Federal Budget Deceit

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On Monday, President Obama will unveil his proposed federal budget for 2016. Voters should be warned that virtually all the numbers reported in news coverage of the federal budget will be misleading at best.

That’s because the budget reporting will be written primarily in the language of official Washington rather than the language of everyday Americans. In Washington, if government spending goes up less than expected, the politicians have declared it to be a “cut.” Normal people don’t consider something a spending cut unless spending actually goes down.

Congress even passed a law in 1974 to make this abuse of the English language official. At the time, federal spending was starting to spiral out of control and voters wanted something done about it. Rather than deal with the substance of what voters wanted, Congress simply changed the definition of a word so that it meant one thing in Washington and another in America.

That let politicians campaign on claims of “cutting” government spending while spending continued to grow. Forty years of such deceit created the problems we face today.

The confusion created by the language of official Washington was highlighted earlier this week in media coverage of a report showing that the federal budget deficit for 2015 will be the lowest in many years. USA Today, for example, reported this good news with the explanation that deficits have fallen since 2009 “due to a combination of federal spending cuts and economic growth.”

The problem — and it’s a big one — with that statement is that federal spending in 2015 is projected to be $138 billion higher this year than it was in 2009 ($3,656 billion this year compared to $3,518 in 2009).

Read more:
Federal Budget Deceit | John Hawkins' Right Wing News

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Friday Funnies

Help Bob the Cat

My name is Melissa and I live in South Carolina.  I have two grown daughters and 3 beautiful grandchildren.  During the AM rush to work yesterday, I noticed the cars ahead of me veering around something in the center of the road.  I assumed it was an empty box or a random tennis shoe, but when I got closer, I realized it was a cat – curled up with his feet tucked under him.  He looked like he might be lying on a couch.  I turned left into a parking lot and wheeled around to go check on him.  By the time I got back, a police officer had stopped,  picked him up by the scruff of his neck and was setting him a little ways onto the grass at a condo complex.  I turned into the complex and rolled down my window.  “Is he alive?”  I asked.  “For now” he replied.  I thanked him for stopping and walked over to the cat.  He had a little blood on his mouth and couldn’t walk.  The sound of the cars was scaring him, but I guess he figured I was the lesser of the evils he was facing.  I stooped down and gently began to pet him.  I couldn’t leave him there, but had no way to transport him and started knocking on condo doors to hopefully find the owner. Nobody had ever even seen the cat before.  As I was walking back, I saw that the police officer had come back by.  “I realized you were still here.  I’ll take him to the vet just up the street.”   I thanked him and left.  I called the vet’s office and told them the officer was on his way with the injured animal.  “He doesn’t seem to be critically injured and I’ll take him if you’re going to euthanize him otherwise, but I can’t afford to spend a fortune on this cat,” I told her.  “What’s his name?” she asked.  His name?  What?  Ummmmm… “Bob” came out.

 Bob is my “go to” name when I tell a story.  “I worked with a guy who dyed his hair blue… what was his name?  I’ll just call him Bob…” or “A friend of mine dated a man who just moved into your neighborhood, but I can’t remember his name… anyway let’s just say it’s Bob.”  I would like to blame his name on my lack of creativity so early in the morning, but apparently I’m just not very clever in general.

After giving her my required Visa card number, she promised to have the vet call me.    Bob.  I just named a cat Bob… Bobcat.  Ha!  I had a little laugh with myself.  But all I could think about was the only money in my account was already spent on bills.  “Even if it’s not expensive and they give me a break for being a “nice” person, how am I going to pay for this?” I wondered.  I am my sole financial provider.  I don’t make a lot of money.  I, like most people, live paycheck to paycheck.  About an hour later, the vet called to say they would have to do x-rays to determine the damage and because he was not very happy they would need to sedate him.  That’s understandable so I gave my permission.  What else could I do? 

