Category: Politics

Congress Now Exempt From Obamacare. If It’s Good Enough For us…?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

pelosigavelA long time ago, within the hallowed Halls of Power, a bunch of self-serving politicians took a vote to decimate the greatest Healthcare System in the World. The vote, taken in the middle of the night, went the way they wanted, putting into effect a Government-run Socialized Healthcare System in a Constitutional Republic. Those that passed it were so proud of what they had done, that they paraded through the “unwashed masses”, holding their symbol of power, an over-sized gavel, smiling like jackasses eating yellow- jackets.

As reality struck their constituents, as to what the people who were supposed to represent their wishes had done, a groundswell movement began to form, taking upon themselves the name of “The Tea Party Movement, in honor of those revolutionaries, centuries ago, who expressed their displeasure with a tyrannical, over-taxing king, by tossing crates of English Tea off of a sailing vessel, into Boston Harbor.

Through this Groundswell Movement’s efforts, the minority political party in the nation, became the majority political party, sweeping the 2010 Mid-term Elections, on the promise of lower taxes and the appeal of the Government-run Socialized HealthcareSystem, which had become “affectionately” known as Obamacare.

As time went on, these public servants, elected to power by the acclamation of the over-taxed, seemed to steadily forget why they were elected to their Congressional Seats. They began to exhibit behaviors more in line with the Old Guard of their political party, instead of attacking the issues with the ferocity of Young Lions, as they promised to, if the voters would elect them.The reaching across the aisle and “bi-partisanship” of the two political parties, who are supposed to be political adversaries, has become so widespread, that they seem to be beginning to merge into one political party, much to to frustration and consternation of the voters who sent them to the Halls of Power to represent them, not themselves.

As now, as voters’ disillusionment with the whole dadblamed political system is at its highest, along comes the ultimate insult:

In a ruling issued on Wednesday, U.S. lawmakers and their staffs will continue to receive a federal contribution toward the health insurance that they must purchase through soon-to-open exchanges created by President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law.

The decision by the Office of Personnel Management, with Obama’s blessing, will prevent the largely unintended loss of healthcare benefits for 535 members of the Senate and House of Representatives and thousands of Capitol Hill staff.

When Congress passed the health reform law known as Obamacare in 2010, an amendment required that lawmakers and their staff members purchase health insurance through the online exchanges that the law created. They would lose generous coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

The amendment’s author, Republican Senator Charles Grassley, argued that if Obamacare plans were good enough for the American public, they were good enough for Congress. Democrats, eager to pass the reforms, went along with it.

But it soon became apparent the provision contained no language that allowed federal contributions toward their health plans that cover about 75 percent of the premium costs.

This caused fears that staff would suddenly face sharply higher healthcare costs and leave federal service, causing a “brain drain” on Capitol Hill.

But Wednesday’s proposed rule from the OPM, the federal government’s human resources agency, means that Congress will escape the most onerous impact of law as it was written.

The OPM said the federal contributions will be allowed to continue for exchange-purchased plans for lawmakers and their staffs, ensuring that those working on Capitol Hill will effectively get the same health contributions as millions of other federal workers who keep their current plan.

In other words, the same idiots who foisted this travesty of a Government-run Socialized Healthcare System, called Obamacare on us, are now exempt from it.

So, Government Bureaucracy and Death Panels are good enough for us, but not for them?

I thought that the Republican Leaders in the House and Senate wanted to defund this monstrosity, not be exempt from it. Who are they working for…themselves?

If Cryin’ John Boehner and the rest of the Vichy Republicans don’ call the whole Congress out on this latest development, than they are no better than San Fran Nan Pelosi and the rest of the Marxist/Alinsky-ite Democrats

They are drinking from the same through of grape Kool-Aid.

Our Founding Fathers envisioned Congress as being filled with public servants, who would be elected by their community to represent them in our Federal Government, serve out their term, and then go back home and resume their normal lives.

Over the years, public service has degenerated into selfish avarice. The “citizen servant” has become the professional politician, running for office time and time again. until their literally keel over and die on the House or Senate Floor.

What started out as altruistic servitude, usually winds up being unbridled, self-serving corruption.

yes, there are still some “citizen servants”, but, at least in this day and age, the seem to be few and far between. It seemingly does not take very long for wide-eyed good-hearted freshmen Representatives and Senators, to become jaded, self-serving political hacks, who only seem to care about their constituency’s concerns when it is during their next campaign.

To those, like Ted Cruz, who seem genuinely concerned about defunding Obamacare…thank you for working on behalf of the American people.

To the Vichy Republicans, please follow up on your numerous promises to do the same.

It would behoove you to speak out about this double standard and continue to work on defunding Obamacare.

…as if your jobs depend on it.

Because they do.

Until He Comes, 

KJ

Oprah, Emmett, and Trayvon: The Rich, The Innocent, and The Lost

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

tillmartin

The other day, during a television interview, Talk Show Queen and Obama sycophant Oprah Winfrey made the following statement…

It’s so easy during this time, Trayvon Martin, Trayvon Martin parallel to Emmett Till, let me just tell you. In my mind, same thing. But you can get stuck in that and not allow yourself to move forward and to see how far we’ve come.

Let’s examine both stories, shall we?

Emmett Till grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. Even though he had attended a segregated elementary school, he was unprepared for the level of segregation he encountered in Mississippi. His mother warned him that race relations were different where his cousins lived, but Emmett enjoyed pulling pranks. On August 24, while standing with his cousins and some friends outside a country store in Money, Mississippi, Emmett bragged to his buddies that his girlfriend back home was white. Emmett’s friends did not believe him, and dared Emmett to go ask the white woman sitting behind the store counter for a date.

Emmett went in, bought some candy, and on the way out was heard saying, “Bye, baby” to the woman. There were no witnesses in the store, but Carolyn Bryant, the woman behind the counter, claimed that he grabbed her, made lewd advances, and then wolf-whistled at her as he nonchalantly left the store.

The woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, the owner of the store, returned from a business trip a few days later and found out how Emmett had spoken to his wife. Insanely mad, he and his brother-in-law J.W. Milam, went to the home of Till’s great-uncle, Mose Wright, in the early morning hours of August 28, 1955. The pair demanded to see the boy. Despite his uncle’s pleas to leave him alone, they forced Emmett into their car. After driving around in the Memphis night, and perhaps beating Till in a toolhouse behind Milam’s residence, they drove him down to the Tallahatchie River.

