The title of this blog could have also been, “Taking Advantage of Misery”.

BP may possibly be paying millions in compensation to ‘fake fishermen’.

BP has already paid $308 million  to those whose livelihood has been affected by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In order to receive BP’s money, fishermen must display a valid fishing licence.   Applications for such licenses have suddenly spiked by nearly 60 per cent, despite most fishing grounds being closed by the disaster. 

Three people suspected of abusing the system have been arrested in the past week in the U.S, but authorities are afraid that they are just the vanguard of a much bigger army of con men and women.

One genuine fisherman relayed the story of being approached by two men who wanted him to sign documents for them showing that they had worked for him.

He said he refused, but told the BBC that other captains have been offered thousands to sign similar such documents vouching for grifters trying to claim compensation.

Lt Col Jeff Mayne of the LDWF Law Enforcement Division said that Louisiana Department of  Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) has sold 2,200 licenses since the spill:

Originally BP was paying checks to just anybody who had a licence and that may have spurred some of the fraud.

‘There were no real checks and balances on whether they were they really commercial fishermen.

I would like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not. It’s a lot easier to go and steal a resource than to rob a bank.

When asked whether Scooter may sit down with “A-Jad”, Gen Jones said:

Ultimately if we find a convergence of paths all things are possible.

One thing they might do is return our three hikers. That would be an important gesture. It could lead to better relations.

 However, the President’s national security adviser warned there would be “no point in a theatrical meeting.”

With those two, would there be any other kind?

Gen Jones refused to speculate on whether military action might be considered against Iran if it fails to comply with international demands.

Meanwhile, A-Jad has trouble back on the home front.  Iranian businessmen both inside and outside the country say the economy is going in the tank (sounds familiar), while his many enemies from within the ranks of his own conservative faction in the leadership are very critical of his domestic policies. 

Recently, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of our joint chiefs of staffs, was as comforting  as Obama on the administration’s Iran policy, saying that he had prepared an attack plan focusing on Iran’s nuclear plants while at the same time accepting he was unwilling to use it.

Both sides are open about the brinkmanship threats of force involved, with the wider Middle East fearing it will be sucked into open conflict. Gen Hossein Moghadam, former deputy chief of Iran’s Revolution Guard said:

If the US decides to take a pre-emptive action and attack Iran, Iran will have no choice but to strike the American bases in the region.

The heavy costs of such a war will not be just on the Islamic Republic of Iran. America and other countries should accept that this would be the start of an extensive war in the region.

At the same time Scooter and A-Jad are playing this game of “chicken”, the Iran Revolutionary Guard is digging mass graves for American soldiers.

The imam behind the proposed Islamic Victory Monument known as the Ground Zero Mosque is about to leave on a multi-country jaunt to the Middle East funded by taxpayer dollars through the State Department.  Americans are rightly concerned that he will be using our money to raise the money he needs to build the $100,000,000 mosque. 

According to a State Department announcement that was given on Monday, Feisal Abdul Rauf is taking the publicly funded trip to foster “greater understanding” about Islam and Muslim communities in the United States.  Yeah, right. 

When asked about the trip, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said:

He is a distinguished Muslim cleric.  I think we are in the process of arranging for him to travel as part of this program, and it is to foster a greater understanding about the region around the world among Muslim-majority communities.

Crowley said no fund-raising for the mosque and cultural center during the trip would be permitted:

That would not be something he could do as part of our program.

However, Rauf is scheduled to make stops in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Qatar, Islamic countries with deep pockets.

Abdul Rauf said funds for the center will come from Muslims and members of his congregation.

In a London-based Arabic-language newspaper that interviewed Abdul Rauf, the imam says he also will collect money from Muslim and Arab nations around the world.  This means that he will be using this goodwill mission to build contacts in those oil-rich states.

Debra Burlingame, a 9/11 family member, asks some pertinent questions:

Does the State Department have any idea they are sending a guy to the Middle East who is going to be fund-raising perhaps among the very same people he will be meeting with?  We know he has a fund-raising association with Saudi Arabia.

 Burlingame also noted that the Saudis have contributed money to underwrite programs by the American Society for Muslim Advancement, a not-for-profit that Abdul Rauf runs with his wife and that is one of the sponsors of the Ground Zero mosque:

He’s going to the well, and how can they say they do or don’t know what he’s doing?

