And So I Go: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

This article from The American Thinker is a good overview of the IRS scandal in case you need to get the facts straight or understand just what it all means to you.  The Internal Revenue Service is the most powerful department in the government.  No one, but NO ONE dares to go up against the IRS.  This being the case it is a powerful weapon for any congressman or President to use to get back at anyone they don’t like.   This is what has happened with the conservatives in our country who dared to oppose the Democrats and Obama:  The IRS was  notified to “look into the activities” of any groups who applied for tax exempt status with certain words in their names.  Words like “Tea Party,  ”Conservative”,  ”Constitution”.   The Treasury Department Inspector General  (Treasury oversees the IRS) sat right beside the IRS Director in the Congressional hearing Friday and refuted every lie the IRS Director told!    The Inspector General stated without a doubt that certain groups were “targeted” by the IRS deliberately.    The Inspector General also stated that he told members of the Obama White House of his findings last summer well before the elections and yet Obama is playing deaf and dumb!

Inspectors General are people who have no political affiliation and whose job it is to police the departments in the government.  These people are the public’s watch dogs and are chosen for their high standards and integrity.  Many of them have been denigrated by this administration in the past four years when they have dared to speak up so I expect this one (Mr. George) to be vilified also in the next week or so.

Anyhow,  the following article may be useful to you when trying to argue the points while some bone head or other damned fool.   :)  BB

May 18, 2013

The IRS Scandal — a Basic Primer

By Jonathon Moseley

Confusion about the IRS scandal is distracting from its importance, so that thinking conservatives should be prepared to debate the issue. Some basics matter. Conservatives may need to share a summary such as this article to help convince moderate friends.

Callers to C-SPAN badly misunderstood these details when Jenny Beth Martin, Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, appeared on C-SPAN television last week. I interviewed Keli Carender of Tea Party Patriots on the radio on May15, who helped clarify some of the pushback and distractions from liberals.

First, don’t let people forget: the IRS scandal is not about conservative accusations. The Inspector General of the U.S. Treasury issued a report finding that the Internal Revenue Service sharply discriminated against conservative organizations. This is confirmed by Treasury’s Inspector General.

Second, a group’s political beliefs and positions ought to be totally irrelevant. Tax exemption must be based on what an organization does, not what it believes or what positions it supports. Whether a group teaches the Constitution or teaches union tactics doesn’t matter, it is educating either way. Therefore, the IRS should not have been looking at the name of the organization, whether liberal or conservative, but on the substance of the organization.

Third, many people don’t realize that nearly all liberal political organizations are tax exempt. There has been a lot of distraction and diversion focused on whether or not the IRS should have scrutinized tea party groups. However, MoveOn.org, NARAL Pro-Choice America, People for the American Way, Planned Parenthood (which has been active in partisan election campaigns), Media Matters, etc., are all tax exempt. Organizations on the Left similar to tea party groups have had tax exempt status forever.

Fourth, don’t allow people to wander away from the central point that the scandal is about a double standard — not whether people believe political organizations should be tax exempt. Conservatives seeking tax exempt status were treated very differently from similarly-situated liberal organizations. Sure, some liberal groups were scrutinized. But conservatives were treated differently.

IRS official Lois Lerner fast-walked the tax-exempt application of Barack Obama’s half-brother, the best man at President Obama’s wedding. Abon’go “Roy’ Malik Obama got tax-exempt status in a bureaucratic breakneck speed, in only 30 days, in May 2011, even though it is unclear what if anything the Barack H. Obama Foundation actually does or has done since being approved.

When a conservative organization Media Trackers couldn’t get approved after 8 months, it changed its project to the liberal-sounding name “Greenhouse Solutions.” With the new name, the exact same project was approved within 3 weeks.

Liberal groups — even with very political activities — were systematically approved, and quickly, with relatively little burden or scrutiny, as reported by USA Today.

Groups supporting Israel were discriminated against. In August 2010, a pro-Israel group “Z Street” filed a Federal lawsuit when an IRS staff member admitted that all Israel-related groups were singled out by the IRS for extra scrutiny. There will be a hearing this July 2013, after the case was transferred to the Federal district in Washington, D.C.

The IRS demanded that a Pro-Life group promote abortion in order to get tax-exempt status. No liberal group has such a requirement. NARAL and Planned Parenthood are not required to promote abstinence, adoption, or Pro-Life Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

It is the law that the IRS must answer within 270 days for 501(c)(3) organizations, yet the IRS delayed conservative organizations for more than 540 days.

Fifth, there are many different types of tea party organizations. Some tea party organizations are Political Action Committees (PAC’s) which are directly involved in election campaigns. Others focus purely on training tea party organizers and members on how to be effective in organizing events and lobbying on legislation. Some purely educate about the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Federalist Papers, etc. Others lobby on pending legislation.

So when the public hears about tea party organizations applying for tax exempt status, they often imagine only campaigning for or against a candidate. That is not tax exempt. Some tea party groups qualify. Some don’t.