14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, was brutally murdered that fateful morning. During the assault, the two men made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton-gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. They then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

HIs body was recovered three days later,  but was so disfigured that Mose Wright could only identify it by an initialed ring. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, requested it be sent back to Chicago. After seeing the mutilated remains, she decided to have an open-casket funeral so that all the world could see what racist murderers had done to her only son. Jet, an African American weekly magazine, published a photo of Emmett’s corpse, and soon the mainstream media picked up on the story.

In the case of Trayvon Martin, it was the “victim” who was the attacker.

With a single punch, 17-year-old High School Football Player Trayvon Martin decked Neighborhood Watch Volunteer, George Zimmerman. Then, Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk, over and over again, while Zimmerman pleaded for him to get off of him.

Zimmerman had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind, the two exchanged words and then Trayvon punched him in the nose, sending him to the ground, and began beating him.

Zimmerman said he was on his way to the grocery store when he spotted Trayvon walking through his gated community.

Trayvon was visiting his father’s fiancée, who lived there. He had been suspended from school in Miami after being found with an empty marijuana baggie. Miami schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession.

When Zimmerman first spotted Trayvon, he called police and reported a suspicious person, describing Trayvon as black, acting strangely and perhaps on drugs.

Zimmerman got out of his SUV to follow Trayvon on foot. When a dispatch employee asked Zimmerman if he was following the 17-year-old, Zimmerman said yes. The dispatcher told Zimmerman he did not need to do that.

Zimmerman told the dispatcher that he lost sight of Trayvon and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from the left rear, and they exchanged words.

Trayvon asked Zimmerman if he had a problem. Zimmerman said no and reached for his cell phone. Trayvon then said, “Well, you do now” and punched Zimmerman in the nose.

Trayvon started slamming Zimmerman’s head into the sidewalk, while hitting him with Martial-Arts Style blows.

After Trayvon refused to stop, Zimmerman  shot Trayvon once in the chest.

When police arrived less than two minutes later, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a swollen lip and had bloody lacerations to the back of his head.

Paramedics gave him first aid but he said he did not need to go to the hospital. He got medical care the next day.

And, we all know what happened after that. Trayvon became a cause celebre…a focal point by which American’s Race Baiters, including the President of the United States, could grab the spotlight and, somehow, try to become relevant again.

These Race Baiters, supported by our own Federal Government, pushed for a charge of murder against Zimmerman, even though all the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to self-defense. They didn’t want justice. They wanted a lynching.

And, they almost had one. The judge assigned to the case was a lifelong Liberal and Obama Supporter. If the evidence had not been so overwhelmingly in Zimmerman’s favor, he would have been buried under the jail.

The Liberal Media had him convicted before the trial even started. Beginning with NBC’s editing of an audio tape of the attack, to make it seem as if Zimmerman was guilty.

The president even became personally involved in this local matter, proclaiming that if he had a son, he would look like Trayvon.

At least he resembled him with the “chooming” part….I don’t know if the president likes “Purple Drank” or not.

And now, Oprah, desperate to create buzz for her new movie, “The Butler”, comes out with the most ignorant comparison I have seen in a long while.

Emmett Till was an innocent young boy.

Trayvon Martin was a dope-smoking, Purple Drank-drinking, vulgarity-spewing (as the Daily Caller proved, by publishing his tweets), 17-year-old High School Football playing, Gangsta Wannabe.

Hardly someone to hold up as a role model, except if you want an entire generation to be stuck in the same dead-end, hopeless, government-dependent existence that Trayvon was headed toward, when his young life ended.

The stories of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin did have two things in common, though: they ended much too soon and, they both ended because of ignorance and hatred.

Emmett’s life ended because of the ignorance and hatred of others.

Trayvon’s ended because of his own.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Egypt, America, and the Muslim Brotherhood

On By kingsjesterIn Politics4 Comments

obamaegypt7613With all of our Middle Eastern Embassies shut down for at least a week, the Senate’s own “Sunshine Boys”, Juan McAmnesty and Tiddie Graham are presently over in Egypt,

…on behalf of President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

Sens. John McCain, Arizona,and Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, arrived Monday in the capital of Cairo to meet with interim leaders including President Adly Mansour and Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

They arrived amid a roughly 30-day standoff between Egypt’s military-backed government and protesters who support ousted President Mohammed Morsi — a member of the Muslim Brotherhood political party.

Clashes between the rival groups have already resulted in the deaths of more than 250 Egyptians.

Thousands of Morsi supporters remain camped out in downtown Cairo, demanding the Islamist leader’s reinstatement as the interim government repeatedly tells them to disperse before security forces move in — setting the stage for potentially more violent showdowns.

Neither senator has so far publicly commented on the unannounced trip, though both are experienced in foreign policy and diplomacy.

McCain, a retired Navy officer and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in late spring made a surprise trip to Syria, where opponents are trying to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

In a recent interview, McCain said his and Graham’s positions as elected leaders have forged relationships with many Egyptians.

Graham is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Air Force lawyer.

They arrived with the U.S. Embassy in Egypt closed amid a terror threat and more than 1,000 pro-Morsi supporters marching Monday through Cairo.

Meanwhile, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns also is in Egypt as part of U.S. mediation efforts.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said McCain and Graham are representing “the United States Congress” while Burns represents the administration.

While the two Vichy Republicans are over there, perhaps they could get our weapons back.

Jihadists in Egypt’s lawless Sinai Peninsula are using U.S. weapons to carry out attacks against the temporary government in the wake of the military’s ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, according to the embattled nation’s Interior Ministry.

The government office posted an official statement on its Facebook page along with images of an exploded missile that hit the third floor of a building in the city of el-Arish last week. The post said terrorist forces targeted the North Sinai Security Directorate office with a ballistic missile that struck the third floor facade of the building, leaving three soldiers injured. While attacks in the Sinai, which borders Gaza and is a haven for terrorist activity, have become commonplace, the prospect that militants have U.S. weapons typically fired from helicopters at their disposal is especially alarming.

Three photos of the missile posted by the government agency shows that it appears to be an AGM-114F with a label written in English and the letters “U.S.” stenciled on the side.

“If, and that is a big if, it was a AGM-114, as in the report, that’s not a ballistic missile, which conjures Cold War images of something massive and long range, but a Hellfire, which is of the type carried on helicopters,” Peter Singer, of the Brookings Institute’s Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, told FoxNews.com.

Egyptian security forces apprehended three suspects at the scene, including one Palestinian citizen.

A request for comment to the U.S. Department of Defense was not immediately returned.

