This first video is another wonderful Trey Gowdy anthem. Click his name in the “TAGS” to see other “music to your ears” speeches:
Video description: Rep. Gowdy’s floor speech in favor of H.R. 4138 the ENFORCE the Law Act.
And this is a recent Jonathan Turley statement before Congress (do the same, check out Turley in the “TAGS”):
Video description:
Via The Blaze ~ I did turn the volume up from the original file… so prep your volume control.
A constitutional law expert warned Congress during a hearing Wednesday that America has reached a “constitutional tipping point” under the watch of President Barack Obama.
Jonathan Turley, professor of public interest law at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., said the legislative branch of the U.S. government is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the face of continued executive overreach.
“My view [is] that the president, has in fact, exceeded his authority in a way that is creating a destabilizing influence in a three branch system,” Turley said. “I want to emphasize, of course, this problem didn’t begin with President Obama, I was critical of his predecessor President Bush as well, but the rate at which executive power has been concentrated in our system is accelerating. And frankly, I am very alarmed by the implications of that aggregation of power.”
“What also alarms me, however, is that the two other branches appear not just simply passive, but inert in the face of this concentration of authority,” he added….
People are looking at Putin as one who wrestles bears and drills for oil. They look at our president as one who wears mom jeans and equivocates and bloviates. We are not exercising that peace through strength that can only be brought to you courtesy of the red, white and blue, that only a strengthened US military can do.
Top NY Times Editor: Obama Administration ‘Most Secretive White House’ She’s Dealt With
In an interview set to air Sunday on al-Jazeera America, New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson told the Arab network’s John Seigenthaler than the Obama adminisistration “is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering, and that includes — I spent 22 years of my career in Washington and covered presidents from President Reagan on up through now, and I was Washington bureau chief of the Times during George W. Bush’s first term.”
She complained “The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It’s on a scale never seen before.”…
Like Obama’s lies about many aspects in his book, to Elizabeth Warren’s lies, to Wendy Davis… when you on on policies driven by emotion… you tend to emotionally driven fairy tales by said people:
CNN is actually looking into this, where other places, ahem… *MSNBC*… are not:
(From an older post) Some new information about Obama’s grandfather and his treatment by the British may be another lie penned by Obama. Mail Online has this:
A new biography of Barack Obama has established that his grandfather was not, as is related in the President’s own memoir, detained by the British in Kenya and found that claims that he was tortured were a fabrication.
‘Barack Obama: The Story’ by David Maraniss catalogues dozens of instances in which Obama deviated significantly from the truth in his book ‘Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance’. The 641-page book punctures the carefully-crafted narrative of Obama’s life.
One of the enduring myths of Obama’s ancestry is that his paternal grandfather Hussein Onyango Obama, who served as a cook in the British Army, was imprisoned in 1949 by the British for helping the anti-colonial Mau Mau rebels and held for several months.
Obama’s step-grandmother Sarah, Onyango wife, who is still living, is quoted in the future President’s memoir, as saying: ‘One day, the white man’s askaris came to take Onyango away, and he was placed in a detention camp.
‘But he had been in the camp for over six months, and when he returned to Alego he was very thin and dirty. He had difficulty walking, and his head was full of lice. He was so ashamed, he refused to enter his house or tell us what happened.’
In a 2008 interview, Sarah Obama claimed that he was ‘whipped every morning and evening’ by the British. ‘They would sometimes squeeze his testicles with metal rods. They also pierced his nails and buttocks with a sharp pin, with his hands and legs tied together. He was lucky to survive. Some of his fellow inmates were mutilated with castration pliers and beaten to death with clubs.’
But Maraniss, who researched Obama’s life in Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii and the mainland United States, found that there were ‘no remaining records of any detention, imprisonment, or trial of Hussein Onyango Obama’. He interviewed five people who knew Obama’s grandfather, who died in 1979, who ‘doubted the story or were certain it did not happen’.
This undermines the received wisdom that Obama’s grandfather was a victim of oppression, an assumption that has in turn fuelled theories that Obama harbours an animus towards Britain based on a deeply-rooted rage about the way Onyango was treated.
John Ndalo Aguk, who worked with Onyango before the alleged imprisonment and was in touch with him weekly afterwards said he ‘knew nothing’ about any detention and would have noticed if he had gone missing for several months.
Obama`s Son Would Be Kicked Off Football for Drug Use
I noticed L.Z. Granderson (in the CNN video above, who debates Amy Holmes) said there is science behind the gravity of health risks in the NFL. Agreed. There is science behind the dangers of pot use as well, that far outweigh anything comparatively to alcohol.We do know about Obama’s parenting skills, L.Z.:
“My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon,” Obama said. “All of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves.” ~ Obama
But, we know Obama wouldn’t want his son to play football. Great parenting skills. Maybe his parenting skills shined through by taking his daughters to a church that sold anti-Semitic, anti-white literature, books, and sermons by Louise Farrakhan, and other black-nationalists that paint God as a counter-white deity. Here is just one comparison of books sold in his church’s bookstore to Mein Kampf:
✰ “The personification of the devil as the symbol of all evil assumes the living shape of the Jew” ~ Adolf Hitler – Mein Kampf ✰“The goal of black theology is the destruction of everything white, so that blacks can be liberated from alien gods” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.62 ✰“White religionists are not capable of perceiving the blackness of God, because their satanic whiteness is a denial of the very essence of divinity. That is why whites are finding and will continue to find the black experience a disturbing reality” ~ James Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation, p.64
I wouldn’t want my kid going to his church!
