tagged w/ Obama Administration
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President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
I am writing to you as a wife and mother of two young daughters, whose 34-year old husband, Matthew Davies, faces 10 years or more in federal prison for providing medical marijuana to sick people in California, even though he complied with state law concerning medicinal cannabis. My questions to you are simple:
•What has my husband done that would justify the federal government forcing my young daughters to grow up without a father?
•How can your Administration ignore the will of the California people and prosecute this good, law-abiding man for doing exactly what state law permits?
Mr. President, my husband is not a criminal and shouldn't be treated like one. Matt is not a drug dealer or trafficker. He's not driving around in a fancy car and living in some plush mansion--trust me. My husband is a regular guy, and we're a regular, middle-class family. Yet even though Matt took great pains to follow state and local law, he is currently facing a severe prison sentence. This all seems so surreal.
Last month you told Barbara Walters that federal law enforcement authorities would not go after people in Colorado and Washington for marijuana-related crimes because it makes no sense for the government to "focus on recreational drug users in a state that has already said that under state law that's legal." You said that the federal government has "bigger fish to fry."
If that's true, why are federal prosecutors in Sacramento threatening my husband, Matt, with 10 years to life in federal prison for providing medical marijuana to California patients who are legally allowed to possess and use it? Matt did nothing illegal under our state and local laws. He has no criminal record. He is a hard-working family man and a loving, kind husband and father.
We are confused and absolutely terrified.
I remember when Matt first told me about his hopes of providing medical cannabis to patients. At first, I thought he was crazy. But, we talked about how his grandfather wasted away from cancer and was in so much pain at the end of his life, and how medical marijuana could have helped him. We also talked about how it is perfectly legal in California to use marijuana for medicinal purposes and to provide it to people who have been legally prescribed the medication.
Matt explained to me how he wanted to do things right--to pay taxes, to provide good jobs, and to reduce the price of medicine for patients.
But I was still worried. Even though California has legalized medical marijuana, I was afraid that the federal government could still come after him. Matt had thought this through as well. He showed me an official memo from your Department of Justice saying that the federal government has no interest in prosecuting folks for using and providing medical marijuana so long as they comply with their state's laws. Just like you told Barbara Walters last month, the federal government, it seemed to us, had "bigger fish to fry."
So, Matt moved forward with his plans. To protect his family, Matt spent thousands of dollars on lawyers who would ensure that he complied with every part of state law. When I saw how careful he was, I eventually became comfortable with what Matt was doing. He felt like he was offering a valuable service to people in need, many of whom are vulnerable and terminally ill. Matt truly believed that he was doing a good thing.
And he was. My husband provided medical marijuana to patients for a little over one year. It was not his full-time job--he actually runs a local family-owned restaurant where he manages 30 employees--but it was a second job that he felt quite passionate about. Through his non-profit work, Matt employed dozens of people; all of them paid taxes. All of this was out in the open--he even had business permits from state and local governments. The dispensaries that Matt helped run made it possible for patients to safely and reliably access their legally prescribed medication. Many of them appreciated the fact that they didn't have to try to "hook up" their medication though some drug dealer on the street.
Despite employing dozens of people and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal, state and local taxes and fees, Matt kept his non-profit salary low: he made less than $50,000 total. He obviously didn't do it for the money.
We would have never gone down this road had we thought for a moment that the federal government would prosecute Matt for running a completely above-board operation that is perfectly legal where we live. Nothing is worth Matt's liberty. And I cannot even bear to think of our daughters growing up without their father. This is a nightmare.
Mr. President, I ask you, I beg of you, to convey the position you took on national television last month to your local law enforcement agents. Or, even better, come to Stockton, California and see for yourself. Sit down with Matt and hear our story. My husband is not the "bigger fish to fry." Please drop this case and put an end to our family's nightmare.
Yours with hope and sincerity,
Molly Davies
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/molly-davies/a-letter-to-the-president_3_b_2469267.html?utm_hp_ref=twPresident Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington,... more
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The California Democrat's disgusting rhetoric recalls the worst of Dick Cheney while advancing Obama's agenda
To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster "any bill" that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.
But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that - the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise - actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote - caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.
Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.
In doing so, the new 2008 law gutted the 30-year-old FISA statute that had been enacted to prevent the decades of severe spying abuses discovered by the mid-1970s Church Committee: by simply barring the government from eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008 law legalized most of what Democrats had spent years pretending was such a scandal: the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George Bush after the 9/11 attack. In other words, the warrantless eavesdropping "scandal" that led to a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times reporters who revealed it ended not with investigations or prosecutions for those who illegally spied on Americans, but with the Congressional GOP joining with key Democrats (including Obama) to legalize most of what Bush and Cheney had done. Ever since, the Obama DOJ has invoked secrecy and standing doctrines to prevent any courts from ruling on whether the warrantless eavesdropping powers granted by the 2008 law violate the Constitution.
