Monthly Archives: November 2013

Has The Government Lost Its Mind?

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Last week CNS News reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a draft resolution that would lift a 30-year-ban on Libyan nationals coming to the United States to work or train in “aviation maintenance, flight operations, or nuclear-related fields.”

The article reports:

In a statement on his congressional website, Rep. Chaffetz said that the draft final regulation could take effect without prior notice and comment. The congressmen say the prohibition was put in place in the 1980s after the wave of terrorist incidents involving Libyans.

“The administration justifies lifting this ban by claiming that the United States’ relationship with Libya has been ‘normalized,’” the statement said.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Reuters reports today:

Heavy fighting between militias using rifles, grenades and anti-aircraft weapons erupted in several parts of Tripoli on Tuesday in the worst violence in the Libyan capital for weeks.

…OPEC producer Libya faces chaos and anarchy as the government struggles to rein in militias, gangs and Islamist radicals in a country awash with arms two years after the ouster of former leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Several security officials declined to comment when contacted by Reuters on the latest incdient.

Officials are often reluctant to discuss militias which call the shots in the streets. Many technically work for the police or other other regular forces but in practice report to their commanders.

Fighting between militias is often about personal arguments, control of local areas, stolen cars or smuggled goods such as drugs or alcohol banned in Libya.

I don’t have a problem with taking in refugees from a war-torn country. I do have a problem with allowing people from a country with known terrorist ties to work or train in “aviation maintenance, flight operations, or nuclear-related fields.” The draft memo by the DHS is simply not sensible. I don’t understand how America’s relationship with a terrorist country can ever be ‘normalized.’

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The Temple Mount Sifting Project

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Tonight I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Gavriel Barkay speak at the Ahavath Torah Congregation in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Dr. Barkay spoke about the Temple Mount Sifting Project. The project takes mounds of Temple Mount material from the Kidron Valley dump to the Tzurim Valley National Park and sifts through the mounds for archaeological finds.

The website of the Temple Mount Sifting Project explains some of what the sifters have learned:

Early in the Sifting Project, we already noticed that there were differences in the frequencies of certain types of finds from different areas. Moreover, similar finds, and sometimes fragments of the same object, were discovered within short periods of time. This suggested that these similar objects were originally next to each other. But the full significance and value of dividing the material at the dump into different areas was discovered only last summer, during the processing of quantitative data for the Third Preliminary Report which we recently published. We found that artifacts which we assume to be from the same context were also distributed in a similar manner. Another example is that we found that artifacts which can be identified with the Horses of the Crusader era Templar Knights were distributed in a similar way among the dump areas.

The soil involved in the Temple Mount Sifting Project was illegally removed from the Temple Mount, resulting in the loss of much archaeological information. It is encouraging to know that the volunteers of the Temple Mount Sifting Project are recovering valuable information despite the illegal removal of the dirt from the Temple Mount.

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What Has Happened To Our Vetting Process For Public Office?

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Mohamed Elibiary is a member of DHS’s Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC). On Friday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that when asked to name an Islamic country where non Muslims are treated with equality, Mr. Elibiary tweeted, “America and yes I do consider the United States of America an Islamic country with an Islamically compliant constitution. Move On!”

Wow. The U.S. Constitution is not Islamically compliant. Women in America have an equal voice in legal matters. Women in America are not subject to female genital mutilation. Women in America are not put in prison if they are raped. America does not recognize honor killings. That’s just the beginning.

The article reports:

Elibiary has expressed great support for the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming in a recent interview with Clarion that the organization is “pragmatic” and “non-violent.”

Supporters of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have been cited for a range of violent crimes before and after the fall of Morsi, including the desecration of churches and other abuses.

“I believe that MB and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party, has by and large acted responsibly, if not always effectively, during the democratic transition period that Egypt is in the very early stages of,” Elbiary told Clarion.

Elibiary has served on the DHS’ “Countering Violent Extremist Working Group,” as well as its “Faith-based Security and Communications Advisory Committee.”

Elibiary’s critics say that someone with his views should not be advising DHS, the country’s chief counter-terror agency responsible for advising local governments across the country.

“This isn’t just a foreign policy issue,” said Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst for the Clarion Project. “Elibiary’s beliefs are reflected in DHS training guidelines that leave counter-terrorism personnel unaware that the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood even exists.”

Neither Elibiary nor a DHS spokesperson responded to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment.

We will never win the war on terror if we refuse to understand who the terrorists are.

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The Realities Of ObamaCare

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ObamaCare is more than a political issue. ObamaCare is an issue of life and death for people with serious diseases who have health insurance. It would have been very easy to pass a law that provided people who did not have health insurance with insurance without impacting those people who had health insurance they depended on. Unfortunately the Obama Administration chose to disrupt the health insurance of Americans with insurance in order to provide coverage for those Americans without health insurance.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted an article by Edie Littlefield Sundby about how ObamaCare is impacting her healthcare.

Ms. Sundby writes:

For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.

…Two things have been essential in my fight to survive stage-4 cancer. The first are doctors and health teams in California and Texas: at the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, and its Moores Cancer Center; Stanford University’s Cancer Institute; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The second element essential to my fight is a United Healthcare PPO (preferred provider organization) health-insurance policy.

Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.

But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market. The company suggested I look to Covered California starting in October.

…Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.

This lady has beat the odds of survival because of very good healthcare. She will now be denied that quality of healthcare under ObamaCare. This is no longer an abstract issue–it is now personal. Not only can she not keep the health insurance she liked, she cannot keep the doctors and the hospital she depended on. ObamaCare needs to be fixed quickly or done away with and replaced with a plan that actually works.