Reports of U.S.-made weapons turning up in the Sinai date back to at least January, when six U.S.-made missiles were found in a cache of weapons bound for Gaza. And in February, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that weapons left over from the revolution in Libya were being sold at clandestine auctions is the Sinai Peninsula. The U.S. has repeatedly denied arming the Libyan rebels, though it did assist them in other ways with the overthrow of longtime Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi.

“Weapons left over from the Revolution in Lbya”? Tell me…are they stamped “Property of the U.S. Embassy Annex, Benghazi, Libya”?

In a possibly-related story…

Back on January 9th, IsraelNationalNews.com reported

An Egyptian magazine has claimed that six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy.

The December 22 story was published in Egypt’s Rose El-Youssef magazine and was translated into English for the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT). The story suggests the six turned the White House “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

The story is largely unsourced, but its publication is considered significant in raising the issue to Egyptian readers, IPT said.

The six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland Security for policy development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA); and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.

I think they left out someone…Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “Number One”, Huma Abedin.

Her father, Syed Z. Abedin, was a professor in Saudi Arabia who founded the Institute for Muslim Minority Affairs, an organization supported by the Muslim World League, a Brotherhood organization. Her mother, Saleha Mahmoud Abedin, is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood, the Brotherhood’s adjunct organization for women. The Brotherhood itself is in its own words, according to a captured internal document, dedicated to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.”

So, basically, in Egypt, we have a very strange situation.  The United State Administration, aided by the Vichy Republicans, are, through a Machiavellian political strategy, backing up from their pro-Muslim Brotherhood Foreign Policy, and pretending to be “the Good Guys” instructing Egypt in the principles of Democracy. Their problem is the fact that the Egyptian People are not fooled that easily. They know a double-dealer when they see one.

In fact, they have even come up with a belly dance in Obama’s “honor”, making fun of him for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.

Meanwhile, back home, The Muslim Brotherhood, the Godfather of Muslim Terrorists organizations, have infiltrated our Administration.

Not since the days of Sadat have Americans and Egyptians agreed on much of anything. However, we both agree that the Muslim Brotherhood must go.

And, they can take all of their backers in America, including President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm), with them.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama’s Report of Al-Qaeda’s Death Was Greatly Exaggerated

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

muslimredbeardYou know, for a “dead” group, al-Qaeda seems pretty lively to me.

According to the Wall Street Journal…

The State Department Sunday extended some embassy closures for the rest of the workweek, citing a need to “exercise caution” and take “appropriate steps” to protect American diplomats, local employees and visitors. Officials said the move wasn’t an indication that the U.S. had any new intelligence about the suspected plot or plots.

The high level of concern from U.S. officials underscores what many in the intelligence world have long warned. While al Qaeda’s central leadership may be weakened, the rest of the group has morphed into smaller entities and dispersed, which has made the threat harder to predict and track. This process was accelerated by the turmoil of the Arab Spring.

Officials briefed on the latest intelligence say the new warnings show that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is as determined as ever to attack the West, but it is unclear whether the group is as capable of following through as it was before the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command started targeting its leaders in Yemen in parallel campaigns.

The deaths of Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda officials in Pakistan has fueled U.S. confidence that al Qaeda’s core leadership can’t mount attacks on the U.S. and that U.S. drone strikes there could be phased out over time. But al Qaeda affiliates, the most active and lethal of which is AQAP, have shown themselves to be increasingly capable and autonomous organizations, making it harder for the U.S. to track and target their leaders.

A major concern for the U.S. is AQAP’s chief bomb-maker—a Saudi citizen named Ibrahim al-Asiri—who is thought to still be at large and has been active both experimenting with new bomb designs and training other bomb-makers, according to American officials and analysts.

Beyond Yemen, al Qaeda in Iraq has reconstituted itself. Its branch in Syria is drawing in hundreds of foreign recruits each month. And in Mali, al Qaeda-linked fighters fled French warplanes and commandos and have set up a rudimentary base in the Libyan Desert outside Paris’s reach.

“The problem we face today is there are probably more al Qaeda cells and affiliates across the Arab world in 2013 than there have ever been before because of the chaos that’s followed the Arab Spring,” said Bruce Riedel, a Central Intelligence Agency veteran and now director of the Brookings Intelligence Project

About al-Qaeda...

The group was founded in approximately 1988 by Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, and Muhammad Atef — the latter a native Egyptian and a onetime member of the terrorist group Egyptian Islamic Jihad. Al Qaeda’s overriding objective is to establish a worldwide caliphate governing all the earth via the dictates of Islamic Law. Crucial to the achievement of that goal is the destruction of America by any means necessary. As one Al Qaeda Training Manual makes explicitly clear, violence is the preferred method of dealing with the enemy:

“Islamic governments have never and will never be established through peaceful solutions and cooperative councils. They are established as they [always] have been by pen and gun, by word and bullet, by tongue and teeth.”

The manual further exhorts jihadists to “pledge … to make their [the infidels’] women widows and their children orphans … to slaughter them like lambs and let the [rivers] flow with their blood.”

Al-Qaeda has been in Yemen for a number of years.

Al Qaeda’s presence in Yemen is due to the with the country’s domestic conflicts and the convoluted agendas of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In the 1994 civil war, in which Saleh’s government defeated the Southern Rebels, Saleh and his loyal generals organized the mujahideen, some of whom would split off and form Al-Qaeda in Yemen, into fighting units against southerners who the jihadis already thought were godless socialists.

In the process of destroying an uprising of Zaydi Shiites in Yemen’s north known as the Houthi rebellion, Saleh backed the bujilding of Salafi schools linked with Al-Qaeda in Houthi territory, thus turning his political threat into a sectarian battle. Even during the war in Afghanistan against the Soviets, Yemeni leaders urged the country’s young men to travel to Afghanistan to fight.

Despite cooperating with them at the beginning, jihadis would find Saleh an undependable ally. Salah would readily cozy up to them when it suited his political goals, then he would just as readily turn on Al-Qaeda as soon as the benefits from doing so were presented to him, usually in the form of American aid money. His turncoat nature, in the years following the Cole bombing, led to the Yemeni Government arresting the group’s members, using deadly force against them, and allowing the U.S. intelligence services to operate in the country.

Saleh was an unfaithful friend to the United States in the war on terrorism, as well. His friendship ran hot and cold, even at one point refusing the FBI access to prisoners complicit in the USS Cole bombing.

