Send this BUM back to the U.K....if they don't want him back let them send him somewhere else....he's just an arrogant, rude Brit that has NO PLACE here in America. Why CNN would keep him on payroll is beyond me...let him go back to Britain and start his phone hacking again.....
Petition: British don’t want Piers Morgan back
12:57 PM 12/26/2012 Caroline May
Piers Morgan is a man without a country … sort of.
In the wake of a petition on Whitehouse.gov calling for the CNN host’s deportation back to the United Kingdom, a response petition has cropped up on Change.org from British citizens urging the UK government not to take Morgan back.
“We got rid of him once and why should we have to suffer again. The Americans wanted him so they should put up with him. We washed our hands of him a long time ago,” the introduction to the Change.org petition explains.
The petition, addressed to the British Home Secretary Theresa May simply states: “Stop Piers Morgan from being deported back to the UK from America.”
The request to keep Morgan out includes a nine-minute YouTube video of Morgan, former News of the World editor, testifying before the before the 2011 Leveson inquiry into British press ethics following the mobile phone hacking scandal at News of the World.
The handle “hackergate” posted the petition.
“Hackergate” profile links to a website maintained by Steven Nott of South Wales, about whom Morgan speaks ill in the YouTube video posted on the petition.
Nott confirmed to The Daily Caller in an email that he is the author of the petition.
He told TheDC that be believes Morgan had a lot more to do with the hacking scandal than he let on.
“All of my friends and family used to think Morgan was ok until they realised how arrogant and rude he was when he insulted me at the Leveson Inquiry.” Nott wrote in an email. “They all now despise him and can’t bear to watch him on British TV. He always called Hugh Grant a ‘tedious little man’ and I honestly believe Piers Morgan is the tedious little man in all of this and is way out of his depth.”
According to news reports, Nott was a “whistleblower” in the phone hacking scandal that rocked News of the World — giving information to the Daily Mirror about how easy it was to hack into celebrities phones in the hope of a news article about it, only to see that article remain unpublished.
“It didn’t take me long to realise what I had done. I couldn’t believe I was so stupid to tell a national newspaper how to get hot news for free just by hacking into someone’s phone,” Nott told the BBC in August 2011.
Nott has been promoting the petition on Twitter. His Twitter handle proclaims, “I don’t trust @PiersMorgan.”
“Dear America, you deport Piers Morgan and he’ll be straight back into LA before you know it. We’re sending him back,” Nott tweeted on Wednesday.
The petition currently boasts over 200 signatures (and growing) at the time of publication and is in response to a Whitehouse.gov petition calling for Morgan to be deported for his vocal anti-gun positions. That petition currently has over 71,000 signatures.
“British Citizen and CNN television host Piers Morgan is engaged in a hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution by targeting the Second Amendment,” the Whitehouse.gov petition reads. “We demand that Mr. Morgan be deported immediately for his effort to undermine the Bill of Rights and for exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.”
Nott referenced the gun issues currently at play in America to TheDC, noting Morgan’s arrogance, and expressing hope that he does not inspire future gun violence.
“He got himself into real trouble recently, spouting off about the gun laws in America and I honesty think he’s making things worse,” Nott wrote. “He’s been winding gun owners up for a while now….let’s hope no more go on the rampage because if there is a next time, it could be because of Piers Morgan’s ranting on Twitter and stirring up trouble which he seems to be pretty good at. Remember, he was once the youngest UK national newspaper editor and was famous for saying to people ‘Don’t you know who I am ?’”
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Thursday, December 20, 2012
"Dirty" Harry and Obama - Take it or Take America off the Cliff.....Your Choice!
Why would this surprise anyone...."Dirty" Harry Reid hasn't taken up any of the 30+ Bills the House has passed that could help this nation....including a couple of budgets.....But "Dirty" Harry won't do it and Barack doesn't care enough about the success of America to make him do it...
But this time "Dirty" Harry... you and Barack have only a couple of choices....act on this bill....work on a real big bill that has REAL Spending Cuts in it or you two guys can take the American people over the cliff.....It's Your Choice and the Nation Knows it....!
Leader Reid rules out Senate vote on 'Plan B'
By Alexander Bolton - 12/20/12 12:31 PM ET
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday the Senate will not vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) "Plan B" to extend tax rates for family income below $1 million.
The Democratic leader blasted Boehner for wasting time on "fiscal cliff" legislation that will not see floor time in the upper chamber.
“We are not taking up any of the things that they’re working on over there now,” Reid told reporters. “It’s very, very, very unfortunate the Republicans have wasted an entire week on a number of pointless political stunts.”
“The bill has no future, if they don’t know it now, tell them what I said,” he added.
Reid said Boehner should schedule a House vote on the Senate-passed bill to extend the Bush-era tax rates for family income below $250,000.
“The Senate bill is the only one that will be signed into law. We could protect middle-class families tomorrow,” Reid said. “The Speaker refuses to bring our bill to the floor because it would pass.”
Republicans argue the Senate-passed bill is not a solution to the stalemate because it would allow tax rates on inheritances and dividend income to rise dramatically.
Democratic leaders say the GOP plan will not see the light of day in the upper chamber because it raises taxes on middle-class families, does not extend the college tuition tax credit, the earned income tax credit or the child tax credit and includes an “unrealistic proposal” for the estate tax.
Boehner’s plan would keep the top estate tax rate at 35 percent. It is scheduled to rise to 55 percent without congressional action.
“It will not come up for a vote in the Senate,” said Durbin, who called it “a disastrous plan which will hurt working families.”
“It is not good for working families across this country,” said Durbin, proclaiming it “dead on arrival.”
Boehner’s bill would make permanent current income tax rates for taxpayers earning up to $1 million a year but would allow taxes to increase for those making more. Party leaders were working Thursday to cobble together enough votes to pass the legislation, which some conservatives consider a tax increase.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Thursday predicted that "Plan B" would pass, and said it's up to Senate Democrats to act.
“We want to avoid the fiscal cliff from happening. And again, I think the decision is for the White House and Senate Democrats to come join us so we can avoid the tax hikes for the American people and avoid the fiscal cliff,” Cantor said.
Reid said the Senate has other important things to do, such as a $60 billion bill to pay for damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York, New Jersey and other areas.
“We’re going to do our best to finish that in the next 24 hours or however long it takes,” Reid said.
Senate Democrats also plan votes on the Defense authorization and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorization.
Reid said Boehner should return to the negotiating table with President Obama.
“Get back and start talking to the president,” Reid said. “You have a multitrillion dollar deal that they’ve been talking about, a multitrillion dollar deal. They’re a couple of hundred billion dollars apart.”
But this time "Dirty" Harry... you and Barack have only a couple of choices....act on this bill....work on a real big bill that has REAL Spending Cuts in it or you two guys can take the American people over the cliff.....It's Your Choice and the Nation Knows it....!
Leader Reid rules out Senate vote on 'Plan B'
By Alexander Bolton - 12/20/12 12:31 PM ET
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday the Senate will not vote on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) "Plan B" to extend tax rates for family income below $1 million.
The Democratic leader blasted Boehner for wasting time on "fiscal cliff" legislation that will not see floor time in the upper chamber.
“We are not taking up any of the things that they’re working on over there now,” Reid told reporters. “It’s very, very, very unfortunate the Republicans have wasted an entire week on a number of pointless political stunts.”
“The bill has no future, if they don’t know it now, tell them what I said,” he added.
Reid said Boehner should schedule a House vote on the Senate-passed bill to extend the Bush-era tax rates for family income below $250,000.
“The Senate bill is the only one that will be signed into law. We could protect middle-class families tomorrow,” Reid said. “The Speaker refuses to bring our bill to the floor because it would pass.”
Republicans argue the Senate-passed bill is not a solution to the stalemate because it would allow tax rates on inheritances and dividend income to rise dramatically.
Democratic leaders say the GOP plan will not see the light of day in the upper chamber because it raises taxes on middle-class families, does not extend the college tuition tax credit, the earned income tax credit or the child tax credit and includes an “unrealistic proposal” for the estate tax.
Boehner’s plan would keep the top estate tax rate at 35 percent. It is scheduled to rise to 55 percent without congressional action.
“It will not come up for a vote in the Senate,” said Durbin, who called it “a disastrous plan which will hurt working families.”
“It is not good for working families across this country,” said Durbin, proclaiming it “dead on arrival.”
Boehner’s bill would make permanent current income tax rates for taxpayers earning up to $1 million a year but would allow taxes to increase for those making more. Party leaders were working Thursday to cobble together enough votes to pass the legislation, which some conservatives consider a tax increase.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Thursday predicted that "Plan B" would pass, and said it's up to Senate Democrats to act.
“We want to avoid the fiscal cliff from happening. And again, I think the decision is for the White House and Senate Democrats to come join us so we can avoid the tax hikes for the American people and avoid the fiscal cliff,” Cantor said.
Reid said the Senate has other important things to do, such as a $60 billion bill to pay for damage caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York, New Jersey and other areas.
“We’re going to do our best to finish that in the next 24 hours or however long it takes,” Reid said.
Senate Democrats also plan votes on the Defense authorization and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorization.
Reid said Boehner should return to the negotiating table with President Obama.
“Get back and start talking to the president,” Reid said. “You have a multitrillion dollar deal that they’ve been talking about, a multitrillion dollar deal. They’re a couple of hundred billion dollars apart.”
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Yes Mr Obama...You Have Been On Vacation ....or Campaigning, but certainly NOT Leading
Obama hasn't been on VACATION???? You've got to be kidding me....he and his family have spent more time than I have on vacation and at the taxpayer's expense in these times of economic hardship....
Obama is just embarassing!!!
Obama Should Be Ashamed of Himself.....He Stoops Lower Every Day....
Obama should be ashamed of himself using the death of children to rationalize that Republicans should concede to his demands on the fiscal cliff....Is he NUTS???? This Jerk would Politicize Anything...
Finally Boehner grows some Balls....
Boehner: Obama will be responsible for 'largest tax increase in American history'
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times December 19, 2012, 02:25PM
House Speaker John A. Boehner said Wednesday that the House will pass his bill that would raise taxes on millionaires but extend tax cuts for everyone else, and said it's then up to President Obama to either accept that plan or be responsible for a tax increase on everyone.
"The president will have a decision to make. He can call on the Senate Democrats to pass our bill, or he can be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history," Mr. Boehner said as he briefly appeared before reporters to respond to Mr. Obama's press conference earlier in the day.
Mr. Boehner spoke for 50 seconds and did not take any questions — unlike Mr. Obama, who handled questions from a handful of reporters about both guns and about negotiations over the fiscal cliff.
From the mouth of a Rabbi - We're Screwed!
From the mouth of a Rabbi....Why Jews would ever vote for Obama is still well beyond me...!
Rabbi Pruzansky On Why Obama Won and How We Are Lost-Confirmed Authorship!
Subject: Perspective of a Rabbi on free stuff, or simply, Why Romney lost.
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2012, 9:35 AM
Subject: Perspective of a Rabbi
Please take a moment to digest this provocative article by a Jewish Rabbi from Teaneck , N.J. It is far and away the most succinct and thoughtful explanation of how our nation is changing. The article appeared in The Israel National News, and is directed to Jewish readership. 70% of American Jews vote as Democrats. The Rabbi has some interesting comments in that regard.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck , New Jersey .
The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. The y must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility.
And fewer people voted.
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.
Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate.
The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff.
Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.
The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government.
Almost half of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. The y just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.
It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.
That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is ignorant and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters – the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism.
That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”
Truer words were never spoken.
Obama could get away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending.
Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws.
He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone.
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in California ) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America . Obama is part of that different America , knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.
Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises.
It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. If an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America , in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel . The y voted to secure Obama’s future at America ’s expense and at Israel ’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality.
But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. The re is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations.
The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. The “Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.
Rabbi Pruzansky On Why Obama Won and How We Are Lost-Confirmed Authorship!
Subject: Perspective of a Rabbi on free stuff, or simply, Why Romney lost.
Date: Tuesday, December 11, 2012, 9:35 AM
Subject: Perspective of a Rabbi
Please take a moment to digest this provocative article by a Jewish Rabbi from Teaneck , N.J. It is far and away the most succinct and thoughtful explanation of how our nation is changing. The article appeared in The Israel National News, and is directed to Jewish readership. 70% of American Jews vote as Democrats. The Rabbi has some interesting comments in that regard.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is the spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck , New Jersey .
The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. The y must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility.
And fewer people voted.
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.
Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate.
The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff.
Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.
The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government.
Almost half of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. The y just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.
It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.
That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is ignorant and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters – the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism.
That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich.
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!”
Truer words were never spoken.
Obama could get away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending.
Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws.
He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone.
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in California ) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America . Obama is part of that different America , knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.
Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises.
It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. If an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America , in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel . The y voted to secure Obama’s future at America ’s expense and at Israel ’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality.
But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. The re is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations.
The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. The “Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back.
Hillary takes Responsibity so she says BUT the Buck Evidently Stops NOWHERE!
