Sabotaging America: The Obama Energy Agenda

FreedomCenter

The Obama administration’s lack of any coherent, realistic energy policy is providing Republican candidates with a good deal of ammunition, as gas prices and oil prices continue to rise. The issue has put the president on the defensive as the specter of five dollar per gallon gas this summer gives Team Obama heartburn.

“It’s the easiest thing in the world (to) make phony election-year promises about lower gas prices,” Obama said, speaking at the University of Miami yesterday. “What’s harder is to make a serious, sustained commitment to tackle a problem that may not be solved in one year or one term or even one decade.”

Indeed. Clearly, making a serious, sustained commitment to a sound energy policy is well beyond this administration’s capabilities. Rather than investing in proven, affordable and plentiful sources of domestic energy, Obama has thrown billions of tax dollars away in misguided efforts to find pixie dust solutions to America’s energy needs.

From wind, to solar, to bio-fuels, the president has abandoned the free market to cast his lot in with the most extreme of environmental utopians and we’re all paying the price for his folly. This president, who asserts that America’s future depends on science and technology, has yet to even come to grips with the basic laws of thermodynamics. That level of scientific ignorance doesn’t bode well for consumers, or for Obama’s re-election prospects.

The president has tried to blame rising gas prices on factors that are beyond his control, such as increased demand from China and India, increasing tension with Iran and speculation in oil futures. While it’s accurate to say that America can do little to influence those factors, it’s entirely disingenuous to ignore the fact that we could have – and should have – taken action to mitigate those market effects.

We have seen crude demand in China and India rise steadily for over a decade now. That it continues to do so as those economies continue to grow shouldn’t surprise anyone, least of all the president of the United States. The same holds true for the effect of the Iranian nuclear crisis. And, given all of the uncertainty and demand-side pressure, it’s clear that the free market is going to respond by hedging its bets in the form of rising oil future prices. The president sees the latter in terms of greedy speculation, but Obama has long-since abandoned any pretense of understanding – or caring – about the way that a healthy free market actually works.

Source

U.S. Senator Coburn: "We're two years away from being Greece"

newson6.com

WASHINGTON, D.C -

He's blunt, he's polarizing, and says he's not like other politicians. What he thinks is Washington's biggest problem and the disaster he says is looming.

News On 6 anchor Terry Hood traveled to Washington, D.C. to talk with Oklahoma's maverick U.S. Senator, Dr. Tom Coburn.

Subtlety has never been tom Coburn's style. In his 14 years in congress, Coburn's earned a reputation as a maverick who's willing to fight any bill he thinks is wasting taxpayer dollars.

The list includes everything from the infamous "bridge to nowhere" to funding for breast cancer research.

"The difference is they're seeing what they see in their life, and I'm seeing how do we best do research in our country," he said.

And Medicare?

"Any politicians that stands up and says ‘we're not going to touch your Medicare' is a liar," he said.

On Capitol Hill, they call him "Dr. No."

"I'm pretty blunt, and I tend to see things in black and white," Coburn

And what Tom Coburn sees now, is nothing short of disaster.

"In the next two years our country is going to be consumed. Absolutely consumed with debt. We're bankrupt. We're getting ready to have a debt crisis and nobody is working on it. We're two years away from being Greece," Coburn said.

Coburn's calling card has always been his willingness to offend both Democrats and Republicans. But with the nation's skyrocketing debt and the failure of the Super committee, Congress, or the president to hammer out a solution, his frustration may be at an all-time high.

"We have all the capabilities to solve every problem we have. We have none of the leadership in any key office in this country to do that," he said.

2011 was a pivotal year for Oklahoma's junior senator. Last summer, as the debt crisis threatened to shut down the federal government, Tom Coburn of Muskogee, Oklahoma emerged as an unlikely hero.

"This plan offers the American people 9 trillion reasons to stop making excuses," Coburn said on the floor of the senate.

His "Back in Black" proposal--slashing $8 trillion from the deficit while also raising a trillion dollars in new revenue--was hailed by many as a step toward responsible government.

Newsweek called him the "Man of the Hour." The New York Times gushed that he was the "Lady Gaga of Fiscal Conservatives." And the President frequently drops his name.