Sixth, many have questioned whether the IRS wasn’t doing the job it should have done by asking questions of tea party groups seeking tax exempt status. No one objects to the IRS obtaining basic information and asking reasonable questions. The problem is that the IRS bombarded tea party and conservative groups with multiple waves of a huge number of very intrusive questions. And the wave after wave of questions seemed aimed at never getting around to finishing the process or persuading groups to simply give up and abandon their application.

Seventh, many don’t recognize what ‘tax exempt’ means. It means that if someone donates to a tea party group, the donations are not taxed as income. Otherwise, any political organization would have to pay income taxes on donations.

A tax-exempt organization may still have to pay taxes on other income, such as sales of products or services. Some C-SPAN callers imagined that people in such groups don’t pay income taxes. Of course, people running or working in tax-exempt groups pay income taxes on their salary the same as everyone else.

There are four important categories:

1. A 501(c)(4) organization is tax-exempt (they don’t pay income taxes on donations). A 501(c)(4) organization is allowed to lobby for or against legislation, but is not allowed to advocate for or against a candidate. A 501(c)(4) also can do anything a 501(c)(3) can do.

2. A 501(c)(3) organization is both tax-exempt and tax-deductible. That is, contributors can deduct their donations from their income taxes. It is much more difficult to qualify for 501(c)(3) status. A 501(c)(3) cannot lobby for or against legislation (except to an insignificant extent) and may not engage in any partisan’ (campaign) activity. A 501(c)(3) can educate the public on policy, issues, the advantages and disadvantages of various political policies and topics like the Constitution, concepts of our Founding Fathers, etc. or train citizens.

3. A Political Action Committee (PAC or Super-PAC) intervenes directly in partisan campaigns and does not qualify as tax exempt.

4. A 527 organization is a recent development, which also intervenes directly in partisan campaigns and does not qualify as tax exempt.

Eighth, many are not aware of the difference between ‘political’ and ‘partisan.’ Tax exempt organizations are allowed to engage in public discussion and lobbying of ‘political’ issues affecting society. That is very different from ‘partisan’ activity. ‘Partisan’ means influencing a campaign — that is, advocating for or against a candidate in an election (not necessarily just discussing policy or issues).

An example is the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). CREW is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, tax deductible foundation. Its head Melanie Sloan earns $230,000 per year. CREW does nothing but slander conservative Republicans and a few Democrats who get out of line with mostly false accusations.

Christine O’Donnell won the Republican primary for United States Senate from Delaware. This was learned at 8:00 PM on September 14, 2010. By about 11:00 AM on September 15, 2010, CREW started attacking Christine O’Donnell and publicly declaring that Christine belongs in jail not in the Senate.

Advocating for or against a candidate is the test of ‘partisan’ (campaign) activity that is prohibited for a tax-exempt organization. CREW ignored Christine until she won the GOP Primary. But within hours CREW started attacking her. CREW explicitly referenced her status as a candidate, and specifically that she does not belong in the Senate. Melanie Sloan explicitly said that the voters should know all this when they go to vote in November 2010.

I noticed this pattern and conceived, developed, planned, and drafted the complaint against CREW to the IRS, which ChristinePAC later filed with the IRS in July 2011. Yet two years later, the IRS has done nothing. Melanie Sloan’s parents are big donors to former Delaware Senator Joe Biden and CREW attacks conservatives. Don’t expect the IRS to hold liberals responsible for anything.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/the_irs_scandal__a_basic_primer.html#ixzz2TgoNNdjy
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From the beginning it was clear to me that controlling our health care was the federal government final grab for complete control of Americans.  Yes!  Control!   Everything about Obamacare is about taking our rights away and learning everything about us and our lives so that the government can control our lives in all areas not just health care.   Jim DeMint lays it out very well in the following article.  Sincerely, BB

 

Obamacare Is About Power

05/16/2013

By Jim DeMint

Members of the House of Representatives are scheduled to vote Thursday to repeal all of Obamacare. Given that the House voted to repeal the law last year, some commentators and observers have questioned the need for another repeal vote. (actually there have been 37 votes in the Republican control House of Representatives repealing all or parts of Obmacare.  BB)

However, the scandals coming to light over the last week perfectly make the case for why Congress must eradicate the law from the statute books.

On Friday, the Internal Revenue Service finally disclosed that it had spent years targeting tea party and other conservative groups, delaying their applications for non-profit status and giving those applications additional scrutiny — solely because of those groups’ political beliefs.

Also on Friday, The Washington Post revealed that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius personally asked health industry groups to contribute to Enroll America, a pro-Obamacare front group working to “educate” the public about the law’s supposed benefits.  

While we don’t yet know all the details about these scandals, we do know that the IRS grossly abused its power at a time when Obamacare grants it massive new authority. The Treasury Department’s Inspector General has said Obamacare represents “the largest set of tax law changes in 20 years,” with at least 42 provisions adding to or amending the tax code.  (AND, at least 18 new taxes on the American tax payer.  that is 18 that we have discovered so far.  BB)

Obamacare taxes most people with health insurance, and most people without health insurance. Likewise, the law taxes many employers who provide health insurance, and most employers who don’t provide health insurance.