ONLY in the Obama administration could be have four Americans killled including an Ambassabor due to "systematic failures and leadership and management at senior levels" of the State Department and NOONE is HELD ACCOUNTABLE!!!....The Buck Stops NOWHERE!!!!.....Obviously this is an attempt by the Obama team of goons to protect Hillary Clinton and we all know she is hiding from the public and Congressional eye.....She says she takes full responsiblity so she should be FIRED!!!...IF she had any integrity she would resign.
If Barack had any integrity he would hold people responsible starting with Hillary.
But once again a major Obama Administration failure and noone is held accountable...If this was the fault of big oil, big business, wall street, or the rich you know someone would be demonized and held accountable.....
Review board raps State Department for poor security in Benghazi
Punishment unlikely for “systemic failures”
By Shaun Waterman The Washington Times Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The mandatory State Department internal inquiry into the deadly Sept. 11 terror attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, slams bureaucrats for “grossly inadequate” security but says that poor leadership could not be punished under department regulations.
The report blames inadequate security at the mission on “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels” of State Department headquarters, where officials turned down repeated requests from diplomats on the ground for more security, both at the embassy in Tripoli and in Benghazi.
The failures, at State’s Diplomatic Security and Near Eastern Affairs Bureaus in Washington, left the diplomatic post with security “that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the report states.
Because the diplomatic compound in Benghazi — a villa and three out-buildings set in a walled garden — was a temporary post which was not expected to be in use for much longer, getting funds and personnel to secure it was “difficult,” leaving responsibility for securing it “to the working-level [officials] in the field, with very limited resources.”
The report, produced by a panel led by retired career diplomat Thomas R. Pickering and known as an Accountability Review Board, also criticized State for relying too much on unreliable local militias for security in Libya; and for being lulled by the absence of specific warnings of an imminent attack, rather than responding to the general security environment, which had been deteriorating for some time in eastern Libya.
The board “found that certain senior State Department officials within two bureaus demonstrated a lack of proactive leadership and management ability in their responses to security concerns” in Benghazi. But the report notes that poor management is “ordinarily … addressed through the performance management system” rather than through discipline.
However, the board adds that “findings of unsatisfactory leadership performance by senior officials” in relation to security “should be a potential basis for discipline recommendations” in the future, and recommends changes to department regulations that would make that possible.
The report does not name any of the officials concerned, but an investigation by House Republicans found that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb, responsible for diplomatic security in the region, denied repeated requests for additional security in Libya from security officials on the ground.
In a letter to congressional committees Tuesday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she accepted “every one” of the board’s 29 recommendations, several of which remain classified. She also said the State and Defense departments were working to “dispatch hundreds of additional Marine Security Guards to bolster our posts,” and that her department had “already begun to fix” the problems the board identified.
The board, which began work in early October, found that the two waves of attacks, by dozens of heavily armed extremists, “were unanticipated in their scale and intensity.”
The first wave over-ran the compound, and the attackers set the buildings on fire, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and State Department official Sean Smith.
Later that night, extremists also attacked a CIA facility nearby, killing two former SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, both of whom were working as security contractors for the CIA. A copy of the full, classified report was sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, ahead of a closed-door briefing Wednesday for lawmakers by Mr. Pickering, and fellow board member and former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, retired Adm. Michael Mullen.
An unclassified version of the report was posted by the department on its website late Tuesday evening.
Mrs. Clinton had been scheduled to testify herself this week, but canceled her appearance owing to ill health.
If Barack had any integrity he would hold people responsible starting with Hillary.
But once again a major Obama Administration failure and noone is held accountable...If this was the fault of big oil, big business, wall street, or the rich you know someone would be demonized and held accountable.....
Review board raps State Department for poor security in Benghazi
Punishment unlikely for “systemic failures”
By Shaun Waterman The Washington Times Tuesday, December 18, 2012
The mandatory State Department internal inquiry into the deadly Sept. 11 terror attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, slams bureaucrats for “grossly inadequate” security but says that poor leadership could not be punished under department regulations.
The report blames inadequate security at the mission on “systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels” of State Department headquarters, where officials turned down repeated requests from diplomats on the ground for more security, both at the embassy in Tripoli and in Benghazi.
The failures, at State’s Diplomatic Security and Near Eastern Affairs Bureaus in Washington, left the diplomatic post with security “that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,” the report states.
Because the diplomatic compound in Benghazi — a villa and three out-buildings set in a walled garden — was a temporary post which was not expected to be in use for much longer, getting funds and personnel to secure it was “difficult,” leaving responsibility for securing it “to the working-level [officials] in the field, with very limited resources.”
The report, produced by a panel led by retired career diplomat Thomas R. Pickering and known as an Accountability Review Board, also criticized State for relying too much on unreliable local militias for security in Libya; and for being lulled by the absence of specific warnings of an imminent attack, rather than responding to the general security environment, which had been deteriorating for some time in eastern Libya.
The board “found that certain senior State Department officials within two bureaus demonstrated a lack of proactive leadership and management ability in their responses to security concerns” in Benghazi. But the report notes that poor management is “ordinarily … addressed through the performance management system” rather than through discipline.
However, the board adds that “findings of unsatisfactory leadership performance by senior officials” in relation to security “should be a potential basis for discipline recommendations” in the future, and recommends changes to department regulations that would make that possible.
The report does not name any of the officials concerned, but an investigation by House Republicans found that Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb, responsible for diplomatic security in the region, denied repeated requests for additional security in Libya from security officials on the ground.
In a letter to congressional committees Tuesday night, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she accepted “every one” of the board’s 29 recommendations, several of which remain classified. She also said the State and Defense departments were working to “dispatch hundreds of additional Marine Security Guards to bolster our posts,” and that her department had “already begun to fix” the problems the board identified.
The board, which began work in early October, found that the two waves of attacks, by dozens of heavily armed extremists, “were unanticipated in their scale and intensity.”
The first wave over-ran the compound, and the attackers set the buildings on fire, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and State Department official Sean Smith.
Later that night, extremists also attacked a CIA facility nearby, killing two former SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, both of whom were working as security contractors for the CIA. A copy of the full, classified report was sent to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, ahead of a closed-door briefing Wednesday for lawmakers by Mr. Pickering, and fellow board member and former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, retired Adm. Michael Mullen.
An unclassified version of the report was posted by the department on its website late Tuesday evening.
Mrs. Clinton had been scheduled to testify herself this week, but canceled her appearance owing to ill health.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Bad Deal As It Stands today...
The way this deal stands now it is a non starter....Boehner should be ashamed to even present it House Republicans.....Time for them to stand tough....not enough spending cuts....still tax increases that are too large, and not enough fundamental reform in entitlements....but most of all the we can't give up the debt ceiling fight in 2013....it's our only leverage! Obama needs to solve this fiscal cliff more than republicans have to....let him sweat and cancel his vacation..
Maybe it's time to get rid of Boehner and get someone that can negotiate better.
Obama, Boehner move closer to ‘cliff’ deal
By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane, Published: December 17
President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner moved close to agreement Monday on a plan to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff,” but they had yet to clear several critical hurdles, including winning the support of wary House Republicans.
Obama and Boehner (R-Ohio) huddled at the White House for 45 minutes Monday morning for their third conversation in the past five days. Later, Boehner met for an hour at the Capitol with his leadership team in advance of a briefing Tuesday morning for the entire House GOP that could be a crucial test of Boehner’s ability to sell the deal.
Behind the scenes, administration officials and senior Republican aides continued to make progress. Obama laid out a counteroffer that included significant concessions on taxes, reducing the amount of new revenue he is seeking to $1.2 trillion over the next decade and limiting the hike in tax rates to households earning more than $400,000 a year. Obama had previously sought $1.4 trillion in new revenue, with tax increases on income over $250,000.
Obama also gave ground on a key Republican demand — applying a less-generous measure of inflation across the federal government. That change would save about $225 billion over the next decade, with more than half the savings coming from smaller cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.
In addition, Obama increased his overall offer on spending cuts and dropped his demand for extending the payroll tax holiday, which has benefited virtually every worker for the past two years. But he is still seeking $80 billion in new spending on infrastructure and unemployment benefits and an increase in the federal government’s borrowing limit large enough to avert any new fight over the issue for two years.
Boehner has offered a one-year debt-limit increase, and the fresh stimulus spending remains a sticking point, according to senior Republican aides, who also complained that the overall deal remains too tilted toward new taxes.
“Any movement away from the unrealistic offers the President has made previously is a step in the right direction, but a proposal that includes $1.3 trillion in revenue for only $930 billion in spending cuts cannot be considered balanced,” Boehner spokesman Michael A. Steel said in a written statement.
“We hope to continue discussions with the President so we can reach an agreement that is truly balanced and begins to solve our spending problem,” he said.
Talks over the fiscal cliff have accelerated since Boehner made an offer Friday to raise tax rates on income over $1 million and to delay a fight over the government’s borrowing limit in exchange for significant cuts to health and retirement programs.
On Monday, it became clear that the two sides are extremely close on the broad outlines of the deal that has eluded them for much of the past two years. Boehner’s latest offer calls for $2 trillion in savings over the next decade, half from higher taxes and half from cuts to the fast-growing health and retirement programs that are the federal government’s largest expense. All told, Obama’s latest offer calls for about $2.15 trillion in savings.
People in both parties said the next few days could prove critical: Either Obama and Boehner will reach a consensus and sell it to their respective parties, or talks will again collapse, leaving congressional leaders scrambling for a fallback plan to mitigate the economic damage from more than $500 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to begin immediately after Dec. 31.
Both sides cautioned that rank-and-file lawmakers had yet to see — much less digest — legislation that would require them to breach fundamental party orthodoxies. For Democrats, Social Security benefits have been sacred. Republicans, meanwhile, would have to not only raise taxes but also agree to raise rates on successful individuals they have dubbed “job creators.”
The talks have made “substantial progress,” but “they have a long way to go,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, who is acting as a liaison between the White House and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Of particular concern to negotiators is the conservative wing of Boehner’s caucus, which has been boisterous in its opposition to tax increases of any kind. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he found initial reports of Boehner’s tax offer upsetting.
“I don’t like it,” Chaffetz said. But echoing a number of his conservative colleagues, he said he is willing to “give the speaker the benefit of the doubt and hear him out before I pass judgment.”
Liberal Democrats, too, were on edge about Obama’s offer on the inflation measure, known as the chained consumer price index, or chained CPI. Obama tentatively embraced the change in budget negotiations with Boehner in the summer of 2011. Since then, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democrats have rejected the proposal, insisting that the solvency of Social Security should be addressed separately from the year-end negotiations.
Obama is seeking adjustments to blunt the impact on the very old and the infirm. His offer proposes to exclude disability payments, known as Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, and to provide a bump-up in benefits for retirees who reach age 85, Democrats said.
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), who organized 57 House Democrats to sign a letter last week urging Obama and congressional leaders to protect Social Security, nonetheless argued that adopting chained CPI would result in “serious benefit cuts for recipients, particularly for our seniors and the disabled.”
“You can’t tell me it’s balanced when the principal payees are seniors and the disabled,” Edwards said.
Meanwhile, the possibility remains that the deal could get even more distasteful for Democrats, particularly if Republicans counter Obama’s request for $1.2 trillion in new taxes with a demand for an additional concession on health care, such raising as the eligibility age for Medicare beneficiaries from 65 to 67.
While Obama tentatively agreed to raise the Medicare eligibility age during talks with Boehner in 2011, it has emerged in the current negotiations as a line the White House is unwilling to cross.
Still, Democrats in particular seemed buoyed by the status of negotiations after a weekend of horse-trading by Boehner’s senior policy adviser and Obama’s chief liaison to Congress. Those negotiations played out in the shadow of the massacre of 20 elementary school students in Connecticut on Friday and the death Monday of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), who had served 50 years in the Senate.
If a deal is reached, people in both parties say, it would include postponement of roughly $100 billion in automatic spending cuts to the budgets of the Pentagon and other agencies next year. But $1 trillion in future cuts to agency budgets adopted during the 2011 budget battle would remain in place. Counting around $800 billion in savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall package would come close to reducing deficits by a total of $4 trillion over the next decade — a target that economists say would stabilize the soaring federal debt.
As talks continued, Reid made tentative plans to advance fiscal-cliff legislation in the Senate, warning lawmakers that they probably do not have time to finish before Christmas. Instead, Reid said the Senate would probably have to return to Washington next week to take a final vote.
Maybe it's time to get rid of Boehner and get someone that can negotiate better.
Obama, Boehner move closer to ‘cliff’ deal
By Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane, Published: December 17
President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner moved close to agreement Monday on a plan to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff,” but they had yet to clear several critical hurdles, including winning the support of wary House Republicans.
Obama and Boehner (R-Ohio) huddled at the White House for 45 minutes Monday morning for their third conversation in the past five days. Later, Boehner met for an hour at the Capitol with his leadership team in advance of a briefing Tuesday morning for the entire House GOP that could be a crucial test of Boehner’s ability to sell the deal.
Behind the scenes, administration officials and senior Republican aides continued to make progress. Obama laid out a counteroffer that included significant concessions on taxes, reducing the amount of new revenue he is seeking to $1.2 trillion over the next decade and limiting the hike in tax rates to households earning more than $400,000 a year. Obama had previously sought $1.4 trillion in new revenue, with tax increases on income over $250,000.
