Special note: #Benghazi updates are posted in the comments section here. Please feel free to add your own and share what is there. Thank you.
Previously...
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
My take on the Padres-Dodgers #Basebrawl
A sports take, because knee-jerk reactions from a national media that is Los Angeles/Dodgers-centric get tiresome. My response to Sports on Earth columnist Gwen Knapp's "No Reason" post...
Gwen Knapp joins a crowded left field of sports media colleagues on the Dodgers' bandwagon who, in response to last night's brawl, are all running with the same lame "tale-of-the-tape" meme. To be fair, Carlos Quentin is a bull and Zack Greinke isn't. But that doesn't tell the whole story, especially when one factors in the damage that a well-located fastball can do.
Oh, and Q was not crowding the plate:
Unfortunately, Gwenn also fails to mention that the official Twitter feed for the Dodgers went trolling afterwards. Or what happened after the game, when the REAL adolescent, Matt Kemp, went looking for a fight...
Quoting the original caption: Los Angeles Dodgers' Matt Kemp, left, is stopped by San Diego Padres' Clayton Richard when Kemp confronted the Padres' Carlos Quentin in the tunnel walk-way exiting Petco Park following the baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in which a brawl occurred when Quentin was hit by a pitch from the Dodgers' Zack Greinke in San Diego, Thursday, April 11, 2013. Greinke suffered a broken left collarbone in the brawl.(AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)
...which resulted in a San Diego police officer having to break up the confrontation brought on by Kemp:
Quoting the original caption: A San Diego police officer arrives to break up a confrontation involving Los Angeles Dodgers' Matt Kemp, left, and San Diego Padres' Clayton Richard after Richard stopped Kemp when he confronted the Padres' Carlos Quentin in the tunnel walk-way exiting Petco Park following the baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres in which a brawl occurred when Quentin was hit by a pitch from the Dodgers' Zack Greinke in San Diego, Thursday, April 11, 2013. Greinke suffered a broken left collarbone in the brawl. (AP Photo/Lenny Ignelzi)
I'm a lifelong baseball fan -- I love the game. I recall a time when a home plate umpire rang up Matt Kemp on a called third strike that he didn't like. Kemp was in a rut (rare for him) and he WENT OFF. Now I've heard cursing before but Kemp was dropping F-bombs and was loud and vulgar all the way to the dugout... and he didn't stop there. He went on and on. It was cringe-worthy. The hundreds of fans within earshot would agree. I can't say that those who heard Kemp's tirade lost respect for him as a "professional" but I know that I did that day.
Back to point, how the Dodgers (didn't) handle themselves last night detracts from what should be a national celebration this Monday -- Jackie Robinson Day. It's a bad time for bad PR, especially with the anniversary of the brutal beating that the still-recovering Bryan Stow suffered in the Dodger's parking lot two years ago, and the Dodgers' former owner Frank McCourt still not having picked up the tab for Stow's mounting medical costs. But I guess that's a different topic that "sports writers" are afraid to touch.
To wrap this up, I'd argue that, besides Kemp, another person who acted without reason was Zack Greinke himself, who suffers from Social Anxiety Disorder. And taking on a bull by the horns didn't prove to be too smart, did it?
Related: What a #Basebrawl can do for a team...
Gwen Knapp joins a crowded left field of sports media colleagues on the Dodgers' bandwagon who, in response to last night's brawl, are all running with the same lame "tale-of-the-tape" meme. To be fair, Carlos Quentin is a bull and Zack Greinke isn't. But that doesn't tell the whole story, especially when one factors in the damage that a well-located fastball can do.
Oh, and Q was not crowding the plate:
h/t to CJ Nitkowski for image
Unfortunately, Gwenn also fails to mention that the official Twitter feed for the Dodgers went trolling afterwards. Or what happened after the game, when the REAL adolescent, Matt Kemp, went looking for a fight...
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| Clayton Richard in #BeastMode |
...which resulted in a San Diego police officer having to break up the confrontation brought on by Kemp:
.jpg) |
| More of Clayton Richard in #BeastMode |
I'm a lifelong baseball fan -- I love the game. I recall a time when a home plate umpire rang up Matt Kemp on a called third strike that he didn't like. Kemp was in a rut (rare for him) and he WENT OFF. Now I've heard cursing before but Kemp was dropping F-bombs and was loud and vulgar all the way to the dugout... and he didn't stop there. He went on and on. It was cringe-worthy. The hundreds of fans within earshot would agree. I can't say that those who heard Kemp's tirade lost respect for him as a "professional" but I know that I did that day.
Back to point, how the Dodgers (didn't) handle themselves last night detracts from what should be a national celebration this Monday -- Jackie Robinson Day. It's a bad time for bad PR, especially with the anniversary of the brutal beating that the still-recovering Bryan Stow suffered in the Dodger's parking lot two years ago, and the Dodgers' former owner Frank McCourt still not having picked up the tab for Stow's mounting medical costs. But I guess that's a different topic that "sports writers" are afraid to touch.
To wrap this up, I'd argue that, besides Kemp, another person who acted without reason was Zack Greinke himself, who suffers from Social Anxiety Disorder. And taking on a bull by the horns didn't prove to be too smart, did it?
Related: What a #Basebrawl can do for a team...
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Say No to Flo and Say No to Progressive!
Which brings us to another man, one who hides behind a mask... literally. His name is Peter B. Lewis.
Warning: "What you are about to read may disturb you."
Peter B. Lewis is Progressive Insurance Corporation's billionaire Chairman of the Board, a "good friend" of George Soros, and an admirer of Communist dictator Mao Tse-Tung.
Hoover's Handbook of American Business has described Lewis as a "functioning pot-head." Peter B. Lewis uses his Progressive wealth to promote drug use, including psychedelics, and finance Democrats, including Obama.
Peter B. Lewis corresponded with the UN to undermine US drug laws so that children would have access to pot. In 2000, he was busted by customs agents overseas for importing hashish.
The progressive movement sees Peter B. Lewis as their champion -- he's a major player/backer for hard-left, anti-American organizations and extreme Leftist causes including the since-morphed ACORN, the Campaign for America's Future, the Center for American Progress, the Democracy Alliance, GOTV (Get Out The Vote), Media Matters for America, MoveOn.org, militant pro-homosexual organizations, SEIU, the Tides Foundation, and the various "Occupy Movement" fronts.
The message that Lewis's money buys ends up in "mainstream" media by design. But it's not just the insidious narrative being pushed by "the news" or all of those ditzy Flo commercials -- it's the funding that Lewis provides for the Left's never-ending culture war against our Judeo-Christian heritage.
Here's a video from 2007 that follows some of that money...