“He seems to be in overall good health,” the doctor said later.  “But he does have a broken pelvis and a few contusions I’ll need to stitch up.  He appears to be fairly well taken care of, but probably a neighborhood cat.  I doubt he has an owner, but I could be wrong.  Also, he hasn’t been neutered and I imagine that’s something you’ll want to take care of later.  He’ll need to be confined to a pet carrier for about a month and the pelvis will heal on its own.  Right now, we’re giving him IV fluids and some non-steroid medication for inflammation.  I know you’re footing the bill here so I just wanted to let you know we’re at $505.00 right now.  We’re going to keep him overnight and I’ll call you tomorrow.”  I thanked her and got off the phone.  $505.00 might as well be a million…

I called my daughter and told her the story.  God always gives me needy cats so this one came as no great surprise to her.  “I have no idea how I’m going to pay for this, but God knows I don’t have the money and He also KNEW I would stop and take care of this cat!”  “He has a plan Mom.  Don’t worry!” she replied.  Wise woman I raised.  I also told a friend at work about my situation.   “I named him Bob.”  She gets it because she knows me so well.  “He’s Bob.  Bobcat.”  We both laughed. “We’re at $505.00 right now, but he’ll also have to be neutered so that’s even more money.”  Pause… “I guess he’ll be Bobbitt after that!”  We both nearly fell to the floor laughing.

This morning I got the update on Bob (still his name, no snipping yet).  He’s running a low grade fever and they’re starting antibiotics.  Good news is he doesn’t have feline leukemia, HIV or any other cat aliment.  Bad news, more money.

I know this is not the big news of the century and certainly not the most worthy cause in the world.  But I don’t have the $1,000.00 + it’s going to cost me to take care of this animal.   Another friend suggested I set up this account.  You have no idea how much Bob and I would appreciate it!  God Bless!
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Random Readings

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Phone Company ‘Outraged’ By Fraud, Abuse In ‘Obamaphone’ Program

A nationwide cellphone company distributing phones and cellphone plans in Denver as part of a massive government program says it is “outraged by the unacceptable actions” uncovered by a CBS4 undercover investigation.

 The response from Total Call Mobile comes nearly three months after an undercover CBS4 investigation revealed multiple examples of fraud and cheating in the phone distribution program.
The Lifeline program is aimed at providing free cellphone service to the poor and needy. It handed out more than 13 million free cellphone plans in the first six months of 2014. In Colorado, the program handed out more than 117,000 free cellphone plans in the first half of 2014 or about 20,000 cellphones every month.

If you own a cellphone, you pay for the free phones and their wireless plans via a monthly tax on your cellphone called the Universal Service Tax. Although the Lifeline wireless program has been around since 2005 and started under President George W. Bush, it ballooned under President Obama and the phones are often referred to as Obamaphones.

Obamacare program costs $50,000 in taxpayer money for every American who gets health insurance, says bombshell budget report

It will cost the federal government – taxpayers, that is – $50,000 for every person who gets health insurance under the Obamacare law, the Congressional Budget Office revealed on Monday.

The number comes from figures buried in a 15-page section of the nonpartisan organization's new ten-year budget outlook.

The best-case scenario described by the CBO would result in 'between 24 million and 27 million' fewer Americans being uninsured in 2025, compared to the year before the Affordable Care Act took effect.

Pulling that off will cost Uncle Sam about $1.35 trillion – or $50,000 per head.

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Hump Day Hunnies

Andrew Klavan: The Facts of Life for Liberals

The President’s Address of Lies

Obama’s previous State of the Union address claimed last year would be a “breakthrough year.” In this year’s State of the Union address he announced that he would turn the page.

Turning the page on last year’s grandiose and dishonest claims is what Obama does with each new address. Each year terrorism has been permanently defeated and the economy has recovered; Al Qaeda is on the run, unemployed dentists from Poughkeepsie are learning to install solar panels and illegal aliens from Los Angeles are teaching sex ed to kindergarteners.

