See, the four women in the top row weren’t actually present when the group photo was taken; they arrived late to the party (you can view an original version of the photo here) and were added via Photoshop.
Hilarity ensued on Twitter, reaching its zenith with a photoshop that included, Darth Vader, Waldo, Gollem, and Santa Claus. ( Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-CT.,seen in the last row, far left was not photoshopped.)
Hurricane Sandy victim, Scott McGrath of Staten Island, gave his opinion of FEMA and the Obama administration’s handling of the hurricane relief effort on Neil Cavuto, Friday.
He called Obama a phoney and straight out liar.
“He said to me face to face that he’s going to cut the red tape. We’re two months out — no red tapes been cut. He told me things were going to be taken care of. FEMA has to listen to him…”
He also railed against the extension of unemployment benefits”
“There’s jobs out there. People need to get off their rear ends and find a job and stop taking free hand-outs….I’m tired of people collecting, collecting, collecting and getting rewarding – they’re sending a bad message to the kids of the future – they’re telling them, ‘do not work’, you’re better off.”
Democrats get to take full credit for an “accomplishment” that does more harm than good.
Economy: President Obama and his acolytes are gushing over his fiscal cliff victory. But the glow isn’t likely to last long, once everyone figures out that the tax hikes Obama wrangled from Republicans only made matters worse.
Let’s look at what Obama has managed to achieve with his $620 billion tax hike on the wealthy and the boost in the payroll tax rate.
• They’ll hurt the economy. Economists are admitting the fiscal deal will slow the already sluggish economic growth.
Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi says the higher taxes on the wealthy and the increase in payroll taxes will shave close to 1 point off GDP growth this year and result in 600,000 fewer new jobs.
Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors chief economist Ian Shepherdson figures the deal will cut GDP by 1.5 points. And Gallup’s chief economist Dennis Jacobe says the deal has created a “higher probability of recession — just the opposite of what fixing the fiscal cliff was intended to do.”
Additional points to ponder: They’ll do nothing to fix the debt crisis, they won’t raise as much as advertized, and they’ll hurt the cause of tax reform. The American people have terrifyingly short memories, but hopefully they’ll remember who to blame as the economy continues to tank.
A couple of days ago I advised the pro “tax the rich” crowd to put away the party hats and kazoos after the fiscal cliff deal passed, because middle class taxes would still be going up. Not only that, but according to the Tax Policy Center, as a percentage, people earning between $30k and $200k will be taking a bigger tax hit than those making between $200k and $500k:
The national unemployment rate is 7.8% (not counting the millions who dropped out of the market.) The Herald Online reported:
The overall unemployment rate for 18-29 year olds for December 2012 is 11.5 percent (NSA).
The unemployment rate for 18-29 year old African-Americans for December 2012 is 22.1 percent (NSA); the unemployment rate for 18-29 year old Hispanics for December 2012 is 12.2 percent (NSA); and the unemployment rate for 18–29 year old women for December 2012 is 10.4 percent (NSA).
Happy New Year and happy payday! Thank goodness our “lord and savior” Obama signed the fiscal cliff bill into law after proudly proclaiming, “Under this law, more than 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses will not see their income taxes go up.”
Earlier this week, many Americans realized the “fair share” fiscal cliff deal didn’t seem so fair. One Democratic Underground commenter was a little behind yesterday and was shocked — shocked! — to learn that the fiscal cliff crapwich didn’t extend the payroll tax holiday. (They don’t call ‘em DUmmies for nothing.)
Of course, Obama’s not through “raising revenues”, as Charles Krauthammerbitterly notes:
“Why,” asked the Washington Post on the eve of the final “fiscal-cliff” agreement, “is the nation’s leader not embracing and then explaining the balanced reforms the nation needs?”
Because he has no interest in them. He’s a visionary, not an accountant. He’ll pretend to care about deficits, especially while running for re-election. But now that he’s past the post, he’s free to be himself — a committed big-government social-democrat.
As he showed in his two speeches this week. After perfunctory nods to debt and spending reduction, he waxed enthusiastic about continued “investments” — i.e. spending — on education, research, roads and bridges, green energy, etc.
Having promised more government, he then promised more taxes — on “millionaires” and “companies with a lot of lobbyists,” of course. It was a bold affirmation of pre-Clintonian tax-and-spend liberalism.
Why not? He had just won Round 1: raising rates. Round 2 is to raise yet more tax revenues by eliminating deductions. After all, didn’t John Boehner offer him $800 billion of such loophole-closing revenues just a few weeks ago?
***
Fundamentally, Obama is a leveler. The community organizer seeks, above all, to reverse the growing inequality that he attributes to ruthless-Reaganism. Now, however, clothed in the immense powers of the presidency, he can actually engage in unadorned redistributionism. As in Tuesday night’s $620 billion wealth transfer.
My biggest beef with Boehner is that he refused to negotiate in public. One of the cards in Obama’s stacked deck of Alinsky tactics is demagoguery. They win the narrative when Americans are kept in the dark. That’s why Boehner’s promise to no longer negotiate with Obama, now, is a day late and a dollar short. What was he thinking? (No, he’s not a fellow Marxist who believes in Obama’s redistributionist policies.)
The first thing that we’ve got to do is look at where we still have unfairness in the tax system and make sure that the people of influence, the billionaires and the millionaires and the corporate interests are paying their fair share.
Yesterday, just hours after the 113th Congress officially started, Grayson was on MSNBC accusing Republicans of legislative terrorism because you know, new tone or something.
Unfortunately, four members were late to the photo shoot.
“Please note this version has the four Members who were late photo-shopped in,” Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill wrote in an email to news outlets Thursday evening. In a subsequent email to Poynter, Hammill confirmed that the four latecomers were placed in the rear of the group.
