Report: Obama Spent Twice as Much Time on Vacation/Golf as Economy

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Photo Credit: Breitbart According to a new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute (GAI), President Barack Obama has spent over twice as many hours on vacation and golf (976 hours) as he has in economic meetings of any kind (474.4 hours)…

GAI’s findings may actually understate Obama’s recreational hours.

Last year, Obama told CBS News that playing golf is “the only time that for six hours, I’m outside.” But instead of six hours, GAI counted a round of golf as taking just four hours. Likewise, for presidential vacation hours, researchers attributed just six hours of any day of vacation to leisure activity.

“Like most people, presidents still do work while on vacation,” said GAI President Peter Schweizer. “So we really went out of our way to fairly and accurately reflect how the president spends his time.”

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Rampant American Bribery in Afghanistan: CIA Pays Bags of Cash in Failed Effort to Buy Friends

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Photo Credit: APFor more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.

All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.

“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s deputy chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”

The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.

Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.

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Rep. Chaffetz: I Don’t Want Government ‘Searching my Facebook Page’

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Photo Credit: Poster Boy NYCRep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) warned that the government’s search for information online is approaching a “dangerous line” of infringing on people’s liberties.

Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Chaffetz said that there has to be a balance between liberty and security, even as the government works to hunt down potential terrorists.

“We have a very dangerous line — I don’t want my federal government going in and searching my Facebook page,” Chaffetz said.

The way the federal government tracks potential terrorism suspects has come under scrutiny in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, after it was revealed that the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was placed on a watch list.

Chaffetz raised the concerns about the government searching for information online after Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), another panelist, had discussed investigators’ data mining in the Boston case.

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Congressman: Boston Bombing Suspects Had Help

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Photo Credit: APThe chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee says evidence suggests the two brothers accused of the Boston bombings had help planning the attack — and he says he has concerns about a possible “wider conspiracy” stretching overseas.

U.S. officials investigating the bombings have told The Associated Press that so far there is no evidence of a wider plot.

But Rep. Michael T. McCaul, Texas Republican, told “Fox News Sunday” that the “level of sophistication” of the two improvised bombs made from pressure cookers that killed three and injured more than 260 “leads me to believe there was a trainer.”

He added that pressure cooker-bombs are a “signature device” used in the al Qaeda hotbeds of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“The question is, where is that trainer or trainers? Are they overseas in the Chechen region or are they in the United States?” Mr. McCaul said. “In my conversations with the FBI, that’s the big question.”

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Why Americans Will Never Love Obamacare

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photo credit: azrainmanMy college friend’s two-year-old son was born with a rare genetic disorder that severely compromises his immune system. He has been in and out of the hospital with life-threatening incidents since he was six months old, nearly dying seven times. His medical team consists of more than ten specialists, and dozens of nurses and physical therapists. My friend and her husband have health insurance, but their son’s medical costs eat up an entire salary from their two-career income. My heart aches for her; she has to endure not only her son’s terrifying illness, but also the crushing cost of keeping him healthy.

Like most Americans, I want to live in a society that takes care of people like my friend’s son; like most Americans, I would be ashamed if we collectively refused to lend a hand to people who, through no fault of their own, desperately need help. And, like most Americans, I do not support Obamacare. In fact, I despise it.

I do not suffer from cognitive dissonance. Obamacare is a despicable piece of legislation because it twists the noble desire to help those less fortunate into a duty to junk the entire United States health care system. It uses the common belief that we all should pitch in to help pay for the health expenses of a small percentage of the population as a disguise — a cover-up — for what it really is: a federal seizure of the administration and oversight of the entire health care and insurance system.

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Pentagon taps Anti-Christian Extremist for Religious Tolerance Policy

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Photo Credit: Breitbart “Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”

Those words were recently written by Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), in a column he wrote for the Huffington Post. Weinstein will be a consultant to the Pentagon to develop new policies on religious tolerance, including a policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.

Weinstein decries what he calls the “virulent religious oppression” perpetrated by conservative Christians, whom he refers to as “monstrosities” and “pitiable unconstitutional carpetbaggers,” comparing them to “bigots” in the Deep South during the civil rights era.

He cites Dr. James Dobson—the famous Christian founder of Focus on the Family—as “illustrating the extremist, militant nature of these virulently homophobic organizations’ rhetorically-charged propaganda.” Regarding those who teach orthodox Christian beliefs from the Bible, Weinstein concludes, “Let’s call these ignoble actions what they are: the senseless and cowardly squallings of human monsters.”

