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Obama keeps disarming us and wants us to be dependent upon the U.N.. (See 2 below.)
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Bret Stephens explains the potential implications of Obama's no foreign policy which , of course, can have uncontrollable negative consequences. (See 3 below.)
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And then there is Turkey. Obama's closest friend , Erdogan, seems to be in trouble as well. (See 4 below.)
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And finally 'Obamascare" is proving to be more costly than people think and as predicted it would be. (See 5 and 5a below.)
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Another comment about Obama and what he is doing to our nation from a friend as well as a comparable comment from Mychal Massie, a black writer and radio talk show host. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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American citizens are being sucker punched once again: "The IRS will put you in jail if you fail to pay taxes to support this...................
watch this !
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One of America's finest musicians, one of Savannah's sweetest men and a dear fiend - Ben Tucker. May his soul rest in peace! "Savannah musician Ben Tucker killed in golf cart crashA local jazz legend died Tuesday on Hutchinson Island when the golf cart he was in was struck by a car coming off the island’s former racetrack."
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This from the promised most open administration - Obama's pledge to voters. (See6 below.)
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This from the promised most open administration - Obama's pledge to voters. (See6 below.)
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Dick
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 Last month, we took a look at three trends that appeared ready to spike higher in May. Let's take an updated look at them today and see what June might bring…We figured May would be a tough month for bond investors. And it was. Interest rates on the 30-year Treasury bond spiked from 2.85% to more than 3.3%. It was the largest one-month spike in interest rates in the past four years… Could Barack Obama's entire presidency be ruined by a single upcoming event? One of the most widely read journalists in America thinks so. And you can see his fascinating take on the subject – including when it's likely to occur and what it would mean for U.S. citizens… The full story is posted, free of charge, here. --------------------------------- Here's an updated chart…  We were also looking for an increase in volatility. Periods of low volatility are always followed by periods of high volatility. So with the Volatility Index (the "VIX") trading below 14 at the start of May and remaining low through the middle of the month, it looked overdue to spike higher. Here's an updated chart…_1Y1GWZ39HZ.png) Finally, we were looking for gasoline prices to bottom in May – about one month earlier than they did in 2011 and 2012. Here's the chart… – Jeff Clark ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2)Kerry Says US Will Sign UN Arms Treaty, Ignores Congressional Opposition!By Lisa Barron ! Secretary of State John Kerry says that the U.S. will sign a controversial United Nations treaty on arms control in spite of bipartisan opposition from lawmakers. Kerry released a written statement on Monday saying the U.S. "welcomes" the next phase for the treaty, which the U.N. General Assembly approved on April 2 but which gun rights advocates on Capitol Hill fear could lead to new gun control measures domestically, reports Fox News. "We look forward to signing it as soon as the process of conforming the official translations is completed satisfactorily," Kerry said, adding that the treaty is "an important contribution to efforts to stem the illicit trade in conventional weapons, which fuels conflict, empowers violent extremists, and contributes to violations of human rights." The treaty would reportedly require countries that ratify it to establish national guidelines to govern the transfer of conventional arms and components and to regulate arms brokers. Supporters of gun rights have warned that it could be used as the basis for more gun control measures in the U.S. Last week, 130 members of Congress signed a letter to President Barack Obama and Kerry calling on them to reject the measure. "We strongly encourage your administration to recognize its textual, inherent and procedural flaws, to uphold our country's constitutional protections of civilian firearms owners, and to defend the sovereignty of the United States, and thus to decide not to sign this treaty," they wrote. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3)The Muslim Civil War Standing by while the Sunnis and Shiites fight it out invites disaster.
By Bret Stephens
Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the prominent Sunni cleric, said Friday that Hezbollah and Iran are "more infidel than Jews and Christians." Coming from the guy who once lauded Hitler for exacting "divine punishment" on the Jews, that really is saying something.
