Obama Bypasses Congress, Attempts to Force Companies to Reveal Political Donations to SEC

/2 Comments/in , /by

The Obama administration is attempting to bypass Congress and force publicly-traded companies to reveal their political donations through regulation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporate Finance has begun the steps necessary to create a regulation that would in many ways mirror the DISCLOSE Act — a bill Senate Democrats have failed to pass through Congress.

Created in reaction to the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that said corporations and unions could not have limits placed on their political expenditures, the Senate bill would require political organizations to publicly name their donors and the amounts they give.

The SEC regulation would do the reverse — force companies to disclose the political groups they support — and have a similar effect.

“The Division [of Corporate Finance] is considering whether to recommend that the Commission issue a proposed rule to require that public companies provide disclosure to shareholders regarding the use of corporate resources for political activities,” reads the proposal, as reported to the president’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Read more from this story HERE.

Iran Warns: Terrorism to Spread to Washington DC

/23 Comments/in , /by

In a story carried by Iran’s FARS News Agency, a senior Iranian religious cleric warned that Washington, D.C. should prepare for terrorist attacks in the future.

This warning followed a brutal attack on Shiites in Pakistan that Iran blames on the United States and Saudi Arabia.

The FARS media outlet, effectively controlled by the Iranian government, said that Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi – a senior Iranian religious leader – condemned

the massacre of Shiite Muslims in a terrorist attack in Pakistan which he said has been financed by the US and Saudi Arabia, and warned that the terrorism that these countries support will one day backfire and target Washington, London and Riyadh.

“A horrible crime has happened in Pakistan and a number of predator animals who are called Wahhabi Takfiris have detonated bombs in a Shiite convention and martyred 120 people and injured hundreds,” Makarem Shirazi said in the Central city of Qom on Wednesday.

He blamed the US and Saudi officials for financing such crimes against the Shiite Muslims, and said, “Today this crime was committed in Quetta, Pakistan, and tomorrow it will be Washington’s, London’s, Egypt’s and even Saudi Arabia’s turn.”

Makarem Shirazi also blasted the Pakistani government for it loose security measures in protection of the Shiite community in the country.

A total of 129 people were killed and 280 wounded in three bomb attacks across Pakistan on Thursday.

Ninety-two people were killed and 200 others wounded in a twin bombing that targeted Shiite Muslims in a crowded billiards hall in the western city of Quetta. Earlier in the day, 12 security forces were also killed in a bomb explosion at a security check point in the city.

Read more from the Iranian press agency HERE.

Video: NRA Calls Obama An Elitist Hypocrite, Says ‘America Speaks for Itself’

/9 Comments/in , /by

By The Telegraph. The US gun lobby lashed out at President Barack Obama on Tuesday as an “elitist hypocrite” for providing Secret Service protection to his daughters but balking at having armed guards in all schools.

In a 35-second video released on its website, the National Rifle Association slammed the duplicity of “protection for their kids, and gun-free zones for ours,” amid a heated, nationwide gun control debate in the wake of a deadly school shooting.

The advert was released just a day before President Obama unveiled new measures aimed at increasing gun control across the US.

The president called for a ban on the sale of “military-style assault weapons” such as the rifle used at Sandy Hook elementary on December 14, noting that former President Ronald Reagan, the hero of today’s Republican Party, urged Washington to prohibit their manufacture in 1994.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rush Limbaugh: Obama ‘Wants People to Snap’

/3 Comments/in , /by

PALM BEACH, Fla. – President Obama’s newly announced gun-control initiatives are intended as “revenge” against many Americans, as he’s pushing them “to snap,” claims top-rated radio host Rush Limbaugh.

“I think he wants people to snap. I think Obama is challenging everybody’s sanity,” Limbaugh said on his show Wednesday afternoon. “Obama [is] literally pushing people to snap, attacking the very sanity of the country.”

Obama announced a sweeping set of directives he intends will cut down on Americans’ access to guns, setting the stage for a constitutional battle with states where lawmakers already are openly defying the latest power grab by the White House.

His plan would demand federal access to the details every time an uncle sells a .22 to a nephew, would ban some weapons outright through a limit on ammunition capacity, would waive medical privacy laws in some cases so individuals can be reported, and others.

Coming on the heels of a recent birth-control mandate, Limbaugh noted, “All of this is so in our face. Everything that people hold dear is under assault. Deliberately making people upset. This is not what presidents do.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Are We on the Verge of a Currency War?

/2 Comments/in , /by

Despite global finance ministers promising in 2010 that they wouldn’t engage in “competitive devaluation,” it looks like the world is on the brink of a major currency war, or so says Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy chairman of Russia’s central bank, according to Bloomberg.

“Japan is weakening the yen and other countries may follow,” Ulyukayev warned today at a conference in Moscow, adding later that the world is headed for a “currency war.”

Unfortunately, Ulyukayev isn’t the only one with currency concerns. Others have weighed in on the issue :
•Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker recently noted the “dangerously high” value of the euro.
•Norway and Sweden have expressed concern over currencies exchange-rates.
•The Bank of Korea has threatened “an active response” to current rates.
•Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said he’s “a little disturbed” by Japan’s actions and the risk of so-called “beggar-thy-neighbor” policies.
•Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said last week that he is worried “we’ll see the growth of actively managed exchange rates.”

In short, there’s a “degree of disquiet in the global policy-making community,” as Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens puts it, and some think it could evolve into something far more dangerous for the world economy.

Read more from this story HERE.

Congressman: Obamacare, WH Gun Control ‘Intertwining’

/1 Comment/in , /by

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) expressed concerns about the “intertwining” of President Barack Obama’s gun control push and his 2009 healthcare overhaul legislation Obamacare in a Wednesday evening statement.

