ICE: Thousands of Illegals Freed

Obama’s Obsession with the One Percent

By Jon N. Hall
On January 8 in “Stories behind the tax cuts,” Kansas City Star columnist Dave Helling began his commentary thus:

Pop quiz: Who’s the bigger tax cutter, Barack Obama or Ronald Reagan?

Answer: Obama. The fiscal cliff agreement, signed early this year, cuts expected federal income tax revenue by about $1.8 trillion over the next five years, while the famous supply-side Reagan tax cuts in 1981 cost the government about $1.5 trillion, in inflation-adjusted cash, over their first five years.

In a better world, Republicans would understand this and claim their fiscal cliff victory. Had a Republican president passed such a dramatic federal income tax reduction, he or she would be considered a supply-side saint, not a budget-busting socialist.

Regardless of whether or not Obama is a socialist, there can be no question that he is a “budget-buster.” But there are several other things to look at here. First, Helling compares a projection with an historical fact. That hardly seems fair. We know what revenues were in those “first five years” after the 1981 rate cuts. But to say what revenue would have been without the cuts is to credit economic projections with more prescience than they deserve. Economic forecasts, especially those of the government, are often wrong. Else we wouldn’t have so much economic turmoil.

Second, the 1981 bill that Reagan signed cut some tax rates that had been in effect since 1965, whereas the fiscal cliff bill that Obama signed on January 2, cut tax rates that had been in effect for less than two full days. Obama’s entire first term (except for the final 20 days of it) operated under the “Bush tax rates.” In the 2010 lame duck session, Obama himself temporarily extended those rates. And then he made them permanent for about 99 percent of Americans. To compare putting rates back to what they had been less than two days before to slashing rates that had been in effect for 16 years is a stretch. Indeed, the 1981 bill set the top personal income tax rate lower than it had been at any time since 1931. (Verify that at Tax Foundation here.)

As for income tax rates, Reagan was a revolutionary, while Obama is more of a status quo kind of guy, despite all the “change” rhetoric. For 99 percent of Americans, federal income tax rates are the same as they’ve been for the last ten years. But even though those Bush rates are now permanent, the lapdog media try to portray the fiscal cliff deal as a great victory for Obama.

And another thing, if Mr. Helling is going to judge “who’s the bigger tax cutter,” he might include the 1986 bill, which cut rates even more than in 1981.

Third, after claiming that with the fiscal cliff deal that Obama deprived the government of more revenue than Reagan had, we come to the third paragraph, which shows a serious misunderstanding of what supply-side economics is about. Supply-side is not about cutting tax revenue, it’s about cutting tax rates. Supply-siders argue that cutting rates spurs the economy, which eventually brings in more revenue to the government. Even Obama may have glimpsed the truth of supply-side when he said that raising tax rates in a down economy is a bad idea.

On January 1, the day the Clinton-era tax rates automatically went back into effect, the headline of a report by Peter Schroeder at The Hill read: “CBO: ‘Fiscal cliff’ deal carries $4 trillion price tag over next decade.” On January 4, the CBO reported that the estimated cost would be $600B higher due to debt service, i.e. interest payments. So the projected cost of the fiscal cliff deal over the next ten years is more like $4.6 trillion.

The “price tag” Schroeder referred to is the “lost” revenue that is mainly due to overriding the expiration of the “Bush tax cuts.” Schroeder wrote: “The extension of lower tax rates for the bulk of the nation’s taxpayers and the addition of a patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax would add roughly $3.6 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, the CBO said.”

Lately, President Obama has been saying, ad nauseam, that the one percent at the top should pay “a little bit more.” But if the Bush-era tax rates had been allowed to expire for everyone, instead of a measly $600B in new revenue over the next ten years, the feds would have raked in an additional $3.6T. Obama could have had six times the revenue had he included the bottom 99 percent of taxpayers. Having exempted everyone but the One Percent, the president leaves 83 percent of the money on the table, while the lapdogs declare him a master of negotiation and brinksmanship.

But now would be a particularly bad time to start draining an additional $360B per year out of the private sector. Unfortunately, tax hikes were part of the fiscal cliff deal. Not only are rates now higher for the One Percent, the payroll tax holiday wasn’t renewed. So now all working Americans have less take-home pay. That can’t be good for “aggregate demand,” can it?

But it doesn’t stop there. Despite having succeeded in confiscating more money from the One Percent through rate hikes, Obama now wants to eliminate their exemptions, which would raise their effective tax rates even higher. Obama wants to make “tax reform” into just another way to get more revenue. But for normal Americans, tax reform is all about simplification and equity, not raising revenue. Real tax reform must be revenue-neutral. (Read Charles Krauthammer on real tax reform at National Review.)