"My friend Tom Coburn is right, we shouldn't be giving tax breaks to millionaires," President Obama said during the State of the Union Address.

But on the other side of the aisle, Coburn's willingness to raise taxes as well as cut spending, outraged some of his most ardent fans.

Coburn says compromise is simply a fact of life in Washington. At the time of this interview, last October, he was still optimistic the tide would turn.

"If I think if we can get through the next two or three years, I think we can fix this," he said.

Today, those hopes may have dimmed, but Tom Coburn's determination has not.

While the rest of Washington is caught up in presidential politics, Coburn is renewing his focus on the issue he believes will make or break this country: the deficit.

The huge debt clock that hangs in his front office used to sit in the hallway, the senate ethics commission made him move it inside.

But no one can make Oklahoma's Junior Senator stop sounding the warning bell. Tom Coburn has four years left in Washington. He has no intention of going quietly.

"I don't want to be civil if our country is going to crash on the rocks. I want to have a vigorous and cantankerous debate about the issues and the facts, and I want to be too out there," Coburn said.

Certainly Senator Coburn's latest decision on funding for the 9/11 memorial is generating vigorous debate.

But he's doing more than just blocking bills.

While Coburn wouldn't give any specifics, he said his "Gang of 6" is back at work. He's hoping Congress will not wait until the end of the year to make the budget cuts they agreed to last summer.

Study: (MONSANTO'S) Roundup diluted by 99.8 percent still destroys human DNA

NaturalNews

A new study published in the journal Archives of Toxicology proves once again that there really is no safe level of exposure to Monsanto's Roundup (glyphosate) herbicide formula for genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).

According to the new findings, Roundup, which is applied by the tens of thousands of tons a year all around the world, is still toxic to human DNA even when diluted to a mere 0.02 percent of the dilution amount at which it is currently applied to GM food crops.

Numerous studies have already identified the fact that Roundup causes DNA damage, not to mention endocrine disruption and cancer. But this new study, which originates out of the Medical University of Vienna, is one of the first to illustrate Roundup's toxicity at such drastically diluted levels, which is a direct contradiction of the agri-giant's talking points about the supposed safety of Roundup.

"Comparisons with results of earlier studies with lymphocytes and cells from internal organs indicate that epithelial cells are more susceptible to the cytotoxic effects and DNA-damaging properties of the herbicide and its formulation," wrote the authors in their abstract.

"Since we found genotoxic (DNA damaging) effects after short exposure to concentrations that correspond to a 450-fold dilution of spraying used in agriculture, our findings indicate that inhalation may cause DNA damage in exposed individuals."

Interestingly, it is not so much just the glyphosate ingredient in Roundup that is extremely poisonous, as much as it is this chemical's amplified toxicity in the presence of other additives in the formula. Polyoxyethyleneamine, for instance, a surfactant that facilitates glyphosate's absorption into cells, has been found to significantly increase Roundup's synergistic toxicity in humans.

Despite Monsanto's claims to the contrary, Roundup is clearly an exceptionally toxic chemical that has no legitimate place in agriculture. According to data compiled by GreenMedInfo.com, Roundup is linked to causing Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, imbalanced hormones in children, DNA damage, low testosterone, endocrine disruption, liver cancer, meningitis, infertility, skin cancer, kidney damage, and even uranium poisoning (http://www.greenmedinfo.com/toxic-ingredient/glyphosate).

Environmentally, Roundup is a pervasive threat to air, water, and particularly groundwater and drinking supplies, as studies have shown that it does not effectively biodegrade after being sprayed. Back in the fall, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released data showing that air and water all across America's "bread belt," where much of our nation's food is grown, is highly contaminated with glyphosate (http://www.naturalnews.com/033699_Roundup_pollution.html).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.greenmedinfo.com

Illegal Immigration – this pic says it all

I mean, just sayin'- W.E.

Fellowshipoftheminds

On the left is San Diego, located in the United States. On the right is the densely populated border town of Tijuana, located in Mexico.