That the war in Syria is sectarian was obvious almost from the start, despite the credulous belief that Bashar Assad ran a nonsectarian regime. That a sectarian ruling minority fighting for its life would not fold easily was obvious within months, despite happy guarantees that the regime's downfall would come within weeks. That a sectarian war in Syria would stir similar religious furies in Iraq and Lebanon was obvious more than a year ago, despite wishful administration thinking that staying out of Syria would contain the war to Syria alone.
What should be obvious today is that we are at the dawn of a much wider Shiite-Sunni war, the one that nearly materialized in Iraq in 2006 but didn't because the U.S. was there, militarily and diplomatically, to stop it. But now the U.S. isn't there. What's left to figure out is whether this megawar isn't, from a Western point of view, a very good thing.
The theory is simple and superficially compelling: If al Qaeda fighters want to murder Hezbollah fighters and Hezbollah fighters want to return the favor, who in their right mind would want to stand in the way? Of course it isn't just Islamist radicals of one stripe or another who are dying in Syria, but also little children and aging grandparents and every other innocent and helpless bystander to the butchery.
But here comes the whispered suggestion: If one branch of Islam wants to be at war with another branch for a few years—or decades—so much the better for the non-Islamic world. Mass civilian casualties in Aleppo or Homs is their tragedy, not ours. It does not implicate us morally. And it probably benefits us strategically, not least by redirecting jihadist energies away from the West.
Wrong on every count.
Similar thinking was popular in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. The war left as many as 1.4 million corpses on the battlefield, including thousands of child soldiers, and caused both countries billions in economic damage. And how did the West benefit from that? It's true that the price of crude declined sharply almost every year of the war, but that only goes to show how weak the correlation is between Persian Gulf tensions and oil prices.
Otherwise, the 1980s were the years of the tanker wars in the Gulf, including Iraq's attack on the USS Stark; the hostage-taking in Lebanon; and the birth of Hezbollah, with its suicide bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut. Iraq invaded Kuwait less than two years after the war's end. Iran emerged with its revolutionary fervors intact—along with a rekindled interest in developing nuclear weapons.
In short, a long intra-Islamic war left nobody safer, wealthier or wiser. Nor did it leave the West morally untainted. The U.S. embraced Saddam Hussein as a counterweight to Iran, and later tried to ply Iran with secret arms in exchange for the release of hostages. Patrolling the Strait of Hormuz, the USS Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian jetliner over the Gulf, killing 290 civilians. Inaction only provides moral safe harbor when there's no possibility of action.
Maybe that's what President Obama is secretly aiming for. Had he armed Syria's rebels early in the conflict, he could have empowered a moderate opposition, toppled the regime, sidelined Sunni jihadists, prevented the bloodbath we now have, stemmed the refugee crisis and dealt a sharp strategic setback to Iran—all without any U.S. military involvement.
Had he moved against Assad after the latter's use of chemical weapons, the president could have demonstrated the seriousness of U.S. red lines—this time with limited and surgical use of U.S. military assets. (By the way, whatever happened to that U.N. fact-finding mission on Syrian chemical weapons that Mr. Obama promised back in April?)
Yet if Mr. Obama were to move against Assad today, the odds of success would be far longer. He would be going against an emboldened and winning despot, brazenly backed by Russia. And he would be abetting a fractured insurgency, increasingly dominated by radicals answering the call of jihad. The administration has gone from choosing not to take action to having no choice but to remain passive. Thus does global order give way to global disorder.
It's tempting to rejoin that Syria is small and faraway, and that if Vladimir Putin or Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei want to play in the Syrian dung heap they're welcome to it. But these guys aren't dupes getting fleeced at a Damascene carpet shop. They are geopolitical entrepreneurs who sense an opportunity in the wake of America's retreat.