Obamacare’s heavy reliance on the IRS seems somehow fitting, as the entire law relies on a scheme of government controls and regulations to work its will on the health care system. The law imposes price controls on insurance companies and extends a system of price controls for pharmaceutical companies. Obamacare also places a board of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats at the center of its plans to control health care costs.

A 2010 Congressional Research Service report found that the number of new bureaucracies “that will ultimately be created” by Obamacare “is currently unknowable.” Little wonder that Vice President Biden boasted shortly before the law was passed, “We’re going to control the insurance companies.”

That’s what Obamacare is about. It’s not about health care. It’s about government control and power. And the record of this Administration shows its willingness to use this power in arbitrary and harmful ways.  (We the People MUST accept and fully understand and accept this fact!  BB)

Secretary Sebelius’s recently disclosed fundraising campaign tried to make an end-run around Congress, forcing private companies to give money for a pro-Obamacare marketing campaign that Congress itself has refused to fund.

It isn’t the first time the secretary has skirted the law, either. HHS’s infamous waivers, the majority of which went to individuals in union health plans, weren’t mentioned in Obamacare. And in recent weeks, Democrats who support the law have criticized the secretary for taking funds from other programs to fund Obamacare implementation.

Just like the IRS, HHS has also targeted the First Amendment rights of private organizations. In 2009, the department applied an infamous “gag order” on Medicare Advantage plans, ordering them not to communicate with seniors about how Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare Advantage would affect their coverage.

If past experience is any guide, IRS and HHS could use their newfound Obamacare powers to target their political opponents. Will individuals who choose not to buy insurance under Obamacare’s mandate find themselves subjected to government audits?

Will corporations who choose not to “donate” to Sebelius’s fundraising campaign find themselves targeted by Obamacare regulators — or even the IRS itself? Given the events of the past week, few can answer these questions with an unequivocal “no.”

There’s one easy way to stop the rot, and that’s to repeal Obamacare once and for all. At a time when this week’s revelations show how the government has abused its existing powers, it’s exactly the wrong time to give the government yet more authority. Congress should instead focus on repealing Obamacare and restoring freedom.

This piece originally appeared in The Washington Examiner.

Read the Morning Bell and more en español every day at Heritage Libertad.

Quick Hits:  (You may want to read some of these other Heritage reports.  BB)

 

 

  • The acting commissioner of the IRS has been ousted, but congressional committees and the FBI are still investigating potential civil rights violations in the IRS’s targeting of conservative groups.  (Big deal this is when the man was due to leave the department next month anyhow.  What a farce!  And he was only appointed last November and this  breaking of the laws has been going on since at least 2010.  BB)

 

  • Attorney General Eric Holder went before a congressional committee yesterday on the AP phone record scandal, though the hearing yielded few answers.   (The last count I heard was that he said “I don’t know” 87 times.  He claims he knew nothing about this because it was his staff that handled the whole thing.  Yeh!  BB)

 

  • Google has launched a new music streaming service to compete with Pandora and Spotify.  (I like Pandora and don’t really trust Google with all the shenanegans I have read and heard about Google being involved in.  BB)

 

Dear Readers I won’t be blogging a great deal on the three scandals now  ripping the curtain aside and showing  the Obama Administration as  it is and has been from even before Obama’s election in 2008.  Chicago thugs, communists and Muslims—–ALL destroyers and haters of the United States and the American way of life.  I was blogging my heart out in 2007 onward trying to show Obama for what he is. This man and his cadre of thugs has gotten away with every possible bending and breaking of the laws and even the Constitution  with nothing more than a few crying in the wilderness while the main stream media (CNN< MSNBC< ABC< NBC and a whole slew of newspapers covering for him while they were getting a “thrill up their legs” while blinkers and blinders were firmly placed upon their eyes.   Ironically it may be the IRS (Internal Revenue System)    the department that taxes us that finally puts a spike in Obama’s heart.  Funny because it has taken the taxing system to finally take  down the worst criminals in our country  (usually for the evasion of taxes as in the case of Al Capone a fellow Chicagoian!)

Obama threw Hillary under the bus ( so to speak) with the release by the White House of 100 pages of emails yesterday.  Not much was contained in the emails but they do point a finger directly at the State Department for changing the famous “talking points” that put a silly video as the cause of the Benghazi slaughter.  Now we all saw how Bill took over giving Obama a big lift and getting him elected in 2012 because  he and Hillary didn’t want her having to face a sitting President in 2016. (Bill actually preferred that Romney be elected because he knew that Romney would get the country working and at heart Bill Clinton is  and was a patriot.) But a “sitting president”  with all the perks and privileges and bully pulpit available to him/her is much harder to defeat.  Having two newbies running in 2016 gives Hillary a level playing field.  Now that Obama has turned on Hillary and tried to put the blame for Benghazi  squarely  on her I am waiting to see how the Clinton’s retaliate.  Should be a good show!