Pentagon Says U.S. Citizens With Terrorism Ties Can Be Targeted in Strikes

Not so long ago, in the United States of America, we had this document, it was called the, umm, oh what was that pesky thing? Oh yes! It was called the constitution and it contained in it something called the, umm, the....oh yes!  The Bill of Rights!  I sure do miss those. - W.E.

NY Times

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s top Pentagon lawyer on Wednesday said that American citizens who join Al Qaeda can be targeted for killing and that courts should have no role in reviewing executive branch decisions about whether someone has met such criteria.

“Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives,” said Jeh C. Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, in a speech at Yale Law School.

Mr. Johnson’s remarks offered an unusually comprehensive and public declaration of the Obama administration’s national security legal policy views in the war against Al Qaeda and its allies. While the outlines of those views have been aired in pieces before, officials usually discuss such matters only on condition of anonymity.

In raising the targeted killing of an American citizen, Mr. Johnson emphasized that he was not talking about any particular operation. The administration has declined to discuss its killing last September of Anwar Al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born radical Islamist cleric who died in a drone strike in Yemen that technically remains a covert operation.

Still, Mr. Johnson invoked a lawsuit filed by Mr. Awlaki’s father before the killing that had sought an injunction against targeting his son, citing with approval a district judge’s decision to dismiss the case and saying that targeting decisions are not suited to court review because they must be made quickly and based on fast-evolving intelligence.

“Within the executive branch the views and opinions of the lawyers on the president’s national security team are debated and heavily scrutinized, and a legal review of the application of lethal force is the weightiest judgment a lawyer can make,” he said. “And, when these judgments start to become easy, it is time for me to return to private law practice.”

Mr. Johnson also emphasized that even though the conflict is against an unconventional force, the administration believes that it must apply conventional legal principles – like the Geneva Conventions, international laws of armed conflict, and traditional ways of interpreting domestic wartime statutes – in waging it.

Still, he described a broad interpretation of the authorization by Congress to use military force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying that nothing in that statute limited the ability to wage war against Al Qaeda and its allies to the so-called “hot” battlefield zone of Afghanistan.

“The legal point is important because, in fact, over the last 10 years Al Qaeda has not only become more decentralized, it has also, for the most part, migrated away from Afghanistan to other places where it can find safe haven,” Mr. Johnson said.

Mr. Johnson explained that in deciding whether an armed Islamist group that is not part of Al Qaeda counts as an “associated force” – meaning it is part of the war, so its members can be targeted or detained without trial – the administration is using a two-part test: such a group must have aligned itself with Al Qaeda, and it must have specifically started fighting the United States and its allies.

“Thus, an ‘associated force’ is not any terrorist group in the world that merely embraces the Al Qaeda ideology,” he said. “More is required before we draw the legal conclusion that the group fits within the statutory authorization for the use of military force passed by the Congress in 2001.”

Mr. Johnson also told the Yale Law School audience that it was true that he had sometimes disagreed with the school’s former dean, Harold Hongju Koh, who is now the top State Department lawyer. But he praised Mr. Koh and said it was a good thing that such lawyers were thrashing out difficult legal issues together rather than succumbing to “group think.”

One of the disputes between Mr. Koh and Mr. Johnson, as reported last year by The Times, was whether the United States’ war against Al Qaeda extended to every member of the Islamist groups in Yemen and Somalia, or just to high-level leaders who were focused on attacking the United States rather than parochial concerns.

That dispute may have been partly settled earlier this month when a video surfaced in which Ayman al-Zawahri – who took over as Al Qaeda’s leader after United States forces killed Osama bin Laden last year – said that the Shabab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia, had formally joined Al Qaeda.

ObamaCare: Supreme Court May Postpone Ruling Till 2016!!

iowntheworld

This morning's newspapers report an ominous development in the ObamaCare litigation, now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court:

The Court posted a seemingly minor but potentially important administrative change that reminds us that it could postpone a final ruling on the constitutionality of ObamaCare until the middle of 2016! 

Specifically, the high Court increased the time it will devote to hearing oral arguments on whether the mandate to purchase health insurance is a "tax" for purposes of something called the Tax Anti-Injunction Act (26 U.S.C. § 7421(a)).

