -- regarding access to life-saving medication -- is in conflict with a previously leaked document on intellectual property (IP) standards.

"Bush was better than Obama on this," said Judit Rius, U.S. manager of Doctors Without Borders Access to Medicines Campaign, referring to the medication rules. "It's pathetic, but it is what it is. The world's upside-down."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative insists that while broad standards require many medical patents and IP rules that would increase the price of medications, the U.S. intends to work with countries involved in the Trans-Pacific talks to ensure that the agreement does not restrict access to life-saving drugs.

USTR was not immediately available to comment on the newly leaked investment chapter of the Trans-Pacific deal, and has previously stated that it cannot comment on the terms of an allegedly leaked document.

That statement is belied somewhat by recent American efforts in other international negotiations to establish controversial medical patents that grant companies long-term monopolies on life-saving medications. Those monopolies increase drug prices, which impede access to medications, particularly in developing nations. The World Health Organization and dozens of nonprofit public health groups have objected to the standards sought by the Obama administration. Two United Nations groups recently urged global governments not to agree to trade terms currently being advocated by the Obama administration, on the grounds that such rules would hurt public health.

Such foreign investment standards have also come under fire at home, from both conservative sovereignty purists and progressive activists for the potential to hamper domestic priorities implemented by democratically elected leaders. The North American Free Trade Agreement, passed by Congress in 1993, and a host of subsequent trade pacts granted corporations new powers that had previously been reserved for sovereign nations and that have allowed companies to sue nations directly over issues.

While the current trade deal could pose a challenge to American sovereignty, large corporations headquartered in the U.S. could potentially benefit from it by using the same terms to oppose the laws of foreign governments. If one of the eight Pacific nations involved in the talks passes a new rule to which an American firm objects, that U.S. company could take the country to court directly in international tribunals.

Public Citizen challenged the independence of these international tribunals, noting that "The tribunals would be staffed by private sector lawyers that rotate between acting as 'judges' and as advocates for the investors suing the governments," according to the text of the agreement.

In early June, a tribunal at the World Bank agreed to hear a case involving similar foreign investment standards, in which El Salvador banned cyanide-based gold mining on the basis of objections from the Catholic Church and environmental activists. If the World Bank rules against El Salvador, it could overturn the nation's domestic laws at the behest of a foreign corporation.

Speaking to the environmental concerns raised by the leaked document, Margrete Strand Rangnes, Labor and Trade Director for the Sierra Club, an environmental group said, "Our worst fears about the investment chapter have been confirmed by this leaked text ... This investment chapter would severely undermine attempts to strengthen environmental law and policy."

Basic public health and land-use rules would be subject to challenge before an international tribunal, as would bank regulations at capital levels that might be used to stymie bank runs or financial crises. The IMF has advocated the use of such capital controls, which would be prohibited under the current version of the leaked trade pact. Although several countries have proposed exceptions that would allow them to regulate speculative financial bets, the U.S. has resisted those proposals, according to Public Citizen.

Trans-Pacific negotiations have been taking place throughout the Obama presidency. The deal is strongly supported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the top lobbying group for American corporations. Obama's Republican opponent in the 2012 presidential elections, Mitt Romney, has urged the U.S. to finalize the deal as soon as possible.

This post has been updated to include comment from the Sierra Club.




________________________ ________________________ _________________


And you stupid fucks plan on voting for this again? 

[Soul Crusher]

Obama Energy Dept. awards $2 million grant to solar company linked with Van Jones
The Daily Caller ^ | 06/14/2012 | Hal Libby
Posted on June 15, 2012 4:35:06 AM EDT by markomalley

On Wednesday the Department of Energy began financing solar power installation research with a $2 million award to Solar Mosaic. The solar energy research company has former Obama “green jobs” czar Van Jones listed as an advisor. It also employed Rebuild the Dream, Jones’ firm, to do its public relations work.

The DOE’s grant money will be distributed to nine companies in four states. Solar Mosaic received the most money, four times the amount of most other grants.

Jones resigned his post in the Obama administration three years ago amid controversy stemming from his past remarks.

Before working in the Obama White House, Jones signed a petition alleging officials in the George W. Bush administration “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

Jones later made crude remarks about Republicans in a public speech and expressed support for Mumia-Abu Jamal, a death row inmate convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer.

It’s unclear whether the Department of Energy knew of Jones’ position at Solar Mosaic. Agency spokeswoman Jen Strutsman told The Daily Caller that grantmaking was “decided solely on the merits of the project, assessed by career civil servants.”

“Each of the awards … was selected because of its technology and the project’s potential to reduce the cost of solar energy for American families and businesses,” she added.

Van Jones did not respond to requests for comment.

[Soul Crusher]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2159554/Barack-Obama-New-York-President-jets-evening-star-studded-fundraisers.html#ixzz1xrBM6E6y


So basically we paid for obama's star studded bash w the girls last night because of his 15 minute fake photo op at WTC.


FUBO you pofs! 

[Soul Crusher]

HHS Inks $20 Million Contract to Sell Obamacare to Skeptical Public! (Before SCOTUS/Election Day)
Heritage Foundation ^ | Lachlan Markay
Posted on June 14, 2012 10:47:57 PM EDT by MindBender26

The Department of Health and Human Services has inked a $20 million contract with a public-relations firm to sell aspects of Obamacare to the American public.

The PR push is part of a sustained effort to sell the unpopular Obamacare law to the American public. Last year, HHS asked Congress to quadruple the budget for its public affairs office – to nearly $20 million – and nearly double the size of the office’s staff. The department insisted the changes were necessary to “help Americans understand and access their benefits and information under the law.”

•The Obama HHS launched a campaign to track Internet searches and to use online search engines such as Google and Yahoo to drive traffic to a government website promoting Obama’s health care overhaul. Using “pay-per-click” advertising tools, such as Google Adwords, HHS purposely targeted people searching the term “Obamacare,” a word that has been described as “disparaging” by political agents of the president.

•According to a budget summary prepared by Ogilvy, from October 2010 through February 2011, the Obama administration spent $1,435,009 on these online advertisements alone, including advertising campaigns with Google and Yahoo, almost $300,000 per month.

•A number of documents address the need to target the Obamacare propaganda campaign to Hispanics, blacks, and women. For example, according to an email from Chris Beakey, vice president of Ogilvy PR Worldwide, to HHS officials on Dec. 16, 2010, summarizing a conference call, “You want to utilize the bulk of their paid media efforts (which would include expenditures for Radio One and Univision) on media that reaches African Americans and Hispanics. The money will go farther and these audiences continue to be a top priority.”

The Obama administration has also coordinated with liberal activist groups and friendly media organizations to spin the law in a positive light.

(Excerpt) Read more at blog.heritage.org ...

