OBAMA POLITICIZES FIGHT AGAINST EBOLA

17 Oct

So Obama names an Ebola Czar, charged with supervising the fight against this dangerous virus. This “czar” has zero experience in the medical field. He’s a politician. You can’t make this stuff up. Such is the wisdom of this president.
Don’t forget what Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel said, “Never let a crisis go to waste,” he said. “Because you can do things you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do.”
Americans must pay attention to this.

RON KLAIN

Obama to Tap Former VP Chief of Staff Ron Klain as Ebola ‘Czar’

President Barack Obama will appoint Ron Klain to head up efforts to address the Ebola threat, a senior administration official tells NBC News.

Klain is a former chief of staff to both Vice President Joe Biden and former Vice President Al Gore. He left the vice president’s office in 2011. He is now the president of Case Holdings and serves as the general counsel for Revolution, an investment organization.

 “It’s not solely a medical response,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “That’s why somebody with Mr. Klain’s credentials — somebody that has strong management experience both inside government but also in the private sector; he is somebody who has strong relationships with members of Congress; and obviously strong relationships with those of us who worked with him here at the White House earlier in the administration. All of that means that he is the right person.”

Obama signaled his openness to appointing an Ebola “czar” Thursday night, telling reporters that it “may be appropriate” to elevate an additional person to coordinate the U.S. response. (White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that Klain’s official title is not czar, but Ebola Response Coordinator.)

Klain will report directly to White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice and the president’s Homeland Security Advisor Lisa Monaco. He is tasked with protecting Americans from the disease and making sure the response is coordinated with the U.S. effort to stop Ebola in West Africa.

The White House had previously resisted the idea of a czar, saying that the administration had already established clear lines of responsibility for handling the threat.

But Obama faced pressure from critics who argue that the nation’s hospitals are not prepared for an outbreak of the virus.

 

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Mark Caserta: Obama’s policies are on November ballot

16 Oct

economy chart

Oct. 15, 2014 @ 09:20 PM

No doubt when President Obama told Mitt Romney during the first 2012 presidential debate that he “liked” the term “Obamacare,” he was confident the appellation would be revered as an historic accomplishment for his administration.

Certainly Democrats have been willing to spend your hard-earned tax money to preserve the president’s aspirations. Bloomberg Government reports the cost of HealthCare.gov has now exceeded the $2 billion mark, while the total cost of Obama’s health care reform is more than $73 billion.

But nowadays it’s difficult to find a Democrat who openly supports any of this president’s policies in their election campaigns, much less Obama’s signature health care legislation. But in a recent speech, President Obama assured Americans his policies were indeed on November’s ballot.

“I am not on the ballot this fall,” President Obama said. “But make no mistake: these policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”

Yes, there are people who now have healthcare who didn’t prior to the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

But millions have been forced off their existing plan (despite Obama’s promise this would never happen, winning him the esteemed Politifact “Lie of the Year” Award) into health care exchanges where they’re experiencing less coverage, higher deductibles and fewer choices in providers.

In fact, if the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) had scored the ACA correctly, it probably would never have passed! According to Forbes Magazine, 12.5 percent fewer people are uninsured by 2014, rather than the 37.3 percent projected by the CBO.

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Additionally, of the millions with canceled coverage, 1 million remain uninsured. And Americans are experiencing far higher premiums than originally estimated while nearly $7,000 will be added in taxes/fees over a decade even for families in the lowest 20 percent of household income.

And all around the country businesses are preparing for the impact of the employer mandate under Obamacare. Understand, these companies will not simply absorb these additional costs. They’ll either cut expenses or raise prices.

Currently hundreds of employers are cutting back on employee’s hours to avoid paying for health care, forcing these individuals into purchasing coverage from an exchange or pay a fine.

And many people still don’t realize the IRS will be the enforcer for ensuring everyone meets their “shared responsibility payment” as decreed by the individual mandate of Obamacare. And Americans have already seen what IRS leadership is willing to do to propagate this president’s ultra-liberal agenda.

Now, there are points in the ACA which should remain, such as coverage for “pre-existing” conditions. But Democrats failed to engage in the necessary conversation about allowing the free market to work in the insurance industry by instituting healthy interstate competition and tort reform.

Instead, they went right for socialized medicine.

Simply put, Barack Obama and complicit Democrats passed legislation that forces Americans into purchasing a product, despite their wants or needs, so they can “redistribute” the assets as they deem “fair.” They’ve taken the “care” out of health care and made it health “control.”

