Living up in Orange County, New York, fifty minutes or so northwest of the George Washington Bridge, we get the TV and radio commercials put out by the NYC mayoral and comptroller candidates.
Geezus Christ...
Folks... don't fool yourselves. Understand this: The Democratic Party is for all intents and purposes a socialist party... a "soak the rich" party... a party whose goal is to "redistribute" wealth and accelerate the never-ending expansion of the American Welfare State.
Folks... this isn't me talking smack; this is basically the campaign narrative of New York City's Democrat politicians! (And I have no reason to doubt the same applies across the country... certainly when it comes to major urban areas... San Francisco... Chicago... what's left of Detroit... and on and on and on.)
(*SIGH*)
On the federal level this "socialism" transforms itself into fascism. No... not necessarily based upon violence... but rather based upon regulatory control.
(*SHRUG*)
(Understand, though... when push comes to shove it's men with guns who enforce government regulations.)
Oh, sure, no one is trying to point a finger at the IRS and confuse them with Hitler's Gestapo! Placing a lean on a person's bank accounts and/or property isn't the same as throwing a "non-compliant" citizen into a concentration camp...
(But then again... remember Ruby Ridge...???)
Oh, well... enough of this... on to today's newsbites!
As always... found in the comments section of these newsbite posts themselves!
9 comments:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100980411
The average American household is earning less than when the Great Recession ended four years ago, according to a report released Wednesday.
U.S. median household income, once adjusted for inflation, has fallen 4.4% in that time, according to the report from Sentier Research. The report is based on an analysis of Census Bureau data.
* AND FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... THE GOVERNMENT DELIBERATELY UNDERSTATES "REAL" INFLATION BY NOT COUNTING FOOD AND FUEL COSTS! THE GOVERNMENT SIMPLY DOESN'T ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU'RE PAYING CLOSE TO (OR IN SOME STATES ABOVE) $4-gal. FOR GAS... THAT TRUCKERS ARE PAYING OVER $4-gal. FOR DIESEL (AND PASSING THAT COST ON!)... THAT DELI HAM AVERAGES $7.99 LB. WHILE ROAST BEEF PROBABLY AVERAGES $12.99 LB.
(*SIGH*)
* ANYONE SEEING ROAD TOLLS BEING LOWERED? TAXES BEING LOWERED? INSURANCE PREMIUMS NOT GOING UP? COLLEGE TUITION AND AUXILARY EXPENSES GOING DOWN?
(*SNORT*)
The median, or midpoint, [household] income in June 2013 was $52,098. That's down from $54,478 in June 2009, when the recession officially ended.
* THINK OF YOUR DAILY/WEEKLY/MONTHLY EXPENSES. HAVE THEY GONE UP OR DOWN SINCE JUNE 2009?
* LESS MONEY PERIOD... LESS STUFF YOUR MONEY CAN BUY... LET'S CHANT IT TOGETHER, FOLKS: O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A! O-BAM-A!
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
And it's below the $55,480 that the median household took in when the recession began in December 2007.
* WOW...
* JUST... WOW...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/22/fort-hood-nidal-hasan-jury-deliberations-trial/2684387/
Jury deliberations began Thursday in the court-martial of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who declined to give a closing argument at his trial on charges of killing 13 people and injuring 31 others in a shooting spree here four years ago.
* FINALLY!
* QUESTION: AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO REALIZES THAT THIS TRIAL HAS BASICALLY FLOWN BELOW THE RADAR... BEEN SOMEWHAT OF A NON-EVENT...? I WONDER WHAT WENT ON BEHIND THE SCENES... BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT AND MAJOR MEDIA... SO THAT THIS TRAIL GOT ALMOST NO "POP CULTURE" COVERAGE.
A military prosecutor, in his closing, pressed the jury of 13 Army officers for a unanimous murder conviction that could lead to the death penalty.
* THE OPTIMUM RESULT!
Col. Steve Henricks repeatedly emphasized the word "premeditation," and claimed that Hasan's use of laser sights "established intent to kill."
A day earlier, Hasan told the judge, Col. Tara Osborn - with no jury present - that he agreed that his crime was not "done under heat of passion." He added that "there was adequate provocation — that these were deploying soldiers that were going to engage in an illegal war."
* AND THE JURY WASN'T ALLOWED TO HEAR THIS...? WHY...?!
Military prosecutors called 89 witnesses and entered hundreds of pieces of evidence detailing the gory scene at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009, when prosecutors say Hasan opened fire on soldiers – killing 12 and one civilian – in a busy medical processing center.
Hasan, representing himself, called no witnesses on his behalf during the trial.