Krauthammer“Democrats realize Bush architecture after 9/11 was tremendous asset and kept us safe”
I’ve gotta take issue with Krauthammer’s analysis. Contrary to what he suggests, the Democrats have learned nothing on how to fight terror. It never mattered to them whether GW Bush’s policies were effective or not. Keeping Americans safe was always a secondary concern for them. They are motivated by one thing and one thing only - power – how to attain it and how to keep it.. During the Bush years, their primary enemy was George W. Bush and so the organized left was dispatched to protest every move he made in the War on Terror. Now that the left is in power, we hear not a peep from these same loons about renditions or Obama’s drone savagery. You’re more likely to see Code Pink protesting Wall Street and income inequality and supporting Hamas dressed as vaginas then protesting anything the Moonbat Messiah does.
Speaking of W, Victor Davis Hanson has a good piece in NRO: Bush Reconsidered:
At times the venom accorded Bush in popular culture reached absurd — and even sick — levels. Alfred A. Knopf, for example, infamously published Nicholson Baker’s Checkpoint, a pathetic riff on shooting Bush. Gabriel Range’s unhinged 2006 “docudrama,” The Death of a President, focused on an imagined assassination of President Bush (imagine the outcry should any filmmaker today update that topos). A sick Charlie Brooker op-ed in the Guardian called for another John Wilkes Booth or Lee Harvey Oswald to kill Bush. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic more or less permanently ruined his reputation by writing an adolescent rant on “the case for Bush hatred,” one that began creepily with “I hate President George W. Bush.” Try substituting another president’s name for Bush’s and see what the reaction of The New Republic would be.
Charles Krauthammer remembers this well, he’s the one who coined the term, “Bush Derangement Syndrome.”
Little more need be said about the hysteria over the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols, other than that most of their critics went silent when the former critic President Obama, quite mysteriously, embraced or even expanded almost all of them — apparently on the post-election realization that something that had prevented another 9/11 for a subsequent seven years should not be summarily ended. Guantanamo is still open. Renditions and tribunals remain in effect. Predator-drone missions vastly increased under Obama, and are such a part of the current landscape that the president can joke about siccing drones on any potential suitors of his two daughters. The Patriot Act and its subsidiaries have become institutionalized. Meanwhile, early grand talk by the Obama administration of trying arch-terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court, indicting CIA officials for enhanced interrogations, and moving detained terrorists from Guantanamo to the Midwest all have come to nothing. Perhaps the chief anti-terrorism difference between the Bush and Obama administrations, at least as it has pertained to the vast majority of suspected terrorists, is that the former sought to capture and interrogate them, while the latter prefers blowing them up — along with anyone else caught in the general vicinity of a strike — through remote-control Hellfire missiles.
They will never admit their hypocrisy. The best they’ll do is meekly offer that now we can see “a clearer partisan difference” between Democrats and Republicans as WaPo’s Charles Lane did in the clip above.
Pray for poor Ben Stein. He saw enough personal tragedy in his life, last year, to last a lifetime. And he’s not too happy about the political landscape, either.
The election was deeply unsettling. Governor Romney basically threw it away. Just tossed in the trash can. He totally folded in debate three and tendered the election to Mr. Obama. Benghazi should have been the tragic gift that won him the election. He handed it back unopened to Mr. Obama. When his son, Tagg, recently came out and said that Gov. Romney basically did not even want to be President in the first place, I felt sick. Why did he bother to waste all of our time and hopes and money? What is going on with him? Or was his son just confused? The whole episode was disturbing.
***
Ann Coulter says she’s bored with politics (I hear ya, sista!) – so she’s writing about the latest inventions that annoy her - she sounds like a sort of female version of Andy Rooney, here.
I am bored with politics, refuse to pay attention to the news and am watching only True Crime TV shows and Turner Classic Movies these days. With the Democrats controlling the Senate and presidency, nothing good can possibly come out of Washington for at least another two years. So I thought I’d start the new year with something useful, like a short list of bad inventions.
(1) SILENT DISHWASHERS
Are people installing dishwashers next to their beds? I’ve checked my “Top 500 Daily Irritations” list and dishwasher noise is not on it.
With Benghazi still burning in the rear-view mirror of its wobbly foreign policy, the Obama administration is set to ship the Islamic Brotherhood government of Egypt 10 F16 fighter jets and 200 Abrams tanks and charge it to U.S. taxpayers, according to a Fox News report.
An independent investigation revealed the Obama administration failed to fortify the U.S. Libyan embassy that was destroyed in September; a lack of funding was among the reasons cited for the U.S. embassy being grossly under defended.
The $213 million gift to the disheveled Islamic-led government was signed during the now deposed Hosni Mubarak administration. Mubarak is facing trial and the Islamic Brotherhood is not a U.S. ally. Nevertheless, the Obama administration is prepared to arm them to the teeth with cutting-edge tanks and planes.
ELEVEN YEARS AGO, al-Qaeda terrorist Richard Reid tried to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 with a bomb hidden in his shoes. As a result, air travelers to this day must remove their shoes to pass through security at US airports.
In 2006, terrorists plotted to destroy as many as 10 planes flying from London to North America using peroxide-based liquid explosives smuggled in their carry-on luggage. So passengers now must limit any liquids they carry through security checkpoints to minuscule containers sealed in clear plastic bags.
On Christmas Day in 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight over Detroit by means of an explosive device sewn into his underwear. The government’s response: full-body X-ray scans to detect even contraband concealed in one’s groin.
Our irritating, inconvenient airport security rules are one reflection of a common view that the way to prevent evil in this world — in this case, the evil of jihadist terrorism — is to intercept the instruments evildoers use. Thus, if the 9/11 hijackers used box cutters to carry out their airborne atrocities, box cutters must be barred from subsequent flights. If other terrorists find other means of committing brutal acts, we bar those means as well.