Obama also gave ground on a key Republican demand — applying a less-generous measure of inflation across the federal government. That change would save about $225 billion over the next decade, with more than half the savings coming from smaller cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.
In addition, Obama increased his overall offer on spending cuts and dropped his demand for extending the payroll tax holiday, which has benefited virtually every worker for the past two years. But he is still seeking $80 billion in new spending on infrastructure and unemployment benefits and an increase in the federal government’s borrowing limit large enough to avert any new fight over the issue for two years.
Boehner has offered a one-year debt-limit increase, and the fresh stimulus spending remains a sticking point, according to senior Republican aides, who also complained that the overall deal remains too tilted toward new taxes.
“Any movement away from the unrealistic offers the President has made previously is a step in the right direction, but a proposal that includes $1.3 trillion in revenue for only $930 billion in spending cuts cannot be considered balanced,” Boehner spokesman Michael A. Steel said in a written statement.
“We hope to continue discussions with the President so we can reach an agreement that is truly balanced and begins to solve our spending problem,” he said.
Talks over the fiscal cliff have accelerated since Boehner made an offer Friday to raise tax rates on income over $1 million and to delay a fight over the government’s borrowing limit in exchange for significant cuts to health and retirement programs.
On Monday, it became clear that the two sides are extremely close on the broad outlines of the deal that has eluded them for much of the past two years. Boehner’s latest offer calls for $2 trillion in savings over the next decade, half from higher taxes and half from cuts to the fast-growing health and retirement programs that are the federal government’s largest expense. All told, Obama’s latest offer calls for about $2.15 trillion in savings.
People in both parties said the next few days could prove critical: Either Obama and Boehner will reach a consensus and sell it to their respective parties, or talks will again collapse, leaving congressional leaders scrambling for a fallback plan to mitigate the economic damage from more than $500 billion in automatic tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to begin immediately after Dec. 31.
Both sides cautioned that rank-and-file lawmakers had yet to see — much less digest — legislation that would require them to breach fundamental party orthodoxies. For Democrats, Social Security benefits have been sacred. Republicans, meanwhile, would have to not only raise taxes but also agree to raise rates on successful individuals they have dubbed “job creators.”
The talks have made “substantial progress,” but “they have a long way to go,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, who is acting as a liaison between the White House and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Of particular concern to negotiators is the conservative wing of Boehner’s caucus, which has been boisterous in its opposition to tax increases of any kind. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he found initial reports of Boehner’s tax offer upsetting.
“I don’t like it,” Chaffetz said. But echoing a number of his conservative colleagues, he said he is willing to “give the speaker the benefit of the doubt and hear him out before I pass judgment.”
Liberal Democrats, too, were on edge about Obama’s offer on the inflation measure, known as the chained consumer price index, or chained CPI. Obama tentatively embraced the change in budget negotiations with Boehner in the summer of 2011. Since then, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and other Democrats have rejected the proposal, insisting that the solvency of Social Security should be addressed separately from the year-end negotiations.
Obama is seeking adjustments to blunt the impact on the very old and the infirm. His offer proposes to exclude disability payments, known as Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, and to provide a bump-up in benefits for retirees who reach age 85, Democrats said.
Rep. Donna Edwards (D-Md.), who organized 57 House Democrats to sign a letter last week urging Obama and congressional leaders to protect Social Security, nonetheless argued that adopting chained CPI would result in “serious benefit cuts for recipients, particularly for our seniors and the disabled.”
“You can’t tell me it’s balanced when the principal payees are seniors and the disabled,” Edwards said.
Meanwhile, the possibility remains that the deal could get even more distasteful for Democrats, particularly if Republicans counter Obama’s request for $1.2 trillion in new taxes with a demand for an additional concession on health care, such raising as the eligibility age for Medicare beneficiaries from 65 to 67.
While Obama tentatively agreed to raise the Medicare eligibility age during talks with Boehner in 2011, it has emerged in the current negotiations as a line the White House is unwilling to cross.
Still, Democrats in particular seemed buoyed by the status of negotiations after a weekend of horse-trading by Boehner’s senior policy adviser and Obama’s chief liaison to Congress. Those negotiations played out in the shadow of the massacre of 20 elementary school students in Connecticut on Friday and the death Monday of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii), who had served 50 years in the Senate.
If a deal is reached, people in both parties say, it would include postponement of roughly $100 billion in automatic spending cuts to the budgets of the Pentagon and other agencies next year. But $1 trillion in future cuts to agency budgets adopted during the 2011 budget battle would remain in place. Counting around $800 billion in savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall package would come close to reducing deficits by a total of $4 trillion over the next decade — a target that economists say would stabilize the soaring federal debt.
As talks continued, Reid made tentative plans to advance fiscal-cliff legislation in the Senate, warning lawmakers that they probably do not have time to finish before Christmas. Instead, Reid said the Senate would probably have to return to Washington next week to take a final vote.
I don't always agree with Morgan Freeman, but I do in this case....
TURN OFF THE NEWS.......
Morgan Freeman's brilliant take on what happened yesterday :
"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.
It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."
Morgan Freeman's brilliant take on what happened yesterday :
"You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why.
It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody.
CNN's article says that if the body count "holds up", this will rank as the second deadliest shooting behind Virginia Tech, as if statistics somehow make one shooting worse than another. Then they post a video interview of third-graders for all the details of what they saw and heard while the shootings were happening. Fox News has plastered the killer's face on all their reports for hours. Any articles or news stories yet that focus on the victims and ignore the killer's identity? None that I've seen yet. Because they don't sell. So congratulations, sensationalist media, you've just lit the fire for someone to top this and knock off a day care center or a maternity ward next.
You can help by forgetting you ever read this man's name, and remembering the name of at least one victim. You can help by donating to mental health research instead of pointing to gun control as the problem. You can help by turning off the news."
Monday, December 17, 2012
Why???....Here's some Answers....
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Now you KNOW this is Bullshit....the Coverup Goes On....Drip...Drip....Drip....
Clinton is a guilty in this mess as Obama....the Republicans need to push to get to the real truth....everyone knows that this is just a bullshit excuse...
EXCLUSIVE: Clinton will not testify before Congress on Libya, concussion cited
Published December 15, 2012 FoxNews.com
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not be able to testify before House and Senate panels on the Benghazi issue due to concussion, Fox News learned Saturday.
Clinton was a scheduled to testify Thursday on the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans were killed.
The State Department said Saturday that Clinton is suffering from a stomach virus, fainted and hit her head, which caused the concussion.
However, the agency did not say when the incident occurred.
Both congressional panels announced earlier this week that Clinton would testify Thursday. However State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Thursday a related report has yet to be completed and no date has been set.
EXCLUSIVE: Clinton will not testify before Congress on Libya, concussion cited
Published December 15, 2012 FoxNews.com
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will not be able to testify before House and Senate panels on the Benghazi issue due to concussion, Fox News learned Saturday.
Clinton was a scheduled to testify Thursday on the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in which U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other Americans were killed.
The State Department said Saturday that Clinton is suffering from a stomach virus, fainted and hit her head, which caused the concussion.
However, the agency did not say when the incident occurred.
Both congressional panels announced earlier this week that Clinton would testify Thursday. However State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Thursday a related report has yet to be completed and no date has been set.
Inefficient Federal Government...and one that just doesn't understand the position America is in right now....
More proof that our politicians just don't get it.....congress should what the immediate storm related needs are and that's it.....once again it's every politician getting every pet project in with no consideration for the tough fiscal position this nation is in.....Government does NOTHING efficiently and this is just one example why less government is better than more....
When IKE his the gulf coast there wasn't this kind of outcry and we got along just fine...it took several years to recover and yes not everyone was made completely whole, but that's part of life....
Pet projects tacked on to Sandy relief bill
By Barnini Chakraborty Published December 15, 2012 FoxNews.com
Washington – A $60.4 billion spending bill washed up in Washington this week aimed at bringing help to communities hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy.
But a closer look at the legislation shows millions of dollars being requested by lawmakers for projects that have little to do with the storm. Some items, like a proposed $2 million roof restoration for the Smithsonian Institution, even pre-date Sandy, causing some to question the finer details of the federal funding package.
“How much is absolutely needed now? That’s all we should really be considering now, the short-term needs,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has called the $60 billion request “absurdly high.”
While most of the money -- $47.4 billion – would immediately go to help Sandy victims and rebuilding efforts, the pet projects around the edges could cause consternation.
Tucked in the bill is a $41 million request for repairs at eight military bases, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Customs and Border Protection has asked for $2.4 million to replace "destroyed or damaged vehicles, including mobile X-Ray machines." The bill includes a $4 million repair job at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
An additional $13 billion has also been added in to protect against future storms, a cost some Republican lawmakers say isn’t emergency-related and should be scaled back.
Other sweeteners include $150 million for fisheries in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, and $125 million for a Department of Agriculture program that would help Colorado cope with summer wildfires.
Complicating matters are the ongoing fragile negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner over spending cuts, tax increases and efforts to avert the looming fiscal crisis.
The Senate is scheduled to start debating the Sandy bill Monday afternoon but the measure as a whole faces a tough fight in Congress. Fiscal conservatives are hesitant to approve such a large spending bill, especially after slamming Democrats for playing fast and loose with federal dollars. Republicans want new spending to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere in the budget.
The Obama administration and several Democrats say that emergency spending is a one-time expense and that it makes sense to add it to the government’s tab. What they don’t address are provisions planted in the bill that aren’t storm related, such as infrastructure projects in states more than a thousand miles away from where Sandy hit.
Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, asked for funds to clean up marine debris washing up on the West Coast from the Japan earthquake in March 2011. Calls to his office for comment were not immediately returned.
So far, the federal government has spent about $2 billion in the 11 states affected by the storm.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only $9 billion of the $60.4 billion proposed would be spent over the next nine months. An additional $12 billion would be spent the following year. Republicans say the CBO’s estimate undercuts the urgency of the bill.
Others, though, are softening their stance. “We’d be wise to do offsets but this is truly an emergency,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. “I’d like to try to find offsets but at the end of the day this is a catastrophic event in a huge population center.”
On Sunday, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post calling on Congress to provide aid and arguing that “in times of crisis no region, state, or single American should have to stand alone or be left to fend for themselves.” They added that while the nation “faces significant fiscal challenges,” Congress should “not allow this much-needed aid to fall in to the ideological divide.”
When IKE his the gulf coast there wasn't this kind of outcry and we got along just fine...it took several years to recover and yes not everyone was made completely whole, but that's part of life....
Pet projects tacked on to Sandy relief bill
By Barnini Chakraborty Published December 15, 2012 FoxNews.com
Washington – A $60.4 billion spending bill washed up in Washington this week aimed at bringing help to communities hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy.
But a closer look at the legislation shows millions of dollars being requested by lawmakers for projects that have little to do with the storm. Some items, like a proposed $2 million roof restoration for the Smithsonian Institution, even pre-date Sandy, causing some to question the finer details of the federal funding package.
“How much is absolutely needed now? That’s all we should really be considering now, the short-term needs,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who has called the $60 billion request “absurdly high.”
While most of the money -- $47.4 billion – would immediately go to help Sandy victims and rebuilding efforts, the pet projects around the edges could cause consternation.
Tucked in the bill is a $41 million request for repairs at eight military bases, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Customs and Border Protection has asked for $2.4 million to replace "destroyed or damaged vehicles, including mobile X-Ray machines." The bill includes a $4 million repair job at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
An additional $13 billion has also been added in to protect against future storms, a cost some Republican lawmakers say isn’t emergency-related and should be scaled back.
Other sweeteners include $150 million for fisheries in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, and $125 million for a Department of Agriculture program that would help Colorado cope with summer wildfires.
Complicating matters are the ongoing fragile negotiations between President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner over spending cuts, tax increases and efforts to avert the looming fiscal crisis.
The Senate is scheduled to start debating the Sandy bill Monday afternoon but the measure as a whole faces a tough fight in Congress. Fiscal conservatives are hesitant to approve such a large spending bill, especially after slamming Democrats for playing fast and loose with federal dollars. Republicans want new spending to be offset by spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere in the budget.
The Obama administration and several Democrats say that emergency spending is a one-time expense and that it makes sense to add it to the government’s tab. What they don’t address are provisions planted in the bill that aren’t storm related, such as infrastructure projects in states more than a thousand miles away from where Sandy hit.
Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, asked for funds to clean up marine debris washing up on the West Coast from the Japan earthquake in March 2011. Calls to his office for comment were not immediately returned.
So far, the federal government has spent about $2 billion in the 11 states affected by the storm.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only $9 billion of the $60.4 billion proposed would be spent over the next nine months. An additional $12 billion would be spent the following year. Republicans say the CBO’s estimate undercuts the urgency of the bill.
Others, though, are softening their stance. “We’d be wise to do offsets but this is truly an emergency,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. “I’d like to try to find offsets but at the end of the day this is a catastrophic event in a huge population center.”
On Sunday, the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post calling on Congress to provide aid and arguing that “in times of crisis no region, state, or single American should have to stand alone or be left to fend for themselves.” They added that while the nation “faces significant fiscal challenges,” Congress should “not allow this much-needed aid to fall in to the ideological divide.”
Friday, December 14, 2012
Benghazi Scandal just gets bigger and bigger....drip...drip....drip....drip....