Hasan, 42, has admitted to being the gunman in the shooting.
* AND WANTED TO PLED GUILTY BUT WASN'T ALLOW TO BY THE GOVERNMENT!
More so than guilt, a central question in the four-year-old case has been whether Hasan gets the death penalty or life in prison, said Geoffrey Corn, a former Army judge advocate who teaches military and national security law at South Texas College of Law in Houston. Hasan has been passive through the guilt phase of the trial in order to reach the sentencing phase, where he would have more leeway in voicing his opinions and could talk about what motivated him to turn his gun on fellow soldiers, he said.
"He really believes what he did was right," Corn said. "But he's not allowed to talk about that in the guilt phase. He only gets to talk about that in the sentencing phase."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324653004578651852012786828.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Nearly 30 years ago, I started a company called Staples Inc. that went on to do pretty well.
* THE AUTHOR, THOMAS STEMBERG, IS FOUNDER AND FORMER CEO OF STAPLES, INC.
Launching a business like Staples in 2013 would be a much harder proposition, with success by no means certain. There are so many government impediments to business today that the next Staples — and its 50,000 jobs — might never get off the ground.
Chief among those roadblocks: the blizzard of bureaucratic red tape that buries businesses and stifles job creation. These include the additional 16 million hours that vending-machine and chain-restaurant business owners must spend complying with new food regulations each year. But there is also the license that magicians require to do a rabbit disappearing act, which mandates an annual fee, surprise inspections and a rabbit disaster plan. All told, American business faces 46,758 pages of rules to live by in the Federal Register.
Job creators know that regulatory relief can't come soon enough. In 2010, the Small Business Administration pegged the annual cost of complying with regulations at $1.75 trillion. The SBA report covered 2008 and the burden has certainly grown since. A May 2013 report by the Heritage Foundation, "Red Tape Rising," found that new regulatory costs added in 2012 totaled $23.5 billion. That's a staggering amount of money to pay for government rules.
In 1986, we founded Staples in large part because of what used to be an enormously productive American financial system. The system that fueled entrepreneurship 25 years ago is now being regulated to death under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, which requires as many as 398 new regulations. The next Staples, and its 50,000 jobs, may not happen because of this burden.
If the president and Congress are serious about creating jobs, they must take seriously the job-killing regulations that are holding job creators back.
* AND IF YOU WANNA READ A CONCRETE ACTION PROPOSAL... UTILIZE THE LINK.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324619504579028841667645598.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLESecond
Lois Lerner, the agent at the heart of the Internal Revenue Service scandal, was not the first person in a leadership position to know that conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status were being targeted. Lerner's deputy - Holly Paz - was.
Ms. Paz testified in May before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that she learned of the targeting accidentally, after noticing an influx of tea party cases and asking Cincinnati agents for the criteria that were used to flag them.
But according to interviews with other agents and newly released emails, it appears that "how" Ms. Paz learned of the criteria was no accident, and Congress wants answers.
GOP Reps. Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan sent Ms. Paz a letter this week asking her to explain certain "inconsistencies."
Ms. Paz testified that she asked for the criteria from her employees after noticing the list of cases held for added scrutiny "was being over-inclusive." She said it was in June 2011 that she initially learned agents were using keywords on a "Be On the Lookout" spreadsheet to flag potential political cases. But Cindy Thomas, the manager of the Cincinnati office, had sent Ms. Paz an email making her "aware of a BOLO spreadsheet on March 16, 2011," or three months earlier.
If Ms. Paz had the spreadsheet already, why did she need to ask her agents for the criteria?
* GOOD... FRIGGIN'... QUESTION...
* NO...???
Moreover, the same spreadsheet directed agents to flag "organizations involved with the Tea Party movement."
* HMM...
So why did Ms. Paz testify that IRS agents saw "Tea Party" as a generic term for all potential political cases, not just applications from conservative groups?
* ANOTHER... GOOD... QUESTION...
Messrs. Issa and Jordan asked Ms. Paz to renounce her testimony or rectify it by September 3.
(Let's see if she sticks to her story.)
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/court-ability-to-police-us-spying-program-limited/2013/08/15/4a8c8c44-05cd-11e3-a07f-49ddc7417125_story.html
The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans.
The chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said the court lacks the tools to independently verify how often the government’s surveillance breaks the court’s rules that aim to protect Americans’ privacy. Without taking drastic steps, it also cannot check the veracity of the government’s assertions that the violations its staff members report are unintentional mistakes.
“The FISC is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the Court,” its chief, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, said in a written statement to The Washington Post. “The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing [government] compliance with its orders.”