Peter B. Lewis's son Jonathan, from a divorced marriage, once described the closeness of the Lewis-Soros financial collusion as being "like a married couple." Lewis is against teachers being tested for drugs, and is leveraging what public support there is for the decriminalization of marijuana to achieve these "progressive" goals: The further "dumbing down" of America's youth, and the infusion of cash that revenue collectors will receive if/when the government legalizes (taxes) pot. In other words, it's a win-win for the Left... more low information voters and a bigger government-bloated stash.
Final note: The "ditziness" of Progressive Insurance's Flo may come from Peter B. Lewis himself -- he's appeared at a city council meeting tricked out in his Lone Ranger outfit. (He has a football field-length yacht of the same name -- a place he once got caught using as a stash for his drugs.)
But it's Lewis's actions that mark him as more than an eccentric billionaire -- he's a danger to the republic. It's time to say no to Flo and say no to Progressive!
Links...
Peter B. Lewis -- Discover the Networks
From 2003: Who is Peter Lewis? (audio/text)
From 2005: Peter B. Lewis: "Aviator" of the Left?
From 2007: C-SPAN Video (41:09) Phil Kent talks about Foundations of Betrayal: How the Liberal Super-Rich Undermine America
Related...
Whether it's the "black box" mandate, Government Motors' OnStar, or Progressive's new "Snapshot" device, Big Brother is watching...
Ed Arnold: "...the Snapshot device is a tattletale. [It] records the time of day and speed per second one drives. Progressive... uses the time of day and speed to calculate the number of miles a customer drives, as well as how often the driver slams on the brakes."
Progressive's 'Snapshot' device worries consumer advocacy group
Another reason to say no to Progressive, from last year...
Matt Fisher: "Carrying Progressive insurance and getting into an accident does not entitle you to the value of your insurance policy. It just pisses off Progressive's lawyers... At the trial, the guy who killed my sister was defended by Progressive's legal team.... If you are insured by Progressive, and they owe you money, they will defend your killer in court in order to not pay you your policy."
My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court
Matt's heartrending story became international news:
'My dead sister paid for Progressive to defend driver who killed her': Outrage at insurance company's efforts to avoid paying claim
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Will Obamacare be a future Cause of Death?
***UPDATES***
In the future, the day may come when, God Forbid, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" is listed as a Cause of Death, i.e., they died of Obamacare. Liberals wanting to "self check-out" (and not eat a bullet) may even get the choice of getting their ticket punched before boarding/PERMANENTLY CHECKING OUT in a G-LOC (G-force induced Loss of Consciousness), courtesy of their local George Soros-franchised "euthanasia" roller coaster.
**WARNING** The following video is disturbing...
The Left could then have their organs harvested/"recycled"/sold to the highest bidder.
Don't think horrors such as this can't happen. "Bioethicist" Ezekiel "Zeke" Emanuel, MD, PhD, brother of former White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm, acted as Special Adviser on Health Care to Obama, assisting him and the White House's Office of Management and Budget on how to spend billions of our taxpayer dollars on health care. Dr. Zeke also argued for an organ allocation system he coined "The Complete Lives System" (Google it and CRINGE -- it seems straight out of Soylent Green and reads like it came from no doctor any of us ever knew nor one who took the Hippocratic Oath).
Then again, Dr. Zeke's career started in the isolated world of Academic Medicine before moving on to the Public Sector and into the White House, where he was able to affect HIS kind of policy change and practice HIS kind of medicine, Obamacare, because he had the President's ear... literally. The only thing missing from this checksum zero equation is the marshaling of the soon-to-be-dead for vote casting and signing their estates away... to The State.
h/t to "90Ninety Miles From Tyranny" for image
The following articles and news stories just begin to touch on the tyranny that is Obamacare...
Top Ten ObamaCare Horror Stories the Media Is Covering Up
John Nolte: Because the mainstream media lobbied every bit as hard as Obama to win passage of ObamaCare, they are every bit as invested in doing whatever is necessary to see that it is perceived as a success. Unfortunately for Americans who expect truth from their media, this means the media are having to manufacture a false reality that says ObamaCare is, to steal a phrase, "doing fine."
John Nolte: Because the mainstream media lobbied every bit as hard as Obama to win passage of ObamaCare, they are every bit as invested in doing whatever is necessary to see that it is perceived as a success. Unfortunately for Americans who expect truth from their media, this means the media are having to manufacture a false reality that says ObamaCare is, to steal a phrase, "doing fine."
The top ten, "in no particular order..."
1. Millions are and will lose the insurance Obama promised they could keep. Because ObamaCare forces employers to offer expensive Cadillac plans but also offers the option of paying a fine for not providing health insurance that can be cheaper than providing it, between seven and twenty million Americans are likely to lose their health insurance coverage according to the Congressional Budget Office. The original estimate was closer to four million.
2. The cost of healthcare premiums is about to further skyrocket. Premium costs have already exploded, but that is a slow-motion explosion. In the near future, we could see costs double or worse. Naturally, these costs will hit an already burdened middle class hardest.
3. Lost jobs. Lost jobs.
The Federal Reserve's March beige book on economic activity noted that businesses "cited the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act as reasons for planned layoffs and reluctance to hire more staff."
Meanwhile, human resources consulting firm Adecco found that half of the small businesses it surveyed in January either plan to cut their workforce, not hire new workers, or shift to part-time or temporary help because of ObamaCare.
4. Potential doctor shortages that will mean rationing. The healthcare industry is already a bureaucratic quagmire. ObamaCare is about to add steroids. As the profession becomes tyrannized by government, the talented people currently practicing medicine plan to get out sooner than expected. Who knows how many will choose not to get in.
Doctor shortages lead to the nightmare known as rationed care. Here's an unsettling example already being practiced.
5. Somewhere around $800 billion in tax increases will hit America's middle class. This added burden will not only further oppress a middle class already reeling from a drop in wages over the last few years, but could damage the overall economy.
6. Inflation, the cruelest tax on the poor. When businesses get socked with added costs brought about by higher taxes and burdensome government mandates, they pass those costs along to the consumer in the form of higher prices.
7. Added bureaucracy. Even those Obama lapdogs over at the Washington Post's Wonk Blog are admitting that applying for health care is about to get more burdensome than the byzantine paperwork involved in buying a home.
8. To cut costs or to avoid having to provide insurance, workers on the economic margins are already losing hours, which means a lower paycheck. There are a million sad stories in ObamaVille; here are just a few of them.
9. ObamaCare is projected to add $6.2 TRILLION to a deficit the GAO has already declared "unsustainable." That's "trillion" with a "t".
10. More taxes than currently estimated are likely to hit because of situations like this one.
Phil Kerpen: "Obamacare is falling apart before our eyes. The long-term care insurance program known as the CLASS ACT was deemed financially unworkable and shut down by the administration’s own actuaries. Taxpayer-funded health care cooperatives never got off the ground and were shut down in the fiscal cliff deal. Last month the federal Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan stopped accepting enrollment applications." Continue reading...