Weinstein then endorses the ultra-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), who publishes a list of “hate groups.” Alongside truly deplorable organizations like the KKK, the SPLC’s list includes a host of traditional Christian organizations (for their support of traditional marriage) and Tea Party organizations (for supporting limited government). Weinstein says SPLC correctly labels them all as “hate groups.”

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Lesbian Teacher Fired From Catholic School, Files Discrimination Complaint (+video)

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Photo Credit: NCinDCA diocese in Ohio is under siege — receiving numerous threatening calls as well as heated online criticism — and a veteran teacher is out of a job because of publicly revealing a lesbian relationship in violation of the Catholic school’s morality code.

But the firing has raised a fervent debate over tolerance both online and in the Columbus, Ohio, community where the incident took place.

Physical education teacher Carla Hale, 57, was fired in March after her name appeared in her mother’s obituary, which also noted Hale’s longtime lesbian partner.

Hale was summoned to a meeting with school administrators after she returned from her mother’s funeral.

At the meeting, she received a copy of her mother’s obituary that she and her brother had written. In addition, administrators gave Hale an anonymous letter from a parent calling the presence of a lesbian teacher at the school disgrace.

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Cancer Clinics Still Suffering From Sequester, Ask Why FAA was Fixed, Cancer Ignored

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Photo Credit: José GoulãoCongress should have addressed deep cuts to cancer clinics before tackling airline delays caused by sequestration, people at several of those clinics said Friday.

Both the House and Senate have now voted to restore funding that the Federal Aviation Administration lost through the automatic budget cuts known as “sequestration.” The bill is headed to President Obama’s desk.

Although delays in air travel affect lawmakers personally, cancer clinics say the cuts they are facing under the sequester are far more serious — and should have been a higher priority for Congress.

“I would invite anyone in Washington to come look my patients in the eye and tell them that waiting for a flight is a bigger problem than traveling farther and waiting longer for chemotherapy,” said William Nibley, a doctor at Utah Cancer Specialists in Salt Lake City.

Cancer clinics have seen their Medicare payments slashed under sequestration. They have had to turn away thousands of new patients, and some clinics say they will have to close their doors for good if the sequester cuts are not reversed soon.

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After Failed Charm Offensive, Obama Back to Bashing GOP

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama’s charm offensive has been a dismal failure. Of course, he didn’t really try all that hard. He bought dinner for a few Republican lawmakers, vowed to meet them halfway, but within a week — after his gun-grab bill went up in flames — he called them “liars” and stomped off in a huff, taking his ball with him.

The midterm elections in 2014 will decide whether the president can actually implement his far-reaching socialist agenda or if he’ll have to settle for the federal takeover of one-sixth of the nation’s economy with Obamacare.

In the meantime, Mr. Obama, like Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him, is stuck with a divided Congress. Yet unlike his two predecessors, this president has almost nothing nice to say about the coequal branch or the men and woman elected by Americans to represent their dreams and goals. In fact, he’s spent the past four years setting Congress up as the fall guy for all his faults, even more so now that he no longer can blame Mr. Bush.

This week was no different. After injecting politics into the festive dedication of Mr. Bush’s library in Dallas by pushing amnesty for illegal aliens, the president upped the bitterness with a biting weekend screed directed at Republicans.

“Two months ago, Congress allowed a series of automatic budget cuts to fall across the federal government that would do the opposite,” he said. “Because of these reckless cuts, there are parents whose kids just got kicked out of Head Start programs scrambling for a solution. There are seniors who depend on programs like Meals on Wheels to live independently looking for help. There are military communities — families that have already sacrificed enough — coping under new strains. All because of these cuts.

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US to Subsidize Chinese Car Maker in California

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Photo Credit: APA Chinese car maker is setting up shop in the U.S., with small ambitions but a clear goal: Get the federal government to subsidize the sales of the company’s American-made electric buses.

BYD Co., 002594.SZ +3.06% an electric-car and battery maker that counts Warren Buffett among its investors, will open an electric-bus assembly facility in Lancaster, Calif., on Wednesday.

The company’s U.S. expansion won’t create many jobs yet. The new plant will employ a few dozen people at the outset, according to Stella Li, BYD senior vice president. “We are starting small,” she said.

But the benefits of BYD’s move will be immediate, allowing it to sell its buses to local transit companies at a huge discount—with the federal government picking up the rest of the tab.

BYD spokesman Micheal Austin said the company’s U.S. production facility meets “Buy America” procurement guidelines, enabling its customers to tap federal subsidies that cover up to 80% of the cost of the electric buses they buy. The availability of government aid was one of the main motivations behind BYD’s move to the U.S., he said.

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