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Obama’s Mojo Meter: 0

September 10, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

President Obama plans to call for a “pause” Tuesday night in the push for a congressional vote on military action in Syria, senior administration officials told Fox News, as the president waits to see if an emerging diplomatic option can work.

The early details of the president’s national address show he is continuing to back off his “red line” threat to take military action against President Bashar Assad’s regime for its use of chemical weapons. Though his Secretary of State, John Kerry, seemed to push for a congressional vote during testimony on Capitol Hill earlier in the day, officials said Obama is now hitting “pause” on that process.

The pause comes as Kerry plans to meet with his Russian counterpart in Geneva on Thursday to discuss a proposal to have Syria turn over its chemical weapons stockpile to international control.

The administration claims it wants to find out quickly whether this proposal is serious.

Administration officials clarified that Obama is not canceling the congressional votes; but rather, wants to slow them down. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid already has postponed a Wednesday test vote on whether to authorize military force.

One official described the administration’s current approach as a two-track plan – setting up potential votes for military force on the Hill, while also pursuing the diplomatic track.

Another official said that during Tuesday’s meetings on Capitol Hill Obama “indicated a desire to pursue the diplomatic option that was put forward yesterday by the Russians.”

He said the president said his administration would spend the days ahead “pursuing this diplomatic option with the Russians and our allies at the United Nations” while his administration worked with members of Congress on authorizing language.

Administration officials also claimed the White House has been working on the chemical weapons hand-over idea with the Russians for up to year. According to the officials, Kerry did accidentally let the news out on Monday – when he appeared to make an off-handed comment that Assad could avert a strike by turning over his weapons. Kerry immediately walked back the remark.

The officials said that because Russia then openly agreed to the idea, the president is willing to see if this will work. If not, officials said, the White House will still pursue a military course.

No matter what course the administration takes, the president was being challenged from all sides Tuesday — with Russia’s Vladimir Putin pressuring Obama to drop his call for a military strike and members of the Syrian opposition warning that a newly emerging diplomatic option would only play into Assad’s hands.

In Russia, Putin reportedly needled the Obama administration to abandon the military option. Putin said the only way diplomacy can work is if “we hear that the American side and all those who support the United States in this sense reject the use of force,” according to Reuters.

But the diplomatic option was running into early obstacles, as an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council was suddenly called off, after Russia withdrew its request.

And members of the Syrian opposition and others voiced concern that the chemical weapons plan is indeed turning into a “stall” tactic that will allow the Assad regime to escalate conventional warfare on its own people.

Among the most outspoken since the emergence Monday of a potential U.S.-Russia plan has been the Syrian Coalition — a leader in the nearly three-year-long effort to oust Assad.

“It is vital to remember that the Assad regime, notwithstanding its use of chemical weapons, continues to use all kinds of conventional weapons against innocent women and children,” said the group, formally known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces. “The Assad regime, which has butchered people with knives and burnt them alive, has exhausted all time limits over the past two-and-a-half years.”

More than 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war, including an estimated 1,400 in the sarin-gas attack last month that prompted Obama to conclude on Aug. 31 that the United States should launch a punitive strike and ask for congressional support.

The diplomatic plan appeared to emerge Monday morning in London when Kerry said Assad has a long-shot possibility of avoiding a strike by surrendering the weapons. The plan was promptly endorsed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and by Monday night Obama appeared to make the idea part of his evolving foreign policy.

“I welcome the possibility of the development,” the president told Fox News. “And John Kerry will be talking to his Russian counterparts. I think we should explore and exhaust all avenues of diplomatic resolution of this. But I think it’s important for us to keep the pressure on.”

Syria’s foreign minister embraced the proposal to turn over chemical weapons, saying Tuesday that Syria would declare its chemical weapons arsenal and sign the chemical weapons convention. Kerry, though, said Syria should “go further.”

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain — among Capitol Hill’s most outspoken supporters of efforts to end the Assad regime — said Tuesday he was “very skeptical” about the proposed diplomatic solution, considering Assad had refused to acknowledge having chemical weapons.

Still, he said Congress should wait on deciding on a military strike until the possibility of a U.N. resolution on controlling Assad’s chemical weapons “plays out.”

“To not pursue this option would be a mistake,” McCain told CBS News before making clear he still thinks the best strategy is military support for Assad opposition forces to help overthrow the government.

Meanwhile, Kansas Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, a member of the Select Intelligence Committee, told FoxNews.com LIVE’s “Power Play” on Tuesday the United States should still strike because the Syrian uprising is a national security concern.

“I don’t trust the president to execute this plan well,” he said. “It’s why I wanted to engage. I was over at the White House yesterday. We had a very direct conversation about what the president ought to say tonight. But more importantly, what the president ought to do if he were to engage militarily in Syria. It’s not enough to fire a couple missiles.”

Many in Congress, though, are against any U.S. military action in Syria. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday joined those opposing a strike. It’s not clear whether Congress will take up a resolution to authorize the use of force.

Earlier in the day, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed there was no need for a congressional vote.

“It is not necessary for Congress to give the president this authority,” Pelosi said. “We are grateful that he has asked for it but if he sees an opportunity we don’t want the Russians to think that his leverage is diminished because of a vote (that) may or may not succeed within the Congress.”

The push-back from Washington and Moscow poses a challenge for Obama, as he finds himself caught between two very different paths on Syria — a missile strike that potentially drags the U.S. into a bloody civil war, and a diplomatic solution that would likely do little to end that war.

The momentum, at least temporarily, appeared to be running in favor of the diplomatic course.

On Capitol Hill, a bipartisan group of eight senators started writing an alternative resolution that would call on the United Nations to state that Syria used chemical weapons and require a U.N. team to remove the chemical weapons from Syria within a specific time period, possibly 60 days. If that can’t be done, then Obama would have the authority to launch military strikes, congressional aides said.

Published September 10, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Ed Henry and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Obama Praises Islam in America

September 7, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

President Barack Hussein Obama taped the following message to the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) for its 50th Convention, praising Islamic efforts in this country to help him implement many of his policies.

“My Administration is proud to be your partner in our shared efforts to promote economic opportunity, accessible health care and affordable education in Muslim communities throughout our country,” he said.

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Drudge Rebukes GOP Over Syria, NSA

September 5, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Internet pioneer Matt Drudge may have had enough of the Republican Party.

Though known to needle the GOP and its leaders from time to time, the founder of Drudge Report let loose over the party’s direction on Twitter this week.

Asking why anyone would vote Republican, Drudge listed his grievances: “Raised taxes; marching us off to war again; approved more NSA snooping. WHO ARE THEY?!”

His tweets referred to Republican leaders, like House Speaker John Boehner, getting behind the president’s military-strike push in Syria and other positions. But Drudge’s comments also touched on the broader internal fight in the party.

Or as Drudge put it: “It’s now Authoritarian vs. Libertarian. Since Democrats vs. Republicans have been obliterated, no real differences between parties.”

But Drudge’s recent tweets are hardly the first time he’s gotten in the middle of Republican Party infighting.

In January 2012, conservative Republicans accused him of catering to the GOP establishment and said he used his influential site as a virtual soap box for presidential candidate Mitt Romney. They were upset that he had taken repeated swipes at candidate Newt Gingrich.

Some fans openly questioned whether Drudge, once the darling of the conservative right, had become an enemy to the “cause” and accused him of using his digital real estate to push a more mainstream message. Politico wrote at the time, “Newt Gingrich better hope voters who lapped up his delicious hits on the ‘elite media’ and liberals don’t read the Drudge Report this morning … If they do, Gingrich comes off looking like a dangerous, anti-Reagan, Clintonian fraud.”