Maybe Americans will feel better after ceding the field to these characters. But we won't be safer. And as a former Chicago friend of Mr. Obama used to say, the chickens sometimes do come home to roost
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4)Michael Rubin: The Roots of the Turkish Uprising
While the U.S. has celebrated Turkey as a model of Muslim democracy, Turks have found freedom increasingly elusive.By MICHAEL RUBIN
Two months ago, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan feted the International Olympic Committee in Istanbul, courting the committee's vote for Turkey's cosmopolitan cultural capital to host the 2020 Summer Olympics. Over the past few days, in that same city, tear gas has wafted over centuries-old mosques as police clashed with growing crowds of angry Turks, sending more than a thousand to the hospital and, according to some reports, a few to the morgue.
When a small group of environmentalists banded together on May 28 to save an Istanbul park from being turned into a shopping mall, their sit-in hardly seemed likely to spark what is already being called the Turkish Spring. The government's harsh response—eventually water cannon and tear gas would be used—spurred popular outrage that quickly spread to Ankara, Izmir and more than a dozen other cities and towns across the country. The Turks' reaction seems to have caught Prime Minister Erdoğan, not to mention many Western observers, entirely by surprise. It shouldn't have. The unrest has been long brewing.
For the casual tourist or visiting congressman in Turkey in recent months, Mr. Erdoğan likely appeared to be on a roll. His Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish abbreviation AKP, had won three straight general elections since 2002, increasing its popular vote to 50% in 2011 from 34% in the first election. Mr. Erdoğan's able economic stewardship—coupled with falling fertility and a large working-age population—fostered unprecedented economic growth. In 2010 and 2011, growth exceeded 8%, putting Turkey behind only China in terms of modern, non-oil-based economies. Istanbul was booming.
Mr. Erdoğan appeared to relish suggesting to Turks that he was unstoppable. Upon winning his latest term, he compared himself to the 16th-century Ottoman architect Sinan, who built Istanbul's most glorious monuments. The prime minister has certainly aspired to remake the country: In recent years, Mr. Erdoğan began work on a third Istanbul airport and a new bridge to span the Bosporus. He has promised to dig a 30-mile "second Bosporus" to connect the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara. The prime minister has also proposed to build a giant mosque, capable of accommodating 30,000 worshipers, on a hilltop above the city.
Riding high and dominating all branches of government, the charismatic Mr. Erdoğan dispensed with political compromise and doubled down on Islamism and old vendettas. He antagonized Turkey's minority Alevi population—one-quarter of Turkey's 75 million citizens—by naming the new Istanbul bridge now under construction after Selim I, a 16th-century sultan who massacred 40,000 Alevis. The proposed skyline-dominating mosque antagonized secularists, and new laws that would dramatically restrict the purchase and drinking of alcohol in Istanbul's Western-leaning districts provoked liberals. So on May 31, when Mr. Erdoğan dismissed the environmentalist protesters as "marginal elements" after the first police assault, for many it was the last straw.
Washington over the past decade has made a habit of celebrating Turkey as a model of Muslim democracy. But from Turks' perspective, economic and political freedom have become increasingly elusive.
While Turkey's balance sheet looks good at first glance—its debt-to-GDP ratio was 36% in 2012, compared with the U.S.'s 105%—Mr. Erdoğan has accumulated more foreign debt in his rule than all of Turkey's previous prime ministers combined. Last year's drop in growth to 2.2% from 8.8% in 2011 was a wake-up call that Turkey might not always be able to make its payments. Turks are also saddled by household debt, which has increased 3,600% since the AKP took office.
Against this backdrop, many Turks are enraged by signs that Mr. Erdoğan and his aides have enriched themselves while in power. Few believe the prime minister's explanation that his newfound wealth—millions of dollars in property and a reputed eight Swiss bank accounts, according to U.S. diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks—is the result of wedding gifts received by his son.
Turks remember that 13 corruption cases pending from his Istanbul mayoral tenure remain suspended only because he enjoys parliamentary immunity. Many Turks suspect that Mr. Erdoğan's personal investment in the redevelopment of Taksim Square—where the protesters now face off against police—is quite literal.