So Democrats may want to run, but they cannot hide. They gave us Obamacare.

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Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page

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Marc Thiessen: Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings?

15 Oct

IS HE THAT MUCH SMARTER THAN HIS ADVISORS?   OR WOULD HE SIMPLY RATHER BE GOLFING?

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By Marc A. Thiessen September 10, 2012

President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting.

The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.

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I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule. Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions. “I actually don’t agree at all,” Vietor told me in an e-mail, “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”

OBAMA AT PRESS BRIEFING

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TOM DELAY: OBAMA PARALYZED BY MUSLIM SYMPATHIES

15 Oct

obama muslim

NEW YORK – President Obama’s left-leaning political ideology combined with sympathies for Islam acquired from being raised by a Muslim stepfather paralyze him as he faces the threat posed by the Islamic jihadist group ISIS, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay told WND in an interview.

googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-story160LeftSide’); }); “In defending America against radical Islamic terrorism, Barack Obama cannot be trusted,” DeLay said.

“Barack Obama was raised a Muslim, and he claims he is a Christian, and I can’t say for sure whether he’s a Christian or not, but he has shown over the last few years that he has great sympathies with Islam,” DeLay explained.

“You combine that with Obama’s political orientation that is far to the left,” he continued, “and you get a president who hates war, hates the military, and you have a formula for military inaction when it comes to combating radical Islamic terrorists like we are seeing in ISIS.”

DeLay’s indictment of Obama did not end there.

“You add to mix that Barack Obama is incompetent, way over his head as president, and the whole combination produces a worldview that makes Obama detached and reluctant to take the type of the military action against ISIS that would be effective,” he said

DeLay concluded Obama “does not want to face the reality of the danger and threat represented to the United States by ISIS, and he does not want to admit the connections between al-Qaida and ISIS, because he refuses to understand that we are in a war against radical Islamic terrorism.”

Congressional resolve

battle isis

He said if he were leading Republicans in the House of Representatives, he would rally Congress around a resolution calling on Obama to take immediate military action against ISIS.

DeLay acknowledged that a congressional resolution “can’t force Obama to take effective military action, because he’s still commander-in-chief.”

“But a properly drafted congressional resolution passed with bipartisan support could communicate to the president the will of the people is that he must take effective action and he must take it now,” DeLay said.

“Obama does not understand that there is no alternative but to destroy ISIS,” he said.

DeLay said the U.S. needs “to go into Iraq and Syria with effective military action, and we can’t stop until we destroy ISIS.”

“The truth is that ISIS is a huge threat to the United States and the whole world. But the problem is that under Obama, radical Islamic terrorism is growing in strength every day,” he said.

Words and action

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DeLay discounted Vice President Joe Biden’s charge in a speech Wednesday in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, after the video release of the beheading of another American journalist by ISIS, that the U.S. will “follow ISIS to the gates of hell.”

“Biden’s speech didn’t impress me,” DeLay explained, “because the words Obama and Biden speak about going after ISIS do not match with the Obama administration inaction.”

DeLay compared Obama to British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“I read carefully as Barack Obama and David Cameron joined together co-authoring a column in The Times in London that published very tough words attacking ISIS,” DeLay commented. “Cameron has great rhetoric but no power, while Obama has horrible rhetoric and all the power.”

DeLay said the step Obama should be taking at the upcoming NATO meeting in Wales is to form a “coalition of the willing” like President George H. W. Bush did in the run-up to the Gulf War in 1991.

Instead, DeLay said, Obama is leaving the border with Mexico wide open, with no measures to block Islamic terrorists from mixing in with the invasion from Central American of “unaccompanied minors,” many of whom are teenagers in the prime gang-recruitment years, including some with criminal records in their home countries.

“It’s like the pre-911 environment,” DeLay lamented. “For all I know there are radical Islamic terrorists taking flying lessons again in the United States, and all the Obama administration would look the other way, just like the Obama administration does on stopping illegal immigration.”

DeLay referenced recent news reports that some 11 airliners were missing from the airport in Tripoli after radical Islamic terrorists overran it.

He joined with Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in criticizing the Obama administration for trying to lift a ban on Libyans coming to the U.S. to attend flight school or to study nuclear science.