Known for its never-changed spartan look, Drudge Report has become one of the most powerful drivers of political news in the country. The headlines trend toward news that interests conservative readers the most, but news outlets of all stripes relish a link on the heavily trafficked site — and check it regularly.

According to a May 2011 Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism study, Drudge is an “extremely important traffic driver.”

“In other words, the Drudge Report’s influence cuts across both traditional organizations such as ABC News to more tabloid style outlets such as the New York Post,” the study found. “What’s more, Drudge Report drove more links than Facebook or Twitter on all the sites to which it drove traffic.”

Drudge Report started off as an online news group in the ’90s. Its break-out moment came in 1998, when it out-scooped Newsweek on its own story. Drudge reported that the national magazine had information on the inappropriate relationship between then-President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky but was sitting on it. Newsweek published the story after Drudge’s report came out.

Not known for his tact, Drudge has been repeatedly slammed by the left for sensationalizing news.

Yet earlier this year, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange hailed Drudge as a “news media innovator” who should be applauded.

Assange claimed that Drudge made his name by “publishing information that the establishment media would not. It is as a result of the self-censorship of the establishment press in the United States that gave Matt Drudge such a platform and so of course he should be applauded for breaking a lot of that censorship.”

Published September 05, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Critics Blast Fed Common Core Education Edicts

September 4, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

A full year before students around the nation submit to the new Common Core standardized tests, the federally-backed program is already causing chaos and confusion at local school board meetings, in the classroom and at the dinner table.

As critics fear Washington is poised to take control of what and how local districts teach kids, school administrators are adopting new curriculum in an effort to ensure their students outperform their peers and parents worry that their children are being used as academic guinea pigs. As the program gets closer to full implementation, a full-blown backlash is developing despite assurances from supporters that it is merely a test aimed at establishing a national standard.

“Common Core is forcing districts to re-think math curriculum. And in cases like ours, they are making poor decisions.” – Kelly Crisp, parent from Fairfield, Conn.

“It’s just now reaching their school districts and their children’s schools and they want to know, ‘What is this, and why is it being forced on us?’” said the Cato Institute’s Neil McCluskey.

When 90 percent of states signed on to subject K-12 students to the Common Core math and English standards being pushed by the federal government, the program looked like an unqualified success. Kids around the nation would be tested once a year in grades 3-8 in math and English language arts, and once in high school, either in the 10th or 11th grades. Finally, students throughout the country could be measured by the same yardstick, long before taking college entrance exams. Local districts that excelled at educating children could be singled out, and ones who lagged could also be identified in order to address problems.

But if what happened in New York and Kentucky, two of the 45 states that have signed on to the Common Core State Standards Initiative, is any indication, the chaos has only just begun. Those states administered their own standardized tests aligned with Common Core, and the results were disastrous. Just 31 percent of New York students in the third through eighth grades were deemed proficient in math and English on the new tests, down about 50 percent from the traditional test given the year before. Kentucky, which also implemented its own Common Core-aligned tests, experienced similar declines in scores.

Other states are waiting until at least 2014-15 to implement Common Core tests that are still in development. But at the state and district level, educators are tinkering with the curriculum in the hopes of having students prepared for the new tests – sometimes with disastrous results. In the affluent town of Fairfield, Conn., the school district last year adopted a new math curriculum for eighth- and ninth-graders called College Preparatory Math, with an eye toward the looming Common Core tests. But a year later, standardized test scores dipped and, according to one parent, Kelly Crisp, kids who had always done well in math were left disillusioned with the subject.

Five parents filed a complaint with the state over use of the new Algebra 1 book, and, after a protracted battle, forced the district to establish an “instructional online interactive forum” for Algebra 1 students and adopt new regulations for pilot programs as part of a settlement on the controversy over use of a textbook. Crisp said she worries about some 800 students who spent a year studying from a textbook hastily adopted in the frenzy to align with Common Core. The district later disavowed the book.

“Common Core is forcing districts to re-think math curriculum,” Crisp said. “And in cases like ours, they are making poor decisions.”

McCluskey said school districts are “flailing to try to adopt curriculum that will prepare students for Common Core, but there is no real standard.

“What we’re seeing is the market flooded with curriculum that claims to be Common Core aligned,” McCluskey said.

While the Obama administration has embraced Common Core, the plan was actually drawn up by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Carissa Miller, deputy executive director of Council of Chief State School Officers, bristles at the suggestion that Common Core seeks to impose a Washington-based, politically correct curriculum on local districts.

“It’s a misperception,” Miller said. “States have had standards for a long time. This would just set common standards, and standards are not curriculum.”

As an example, Miller cites a third-grade writing standard in which students must be able to recall information from print or digital sources, write notes on it and then sort it into relevant categories. The process, Miller notes, is the same for all students. But the source materials used to prepare for it are up to the teacher or district.

David Coleman, whose nonprofit Student Achievement Partners was hired by the National Governors Association to design the Common Core standards, said parents should look at the standards set forth before deciding whether they are good or bad for their children.

“They are a set of standards that we expect kids to know,” said Coleman, now president of the College Board, where he is redesigning the SAT to reflect Common Core standards.. “It is not taking away any kind of state or district rights to say how or what kids are taught.

“Any time you do something new, there’s always concern. It is valid for parents to be concerned. But with more information, it will become apparent that this is simply setting a high bar and having a uniform standard across the nation.”

Proponents say that because Common Core only applies to math and reading, fears that revisionist history or agenda-driven social studies will find their way into K-12 textbooks are unfounded. But in McCluskey’s words, “standards are designed to set a box around curriculum,” meaning whatever is on the test will have to be taught.

Phyllis Schlafly of The Eagle Forum goes even further.

“Common Core means federal control of school curriculum, i.e., control by Obama administration left-wing bureaucrats,” wrote Schlafly. “The control mechanism is the tests (called assessments). Kids must pass the tests in order to get a high school diploma or admittance to college. If they haven’t studied a curriculum based on Common Core standards, they won’t score well on the tests.”

Published September 04, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Rubio Blasts $9M ObamaCare Advertising Campaign

September 4, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

A proposed $8.7 million TV advertising campaign to promote ObamaCare in the lead-up to a key launch date is being targeted by Sen. Marco Rubio, who calls the effort a “blatant misuse of federal dollars.”

The Florida Republican said Tuesday that such spending is “unconscionable,” considering the uncertainty of the law and urged the Department of Health and Human Services to halt the spending.

“Until critical questions can be answered regarding the availability and type of health insurance to be provided by ObamaCare, it is unconscionable to spend taxpayer dollars to promote and advertise ObamaCare plans that have yet to be finalized,” Rubio wrote in the Sept. 3 letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The agency did not return a request for comment late Tuesday.

Obama signed his signature health care proposal into law in March 2010.

However, the administration has more recently delayed implementing parts of the law, most notably the requirement for businesses to offer insurance to employers.

The administration has tried rigorously to promote the program over the past several months, knowing that its success depends largely on a large pool of customers. The start for people to sign up for insurance in so-called “exchanges” is Oct. 1.

This is not the first time such HHS-related efforts have been criticized.

In the spring, Sebelius asked charitable groups, businesses executives, churches and doctors to donate money to nonprofit organizations such as Enroll America to sign up uninsured Americans.

This raised questions about Sebelius asking for money from groups her agency might regulate and prompted a probe by the Republican-led House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The agency said a special section in the Public Health Services Act allows the secretary to solicit financial support for nonprofit organizations conducting public health work.

This summer, Sebelius purportedly asked the NFL to help promote insurance options under ObamaCare.