The past week's protests have highlighted the lack of press freedom in Turkey. Exhibit A: As police attacked the protesters, CNN Türk broadcast a cooking show. Tens of thousands of Turks have signed petitions calling on CNN in the U.S. to cut ties with its pro-Erdoğan affiliate. For reporters who do cover the government critically, such pursuits can be dangerous: Turkey imprisons more journalists than any other country in the world, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Alas, signs of the Obama administration's benign indifference to matters in Turkey may have convinced the prime minister that he has a free pass. When President Obama wanted to laud U.S.-Turkish ties last month to mark Mr. Erdoğan's Washington visit, the White House placed the president's article in Sabah, formerly an opposition newspaper before it was seized by the Turkish government in 2007 and transferred to Mr. Erdoğan's son-in-law. The same day that the two leaders met, the Turkish government confiscated yet another opposition media company. President Obama was silent.
With the protests continuing, many Turks fear that Mr. Erdogan may soon target social media—an important form of communication for the protesters. "There is now a scourge that is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there," the prime minister declared on June 3. "To me, social media is the worst menace to society."
As he consolidates power and contends with protesters, Mr. Erdoğan appears to have little to fear from the military, which in past decades might have imposed its wishes on the government. Beginning in 2007, Mr. Erdoğan imprisoned dozens of Turkish generals—a power play that won cheers in many diplomatic circles because he had excised the military's role in politics. But the prime minister also refused to allow any new body to serve as constitutional guarantors. Bülent Arınç, now Mr. Erdoğan's chief deputy, famously threatened to dissolve the constitutional court if it found AKP legislation unconstitutional. Mr. Erdoğan's efforts to write a new constitution—one that would cement his power into the next decade—have convinced many Turks that the street protests now rocking the country are secularism's last stand.
As Istanbul's mayor, Mr. Erdoğan once said: "Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off." Perhaps desperate to find in Turkey proof that Islamism is compatible with democracy, the West has refused to believe what Turks know: Mr. Erdoğan arrived at his stop years ago.
Mr. Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
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5)ObamaCare Bait and Switch
The truth about those rate increases in Oregon and California.
Liberals have spent years claiming that "rate shock" under the Affordable Care Act—the 20% to 30% average spike in insurance premiums that every independent analyst projects—is merely the political imagination of Republicans and the insurance industry. So they immediately claimed victory when California reported last month that the plans that will be available on the state's new insurance exchange next year would be cheaper than they are today.
Except now it emerges that California goosed the data to make it appear as if ObamaCare won't send costs aloft as the law's regulations and mandates kick in. It will, by a lot. And now liberals have suddenly switched to arguing that, sure, insurance will be more expensive but the new costs are justified. Needless to say that was not how Democrats sold health-care reform.
California reported that the rates would range from 2% above to 29% below the current market. "This is a home run for consumers in every region of California," said Peter Lee, the director of the state exchange. "These rates are way below the worst-case gloom-and-doom scenarios we have heard."
But Mr. Lee and his fellow regulators were making a false comparison. They weren't looking at California's lightly regulated individual insurance market that functions surprisingly well. They were comparing ObamaCare insurance to the state's current small-business market where regulations similar to ObamaCare have already been imposed.
We wouldn't be shocked if California deliberately abused statistics in the hopes that no one would notice that in some cases premiums would more than double. In any case, the turn among the liberals who touted the fake results has been educational.In other words, California wasn't comparing apples to apples. It wasn't even comparing apples to oranges. It was comparing apples to ostriches. The conservative analyst Avik Roy consulted current rates on the eHealthInsurance website and discovered that the cheapest ObamaCare plan for a typical 25-year-old man is roughly 64% to 117% more expensive than the five cheapest policies sold today. For a 40 year old, it's 73% to 146%. Stanford economist Dan Kessler adds his observations nearby.
They now concede that individual costs will rise but claim that it is unfair to compare today's market to ObamaCare because ObamaCare mandates much richer benefits. Another liberal rationalization is that the cost-increasing regulations are meant to help people with pre-existing conditions, so they're worth it.
