While Americans have been understandably focused on important issues such as the Immigration Bill and the Obama administration scandals, on Thursday, by a vote of 195-234, the House defeated the nearly $1 trillion farm subsidy and food stamp bill–known collectively as “The Farm Bill,” in a searing rebuke to House leadership.
The Wall Street Journal refers to the shocking defeat of the farm legislation as a “revolt,” and describes how the House’s more conservative members who believed the bill spends too much money, including Paul Ryan and Jeb Hensarling, joined with Democrats who said the bill did not offer enough in entitlements to bring the legislation to its knees.
The WSJ states that the reason for the surprising defeat of the House farm bill was its “mind-boggling price tag–$740 billion for food stamps and $200 billion for farm payments” and other freebies. The taxpayer-funded farm payment subsidies have been shown to find their way into the pockets of wealthy farm owners, agribusiness lobbyists, and even members of Congress who vote on the bill.
While conservatives note that food stamps have grown to an $80 billion per year program, up by about 70% in less than five years, Democrats called the $2 billion in cuts and the addition of a work requirement in the legislation too severe.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-22 03:48:592013-06-22 03:48:59Farm Bill Comes to Stunning Defeat in House
He has been called the Italian Schindler, credited with helping to save 5,000 Jews during the Holocaust. Giovanni Palatucci, a wartime police official, has been honored in Israel, in New York and in Italy, where squares and promenades have been named in his honor, and in the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II declared him a martyr, a step toward potential sainthood.
But at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the tale of his heroic exploits is being removed from an exhibition after officials there learned of new evidence suggesting that, far from being a hero, he was an enthusiastic Nazi collaborator involved in the deportation of Jews to Auschwitz.
A letter sent this month to the museum’s director by the Centro Primo Levi at the Center for Jewish History in New York stated that a research panel of more than a dozen scholars who reviewed nearly 700 documents concluded that for six years, Palatucci was “a willing executor of the racial legislation and — after taking the oath to Mussolini’s Social Republic, collaborated with the Nazis.”
The letter said that Italian and German records provided no evidence that he had helped Jews during the war and that the first mention only surfaced years later, in 1952. Researchers also found documents that showed Palatucci had helped the Germans identify Jews to round up.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-22 03:46:422013-06-22 03:46:42Italian Praised for Saving Jews Is Now Seen as Nazi Collaborator
The “shoot-themselves-in-the-foot” party is stalking the irresistible “youth voter,” or what purportedly has been learned about this elusive prototype. The College Republican National Committee commissioned surveys of young adults, 18 to 29, and issued a report which advises the party to radically alter not just its media tactics and grassroots outreach to youth, but the Party’s current message on some issues.
Take a guess what those issues are.
Let’s start with Planned Parenthood. Leave this poor beleaguered organization alone, say the youngsters in GOP research. Defunding efforts are too “negative.” This contrasts, of course,with the DNC’s positive, pro-fetus advocacy including taxpayer-funded, late-term, sex-selection abortions…
So what’s the solution? The Republicans need to change their message, even though it wasn’t their message. Essentially, the party must change its principles. They must not speak out and try to limit Planned Parenthood’s evil actions any longer…
Which brings us to homosexuality. Predictably, the researchers found that younger voters are more inclined to see nothing wrong with this behavior, dutifully regurgitating the relentless, inaccurate messaging of “gay” advocates and the liberal media. Opposing same sex marriage is a “deal breaker” for one out of four younger voters, who said they’d never pull the lever for such candidates. So what do the “experts” advise?
On the issue of same sex so-called marriage, the report recommends, “…the party ought to promote the diversity of thought within its ranks and make clear that we welcome healthy debate on the policy topic at hand. We should also strongly oppose the use of anti-gay rhetoric.”
The CIA and US special operations forces have been training Syrian rebels for months, since long before President Barack Obama announced plans to arm the opposition, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
Training for rebel forces covers the use of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons and has been carried out at bases in Jordan and Turkey since late last year, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.
The two-week courses, for about 20 to 45 fighters at a time, began last November at a new US base in the desert in southwest Jordan, it said.
The report came days after the Obama administration announced it had approved the arming of Syrian rebels, though analysts said the United States likely would avoid providing sophisticated guided anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons.
The Central Intelligence Agency typically leads covert training and arming of fighters in foreign conflicts, while military special operations forces can be assigned to covert missions overseen by the spy agency.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-22 03:43:272013-06-22 03:43:27CIA Has Been Secretly Providing Training for Syrian Rebels for Months
(PALMER, Alaska) – Alaska State Troopers will try to defend last year’s win over the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on home turf at the 53rd Annual International Police Shooting Competition taking place at the Palmer Shooting Range this weekend. A team of Troopers has won the team honors the past two years in a row – winning in both Whitehorse, Yukon in 2012 and Fairbanks in 2011.