The most recent program would be administered through HHS’ Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The ads are expected to appear first in parts of Florida, Texas and Tennessee.

Published September 04, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Muslims Wiping Out Christians Across World

August 30, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Newly-surfaced video from Egypt shows a Muslim mob storming a Coptic church, setting cars on fire and then toppling a cross atop the steeple, in a shocking attack that Christians say has been played out dozens of times since the ouster of Mohammad Morsi.

The video, obtained by MidEast Christian News, was shot Aug. 14 from a nearby building overlooking the diocese in the southern Egyptian city of Sohag. In the six-minute video, a crowd, incensed by the eviction of pro-Morsi supporters from camps in Cairo, masses outside the church. Several members of the group scale a wall and attack vehicles in a courtyard, setting several ablaze. The video culminates in the crown exhorting a man high up on the steeple to take down a cross, which he does.

Dozens of Coptic churches were attacked by members and supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the military’s move against Morsi, who critics say was turning Egypt into an Islamist state. Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million, but Morsi supporters blamed them for his ouster, according to Coptic leaders.

Bishop Makarious, a Coptic leader from Minya, accused Muslim Brotherhood leaders of planning attacks on Christian churches, homes and businesses in an effort to divide the embattled nation.

“We were expecting this scenario weeks before sit-ins were broken up; as it was evident of the incitement being made by Brotherhood leaders against Copts,” Makarious told MidEast Christian News. “We were then surprised by the systematic attacks on churches and Copts’ properties, many of them occurring at the same time in different places, in a series of attacks made under a plan they called ‘Plan B’”, which targeted all churches to be burned and destroyed.”

The provisional military government has pledged to rebuild Christian churches destroyed by mobs.

Published August 30, 2013 / FoxNews.com

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Kim Jong-Un’s Ex-girlfriend Executed for Porno

August 29, 2013 By Editor 1 Comment

The ex-girlfriend of North Korean leader Kim-Jong-un was one of a dozen people reportedly executed by a firing squad last week.

The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports that singer Hyon Song-wol and 11 others had been arrested on August 17 for violating North Korea’s laws against pornography and was executed three days later.

The paper reported that the condemned, all members of the performing groups Unhasu Orchestra and Wangjaesan Light Music Band, were accused of making videos of themselves having sex and selling the videos, which the paper reported were available in China.

“They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on,” a source told the paper. The source added that the victims’ families appear to have all been sent to prison camps.

Kim Jong-un reportedly met Hyon Song-wol approximately 10 years ago, before he was married. The relationship between the two is believed to have ended after interference from Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, though the two had been rumored to be having an affair. Kim Jong-un’s wife, Ri Sol-ju, was also a member of the Unhasu Orchestra before their marriage. It is not clear if she had any role in the executions.

Published August 29, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Israeli Intelligence Confirmed Assad Regime Behind Chemical Attack

August 28, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The initial confirmation that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad was responsible for a suspected chemical weapons attack Aug. 21 came from a tip from the Israeli intelligence service, western intelligence sources tell Fox News.

A special unit of the Israeli Defense Force — an intelligence unit that goes by the number 8200, which is a military intelligence listening unit — has been cooperating with the NSA, sources tell Fox News.

This Israeli intelligence unit helped provide the intelligence intercepts that allowed the White House last weekend to conclude that the Assad regime was behind the attack.

Initially, according to well-placed U.S. intelligence sources, there was apparent confusion over whether chemical weapons were used and who gave the orders, but the U.S. now has access to intercepted conversations.

The administration also has satellite images that suggested the Assad regime was in the process of covering up the chemical attack by shelling the area where most of the deaths from the alleged chemical attack had occurred.

“We believe that it’s too late for the U.N. inspection to be credible given the mass shelling that the regime has done in the affected areas,” State Department spokesman Marie Harf told reporters. “And we’re going to make our own decisions on our own timeline about our response. Obviously we will continue consultations with our international partners around the world but we are making decisions based on our own timeline.”

The Obama administration has not yet released intelligence on last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria, in part because of concerns over what could be declassified.

The report is considered a key component in the administration’s public case for intervention – and a possible military strike – in Syria.

Officials originally suggested the report would be released as early as Tuesday, but now there are hints the release may not come until at least Thursday.

The intelligence community is working through concerns about which intelligence is de-classified, because it could reveal sources and methods.

The timing of the release is important, though, because the more the report is delayed, the longer it will be before the administration steps up its public case for military action — if they choose that route.

A senior administration official told Fox News on Wednesday that once the intelligence community finishes its formal assessment of the chemical attack, a larger and classified report will be sent to Congress that will have a lot more detail. Then the administration will publicly release a smaller declassified version.

“It is important to remember that the protection of sources and methods must be taken into account when the intelligence community determines what information can be declassified and released to the public,” the senior administration official said.

“While the Congress will receive a classified version of the assessment that includes the broad range of intelligence collected, the intelligence information we are able to provide publicly will be limited in scope.”

A senior U.S. official also confirmed a report that initially appeared in the Wall Street Journal that National Security Adviser Susan Rice wanted to get the U.N. inspectors out of Syria last weekend because the U.S. already believed it had the information it needed to confirm the Syrian government’s culpability.

A White House official would not comment on internal deliberations between Rice and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.

The Wall Street Journal quoted from an email that Rice reportedly sent Sunday to Power and others within the administration.

“The investigation is. . .too late, and will actually tell us what we already know: CW was used,” Ms. Rice wrote, using the abbreviation for chemical weapons. “It won’t even tell us by whom, which we already know.”

U.N. inspectors have permission to be in Syria until Sunday.

By Jennifer Griffin, Ed Henry, Bret Baier / Published August 28, 2013 / FoxNews.com

King: By the Content of Their Character

August 28, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Fifty years ago today Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech, the most memorable portions of which were impromptu. His “I Have A Dream” speech was technically superior, and rhetorically persuasive.

Who among us can argue with his yearning that the dictates and limiting language of the American Constitution would apply to all citizens equally, regardless of race, religion, or other legitimate differentiation? Which defender of the Constitution and the principles upon which this great nation were founded does not likewise yearn for an America where all citizens are happy and productive, lending a helping hand or sharing a kind word to every fellow American?

In his speech, Republican Martin Luther King, Jr., publicly deplored and excoriated the Democrats who were vigorously holding American blacks back from full citizenship, institutionalizing their second-class citizen status in public places and public universities.

He shared his “dream” with the American people that such official barriers would be cast aside by government officials, pressured by kind and caring white citizens, led by the Republican Party who since before the Emancipation Declaration had championed their equal treatment under the laws of the land.

This speech was the turning point for the true civil rights movement in America.

However, the movement was soon co-opted by the Democratic Party, who saw the plight of the underclass they had created as a rallying point for the expansion of the federal government. We have documented that coup and its insidious re-enslavement of America’s minorities in our recent articles, Zimmerman: The Subtext of July 8, 2013, Democrat Senator ‘abandons big government plantation’ to join GOP of June 18, 2013, and Dems Hurting Minorities of June 8, 2013.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” was the most poignant and enlightening line of that great speech. When spoken, American Blacks were a family centered, hard working and Christ focused people for the most part. They had indeed earned the respect of their nation by transitioning from the status of southern slaves to upwardly mobile working class people, who with equal protection under the laws could fulfill the measure of their creation in a land of promise and opportunity, as so many other immigrant groups had done, and have done since.

The problem is that “Progressive” policies have obliterated the Black Family, and crime, violence, abortion and addiction have devastated much of the entire race in this country. American blacks feel disenfranchised more than ever, and the race-hustlers in the Democratic Party and Black “Leadership” have done everything in their usurped power to drive our black brothers and sisters deeper into the abyss of hopelessness.