Meanwhile, New York state regulators said the sale of an adjacent Con Ed building needed to complete the Ground Zero mosque might be subject to review after all, even as clueless New York City Mayor Bloomberg insisted the project has “nothing to do with Con Ed.”

According to Public Service Commission spokeswoman Anne Dalton, state law requires the agency to sign off on the “transfer or lease” of any property a utility owns within its franchise area.

The question is whether Con Ed satisfied that requirement nearly four decades ago, when it granted a 99-year lease on the former substation site at 49-51 Park Place. 

So, just who is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf?  Is he the “Moderate” Imam that the Liberals proclaim him to be?  Nope.  In previous posts, I presented detailed information concerning his ties to Perdana and the Gaza Flotilla, and his interviews with Ed Bradley and the popular Islamic website, Hadiyul-Islam.

I now present information that you may not have seen before:  An interview the Sydney Morning Herald, published on their website on March 21, 2004:

The US and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end, says an Islamic cleric invited to Sydney by Premier Bob Carr.

New York-based Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who impressed Mr Carr at an international conference last year, arrives in Sydney today for two weeks of meetings and public talks.

Speaking from his New York mosque, Imam Feisal said the West had to understand the terrorists’ point of view.

In a move likely to cause controversy with church leaders, Imam Feisal said it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians.

“The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets.”

Imam Feisal said the bombing in Madrid had made his message more urgent. He said there was an endless supply of angry young Muslim rebels prepared to die for their cause and there was no sign of the attacks ending unless there was a fundamental change in the world.

Imam Feisal, who argues for a Western style of Islam that promotes democracy and tolerance, said there could be little progress until the US acknowledged backing dictators and the US President gave an “America Culpa” speech to the Muslim world.

On July4th, 2009, United States of America President Barack Hussein Obama (Peace be upon him.), delivered that apology to the Muslim World at the University of Cairo, in the Islamic country of Egypt:

The relationship between Islam and the West includes centuries of co-existence and cooperation, but also conflict and religious wars. More recently, tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations. Moreover, the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.

…So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

Even to the point of assisting in the building of a Muslim Symbol of Victory on the Hallowed Ground of the greatest Terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the history of our country.

Sources:  nypost.com, smh.com.au, nytimes.com

Just 84 days before a pending massacre in the Mid-term Elections, House Democrats are doubling down on stupid (That’s a Greek word for ignorant. [Thanks, Preacher!]) this week by returning from a recess that had barely begun to pass a $26 billion teacher jobs bill, ignoring the wishes of the American people to stop their record-breaking spending. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called lawmakers back to Washington from  Summer Recess last week after the Senate broke a GOP filibuster that paved the way for the bill’s passage.

The bill is meant to provide both teacher and Medicaid funding to the states.

Democrats and Obama administration officials claim that the package is paid for and will not add to the deficit. The bill, which the Democrats will ram down our throats once again, allows the ‘Rats to brag about saving tens of thousands of teachers and other government workers from being laid off before the start of the school year, and before the November election. 

In other words, the bill is a bribe to secure voters.

 Education Secretary Arne Duncan told Fox News on Monday:

This bill … will help keep 160,000 teachers around the country in the classroom as we start school the next couple weeks rather than on the unemployment line. 

But the fact that San Fran Nan and Arne evidently don’t care about, is that this vote takes members of Congress off the campaign trail to vote for yet another multibillion-dollar aid bill.   Republicans are quick to take the opportunity to use the looming vote as the latest example of Washington’s addiction to spending, something they claim they’ll put a stop to if they win back the majority in Congress. 

 Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told “Fox News Sunday”:

It amounts at this point in time to asking the citizens of responsible states like ours to subsidize those places who have been more reckless.  It’s probably not going to help the economy. 

The bill is “paid for” with a cut to food stamps benefits and a tax increase on some multinational companies based in the United States. House Minority Leader John Boehner said those the provisions in the jobs bill would have an adverse effect.   Boehner said the vote just shows how oblivious Democrats are to concerns about spending. 

Boehner said last week:

The American people don’t want more Washington ‘stimulus’ spending — especially in the form of a payoff to union bosses and liberal special interests.  This stunning display of tone-deafness comes at the expense of American workers, who will be hit by another job-killing tax hike because Washington Democrats can’t kick their addiction to more government ‘stimulus’ spending. Democrats should be listening to their constituents. 