The 2008 FISA law provided that it would expire in four years unless renewed. Yesterday, the Senate debated its renewal. Several Senators - Democrats Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon along with Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul - each attempted to attach amendments to the law simply to provide some modest amounts of transparency and oversight to ensure that the government's warrantless eavesdropping powers were constrained and checked from abuse.
Just consider how modest these amendments were. Along with Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Sen. Wyden has spent two years warning Americans that the government's eavesdropping powers are being interpreted (by secret court decisions and the Executive Branch) far more broadly than they would ever suspect, and that, as a result, these eavesdropping powers are being applied far more invasively and extensively than is commonly understood.
As a result, Wyden yesterday had two amendments: one that would simply require the NSA to give a general estimate of how many Americans are having their communications intercepted under this law (information the NSA has steadfastly refused to provide), and another which would state that the NSA is barred from eavesdropping on Americans on US soil without a warrant. Merkley's amendment would compel the public release of secret judicial rulings from the FISA court which purport to interpret the scope of the eavesdropping law on the ground that "secret law is inconsistent with democratic governance"; the Obama administration has refused to release a single such opinion even though the court, "on at least one occasion", found that the government was violating the Fourth Amendment in how it was using the law to eavesdrop on Americans.
More at link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/28/fisa-feinstein-obama-democrats-eavesdroppingThe California Democrat's disgusting rhetoric recalls the worst of Dick Cheney... more
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President gives away the store in fiscal negotiations. Reports indicate that Obama has willingly affronted public opinion, sound economics, and his political base of supporters by agreeing to make significant cuts to Social Security, health programs, education, and other programs while at the same time making some of the most odious benefits for the nation's financial elite permanent. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/12/18President gives away the store in fiscal negotiations. Reports indicate that Obama has... more
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Friends, there is a gift that God has given me: I can smell something fishy a mile away. Like Benghazi. Almost on day one, I told my husband: “The facts don’t make sense. Something is wrong here.” Last night, after I saw a talking head interview (or, I should say, NOT interview) the father of the boy who saw his teacher get shot and ran for his life with a couple of friends, I told my husband, “Something is not right here. She didn’t ask a single relevant question. So far, this boy is the only eye-witness of the gunman coming forward. She didn’t ask if the boy saw one or more shooters. She didn’t ask any details of what the gunman did first, second, third. She didn’t ask for a description of the gunman. These reporters are complete prostitutes. They could care less about the feelings of the people they interview. So why didn’t she ask any of these questions?” In fact, I could tell she was biting back questions. I looked at my husband and said, “Cal, this thing is starting to stink. By now, there should be many eye-witness accounts of the actual gunman. There should be breathless survivors talking about how this guy walked by their room, etc. About how they narrowly escaped. But so far, it looks like every single eye-witness is dead. That is IMPOSSIBLE!”
I watched the situation LIVE. There were original reports of a second man who was found in the woods that they had put in custody. This man was NEVER spoken of again. Why? The details of the shooting changed enormously from one minute to the next. Inside sources at the police departments were reporting one thing while the official accounts said completely different information. The news reports were full of such ambiguous NON statements that I was furiously looking throughout the internet to find solid evidence or eye-witness accounts to clarify. None was to be found. One example: They originally said that the shooter was buzzed in via the front office’s new video security system. Then, the news report said, “The shooter was NOT voluntarily buzzed into the school.” What the heck does THAT mean? Does that mean he forced his way through the system? Does that mean they have video evidence of his face? Does that mean that there was someone on the inside putting a gun to someone’s head to buzz the shooter in? Huh?
Also, it seems highly unlikely, based on descriptions of Adam, that he could have purchased all that black ops gear! The guy is described as being so shy that he would hug the school walls when someone approached him! Also, first the news definitely says the mother was a teacher and the classroom of dead kids was her class. Then, reports are that she had nothing to do with the school. So, why the shooting there? Also, the number and kind of weapons used changed. Also, where they discovered the weapons. Sometimes they reported that all the weapons were in the school. Then they said the rifle was in the car. But they also said that the shooter used the rifle to kill every single person with multiple shots.
No, something stinks here. The lack of eye witnesses of the shooter confirming the single shooter account is BLARINGLY absent. The reports of a second shooter in the woods has suddenly disappeared. The reporters are not grilling the one and only witness we know of- this little boy. Please don’t say they suddenly have even a smidge of conscience. The original statements about the shooter being buzzed into the school have simply disappeared. I was ready to let this go and explain it away as simple confusion. I was maddened by the timing and circumstances of the tragedy as concerns the upcoming UN small arms treaty & gun control. It killed me that this wack-job used LEGALLY REGISTERED weapons to do his killing. There is NO OTHER CONCLUSION, if the story is accurate, than the fact that had Adam Lanza NOT had access to those legal guns, he could never have killed those kids. He was too mentally ill to have gotten those weapons himself. He was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and we now know that he had many, many interventions by school officials in the past. I felt that the killing of little children would be the strongest argument yet that we should clamp down on gun ownership. I just couldn’t believe the TIMING and circumstances of this event- a GIFT to the Progressives to disarm us. Who can argue with this case? I was ready for the inevitable.
