Epic Fail: The NFL Owners Try Bribing The Protesting Players

 

Faced with what amounts to a revolt from the protesting players on the one hand and the fans outraged at what they see as blatant disrespect for flag and country, the NFL owners decided to pursue several compromises, all of which failed...so now, they've resorted to what amounts to race based bribery.

As ESPN reported, the owners sat down with Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins and former NFL wide receiver Anquan Boldin, who represent something called 'the Coalition,' a group that is supposed to be representing the protesting black players. And the owners made them an offer.

If the players act nice and stop sitting, taking the knee and raising fists in the air when our national anthem is played, The owners are willing to give them a pile of cash.The bribe consists of $89 million in donations over seven years to the Coalition and other national organizations, according to ESPN, and franchises would also contribute to local charities. You can only imagine what some of those consist of. Twenty-five percent of the portion of the money for national initiatives would go to the United Negro College Fund, 25 percent to Dream Corps and 50 percent, almost $45 million to the Coalition itself. Which has already filed papers to qualify as a tax exempt non-proft. That means they can invest that money for profit tax free as long as a small portion of it can be shown to be used for charitable donations. Just ask the Clintons how lucrative that can end up being!

The players have learned  well from the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson on other 'activist' race pimps. And as you see from who's getting the money, you'll see exactly what I mean by raced based bribery.  And as far as I've been able to find out, there aren't any white or Latino players in the Coalition either.

The ironic thing about it is that even if the Coalition accepts this and the owners shell the cash out, it isn't going to have any effect whatsoever.

For one thing, a number of the players the Coalition supposedly represents are now saying the Coalition doesn't represent them at all, and that they're not bound by any deal. Among them are 49ers safety Eric Reid (one of the first players to jump on Colin Laepernick's wagon and take the knee with him) and Dolphins safety Michael Thomas, who announced via Twitter that the Coalition doesn't represent them. And they're by no means alone. The black players are apparently having disagreements between various faction over whether to go for more money and exactly how the booty is to be divided.

Not only that, but if the main reason for the bribe is stopping the protests to get the fans back to the games, buying NFL merchandise and watching the games on TV,  that isn't going to happen even if the protests stop. There are literally thousands of former NFL fans who have tuned out forever, and won't be back. Not only were they disgusted by the protests themselves, but by the cowardly PC pandering of Roger Goodell and the other owners to the protests.

 

The NFL owners could have stopped this last years had they simply abided by their own rules as stated in the NFL Games Operation Manual. 

Instead, they decided to try an appease the black protesting players. That tactic never works in situations like this. The perpetrators always ask for more, more, more.

The NFL might be able to limp along, but it will never be the major sporting franchise it once was. Those days are over. Especially if they try to bribe their way out of it.

Yes, The Peace Talks Are Dead - And An Opportunity For Real Peace Comes Alive

While neither side has formally acknowledged it, the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are dead, and even John Kerry has thrown in the towel.

The Obama Team would never admit it, but they're fully aware that it was Palestine's unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas that pulled the trigger and ended the talks, and his own controlled Palestinian media proudly admits it. Both Palestinian and Israeli media outlets on Thursday night quoted Abbas as saying, “I would rather become a martyr” than rescind the applications he signed on Tuesday to join 15 UN and other international treaties and conventions.

Which of course means the talks are over, since that was the sole concession Abbas was willing to give in order to even participate in the negotiations, and he had to be bribed with the release of over 100 convicted terrorist killers in Israeli custody to even do that much.

Kerry and the rest of the Obama team managed to arm twist the Israelis into discussing a further release of convicted terrorists along with releasing the fourth batch provided Abbas rescinded the UN membership applications and agreed to extend the deadline of the talks.

Instead of agreeing to what amounted to another gimmee, Abbas came out with a whole new set of pre-conditions to continue talks, conditions he knew no Israeli government could accept. According to Abbas' own Palestinian News Agency Ma'an, the new pre-conditions included formal Israeli recognition of the borders of 'Palestine' as the pre-67 lines with all of East Jerusalem as its capitol; the release of 1,200 Palestinian prisoners including convicted terrorist leaders Marwan Barghouti, Fuad Shweiki and Ahmad Saadat; a Israeli building freeze in East Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria; Israeli citizenship for 15,000 Palestinians under a 'family reunification program' essentially a recognition of a Palestinian 'right of return'; the end of Israel’s blockade of Hamas in Gaza; the right of return for PLO terrorists who were exiled to European countries under an agreement between the EU and Israel after the 2002 Palestinian siege of the Church of the Nativity; forbidding the IDF to enter Area A, the part of Judea and Samaria under PA control which would essentially create an escape zone for terrorists after attacks on Israelis since the PA has never jailed anyone for murdering an Israeli; and Palestinian control of parts of Area C, the areas now under full Israeli sovereignty.

And that was just to continue listening to Abbas say no for another few months!

Kerry's deputy Martin Indyk mediated a nine hour meeting between head Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, Head of Palestinian intelligence Majid Faraj, and Israeli negotiators Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Molcho and tried to cable together some semblance of a reasonable platform, but he was yelled down by the Palestinian negotiators and the entire meeting turned into a shouting match, with even the ever flexible Tzipi Livni unable to contain herself. At one point, Livni reportedly  demanded of Erekat that Abbas rescind the applications to the 15 UN organizations and conventions he'd submitted in order to negotiate any other preconditions. Erekat flatly refused, and Livni announced the next day that Israel would definitely not release that fourth batch of convicted Palestinian terrorists.

When Indyk tried to reason with the Palestinians, saying that any agreement had to consider Israel's security considerations, Faraj snapped back that the Palestinians weren't there to discuss Israeli security, but to negotiate over a timetable to get all of their demands met.

Things went quickly downhill from there, with the Palestinians threatening to join even more international bodies and take prosecute Israel for 'war crimes' at the International Criminal Court and the Israelis promising retaliation if they did so.

Abbas never had any intention of actually negotiating. Even Saeb Erekat admitted earlier this month that Abbas was staying in the talks just to get the terrorist releases.

Kerry. for his part has pretty much given up, saying in Algiers during his North African trip,  "You can facilitate, you can push, you can nudge, but the parties themselves have to make fundamental decisions to compromise."

In a way, I almost feel sorry for him. The real author of this fiasco was none other than President Barack Obama.The 'nudge and pushing' , and indeed the threats were reserved for Israel, while Abbas and the PLO got nothing but concessions and applause from the White House. Had President Obama told Abbas during their last meeting that yet another refusal to meet the Israelis half way was going to entail real consequences for Abbas and the PA, the talks just might have been salvaged. Instead the president stuck to his preferred role as the Palestinian's lawyer and community organizer and left Kerry to deal with the mess the president created.

This will end up in the UN. And contrary to the president's remarks about not being able to defend Israel in international forums, a simple look at the UN Charter shows that the US can easily veto statehood for Abbas' corrupt little apartheid reichlet, just like any other permanent member of the Security Council. I have my own ideas how that particular brawl will end up going, but we'll see.

As it is right now, Israel needs to work on the divorce, end any serious discussion of the Two State mirage and secure its rights in Judea and Samaria as well as its national security. That should have happened a long time ago. Israel needs to unilaterally mark out its own borders, annex those areas, bring any Jews on the Arab side of the line to the Jewish side and move any non-Israeli Arab citizens to the other side, perhaps with property compensation.Then build the land and defend it.

The odd part is that it might actually work for the Palestinian's benefit. Abbas and the rest of the corrupt Fatah crew are on the way out with the money they stole. An autonomous Palestine might even decide that its best chance for peace and prosperity would be better relations with Israel.

Would there be a lot of international posturing? Media outrage? Of course there would, for a time. I can literally smell the likes of Tom Friedman and Peter Beinart from here. But much of the world, particularly the EU is tired of 'Palestine', they can't financially support it any more, they have their own problems to solve and many of them are ready to move on after the obligatory lip service.

That's how the question of 'Palestine' needs to be settled once and for all, in the same way every other question involving refugees has been settled throughout history. This ought to be the last time the Arabs who identify themselves as Palestinians have an opportunity to miss an opportunity, with all the blood and treasure involved each time they do. Enough.

Real peace beckons..it's time Israel embraced it.