WATCH FOXNEWS and even FOX BUSINESS!  They are covering all three scandals  very well and in their “fair and balanced way”  by giving the leftist journalist a fair chance to give their take.  Some are still trying to forgive and alibi and explain but some have come to the  place where they can no longer stomach what the Obama Administration and the Clinton’s are doing.  Bob Beckel on THE FIVE yesterday finally seemed top see the light.

Below is the Heritage report on this subject for some extra information.  BB

The IRS Wants to Know If You’re a “Patriot”

05/15/2013

By Matthew Spalding

Across this great land, patriotic Americans are behaving subversively.

We’re quoting from our pocket Constitutions, starting reading groups to discuss our founding documents, evengathering together to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Uncle Sam is not amused.

As leaders of tea party groups have been painfully aware for years, the Internal Revenue Service has given “special” attention to conservative groups.

Heritage sounded the alarm on the Obama Administration’s hit list nearly a year ago. Idaho businessman Frank VanderSloot was singled out by the IRS and the Labor Department after making a sizable donation to Mitt Romney. Who ordered his investigation?

>>> Watch our video to hear his story 

The IRS admits that in recent years it has zeroed in on organizations with “tea party” or “patriot” in their names. Further, The Wall Street Journal reports the IRS has also targeted groups that say they are “worried about government spending, debt or taxes, and even ones that lobbied to ‘make America a better place to live.’” Fox News adds that organizations interested in doing “education on the Constitution and Bill of Rights” made the list.

The goal was clearly to reduce the amount of anti-government speech by making it more difficult for these groups to achieve tax-exempt status. And it worked. Just look at these examples from four different states:

 

  • ABC News reports that Jennifer Stefano of Pennsylvania wanted to start a tea party group, but dealing with the IRS “was frightening and that’s why I shut it down. I shut my group down.”

 

  • The IRS ordered an Ohio group to answer 35 detailed questions, including to “provide a listing of all your past activities. Indicate the percentage of your time spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100%) and the percentage of your funds spent conducting the activity (total of all activities should equal 100%).”

 

  • In Tennessee, Kevin Kookogey was trying to start an educational group called Linchpins of Liberty to teach the economic principles of Milton Friedman and Adam Smith. When he inquired with the IRS in 2011 about the delay in his tax-exempt status, he was told: “We have been waiting on guidance from our superiors as to your and similar organizations.” He is still waiting.

 

  • In Virginia, it took Richmond Tea Party President Larry Nordvig two and a half years to get tax-exempt status.He tells The Washington Post the wait had “a very chilling effect” on how much money his group could raise, and thus on how much speech it could generate.

How many groups are under scrutiny? That remains to be seen. President Obama said yesterday that the IRS’s actions were “intolerable and inexcusable” and that “regardless of how this conduct was allowed to take place, the bottom line is, it was wrong.”

Our federal government was designed to be a neutral arbiter between competing private interests that would protect our liberties. Instead, it has morphed into a permanent interest group of its own.

In some ways, it’s almost as if we’ve disappointed our government by questioning it. As Bertolt Brecht quipped about the late, unlamented East Germany:

The people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts.

So here’s a charge to all tea partiers, and indeed all “patriotic” Americans of any political bent: Let’s redouble our efforts—to limit government and promote freedom.

Doing so may anger Big Brother, but it will protect the liberty of all Americans.

Read the Morning Bell and more en español every day at Heritage Libertad.

Quick Hits:

 

  • The IRS isn’t the only agency treating conservative groups differently from liberal groups. The Competitive Enterprise Institute reports that the EPA shows a bias in its answers to Freedom of Information Act requests.   (CHECK THIS REPORT OUT.  BB)

 

  • At a fundraiser earlier this week, President Obama blamed gridlock in Washington on “hyper-partisanship,” saying, “My thinking was after we beat them in 2012, well, that might break the fever, and it’s not quite broken yet.”

 

  • Conservatives should be concerned about modernizing U.S. defenses so that they are there when we need them, says Heritage President Jim DeMint.

 

  • Join us today at noon ET for a debate about defense. Watch online as conservative and liberal debaters face off on national security.

Here is an interesting article from American Thinker I would like to pass on to my Readers.  I lived thru all of the events the author writes about.  It is a short article and names only a very few of the “causes” I can tell you that his assessments are correct and would be correct for all those he doesn’t name.  All of the “causes” were originally proposed and  fought for with the best of intentions; then they all somehow went wrong.  They went wrong because they were taken over by those who would destroy us. And while those who were the most fervent believers in their particular “cause” were lied to and play with and conned into believing the destroyers were with soul-mates the majority of us were sleeping thru it all and going our own silly, passive, pampered ways.  Fiddling while Rome burned so to speak.

