Monthly Archives: November 2015

Wonderful News From Israel

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On October 26th, The Times of Israel posted a story about a breakthrough in cancer research that has occurred in Israel.

The article reports:

“Our interim results in a major study of patients with leukemia shows that our system yields the maximum efficiency from chemo, with a minimum of toxicity,” said Dr. Ruth Ben Yakar, CEO of BioSight. “Our method of using chemo does not cause brain damage or weaken blood cells,” with all its attendant phenomena, such as lethargy, loss of hair, etc.

BioSight’s “Trojan horse” chemo technology doesn’t only work for leukemia patients, said Ben Yakar. “We believe it will be effective in many other kinds of cancer as well. It’s a matter of finding the amino acid that a specific cancer is ‘allergic’ to, and packaging it in a structure that the cancer cell thinks contains material that strengthens it, while in reality it contains material that destroys it.”

I am sure everyone reading this has watched someone they love go through the agonies of chemotherapy because that was the only hope of survival. It would be wonderful if this procedure can cure cancer without doing major harm to the patient.

The article further reports:

While further tests are needed, Ben Yakar is very optimistic that the technology – which, she said, could be applied to other cancers as well — will receive recognition as a Breakthrough Therapy, able to treat patients who have no other medical recourse.

“We are excited with the results obtained to date with treatment of AML and ALL patients with Astarabine,” said Ben Yakar. “These patients would have otherwise had very limited treatment options. We are optimistic that Astarabine could bring real hope to many patients and an answer to unmet needs in the treatment of hematologic malignancies.”

This is fantastic news.

Quietly Infringing On The Second Amendment

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Historically, one of the first steps in gun confiscation is the registration of all privately-owned firearms. That step makes it very simple for authorities to quickly go to the homes where firearms are owned and take them away. Gun registration in America has not met with a lot of success, so those who would like to ignore the Second Amendment are looking for alternative ways to determine which households own guns.

ObamaCare included a section that stated:

(2) Limitation on data collection

None of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or an amendment made by that Act shall be construed to authorize or may be used for the collection of any information relating to-

(A) the lawful ownership or possession of a firearm or ammunition;

(B) the lawful use of a firearm or ammunition; or

(C) the lawful storage of a firearm or ammunition.

On November 4, 2015, U. S. House of Representatives Representative Michael M. Honda, a Democrat from California, introduced H.R. 3926 To amend the Public Service Act to provide for better understanding of the epidemic of gun violence, and for other purposes.

The bill includes the following section:

SEC. 4. Protecting confidential doctor-patient relationship.

Section 2717(c) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300gg–17(c)) is amended by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

“(6) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Notwithstanding the previous provisions of this subsection, none of the authorities provided to the Secretary under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, an amendment made by that Act, or this subsection shall be construed to prohibit a physician or other health care provider from—

“(A) asking a patient about the ownership, possession, use, or storage of a firearm or ammunition in the home of such patient;

“(B) speaking to a patient about gun safety; or

“(C) reporting to the authorities a patient’s threat of violence.”.

As of the writing of this article, the bill has 36 co-sponsors–all Democrats.

On Friday, a website called guns.com reported:

Federal research of gun violence as a health care issue had been largely defunded for 17 years until President Obama’s January 2013 executive order partially restored it. This order lead to the National Institutes of Health publicly requesting research projects on the topic for funding consideration.

The CDC peeked into gun violence as part of a White House by executive order following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, but its results were surprising to gun control advocates. The final study found that defensive gun use was common, while mass shootings were not. It was also discovered that when guns are used in self-defense the victims consistently have lower injury rates than those who are unarmed, even compared with those who used other forms of self-defense.

Taking guns away from innocent people does not make anyone safer. It amazes me that this seemingly rather obvious concept seems to be beyond the reach of many of our leaders.

They Must Be Using Common Core Math

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On Thursday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the cost of the new stricter Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) smog limits. According to EPA estimates, the new limits would cost Americans $1.4 billion a year (it’s bad enough that the government is taxing us to death, now they have a new way to take our money).

However, it doesn’t seem seem quite that simple. The article reports:

The right-leaning American Action Forum says EPA’s updated smog, or ground-level ozone, rule could cost $56.5 billion in lost wages based on economic losses from counties that couldn’t comply with the agency’s 2008 rule.