Indeed, the major problem facing many black Americans is society’s tendency to judge by the content of their character–which has declined steadily since the “Great Society” enticed American blacks onto the Democrat plantations. Government dependence, fatherless families, children born out of wedlock, indolence, violence, crime, unemployment, lack of character or values . . . these are the natural results of the expansion of a godless government whose main objective is to reduce the prominence of individual liberty and the family unit in favor of expansion of the government and its role in citizens’ lives.

How much longer will the cries of America’s black children go unheard by decent citizens? How much longer will we suffer the rapid encroachments of a leftist government hell-bent on the enslavement of every American citizen?

What has happened to black Americans is a foreshadowing of what awaits us all if this movement toward a totalitarian government goes unchecked. As the character of all youth declines and they pursue a path of taking more than they give, we see an inevitable course that leads to the destruction of every American family, every American value, and every person’s individual liberty.

It does not require a prophet or a mathematician to predict where we are all going to end up if we do not immediately and abruptly change our national course. If we are going to salvage our Constitutional form of government, we would do well to allow the constitutionalists to free the slaves once again, and so doing, ensure our collective freedom for generations to come.

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Administration Ignores ObamaCare Deadlines

August 20, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The Obama administration has missed half its own deadlines for implementing the health care overhaul, according to a report that suggests the recent delay of a key insurance mandate is hardly an outlier.

The finding was included in a Congressional Research Service report, and first published in an article on Forbes.com.

The nonpartisan congressional research unit examined 82 deadlines that the Affordable Care Act imposed on the administration, and found the administration missed exactly half of them.

The White House, according to the June report, did not meet nine of 12 deadlines from the first year after ObamaCare was enacted. It failed to meet 22 of 53 deadlines in the second year. In the third year, the administration missed 10 out of 17 deadlines.

That’s a total of 41 out of 82 deadlines missed.

One Republican lawmaker suggested this report should not surprise anyone.

“I think this is one of the obvious signs that ‘ObamaCare’ is doomed to fail,” Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., told Fox News. He also criticized the administration for using “blogs” to “communicate these delays” to the public.

He was referring in part to the recent announcement by the administration, via an official blog, that the requirement on mid-sized and large employers to provide health coverage for full-time workers was being pushed off by a year.

The Health and Human Services Department, though, defended the implementation and said a key part of the law — the so-called insurance exchanges where people can shop for various regulated plans — will launch on time.

“Millions of Americans are benefiting from the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that are already in place, such as ending lifetime limits on coverage and requiring insurance companies to cover preventive care with no cost sharing,” HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said. “On October 1, the Health Insurance Marketplace will open on time, where millions of Americans will have access to quality, affordable coverage for the first time.”

According to Forbes.com, most of the 41 missed deadlines pertain to items that aren’t exactly critical to the law’s implementation. One of them reportedly pertained to the requirement on HHS to submit a report to Congress on the “appropriate level of diabetes medical education.”

But there are other high profile delays that are not included in this report — one of them being a delay in caps on out-of-pocket insurance costs.

Published August 20, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Doug McKelway contributed to this report.

Spoon In Underwear Saving Kids From Forced Marriage

August 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

LONDON, England (AFP) – As Britain puts airport staff on alert to spot potential victims of forced marriage, one campaigning group says the trick of putting a spoon in their underwear has saved some youngsters from a forced union in their South Asian ancestral homelands.

The concealed spoon sets off the metal detector at the airport in Britain and the teenagers can be taken away from their parents to be searched — a last chance to escape a largely hidden practice wrecking the lives of unknown thousands of British youths.

The British school summer holidays, now well under way, mark a peak in reports of young people — typically girls aged 15 and 16 — being taken abroad on “holiday”, for a marriage without consent, the government says.

The bleep at airport security may be the last chance they get to escape a marriage to someone they have never met in a country they have never seen.

The spoon trick is the brainchild of the Karma Nirvana charity, which supports victims and survivors of forced marriage and honour-based abuse.

Based in Derby, central England, it fields 6,500 calls per year from around Britain but has almost reached that point so far in 2013 as awareness of the issue grows.

When petrified youngsters ring, “if they don’t know exactly when it may happen or if it’s going to happen, we advise them to put a spoon in their underwear,” said Natasha Rattu, Karma Nirvana’s operations manager.

“When they go though security, it will highlight this object in a private area and, if 16 or over, they will be taken to a safe space where they have that one last opportunity to disclose they’re being forced to marry,” she told AFP.

“We’ve had people ring and that it’s helped them and got them out of a dangerous situation. It’s an incredibly difficult thing to do with your family around you — but they won’t be aware you have done it. It’s a safe way.”

The charity is working with airports — so far London Heathrow, Liverpool and Glasgow, with Birmingham to come — to spot potential signs, such as one-way tickets, the time of year, age of the person and whether they look uncomfortable.

“These are quite general points, but there are things that if you look collectively lead you to believe something more sinister is going on,” said Rattu.

People who come forward can be escorted out of a secure airport exit to help outside.

Marriages without consent, or their refusal, have led to suicides and so-called honour killings, shocking a nation widely deemed to have successfully absorbed immigrant communities and customs.

Officials fear the number of victims coming forward is just the tip of the iceberg, with few community leaders prepared to speak out and risk losing their support base.

One woman, whose identity was protected by Essex Police in southeast England, was forced to get married in India.

She said she was threatened by her father “because he said if I thought about running away he would find me and kill me”.

“I was shipped off with a total stranger.

“That night I was raped by my husband and this abuse continued for about eight and half years of my life.”

She eventually fled.

Last year, the Foreign Office’s Forced Marriage Unit dealt with some 1,500 cases — 18 percent of them men.

A third of cases involved children aged under 17. The oldest victim was aged 71; the youngest just two.

The cases related to 60 countries: almost half were linked to Pakistan, 11 percent to Bangladesh, eight percent to India, and two percent to Afghanistan. Other countries were Somalia, Turkey and Iraq.

Calls to Karma Nirvana tend to spike before the British school summer holidays and again at the end, said Rattu.

“The holidays are a really good time for young people to go missing because there is nobody accounting for where they are at school,” she said.

Since Ramadan ended last week, calls have risen again, including one from an 18-year-old who has fallen pregnant and her family is trying force her into marriage to conceal it.

Burdened by South Asian codes of “izzat”, or family honour, youngsters can be under extreme physical and emotional duress to marry relatives in a culture and country they were not brought up in.

If they refuse, they are often threatened with being thrown out of the family — or worse.

“It really takes a brave person to stand up against their family,” said Rattu.

By Robin Millard / Published August 15, 2013 / AFP

Obamacare Penalty — Single Mom pays $8,173 For Marriage License

August 19, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Obamacare attacks the liberty and financial viability of the traditional family, and nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the system of federal subsidies it puts in place starting next year.

This system rewards people who don’t marry, don’t work and don’t take care of their own children. It punishes people who do marry, work hard and take care of their own children.

Under Obamacare, the federal government orders all Americans to have health insurance. Households with adjusted gross incomes of less than 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) will go on government-run Medicaid, and households with adjusted gross incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of FPL can qualify for a subsidy to help them buy their government-mandated health insurance — provided they do not qualify for Medicaid in their state and their employer does not offer them coverage.