This post should be combined with my previous statement about marijuana. The Washington Times notes Obama’s hypocritical actions that can be added to his “list of confusing messengers who perpetuate false notions.” Like his fiscal and political notions. They continue:
President Obama’s latest claims about marijuana are contradicted by research and official positions of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is part of the White House. And Mr. Obama’s words have anti-drug leaders worried about negative repercussions among youth.
Mr. Obama claimed to The New Yorker magazine that marijuana is no worse than cigarettes or alcohol and he promoted state efforts by Colorado and Washington to legalize marijuana, which remains illegal under federal law.
The National Drug Control Policy’s official stance, posted on the whitehouse.gov website, says the opposite of Mr. Obama on all counts.
For example, as documented in agency reports, marijuana smoke has significantly more carcinogens than tobacco smoke.
And as reported by the government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse, adolescent use of marijuana does something that alcohol does not; it causes permanent brain damage, including lowering of I.Q.
Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars warning about drugs, often about marijuana, but these efforts were dramatically undercut by the president’s comments.
Mr. Obama might as well have rolled that money into a joint and smoked it on national television.
He told the interviewer, David Remnick, that his earlier years of prodigious puffery were “a bad habit and a vice.” Yet he doesn’t warn others not to follow in his footsteps.
The Drug-Free America Foundation responded on its blog: “His laissez-faire attitude about legalization has drug policy and prevention experts scratching their heads in confusion as to why the president will not give clear guidance…either he is seriously ill-informed about the issue or is completely ignoring warnings from his highly-esteemed advisors.”
The foundation called it an “irresponsible move for such a person in the most highly-regarded position in this country.”
[….]
[….]
Be on the lookout for the White House to remove warnings of marijuana use from its Website, such as this gem: “The Administration steadfastly opposes legalization of marijuana and other drugs because legalization would increase the availability and use of illicit drugs, and pose significant health and safety risks to all Americans, particularly young people.”
Mr. Obama, however, tried to attribute it to class warfare and racial bias — and in so doing voiced a myth that his own anti-drug people are shooting down.
As Mr. Obama stated: “Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot and poor kids do. And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties. We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”
But Mr. Obama’s claim was shot down by an earlier federal publication, “Marijuana Myths & Facts: The Truth Behind 10 Popular Misconceptions”.
Myth #10 is “The government sends otherwise innocent people to prison for casual marijuana use.”
In fact, less than 1% of all drug incarcerations are for simple possession or use of marijuana. And those few tend to be plea-bargains for people who actually were dealers.
Mr. Obama’s own White House website contradicts his light-hearted claims about marijuana in other ways as well. Multiple pages are devoted to describing clear dangers of marijuana, including these excerpts:
Marijuana use is associated with dependence, respiratory and mental illness, poor motor performance, and impaired cognitive and immune system functioning, among other negative effects.
Marijuana intoxication can cause distorted perceptions, difficulty in thinking and problem solving, and problems with learning and memory.
Studies have shown an association between chronic marijuana use and increased rates of anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and schizophrenia.
Other research has shown marijuana smoke to contain carcinogens and to be an irritant to the lungs. Marijuana smoke, in fact, contains 50‐70 percent more carcinogenic hydrocarbons than does tobacco smoke.
[….]
Furthermore, the studies cited by the National Institute for Drug Abuse, regarding brain damage among regular adolescent pot smokers, has no parallel from alcohol. And making one dangerous drug legal is, of course, never a good reason to add another, or a third, or more.
Mr. Obama’s ramblings in The New Yorker show an effort to project an intellectual approach to the marijuana issue when in fact his was pseudo-intellectualism.
He offers up loose arguments, even discredited arguments, because he doesn’t expect serious follow-up from the media. Even if he gets it, Mr. Obama simply talks in circles, ends the questioning, and shuts that reporter out in the future.
Anyone who believes otherwise must be smoking something.
Breitbart adds to the idea of the “Cooked” Cook paper with a real survey:
Nearly six in ten climate scientists don’t adhere to the so-called “consensus” on man-made climate change, a new study by the Dutch government has found. The results contradict the oft-cited claim that there is a 97 percent consensus amongst climate scientists that humans are responsible for global warming.
The study, by the PBL Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency, a government body, invited 6550 scientists working in climate related fields, including climate physics, climate impact, and mitigation, to take part in a survey on their views of climate science.
Of the 1868 who responded, just 43 percent agreed with the IPCC that “It is extremely likely {95%+ certainty} that more than half of [global warming] from 1951 to 2010 was caused by [human activity]”. Even with the “don’t knows” removed that figure increases only to 47 percent, still leaving a majority of climate scientists who do not subscribe to the IPCC’s statement.
The findings directly contradict the claim that 97 percent of climate scientists endorse the view that humans are responsible for global warming, as first made by Cook et al in a paper published in Environment Research Letters.
Cook’s paper has since been extremely widely debunked, yet so ingrained has the 97 percent consensus claim become that The Guardian has an entire section named after it, and President Obama has cited it on Twitter.