[Soul Crusher]

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Barack Obama the Shape Shifter
Townhall.com ^ | June 18, 2012 | Lurita Doan
Posted on June 18, 2012 4:11:08 AM EDT by Kaslin

Barack Obama does lip service to the concept of entrepreneurship and small business ownership and, as he moves full tilt into election campaign mode, repeatedly cues up small business photo ops in an effort to become all things for all people. Like a shape-shifter from a sci-fi film, Obama’s primary skill is to appear to be something he is not, as he repeatedly masks his full-tilt assault on entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Consider the many, small business photo-ops that Team Obama has staged in the past few months, in New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Michigan, and Florida. At the same time, the regulatory costs and burdens of Obama’s policies have fallen heavily on the small business community, even as the net worth of Americans has plunged 40% in the past three years under the Obama Administration.

Barack Obama has, arguably, destroyed more wealth during his three years in office than almost any other individual in the history of the United States. And much of this destruction has occurred because Obama is anti-small business and anti-entrepreneurship. Much of this destruction of the economy has occurred because Barack Obama does not understand that business owners and risk takers are what grow an economy, and when the government creates an environment of instability, uncertainty, scapegoatism, topped off with draconian tax regulations, businesses and the economy suffer.

To Obama’s thinking, small business owners are considered part of the “rich”, and thus have become the whipping boy of the Obama Administration. The group labeled “rich”, earning $200,000 or more annually, whom Barack Obama believes need to be taxed at 40% or higher is mainly composed of small business owners, sole proprietors and entrepreneurs, who file their business taxes on Schedules and addenda to their personal income taxes.

Consider, too, that the group hardest hit by the mandates of Obamacare is the small business community which will be required to provide government-legislated healthcare options to employees, regardless of business size and profitability. The new rate hikes due to Obamacare may result in businesses facing a 9% increase in the cost of healthcare premiums. For many small businesses, 9% oftentimes represents the business' entire profit that year, so the Obamacare mandate could wipe out the fruits of an entire year's effort, or even worse, put a small business in the red.

The sad story goes on, as the group hardest hit by the reporting requirements of the Obama Administration policies is the small business community, where the SBA estimates that the cost of the various reports now required by the federal government cost approximately $10,000 to $20,000 dollars—often more than what the average small business makes in profit annually.

The proof that the small business community is the hardest hit by the Obama Administration’s anti-business policies is evidenced in several surveys that have been released this past month.

Small businesses are the biggest employer for minorities and teenagers. But, hiring by small business has slowed to the lowest point ever measured over a ten year period—which also helps to explain the disastrous unemployment numbers for minorities and teens. (The Administration has been trying to posit that teen hiring improved in May, but studies show that teens are discouraged and, thus, there are fewer teens in the market looking for jobs.)

Since small businesses are not hiring, they are also not borrowing as much—which affects the banking industry. Business lending to small business has slowed. Small loans to business of $1 million or less have been shrinking consistently since June 2008.

Average monthly pay for all small business employees decreased to $2,688 in May, a decrease of 13 percent.

The construction sector which has a large proportion of small businesses is, as a direct result of Obama’s anti-business assault is also in serious trouble. Construction sector revenue stopped growing at the beginning of 2006, began a slow decline in mid 2007, and then continued a more dramatic decline starting in mid-2008

“The most common source of startup capital for immigrant-owned businesses is personal or family savings, with roughly two-thirds of businesses reporting this source of startup capital”. But, the devastation within the economy over the past three years means that there’s a lot less “family savings” available for use as startup capital.

There’s an oft heard saying “small businesses need a hand up, not a hand out”, but in the Obama Administration, these kinds of assistance to small businesses are regarded, incorrectly, as one in the same.

The belief that one person can make a difference, can create a thing of value with no help from the government is antithetical to everything that Obama believes. Furthermore, the entrepreneurial ideology scares Obama because business owners act in direct opposition to the kind of government-doled out opportunities that Obama wants Americans to think is the best they can do.

The 2012 election is all about the government and its relationship to the American people and American business. That’s it. That’s all. Whether the issue under discussion is the economy, strengthening the capital markets, the bloated entitlement system, the military, American involvement overseas, Greek debt, healthcare legislation, attracting talented and educated workers, the tax code, or the risks and rewards of being an American, there’s just one degree of separation from these issues and the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed, regulatory overreaching into the lives of Americans.

Barack Obama’s policies cannot and will not work, because the Obama Administration does not truly believe that the economic success of America is intrinsically tied to the success of the American small business community.

And so, our shape-shifting president hopes to disguise his antipathy towards business, entrepreneurs and small business leaders, as he moves skillfully around the country in one staged photo-op after another. Each carefully orchestrated to mask the economic destruction caused by his policies.

Americans should watch how effortlessly Obama shifts his shapes, how effortlessly Obama dons whatever mask is calculated to disguise his intents and best serve his reelection efforts. Americans better say a prayer for the small businesses and entrepreneurs pitted against Barack Obama—a most formidable foe, capable of destroying vast amounts of wealth, ushering in even more restrict regulations, and killing off job creators.

[whork]

I need a lawyer can you show up in court and NOT talk Obama and Socialism?

[Soul Crusher]

I need a lawyer can you show up in court and NOT talk Obama and Socialism?

I don't represent pedos sorry.   

[whork]

I don't represent pedos sorry.   

Haha auch nice comeback

[Soul Crusher]

King Con: The Legend of Obama
 Sultan Knish ^ | Sunday, June 17, 2012 | Daniel Greenfield




Let us suppose for a moment that Obama's endorsement of gay marriage was a courageous step, rather than an admission of an opinion that everyone but a few dupes knew he already held. Now let's allow that moment to pass, because if, as liberals say, it was the right thing to do, then why did he wait so long to do it?

(A preview of the next Newsweek cover) When Obama first came out against gay marriage, he was doing it to pander to voters. Now that he came out for gay marriage, he was pandering to a different set of voters. A small set with deep pockets who needed a reason to cheer him and donate to him.

No matter how many rainbow halos Newsweek sticks around his photoshopped head, there is no escaping the inescapable conclusion that Obama's alternating opposition and support for two men holding hands in a Las Vegas chapel while an Elvis impersonator pronounces them man and man, has nothing to do with his ideals and everything to do with precise political calculations.

Liberal apologetics explain Obama's decline as the woes of a naive idealistic lad, another Mr. Smith who spends too much stuttering and playing golf, to be able to properly explain to America why it needs to get in touch with its inner liberal child. But if Obama had been that fellow, he would have given his Adam and Steve speech a few days into his administration, not after a few years and some heckling from gay rights advocates.

Obama's Dream Act is a creature from the same closet. Trade in the rainbow halo for a tricolor sombrero and give Latino voters something to chew on going into the election. There's nothing idealistic about the maneuver. Much as liberals want their Josiah Bartlet, instead they've got David Hampton, who's slick, smooth and completely unprincipled.