“We have something like 6,000 foreign student visas where the Department of Homeland Security cannot find where the students are today,” DeLay commented. “It would be just the same letting Muslims come back into the country to learn how to be airline pilots. The Obama administration would probably just look the other way.”

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Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/tom-delay-obama-paralyzed-by-muslim-sympathies/#7UBqWduK7dqJRMA5.99

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Trouble Looms for Obama, Democrats with Election Day 2014 Approaching

15 Oct

three amigos

By Gary Langer

Oct 15, 2014 7:01am

(Evan Vucci/AP Photo | Danny Johnston/AP Photo | Melinda Deslatte/AP Photo)

Barack Obama and his political party are heading into the midterm elections in trouble. The president’s 40 percent job approval rating in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll is the lowest of his career – and the Democratic Party’s popularity is its weakest in polling back 30 years, with more than half of Americans seeing the party unfavorably for the first time.

The Republican Party is even more unpopular. But benefitting from their supporters’ greater likelihood of voting, GOP candidates nonetheless hold a 50-43 percent lead among likely voters for U.S. House seats in the Nov. 4 election.

See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.

These and other results are informed by an array of public concerns on issues from the economy to international terrorism to the Ebola virus, crashing into a long-running crisis of confidence in the nation’s political leadership. Almost two-thirds say the country is headed seriously off on the wrong track. Even more, three-quarters, are dissatisfied with the way the political system is working.

Scorn is widely cast: Among those who are dissatisfied with the political system, two-thirds say both sides are equally to blame, with the rest dividing evenly between Obama and his party, vs. the Republicans in Congress, as the chief culprits. But as a nearly six-year incumbent president, Obama – and by extension his party – are most at risk.

pelosi, obama, reid

Beyond his overall rating, Obama is at career lows in approval for his handling of immigration, international affairs and terrorism (long his best issue) in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates. Approval of his handling of the conflict with Islamic State insurgents in Iraq and Syria has plummeted by percentage 15 points in the last two weeks, amid questions about the progress of the air campaign now under way.

Further, while Obama’s negative rating on handling the economy has eased, more Americans say they’ve gotten worse off rather than better off under his presidency; the plurality is “about the same” financially, for most not a happy outcome. Even with the recovery to date, 77 percent are worried about the economy’s future, and 57 percent say the country has been experiencing a long-term decline in living standards – all grim assessments as Election Day looms.

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OBAMACARE WON’T REVEAL PRICING UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTION

14 Oct

Coincidence?????

OBAMACARE

Those planning to purchase health insurance on the Obamacare exchange will soon find out how much rates have increased — after the Nov. 4 election.

Enrollment on the Healthcare.gov website begins Nov. 15, or 11 days after the midterm vote, and critics who worry about rising premium hikes in 2015 say that’s no coincidence. Last year’s inaugural enrollment period on the health-care exchange began Oct. 1.

“This is more than just a glitch,” said Tim Phillips, president of free-market Americans for Prosperity, in a Friday statement. “The administration’s decision to withhold the costs of this law until after Election Day is just more proof that Obamacare is a bad deal for Americans.

Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, said in a Monday column in USA Today that “when it comes to a lack of openness and transparency about Obamacare, this administration has no peer.”

Even so, details about cost increases are trickling out in states with pivotal Senate contests: Alaska, Iowa and Louisiana. All three states are wrestling with double-digit premium hikes from some state insurance companies on the exchange, which has fueled another round of Republican attacks on the Affordable Care Act.

This undated file image shows the website for updated HealthCare,gov, a federal … more >

It’s the Democrats’ bad luck that those states may be outliers. PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute reports Oct. 3 that the average premium increase this year is 5.9 percent, according to data collected from 40 states and the District of Columbia.

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James Baker: Iran May Be ‘Quietly’ Helping US Against ISIS

13 Oct

Could the stars be aligning for Iran’s hatred of the U.S.???

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Sunday, 12 Oct 2014 12:57 PM

By Greg Richter – Newmax

Iranian help would be tricky, partly because of the history between the two countries. Fifty-two Americans were held hostage in Iran for 444 days between 1979 and 1981, and the United States later backed Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. The United States currently is leading negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, which critics in the United States say is an effort to acquire a nuclear weapons arsenal. That said, Iran sees ISIS as a threat and has an interest in seeing it defeated. A senior Iranian official told the Associated Press over the weekend that Iran and the United States have exchanged messages over ISIS.