Commenting on the new study, Australian climate blogger Joanne Nova said: “Finally there is a decent survey on the topic, and it shows that less than half of what we would call “climate scientists” who research the topic and for the most part, publish in the peer reviewed literature, would agree with the IPCC’s main conclusions. Only 43% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC “97%” certainty.”…
I have to post this because someone on Facebook posted this link to a revised chart (the original is here). The new chart, even has MORE of a devastating “consensus.”
I didn’t know where to find something on this brand-new chart. So I cautioned the guys on Facebook that I have a feeling that this “consensus” was derived wrongly and will end up in the waste bin with this popular one pictured below:
A Previous “Consensus” Busted
(Click Graph To See Previously Hidden Data)
We’ve all been subjected to the incessant “97% of scientists agree …global warming…blah blah” meme, which is nothing more than another statistical fabrication by John Cook and his collection of “anything for the cause” zealots. As has been previously pointed out on WUWT, when you look at the methodology used to reach that number, the veracity of the result falls apart, badly. You see, it turns out that Cook simply employed his band of “Skeptical Science” (SkS) eco-zealots to rate papers, rather than letting all authors of the papers rate their own work (Note: many authors weren’t even contacted and their papers wrongly rated, see here). The result was that the “97% consensus” was a survey of the SkS raters beliefs and interpretations, rather than a survey of the authors opinions of their own science abstracts. Essentially it was pal-review by an activist group with a strong bias towards a particular outcome as demonstrated by the name “the consensus project”.
Look at the views in column 1, then look at the % in the rightmost column: 52% state the the warming since 1850 is mostly anthropogenic. One common categorization would categorize the other 48% as ‘deniers’.
So, the inconvenient truth here is that about half of the world’s largest organization of meteorological and climate professionals don’t think humans are “mostly” the cause of Anthropogenic Global Warming the rest will probably get smeared as “deniers”
I wish to note, that, the truth was not a 97% consensus, but that about half disagreed with man causing it. Which is about the same percentage Dr. Happer says on CNBC:
So I verbalized my thoughts on this new information, multiple times, even posting the 97% graph a couple times as well as the below cations that this new “consensus” was probably going to fall by the wayside. Here is what I said:
…Of course, polls of scientists are not evidence about our climate. But it is evidence that one of the main forms of argument “97% of climate scientists say man-made warming is real” is not just meaningless, but misleading. It’s PR, not science….
…I posted a graphic [like the one above — 97% vs. what it really is ~ 52%] that includes the full range that activists involved in getting $$$$ like to say, “CONSENSUS” (like your [~ Michael B.] original 2,259 vs. 1). I will end up responding specifically to your OP, but my original graphic is similar, in that, many said 97% of specialist agree global warming is happening. The study did not really say that, it inferred it by keeping information hidden.
“Wow, the list is pretty impressive …It’s Oreskes done right.”
– Luboš Motl, Ph.D. Theoretical Physics
“I really appreciate your important effort in compiling the list.”
– Willie Soon, Ph.D. Astrophysicist and Geoscientist
“A tour de force list of scientific papers…”
– Robert M. Carter, Ph.D. Palaeontology
“…it’s a very useful resource. Thanks to the pop tech team.”
– Joanne Nova, Author of The Skeptics Handbook
“I do confess a degree of fascination with Poptech’s list…”
– John Cook, Skeptical Science
† The list has been cited by Scientists (1, 2) and Professors (3)
My skeptical opponents continued with the mantra:
Jason H.said this:
…Overwhelming consensus is overwhelming. Fail harder…
…If this is not scientific consensus, what in the world would a consensus look like?…
Michael B.said this (by the way, he posted the original article):
…The topic of this debate is whether there is scientific consensus….
So, because I was at a loss, I tweeted a couple of people I know via being a fan, and I got a response via Hockey Schtick, Who shot me over to Popular Technology.net …
…so you know ~ as I am writing this ~ the new rebuttal went up! Here is the new rebuttal to the actual Facebook link and subsequent debate:
(Mouse over to see original)
James Powell continues to demonstrate his computer illiteracy by doing worthless database searches in an intellectually dishonest propaganda campaign. He updated his previous meaningless analysis in continued blissful ignorance that the ‘Web of Science’ database does not have a “peer-reviewed” only filter and the existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine it’s context. Thus, all that can be claimed is there were 2,258 meaningless search resultsnot “peer-reviewed climate articles” for a query of the ‘Web of Science’ database – with 1 chosen by strawman argument.
1. The context of how the “search phrases” were used in all the results was never determined.
2. The results are padded by not using the search qualifier “anthropogenic”.
3. The 2,258 results cannot be claimed to be peer-reviewed as the Web of Science does not have a peer-reviewed only filter.
4. It is a strawman argument that most skeptics deny or reject that man can have an influence on the climate, but rather if there is any cause for alarm.
1. Context Matters
The existence of a search phrase in a returned result does not determine its context. So making any arguments for or against an implied position relating to the use of a phrase by simply looking at numerical result totals is impossible. Powell never determined the context of how the search phrases were used in all the results.
2. Padding the Results
Powell padded his search results total by using the phrases; “global warming” and/or “global climate change” instead of “anthropogenic global warming” [man-made global warming] or “anthropogenic global climate change” [man-made global climate change], which would have significantly reduced the number of returned results. Without the qualifier “anthropogenic”, results are included where no claim of explicit endorsement or rejection of ACC/AGW can be made.