So they're finally admitting what some of us predicted from the start, but that's also the policy point. Americans are being forced to buy more expensive coverage than what they willingly buy today. Liberals also argue that some of the new costs will be offset by subsidies, which is great news unless you happen to be a taxpayer or aren't eligible for ObamaCare dollars and wake up to find your current coverage is illegal.
The Affordable Care Act was sold as a tool to lower health costs. In case you missed it, the claim is right there in the law's title. The new Democratic position is that the entitlement will do the opposite but never mind, which is at least more honest.
But we wonder how long this new candor will last. If the public reacts badly to these higher premiums, the authors of ObamaCare will soon be back to blaming insurance companies and Republicans.
5a)Daniel Kessler: ObamaCare Is Raising Insurance Costs
Despite what you read, premiums in Oregon and California are going up, especially for the young.By DANIEL P. KESSLER
California and Oregon have recently announced the premiums for the health plans that will be offered through their ObamaCare insurance exchanges in 2014. Supporters of the law are jubilant. KQED, northern California's largest public radio station, reported that "experts had warned of 'rate shock.' That has not happened." The New York Times editorial page chimed in, writing that "For the most part, the premiums will increase only slightly or even decrease for individuals and family coverage on the exchanges."
A closer examination of these health plans reveals a less rosy picture. Although the premiums are lower than some anticipated, this has been achieved by designing the plans around much more limited provider networks and including greater cost-sharing than the typical commercial health-insurance plan. The premiums for the policies that will be offered on the states' exchanges are much higher than analogous plans being sold today.
One of the most important feature of any health plan is its "network"—the group of doctors and hospitals that agree to serve the plan's enrollees. Although the California and Oregon networks are not final, there are indications they will be narrow.
California HealthLine, a service of the California HealthCare Foundation, reports that "some premier provider networks" (such as Cedars-Sinai and UCLA Medical Center) are largely absent from the exchange plans. In Los Angeles County, most of the exchange plans are priced comparably to L.A. Care—the health plan for Medicaid beneficiaries. This suggests that the other exchange plans will have provider networks similar to those that serve Medicaid—networks that have been criticized for giving beneficiaries inferior access to care.
Even after the networks are made public, it will still be difficult to precisely determine their breadth. That's because a physician who participates in a network does not have to accept an unlimited number of patients enrolled in the plan. Providers can't discriminate against patients on the basis of prohibited characteristics like race or ethnicity. They can limit the number of patients they take with exchange insurance if they can't handle any more patients.
Getty Images
Exchange plans also involve much more cost-sharing than the typical plan. For example, the deductible of an individual "silver" plan—the benchmark for determining the subsidies for low- and moderate-income people—in the California exchange is $2,000, considerably higher than the $1,250 minimum deductible for a High-Deductible Health Plan that qualifies for a Health Savings Account under current federal law. (The deductible for a "bronze," or budget, plan is $5,000.)
Determining whether premiums for exchange plans are higher or lower than premiums of currently available plans is therefore difficult, because the two types of plans are not always directly comparable. However, one firm's exchange plans can be evaluated against its current product line: Kaiser Permanente. Kaiser is the nation's largest Health Maintenance Organization that serves its enrollees through its own proprietary network. Its network will be roughly the same in 2014 as it is today, and the wide variety of plans it currently offers makes comparisons more feasible.
This apples-to-apples assessment shows how much higher exchange-plan premiums will be. For example, a 25-year-old male who lives in San Francisco can purchase a "California 40/4000" policy from Kaiser today that has a $40 copayment for office visits after a $4,000 deductible, with a $5,600 out-of-pocket maximum, for $140 per month. Kaiser's most comparable exchange policy—a "bronze" plan with the minimum benefits and the highest out-of-pocket costs—has a $5,000 deductible with a $6,400 out-of-pocket maximum, although it allows three office visits per year that are exempt from the deductible. It costs $227, 62% higher than its current comparable plan, the California 40/4000.