We’re taking money from feeding poor kids so middle class teachers don’t have to look for jobs.

Gov. McDonnell said on CNN’s “State of the Union”:

I think it has to end soon because the federal government is running out of money .  We cannot continue to have all of the states rely on the federal government. 

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm disagrees.  She said that while the states do need to make cuts, the funding in the $26 billion package is necessary: 

This is not for bureaucracy. This is for people — real people who need real help out here. And this bill was entirely funded. 

From where, Governor?  The orchard of money trees behind the White House?

The state that will profit the most from the bill is California.  The state is set to receive $1.2 billion for education. The amount is projected to save up to 16,500 teacher jobs. 

With California and other states still begging for Federal money to bail them out of horrendous budget shortfalls, many lawmakers saw the congressional package as a way to boost their re-election campaigns.  Sen. Barbara (Call me Ma’am) Boxer, D-Calif., said in a written statement that the money comes “just in time” for the start of the school year. 

Just in time for her upcoming re-election battle, she means.   Ever since Barack Hussein Obama (Peace be upon him.), ascended to his throne, Congress has been spending like Michelle Obama on vay-cay.  And, unfortunately, it’s not going to get any better.  When these losers are voted out of office in November, the fiscal irresponsibility of their lame duck session will be the stuff of legend for decades to come.  On the bright side though, San Fran Nan and her bunch have given me an idea.  Let’s move Congress next door to the proposed Ground Zero Mosque.  The Muslims would never build it, then.  Too much Pork.

Sources:  foxnews.com, dailycaller.com, radioactiveliberty.com

Only in America could a boy grow up to be…THE NUMBER THREE GUY IN AL QAEDA??!!

A suspected Al Qaeda operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations.  The FBI says that this marks the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.   Uh oh.

Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press that Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over in the position at the Terrorist organization once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003.  This position means that he will be communicating regularly with Al Qaeda’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden.

Shukrijumah and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two cohorts were taken out in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed, his former boss.

According to LeBlanc, the FBI’s lead Shukrijumah investigator:

He’s making operational decisions is the best way to put it.  He’s looking at attacking the U.S. and other Western countries. Basically through attrition, he has become his old boss.

Shukrijumah has been in the FBI’s crosshairs since 2003.   They believe that he is the only Al Qaeda leader to have once held permanent U.S. resident status, or a green card.

Shukrijumah was named earlier this year in a federal indictment as a conspirator in the case against three men accused of plotting suicide bomb attacks on New York’s subway system in 2009.  The indictment signaled the first criminal charges against Shukrijumah, who previously had been sought only as a witness.

Shukrijumah has also been identified as playing a role in the plotting of potential Al Qaeda bomb attacks in Norway and a never-executed attack on subways in the United Kingdom, but LeBlanc said no direct link has been found.  LeBlanc also said that travel records and other evidence point to Shukrijumah doing research and surveillance in spring 2001 for a potential plot to disrupt commerce in the Panama Canal by sinking a freighter there.

Shukrijumah trained at Al Qaeda’s Afghanistan camps in the late 1990s.  He was labeled a “clear and present danger” to the U.S. in 2004 by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.  The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture and the FBI also is releasing an age-enhanced photo of what he may look like today.

According to LeBlanc, it’s natural he would focus on attacking on the U.S:

He knows how the system works. He knows how to get a driver’s license. He knows how to get a passport.

Shukrijumah’s mother, Zurah Adbu Ahmed, lives in a small home in suburban Miramar, FL.  According to her, he frequently talked about what he considered the excesses of American society, such as alcohol and drug abuse and women wearing skimpy clothes, but that he did not condone violence.   But, she also said she has not had contact with her son for several years.

She said:

This boy would never do evil stuff. He is not an evil person.  He loved this country. He never had a problem with the United States. 

Yeah, right.  He joined Al-Qaeda for the great benefits plan.

LeBlanc said that they brought these new charges against him because the New York subway bomb suspects identified him to investigators as their Al Qaeda superior.   The New York suspects also provided other key information about his Al Qaeda status.

LeBlanc said:

It was basically Adnan who convinced them to come back to the United States and do this attack.  His ability to manipulate someone like that and direct that, I think it speaks volumes.

