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Eye 1

The life of a lobbyist in a do-nothing Congress

Peter Overby
Press TV
Sat, 21 Dec 2013 10:49 UTC
congress

For 2013, total reported lobbying expenditures could easily hit $3 billion.
The 113th Congress has finished its first session, and lawmakers enacted fewer than 60 laws. No Congress since 1947 has done so little legislating. That's bad news for many of Washington's lobbyists. Howard Marlowe, for one, hasn't been feeling the joy of his job.

"One of the driest periods in the 35 years that I've been lobbying," he says.

An old Washington hand, Marlowe has a small, boutique lobbying firm specializing in local infrastructure projects. His client base includes airports, shipping ports and local governments. Marlowe & Company already took a hit when Congress swore off earmarks, the targeted money that financed many infrastructure jobs.

This year is even worse. Marlowe says congressional committees have lost interest in government programs.

"You get more press attention, more cameras, more ink time, whatever it may be, by holding an oversight hearing than you do by holding a legislative hearing on how to fix our roads or what to do to improve education," he says.

Comment: For once, it's easy to agree with a lobbyist. It is a do-nothing Congress - nothing good, that is.

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Cowboy Hat

Schweitzer Takes Shot at Hillary Over Her Vote for Iraq War

Michael Warren
The Weekly Standard
Thu, 19 Dec 2013 12:10 UTC
Brian Schweitzer, the former Democratic governor of Montana who may run for president in 2016, spoke Wednesday night to Progress Iowa, a liberal grassroots organization, in Altoona, Iowa. In his speech, Schweitzer criticized Democrats who voted for the Iraq war, a group that includes a potential rival for the Democratic nomination: Hillary Clinton.

Watch Schweitzer's remarks below:

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Candy Cane

Obama partially suspends ObamaCare individual mandate


The Wall Street Journal
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 18:41 UTC
Under pressure from Senate Democrats, the President partly suspends the individual mandate

Image
© Getty Images
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius
It seems Nancy Pelosi was wrong when she said "we have to pass" ObamaCare to "find out what's in it." No one may ever know because the White House keeps treating the Affordable Care Act's text as a mere suggestion subject to day-to-day revision. Its latest political retrofit is the most brazen: President Obama is partly suspending the individual mandate.

The White House argued at the Supreme Court that the insurance-purchase mandate was not only constitutional but essential to the law's success, while refusing Republican demands to delay or repeal it. But late on Thursday, with only four days to go before the December enrollment deadline, the Health and Human Services Department decreed that millions of Americans are suddenly exempt.

Individuals whose health plans were canceled will now automatically qualify for a "hardship exemption" from the mandate. If they can't or don't sign up for a new plan, they don't have to pay the tax. They can also get a special category of ObamaCare insurance designed for people under age 30.

So, Merry Christmas. If ObamaCare's benefit and income redistribution requirements made your old, cheaper, better health plan illegal, you now have the option of going without coverage without the government taking your money as punishment. You can also claim the tautological consolation of an ObamaCare hardship exemption due to ObamaCare itself.
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Cardboard Box

What would you do with 8.5 trillion and total secrecy? US government clueless about missing Pentagon cash


RT News
Sat, 21 Dec 2013 17:25 UTC
The Pentagon has secured a 630 billion dollar budget for next year, even though it's failed to even account for the money it's received since 1996. A whopping 8.5 trillion dollars of taxpayer cash have gone to defense programs - none of which has been audited. This black budget has sparked concerns over potential fraud, as Gayane Chichakyan reports.


Comment: Back in 2001, the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon had lost 2.3 trillion dollars in transactions. No one bothered to follow up on his jaw-dropping remarks because, well, he chose the 10th of September of that year to make the announcement.


We have to wonder, what sort of 'defense' programs require trillions of funding while remaining in total secrecy?

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Book

Obama's half-brother to set the record 'straight' about President's memoir: 'A lot of that stuff Barack wrote is wrong'

Jason Howerton
The Blaze
Thu, 19 Dec 2013 16:47 UTC
Image
© AP
Mark Obama Ndesandjo, Obama's half-brother
President Barack Obama's half brother is publishing an autobiography that details the domestic abuse that served as the theme for his earlier semiautobiographical novel, which featured an abusive parent patterned on their late father. In fact, Mark Obama Ndesandjo says he wants to "set the record straight" about some of the lies President Obama included in his bestselling 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father."