This fixation on stopping bad things — as opposed to stopping bad people or bad behavior — goes beyond keeping air travel safe from al-Qaeda. On the international stage, it shows up in campaigns to reduce strategic arsenals and destroy nuclear warheads, regardless of the moral caliber of the governments possessing them. In schools, zero-tolerance drug and alcohol policies have been applied so rigidly, USA Today observes, that “kids have been kicked out of school for possession of Midol, Tylenol, Alka Seltzer, cough drops, and Scope mouthwash.”
More recently, the shrill demands for more restrictions on guns in the wake of the Newtown massacre have been a classic illustration of the phenomenon.
A second business owner in the state of Missouri has won its battle against the Obama HHS mandate as a federal court granted it a reprieve from the Obama Administration’s contraceptive and abortion drug mandate.
The U.S. District Court for Western Missouri issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of the law against American Pulverizer Company of St. Louis. The firm is owned by Paul and Henry Griesedieck and members of the family are pro-life Christians who don’t want to be forced to pay for drugs for their employees that may cause abortions.
In their lawsuit, the Griesediecks contend that compliance with the Obamacare mandate would force them to violate their religious and moral beliefs. In their lawsuit, the Griesediecks state that “it would be sinful for us to pay for services that have a significant risk of causing the death of embryonic lives.”
U.S. District Judge Richard Dorr ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to be able to prove that Obamacare “substantially burdens their exercise of religion…Plaintiffs must either pay for a health plan that includes drugs and services to which they religiously object or incur fines.”
Meanwhile Hobby Lobby continues its fight against the mandate.
The Green family respects the religious convictions of all Americans, including those who do not agree with them. All they are asking is for the government to give them the same respect by not forcing them to violate their religious beliefs. Read more.
The Becket Fund is proud to stand with Hobby Lobby – as well as our other five clients challenging this unconstitutional mandate. But, our services are rendered at no cost and we’re up against the virtually unlimited resources of the federal government. Help support the fight today.
The Green family isn’t only fighting for its right to religious liberty, but ours, too. Send a thank you note to the Greens letting them know you’re standing by their side.
Government forced Hobby Lobby to choose:
Violate your conscience and stay in business or remain faithful to your conscience and be penalized up to 1.3 million dollars per day. Hobby Lobby chose to sue the government for their right – and ours – to operate their business in full accord with their faith. Read more about the case here.
The CEO of Hobby Lobby has penned a tragic letter about the loss of religious freedom and liberty in America. The Christian crafts company has been forced by the Obama administration to pay for drugs for its employees in their health care plan that may cause abortions.
Doing so violates the religious freedom of the founders and owners of Hobby Lobby, but the firm has, so far, been unsuccessful in getting courts to give it an exemption while its lawsuit against the HHS mandate continues.
President Barack Obama’s inaugural team is opening an online and brick-and-mortar store to sell souvenirs including a commemorative poster by famed artist Chuck Close. The Presidential Inaugural Committee launched the online store Thursday. A retail store a few blocks from the White House was scheduled to open Jan. 11. The goods, ranging from $2.50 rulers to $30 champagne flutes to a $7,500 medallion set, also will be sold at some Washington hotels around the Jan. 21 inauguration.
For only $7,500 you can own this exquisiteMedallion Set that distinguishes Obama’s strong Presidential jawline from Biden’s weak, Vice Presidential one:
Dupes comprise a long, dubious tradition in American history. Over 200 years ago, George Washington warned the nation about “dupes” in his historic Farewell Address. Such warnings would echo from the founding of the republic through the Cold War. During the Cold War, “dupe,” like the associated word, “useful idiot” — attributed to Vladimir Lenin — became an everyday term. Dupes were legion during the Cold War, a unique breed of (largely) left-leaning Americans who, unwittingly, allowed or enabled themselves to be deceived or misled by communist propagandists. Communists were natural liars, and liberals/progressives were their primary suckers. In fact, Obama’s communist mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, excelled at this crass craft. In all, there were so many dupes during the Cold War that I’ve often said that my book on the subject could be the first in a multi-volume set.
But dupes did not end with the Cold War — hardly. Consider any number of exhibits over just the last four years:
Remember the Stupak Democrats? There was Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan, who, on March 24, 2010, along with 12 other beaming pro-life House Democrats, stood aside President Barack Obama as he signed an executive order promising to prevent abortion funding in Obama-care. They made another group of dupes, the social-justice champions at Notre Dame who gave Obama an honorary degree a year earlier, look shrewd as serpents by comparison.
Dupes come in many shapes and sizes. Who was the biggest dupe of 2012?
That’s no easy call. To name a group, I’m partial to the majority of professing Roman Catholics who once again elected Barack Obama, thereby obliviously authorizing Obama’s HHS mandate and voting to violate their own religious liberty.
Michelle Obama recently revealed that she and President Obama don’t give Christmas gifts to each other. They merely say, “We’re in Hawaii,” and that’s Christmas gift enough.
But actually the present is from taxpayers, and it’s an expensive one.
The total cost to taxpayers of Obama’s vacations to Hawaii since becoming president is likely in excess of $20 million, and possibly much, much more. During a time of budget deficits that threaten the nation’s security and its future, the Obamas have chosen to maintain a “family tradition” and vacation halfway around the world instead of finding far cheaper alternatives closer to home.
The $20 million figure is based on estimates of the cost of the four Hawaii vacations the Obamas have taken during Christmastime 2009-2012.
Forget the fact that this tax-the-rich hypocrite tried to save himself millions by jamming the sale through before taxes rose after the end of the year; forget the fact that a former vice president of the United States sold out to an openly anti-American cable network embraced by terrorists; forget the fact that Mr. Global Warming sold out to a network funded solely with oil money… In order to personally pocket a reported $100 million, Gore resorted to racial blackmail:
Al Gore’s Current TV was never popular with viewers, but it was a hit where it counted: with cable and satellite providers. When he co-founded the channel in 2005, Mr. Gore managed to get the channel piped into tens of millions of households — a huge number for an untested network — through a combination of personal lobbying and arm-twisting of industry giants.