Report: Israel refuses To Release Last Batch Of Terrorist Killers

According to what Senior Fatah official Jibril Rajoub told the AFP after a meeting between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and US envoy Martin Indyk, the Israelis have refused to release the last batch of 28 terrorist killers convicted in Israeli civil courts:

“The Israeli government has informed us through the American mediator that it will not abide by its commitment to release the fourth batch of Palestinian prisoners scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday 29," Rajoub said.

Rajoub, by the way is another one of those moderate Palestinians President Obama says is ready for peace. Only a short time ago on Lebanese TV, (in Arabic,of course) Rajoub said, "I swear,if we had a nuclear weapon we'd have used it on Israel this morning."

The reason the Israelis didn't follow through is simple. There was absolutely no sign from the Palestinian Authority's unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas being willing to make any concessions whatsoever in his demands in order to craft a peace agreement, no progress on the talks and no commitment from Abbas to extend the talks past the April 29th deadline unless he was rewarded with even more goodies, just for the dubious pleasure of the Israelis hearing him continue to say no repeatedly.

Freeing these murderers is a very divisive issue in Israel as you can imagine, especially since Abbas and the PA insist on making heroes out of them and rewarding them with money, celebrations and fanfare.So the Israelis have apparently decided that Abbas' days of take, take, take in exchange for absolutely nothing are over, and understandably so.

Even the normally craven Tzipi Livni came out in favor of this, saying said last week that there was never an “automatic commitment to release prisoners unrelated to making progress in negotiations.”

Abbas and the PA will undoubtedly go to the UN and attempt to get the UN to agree to their demands unilaterally. As Rajoub said, “Not releasing the prisoners will mark the beginning of the efforts in the international community to challenge the legality of the occupation.”

Of course, the PA was always planning on going to the UN from day one. Even  the PA chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat admitted earlier this month that Abbas was staying in talks just to get the  terrorist releases.They never had any intention of crafting an actual peace agreement with Israel, but merely wanted to get whatever they could get for free for as long as it worked. They will of course, use this as an excuse to justify breaking the treaties they signed on the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, but again, they were always going to do that anyway.


And here is where it's going to get interesting. Now that the Israelis are unwilling to be pushed any further, what happens next? The U.S. is also a signatory to the Oslo Accords, and America, the EU and the UN are signatories to the Road Map,both of which insist that the move the PA is making to resolve this without an agreement between themselves and the Israelis is against international law and will not be tolerated.

Most of the EU and of course the 57 nation Muslim bloc in the UN will undoubtedly go along with this. So will a number of smaller third world countries that depend on Muslim good will and/or Arab oil.

So it comes down to what the United States decides to do.President Obama, John Kerry and anyone else connected with this knows that it was Abbas and the PA who rejected Kerry's framework and precipitated this, and anyone looking at this intelligently knew it was coming, even if our president and our secretary of state didn't.

It's a given that Abbas and the PA aren't going to suffer any consequences from Barack Obama for their rejectionism and intransigence in blowing up what was supposed to be a signature achievement for the Obama/Kerry team. But will the Obama team actually allow the UN to pull this off, especially as the Israelis won't comply and no one's going to make them or really has any real interest in making them? Will they allow the UN to make a mockery of what remains of its influence? Was President Obama lying when he said this just a couple of weeks ago? :

"The U.S. commitment to Israel’s security is not subject to periodic policy differences. That’s a rock-solid commitment, and it’s one that I’ve upheld proudly throughout my tenure. I think the affection that Americans feel for Israel, the bond that our people feel and the bipartisan support that people have for Israel is not going to be affected.

So it is not realistic nor is it my desire or expectation that the core commitments we have with Israel change during the remainder of my administration or the next administration."

Of, course, he said a lot of things that day, and many of them contradict each other as usual. I have my own expectations, but stay tuned....

Today's WAPO Poll, Obama's Poor Numbers And What It All Really Means

One thing that was very much in the news today was a WashingtonPostt/ABC News poll showing that the president's approval ratings, that of ObamaCare and of politicians supporting ObamaCare has taken a nasty turn south.

Opposition to the new health-care law also hit a record high in the survey, with 57 percent saying they oppose the president’s most significant domestic initiative. Forty-six percent say they are strongly against it. Just a month ago, as the enrollment period was beginning, the public was almost evenly divided in its assessments of the law.

Disapproval of Obama’s handling of the health-care law’s rollout stands at 63 percent, with a majority saying they strongly disapprove. Last month, 53 percent disapproved.

The findings are the first since Obama’s news conference last week in which he repeatedly acknowledged his and the administration’s mistakes in handling the legislation. He also sought to assuage the anger among millions of Americans whose individual policies were canceled because they did not meet the new requirements.

With all the controversy surrounding the implementation of the law, Americans are evenly divided on whether the Affordable Care Act can be fixed.

Responses to that question differ dramatically depending on party identification, with Democrats overwhelmingly confident that the legislation can be made to work and Republicans overwhelmingly pessimistic about its viability. A majority of independents say it cannot be made to work

The health-care law has become a political burden for elected officials who support it. Almost four in 10 Americans say they are more likely to oppose a politician who backs the legislation, while just over a fifth say they would be more likely to support such a politician. That’s the biggest gap recorded in Post-ABC polling during the entire debate over the law.

[...]
On three measures of leadership and empathy that have been tested repeatedly in Post-ABC polls, Obama now is underwater on all three for the first time. Half or more now say he is not a strong leader, does not understand the problems of “people like you,” and is not honest and trustworthy. Perceptions of the president as a strong leader have dropped 15 points since January, and over the past year the percentage of registered voters who say he is not honest and trustworthy has increased 12 points.

The new survey also asked people whether they consider Obama a good manager. In what appears to be a direct link to the problems of the health-care rollout, 56 percent say no and 41 percent say yes.

The president's job approval rating? On average, 40.6 per cent.

So what does all this mean?

First off, as far as I'm concerned I take most of this poll with a grain of salt.The Washington Post is a very pro-Obama paper,and as we've discussed before, polls depend a great deal on whom you sample,what percentage of your sample they are, and how you phrase the questions you ask.

Back in 2012,before the WAPO stopped publishing their mechanics so you could actually see what they were doing, I used to bust them routinely for ridiculously oversampling Democrats to get a pro-Obama result. 17% was not uncommon. And yes, when it comes to Barack Obama, oversampling black voters also helps queer the numbers:



As Muhammed Ali once told me, the funniest joke is the truth.

The WAPO says that President Obama's overall approval numbers are well over 42%, something that puts him enough above the other polls out there to raise his overall average, but not too much, so it doesn't totally destroy their credibility.

I'd bet my dollar to your dime they had to work pretty hard to skew things to get the president's numbers up even this much.

But then there's the question of what this means.

To me, the most significant parts of the poll are the lowering of Obama's number on the so-called 'three measures of leadership and empathy' and the numbers when it comes to voting against politicians who support ObamaCare.

For years, most of the media have been telling us how smart, how empathetic and how wonderful Our Dear Leader is, and by and large the low information voters bought it, even when this president was stealing them blind and raping their freedoms with impunity. By and large, a lot of them are dependent on government and benefit in some way from the status quo. What the collapse of ObamaCare did was to bring the war home so to speak. It was something they could directly see and feel the pain of in a way that Benghazi, IRS-Gate,NSA-Gate, Fast and Furious and all the other scandals bubbling around the cesspool in Washington didn't. After all, when you personally pay no taxes, what does it matter if somebody else's money is wasted?

Except now, it's personal. The low information voters see that it isn't the Ruling Class whose hours are being cut or whose spouses and children are being tossed off of their health plan. These people notice now that it isn't the Ruling Class screaming in frustration at their computer monitors trying to get health insurance, now that what they were promised by the Prevaricator-in-Chief they could keep has been cancelled.The Ruling class screamed and were heard immediately, and got themselves a waiver.The rest of us are still reeling at what it's going to cost for less coverage with higher deductibles and co-pays.

In fact, ObamaCare's poster girl, the one the White House was pushing as the successful example, one of the few who actually signed up successfully has now informed the world that after getting a look at the price, she's opting for the penalty. She won't be the only one. It's the height of irony that ObamaCare, which is still being sold to us as a device to see to it that more Americans have healthcare is actually going to see to it that a lot more Americans don't.

Oh, and by the way, the White House, which proudly embraced 'ObamaCare' as its own, very special achievement is now running away from that name like the bubonic Plague. The White House is actually issuing talking points to Democrats instructing them to refer to it as the Affordable Care Act.

We have always been at war with East Asia.Just ask Big Brother.