But a friend sent me the following links which tell a different story. Having reported the event LIVE and experienced the changing information, I am not surprised. In fact, it makes sense now.
Friends. I believe there is evidence of more than one shooter. I believe this was a PLANNED event- specifically to get the UN Small Arms Treaty signed. The father of the shooter is Peter Lanza, rumored to be scheduled to testify on the international LIBOR scandal. Guess who else is rumored to be scheduled to testify on the LIBOR scandal? Father of the BATMAN theater shooter. Amazing coincidence? We will see. The LIBOR scandal is a massive, worldwide network of banks, the Federal Reserve and highly position individuals such as Tim Geihtner and Ben Bernanke that are being accused of manipulating LIBOR rates to gain better market positions. Just some of the Banks involved are: the Canadian branches of the Royal Bank of Scotland, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Bank, and Citibank, as well as ICAP (Intercapital), an interdealer broker.[37 It also mentions Bank of America & Barclays. It is ugly to its roots and VERY powerful people are involved.
I believe our GOVERNMENT shot those kids and teachers and used Adam Lanza and his family to pull it off. They might have killed two birds with one stone. One: If these men are involved in the LIBOR scandal, they can manipulate their testimony. Two: they get gun control. How very, very clever and efficient of them, right? I hate to say it. I hate to put myself ‘out there’ with this because I KNOW how I will be attacked. But I don’t do this for anyone’s approval. I do it to help the American People. You look at these links and you decide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uuhbCOqIaC4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=S59IXI9g6VE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j_fI0hm1dqY
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/12/15/peter_lanza_reporter_tells_adam_lanza_father_of_connection_to_sandy_hook.html
http://beforeitsnews.com/economics-and-politics/2012/12/2-mass-shootings-connected-to-libor-2447738.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-15/ubs-libor-manipulation-accord-said-to-be-as-much-as-1-6-billion.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libor_scandal
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2012/jul/20/holmess-father-is-anti-fraud-scientist/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2178852/James-Holmes-Did-Colorado-maniac-snap-failing-meet-expectations-academic-father.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/aurora-dark-knight-shooting-suspect-identified-james-holmes/story?id=16818889#.UAnPJDFU2NE
http://www.tmz.com/2012/07/20/james-holmes-father-robert-holmes-colorodo-shooting/
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/07/james-holmes-appears-drugged-and-sleepy-in-court.html
http://hereisthecity.com/2012/10/04/fox-business-networks-charlie-gasparino-reports-sen-grassley-and/Friends, there is a gift that God has given me: I can smell something fishy a... more
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(second betrayal ?! try 20th or 30th )
By William K. Black
One of the “tells” that reveals how embarrassed Lanny Breuer (head of the Criminal Division) and Eric Holder (AG) are by the disgraceful refusal to prosecute HSBC and its officers for their tens of thousands of felonies are the false and misleading statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) about the settlement. The same pattern has been demonstrated by other writers in the case of the false and disingenuous statistics DOJ has trumpeted to attempt to disguise the abject failure of their efforts to prosecute the elite officers who directed the “epidemic” (FBI 2004) of mortgage fraud.
HSBC was one of the largest originators of fraudulent mortgage loans through its acquisition of Household Finance.
Three recent books by “insiders” have confirmed earlier articles revealing the decisive role that Treasury Secretary Geithner has played in opposing criminal prosecutions of the elite banksters and banks whose frauds drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession.
Bair, Sheila, Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself” (2012); Barofsky, Neil, Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street (2012); Connaughton, Jeff, The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins (2012).
Geithner’s fear is that the vigorous enforcement of the law against the systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) that caused the crisis could destabilize the system and cause a renewed global crisis. I have often expressed my view that the theory that leaving felons in power over our largest financial institutions is essential to producing financial stability is insane. Geithner, it turns out, is very sensitive to that criticism. I will return to that subject after setting the stage.
The UK authorities admit openly the arrival of “too big to prosecute”
The title of the article in The Daily Telegraph says it all: “Banks are ‘too big to prosecute’, says FSA’s Andrew Bailey.”
The FSA was the U.K.’s faux financial regulator during the run-up to the crisis. The U.K. “won” the regulatory “race to the bottom” that destroyed effective regulation and supervision in the U.K. and Europe and helped degrade to near impotence in the U.S. The FSA’s goal was to attract the world largest financial firms to relocate much of their operations to the City of London. The FSA offered “light touch” (non) regulation and (non) supervision to firms operating in the City of London. The results were the typical result – the City of London attracted the worst of the worst. The “control frauds” produced a “Gresham’s” dynamic (Akerlof 1970) because the frauds gained a crippling competitive advantage over honest competitors and dishonest and unethical officers became wealthy through fraud and modern executive compensation’s perverse incentives. “Control fraud” refers to criminal enterprises in which the people that control a seemingly legitimate enterprise use it as a “weapon” to defraud. Control frauds can create a Gresham’s dynamic causes markets to become so perverse that bad ethics drive good ethics out of the marketplace. The result was that the City of London became an intensely criminogenic environment and many of the largest financial firms in the world became criminal enterprises.