The Benghazi Scandal is a big deal and the repulicans need to be fierce in their quest for the real truth. It's obvious that it's been an Obama coverup, but it has the potential to expose the corruption in this administration and also get at Hillary Clinton and derail her corenation but Democrats. There is a big story here...it's just whether the republicans get force out the truth!
State Department preparing for Libya bombshell?
Published December 14, 2012 FoxNews.com
Susan Rice's abrupt withdrawal from consideration for secretary of state, coupled with suggestions from the State Department that Secretary Hillary Clinton may not testify as scheduled next week, has stirred speculation that something big is coming down the pike on Libya.
"You're starting to see the State Department squirm a little bit," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said.
For the better part of the last three months, an independent board has been conducting a review for the State Department of the Sept. 11 terror attack in Benghazi. In anticipation of the report's conclusion, two congressional committees scheduled hearings for next week in which Clinton was set to testify.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, though, surprised lawmakers and reporters on Thursday when she indicated the report, and the secretary, might not be ready.
"The Hill has talked about a planning date on the calendar. That presumes that the (report) is finished," Nuland said. "I don't have any dates, any schedule of the secretary's to announce here."
Asked whether Clinton has committed to testify, Nuland said "it's dependent on the work being finished."
Further, Nuland rejected the notion that the final report on Libya needed to be shared with Congress at all. She stressed, instead, that the only thing the statute requires is for "the secretary's response" to the report's conclusion to be sent to Congress.
The comments were met with surprise on Capitol Hill. A spokesman for House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who scheduled a hearing for Dec. 20, said this was the first they heard a scheduling issue.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said it's still "the plan" for Clinton to testify on his committee next week.
But Fox News is told that Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, believes there was gross negligence on behalf of the State Department for not providing adequate security to Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Chaffetz told Fox News that if done accurately, the final report will be a "very difficult thing" for the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense and the White House to explain.
Chaffetz also speculated that Rice's announcement Thursday that she's withdrawing from consideration for secretary of state is related.
"The State Department owes us a report," he told Fox News. "That's why I think Susan Rice made the announcement today, because I think we're on the verge of getting that report."
Nuland insisted Thursday that, whatever the timeframe, Clinton will be "transparent and open with Congress."
She said Washington needs to wait for the report to be completed, "and we'll go from there."
For her part, Rice said she was withdrawing because she did not want to subject the Obama administration to a "lengthy, disruptive and costly" confirmation process.
Many Republicans were opposed to the possibility of her nomination over concerns about her Sept. 16 comments in which she described the Libya attack as tied to a "spontaneous" demonstration. They questioned why she was chosen by the administration in the first place to do a round of Sunday show interviews.
Rice, though, tried to explain as she bowed out of the running Thursday. In an interview on NBC News, she said Clinton was originally asked to go on the networks, but "she had had an incredibly grueling week dealing with the protests around the Middle East and North Africa," as well as the deaths of department employees, and declined. So Rice stepped in.
In a Washington Post column, Rice said her comments were based on intelligence at the time. "It would have been irresponsible for me to substitute any personal judgment for our government's and wrong to reveal classified material," she wrote.
State Department preparing for Libya bombshell?
Published December 14, 2012 FoxNews.com
Susan Rice's abrupt withdrawal from consideration for secretary of state, coupled with suggestions from the State Department that Secretary Hillary Clinton may not testify as scheduled next week, has stirred speculation that something big is coming down the pike on Libya.
"You're starting to see the State Department squirm a little bit," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said.
For the better part of the last three months, an independent board has been conducting a review for the State Department of the Sept. 11 terror attack in Benghazi. In anticipation of the report's conclusion, two congressional committees scheduled hearings for next week in which Clinton was set to testify.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, though, surprised lawmakers and reporters on Thursday when she indicated the report, and the secretary, might not be ready.
"The Hill has talked about a planning date on the calendar. That presumes that the (report) is finished," Nuland said. "I don't have any dates, any schedule of the secretary's to announce here."
Asked whether Clinton has committed to testify, Nuland said "it's dependent on the work being finished."
Further, Nuland rejected the notion that the final report on Libya needed to be shared with Congress at all. She stressed, instead, that the only thing the statute requires is for "the secretary's response" to the report's conclusion to be sent to Congress.
The comments were met with surprise on Capitol Hill. A spokesman for House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who scheduled a hearing for Dec. 20, said this was the first they heard a scheduling issue.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said it's still "the plan" for Clinton to testify on his committee next week.
But Fox News is told that Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, believes there was gross negligence on behalf of the State Department for not providing adequate security to Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Chaffetz told Fox News that if done accurately, the final report will be a "very difficult thing" for the State Department, the CIA, the Department of Defense and the White House to explain.
Chaffetz also speculated that Rice's announcement Thursday that she's withdrawing from consideration for secretary of state is related.
"The State Department owes us a report," he told Fox News. "That's why I think Susan Rice made the announcement today, because I think we're on the verge of getting that report."
Nuland insisted Thursday that, whatever the timeframe, Clinton will be "transparent and open with Congress."
She said Washington needs to wait for the report to be completed, "and we'll go from there."
For her part, Rice said she was withdrawing because she did not want to subject the Obama administration to a "lengthy, disruptive and costly" confirmation process.
Many Republicans were opposed to the possibility of her nomination over concerns about her Sept. 16 comments in which she described the Libya attack as tied to a "spontaneous" demonstration. They questioned why she was chosen by the administration in the first place to do a round of Sunday show interviews.
Rice, though, tried to explain as she bowed out of the running Thursday. In an interview on NBC News, she said Clinton was originally asked to go on the networks, but "she had had an incredibly grueling week dealing with the protests around the Middle East and North Africa," as well as the deaths of department employees, and declined. So Rice stepped in.
In a Washington Post column, Rice said her comments were based on intelligence at the time. "It would have been irresponsible for me to substitute any personal judgment for our government's and wrong to reveal classified material," she wrote.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Obama.....Wasn't afraid to do ANYTHING to get himself reelected....
Just more evidence of the corruption and lack of integrity that Obama and his Administration exhibit day in a day out.....we all now know that Menendez is a whoring sleazeball and now we learn he has no problem employing illegals....and this guy is in the Senate of the Unites States??????....Just one more corrupt democrat...
If Obama has this little integrity, then just guess what else is probably going on in Washington with him in office....
Watchdog groups rip DHS over claim agents waited to arrest illegal immigrant Senate intern
Published December 13, 2012 FoxNews.com
Anti-illegal immigration groups slammed the Department of Homeland Security for allegedly waiting to arrest an illegal immigrant intern working for a prominent U.S. senator until after the election -- though the department "categorically" denied the allegation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, 18, in front of his home in New Jersey on Dec. 6. One official involved in the case told the Associated Press that the DHS told agents not to arrest the individual, who was employed as an unpaid intern for Democratic New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, until after Election Day.
ICE spokesman Brian Hale called the claim "categorically false."
"ICE followed standard process in coordination with its federal partners and local prosecutors before taking appropriate enforcement action," he said in a statement.
But watchdog groups were not so convinced, with one calling for a separate investigation.
"The Department of Homeland Security knew that Luis Sanchez Zavaleta was both an illegal alien and a registered sex offender as early as October," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "Nevertheless, high ranking DHS officials placed electoral politics ahead of public safety and the law, when they instructed ICE agents not to arrest Mr. Sanchez until after the 2012 elections."
Stein went on to say the account would "ratify charges by career ICE agents that the Obama administration is recklessly disregarding immigration law."
Stein called for a "full and independent investigation" into the case, "based on the allegations of the ICE officers and strong evidence that DHS leadership interfered in a criminal arrest for political reasons."
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, went so far as to call for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's and Menendez' resignation.
"Menendez's new term in the U.S. Senate is illegitimate now that we know he would have likely lost his reelection bid if the White House had not protected the illegal alien sex offender intern from arrest before Election Day," he said in a statement.
It's unclear whether the arrest would have made a difference. Menendez won re-election with a comfortable 58 percent of the vote.
Menendez' office has meanwhile distanced itself from the intern.
Spokeswoman Tricia Enright said that he was an unpaid college intern in their Newark office for two months. "No staff member responsible for managing the internship program had reason to believe, based on their interview process, that Sanchez had any criminal background or immigration issues. Clearly Mr. Sanchez sought to deceive our staff," she said in a statement.
Enright said Sanchez' "relationship with our office immediately ended" as soon as the senator's office was informed of his arrest. She said Menendez is "appalled" by the incident.
"He has no tolerance for those who violate the law and expects the authorities to continue to prosecute the case. Senator Menendez believes this incident underscores the reason we need comprehensive immigration reform that provides zero tolerance for those who have criminal records," she said.
The prosecutor's office in Hudson County, N.J., said Sanchez was found to have violated the law in 2010 and subsequently required to register as a sex offender. The exact charge was unclear because Sanchez was prosecuted as a juvenile and those court records are not publicly accessible. The prosecutor's office confirmed to AP that Sanchez registered as a sex offender, although his name does not appear on the public registry. The acting county prosecutor, Gaetano Gregory, is a Republican.
Authorities in Hudson County notified ICE agents in early October that they suspected Sanchez was an illegal immigrant who was a registered sex offender and who may be eligible to be deported. ICE agents in New Jersey notified superiors at the Homeland Security Department because they considered it a potentially high profile arrest, and DHS instructed them not to arrest Sanchez until after the November election, one U.S. official told the AP. ICE officials complained that the delay was inappropriate, but DHS directed them several times not to act, the official said.
It was not immediately clear why federal immigration authorities would not have been notified sooner about Sanchez's status. During discussions about when and where to arrest Sanchez, the U.S. reviewed Sanchez's application for permission to stay in the country as part of President Obama's policy to allow up to 1.7 million young illegal immigrants avoid deportation and get permission to work for up to two years. As a sex offender, he would not have been eligible. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, notified Sanchez of that shortly before his arrest, one official said.
Menendez said the arrest spoke to the need for comprehensive immigration reform that brings illegal immigrants out of the shadows.
If Obama has this little integrity, then just guess what else is probably going on in Washington with him in office....
Watchdog groups rip DHS over claim agents waited to arrest illegal immigrant Senate intern
Published December 13, 2012 FoxNews.com
Anti-illegal immigration groups slammed the Department of Homeland Security for allegedly waiting to arrest an illegal immigrant intern working for a prominent U.S. senator until after the election -- though the department "categorically" denied the allegation.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Luis Abrahan Sanchez Zavaleta, 18, in front of his home in New Jersey on Dec. 6. One official involved in the case told the Associated Press that the DHS told agents not to arrest the individual, who was employed as an unpaid intern for Democratic New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, until after Election Day.
ICE spokesman Brian Hale called the claim "categorically false."
"ICE followed standard process in coordination with its federal partners and local prosecutors before taking appropriate enforcement action," he said in a statement.
But watchdog groups were not so convinced, with one calling for a separate investigation.
"The Department of Homeland Security knew that Luis Sanchez Zavaleta was both an illegal alien and a registered sex offender as early as October," said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. "Nevertheless, high ranking DHS officials placed electoral politics ahead of public safety and the law, when they instructed ICE agents not to arrest Mr. Sanchez until after the 2012 elections."
Stein went on to say the account would "ratify charges by career ICE agents that the Obama administration is recklessly disregarding immigration law."
Stein called for a "full and independent investigation" into the case, "based on the allegations of the ICE officers and strong evidence that DHS leadership interfered in a criminal arrest for political reasons."
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, went so far as to call for DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's and Menendez' resignation.
"Menendez's new term in the U.S. Senate is illegitimate now that we know he would have likely lost his reelection bid if the White House had not protected the illegal alien sex offender intern from arrest before Election Day," he said in a statement.
It's unclear whether the arrest would have made a difference. Menendez won re-election with a comfortable 58 percent of the vote.
Menendez' office has meanwhile distanced itself from the intern.
Spokeswoman Tricia Enright said that he was an unpaid college intern in their Newark office for two months. "No staff member responsible for managing the internship program had reason to believe, based on their interview process, that Sanchez had any criminal background or immigration issues. Clearly Mr. Sanchez sought to deceive our staff," she said in a statement.
Enright said Sanchez' "relationship with our office immediately ended" as soon as the senator's office was informed of his arrest. She said Menendez is "appalled" by the incident.
"He has no tolerance for those who violate the law and expects the authorities to continue to prosecute the case. Senator Menendez believes this incident underscores the reason we need comprehensive immigration reform that provides zero tolerance for those who have criminal records," she said.
The prosecutor's office in Hudson County, N.J., said Sanchez was found to have violated the law in 2010 and subsequently required to register as a sex offender. The exact charge was unclear because Sanchez was prosecuted as a juvenile and those court records are not publicly accessible. The prosecutor's office confirmed to AP that Sanchez registered as a sex offender, although his name does not appear on the public registry. The acting county prosecutor, Gaetano Gregory, is a Republican.
Authorities in Hudson County notified ICE agents in early October that they suspected Sanchez was an illegal immigrant who was a registered sex offender and who may be eligible to be deported. ICE agents in New Jersey notified superiors at the Homeland Security Department because they considered it a potentially high profile arrest, and DHS instructed them not to arrest Sanchez until after the November election, one U.S. official told the AP. ICE officials complained that the delay was inappropriate, but DHS directed them several times not to act, the official said.