If legalizing illegals is the right thing to do, then like gay marriage, it was the right thing to have done years ago. Instead the timing testifies that it wasn't the right to do for America. It was the right thing to do for Obama.

Obama deciding to carpet bomb American jobs would be bad enough, but what's worse is that he did it in the service of his own needs. It's grand scale policymaking whose only purpose is to get one man another four years doing a job that he isn't very good at. And if a few hundred thousand Americans have to lose their jobs for him to get his back, that doesn't bother him.

Liberals can defend a politician who comes out for gay marriage or legalizing aliens, but how do you defend a man who does these things not because he believes in them, but because they're convenient for him at a given place and time. You can't defend him as a deep thinker who doesn't seem to know how to handle real world politics. And you certainly can't defend him as a babe in the woods who just wants to make the country a better place. A man who does these things has only one agenda and all the liberal pieties come second to keeping his ass firmly in the Oval Office chair.

The unpleasant truth that Obama supporters have to face is that he isn't losing because of anything that the Republicans have done. He isn't losing because of FOX News or Rush Limbaugh. Those are reasons why Republicans are winning, but they're not the reason why he's losing.

Americans generally don't hate him. What they hate is seeing their finances unravel while the only thing he has to offer them is another sonorous speech that tries to remix FDR, JFK and LBJ but only leaves them worried and scratching their heads.

Obama in 2008 was like Madoff in the 90's. He had a good suit and an even better line. Mostly he made people feel like he was going places and if they hitched their wagon to his hybrid, they would go places too. But Obama in 2012 is more Madoff in 2008. The patter is still good, but nobody's seeing any money and they're starting to get worried. Suddenly the, "Let's invest trillions in America" line sounds like the biggest scam in the world.

Every time Obama walks out to give another speech, what hundreds of millions of people hear is a drawn out, "Just trust me." The check is in the mail. I sent it out last week. You want me to talk to Helen in accounting, I can do that. I'll go talk to her right now. We'll clear this thing right up. But I promise you'll get your money. I just have to work a few things out. But it's in the mail. Just trust me.

Liberals agonize that Obama isn't communicating to the American people. But he is communicating, the problem is that he has nothing to communicate to them. Just another round of blaming everyone else while telling people that "the rich" have their money. And once people have listened to that, once they've sat through another 54 minutes of, "Some say that ______, but I say_______" what then?

Then you go back to the people who gave you money when you were just working your way up. The people you began ignoring once you got into the big leagues. But now you come right back to them and endorse gay marriage. No more "not defending" the Defense of Marriage Act, which happens to be law. No more "not enforcing" Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Now you're committed.

Now you'll openly endorse gay marriage, and stop enforcing whatever relevant laws remain, because what the hell, the white men care about that sort of thing are never going to vote for you anyway. But if they did, if you could get all those white men back, why you'd run out on your gay pride fundraiser and be over to Virginia or North Carolina in a minute, denying that you ever contemplated accepting Adam and Steve.

Any gay donors who don't know that Obama is as reliably politically monogamous as David Bowie, will figure it out when he begins carving out a new territory in the dark hours of the election. Just as Latinos will figure out that a man who will deport them in the hopes of boosting employment numbers and then offer them a "Get Out of Deportation" card before the election, is about as likely to keep his word to them, as he is to Middle America.

Obama became popular whoring himself out to Chicago's aging Socialists on an Anti-War platform. But before you could whistle, "Hail to the Chief", he was in office and had his war on. Liberals who backed Obama over Hillary Clinton on his anti-war credentials, might just as easily have gone with John Edwards. They would have been screwed either way.

Now that Obama has done the gays and Latinos, look for him to go running back to the anti-warries to show them how many wars he's ended. And just like gay marriage and the Dream Non-Act, he did it right in time for the election.

"Afghanistan? Taken care of. Gay marriage, done. Dream Act, done. We've got gay illegal alien soldiers getting married in empty cells in Guantanamo Bay. What more do you guys want from me?"

How about the truth? But that's the one thing that Obama doesn't give anyone. You can have made up stories about his agonizing quest to come to terms with being a half-black half-hippie space alien, but don't ask him what he's actually going to do a year from now or whom, if anyone, he's loyal to. If you want a speech that invokes the Gettysburg Address and the time that his white grandmother said something racist, he can have that for you in 15 minutes or less. But don't ask him why he violated every promise that he ever made, often more than once.

David Hampton conned money out of wealthy Hollywood liberals by pretending to be Sidney Poitier's son. Obama conned money out of them by pretending to be America's son, the man who would finally reconcile their contradictory identities as Americans and as liberals by inspiring the country to be as liberal as it could be. Like David Hampton, Obama was lying to them.

Obama certainly tilted America leftward, but he didn't do it through inspiration, he did it through deception. This was not an administration that created a new consensus, but one that functioned as its own closed door consensus that it occasionally stepped out to announce to the American People.

Not only didn't Obama win the argument, but he lost the election. Congress snapped back to the right so fast that it might have been a rubber band on steroids. And this was to Obama's advantage because it allowed him to spend the next two years blaming his own laziness, corruption and ineptitude on a Congress which had only tilted right because of him.

Most legends are about heroic deaths. The warrior who falls in defense of his cause. His nobility enshrined in defeat. That's the story that liberals want to tell about Obama. A great man who was too good for us. Who fell in the electoral field because he was too honest, too decent and too right for us to acknowledge his virtues. But that's not the story of Obama. It's not even in the same fairy kingdom as his story.

Obama isn't losing because he's too good to cheat, too noble to mess with the political process, too decent to answer the evil Republicans in kind, too idealistic to turn the system to his advantage, or any of the ridiculous myths being spun to explain his fall. He is losing because he has done all these things and more, in the service of nothing but his own power.

Before Obama lied to America, he lied to the left. Before he cheated us, he cheated them. Now he comes to them with some pink underwear and a tricolor sombrero and the people he conned eagerly cheer for him, the way that investors cheered when despite all the investigations around him, he sent them a check.

"If it was all scam, why would he be sending us money? If it's all a scam, why did he endorse gay marriage and illegal aliens?" That's the mark's question that hangs in the air and there is no answer. The question is already the answer. If you're looking for proof that you haven't been conned, it's the best proof that the con has already happened.

[Soul Crusher]

Google: Obama Administration Increases Requests for Content Removal
 Newsmax ^ | 6/18/12 | Thomson/Reuters



U.S. authorities are leading the charge as governments around the world pepper Google (GOOG) with more demands to remove online content and turn over information about people using its Internet search engine, YouTube video site and other services.

Google provided a glimpse at the onslaught of government requests in a summary posted on its website late Sunday. The breakdown covers the final six months of last year. It's the fifth time that Google has released a six-month snapshot of government requests since the company engaged in a high-profile battle over online censorship with China's communist leadership in 2010.

The country-by-country capsule illustrates the pressure Google faces as it tries to obey the disparate laws in various countries while trying to uphold its commitment to free expression and protect the sanctity its more than 1 billion users' personal information.