Obama is the last link in the chain that will enslave us to the rule of a soulless group of subhuman thugs, otherwise known as sociopaths.   I am suggesting this article to you simply as a history lesson for those of you too young to know, or remember, some of the beginnings  that have brought us to this point.  BB

May 13, 2013

Barack Obama and the End of an Era

By Steve McCann

The re-election of Barack Obama is the high water mark and the end of an era.  The period 1960 to 2014 will go down in American history as the era of never-ending crusades leading to the decline and potential downfall of the United States.   During this time frame America has been inundated with one cause after another.   The essential civil rights movement and the tragically successful Viet Nam protests spawned numerous causes, among them: feminism, environmentalism, global warming, and gay rights.

 

For each generation born after 1940 it has been a rite of passage to take up the mantle of protest concurrent with mindless dedication to oftentimes absurd and erroneous beliefs, which have, in nearly all cases, resulted in disastrous societal and economic consequences.

 

With the backdrop of unimaginable prosperity and lack of any national adversity since the end of the Great Depression, far too many have sought so-called meaning in their lives and for a cause to wholeheartedly and fervently embrace.  To countless Americans these movements became their religion and reason for being.  This mindset is unique among western democracies and it has been easily exploited by the American left — a major factor in their rise to power and domination of the culture and government.    

 

As the left stealthily hijacked these causes, they were able to convince the True Believers in all these various movements that they stood with them; but more important was their ability to ingrain the conviction that anyone who opposed any of these evolving crusades was the incarnation of evil and must be defeated at all costs.  Political Correctness and its companion, unrestrained demonization of political opposition, was born.

 

The Civil Rights movement begun with best of intentions, and long overdue, achieved many of its original goals in breaking down the barriers to equality; however it soon degenerated into a battering ram as the liberals, in order to create a vast national dependency class, demanded, in the name of civil rights, innumerable and ever-expanding welfare programs as well as unending affirmative action for ever-evolving “minorities” (including women, a numerical majority).  The nation now faces a tsunami of unsustainable welfare and entitlement spending emanating from programs begun in the 1960′s.

 

The Viet Nam war protests, while perhaps justified in light of the ham-handed manner in which the war was prosecuted, unleashed far more than just a demand for an end to the war.  Those that blamed America for all manner of alleged sins in the past and determined to transform the United States into a socialist nirvana were able to step out from behind the shadows and enter the mainstream of national legitimacy.  This swarm of locusts soon enveloped the higher levels of academia spawning countless clones to further infiltrate all levels of society — most notably the mainstream media and entertainment complex as well as primary and secondary education.   These vital segments of the culture are now instruments of indoctrination and propaganda.

 

The feminist movement originally initiated to ensure workplace equality was quickly taken over by the self-described “Progressives” and transformed into a vehicle to alter American society primarily through the legitimization of abortion on demand under the rubric of “women’s rights.”   Since 1973 the nation has witnessed the killing of over 54.5 million children, which has eventuated in a grotesque disregard for human life, as exemplified by Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia.  This catastrophic erosion in respect for the uniqueness of each individual has resulted in American society inexorably losing its moral compass.  Thus the people have become more susceptible to accepting deviancy and abandoning all pretexts of honor and integrity in themselves and in particular their national leaders.

 

As with other causes, the environmental movement began with the best of intentions: to clean up the air and water polluted through years of neglect.  However, it quickly evolved into an anti-capitalist crusade with the avowed intent of promoting socialist big government as the savior of the planet and the only means of curbing the evil and greedy capitalists.  Man-made global warming, perhaps the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind, became the penultimate dogma to those dedicated to things “bigger than themselves” and who turned out to be ideal useful idiots for the left.   Today the free market is shackled by a Niagara Falls of regulations, mandates, taxes and oversight thus devastating the ability of the economy to create wealth and jobs.

 

While the nation slumbered, content in its prosperity, the American left, during the past fifty plus years of never-ending crusades, has succeeded in creating:

 

A)   a vast army of voters made up of:  1) those dependent on government largess, 2) low-information voters — the natural outgrowth of the current education system, and 3) the easily manipulated and myopic single issue zealots.  The election of Barack Obama is a testament to the success of this strategy. 

 

B)    national leadership devoid of character and integrity who, in their determination to seize and hold power, are guided by only one principle: the end justifies the means.

 

C)    an entrenched and unrestrained de facto oligarchy in Washington D.C.

 

D)   economic circumstances wherein, for the first time in American history, a succeeding generation will be far worse off than the one preceding it.   Meanwhile the ruling class is insistent on adding untold millions to the labor force by legitimizing, for political purposes, those in the country illegally.

 

E)    a deliberately ill-educated and fractured society destined for internal strife and chaos.

 

The prosperity that allowed this stealth war on United States to occur is no more.  This nation is subsisting on the residue of its past glory with no hope of regaining its former lofty status as long as it is governed by the most dangerous and radical regime in its history.  The American people, as their day to day lives continue to deteriorate, are becoming increasingly aware of the nation’s precarious situation.