It was not immediately clear why federal immigration authorities would not have been notified sooner about Sanchez's status. During discussions about when and where to arrest Sanchez, the U.S. reviewed Sanchez's application for permission to stay in the country as part of President Obama's policy to allow up to 1.7 million young illegal immigrants avoid deportation and get permission to work for up to two years. As a sex offender, he would not have been eligible. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, notified Sanchez of that shortly before his arrest, one official said.
Menendez said the arrest spoke to the need for comprehensive immigration reform that brings illegal immigrants out of the shadows.
Obama is Totally at Fault on the Fiscal Cliff issue...
It is totally Obama's fault since he is NOT serious about spending cuts and I wouldn't pass ANYTHING on taxes UNTIL he gets serious about spending....Pelosi remains a total moron idiot...all she wants to do is go home for Christmas....If I were Boehner I would keep her in DC through Xmas and I would ruin Obama's vacation if he doesn't get serious on spending....it's time to pull the gloves off...The American People know that spending is the problem...
Boehner: Failure to get 'serious' about spending cuts holding up budget deal
Published December 13, 2012 FoxNews.com
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that talks over the looming fiscal crisis have failed to produce a deal because President Obama will not get "serious" about spending cuts.
In a fresh bid to energize support for major entitlement cuts as part of any agreement, Boehner rolled out a chart that showed federal spending skyrocketing between now and 2041 -- to 40 percent of the nation's total economy.
The chart showed that revenue from Obama's push to increase taxes on the top 2 percent will only fill in a sliver of that amount.
"If you look at the spending problem, you see (the additional tax revenue) does nothing," Boehner said. "The president wants to pretend that spending isn't the problem. That's why we don't have an agreement."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, though, said Thursday that Republicans' resistance to tax hikes on top earners is what's holding up an agreement.
The comments come amid increased pessimism on Capitol Hill about the prospects for a deal any time soon. Lawmakers are at loggerheads over whether to raise taxes on the top 2 percent -- but also Obama's call for unilateral power to increase the debt ceiling, and more stimulus spending.
Obama on Thursday called the negotiations a "work in progress."
But a senior Democrat told Fox News that at a private dinner Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confided to colleagues he now believes getting a deal by Christmas is almost impossible. In private, Reid suggested going off the so-called fiscal cliff is a real possibility -- but thinks a more likely scenario is that the House ends up passing the Senate bill to only extend rates for households making less than $250,000. From there, both chambers would return in January to fight over spending cuts.
The latest Fox News poll shows 61 percent of voters say major spending cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit.
House Republican Leader Eric Cantor is vowing that he and fellow Republicans will work through the holidays to reach a deal to avoid a roughly $500 billion mix of automatic tax increases and federal spending cuts that start on Jan. 1.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, though, said Thursday that leaders would need to reach a deal "in the next couple of days" or by the beginning of next week at the latest, considering the amount of time it takes to craft the legislation and bring it to the floors of both chambers.
"We're coming down to the wire. It's a matter of days," she said.
The Democrats' and Republicans' remarks dampened the recent optimism in Washington that was created by a flurry of exchanges earlier this week between Boehner and President Obama -- a meeting Sunday, an Obama offer Monday, and Boehner's counter-offer Tuesday that was followed by another phone conversation.
Boehner refusal Tuesday night to talk about his counter-offer and the most recent phone call suggested a deal was within striking range, perhaps too delicate to fight over in public.
However, Boehner on Wednesday described the conversation as "deliberate" and focused on the divide they face.
Boehner also said the president's most recent offer still has "too many taxes" and could pass in neither the House nor the Senate.
"The longer the White House slow-walks this, the closer we get to a fiscal cliff," Boehner said after meeting with members of his leadership team. "I am the most optimistic person in town, but we have some differences."
Pelosi within hours put the blame on Boehner, insisting he make House Republicans vote on what Obama has already offered, and some of his party members appear willing to accept a compromise to help avert the fiscal crisis by extending tax cuts to 98 percent of income earners.
"Figure it out. We did," said Pelosi, referring to when she was House speaker and forced a full vote on funding the Iraq War. "Then go forward and debate the issue. ... What are we waiting for? Is there a dove going to fly in with a message tied to his leg?"
Boehner: Failure to get 'serious' about spending cuts holding up budget deal
Published December 13, 2012 FoxNews.com
House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday that talks over the looming fiscal crisis have failed to produce a deal because President Obama will not get "serious" about spending cuts.
In a fresh bid to energize support for major entitlement cuts as part of any agreement, Boehner rolled out a chart that showed federal spending skyrocketing between now and 2041 -- to 40 percent of the nation's total economy.
The chart showed that revenue from Obama's push to increase taxes on the top 2 percent will only fill in a sliver of that amount.
"If you look at the spending problem, you see (the additional tax revenue) does nothing," Boehner said. "The president wants to pretend that spending isn't the problem. That's why we don't have an agreement."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, though, said Thursday that Republicans' resistance to tax hikes on top earners is what's holding up an agreement.
The comments come amid increased pessimism on Capitol Hill about the prospects for a deal any time soon. Lawmakers are at loggerheads over whether to raise taxes on the top 2 percent -- but also Obama's call for unilateral power to increase the debt ceiling, and more stimulus spending.
Obama on Thursday called the negotiations a "work in progress."
But a senior Democrat told Fox News that at a private dinner Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confided to colleagues he now believes getting a deal by Christmas is almost impossible. In private, Reid suggested going off the so-called fiscal cliff is a real possibility -- but thinks a more likely scenario is that the House ends up passing the Senate bill to only extend rates for households making less than $250,000. From there, both chambers would return in January to fight over spending cuts.
The latest Fox News poll shows 61 percent of voters say major spending cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit.
House Republican Leader Eric Cantor is vowing that he and fellow Republicans will work through the holidays to reach a deal to avoid a roughly $500 billion mix of automatic tax increases and federal spending cuts that start on Jan. 1.
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, though, said Thursday that leaders would need to reach a deal "in the next couple of days" or by the beginning of next week at the latest, considering the amount of time it takes to craft the legislation and bring it to the floors of both chambers.
"We're coming down to the wire. It's a matter of days," she said.
The Democrats' and Republicans' remarks dampened the recent optimism in Washington that was created by a flurry of exchanges earlier this week between Boehner and President Obama -- a meeting Sunday, an Obama offer Monday, and Boehner's counter-offer Tuesday that was followed by another phone conversation.
Boehner refusal Tuesday night to talk about his counter-offer and the most recent phone call suggested a deal was within striking range, perhaps too delicate to fight over in public.
However, Boehner on Wednesday described the conversation as "deliberate" and focused on the divide they face.
Boehner also said the president's most recent offer still has "too many taxes" and could pass in neither the House nor the Senate.
"The longer the White House slow-walks this, the closer we get to a fiscal cliff," Boehner said after meeting with members of his leadership team. "I am the most optimistic person in town, but we have some differences."
Pelosi within hours put the blame on Boehner, insisting he make House Republicans vote on what Obama has already offered, and some of his party members appear willing to accept a compromise to help avert the fiscal crisis by extending tax cuts to 98 percent of income earners.
"Figure it out. We did," said Pelosi, referring to when she was House speaker and forced a full vote on funding the Iraq War. "Then go forward and debate the issue. ... What are we waiting for? Is there a dove going to fly in with a message tied to his leg?"
Obamacare is NOT good for anyone....
Medical companies brace for 'devastating' ObamaCare tax, prepare for layoffs
By Judson Berger Published December 13, 2012 FoxNews.com
Andre DiMino has been running medical device company ADM Tronics since his father, who founded the decades-old firm, died in 2001. He's never laid off anybody.
"These people are like family with us," he said.
The boss might not be able to hold out much longer. Come Jan. 1, an ObamaCare-tied tax specific to his industry is expected to go into effect. Though the Obama administration has downplayed the impact, DiMino calls it "devastating."
"I think after all of these decades of not laying people off, I think we may have to face that," DiMino told FoxNews.com. He predicted he might have to immediately lay off three people in his manufacturing division and possibly more after that.
DiMino, whose Bergen County, N.J., business currently employs 20 workers, is one of hundreds of CEOs across the country clamoring for Washington's attention, urging lawmakers to kill the tax before it kills jobs.
In just the last few days, the intense lobbying push elicited some measure of response. On Monday, 18 Democratic senators and senators-elect asked Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to delay the tax, citing the business impact. They noted the industry employs more than 400,000 people, and is dealing with "significant uncertainty and confusion."
Many in the industry, though, have been clear-eyed about what the tax means -- preemptive layoffs and significant cutbacks in research and development.
'We've literally put all of our new product development on hold ... so we can afford to pay the stupid tax.' - Lev Melinyshyn, president of Uresil, LLC
While DiMino is waiting for next year to see if he'll need to fire workers, over at Uresil, LLC, in Skokie, Ill., the layoffs have already started. The company laid off six people from its 52-person workforce this year, "primarily related" to the tax, President Lev Melinyshyn said.
"We had never laid off anybody," he told FoxNews.com. "We bought the company in 2004, never had a layoff. In fact, even during the recession, we added jobs. ... It wasn't until this tax hit us that we had to do it."
Melinyshyn, whose company makes specialized catheters, said he thinks that at current staffing levels, his 46-person company can handle the tax -- however, he's expecting to cut back sharply on product development, which hurts in the long run.
"A lot of patients, I think, are not going to benefit from new technologies," he said. "We've literally put all of our new product development on hold ... so we can afford to pay the stupid tax."
The Affordable Care Act imposed the 2.3 percent tax on medical devices with the goal of raising nearly $30 billion over the next decade. Manufacturers say the impact of the tax is far greater than meets the eye -- the 2.3 percent tax is on gross sales, meaning it's a much greater percentage of net income.
Melinyshyn, for instance, said his total tax burden on profits will rise from 43 percent to 65 percent next year.
"It's huge," he said.
The Advanced Medical Technology Association estimates that the tax ultimately could cost up to 43,000 jobs.
It's unclear, though, whether any attempt to delay or quash it could be made as part of negotiations over the looming fiscal crisis. Far more attention has been paid to the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates -- and the battle over whether to allow rates to rise exclusively for the top 2 percent.
The IRS recently provided some relief to worried medical device executives, announcing that penalties would not be imposed for failing to pay the tax for the first three quarters of 2013.
The Obama administration earlier this year defended the medical device tax, saying companies actually stand to benefit from the law. Though the 2.3 percent tax hits the industry, the department argues that the millions of new health care customers insured as a result of the law will increase the demand in hospitals to order more equipment -- in turn boosting medical device companies' profits.
The White House earlier this year threatened to veto a House bill that would have repealed the tax, citing concerns that the House proposal would offset the lost revenue from the tax by cutting down on subsidies for some families.
This, the White House said, would effectively "raise taxes on middle-class and low-income families."
The industry, though, argues Congress could always negotiate a different way to pay for the repeal.
DiMino said some of the damage has already been felt, not just from layoffs, but from investors "running away" from the industry.
"They know we're being targeted," he said
By Judson Berger Published December 13, 2012 FoxNews.com
Andre DiMino has been running medical device company ADM Tronics since his father, who founded the decades-old firm, died in 2001. He's never laid off anybody.
"These people are like family with us," he said.
The boss might not be able to hold out much longer. Come Jan. 1, an ObamaCare-tied tax specific to his industry is expected to go into effect. Though the Obama administration has downplayed the impact, DiMino calls it "devastating."
"I think after all of these decades of not laying people off, I think we may have to face that," DiMino told FoxNews.com. He predicted he might have to immediately lay off three people in his manufacturing division and possibly more after that.
DiMino, whose Bergen County, N.J., business currently employs 20 workers, is one of hundreds of CEOs across the country clamoring for Washington's attention, urging lawmakers to kill the tax before it kills jobs.
In just the last few days, the intense lobbying push elicited some measure of response. On Monday, 18 Democratic senators and senators-elect asked Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to delay the tax, citing the business impact. They noted the industry employs more than 400,000 people, and is dealing with "significant uncertainty and confusion."
Many in the industry, though, have been clear-eyed about what the tax means -- preemptive layoffs and significant cutbacks in research and development.
'We've literally put all of our new product development on hold ... so we can afford to pay the stupid tax.' - Lev Melinyshyn, president of Uresil, LLC
While DiMino is waiting for next year to see if he'll need to fire workers, over at Uresil, LLC, in Skokie, Ill., the layoffs have already started. The company laid off six people from its 52-person workforce this year, "primarily related" to the tax, President Lev Melinyshyn said.
"We had never laid off anybody," he told FoxNews.com. "We bought the company in 2004, never had a layoff. In fact, even during the recession, we added jobs. ... It wasn't until this tax hit us that we had to do it."
Melinyshyn, whose company makes specialized catheters, said he thinks that at current staffing levels, his 46-person company can handle the tax -- however, he's expecting to cut back sharply on product development, which hurts in the long run.
"A lot of patients, I think, are not going to benefit from new technologies," he said. "We've literally put all of our new product development on hold ... so we can afford to pay the stupid tax."
The Affordable Care Act imposed the 2.3 percent tax on medical devices with the goal of raising nearly $30 billion over the next decade. Manufacturers say the impact of the tax is far greater than meets the eye -- the 2.3 percent tax is on gross sales, meaning it's a much greater percentage of net income.