One thing Dave Helling got right is that Republicans should see the fiscal cliff deal as a victory. And the public seems to be siding with the GOP on sequestration, too. The hubbub over sequestration is an attempt by the Democrats to lay the predicate for blaming any downturn in the economy on spending cuts rather than the fiscal cliff tax hikes. Obama will make sequestration’s spending cuts as painful as he can.

The One Percent is Obama’s own Moby Dick. The very existence of the One Percent offends Obama; it “tasks” him, it “heaps” him. Obama will chase the One Percent round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and to the Gates of Hell if need be. Obama will not be satisfied until he has once again harpooned the One Percent and flensed every last dollar from its godforsaken, putrefying corpse.

Obama senses that there’s still money floating around out there that needs to be put to a higher purpose. And, gentlemen, he means to have that money. And if he doesn’t get that money, the doors of the White House will be closed to the public forever.

Jon N. Hall is a programmer/analyst from Kansas City.

book

In comparison, British taxpayers spent just $57.8 million on the royal family.

Author Robert Keith Gray writes in “Presidential Perks Gone Royal” that Obama isn’t the only president to have taken advantage of the expensive trappings of his office. But the amount of money spent on the first family, he argues, has risen tremendously under the Obama administration and needs to be reined in.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/26/taxpayers-spent-1-4-billion-on-obama-family-last-year-perks-questioned-in-new-book/#ixzz2NTIC0G1e

De Fuera de Serie used the portrait, which was originally released in 1800 by French artist Marie-Guillemine Benoist, accompanying an article in which the First lady is referred to as the ‘gran mujer’ (great woman) behind President Obama.

Another line from the feature which was translated into English, reportedly calls Michelle the ‘Granddaughter of a Slave, Lady of America.’

Despite the alleged positive message the magazine appeared to have been trying to portray in the piece, use of the portrait has divided bloggers.

Writer for The Frisky, Jessica Wakeman, wrote: “As a non-Spanish speaker I first looked at the image and just thought OMG that’s Michelle Obama’s boobs!”

Outraged commentators on Twitter have also expressed their shock at the image.

“What???? We should demand an apology from the Country of Spain and the Magazine publisher for this racist stuff! [sic]” one angry Twitter user wrote.

Another added: “Michelle Obama is a woman of class and distinction. To put her on the cover as a slave is an effort to put her ‘in her place’ #epicfail [sic].”

Other’s however have defended the choice of the magazine to use the portrait, including artist, Karine Percheron-Daniels, who claims the image it shows an ‘alternative unexpected reality’ by allowing the viewer to see ‘famous individuals in a different way’.

It has also been reported that the controversial image is just one in a series of edited photos that show famous people’s faces on the heads of other nudes.

Other famous faces said to be included in the magazine are Mrs Obama’s husband Barack Obama, Princess Dianna and former President Abraham Lincoln.

Conservative icon, rocker and passionate gun rights advocate Ted Nugent says that he killed 455 hogs with a machine gun from a helicopter in Texas last weekend for “Bill Maher and all those other animal rights freaks out there.”

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/11/rocker-ted-nugent-once-killed-455-hogs-with-a-machine-gun-from-a-helicopter-find-out-why/

WSJ.com – Judge Halts New York City Soda Ban

A syndicated talk show willing to put up with 9/11 truther Rosie O’Donnell is parting ways with its lone conservative voice.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who routinely battles her liberal peers on The View, won’t be offered a new contract. The news follows word that fellow longtime View co-host, Joy Behar, is also leaving the program.

Behar’s parting is the comedienne’s idea, while the show’s braintrust decided to end its ties with Hasselbeck. Seems she’s turning off the show’s base, according to Us Magazine.

“The viewers they polled all said she was too extreme and right-wing,” a show insider whose name was not reported told UsMagazine.com about Hasselbeck Friday. “People did not watch the show because of Elisabeth. So they told her yesterday her contract would not be renewed.”

Will The View hire a rock-ribbed conservative to take Hasselbeck’s place, a RINO-esque celebrity to feign a modicum of balance or simply go all-in on the program’s liberal agenda?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/a_government_to_be_feared.html#.UTiOyjfWDnU.email

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/ofa_the_organizing_of_america.html#.UTiN4uoXWmY.email

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

Visitors to the nation’s capital looking for a White House public tour are out of luck starting this weekend, courtesy of what the Secret Service says is its own decision to deal with the sequester cuts.