 

Beginning in 2014, as Benghazi and a myriad of other scandals combined with a rapidly declining standard of living for a vast majority of Americans marginalizes the Obama cabal, the focus of the nation will no longer be on bumper sticker platitudes and movements.  Instead it will, by necessity, be on individual survival as well as desperately finding a way, before the nation descends into chaos, to recreate what made the United States the most successful nation in the history of mankind.  (The author holds out hope in this last paragraph that We the People tho hurt badly and demoralized will at last wake up and see where we have been lead and somehow drag ourselves back from the brink.   I personally wonder if it is possible.  Obama has so many entrenched allies and  blind fools who are all willing to throw themselves on the sword point in order to save him.  Will Benghazi take him and Hillary down?  Will the Clinton’s throw Obama “under the bus” as is their nature when  they are threatened?   And if Obama goes does the damage he has done go with him starting with Obamacare?   I don’t know.  BB)

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/the_re-election_of_barack_obama.html#ixzz2TC7NJFvn
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I sincerely hope you all are paying very close attention to the Benghazi hearings going on now.   Obama and Hillary lied and lied and lied and the voters continued to believe the Liar in Chief! and elected him.   I watched the hearings Wednesday and was not at all surprised at what I heard.  In fact, those of you who have been watching actually knew the story.  Secretary of Defense Panetta told the same story as the three whistleblowers Wednesday if you were willing to read between the lines, or hear what he was carefully “not saying”.  This isn’t over by any means and I sincerely hope it takes Obama down as some are predicting.  But since it takes the Senate to dispose of a president and the Senate is controlled by Harry Reid I am not holding my breath.  I do however continue to believe that even tho they claim to be Democrats there are still some decent truth seeking Senators who will simply finally had to swallow so much cess that they will revolt and demand Obama and his thugs be replaced in the White House.     It really is beyond belief to have the bugling Joe Biden as President but I don’t see him as evil but simply stupid.   I also see him as someone who wants to be liked so I think he will go along with some more reasonable legislation that the Republicans are offering.

The following article from Heritage is good because it offers a time line of the Benghazi cover-up that will help you understand better what is now coming out.  BB

 

Ghosts of Benghazi

The White House might have wanted to mute its response to the terrorist attack in Benghazi for fear of inflaming Anti-American sentiment. Perhaps the President did not want to acknowledge a successful attack by an al-Qaeda affiliate on the anniversary of 9/11—right before a national election. Maybe it was just all “Keystone Kops” at the national command authority on the night four Americans were killed at their posts. It could be a bit of all three. The problem is, nine months later, we still don’t know for sure.

Dramatic hearings are expected today as Gregory Hicks, a State Department official who was on the ground in Libya during the 9/11 attack when four Americans died, talks to a House panel.

Some of his testimony from pre-hearing interviews with committee staff has already been released to the press. It includes claims that a Special Forces team that could have helped save lives and safeguard evidence and classified materials at the U.S. facility had been ordered to “stand down.” In addition, Hicks contends that from the outset, the ambassador’s team knew that they were under attack and reported that to Washington.

Hicks’s testimony follows a House Republican Conferencereport and a detailed article on the “Benghazi Talking Points” in The Weekly Standard that further call into question the credibility of the Obama Administration’s response.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that (1) the Administration bungled security before the incident; (2) the response to the assault was disjointed and inadequate; and (3) the Administration made a consistent and considerable effort to hide these facts.

The timeline still does not add up.

benghazi-video

>>> Watch our video on the Benghazi information timeline

That Hicks is only just now being allowed to testify before Congress reinforces concerns that the Administration continues to slow-roll the truth coming out. Yet the White House continues to stick to the increasingly incredulous line that it has been forthcoming at every step.

Just recently, the White House press spokesperson defended the State Department’s internal review of the attack as “rigorous and unsparing,” even after the State Department Inspector General announced it is investigating the conduct of the panel that produced the report.

Fundamental questions about the security breakdown in Benghazi still have not been fully answered. With a White House that is still in denial about sharing the truth, it remains up to the Congress to press for answers and the press the Administration to take its responsibility of protecting our personnel overseas more seriously than protecting its political reputation at home.

Americans were told in the early 1960′s by a funny looking short chubby Russian leader named Khrushchev that America would be defeated by Communism and not a shot would be fired.  If you care to go to my right side column   you will find a series of videos made in the 1980′s by a former KGB (Russia’s top spy agency) agent explaining exactly how the Communist planned to overthrow America  (Subverting America by Uri Bezmenov).    I am 72 years old and I watched it happen exactly as Bezmenov    said it would happen and exactly as Khrushchev claimed as he banged his shoe on the podium.  Many laughed and said it would never happen but  here we are fifty years later and it is happening.  the last brick in the wall of our American prison is being put in place with the federal CORE Curriculum that the government is forcing on states.  The text books of the CORE Curriculum have completely rewritten history!  Beware!