My point here is simple. The pain is going to resonate. But whether that's going to translate into actual numbers at the polls in a year is another question. President Obama, after all, isn't running for anything. And a year is a very long time in politics. Remember, by nature a great many people have trouble concentrating on politics for any length of time. In fact, politics is slowly becoming not a forum to discuss ideas and pick leadership but almost a new form of Roman Circus, with new diversions and spectacles constantly demanded to keep people's interest at the rare times the Ruling Class wants them to pay attention.

The president has already shown that he has no problem breaking the law for the sake of partisan politics, and there's no telling what might be in store. ObamaCare, as toxic as it is won't be going to go away until its repealed, and even if the Republicans take the Senate and retain the House by sufficient numbers to do that in 2014, ObamaCare will not be able to be repealed until January 20th, 2015. A great deal can happen between now and then, and Obama and what Michael Barone, the usually even tempered dean of American political analysts called to my surprise 'that lawless gang' will lie, cheat, manipulate, steal and propagandize to keep it in place, assisted by their ever helpful minions in the media.

Here's a great example of the latter. Politico runs this story with the headline: President Obama to insurers: No bailout. It's subject is the meeting the president had with the CEO's of the major health insurance companies he just screwed over to the tune of millions of dollar. Your immediate impression is that here's our gutsy president standing toe to toe with those bad apple insurers, as he called them. And telling them that they'll take it and like it. No bailouts for you..they don't poll well as they used to.

The whole beginning part of this story is all about that. But a funny thing happens when you hit the bottom part of the story, when most people have stopped reading.

By paragraph 6, after 5 paragraphs about how a bail out isn't going to happen, we get this in paragraph 6:

“As the president emphasized, there is not an unlimited amount of money out there for the government to do that [make up for extra costs],” said Jim Roosevelt, CEO of Tufts Health Plan, one of more than a dozen insurance company leaders who attended the 90-minute meeting.

'amount of money'? Wait a minute, I thought there was no bail out going to happen?

By paragraph 11..well what do you know:

The 2010 health law had several tools aimed at helping insurers through some of the fiscal bumps in the new markets. To address the industry concerns about additional costs if they revive the canceled plans, administration officials said last week they would tweak one of those tools — called “risk corridors” — to give them more help.But Obama made clear that the financial support has a limit, according to the two health executives and several other industry sources who were briefed on the meeting.

Well, well..."risk corridors", AKA increased costs incurred because of ObamaCare, is the euphemism they're using for " bailout due to losses suffered from ObamaCare." And 'financial support' is a bribe using your tax dollars to pay insurance companies to compensate them for the extra costs they're now going to incur from the larger 'risk corridors' of President Obama's bogus fix.

In other words, B-a-i-l-o-u-t.

That's a 180 degrees from the headline saying 'no bailouts'. But our friends at Politico were willing to aid and abet this president's messaging, sticking the information about the offers to bribe the insurance companies at the very end of the article, long after the casual reader has clicked on something else.

I use this fairly egregious example just to show you what we're up against in terms of the PR battle. A lot of this stuff is a lot more subtle.

Of course, the insurers might balk at exposing themselves to criminal liability for writing policies that are against the law, no matter what Barack Obama says.But when you have a president willing to use the IRS as his own personal political goon squad, other things come into play that can influence that decision.

The president and his minions will not let go of this easily. They will continue to try to spin crap into gold, and they'll happily spend your last dime and sacrifice your freedom to do it, if you let them.

The solution, of course is a strategy designed to keep this in front of the low information voters while energizing the anti-Obama base. After all, no one can vote against Barack Obama again, but they can vote against ObamaCare and take revenge on the tools that supported it who are up for re-election.

So the Opposition, if they're smart, will shout "no bail out for ObamaCare" at the top of their lungs early and often. They will remind people again and again of how they were deliberately and knowingly lied to, and warn them against trusting anything this president says. They will take steps to unite their caucus, now that Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have been proven right about what a nightmare ObamaCare is. Apologies are in order. And they will avoid the Democrat's attempt to smear them with the same ordure by attempting to trick them into being part of a 'bi-partisan fix'.

There is no fixing ObamaCare.In fact, any attempt to fix it needs to be avoided at all costs, with the simple mantra that we now know what's in the bill,we don't like it and neither do the American people. The word that needs to be repeated over and over again is 'repeal'.

If the Republicans do that, there's a decent chance they may be able to repeal this monstrosity called ObamaCare come 2015.

But that's what it will take.

Breaking: The Chaos Deepens As Obama Panics - Now Says You Can Keep Existing Policies

 

Things just got even weirder.

President Obama is running scared, and just made the ObamaCare debacle even worse.

He's caved in to demands of his fellow Democrats and is expected to announce shortly that White House is going to allow people to keep their existing insurance policies.

This comes right before a vote in the House is scheduled to vote on a Republican-sponsored bill that would do the same thing. Dozens of Democrats who face tough re-election fights next year were expected to vote in favor, would have forced Harry Reid and Senate Democrats to kill the bill or President Obama to veto it.

However, there are major problems with the 'fix'.

Millions of Americans have already lost their policies, and if they're now going to be able to get those policies back ( and that by no means certain), the logistics of rewriting and reissuing those policies are going to be a nightmare. First off, it involves a huge expense for the insurance companies themselves, which is going to need to be passed on to consumers.

There's also the problem of actuarial standards, by which insurance companies determine risk. For instance, if you had an existing policy but contracted cancer or a heart condition after you purchased it that was covered and then lost that coverage because of ObamaCare, what this presidential diktat does is to force the company to rewrite your policy at the old rate without accounting for your now pre-existing condition. That expense (and it will be huge) is going to be passed on to all consumers, and I frankly would be surprised if insurance companies didn't take this to court.

Not only is the government now forcing individuals to buy a product sold by a private company using the IRS as a policing instrument, it is now attempting to force private companies to sell to individuals at a fixed and uneconomic price. To say this is unconstitutional is an understatement.

Finally, there's the problem of ObamaCare itself. The entire Ponzi scheme was not particularly a health care bill, but a redistributive tax on the middle class to subsidize people the regime feels are more deserving.It was based on people currently holding health insurance to pay increases in their premiums of anywhere from 3 to 10 times more than they were paying and accept increased coverage with higher co-pay and larger deductibles in order to fund the subsidies, policies for people with pre-existing conditions, one size fits all comprehensive benefits for people who neither need or want them, insurance for illegal aliens, the waivers for the president's political allies, and the huge bureaucracy the entire program involves.

If these same people are now going to be allowed to return to their previous policies at the same rate, how is ObamaCare going to be funded? Is the president going to come back to Congress and ask for more money to pay for it? I doubt they'll go with it, but he may. If he does, that adds yet another lie to the president's already considerable portfolio - that ObamaCare was going to reduce the deficit.

Anyone who did the math knew that already, but now it's simply going to become a lot more obvious.

This is a political band-aid designed to try and rescue the president's fellow Democrats from facing up to this next year. Unfortunately, the underlying problems of ObamaCare are only going to worsen because of it, the train wreck is going to continue and the Democrats who voted for it are going to have to face the music.

Those of you who refer to yourselves as 'progressives' ought to think about your support for this president. For two years, he had an ironclad majority in congress and could have done pretty much whatever he wanted. Fortunately for the rest of us, he settled for a tyrannical and unworkable  ObamaCare law, a bogus 'stimulus' designed to pay off his political allies and lots of parties, five star luxury vacations  and golf.

UPDATE: Oh, this is precious! It's even worse than I thought.  In his remarks, the president is NOT going to address the millions who lost their coverage,had their hours cut or were laid off because of ObamaCare.

And he is still refusing to change the ObamaCare regulations  to allow all existing  health insurance plans to be  grandfathered so they are legal under Obamacare's  requirements...'if yu like you plan, you can keep it'.

No, instead of that, the president  saying that the IRS will use "enforcement discretion" to allow  health insurance plans that don't meet ObaamCare's requirements to be able to still be sold in the future.  In other words,  the Obama administration might not enforce the penalty on individuals for not having eligible health insurance plans and they'll  now allow the insurance companies to still sell plans that are illegal to sell  under Obamacare! And only through 2014, after which the midterms will be over.

"I don't see within the law how they can do this administratively," said Speaker John Boehner in a press conference on Capitol Hill. "No one can identify anything the president could do administratively to keep his pledge that would be both legal and effective."