Others alarmists have been challenged to search for the phrase, “anthropogenic climate change” using Oreskes (2004) methods and they only got 108 returned results.
“I did the search [in Web of Science] for “anthropogenic climate change” the other day and got something like 108 papers.” – Barry Bickmore, Professor at Brigham Young University
These low number of results are not useful to sell the type of propaganda alarmists like Powell are looking for.
3. Peer-Reviewed?
In his methods, Powell filtered his results by the ‘articles’ document type which includes content that may not be peer-reviewed depending on the specific journal,
“Article: Reports of research on original works. Includes research papers, features, brief communications, case reports, technical notes, chronology, and full papers that were presented at a symposium or conference.
Categories like these have been the subject of debate and confusion in relation to their peer-review status:
“…three categories of articles have been published: review articles up to 10 000 words, original articles of 2500–5000 words and brief communications of 1000–2000 words. Only the first two categories were subject to peer review and brief communications were being published without this quality check.” – Health Information and Libraries Journal
“Because of trends in submissions, Nature’s Brief Communications will bow out at the end of the year. […] False rumours that the section was not peer reviewed have occasionally circulated.” – Nature
4. Strawman argument
Actual skeptic arguments include that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is exaggerated or inconsequential, such as those made by Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT and John R. Christy, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science at UHA. Skeptics unanimously reject that there is any cause for alarm.
End Result!?
(2013) In a true sense of irony Powell uses his meaningless analysis as a defense of Oreskes (2004) which is considered useless by world renowned climate experts,
“Analyses like these by people who don’t know the field are useless. A good example is Naomi Oreskes work.” – Tom Wigley, Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
He then attempts to smear skeptics as “global warming deniers”. This is a dishonest ad hominem as skeptics believe there has been a global temperature increase of a fraction of a degree since the end of the little ice age.
Powell’s pie chart is simply propaganda for those who are intellectual dishonest and want to be intentionally misleading about actual skeptic arguments or the over 1100 peer-reviewed papers that support them….
Instead he hopes his propaganda will be picked up by the media and used by those who are intellectual dishonest and want to be intentionally misleading….
Because Sen. Inhofe quotes Obama as saying this, noted at Junk Science:
“But the flipside is we also know that the climate is warming faster than anybody anticipated five or 10 years ago, and that the future…in part, is going to depend on our willingness to deal with something that we may not be able to see or smell the way you could when the Chicago River was on fire, or at least could have caught on fire, but is in some ways more serious, more fundamental,” Obama said.
Because of that seriousness, Obama said he’s willing to hear out “a different approach” to dealing with the issue. What he won’t consider though, he said, are ideas from climate change deniers.
Warming has stopped longer than that! About 17-years. So, Sen. Inhofe asked the EPA for any stats to back up this claim… the predictable outcome is seen below:
Florida Rep. Reminds John Kerry President Obama Shook ‘Bloody Hand’ of Raul Castro at Nelson Mandela Funeral 12/10/2013
During a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) asked Secretary of State John Kerry pointedly about President Barack Obama’s reportedly spontaneous handshake with Cuban leader Raul Castro. She accused the Cuban dictator of possessing “bloody hands” used to brutally repress his people. Kerry, for his part, agreed that Cuba’s human rights record is problematic.
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) is questioned about President Obama’s handshake with Raul Castro
“It gives Raul some propaganda to continue to prop up dictatorial, brutal regime, that’s all it is, Why should you shake hands with somebody who’s keeping Americans in prison?”
(American Thinker) Everyone in America who isn’t brain dead – or lying – knows exactly what the president meant when he said we could keep our doctor if we wanted to. And I suspect even those who are brain dead know why he said it; in tandem with the promise we could keep our insurance plans, the promise that we could keep our family doctor was necessary for the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Without those two promises, it would have been open season on the bill and even many Democrats would have run for cover.
Crafted with lies. Voted on with lies. Sold with lies. And implemented with lies. Why should Emanuel’s lies surprise us?
Also, one can watch for themselves eight leading Democrats promising lower costs for healthcare: Rahm Emanuel, Henry Waxman, Ben Nelson, Kathleen Sebelius, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama — as examples of people who DID promise lower costs/premiums.
Mr. Emanuel is wontingly and knowingly lying as well. Below is a short video of the internal battle in Democrats own lives, with the example of Pelosi being against larger premiums before she was for them.
California as an example of where all these promises breakdown:
(Breaitbart) …An estimated 70% of California doctors will not participate in the Obamacare-compliant health insurance policies offered by Covered California, according to the California Medical Association, as reported by the Washington Examiner. Though Covered California claims that 85% of doctors will participate, many doctors listed as participating are expected to decline payment, having learned that reimbursements will be very low.
The shortage of physicians was already expected to be a challenge for Obamacare, given that millions of new patients would potentially be demanding medical services. However, that shortage may now be even more acute than expected, particularly in Obamacare’s flagship state. Reimbursement rates in California for federal programs like Medicare were already among the lowest in the nation, the Examiner‘s Richard Pollock notes.
Not only is this a stress — financially — on states, but it is gonna undermine Obamacare… because in order for the bill to work, people have to sign up under the exchanges. Which is not the case:
(Gateway Pundit) Over 396,000 Americans signed up for Medicaid since October. Only 106,185 signed up for private insurance during the same time period. The Bell News reported:
According to an article on thectmirror.com, Connecticut is the only state in the union who is signing up more people for Private insurance than for Medicaid…
Broke as a Joke
State officials who attended the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) annual conference in New Orleans, La. earlier this month expect Medicaid costs to rise dramatically as a result of ObamaCare.