Oregon's exchange policies are about the same. Today, a 25-year-old male who lives in Portland can purchase an "Oregon KP 2000/20%/HSA/Rx" policy from Kaiser that has 20% copayments, a $2,000 deductible and a $5,000 out-of-pocket maximum. It costs $129 per month. The most comparable exchange plan, a "silver" plan, has 25% copayments, a $1,750 deductible, and a $5,000 out-of-pocket maximum. It costs $229 per month—78% higher.
None of this means that the exchange plans will provide inferior care or inadequate protection against financial risk. But it does show that the Affordable Care Act's goal of expanded coverage is going to require much higher premiums, especially for young people, and significant changes in the access and low cost-sharing that Americans have come to expect.
Mr. Kessler is a professor of business and law at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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6) Our great nation is in serious trouble.
The current administration is out of control, and in very dangerous ways.
“Fast and furious”; the atrocious handling of the Benghazi situation and the resulting cover-up attempt; The IRS targeting one particular type of political action group; the Justice Department attempting to muzzle press coverage.
And our current President attests he has just learned about it, by reading the newspaper. I find that hard to believe, as the former IRS commissioner visited the White House 118 times in 2010 and 2011. With the Inspector General breathing down
his neck, it is hard to imagine that Mr. Shulman wouldn’t tell his boss’s boss about it. Especially with the political significance of the actions.
Considering his Chicago background, I can well understand how our current President simply ignored the malfeasance, perhaps even encouraged continuance.
However, that is in violation of the oath he took on assuming office, and provides just ground for impeachment.
With a strong majority in the House of Representatives, I believe that Speaker Boehner should file a motion for
impeachment of our current President. I am certain that such a motion would pass.
I realize that conviction will require a two-thirds majority in the Senate. I recognize that such action is very unlikely considering the composure of the Senate, and its’ current leadership.
Even though the House resolution will not remove the individual from office, I still believe that the action itself is meaningful. Such a move would let our citizens and the world understand that our nation has not lost complete reason, and that there are very likely better times ahead.
It is a shame that such an action is necessary, since only two Presidents have been impeached in the history of our republic, but on the surface, it has become apparent that the actions of the IRS very likely changed the outcome of our last Presidential election. And it is likely that our current President, if he did not instigate it, was very aware of the activity some years ago.
6a)God bless Mychal Massie for being able to convincingly tell
like it is.
BEST SUMMATION OF BARACK AND MICHELLE OBAMA EVER
Mychal Massie is a respected writer and talk show host in Los Angeles ..
The other evening on my twitter, a person asked me why I didn't like the Obama's? Specifically I was asked: "I have to ask, why do you hate the Obama's? It seems personal, not policy related. You even dissed (disrespect) their Christmas family picture."
The truth is I do not like the Obamas, what they represent, their ideology, and I certainly do not like his policies and legislation. I've made no secret of my contempt for the Obamas. As I responded to the person who asked me the aforementioned question, I don't like them because they are committed to the fundamental change of my/our country into what can only be regarded as a Communist state.
I don't hate them per definition, but I condemn them because they are the worst kind of racialists, they are elitist Leninists with contempt for traditional America . They display disrespect for the sanctity of the office he holds, and
for those who are willing to admit same, Michelle Obama's raw contempt for white America is transpicuous.
I don't like them because they comport themselves as emperor and empress. I expect, no I demand respect, for the Office of President and a love of our country and her citizenry from the leader entrusted with the governance of same. President and Mrs. Reagan displayed an unparalleled love for the country and her people. The Reagan's made Americans feel good about themselves and about what we could accomplish. His arrogance by
appointing 32 leftist czars and constantly bypassing congress is impeachable. Eric Holder is probably the MOST incompetent and arrogant DOJ head to ever hold the job. Could you envision President Reagan instructing his Justice Department to act like jack-booted thugs?
Presidents are politicians and all politicians are known and pretty much expected to manipulate the truth, if not outright lie, but even using that low standard, the Obama's have taken lies, dishonesty, deceit, mendacity, subterfuge and obfuscation to new depths. They are verbally abusive to the citizenry, and they display an animus for civility.