He's got that right. And he could have adding constitutional to the mix. You can't pass a law and then arbitrarily decide to pick what parts you enforce to benefit your party politically. Not to mention the fact that the insurance companies are going to balk at issuing policies that are illegal but that the Obama Administration might decide not to penalize them for. And that they will have to cancel in a year's time, once the elections are over.

This is not only illegal, it' stupid. And that's a fatal combination.

The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One's Talking About

At this point, much is being made about the failure of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare.

President Obama himself tacitly admitted as much by calling in what amounts to an emergency rescue squad from Silicon Valley to try and make sense of the dysfunctional website...paid for by the American taxpayers at a staggering cost of over $500 million. The website itself was granted to a company with connections to Obama backer George Soros, CGI Federal in a no bid contract, and the job they did was so amateurish and sloppy that they even opened the government to a lawsuit for violating the licensing agreement of a copyrighted web script used by the site.

The estimated cost to repair the system and get it up and running again may run as high as $2 billion, and it might take months to repair.

Meanwhile, Americans coast to coast are experiencing sticker shock over the huge increases to their existing healthcare policies, and the demographic ObamaCare targeted to pay the freight - largely uninsured healthy young adults - is steering clear as they discover what enrolling in ObamaCare actually entails.

For instance, here’s a typical deal that's being offered:

“One option available only to people under 30 is a so-called catastrophic policy that kicks in after a $6,350 annual deductible. In Monroe County, you can buy that policy on the New York State of Health exchange for as low as $131 a month for single coverage.”

Let's look at the math. They're offering coverage for $1,572.00 per year that only kicks in after you pay $6,350, not a sum the majority of under 30s still paying off student loans have laying around even if they happen to have full time jobs. Any wonder that healthy young adults aren't signing up, and opting to pay the tax instead? And without their participation, ObamaCare is doomed to failure.

And it gets worse. Even if the president's team ever gets the website fixed to allow people to enroll in one of the new exchanges, your insurance could turn out to be worthless. Most HMO and PPO plans today understand that if one of their insured is facing a catastrophic emergency like a car accident or a heart attack where immediate medical treatment is necessary, a locally available 'out of network' doctor or hospital might have to be used at times and they will cover that care. Because ObamaCare does not allow any payment at all to to out of network physicians or hospitals who do not accept ObamaCare, a steadily increasing group, a single medical emergency could end up costing a person with ObamaCare insurance thousands of dollars.

There are significant voices on the right end of the spectrum who are saying that the best policy is simply to allow this debacle to happen. The strategy they're touting assumes that when this happens, both President Obama and the Democrats will be blamed for the colossal and expensive failure and it will all end up collapsing and eventually being repealed anyway.

They're missing two important factors.

First, no federal entitlement has ever been repealed.They just morph into something different in the name of 'reform'.

And that brings us to the second factor, the dirty secret behind ObamaCare - it was always designed to fail.

President Obama and his minions always had the goal of Sovietizing the American health care system by making it single payer and having it controlled solely by the Federal government. ObamaCare was never anything more than a poorly constructed Potemkin village designed to fail so miserably that the American people would demand single payer just to get rid on the unwieldy mess ObamaCare would create.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted as much  when he was asked whether Obama Care was merely a step towards single payer answering, “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Senator Reid's told PBS in his interview that he and other 'progressives' wanted single payer all along, but even with the Democrats having a veto proof majority in 2009, they didn't have the 60 votes needed to push it through.

“We had a real good run at the public option … don’t think we didn’t have a tremendous number of people who wanted a single-payer system,” Reid said.

But in the end, some Democrats weren't willing to go along - Reid named former Senator Joe Lieberman as a prominent obstacle - so they opted for the next best thing...a cumbersome train wreck in the making which, as an added benefit, provided plenty of pork and contracts for well connected donors as well as 'new revenues' the Democrat euphemism for increased taxes.

Not only that, but it provided funding and employment for President Obama's friends at ACORN as ObamaCare 'navigators', regardless of felony convictions and legal resident status.

That's where things stand now. The next target, especially if President Obama's union allies get the waiver they're screaming for will be an all out assault on employer-sponsored health care, with vast increases on co-pays and employee contributions...except, of course if you're lucky enough to work for someone who has a waiver or is subsidized, like members of congress and their staffers.

Repeal of ObamaCare is the only way to avoid this. 'Reform' just adds another facade to an already corrupt and crumbling structure. And repeal is going to involve electing enough members of Congress in 2014 with the spine to insist on repeal and stick to it, as well as holding their feet to the fire to make sure they don't weasel out in classic DC fashion.

And yes, those really are the only choices available.

Outta Gas! Stations To Turn Away PA Security Vehicles

Ma'an, the Jordanian news agency tells us that gas stations across Judea and Samaria are going to refuse to allow Palestinian security vehicles to gas up, after the PA's finance ministry failed to pay their bills:

The PA Finance Ministry has not reimbursed fuel vouchers for five months, and on Tuesday a network of fuel distributors announced it would stop letting the security forces fill up for free.

They say the security services will be able to fill up their tanks until Thursday, after which they will be refused.

Ma'an has learned that the Finance Ministry only started paying January's fuel vouchers on Sunday. On Tuesday, they were expected to pay February's bills.

But the owners of gas stations say they will not let them take fuel after Thursday if the ministry does not pay all its debts by then.

Maybe they can afford bicycles. Or skateboards.

Ah hah hah hah!

Huge! Qatar Expels Brotherhood's Sheik Qaradawi, Hamas Leader Mesha'al

The coup in Egypt has already had an effect on the Muslim Brotherhood and the Caliphate.

The emirate of Qatar reacted to Wednesday's events by stripping Sheik Qaradawi, the Brotherhood's spiritual leader of his citizenship, closing down all Brotherhood offices and expelling Qaradawi and Hamas leader Khalid Mesha'al from the country.

The link's in Arabic..here's a loose translation, adjusted so it makes more sense in English:

Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa second, the Emir of Qatar, on Tuesday evening, said that Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi must leave the country, and ordered the withdrawal of Qatari nationality from him, and the closure of all offices of the Muslim Brotherhood in order of state policy not to choose a political faction or movement. Confirmed Prince Tamim, in an interview, we are all Muslims, but not the Muslim Brotherhood, and are dealing with matters of State and Government and not allied with any political faction. Al-Nahar reported that Prince Tamim gave Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, 48 hours to leave the country.

The Emir has always been a huge supporter of the Brotherhood, until now. As a matter of fact, Sheik Qaradawi (a foul, genocidal maniac who is not allowed into the U.S. for very good reasons) is (or was) a major star on al-Jazeera, which is owned by the Emir and his family.I have a feeling his show has been cancelled for lack of a sponsor, as they say in showbiz.

Mesha'al is the political head of Hamas, who took refuge in Qatar after he was forced to leave Syria by Assad after the Syrian Civil War broke out and Hamas refused to send fighters to his aid.

You can expect Qatar to cease all financial support for the Brotherhood as well.Deposed Egyptian president Morsi and his friends made a few too many friendly overtures to Iran, which put them on the wrong side of the Sunni-Shi'ite war led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Now that Wednesday's coup removed them from power, expect Qatar and Saudi Arabia to establish ties to the Egyptian junta and support it financially. The Brotherhood has now been revealed as a weak horse, and we know what happens to weak horses uin this part of the world.

This is absolutely huge, and very good news for the West.

Official US Embassy Warning: Stay Away From Egypt

 

The American Embassy in Egypt is cautioning Americans from visiting the country, even the famed Pyramids.

A academic teaching at the American University in Cairo received an email from the embassy warning of “aggressiveness [that] in some cases is closer to criminal conduct… with angry groups of individuals surrounding and pounding on [vehicles]… and in some cases attempting to open the vehicle’s doors.” The warning lined up with the professor’s observations:

So, it’s not like I’m easily scared by anything that happens at the Pyramids, that repository for all of Egypt’s most villainous swindlers (every nation has some). But in recent months it has become almost unbearable. It feels almost like an openly criminal environment now. The problem is not only “lack of visible security,” but in some cases the security are either working with the vendors on their scams, or are sexually harassing female foreigners quite openly, even those who are obviously accompanied by their husbands. In short, if you visit Egypt in the near future, don’t even think of going to the Pyramids unless you’re on a large organized bus tour. Anything else is a big risk, for now.