Joe Klein: "Let me try to understand this: The key incentive for small businesses to support Obamacare was that they would be able to shop for the best deals in health care super-stores—called exchanges. The Administration has had 3 years to set up these exchanges. It has failed to do so.
This is a really bad sign."
Paul Bedard: Tens of thousands of health care professionals, union workers and community activists hired as "navigators" to help Americans choose Obamacare options starting Oct. 1 will be paid up to $48 an hour, more than six times the federal minimum wage of $7.25, according to new regulations issued Wednesday.
Wolf Blitzer: "Here's a question, were Americans misled about the cost of Obamacare? The president has long pledged that his health care law would reduce premiums and raise benefits. Now the Obama administration is conceding that some people, yes, some people will have to pay more, potentially even a lot more for health insurance coverage."
And there is this...
David Catron: ...it should be obvious to the meanest intelligence that PPACA [Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] is, and always has been, a vote-buying scheme. And what's the use of a vote-buying scheme that doesn't steer potential Democrats to voter registration forms?
A genuine health care reform law would not contain provisions that virtually guarantee huge increases in health insurance premiums. Yet, this is such a predictable effect of Obamacare that even Kathleen the Terrible no longer bothers to deny it. Last week, Sebelius admitted that a lot of people will see their premiums rise: "These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, and so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market." Health "reform," you may recall, was supposed to decrease costs.
Nor would genuine health care reform reduce access to health care. Obamacare will allegedly introduce tens of millions of new patients into the health system, yet many physicians are so put off by its intrusiveness that they plan to retire. Thomas Hemphill reports that "nearly one-third of all physicians will retire by 2020; many of them undoubtedly encouraged by the Affordable Care Acts restrictions on personal autonomy, bureaucratic regulation, and diminished job satisfaction." Obamacare will, that is, exacerbate the physician shortage.
During the health care debate, survey after survey showed that the two things Americans wanted most from reform were increased access and lower cost. Obamacare gave us precisely the reverse. Continue reading...
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| Pelosi, wielding a super-size gavel, laughs on her way to the Obamacare vote. |
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| The maze that is Obamacare (click to enlarge, though it won't help) |
The video below features an excerpt from a 2008 speech by Obama's former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick, speaking to a British audience about why he favors government-run health care:
Donald Berwick: "Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health care is by definition redistributional."
Of course, the great Ronald Reagan warned us about the evils of socialized medicine fifty years ago...
Flashback: In 1961, Ronald Reagan, then a private citizen, joined the American Medical Association in opposing the Democrat Party's attempt to shove socialized medicine down the American people's throat. Reagan's warning is even more relevant today.
"One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project... Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it." ~Ronald Reagan
The following ties in with Reagan's warning about socialism, i.e., the federal government not only telling us what doctor we can see, but quite possibly, in accordance with their central plan, telling us what our children can study:
Five Devastating Effects Obamacare Will Have on Young Adults
Alyene Senger: A provision neatly tucked into the massive health care law is an effective nationalization of the student loan industry. Obamacare ends government subsidies to private lenders and puts the federal government in charge of originating and servicing federally backed student loans. As almost anyone is eligible for a student loan, Heritage's Lindsey Burke explains that "these policies only exacerbate the college cost crisis, continuing a vicious cycle whereby college costs rise in tandem with ever-increasing federal subsidies... Colleges will once again be able to increase costs, and students with easy access to low-interest loans will once again be able to pay." Continue reading...
Five Devastating Effects Obamacare Will Have on Young Adults
Alyene Senger: A provision neatly tucked into the massive health care law is an effective nationalization of the student loan industry. Obamacare ends government subsidies to private lenders and puts the federal government in charge of originating and servicing federally backed student loans. As almost anyone is eligible for a student loan, Heritage's Lindsey Burke explains that "these policies only exacerbate the college cost crisis, continuing a vicious cycle whereby college costs rise in tandem with ever-increasing federal subsidies... Colleges will once again be able to increase costs, and students with easy access to low-interest loans will once again be able to pay." Continue reading...
Alyene Senger closes out her article with this: "Obamacare’s negative impact on young Americans is just one of many reasons the law should be repealed."
Thank God for Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who is trying to do just that: "The American people, especially vulnerable women, vulnerable children, vulnerable senior citizens, now get to pay more and get less. That's why we're here because we're saying let's repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens. Let's not do that! Let's love people, let's care about people. Let's repeal it now while we can."
With news that Obamacare is already in trouble, with insurance exchanges being delayed an entire year, and Medicare not paying for diagnostic tests, and now thousands of patients being turned away from cancer clinics -- all because Obama pulled hundreds of billions of dollars out of Medicare to fund his Obamacare, it's obvious that, even before full implementation, Obamacare must meet a quick and timely death... or it will be the death of the Republic.
Let's wrap this up with a "Free Obamacare Pink Slip Notice," courtesy of Doug Ross: "As a public service for businesses impacted by Obamacare's Byzantine maze of penalties, fees, taxes, mandates and other regulations that will require you to shed workers, our enterprising Cub Reporter Biff Spackle offers the following Semi-Official Obamacare Pink Slip."
Doug says, "Feel free to reproduce anywhere, anytime as a reminder to the drones that they may want to think before they vote next time around. That is, if there is a next time."
Related links...
George Soros’ Social Agenda for America
George Soros -- Discover the Networks
The Project on Death in America
Related links...
George Soros’ Social Agenda for America
George Soros -- Discover the Networks
The Project on Death in America
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
The sequester a week later: Obama still holding America hostage
Last week's #SequesterTHAT post looked at Obama's sequester from many different angles and the subterfuge behind it. Some satire was thrown in for laughs. Unfortunately, no one is laughing this week because Obama doubled down and used the sequester he created to inflict even more damage.
Why did he do that? Because Obama hates America. Everything about that statement and the image that goes with it must be seen through the prism of this quote from Dinesh D'Souza: "Obama has a dream -- a dream from his father. That the sins of colonialism be set right, and America be downsized." And the way Obama uses the sequester against us does just that.
Another reason Obama doubled down? The THUG in him lashed out. And his plan to kill two birds with one sequester backfired politically. America and the opposition party are still alive and kicking despite his and "mainstream" media's best efforts to shift the blame with their constantly regurgitated talking points. The sky hasn't fallen yet, though Obama wishes it had...
Which brings us to the next phase of his plan -- call it the kicker: Obama continues laying the groundwork, as he did once again in his most recent Weekly Address, for the sequester that he created to be THE excuse for our stagnating economy... which of course it isn't. But with "mainstream" media's help yet again, the focus remains not on the failure of Obamanomics, but on the sequester. How diabolical Obama is with this vicious circle... while America circles the drain. He's a schemer from hell.