“Observed nonattainment counties experienced losses of $56.5 billion in total wage earnings, $690 in pay per worker, and 242,000 jobs between 2008 and 2013,” according to AAf policy experts.

The new regulations lower the ambient levels from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion. That is not a drastic change, but counties that have heavy manufacturing centers have had a difficult time complying with the current standards, much less the new ones. These counties may be forced to limit either manufacturing or oil and gas extraction.

How can Presidential candidates talk about bringing manufacturing back to America when federal bureaucracies are creating regulations that will ultimately limit manufacturing? I would also like to mention that these regulations are perceived as law, yet are not actually put into force the way that laws are created. The people creating these laws are not elected officials–the voters are not able to hold them accountable. I don’t know exactly how we have gotten to this place, but it is not constitutional. Laws need to be passed by Congress and signed by Congress. It’s time to get back to that.

Accountability?

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Fox News posted a Wall Street Journal story today about a federal audit of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The article reports:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency can’t adequately account for more than 70 percent of the money spent on fuel for New York in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, a federal audit released on Friday found.

FEMA spent $6.37 million for 1.7 million gallons of fuel as a gasoline shortage crippled the New York City area after the October 2012 storm, according to the audit from the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Homeland Security.

Has it occurred to Congress that this might be a part of the reason federal government spending is out of control?

It gets worse:

But the audit found “incomplete and questionable” documentation for $4.56 million of that spending. Additionally, $1.81 million worth of fuel went to recipients outside the scope of work that FEMA established for the crisis, the audit found. As a result, FEMA can’t be sure any of that fuel went to approved power restoration or emergency public transportation work in New York, the audit said.

…The unaccounted fuel deliveries occurred because FEMA didn’t comply with federal regulations requiring the agency provide proper documentation accounting for its work, the audit found.

There is a bit of irony here–a federal agency did not comply with excessive federal regulations.

Continually raising the debt limit is not a solution, because it does not address the actual problem–the spending.

 

Does The Truth Have An Impact?

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Today’s U.K. Daily Mail included an article about Hillary Clinton’s emails. I know we are all rather tired of hearing about Hillary’s emails, but the article brings out an interesting piece of new information.

The article reports:

Hillary Clinton‘s claim that she was unaware top secret documents on her private email server were highly classified took a hit on Friday, with the revelation of a State Department contract she signed in 2009.

The ‘Sensitive Compartmented Information Nondisclosure Agreement,’ which Clinton inked during her second day as Secretary of State, declared that she was personally responsible for determining if sensitive documents in her possession were classified at the government’s highest level.

‘I understand that it is my responsibility to consult with appropriate management authorities in the Department … in order to ensure that I know whether information or material within my knowledge or control that I have reason to believe might be SCI.’

SCI – Sensitive Compartmented Information – is the highest level of ‘top secret’ classification, applying to information so sensitive because of the sources and methods used to obtain it that it can only be viewed in a special room, hardened against electronic eavesdropping, constructed for that purpose.

Mrs. Clinton has stated on the campaign trail that she wasn’t expected to know what is classified. Obviously, the surfacing of this document shows that to be untrue. It is really becoming very clear that Mrs. Clinton has a very distant relationship with the concept of truth.

The article further states:

Government officials who sign the same document Clinton signed acknowledge ‘agree that I shall return all materials that may have come into my possession or for which I am responsible because of such access, upon demand by an authorized representative of the United States Government or upon the termination of my employment.’

Clinton never returned her email server to the federal government. She housed it in her Chappaqua, New York home while she was America’s top diplomat, and then moved it when she left the Obama administration – entrusting it to a Colorado company that was not cleared to handle SCI-level documents.

The State Department acknowledged in September that Clinton’s home-brew server also was never authorized to handle such information.

The FBI is currently investigating Hillary’s email mess, in an information dragnet that has also roped in her former chief of staff Cheryl Mills and current top campaign aide Huma Abedin.

Both of those women also signed the DCI nondisclosure agreement.  

As this scandal continues to unravel, it will be interesting to see how the voters weigh in.

Following The Money

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The good news is that Congress has chosen a panel to look into Planned Parenthood‘s fetal tissue practices. The bad news is that today’s Washington Times reports that the six Democrats named to the investigative panel have received more than $81,000 from PACs affiliated with Planned Parenthood. I am sure their investigation will be totally unbiased despite the amount of money received. Yeah, right.