The newly designated head of the FSA decided to endorse the concept of “too big to prosecute.”
Mr Bailey told The Daily Telegraph that some banks had grown too large to prosecute. “It would be a very destabilising issue. It’s another version of too important to fail,” he said,
“Because of the confidence issue with banks, a major criminal indictment, which we haven’t seen and I’m not saying we are going to see… this is not an ordinary criminal indictment,” he said.
His comments come days after HSBC’s record $1.9bn (£1.2bn) settlement with the US authorities over money-laundering linked to drug-trafficking. US assistant attorney general Lanny Breuer said of the decision not to prosecute: “In this day and age we have to evaluate that innocent people will face very big consequences if you make a decision.”
The U.S. and U.K. have made noise lately about how they had ended the pernicious doctrine of “too big to fail.” As I explained in a prior column, this pretense lasted about four hours before both nations’ true preferences were revealed. The systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) already had crippling competitive advantages because the government bailed out their general creditors. Conservative economists agreed that this advantage was so large that it made “free markets” a farce. The doctrine “too big to prosecute” grants SDIs that are control frauds two additional advantages over their smaller, honest competitors. First, fraud pays enormously for the controlling officers. It is a “sure thing.” (Akerlof & Romer 1993.) The HSBC compliance officers (the minnows) may lose, but the controlling officers were made very wealthy by HSBC’s manifold frauds.
http://figrd.blogspot.com
(for pic)(second betrayal ?! try 20th or 30th )
By William K. Black
One of the... more
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Seriously, what's a bank got to do to get prosecuted in this country?
In another move that proves, yet again, that the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy, the powerful and the bankster criminal class, the Obama administration has declined to bring charges against HSBC for their extensive crimes, including laundering money for drug cartels and collusion with terrorist organizations...
http://veracitystew.com/?p=46688Seriously, what's a bank got to do to get prosecuted in this country?
In... more
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WASHINGTON — Senior White House and Justice Department officials are considering plans for legal action against Colorado and Washington that could undermine voter-approved initiatives to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in those states, according to several people familiar with the deliberations.
Even as marijuana legalization supporters are celebrating their victories in the two states, the Obama administration has been holding high-level meetings since the election to debate the response of federal law enforcement agencies to the decriminalization efforts.
Marijuana use in both states continues to be illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act. One option is to sue the states on the grounds that any effort to regulate marijuana is pre-empted by federal law. Should the Justice Department prevail, it would raise the possibility of striking down the entire initiatives on the theory that voters would not have approved legalizing the drug without tight regulations and licensing similar to controls on hard alcohol.
Some law enforcement officials, alarmed at the prospect that marijuana users in both states could get used to flouting federal law openly, are said to be pushing for a stern response. But such a response would raise political complications for President Obama because marijuana legalization is popular among liberal Democrats who just turned out to re-elect him.
“It’s a sticky wicket for Obama,” said Bruce Buchanan, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Austin, saying any aggressive move on such a high-profile question would be seen as “a slap in the face to his base right after they’ve just handed him a chance to realize his presidential dreams.”
Federal officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter. Several cautioned that the issue had raised complex legal and policy considerations — including enforcement priorities, litigation strategy and the impact of international antidrug treaties — that remain unresolved, and that no decision was imminent.
The Obama administration declined to comment on the deliberations, but pointed to a statement the Justice Department issued on Wednesday — the day before the initiative took effect in Washington — in the name of the United States attorney in Seattle, Jenny A. Durkan. She warned Washington residents that the drug remained illegal.
“In enacting the Controlled Substances Act, Congress determined that marijuana is a Schedule I controlled substance,” she said. “Regardless of any changes in state law, including the change that will go into effect on December 6 in Washington State, growing, selling or possessing any amount of marijuana remains illegal under federal law.”
Ms. Durkan’s statement also hinted at the deliberations behind closed doors, saying: “The Department of Justice is reviewing the legalization initiatives recently passed in Colorado and Washington State. The department’s responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged.”
Federal officials have relied on their more numerous state and local counterparts to handle smaller marijuana cases. In reviewing how to respond to the new gap, the interagency task force — which includes Justice Department headquarters, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the offices of the White House Counsel and the director of National Drug Control Policy — is considering several strategies, officials said.
One option is for federal prosecutors to bring some cases against low-level marijuana users of the sort they until now have rarely bothered with, waiting for a defendant to make a motion to dismiss the case because the drug is now legal in that state. The department could then obtain a court ruling that federal law trumps the state one.
A more aggressive option is for the Justice Department to file lawsuits against the states to prevent them from setting up systems to regulate and tax marijuana, as the initiatives contemplated. If a court agrees that such regulations are pre-empted by federal ones, it will open the door to a broader ruling about whether the regulatory provisions can be “severed” from those eliminating state prohibitions — or whether the entire initiatives must be struck down.