But while the agency said it needed to pull officers off the tours for more pressing assignments, the budget ax didn’t swing early or deep enough to curtail a host of recent Secret Service-chaperoned trips like President Obama’s much-discussed Florida golf outing with Tiger Woods, first lady Michelle Obama’s high-profile multi-city media appearances, or even daughter Malia Obama’s New York dinner outing with a group of teenage friends.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/08/white-house-public-tours-on-hold-first-family-trips/#ixzz2MzElXyv3

Barack Obama ‘has authority to use drone strikes to kill Americans on US soil’

President Barack Obama has the authority to use an unmanned drone strike to kill US citizens on American soil, his attorney general has said.

http://us.mc1615.mail.yahoo.com/mc/welcome?.gx=1&.tm=1338349335&.rand=a08r94pgo7jvs#_pg=compose&&.rand=131127575&clean&.jsrand=9114152

AWWWWEE…. so sorry about ‘your friend’ Seanny… I’ll send a fruitcake.. you freakin’ Fruitcake! (now you & Ollie Stoner can make a movie about your commie bud hero that maybe 10 people will actually go see)
	Sean Penn on Hugo Chavez’s Death: ‘I Lost a Friend’ Source: hollywoodreporter.com Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez died on Tuesday after a long bout with cancer. He was 58. The controversial leader had a slew of Hollywood heavyweights supporting him throughout his reign, with the most vocal two being actor Sean Penn and filmmaker Oliver Stone.

Congressman Gohmert (R-TX) introduced an amendment to the Continuing Resolution preventing Obama from using federal funds to transport himself to/from a golf course until White House resumes giving tours to the public.

Today, the White House Vistor’s Office sent out an email to interested parties that announces the suspension of all White House Tours due to the sequester cuts.

ATTN Interested Parties,

Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House Tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013 until further notice. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours.

We very much regret having to take this action, particularly during the popular Spring touring season. For updates regarding this situation, please contact the White House Visitors Office 24 Hour Hotline at (202) XXX-XXXX.

Sincerely,

White House Visitors Office

Congressman Gohmert is a history enthusiast who frequently gives extended tours of the capitol in the evenings to his constituents. Many tourists come to D.C. this time of year on vacation, specifically to visit the Cherry Blossoms, projected to bloom at the end of the month. These tourists will not be able to take a tour of the White House, and if they scheduled a tour, the tour is cancelled.

The rules committee in the House is currently deciding whether or not they will allow amendments to be included in the CR. If they decide to allow amendments, Gohmert will attach his amendment.

Gohmert’s amendment reads: None of the funds made available by a division of this Act may be used to transport the President to or from a golf course until public tours of the White House resume.

According to ObamaGolfCounter.com, the president has played 115 rounds of golf since taking office. Townhall’s Heather Ginsberg estimates that 341 furloughed jobs could have been saved had the money not been spent of golf trips.

The bill filed Saturday by state Sen. Audrey Gibson, D-Jacksonville, would require a three-day waiting period for the sale of any firearm and the sale of ammunition to anyone who has not completed anger management courses. The proposal would require ammo buyers to take the anger management courses every 10 years.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/06/florida-lawmaker-wants-anger-management-courses-for-ammunition-buyers/?intcmp=trending#ixzz2MnPowxrn

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/06/leaked-email-adds-fuel-to-claims-white-house-playing-politics-over-impact-cuts/#ixzz2MnP8ZfY6

An internal government email sent Monday instructed an official with a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to make sure that sequester-related cuts inflict as much pain as possible to make sure “you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

When Charles Brown of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service asked “if there was any latitude” in how officials might allocate sequester cuts to reduce negatively impacting fish inspections, Brown received the following reply:

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHISwould eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

Lawmakers say the email is further evidence that the Obama Administration is seeking to inflict maximum pain for the minimal $85 billion in cuts.

“This email confirms what many Americans have suspected: The Obama administration is doing everything they can to make sure their worst predictions come true and to maximize the pain of the Sequester cuts for political gain,” said Rep. Tim Griffin (R-AK).

The $85 billion in sequester cuts represents just .5% of the national debt.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/03/05/Internal-Government-Email-Make-Sequester-Cuts-As-Painful-As-Possible

Anyone who knows the Ivy League knows the question shouldn’t be, Who at Harvard is Marxist? but Who at Harvard isn’t Marxist?

Cruz, a U.S. senator for almost two months now, made the offending statement in a speech almost three years ago. He described Barack Obama as “the most radical” president “ever to occupy the Oval Office.”

Obama “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School” because “there were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than communists!” said Cruz. “There was one Republican. But there were 12 who would say they were Marxists who believed in the communists’ overthrowing the United States government.”

Dan McLaughlin, a law school classmate of Cruz, confirms that the senator “is absolutely right on the basic point here: there were multiples more Marxists on the Harvard Law faculty at the time than open Republicans.”

Does any of this mean that Cruz believes actual dues-paying, card-carrying members of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) dominate the Harvard Law faculty? No, but he knows that Harvard, like so many institutions of higher learning across America, is infected with Marxist fellow travelers who are ideologically sympathetic to communism. To distinguish such people from actual CPUSA members, they are often referred to as small-c communists or neo-communists.