The article reports:

More than half of those donations, or $43,362, came in the 2012 and 2014 election cycles, according to LifeNews.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi assigned the Democrats to the panel Wednesday, saying she was “proud to name six strong champions of women, families and facts to stand up against the latest Republican assault on women’s health.”

The Democrats are Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, Rep. Jackie Speier of California, Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee‘s Select Investigative Panel, chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, is charged with examining “medical procedures and abortion business practices” stemming from allegations raised by recent hidden-camera videos involving fetal-tissue procurement from Planned Parenthood.

Anyone who has watched the videos of abortionists harvesting fetal tissue has very little doubt as the humaneness of this practice, much less the legality. Even if you are willing to defend the practice of abortion-on-demand in the latter stages or pregnancy, I do not understand how you can condone the actions depicted on the videos. The fact that this matter is even being discussed is a truly sad commentary on the value our culture places on the lives of the most innocent among us.

It’s About Time

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On Tuesday The Washington Free Beacon reported that lawmakers in Congress have filed legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. It’s about time.

Who is the Muslim Brotherhood?

Gamal al-Banna, the brother of Hassan al-Banna, the man who founded of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, was interviewed for a Norwegian television documentary, called “Freedom, Equality and the Muslim Brotherhood,”, He stated, “They (the Muslim Brotherhood) do not believe in freedom at all. There is no Islamic authority that respects freedom or democracy.”

Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood are cut of the same cloth. The documents uncovered in the Holy Land Foundation Trial (if you follow the link, the first half is in Arabic, the second half is the English translation) explained clearly that the Muslim Brotherhood was (and is) in the process of implementing a plan to bring America under Sharia Law and create a world-side caliphate. The plan of the Brotherhood is to do this by infiltrating the American government and influencing policy. Al Qaeda has the same goal–they just want to do it by violent means rather than peaceful means.

Unfortunately, the Muslim Brotherhood has successfully infiltrated the American government at all levels. In 2012 US Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley was condemned by the Joints Chiefs of Staff (JCS) and relieved of teaching duties at Joint Forces Staff College for teaching a course judged to be offensive to Islam. Former CIA agent Claire M. Lopez commented on the state of things: “All US military Combatant Commands, Services, the National Guard Bureau, and Joint Chiefs are under Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey’s Muslim Brotherhood-dictated order to ensure that henceforth, no US military course will ever again teach truth about Islam that the jihadist enemy finds offensive (or just too informative).”

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

“I can say at the outset that elements of the Muslim Brotherhood both here and overseas have supported terrorism,” said Robert Mueller, the former director of the FBI, during testimony in 2011.

Intelligence officials have established that elements of the Brotherhood run terrorist financing operations in the United States. Much of this information, however, remains classified.

Other officials have explained that terror groups such as Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and al Qaeda can all trace their roots back to the Muslim Brotherhood and its leaders.

Cruz has also led congressional efforts to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps an official state sponsor of terrorism.

That bill, submitted at the end of September, would likely mitigate the impact of sanctions relief provided to Iran under the recently inked nuclear deal.

“Branches of the [Revolutionary Guard Corps] have murdered hundreds of Americans,” Cruz said in a statement at the time. “They have attacked our allies, notably Israel. They have provided material support for other designated terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas. Yet for years the United States has sanctioned [Revolutionary Guard Corps] entities while leaving the organization itself untouched.”

It is about time we declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

President Obama And The Democratic Party

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Yesterday John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line about Tuesday’s election results. The article notes some of the results:

Matt Bevin was elected Governor of Kentucky.

Republicans maintained the majority in the Virginia Senate.

Ohio rejected a proposal to legalize marijuana.

The Sheriff of San Francisco, who supported the ‘sanctuary city’ was defeated.

Houston voters rejected an initiative claiming to be non-discriminatory that discriminated against Christians.

There are some happy conservatives around the country right now. However, the Associated Press (AP) did not see it that way.

The article at Power Line reports some of the comments from AP about the election:

State and local elections across the country this week produced warning signs for both Democrats and Republicans as they press toward next year’s presidential contest.

…Democrats lost ground in state legislatures and governor’s mansions, raising questions about the party’s strength when Barack Obama’s name isn’t on the ballot.