As explained by the Congressional Research Service, the subsidy — which is technically a refundable tax credit — works as a cap on the percentage of income the household can be made to pay in annual health insurance premiums if they buy a “Silver” plan on their state exchange. (The exchanges will sell Platinum, Gold, Silver and Bronze plans, with Bronze being the cheapest and Platinum the most expensive.) If someone with a subsidy buys a more expensive plan, they must pay the additional cost out of their own pocket.

For a household earning an adjusted gross income between 100 percent and 133 percent of FPL, Obamacare caps their health insurance premiums at 2 percent of annual income. That cap incrementally increases as a household’s income increases, peaking at 9.5 percent for households earning between 300 percent and 400 percent of FPL.

When a household gets the subsidy, the federal government pays their insurance company directly for any amount the household owes that exceeds their percentage-of-income cap.

No one getting a subsidy ever pays more than 9.5 percent of their income in premiums.

But if a household earns as little as one dollar over 400 percent of FPL, the household no longer qualifies for a subsidy, and there is no longer a cap on the percentage of income they can be forced to pay for health insurance.

Married couples seeking the subsidy are required to file joint tax returns and whether their premiums are capped or not is determined by the couple’s combined income.

The law thus imposes a steep penalty on Americans who live in traditional families.

Take the hypothetical twin sisters Lucille and Linda, who live across the street from each other and who will buy health insurance on the same state exchange.

They are 50 years old, and their husbands have abandoned and divorced them and their three children. Each earns $47,100 per year, which is 200 percent of FPL for a family of four.

The Kaiser Family Foundation maintains an online “Subsidy Calculator” that “illustrates health insurance premiums and subsidies for people purchasing insurance on their own” in the exchanges.

This calculator estimates a Silver plan for a family of four headed by a single mom like Lucille or Linda would cost $11,140 in annual premiums. But because their income is just 200 percent of FPL, the government will cap the premiums Lucille or Linda would pay at 6.3 percent of their income. Thus, they would each pay $2,967 per year in premiums, and the government would make up the difference by paying $8,172 directly to their insurance companies.

But then Lucille falls in love with 56-year-old Bill. They decide to marry. Bill’s adjusted gross income is $63,300, which is more than 400 percent of FPL for a single person. Before marrying Lucille, Bill bought a Silver plan on the state exchange for what the Kaiser Family Foundation calculator estimates was $7,041.

Under Obamacare, as unmarried people, Lucinda and Bill pay combined health insurance premiums of $10,008 per year and receive total subsidies of $8,172 per year.

After their wedding, Bill and Lucille settle down in one home with Lucille’s three kids. They are now a five-person family with an adjusted gross income of $110,400 — just a bit more than 400 percent of FPL for a family of five.

Now, as a married couple, they look into buying a Silver family plan on the state exchange. The calculator says their new annual premiums will be $18,181 — and because Bill and Lucille and the three children are too wealthy to qualify for the Obamacare premium cap, they must pay every penny of the $18,181 out of their own pockets.

As a penalty for marrying, Bill and Lucille have lost Lucille’s $8,172 subsidy and must pay $8,173 more in annual health insurance premiums than the combined $10,008 they paid before they were married. Their federally mandated health insurance plan costs 16.5 percent of their family income.

Linda, after seeing the plight of Lucille and Bill, falls in love with Bill’s twin brother, Jack, who like Bill, earns $63,300 per year. Will she marry him?

By Terence P. Jeffrey — editor-in-chief of CNSnews.com

Obama Faces Dem Backlash Over New NSA Revelations

August 16, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The Obama administration faced a backlash from congressional Democrats on Friday following revelations that the National Security Agency broke privacy rules and overstepped its authority thousands of times since 2008.

The details were reported late Thursday in The Washington Post, based on an audit and other secret documents provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden. The report challenged claims by President Obama just last week that the NSA was not abusing its authority, and complicated his effort to reassure Americans and Congress that — with a little more oversight and transparency — the surveillance programs are nothing to be worried about.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi called the latest reports “extremely disturbing.”

Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said: “Reports that the NSA repeatedly overstepped its legal boundaries, broke privacy regulations and attempted to shield required disclosure of violations are outrageous, inappropriate and must be addressed.”

Senior lawmakers said they had been unaware of the audit until they read the news on Friday.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he planned to hold another hearing in the wake of the report.

“The American people rely on the intelligence community to provide forthright and complete information so that Congress and the courts can properly conduct oversight. I remain concerned that we are still not getting straightforward answers from the NSA,” Leahy said in a statement. “I plan to hold another hearing on these matters in the Judiciary Committee and will continue to demand honest and forthright answers from the intelligence community.”

Obama has repeatedly said that Congress was thoroughly briefed on the programs revealed by Snowden in June. The two that were described vacuum up vast amounts of metadata — such as telephone numbers called and called from, the time and duration of calls — from most Americans’ phone records, and scoop up global Internet usage data.

Proposed legislation to dismantle the programs was narrowly defeated last month in the House, and at least 19 other pending bills are aimed at restraining NSA’s powers or changing how the agency is regulated, according to a count kept by the ACLU. The July legislative effort brought together Libertarian-leaning conservatives and liberal Democrats who pressed for change against congressional leaders and lawmakers focused on security.

A week ago, Obama sought to soothe concerns by promising to consider reforms to NSA surveillance.

“It’s not enough for me to have confidence in these programs,” he said at a White House news conference. “The American people have to have confidence in them as well.”

He announced changes such as convening an outside advisory panel to review U.S. surveillance powers, although it is unclear how that would differ from the existing U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, mandated by Congress to monitor surveillance and constitutional concerns.

Obama also said the NSA would hire a privacy officer — though the NSA already has a compliance office. None of those measures would seem likely to stop the kind of inadvertent collection of information that was described in the NSA audit.

Most of the infractions revealed late Thursday involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order, according to the May 3, 2012 audit, and other top-secret documents.

The May audit counted 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications. Most were reported to be unintended, and many involved failures to take sufficient care or violations of standard operating procedure. They ranged from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interceptions of U.S. emails and telephone calls.

The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, backed up the administration on its claims, releasing a lengthy statement on Friday afternoon claiming that most the compliance problems at the NSA happen when the agency inadvertently collects records on a non-American who enters the U.S., a point when the NSA is supposed to follow different procedures.

“The majority of these ‘compliance incidents’ are, therefore, unintentional and do not involve any inappropriate surveillance of Americans,” she said. “As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.”

Late Friday, the White House issued a statement saying, “the majority of the compliance incidents are unintentional. The documents demonstrate that the NSA is monitoring, detecting, addressing and reporting compliance incidents.”

It directed questions to the National Security Council, and NSC spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden directed questions to the NSA.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said the number of incidents in the first quarter of 2012 was higher than normal, and that the number has ranged from 372 to 1,162 in the past three years, due to factors such as “implementation of new procedures or guidance with respect to our authorities that prompt a spike that requires `fine tuning,’ changes to the technology or software in the targeted environment for which we had no prior knowledge, unforeseen shortcomings in our systems, new or expanded access, and `roaming’ by foreign targets into the U.S., some of which NSA cannot anticipate in advance but each instance of which is reported as an incident.”

“When NSA makes a mistake in carrying out its foreign intelligence mission, the agency reports the issue internally and to federal overseers — and aggressively gets to the bottom of it,” Vines said.

Published August 16, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Economist Says True US Debt $70 Trillion

August 15, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The federal government has been low-balling the public for years on how much debt it actually has, a University of California, San Diego economics professor says, adding that the real amount is $70 trillion – not $16.9 trillion.

James Hamilton’s claim the United States is in a much deeper financial hole than many realize comes as Congress gets ready for another budget battle when lawmakers return in September. Both sides have been digging in on their policy positions over the debt, spending and the country’s future fiscal health.