Governments zero in on Google because its services have become staples of our digital-driven lives. Besides running the Internet's most dominant search engine, Google owns the most watched video site in YouTube, operates widely used blogging and email services and distributes Android, the top operating system on mobile phones. During the past year, Google has focused on expanding Plus, a social networking service, that boasts more than 170 million users.


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



________________________ ________________________ _______________________


HOPE AND CHANGE!

[Soul Crusher]

Obama Administration's Drone Death Figures Don't Add Up


ProPublica  |  By Justin Elliott Posted: 06/18/2012 4:59 pm

By Justin Elliott ProPublica
 June 18, 2012, 4:12 p.m.


Last month, a "senior administration official" said the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under President Obama is in the "single digits." But last year "U.S. officials" said drones in Pakistan killed about 30 civilians in just a yearlong stretch under Obama.

Both claims can't be true.

A centerpiece of President Obama's national security strategy, drones strikes in Pakistan are credited by the administration with crippling Al Qaeda but criticized by human rights groups and others for being conducted in secret and killing civilians. The underlying facts are often in dispute and claims about how many people died and who they were vary widely.

So we decided to narrow it down to just one issue: have the administration's own claims been consistent?

We collected claims by the administration about deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan and compared each one not to local reports but rather to other administration claims. The numbers sometimes do not add up. (Check out our interactive graphic to explore the claims.)

Even setting aside the discrepancy between official and outside estimates of civilian deaths, our analysis shows that the administration's own figures quoted over the years raise questions about their credibility.
 



There have been 307 American drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004, according to a New America Foundation count. Just 44 occurred during the Bush administration. President Obama has greatly expanded the use of drones to attack suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other groups in Pakistan's remote northwest region.

Obama officials generally do not comment by name on the drone strikes in Pakistan, but they frequently talk about it to reporters (including us) on condition of anonymity. Often those anonymously sourced comments have come in response to outside tallies of civilian deaths from drone attacks, which are generally much higher than the administration's own figures.

The outright contradiction we noted above comes from two claims made about a year apart:

* April 22, 2011 McClatchy reports that U.S. officials claim "about 30" civilians died in the year between August 2009 and August 2010.

* May 29, 2012 The New York Times reports that, according to a senior Obama administration official, the number of civilians killed in drone strikes in Pakistan under president Obama is in the "single digits."

As we also show in our interactive graphic, other anonymous administration claims about civilian deaths are possible but imply conclusions that seem improbable.

Consider:

* April 26, 2010 The Washington Post quotes an "internal CIA accounting" saying that "just over 20 civilians" have been killed by drones in Pakistan since January 2009.

* Aug. 11, 2011 The New York Times reports that CIA officers claim zero civilians were killed since May 2010

* Aug. 12, 2011 CNN quoted a U.S. official saying there were 50 civilians killed over the years in drones strike in Pakistan.

If this set of claims is assumed to be accurate, it suggests that the majority of the 50 total civilian deaths occurred during the Bush administration — when the drone program was still in its infancy. As we've noted, in the entire Bush administration, there were 44 strikes. In the Obama administration through Aug. 12, 2011, there were 222. So according to this set of claims more civilians died in just 44 strikes under Bush than did in 222 strikes under Obama. (Again, the graphic is helpful to assess the administration assertions.)

Consider also these three claims, which imply two lengthy periods when zero or almost zero civilians were killed in drone strikes:

* September 10, 2010 Newsweek quotes a government estimate that "about 30" civilians were killed since the beginning of 2008.

* April 22, 2011 McClatchy reports that U.S. officials claim "about 30" civilians died in the year between August 2009 and August 2010.

* July 15, 2011 Reuters quotes a source familiar with the drone program as saying "about 30" civilians were killed since July 2008.

It's possible that all these claims are true. But if they are, it implies that the government believes there were zero or almost zero civilian deaths between the beginning of 2008 and August 2009, and then again zero deaths between August 2010 and July 2011. Those periods comprise a total of 182 strikes.

The administration has rejected in the strongest terms outside claims of a high civilian toll from the drone attacks.

Those outside estimates also vary widely. A count by Bill Roggio, editor of the website the Long War Journal, which bases its estimates on news reports, puts the number of civilian killed in Pakistan at 138. The New America Foundation estimates that, based on press reports, between 293 and 471 civilians have been killed in the attacks. The London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which draws on a wider array of sources including researchers and lawyers in Pakistan, puts the number of civilians killed at between 482 and 832. The authors of the various estimates all emphasize that their counts are imperfect.

There are likely multiple reasons for the varying counts of civilian deaths from drone strikes in Pakistan. The attacks are executed remotely in often inaccessible regions. And there's the question of who U.S. officials are counting as civilians. A story last month in the New York Times reported that President Obama adopted a policy that "in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants."

There are also ongoing debates in the humanitarian law community about who the U.S. may legitimately target with drone strikes and how the CIA is applying the principle of proportionality — which holds that attacks that might cause civilian deaths must be proportional to the level of military advantage anticipated.

In a rare public comment on drone strikes, President Obama told an online town hall in January that the drones had not caused "a huge number of civilian casualties."

When giving their own figures on civilian deaths, administration officials are often countering local reports. In March 2011, for example, Pakistanisincluding the country's army chief accused a U.S. drone strike of hitting a peaceful meeting of tribal elders, killing around 40 people. An unnamed U.S. official rejected the accusations, telling the AP: "There's every indication that this was a group of terrorists, not a charity car wash in the Pakistani hinterlands."

Unnamed U.S. officials told the Los Angeles Times last year that "they are confident they know who has been killed because they watch each strike on video and gather intelligence in the aftermath, observing funerals for the dead and eavesdropping on conversations about the strikes."

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said during a visit to Pakistan this month that there should be investigation of killings of civilians by drones and that victims should be compensated. The U.S. has given compensation to victims of airstrikes in Afghanistan but there are no reports of victims of drone strikes in Pakistan being compensated.

Since the various administration statements over the years were almost all quoted anonymously, it's impossible to go back to the officials in question to ask them about contradictions.

Asked about the apparent contradictions, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told ProPublica: "[W]e simply do not comment on alleged drone strikes."

Additional reporting by Cora Currier.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/18/drones-obama-administration-figures_n_1607030.html






drip drip drip   

[Soul Crusher]

How Obama Bureaucrats Fueled Western Wildfires
 Townhall.com ^ | June 20, 2012 | Michelle Malkin



COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The smell of singed air here is inescapable. Less than 50 miles west of my neighborhood, the latest wildfire has spread across 1,100 acres. It's the fifth active blaze to erupt in our state over the past month. But ashes aren't the only things smoldering.