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Preventing Iran From Going Nuclear

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The Debka File released a report today that there had been an explosion at Iran‘s Arak heavy water reactor last week. The government of Iran had attempted to keep the news of the explosion quiet.

The article reports that the Iranian Atomic Council is investigating four possible causes of the explosion:

1. Sabotage.
2. A virus planted in the computers that control the systems administering the test.
3. An error in engineering calculations in the design of the coolant containers which underestimated their strength for standing up to the required level of pressure.
4.  The deliberate sale to Iran of inferior steel materials that were not strong enough to withstand such pressure.

The article concludes:

Last August, Iran informed the nuclear watchdog that the test with real fuel would be the final one before the reactor entered its running-in stage. The damage caused by the explosion will have postponed that stage indefinitely.
The Arak reactor, known as IR-40 and designed for a capacity of 40 megawatt, is the cause of deep concern in Israel because it is capable of producing plutonium for use in nuclear bombs as an alternative to enriched uranium. 

Obviously I have no idea what caused this explosion. What I do know is that explosions at reactor sites are a much better way to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons that an actual attack on Iran.

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Nationalizing Oil Rigs In Venezuela

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On Friday the Associated Press reported that PDVSA, the government-owned oil producer in Venezuela, seized control of two oil rigs owned by a unit of Houston-based Superior Energy Services. The company had shut down the rigs because the Venezuela oil monopoly was behind on payments.

The article reports:

Centeno (Jesus Centeno, local operations manager for Superior in the city of Anaco) said Superior stopped servicing PDVSA in July after negotiations broke down over millions of dollars in unpaid bills stretching back to December. Removal of the equipment will take a few days, so Superior is also feeding and sheltering the police officers and PDVSA crew on site, he said.

During the seizure of the wells, PDVSA ordered the workers to load the rigs on to trucks to be deployed at “critical wells” elsewhere.

Nicolas Maduro, the successor to Hugo Chavez, has not taken over any industries during the six months he has been President of Venezuela. This is the first move he has made in that direction. When Hugo Chavez began taking over industries, one news analyst observed that it would be difficult for him to keep those industries running at their profit levels without the knowledge of the companies that owned them. The seizure of these two rigs, which are repair rigs, is an illustration of that point.

Like it or not, free enterprise generates more wealth for more people than socialism.

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Understanding The Spin

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As millions of Americans lose their health insurance because of ObamaCare, the Democrats are trying to convince us that those policies were inferior and we didn’t want them anyway.

The following video is posted on YouTube:

Beware of the spin.

Good News For Religious Freedom

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Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted an article today about a recent decision by a divided three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The ruling states that forcing business owners to fund and facilitate contraception and sterilization services against the tenets of their faith encroaches on their free exercise of religious belief, and that the government’s argument that protecting womens’ health trumped that right was absurd.

The article reports:

…What Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in her decision was that corporations themselves, whether for-profit or non-profit, do not have First Amendment standing for religious exercise.  However, those who own or run them do, and even though the Gilardis’ businesses are corporations, the net effect of the HHS mandate is to penalize the Gilardis individually for living their faith.

The argument the Obama Administration has made for the requirement that companies provide contraception and abortion services is that these services need to be covered in order to protect women’s health. The Court seems to be saying that providing insurance for these services does not necessarily protect a woman’s health and should not override the religious freedom granted in the First Amendment.

This case or a similar case will eventually make its way to the Supreme Court.

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You Really Do Have Less Money To Spend

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CNS News reported today that the real median earnings of men and women have decreased 3.2 percent since President Obama took office in January 2009.The data was released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The article reports:

When Obama took office in the first quarter of 2009, median weekly earnings for full-time wage and salary workers was $344. At that time, the median weekly earnings for men were $384 and the median weekly earnings for women were $304.

Thus, overall real median weekly earnings dropped by $11 between the first quarter of 2009 and the third quarter of 2013 (from $344 to $333). That is a real decline of 3.2 percent.

Men’s real median weekly earnings have dropped $16 dollars since Obama took office (from $384 to $368). That is a real drop of 4.2 percent.

Women’s real median weekly earnings have dropped $2 since Obama took office (declining from $304 to $302). That is a real drop of 0.66 percent.

We really cannot afford too much more hope and change.

 

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Six????

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Oversighthouse.gov reported yesterday that the enrollment numbers in ObamaCare are not good.

The website reported:

WASHINGTON – House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., today released new HealthCare.gov meeting notes stating that as of 10/2/2013, there were “248 enrollments.” According to meeting notes from the day before, “6 enrollments have occurred so far with 5 different issuers.”

The numbers come from notes taken during “War Room” meetings at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance (CCIIO), part of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) tasked with implementing ObamaCare. The meetings were comprised of Administration officials and contractors discussing the standing issues and problems with the disastrous launch of HealthCare.gov.

The first set of notes, taken the morning of October 2nd, states, “6 enrollments have occurred so far with 5 different issuers… Issuers include BCBS NC, BCBS Kansas City, and CareSource. Healthcare Service Corporation had the 2 enrollments.”

At the next meeting held the afternoon of October 2nd, the notes add that “[a]pproximately 100 enrollments have happened as of this meeting.”

At the morning meeting held October 3rd, the notes say that “[as] of yesterday, there were 248 enrollments.”

The website provides a link to some of the meetings concerning ObamaCare. I really do wonder what the future of this program will be. It obviously is not providing healthcare for the majority of uninsured people in America. It seems as if it is only responsible for causing those people who were already insured to lose their health insurance.

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