…And in Kentucky, Republican Matt Bevin’s win for the governorship could be a sign that many voters are serious about electing outsider candidates.

…That sounds good for the GOP, whose leading presidential candidates are Donald Trump and Ben Carson.

…But Democrats still have important demographic advantages in the states that often determine presidential elections.

…And Republican leaders are skeptical that outsiders’ rebellious appeal will be sufficiently deep and lasting to send such a candidate to the White House.

The article at Power Line mentions one inconvenient fact:

The AP fails to mention that the Obama administration has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. President Obama is widely seen as both incompetent and outside the mainstream of American politics. This has largely driven the flight of voters to the GOP, not only in the House and Senate, both now under Republican control, but also in state offices across the country.

The conclusion:

It is remarkable how far the press will go to cover for the Democrats, even after ballots have been cast. But does it do the Democrats much good? On the evidence of the last five years, the answer is no.

At some point, the American voters are quite capable of looking past the hype and seeing the impact of eight years of President Obama. The next President will have to reconstruct both our economy and our healthcare system. It is becoming obvious that the Democrats are not capable of doing that.

I Think We Need To Re-examine Our Priorities

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Yesterday a website entitled The U. S. Herald posted an article about the funding of our Veteran’s Administration Hospitals.

The article reports:

The Secretary of Veteran Affairs, Robert McDonald, told Congress that if they do not receive $2.6 billion more in funds, they will have to deny veterans the care they deserve.

After discussing the possibility of closing some of the VA hospitals, Congress passed an emergency spending bill worth $3.5 billion.

In short while veteran’s are struggling to survive under a bureaucracy of corruption and incompetence, the “Commander in Chief”  will spend $4.5 billion dollars  in order to help rebuild Syria while also addressing the refugee camps scattered throughout Europe…betrayal does indeed have a price.

We need to take care of our veterans before we spend money on Syrian refugees. I am sorry, but we need to take a good look at our priorities here. Where is the International Red Cross? Where are the other Muslim countries in the Middle East? Where is the United Nations? This should not fall on America’s shoulders.

The Numbers Are Staggering

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On Sunday The Washington Times reported that with the signing of the new budget deal reached with Congress, by the time he leaves office President Obama will have increased to national debt to $20 trillion.

The article reports:

Mr. Obama’s spending agreement with Congress will suspend the nation’s debt limit and allow the Treasury to borrow another $1.5 trillion or so by the end of his presidency in 2017. Added to the current total national debt of more than $18.15 trillion, the red ink will likely be crowding the $20 trillion mark right around the time Mr. Obama leaves the White House.

When Mr. Obama took over in January 2009, the total national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. That means the debt will have very nearly doubled during his eight years in office, and there is much more debt ahead with the abandonment of “sequestration” spending caps enacted in 2011.

“Congress and the president have just agreed to undo one of the only successful fiscal restraint mechanisms in a generation,” said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union. “The progress on reducing spending and the deficit has just become much more problematic.”

Some budget analysts scoff at the claim made by the administration and by House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, that the budget agreement’s $112 billion in spending increases is fully funded by cuts elsewhere. Mr. Boehner left Congress last week.

This amount of debt is unsustainable.

I would also like to mention that the budget deal included taking $150 billion dollars from the Social Security Trust Fund (as if that ever existed) that working people continually pay into. (see rightwinggranny.com).

We need to elect people who will cut government spending–not increase it. Remember as you vote in your state’s primary election and next November that the debt we are incurring will be laid on your children and grandchildren. For their sake (as well as the sake of not becoming a third-world country), we need to rein in government spending as quickly as possible.

It Just Gets Messier

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The Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday that The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI). which was spun off from the Clinton Foundation in 2010, is not going to refile its tax returns. The CHAI failed to comply with a conflict-of-interest pledge after promising to do so.

The article reports:

The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which was spun off from the foundation in 2010, did not solicit a State Department ethics review of multiple contributions from foreign governments as mandated by a conflict-of-interest pledge established before Hillary Clinton assumed the role of secretary of state in 2009. A CHAI representative told Reuters in April that the organization was planning to refile its 2012 and 2013 tax returns.

However, Politico reported Monday that the same representative insists that the organization never promised to refile the forms and will not do so.