The links...
Doug Ross: "This administration is the first in American history that is out to punish the American people. That is out to make the American people suffer. We will be very fortunate to survive the next four years intact."
Emails confirm Obama is the first president in history who is out to hurt the American people as badly as possible
Guy Benson on Obama's political team: "They are deliberately hurting you, America, hoping that you'll blame the people they want you to blame. For now, it's backfiring."
Making the Sequester Really Hurt -- Everyone
Congressman Louie Gohmert on Obama's decision to use the sequester to punish Americans: "It is just incredible that anybody would think like that. 'Gee, we're being cut so let's make America hurt, make them suffer so they'll give us more of our money.' In the last four years, the executive branch budget has gone up over 20 percent, and they can't stand to have that increase lowered to 18 percent increase? It is outrageous."
Obama’s ‘make America hurt’ plan
Carol Platt Liebau: As everyone knows, when any US president takes the oath of office, he swears to "preserve, protect and defend" the USA. That promise can reasonably be construed to mean that a president is obligated to make sensible efforts, wherever possible, to minimize -- not enhance -- any "pain" experienced by law-abiding US citizens as he executes his duties. How disgraceful, then, to note that the Obama administration is trying to implement the sequester's funding reductions in a way that will maximize problems for those he is sworn to serve.
Making the Sequester Really Hurt -- Everyone
SEQUESTER MEMO: 'Make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be'...
"Email tells feds to make sequester as painful as promised"
"House Republicans renewed their complaints about the Obama administration's move to release illegal immigrants from local jails over budget cuts, after obtaining an Immigration and Customs Enforcement document that appeared to detail plans to release 1,000 detainees every week."
Republicans blast ICE over document previewing release of 1,000 detainees every week
Joel Gehrke reports: House investigators learned Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials developed plans to release about 5,000 illegal immigrant detainees, although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has denied responsibility for the decision. “An internal document obtained by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Administration officials at ICE prepared cold calculations to release thousands of criminal aliens onto the streets and did not demonstrate any consideration of the impact this decision would have on the safety of Americans,” committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., announced.
DHS plans to release 5,000 illegal immigrants due to sequestration
(CNN) -- The U.S. government on Thursday notified 60,000 federal workers responsible for securing borders and facilitating trade that they will face furloughs due to government-wide spending cuts. Customs and Border Protection said it expects furloughs and other austerity will cause delays at ports of entry, including international arrivals at airports, and reduce the number of border patrol officers on duty at any one time.
Judson Berger reports: Another federal employee has come forward to claim the Obama administration resisted efforts to ease the impact of sequester. A U.S. park ranger, who did not wish to be identified, told FoxNews.com that supervisors within the National Park Service overruled plans to deal with the budget cuts in a way that would have had minimal impact on the public. Instead, the source said, park staff were told to cancel special events and cut "interpretation services" -- the talks, tours and other education services provided by local park rangers. "It's obvious that they want the public to feel the pain in order to push this agenda that Washington wants," the ranger said. "A lot of these parks can absorb these cuts without the public's visit being affected."
Park ranger: Supervisors pushed sequester cuts that visitors see
"A leaked email from an Agriculture Department field officer adds fuel to claims President Obama's political strategy is to make the billions in recent federal budget cuts as painful as possible..."
Leaked email adds fuel to claims White House playing politics over impact of cuts
"What sequester? Feds hiring!"
Giuliani: Obama’s Antics over Sequestration Are “Absurd”
Judge Napolitano On Leaked Sequestration Emails: "Impeachable" Conduct
Crumble: Fact-Checkers, Congress, Voters Reject Obama's Sequester Hype
CBS News: White House ‘Cries Wolf’ 3 Times Over Past 10 Days About Sequester Cuts
Daniel Halper: ABC reports that most folks support spending cuts, as long as defense budgets aren't slashed: For all the dire warnings, most Americans welcome a five percent cut in overall federal spending this year. But the defense budget is another matter. The public by nearly 2-1, 61-33 percent, supports cutting the overall budget along the lines of the sequester that took effect last Friday. But by nearly an identical margin, Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll oppose an eight percent across-the-board cut in military spending.
William Kristol: President Obama is an appalling commander in chief. In the last couple of months alone, he’s selected and muscled through the Senate the least qualified nominee for secretary of defense in a half century; forced out of his position early a superb combatant commander, General James Mattis, because Mattis took seriously the Iranian threat; and blithely ordered women into combat arms units, with no pretense of serious consideration of the effect of this on the capability, discipline, and morale of our warfighters. Before that, while growing every other part of the federal government, he cut defense. So we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not doing anything serious about the further devastating cuts sequestration will impose on the military.
Thomas Sowell: "Republicans in the House of Representatives have offered to pass legislation giving President Obama the authority to pick and choose what gets cut -- anywhere in the trillions of dollars of federal spending -- rather than being hemmed in by the arbitrary provisions of the sequester. This would minimize the damage done by budget cuts concentrated in limited areas, such as the Defense Department. But it serves Obama's interest to maximize the damage and the public alarm, which he can direct against Republicans. President Obama has said that he would veto legislation to let him choose what to cut. That should tell us everything we need to know about the utter cynicism of this glib man."
Meanwhile... "Federal coffers are already well fed on taxes: The Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government is on pace to bring in a record $2.7 trillion in tax receipts this fiscal year."
Living Large in the Obama White House: "The hoi polloi aren't welcome, but Marie Antoinette would be at home."
Charles C. W. Cooke: We are now firmly ensconced in the brutal Age of the Sequester, and things in America are grave. The federal government, we learned on Wednesday, is so strapped for cash that the president has been forced to cut off the People’s access to the home he’s borrowing from them. He didn’t want to have to do this, naturally — “particularly during the popular spring touring season.” But then Congress just had to go and acquiesce with measures that the president himself suggested and signed into law. How beastly! We axed 2.6 percent from a $44.8 trillion budget, and now the president can’t even afford the $18,000 per week necessary to retain the seven staff members who facilitate citizens’ enjoying self-guided tours around the White House. The executive mansion is not in that much trouble, of course. It’s certainly not in sufficiently dire straits for Air Force One ($181,757 per hour) to be grounded, or to see the executive chef ($100,000 per year) furloughed, or to cut back on the hours of the three full-time White House calligraphers ($277,050 per year for the trio), or to limit the invaluable work of the chief of staff to the president’s dog ($102,000 per year), CONTINUE READING...