He called on those skills again after deciding in December to sell Current TV to Al Jazeera for $500 million. To preserve the deal — and the estimated $100 million he would personally receive — he went to some of those same distributors, who were looking for an excuse to drop the low-rated channel, and reminded them that their contracts with Current TV called it a news channel. Were the distributors going to say that an American version of Al Jazeera didn’t qualify, possibly invoking ugly stereotypes of the Middle Eastern news giant?
“The lawyers for the carriers couldn’t find their way around it,” said a person briefed on the negotiations who described them on condition of anonymity.
Al Gore is in my top five of the worst American political villains of the past 100 years. He really is a nasty piece of work.
Honorable Mentions: Bill Ayers, Bob Beckel, Joy Behar, Eric Boehlert, Margaret Cho, Candy Crowley, Code Pink, Lena Dunham, Dianne Feinstein, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, Kathy Griffin, Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson, Ezra Klein, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher, Bill Press, Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton, Jon Stewart, and Jeremiah Wright.
20) Chris Hayes: He’s a smarmy, politically correct beta male who would probably be irritating even if he wasn’t talking about politics. If you had to pick the MSNBC host most likely to hold Rachel Maddow’s purse while she shops, it would be Hayes.
Defining quote:“(It’s) very difficult to talk about the war dead and the fallen without invoking valor, without invoking the words ‘heroes.’ I feel … uncomfortable about the word hero because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.” — Chris Hayes
19) Mike Malloy: He’s one of the biggest liberal radio hosts, which is kind of like being one of the world’s fastest Sumo wrestlers. That begs the question: If Malloy says something insane and no one hears it, should we care?
Defining quote:“These teabag bastards, who by the way, I just wish they would all go away, or like in Passover, I just wish there was an angel of the Lord that would pass over, instead of killing the first born in all the households of Egypt, just wipe out all the teabaggers. Just, you know, the terrible swift sword, just (Malloy emulates sound of sword cutting repeatedly through the air) lop their heads off.” — Mike Malloy
President Obama captured almost 63 percent of votes out of a total of almost 2,900 votes, outpacing his closest competitor Democratic National Committee (DNC chair), Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, by 52 percentage points.
What’s the reason for Obama’s landslide victory? Where do we start?
Let;s start with the Obama administration’s Benghazi scandal, during which he repeatedly contradicted not only members of his administration, but himself. First his administration said the the Libya attacks were a result of the video, then he reportedly said they were terrorism, then he again blamed the video — back and forth with no clear answer. And it took the President three months to admit there was any sort of “sloppiness” involved on the part of his administration in the security at the Benghazi consulate.
And don’t even get us started on the deceitful, manipulative or downright inaccurate ads released by his campaign during the 2012 election, all of which he had to lawfully approve.
The White House’s Flickr account recently released a photo of President Barack Obama and his top advisers. The complete absence of women in the image is another reminder that females are underrepresented in Obama’s staff.
Additionally, the president still pays his female employees significantly less than their male counterparts.
From the journal Earth System Dynamics billed as “An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European Geosciences Union” comes this paper which suggests that the posited AGW forcing effects simply isn’t statistically significant in the observations, but other natural forcings are.
“…We show that although these anthropogenic forcings share a common stochastic trend, this trend is empirically independent of the stochastic trend in temperature and solar irradiance. Therefore, greenhouse gas forcing, aerosols, solar irradiance and global temperature are not polynomially cointegrated. This implies that recent global warming is not statistically significantly related to anthropogenic forcing. On the other hand, we find that greenhouse gas forcing might have had a temporary effect on global temperature.”
This is a most interesting paper, and potentially a bombshell, because they have taken virtually all of the significant observational datasets (including GISS and BEST) along with solar irradiance from Lean and Rind, and CO2, CH4, N2O, aerosols, and even water vapor data and put them all to statistical tests (including Lucia’s favorite, the unit root test) against forcing equations.
John Boehner was reelected Speaker of the Housewithout much resistance. Although a faction of conservatives in the House wanted to see him unseated, no one stood up to the plate to take his place.
In a vote that opened the 113th Congress, Boehner received 220 votes, compared to 192 for Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the minority leader. Fourteen members voted for other candidates or present. Boehner needed 218 votes to win reelection.
Defectors from Boehner included Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who voted for Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho). Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) and two freshmen, Reps. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) and Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), all voted for Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), but Cantor himself voted for Boehner.
I’m one of the few people I know of who doesn’t disparage John Boehner, aka “the Weeper of the House” because of his tendency to get emotional during times of great national import. How do you not appreciate the fact that this man takes none of this for granted - that the burdens of his office clearly weigh heavily upon his shoulders?
“To our new members and their families”, Boehner said, “let me just say, welcome. I know you’re feeling a bit awestruck at this moment. History runs through this building, and now you’re among a select few who share in this privilege, and those of you are returning, who have walked these aisles before, maybe it’s time we get a little awestruck, again.”
Boehner went on to talk about upcoming challenges, the most important of which is reducing the debt. He got choked up again as he noted the House’s constitutional duty to represent the people, not self interest or party agendas.
“If you’ve come here to see your name up in lights or to pass off political victory as accomplishment, (he’s talking about all Democrats, here) you’ve come to the wrong place – the door’s right behind you. (Choking back tears) If you’ve come here …humbled by the opportunity to serve, if you’ve come here to be the determined voice of the people, if you’ve come here to carry the standard of leadership not demanded by our constituents but by our times, you’ve come to the right place.” That line actually drew applause.
A conservative group aiming to oust John Boehner as speaker of the House said on Wednesday that they have commitments from enough Republicans in Congress to deliver the political surprise of the year and deny the Ohio Republican another two years with the speaker’s gavel.