Another potential avenue would be to cut off federal grants to the states unless their legislatures restored antimarijuana laws, said Gregory Katsas, who led the civil division of the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration.
Mr. Katsas said he was skeptical that a pre-emption lawsuit would succeed. He said he was also skeptical that it was necessary, since the federal government could prosecute marijuana cases in those states regardless of whether the states regulated the drug.
Still, federal resources are limited. Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department issued a policy for handling states that have legalized medical marijuana. It says federal officials should generally not use their limited resources to go after small-time users, but should for large-scale trafficking organizations. The result has been more federal raids on dispensaries than many liberals had expected.WASHINGTON — Senior White House and Justice Department officials are considering... more
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Excerpt of two sentences from linked article above of original article which it has posted in full:
By Scott Dodd
http://www.onearth.org/article/susan-rice-obama-secretary-state-tar-sands-finances
"Susan Rice, the candidate believed to be favored by President Obama to become the next Secretary of State, holds significant investments in more than a dozen Canadian oil companies and banks that would stand to benefit from expansion of the North American tar sands industry and construction of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline. If confirmed by the Senate, one of Rice’s first duties likely would be consideration, and potentially approval, of the controversial mega-project."
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More at the link
http://www.onearth.org/cjterms
d) Respect Copyright and Fair Use Laws. Always follow the laws governing copyright and fair use of copyrighted material. You may quote short excerpts of someone else's work (one or two sentences, a paragraph at most); do not reproduce long passages. (And it always good general blogging practice to link to others' work.)
http://previous.presstv.ir/photo/20121129/noorani20121129021724353.jpg
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Update as of December 1, 2012. The entire original article which I was told was complained about as being posted (in excerpt here with a link back) in violation of their rules is still posted on the eco watch site in full with no apparent problem. Perhaps there was then more to wanting this story hidden here than was disclosed. (?) Why would Current only be singled out regarding this?Excerpt of two sentences from linked article above of original article which it has... more
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The Obama administration put a temporary stop to new federal contracts with British oil company BP on Wednesday, citing the company’s “lack of business integrity” and criminal proceedings stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.
The action by the Environmental Protection Agency bars BP and its affiliates from new government contracts for an indefinite period, but won’t affect existing contracts.The Obama administration put a temporary stop to new federal contracts with British... more
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Faithful readers have been waiting more than 6 years for reality to catch up to the name of this blog. So I am delighted to report that despite those doomsayers at the New York Times and New Scientist, the United States of America, at least, is finally making some big-time Climate Progress.
How do we know? Because one of our senior negotiators at the international climate conference in Doha, Qatar, Jonathan Pershing, said so:
“Those who don’t know what the US is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it’s enormous.”
For the uninformed, here is what “enormous” climate progress — in scale and extent — looks like, according to the US Energy Information Administration:
(see photo)
Woo-hoo! All we need is ten more years like 2009, and we’ll achieve the catastrophe-averting 80% reduction in carbon pollution by mid-century that Obama campaigned on.
Yes, the administration is touting emissions reductions that were due in large part to the economic collapse and subsequent slow economic growth, coupled with the low price of natural gas (which itself was partly due to the unnaturally warm weather last winter and spring, as the EIA notes).
Not that the U.S. has been a total slacker in climate policy. Obama has put in place impressive fuel economy standards and made major investments in clean energy. States have pushed renewable electricity through portfolio standards. For a detailed breakdown of all the reasons for the drop in carbon pollution, see “Shale Gas And The Overhyping Of Its CO2 Reductions.”
But the “scale and extent of the effort” is minimal, at best, compared to the scale and extent of the problem.
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/10/14/1009121/science-of-global-warming-impacts-guide/
More at the linkFaithful readers have been waiting more than 6 years for reality to catch up to the... more
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An image of Obama from the leaked Honeywell document is captioned "HON has great relationships with Federal officials."
In These Times has exclusively obtained a leaked internal Honeywell document outlining an anti-union strategy that includes leveraging Obama administration connections. The documents suggest that the megacorporation is deeply concerned about recent union activity at its factories and the bad press that has resulted (one example cited is a Working In These Times op-ed).
The PowerPoint presentation, downloadable here, was leaked to In These Times by unionized Honeywell workers who downloaded them from company’s internal database. Titled “DRAFT Honeywell Readiness Plan for Corporate Union Campaigns” and marked "Honeywell - Confidential," the slideshow was authored by four Honeywell interns (see correction at bottom). Though the document is undated, it appears to be relatively recent, relying on 2011 data. Its stated objective is “to develop a framework that can be used by Honeywell with the resources required to prevent or react to a nationwide corporate union campaign and dissipate any problems as quickly as possible.”