Then, over the past decade, the U.S. supported a totally inept and totally corrupt Yemeni security apparatus When Yemeni security forces would somehow actually manage a victory in its fight against Al-Qaeda, it would lose to “escapes” twice as many Terrorists as it would capture.

Meanwhile, our American President, instead of providing troops to protect our American Embassies, has simply closed them, showing weakness to the barbarians, which is never a good idea.

I recognize the need to protect Americans, so more are not butchered, as Americans were on that fateful night in Benghazi. However. If this Administration does not show some backbone soon, America will continue to be in the same situation that England was under Neville Chamberlain.

We will be negotiating from a position of weakness.  

This is Smart Power?

Until He Comes,

KJ

The War Against Christianity: “Zealot”

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics2 Comments

American FreedomAmerica is still a Christian Nation. We comprise 78% of our country’s population. One might not believe that, given the disparagement of Christians by “the smartest people in the room”, i.e., Liberals, including the President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm).

Recently, a new book titled “Zealot” hit the book stands, and its author, Dr. Reza Aslan, started making the rounds, promoting his book. The Liberal Media has been praising his  “ground-breaking work of Literature” and coming to his defense, when his scholarship and motives are questioned.  For example, here is an excerpt from the Washington Post…

Reza Aslan, “an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions,” according to his online biography, has gotten a boost in sales and popularity from his “embarrassing” interview with a Fox News anchor about his new book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. But those familiar with the Harvard graduate and former Christian’s work say Zealot is re-hashed scholarship that ignores much of what the New Testament actually says about Jesus.

Aslan has written an account of how he “found” Jesus as a teen at an evangelical youth camp but years later returned to Islam after his studies led him to doubt the veracity of the Christian Scriptures, which he says are “replete with the most blatant and obvious errors and contradictions.”

“The more I probed the Bible to arm myself against the doubts of unbelievers, the more distance I discovered between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of history – between Jesus the Christ and Jesus of Nazareth,” Aslan wrote. “In college, where I began my formal study of the history of religions, that initial discomfort soon ballooned into full-blown doubts. …

“And so, like many people in my situation, I angrily discarded my faith as if it were a costly forgery I had been duped into buying.”

…Charged in his Fox New interview that his personal faith journey somehow overshadowed his academic objectivity, Aslan insisted: “Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, and fluency in biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also just happens to be a Muslim.”

“It’s not as if I’m just some Muslim writing about Jesus. I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions,” he added.

While his claims to being a “scholar of religions” and an “expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions” have been challenged, those familiar with the contents and claims of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth say Aslan has presented nothing new, although his meticulous research is evident.

Among some of the claims in Zealot, a biography in the top five of The New York Times Best Seller list and the leading book in a few Amazon categories, is that: Jesus was a revolutionary and a zealot who advocated the use of violence; as a devout Jew Jesus would have rejected the idea of an incarnate God; Jesus was crucified for sedition against the Roman Empire and not for the world’s sins.

The Fox interview that The Christian Post refers to, was conducted by Fox News’ Faith Editor, Lauren Greene, herself a Christian. Ms. Greene asked the Muslim “religious scholar” the questions that needed to be asked. Now, all of the Liberal Media is aghast that she actually dared to call Aslan out on his inaccurate book, which was, of course, slanted due to his own Mohammedanism.  Here are some excerpts…

Green: My question, yeah, I wanted to ask — actually there’s another chat coming, and I wanted to get this on before we end this interview. [A critic] just says so your book is written with clear bias and you’re trying to say it’s academic. That’s like having a Democrat writing a book about why Reagan wasn’t a good Republican. It just doesn’t work. What do you say to that?

Aslan: It would be like a Democrat with a PhD in Reagan who has been studying his life and history for two decades writing a book about Reagan. Again, I think that it’s unfair.

Green: Why would a Democrat want to promote democracy by writing about a Republican?

Aslan: Ma’am, may I just finish my sentence for a moment, please? I think that the fundamental problem here is that you’re assuming that I have some sort of faith-based bias in this work that I write. I write about Judaism, I write about Hinduism, I write about Christianity, I write about Islam. My job as a scholar of religions with a PhD in the subject is to write about religions and one of the religions and one of the religions I’ve written about is the one that was launched by Jesus.

Green: You’re not just writing about a religion from a point of view of an observer. I mean, the thing about it is that…

Aslan: Why would you say that?

Green: …you’re promoting yourself as a scholar and I’ve interviewed scholars who have written books on the resurrection, on the real Jesus and who are looking at the same information that you’re saying. To say that your information is somehow different from theirs is really not being honest here.

Ms. Greene was right to be suspicious. As Glenn Beck reported on his show last week…

He has, in 1995, he got a BA in religion, in religious studies, a BA. That’s not a PhD – Santa Clara University. In 1999, Masters in world religions from Harvard. Okay, good, not a PhD. In 2002, a Masters in fine arts in fiction, interesting – in the University of Iowa.

In 2009, a PhD in sociology. That is bizarre. So he’s studying us. He’s learning how to write fiction, and he learns how to speak the religious language. Wow, it’s a fascinating work here. But you know what I notice, there’s no history degree. There’s no history degree. He’s not a PhD in religions, and he’s not a historian. It’s possible that his Harvard theology degree included some history credits, but that’s not the same, not even on the same planet as an expert with a PhD in the history of religions.

…He’s not a PhD in the history of religions. He is not a historian. I tell you what, next time I’m on any channel, I’m going to insist that they put historian underneath my name. I spend a lot of time looking at history, a lot of time. Do you think they’d let me get away with historian? How about if I said I was a PhD in American history, and I don’t have that? Would anybody allow me to get away with it?

A cursory glance at his book reveals serious flaws in both fact and logic. But before I leave there, could you please put up where he’s teaching now, because he said I want you to know what I’m teaching here. This is what I do. I’m a professor of history specializing in the Gospels. No, actually he’s at UC Riverside, and he’s in the department of creative writing. Really? He also is…he’s at the University of Southern California in public diplomacy, which is an interesting place for him to be.

He’s also a contributor for The Daily Beast, but my favorite, my favorite is the last one. Can we put this up? He’s a sometimes professor, sometimes professor, and Tiffany, if you can please find that for me. He’s a sometimes professor, and what he’s doing is he’s teaching people something fantastic. He’s teaching people Middle Eastern revolution. That’s what he’s a professor of, revolution through – go ahead, here it is – revolution “on the art of protest in the Middle East, examining protest literature, film, art, and music. There it is, Drew University.