“I have confirmed with a group of congressmen that Speaker Boehner will not be elected speaker tomorrow,” Ron Meyer of the group American Majority Action wrote in an email Wednesday evening. “He will either resign or be forced out tomorrow.”
In a phone interview with The Daily Caller, Meyer said “more than 20” Republicans have told his group they won’t vote for Boehner during elections Thursday. American Majority Action is a conservative organization based in Virginia that is active in the tea party movement. It is run by Ned Ryun, the son of former Republican Rep. Jim Ryun of Kansas.
Although I was not one to publicly doubt that Sec. Clinton had been injured, (you don’t want to be wrong about something like that!) doubting it privately was another matter. A lot about the timing of the injury and the secretive way in which it had been handled invited suspicion. Add to that this administration’s tendency to lie about anything and everything at a drop of a hat, and Clinton’s own history of deception, and the skepticism was not only understandable, but healthy. The fact that Clinton is indeed dealing with serious health issues doesn’t negate the fact that the State Dept has been very secretive about it.
On Dec. 10, the day before she was due to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the September 11 terrorist attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi – in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US diplomats lost there lives – the State Department which has been heavily under fire over the episode, announced that Clinton had sustained a concussion after fainting out from dehydration.
None of the details normally released in such cases, such as when exactly she fainted, the seriousness of the concussion she suffered or how she was being treated, was offered. A State Department source was only willing to say it was “not severe.”
According to another unofficial report, she was apparently working from home. No one in the office appeared to have been delegated her functions although the secretary herself has not been been absent for three weeks.
Debka Files is now reporting some rumors about the real cause Of Hillary Clinton’s head injury…
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s admittance to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Monday, Dec, 31 – with a blood clot caused by concussion – gave wings to a cloud of rumor and conspiracy theories surrounding her state of health. The hospital, where Saudi King Abdullah was also treated two years ago, stated that the Secretary was receiving anti-coagulents and her condition would be assessed after 48 hours.
However, NBC television’s medical correspondent Robert Bazell was skeptical about the blood clot being caused by an earlier concussion because, he said, it if were, it would not be treated with anti-coagulents. “So either it’s not really related to the concussion and she’s got a blood clot in her leg or something, or there’s something else going on that we’re not being told.”
I found video of that:
Affix tinfoil hat to head and proceed….some spectacular rumor mongering follows….
….around Tehran and the Gulf Emirates, debkafile was already picking up insistent rumors claiming that Clinton was seriously injured while on a secret mission in the region in the first week of December. Some claimed that in the same incident, Americans in her party – advisers and security personnel – were either injured or killed. Those rumors did not say what her secret mission was. However, the episode described occurred shortly after Dec. 1, when, as debkafile reported at the time, Obama administration officials and senior representatives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched secret talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Although our sources have not identified the negotiators on either side of the table, one of the theories floating around certain capitals claimed that Hillary Clinton three weeks ago was on her way to a secret meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in regard to those negotiations. The plane carrying her from Bahrain logged its destination as Baghdad, but is described as having changed direction in midair and headed for Ahvaz, capital of the south Iranian province of Khuzestan. There, it was said, the Iranian president was awaiting her arrival. But then the plane ran into technical trouble and made an emergency landing and that was when she was injured, according to this theory.
The unexplained death of Commander Job Price, 42, SEALs commander in Afghanistan is tied by some of the speculation to that incident. At the time, the Pentagon reported that his sudden death on Dec. 22, in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, was under investigation. It is now suggested that Commander Price was head of the security detail attached to Clinton for her Iran mission and he was one of the casualties of the accident.
A new Foreign Military Intelligence (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin today is saying that United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [photo 2nd right] was injured, and a top US Navy Seal Commander killed when their C-12 Huron military passenger and transport aircraft crash landed nearly 3 weeks ago in the Iranian city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border.
Iranian intelligence agents quoted in this GRU report confirm that the C-12 Huron aircraft is still in their possession in Ahvaz, but will only admit that the plane was “forced to land because of technical problems”.
The US Navy Seal member reported killed in this bizarre incident, this report says, was indentified as Commander Job W. Price [photo 3rd right] who as a leader of this highly specialized American Special Forces unit protects high-ranking diplomats traveling in Middle Eastern and Asian combat zones.
Curiously, US media reports on Commander Price’s death say it being investigated as a possible suicide as he died from what the American Defense Department describes as “a non-combat related injury”.
Equally as curious, US media reports state that Secretary Clinton will return to work next week after her having suffered what they describe as a “nasty bout with stomach flu” and a “concussion” which have kept her missing from public view the past three weeks.
This GRU report, however, states that US military flight logs recorded by Russian air and space forces confirm that Commander Price, and other members of US Navy Seal Team 4, left their base in Urozgan Province, Afghanistan on a flight to US Naval Support Activity Bahrain where they met up with Secretary Clinton and all of them transferred to the C-12 Huron that began a flight path to Baghdad, Iraq.
Within minutes of leaving Bahrain airspace, this report says, the C-12 Huron carrying Secretary Clinton and her US Navy Seal protectors, “without notice,” deviated from their assigned flight path heading, instead, directly towards Iran’s Ahwaz International Airport where, coincidentally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had previously landed on an “unscheduled” visit.
Important to note, GRU analysts say in this report, was that when the C-12 Huron entered into Iranian airspace neither American nor Iran air force units responded clearly indicating that this secret mission was sanctioned.
Upon the C-12 Huron landing at Ahwaz, however, this report says it encountered “extreme turbulence” causing it to leave the runway where its main landing gear then collapsed causing it to crash.
Within seconds of the C-12 Huron crashing, this report continues, Iranian emergency and security personal responded freeing the victims, including Secretary Clinton who was reportedly unconscious and “bleeding profusely.”