Before embracing Jihad, Shukrijumah lived in Miramar with his mother and five siblings.  He excelled at computer science and chemistry courses while studying at community college.   He had come to South Florida in 1995 when his father, a Muslim cleric and missionary trained in Saudi Arabia, decided to take a post at a Florida mosque after several years at a mosque in Brooklyn, N.Y.

According to the FBI, at some point in the late 1990s,, Shukrijumah became convinced that he must participate in “jihad,” or holy war, to fight perceived persecution against Muslims in places like Chechnya and Bosnia.

He journeyed to training camps in Afghanistan, where he underwent basic and advanced training in the use of automatic weapons, explosives, battle tactics, surveillance and camouflage.

Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism research fellow at the New America Foundation said:

What’s dangerous about an individual that understands the U.S. is he may have a better sense of our security vulnerabilities and insights into how to terrify the American people using smaller attacks for large, political impact. This increases the risk of attacks outside traditional places we normally worry about like New York and Washington.

Shukrijumah was born in Saudi Arabia.  He is a citizen of Guyana, a small South American country where his father was born.  His father died in 2004.

While still in Afghanistan, he met another outstanding young American. Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was once suspected of plotting to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb”.  He is now, thankfully, imprisoned on a 2007 terrorism material support conviction in Miami.  Authorities discovered in their interrogations of Padilla and other Al Qaeda detainees that Shukrijumah and Padilla were paired in a plot to fill apartments in several high-rise apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up, but they had a falling out.

LeBlanc said:

They just couldn’t get along. It’s like two guys that could not work together.

The FBI is still hopeful that they can bring charges in South Florida against Shukrijumah.  However,  key information about him was provided by Guantanamo Bay detainees such as Mohammed, whose use as a witness would be difficult.

 LeBlanc said:

For us, it’s never been a dry hole. It’s always been an active investigation and it’s global in nature.  We have never stopped working it.

A couple of thoughts to ponder:

How many of these American-grown Terrorists are residing, undetected, on our soil, primed to kill innocent Americans?

United States Attorney General Eric Holder was a senior partner with Covington & Burling, a prestigious Washington, D.C. law firm, which currently represents 17 Yemenis and one Pakistani currently held at Gitmo.  Mr. Holder, while Deputy Attorney General, pushed for the release of 16 violent FALN terrorists against the advice of the FBI, the US Attorneys who prosecuted them and the NYPD officers who were maimed by them.  As we have seen in his performance so far, including his desire to put KSM on trail in New York City, he is perfectly willing to put politics before the national security interests of the country.  Just how vigorously is Attorney General Holder pushing our domestic intelligence operatives to locate these monsters hiding among us? 

Sources:  foxnews.com, michellemalkin.com, ap.com, masslive.com

May I ask y’all something?   How close do you think this country is to being ripped apart at the seams?  Other bloggers and pundits of note have been writing recently about the the growing division in this country between the ruling class (the Politburo, the Progressives, the Liberals, or, as O’Reilly calls them, the Pinheads) and great, honest, God-loving, hard-working, average Americans (the Proletariart, Conservatives, or wingnuts, as the Liberal bloggers refer to us).   

 Take a look at these topics from the Current Events section of RasmussenReports.com:

Among these important topics, do you see any of them that the current administration or their minions in Congress and the Judiciary would agree with the majority of Americans on?

Thewre is a major disconnect going on between those in power and average Americans.  The Obama administration has decided to govern from a “Progressive”, or Far Left point of view.  The disconnect is happening because, going into 2010, only 21 % of Americans identified themselves as Liberal.   That leaves an overwhelming majority of Americans that are not Elitist whackjobs, consisting of 36% of Americans being Moderates, and 40% of Americans proclaiming themselves to be Conservative.

I thought this guy that sneaked into the White House was supposed to be the Great Unifier, not the Great Divider.

Remember in April 2008 when Obama was making a campaign speech in San Francisco and he said:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

That was just a hint of things to come.

Vic Gold, writer and historian, has given some food for thought.   Obama, he said, has never sat in the Oval Office and looked into a camera and said, “My fellow Americans…” just as every president before him has, in the era of radio, film and television.

All of Obama’s pronouncements have been before a live audience or a press gaggle. Why? Because he needs the fawning adulation of his elite audiences. He lacks the self-confidence of men such as Truman, JFK and RWR, all of whom said “this government” or “your government.” Obama says, “my administration” and “my cabinet.” He is a product of the Facebook generation, the “Me” generation.  He is outstanding at self-promotion, not so hot at other things, like, say, being President.