Like most Americans, Cruz wasn’t using the plural form of the word communist with the precision of a political theory scholar. He was referring to people who believe that markets are fundamentally unjust and that physical force should be used to create a classless society. They believe in extreme, forced equality and boring sameness at the expense of freedom and individual rights.

A Cruz spokeswoman later explained that her employer’s “substantive point was absolutely correct: in the mid-1990s, the Harvard Law School faculty included numerous self-described proponents of ‘critical legal studies’ — a school of thought explicitly derived from Marxism — and they far outnumbered Republicans.”

Greg Sargent, the Washington Post‘s in-house ideological purity enforcer, pounced on Cruz, calling the clarification the “latest blast of unhinged nonsense from Cruz’s office.”

Sargent is wrong.

Critical legal theory takes the neo-Marxist perspective that the law is concerned with power, not justice. Because the law is a fraud perpetrated on the people, an oppressive tool of capitalism, imperialism, sexism, racism, and whatever other ism it is currently fashionable to attack, the legal system should be criticized endlessly as a means of tearing it down. If you’re a communist it’s natural to embrace critical legal theory as a way of changing American society.

Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals eloquently describes critical legal studies (CLS) as “horse manure.”

As I understand this so-called theory, the notion is that because legal rules don’t mean much anyway, and judges can reach any result they wish by invoking the right incantation, they should engraft their own political philosophy onto the decision-making process and use their power to change the way our society works.

Imagine the chaos that would ensue if “Crits” dominated the judiciary. There would be no fixed rules. The only certain criterion for decisions would be so-called social justice, whatever that might mean on a particular day. As the judicial branch became an instrument of naked redistribution, Karl Marx would look up from his fiery torments and cheer as America degenerated into kleptocracy.

There are more than a few Harvard Law academics associated with critical legal studies.

Harvard has been ground zero for the CLS movement for decades, a fact Time acknowledged in 2005. The magazine identified Harvard law professors Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Morton Horwitz, and Duncan M. Kennedy as “three of the best-known” CLS adherents. (Kennedy is also a member of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America and the radical, pro-terrorist National Lawyers Guild. Bernardine Dohrn, incidentally, used to be an organizer for the NLG.)

Other Crits on the Harvard faculty are Mark Tushnet and David W. Kennedy. In a 1981 law review article titled “The Dilemmas of Liberal Constitutionalism,” Tushnet wrote that if he were a judge he “would decide what decision in a case was most likely to advance the cause of socialism.”

Crits Northeastern University law professor Clare Dalton and University of Wisconsin law professor emeritus David Trubek taught at Harvard Law but failed to earn tenure.

CLS-friendly law professors with ties to Harvard are easy to find. Yale’s Jack Balkin and Georgetown’s Gary Peller and Louis Michael Seidman (author of the infamous column “Let’s Give Up On the Constitution”) all received their law degrees from Harvard. So did academic Peter Gabel (who is also associate editor at leftist magazine Tikkun).

Stanford professor Robert W. Gordon, who has a Harvard law degree, organized a campaign at Harvard Law in support of Dalton and Trubek when they were trying to get tenure. Gordon whined at the time that Harvard had engaged in “red-baiting” the two academics.

CLS enthusiast Mark G. Kelman, a highly cited law professor and vice dean of Stanford Law School, also earned his law degree from Harvard.

And don’t forget that while Barack Obama was a law student at Harvard, he studied under CLS guru Unger. Moreover, Derrick Bell, Obama’s racist, Marxist mentor at Harvard Law, was a proponent of critical race theory, the multiculturalist Left’s race-obsessed spinoff of critical legal theory.

Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit has described critical race theorists as the “lunatic core” of “radical legal egalitarianism.”

At the heart of this ugly, destructive, balkanizing worldview is the idea that the white-dominated American system is hopelessly racist. To remedy this imbalance, the views of non-whites on the system should be given greater weight.

As one commentator has written, this perspective appears to be shared by Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia “Wise Latina” Sotomayor, along with Attorney General Eric Holder who is reluctant to investigate civil rights complaints when the victim is white.

Harvard is not the only university infected by CLS-loving communists.

Virtually all major colleges and universities across the fruited plain are dominated by small-c communists. Far-left insurrectionists such as Northwestern University School of Law professor Bernardine Dohrn, a leader of the Weather Underground terrorist group, are not outliers. In the groves of academe today communists are mainstream or close to it.

It’s been this way for decades.

Communists, who reject the core values of American society and want radical change, don’t like being labeled and compelled to defend their subversive beliefs in public. When they are identified as communists, they marginalize adversaries by calling them crazy or by letting the media do their dirty work for them.

Communism may have faded as a threat to U.S. national security, but its lingering influence on the culture is powerful enough that, to quote Ann Coulter in Treason, accusing someone of being a communist “makes you the nut.”