After emergency aid was given, GRU agents stationed in Iran state that another US military flight was dispatched from Bahrain to Ahwaz which evacuated all of those wounded and killed in the crash including Secretary Clinton.
Curious to note, GRU analysts say in this report, is that Obama has not acknowledged to the American people the grave nature of Secretary Clinton’s condition, despite his appearing before the American propaganda press establishment at least three times since these events occurred.
Obama’s failure to acknowledge Secretary Clinton’s grave health situation was brought into stark relieve the other day when her daughter, Chelsea, was spotted leaving the hospital where her mother is being cared for and described as “visibly anguished”.
The News spotted a distraught Chelsea Clinton emerging from a side entrance of the hospital, bundled up against the cold in a black down coat and red scarf.
The unsmiling Chelsea, clutching a cell phone in one hand as she spoke with a furrowed brow, did not respond to a question shouted by a News reporter.
The EU Times further reported:
Russian medical experts quoted in this GRU report state that Secretary Clinton has “more than likely” suffered what they call a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) as a result of the plane crash and that they say is the “only reasonable explanation” for a blood clot appearing in the location between the skull and the brain.
Interesting to note is that Obama has already selected Secretary Clinton’s replacement, and who is reported to be the present US Senator to Massachusetts, John Kerry. [Photo 3rd right]
Critical to note, Russian medical experts further state in this report, is that the timeline from when Secretary Clinton was first severely injured, to when the news of her true condition was first released, suggest a “planned effort” on the part of the Obama regime to manage the true facts surrounding her health, and here eventual death, or recovery.
It is very possible that these reports are part of a disinformation campaign the purpose of which I couldn’t fathom. I should also note that the European Union Times is a right wing tabloid with a not terribly reliable track record.
But there was a US plane that made an emergency landing in Iran two and a half weeks ago according to this AP report, Dec 30:
A small American commercial plane left Iran Sunday after it was repaired following an emergency landing at an Iranian airport this month, state TV reported.
The plane was forced to land 16 days ago at the airport of the southern city of Ahvaz due to technical failure, Mahmoud Rasoulinejad, head of the state-owned Iran Airports Company, told the TV station.
Rasoulinejad said three passengers left Iran for Arab countries in the Gulf, but the plane remained under repair in the airport. He said the plane took off from Iran Sunday upon arrival of needed spare parts and completion of repairs.
It was not clear why the announcement of the plane’s landing was not made earlier.
Just thought I’d pass this along.
UPDATE:
The AP report states that the plane was forced to land 16 days ago (from Dec 30) putting it at Dec. 14. That’s several days after it was reported that Clinton had fallen and had sustained a concussion….
The Debka File report cited above put the date of Clinton’s fall at Dec. 10. The State Dept issued its first statement about the fall to the media on Saturday, the 15th – the day after the plane crash.
“She has been recovering at home and will continue to be monitored regularly by her doctors. At their recommendation, she will continue to work from home next week, staying in regular contact with Department and other officials,” the State Department said in a statement.
State Department officials said Clinton, 65, fainted earlier this week, although they would not specify when the incident occurred.
Here’s an odd coincidence that might also substantiate the claim that Hillary was on a secret mission to Iran. Prior to her “stomach illness,” here last public appearance was while visiting government officials in Ireland – very soon afterward, Ahmadinejad met with Ireland’s new ambassador to Iran. It could be that Ireland was helping bring this meeting to fruition - in this same timeframe, Clinton was scheduled to meet the Syrian Opposition Coalition, and Pakistan’s president was scheduled to meet with Ahmadinejad.
UPDATE IV:
On Wednesday’s Special Report, Charles Krauthammer explained why he was dubious of the State Dept’s handling of Hillary’s injury. When asked if he would apologize why he called it “the Benghazi flu”, he answered, no, adding: “perhaps the State Dept, if not apologize, ought to explain why it withheld information and why a lot of it was mitigated – we now are hearing – might have been a more serious set of symptoms. We still don’t know what she was suffering during those two weeks.”
If you’re looking for some venting on how badly the Republicans allowed themselves to be played on this ridiculous shit sandwich Congress just served America, go elsewhere. Yes, we have some entrenched establishment types who have thrown in the towel. These Republicans need to be retired and replaced with younger conservatives who have not given up on taming the government Leviathan, can think strategically, are good at PR, and are willing to take some bold steps to cut spending. My husband got an earful, Tuesday, but as a longtime practitioner of Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment, I won’t do it, here. That is exactly what the Marxist in Chief and his simpering minions in the media want, as you know – Obama wanted to “fracture” the Republican party. Why give it to them? I respect our members of Congress too much – including the ones who inexplicably voted for the shitburger – yes, even John Boehner himself. These are not bad guys – they were dealing with a tough, no win situation. Even fiscal- hawk, Paul Ryan voted for this mess. That should tell you how difficult this deal was.
Ramesh Ponnuru explained at The Corner, why House Republicans couldn’t amend the deal:
A lot of conservatives in the House wanted to add spending cuts to the Senate deal and spent hours trying to figure out if they could pass a version of the deal that included them. They failed, though, for the same reason Speaker Boehner’s “Plan B” failed.
You may recall that Boehner wanted the House to pass a bill that blocked income-tax increases for everyone making less than $1 million a year but allowed scheduled increases to take place for people who make more. He couldn’t get such a bill through the House, though, because Democrats wanted a bigger tax increase and a lot of Republicans didn’t want to appear to be endorsing tax increases for anyone. Republicans especially didn’t want to vote “for tax increases” since Boehner’s bill probably wasn’t going to become law. From their perspective, they would be sullying their voting records for nothing.
A deal-plus-spending-cuts bill faced the same hurdle. Republicans had to find 218 votes from their ranks alone; Democrats weren’t going to supply any votes for a bill to the right of the Senate deal. And a lot of Republicans didn’t want to vote “for” tax increases — bigger ones than many of them had rejected when Plan B was being considered. Again, they especially didn’t want to do that when the bill had a good chance of dying in the Senate.