The Obama administration's neglect of the federal government's aerial tanker fleet raises acrid questions about its core public safety priorities. Bipartisan complaints goaded the White House into signing a Band-Aid fix last week. But it smacks more of election-year gesture politics: Too little, too late, too fake.

Ten years ago, the feds had a fleet of 44 firefighting planes. Today, the number is down to nine for the entire country. Last summer, Obama's National Forest Service canceled a key federal contract with Sacramento-based Aero Union just as last season's wildfires were raging. Aero Union had supplied eight vital air tankers to Washington's dwindling aerial firefighting fleet. Two weeks later, the company closed down, and 60 employees lost their jobs. Aero Union had been a leader in the business for a half-century.

Why were they grounded? National Forest Service bureaucrats and some media accounts cite "safety" concerns. But as California GOP Rep. Dan Lungren noted in a letter obtained by reporter Audrey Hudson of the conservative D.C. newspaper Human Events last year, a Federal Aviation Administration representative said it was a contractual/compliance matter, not safety, that doomed Aero Union's fleet.

"I am deeply troubled by the Forest Service's sudden action," Lungren warned, "particularly as California enters into the fire season. Our aerial firefighting fleet is already seriously undercapitalized." Both the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the Department of Agriculture's Inspector General have been critical of the Forest Service's handling of the matter. All of this has been known to the Obama administration since it took the reins in 2009.

Nine months after Lungren's warning, the deadly High Park fire in Larimer County, Colo., claimed a grandmother's life, destroyed 189 homes and scorched nearly 60,000 acres. Arizona, New Mexico, Washington and Wyoming also have battled infernos this summer.

After months of dire red flags from a diverse group of politicians ranging from Texas GOP Gov. Rick Perry and Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl to Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and New Mexico Democratic Sen. Jeff Bingaman, President Obama finally signed emergency legislation last week to expedite the contracting process. Obama will borrow planes from Canada and provide $24 million for new aerial tanker contracts.

But the money won't come until next year, and the dog-and-pony rescue moves will not result in any immediate relief. "It's nice, but this problem isn't fixed with a stroke of the pen," former Forest Service official and bomber pilot Tony Kern told the Denver Post this week. "You need to have the airplanes available now." Veteran wildland firefighter and blogger Bill Gabbert of WildfireToday.com adds: "The USFS should have awarded contracts for at least 20 additional air tankers, not 7."

Imagine if Obama's Forest Service had been a private company. White House eco-radicals would be rushing to place their "boots on the necks" of the bureaucrats who made the fateful decision to put an experienced aerial tanker firm out of business as wildfires raged and the available rescue fleet shrunk.

"The Obama administration is scrambling now to help ensure the Forest Service has the air assets it needs to fight the ongoing inferno," Colorado free-market environmental watchdog Sean Paige reported at MonkeyWrenchingAmerica.c om last week. "But the crisis is bound to raise questions not just about whether the cancelled contract created additional weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but about what the administration has been doing over the past three summers to shore-up the service's air fleet."

Where there's smoke swirling over Team Obama there are usually flames of incompetence, cronyism and ideological zealotry at the source. The ultimate rescue mission? Evacuating Obama's wrecking crew from the White House permanently. November can't come soon enough.



________________________ ________________________ _________



Disgraceful.   Fuck you every obama voter.   

[Soul Crusher]

 

[whork]

If i got political info from AQ regarding a repub president would you take it seriously?

[Soul Crusher]

4 Pinocchios for Obama’s newest anti-Romney ad

Posted by Glenn Kesslerat 06:00 AM ET, 06/21/2012



“Running for governor, Mitt Romney campaigned as a job creator. But as a corporate raider, he shipped jobs to China and Mexico. As governor, he did the same thing: Outsourcing state jobs to India.”
 
— Voiceover of new Barack Obama campaign ad


The Obama campaign apparently loves to ding former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney with the charge of “outsourcing.” On several occasions, we have faulted the campaign for its claims, apparently to little avail.

 Now, all of the claims have been combined in one 30-second ad, with the added incendiary charge that Romney was a “corporate raider.” Let’s look anew at this material.

 

The Facts
 

 The phrase “corporate raider” has a particular meaning in the world of finance. Here’s the definition on Investopedia:



“An investor who buys a large number of shares in a corporation whose assets appear to be undervalued. The large share purchase would give the corporate raider significant voting rights, which could then be used to push changes in the company’s leadership  and management. This would increase share value and thus generate a massive return for the raider.”
 

In other words, this is generally an adversarial stance, in which an investor sees an undervalued asset and forces management to spin off assets, take the company private or break it up.

 In a previous life, The Fact Checker covered renowned corporate raiders such as Carl Icahn and his ilk. We also have closely studied Bain Capital and can find no examples that come close to this situation; its deals were done in close association with management. Indeed, Bain generally held onto its investments for four or five years, in contrast to the quick bust-em-ups of real corporate raiders. So calling Romney a “corporate raider” is a real stretch.

 So how does the Obama campaign justify this phrase? It cites a single Reuters story from last August, about a campaign stop in New Hampshire, written by a stringer, Jason McLure, who was previously based in Africa. Buried in the article is a reference to Romney as a “former corporate raider.”

 “Reuters typically refers to Romney as a ‘former private equity executive’ or something along those lines,” said Ros Krasny, the Boston bureau chief.  “Of the hundreds of times we have referenced Romney over the past year or more, honestly, that example from Jason must have just slipped through the net — 10 months ago.”

 A better source for Romney’s behavior as an investor might be someone who actually worked on Wall Street, such as former Obama auto czar Steven Rattner. “Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path,” Rattner wrote in Politico this year.

Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples — involving Holson Burns Group — took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital.

 Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain — to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics — but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics.

The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic.

 The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.

 This concerns Romney’s veto of a bill that would have prohibited Massachusetts from contracting with companies that outsourced the state’s work to other countries. Lawmakers were especially concerned about a $160,000-a-month contract with Citigroup to operate a system of electronic food-stamp cards that included a customer phone service center in India.

Both the liberal editorial page of the Boston Globe and conservative editorial page of the Boston Herald urged Romney to veto the amendment, saying it would cost the state money. Romney agreed, saying the measure did not protect state jobs — the call center might have moved from India to another state — but “had the potential of costing our citizens a lot more money.” The Democratic-dominated Massachusetts legislature did not override his veto, even though it overturned 117 others, suggesting that there was little real support for the measure.

 When the food-stamp contract expired, the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance insisted that those jobs be returned to the United States. But they ended up in a call center based in Utah — just as Romney had predicted.

As we mentioned, we recounted this ancient Massachusetts history before, giving the campaign Two Pinocchios. So we were very surprised that the Obama campaign cited that critical Fact Checker column as a source for the ad in its back-up materials. 

The ad also cites as a source a Boston Globe article from last month that merely reports on an earlier ad making similar charges. That’s highly circular reasoning — and is not fair play.