The Pyramids won't be an issue for too much longer anyway. There's a large consensus of opinion within the Islamist regime in power that wants them destroyed as idolatry and 'un-Islamic' structures.

On the same day the Embassy's warning was issued, a report came out documenting numerous attacks on journalists, mainly by thugs employed by the Muslim Brotherhood regime.

In the new Islamist Egypt, the economy is in the toilet, prices on food and other staples
are rising rapidly because of hoarding and inflation, black outs are common because of energy shortages and foreign investment is almost non-existent.The economy is on life support.

Well, with one exception. This Egyptian industry still brings in money.

It's anyone's guess where this ends up going.

The New Egypt - Starving For The Muslim Brotherhood

 

The new Islamist Egypt has a number of problems, but the biggest one is that it's starving to death, because it has a population of $80 million it can't feed.

As I reported earlier, Egypt is being forced into a choice of starvation or bankruptcy:


In Egypt, in Syria, in Jordan, in Tunisia, the Arab autocrats survived by providing subsidies to their populations for food, cooking oil and other staples.Last year, when the price of cereal grains and other staples almost doubled, the subsidies simply weren't affordable any more.

When this happened in the past, the brunt was born by Asians in places like India and China. Now, with those economies expanding rapidly, the Arabs are simply being outbid and are the lowest on the food chain.{...}

Tourism, once a major source of income is severely curtailed after the reports on rapes and assaults of both locals and foreigners in places like Tahrir Square.The new Egyptian law that allows 'citizen's arrests' of foreigners is killing most of what's left.

The only part of the tourist trade that survives is sex tourism from the Arab world. That's not an attraction for westerners in view of the other risks involved in simply visiting a country that the World Economic Forum ranked lowest out of 140 countries for safety and security.Nor does it provide anything like the old revenues.

Egyptian cotton is being underbid on the world markets by countries in Central, South and East Asia, foreign investment is almost non-existent, and the gas Israel used to buy from Egypt is no longer in the picture because of sabotage of the pipeline and public outrage in Egypt against any trade at all with the Jews. Foreign aid and the fees Egypt gets from use of the Suez Canal aren't enough to make the nut.

The Islamist government had been basing its hopes on a desperately needed International Monetary Fund (IMF)loan, which would allow the Muslim Brotherhood government to pay subsidies again and give it some breathing space to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, the IMF has other fish to fry at the moment, and is insisting on austerity cuts including cuts in the subsidies. At a time when EU countries are chafing under austerity cuts, it's politically difficult for the IMF to do anything else. And if Egypt agrees to that, they'll be facing massive civil disorder, as well as a major loss in credibility.

The Egyptian pound is in worse straits than the Iranian Rial, and no one wants it. It  has lost 60% of its 2012 exchange value against the dollar, and Egypt's supply of foreign currency is down to about three months.

Egypt, once one of the richest countries in the world agriculturally is now the world's largest importer of whea,t which accounts for an estimated $32 billion trade deficit.
The price of fava beans has skyrocketed 40% this year. The average Egyptian lives on government subsidized bread, sugar and oil. And those subsidies are in jeopardy.

The Egyptian government is expected to be short by as much as 4 million tons of wheat imports this year. Essentially they've slashed orders because they simply don't have the hard currency needed to purchase them, and instead are overestimating the coming crop.

Last week, Libya and Qatar announced that they might be prepared to lend the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood government around $5 billion. Unfortunately, Egypt already owes that amount to the foreign companies that produce its oil and gas, and the amount it owes already for oil and wheat imports almost certainly exceeds its cash reserves. Egypt is not a major player in gas or oil, and its doubtful production will continue unless the arrears are paid up.

Even if Libya and Qatar actually produced the money(especially doubtful in Libya's case)the money would probably only cover a month or two.

Another problem in Egypt is capital flight. Anyone who actually has any money is spiriting it out of the country, usually to the EU or the Emirates.

The Morsi government likely has about three months, tops before the country goes bankrupt. What they're likely doing is playing for time to try and get better terms from th eIMF and their creditors.

The Obama Administration's contribution to all this was $1 billion in debt forgiveness, and about $3 billion in military aid to Egypt over the last year and half in spite of congress' objections and a formal hold.Oh yes, and a shipment of 140,000 teargas canisters to help the Islamist government retain power when the inevitable protests start.

President Obama has a vested interest in seeing the Muslim Brotherhood regime he helped take power stay in power.Where that ends is anyone's guess.

The New Egypt's Choice - Bankruptcy or Bread Riots

 

Egypt is finding out that Islamist government has its limitations.

Ideology is all very well, but the central problem of Egypt hasn't changed - a population of 80 million people it's unable to feed, educate or provide for.

In fact, the sharia-fueled constitution, the Islamist crackdown and the highly publicized violence of the Arab Spring have made the problem even worse.

I've been over this ground before..with the exception of Libya (where tribalism was the main factor) the Arab Spring was not about democracy, but about one four letter word - f-o-o-d.

In Egypt, in Syria, in Jordan, in Tunisia, the Arab autocrats survived by providing subsidies to their populations for food, cooking oil and other staples.Last year, when the price of cereal grains and other staples almost doubled, the subsidies simply weren't affordable any more.

When this happened in the past, the brunt was born by Asians in places like India and China. Now, with those economies expanding rapidly, the Arabs are simply being outbid and are the lowest on the food chain.

At this point, Egypt is almost bankrupt.

Tourism, once a major source of income is severely curtailed after the reports on rapes and assaults of both locals and foreigners in places like Tahrir Square.The new Egyptian law that allows 'citizen's arrests' of foreigners is killing most of what's left.

The only part of the tourist trade that survives is sex tourism from the Arab world. That's not an attraction for westerners in view of the other risks involved in simply visiting a country that the World Economic Forum ranked lowest out of 140 countries for safety and security.Nor does it provide anything like the old revenues.

Egyptian cotton is being underbid on the world markets by countries in Central, South and East Asia, foreign investment is almost non-existent, and the gas Israel used to buy from Egypt is no longer in the picture because of sabotage of the pipeline and public outrage in Egypt against any trade at all with the Jews. Foreign aid and the fees Egypt gets from use of the Suez Canal aren't enough to make the nut.

The Islamist government had been basing its hopes on a desperately needed International Monetary Fund (IMF)loan, which would allow the Muslim Brotherhood government to pay subsidies again and give it some breathing space to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, the IMF has other fish to fry at the moment, and is insisting on austerity cuts including cuts in the subsidies. At a time when EU countries are chafing under austerity cuts, it's politically difficult for the IMF to do anything else. And if Egypt agrees to that, they'll be facing massive civil disorder, as well as a major loss in credibility.

You see, the Islamist argument (and not just in Egypt) was always that secular nationalism had failed, and that the solution to  all problems was to get back to that Ol' Time Religion - namely hard line Islamism and sharia rule.

That sounded plausible to people when it was promises coming from the Muslim Brotherhood personnel running the movement's soup kitchens, schools,  clinics and other charitable institutions. But actually governing a country once you have the power is very different, as Mohammed Morsi and company are finding out.You have to deliver, at least to some extent.

In another piece of bad luck,  the Jews aren't available as a scapegoat anymore. The Egyptians ethnically cleansed them back in the 1950's after stealing everything they owned.

Of course, the Egyptians could totally revise their hideous anti-Semitic stance, perhaps even apologize for the past. Instead of spending their money on weaponry and war games where Israel is labeled 'enemy number one', they could reach out to Israel with a real peace instead of a cold, hostile armistice and take advantage of the Israeli's expertise in things like agriculture, energy, irrigation, high tech and medicine. The Israelis would bend over backwards to help,  Egypt's unemployed labor would be a natural fit for Israeli manufacturing, and both countries would benefit.

Unfortunately, that's not the Muslim Brotherhood's agenda, or Islam's. So it won't happen.

The best scenario, of course is that the Islamists are totally discredited and thrown out of power by a popular revolt just as Mubarak was. But that might conflict with the world view of a certain president and his key cabinet members.

So we'll see, insh'allah.

More on The F-35 Debacle -Leaked Pentagon Report Calls It Critically Flawed

 

The more that comes out about the F-35, the worse the news gets.

Not only is it too slow,too heavy, less maneuverable, and far too expensive to produce, a leaked Pentagon report actually calls the new F-35 unsafe:

In a leaked memo reported by the RT news agency, a Pentagon official prefaces a report on the F-35 by cautioning that even training missions cannot be safely performed on board the aircraft at this time.