The differences between Reagan and Obama become ever more pronounced when one understands that Obama speaks mainly to the elites of Washington, New York and academia. Obama, the ultimate snob, prefers the company of wealthy bankers and Washington’s movers and shakers.

He does not care about the public’s perception.  The Elite are his people.

Ronaldus Magnus, on the other hand, spoke “over the heads of Washington” speaking straight to the American people. He preferred the company of farmers to financiers.   He preferred the wise common sense of the citizenry to the wisenheimers of Washington.

The American people were his people.

This new aristocracy can be observed in the ruling by the gay Federal Judge in California on Wednesday, negating the wishes of 7,000,000 Californian.  He told those citizens that they were stupid and their wishes meant nothing at all.

On Thursday, before the vote in the Senate to confirm Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, failed comedian and freshman Senator Al Franken showed Conservatives in general, and Mitch McConnell in particular, just what he thinks of all of us.

When Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was explaining his opposition to Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination, Franken appeared to be moving around in his chair, gasping and rolling his eyes like a kid in Junior High School.

Moments before Kagan’s confirmation vote Thursday, the Minnesota Democrat was presiding over the Senate — and the Kentucky Republican believed that the freshman senator was mocking his speech. Upon the conclusion of his remarks, a torqued-off McConnell removed his microphone, approached the dais and confronted the Elitist little jerk.

“This isn’t ‘Saturday Night Live,’ Al,” McConnell told Franken sternly, according to people who overheard the exchange.

Franken later apologized to McConnell.

Franken said in a statement to politico.com, trying to weasel out of responsibility for his actions:

The leader thought I was disrespectful while he was giving his speech on General Kagan.  He is entitled to give his speech with the presiding officer just listening respectfully. I went directly to his office after I was done presiding to apologize in person. He wasn’t there, so I’ve sent him a handwritten note.

Yeah, I’m sure you did.  At the bottom of the note, it probably read:  Signed, Epstein’s Mother.  Up your nose with a rubber hose, Al.

While Obama and all his Elitist minions are laughing it up and ignoring the wishes of the American people, they are each, at least those up for re-election to Congress this year, hoping that their cushy government job will be the last one that the hungry tiger, known as the American public, will devour.

Sources:   politico.com, csmonitor.com, foxnews.com

How many of y’all out there are negotiating with the people you pay your monthly bills to, trying desperately to keep your head above water?  Staying home instead of going out to eat or to a movie?  Praying that you have enough to pay your mortgage/rent?  Sacrifice is something that average Americans are having to practice everyday in order to survive. President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) spoke about it in his inaugural address to the nation, and he’s rubbed our noses in it several times while lecturing the country on how to get back on its feet.

But while we little people are chin deep in the morass of this horrible economy, the Obamas don’t seem to sacrificing a cotton-pickin’ thing.  While we’re all eating peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her “closest friends.” According to CNN, Michelle (ma belle) and her posse are expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Isn’t that just lovely?

Reports are calling the accommodations at Michelle’s vay-cay par-tay, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, “luxurious,” “posh” and “a millionaires’ playground.”   How much per room?  Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

I don’t care what the Obamas do with their money.  What they do with ours is another thing entirely.   Transporting and housing the estimated 70 Secret Service agents who have to go with her will cost the taxpayers a pretty penny.

Maybe the word sacrifice does not mean the same thing to the Obamas as it does to us peons.  Remember when Michelle Obama accompanied her husband to Copenhagen along with best buddy Oprah Winfrey?   At the time, she said the trip, an ultimately unsuccessful bid to bring the Olympics to Chicago was:

As much of a sacrifice as people say this is for me or Oprah or the President to come for these few days, so many of you in this room have been working for years to bring this bid home.

A tax-payer funded trip to Denmark is a sacrifice?  I do not think that you know what this word means.

The way the Obamas roll is the most transparent thing about their administration.  Between lavish trips to Spain to reportedly flying Bo, the President’s Portuguese water dog, on a separate aircraft to vacation with them in Maine, to a date night in New York City that perhaps cost nearly $100,000, they seem to be content to be eating Wagyu beef and arugula while the American public is eating nibs crackers and vienna sausages.