Naturally, Cruz, who earned his J.D. magna cum laude at Harvard Law School in 1995, has been vilified by left-wingers and mocked by the antique media for speaking truth to power. He is portrayed as a liar, a bully, and a lunatic.

The senator has been attacked by leftist Obama-worshipers such as MSNBCers Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky, and an ever-expanding echo chamber of radical journalists and useful idiots.

Jane Mayer, a reporter on the New Yorker‘s anti-conservative beat, started the ovine stampede recently by reporting Cruz’s otherwise unremarkable comments about communists on campus. Like her comrades, Mayer smeared Cruz after he tried to hold Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to account at his recent confirmation hearing by comparing the Texan to Sen. Joe McCarthy, the Red-hunting Wisconsin Republican from the 1950s. Hagel scoffed at congressional demands for details about who has been paying his speaking fees and Cruz responded by speculating about the sources. That’s what happens when cabinet nominees thumb their noses at Congress. Things get ugly.

For pressing Hagel, Cruz was accused by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) of conducting an ideologically motivated witch hunt. Boxer said she was reminded of “a different time and place, when you said, ‘I have here in my pocket a speech you made on such-and-such a date,’ and of course there was nothing in the pocket.”

Of course, the late Sen. McCarthy had nothing to do with much of what has come to be known as McCarthyism. And he was correct about the presence of real, live, pro-Soviet Communist agents in the U.S. government, as M. Stanton Evans proved in his exhaustively researched book, Blacklisted By History.

In his pursuit of Communist spies, McCarthy was a great deal more accurate than Cruz’s critics are about the freshman senator.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/we_have_ted_cruzs_list_harvard_law_really_islittered_with_communists.html

A suburban Philadelphia sixth-grader has died.He suffered a concussion, a broken nose and other injuries during encounter.
He had been at recess when the boy, who was taller, challenged him to a fight.
He declined to fight, saying he was worried about being suspended.
Another boy then pushed him from behind and he was struck in head about five times.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/05/philly-area-boy-12-taken-off-life-support-weeks-after-suffering-injuries-in/#ixzz2MfWjDHvV

Here’s the list, via the White House:

• Robert Leroy Bebee – Rockville, Maryland. Offense: Misprision of a felony, 18 U.S.C. § 4. Sentence: Two years probation.

• James Anthony Bordinaro – Gloucester, Massachusetts. Offenses: Conspiracy to restrain, suppress, and eliminate competition in violation of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1; conspiracy to submit false statements, 18 U.S.C. § 371. Sentence: 12 months imprisonment, three years supervised release and a $55,000 fine.

• Kelli Elisabeth Collins – Harrison, Arkansas. Offense: Aiding and abetting a wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1343, 2. Sentence: Five years probation.

• Edwin Hardy Futch, Jr. – Pembroke, Georgia. Offense: Theft from an interstate shipment, 18 U.S.C. §§ 659, 2. Sentence: Five years probation, $2,399.72 restitution.

• Cindy Marie Griffith – Moyock, North Carolina. Offense: Distribution of satellite cable television decryption devices, 47 U.S.C. § 605(e)(4), 18 U.S.C. § 2. Sentence: Two years probation with 100 hours of community service.

• Roy Eugene Grimes, Sr. – Athens, Tennessee. Offenses: Falsely altering a United States postal money order, 18 U.S.C. § 500; passing, uttering, and publishing a forged and altered money order with intent to defraud, 18 U.S.C. § 500. Sentence: 18 months probation.

• Jon Christopher Kozeliski – Decatur, Illinois. Offense: Conspiracy to traffic counterfeit goods, 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 2320. Sentence: One year of probation with six months of home confinement, $10,000 fine.

• Jimmy Ray Mattison – Anderson, South Carolina. Offenses: Conspiracy to transport and cause the transportation of altered securities in interstate commerce, 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 2314; transporting and causing the transportation of altered securities in interstate commerce, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2314, 2. Sentence: Three years probation.

• An Na Peng – Honolulu, Hawaii. Offense: Conspiracy to defraud the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 18 U.S.C. § 371. Sentence: Two years probation, $2,000 fine.

• Michael John Petri – Montrose, South Dakota. Offense: Conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and distribution of a controlled substance (cocaine), 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a), 846. Sentence: Five years imprisonment, three years supervised release.

• Karen Alicia Ragee – Decatur, Illinois. Offense: Conspiracy to traffic counterfeit goods, 18 U.S.C. §§ 371, 2320. Sentence: One year of probation with six months of home confinement, $2,500 fine.

• Jamari Salleh – Alexandria, Virginia. Offense: False claims upon and against the United States, 18 U.S.C. §§ 287, 2. Sentence: Four years probation, $5,000 fine, $5,900 restitution.