Upon hearing this ad was under consideration for a tough rating, the Obama campaign supplied reams of additional SEC documents regarding Romney’s ownership in Bain after he left for the Olympics, most of which we had examined previously when we first looked at this question. The campaign also supplied SEC documents showing that two of these companies, Modus and SMTC, as well as one called Stream International (a predecessor of Modus), earned money in part by helping other companies subcontract work overseas. Some of this business predated Romney’s departure from Bain, but thus far it seems a slim case for this particular ad.

“Romney can’t run from his record. At Bain and in Massachusetts, he had the chance to keep jobs in America and sent them overseas instead,” said Kara Carscaden, deputy press secretary for the Obama campaign. “Even while he was at the Olympics, Romney owned and profited from Bain, continues to profit from it today and cannot ignore what Bain did during that time. Whether it’s outsourcing public jobs to India or shipping private ones to Mexico and China, Romney’s record is clear.”

 

 

The Pinocchio Test
 

 The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing.  Simply repeating the same debunked claims won’t make them any more correct.



Four Pinocchios

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/4-pinocchios-for-obamas-newest-anti-romney-ad/2012/06/20/gJQAGux6qV_blog.html?wprss=rss_fact-checker

[Soul Crusher]

Worldcom convict gets $7.5 (Million) loan guarantee from Obama’s stimulus [Tax Dollars for Crooks]
Washington Examiner ^ | 6/21/12 | Joel Gehrke
Posted on June 21, 2012 8:03:59 PM EDT by SoFloFreeper

David Myers, a former Worldcom executive who served 11 months in prison after being convicted of fraud, received a $7.5 million loan that was guaranteed by the federal government with money from the 2009 stimulus.

Worldcom filed the largest Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. history 2002, after three years of “falsely professing financial growth and profitability to increase the price of WorldCom’s stock.” As Worldcom controller, Myers was one of the three executives most intimately involved in perpetrating the fraud, which exaggerated that company’s value by $11 billion.

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

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2898017/posts






WTF! 

[Soul Crusher]

Skip to comments.

Obama's Green-Jobs Fraud Exposed
IBD Editorials ^ | June 21, 2012 | Editor
Posted on June 21, 2012 8:49:46 PM EDT by Kaslin

Industrial Policy: For a $9 billion investment, the administration created just over 900 new, permanent jobs. We could've had 20,000 jobs building a pipeline with not a dollar of taxpayer money being wasted.

According to the report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy, Section 1503 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus), the part that covers green energy projects got some $9 billion in stimulus cash for 2009-11 and created a whopping 910 direct jobs — those involved in the ongoing operation of the wind and solar projects that were funded.

Now, the report doesn't come right out and say this. You have to pick through it and look past the "indirect" jobs said to have been created by the manufacture and installation of the bird-chopping wind turbines and water-cleansed solar panels.

The administration has a most curious way of describing what a green job is, but if you count just the "direct" jobs, it cost taxpayers $9.8 million to create each of those long-term jobs.

Throw in the indirect jobs supporting the direct jobs estimate of 4,600 (we're confused too) and there are 5,510 total jobs (direct and indirect). Starting with the $9 billion in grants, the result to establish 5,510 jobs averages out to $1.63 million per job.

In an attempt to make things look not quite so wasteful, the report in its summary claims that for the 2009-11 time frame, there were an average 52,000-75,000 "direct and indirect jobs per year" created for the construction, installation and related work on the wind and solar projects

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...

http://news.investors.com/article/615697/201206211849/green-stimulus-created-just-910-jobs.htm

[Soul Crusher]

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/top-ubs-executive-and-barrack-obamas-leading-fundraiser-robert-wolf-under-bank-scrutiny/articleshow/14329896.cms




Nice.   Obama Bundler getting TJE heat now. 

[Soul Crusher]

Strassel: Axelrod's ObamaCare Dollars

Emails suggest the White House pushed business to the presidential adviser's former firm to sell the health-care law.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL


Rewind to 2009. The fight over ObamaCare is raging, and a few news outlets report that something looks ethically rotten in the White House. An outside group funded by industry is paying the former firm of senior presidential adviser David Axelrod to run ads in favor of the bill. That firm, AKPD Message and Media, still owes Mr. Axelrod money and employs his son.

The story quickly died, but emails recently released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee ought to resurrect it. The emails suggest the White House was intimately involved both in creating this lobby and hiring Mr. Axelrod's firm—which is as big an ethical no-no as it gets.
 
Mr. Axelrod—who left the White House last year—started AKPD in 1985. The firm earned millions helping run Barack Obama's 2008 campaign. Mr. Axelrod moved to the White House in 2009 and agreed to have AKPD buy him out for $2 million. But AKPD chose to pay Mr. Axelrod in annual installments—even as he worked in the West Wing. This agreement somehow passed muster with the Office of Government Ethics, though the situation at the very least should have walled off AKPD from working on White-House priorities.

It didn't. The White House and industry were working hand-in-glove to pass ObamaCare in 2009, and among the vehicles supplying ad support was an outfit named Healthy Economy Now (HEN). News stories at the time described this as a "coalition" that included the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the American Medical Association, and labor groups—suggesting these entities had started and controlled it.

House emails show HEN was in fact born at an April 15, 2009 meeting arranged by then-White House aide Jim Messina and a chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Max Baucus. The two politicos met at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) and invited representatives of business and labor.
 
A Service Employees International Union attendee sent an email to colleagues noting she'd been invited by the Baucus staffer, explaining: "Also present was Jim Messina. . . . They basically want to see adds linking HC reform to the economy. . . . there were not a lot of details, but we were told that we wd be getting a phone call. well that call came today."

The call was from Nick Baldick, a Democratic consultant who had worked on the Obama campaign and for the DSCC. Mr. Baldick started HEN. The only job of PhRMA and others was to fund it.

Meanwhile, Mr. Axelrod's old firm was hired to run the ads promoting ObamaCare. At the time, a HEN spokesman said HEN had done the hiring. But the emails suggest otherwise. In email after email, the contributors to HEN refer to four men as the "White House" team running health care. They included John Del Cecato and Larry Grisolano (partners at AKPD), as well as Andy Grossman (who once ran the DSCC) and Erik Smith, who had been a paid adviser to the Obama presidential campaign.

 In one email, PhRMA consultant Steve McMahon calls these four the "WH-designated folks." He explains to colleagues that Messrs. Grossman, Grisolano and Del Cecato "are very close to Axelrod," and that "they have been put in charge of the campaign to pass health reform." Ron Pollack, whose Families USA was part of the HEN coalition, explained to colleagues that "the team that is working with the White House on health-care reform. . . . [Grossman, Smith, Del Cecato, Grisolano] . . . would like to get together with us." This would provide "guidance from the White House about their messaging."