In other words, Professor Aslan is a Muslim Sociology Professor who decided to make money by writing an inaccurate book about Jesus Christ, while lying about his credentials, and not publicly acknowledging, (except when pressed about it and on page 2 of his book) that he is a Muslim, and therefore, does not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. 

Every Liberal review that I have read, concerning the Fox Interview, has savaged Ms. Green, calling the interview and the way she handled it, “an embarrassment”.

Since when has it been an “embarrassment” for an American Christian to stand up for Jesus Christ?

Ms. Greene deserves accolades, not admonishment.

She exposed a phony “religious scholar” and burst the collective bubble of “the smartest people in the room”.

They are the ones who should be embarrassed for supporting a phony. But, they’re not.

They still support Obama, don’t they?

Until He Comes,

KJ

“Arab Spring” in August…”Smart Power”, Indeed.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

obamabowIn December of 1985, five U.S. citizens were murdered in simultaneous Islamic terrorist attacks at the Rome and Vienna airports. Upon finding out that Libyan Despot Muammar al-Qaddafi was behind the attacks, U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered expanded sanctions against Libya and froze Libyan assets in the United States. On March 24, 1986, U.S. and Libyan forces clashed in the Gulf of Sidra, and four Libyan attack boats were sunk. Then, on April 5, terrorists bombed a West Berlin dance hall known to be frequented by U.S. servicemen. One U.S. serviceman and a Turkish woman were killed, and more than 200 people were wounded, including 50 other U.S. servicemen. U.S. intelligence actually intercepted radio messages sent from Libya to its diplomats in East Berlin ordering the April 5 attack on the LaBelle discotheque.

On April 14, 1986, President Reagan ordered air strikes against Libya in retaliation for their sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens. The raid, which began shortly before 7 p.m. EST (2 a.m., April 15 in Libya), involved more than 100 U.S. Air Force and Navy aircraft, and was over within an hour. Five military targets and “terrorism centers” were hit, including the headquarters of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi.

In fact, the rumor was, we fired a Stinger Missile right into Qaddafi’s bedroom.

After this, Qaddafi left us alone and kept his mouth shut for 25 years. All it took to make the sponsor of Muslim Terrorism to back down was a show of strength and a United States President who was not afraid to use our military might in defense of our country.

Fast forward to today…

In the midst of new revelations about the horrible night of September 11, 2012 at the U.S. Embassy Compound in Benghazi, Libya, Obama and his Administration announced yesterday that

The United States will temporarily shut down its embassies and consulates around the world Sunday — including those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt — as a precautionary measure over terror-related concerns, State Department officials said.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf did not say how long the international installations would stay closed — only that the decision was taken “out of an abundance of caution and care for our employees and others who may be visiting.” Officials would not describe the nature of the threat.

Sunday is a normal workday in many Arab and Middle Eastern countries, meaning that is where the closures will have an impact. Embassies in Europe and Latin America would be shuttered that day anyway.

“We have instructed all U.S. embassies and consulates that would have normally been open on Sunday to suspend operations, specifically on August 4,” a senior State Department official said Thursday night. “It is possible we may have additional days of closing as well.”

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Other U.S. officials said the threat was specifically in the Muslim world.

Additionally…

The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens to the continued potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula. Current information suggests that al-Qa’ida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August. This Travel Alert expires on August 31, 2013.

Terrorists may elect to use a variety of means and weapons and target both official and private interests. U.S. citizens are reminded of the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure. Terrorists have targeted and attacked subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services. U.S. citizens should take every precaution to be aware of their surroundings and to adopt appropriate safety measures to protect themselves when traveling.

We continue to work closely with other nations on the threat from international terrorism, including from al-Qa’ida. Information is routinely shared between the U.S. and our key partners in order to disrupt terrorist plotting, identify and take action against potential operatives, and strengthen our defenses against potential threats.

Funny…after the Benghazi attack, Obama, is a series of Campaign Speeches, said at least 32 times, that al Qa’ida was “decimated”. Gosh, a U.S. president wouldn’t lie to the American people just to get re-elected, would he?

Does it take Moochelle two trips to haul…well…you know?

Instead of a show of strength against the murderous barbarians who want to kill us Infidels, Obama has embraced them, stating that he will stand with the Muslims “should the winds blow in an ugly direction”.

Courtesy of theblaze.com and the Investigative Project on Terrorism, here are some of the “guests” who Obama and his Administration have welcomed into OUR House:

  • Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of CAIR’s Los Angeles Office: Has called Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “borderline genocidal,” and says Romney has “blind servitude” to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. He attended two White House meetings.
  • Louay Safi, Former Executive Director of the Islamic Society of North America: Worked at Fort Hood prior to the 2009 terrorist attack, and was suspended shortly thereafter. Said we must be “sympathetic” to those “fighting for freedom” in Palestine, and that we must be “against the occupiers and the oppressors.” He attended two White House meetings.
  • Esam Omeish, former head of the Muslim-American Society: Former head of an organization created by the Muslim Brotherhood, Omeish is one of the most radical in the group. The IPT writes that he personally hired radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in 2000 to head a Virginia mosque, and publicly mourned an airstrike that killed one of the founders of Hamas in 2004. He has visited the White House three times.
  • Muzammil Siddiqi, former head of the Islamic Society of North America: ​Said in a 2001 article for the San Francisco Chronicle that he does not support violence against gays, but supports laws in countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. Siddiqi had one meeting at the White House in 2010.
  • Mohamed Elibiary, Homeland Security Council: Spoke at a conference in 2004 honoring Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni as a “great Islamic visionary;” condemned the prosecution of Hamas fundraisers in the United States; defends Sayyid Qutb, who Osama bin Laden cited as one of his main influences; accused of leaking documents to prove Islamophobia, and damage Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Invited to help craft Obama’s counterterrorism strategy in 2010.
  • ​Muslim Public Affairs Council Leaders: ​Representatives from the Muslim Public Affairs Council have visited the White House far more than the other groups, at least one of its leaders logging 24 visits between December 2009 and March 2012. They said Hezbollah’s 1983 attack on U.S. Marine Barracks– which killed 241 people– was not “in a strict sense, a terrorist operation,” and that it would have been praised had it been directed against Washington’s enemies. Founder Salam al-Marayati said in 2005 that “Counter-terrorism and counter-violence should be defined by us.” Often push the narrative that the U.S. is waging a war on Islam, conflating legitimate terrorism concerns with Islamophobia. President Obama personally called one of the organization’s leaders, Haris Tarin, to congratulate him for his “community engagement.”