And then next year he comes out to announce once again that the country has recovered from the crisis that he had already announced that it had recovered from last year.

And everyone applauds.

What exactly is Obama turning the page on? Two lost wars and the lowest employed population since 1977… under his predecessor Jimmy Carter?

When everything on the last page looks so bad, then it’s time to turn the page, offer up a minor variation on the same promises about infrastructure, income inequality and education, before going back to a busy schedule of playing golf, visiting foreign countries on pseudo-vacations and ruling unilaterally without regard for the other two branches of government that don’t control the military.
There are the false claims of victory in the War on Terror. Obama claims credit for the withdrawal from Afghanistan without accepting responsibility for the defeat. There is no mention of Yemen and Libya, which showed up in his 2013 address, now that both countries have been overrun by terrorists.

Turning the page means not having to read any bad news.

Having dragged the United States into two new wars, one in Libya and one in Syria, Obama sneeringly denounces Republicans and more serious Democrats who want to drag the country “into costly conflicts that strain our military and set back our standing.” By that he means imposing new sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program, instead of letting a terrorist state have a nuclear bomb.
In fact it’s Obama, not Republicans, who brought the United States into a proxy war with Iran in Syria while at the same time allowing it to go nuclear in the single greatest act of strategic insanity in history.

Instead Obama urges that we use “all elements of our power to defeat new threats and protect our planet.” Like inviting James Taylor to play in Paris. The terrorists must have been terrified.

Read the full story here:
The President’s Address of Lies | FrontPage Magazine

Andrew Klavan: Which Black Lives Matter?

Offenders Of The Western Faith | John Hawkins' Right Wing News

Western civilization’s creed is free thought and expression, the lubricant of everything from
democracy to human rights.

Even a simpleton in the West accepts that protecting free expression is not the easy task of ensuring the right to read Homer’s “Iliad” or do the New York Times crossword puzzle. It entails instead the unpleasant duty of allowing offensive expression.

“Parody” and “satire” are, respectively, Greek and Latin words. In antiquity the non-Western tradition simply did not produce authors quite like the vicious Aristophanes, Petronius and Juvenal, who unapologetically trashed the society around them. If the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo loses the millennia-old right to ridicule Islam from within a democracy, then there is no longer a West, at least as we know it.

Unfortunately, when we look to prominent defenders of the Western faith in free speech, we find too often offenders.

Start with Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League. He recently made a series of silly statements about the terrorist attack in Paris. The gist was that the slain Charlie Hebdo staffers were nearly as much to blame for their deaths as were their killers, given their gratuitous blasphemy against the Islamic religion.

Does Donohue believe that satirists who poke fun at Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Judaism — and there are many, including the editors of Charlie Hebdo — are in similar mortal danger worldwide? Would Donohue wish such crass artists and writers to be? Do atheists find Donohue’s wink-and-nod apology for the radical Islamic killers offensive to the ideals of the secular Enlightenment? If so, should they assault Donohue for his de facto attack on unfettered free speech?

Cowardice also explains the failure to defend Western free expression. The New York Daily News recently ran a photo of editor Stephane Charbonnier, who was killed in the attack, holding an issue of Charlie Hebdo, but with the obnoxious cover-page cartoon caricaturing Islam pixelated out.


Read the full story here:
Offenders Of The Western Faith | John Hawkins' Right Wing News

Friday Funnies

Hump Day Hunnies

These should help you recover from the SOTU last night.

Mr. President, Let Me Be Clear

by James P Willis · 10 November, 2014

Some things are so predictable you can set your watch by them, especially when it comes to Liberals. Appearing on Face the Nation yesterday President Obama blamed his party’s mid-term election losses on “a failure of politics” because “we have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we’re trying to do and why this is the right direction”. In other words he believes he is doing everything right but we’re just too stupid to realize it; all he needs to do is dumb down the explanation enough for us simple bumpkins to catch onto his greatness.