Huelskamp worries that the administration will coordinate controversial parts of Obamacare that may invade patient privacy with the president’s new strident gun control efforts.

“The intertwining of ObamaCare and President Obama’s new anti-gun agenda raises serious concerns,” Huelskamp said. “With earlier and on-going efforts by the Obama Administration to invade personal liberties by collecting sensitive patient data, we should now be concerned that the Administration wants to reassure providers that they can ask – and record information – about patients’ gun ownership and storage of firearms.

“It seems that there is no end to the Administration’s efforts to conduct citizen surveillance in the exam room,” the Congressman warned.

One part of the president’s 23-point gun control proposal advocates that the government act to “preserve the rights of health care providers to protect their patients and communities from gun violence.”

Read more from this story HERE.

An Oil Town Where Men Are Many, and Women Are Hounded

/0 Comments/in /by

WILLISTON, N.D. — Christina Knapp and a friend were drinking shots at a bar in a nearby town several weeks ago when a table of about five men called them over and made an offer.

They would pay the women $3,000 to strip naked and serve them beer at their house while they watched mixed martial arts fights on television. Ms. Knapp, 22, declined, but the men kept raising the offer, reaching $7,000.

“I said I make more money doing my job than degrading myself to do that,” said Ms. Knapp, a tattoo artist with dark streaks in her light brown hair, a bird tattoo on her chest and piercings above her lip and left cheekbone.

The rich shale oil formation deep below the rolling pastures here has attracted droves of young men to work the labor-intensive jobs that get the wells flowing and often generate six-figure salaries. What the oil boom has not brought, however, are enough single women.

At work, at housing camps and in bars and restaurants, men have been left to mingle with their own. High heels and skirts are as rare around here as veggie burgers. Some men liken the environment to the military or prison.

Read more from this story HERE.

State’s Rights Bill Protecting Alaskans’ Right To Keep And Bear Arms Introduced

/4 Comments/in , , /by

photo credit: housemajority

(SitNews) – Alaska Speaker of the House Mike Chenault (R-Nikiski) introduced a bill on Wednesday defending Alaskans’ Second Amendment rights in light of President Barack Obama’s announced plans to curb gun violence.

“We began work on this bill before the President’s announcement today, and now I’m extremely glad we did. Twenty-three Executive Orders have been signed into law without a review from Americans’ elected representatives,” Chenault said.

Chenault said, “Tragedy is not a license for federal encroachment of constitutionally protected freedoms. We can all agree that what happened in Newtown, Connecticut was an absolute tragedy. But what we fundamentally disagree on is how you meet the challenge it presented. The President is using it to further his liberal agenda to try and disarm and disenfranchise law-abiding Americans from their enshrined Second Amendment rights. No one should be comfortable with that, regardless of where you sit on the issue.”

“As a father, I prayed for those who lost children in the incident, and was sickened that someone would prey on our children,” Chenault said. “The President shouldn’t parade out children and pull on emotional heart strings on something as important as executing orders to circumvent the Congress and weaken the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Former Fairbanks Representative Mike Kelly stood up for Alaskans’ gun rights during the 26th Legislature, and I hope to carry on his legacy with this new bill.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Static Electricity May Be Key to Predicting Earthquakes

/1 Comment/in /by

A rise in static electricity below the ground could be a reliable indicator that an earthquake is imminent, say scientists who are now launching an experiment to predict quakes well in time to save thousands of lives.

Tom Bleier, a satellite engineer with QuakeFinder, has spent millions of dollars putting specialist measuring equipment – magnetometers – along fault lines in California, Peru, Taiwan, and Greece, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.

The instruments are sensitive enough to detect magnetic pulses from electrical discharges up to 16 kilometres away, which could give people enough time to get to safety before a quake strikes. Scientists’ theory is that, when an earthquake looms, activity below ground goes through a ‘strange change’, producing intense electrical currents.

“These currents are huge,” Bleier said at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. “They’re on the order of 100,000 amperes for a magnitude 6 earthquake and a million amperes for a magnitude 7. It’s almost like lightning, underground,” Bleier added.

“In a typical day along the San Andreas fault, you might see ten pulses per day. The fault is always moving, grinding, snapping, and crackling,” he told National Geographic News. Before a large earthquake, that background level of static-electricity discharges should rise sharply, Bleier said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hoax: Heartbreaking Story of Notre Dame Linebacker Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, the Most Inspirational Story of the College Football Season

/0 Comments/in , /by

Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school’s football program back to glory, Te’o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te’o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua.

Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI’s Pete Thamel described how Te’o would phone her in her hospital room and stay on the line with her as he slept through the night. “Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice,” Thamel wrote.

Upon receiving the news of the two deaths, Te’o went out and led the Fighting Irish to a 20-3 upset of Michigan State, racking up 12 tackles. It was heartbreaking and inspirational. Te’o would appear on ESPN’s College GameDay to talk about the letters Kekua had written him during her illness. He would send a heartfelt letter to the parents of a sick child, discussing his experience with disease and grief. The South Bend Tribune wrote an article describing the young couple’s fairytale meeting—she, a Stanford student; he, a Notre Dame star—after a football game outside Palo Alto.

Did you enjoy the uplifiting story, the tale of a man who responded to adversity by becoming one of the top players of the game? If so, stop reading.

Manti Te’o did lose his grandmother this past fall. Annette Santiago died on Sept. 11, 2012, at the age of 72, according to Social Security Administration records in Nexis. But there is no SSA record there of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper.

Read more from this story HERE.