Melinyshyn, for instance, said his total tax burden on profits will rise from 43 percent to 65 percent next year.
"It's huge," he said.
The Advanced Medical Technology Association estimates that the tax ultimately could cost up to 43,000 jobs.
It's unclear, though, whether any attempt to delay or quash it could be made as part of negotiations over the looming fiscal crisis. Far more attention has been paid to the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates -- and the battle over whether to allow rates to rise exclusively for the top 2 percent.
The IRS recently provided some relief to worried medical device executives, announcing that penalties would not be imposed for failing to pay the tax for the first three quarters of 2013.
The Obama administration earlier this year defended the medical device tax, saying companies actually stand to benefit from the law. Though the 2.3 percent tax hits the industry, the department argues that the millions of new health care customers insured as a result of the law will increase the demand in hospitals to order more equipment -- in turn boosting medical device companies' profits.
The White House earlier this year threatened to veto a House bill that would have repealed the tax, citing concerns that the House proposal would offset the lost revenue from the tax by cutting down on subsidies for some families.
This, the White House said, would effectively "raise taxes on middle-class and low-income families."
The industry, though, argues Congress could always negotiate a different way to pay for the repeal.
DiMino said some of the damage has already been felt, not just from layoffs, but from investors "running away" from the industry.
"They know we're being targeted," he said
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Same Old Obama...Still a Socialist...still a Pro Labor Goon buy....but more aggressive when the it doesn't have as much of a chance to impact him Personally!!!...what a coward!
Obamas big talk when his election is behind him...when the Wisconsin debate was going on he didn't want to get close to this issue because it might have hurt him personally...he has NO conviction...no morals...no integrity....
How the American People can stand behind him is totally beyond me...
And isn't it interesting that all these liberals are for personal freedoms...fairness...equity in their rhetoric, but when it comes to the personal freedom of workers to decide for themselves whether to pay dues to union goons or not then they fall on the side of the unions....What total hypocrisy....
Obama Shows Second Term Swagger on Michigan Labor Unrest
By Chris Stirewalt Power Play Published December 11, 2012 FoxNews.com
“What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.” -- President Obama speaking at a rally in Detroit.
Many schools in Michigan will have to shut down today because teachers are using sick days to attend a massive labor protest in the state capital of Lansing. The state police are getting out the riot gear and lawmakers are preparing for ugly confrontations.
And when the unions lay siege to the statehouse, they will be doing it with the encouragement of the president of the United States, who turned what was billed as a speech on the need to extend tax rates for middle-class earners into a rally for Michigan labor unions.
Ahead of his election, Obama marooned Wisconsin labor groups and Democrats and even stood silent on a teacher strike in his hometown. After his election, Obama is diving in.
While Republicans in Washington are talking about how much to raise taxes in order to coax Obama into a broader budget deal, Obama is out firing up crowds ahead of a labor march.
At a certain point, Republican lawmakers might be forgiven for thinking that the president is not so desperate for bipartisanship and common ground as has been suggested.
The president’s decision to jump into Michigan’s fight shows a lot about where his head is going into his second term. As New York Times White House scribe Helene Cooper, one of the best on the beat, said on “Meet the Press”: “They are so much cockier right now at the White House than they were a year and a half ago when they were doing this.”
In 2011 when Wisconsin was gripped by a nasty battle between government worker unions and newly elected statehouse Republicans, Obama took plenty of heat from liberals for mostly standing silent. Obama not only declined to join the fray, but ahead of the June 2012 election aimed at punishing Republican Gov. Scott Walker for his law stripping government worker unions of the power to strike, Obama declined to help Democrats oust Walker.
Obama famously flew over the state just ahead of the recall vote as he jumped between fundraisers for his own re-election campaign. Liberals lamented that Obama had forgotten his campaign promise to “walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America” whenever collective bargaining power was under threat.
Obama made a few remarks about the Wisconsin law in interviews, but mostly steered clear of the subject, with the White House calling it a “Wisconsin issue.”
But on Monday, Obama dived headlong into a labor dispute in Michigan, even though the stakes for his union allies in the state appear to be lower. In Wisconsin it was about ending collective bargaining power for government workers. In Michigan, the fight is over so-called “right to work” legislation that would allow individual workers to opt out of union membership.
Twenty four states already have similar laws. Unions hate the idea because it means that they will no longer get automatic dues payments from workers who opt out. Labor groups refer to these workers as “free riders” who they accuse of enjoying the benefits obtained in contract negotiations without paying to support the union.
But this is a far-less ideologically controversial proposition than what was offered in Wisconsin. One version of the Michigan law under consideration would apply to government workers, allowing them to opt out of state worker unions, but nothing on collective bargaining.
But the labor movement that dominated 20th century America found its fullest flower in Michigan with the United Auto Workers, so there’s an emotional attachment here for the left. Seeing union power and pelf rolled back in Walter Reuther’s Detroit would be a serious psychic blow for a movement that has been staggering for decades.
When labor unions failed in November to amend the state constitution to enshrine the power of collective bargaining for state workers in the Michigan constitution, state Republicans saw their opportunity.
Michigan Republicans went after the lifeblood of the labor movement and, by extension, the Democratic Party: mandatory union dues payments and the response has been fearsome.
Obama’s promise to his political base, and once embarrassingly to the Putin regime in Russia, is that after his final election he would be free to govern as he wanted. What you saw in Michigan on Monday was a prime example of that new flexibility. Ahead of his election, Obama marooned Wisconsin labor groups and Democrats and even stood silent on a teacher strike in his hometown. After his election, Obama is diving in.
Imagine Obama pre-election encouraging a labor demonstration that will leave thousands of swing-state parents in the lurch as teachers catch the blue flu. Imagine Obama speaking so forcefully against right-to-work laws on the books and with popular support in swing states Nevada, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.
No chance.
Republicans in Washington are scourging themselves, and practically begging Obama to make a deal that allows them to raise taxes on top earners in exchange for future concessions on entitlements. This assumes that Obama is interested in some kind of grand bargain.
While the GOP is negotiating with itself over how much to raise taxes, the president is out on the campaign trail hammering away. Those centrist pundits and anxious Republicans suggesting that Obama just wants a win on tax rates and then can be enticed into a bigger deal are apparently not listening and weren’t listening when Obama talked about his plans for a second term. Since re-election Obama has shown no hints of bipartisanship beyond suggesting that it was a good thing for Republicans to give him what he wants on taxes. But there is no evidence to suggest that Obama plans to govern as a pragmatic centrist in a second term and plenty of evidence that he plans to govern from the left, now being beyond the grasp of the electorate.
Republicans know that whatever happens in the next few months – cliff dive or no cliff dive – will be unpleasant for the country and that they will get the blame. A grim prospect for the party, perhaps, but the more the president does to show his second-term swagger the more readily Republicans can excuse themselves from their current mother-may-I-raise-taxes-this-much approach.
How the American People can stand behind him is totally beyond me...
And isn't it interesting that all these liberals are for personal freedoms...fairness...equity in their rhetoric, but when it comes to the personal freedom of workers to decide for themselves whether to pay dues to union goons or not then they fall on the side of the unions....What total hypocrisy....
Obama Shows Second Term Swagger on Michigan Labor Unrest
By Chris Stirewalt Power Play Published December 11, 2012 FoxNews.com
“What they're really talking about is giving you the right to work for less money.” -- President Obama speaking at a rally in Detroit.
Many schools in Michigan will have to shut down today because teachers are using sick days to attend a massive labor protest in the state capital of Lansing. The state police are getting out the riot gear and lawmakers are preparing for ugly confrontations.
And when the unions lay siege to the statehouse, they will be doing it with the encouragement of the president of the United States, who turned what was billed as a speech on the need to extend tax rates for middle-class earners into a rally for Michigan labor unions.
Ahead of his election, Obama marooned Wisconsin labor groups and Democrats and even stood silent on a teacher strike in his hometown. After his election, Obama is diving in.
While Republicans in Washington are talking about how much to raise taxes in order to coax Obama into a broader budget deal, Obama is out firing up crowds ahead of a labor march.
At a certain point, Republican lawmakers might be forgiven for thinking that the president is not so desperate for bipartisanship and common ground as has been suggested.
The president’s decision to jump into Michigan’s fight shows a lot about where his head is going into his second term. As New York Times White House scribe Helene Cooper, one of the best on the beat, said on “Meet the Press”: “They are so much cockier right now at the White House than they were a year and a half ago when they were doing this.”
In 2011 when Wisconsin was gripped by a nasty battle between government worker unions and newly elected statehouse Republicans, Obama took plenty of heat from liberals for mostly standing silent. Obama not only declined to join the fray, but ahead of the June 2012 election aimed at punishing Republican Gov. Scott Walker for his law stripping government worker unions of the power to strike, Obama declined to help Democrats oust Walker.
Obama famously flew over the state just ahead of the recall vote as he jumped between fundraisers for his own re-election campaign. Liberals lamented that Obama had forgotten his campaign promise to “walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States of America” whenever collective bargaining power was under threat.
Obama made a few remarks about the Wisconsin law in interviews, but mostly steered clear of the subject, with the White House calling it a “Wisconsin issue.”
But on Monday, Obama dived headlong into a labor dispute in Michigan, even though the stakes for his union allies in the state appear to be lower. In Wisconsin it was about ending collective bargaining power for government workers. In Michigan, the fight is over so-called “right to work” legislation that would allow individual workers to opt out of union membership.
Twenty four states already have similar laws. Unions hate the idea because it means that they will no longer get automatic dues payments from workers who opt out. Labor groups refer to these workers as “free riders” who they accuse of enjoying the benefits obtained in contract negotiations without paying to support the union.
But this is a far-less ideologically controversial proposition than what was offered in Wisconsin. One version of the Michigan law under consideration would apply to government workers, allowing them to opt out of state worker unions, but nothing on collective bargaining.
But the labor movement that dominated 20th century America found its fullest flower in Michigan with the United Auto Workers, so there’s an emotional attachment here for the left. Seeing union power and pelf rolled back in Walter Reuther’s Detroit would be a serious psychic blow for a movement that has been staggering for decades.
When labor unions failed in November to amend the state constitution to enshrine the power of collective bargaining for state workers in the Michigan constitution, state Republicans saw their opportunity.
Michigan Republicans went after the lifeblood of the labor movement and, by extension, the Democratic Party: mandatory union dues payments and the response has been fearsome.
Obama’s promise to his political base, and once embarrassingly to the Putin regime in Russia, is that after his final election he would be free to govern as he wanted. What you saw in Michigan on Monday was a prime example of that new flexibility. Ahead of his election, Obama marooned Wisconsin labor groups and Democrats and even stood silent on a teacher strike in his hometown. After his election, Obama is diving in.
Imagine Obama pre-election encouraging a labor demonstration that will leave thousands of swing-state parents in the lurch as teachers catch the blue flu. Imagine Obama speaking so forcefully against right-to-work laws on the books and with popular support in swing states Nevada, Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.
No chance.
Republicans in Washington are scourging themselves, and practically begging Obama to make a deal that allows them to raise taxes on top earners in exchange for future concessions on entitlements. This assumes that Obama is interested in some kind of grand bargain.
While the GOP is negotiating with itself over how much to raise taxes, the president is out on the campaign trail hammering away. Those centrist pundits and anxious Republicans suggesting that Obama just wants a win on tax rates and then can be enticed into a bigger deal are apparently not listening and weren’t listening when Obama talked about his plans for a second term. Since re-election Obama has shown no hints of bipartisanship beyond suggesting that it was a good thing for Republicans to give him what he wants on taxes. But there is no evidence to suggest that Obama plans to govern as a pragmatic centrist in a second term and plenty of evidence that he plans to govern from the left, now being beyond the grasp of the electorate.
Republicans know that whatever happens in the next few months – cliff dive or no cliff dive – will be unpleasant for the country and that they will get the blame. A grim prospect for the party, perhaps, but the more the president does to show his second-term swagger the more readily Republicans can excuse themselves from their current mother-may-I-raise-taxes-this-much approach.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Republicans need to stand tall and let Obama take America Over the Cliff if that's what he wants......He's the Leader of the Free World....
Obama not interested in solving America's Problems...just interested in making his personal power play....He's BAD for America....
Obama Risks it All for Tax Hike
By Chris Stirewalt Published December 03, 2012 FoxNews.com
“So our view here is the president won’t sign a deal that doesn’t have higher rates for the wealthy. Until they cross that bridge, nothing else is relevant.” -- White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer talking to The New York Times.
We know President Obama’s insistence on making higher tax rates for top earners isn’t about the money.
Not only would the additional payments by those families making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000 be a relatively small sum – something like one week of federal spending next year – but the president is turning down proposals that would provide similar revenues by closing loopholes.
For Obama, this is in part about principle. He believes income inequality is a huge problem facing the nation. The president also seemingly believes that by knocking down the income of the top 2 percent of earners by an estimated average of $36,000 per household, and then taking that money and spending it on government programs aimed at lower-income Americans, it will help narrow the gap between the rich and the middle class.
While a post-cliff Obama might have more leverage since he would have more power and be starting with tax rates already higher, he would be in very poor shape if his brinksmanship kicked off a panic or recession.