Under his failed Foreign Policy of Smart Power!, Obama has put the entire Free World, including the country he swore to protect from “enemies foreign and domestic” in danger from barbarians, who will do and say anything to further their “Holy Jihad”.

President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote, when speaking about how to deal with your enemies, was

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

Obama has thrown our “Big Stick” upon the fires of Arab Spring.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Has Benghazigate Just Blown Wide Open?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics8 Comments

BenghaziGate3Our eternally campaigning President has been roaming the countryside recently, insisting that the scandals surrounding his Administration are phony, especially the scandals involving the IRS targeting Conservative Groups and the Administration’s Negligence of Duty concerning the night of September 11, 2012, at the US Embassy Annex in Benghazi, Libya.

For months, Americans have been sensing that there was more to the story of that horrible night, in which barbaric Islamic Terrorists savagely murdered 4 brave Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, of whom it is rumored that they sexually savaged, as well.

Yesterday, CNN’s Jake Tapper broke some news about that event, that if it is indeed true, could blow the lid completely off the Obama Administration’s cover-up of the event.

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency’s Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency’s missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency’s workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

It is being described as pure intimidation, with the threat that any unauthorized CIA employee who leaks information could face the end of his or her career.

In exclusive communications obtained by CNN, one insider writes, “You don’t jeopardize yourself, you jeopardize your family as well.”

Another says, “You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation.”

“Agency employees typically are polygraphed every three to four years. Never more than that,” said former CIA operative and CNN analyst Robert Baer.

In other words, the rate of the kind of polygraphs alleged by sources is rare.

“If somebody is being polygraphed every month, or every two months it’s called an issue polygraph, and that means that the polygraph division suspects something, or they’re looking for something, or they’re on a fishing expedition. But it’s absolutely not routine at all to be polygraphed monthly, or bi-monthly,” said Baer.

Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the attack.

A source now tells CNN that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously.

While it is still not known how many of them were CIA, a source tells CNN that 21 Americans were working in the building known as the annex, believed to be run by the agency.

Back on April 29th, Katie Kieffer, writing for townhall.com summed up what we knew, at the time,

We now know that President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus were likely behind a mishandled gun-trafficking program that ended up arming the radical jihadist rebels who stormed the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya on that fateful day.

Our CIA is still playing the role of vetting which Syrian rebel groups will obtain arms including machine guns, ammunition, and rocket-propelled grenades. While Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are directly purchasing the weaponry, the Obama administration is aiding the Arab governments in shopping for these arms and transferring them from Libya, to Turkey, and finally into Syria.

Unfortunately the CIA has “vetted” shady intermediaries (including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood) and shady recipients of thousands of tons worth of military equipment and millions of rounds of ammo. Consequently, weapons have fallen into the wrong hands. In the case of Benghazi, anti-tank weapons appear to have landed in the hands of terrorists.

Now, Clinton is denying even knowing about the program, although the evidence indicates it was largely her idea. Of course everything happened under Obama’s watch and the buck stops with him.

Indeed.

From whitehouse.gov, “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government”…

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public…

Remember…all of Obama’s promises have expiration dates. That promise was over the moment the words were written.

So, if the new revelation is true, what now?

More Senate hearings? More House Committee Meetings? More Dog and Pony Shows? More Bread and Circuses? More sound and fury signifying nothing?

Will Obama and his minions find another video to blame this new revelation on?

Think about this: A President of the United States, in the process of arming Islamic Terrorists, to bring about a takeover of countries run by Muslim Moderates, becomes responsible for the death of his own Ambassador and 3 other Americans, plus the wounding of 7 others.

And, that is just the tip of the possible treason. If this is all tue, that means that our Administration was working hand-in-hand with sworn enemies of the United States of America to topple foreign governments and surround our greatest ally, Israel.

It positively boggles the mind…and fills it with revulsion.

If all of this is true, we have moved beyond Congressional Hearings….well…all except for one kind of them:

Impeachment.

Ambassador Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty, and Sean Smith remain unavailable for comment.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The Shelby County School Consolidation: A Lesson in Liberal Overestimation

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

children41313I was entering the tenth grade in 1973, when forced busing began in the city of Memphis, TN. To say that it was a time of great upheaval would be an understatement.

In my Middle Class neighborhood, in my typical Memphis City School, our administration tried to make accommodations for the new students. They decided that there would be two Sophomore Commissioners on the Student Council, a White one and a Black one. I was elected as the White Commissioner, and the last I heard of the fellow who became the Black Commissioner, he was a Doctor at Johns Hopkins.

And now, 40 years later, students in the Former Shelby County School System, are beginning to enter their own “Brave New World.”.

You see, a couple of years ago, the then overwhelmingly majority-Black Memphis City School System was swirling down the ol’ porcelain receptacle at an alarming rate. Decades of poor management and fiscal irresponsibility had taken a fatal toll. The City School Board was besieged by parents and city leaders alike, wanting them to actually do their jobs, and turn the struggling school system around. Of course, neither they, nor the school system’s overpaid administration had a clue as to how to actually be fiscally responsible leaders.

So, one of the mountebanks on the school board had an idea: Surrender the System’s Charter to the state, thereby dissolving the System, and forcing a merger with the fiscally sound, White-majority Shelby County School System.

In fact, in the “interest of fairness”, they held a referendum to allow the citizens to vote on whether to merge the school systems or not. The motion overwhelmingly passed.

Of course, the fact that they only allowed Memphis residents, and not the entire county to vote on the measure, probably had something to do with the outcome, don’t ya think?

An Interim School Board was formed, whose make-up just happens to have more representatives from the city system on it than the county’s. (Yeah. I was shocked, too. …Not.)

Then a discussion was started as to which School Superintendent to keep, the City’s or the County’s.

They “compromised” and gave both of them the boot.

But, not so fast. Again, “in the interest of fairness”, an attorney for the City Schools was made the new Superintendent. (Are you catching on, yet?)

Sounds like things were going just as the City School Board’s Professional Politicians planned, huh?

Well, in every life a little rain must fall. The Tennessee State Legislature ruled that the municipalities in the county could form their own separate school systems, if their citizens voted for it.

They did. (Dateline: July 16, 2013)

Voters in six Memphis suburbs decided Tuesday [July  to start public school districts in the municipalities where they live.

Residents of Arlington, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland and Millington overwhelmingly approved separate school systems in the second vote on the issue in less than a year. A federal judge invalidated the first vote.