Hamilton believes the government is miscalculating what it owes by leaving out certain unfunded liabilities that include government loan guarantees, deposit insurance, and actions taken by the Federal Reserve as well as the cost of other government trust funds. Factoring in those figures brings the total amount the government owes to a staggering $70 trillion, he says.

Hamilton believes important areas of federal off-balance-sheet commitments include loans for post-high school education, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve System.

“The biggest off-balance-sheet liabilities come from recognition of the fiscal stress that will come in the form of an aging population and rising medical expenditures,” Hamilton says, adding, “It is worth noting that there are many historical episodes in which off-balance sheet liabilities ended up having quite significant on-balance sheet implications.”

For example, he says, fiscal problems stemming from the saving and loans crisis from the 1980s.

“Losses at these institutions ended up dwarfing the capabilities of the now-defunct Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation to honor its promise to guarantee depositors,” he says.

The final on-balance-sheet cost to taxpayers honoring those guarantees came out to $124 billion.

Hamilton isn’t the first economist to say the government understates how much it owes. Claims that the real liability facing the government is $70 trillion date back several years.

David Walker, former U.S. Comptroller and CEO of the Comeback America Initiative, made similar claims in 2012. Walker’s calculations include unfunded Social Security, Medicare and retiree pension promises.

Boston economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Scott Burns warned in a 2008 Forbes article about what could happen if the government doesn’t curb its spending.

“The earthquake will come via a collapse in the market for U.S. government bonds as domestic and foreign investors realize that the only way Uncle Sam can meet his future spending obligations is to print massive quantities of money,” they said. “The result will be sky-high inflation and interest rates and, most surely, a prolonged reduction in output and employment. This could happen today. It could happen tomorrow. But it will happen here just as it has happened in every other country that tried to spend far beyond its ability to pay.”

Published August 15, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Obama Throws Tantrum, Sows Seeds of Discontent

August 13, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

It is a sign of the twisted times that we have the misfortune of living in. It is a symptom of the advanced state of moral and social decay that in America today that celebrities are afforded the reverent status that they are. Take for instance our clowns, specifically the liberal clowns. Silly comedians the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher provide a mixture of jokes, shtick, political mockery and real news mixed with interviews and enjoy an astounding degree of popularity. That these court jesters are taken with any degree of seriousness is a clear example of not only how poorly that the mainstream media has served its purpose but also of the depravity of the American soul during this ongoing downtrend. Now there is El Presidente Barack H. Obama showing up on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this week. So much for the dignity of the office.

Obama took to the air to schmooze with Leno and to dispense his political lies and disinformation on a number of topics. One of course being of Russia’s refusal to turn over NSA contractor Booz Allen leaker Edward Snowden for torture and a show trial. Obama and dirty Eric Holder, still pissy over Friday’s embarrassing smackdown by the bear accused Russia of having a “Cold War mentality” for not immediately rolling over and conceding to his majesty’s requests. In the new American century it is intolerable for any country to not acquiesce to the wishes of the U.S. empire, for the smaller ones there are threats of withholding of economic support, non- inclusion in global trade agreements, support of that regime’s political opponents and when all else fails, send in the drones. With Russia, still an extremely powerful nation with a military and nukes of it’s own it is a special type of retaliation that is merited. The U.S. President debases the office he holds, shows up on a celebrity clown show, mocks Putin and the next day in a proclamation that is promulgated by state media Obama throws a tantrum and cancels his September Summit with the Russian leader. Now there’s some stellar leadership, the type that is befitting of a kindergarten sandbox.

Someone get that man a pacifier.

Obama’s snit over Russia only further cements the image of the U.S. of A as the global spoiled brat that it has become after years of abysmal leadership. The pope of hope can stamp his feet all that he wants and here in Der Homeland it will be eaten up by most lemmings as well as his legions of adoring, low-information zombies but once again the country is exposed on the world stage as exactly what it has become which is a petulant, immature, self-absorbed, hypocritical bully led by a pathological narcissist. We are no longer held in high esteem by those outside of our borders where the electronic narcosis of television used to keep the population distracted, placid and stupid. There was a time when our democratic form of government, civilized and moral society and advanced sciences were the envy of the world but that era recedes into the past quicker than revisionist history is able to keep its image alive through lies, trickery and propaganda. Thanks to a succession of amoral cheats and cheap hustlers, of which Obama is only the latest we have become the new evil empire and continue to expand our global footprint of degeneracy and blight.

While on Leno, in addition to talking about his “bromance” with John McCain (retch) Obama also used the opportunity to blatantly lie about his NSA surveillance machine.

“We don’t have a domestic spying program…What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.”

While I seriously doubt that the man has more than an inkling of the true nature of this growing menace that will soon consume all privacy except as Orwell put it his prophetic 1984 “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull” he is a useful idiot. Most of it is above Obama’s paygrade, he will be gone long before the final phase of the eradication of the Constitution will occur. He is a malleable fool, a dunce and an amiable, smiling front man for the empire. He serves his purpose for the time and by showing up on Leno’s show he is selling the sizzle while obscuring that the steak is made of horsemeat.

As for the terrifying Al Qaeda, risen like a phoenix from the ashes to which Obama himself not so long ago relegated it the propaganda just gets more ridiculous by the day. I heard some yutz on the Chris Matthews show the other night (it may have been Washington adjunct Richard Engle spreading the absurd tale that devious Al-Qaeda was planning to attack targets by carrying surgically implanted bombs that are able to evade detection. Hey, I saw the Dark Knight too where the Joker was able to sucessfully pull this off and blow up the Gotham City Police Department but come on now, when does this stuff just become so over the top that it is rejected outright as the horseshit that it is? Now with the wonderful idea that this is actually a threat it will allow an already run amok TSA to unleash the government goon squad on those who appear to have medical issues, humiliating them in public and seizing them for strip searches. A massive big government agency already comprised of thugs, miscreants, wanna-be-cops, perverts and control freaks is about to get even more aggressive. Nice country isn’t it.

And all of this recent hullabaloo is because one man was able to break free from the systems of control and reveal top secret rogue government information about widespread unconstitutional spying. The subsequent self- immolation of the Obama administration’s competence and the tearing down of their star spangled facade of lies that covered their tyranny was just too much to take.

So the vainglorious ass that is the sitting U.S. Emperor is now taking his case directly to the sheeple, first there was Leno, what’s next Obama? Jersey Shore? A sit down with Honey Boo Boo? There is no level to which he won’t descend when it comes to selling out his country for chump change.

By Donn Marten

Juan Williams: Why I’m Calling Out Civil Rights Hustlers Sharpton and Dyson

August 9, 2013 By Editor 1 Comment

Editor’s note: The following is based on a monologue delivered on the July 30, 2013 edition of Fox News Channel’s “The Five” and an op-ed that appeared previously in Fox News Opinion.

Race has been the topic over the last couple weeks, but if we’re going to do this right, if we’re going to have an honest discussion among people who care about the problems inside the black community, we have to be dealing with honest brokers. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the so- called civil rights community are frauds, outright hucksters.

Two of the worst: civil rights activist and MSNBC host Al Sharpton and Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson. Their goal: demonize white people, especially conservatives like Bill O’Reilly, so they don’t have to deal with the real problems that continue to plague the black community. Making an older, conservative white guy like O’Reilly a boogie man is easy for these hustlers.

If you truly love people, and want to help those in need, how does it help to go after conservatives, Bill O’Reilly and other white people, rich people?

But do they ever confront the real problems and threats in the minority community? No.
High murder rates? How about that? What about high dropout rates? What about the breakdown of the family?