• Alfor Sharkey – Omaha, Nebraska. Offense: Unauthorized acquisition of food stamps, 7 U.S.C. § 2024(b)(1). Sentence: Three years probation with 100 hours of community service, $2,750 restitution.

• Donald Barrie Simon, Jr. – Chattanooga, Tennessee. Offense: Aiding and abetting in the theft of an interstate shipment, 18 U.S.C. §§ 659, 2. Sentence: Two years imprisonment, three years probation.

• Lynn Marie Stanek – Tualatin, Oregon. Offense: Unlawful use of a communication facility to distribute cocaine, 21 U.S.C. § 843(b). Sentence: Six months in jail, five years probation conditioned on residence in a community treatment center for a period not to exceed one year.

• Larry Wayne Thornton – Forsyth, Georgia. Offense: Possession of an unregistered firearm, 26 U.S.C. §§ 5861(d), 5871; possession of a firearm without a serial number, 26 U.S.C. §§ 5861(i), 5871. Sentence: Four years probation.

• Donna Kaye Wright – Friendship, Tennessee. Offense: Embezzlement and misapplication of bank funds, 18 U.S.C. § 656. Sentence: 54 days imprisonment, three years probation conditioned on performance of six hours of community service per week.

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/03/obama-issues-pardons-158268.html?ml=bp

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/barack_obama_the_man_behind_the_mask.html#.UTTghNRBVco.email

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

Hail Armageddon

By Charles Krauthammer, Published: February 28

“The worst-case scenario for us,” a leading anti-budget-cuts lobbyist told The Post, “is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens.”

Think about that. Worst case? That a government drowning in debt should cut back by 2.2 percent — and the country survives. That a government now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar it spends reduces that borrowing by two cents “and nothing bad really happens.” Oh, the humanity!

A normal citizen might think this a good thing. For reactionary liberalism, however, whatever sum our ever-inflating government happens to spend today (now double what Bill Clinton spent in his last year) is the Platonic ideal — the reduction of which, however minuscule, is a national calamity.

Or damn well should be. Otherwise, people might get the idea that we can shrink government and live on.

Hence the president’s message. If the “sequestration” — automatic spending cuts — goes into effect, the skies will fall. Plane travel jeopardized, carrier groups beached, teachers furloughed. And a shortage of junk-touching TSA agents.

The Obama administration has every incentive to make the sky fall, lest we suffer that terrible calamity — cuts the nation survives. Are they threatening to pare back consultants, conferences, travel and other nonessential fluff? Hardly. It shall be air-traffic control. Meat inspection. Weather forecasting.

A 2011 Government Accountability Office report gave a sampling of the vastness of what could be cut, consolidated and rationalized in Washington: 44 overlapping job training programs, 18 for nutrition assistance, 82 (!) on teacher quality, 56 dealing with financial literacy, more than 20 for homelessness, etc. Total annual cost: $100 billion-$200 billion, about two to five times the entire domestic sequester.

Are these on the chopping block? No sir. It’s firemen first. That’s the phrase coined in 1976 by legendary Washington Monthly editor Charlie Peters to describe the way government functionaries beat back budget cuts. Dare suggest a nick in the city budget, and the mayor immediately shuts down the firehouse. The DMV back office, stacked with nepotistic incompetents, remains intact. Shrink it and no one would notice. Sell the firetruck — the people scream and the city council falls silent about any future cuts.

After all, the sequester is just one-half of 1 percent of GDP. It amounts to 1.4 cents on the dollar of nondefense spending, 2 cents overall.

Because of this year’s payroll tax increase, millions of American workers have had to tighten their belts by precisely 2 percent. They found a way. Washington, spending $3.8 trillion, cannot? If so, we might as well declare bankruptcy now and save the attorneys’ fees.

The problem with sequestration, of course, is that the cuts are across the board and do not allow money to move between accounts. It’s dumb because it doesn’t discriminate.

Fine. Then change the law. That’s why we have a Congress. Discriminate. Prioritize. That’s why we have budgets. Except that the Democratic Senate hasn’t passed one in four years. And the White House, which proposed the sequester in the first place, had 18 months to establish rational priorities among accounts — and did nothing.

When the GOP House passed an alternative that cut where the real money is — entitlement spending — President Obama threatened a veto. Meaning, he would have insisted that the sequester go into effect — the very same sequester he now tells us will bring on Armageddon.

Good grief. The entire sequester would have reduced last year’s deficit from $1.33 trillion to $1.24 trillion. A fraction of a fraction. Nonetheless, insists Obama, such a cut is intolerable. It has to be “balanced” — i.e., largely replaced — by yet more taxes.

Which demonstrates that, for Obama, this is not about deficit reduction, which interests him not at all. The purpose is purely political: to complete his Election Day victory by breaking the Republican opposition.