More than 90 percent of voters in four of the six suburbs voted to approve new school systems, according to the Shelby County Election Commission. Eighty-seven percent of voters in Lakeland and 74 percent in Millington voted “yes.”

The suburbs want to avoid the massive merger between the struggling Memphis City Schools system and the more successful Shelby County Schools system. Suburban leaders and many parents fear that education quality and academic achievement will suffer if they join the huge merged system — known as the Unified School District — and they want control of their own school systems.

The merger, which has created a school system of 150,000 students, is to begin operating when classes start in August. Experts say the merger represents one of the largest school consolidations in decades.

But the makeup of that system could only last a year — the six new suburban systems could start operating in 2014.

Critics say the suburban separation will hamper the massive consolidation efforts, which have included intense budget battles and layoffs of hundreds of teachers and office employees. Some board members in the unified district worry about losing quality teachers and administrators to the new districts. They also stand to lose valuable tax dollars to the breakaway systems.

But the six suburbs have been galvanized in their efforts, spending hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars in a campaign that has included community meetings, public rallies and a bitter legal fight in federal court. All six municipalities already have voted to raise taxes to pay for schools.

A judge in November ruled that the earlier suburban schools vote in August 2012 violated the Tennessee constitution because it dealt with only one county. Lawmakers in Nashville wrote and passed a new law that applied statewide and allowed Tuesday’s vote.

You know , I saw yesterday where Nancy Pelosi and her Liberal brethren want to have a “National Conversation on Race”, in the wake of George Zimmerman being found not guilty of murder, in the case of Trayvon Martin.

This would not be a conversation, it would be a lecture, given by a bunch of didactic, pompous Liberals, who believe that they are smarter than average Americans.

Just like the Memphis City School Board thought that they were being smart by completely destroying what was once an award-winning school system, instead of taking responsibility for their own actions, or lack thereof.

Do you see the parallel, boys and girls?

Liberals overestimate their own intelligence…and nothing good ever comes from it.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Obama Pushes 40% Tax Rate on Small Businesses. Karl Marx Smiles.

On By kingsjesterIn Politics3 Comments

obamabiggovernmentPresident Obama delivered another speech in his Economic Campaign Tour on Tuesday, where he continued “playing his greatest hits”….or misses, depending on your point-of-view.

The Weekly Standard posted yesterday that,

The New York Times reports that President Obama is reviving an old proposal to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent (and 25 percent for manufacturers). Obama’s push to lower the corporate tax rate to 28 percent comes less than a year after he raised the top individual income tax rate, paid by many small businesses, to 39.6 percent.

In a speech delivered Tuesday afternoon, Obama did not explain why he thinks it’s a sound economic idea to raise the top marginal tax rate on small businesses but lower it for corporations.

“Right now, our tax code is so riddled with wasteful loopholes that many companies doing the right thing and investing in America pay 35%, while the corporations with the best accountants stash their money abroad and pay little or nothing at all,” Obama said, according to the text of his prepared remarks. “I’m willing to simplify our tax code in a way that closes those loopholes, ends incentives to ship jobs overseas, and lowers rates for businesses that create jobs right here in America.”

Neither Obama’s Tuesday speech nor his February 2012 corporate tax reform plan explained in detail which loopholes would be closed. During the 2012 presidential campaign, the Obama campaign hammered Mitt Romney for not saying which loopholes he would close to pay for a proposed reduction in individual income tax rates.

Obama was singing a different tune last November, as thehill.com reported.

President Obama and his daughters visited an independent bookstore on Saturday to participate in “Small Business Saturday.”

Obama is urging Americans to shop at neighborhood stores as an alternative to big Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales by national chains. He also dispatched top White House aides to do holiday shopping at local small businesses on Saturday.

Obama has made a tradition of marking Small Business Saturday by visiting a non-franchise bookstore with Sasha and Malia. Last year, the president and his two daughters visited Kramerbooks & Afterwards Café in Dupont Circle.

This year, the trio visited One More Page Books in Arlington, Va., a short trip across the river from Washington, D.C. They stayed in the bookstore for just over half an hour, according to a White House pool report, and immediately returned to the White House.

Despite a lack of browsing, the president bought 15 children’s books during the stop. The White House reported the purchases will be given as gifts to family this year for Christmas. Obama explained that he prepared ahead, apparently consulting a Christmas shopping list on his BlackBerry.

“Preparation,” the president told shop owner Eileen McGervey, according to the report. “That’s how I shop.”

The federal government is offering stores free Small Business Saturday marketing materials and promoting the event on social and paid media in a partnership with American Express.

“From the mom-and-pop storefront shops that anchor Main Street to the high-tech startups that keep America on the cutting edge, small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the cornerstones of our nation’s promise,” Obama said in a statement Friday. “Through events such as Small Business Saturday, we keep our local economies strong and help maintain an American economy that can compete and win in the 21st century.”

As a matter of fact, Obama was on the side of Small Business Owners, as late as last February…

During the 2013 State of the Union Address on February 12th, Obama said,

Now is our best chance for bipartisan, comprehensive tax reform that encourages job creation and helps bring down the deficit. (Applause.) We can get this done. The American people deserve a tax code that helps small businesses spend less time filling out complicated forms, and more time expanding and hiring — a tax code that ensures billionaires with high-powered accountants can’t work the system and pay a lower rate than their hardworking secretaries; a tax code that lowers incentives to move jobs overseas, and lowers tax rates for businesses and manufacturers that are creating jobs right here in the United States of America. That’s what tax reform can deliver. That’s what we can do together.

We know that all of Obama’s promises have expiration dates. However, in a horrible economy, why is Obama trying to tax America’s Small Business Owners out of business?

You remember them…the people who actually create jobs for you and me.

That’s not the only problem America’s Entrepreneurs are facing.

Adding to Small Business Owners’ Burden will be ObamaCare, and the penalties for non-compliance.

Cato.otg explains,

If our small-business owner has 50 or more employees — or fewer full-time employees and lots of part-timers — he faces the prospect of tens of thousands of dollars in penalties under ObamaCare’s employer mandate if he does not provide “adequate” coverage to his workers.

The worst part is that these penalties will be triggered by factors that are unpredictable, unobservable, and totally beyond the control of our small-business owner. He could get hit with those penalties simply because a worker’s spouse loses or changes jobs. Or if a worker’s spouse moves out or dies. Or if an employee’s parents move in.

This creates so much uncertainty that a small-business owner with 55 employees may have to fire six of them just to eliminate that potential liability.