“Contrary to what was reported, CHAI has consistently stated that they would conduct a review process to determine whether the transposition errors required a refiling,”  CHAI spokeswoman Maura Daley stated. “After conducting the review, the transpositional errors made had no material impact and we do not believe a refiling is required.”

The Clinton Foundation itself has had some problems with accountability. In April of this year, The New York Post reported the following:

The Clinton Foundation’s finances are so messy that the nation’s most influential charity watchdog put it on its “watch list” of problematic nonprofits last month.

The Clinton family’s mega-charity took in more than $140 million in grants and pledges in 2013 but spent just $9 million on direct aid.

Democratic voters really need to reconsider whether or not they want to put these people back in the White House. They are obviously ethically challenged.

Why Science Should Never Be Considered “Settled”

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Yesterday Giz Magazine posted an article about Greenland‘s ice sheet. In recent years, conventional wisdom has been that Greenland’s ice sheet is getting darker due to soot from fossil fuel and/or forest first, possibly resulting in accelerated melting of the ice. Recently, Dartmouth College has come up with a new theory.

The article reports:

Now, however, researchers from Dartmouth College believe that the ice may still still be relatively clean, and that its darkness in the photos could just be due to faulty sensors on the satellites.

Ordinarily, untainted ice sheets reflect much of the sunlight that hits them back up into the sky, limiting how much solar heat is absorbed by the ice. With the Greenland ice sheet, the concern has been that dark carbon particles in the ice are allowing it to absorb more heat, speeding up the process at which the ice will ultimately melt away for good.

Led by Prof. Chris Polashenski, Dartmouth scientists analyzed dozens of snow samples taken from the ice sheet between 2012 and 2014, and compared them to samples taken over the prior 60 years. They reportedly found no significant difference in the amount of black carbon particles or mineral dust in the samples. Additionally, they ruled out algae as the culprit.

The researches have suggested that the degradation of sensors in NASA’s MODIS(Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellites could be making the ice look darker in the photos.

The bottom line here is very simple–we don’t control the climate. I believe that as the inhabitants of planet earth we have a responsibility to keep the planet as clean as possible. I also believe that we need to do that in a way that does not hamper our economic growth. Statistically, the countries doing the least polluting are the countries with free market economies and relatively free societies. No company operating in a free market environment wants to kill off its customers. We don’t need to give a world government control of the world’s economy in the name of controlling global warming–individual free countries are quite capable of managing both pollution and their economies.

 

The Current State Of ObamaCare

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Today’s Wall Street Journal included an article about the current state of ObamaCare. The article mentioned that Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell recently announced that by the end of next year she expects 10 million people to be enrolled in ObamaCare. She failed to mention that in March 2014 the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 21 million people would be enrolled in 2016. The Obama Administration explains the difference as the result of fewer companies dropping employee heath insurance than expected.

There are some facts left out of the statistics quoted by ObamaCare supporters. Supporters claim that ObamaCare helped 9 million Americans get health insurance coverage in 2014. The Heritage Foundation showed that nearly 9 million people were added to Medicaid. The 9 million were given free or nearly free health insurance. That’s really not much of a sales accomplishment.

The article reminds us:

In other words, ObamaCare expanded coverage in 2014 to the extent that it gave people free or nearly free insurance. That goal could have been accomplished without the Affordable Care Act. To justify its existence, ObamaCare must make affordable private insurance available to a broad cross-section of uninsured Americans who are ineligible for Medicaid.

But with fewer people buying insurance through the exchanges, the economics aren’t holding up. Ten of the 23 innovative health-insurance plans known as co-ops—established with $2.4 billion in ObamaCare loans—will be out of business by the end of 2015 because of weak balance sheets.

The article is written by Andy Puzder, Chief Executive Officer of CKE Restaurants. He observes that of his company’s 5,453 employees who were not eligible for company health insurance, only 420 enrolled in ObamaCare. The problem with ObamaCare is that it expects healthy young people to pay higher premiums to cover the cost of the older, less healthy, insured. Young people are not inclined to do that and are instead paying the penalty for not being insured. The problem with that is that the penalties are paid to the government and not to the insurance companies and do nothing to help with the imbalance on what is paid in and what is paid out. Insurance companies charge premiums based on actuary tables, and ObamaCare has chosen to ignore the basis of the business model of insurance companies. In essence, they have attempted to reinvent the wheel while leaving out the spokes and the hub. The private sector always does better than the government when it comes to business models.