“The training management system lags in development compared to the rest of the Integrated Training Center and does not yet have all planned functionality,” the report reads in part.

“The out-of-cockpit visibility in the F-35A is less than other Air Force fighter aircraft,” one excerpt reads.

Elsewhere, the report includes quotes from pilots commenting after test missions onboard the aircraft:

“The head rest is too large and will impede aft (rear) visibility and survivability during surface and air engagements,” said one. “Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned (down) every time” in dogfights, remarked another.

“Aft visibility could turn out to be a significant problem for all F-35 pilots in the future,” the Pentagon admits.

In one chart included in the report, the Pentagon says there are eight crucial flaws with the aircraft that have raises serious red flags within the Department of Defense.

The plane’s lack of maturity, reduced pilot situational awareness during an emergency and the risk of the aircraft’s fuel barriers catching fire are also cited, as is the likelihood of a pilot in distress becoming unable to escape his aircraft during an emergency.

The Pentagon report described flaws as “unacceptable for combat or combat training.”

This is the plane that President Obama scuttled the perfectly acceptable F-22 for because in his words, "the F-22 cost too much.".

The Pentagon has already suspended all F-35 flights while Lockheed-Martin scrambles furiously to try to correct the flaws.

While they may mange to fix a few things, the biggest problem is that the F-35 was designed to do far too many jobs, and thus has to carry a lot more equipment than an average fighter. That's why development alone cost a trillion dollars, even with U.S. allies like Israel, Canada, Italy, Britain Turkey, Australia, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands contributing to the cost of joint development.

Because of the poor performance, high price tag ($238 million each) and high maintenance costs, a number of countries who initially were lining up to purchase the F-35 are now having second thoughts. Canada canceled a deal to buy 65 F-35's just last week and Italy cut it order from 131 to 90 planes, with a caveat that they may cut the order even further at a later date. Even the Defense Department has delayed most of its purchases.

The Israelis signed on for a squadron's worth, 25 planes, primarily because the F-22 was no longer available according to my sources. They're supposed to be up and running in 2016. The Israelis won a prolonged battle with Lockheed-Martin to be able to modify the plane's electronics with Israeli-unique systems once they're delivered, which should be between 2015-2017...provided the F-35 isn't scrapped.

Israel and Japan got screwed that way when the Obama Administration canceled the F-22. They had contributed to its development with the agreement that they were going to be able to purchase the plane, but since it was aborted, they never received what they paid for.

We'll see what happens with the F-35, but so far it doesn't look promising.

The Media Isn't Talking, But Europe Continues To Implode Economically

 

The media hasn't been talking much about the European financial crisis, and is giving the impression that all's well. It isn't.

The ever prolific Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge has a must read piece on the subject...must read because it's a red flag alert as to where America is headed if we continue on the path we're on:

The economic situation in Europe is far worse than it was a year ago, and it is going to continue to get worse as austerity continues to take a huge toll on the economies of the eurozone.

It would be hard to understate how bad things have gotten – particularly in southern Europe. The truth is that most of southern Europe is experiencing a full-blown economic depression right now. Sadly, most Americans are paying very little attention to what is going on across the Atlantic. But they should be watching, because this is what happens when nations accumulate too much debt. The United States has the biggest debt burden of all, and eventually what is happening over in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal and Greece is going to happen over here as well.

The following are 20 facts about the collapse of Europe that everyone should know...

#1 10 Months: Manufacturing activity in both France and Germany has contracted for 10 months in a row.

#2 11.8 Percent: The unemployment rate in the eurozone has now risen to 11.8 percent – a brand new all-time high.

#3 17 Months: In November, Italy experienced the sharpest decline in retail sales that it had experienced in 17 months.

#4 20 Months: Manufacturing activity in Spain has contracted for 20 months in a row.

#5 20 Percent: It is estimated that bad loans now make up approximately 20 percent of all domestic loans in the Greek banking system at this point.

#6 22 Percent: A whopping 22 percent of the entire population of Ireland lives in jobless households.

#7 26 Percent: The unemployment rate in Greece is now 26 percent. A year ago it was only 18.9 percent.

#8 26.6 Percent: The unemployment rate in Spain has risen to an astounding 26.6 percent.

#9 27.0 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Cyprus. Back in 2008, this number was well below 10 percent.

#10 28 Percent: Sales of French-made vehicles in November were down 28 percent compared to a year earlier.

#11 36 Percent: Today, the poverty rate in Greece is 36 percent. Back in 2009 it was only about 20 percent.

#12 37.1 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Italy – a brand new all-time high.

#13 44 Percent: An astounding 44 percent of the entire population of Bulgaria is facing “severe material deprivation”.

#14 56.5 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Spain – a brand new all-time high.

#15 57.6 Percent: The unemployment rate for workers under the age of 25 in Greece – a brand new all-time high.

The problems with the entire EU project stemmed from a number of really bad ideas.

The idea that you could cram people from very diverse cultures into a common financial union was flawed from the start, as was the idea that you can have a welfare society and an immigration society at the same time. As America is also starting to find out, you can have one or the other, but not both for very obvious reasons.

Another problem with a socialist nanny state nirvana that ultimately dooms it is the fact that people don't have children. After all, if you're essentially secular or even agnostic and your entire society is focused on cradle to grave management of all your affairs, children really just become a drain on your own hedonistic lifestyle, so why bother? In that kind of society, there's no point unless you love being a parent for its own sake. Certainly you likely won't have the pleasure of seeing them grow up to attain more than you did in life.

Lest you think this is strictly a European problem, keep in mind that one of the hallmarks of the age of Obama is a sharply lowered U.S. birth rate,coupled with an abortion rate of 337,000 last year by Planned Parenthood alone - about one every 94 seconds.

The European leftist elite figured that Muslim immigration would pick up the slack and pay for the party but as it turned out most of those immigrants ended up costing more in social welfare benefits than they provided in tax revenues. And the culture they brought with them involved incurring a number of uncomfortable and costly side effects as well.

The Europeans, especially countries in southern Europe then tried to finesse the gap between what they were spending and what was coming in by simply running huge deficits, with the obvious end results.

The sheer misery many of the people in Europe are suffering today amounts to more than just mere numbers and will effect them deeply for a long time to come. But they have one advantage over us.

Europe still has NATO and an American commitment to defend them - for now.Since the beginning of the Cold War, they have been able to avoid spending much on defending themselves because America cheerfully picked up the bill, not that we got much gratitude for it.

If America continues along the path we're headed on, we will eventually experience what Europe is going through now..except there's no one to farm out America's defense to.

Meltdown - Boehner's 'Plan B' Implodes As Conservatives Say No

In spite of Majority Leader Reid essentially flipping him the middle digit yesterday, Republican Speaker John Boehner still didn't get the message.

He insisted on getting his 'Plan B' passed by the House, a rehash of former Democrat Speaker Nancy Pelosi's plan from last May - tax increases on gross incomes of $1 million and up, no mention of spending or the debt ceiling.

His idea was that this was somehow going to force President Obama and the Democrats to deal.

But to his surprise, the Republican caucus refused to go along:

At a quarter to 8 p.m. on Thursday night, House Republicans gathered in the Capitol basement for an urgent, closed-door conference meeting. The scene was hushed and confused. Instead of huddling in a windowless room, members thought they’d spend the evening on the House floor, voting on “Plan B,” Speaker John Boehner’s fiscal-cliff proposal. But as they took their seats and looked at Boehner’s face, the reason for the gathering became clear: The speaker didn’t have the votes. The whipping was over. “Plan B” was dead.

Boehner’s speech to the group was short and curt: He said his plan didn’t have enough support, and that the House would adjourn until after Christmas, perhaps even later. But it was Boehner’s tone and body language that caught most Republicans off guard. The speaker looked defeated, unhappy, and exhausted after hours of wrangling. He didn’t want to fight. There was no name-calling. As a devout Roman Catholic, Boehner wanted to pray. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he told the crowd, according to attendees.

The Serenity Prayer is about all Boehner has left.

He and his friends in the GOP establishment have spent the last few weeks dissing the Tea party and conservatives in general, kicking members associated with those movements off committee seats, and threatening suspected dissidents with similar retaliation.

Did Boehner think that would go unnoticed? Is he really that clueless?

Plan B was a stunningly futile and bad idea anyway. Most of the GOP caucus obviously didn't like the idea of going home and explaining it to the constituents who elected them.