I bet you think I’m exaggerating. Well, here’s this from Michael Eric Dyson:

“Why is it that when we say we want to have a conversation on race, you want a conversation on blackness? You don’t want to have a conversation on race. You don’t want to have a conversation on white privilege, unconscious bias. You don’t want to talk about the collective world we made as black, brown, red, yellow and white people. You want to lecture black people.

So, Mr. O’Reilly, I’d love to have that conversation about protecting yourself behind white picket fences and Fox News and having digital courage. Come in the streets where you went to Sylvia, and you were surprised that black people don’t throw bananas at each other or swing from trees.”

Can you believe that? This is unbelievable on so many levels. But let me just start by saying this: Dyson is making the charge basically that O’Reilly is portraying black people as animals. And, of course, this never happened. This is not true.

In the whole episode (when he visited Sylvia’s restaurant), which O’Reilly and I talked about on the radio, was going on about defeating racial stereotypes in this society. But that’s not what Michael Eric Dyson wants to do here. He wants to hold up somehow that Bill O’Reilly is a racist and target of the conversation and therefore we should be about, somehow, going after Bill O’Reilly.

Well, who does that help? Let’s think about that for a second. If this is a real conversation about helping people, if you truly love people, and want to help those in need, how does it help to go after conservatives, O’Reilly, white people, rich people? Let’s go to the people who need help and give them help.

But that’s not what Michael Eric Dyson is doing. Oh, no. When you start asking questions like well, are you doing anything to help the schools in the inner-city? No.

What about the carnage on black streets with kids shooting each other? No.

What about, you know, any of the issues attached to family breakdown, 70 percent of children born out of wedlock? What about that? No.

So what we’re doing here is a huge distraction. Yes, there’s legitimate rage in the black community over the Zimmerman verdict, but the idea that we have to use the power that exists in this country to help people who are in need in the black community, that is an ongoing and longer story and you can’t pull away from that by making Bill O’Reilly into your target and somehow beating him up. That’s craziness.

So what can we do, what should we do to start helping people who are in need in the African-American community today? I wrote about this in my book, “Enough” and recently in an opinion piece for FoxNews.com.

Here’s the message I would like to see expressed in America today. I think it would be especially powerful if it could come from the black man with the highest level of credibility in black America since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – President Obama.

1. Stay in school and graduate from the highest level of school – but absolutely, no excuses, graduate from high school.

2. Take a job and hold it, no matter what job, no matter if your friends put you down for ‘flipping burgers.’ Use the job to get experience, make contacts with business people, and build a resume.

3. Marry after you have finished your education and while you have a job.

And the final step is important for you and for the future of your family and your community:

4. Don’t have children until you are at least 21-years-old and married.

Imagine if President Obama repeated that message over and over, ignoring the phonies who want to focus only on “systemic” racism as the reason for high rates of poverty, involvement with crime, and incarceration among black men.

Imagine if the president delivered that message despite attempts to intimidate him by civil rights leaders.

Imagine if he decided to deliver that message and by-passed the so-called ‘racial experts’ and academics who prefer to look at America’s troubled racial history – slavery and legal segregation.

The answer is the president could make a difference in millions of lives and build a legacy on par with Dr. King.

Mr. President it is your move.

Juan Williams is a Fox News political analyst. He is the author of several books including “Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It” and “Muzzled: The Assault on Honest Debate.”

Can Tea Party Plan Solve Budget Woes?

August 7, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

As Congress faces a fast-approaching deadline on passing a federal spending bill, Republican lawmakers are reviving a Tea Party-backed plan with a catchy title that they claim could balance the budget.

The so-called “Penny Plan” would, according to its sponsors, balance the federal budget in two years by using just a 1 percent reduction in spending.

The lawmakers are pitching the plan in the simplest terms — cutting a penny from every dollar the government spends so that spending will soon equal revenue. They cast the plan as a pick-and-choose alternative to the sequester’s across-the-board budget cuts.

“Everybody should be able to live with one percent less in order to help bring this country back from the brink of catastrophic failure,” bill sponsor and Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi said in submitting the legislation just before August recess.

Enzi is joined by fellow GOP Sens. Rand Paul, of Kentucky; John Barrasso, of Wyoming; Jim Risch, of Idaho; David Vitter, of Louisiana; Johnny Isakson, of Georgia; and Marco Rubio, of Florida. Republican Georgia Rep. Austin Scott introduced similar legislation in the House.

Senate sponsors warn that federal spending over the past 11 years has increased from 18 percent of the country’s GDP to nearly 23 percent. And without intervention, they say, the national debt will go from roughly $16 billion to $25 billion by 2023, increasing interest payment so much that balancing the budget will go “beyond the reach of Congress.”

The 1 percent cut would last two years, followed by a cap on total annual spending — equal to roughly 19 percent of GDP. Supporters say it also will cut spending over roughly 10 years by about $5.8 trillion, based on currently projected levels.

The senators say only that the plan takes a “worst first” approach to the cuts — in other words, leaving it to lawmakers to cut what they deem the most wasteful items first — as long as the overall 1 percent cut is achieved.

Enzi has frequently talked about reducing spending by eliminating ineffective, outdated and redundant federal programs.

“You don’t need five agencies doing the same thing, especially when their programs could be combined or cut,” Enzi spokesman Daniel Head told FoxNews.com.

However, the bill singles out only entitlements.

“Absent reform, the growth of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other health-related spending will overwhelm all other federal programs,” the bill states.

This is not the first time the plan has surfaced on Capitol Hill.

Enzi proposed similar legislation in 2011 with then-Florida Republican Rep. Connie Mack that also got Paul’s support.

Paul refreshed the idea in March during his Tea Party response to President Obama’s State of the Union address.

The idea is backed largely by conservative groups including FreedomWorks and the Tea Party Patriots. It also garnered support during its Capitol Hill debut from former Clinton administration aide Lanny Davis, who said the plan also needs a revenue-raising component but was “practical” and seemed like “a good place to start.”

Still, the plan does not appear to enjoy widespread support among progressives.

Jim Dean, chairman for Democracy for America, called the plan “one of the more idiotic pieces of legislation” put forth by Congress’ Tea Party-aligned lawmakers.

“Americans are smart enough to see it for what it really is: a stealth effort to gut our dwindling retirement security by slashing over $1 trillion from Social Security and more than $200 billion from Medicare,” he told FoxNew.com.

Washington has meanwhile made progress on cutting the federal deficit, largely through recent spending cuts and tax increases, including the hike in January on Americans’ highest earners.

After topping $1 trillion for four straight years, the budget is projected to fall to $642 billion in the budget year ending in September and shrink even further in the next several years before starting to grow again at the end of the decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

However, the Republican senators warned that entitlements if left unchecked will “consume” the additional tax revenue.

By Joseph Weber / Published August 07, 2013 / FoxNews.com / The Associated Press contributed to this report.

WORLDWIDE ALERT: Travel Warning, Closures Over Islamist Threat

August 2, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

The State Department issued a worldwide travel alert on Friday to U.S. citizens over an Al Qaeda terror threat, as the U.S. government prepared to close its embassies and consulates throughout the Muslim world this Sunday over related security concerns.

U.S. officials have not offered many details on the nature of the threat, but apparently are taking it seriously.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the alert indicates the U.S. government must have some “pretty good information” about a possible threat.

The travel alert issued Friday warned Americans of the “continued potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula.”

It said: “Current information suggests that al-Qa’ida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August.”

The alert reminded Americans about the potential for attacks on transit systems and other “tourist infrastructure.”