In short: A lot of Republicans wished the deal included more spending cuts without being willing to vote for a deal with more spending cuts. That’s why this effort failed.
… for now, most Republicans are happy to see the fiscal-cliff episode end, even if it was with a whimper and much disagreement. “People wanted to get this finished, move on, and fight another day,” says Representative Bobby Schilling of Illinois, who voted against the plan. “There is unhappiness about how the Senate went about this, but that wasn’t enough to stop the vote.”
Conservative groups, such as the Club for Growth, Freedom Works, and Heritage Action opposed the Biden-McConnell deal, but their opposition was far from a unanimous position among right-of-center activists. Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, told CNN that the vote was “technically not a violation” of his group’s anti-tax pledge. Due to the fiscal cliff, “the tax cuts disappear and we’re restoring them for most people,” Norquist said. “We’re not raising taxes.” In the Senate, tea-party stars such as Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Rand Paul (Ky.) voted against it, but other conservatives, such as Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) voted for it. Across the board, Republicans were dissatisfied, but hardly united in opposition.
William Kristal, while making clear that he thought the cliff deal was “ridiculous in too many ways to count” and “a sad commentary on our politics today”, attempted to put a positive spin on it in his piece in The Weekly Standard:
….the deal is substantively better than going over the cliff and having all income and investment taxes go up, and having the defense sequester hit right away. And politically, Republicans are escaping with a better outcome than they might have expected, and President Obama has gotten relatively little at his moment of greatest strength. In particular, this should do it for new tax revenues, at a number lower than Speaker Boehner originally offered—and it should be pretty easy to have the next debate focus on spending and entitlements.
Okay, Kristol’s faith that spending will be addressed by this demented President and Democrats in Congress is somewhat optimistic…granted.
That leads us to this glass half full assessment from John Hinderaker of Powerline - they’re going to have to address….something, eventually…
But what happens now that Obama has gotten his way? It will soon become apparent that the fiscal cliff deal, including precisely the tax increases that Obama has been demanding for four years, makes hardly a dent in the deficit. At best, it will reduce the deficit by five or six percent. We will continue to run up deficits of close to $1 trillion a year, and the national debt will continue to grow, as Obama has always intended. This fact can’t be hidden; it will be reported. Journalists who have pulled their punches in the past because they wanted Obama to be re-elected will now begin to ask, what are we going to do about the deficit and the debt? At some point, perhaps sooner rather than later, interest rates will begin to rise, at which point the debt issue will become a crisis. And Republicans will say: we told you so.
The Democrats will have only three choices: they can try to raise taxes on the “rich” even higher. But raising them to 100% wouldn’t deal with the deficit, even if you assume all those rich people are willing to work for free. The second option is to restrain federal spending. The Democrats would rather die than do that. The third option is to try to raise taxes on all those millions of Americans who aren’t rich. That is what the Democrats will do once the moment arrives when they can no longer ignore the trillions of dollars in debt they are inflicting on our children. That will be, politically, a very bad moment for the Democrats and a very good one for the Republicans, who can offer the alternative of less spending and who will have been proved right with respect to the biggest policy debate of recent years.
All of this is another way of saying that, with the Democrats’ BS about raising taxes on the rich out of the way, we can have a rational debate about the country’s fiscal future. And that is a debate the GOP can win, as most voters continue to believe that it is better to cut spending than to raise taxes on them. So let’s not despair: the post-cliff landscape may well prove favorable to the sorts of reforms that have been impossible for the last four years.
For all the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth on the professional right, it’s important to understand that this ship sailed on November 6. Mitt Romney lost the election. The President ran on higher taxes for the wealthy. The status quo of existing law was the President’s position. This cake was baked on election night.
Yes, it’s stupid, wrongheaded policy. It doesn’t make a whit’s worth of difference to my tax return, but we will never know the full impact of the jobs that won’t be created because we’re confiscating more than half of what the job creators earn, and incentivizing them to keep what they’ve already earned on the sidelines, instead of investing it.
But here’s where the game changes.
For years, every time level-headed leaders have tried to address the spending crisis, the liberal retort has been that the rich have to pay their fair share first.
Well, it’s done. The President won. He can’t ever again say that the rich aren’t paying their “fair share.” According to his definition, they are now.
And now, his second term is going to be defined by dealing with a spending crisis so incredibly massive that if you could tax every “rich” person 1,000% a year, you still wouldn’t solve it. And we reach that “cliff” in mere weeks when we hit the debt ceiling.
I’m interested in playing the blame game as our beleaguered economy continues to get worse instead of better….
… I’m arguing that Republicans should agree to a modest tax hike on upper income earners to avoid going over the fiscal cliff, which would be devastating to the economy and to our national security. Obama is playing a political poker game, and it’s great fun for him, because he has all the cards. He doesn’t care a whit if we go over the cliff because he knows Republicans will get blamed for it and by demanding that Republicans agree to his tax increase, he believes the Republican party will be fractured.
That’s why Republican leaders must make clear that any increase agreed to was made under duress. As I said, the other day — make sure the public understands that Republicans are giving the President his tax increase only because it’s what the people who voted for him wanted, and because it’s better than the alternative – going over the cliff - not because it is the right thing to do. No smiles, and public pats on the back. They will need to be sore losers and tell everyone that hiking taxes on anyone while the economy is struggling is a bad idea, and they should walk out rather than vote for the shit sandwich.
Okay, nobody walked out, but I didn’t see any smiling faces among the Republicans, Tuesday. The Speaker looked like he’d been crying, in fact.
That’s good. Let the people see how unhappy they are with all this. Let Obama have his little “win”. Let him spike the football and crow to his base that he got Republicans to surrender against their will on taxes. It will be abundantly clear to everyone who the Captain of this sinking ship known as America is. We’re all going to suffer because of this man’s lack of seriousness on the economy. But at least after this, he won’t be able to blame Republicans for it.