“Honeywell is at significant risk of becoming the target of a national union corporate campaign and has no readiness plan in place to deal with this possibility," warns the document. A graphic identifies a number of unions and workers' organizations as potential sources of such a campaign, including SEIU, Warehouse Workers United, the AFL-CIO's Change to Win, UNITE HERE! and the United Steelworkers. Honeywell notes in particular the dangers of negative publicity, citing as one example an August 4, 2011 Working In These Times op-ed by Metropolis Honeywell employee and USW Local 7-699 leader John Paul Smith titled “What the Honeywell Lockout Taught Me About International Labor Solidarity.”
The PowerPoint then presents a five-part prevention plan broken down into "1.) Labor Employee Relations 2.) Communications 3.) Government Relations 4.) Legal and 5.) Global Security."
The third section, on Government Relations (GR), reveals Honeywell's hopes that its influence with the Obama administration can be leveraged to help combat union activity. Slide 18 of the confidential document states that Honeywell (HON) should “continue to grow positive relationships with elected officials, with federal agencies, focusing on local branches." These relationships, the document explains, "can be directed at union activity, if needed.” The plan suggests that Honeywell's Government Relations division can be used to “break up union cohesion across the country.” A picture of President Obama speaking at a Honeywell plant is included (see above), with a caption reading “HON has great relationships with Federal officials, focus is needed at the State and local levels."
Indeed, President Obama and Honeywell CEO Dave E. Cote have a very close relationship. Cote visited with Obama at the White House this past Wednesday to push him to cut budget spending. Cote is considered one of Obama’s closest allies in the business community. In January of 2009, Cote introduced Obama’s stimulus package in a White House speech. Cote was subsequently appointed by Obama to serve on the Deficit Commission. President Obama even flew with Cote to India while a lockout at Honeywell's Metropolis, Ill. uranium plant was ongoing. Cote returned the favor by giving heavily to the Democratic Party. In the 2010 election cycle when the Met, Honeywell was the top corporate PAC contributor to the Democratic Party.
(More anti-Union scum bag corporations going to the govt. for help-there time is up -GF)An image of Obama from the leaked Honeywell document is captioned "HON has great... more
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After leaving President Obama during a trip to Myanmar and Cambodia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew in the middle of the night Monday to Israel to broker an agreement. She then traveled to the West Bank for further negotiations before jetting over to Egypt to finalize the deal with Egyptian President Morsi, who has been a key player in brokering a deal.
http://veracitystew.com/?p=46081After leaving President Obama during a trip to Myanmar and Cambodia, Secretary of... more
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According to news reports, President Obama maintains a list of alleged militants to be assassinated. Some are US citizens. None will get to plead his case. The president tells us to trust that this is all perfectly legal and constitutional, even though Congress is not allowed to see any legal justification. The weapon of choice in these assassinations: remote-controlled planes called drones.
The targeted killing of suspects by the United States is slowly and quietly becoming institutionalized as a permanent feature of the US counterterrorism strategy. Unless members of Congress begin to push back, such killings will continue – without any oversight, transparency or accountability. Victims of drone strikes – including US citizens – are secretly stripped of their right to due process and are arbitrarily deprived of their life, in violation of international human rights law.
The attempted characterization of drones as a precise weapon is irrelevant and chilling because it values the alleged high-tech efficiency of the killing above the rule of law. Drones are a weapon that must be subject to the same constraints and laws as every other weapon employed by the US government. As the authors of a recent groundbreaking report by Stanford and New York Universities on drones in Pakistan powerfully stated:
"In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling 'targeted killing' of terrorists, with minimal downsides of collateral impacts. This narrative is false."
More at link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/16/obama-administration-account-congress-targeted-assassinations?commentpage=last#end-of-commentsAccording to news reports, President Obama maintains a list of alleged militants to be... more
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(Reuters) - CIA officials on the ground in Libya dispatched security forces to the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi within 25 minutes and made other key decisions about how to respond to the waves of attacks on U.S. installations on September 11, a senior American intelligence official said on Thursday.
Officials in Washington monitored events through message traffic and a hovering U.S. military drone but did not interfere with or reject requests for help from officials in the line of fire, the official said.
The information emerged as officials made available on Thursday a timeline chronicling the U.S. response to the Benghazi attacks in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other American officials died. The material appears to refute claims by critics that officials in Washington delayed sending help to the besieged personnel.
The handling of the attack by the Obama administration and CIA has come under sharp criticism by supporters of Republican challenger Mitt Romney during the campaign ahead of the presidential election on November 6.
The senior intelligence official said that CIA officers in Benghazi, "responded to the situation on the night of 11 and 12 September as quickly and as effectively as possible.
"The security officers in particular were genuine heroes. They quickly tried to rally additional local support and heavier weapons, and when that could not be accomplished within minutes, they still moved in and put their own lives on the line to save their comrades," the official said.
"At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could," the official said.
"There was no second-guessing those decisions being made on the ground, by people at every U.S. organization that could play a role in assisting those in danger. There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support," the official added.
OBAMA, CIA PUSH BACK AGAINST CRITICISM
Intelligence and other administration officials expressed particular dismay about a report on Fox News last week that alleged that armed CIA operatives near the U.S. compound in Benghazi were repeatedly told to "stand down" after asking for permission to assist on the night of September 11 and were also refused military backup by the CIA chain of command.