As it is, Medicaid currently accounts for about 17 percent of all state-level spending, according to StateHealthFacts.org. This exceeds what states spend on higher education and transportation put together, according to ALEC.
Under ObamaCare, states are required to extend their Medicaid programs to anyone earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level come 2014. This comes out to about $30,000 for a family of four. In addition to the Medicaid expansion, the new federal health care law also creates an individual health insurance mandate, which will further encourage those who were already eligible for benefits prior to the new legislation to now enroll. Moreover, the federal subsidies included as part of the new health care law will not cover the entire cost of the Medicaid expansion.
“Washington [D.C.] is trying to take control of everything and that’s not healthy for anyone,” said Rep. Noble Ellington, a Louisiana Republican. “We are already in the middle of a recession as it is, and if ObamaCare does kick in it will mean less jobs, less business activity and less opportunity.”…. (NetRight Daily)
The New York Postnotes this ObamaCare created Medicaid time bomb:
The good news, if you want to call it that, is that roughly 1.6 million Americans have enrolled in ObamaCare so far.
The not-so-good news is that 1.46 million of them actually signed up for Medicaid. If that trend continues, it could bankrupt both federal and state governments.
Medicaid is already America’s third-largest government program, trailing only Social Security and Medicare, as a proportion of the federal budget. Almost 8 cents out of every dollar that the federal government spends goes to Medicaid. That’s more than $265 billion per year.
Indeed, already Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid account for 48% of federal spending. Within the next few years, those three programs will eat up more than half of federal expenditures.
And it’s going to get worse. Congress has shown no ability to reform Social Security or Medicare. With ObamaCare adding to Medicare spending, we are picking up speed on the road to insolvency.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that, in part because of ObamaCare, Medicaid spending will more than double over the next 10 years, topping $554 billion by 2023.
And that is just federal spending.
State governments pay another $160 billion for Medicaid today. For most states, Medicaid is the single-largest cost of government, crowding out education, transportation and everything else.
PJ Media also points out that many well-off (rich) people are pushed onto Medicaid:
The Affordable Care Act eliminates Medicaid’s asset test, and creates the roach motel of government welfare programs. Medicaid is no longer an “entitlement” you can choose to access. Instead, as Nicole Hopkins’ mother found out earlier this month, if you qualify under its new, lenient rules, HealthCare.gov forces your enrollment:
We checked and double-checked the information, but the only option still appeared to be Medicaid. She suggested clicking on “Apply for Coverage,” thinking that other options might appear.
Instead, almost mockingly, her “Eligibility Results” came back: “Congratulations, we received and reviewed your application and determined [you] will receive the health care coverage listed below: Washington Apple Health (the state of Washington’s version of Medicaid).”
[….]
The page lacked a cancel button or any way to opt out of Medicaid. It was done; she was enrolled, and there was nothing to do but click “Next” and then to sign out.
So Medicaid is now mandatory for those who apply at HealthCare.gov and qualify — and as long as your income remains sufficiently low, you can never leave. Never mind if you believe, as Ms. Hopkins does, that “other people should (not) have to pay for my care, whether it be through taxes or otherwise.”
This has led to the following “you can’t make up something this stupid” situation:
The father owns a $5 million house – entirely paid for. His kids attend expensive private schools. He owns three cars, but because he has earned his fortune and has stopped working, and his wife’s new start-up business has yet to produce an income stream, he is considered by the HealthCare.gov website to have no income.
The website put him on Medicaid.
There are no other options. This — not President Barack Obama’s “if you like your plan-doctor-provider, you can keep your plan-doctor-provider” — is how HealthCare.gov has been designed to work.
Obamacare is making our healthcare system sick… and it is not yet fully implemented!
Rep. Gowdy Questions about the President’s use of prosecutorial discretion at the House Judiciary Committee Hearing on the President’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws.
“We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem has received America’s highest honor. President Obama bestowed upon Steinem the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In so doing, he honored the work of not only Steinem but Margaret Sanger, liberalism’s iconic racial eugenicist. Celebrating her award at the National Press Club, Steinem said she hoped Obama’s action would be “honoring the work of Margaret Sanger.”
It indeed has done just that.
Margaret Sanger longed for a more enlightened time when birth control would be (as she put it) “part of the regular welfare service of the government.” In this, she was inspired by Stalin’s Soviet Union — literally. In 1934, she undertook a fact-finding pilgrimage to Moscow, where she, like many American progressives, believed the Bolshevik government might well have discovered the Brave New World. Many American progressives — public education father John Dewey among them — thought the Soviets were perhaps merely a few steps ahead of us. We needed to look there. We needed to go there.
Upon her return, Sanger reported her findings in the June 1935 edition of her organization’s flagship publication, Birth Control Review. In an article titled, “Birth Control in Russia,” Sanger noted, “Theoretically, there are no obstacles to birth control in Russia. It is accepted… on the grounds of health and human right.” She said of America: “[W]e could well take example from Russia, where there are no legal restrictions, no religious condemnation, and where birth control instruction is part of the regular welfare service of the government.”