According to White House visitor logs, Mr. Smith had 28 appointments scheduled between May and August—17 made through Mr. Messina or his assistant. Mr. Grossman appears in the logs at least 19 times. Messrs. Del Cecato and Grisolano of AKPD also visited in the spring and summer, at least twice with Mr. Axelrod, who was deep in the health-care fight.

A 2009 PhRMA memo also makes clear that AKPD had been chosen before PhRMA joined HEN. It's also clear that some contributors didn't like the conflict of interest. When, in July 2009, a media outlet prepared to report AKPD's hiring, a PhRMA participant said: "This is a big problem." Mr. Baldick advises: "just say, AKPD is not working for PhRMA." AKPD and another firm, GMMB, would handle $12 million in ad business from HEN and work for a successor 501(c)4.
 
A basic rule of White House ethics is to avoid even the appearance of self-dealing or nepotism. If Mr. Axelrod or his West Wing chums pushed political business toward Mr. Axelrod's former firm, they contributed to his son's salary as well as to the ability of the firm to pay Mr. Axelrod what it still owed him. Could you imagine the press frenzy if Karl Rove had dome the same after he joined the White House?

Messrs. Axelrod and Messina are now in Chicago running Mr. Obama's campaign. Mr. Axelrod, the White House and a partner for AKPD didn't respond to requests for comment on their role in HEN, the tapping of Mr. Baldick, and the redolent hiring of AKPD. Until the White House explains all this, voters can fairly conclude that the President's political team took their Chicago brand of ethics into the White House.

Write to kim@wsj.com
 
A version of this article appeared June 22, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Axelrod's ObamaCare Dollars.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304765304577480871706139792.html?mod=hp_opinion




Disgraceful.   

[Soul Crusher]

http://offgridblogger.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/the-20-most-disgusting-things-from-barack-obama

[Soul Crusher]

June 26, 2012
32 Grieving Parents with Absolute Moral Authority over Obama
By Stella Paul

I know you're busy writing to your friends to ask them to skip your birthday present this year and send the cash to Obama, but I just want to interrupt you for a minute to introduce you to 32 parents who probably won't be fundraising for Obama anytime soon.

Kent and Josephine Terry are the parents of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who sacrificed his life protecting ours.  Last week, they spoke up for the first time with a message to Obama, who has asserted executive privilege to hide documents on Operation Fast and Furious.

When asked what they'd say to Obama and Eric Holder, Kent Terry replied, "I probably couldn't say on camera what I'd like to say to them.  But I'd say get their heads out of their butt anyway."

(Please don't share this quote with the "important" gay activists whom Obama invited to the White House, where they ran riot, kissing and exposing their middle digits to Reagan's portrait.  They might get too excited.)

Brian Terry was murdered in December 2010 with guns from Obama's Fast and Furious program, which is politely (and fictitiously) described as a botched gun-tracing operation.  Somehow this "botching" resulted in the most violent Mexican drug cartels being armed with thousands of assault weapons, which they used to slaughter 300 Mexicans and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

I'm not buying that Obama ever had any interest in reining in Mexican gangs.  I think he and Holder looked across the border and said, "Hey, violent drug cartels with a bottomless capacity to launder cash and growing ties to Hezb'allah and Iranian terrorists.  Those are our kind of guys!"

Which brings us to Mary and Amador Zapata, the parents of slain ICE agent Jaime Zapata.  Last week, the Zapatas filed a $25-million wrongful death claim against the government.

Jaime Zapata was ambushed in a roadside attack in Mexico in February 2011, while working for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.  Highly informed sources say that Zapata was investigating Fast and Furious at the time of his murder.

The Zapatas' lawsuit claims that Jaime Zapata informed his supervisors that he had misgivings about the safety of his trip but was ordered to go anyway.  "All of these legitimate concerns were put aside ... and agents Avila and Zapata were required to follow orders," the lawyers wrote.

But, of course, Obama's withholding of Fast and Furious documents from Congress via executive privilege is all about "the principle of the matter," as spokesman Jay Carney asserted last week, with an admirably straight face.  Obama's heart is pure as the Chicago snow.

Next, I'd like you to meet Daris and Janet Long, the parents of the late Private William Long.  In June 2009, 23-year-old "Andy" Long was murdered at an Army recruitment center in Little Rock, Arkansas by an American-born Muslim convert.  Daris, an ex-Marine, is on a grief-stricken mission to see his son awarded a Purple Heart, since he was killed on active duty in a jihad-inspired attack.

But good luck with that in Obama's regime.  The purported commander-in-chief threatened to veto the 2012 Defense Authorization Act, because Congress had inserted a clause awarding Purple Hearts to Andy Long and the 12 murdered soldiers of Fort Hood.

Obama delights in handing out awards to those he deems worthy: why, just a few weeks ago, he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Delores Huerta, honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, which describes itself as "the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International."

But Obama is not terribly keen at recognizing the sacrifices of those who serve.  (Although to be fair, he did tell troops stationed overseas, "You guys make a pretty good photo op.")

Obama's Department of "Justice" declined to press federal charges against Andy Long's murderer, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe.  Instead, the murder of a uniformed soldier on Army property was treated as a drive-by shooting.  Similarly, the murder of 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood was deemed a state-level offense of "workplace violence," despite the passionate jihadist proclivities of alleged shooter Major Nidal Hasan.

A riveting new documentary, Losing Our Sons, tells the story of Daris Long's quest for justice for his murdered son, and of Melvin Bledsoe's determination to expose the government's negligence that ruined the life of his promising son.  Melvin, an African-American small business owner in Memphis, sent Carlos to Tennessee State University in Nashville.  There he was recruited by radical Muslims, who sent him to a terrorist training camp in Yemen and brought him back to murder Andy Long.

Mike Huckabee featured Losing Our Sons on his Father's Day show on Fox, saying, "Get your friends and your family to see it.  It opened my eyes to some things, and I thought I was fairly informed.  And it is powerful.  It is a gut punch."

When a mentally unbalanced bereaved mother named Cindy Sheehan theatrically pursued President George Bush for months after her son Casey was killed in Iraq, she was proclaimed to have "absolute moral authority" by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Well, I hereby proclaim the absolute moral authority of the Terrys, Zapatas, Longs, and the parents of the 13 men and women murdered at Fort Hood.

Maybe these bereaved mothers and fathers should take inspiration from Cindy Sheehan and join together for some attention-grabbing theater inside the Democratic National Convention.  Considering all the anxious politicians beginning to bail out, they should find plenty of empty seats.

How about it?  Why not make some noise and raise some hell?  America is on your side.

And to prove it, let's all go to www.losingoursons.com and sign the petition to award a Purple Heart to Private William Long and the Fort Hood soldiers now.

Write Stella Paul at stellapundit@aol.com.


Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2012/06/32_grieving_parents_with_absolute_moral_authority_over_obama.html at June 26, 2012 - 07:49:45 AM CDT

[Soul Crusher]

[ Invalid YouTube link ]

[Soul Crusher]

Border Patrol Being Taught To Run, Hide & Throw Things, Not Shoot
Freedom Outpost ^ | June 26, 2012 | Tim Brown
Posted on June 26, 2012 11:04:23 PM EDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

It appears that the Obama administration is not only getting in the face of the American people with their immigration policies, but they are also running a little private campaign of their own when it comes to the border patrol. Instead of the border patrol doing their job in an aggressive case in public, they are now being taught to run away and hide and only as a last resort are they to open fire. Wait! No! They can’t do that. They are supposed to become “aggressive” and “throw things.

You heard that right. Local 2544 posted a brief statement in regards to the new “training tactics” they are being taught. Welcome to the new world of Barack “The Golfer” Obama and Janet “Can I have another doughnut” Napolitano.

In another nauseating series of “Virtual Learning Center” brainwashing courses that Border Patrol agents are forced to sit behind a computer for hours and endure, we are now taught in an “Active Shooter” course that if we encounter a shooter in a public place we are to “run away” and “hide”. If we are cornered by such a shooter we are to (only as a last resort) become “aggressive” and “throw things” at him or her. We are then advised to “call law enforcement” and wait for their arrival (presumably, while more innocent victims are slaughtered). Shooting incidents cited in the course are Columbine, the Giffords shooting and the Virginia Tech shooting.
These types of mandatory brainwashing courses and the idiocy that accompanies them are simply stunning when they are force-fed to law enforcement officers. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that any three of the above shootings would have been stopped cold by an off-duty law enforcement officer or a law abiding citizen with a gun. The Fort Hood shooting would have been stopped cold by someone with a gun as well. The shooters in these situations depend on unarmed and scared victims. It gives them the power they seek. We could go on and on with examples of shootings that could have been stopped by someone with a firearm. One of the videos in this course actually shows a terrified female hiding behind a desk as an example of how to “hide” from some deranged shooter. Multiple quizzes throughout the course and a final test ensure repeatedly that we know that we only have three options when encountering some murderous thug in a public place. 1. Run away; 2. Hide; and 3. Only put up a fight as a last resort by acting aggressively and throwing things at the shooter. Not one mention anywhere of “if you are carrying a gun and you have the opportunity take the shooter out”. Calling 911 in these instances is obvious, but we all know that waiting on the arrival of uniformed law enforcement will ensure more people are killed, injured, or taken hostage. Telling law enforcement officers that in all instances they are to run away and hide from some thug while innocent victims are butchered is simply inexcusable and pathetic.

It is always comforting to know that for those of us who carry a weapon when we are off-duty, if we should encounter such a situation, stop a shooter and save countless lives, we can look forward to being disciplined or fired by the Border Patrol because we should have run away to hide and then maybe thrown objects at the deranged killer instead of taking action and stopping him with a firearm. This, in addition to the scrutiny and second-guessing that will come from local authorities and the inevitable possibility of lawsuits and criminal conviction.

Welcome to the New Patrol.

This is the kind of thing that makes you want to pull your hair out. We are in the middle of an investigation where this administration used an operation, which was called Fast and Furious but should have been called Dumb and Dangerous, that put thousands of weapons into the hands of some of Mexico’s most dangerous drug cartels. Some of these weapons were used to kill American and Mexican citizens, including border patrol agent Brian Terry. They want their people to be weak and cut off at the knees while the real criminals face no handicaps. This is a demonstration of absolute stupidity on the part of the Obama administration who provide such non-sensical training.

It’s not bad enough that the federal government, under this administration want our guns, but now they don’t seem to want border patrol to use theirs either. What kind of fantasy world do these lunatics, who are running the asylum, live in?

[Soul Crusher]

Colorado's 'Epic Firestorm' Reveals Danger of Air Force Cuts

Michael Auslin

June 27, 2012 12:10 PM

Colorado's wildfire has exploded into an "epic firestorm," in the words of Colorado Springs fire chief Richard Brown. Over 30,000 people have evacuated, and already hundreds of homes have been consumed. Ironically, the U.S. Air Force Academy has also been evacuated, at the very time that Colorado desperately needs more Air Force C-130s to fight the massive fire.

A C-130 fitted with the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) can drop 3,000 gallons of fire-retardant material in 5 seconds, and reload in just 15 minutes. This tempo is crucial to containing wildfires like the one devastating Colorado Springs. However, of a current fleet of nearly 380 C-130s, only eight can be fitted with the MAFFS—and four of them are already in the skies over Colorado. With another fire looming in the north of the state, there is no excess capacity to help protect civilian areas. That means thousands of exhausted firefighters on the ground are without enough of the crucial support they need to control the fires.

All this raises concerns about President Obama’s defense budget, which cuts 65 C-130s from the fleet over the next four years. While that will leave 318 C-130s, the demands on the fleet are not shrinking in Afghanistan or other places. Nor did the Air Force have much choice in the matter.

The Air Force took the brunt of Pentagon budget cuts in the 2013 budget, shrinking by 4 percent (or roughly $4 billion dollars), after having a flat budget since 2004. Since 2001, over 500 aircraft have been retired, and another 300 will be scrapped by 2017. All this is happening while demand for the Air Force increases: The service flew approximately 400 sorties per day in Afghanistan and Iraq during 2011, while also fighting in Libya and delivering thousands of tons of disaster relief aid to Japan after its earthquake and tsunami. C-130s have been central to all these operations, and the proposed cuts will reduce airlift capacity among all the Air Force's components: active, reserve, and guard. Sequestration would be even worse, mandating equal percentage cuts down to the program level across the service, with no flexibility for Air Force leadership to target the cuts. 

But as the wildfire in Colorado shows, readiness and flexibility are sometimes needed at home as much as abroad. Cutting more C-130s puts a greater strain on the entire Air Force fleet. It means fewer planes will be available for possible conversion to the MAFFS configuration. And that means that as hundreds of houses burn in Colorado, only eight planes can be called upon to help the thousands of firefighters on the ground. America should not have to make such tradeoffs: We can fight both aggressors and fires smarter and better, but only if we do it increasingly from the sky. 

Michael Auslin is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

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Copyright 2012 Weekly Standard LLC.

Source URL: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/colorados-epic-firestorm-reveals-danger-air-force-cuts_647897.html

[Soul Crusher]

OBAMA CAMPAIGN CELEBRATES INDEPENDENCE DAY ... WITH FUNDRAISER IN PARIS
Big Hollywood ^ | 6.29.12 | Ben Shapiro
Posted on June 30, 2012 8:51:12 AM EDT by Behind Liberal Lines

Apparently tiring of US soil as a source of campaign dollars, the Obama campaign is headed overseas -- with its celebrity friends in tow. The European Obama campaign starts next week in Paris on July 4 with a reception organized by various fundraising heavy-hitters. Independence Day fundraisers in Paris – now that’s a flag-waving campaign.

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