Obscene Government Waste
By Alan Caruba
http://cnsnews.com/blog/alan-caruba/obscene-government-waste
"Mark Levin exposes a WASTELAND of govt overspending while Obama LIES to your face saying we can’t cut spending" [AUDIO]
http://www.therightscoop.com/mark-levin-exposes-a-wasteland-of-govt-overspending-while-obama-lies-to-your-face-saying-we-cant-cut-spending/
And then there is this... "The Floodgates Open: More Accounts of White House Thuggery Emerge"
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/03/03/The-Floodgates-Open-More-Accounts-of-White-House-Thuggery-Emerge
Speaking of thugs...
"From Stalin to Sequestration"
By Ion Mihai Pacepa
http://pjmedia.com/mihaipacepa/2013/03/06/from-stalin-to-sequestration/?singlepage=true
Just face it: Barack Obama is trying to hold America HOSTAGE.
And anyone who can't see that suffers from Stockholm syndrome.
Why did he do that? Because Obama hates America. Everything about that statement and the image that goes with it must be seen through the prism of this quote from Dinesh D'Souza: "Obama has a dream -- a dream from his father. That the sins of colonialism be set right, and America be downsized." And the way Obama uses the sequester against us does just that.
Another reason Obama doubled down? The THUG in him lashed out. And his plan to kill two birds with one sequester backfired politically. America and the opposition party are still alive and kicking despite his and "mainstream" media's best efforts to shift the blame with their constantly regurgitated talking points. The sky hasn't fallen yet, though Obama wishes it had...
Which brings us to the next phase of his plan -- call it the kicker: Obama continues laying the groundwork, as he did once again in his most recent Weekly Address, for the sequester that he created to be THE excuse for our stagnating economy... which of course it isn't. But with "mainstream" media's help yet again, the focus remains not on the failure of Obamanomics, but on the sequester. How diabolical Obama is with this vicious circle... while America circles the drain. He's a schemer from hell.
The links...
Doug Ross: "This administration is the first in American history that is out to punish the American people. That is out to make the American people suffer. We will be very fortunate to survive the next four years intact."
Emails confirm Obama is the first president in history who is out to hurt the American people as badly as possible
Guy Benson on Obama's political team: "They are deliberately hurting you, America, hoping that you'll blame the people they want you to blame. For now, it's backfiring."
Making the Sequester Really Hurt -- Everyone
Congressman Louie Gohmert on Obama's decision to use the sequester to punish Americans: "It is just incredible that anybody would think like that. 'Gee, we're being cut so let's make America hurt, make them suffer so they'll give us more of our money.' In the last four years, the executive branch budget has gone up over 20 percent, and they can't stand to have that increase lowered to 18 percent increase? It is outrageous."
Obama’s ‘make America hurt’ plan
Carol Platt Liebau: As everyone knows, when any US president takes the oath of office, he swears to "preserve, protect and defend" the USA. That promise can reasonably be construed to mean that a president is obligated to make sensible efforts, wherever possible, to minimize -- not enhance -- any "pain" experienced by law-abiding US citizens as he executes his duties. How disgraceful, then, to note that the Obama administration is trying to implement the sequester's funding reductions in a way that will maximize problems for those he is sworn to serve.
Making the Sequester Really Hurt -- Everyone
SEQUESTER MEMO: 'Make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be'...
"Email tells feds to make sequester as painful as promised"
"House Republicans renewed their complaints about the Obama administration's move to release illegal immigrants from local jails over budget cuts, after obtaining an Immigration and Customs Enforcement document that appeared to detail plans to release 1,000 detainees every week."
Republicans blast ICE over document previewing release of 1,000 detainees every week
Joel Gehrke reports: House investigators learned Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials developed plans to release about 5,000 illegal immigrant detainees, although Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has denied responsibility for the decision. “An internal document obtained by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Administration officials at ICE prepared cold calculations to release thousands of criminal aliens onto the streets and did not demonstrate any consideration of the impact this decision would have on the safety of Americans,” committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., announced.
DHS plans to release 5,000 illegal immigrants due to sequestration
(CNN) -- The U.S. government on Thursday notified 60,000 federal workers responsible for securing borders and facilitating trade that they will face furloughs due to government-wide spending cuts. Customs and Border Protection said it expects furloughs and other austerity will cause delays at ports of entry, including international arrivals at airports, and reduce the number of border patrol officers on duty at any one time.
Judson Berger reports: Another federal employee has come forward to claim the Obama administration resisted efforts to ease the impact of sequester. A U.S. park ranger, who did not wish to be identified, told FoxNews.com that supervisors within the National Park Service overruled plans to deal with the budget cuts in a way that would have had minimal impact on the public. Instead, the source said, park staff were told to cancel special events and cut "interpretation services" -- the talks, tours and other education services provided by local park rangers. "It's obvious that they want the public to feel the pain in order to push this agenda that Washington wants," the ranger said. "A lot of these parks can absorb these cuts without the public's visit being affected."
Park ranger: Supervisors pushed sequester cuts that visitors see
"A leaked email from an Agriculture Department field officer adds fuel to claims President Obama's political strategy is to make the billions in recent federal budget cuts as painful as possible..."
Leaked email adds fuel to claims White House playing politics over impact of cuts
"What sequester? Feds hiring!"
Giuliani: Obama’s Antics over Sequestration Are “Absurd”
Judge Napolitano On Leaked Sequestration Emails: "Impeachable" Conduct
Crumble: Fact-Checkers, Congress, Voters Reject Obama's Sequester Hype
CBS News: White House ‘Cries Wolf’ 3 Times Over Past 10 Days About Sequester Cuts
Daniel Halper: ABC reports that most folks support spending cuts, as long as defense budgets aren't slashed: For all the dire warnings, most Americans welcome a five percent cut in overall federal spending this year. But the defense budget is another matter. The public by nearly 2-1, 61-33 percent, supports cutting the overall budget along the lines of the sequester that took effect last Friday. But by nearly an identical margin, Americans in this ABC News/Washington Post poll oppose an eight percent across-the-board cut in military spending.
William Kristol: President Obama is an appalling commander in chief. In the last couple of months alone, he’s selected and muscled through the Senate the least qualified nominee for secretary of defense in a half century; forced out of his position early a superb combatant commander, General James Mattis, because Mattis took seriously the Iranian threat; and blithely ordered women into combat arms units, with no pretense of serious consideration of the effect of this on the capability, discipline, and morale of our warfighters. Before that, while growing every other part of the federal government, he cut defense. So we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not doing anything serious about the further devastating cuts sequestration will impose on the military.
Thomas Sowell: "Republicans in the House of Representatives have offered to pass legislation giving President Obama the authority to pick and choose what gets cut -- anywhere in the trillions of dollars of federal spending -- rather than being hemmed in by the arbitrary provisions of the sequester. This would minimize the damage done by budget cuts concentrated in limited areas, such as the Defense Department. But it serves Obama's interest to maximize the damage and the public alarm, which he can direct against Republicans. President Obama has said that he would veto legislation to let him choose what to cut. That should tell us everything we need to know about the utter cynicism of this glib man."