Hence the fact that in his proposal to avert across-the-board income tax hikes, unveiled to stunned Republicans and political watchers, are calls for spending most of the first year’s worth of the tax hike on a stimulus spending package, likely aimed at helping state and local governments retain workers and maintain programs.
But again, the president is rejecting plans that would provide similar reductions in net income for top earners, so he pretty obviously isn’t as concerned that this particular deal comports with his goal of wealth redistribution.
Obama is playing a longer, riskier game than that.
The president’s proposal is designed to fail and designed to take the nation right up to the so-called fiscal cliff.
If the GOP breaks in the end and give him his rate increase then he will not only have won a big victory but also will have left his rival political party in a shambles, having forced Republicans to violate the core principle that has animated their party for two decades. Obama could head into 2014 midterms knowing that Republican primary voters would be undertaking a vicious ideological fight on taxes.
But what if the Republicans don’t accept higher tax rates as a precondition for negotiating a larger deal and the federal government jumps the cliff.
The Obama Democrats are sanguine about the prospect, believing that they can get a much better deal overall once everyone’s taxes have gone up. Republicans wouldn’t be voting for higher taxes in a post-cliff world, but rather lowering them from the automatically higher rates that would kick in on January 1. While it would allow Republicans to remain ideologically intact, it means the president would start the next round of negotiations having already gotten what he wanted.
While Republicans complain that the president has been unyielding in his first term, Democrats largely have the opposite view. The conventional wisdom on the left has been that Obama has been a pushover and given away too much in his negotiations with Republicans over taxes and spending.
Recall the pressure on Obama to unilaterally raise the federal borrowing limit, touching off a Constitutional crisis? The president’s political base has long wished that Obama would simply smash the Republicans and have seen his chief weakness as being too accommodating.
These are the folks who have been urging the president to force the Republicans to open the negotiations with a huge concession and suggesting that jumping the cliff is not a big deal. Rather than allowing the Republicans to save face and move on past the current impasse, the left wants an auto-da-fe from the GOP.
Again, it’s not about how much money would be raised. It is about breaking the Republicans.
So far, the president is giving his base what it wants, and is paving the way for a cliff jump by indicating that he can unilaterally shield taxpayers from the effects and perhaps even hold off on the cuts. Under this scenario, the president would wait for a new, more Democratic Congress, and for heightened anxiety to set in before taking on larger negotiations. He would hold additional power under this scenario because he would be the one dangling the sword on the taxes and cuts – if he could unilaterally delay much of their imposition, one supposes that he could unilaterally impose them whenever he decided that further negotiations were fruitless.
But that assumes markets and investors can be mollified for the next several months – that the president can convince the financial world that he can pull this all off.
For now, capitalists are making the same mistakes they usually do when it comes to Washington. First, they assume rational thinking applies and that politicians care more about the economy than political gain.
Right now, the president is content to tell Republicans that it is his way or the highway on tax rates and it is seen as mere bluster ahead of the final round of negotiations. But if Obama really is serious about refusing to do a deal over what is essentially a semantic, ideological point – that it is not enough for people to pay more taxes, that they must pay at a higher rate – things could get ugly very fast.
A president who shows that kind of rigidity would scare markets and deepen doubts that a larger deal could eventually be completed. While a post-cliff Obama might have more leverage since he would have more power and be starting with tax rates already higher, he would be in very poor shape if his brinksmanship kicked off a panic or recession.
The president was having success cornering Republicans as the narrow ideologues in this debate, but has now made himself the intransigent one. If the economy starts to tumble, Obama’s tax rate gambit has dramatically increased the share of blame he would receive
Obama Risks it All for Tax Hike
By Chris Stirewalt Published December 03, 2012 FoxNews.com
“So our view here is the president won’t sign a deal that doesn’t have higher rates for the wealthy. Until they cross that bridge, nothing else is relevant.” -- White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer talking to The New York Times.
We know President Obama’s insistence on making higher tax rates for top earners isn’t about the money.
Not only would the additional payments by those families making more than $250,000 and individuals making more than $200,000 be a relatively small sum – something like one week of federal spending next year – but the president is turning down proposals that would provide similar revenues by closing loopholes.
For Obama, this is in part about principle. He believes income inequality is a huge problem facing the nation. The president also seemingly believes that by knocking down the income of the top 2 percent of earners by an estimated average of $36,000 per household, and then taking that money and spending it on government programs aimed at lower-income Americans, it will help narrow the gap between the rich and the middle class.
While a post-cliff Obama might have more leverage since he would have more power and be starting with tax rates already higher, he would be in very poor shape if his brinksmanship kicked off a panic or recession.
Hence the fact that in his proposal to avert across-the-board income tax hikes, unveiled to stunned Republicans and political watchers, are calls for spending most of the first year’s worth of the tax hike on a stimulus spending package, likely aimed at helping state and local governments retain workers and maintain programs.
But again, the president is rejecting plans that would provide similar reductions in net income for top earners, so he pretty obviously isn’t as concerned that this particular deal comports with his goal of wealth redistribution.
Obama is playing a longer, riskier game than that.
The president’s proposal is designed to fail and designed to take the nation right up to the so-called fiscal cliff.
If the GOP breaks in the end and give him his rate increase then he will not only have won a big victory but also will have left his rival political party in a shambles, having forced Republicans to violate the core principle that has animated their party for two decades. Obama could head into 2014 midterms knowing that Republican primary voters would be undertaking a vicious ideological fight on taxes.
But what if the Republicans don’t accept higher tax rates as a precondition for negotiating a larger deal and the federal government jumps the cliff.
The Obama Democrats are sanguine about the prospect, believing that they can get a much better deal overall once everyone’s taxes have gone up. Republicans wouldn’t be voting for higher taxes in a post-cliff world, but rather lowering them from the automatically higher rates that would kick in on January 1. While it would allow Republicans to remain ideologically intact, it means the president would start the next round of negotiations having already gotten what he wanted.
While Republicans complain that the president has been unyielding in his first term, Democrats largely have the opposite view. The conventional wisdom on the left has been that Obama has been a pushover and given away too much in his negotiations with Republicans over taxes and spending.
Recall the pressure on Obama to unilaterally raise the federal borrowing limit, touching off a Constitutional crisis? The president’s political base has long wished that Obama would simply smash the Republicans and have seen his chief weakness as being too accommodating.
These are the folks who have been urging the president to force the Republicans to open the negotiations with a huge concession and suggesting that jumping the cliff is not a big deal. Rather than allowing the Republicans to save face and move on past the current impasse, the left wants an auto-da-fe from the GOP.
Again, it’s not about how much money would be raised. It is about breaking the Republicans.
So far, the president is giving his base what it wants, and is paving the way for a cliff jump by indicating that he can unilaterally shield taxpayers from the effects and perhaps even hold off on the cuts. Under this scenario, the president would wait for a new, more Democratic Congress, and for heightened anxiety to set in before taking on larger negotiations. He would hold additional power under this scenario because he would be the one dangling the sword on the taxes and cuts – if he could unilaterally delay much of their imposition, one supposes that he could unilaterally impose them whenever he decided that further negotiations were fruitless.
But that assumes markets and investors can be mollified for the next several months – that the president can convince the financial world that he can pull this all off.
For now, capitalists are making the same mistakes they usually do when it comes to Washington. First, they assume rational thinking applies and that politicians care more about the economy than political gain.
Right now, the president is content to tell Republicans that it is his way or the highway on tax rates and it is seen as mere bluster ahead of the final round of negotiations. But if Obama really is serious about refusing to do a deal over what is essentially a semantic, ideological point – that it is not enough for people to pay more taxes, that they must pay at a higher rate – things could get ugly very fast.
A president who shows that kind of rigidity would scare markets and deepen doubts that a larger deal could eventually be completed. While a post-cliff Obama might have more leverage since he would have more power and be starting with tax rates already higher, he would be in very poor shape if his brinksmanship kicked off a panic or recession.
The president was having success cornering Republicans as the narrow ideologues in this debate, but has now made himself the intransigent one. If the economy starts to tumble, Obama’s tax rate gambit has dramatically increased the share of blame he would receive
Another Liberal NBC STATE-RUN idiot trying to preach to others....
Bob Costas...just one more liberal NBC State-Run Media idiot preaching to all of us over gun control....Mr Costas if you want to preach, go into religion...if want to comment on public policy, run for office....otherwise stick to sports and cut the commentary!
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Finally A Couple of State-Run Media Anchors that actually have some Values and Integrity...I applaud them...
News Anchors Quit LIVE on Air
11/26/12
According to Bangor Daily News:
“News co-anchors Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced their resignations at the end of Tuesday’s 6 p.m. newscast.
Michaels and Consiglio, who have a combined 12½ years’ service at WVII (Channel 7) and sister station WFVX (Channel 22), shocked staff members and viewers with their joint resignations Tuesday evening.”
Michaels: “It’s a culmination of ongoing occurrences that took place the last several years and basically involved upper management practices that we both strongly disagreed with,” she explained. “It’s a little complicated, but we were expected to do somewhat unbalanced news, politically, in general.”
“There was a constant disrespecting and belittling of staff and we both felt there was a lack of knowledge from ownership and upper management in running a newsroom to the extent that I was not allowed to structure and direct them professionally,” Michaels explained. “I couldn’t do everything I wanted to as a news director. There was a regular undoing of decisions.”
Friday, November 30, 2012
Charles is Correct Again....He Boils Down Just What the Republicans Need to Do....Let's Hope John Boehner is Listening....
November 29, 2012 8:00 P.M. By Charles Krauthammer
Cliff Jumping with Barack If Republicans give way on taxes, it should only be for real entitlement reform.
Why are Republicans playing the Democrats’ game that the “fiscal cliff” is all about taxation?
House Speaker John Boehner already made the preemptive concession of agreeing to raise revenues. But the insistence on doing so by eliminating deductions without raising marginal rates is now the subject of fierce Republican infighting.
Where is the other part of President Obama’s vaunted “balanced approach”? Where are the spending cuts, both discretionary and entitlement: Medicare, Medicaid, and now Obamacare (the health-care trio) and Social Security?
Social Security is the easiest to solve. So you get a sense of the Democrats’ inclination to reform entitlements when Dick Durbin, the Senate Democrats’ No. 2, says Social Security is off the table because it “does not add a penny to our deficit.”
This is absurd. In 2012, Social Security adds $165 billion to the deficit. Democrats pretend that Social Security is covered through 2033 by its trust fund. Except that the trust fund is a fiction, a mere “bookkeeping” device, as the OMB itself has written. The trust fund’s IOUs “do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits.” Future benefits “will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.”
And they are draining the Treasury, as 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. Yet that’s off the table. And on Wednesday, the president threw down the gauntlet by demanding tax hikes now — with spending cuts to come next year. Meaning, until after Republicans have fallen on their swords, given up the tax issue, and forfeited their political leverage.
Ronald Reagan once fell for a “tax now, cut later” deal that he later deeply regretted. Dems got the tax; he never got the cuts. Obama’s audacious new gambit is not a serious proposal to solve our fiscal problems. It’s a raw partisan maneuver meant to neuter the Republicans by getting them to cave on their signature issue as the hold-the-line party on taxes.
The objective is to ignite exactly the kind of internecine warfare on taxes now going on among Republicans. And to bury Grover Norquist.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Norquistian. I don’t believe the current level of taxation is divinely ordained. Nor do I believe in pledges of any kind. But Norquist is the only guy in town to consistently resist the tax-and-spend Democrats’ stampede for ever higher taxes to fund ever more reckless spending.
The hunt for Norquist’s scalp is a key part of the larger partisan project to make the Republicans do a George H. W. Bush and renege on their heretofore firm stand on taxes. Bush never recovered.
Why are the Republicans playing along? Because it is assumed that Obama has the upper hand. Unless Republicans acquiesce and get the best deal they can right now, tax rates will rise across the board on January 1, and the GOP will be left without any bargaining chips.
But what about Obama? If we all cliff-dive, he gets to preside over yet another recession. It will wreck his second term. Sure, Republicans will get blamed. But Obama is never running again. He cares about his legacy. You think he wants a second term with a double-dip recession, 9 percent unemployment, and a totally gridlocked Congress? Republicans have to stop playing as if they have no cards.
Obama is claiming an electoral mandate to raise taxes on the top 2 percent. Perhaps, but remember those incessant campaign ads promising a return to the economic nirvana of the Clinton years? Well, George W. Bush cut rates across the board, not just for the top 2 percent. Going back to the Clinton rates means middle-class tax hikes that yield four times the revenue that you get from just the rich. So give Obama the full Clinton. Let him live with that. And with what also lies on the other side of the cliff: 28 million Americans newly subject to the ruinous alternative minimum tax.
Republicans must stop acting like supplicants. If Obama so loves those Clinton rates, Republicans should say: Then go over the cliff and have them all.
And add: But if you want a Grand Bargain, then deal. If we give way on taxes, we want, in return, serious discretionary cuts, clearly spelled-out entitlement cuts, and real tax reform.
Otherwise, strap on your parachute, Mr. President. We’ll ride down together.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2012 the Washington Post Writers Group.
Cliff Jumping with Barack If Republicans give way on taxes, it should only be for real entitlement reform.