Walton’s comments came in response to internal government records obtained by The Post showing that NSA staff members in Washington overstepped their authority on spy programs thousands of times per year.
(The records also show that the number of violations has been on the rise.)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
The court’s description of its practical limitations contrasts with repeated assurances from the Obama administration and intelligence agency leaders that the court provides central checks and balances on the government’s broad spying efforts.
(*PURSED LIPS SLIPPING INTO A FULL-BLOWN SMIRK BEFORE RELAXING ENOUGH TO SPIT ON THE GROUND*)
They...
* OBAMA... BUSH... REPUBLICANS... DEMOCRATS...
...have said that Americans should feel comfortable that the secret intelligence court provides robust oversight of government surveillance and protects their privacy from rogue intrusions.
* LET A LITTLE GIGGLE OF TENSION ESCAPE, FRIENDS; AFTER ALL... IF WE DON'T LAUGH WE'LL SURELY CRY.
President Obama and other government leaders have emphasized the court’s oversight role in the wake of revelations this year that the government is vacuuming up “metadata” on Americans’ telephone and Internet communications.
“We also have federal judges that we’ve put in place who are not subject to political pressure,” Obama said at a news conference in June. “They’ve got lifetime tenure as federal judges, and they’re empowered to look over our shoulder at the executive branch to make sure that these programs aren’t being abused.”
* OBAMA IS A LAWYER. A MEMBER OF THE BAR. THIS MAKES HIS DELIBERATE LIES WORSE IN MY OPINION THAN BUSH'S. BUSH WAS NOT... IS NOT... A LAWYER... MEMBER OF THE BAR... FORMER LAW LECTURER AT HARVARD...
(*SMIRK*)
* ALL LIES DISGRACE TO ONE EXTENT OR ANOTHER, BUT OBAMA'S LIES ARE A STAIN ON HIS PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY AND PROFESSIONAL HONOR.
Privacy advocates and others in government have voiced concerns about the ability of overseers to police secret programs of immense legal and technological complexity. Several members of the House and Senate intelligence committees told The Post last week that they face numerous obstacles and constraints in questioning spy agency officials about their work.
* AND THINK ABOUT THE FOLLOWING...
In contrast to the dozens of staff available to Congress’s intelligence and judiciary committees, the FISA court has five lawyers to review compliance violation reports.
* BUT EVEN IF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH ABIDES BY THE LAW AND NOTIFIES THE FISA COURT OF "IRREGULARITIES"... (READ ON!)
The government does not typically provide the court with case-specific detail about individual compliance cases, such as the names of people it later learned it was improperly searching in its massive phone or e-mail databases, according to the two people familiar with the court’s work.
(*SNORT*)
Last week, the president said that he recognizes that some Americans may lack trust in the oversight process — in which the secret court approves the rules for collecting Americans’ communications — and that he will work with Congress on reforms, which could include a privacy advocate to the court.
“In other words, it’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programs,” Obama said in his news conference. “The American people need to have confidence in them, as well.”
* UH-HUH...
* IT'S... BEEN... FIVE... YEARS...
* IF HE HADN'T GOTTEN CAUGHT...
(*SHRUG*)
* GRANT OBAMA THIS: HE'S GOT A PAIR OF BALLS!
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will082213.php3#.Uhaj33_fLXQ
* BY GEORGE WILL
Nowadays the federal government leavens its usual quotient of incompetence with large dollops of illegality.
* FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... WHAT RESPECTED WASHINGTON POST COLUMNIST AND ABC NEWS PUNDIT WILL IS SAYING IS THAT THE UNITED STATES IS NO LONGER A NATION UNDER THE RULE OF LAW. (NOW WHO ELSE SAYS THAT...???)
(*SMIRK*)
This is eliciting robust judicial rebukes, as when, last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia instructed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop "flouting the law."
* YES, FOLKS... FLOUTING THE LAW... THIS ADMINISTRATION - HEADED BY AN ATTORNEY... MEMBER OF THE BAR... FORMER HARVARD LAW LECTURER - OFTEN FLOUTS THE LAW. AND YET...
(*SHRUG*)
"It is no overstatement," said Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, "to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case."
* IT'S... ALREADY... HAPPENED!
* IT'S... HAPPENING... AS... I... TYPE... AND AS YOU READ!
For six decades the nation has been studying the challenge of safely storing nuclear waste from weapons production, Navy vessels and civilian power plants. So far, more than $15 billion has been spent developing a waste repository system (in the 1980s, a Nevada senator misnamed it a waste "suppository") deep within Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 says the NRC "shall consider" the Yucca Mountain application to become a repository, and "shall" approve or disapprove the application within three years of its submission. "Shall" means "must." The application, submitted in June 2008, has not been acted upon, and the court says: "By its own admission, the commission has no current intention of complying with the law."