The article concludes:

How have things changed under ObamaCare? Wealthy Americans continue to have health insurance, albeit at a higher price. But they can afford it. Many middle-class Americans are paying higher premiums they can hardly afford. And then millions more low-income Americans have heavily subsidized insurance or Medicaid coverage.

However, millions of other Americans who enjoyed good individual insurance before ObamaCare have found themselves forced out of affordable plans, with their new premiums rising rapidly. Other middle- and working-class Americans who were uninsured are still uninsured and paying the penalty or claiming an exemption. That isn’t affordable care. In many cases, it isn’t care at all.

Hopefully, we will elect a President next year who will rid us of this horrendous program.

Whoops!

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Breitbart.com posted an article today about the Antarctic ice cap–it’s growing–not shrinking. According to the latest study by NASA, the Antarctic is growing and reducing sea levels by 0.23 mm per year.

The article reports:

But the satellite measurements used in the latest NASA report tell a different story. Unlike previous studies – many largely based on guesswork because the continent is so vast and inhospitable, meaning that data is extremely limited – they use satellite altimeters to calculate changes in the surface height of the ice. What they show is that the amount of ice lost by glaciers collapsing into the sea has been exceeded by the gain in ice mass from accumulated snow.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

The scientific evidence contradicts the political guess. Man-made global warming is a political concept designed to give government control over how we use energy and who is allowed to use how much energy. Note that those screaming the loudest about global warming are flying around the planet in private jets. If they were truly all that worried, I suspect they might find a more efficient form of transportation.

 

 

You Only Get To Vote Once

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Yesterday Hot Air posted an article about voter registration in Ohio. Marc Elias is the general counsel for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Earlier this year he represented the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a group challenging the state’s new voter identification law. The purpose of the group was to register voters to increase voter participation in elections. Well, some of the people they registered to vote were amazing.

The article reports:

Marc Elias, an attorney at Perkins Coie who has become the go-to fixer for Democrats and is now general counsel for Clinton’s presidential campaign, became involved with the Ohio Organizing Collaborative this May when he filed a lawsuit on its behalf to challenge the state’s voter identification laws.

Now the group is being investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal investigation after a local board of elections alleged that 25 to 30 of the voter-registration applications that the group submitted appeared to be fraudulent…

“They have turned in roughly 530 voter registrations, of which five of them were dead people,” said Johnson. “They actually had the dead people’s drivers license numbers and Social Security numbers, and of course they forged the signatures of these dead people.”

It seems that Attorney Elias has an interesting history in supporting voter participation. In 2010 in the gubernatorial election in Minnesota, there were more votes that the total number of people who showed up and signed in to vote. One estimate puts the number at about 12,000, greater than the margin of victory claimed by Democrat, Mark Dayton. Attorney Elias argued the case, and Marc Dayton become the governor.

In making the case that going back and checking the ballots would be a waste of time, Attorney Elias stated:

“Once the ballots are opened and once you know the vote total, courts should be skeptical about procedural challenges that could have been brought earlier,” Elias said. “The time to challenge the voting process is before the election when the veil of ignorance still stands as to whether this process or that process benefits one candidate or another.”

Another example of the need for voter identification laws.

 

Unlikely To Appear In The Mainstream Media

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Yesterday Newsbusters posted a story about an important story that the mainstream media seems to be ignoring.

In an interview on 60 Minutes which aired on October 11th, President Obama was asked by Steve Kroft if he was aware of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The President replied, “No.”

The article reports:

Unfortunately for Obama, as the Times reported, the latest release of Hillary Clinton emails shows that the two corresponded via email. The State Department then gave the White House a heads-up before releasing them to congressional investigators, giving the administration the opportunity to quash their release:

Mr. Obama’s direct correspondence with Mrs. Clinton was forwarded by the State Department to the White House, which has decided against release, a move likely to intensify the struggle between Mrs. Clinton and congressional Republicans, who have pressed for disclosure of her emails as part of an investigation into the administration’s handling of the Benghazi events.

So how could Obama have answered “no” when CBS’s Steve Kroft asked him “Did you know about Hillary Clinton’s use of private email server?”