Meanwhile... "Federal coffers are already well fed on taxes: The Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government is on pace to bring in a record $2.7 trillion in tax receipts this fiscal year."
Living Large in the Obama White House: "The hoi polloi aren't welcome, but Marie Antoinette would be at home."
Charles C. W. Cooke: We are now firmly ensconced in the brutal Age of the Sequester, and things in America are grave. The federal government, we learned on Wednesday, is so strapped for cash that the president has been forced to cut off the People’s access to the home he’s borrowing from them. He didn’t want to have to do this, naturally — “particularly during the popular spring touring season.” But then Congress just had to go and acquiesce with measures that the president himself suggested and signed into law. How beastly! We axed 2.6 percent from a $44.8 trillion budget, and now the president can’t even afford the $18,000 per week necessary to retain the seven staff members who facilitate citizens’ enjoying self-guided tours around the White House. The executive mansion is not in that much trouble, of course. It’s certainly not in sufficiently dire straits for Air Force One ($181,757 per hour) to be grounded, or to see the executive chef ($100,000 per year) furloughed, or to cut back on the hours of the three full-time White House calligraphers ($277,050 per year for the trio), or to limit the invaluable work of the chief of staff to the president’s dog ($102,000 per year), CONTINUE READING...
Obscene Government Waste
By Alan Caruba
http://cnsnews.com/blog/alan-caruba/obscene-government-waste
"Mark Levin exposes a WASTELAND of govt overspending while Obama LIES to your face saying we can’t cut spending" [AUDIO]
http://www.therightscoop.com/mark-levin-exposes-a-wasteland-of-govt-overspending-while-obama-lies-to-your-face-saying-we-cant-cut-spending/
And then there is this... "The Floodgates Open: More Accounts of White House Thuggery Emerge"
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/03/03/The-Floodgates-Open-More-Accounts-of-White-House-Thuggery-Emerge
Speaking of thugs...
"From Stalin to Sequestration"
By Ion Mihai Pacepa
http://pjmedia.com/mihaipacepa/2013/03/06/from-stalin-to-sequestration/?singlepage=true
Just face it: Barack Obama is trying to hold America HOSTAGE.
And anyone who can't see that suffers from Stockholm syndrome.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
#SequesterTHAT with "Let the SKYFALL" ♫ #Sequester Parody Song
I am all for making very significant cuts to the bloated federal budget -- our government has a spending and debt problem -- but I would bet that many in agreement never considered how Obama would use cuts from the sequester that he created against us... including laying the groundwork for it to be an excuse for his failed economic policies.
Obama's sequester machinations are scare tactics, but he is still leveraging this crisis that he manufactured to make us less safe... and I think that was his plan all along. It's the perfect cover. He gets to gut our military with wholesale troop cuts, delay aircraft carrier deployments, etc., while "mainstream" media covers for him.
Still, I say "Embrace that sequester" -- even if it means Obama won't stop using it against us. That's one sure way to awaken more people to the disastrous effects of his agenda. That, in turn, will ignite more "brushfires of freedom" against Obama's tyranny.
Carol Platt Liebau has an article titled "Explaining the Sequester," where she posted Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo's response to Obama mouthpiece "Jay Carney's gibe about what he would say to workers furloughed because of the sequester." Carol calls Pompeo "a conservative who is able to explain his positions with ease and clarity." After reading Pompeo's statement, I think you'll agree. Carol also offers up this chart "that highlights, in graphic form, the size of the cuts the President is claiming will bring America to its knees":
The sequester was Obama's idea despite his claims to the contrary...
Quoting: "The book 'The Price of Politics,' by Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward, makes it clear the idea for the draconian spending cuts originated in the White House – and not in Congress … Woodward describes the behind-the-scenes haggling last year that laid the groundwork for sequestration."
Bob Woodward: My extensive reporting for my book "The Price of Politics" shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government. Obama personally approved of the plan...
The sequester is used against us...
Doug Ross @ Journal: "Obama created the sequester. He designed its brutal cuts to the military. And he desperately seeks to eviscerate the military."
A.W.R. Hawkins: "In anticipation of sequester cuts, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta has ordered a reduction from two carrier groups to one in the Persian Gulf."
US Naval Institute News: "The U.S. Navy will delay the refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for an unknown period because of the uncertain fiscal environment due to the ongoing legislative struggle, the service told Congress in a Friday message obtained by USNI News. ... The move by the navy is the second this week involving funding for carriers. On Wednesday it announced it would delay the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) to the Middle East do to the ongoing budget strife bringing the total number of carriers in U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to one until funding normalizes."
John McCormack: [Sequestration] will force the Marine Corps to shrink by 25 percent--from 202,000 Marines to 145,000. What's more, "by the end of calendar year 2013, less than half of our ground units will be trained to the minimum readiness level required for deployment," Marine Corps commandant James Amos testified to Congress this month.
John Hill: Despite potential budget cuts being 4 days away and with Congress and the Administration negotiating to avoid them, the Department of Homeland Security has already started releasing hundreds of illegal aliens held in local jails in anticipation of automatic "sequestration" cuts – out of a planned total of more than 10,000 aliens to be released.
Note: In my opinion, Barack Obama should be held accountable for any crimes committed by the criminal illegal aliens that he released.
Obama's Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warns of massive nationwide flight delays and the closure of hundreds of air-traffic control towers.
"Sequester: Is your airport on the chopping block?"
Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan: "There are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices they can't come back this fall."
Duncan: Thousands of teachers to lose jobs as result of sequester
Obama's AG Eric Holder seems to be inviting a terrorist attack on the United States of America with these sequester comments...
Eric Holder Sounds the Sequester Alarm
The demagogue loses credibility...
Bob Woodward: Obama is exhibiting a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns. ... Under the Constitution, the President is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the President going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.'
But that hasn’t stopped the Chicken Little in Chief from surrounding himself with every last teacher, senior citizen and emergency responder who will be catastrophically victimized by hardhearted Republicans. Curses on those meanie Republicans! How dare they acquiesce to the very plan for “cuts” — or rather, negligible reductions in the explosive rate of federal spending growth — that Obama himself hatched?
Brett LoGiurato: Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a "very senior person" at the White House warned him in an email that he would "regret doing this," the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.
WMAL: Bob Woodward isn't the only person who's received threats for airing the Obama administration's dirty laundry. It seems anyone is a potential target of the White House these days -- even former senior members of the Clinton administration. A day after Woodward's claim that a senior White House official had told him he would "regret" writing a column criticizing President Obama's stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL's Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats...