Sanger could not have known it, but she was speaking of Barack Obama’s America, where birth control is being thrust upon us as a basic “human right” and form of “health care” with no obstacles in its way. In fact, it’s even easier than Sanger could have imagined: Not only do contemporary progressives want no obstacles, but Obama wants all Americans to forcibly pay for birth control. He is even forcing the religious to do so via his HHS mandate. He and his progressive cohorts are rolling right over any “legal restrictions” or “religious condemnation.” If you as a religious believer disagree, they will see you in court. You will be penalized and demonized.
Under Obama, we have arrived at Sanger’s new world, where birth control is a regular service of the federal government.
And thus, Gloria Steinem honoring Margaret Sanger with Obama’s Presidential Medal of Freedom is so perfectly fitting. It really is. In fact, if Obama thought about all this more deeply, perhaps he’d consider a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom for Margaret Sanger. She was way ahead of her time. A veritable progressive prophetess.
But there’s something even more significant and ironic at work here.
Margaret Sanger not only championed Bolshevik birth control services, she also championed racial eugenics. The Planned Parenthood matron wanted to advance what she called “racial health” and “race improvement” in America. She lamented America’s “race of degenerates.” This meant purging the landscape of its “human weeds” and “the dead weight of human waste.” This included the “feeble-minded,” the “imbeciles,” the “morons,” and the “idiots,” but it also included a “Negro Project” that Margaret had in mind for another group of Americans.
The Negro Project was close to Sanger’s heart, as shown by a remarkable December 10, 1939 letter she wrote to Dr. Clarence Gamble of Milton, Massachusetts. (The letter is today held in the Sanger archives at Smith College. I have a photocopy.) The Planned Parenthood foundress alerted the good doctor: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”
That eye-opening assertion has been disputed and defended by liberals. And, to be fair, what Sanger meant isn’t entirely clear, though I personally lean to a decidedly negative interpretation. But one group with no ambivalence about Sanger’s intentions with black Americans was the KKK.
Add the Klan to the list of those deeply grateful for Sanger’s work. They were so grateful that the boys in the white hoods invited the progressive heroine to one of their celebrations. They asked her to speak at one of their rallies. Sanger accepted. She addressed her brethren at a KKK rally in Silver Lake, New Jersey, in 1926.
What do Barack Obama and Gloria Steinem think of that? Like most leftists, either they’re totally ignorant of the fact or they look the other way as they extol the magnificence of Sanger’s other “achievements” that outweigh the more sinister ones in their ever-evolving progressive calculus.
Among Sanger’s other achievements is another bitter pill: Her Planned Parenthood is America’s largest abortion provider, and one of the greatest killers of black Americans. No other organization comes close. Planned Parenthood’s bloodletting of unborn black babies has been in the countless millions.
The following quotes from Steinem and other “lauded” feminists in the university (“higher” learning) come from two sources and can be better referenced by them:
Author and journalist Natalie Angier begins an article in the New York Times by writing, “Women may not find this surprising, but one of the most persistent and frustrating problems in evolutionary biology is the male. Specifically… why doesn’t he just go away?” (Natalie Angier, “The Male of the Species: Why Is He Needed?” New York Times, May 17, 1994)
In a CNN interview with Maureen Dowd about her 2005 book, Are Men Necessary? Dowd says, “Now that women don’t need men to reproduce and refinance, the question is, will we keep you around? And the answer is, ‘You know, we need you in the way we need ice cream—you’ll be more ornamental.” (“Are Men Necessary?” CNN.com, November 15, 2005, http:// www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/books/11/15/dowd.men.necessary/ index.html)
Lisa Belkin, a blogger for the New York Times whose work is provocative but not overly biased, wrote, “We are standing at a moment in time when the role of gender is shifting seismically. At this moment an argument can be made for two separate narrative threads—the first is the retreat of men as this becomes a woman’s world.” (Lisa Belkin, “Are Men Necessary?” Motherlode: Adventures in Parenting blog, New York Times Magazine, June 30, 2010, http:// parenting.blogs. nytimes.com/2010/06/30/are-men-necessary/)
In an article in the Atlantic titled ‘Are Fathers Necessary?” author Pamela Paul wrote, “The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution.” Pamela Paul, “Are Fathers Necessary?” Atlantic, July/August 2010, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/arefathers-necessary/8136/)
For example, in the January 1988 National NOW Times, the newsletter for the organization, said: “The simple fact is that every woman must be willing to be identified as a lesbian to be fully feminist.” (William D. Gairdner, The War Against the Family: A Parent Speaks Out on the Political, Economic, and Social Policies That Threaten Us All, 295.)
Well-known feminist author and co-founder/editor of Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem, said the following about feminisms end game: “Overthrowing capitalism is too small for us. We must overthrow the whole #@*! patriarch!” Ibid., 300 [How can a civil rights movement be interested in capitalism?] (Ibid)
One sign of an over oppressive movement is illustrated in The Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Napoleon, one of the main characters, concerns himself with the education of the young, and forcefully takes two litters of puppies away as soon as they’re weaned, saying he’ll educate them. In effect the “State” are the ones who are charged with educating and rearing them. Now compare this to a statement made by feminist Mary Jo Bane, assistant professor of education at Wellesley College and associate director of the school’s Center for Research on Woman, and the lesson taught in Animal Farm:
“In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.”