This does not help the PR effort to paint the Obamas as “just your average American family”.  Earlier this month, Obama told ABC that he and Michelle are:

…not that far removed from what most Americans are going through.  It was just a few years ago that we had high credit card balances, we had two kids, thinking about college. We had our own retirement accounts, wondering if we were going to be able to get enough assets in there.

And then George Soros, anonymous foreign donors, and your sycophants within the Chicago Democratic machine came along, and here you are..worth millions.

Meanwhile, among us members of the Proletariat…

Initial requests for jobless benefits rose last week to their highest level since April, proving that “Recovery Summer” was nothing but a big, fat lie.

The Labor Department reported today that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 479,000. Claims have risen twice in the past three weeks.

Home sales and construction have slumped after a popular homebuyers’ tax credit expired on April 30. The Porkulus bill has been a total bust.

Apologetic analysts said seasonal factors that began in early July are still skewing the numbers and must be considered before reading too much in to the report.

Pay no attention to the reality around you.

The Labor Department was expecting claims to go down last week as many auto companies usually shut their plants temporarily in early July. Claims were expected to rise during the shutdown and then fall. But this year General Motors and other manufacturers skipped the shutdowns, so claims didn’t fall last week as much as expected.

The seasonally adjusted four-week average of claims, which smooths out volatility, rose by 5,250 to 458,500.

Applications for unemployment insurance have fluctuated between 450,000 and 480,000 all year, after declining steadily last year from a peak of 651,000 in March 2009. If America was experiencing a health economy, claims would fall below 400,000.

The total number of laid-off workers continuing to claim unemployment benefits fell by 34,000 to 4.54 million. That doesn’t include an additional 3.9 million people receiving extended unemployment benefits paid for by the federal government.  Nor does it include those who do not receive unemployment checks any more and have given up applying for jobs.

The economy had a small growth spurt  in the spring. It spurred some modest hiring, but not enough to make much of a difference in the unemployment rate, which is 9.5 percent.

Without jobs, people cannot spend money.  Without consumer spending, America’s economy will not grow.

On Friday, the Labor Department will issue the July jobs report and economists predict it will show the nation lost a net total of 65,000 jobs. That includes the end of about 150,000 temporary census jobs.

Excluding government employment, private companies are expected to add a net total of only 90,000 jobs.

Meanwhile, the number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May, coinciding with the jobless rate hovering near a 27-year high.

Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website.

Missouri voters on Tuesday Told President Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm) exactly what they thought about his Regime’s plans to force all Americans to carry health insurance.   71 percent of Missouri voters said yes to Proposition C.   This proposition would stop the government from requiring the people of Missouri to have health insurance and would not allow penalizing them for not having it.   

Obamacare’s requirement that most people have health insurance or face penalties takes effect in 2014.   

Tuesday’s vote will be dismissed by Liberals as being largely symbolic because federal law takes precedence over state law.   However, it is a clear signal to anyone who will pay attention that Americans are fed up and tired of being herded like cattle toward a Marxist state.  Yeah, I said it.   

Annette Read, a tea party participant from suburban St. Louis who quit her online retail job to lead a yearlong campaign for the Missouri ballot measure said:   

To us, it symbolized everything.  The entire frustration in the country … how our government has misspent, how they haven’t listened to the people, this measure in general encompassed all of that.   

Mike Sampson of Jefferson City, an independent emergency management contractor, said:   

I believe that the general public has been duped about the benefits of the health care proposal.  My guess is federal law will in fact supersede state law, but we need to send a message to the folks in Washington, D.C., that people in the hinterlands are not happy.   

The Missouri Primary Elections experienced a high Republican turnout.   In Missouri’s open primaries, voters do not have to register their party affiliation.   

Republican lawmakers planned to place the measure on Missouri’s November ballot as a state constitutional amendment.   But in order to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the state Senate, they agreed to scale it back to a proposed law and place it on the primary ballot.   

Legislatures in Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana and Virginia have already passed similar statutes without referring them to the ballot, and voters in Arizona and Oklahoma will vote on such measures as state constitutional amendments in November.  Missouri was the first state to challenge aspects of the federal law in a referendum.   

Obama and his minions say that the intent of the insurance mandate is to broaden the pool of healthy people covered by insurers, resulting in controlled premiums that otherwise would rise because of separate provisions in the disaster called Obamacare prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with poor health or pre-existing conditions.    

In other words, it’s a provision they added to counter-act another stupid provision in a stupid law.    