Why is that important? Because while Congress lacks any power in the Constitution to take over the health care industry, it does have the power to tax. And if it can persuade the Court that the health care mandate is really just a valid exercise of the tax power, then the chances go up that the Court will find ObamaCare constitutional. The logic of this situation is paradoxical: 

1) If the Court finds the mandate is a tax, it will probably uphold ObamaCare.

2) If the Court postpones a final ruling on the law's constitutionality because it feels the aforementioned Tax Anti-Injunction Act requires it to do so, that decision by itself would signal that the Court suspects but is not yet prepared to say clearly that the mandate is a tax, in which case ... see point 1.

We could find ourselves in a kind of legal limbo. Because of how the Tax Anti-Injunction Act works -- about which, more anon -- the Court would not be able to render a final judgment until several years from now, thereby denying voters in this fall's elections a critical piece of information: What does the Supreme Court think about ObamaCare's constitutionality? 

This would ensure that President Obama wouldn't have to suffer the political blow of having the Supreme Court strike down his signature domestic achievement before the election -- though it would subtly signal that that achievement might be upheld, eventually. It would also give the unpopular law more time to take root, and thereby give its supporters more time to stave off repeal. 

The historically lengthy oral arguments in the case, HHS v. Florida -- now expanded by 30 minutes, to six hours -- are slated to take place in late March. A formal ruling in the case is expected by early July. But will it be the final ruling? That's now less clear. 

Okay, so what is the Tax Anti-Injunction Act? First enacted in 1867, this law sweepingly forbids any court from hearing any case in which any person attempts to prevent the assessment or collection of a tax. Once a tax has been assessed and collected, however, a court may hear a case on it. 

The question in the present case is: Is the health mandate penalty a tax, or not? Although Congress was careful not to describe the penalty as a "tax," it does have some of the hallmarks of one. The language establishing it is found in the Internal Revenue Code, and it is collected by the IRS, through the regular income tax return filing and refund process.

But do those things make it a "tax"? Not necessarily, because past Court rulings have said that it's only a "tax" if its primary effect is to "raise a revenue." If it's primary effect is to coerce people into doing something or not doing something, then it's a really just a mandate masquerading as a tax. The health care mandate's primary effect is clearly to make people buy health coverage, not to raise a revenue. It raises very little revenue, in fact.

So far, most lower federal courts who have considered this issue have taken the view that the mandate is not a tax but a penalty. But one judge has found the other way. And for complicated legal and political reasons, the Obama Administration has actually been taking boths sides on the issue. In Congress, the President's men say it's not a tax; in court, they say it is one. 

ObamaCare doesn't go into full operation until January 2014. The first time the IRS can levy the mandate penalty/tax won't be until folks file their tax returns, in mid-April 2015.  The slow judicial process will likely delay a final judicial ruling until mid-2016. By which time -- perhaps the public will have resigned itself to accepting this awful law?

Both sides in the case claim they would prefer that the Court not punt to 2016.

• The Administration's lawyers' requested the extra time, which suggests that they are not entirely confident of their ability to easily and quickly explain why the Tax Anti-Injunction Act shouldn't apply in this case. (Could they, alternatively, be harboring a secret desire to push the final verdict past the election but can't say so publicly, because to do so would signal weakness?) 
• The anti-ObamaCare lawyers' consent to the request for additional time suggests that they want the Court to decide the whole case, this year.

What makes today's development ominous is this. The Court agreed to grant the extra time, despite having already given an unprecedented five and a half hours to this historic case and a full 60 minutes to this specific question. Raising it to 90 minutes -- the same amount of time they are allotting to the issue of "severability" (i.e., whether the Court could strike down only the mandate, or must strike down the whole Act with it) -- suggests that they take the Anti-Injunction Act issue quite seriously.

Today's development is just another reminder that we can't count on the courts to repeal the government takeover of health care.

However the courts finally rule, we citizens must keep fighting to protect our threatened health care liberties, in the halls of Congress -- and at the ballot-box. 