 

Do read carefully this article from the Cato Instutute.  Then check carefuylllly and keep an eye on your own schools and what is being fed to your children.   BB

May 4, 2013

The Great Education Power-Grab

By E. Jeffrey Ludwig

Did you know that reformers intent on implementing the Core Curriculum (National Standards) have invaded public education?  They do not care about kids or about individuals.  Armed with statistics and vast software systems, their intent is to establish one-size-fits-all curricula and success parameters in public education nationwide.  The scope of their ambitions leads this educator to the conclusion that their underlying impulse is totalitarian.

 

These reformers are driving toward the six- or seven-class-a-day high school teaching load, the 9-5 schedule for the schools (or longer), school provided free and compulsory for ages 2 to 22 (or 26), the six- or seven-day school week, and the 12-month school year (with two- or three-week vacation breaks scattered throughout the school year), all controlled by a vast bureaucracy nationwide and justified by the implementation of “national standards.”  A database of answers to 400 questions by all U.S. students K-20 will be compiled and maintained at a tremendous cost to the public.  Forty-six states are already on board.  This 20-plus years of control and indoctrination will, if implemented, become a cornerstone of statist control.mic

 

Who’s doing it?  These reforms are led by Bill Ayers, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York City.  They are also led by educational publishers such as Cengage, Pearson, McGraw Hill, and McDougal Littel.  They have a host of supporters including, but not limited to, the Coalition of Essential Schools, New Visions, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and other NGOs that want to bring equality and progress [sic] to institutions supposedly failing to their very core.  These “reformers” are being abetted by their so-called adversaries, the education unions: UFT, AFT, NEA, and NYSUT.  Claiming to object to some of the teacher hostility expressed by the “reformers,” these unions actually are 100% in tune with the political and social agenda of those reformers.  Why?  Because the movement toward “national standards” by these reformers means increased membership and dues for the unions, consolidation of power, and national promotion of their left-wing agenda.  The education unions become junior partners in one of the greatest power plays in the history of this country.

 

The key to their vision, if one can call this Brave New World and 1984 nightmare a “vision,” is to bring in a whole new class of school administrators.  These administrators do not have teaching experience.  Teaching experience tends to breed respect for the individual.  Instead, the drive of national standards is to collectivize, to standardize, and to establish one-size-fits-all educational benchmarks, goals, and curricula.  The new mandarins of education are people in their twenties or early thirties who are to come in and uproot the supposed garbage of the past.  Likewise, pressures are being brought to bear on older teachers and experienced administrators to get out of the way of the “agenda of change.”

 

A few years ago, this writer attended a meeting to recruit teachers into the New York City Department of Education Leadership Academy for prospective principals, and the sophisticated and attractive hostess of the program was asked, “When reviewing applications to the program, do you take into account whether the applicant has written and published any articles of books?”  Without hesitation, the woman answered firmly that she does not.  Connection with the world of books is not part of leadership in education.  On another occasion, this writer even heard one principal in the New York City Department of Education say that he is not interested in having libraries where books just gather a lot of dust; rather, he wants to replace all books with much cheaper and less space-consuming CDs.  He added that students do not need literature in high school; they need only skill-sets for proper English usage.  Under the Common Core, literature is being de-emphasized in favor of nonfiction, and excerpts will replace the reading of entire texts.

 

The thrust during Bloomberg’s years as mayor of New York City has been to recruit people with little or no experience in education to teach and to run the schools.  This supposedly is to refresh a profession that has been too insulated from accountability and new ideas for too long. We saw this in Chicago, when Arne Duncan was the head of the schools.  He had only had a little tutoring experience, but his goal was to renovate and revamp the failing system.  As far as anyone knows, the system there is still failing.

 

What, then, do we find?  From top to bottom, the NYC Dept. of Education is replete with administrators with little  teaching experience.  Often selected because they are inexperienced and willing to be as insensitive as a cactus in order to please their superiors, they come to impose themselves as “leaders” on those who are already making great sacrifices as teachers.

 

Then there are teaching fellows and other “career change” types who have decided they want to begin a new career path in education.  They soon learn the realities of life in the schools, and many leave.  Many teaching fellows are also brilliant and idealistic, and they come into education to make a difference in the lives of individuals and society as a whole.  However, they find that they not only have to deal with incredibly complex and difficult classroom and building situations, but many times are being badgered by clueless administrators who are the “new breed” as described above.  This author recently heard a highly regarded principal of a New York City high school say that he considered “classroom management” overestimated in importance.  Right.  Who needs an attentive, orderly classroom?  Let students have a watered down curriculum, let them talk during class, and then give them inflated grades to support their self-esteem.  This is to be the new formula for national “progress.”

 

We find people coming into education from facilities management, the petroleum industry, pharmaceutical sales, and lobster wholesaling and delivery backgrounds.  This writer has met these people, and the likelihood that they read even one book a year is remote.  Are non-readers and non-teachers suited to be educational leaders?