Here's Chris Good's 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester:
1. Air Travel Disruption
PostScript from Reason.com Associate Editor Mike Riggs...
[T]here's a small problem with the [OMB] report: One of the cuts it warns against would affect an agency that no longer exists--and didn't exist when the OMB sent its report to congress.
Obama's sequester machinations are scare tactics, but he is still leveraging this crisis that he manufactured to make us less safe... and I think that was his plan all along. It's the perfect cover. He gets to gut our military with wholesale troop cuts, delay aircraft carrier deployments, etc., while "mainstream" media covers for him.
Still, I say "Embrace that sequester" -- even if it means Obama won't stop using it against us. That's one sure way to awaken more people to the disastrous effects of his agenda. That, in turn, will ignite more "brushfires of freedom" against Obama's tyranny.
Carol Platt Liebau has an article titled "Explaining the Sequester," where she posted Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo's response to Obama mouthpiece "Jay Carney's gibe about what he would say to workers furloughed because of the sequester." Carol calls Pompeo "a conservative who is able to explain his positions with ease and clarity." After reading Pompeo's statement, I think you'll agree. Carol also offers up this chart "that highlights, in graphic form, the size of the cuts the President is claiming will bring America to its knees":
Now on to the nuts and bolts...
Quoting: "The book 'The Price of Politics,' by Washington Post Associate Editor Bob Woodward, makes it clear the idea for the draconian spending cuts originated in the White House – and not in Congress … Woodward describes the behind-the-scenes haggling last year that laid the groundwork for sequestration."
Bob Woodward: My extensive reporting for my book "The Price of Politics" shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government. Obama personally approved of the plan...
The sequester is used against us...
Doug Ross @ Journal: "Obama created the sequester. He designed its brutal cuts to the military. And he desperately seeks to eviscerate the military."
A.W.R. Hawkins: "In anticipation of sequester cuts, Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta has ordered a reduction from two carrier groups to one in the Persian Gulf."
US Naval Institute News: "The U.S. Navy will delay the refueling of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for an unknown period because of the uncertain fiscal environment due to the ongoing legislative struggle, the service told Congress in a Friday message obtained by USNI News. ... The move by the navy is the second this week involving funding for carriers. On Wednesday it announced it would delay the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) to the Middle East do to the ongoing budget strife bringing the total number of carriers in U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) to one until funding normalizes."
John McCormack: [Sequestration] will force the Marine Corps to shrink by 25 percent--from 202,000 Marines to 145,000. What's more, "by the end of calendar year 2013, less than half of our ground units will be trained to the minimum readiness level required for deployment," Marine Corps commandant James Amos testified to Congress this month.
John Hill: Despite potential budget cuts being 4 days away and with Congress and the Administration negotiating to avoid them, the Department of Homeland Security has already started releasing hundreds of illegal aliens held in local jails in anticipation of automatic "sequestration" cuts – out of a planned total of more than 10,000 aliens to be released.
Note: In my opinion, Barack Obama should be held accountable for any crimes committed by the criminal illegal aliens that he released.
Obama's Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood warns of massive nationwide flight delays and the closure of hundreds of air-traffic control towers.
"Sequester: Is your airport on the chopping block?"
Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan: "There are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices they can't come back this fall."
Duncan: Thousands of teachers to lose jobs as result of sequester
Obama's AG Eric Holder seems to be inviting a terrorist attack on the United States of America with these sequester comments...
Eric Holder Sounds the Sequester Alarm
Charlie Spiering: "President Obama warned Congress that if the sequester cuts go through on Friday, significant cuts would bring about serious consequences in America."
Obama: "Criminals will be let go if sequester cuts go through"
Amy Payne: "Now that President Obama has turned against sequestration, he is suggesting that spending cuts to federal agencies must result in dire consequences. Firefighters, emergency responders, and teachers will all be cut, he claims. Media outlets have played up these sob stories, copying White House releases in their local news stories and soliciting sad testimonials from people who supposedly would be affected by these cuts."
Amy Payne: "Now that President Obama has turned against sequestration, he is suggesting that spending cuts to federal agencies must result in dire consequences. Firefighters, emergency responders, and teachers will all be cut, he claims. Media outlets have played up these sob stories, copying White House releases in their local news stories and soliciting sad testimonials from people who supposedly would be affected by these cuts."
The demagogue loses credibility...
Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist Charles Krauthammer:
For the first time since Election Day, President Barack Obama is on the defensive. That's because March 1, automatic spending cuts ("sequestration") go into effect – $1.2 trillion over 10 years, half from domestic (discretionary) programs, half from defense.
The idea had been proposed and promoted by the White House during the July 2011 debt-ceiling negotiations. The political calculation was that such draconian defense cuts would drive the GOP to offer concessions.
It backfired. The Republicans have offered no concessions. Obama's bluff is being called and he's the desperate party. He abhors the domestic cuts. And as commander in chief he must worry about indiscriminate Pentagon cuts that his own defense secretary calls catastrophic.
Bob Woodward: Obama is exhibiting a "kind of madness I haven't seen in a long time" for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns. ... Under the Constitution, the President is commander-in-chief and employs the force. And so we now have the President going out because of this piece of paper and this agreement. 'I can't do what I need to do to protect the country.'
ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl: "The Obama administration's list of what will happen [scroll to the end of this post] if upcoming spending cuts go into effect is downright terrifying. In recent days, officials have warned of more forest fires, workplace deaths and, heaven-forbid — chicken shortages."
Jeff Sessions: "The President had 18 months to develop reforms to improve the government, but instead he announced furloughs of federal workers as a political cudgel. Yet, his golf weekend at the yacht club with Tiger Woods cost taxpayers over a million dollars—enough money to save 341 federal workers from furlough."
Jeff Sessions: "The President had 18 months to develop reforms to improve the government, but instead he announced furloughs of federal workers as a political cudgel. Yet, his golf weekend at the yacht club with Tiger Woods cost taxpayers over a million dollars—enough money to save 341 federal workers from furlough."
Glenn Kessler on the thousands of supposedly pink-slipped teachers: "...no one in the county seemed to know what [Obama's Education Secretary Arne] Duncan was talking about..."
Doug Ross @ Journal: If Ray LaHood sabotages air transportation as he promises, he needs to be subpoenaed by the House.
Image courtesy of Glenn McCoy
Michelle Malkin: Traffic alert: There’s a massive clown car pileup in the Beltway. And with the White House court jesters of sequester behind the wheel, no one is safe. Fiscal sanity, of course, is the ultimate victim.
President Obama has been warning America that if Congress allows mandatory spending “cuts” of a piddly-widdly 2 percent to go into effect this week, the sky will fall. The manufactured crisis of “sequestration” was Obama’s idea in the first place.