Why are Republicans playing the Democrats’ game that the “fiscal cliff” is all about taxation?
House Speaker John Boehner already made the preemptive concession of agreeing to raise revenues. But the insistence on doing so by eliminating deductions without raising marginal rates is now the subject of fierce Republican infighting.
Where is the other part of President Obama’s vaunted “balanced approach”? Where are the spending cuts, both discretionary and entitlement: Medicare, Medicaid, and now Obamacare (the health-care trio) and Social Security?
Social Security is the easiest to solve. So you get a sense of the Democrats’ inclination to reform entitlements when Dick Durbin, the Senate Democrats’ No. 2, says Social Security is off the table because it “does not add a penny to our deficit.”
This is absurd. In 2012, Social Security adds $165 billion to the deficit. Democrats pretend that Social Security is covered through 2033 by its trust fund. Except that the trust fund is a fiction, a mere “bookkeeping” device, as the OMB itself has written. The trust fund’s IOUs “do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits.” Future benefits “will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.”
And they are draining the Treasury, as 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. Yet that’s off the table. And on Wednesday, the president threw down the gauntlet by demanding tax hikes now — with spending cuts to come next year. Meaning, until after Republicans have fallen on their swords, given up the tax issue, and forfeited their political leverage.
Ronald Reagan once fell for a “tax now, cut later” deal that he later deeply regretted. Dems got the tax; he never got the cuts. Obama’s audacious new gambit is not a serious proposal to solve our fiscal problems. It’s a raw partisan maneuver meant to neuter the Republicans by getting them to cave on their signature issue as the hold-the-line party on taxes.
The objective is to ignite exactly the kind of internecine warfare on taxes now going on among Republicans. And to bury Grover Norquist.
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Norquistian. I don’t believe the current level of taxation is divinely ordained. Nor do I believe in pledges of any kind. But Norquist is the only guy in town to consistently resist the tax-and-spend Democrats’ stampede for ever higher taxes to fund ever more reckless spending.
The hunt for Norquist’s scalp is a key part of the larger partisan project to make the Republicans do a George H. W. Bush and renege on their heretofore firm stand on taxes. Bush never recovered.
Why are the Republicans playing along? Because it is assumed that Obama has the upper hand. Unless Republicans acquiesce and get the best deal they can right now, tax rates will rise across the board on January 1, and the GOP will be left without any bargaining chips.
But what about Obama? If we all cliff-dive, he gets to preside over yet another recession. It will wreck his second term. Sure, Republicans will get blamed. But Obama is never running again. He cares about his legacy. You think he wants a second term with a double-dip recession, 9 percent unemployment, and a totally gridlocked Congress? Republicans have to stop playing as if they have no cards.
Obama is claiming an electoral mandate to raise taxes on the top 2 percent. Perhaps, but remember those incessant campaign ads promising a return to the economic nirvana of the Clinton years? Well, George W. Bush cut rates across the board, not just for the top 2 percent. Going back to the Clinton rates means middle-class tax hikes that yield four times the revenue that you get from just the rich. So give Obama the full Clinton. Let him live with that. And with what also lies on the other side of the cliff: 28 million Americans newly subject to the ruinous alternative minimum tax.
Republicans must stop acting like supplicants. If Obama so loves those Clinton rates, Republicans should say: Then go over the cliff and have them all.
And add: But if you want a Grand Bargain, then deal. If we give way on taxes, we want, in return, serious discretionary cuts, clearly spelled-out entitlement cuts, and real tax reform.
Otherwise, strap on your parachute, Mr. President. We’ll ride down together.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2012 the Washington Post Writers Group.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
YOUR TAxes Are Going Up BUT Barack and Michelle Are Still Livin Large on YOUR TAX DOLLARS....
Report: Obamas to spend holidays in Hawaii at $4 million cost to taxpayers
Caroline May Political Reporter
The first family will be vacationing in Hawaii for the Christmas holidays at a cost of at least $4 million to taxpayers, according to a report from the Hawaii Reporter.
The Hawaiian paper reports that residents living near the beachfront homes at Kailuana Place, where the President Obama and first family have visited annually since 2008, were notified Monday that there will be restrictions on their movements in place for 20 days, from Dec. 17 through Jan. 6.
The Hawaii Reporter calculated the $4 million cost to taxpayers based in part on the price of a round trip flight to the island on Air Force One, the transport of the president’s support equipment, housing of security and staff and the cost of police to local taxpayers.
The first family pays for their own rental on the beach, according to the paper.
The White House Dossier notes that the White House has yet to officially announce the vacation or the president’s travel plans and notes Obama could be in Hawaii on the day the country goes off the “fiscal cliff” if no deal is reached in time.
The Dossier adds that the vacation could help to add “subtle pressure” the president to reach a deal.
Author Robert Keith Gray estimated in his book “Presidential Perks Gone Royal“ that last year taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on the first family, compared to the $57.8 million British taxpayers spent on the royal family, The Daily Caller reported in September.
Last year the Hawaii Reporter estimated the president’s 17-day holiday vacation in Hawaii was more than $4 million as well.
Caroline May Political Reporter
The first family will be vacationing in Hawaii for the Christmas holidays at a cost of at least $4 million to taxpayers, according to a report from the Hawaii Reporter.
The Hawaiian paper reports that residents living near the beachfront homes at Kailuana Place, where the President Obama and first family have visited annually since 2008, were notified Monday that there will be restrictions on their movements in place for 20 days, from Dec. 17 through Jan. 6.
The Hawaii Reporter calculated the $4 million cost to taxpayers based in part on the price of a round trip flight to the island on Air Force One, the transport of the president’s support equipment, housing of security and staff and the cost of police to local taxpayers.
The first family pays for their own rental on the beach, according to the paper.
The White House Dossier notes that the White House has yet to officially announce the vacation or the president’s travel plans and notes Obama could be in Hawaii on the day the country goes off the “fiscal cliff” if no deal is reached in time.
The Dossier adds that the vacation could help to add “subtle pressure” the president to reach a deal.
Author Robert Keith Gray estimated in his book “Presidential Perks Gone Royal“ that last year taxpayers spent $1.4 billion on the first family, compared to the $57.8 million British taxpayers spent on the royal family, The Daily Caller reported in September.
Last year the Hawaii Reporter estimated the president’s 17-day holiday vacation in Hawaii was more than $4 million as well.
I Still Think Newt Would Have Been the BEST Republican Nominee for President.....He would have won the Election!
Gingrich: House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Obama
3:12 AM 11/29/2012 Alexis Levinson
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the fiscal cliff, saying that by doing so, they give Obama all of the leverage in the talks.
“One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.
"They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to cave in to Obama; they don’t need to form a ‘Surrender Caucus.’”
“So my number one bit of advice to the congressional Republicans is simple: Back out of of all of this negotiating with Obama. The president is overwhelmingly dominant in the news media. You start setting up the definition of success finding an agreement with Obama, you just gave Obama the ability to say to you, ‘Not good enough,’” Gingrich said.
The onetime presidential hopeful ridiculed the idea of the fiscal cliff, saying it was a manufactured crisis.
“There is no fiscal cliff. It’s absolute, total, nonsense,” Gingrich said.
“It is an excuse to panic. It’s a device to get all of us running down the road so we accept whatever Obama wants because otherwise we have failed the fiscal cliff, and how can you be a patriot if you don’t do what the fiscal cliff requires, and the fiscal cliff will appear to us one afternoon, much like the land of Oz, where there will be this person hiding behind the machine who will say, ‘Raise taxes now,’” Gingrich intoned, “and if you don’t raise taxes you’ll have violated the fiscal cliff.”
“Now, do any of you want to be the person who stands up and destroys America by violating the fiscal cliff? Do you want to go on one of the national networks and explain that you are so reactionary, so out of touch with life, that you don’t care that America is going to die late on Thursday?” Gingrich scoffed
He also addressed the recent focus on Grover Norquist and his no-raising taxes pledge, which some Republicans have abandoned in recent weeks, calling it a “distraction.”
“I give Obama great credit for this. I have never seen anybody better at finding trivial distractions in order to avoid responsibility,” Gingrich said.
“I’ve known Grover Norquist for a long time, and I think he’s a fine person. He holds no elected office, and in fact, he wasn’t elected president. So here you have the President of the United States who is responsible for solving our problems, who has not offered a single serious, cost cutting measure, … Instead of dealing with the fact that the president has once again failed to provide leadership, the president has now gotten us worried about whether Grover Norquist now defines the Republican Party
3:12 AM 11/29/2012 Alexis Levinson
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that House Republicans should stop negotiating with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats on the fiscal cliff, saying that by doing so, they give Obama all of the leverage in the talks.
“One of the things I would say to House Republicans is to get a grip,” Gingrich said in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.
"They are the majority. They’re not the minority,” he said, enunciating the words as if explaining the concept to someone who did not understand it. “They don’t need to cave in to Obama; they don’t need to form a ‘Surrender Caucus.’”
“So my number one bit of advice to the congressional Republicans is simple: Back out of of all of this negotiating with Obama. The president is overwhelmingly dominant in the news media. You start setting up the definition of success finding an agreement with Obama, you just gave Obama the ability to say to you, ‘Not good enough,’” Gingrich said.
The onetime presidential hopeful ridiculed the idea of the fiscal cliff, saying it was a manufactured crisis.
“There is no fiscal cliff. It’s absolute, total, nonsense,” Gingrich said.
“It is an excuse to panic. It’s a device to get all of us running down the road so we accept whatever Obama wants because otherwise we have failed the fiscal cliff, and how can you be a patriot if you don’t do what the fiscal cliff requires, and the fiscal cliff will appear to us one afternoon, much like the land of Oz, where there will be this person hiding behind the machine who will say, ‘Raise taxes now,’” Gingrich intoned, “and if you don’t raise taxes you’ll have violated the fiscal cliff.”
“Now, do any of you want to be the person who stands up and destroys America by violating the fiscal cliff? Do you want to go on one of the national networks and explain that you are so reactionary, so out of touch with life, that you don’t care that America is going to die late on Thursday?” Gingrich scoffed
He also addressed the recent focus on Grover Norquist and his no-raising taxes pledge, which some Republicans have abandoned in recent weeks, calling it a “distraction.”
“I give Obama great credit for this. I have never seen anybody better at finding trivial distractions in order to avoid responsibility,” Gingrich said.
“I’ve known Grover Norquist for a long time, and I think he’s a fine person. He holds no elected office, and in fact, he wasn’t elected president. So here you have the President of the United States who is responsible for solving our problems, who has not offered a single serious, cost cutting measure, … Instead of dealing with the fact that the president has once again failed to provide leadership, the president has now gotten us worried about whether Grover Norquist now defines the Republican Party
Bill Clinton....Still a total Sleezeball
Inside the Beltway: Bill and the hoodie
By Jennifer Harper The Washington Times Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Two decades have passed since nightclub entertainer and blond bombshell Gennifer Flowers stepped before cameras and announced she had a 12-year affair with then-Gov. Bill Clinton, joining a roster of attractive women who reported similar dalliances, wanted and unwanted. Miss Flowers has stepped forward once again to reveal that in 2005, Mr. Clinton offered to come visit her once again.
“I picked up the telephone, and it was him. I said, ‘No, you can’t come over here. No way.’ I said ‘No, you can’t come to my house.’ He said, ‘I’ll put on a hoodie and jog up there.’ He used to do that. I said ‘No. No. And I want you to leave me alone.’ And that was the end of it,” said Miss Flowers, now 62, as she sipped wine and laughed languidly through an interview with WGNO, an ABC affiliate in New Orleans.
She also had advice for Paula Broadwell, still generating scandalous news coverage of her affair with former CIA Director David H. Petraeus.
“Call me, Paula,” Miss Flowers said, miming a phone to her ear. “I’ll give you some really good advice.”
The self-described “cougar,” author and motivational speaker, incidentally, is currently shopping around a new reality show titled “The Real Housewives of New Orleans,” in which she plays herself.
“I’m always looking for romance,” she explains
By Jennifer Harper The Washington Times Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Two decades have passed since nightclub entertainer and blond bombshell Gennifer Flowers stepped before cameras and announced she had a 12-year affair with then-Gov. Bill Clinton, joining a roster of attractive women who reported similar dalliances, wanted and unwanted. Miss Flowers has stepped forward once again to reveal that in 2005, Mr. Clinton offered to come visit her once again.
“I picked up the telephone, and it was him. I said, ‘No, you can’t come over here. No way.’ I said ‘No, you can’t come to my house.’ He said, ‘I’ll put on a hoodie and jog up there.’ He used to do that. I said ‘No. No. And I want you to leave me alone.’ And that was the end of it,” said Miss Flowers, now 62, as she sipped wine and laughed languidly through an interview with WGNO, an ABC affiliate in New Orleans.
She also had advice for Paula Broadwell, still generating scandalous news coverage of her affair with former CIA Director David H. Petraeus.
“Call me, Paula,” Miss Flowers said, miming a phone to her ear. “I’ll give you some really good advice.”
The self-described “cougar,” author and motivational speaker, incidentally, is currently shopping around a new reality show titled “The Real Housewives of New Orleans,” in which she plays herself.
“I’m always looking for romance,” she explains
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