Public officials in well over a dozen states, including Missouri, have filed lawsuits because they rightfully believe that Congress overstepped its constitutional authority by requiring citizens to buy health insurance.   

There is expected to be a ruling by the Federal Courts way before the insurance requirement takes effect about whether the federal health care overhaul is constitutional.   

The Missouri Hospital Association spent $400,000 warning people that passage of the ballot measure could increase hospitals’ costs for treating the uninsured, but, aside from that, the Astroturf (Soros-funded) organizations, the unions, and consumer groups that backed the passage of Obamacare were nowhere to be seen.   

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told an audience that Democrats would “pass the bill so you can find out what’s in it, away from the fog of controversy?”   

That remark was probably the most honest  thing she’s said in years.  Most Americans have a vague sense that something bad is happening to their health care, but very few, if any, have a clue as to exactly what This country is in for when Obamacare kicks in.   

Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee, had his staff prepare a study of the law, including a flow chart that illustrates how the major provisions will work.   

The result, which came out July 28, provides citizens with a preview of the impact the health-care overhaul will have on their lives. What it shows will scare you worse than a Rob Zombie movie.   

This chart includes the new fees, bureaucracies, and programs and connects them into an organizational chart that accounts for the existing structure. It’s so carefully documented that a line connecting two structures cites the legislative language that created the link.   

According to the chart, the new law creates 68 grant programs, 47 bureaucratic entities, 29 demonstration or pilot programs, six regulatory systems, six compliance standards and two entitlements.   

Getting a bureaucracy this big up and running will be next to impossible. But, don’t worry.  Obama’s minions thought of that.  Obamacare gives Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the authority to make judgments that can’t be challenged either administratively or through the courts.   

This omnipotent power is extended as well to the development of new patient-care models under Obama’s controversial recess appointment, Donald Berwick, whom Republicans are calling the rationer-in-chief.  Berwick will run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he can experiment with ways to use his newly granted power to help change the greatest healthcare system in the world into the failed socialized medicine system of Europe, which he adores.   

Dr. Frankenbama has created a hideous monster that will have almost absolute power to dictate terms for participating in the health-care system. That’s the government angle.   The effect on American citizens is even worse.   

According to The Regime, as many as 117 million people might have to change their health plans by 2013 as their employer-provided coverage loses its grandfathered status and becomes subject to the new Obamacare mandates.   

Those mandates also might make your health care more expensive. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that premiums for a small number of families who buy their insurance privately will rise by as much as $2,100.   

The way Obamacare will wind up increasing insurance coverage is an expansion of the Medicaid program. Of the 30 million new people covered, 16 million will be enrolled in Medicaid. And guess what?  You could end up in the program whether you want it or not.   The bill states that people who apply for coverage through the new exchanges or who apply for premium-subsidy credits will automatically be enrolled in Medicaid if they qualify.   

Where is the money coming from in order to pay for this expansion?  Obamacare takes $529 billion from Medicare, with roughly 39 percent of the cut coming from the Medicare Advantage program.  In other words, the government is sacrificing the care of the elderly in order to increase the Medicaid rolls.   

This will cost the American taxpayer $569 billion.   

There will also be a 40 percent excise tax on those lucky people with so-called Cadillac health plans. The higher insurance costs that are driven by the government mandates will push many more ordinary plans into Cadillac territory.   

If the government taxing people with good health insurance plans does not upset you, maybe the new 3.8 percent tax on investment income will.  This tax will apply even to a small number of home sales, those that generate $250,000 in profit for an individual or $500,000 for a married couple.   

Finally, even though Obamacare has not really kicked in yet, its’ effects are being felt thoughout the Health Insurance Industry.  Thousands of people have already been laid off, and independent brokers and their agents are struggling to provide for their families. ..and it’s going to get worse.  Here’s a recent notice from a major Health Insurance Company: 

CIGNA is committed to delivering affordable, quality health plans in the markets we serve. Provisions of the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) have necessitated changes in order for CIGNA to remain cost competitive. As a result, effective October 1, 2010, commissions will no longer be paid on any Individual & Family Plan policy containing one or more Guaranteed Issue customers. 

Effective October 1, 2010, this change will impact:

* Existing policies covering one or more persons on a Guaranteed Issue basis

* New policies covering one or more persons on a Guaranteed Issue basis