Following the initial broadcast of the Fox News report, Jennifer Youngblood, a CIA spokeswoman, denied that CIA had ever turned down requests for help from U.S. personnel in Benghazi.
"No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate," Youngblood said.
According to the timeline, around 9:40 p.m. Benghazi time, officials at the CIA's relatively fortified and well-defended base in Benghazi got a call from State Department officials at the U.S. diplomatic mission about a mile away that the less-fortified public mission complex had come under attack from a group of militants, the intelligence official said.
Other official sources said that the initial wave of attacks on the diplomatic mission involved setting fires using diesel fuel. The dense smoke created by the fuel both made it hard for people at the compound to breathe and to organize a response to the attack.
About 25 minutes after the initial report came into the CIA base, a team of about six agency security officers left their base for the public diplomatic mission compound.
Over the succeeding 25 minutes, the CIA team approached the compound, and tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to get local Libyan allies to bring them a supply of heavier weapons, and eventually moved into the burning diplomatic compound, the intelligence official said.
At around 11:10 p.m., a Defense Department drone, which had been on an unrelated mission some distance away, arrived in Benghazi to help officials on the ground gather information. By 11:30, U.S. personnel who had been working or staying at the mission had been rounded up except for Ambassador Stevens, who was missing, the intelligence official said.
When they tried to drive out of the diplomatic compound to return to the CIA base, however, the convoy carrying U.S. evacuees came under fire.
Once they got back to the CIA base, that installation itself came under fire from what the intelligence official described as small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. These patchy attacks went on for roughly 90 minutes, the intelligence official said.
CIA SENT TEAM FROM TRIPOLI
Around the same time, a CIA security team based in Tripoli, which included two U.S. military officers, landed at Benghazi airport. Upon its arrival, however, the team spent some time trying both to arrange local transport and to locate the missing Ambassador Stevens.
After some time trying to solve these problems, the security team that had flown in from Tripoli eventually arranged for an armed local escort and extra transportation, but decided not to go the hospital where they believed Stevens had been taken. In part this was because they had reason to believe Stevens was likely dead, and because security at the hospital was believed, at best, to be "uncertain," the intelligence official said.
Not long before dawn, the reinforcements from Tripoli managed to take themselves and a convoy of vehicles to the CIA base to prepare for an anticipated evacuation.
However, just after they arrived at the CIA base, the official said, a new round of attacks on that facility was launched, this time with mortars. Although the mortar attacks lasted only 11 minutes, two U.S. security officers were killed by a direct hit from one of the shells, the intelligence official said.
Finally, a bit less than an hour later, a heavily armed Libyan military unit arrived at the CIA base to help evacuate the compound of U.S. personnel to the Benghazi airport, the official added.
Over the next few hours, roughly 30 Americans, as well as the bodies of Stevens and the other three Americans killed during the attacks, were loaded on planes and flown out of the city, several U.S. officials said.
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)(Reuters) - CIA officials on the ground in Libya dispatched security forces to the... more
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A $20 challenge for those who say Obama is anti-small business.
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Apparently according to the Obama campaign it is impossible for women to wrap their brains around the mishandling of the economy and failed foreign affairs of the past four years. According to the Obama campaign the last four failed years are not important because the only topics women care about for the future are those issues that revolve around their vaginas and uteri. Talk about a war on women. Talk about a mountain of disregard and disrespect. This inane supercilious advent of the democrats that women are too self-focused and too self-centered to care about the nation at large is beyond the pale. Insulting doesn’t even begin to describe their latest campaign denouement.
Women need a good economy. Women want to feed their children, clothe their children, house their children as independent and self-sufficient adults. Women are not JULIA who relies on government to ensure her very existence. Women are strong self-realizing human beings that know without a strong economy their children have no future and no American dream. Women do not want the government telling them how to raise their children. Whether it’s the government telling women what their children should eat and drink, to how women choose to feed their newborns or what words people are allowed to use. Women do not need nor want a nanny state overseeing their lives. No, government does not know better than any individual about what the future should hold.
Ironically the original feminist movement railed against the societal predisposition to view women through the lens of their sex organs. The original feminist movement’s purpose was for society to see women first as capable independent human beings. Women were to viewed as persons able and willing to stand on their own two feet if given the proper respect and proper chance.Women demanded the right to decide for themselves about their bodily integrity, not that someone else should pay for it. Women demanded good schools and good employment opportunities. Women demanded independence of thought, action and existence. Women do not need a pat on the head from government as if they are misbegotten ill-prepared children. Women are not lapdogs waiting for a human master to recognize their existence. Women are tired of being infantilized by government and the democratic left. http://usa2mom.wordpress.com/2012/09/27/american-women-are-more-than-their-vaginas/
Today the Obama campaign has come full circle. They see women as dependent upon government largesse for their success, their healthcare and especially their bodily integrity. The democrats have once again turned women into chattel. But this time instead of the husband being your lord and master, it is the government that rules over a women’s world. The left thinks that women are weak of mind and ability, incapable of success without the intervention of “Big Daddy” government. It’s ironic really, that in the end, all the left sees in a woman is her reproductive organs.