I do not like them, because they both display bigotry overtly, as in the case of Harvard Professor Louis Gates, when he accused the Cambridge Police of acting stupidly, and her code speak pursuant to now being able to
be proud of America. I view that statement and that mindset as an insult to those who died to provide a country where a Kenyan, his illegal alien relatives, and his alleged progeny, could come and not only live freely, but rise to the highest, most powerful, position in the world. Michelle Obama is free to hate and disparage whites because Americans of every description paid with their blood to ensure her right to do same.
I have a saying, that "the only reason a person hides things, is because they have something to hide." No president in history has spent over a million dollars to keep his records and his past sealed.
And what the two of them have shared has been proved to be lies. He lied about when and how they met, he lied about his mother's death and problems with insurance, Michelle lied to a crowd pursuant to nearly $500,000 bank stocks they inherited from his family. He has lied about his father's military service, about the civil rights movement, ad nausea. He lied to the world about the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address. He berated and publicly insulted a sitting Congressman. He has surrounded himself with the most rabidly, radical, socialist academicians today. He opposed rulings
that protected women and children that even Planned Parenthood did not seek to support. He is openly hostile to business and aggressively hostile to Israel . His wife treats being the First Lady as her personal American Express Black Card (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I condemn them because, as people are suffering, losing their homes, their j obs, their retirements, he and his family are arrogantly showing off their life of entitlement - as he goes about creating and fomenting class warfare.
I don't like them, and I neither apologize nor retreat from my public condemnation of them and of his policies. We should condemn them for the disrespect they show our people, for his willful and unconstitutional actions pursuant to obeying the Constitutional parameters he is bound by, and his willful disregard for Congressional authority.
Dislike for them has nothing to do with the color of their skin; it has everything to do with their behavior, attitudes, and policies. And I have open scorn for their constantly playing the race card.
I could go on, but let me conclude with this. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the media for refusing to investigate them, as they did
President Bush and President Clinton, and for refusing to label them for what they truly are. There is no scenario known to man, whereby a white president and his wife could ignore laws, flaunt their position, and lord over the people, as these two are permitted out of fear for their color.
As I wrote in a syndicated column titled, "Nero In The White House" - "Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader. He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequalled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood... Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation, and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement - while America 's people go homeless, hungry and unemployed.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6)Emails of Top Obama Appointees Remain a Mystery Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.
The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom
of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.
The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate
from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged — but often happens anyway — due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
The secret email accounts complicate an agency's legal responsibilities to find and turn over emails in response to congressional or internal investigations, civil lawsuits or public records requests because employees assigned to compile such responses would necessarily need to know about the accounts to search them. Secret accounts also drive perceptions that government officials are trying to hide actions or decisions.
"What happens when that person doesn't work there anymore? He leaves and someone makes a request
(to review emails) in two years," said Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, an open government group. "Who's going to know to search the other accounts? You would hope that agencies doing this would keep a list of aliases in a desk drawer, but you know that isn't happening."
Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.
The AP couldn't independently verify the practice. It searched hundreds of pages of government emails previously released under the open records law and found only one instance of a published email with a secret address: an email from Labor Department spokesman Carl Fillichio to 34 coworkers in 2010 was turned over to an advocacy group, Americans for Limited Government. It included as one recipient the non-public address for Seth D. Harris, currently the acting labor secretary, who maintains at least three separate email accounts.
Google can't find any reference on the Internet to the secret address for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Congressional oversight committees told the AP they were unfamiliar with the non-public government addresses identified so far by the AP.
Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice,
Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.
A Treasury Department spokeswoman, Marissa Hopkins Secreto, referred inquiries to the agency's FOIA office, which said its technology department was still searching for the email addresses. Other departments, including Homeland Security, did not respond to questions from the AP about the delays of nearly three months. The Pentagon said it may have an answer by later this summer.