Obama found his private moment of political candor caught by a live microphone on Monday as he told PresidentDmitri A. Medvedev of Russia that he would have “more flexibility” to negotiate on the delicate issue of missile defense after the November election, which Mr. Obama apparently feels confident he will win. Enlarge This ImagePablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press President Obama drew attention for a remark to Dmitri Medvedev.
How is it even possible that this man could get caught saying something like this on a hot mic and still get reelected President of the United States? What is wrong with people?
In an attempt to seize total control over national security and bypass congress, a frightening new step by the Obama Administration is coming into play. As noted in Friday’s Wall Street Journal in an op-ed by John Bolton and John Woo, a State Department advisory group that is run by former Secretary of Defense William Perry is advising that the U.S. and Russia both reduce nuclear weapons without a treaty, as a treaty would require ratification by Congress. This would allow Obama and his executive branch to unilaterally cut our nuclear weaponry and ignore the treaty clause of the Constitution.
As Bolton and Woo point out, the US has a greater global responsibility than Russia; Iran and North Korea, neither of which is far from Russian interests, can only be countered by U.S. military strength. In addition, they note that Russia is not a trustworthy partner in weapons reduction; it has violated many arms-control agreements, such as the 1991 Presidential Nuclear Initiatives.
Some of the inherent problems in the seizure by this executive branch of decision-making power is Barack Obama’s desire to deeply cut our nuclear forces. A joint decision with Russia would place long-term limits on our cache of arms, thus placing constraints on us catching up if Russia decides to go ahead and build and the blurring of the lines deliberately drawn by the Constitution’s Framers separating the executive and legislative branches power.
Obama has made no secret of his desire to dismantle our nuclear capacity; the New Start Treaty he championed in 2011 forced the U.S. to observe a ceiling of 700 strategic delivery vehicles and 1,550 strategic warheads, and this past March he stated his desire to cut our arsenal further:
“ … a step we have never taken before – reducing not only our strategic nuclear warheads but also tactical weapons and warheads in reserve.”
It is naïve to assume that Obama is simply blind to the results of his actions and trusts the world around him to act with generosity. There has been too much evidence of Russia’s support of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and Russia has cunningly avoided supporting sanctions on North Korea for its rocket launches; in December, Georgy Toloraya, Director of Korean Research at the Institute of Economics, simply said:
“In Russia we believe that resolutions must be observed and UN decisions must be implemented. We think that North Korea has the right for space explorations but only after all the issues linked with the UN sanctions banning rocket launches with the use of ballistic technologies are settled. It is necessary to divide two aspects – we support the discussion of the rocket launch issue by the UN Security Council but we don’t think that this must automatically mean tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.”
Obama knows all this. His step-by-step evisceration of the United States is not confined to its economic system but its national defense as well.
I go a little further. I say that Obama is happy to wreck the US economy, because this will enable him to completely destroy US military defensive capability. This is the REAL agenda of the left. The people Obama has worked with his entire life.
Four more years of Obama may well bring America to the point of no return.
If Obama is allowed to realize the Davis/Palmer/Ayers/Dohrn vision of a militarily impotent America , Americans will be faced with two very harsh choices.
Lay down your arms, and give up your sovereignty, to a United Nations world superstate.
Or face the combined military might of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, possibly Pakistan, Indonesia, and Brazil, and several other countries…with hardly a friend in the world to come to your aid.
Keep your powder dry.
Is there nothing Congress can do? The country can not survive another four years of this guy.
URGENT: Illinois Anti-Gun Legislators That YOU Voted Out of Office to Use Their Last Remaining Days in Legislature Exploiting Lame Duck Session and Holiday Break To Impose a Draconian Gun Ban
The NRA-ILA has just learned that anti-gun legislators backed by Governor Quinn are deceptively trying to sneak through a new draconian gun ban as early as Wednesday while the legislature convenes for the Lame Duck Session from January 2 to 9. You voted many of these anti-gun legislators out of office, and now, in their last days as law makers, they want to quietly trample on the rights of all law-abiding gun owners in Illinois. It is imperative that you contact your state legislators IMMEDIATELY and continue to do so over the next few days. The Lame Duck Session will end on January 9, so this bill will be moving at lightning speed through both the House and Senate, with very little time to spare. Your phone call or email will play an important role in halting this assault on your Second Amendment rights.
Conservatives have their Constitution. Progressives have their Narrative. The current battle for America is between these two concepts, and each side uses different rules to fight it.
One set of rules is consistent with an unchanging objective: limited government and individual freedoms. The other side’s rules are as fickle as their goals, which are never fully disclosed beyond the equivocal references to fairness and hyphenated forms of justice. They will have to remain vague and deny their true allegiances until a time when American voters will no longer squirm at the word “socialism.”
And yet spotting them isn’t that hard. As a bird is known by his feathers, socialists are known by their Game.
First tried and mastered in the USSR, the Game has since been popularized around the world, assuming various forms, names, and colors — from red to brown to green. It is now taking hold in the United States under the blue web banners of Obama’s campaign infomercials.
The laws of society and human nature are such that socialism can only be achieved through a certain sequence of steps and manipulations. For instance, the only way to attain material equality is to confiscate someone’s property and give it to others. That necessitates a centralized mechanism of coercion, redistribution, and control. Such a system gives extraordinary corrupting powers to a small centralized elite, while turning the rest of the citizenry into a compliant, obsequious herd.
All those who claimed they can do it differently were doomed to retrace the same path. Once you unleash the ancient powers of collectivism, you have only two options: control the human herd or be trampled underfoot.
Drawing blood is always an option, but there’s also a “cleaner” way to control the crowds by manipulating their minds with the cattle prods of collectivist morals and a fictional narrative that supplants the reality.