But if he splits his 60-employee small business into two 25-employee businesses, then the federal government — maybe the IRS — will start snooping around to determine whether he did so for legitimate business reasons or just to avoid the mandate.

Why is he doing this to the Backbone of Our Economy? I have a theory. (I know. You’re shocked.)

Remember the Obama-Biden Tax Plan?

The 40% tax rate on Small Businesses, which the Weekly Standard is referring to, was a part of that original plan, which Obama got passed during the Congressional negotiations over raising taxes on America’s “Wealthy”, the other folks who hire Americans.

Our Petulant President, like a little kid throwing a temper tantrum was determined to get what he wants. And, it appears that, what he wanted, was to tax America’s Small Business Owners out of existence…and replace them with those who he can control through Government Grants.

Think about it…if the Administration  can get rid of those Business Owners who are not obliged to them, say, those who vote Republican, and replace them with those who are indebted to Uncle Sugar for giving them the money to start their business, isn’t that, basically, creating a new voting bloc for Obama and the Democrats?

Just thinking out of the box, you understand…

And now, with his “Middle Out” Economic strategy failing miserably, because he’s taxing the Middle Class out of existence, he’s talking about lowering the Corporate Tax Rate, in order to get Corporations who have left the country due to the tax burden he and his fellow Democrats placed on them, to move back home, and bail him and his Political Party out.

Will expatriated American Businesses tell him to take his “Bargain” and shove it?

Does Moochelle like lobster?

Until He Comes,

KJ

Prince Alwaleed to Aku al Naimi: “We Have a Fracking Problem.”

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

Saudi OilBillionaire Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal recently sent a letter to Saudi Oil Minister Aku al Naimi, warning him that the development of shale and natural gas energy sources represents a threat to their kingdom’s profiteering from their massive oil supply.

Per Sky News, the salient points of the letter read as follows…

Prince Alwaleed said demand for oil from Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) member states was “in continuous decline”.

He said Saudi Arabia’s heavy dependence on oil was “a truth that has really become a source of worry for many”.

…”Our country is facing a threat with the continuation of its near-complete reliance on oil, especially as 92% of the budget for this year depends on oil,” he said.

“It is necessary to diversify sources of revenue, establish a clear vision for that and start implementing it immediately.”

Our “Saudi Friends” may have reason to be worried.

Have you ever heard of the Bakken Formation?

The Bakken Formation is a rock unit from the Late Devonian to Early Mississippian age occupying about 200,000 square miles of the subsurface of the Williston Basin, underlying parts of Montana, North Dakota, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It’s total area is

 200,773 sq miles.

On April 30, 2013, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) released an updated oil and gas resource assessment for the Bakken Formation and a new assessment for the Three Forks Formation in North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. The assessments found that the formations contain an estimated mean of 7.4 billion barrels (BBO) of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil. The updated assessment for the Bakken and Three Forks represents a twofold increase over what has previously been thought.

The USGS assessment found that the Bakken Formation has an estimated mean oil resource of 3.65 BBO and the Three Forks Formation has an estimated mean resource of 3.73 BBO, for a total of 7.38 BBO, with a range of 4.42 (95 percent chance) to 11.43 BBO (5 percent chance). This assessment of both formations represents a significant increase over the estimated mean resource of 3.65 billion barrels of undiscovered oil in the Bakken Formation that was estimated in the 2008 assessment.

“These world-class formations contain even more energy resource potential than previously understood, which is important information as we continue to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign sources of oil,” said Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell. “We must develop our domestic energy resources armed with the best available science, and this unbiased, objective information will help private, nonprofit and government decision makers at all levels make informed decisions about the responsible development of these resources.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said the following, in a report published in January of this year,

When considering the market implications of abundant shale resources, it is important to distinguish between a technically recoverable resource, which is the focus of this report, and an economically recoverable resource. Technically recoverable resources represent the volumes of oil and natural gas that could be produced with current technology, regardless of oil and natural gas prices and production costs. Economically recoverable resources are resources that can be profitably produced under current market conditions. The economic recoverability of oil and gas resources depends on three factors: the costs of drilling and completing wells, the amount of oil or natural gas produced from an average well over its lifetime, and the prices received for oil and gas production. Recent experience with shale gas in the United States and other countries suggests that economic recoverability can be significantly influenced by above-the-ground factors as well as by geology. Key positive above-the-ground advantages in the United States and Canada that may not apply in other locations include private ownership of subsurface rights that provide a strong incentive for development; availability of many independent operators and supporting contractors with critical expertise and suitable drilling rigs and, preexisting gathering and pipeline infrastructure; and the availability of water resources for use in hydraulic fracturing.

Because they have proven to be quickly producible in large volumes at a relatively low cost, tight oil and shale gas resources have revolutionized U.S. oil and natural gas production, providing 29 percent of total U.S. crude oil production and 40 percent of total U.S. natural gas production in 2012. However, given the variation across the world’s shale formations in both geology and above-the-ground conditions, the extent to which global technically recoverable shale resources will prove to be economically recoverable is not yet clear. The market effect of shale resources outside the United States will depend on their own production costs, volumes, and wellhead prices. For example, a potential shale well that costs twice as much and produces half the output of a typical U.S. well would be unlikely to back out current supply sources of oil or natural gas. In many cases, even significantly smaller differences in costs, well productivity, or both can make the difference between a resource that is a market game changer and one that is economically irrelevant at current market prices.

There’s the rub. While our nation appears to have an abundant supply of natural gas and shale oil deposits, the catch is: how economically viable is the harvesting of these potential energy sources?

And, how does that help us cut our dependency on foreign oil, right now?

Our nation’s leaders, along with an bunch of others, have to literally cater to OPEC, in order to keep their countries operating. That gives the Saudis the power to influence national elections and the day-to-day lives of the citizens of countries who must buy their product in order to survive.

If American Businesses could find a way to cheaply harvest our own oil, buried so deep under our blessed land, our dependency on foreign oil would rapidly evaporate.

Unfortunately, though, while Obama and his Administration talk a good game, they have no intention of making it easier for American Entrepreneurs to come up with a viable, inexpensive production method for harvesting our oil supply, still waiting for us, down below.

Isn’t it peculiar how the Obama Administration and their soul mates, the Environmental Wackos, want to free us from “Big Oil”, and yet, they won’t give American Businesses the freedom to harvest our own natural resources?

I believe that is called “cutting off your nose to spite your face”, isn’t it?

Until He Comes,

KJ