This argument is invariably the one used by politicians, all of them but especially Democrats, who have lost an election. They lose because they fail to ‘get out the message’, it’s never because their message was heard and rejected. Maybe the voters haven’t been successful in getting the message out there to the President. Here, let me fix that.

Mr. President, let me be clear – I heard your message in 2008 and rejected it, and that is why I didn’t vote for you. I understood your message again in 2012, and didn’t vote for you a second time. The fault was not in the delivery of the message, nor was it because I didn’t understand it; in fact, it was because I understood your message quite well that caused me to reject it. Since 2008 however, we haven’t had to listen to your message as much because your policies have been implemented and we don’t like the results.

Just so you will understand my message, I will spell it out for you. Americans value freedom and the opportunities that freedom creates, and you have worked tirelessly to destroy that. We don’t like higher taxes, higher prices, and lower wages. We don’t believe three part-time jobs is better than one full-time job. We don’t believe we should be importing coal from Russia while our coal mining families are out of work and our coal mines are shutting down. We don’t want our electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket”, especially while our incomes are plummeting. We don’t believe we need millions of illegal immigrants to come into the country to drive down wages and take jobs from Americans that really need them. We don’t believe it was right for you to lie to us when you said we could keep our insurance policies and our doctors if we liked them, and we don’t believe insurance policies with $12,000 deductibles are an improvement over what we had.

Maybe you can’t understand this, but we don’t believe the IRS should be used as a weapon against your political opponents, and we don’t believe the NSA should be listening to our phone calls and reading our e-mails. We do believe it is wrong for the federal government to allow illegal gun sales to Mexican drug cartels for any reason, but especially not to use it as an excuse to take away our right to keep and bear arms. We do believe the Attorney General and anyone else involved should be held accountable for the crimes they have committed. Americans don’t believe our people should have been abandoned in Benghazi, nor do we believe your administration should stonewall Congressional investigations into the tragedy. We also don’t believe we should release high-level terrorists in exchange for a low-level Army deserter, nor do we believe you should have ignored the plight of our Marine held in a Mexican prison.

For the record, most of us don’t believe the way to fight terrorism is to arm and train the terrorists, nor do we believe we should have energy policies that force us to buy oil from Middle Eastern countries that fund terrorists while we have more than enough oil right here. Most Americans don’t believe our interests are being served or that our nation is safe while our borders are not secure.

Mr. President, in summary, we understand very well what you are trying to do and don’t want you to do it, we have seen what you have done and want it undone, and we don’t believe you are capable of leading this country to a place we want to be.

What part of that don’t you understand?

Source:
Mr. President, Let Me Be Clear - Dispatches From The Conservative Underground

Obama's Free Community College Proposal Is Ridiculous

As someone who has spent over 15 years teaching at community colleges, I cannot think of a worse idea than President Obama’s proposal for the federal government to provide “free” community college tuition nationwide.  Here’s why:

Nothing in life is “free”: The lesson we should be teaching our students is that nothing of value is free.  “Free community college” for students translates into “a tax increase for somebody else.”  Who is going to pay for the billions of dollars it will cost to provide “free” tuition at community colleges, which are heavily subsidized by taxpayers already?  College should be affordable, but students need to responsibly shoulder most of the cost.

The federal government has no business in education: Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government. Education is not one of them.  The 10^th Amendment stipulates that all powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states – and this includes education from kindergarten through graduate school.  States are perfectly capable of maintaining community colleges without interference from federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and all the strings they will invariably attach to the “free” program.

You get what you pay for: If community college becomes “free,” it will attract even more unserious students than the ones already enrolled in community colleges.  Anecdotally, I’d say that about half the students in community colleges are not ready for college-level work.  (I worked at one community college in which the department that offered the most course sections of any department on campus was the remedial education department.)  Many students enroll in community colleges simply because they were handed a high-school diploma based on grade inflation and social promotion and have no clue what to do next.  Fall semesters tend to produce the worst students; many simply disappear without a trace after a few weeks.  Those who hang around until the spring semester are usually more serious.  It’s also true that some community college students “game” the financial aid system; they attend long enough to get their checks, then vamoose.
Read the full article:
Articles: Obama's Free Community College Proposal Is Ridiculous

Andrew Klavan: How To Speak Leftist, Part II

Is The NBA Too Black?