Ndesandjo also recounts his sporadic but intense encounters with his brother over the years in "Cultures: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery." The self-published book is to be released in February. In "Dreams From My Father," Obama seeks to learn more about their father, a mostly absent figure, after learning of his death in a car crash in 1982 at age 46.

Ndesandjo's book comes four years after his novel, "Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East." As in his first book, Ndesandjo wanted to raise awareness of domestic abuse by using his family's story, although he said in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday that the president's relatives have not universally welcomed his airing of private matters in public. Ndesandjo spoke ahead of a news conference to launch the book in Guangzhou on Thursday.

Comment: Mark Obama Ndesandjo could learn a lot more about his half-brother by educating himself on Psychopathy.

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Eye 1

U.S. accuses China of acting 'irresponsible' in stand-off at sea


RT
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 17:46 UTC
hagel
© AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards
US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel
U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called China's behavior during recent stand-off with an American warship "irresponsible" at a press conference on Thursday.

In early December, Chinese warships confronted the USS Cowpens guided missile warship in the South China Sea after it was reportedly conducting surveillance on Beijing's new aircraft carrier, the Liaoning.

According to U.S. officials, the Chinese ordered the Cowpens to stop in its tracks, but the Navy refused because it was operating in international waters. The Chinese ship then attempted to cut off the Cowpens' path by stopping in front of it, forcing the Navy to take evasive maneuvers in order to avoid a collision.

"That action by the Chinese, cutting in front ...100 yards out in front of the Cowpens, was not a responsible action," Hagel said, according to Agence France-Presse. "It was unhelpful, it was irresponsible."

Comment: Isn't it interesting how the U.S. government and military chiefs of staff get to be the 'deciders' on drafting 'rules of engagement' at sea, in the air or in cyberspace? Catch the irony: the U.S. government calling another government, 'irresponsible'. So who died and made the psychopathic leaders in Washington God?

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Megaphone

Freed Gitmo detainee - We were subjected to 'meticulous, daily torture'


RT
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 13:54 UTC
gitmo
© Reuters / Brennan Linsley / Pool
After years of being held at the US Naval Base in Cuba without trial, Ibrahim Idris, one of two Sudanese detainees released on Thursday, said US prison officials had "systematically tortured" him in the course of his 11-year imprisonment at Gitmo.

Idris, who has been described by US officials as mentally ill, delivered his comments in a news conference in Khartoum, just hours after returning home courtesy of a US military plane. Appearing weak and speaking with apparent difficultly, Idris gave a brief account of his lengthy imprisonment at Gitmo.
"We have been subjected to meticulous, daily torture," he said. "We were helpless...on an isolated island, surrounded by weapons."
He praised the Sudanese government and human rights organizations for working to secure the release of prisoners at Gitmo, which has been called "the GULAG of our times" by Amnesty International. Closed-door military tribunals, for example, have been riddled with problems, including courtroom speakers that have a mysterious tendency for being blocked during key testimony.

Another released detainee, Noor Othman Muhammed, was unable to attend the conference because he was recovering in the hospital, Idris said.

Comment: It's a total disgrace to call oneself an American in these times, given what the U.S. government is doing to people all across this world as well as within its own borders, and what Americans are, mostly in deafening silence, allowing this government to do. Where is the humanity or justice in this world?

Gitmo detainees to be force-fed at night out of respect for Ramadan
Psychopathic Gitmo Doctors Hid Evidence of Torture
Shock video ft. Mos Def reenacts gruesome Gitmo-style force-feeding
Watch this.


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Bad Guys

Obama admits NSA bulk collection of phone data may be unnecessary

Dan Roberts, Paul Lewis, and Spencer Ackerman
The Guardian
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 16:43 UTC
obama3
© Alex Wong/Getty Images
President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference at the White House.
- President: 'There may be a better way of skinning the cat'
- 'Potential abuse' of collected data cited as concern

President Barack Obama has conceded that mass collection of private data by the US government may be unnecessary and said there were different ways of "skinning the cat", which could allow intelligence agencies to keep the country safe without compromising privacy.

In an apparent endorsement of a recommendation by a review panel to shift responsibility for the bulk collection of telephone records away from the National Security Agency and on to the phone companies, the president said change was necessary to restore public confidence.