Pentagon officials also said there is an increased alert among security personnel in the region in response to the Al Qaeda terror threats.

“Actions have been taken,” one Pentagon official told Fox News.

Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News military analyst, said the threat is yet another sign that Al Qaeda and its affiliates are emboldened — and stressed that the U.S. needs to do a better job securing its embassies.

“It has got to be one of our top priorities,” he told Fox News.

Keane said it appears Al Qaeda is trying build off the Benghazi terror attack. “When they sense weakness, they attack,” he said. “They believe that we’re pulling back, and they were stunned … that we did not come after them immediately after that attack.”

State Department officials said Thursday, after announcing the temporary shutdown of embassies and consulates on Sunday, that they were acting out of an “abundance of caution.”

Spokeswoman Marie Harf cited information indicating a threat to U.S. facilities overseas and said some diplomatic facilities may stay closed for more than a day.

Sunday is a normal workday in many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, meaning that is where the closures will have an impact. Embassies in Europe and Latin America would be shuttered that day anyway. The State Department on Friday released a list of 21 embassies and consulates affected.

“We have instructed all U.S. embassies and consulates that would have normally been open on Sunday to suspend operations, specifically on August 4,” a senior State Department official said Thursday night. “It is possible we may have additional days of closing as well.”

Other U.S. officials said the threat was specifically in the Muslim world.

The issue of security abroad has been prominent since the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, and a string of demonstrations on other U.S. embassies in the Middle East and North Africa.

On Thursday, measures to beef up security at U.S. embassies were passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The bill is in response to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, where Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

The Senate bill creates a training center for diplomatic security personnel.

Separately, the House Foreign Affairs Committee authorized full security funding for diplomatic missions — despite recommending a nine percent cut overall for State Department operations.

The House and Senate have already approved spending bills that cover embassy security. But their budgets differ markedly in other areas.

Published August 02, 2013 / FoxNews.com / Fox News’ Justin Fishel and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Orwell Alert–White House Creates ‘Nudge Squad’ to Reshape Behavior

July 30, 2013 By Editor 1 Comment

The federal government is hiring what it calls a “Behavioral Insights Team” that will look for ways to subtly influence people’s behavior, according to a document describing the program obtained by FoxNews.com. Critics warn there could be unintended consequences to such policies, while supporters say the team could make government and society more efficient.

While the program is still in its early stages, the document shows the White House is already working on such projects with almost a dozen federal departments and agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.

“Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less, and help people to achieve their goals,” reads the government document describing the program, which goes on to call for applicants to apply for positions on the team.

The document was emailed by Maya Shankar, a White House senior adviser on social and behavioral sciences, to a university professor with the request that it be distributed to people interested in joining the team. The idea is that the team would “experiment” with various techniques, with the goal of tweaking behavior so people do everything from saving more for retirement to saving more in energy costs.

The document praises subtle policies to change behavior that have already been implemented in England, which already has a “Behavioral Insights Team.” One British policy concerns how to get late tax filers to pay up.

“Sending letters to late taxpayers that indicated a social norm — i.e., that ‘9 out of 10 people in Britain paid their taxes on time’ — resulted in a 15 percent increase in response rates over a three-month period, rolling out to £30 million of extra annual revenue,” the document reads.

Another policy aimed to convince people to install attic insulation to conserve energy.

“Offering an attic-clearance service (at full cost) to people led to a five-fold increase in their subsequent adoption of attic-insulation.”

[Read the full document here]

Such policies — which encourage behavior subtly rather than outright require it — have come to be known as “nudges,” after an influential 2008 book titled “Nudge” by former Obama regulatory czar Cass Sunstein and Chicago Booth School of Business professor Richard Thaler popularized the term.

The term “nudge” has already been associated with the new program, as one professor who received Shankar’s email forwarded it to others with the note: “Anyone interested in working for the White House in a ‘nudge’ squad? The UK has one and it’s been extraordinarily successful.”

Richard Thaler told FoxNews.com that the new program sounds good.

“I don’t know who those people are who would not want such a program, but they must either be misinformed or misguided,” he said.

“The goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government by using scientifically collected evidence to inform policy designs. What is the alternative? The only alternatives I know are hunches, tradition, and ideology (either left or right.)”

But some economists urge caution.

“I am very skeptical of a team promoting nudge policies,” Michael Thomas, an economist at Utah State University, told FoxNews.com.

“Ultimately, nudging … assumes a small group of people in government know better about choices than the individuals making them.”

And sometimes, he added, government actually promotes the wrong thing.

“Trans-fats were considered better than saturated and unsaturated fats in the past. Now we know this is an error.”

Every intervention would need to be tested to make sure it works well, said Harvard economics professor David Laibson, who studies behavioral economics and is in touch with the people in government setting up the program. He added that the exact way the team will function is currently unknown.

“We have to see the details to be sure, but this could work out very well,” he said.

Asked about details, Dan Cruz, spokesman for the U.S. General Services Administration (the department which the team will be a part of) told FoxNews.com: “As part of the Administration’s ongoing efforts to promote efficiency and savings, GSA is considering adding some expertise from academia in the area of program efficiency and evaluation under its Performance Improvement Council.”

Maya Shankar did not respond to questions.

Laibson added that he hoped the U.S. program would stay away from overly controversial subjects.

“Let’s say we want people to engage in some healthy behavior like a weight loss program, and then start automatically enrolling overweight people in weight loss programs — even though they could opt out, I’m guessing that would be viewed as offensive … a lot of people would say, ‘I didn’t ask for this, this is judging who I am and who I should be.”

But Laibson added that there are very real benefits to some “nudge” policies — such as one that increases the number of people registered as organ donors by making people decide when they apply for a drivers’ license.

Thaler, who is also an adviser to the British Behavioral Insights Team, said that his research also supports automatically enrolling people in retirement savings plans.

“Many people have struggled to save enough to provide for an adequate retirement. … Two simple design changes can dramatically improve the situation … automatic enrollment (default people into the plan with the option to easily opt out) and automatic escalation, where workers can sign up to have their contributions increased annually,” he said.

Jerry Ellig, an economist at the Mercatus Center, said that some “nudges” are reasonable, but warned about a slippery slope.

“If you can keep it to a ‘nudge’ maybe it can be beneficial,” he added, “but nudges can turn into shoves pretty quickly.”

By Maxim Lott / Published July 30, 2013 / FoxNews.com

Labor Statistics Chief: Jobs Numbers Misleading

July 18, 2013 By Editor Leave a Comment

Think the economy is bouncing back quickly? Think again, says the former top number-cruncher in charge of the Washington Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Keith Hall tells the New York Post Thursday that the BLS, White House and media are wasting time focusing on an edited set of data and using it to paint an incorrect picture of the American jobs market on the mend. The current U.S. unemployment level is reported to be around 7.6 percent.

“Right now [it’s] misleadingly low,” Hall told the New York paper.

Hall, like many other economists, believes that the more accurate reading of Americans who want a job but can’t find one is north of 10 percent.

Hall is now a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

He says the jobless rate that grabs the most headlines — called the U-3 — doesn’t factor in people who have stopped looking for work, but does count employed people who have clocked in as little as an hour of work during the prior month.

Hall says another more accurate indicator of the country’s economic health is in the U-6 number, which factors in the underemployed. That number, he said, jumped in June to 14.3 percent from 13.8 percent the month before.

“This has been a very slow, very bad recovery,” he said. “And I think the numbers have really struggled as a result. In fact, I’ve been very disappointed in the coverage of the numbers.”

The July monthly jobs report is scheduled to be released Aug. 2.

Published July 18, 2013 / FoxNews.com

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