The following was written by Michelle Hickford, Editor in Chief at allenbwest.com. She is a communications strategist and award-winning advertising copywriter. She has held senior marketing positions at Turner Broadcasting and USA Networks, and is the author of “Do I Need To Slap You?” She served in Congressman West’s congressional office and as Press Secretary for his 2012 campaign.

Liberals may be terrible at handling the economy or protecting our nation, but they sure are entertaining. The latest side-splitter comes from the White House official court jester, Al Sharpton.

As the Washington Times reports, Reverand Al “announced he was holding an “emergency meeting” to discuss Hollywood’s all-white list of Oscar nominees and talk about possible action against the Academy Awards’ powers-who-be.”

“The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains,” he said in a statement reported by Business Insider. “The higher you get, the whiter it gets. … I have called an emergency meeting early next week in Hollywood with the task force to discuss possible action around the Academy Awards.”

Now bear in mind this is only the second time in the last 20 years that only white folks were nominated for best actor, actress or director Oscars, so it’s not like there’s a continuing pattern of racism.

But I’ll tell you where there IS a clear pattern of racism. It’s in the NFL!

I did a quick review of the starting line-ups for the four playoff teams (Seahawks, Packers, Colts and Patriots) and 65 percent of those players are black. I’d say that’s a little lop-sided, wouldn’t you — considering blacks make up only around 14 percent of the U.S. population.

And don’t get me started on the racism in the NBA!

If you want to talk about no diversity in honoring excellence, look at the recipients of the Most Valuable Player awards over the last 58 years. 

It’s shocking! Seventy-eight percent of all MVPs in history have been black! Boy, I’d say the NBA is way too black. We ought to hold an emergency meeting to discuss possible action against the NBA, right Al? I mean it’s simply not FAIR.

In the NBA, it’s like outer space Al — the higher you get, the darker it gets.
Copyright @2014. AllenBWest.com

Articles: Obama Tries to Co-opt the Charlie moment

By James Lewis

 

There is reason to suspect President Obama’s attitude toward the Muslim Brotherhood, a long-time jihadist movement that forty years ago assassinated Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat for making peace with Israel. The Moobers also overthrew Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak for keeping the peace treaty with Israel. And we know — as many Egyptians know — that Obama literally told Egypt’s President Mubarak to resign, in public, precipitating a phony election in which the Moobs were bound to win.

At every turn in that shocking story Obama took the wrong side. Now he is trying to grab the lead in the spontaneous French and worldwide movement against Jihad war, by sponsoring a “global security summit” under his (Obama’s) control on “violent extremism” (apparently on the part of nobody in particular), which is bound to be infiltrated and sabotaged by the Moobers.

What is the evidence for Obama’s softness on the Dark Side? Let us count the ways.

1. He has said so.

“The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam”

We now know that telling the truth is equivalent to “slander” in the Muslim mindset.

“I will stand with the Muslims should the winds shift in an ugly direction.”

2. He has lied innumerable times to deny the mass-murdering enemy.

“ISIL is not Islamic.”
“Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.”

Compare this to Egypt’s President El Sisi, who has risked his life by telling the imams that:

 "It's inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. … This is antagonizing the entire world. It's antagonizing the entire world! Does this mean that 1.6 billion people (Muslims) should want to kill the rest of the world's inhabitants -- that is 7 billion -- so that they themselves may live? Impossible!​"

Read more:
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/01/obama_tries_to_coopt_the_charlie_moment.html

Friday Funnies

Andrew Klavan: How To Speak Leftist

Hump Day Hunnies