But that hasn’t stopped the Chicken Little in Chief from surrounding himself with every last teacher, senior citizen and emergency responder who will be catastrophically victimized by hardhearted Republicans. Curses on those meanie Republicans! How dare they acquiesce to the very plan for “cuts” — or rather, negligible reductions in the explosive rate of federal spending growth — that Obama himself hatched?
John Hayward: [I]n reality, the President has not invested one single moment in putting together a package of “smart” spending cuts to avoid the sequester… while Republicans have. They’ve put several specific, realistic plans on the table. A responsible President would be negotiating the differences between his plan and the Republican plan, not racing around the country whipping up panic without ever putting up ideas of his own. And the notion that this bloated government can’t trim spending by 2.3 percent without grabbing more tax revenue is patently absurd.
Sarah Palin: "If we can’t stomach modest cuts that would lower federal spending by a mere 0.3% per year out of a current federal budget of $3.6 trillion, then we might as well signal to the whole world that we have no serious intention of dealing with our debt problem.
If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.
If we ARE serious about putting our fiscal house in order, then let’s stop the hysterics, tighten our belts, and take our medicine."
If we are going to wet our proverbial pants over 0.3% in annual spending cuts when we’re running up trillion dollar annual deficits, then we’re done. Put a fork in us. We’re finished. We’re going to default eventually and that’s why the feds are stockpiling bullets in case of civil unrest.
If we ARE serious about putting our fiscal house in order, then let’s stop the hysterics, tighten our belts, and take our medicine."
More from Charles Krauthammer: What we're talking about here is two cents on the dollar. Every dollar the government spends today, 35 cents is borrowed from the Chinese and others. What is going on here is ending up in a position where we borrow not 35, but 33 cents, and that is going to bring Armageddon. An example of the cynicism of this campaign, is one lobbyist for the liberal causes leading 3,000 organizations in opposing the cuts, who told The Washington Post the following: 'The worst case scenario is the sequester hits and nothing really bad happens.'
Think of the cynicism of that. The worst case scenario is that the government makes a small, minuscule cut in spending on the way to beginning of a journey of recovery in to fiscal health, and that it doesn't hurt us, we actually come out of it alive. And, that to them, is the worst case. It means, think of how they are weighing the national interest, which needs a cut in spending and these parochial special interests.
"Thug Obama" threatens critics...
Think of the cynicism of that. The worst case scenario is that the government makes a small, minuscule cut in spending on the way to beginning of a journey of recovery in to fiscal health, and that it doesn't hurt us, we actually come out of it alive. And, that to them, is the worst case. It means, think of how they are weighing the national interest, which needs a cut in spending and these parochial special interests.
"Thug Obama" threatens critics...
Brett LoGiurato: Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a "very senior person" at the White House warned him in an email that he would "regret doing this," the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.
WMAL: Bob Woodward isn't the only person who's received threats for airing the Obama administration's dirty laundry. It seems anyone is a potential target of the White House these days -- even former senior members of the Clinton administration. A day after Woodward's claim that a senior White House official had told him he would "regret" writing a column criticizing President Obama's stance on the sequester, Lanny Davis, a longtime close advisor to President Bill Clinton, told WMAL's Mornings on the Mall Thursday he had received similar threats...
Here's Chris Good's 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester:
1. Air Travel Disruption
2. Longer Security Lines at Airports
3. Slower Extreme-Weather Forecasts
4. Greater Risk of Wildfires
5. Pest-Infested Crops
6. Nationwide Meat and Poultry Shortage
7. Prison Lockdowns
8. Slower Gun Background Checks
9. Fewer FBI Agents
10. Immigration Backlog
11. Longer Waits for Passports and Foreign Visas
12. Neglect for Mentally Ill, Homeless, and Substance Addicted
13. 125,000 Would Be at Risk of Homelessness
14. 600,000 Women and Children Thrown Off WIC
15. 424,000 Fewer AIDS Tests, 7,400 Fewer Patients Could Get HIV Medications
16. No Rent Assistance for 7,300 AIDS Patients
17. 807,000 Fewer Hospital Visits for Native Americans, Hospital Closures
18. Dilapidated Low-Income Housing, Closed Projects
19. No Child Care for 30,000 Kids, No Head Start for 70,000
20. Longer Waits for Disability Payments
21. $725 Million in Cuts for Low-Income and Special-Needs Students
22. Cuts to Schools on Indian Reservations
23. Native American Tribes Would Lose Almost $130 Million
24. Higher Risk of Terrorism
25. Untranslated Wiretaps
26. Less Surveillance
27. Classified Information Vulnerable to Foreign Spies
28. An Even More Porous Border
29. Untended Nukes
30. U.S. Less Prepared for a 'WMD Incident'
31. FBI Will Eventually Be Using Broken Equipment, Could Have Trouble Tracking Fingerprints
32. 1/3 Cutback in Pacific Naval Presence
33. Reduced Army Readiness
34. No Maintenance for Some Ships and Planes
35. 46,000 Defense Jobs Could Be Lost
36. Some Air Force Planes Can't Fly
37. Less Cybersecurity
38. $1 Billion Cut from Disaster Relief
39. First-Responder Layoffs40. Coast Guard Operations Cut by 1/4, Drugs Coming In on Boats
41. $500 Million Cut from Foreign Economic and Military Aid
42. $380 Million Cut from Global AIDS Funding
43. Less Security at U.S. Facilities Abroad, Less Protection for Americans Abroad
44. Freed Up Terror Money
45. U.S. Attorneys Will Take 2,600 Fewer Cases
46. Smaller Unemployment Checks
47. 1,200 Fewer OSHA Inspections, Potential for More Workplace Deaths
48. Fewer Mine Inspections
49. No Job Training for Hundreds of Thousands of People, Less Training for Veterans
50. 1,928 Fewer Small Business Loans
51. Slower Reporting on Economic Data, Less Analysis of It
52. Parks? Can't Use 'Em.
53. 128 Refuges Could Close
54. Less Drilling and Exploration, Offshore and Onshore
55. Fewer Air-Quality Forecasts
56. 1,000 Fewer Environmental Compliance Inspections
57. Less Nuclear Cleanup
PostScript from Reason.com Associate Editor Mike Riggs...
[T]here's a small problem with the [OMB] report: One of the cuts it warns against would affect an agency that no longer exists--and didn't exist when the OMB sent its report to congress.
Looks like the only thing left for us to hear is that "sequester" is a disaster of biblical proportions... I mean Old Testament, real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes... The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
A final note from Charles Krauthammer: 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. ... [Obama] 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.
T-minus how many seconds and counting?!?
Update: The #sequester a week later: Obama still holding America hostage
A final note from Charles Krauthammer: 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. ... [Obama] 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.
T-minus how many seconds and counting?!?
Update: The #sequester a week later: Obama still holding America hostage
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