At the fiscal cliff, Obama broke — and split — the Republicans on taxes. With the sequester, he intends to break them on spending. Make the cuts as painful as possible, and watch the Republicans come crawling for a “balanced” (i.e., tax-hiking) deal.

In the past two years, House Republicans stopped cold Obama’s left-liberal agenda. Break them now, and the road is open to resume enactment of the expansive, entitlement-state liberalism that Obama proclaimed in his second inaugural address.

But he cannot win if “nothing bad really happens.” Indeed, he’d look both foolish and cynical for having cried wolf.

Obama’s incentive to deliberately make the most painful and socially disruptive cuts possible (say, oh, releasing illegal immigrants from prison) is enormous. And alarming.

Hail Armageddon.

Plans to release illegal immigrants in anticipation of looming budget cuts were announced earlier this week, but the report by The Associated Press detailed the policy had already taken effect and on a much larger scale. Citing federal documents, the agency said more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation had been released from immigration jails and plans exist to release 3,000 more people by the end of the month.

The newly disclosed figures are significantly higher than what the Obama administration acknowledged this week as a “few hundred” who were released without the White House’s direct knowledge. And on Friday, Napolitano, whose agency oversaw the move, said the decision to release illegal immigrants was made “in the field,” and without her knowledge.

Republicans in Congress, already critical of the plan to release illegal immigrants, demanded details, including the number of illegal immigrants released and the nature of any criminal charges they were facing as part of the deportation process.

“Simply blaming budget reductions as a means to turn a blind eye toward the national security of the American people is a dangerous plan, and one that calls into question the department’s preparations for sequestration,” wrote two Republican lawmakers, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The budget documents obtained by the AP show that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released roughly 1,000 illegal immigrants from its jails around the U.S. each week since at least Feb. 15. The agency’s field offices have reported more than 2,000 released before intense criticism this week led to a temporary shutdown of the plan.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/03/01/thousands-illegal-immigrants-already-released-according-to-report/#ixzz2MLNnCF2E

we know she doesn’t like compliments but: she is ‘AMAZING’ 🙂

Michelle Obama’s not shocked by criticism surrounding her Oscar appearance
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57572039/michelle-obamas-not-shocked-by-criticism-surrounding-her-oscar-appearance/

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/forward_they_cried.html#.US9xuLqtYuI.email

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

https://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226029/something-new-here/stanley-kurtz

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

While in college Obama said that “there will be a revolution of the
working class, led by revolutionaries, who would overthrow the capitalist
system and institute a new socialist government that would redistribute
wealth.”

’08: “we are 5 days away from ‘Fundamentally Transforming” the USA!

Obama IS ‘that revolutionary’

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/11/who_is_barack_hussein_obama_and_what_is_he_really_up_to.html#.US90Fdmgsqk.email

THE-TRUTH-IS-OUT-THERE (Obama Files)

Wednesday night on CNN, legendary Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward stated that a “very senior person” in the Obama administration had told him in an email that Woodward would “regret” it if he continued to press the point that President Obama was the originator of the idea of sequestration, bore responsibility for it, and needed to stop redeploying defense resources to make political points. The Obama aide, Woodward told Politico, “yelled at me for about a half hour” as well. “I’ve tangled with lots of these people,” Woodward said. “But suppose there’s a young reporter who’s only had a couple of years – or 10 years’ – experience and the White House is sending him an email saying, ‘You’re going to regret this.’ You know, tremble, tremble, tremble. I don’t think it’s the way to operate.”