President Obama’s Press Secretary, Josh Earnest. has stated:

Mr. Obama told CBS News in March that he learned about Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server “the same time everybody else learned it — through news reports.” Mr. Earnest later clarified that the president was aware that she sometimes used a private email address but did not know the details about how the server was set up.

The writers of the article at Newsbusters want to know–”
how Obama could have stated that “I don’t think it posed a national security problem” if he, as Earnest admitted, “did not know the details about how the server was set up.” Interesting question.

The article finally states:

The President has been caught in a obvious falsehood, and has also been caught making an assessment of the presence or absence of a “national security problem” without have the requisite knowledge to make that assessment.

This would be a screaming-headlines story in a Republican or conservative presidential administration, but it has barely been noticed elsewhere in the establishment press. For example, the Associated Press has no related story; in fact, it has no story whatsoever on the latest Clinton email release.

Another example of the reason for the alternative media.

I’m Sure There Is Another Side To This Story, But I Haven’t Heard It

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On Friday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about Medicare cutting back the work of the auditors that oversee the program.

The article reports:

Recovery audit contractors, as they are known, recouped $2.4 billion in improper payments in 2014, down from $3.7 billion in 2013 before the agency scaled back other audit activities and temporarily suspended the program for several months, according to a Medicare report.

Starting in January, the auditors will be able to review only 0.5% of the claims the agency pays to each hospital or provider every 45 days, according to an Oct. 28 letter to the contractors. That is a quarter of the prior threshold: 2% of claims.

The article concludes:

Those recoveries represent just a fraction of the total amount Medicare estimates it spends on incorrect payments. The Medicare program made $58 billion in improper payments to medical providers and health plans in 2014, according to PaymentAccuracy.gov, a federal website that tracks agencies’ estimates of waste.

Separate contractors and the Justice Department separately pursue fraudulent payments from the program.

I hate to be difficult here, but $58 billion is not pocket change. As federal budget deficits increase, we need to look at the places where we are spending money needlessly. Fraudulent claims made to various agencies might be a really good place to start.

Here is another thing to think about when you consider budget deficits. According to a Huffington Post article from 2013:

According to the U.S. Census about 57 million, or 1 in 5 Americans, live with disabilities, and about 38 million or 1 in 10 has a severe disability. The Social Security disability programs provide vital support only to those with the most significant disabilities — about 14 million children and working-age adults.

I am not ready to believe that 1 in 5 Americans is disabled or that 14 million Americans are disabled. That number seems extremely high to me. That might be another thing to look at when examining the budget.

The Truth Has A Way Of Showing Up

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the early intelligence reports regarding the attack at the diplomatic facilities in Benghazi. Michael Morell, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, wrote a book entitled The Great War of Our Time.

The article in The Daily Caller quotes his book:

In Morell’s 2015 book The Great War of Our Time, he writes that while the CIA knew “the demonstration and violence in Cairo were sparked by people upset over a YouTube video,” intelligence “analysts never said the video was a factor in the Benghazi attacks.” (p. 205-206).

It has also been shown that Mrs. Clinton told the Libyan President on the night of the attacks that Ansar as-Sharia was responsible. She also emailed her daughter stating that the attack was carried out by an “Al Qaeda-like group.” The Egyptian Prime Minister also stated on the day after the attack that the attack was not related to the video–it was a planned attack. So we are left to wonder why the American public was given an account of the events of September 11, 2012, that was very different from the facts as they were known almost immediately after the attack.

Mrs. Clinton made the following statement before the Benghazi Committee hearing last week:

When asked at last week’s Benghazi Committee hearing why she blamed the You Tube video when she knew very well it was not the cause of the attack, Clinton proclaimed, she “needed to be talking about the video.”

“None of us can speak to the individual motivations of those terrorists who overran our compound and who attacked our CIA annex. There were probably a number of different motivations,” she said, adding that the intelligence community “took the lead” in analyzing the information at the time.

“We also knew, congressman, because my responsibility was what was happening throughout the region, I needed to be talking about the video, because I needed to put other governments and other people on notice that we were not going to let them get away with attacking us, as they did in Tunis, as they did in Khartoum,” she said.

It is becoming very obvious that Mrs. Clinton has been lying about Benghazi since it occurred. It is unfortunate that she has chosen to involve other people in her lies–sending Susan Rice out to do the Sunday talk shows to spread the lies. However, even in the Obama Administration, the truth has a way of coming to the surface.