Dean Clancy is FreedomWorks' Legislative Counsel and Vice President, Health Care Policy

US Embassy on Lock Down After Outragous Overreaction By Muslims

If this was really an accident, and even if it wasn't, why is this NATO Commander groveling to the enemy?  If a law was broken, deal with it legally, or perhaps this is the face of Sharia Law?
Why does the Qur'an cause people to act in a way that the rest of the world, apart from Sharia, would observe as criminal? - W.E.

thejihadresistance

Obama Admin International Photo Fail: Round 2

Big Peace

Remember when President Obama visited an Open Government Partnership event last September? The media emerged with this stellar example of Obama centralizing attention to himself:

Now his Secretary of State has done the same thing at the G20. Check out Hillary, going with the ever-fashionable lime green pantsuit:

Are these folks clueless or what?

Dots connect: Obama agents snagged on birth control

WND

A consortium of progressive groups working with a marketing outfit that helped to sell Obamacare to the public recently recommended that President Obama make contraception a re-election issue, WND has learned.

Billionaire George Soros is a primary funder to the progressive groups. 

The marketing outfit that coordinated the contraception campaign, the Herndon Alliance, received funds from the embattled Media Matters for America, which is also tied to the other progressive groups behind the contraception drive.

A national debate on contraception has been raging on Obama’s announced mandate to including birth control in health-care coverage.

GOP candidate Rick Santorum responded by saying states should have the right to outlaw the sale of contraception.

House Republicans drew fire when they invited a panel consisting only of men to debate the issue.

George Stephanopoulos of ABC News came under heavy fire after asking Mitt Romney during a presidential debate if a state could ban birth control.

“I’m thinking contraception? Who is talking about that as a political issue?” said Fox News political analyst Dick Morris. “Then I see George in the ABC debate ask Romney four times – the audience was hooting, they were booing, they were laughing at him – whether a state can ban birth control. And Romney said George, nobody is talking about that and he said no, but I want to know if you think they can. Do you think they can? And then Obama comes in with this birth-control regulation. And I think that this is all of a piece to set up contraception as the new social issue replacing abortion to separate the left and right.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also fueled the debate by going up against Obama on the contraception mandate.

In a Politico article yesterday titled “2012: The year of ‘birth control moms’?” progressive strategist Celinda Lake was quoted as saying Obama’s stance on contraception is enough to “really irritate” independent suburban moms and “re-engage” young, single women who haven’t tuned into the campaign so far.

Lake said that she and other Democrats see the strong Republican opposition to contraception as a way to win women back after they swung right in 2010, even though they backed Obama in big numbers in 2008.

Politico also quoted Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University, as warning of a major female backlash if the Republicans overreach on contraception.

“If women feel they are being targeted again, that women’s health is on the line – that’s not an argument you want to make in an election year,” she said.

Dick Polman, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote yesterday, “It’s hard to fathom why the Republicans would want to launch a suting women voters in November. But, hey, if that’s how they want tstained assault on birth control, align themselves with the most conservative voices in the Catholic Church, and thereby risk alienao play it, Barack Obama is only too happy to reap the benefits.”

Progressives behind contraception drive

Lake, quoted by Politico, is no bystander on the contraception debate.

WND has found that she is one of the driving forces behind the progressive election strategy to use contraception as a way to turn women against the Republican Party.

Lake heads Lake Research, which ran extensive polling in November in an effort to gauge voters’ reactions to including birth control or contraception in insurance coverage.

According to Lake’s website, the polling was done in conjunction with an organization called the Communications Consortium Media Center, or CCMC, and the Herndon Alliance marketing firm.

WND previously reported how the Herndon Alliance helped to market Obamacare, even providing suggestions on which words supporters should use to promote the bill.

As part of an in-depth investigative series on Media Matters for America, the Daily Caller revealed that the progressive media organization gave away $125,000 of its donors’ money to the Herndon Alliance.

That information came amid reports that White House staffers held regular meetings with Media Matters, which is under fire for unusual tactics, including compiling a de facto enemies list; announcing an all-out campaign of “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” aimed at the Fox News Channel; and reportedly seeking to investigate the personal lives of targeted reporters and news personalities.

Meanwhile, Lake’s research on voters attitudes on contraception found Catholic voters tend to mirror voters overall when it comes to reproductive healthcare services that the Affordable Care Act will cover.

Related Lake’s website: “Not only are Catholics favorable to including birth control or contraception in insurance coverage, these inclusions also make them more favorable toward the Affordable Care Act.”