American women understand that with economic independence comes bodily integrity, self-realization, independence, freedom of thought and action, along with the American dream. For with economic realization comes the political power to make your dreams come true. American women know what needs to be done to advance themselves and their children. It’s called hard work not government largesse. American women know that what they need is not a nanny-government but freedom to create their own future. American women really do understand that the most important organs in their bodies are their brains and their hearts. American women know that they are more than their vaginas.Apparently according to the Obama campaign it is impossible for women to wrap their... more
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Barack Obama’s prospects for re-election have been fading for some time now. As Mitt Romney surges, Obama flails, embarrassing himself with silly trivialities that are often summed up as Big Bird, binders and bayonets. That’s what happens when your record is so bad that you can’t talk about it; not truthfully, anyway. So it has been clear for a while that Obama’s re-election hopes can’t absorb another blow. Which the Benghazi story, to the extent the facts get out, surely is.
That is why Obama made a decision early on to stop referring to the Benghazi debacle as a successful terrorist attack. Acknowledging what really happened would have utterly destroyed one of Obama’s main campaign themes, that through his own personal heroism he had al Qaeda on the run. Instead, Obama chose to pretend that Benghazi was an unfortunate but essentially meaningless mob uprising, prompted by a YouTube video. So we got the nauseating spectacle of Hillary Clinton hugging the father of one of the murdered SEALS and assuring him not to worry, the Obama administration would prosecute the guy who made the video to the fullest extent of the law.
But, with a little over a week to go until the election, the lid was blown off the administration’s cover-up by Fox’s story yesterday, alleging that the administration turned down repeated pleas for help over the course of the seven-hour Benghazi battle, and by the white-hot anger of Charles Woods, who has repeatedly called Barack Obama and his White House “cowards” for failing to come to his son’s aid.
If the allegations of Fox’s story prove to be true–still an open question at this point–and if voters know about them, Obama has no chance on November 6. So how will the media formerly known as mainstream, which have done their best to try to drag Obama’s sorry campaign across the finish line, deal with the Benghazi story?
The New York Times, for one, has dealt with it by not mentioning the current allegations. This is what you get if you search the Times site for “Benghazi:”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/will-obamas-benghazi-cover-up-succeed.phpBarack Obama’s prospects for re-election have been fading for some time now. As... more
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Hillary may have said she was taking full responsibility for what happened in Benghazi, however, the latest information concerning where the buck stopped on bad decisions, go higher.
Last night, it was revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered more security at the U.S. mission in Benghazi before it was attacked where four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens were murdered by Al-Qaeda but President Obama denied the request.
The news broke on TheBlazeTV’s “Wilkow!” hosted by Andrew Wilkow, by best-selling author, Ed Klein who said the legal counsel to Clinton had informed him of this information.
Klein also said that those same sources said that former President Bill Clinton has been “urging” his wife [Hillary] to release official State Department documents that prove she called for additional security at the compound in Libya, which would almost certainly result in President Obama losing the election.
Read more: http://janmorganmedia.com/2012/10/clinton-requested-more-security-in-benghazi-obama-said-no/#ixzz2AT9qJcSbHillary may have said she was taking full responsibility for what happened in... more
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President Barack Obama has missed more than half of his daily intelligence briefings since he came into power, a new report shows.
Obama has been to less than 44 percent of the vital meetings, the White House admits, with his attendance reaching a low spot towards the end of 2011 and the start of this year.
His predecessor, George W, Bush made a point of having the meetings six days a week, and attending as many as possible, the American Enterprise Institute fellow, Marc Thiessen reports in the Washington Post.
Obama’s attendance figures were prepared by the conservative Government Accountability Institute, and were not disputed by the White House. At one point he was attending fewer than two meetings out of five.
National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Thiessen that Obama’s attendance at the meetings was “not particularly interesting or useful,” as he received written daily briefings. “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community every day,” Vietor said.
However, in January, the Post published an article, in which security officials stressed the importance of the daily meetings. “One regular participant in the roughly 500 Oval Office sessions during Obama’s presidency said the meetings show a president consistently participating in an exploration of foreign policy and intelligence issues,” that piece said.
Thiessen’s Op-Ed says that the president’s personal attendance at the briefings “is enormously important both for the president and those who prepare the brief.”
“For the president, the meeting is an opportunity to ask questions of the briefers, probe assumptions and request additional information,” Thiessen writes.
“For those preparing the brief, meeting with the president on a daily basis gives them vital, direct feedback from the commander in chief about what is on his mind, how they can be more responsive to his needs, and what information he may have to feed back into the intelligence process.”
Thiessen adds, “This process cannot be replicated on paper.”
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-skips-intelligence-briefings/2012/09/11/id/451438President Barack Obama has missed more than half of his daily intelligence briefings... more
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