 

Many, be it for money, security, ideals, or some combination of the above seek administrative positions that they are not ready for.  Why aren’t they ready?  They are not ready because they have not been mentored and inculcated with core educational values that include, but are not limited to, focus on service and on educational values such as curricular innovation, creativity, knowledge, teacher morale, school tone, the family of man, student character-building, and caring/love of all for all (said list can be summed up as “the pursuit of happiness”).

 

The above changes are gradually (and sometimes not so gradually) being implemented in various school districts throughout the country, but  national standards (Core Curriculum) are the connecting mechanism whereby the philosophy of education outlined above can be managed at the federal level.  The rationale for this is that students in China, Japan, and Singapore regularly do better than U.S. students on international tests of math and science.  Therefore, a more comprehensive approach (standards) needs to be taken if we are to remain competitive in the world economy.

 

Even accepting the highly dubious assumption that we are falling behind those countries, should our schools become as authoritarian as those schools?  Are not the Judeo-Christian ideals of love and compassion still valid?  Do we want the drones we find in these other cultures?

 

About 46 states have already signed onto “national standards.”  There is movement in that direction.  There are not many articles in the conservative media and blogs challenging this direction.  Nevertheless, the danger to culture, to rationality (substituting what to think for how to think), to individuality, and to the tried and true is palpable.

 

My question to the reader: Do you want American public education to become even more of an ideological monolith than it is at present?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/the_great_education_power_grab.html#ixzz2SME2uDEr
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The Obama administration and it’s State Department under Dear Hillary Clinton  did everything they could to cover up what really happened at Benghazi  and how their policies and neglect and just plain incompetence got four Americans killed.  Remember how they blamed a video  even weeks after the incident?  Remember how they  sent the out of touch US United Nations Ambassador to the Sunday talk shows to tell us and the world how the  video that denigrated Muslims was the cause and even went so far as to arrest the producer of the video? ) By the way the man is still in jail on these trumped up charges  —-AND this is happening right here in the United States Dear Reader! )   Remember how Hillary stood beside THE MAN  outside the White House and told us how these terrible videos got our four Americans killed?
Remember how when questioned by the Congress Dear Hillary yelled in frustration, “What does it matter?”  Well it damned well does matter because Hillary herself sign the notice from the Ambassador to Libya who was later one of those killed  when he begged for more security. She claimed she knew nothing about these emails and official request from the Ambassador but when the special House investigators went the paper trail they found the letter from the slain ambassador with Hillary’s signature on it indicating that she had received and read the request.  The miserable BITCH lied a nd lied and lied and is responsible for the death of at least four AMERICANS!   Remember this when Hillary is running for president in 2016!  She lied and got four Americans killed!

The State Department still refuses to turn over all the emails and paperwork related to this  but the House committee has photographic proof that the signed by Hillary document exists.   Read the  summary of the report to the House of Representatives below.  BB

New House Report on the White Washing of Benghazi

April 26, 2013 at 11:00 am

 

AFP PHOTOSTR/AFP/GettyImages/Newscom

AFP PHOTOSTR/AFP/GettyImages/Newscom

A just-released Interim Progress Report based on an investigation across five House committees on the Benghazi terrorist attack paints a disturbing picture of diplomatic security neglected and of obfuscation on the part of the Obama Administration.

The House report is based on documents and e-mails laboriously extracted by Congress from the Obama Administration. In some cases, this happened under the threat of holding up confirmation of presidential nominees to the national security team. The report reveals a fundamental lack of understanding at the highest levels of the State Department of the dangerous situation in Benghazi and, equally problematically, concerted attempts across the Administration to insulate the State Department from blame, whitewashing the narrative of the tragic events. Among the report’s findings:

  • “Reductions of security levels prior to the attacks in Benghazi were approved at the highest levels of the State Department, up to and including [former] Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton. This fact contradicts her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 23, 2013.”
  • “In the days following the attacks, White House and senior State Department officials altered accurate talking points drafted by the Intelligence Community in order to protect the State Department.”
  • “Contrary to Administration rhetoric, the talking points were not edited to protect classified information. Concern for classified information is never mentioned in email traffic among senior Administration officials.”

In the interest of fixing the problems that led to the death of four brave Americans on September 11, 2012, we must get real answers to what happened before, during and after the attack.

Even current Secretary of State John Kerry undertook his own investigation following after taking office in January, clearly not satisfied with the accounting given by his predecessor.

Wednesday, the day after the publication, House Foreign Affairs chairman Ed Royce declared his intention to introduce legislation to increase the independence and transparency of future Accountability Review Boards (ARB), which look at such attacks, to ensure they are truly independent review bodies that have a greater ability to make disciplinary recommendations.

The report’s preliminary findings illustrate the profound need for continued oversight by the five House committees. Making sure that that appropriate officials will be held accountable is a key part of making sure that we do not expose U.S. personnel stationed overseas in such unnecessary fashion again.

Posted in Protect America [slideshow_deploy]

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