Harry Reid has said he's not going to consider any plan that comes out of the House and already sent the Senate home for Christmas, and the president is already preparing for his $4 million Hawaiian vacay at the taxpayer's expense, so even if it had passed it would have been meaningless.

And the Plan itself was ridiculous.

Boehner and anyone else that thinks like him need to get a clue - President Obama and the Democrats have no intention of negotiating anything. Why should they?

Taxes are going to go up, there will be no meaningful spending cuts and our defense budget is going to be scaled back to pre WWI levels. That's what this president and the Democrats wanted all along, and they'll get it, either by doing nothing and letting sequestration take effect or by making Boehner and the House cave on everything they want. And the men who put them in this comfortable position were none other than Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

He champions them now, but President Obama has constantly demonized the Bush tax cuts since 2008, something no Republican of any stature has had the stones to remark on publicly. They were supposed to sunset on January 1st, 2012, but they were extended for an additional year because of the ridiculous deal Boehner and McConnell made with the president last year in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and giving the president a higher credit card limit.They could have refused to increase the debt limit and forced the president to live within a 2.3 trillion dollar budget. Instead, they expected the president to negotiate with them in good faith a year down the road to pass meaningful spending cuts.

Now, how bad a deal that was is finally starting to become readily apparent to them.I use the word 'starting' advisedly, based on Boehner's recent antics.Having been screwed once, he's apparently anxious for a repeat performance.

Again some simple truth. This president and his minions were always going to raise taxes and strangle the defense budget. The Bush Era Tax Cuts are going up on people making more than $250K, and that number will be go south fairly quickly, using the AMT calculation, bogus stimulus programs, and more 'reforms' in Congress to $100,000 and lower. It's open season on the Kulaks, because elections do matter. And as the American people are going to discover, who is labelled as 'the rich is going to be a lot more elastic and inclusive then they imagined.

What Boehner could do, providing he gets someone to help him find his lost testicles is to use the power of the House to prevent the worst of the excesses. Congress holds the purse strings.There's nothing stopping them from simply refusing to raise the debt ceiling past its already obscene limits.If that involves shutting the government down, fine.

There's nothing stopping them from refusing to fund President Obama's agenda and making it clear that any spending he does will come with a price tag of spending cuts attached.There's nothing stopping them from addressing the country and explaining clearly and eloquently that this poresident has no intention of negotiasting anything in good faith, exactly why President Obama's fiscal policies are leading us to ruin, and why they oppose them. And there's nothing stopping them from attacking this president and his policies forcefully.

They're going to be demonized either way by the president and his media lackeys, but at least they're providing an honest, principled alternative, and one more and more people will understand as the Obama economy unravels.

Will they do it? I doubt it. Especially with John Boehner in charge.

But it needs to be done, and if the Republicans can't or won't, someone else will. Depend on it.

The Fiscal Cliff Farce - Time To Fire John Boehner, Seriously

 

I say this with regret, because I actually think that GOP House Speaker John Boehner is, in his own way, a dedicated public servant.

But it's apparent that he has no idea whom he's dealing with in negotiations with this president and the Democrats, and even less courage. It's like watching someone take a stroll in New York's Central Park at 2 AM and seeing him react with surprise and shock when he gets mugged and beaten to a bloody pulp.

In the latest from the saga of the fiscal cliff, Boehner advanced what he thought was at least a reasonable starting point - he took any talk of a debt ceiling limit off the table and essentially endorsed the exact proposal Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi put out back in May of this year, for tax hikes on gross incomes over $1 million.

No sooner did he do that when the Democrats (laughing hysterically among themselves I'm sure) responded that it simply wasn't good enough, and that it was all just a 'political ploy' anyway by Pelosi.

The White House quickly agreed, saying it doesn't go far enough and wouldn't pass the Democrat majority Senate anyway.

The truth is that President Obama and the Democrats don't need or want a deal. The President has no problem with raising taxes on everyone or with the drastic sequestration cuts that will come mostly at the expense of the military.

Last year, when Minority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell made a last minute deal with President Obama to raise his credit card limit (AKA, the debt ceiling) and Boehner quickly endorsed it and rammed it through the House, I predicted this would happen.

The way this was set up it's a win-win for the president.

If a desperate Boehner completely caves, President Obama need only agree if he gets everything he wants with no concessions.At best, there will be some smoke and mirrors nonsense that means nothing to make the surrender compatible, like there was last year.

If there is no deal, the president gets the tax hikes and cuts in the defense budget he wants anyway, and will just sing the same old song about 'obstructionist Republicans, trying to protect the wealthy' while his media lackeys sing backup.That's what he's holding over Boehner's head and why Boehner is behaving so cravenly trying to stave off the inevitable.

The only way to deal with this kind of blackmail is for the Republicans to go public. It should have happened last year. They need to find someone ( NOT Boehner)to speak to the nation, inform them simply and directly of exactly why the president's policies are leading the country to fiscal ruin. And explain that since President Obama is unwilling to negotiate in good faith, the Republicans are going to let him do what he wants, but that every Republican legislator will vote 'present' in protest.

It would then become Obama's economy and Obama's policies, with no Republican fingerprints on it. When the house of cards collapses, President Obama will no longer have someone else to blame.

At this point, I think Rep. Boehner has to look back on his tenure as Speaker and simply admit that he failed, utterly. The decent thing for him to do would be to resign as Speaker, but with a little over a month left in his term the least he should do is announce that he will not be a candidate for Speaker in the next Congress, to give someone more able a chance to begin campaigning for the job.


Tiempo passado, y también los hombres.

Man Makes Deathbed Confession To A Murder..And Then Survives!!

This one is so funny I just have to put it up.

James Washington, pictured above had been suspected of murdering Joyce Goodener , who was found stabbed in the neck, beaten to death with a cinderblock and set on fire in an abandoned Nashville, Tennessee house 17 years ago.

But there was no evidence, so he was never convicted.

Washington was incarcerated for a different crime, and had a heart attack while in prison. Figuring he was about to meet his Maker, he decided to confess to a prison guard who was nearby:

'He kind of got as best as he could, motioned, and said "I have something to tell you. I have to get something off my conscience and you need to hear this,"' said transport guard James Tomlinson.

'He said "I killed somebody. I beat her to death,"' Mr Tomlinson added.

Only problem was, after ratting himself out,Washington survived.

He's been convicted, and could receive up to a 51 year sentence, which essentially means he would die in prison.

Who says G-d doesn't have a sense of humor?

Turkish Press Leaks That 70 U.S. Nukes Are Deployed In Turkey

 

Today the Turkish Haberturk news agency leaked the disturbing news that the U.S. has 70 B61 nuclear bombs stored at America's Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

The U.S. military leases Incirlik from the Turkish government.

According to the report, the nukes are more or less stranded there because the Islamist regime in Turkey refuses to allow planes to land at Incirlik that are capable of transporting them, in spite of repeated U.S. requests. Presumably, the Turks aren't allowing them to be transported by land or sea either.

The obvious conclusion is that the Turks see the nukes at Incirlik as a ready made Turkish nuclear arsenal should they decide to simply confiscate them in the future. The F-16's we sold Turkey are fully capable of transporting them to a different facility under their control, or to a target for that matter.

This story gives rise to several questions. If it's true that the Turks are refusing to allow planes capable of moving these nuclear bombs to land at Incirlik, that would most of the more useful types of U.S. combat planes, thus making the base useless for most of our purposes. It's a lot more probable that the Turks are simply refusing to allow the nukes to be moved, period, and the Obama Administration is going along with it.

Given that Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan is one of President Obama's favorite foreign leaders, that's fairly plausible.

One also has to wonder what we're doing about this.

One of the many consequences of our participating in the overthrow of Libyan leader Moamar Khaddaffi is an increased appetite in the Middle East for nuclear weapons. Many of the region's leaders noted that Khaddaffi gave up his nuclear weapons and started cooperating with the U.S. during the Bush Administration, but was sold out by an American president just the same. The lesson is not lost on them, and I doubt Tayyip Erdogan didn't catch on to the obvious and start wanting nukes pronto. especially with neighboring Iran pressing steadily towards nuclear capability.

I only hope President Obama had the foresight to order someone to quietly disarm the weapons an dmake them useless if we weren't wiling to simply go in, seize our property and take it elsewhere.