The Health and Human Services Department initially turned over to the AP the email addresses for roughly 240 appointees — except none of the email accounts for Sebelius, even one for her already published on
its website. After the AP objected, it turned over three of Sebelius' email addresses, including a secret one. It asked the AP not to publish the address, which it said she used to conduct day-to-day business at the department. Most of the 240 political appointees at HHS appeared to be using only public government accounts.
The AP decided to publish the secret address for Sebelius — KGS2(at)hhs.gov — over the government's objections because the secretary is a high-ranking civil servant who oversees not only major agencies like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services but also the implementation of Obama's signature health care law. Her public email address is Kathleen.Sebelius(at)hhs.gov.
At least two other senior HHS officials — including Donald Berwick, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Gary Cohen, a deputy administrator in charge of implementing
health insurance reform — also have secret government email addresses, according to the records
obtained by the AP.
The Interior Department gave the AP a list of about 100 government email addresses for political
appointees who work there but none for the interior secretary at the time, Ken Salazar, who has since resigned. Spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw said Salazar maintained only one email address while serving as secretary but she would not disclose it. She said the AP should ask for it under the Freedom of
Information Act, which would take months longer.
The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its
archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month's work. But under the department's own FOIA rules — which it cited in its letter to the AP — it is prohibited from charging
news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it
would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.
Fillichio later acknowledged that the $1.03 million bill was a mistake and provided the AP with email addresses for the agency's Senate-confirmed appointees, including three addresses for Harris, the acting secretary. His secret address was harris.sd(at)dol.gov. His other accounts were one for use with labor employees and the public, and another to send mass emails to the entire Labor Department, outside
groups and the public. The Labor Department said it did not object to the AP publishing any of Harris' email addresses.
In addition to the email addresses, the AP also sought records government-wide about decisions to create separate email accounts. But the FOIA director at HHS, Robert Eckert, said the agency couldn't provide such emails without undergoing "an extensive and elongated department-wide search." He also said there were "no mechanisms in place to determine if such requests for the creation of secondary email accounts were submitted by the approximately 242 political appointees within HHS."
Late last year, the EPA's critics — including Republicans in Congress — accused former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson of using an email account under the name "Richard Windsor" to sidestep disclosure rules. The EPA said emails Jackson sent using her Windsor alias were turned over under open records requests. The agency's inspector general is investigating the use of such accounts, after being
asked to do so by Congress.
An EPA spokeswoman described Jackson's alternate email address as "an everyday, working email
account of the administrator to communicate with staff and other government officials." It was later determined that Jackson also used the email address to correspond sometimes with environmentalists outside government and at least in some cases did not correct a misperception among outsiders they
were corresponding with a government employee named Richard Windsor.
Although the EPA's inspector general is investigating the agency's use of secret email accounts, it is not reviewing whether emails from Jackson's secret account were released as required under the Freedom of Information Act.
The EPA's secret email accounts were revealed last fall by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that was tipped off about Jackson's alias by an insider and later
noticed it in documents it obtained the FOIA. The EPA said its policy was to disclose in such documents that "Richard Windsor" was actually the EPA administrator.
Courts have consistently set a high bar for the government to withhold public officials' records under the federal privacy rules. A federal judge, Marilyn Hall Patel of California, said in August 2010 that "persons who have placed themselves in the public light" — such as through politics or voluntarily participation in
the public arena — have a "significantly diminished privacy interest than others." Her ruling was part of a case in which a journalist sought FBI records, but was denied.
"We're talking about an email address, and an email address given to an individual by the government to conduct official business is not private," said Aaron Mackey, a FOIA attorney with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. He said that's different than, for example, confidential information, such as a Social Security number.
Under the law, citizens and foreigners may use the FOIA to compel the government to turn over copies
of federal records for zero or little cost. Anyone who seeks information through the law is generally supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose business secrets or confidential decision-making in certain areas.
Obama pledged during his first week in office to make government more transparent and open. The
nation's signature open-records law, he said in a memo to his Cabinet, would be "administered with a
clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails."
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