(Fr. Robert J. Carr, “No News For You!!” Catholic Online [9-23-2004]. Found at: http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=1364 ~ last accessed 7-29-09; Here is the full quote from Father Carr’s article: “Mary Jo Bane, formerly of the Clinton Administration Department of Health and Human Services one of the major voices in the Boston Globe against the average Catholic’s right to freedom of religion. Bane’s most famous quote is ‘We really don’t know how to raise children. If we want to talk about equality of opportunity for children, then the fact that children are raised in families means there’s no equality. … In order to raise children with equality, we must take them away from families and communally raise them.’”)
Alternatively, Gloria Steinem declared: “By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.” (Angela Howard and Sasha Ranae Adams Tarrant, Reaction to the Modern Women’s Movement, 1963 to the Present: Antifeminism in America: A Collection of Readings from the Literature of the Opponents to U.S. Feminism, 1848 to the Present, 153.)
NEA president/feminist Catherine Barrett wrote likewise that, “Dramatic changes in the way we will raise our children in the year 2000 are indicated, particularly in terms of schooling. … We will need to recognize that the so-called ‘basic skills’, which currently represent nearly the total effort in elementary schools, will be taught in one-quarter of the present school day. … When this happens—and it’s near—the teacher can rise to his true calling. More than a dispenser of information, the teacher will be a conveyor of values, a philosopher. … We will be agents of change.” (Dennis Laurence Cuddy, The Grab for Power: A Chronology of the NEA, 6.)
A Feminist Dictionary, published by the University of Illinois, gives the following definitions:
Male: “… represents a variant of or deviation from the category of female. The first males were mutants… the male sex represents a degeneration and deformity of the female.”
Man: “… an obsolete life form… an ordinary creature who needs to be watched … a contradictory baby-man.”
Testosterone Poisoning: “Until now it has been thought that the level of testosterone in men is normal simply because they have it. But if you consider how abnormal their behavior is, then you are led to the hypothesis that almost all men are suffering from ‘testosterone poisoning.’”
(Cheris Kramarae and Paula A. Treichler, eds., Feminist Dictionary (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1986), cf. male, 242; cf. male, 246; cf. testosterone poisoning, 446.)
Feminist author Ti-Grace Atkinson shows her true autonomy when stating, “the institution of sexual intercourse is anti-feminist.” (Daniel Dervin, Enactments: American Modes and Psychohistorical Models, 244)
Another telling quote comes directly from Atkinson’s own biography, Amazon Odyssey: “The price of clinging to the enemy [a man] is your life. To enter into a relationship with a man who has divested himself as completely and publicly from the male role as much as possible would still be a risk. But to relate to a man who has done any less is suicide…. I, personally, have taken the position that I will not appear with any man publicly, where it could possibly be interpreted that we were friends.” (Ti-Grace Atkinson, Amazon Odyssey, 90, 91.)
Marilyn French, feminist author calls all men rapists: “All men are rapists and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws, and their codes.” (Elizabeth Knowles, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th ed. [New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1999], cf. Freeman, E.A., 324.)
Let us allow Gloria Steinen, feminist extraordinaire, to set the stage with the following praises about her contemporary, Andrea Dworkin, “In every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.” (David M. Friedman, A Mind of Its Own: A Cultural History of the Penis, 225.) Why preface Andrea Dworkin? Because she has this to say about men in general: “Heterosexual intercourse is the pure, formalized expression of contempt for women’s bodies.” (Neil Boyd, Big Sister: How Extreme Feminism has Betrayed the Fight for Sexual Equality, 23.)
Dr. Boyd continues with Dworkin’s quote: “In fucking, as in reproduction, sex and economics are inextricably joined. In male-supremacist cultures, women are believed to embody carnality; women are sex. A man wants what a woman has – sex. He can steal it outright (prostitution), lease it over the long term (marriage in the United States), or own it outright (marriage in most societies). A man can do some or all of the above, over and over again.” (Ibid.)
“What Gloria Steinem, Molly Yard, Patricia Ireland and all the rest have presented to you over the last [30-years] years has not been feminist theory.” …. Tammy Bruce goes on to show that Betty Friedan and Patricia Ireland, ex-presidents of NOW, (and others) are involved with socialist or communist political parties or organizations,
…Betty Friedan, a former Communist Party member, was only the precursor of the hijacking of feminism to serve other political interests. Some consider Gloria Steinem, the founder of Ms. magazine and probably the second most influential feminist leader, after Friedan, of the last 30 years, to be the one who began blurring the lines between gender and race issues. This might be surprising to those who are unaware of Steinem’s involvement in socialist politics. In fact, she serves as an honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, which boasts of being the largest socialist organization in the United States and is the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International. Good for her, but we should know this as we explore what factors influence those who are considered feminist leaders. Steinem’s influence, combined with the socialist sympathies of NOW’s immediate past-president, Patricia Ireland, explain the co-opting of NOW by leftist ideologues. A 1996 article in Ms. quoted Ireland as saying that NOW “must offer a clear understanding of what it means to be a feminist organization concerned with ending discrimination based on race, class, and other issues of oppression [emphasis mine] that come from a patriarchal structure.” Steinem then commented, “To be feminist, we have to take on the entire caste system.” Ireland details her support of the Communist Party in her autobiography, What Women Want. She admits that her socialist sympathies and participation in pro-Communist rallies in Miami (of all places!) were due in part to the fact that her friend and future lover, Pat Silverthorn, was an activist in the Socialist Worker’s Party. There were problems, Ireland explains, with Silverthorn and her friends being Communists in Miami. “Later, after we’d become close,” Ireland writes, “[Pat Silverthorn] would confide that she, too, had wondered how much more dangerous she’d made her life by openly professing communist convictions in that volatile, violent, commie-hating city… Working closely with Pat opened my eyes about the reality of living as a political leftist in this country.”