It’s the “religious component” that makes Iran an antagonist, he said. Baker said he is optimistic about the situation, and also thinks the United States will be able to re-establish ties with Russia. “I think that we will be able to handle ISIS,” Baker said.

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White House national security adviser Susan Rice, appearing live set, denied any such talks. “We’re not in coordination or direct consultation with the Iranians about any aspect of the fight against ISIL,” said Rice, using the acronym preferred by the administration. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also was part of the interview with Baker and Brokaw. “As long as Iran is ruled by the ayatollahs and places itself on a sectarian philosophy, we have to be careful,” Kissinger told Brokaw. But, he added, “as a country, Iran is a natural ally of the United States.”

Despite longstanding divisions between the countries, Iran may be helping the United States in its fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), says former Secretary of State James Baker. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Iran is not helping us quietly,” Baker said in an interview with Tom Brokaw aired Sunday on “Meet the Press.” 

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OBAMA’S PLAN IS FAILIING TO DEGRADE OR DESTROY ISIS.

12 Oct

WE ARE LOSING THE WAR ON RADICAL ISLAM

battle isis

America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad.

The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting.

Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani.

In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are going to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.”

Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes.

MILITARY AIR

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Mark Caserta: President paints inaccurate picture of nation’s economy

9 Oct

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Oct. 08, 2014 @ 11:40 PM

With less than one month until the midterm elections, President Obama is attempting to pivot the national conversation back to the economy after months of scandal and foreign crises.

During a speech last week on the campus of Northwestern University, President Obama told Americans they were “better off” now than when he took office.

“It is indisputable that our economy is stronger today than when I took office,” Obama said. “By every economic measure, we are better off now than we were when I took office.”

It’s very telling that the president feels compelled to “convince” Americans they’re better off economically. Obviously, his advisors have their fingers on the pulse of the majority of Americans who are feeling the crunch of this president’s economic policies.

According to a recent Gallup poll, more than half of Americans said they had virtually no confidence in Obama’s ability to improve the nation’s sagging economy — the highest rate during his years in the White House. Only 42 percent said they believed Obama had the necessary economic skills to turn the economy around.

Here are some “indisputable” economic measures you’ll never hear from this administration.
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Under the ultra-liberal presidency of Obama and his progressive minions, poverty has soared while he has been president to nearly 50 million Americans, more than at any other time in the history of the Census Bureau tracking poverty.

Obama has become the food stamp president, with the number on food stamps increasing during his administration to a record high of 47.7 million, up 80 percent over the past five years as reported by the Department of Agriculture.

And while the administration boasts a recent drop in unemployment to 5.9 percent, they’re using the collapsing labor force and long-term unemployment as smoke and mirrors to deceive the American people. The number of people not participating in the labor force is the highest it’s been in 36 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the government stops tracking the unemployed if they haven’t looked for work in the last four weeks. Our nation’s true rate of unemployment, including the discouraged workers and those who have had to accept a part-time job for economic reasons, is 12.9 percent.

Despite calling George W. Bush “unpatriotic” for increasing the national debt by $4 trillion over eight years, Barack Obama has hypocritically increased the debt nearly $7 trillion in only six years.

And in perpetrating arguably the most nefarious scheme in history upon the American people, President Obama lied to Americans about nearly every aspect of Obamacare, which is now eroding the 40-hour work week for employees whose hours are being cut by employers who can’t afford to provide health care coverage as mandated by the president’s signature health care law.

Despite this president riding his promise to fight for the middle class all the way to the White House, the ironic truth is the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer under his ineffectual economic policies.

America needs to end this failed liberal experiment in November.
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Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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PANETTA: OBAMA HAS GIVEN UP.

7 Oct

 PANETTA

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared President Barack Obama’s approach to be like a law professor, however without the aspect of rolling up his sleeves and to get the job done.

Instead he suggested Obama has given up.

Panetta said, “He [Obama] approaches things like a law professor in presenting a logic of his position. There is nothing wrong with that. We want to have a president who thinks through the issues. My experience in Washington is that logic alone doesn’t work. Once you lay out a position, you are going to roll up your sleeves and you have to fight to get it done. That is key in Washington. In order for presidents to succeed, they cannot just — when they run into problems, step back and give up.”

“There is a feeling and I have a feeling that the leadership and the president have given up on the big issues facing this country whether it’s immigration or a budget deal or infrastructure funding or trade or energy. there is a sense that you can’t deal with that. This country needs that. They can’t give up.”

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