* AIN'T IT GREAT THAT IN OBAMA'S AMERIKA THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH ISN'T BOUND BY THE RULE OF LAW!
* COM'ON, OBAMA VOTERS... GIVE YOURSELVES A HAND...
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* OOPS! MAKE THAT "THREE-PARTER" (Part 2 of 3)
Judge A. Raymond Randolph's concurring opinion said: "Former (NRC) Chairman Gregory Jaczko orchestrated a systematic campaign of non-compliance. Jaczko unilaterally ordered commission staff to terminate the review process in October 2010; instructed staff to remove key findings from reports evaluating the Yucca Mountain site; and ignored the will of his fellow commissioners."
Jaczko resigned last year...
* MOMENTS BEFORE BEING INDICTED BY ERIC HOLDER'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT? (NO! JUST KIDDING! HOLDER IS OBAMA'S ALLY, NOT OBAMA'S CONSCIOUS... AND CERTAINLY NOT A MAN WHO PUTS THE CONSTITUTION ABOVE PETTY SELF-INTEREST.)
...leaving the NRC in demoralized disarray.
* BTW... HE'S SINCE BEEN PLACED ON THE NATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY ADMINISTRATION AS ONE OF 12 CONGRESSIONAL ADVISORS BY HARRY REID!
* SO... NOT ONLY IS HE NOT IN JAIL; HE'S BACK ON THE FEDERAL TIT!
The New York Times reported "charges of mismanagement and verbal abuse of subordinates" and that all four of his fellow commissioners, two from each party, complained about Jaczko to the White House and told a congressional committee that (the Times reported) he "unprofessionally berated the agency's professional staff and reduced female employees to tears with his comments."
To be fair to him, he was put there to disrupt — by Nevada's Sen. Harry Reid, on whose staff he had served.
* THUS HIS LATEST APPOINTMENT...
(*SHRUG*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)
Reid seems uninterested in the metallurgy of waste containment vessels or the geology of the mountain's 40 miles of storage tunnels where the waste would be stored 1,000 feet underground on 1,000 feet of rock. Rather, Reid, like almost all Nevadans, regards the repository as a threat to Las Vegas, a gamblers' destination that lives off tourists who are demonstrably irrational about probabilities. Reid prefers the status quo — more than 160 million Americans living within 75 miles of one or more of the 121 locations where over 70,000 tons of nuclear waste are kept.
* NICE...
The court, which was concerned only with the law, not the mountain, said "the president must follow statutory mandates so long as there is appropriated money available and the president has no constitutional objection to the statute."
* AND IF HE DID HAVE A CONSTITUTIONAL OBJECTION TO THE STATUTE...???
* IN ANY CASE... (READ ON...)
He has none, and Reid has not yet quite succeeded in starving the NRC of funding for the Yucca licensing process.
The NRC said Congress has not yet appropriated the full amount required to complete the process. The court said Congress often appropriates "on a step-by-step basis." The NRC speculated that Congress may not finish appropriating the sums necessary. The court said that allowing agencies to ignore statutory mandates based on "speculation" about future congressional decisions "would gravely upset the balance of powers between the (government's) branches and represent a major and unwarranted expansion of the executive's power at the expense of Congress."
The NRC said small appropriations indicate Congress' desire to stop the licensing process. The court responded that "Congress speaks through the laws it enacts" and "courts generally should not infer that Congress has implicitly repealed or suspended statutory mandates based simply on the amount of money Congress has appropriated."
* FOLKS... THIS IS OBAMA... THIS... IS... O*B*A*M*A!
The court noted that, "as a policy matter," the NRC may want to block the Yucca project but "Congress sets the policy, not the commission."
* ONLY IF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC EXISTS AS SUCH... WHICH IT NO LONGER DOES.
* FOLKS... WHAT IS IT SOME OF YOU JUST DON'T "GET?"
And the court said there is no permissible executive discretion to disregard "statutory obligations that apply to the executive branch."
* DUH!
This episode is a snapshot of contemporary Washington — small, devious people putting their lawlessness in the service of their parochialism, and recklessly sacrificing public safety and constitutional propriety. One can only marvel at the measured patience with which the court has tried to teach the obvious to the willfully obtuse.
* I DON'T MARVEL. I'M DISGUSTED. THE COURT SHOULD HAVE ISSUED CONTEMPT OF COURT RULINGS AND THROWN EVERYONE INVOLVED IN JAIL TILL EITHER THEY COMPLIED OR A HIGHER COURT TOOK THE MATTER UP.
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