The idea of the Islamist government of Turkey being nuclear armed when they already have the largest conventional forces in NATO outside of our own is not a comforting thought.

Did The State Department Have Advance Knowledge Of The Attack On The Libyan Consulate?

The Independent, normally a fairly left wing British outlet has published an embarrassing report claiming exactly that:

The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.

American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.

The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the "safe house" in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed "safe".

Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and "lockdown", under which movement is severely restricted.

According to security sources the consulate had been given a “health check” in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff. Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives near by, said: “The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs.”

Okay. Let's take a good look at this in the light of what we already know happened.

It is apparently a fact that Ambassador Stevens' return to Benghazi was confidential and not generally known, and that the attack occurred shortly after he returned. It's also a fact that the attack was quite obviously premeditated and planned.

Our own Under-Secretary at the State Department Patrick Kennedy along with a number of other officials has said he was convinced the assault was planned due to the extensive nature and the proliferation of weapons.And Imight add, the concentration on a specific target. Even in Benghazi, you can't just get people to show up brandishing RPGs and automatic weapons at a moment's notice.

Another interesting factoid that's come up is that this might have been a revenge attack for the drone killing of Abu Yahya al-Libi a while ago, who was recently eulogized in a video released by the current head of al-Qaeda, Aymanal-Zawahiri. Al-Libi's stage name indicated that he was of Libyan origin. That video was released on jihadi websites on 9/11, and may very well have been the signal for the festivities to start.

There remains the possibility that Stevens simply happened to just be in Benghazi on 9/11, but that would seem to be a huge coincidence, given that Benghazi is well known as a salafist and al-Qaeda stronghold. You would think of all days to steer clear of the unfortified consulate, it would be 9/11, which many Muslims regard as a day to celebrate a victory over the west and America.

The bit about the 'health check' is also puzzling. You have to wonder exactly what they checked and why. The security was limited to one locked door, the Libyan security people ran away and according to several reports actually told the rioters where the Americans were hiding after they were taken to a supposedly secret safe house. There were a few marines ( two were murdered) but they apparently weren't armed or able to defend themselves.

And if a 'health check' was performed prior to 9/11, it does seem to suggest that there was at least some credible info that had surfaced. Why weren't the personnel put into lockdown at a place they could be better defended?

As far as the other allegations, that there was a major security breech that secret documents were stolen and that the jihadis now know exactly whom in Libya was working with the Americans - well, if it wasn't true before, it certainly is now.

What convinces me more than ever that this was a massive screw up is the way the Obama Administration denied it.

Here's their statement:

Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, emailed: “This is absolutely wrong. We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”

Notice a couple of things. First, the 'we are not aware' leaves far too much wiggle room for plausible deniability. If there was no intel and they were certain of it, they would have had no problems saying so.

Second,the story from the Independent never said the U.S. had “actionable intelligence" about a planned attack on the Benghazi consulate. It said that there was credible information 48 hours before that American missions might be targeted on 9/11.

To those familiar with intelligence lingo, the two are night and day, and I expect that whomever crafted this nonsense knows it quite well. “Actionable intelligence" is intel gold, usually from a reliable spy or informant or intercepted communications that gives specific details of an ongoing, active operation.Credible information is a step down the ladder, is much more generalized and merely indicates the possibility that one or more targets might be hit or at risk.

Actionable intelligence, as its name implies, is information that is specific enough to lead to proactive remedies like arrests, raids, or a drone strike. Credible information is a warning signal that normally leads to extra precaution, vigilance and the avoidance of obvious risks.

This 'denial' strikes me as nothing less than an attempt at CYA, because someone should have made sure that the American personnel were not left at risk in a vulnerable unsecured consulate in a place like Benghazi guarded by unreliable Libyan security.

The media obviously won't investigate what looks like a massive screwup unless they're forced to by events, and the Obama Administration definitely won't.

It will be left to congress to get to the bottom of this swamp.

Eric Holder Gets Spanked: Judge OK's Florida Voter Rolls Purge

Another bad day for fans of voter fraud...a federal judge has tossed out a suit by the U.S. Department of Justice that attempted to block the State of Florida from purging ineligible voters from its rolls:

U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said Wednesday that there was nothing in federal voting laws that prevent the state from identifying non-U.S. citizens even if it comes less than 90 days before the Aug. 14 election.

Hinkle ruled that federal laws are designed to block states from removing eligible voters close to an election. He said they are not designed to stop states from blocking voters who should have never been allowed to cast ballots in the first place.

Gov. Rick Scott praised Hinkle's decision, saying "irreparable harm will result if non-citizens are allowed to vote."

Heh! Epic fail.

How The House Should Proceed Against AG Holder

Today, the House oversight committee voted to cite Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt over Fast and Furious and refer it to the House for a full vote.To their shame, not one Democrat on the committee voted in favor..it was a strict party line vote. Hopefully some of the other House Democrats will have more regard for their Constitution, their oath of office and their country.

Constitutional expert, talk show host and attorney Mark Levin had some excellent advice for Congress on how to proceed once the full House vote is completed, which should be early next week:

As the Supreme Court recognized in US v. Nixon, the Executive Branch has a legitimate interest in confidentiality of communications among high officials so that the President can have the benefit of candid advice. However, as President Washington himself recognized, that privilege does not protect the President or his underlings from embarrassment or public exposure for questionable actions.

As the Supreme Court has also recognized repeatedly, the Congress, in the exercise of its constitutional powers, has the essential power to investigate the actions of the Executive Branch.

In this case, the exercise of Executive Privilege seems, in its timing and over-inclusiveness, to be nothing less than a political delaying tactic to prevent exposure of wrongdoing and incompetence that resulted in the murder of a American law enforcement agent and injury and death of many others. Further, a wholesale claim of privilege is facially improper: the President should be held to the standard that anyone claiming privilege is held to: identify each document in a log so that privilege can be disputed. (U.S. v. Nixon, 1974)

Because among the categories of documents sought are all those relating to the recantation by Holder of testimony before Congress, the demand goes to the core of the Congressional power under Article I. In this respect, this is not a general or oversight inquiry but a determination of why the Attorney General of the United States testified falsely before Congress about his own knowledge of a federal program. Presumptively, none of this category of documents is protected by Executive Privilege for wrongdoing per se is not protected by the privilege.

The right way to proceed is to hold Holder in contempt by resolution of the House and seek authorization from the House for the Committee, by its Chairman, to proceed by civil action to compel production of the documents. (Holder will not enforce a holding of contempt against himself -- and by the way, he should have authorized, say, the assistant attorney general for legal counsel, to handle the contempt matter once the House voted as at that point he is representing his own interests and not those of the nation generally). Chairman Issa should file suit in federal court in DC and seek expedited action. There is no need for Senate action. The use of this procedure has been acknowledged by the Congressional Research Service in a 2007 study. Further, a privilege log should be sought by Issa and ordered produced immediately by the court, in camera inspection done promptly by the judge, and a final order entered compelling production of all documents for which no legitimate reason justifies Executive Privilege.

Yes, some documents may be covered by EP, but the blanket attachment of that label flouts the law and the Constitution, and harms the legitimate assertion of EP by Presidents of either party in the future. The Constitution is far too important to be subject to the caprice of this President and an AG who, on its face, wants to be free from scrutiny about why he testified falsely before a Committee of Congress.

Executive Privilege is a very important implied executive power, used in various forms since the presidency of George Washington. Therefore, it's misuse and abuse, to cover-up wrongdoing, conceal embarrassing information, or advance a political agenda, diminishes the ability of future presidents to assert it legitimately.

Obviously the president's decision to assert executive privilege en masse without even providing a log and a singling out of specific documents is a cover up in itself, and designed to stall things until after the election. It's also obvious that Senator Grassley and Rep. Issa know something, which is why they zeroed in on these specific documents.

The trick for Congress will be to get some of the rats to start jumping off of the S.S. Titanic to save themselves via immunity.

One possible smoking gun is the fact that $10 million in stimulus funds were earmarked for Fast and Furious, some the Obama Administration boasted about at one time. It's in the stimulus bill itself.

As you'll recall, the bill was entirely constructed by Democrats, with Republicans essentially locked out of the room.Who put it in the bill? Was it Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi? And whose instructions were they acting on? What did the President know and when did he know it?

And by the way, I want to see a statement by Mitt Romney to the effect that if he becomes President, he'll appoint a special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this, go where it may.

President Obama has certain powers, but he can't pardon himself.