"In light of the disclosures, it is clear that whatever benefits the configuration of this particular programme may have, may be outweighed by the concerns that people have on its potential abuse," Obama told an end-of-year White House press conference. "If it that's the case, there may be a better way of skinning the cat."

Though insisting he will not make a final decision until January, this is the furthest the president has gone in backing calls to dismantle the programme to collect telephone data, a practice the NSA claims has legal foundation under section 215 of the Patriot Act. This week, a federal judge said the program "very likely" violates the US constitution.

"There are ways we can do this potentially that give people greater assurance that there are checks and balances, sufficient oversight and transparency," Obama added. "Programmes like 215 could be redesigned in ways that give you the same information when you need it without creating these potentials for abuse. That's exactly what we should be doing: to evaluate things in a very clear specific way and moving forward on changes. And that's what I intend to do."


Comment: Notice the shift in blame here? It's not 'really' the NSA who's at fault - it's the telecom companies and, of course, Edward Snowden.
Ask yourself how likely it is that anything 'leaks' from this government that this government doesn't want leaked. How much of what we're told can we trust to be true?

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Bomb

Nelson Mandela 'received weapons training from Mossad agents in 1962'

Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 16:33 UTC
Secret letter lodged in Israeli state archives reveals South African icon underwent training under an assumed identity

young Mandela
© Reuters/Corbis
Nelson Mandela, photographed in the early 1960s. The letter said Mandela was trained to use weapons and sabotage techniques, and 'the staff tried to make him into a Zionist'.
Nelson Mandela apparently underwent weapons training by Mossad agents in Ethiopia in 1962 without the Israeli secret service knowing his true identity, according to an intriguing secret letter lodged in the Israeli state archives.

The missive, revealed by the Israeli paper Haaretz two weeks after the death of the iconic South African leader, said Mandela was instructed in the use of weapons and sabotage techniques, and was encouraged to develop Zionist sympathies.

Mandela visited other African countries in 1962 in order to drum up support for the African National Congress's fight against the apartheid regime in South Africa. While in Ethiopia, he sought help from the Israeli embassy, using a pseudonym, according to the letter - classified top secret - which was sent to officials in Israel in October 1962. Its subject line was the "Black Pimpernel", a term used by the South African press to refer to Mandela.

Haaretz quoted the letter as saying: "As you may recall, three months ago we discussed the case of a trainee who arrived at the [Israeli] embassy in Ethiopia by the name of David Mobsari who came from Rhodesia. The aforementioned received training from the Ethiopians [a codename for Mossad agents, according to Haaretz] in judo, sabotage and weaponry."

It added that the man had shown interest in the methods of the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organisation that fought against the British rulers and the Arab population of Palestine in the 1930s and 40s, and other Israeli underground movements.

It went on: "He greeted our men with 'Shalom', was familiar with the problems of Jewry and of Israel, and gave the impression of being an intellectual. The staff tried to make him into a Zionist. In conversations with him, he expressed socialist world views and at times created the impression that he leaned toward communism.

Comment: Even if the Mossad encouraged a young Mandela to "develop Zionist sympathies", it seems that in his his heart he identified with the Palestinians.

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Arrow Down

TSA releases cartoon animation to introduce kids to warrantless checkpoints


Police State USA
Fri, 20 Dec 2013 11:50 UTC
TSA Cartoons
© YouTube
Cartoon animals warrantlessly search a family’s belongings.
In an effort to condition children to accept the police state, the TSA has released a cartoon depicting an animated family enduring a warrantless federal checkpoint at an airport.

The video casts the the travelers and government agents as cute doggie characters that show how fun it can be to go through a checkpoint.

"Its not scary," explains the father, as he hands his papers to the blue-shirted sentry. "TSA officers are here to keep us secure!"

The children are taught the phrase, "Stop, Screen, and Go!" as their persons, papers, and effects are searched without cause.

"Vrrrrroooom!" exclaims the child as he excitedly steps through the TSA scanner.

"Thank you TSA!" the family praises, as their baby's milk bottle is returned to them after a search.

According to the TSA, "passengers who know what to expect during screening will benefit from a more positive screening experience." After all, those who expect to be treated with dignity and in observance to their rights are unlikely to have a pleasant experience getting groped, scanned, and searched.
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