It began with Politico itself, which downplayed the entire incident, even as it acknowledged that Woodward’s “play-by-play is basically spot on” with regard to reporting the sequestration. “White House officials are certainly within their rights to yell at any journalist, including Bob Woodward,” said official Obama buddies Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei. Allen and VandeHei merely suggested that the battle with Woodward was “a major distraction at a pivotal moment for the president.” They added, “Watching and now having interviewed Woodward, it is easy to see why White House officials get worked about him.” Poor Obama, having to deal with such issues.
Next, the White House went to its favorite outlet, Buzzfeed, and their favorite BenSmithing reporter, Ben Smith, to leak the source of the Woodward “regret” email. It’s clear why they did it – Smith spun the entire incident for the White House. After announcing that the email came from Gene Sperling, director of the White House Economic Council, he proceeded to pretend that the threat email wasn’t a threat email at all – actually, Woodward was making a rookie mistake by misinterpreting a kindly tip as a threat: “Officials often threaten reporters that they will ‘regret’ printing something that is untrue, but Woodward took the remark as a threat.” Nothing to see here. Move along. Just to clarify, Smith later added via Twitter, “Am I crazy to read ‘regret’ here as ‘regret being wrong’? This is something flacks yell at reporters a lot.”
That meme was picked up by the White House’s favorite palace guards, including Dave Weigel at Slate (he retweeted Smith, tweeted, “Theory: Woodward is trolling,” then added via retweet that the whole situation was “boring”); BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, who mockingly tweeted, “Every reporter who deals with flacks/campaign advisors/politicos/ on a daily basis finds that less than threatening”; Justin Green, who edits David Frum’s blog at The Daily Beast, tweeted, “I rarely rarely report, and I’ve had flacks say worse. Not that rare”; Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic tweeted, “As a reporter, I don’t think this was a threat”; Dylan Byers of Politico tweeted, “tweets, I’m no Woodward but broadcast/cable TV PR reps use that ‘regret’ tactic a lot”; Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo tweeted, “Who goes birther first, Scalia or Woodward?” The messaging was universal from the leftist Obama-supporting media: Woodward hadn’t been threatened, and was an amateur or a crazy old coot to think he was being threatened. Matt Yglesias of Slate summed up the general Palace Guard Media take: “Woodward’s managed to make me suspect Nixon got a raw deal.”
The gall of this is astounding. All of these reporters combined might equal one tenth a Bob Woodward in the journalistic pantheon; the notion that their treatment at the hands of press flacks in any way reflects the general or appropriate treatment of someone like Woodward is absurd on its face. But the junior varsity is all too happy to gang tackle a reportorial Hall of Famer on behalf of their beloved President.
Imagine if one of George W. Bush’s deputees had dealt with Woodward this way. The left would have gone insane. Now they just call up the White House for a pat on the head and a nice scoop in return.
The saga with Woodward began over the weekend, when Woodward said that Obama was “moving the goal posts” with regard to sequestration spending. Obama, said Woodward, had originally designed the sequester to focus on cuts rather than contemplating additional tax increases. This drove the White House to call Woodward “willfully wrong,” despite the fact that White House press secretary Jay Carney admitted that the sequestration was originally Obama’s idea.
“It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, ‘You’re going to regret doing something that you believe in,’” Woodward told CNN. Wednesday morning, Woodward told MSNBC that Obama’s decision to redeploy an aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf thanks to the possibility of the sequester was irresponsible, the “kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time.”
That madness has now infected the mainstream media. They’re too busy defending President Obama to defend the American people – or even their fellow members of the press – from Obama’s thug White House.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/02/27/Obama-media-gang-tackles-Woodward#sthash.Pmb6IDWl.dpuf

The lavish 2010 conference, which cost over $800,000, had lawmakers fuming last year. But a new congressional report shows taxpayers picked up the tab for at least 894 conferences in 2012 — to the tune of $340 million.

Those figures only cover “big-ticket” conferences — or those that cost $100,000 or more — so the total figure is likely higher.

The numbers, released in conjunction with a hearing Wednesday on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, come as the federal government braces for automatic spending cuts set to hit Friday. Some lawmakers have claimed that Washington could offset the impact by trimming the waste — be it low-priority hires, needless government studies, or conferences.

The latest numbers showed some agencies are far more fond of their annual and special-occasion conventions than others.

Some agencies held only a few big-ticket conferences. The Labor Department held just four, keeping the total bill under $1 million. Even the GSA — which has cut back on its conference spending in light of the Las Vegas scandal — held only three.

But the Defense Department, which is also the biggest department in Washington, held nearly 300 conferences at a cost of $89 million.

The Department of Veterans Affairs held 127 at a cost of $72.7 million; the Justice Department held 107 at a cost of $58.7 million; and the Department of Health and Human Services held 140, at a cost of $56.1 million.

The hearing and report follow a slew of revelations on pricey conferences. While the VA did not report its numbers to the committee, the agency came under fire last year for two conferences allegedly costing more than $6 million the summer before.

Included on the list of expenses was $52,000 spent to produce a video parody of the movie “Patton.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs claimed to be cracking down on its conference policy in light of the allegations, last year ordering an outside review of training policies and conferences.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/28/house-report-says-big-ticket-conferences-cost-taxpayers-268m/#ixzz2MCPTCtZ0

“We spend a lot of money in the state bringing movie production here, post production here. So obviously we would want to facilitate that,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said the prop firearms used in films would probably not be classified as an assault weapon.
“But people want certainty and there’s no reason not to make a change like that,” the governor added. “Apparently, they have blanks or they have phony magazines or something.”

Cuomo and lawmakers announced on Wednesday that they’ll also fix an error that made its way into the law.
The measure passed so quickly that as it reads now, police officers carrying high-capacity magazines could be in violation of the law, Diamond reported.
The need for a “clean-up” bill means the fight over the law may not be over after all.
An estimated 10,000 opponents of the new restrictions will descend on Albany Thursday as legislators consider additional amendments.
The New York State legislature quickly passed the gun control measure.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/02/27/cuomo-announces-plans-to-modify-gun-control-law-to-exempt-film-industry-cops/