Below is an interview of Michael Rubin by Hugh Hewitt. Some frank discussion about the Iran deal occurs by a historian on such negotiations. I believe we have our own Chamberlain moment… brought to you by the kind people on the American Left.
Michael Rubin's Input
…It appears Iran has not made any deal that would curtail its nuclear ambition. As described, the framework upon which U.S. and Iranian negotiators appear to agree fails to resolve those issues of most concern to regional states. Obama has unilaterally waived Security Council resolutions demanding a complete enrichment cessation. There may be some enrichment suspension at key sites but, as Rouhani bragged in 2009, he used an early suspension to install new and better centrifuges. And while Iran might convert some more highly enriched uranium to less usable fuel rods, it has backtracked its own earlier proposals to ship fissile material abroad.
Of even more strategic concern, the deal does not address Arak. On Thursday, a German court sentenced four businessmen who sold components to Iran for that plutonium-producing plant. When Arak becomes operational within a year, it can produce enough plutonium for two bombs per year. Nor has Iran made any concession on Parchin, where Iran conducted weapons research. In short, Kerry can arrive back from Geneva and declare triumphantly, “I have in my hand a paper signed by Mohammad Javad Zarif,” but the agreement does not stop Iran from assembling the material or know-how needed to make a bomb. There is no truth and reconciliation component to the deal: Iran needs not come clean on its previous activities. If the regime had truly has a change of heart, such transparency should not be an issue.
Diplomats may celebrate a deal, but a bad deal can be worse than no deal. Sometimes, the hangover is not worth the celebration.
Besides Debka calling these secret meetings to the public’s attention back in 2012, they also note some glaring loop-holes in the deal:
Debkafile’s intelligence and military sources list seven of the most glaring loopholes in the first-step accord:
1. Parchin: This long-suspected facility remains out of UN oversight. President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry boasted after the signing that daily IAEA inspections will take place at Fordo and Natanz. However, cameras are already fixed at both those facilities without an agreement, whereas Tehran’s consistent denial of IAEA access to Parchin is not addressed.
2. Secret nuclear locations: Under the heading “Possible Military Dimensions,” the last IAEA report noted: “Since 2002, the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related organizations, including activities related to the development of a payload for a missile.”
The watchdog has received information indicating activities “relevant to the development of a nuclear explosive device.” This was further corroborated by new information obtained since November 2011.
Tehran’s non-cooperation for investigating these findings is not mentioned in the Geneva interim accord, nor was it addressed in the negotiations.
3. Dirty bombs: Iran doesn’t need a full-scale nuclear bomb or missile warhead for attacking Israel. For decades, Tehran has been working on perfecting hundreds of dirty bombs as part of its nuclear program, by adding plutonium or enriched uranium to conventional bombs. These weapons are easy to make and easy to use. In the hands of Hizballah or other Shiite terrorist organizations in Syria or Iraq, for instance, they could be used to strike Israel without leaving a trail to Tehran.
This peril too was ignored by the six powers in Geneva.
4. Rollback. While President Obama has presented the deal as a first step toward freezing or even rolling back “key aspects” of Iran’s nuclear program. The fact remains that, so long as Iran is permitted to enrich uranium, even though this is restricted to a low 5 percent grade, it is free to produce as much fissile material as it wants, whenever it wants. This seems more like roll forward than roll back.
5. Enrichment. Obama and Kerry said the new deal does not recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium. They were contradicted by the Iranian president and senior negotiator as well as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. So what is the truth? If Iran won recognition for this right, it blows the bottom out of the Non-Proliferating Treaty because, in no time, all the signatories may start enriching uranium with permission from the big powers. Neither is there any point in making Iran join the NPT’s Additional Protocol for snap inspections.
6. Centrifuges. Iran has undertaken not to add new centrifuges to its enrichment facilities, according to President Obama, but there is nothing to stop it from keeping up their production. In the six-month interregnum for negotiating a comprehensive nuclear deal, Tehran wins time to turn out enough centrifuges to substantially expand its production of enriched uranium.
7. A leap to breakout: Far from being static or in freeze, as the Americans claim, Iran is free to step up centrifuge production and boost its stock of 3.5 percent enriched uranium, thereby accumulating enough material to enhance its capacity for producing enough weapons-grade uranium to break through to a nuclear bomb rapidly enough to defy detection by the IAEA or Western intelligence until it is too late.
The first loophole appeared hours after the new accord was signed:
Iran’s lead negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, announced that his country’s enrichment rights had been recognized in the negotiations, after which Iranian President Hassan Rouhani praised the supreme leader’s guidelines for achieving world power recognition of Tehran’s “nuclear rights.”
However, Secretary of State John Kerry in his first appearance after the signing denied this concession had been made. He said: “The first step, let me be clear, does not say that Iran has a right to enrich uranium.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov lined up solidly behind the Iranian version of the accord, confirming world recognition had been extended for Iran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy, including the right for enrichment.