“Moreover, a majority of Catholics say that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ criticism of the requirement to cover contraception and birth control with no co-pay or deductible makes no difference in how they view the Affordable Care Act.”

Lake also found affirmative reaction on the following issues, according to the Women Donors Network:

• Can communicating these new preventive health services to women boost public support for the Obama administration’s premiere domestic policy initiative?
• What are communication strategies to shift the discussion on health care to a winning one for progressives?

The Women Donor Network noted the polling was funded by Lake and conducted by CCMC and the Herndon Alliance.

CCMC says its work focuses on a cluster of issues, including “children and families, early education and child welfare reform, health care, women’s equality, reproductive rights, global population, the environment, voting, civil rights and immigration.”

Soros is a primary donor to CCMC via his Open Society Institute, according to documentation reviewed by WND.

The Open Society gave a $475,000 grant to fund CCMC’s so-called Global Population Initiative. The 1998-2003 initiative had the stated goal of increasing “media and public interest in world population, reproductive health and women’s empowerment.”
Soros granted another $625,000 to CCMC as part of the group’s Justice at Stake campaign.

Another $150,000 was provided to support CCMC’s Coalition for a Fair and Independent Judiciary.

CCMC is also funded by the Fulfilling the Dream Fund, a project of the Public Interest Projects.

The Fulfilling the Dream Fund is itself funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute as well as by the Woods Funds.

From 1998 to 2002, Obama was a paid director of the Woods Fund, serving on the board alongside Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, as WND was the first to report.

In 2010, CCMC received a $25,000 grant from the Tides Foundation, which is the single biggest donor to Media Matters for America.

Colorado may follow Utah’s lead in gold, silver currency

(Ed Andrieski | The Associated Press) These coins were photographed at Rocky Mountain Coin in Denver on Thursday. The five coins on the left were minted over a hundred years ago and have a value of thousands of dollars because of their gold and silver content. The five coins on the right were minted in the last few years and are worth their face value $1 to $25. Worried that American money is not as good as gold, Colorado lawmakers are considering a bill to legalize gold and silver coins as currency.

SaltLakeTribune

 

Denver • Worried that the U.S. dollar may not be good as gold, some Colorado lawmakers are pushing a bill to legalize gold and silver coins as usable currency.

The bill would not lead to folks carrying gold nuggets in their purses and would have little practical effect.

Rather, the policy proposal from a small group of conservative lawmakers reflects anxieties about the nation’s financial stability, the domestic consequences of the European debt crisis and chronic deficit spending in Washington, D.C.

“There are lots of concerns about the U.S. monetary system,” said the bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs. “Individuals and states ought to be increasing their gold reserves. There’s no way to maintain the value of anything if countries start a race to the bottom by inflating their currency to get out of debt.”

Utah legalized gold and silver as a currency option last year. And lawmakers in more than a dozen other states have proposed similar legislation on gold currency, said Rich Danker of the American Principles Project. The Washington-based conservative think tank favors a return to the gold standard.

But the proposal pending in the Colorado Senate faces long odds.

Currently, people who want to spend gold and silver coins must convert them to paper dollars first. Minted U.S. gold and silver coins retain their face value, even if the value of the coins’ precious metals rises. So a $20 gold coin minted in the 1800s is still legally worth $20, even though its real value may be thousands of dollars in today’s market.

The U.S. largely abandoned gold-backed money during World War I in order to pay for the war. In 1971, President Richard Nixon formally abandoned the gold standard.

Lambert said his bill is designed to provide alternatives in case the dollar falls precipitously. The bill cleared a Senate committee with bipartisan support and awaits a vote in the full chamber.

David Garibaldi: Jesus Painting

This is amazing. What a talent. What a Savior.
Thanks for sharing Sis -W.E.

Email File h/t Lauren Holladay

The Maine Caucus Recount (304 Votes Out Of 7000 Registered Republicans? Sound Right To ANYONE?)

Okay, I confess that I don't like showing ANYTHING from MSNBC, but I also don't like voter fraud, and deception, so.... I Blog, You Decide. -W.E. 

MOXNEWSdotcom