The contest, known as “The Shoot,” pits a team of Troopers against a team of Canadian RCMP counterparts. After a day of practicing, on Sunday they’ll shoot side by side using the Troopers’ standard issue pistol, a .40-caliber Glock, to go through an AST course of fire, then use the RCMP’s standard issue 9 mm Smith and Wesson to go through the RCMP’s course of fire. The competitors then switch weapons and each shooter must complete the other teams course of fire using their partner’s sidearm. This relates to a case years ago where the Mounties and Troopers were working together to track down a suspect near Hyder, a border community in Southeastern Alaska with a neighboring Canadian community just across the international line. Policy prevented the Trooper from using his service weapon in Canada when the trooper crossed the border. The Mounties had to provide him with one of their weapons to use during the apprehension.
While the event is built up around a shooting contest, the occasion is more about camaraderie between the Troopers and Mounties. Shortly after Alaska became a state in 1959, Inspector Joe Vachon, commanding officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, wanted to find a way for the Mounties and Troopers to get to know each other better on a personal basis as well as strengthen their working partnership. It is the longest standing international shooting competition in the world. Some of the Troopers competing this weekend have had to reach across the border and work with Mounties. The Shoot gives them an opportunity to establish and strengthen those long-standing relationships with the RCMP.
After the team portion on Sunday, members will compete individually in a tactical course that is separate from the overall team competition. Spouses also get a chance to compete in the Significant Other Shoot Off on Saturday. Visitors can watch the competition from designated areas at the range.
Schedule of Competition:
Saturday, June 22
09:00 – Team Practice at Palmer Range at end of S. Brooks Road off of Outer Springer Loop near Palmer
13:00 – Significant Other Shoot Off Competition at the Palmer Range
Sunday, June 23
08:00 – 53rd Shoot at Palmer Range
13:00 – Tactical Competition at the Palmer Range
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Katy Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngKaty Miller2013-06-22 03:41:072013-06-22 03:41:07Troopers, Mounties Square Off in Shooting Competition in Palmer This Weekend
Russ Tice, a former intelligence analyst and Bush-era NSA whistleblower, claimed Wednesday that the intelligence community has ordered surveillance on a wide range of groups and individuals, including high-ranking military officials, lawmakers and diplomats.
He also made another stunning allegation. He says the NSA had ordered wiretaps on phones connected to then-Senate candidate Barack Obama back in 2004.
“They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial,” Tice told Peter B. Collins on Boiling Frog Post News.
He went on: “But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges. They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-21 03:58:242013-06-21 03:58:24Explosive: New NSA Whistle-Blower Claims Obama was – and Most Political/Military Leaders are – Under Surveillance (+video)
By Brett Logiurato. Somewhere along the line in what has become a heated debate over how to reform the nation’s immigration laws, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) lost his base.
That much became clear during a marathon “press conference” on Wednesday that quickly turned into a rally in firm opposition to the immigration bill being debated in the Senate. According to reports from the scene, Rubio was public enemy No. 1 to the crowd, which booed his name when he was mentioned as part of the Senate’s “Gang of Eight.”
An immigration debate that started with so much promise for Rubio — including a mildly successful charm offensive with conservative talk radio — has gotten to the point where he has successfully irritated all political parties involved.
Democrats have grown upset with his recent insistence on including stricter border security measures than the bill initially called for. On Thursday, he voted against a motion to table, or kill, a controversial amendment put forth by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), which Democrats had called a non-starter and “poison pill.”
Independents, polling shows, don’t approve of his handling of the issue. And some prominent conservatives are starting to turn on him, too. Read more from this story HERE.
By Michael Carl. A South Florida talk-radio host who “enthusiastically” supported Marco Rubio in his successful run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 and touted his candidacy on her show, has turned against him, charging he has betrayed the people of his state as a member of the “Gang of Eight” by crafting an immigration bill that provides a “path to citizenship” for illegal aliens.
Joyce Kaufman, who hosts a daily show on WFTL 850 AM, denounced Rubio on her show Wednesday and announced she’s organizing protests against the politician she now calls a “pathological liar, a “fraud” and “The Amnesty Man.”
Kaufman has organized rallies against Rubio at the Lincoln Day Dinner in Port Saint Lucie, Fla., and at his Miami Senate offices.
Rubio is feeling the heat after he told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity he knows his moves aren’t winning him any friends among conservatives.
“Look, it’s obvious I didn’t do this for political gain. This is not something that’s going to gain me any parades. People are frustrated, and I do understand it. What I hope they understand is that I studied this issue carefully for almost two years, and I concluded that what we have in place right now is a disaster,” Rubio told Hannity. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-21 03:56:262013-06-21 03:56:26Marco Rubio Has Alienated Just About Everyone In The Immigration Debate
By CBSLA.com. Questions persist following the death of Michael Hastings Tuesday, after reports that the award-winning journalist told WikiLeaks the government was watching him.
WikiLeaks tweeted a message to their millions of followers Wednesday stating that the 33-year-old author and war correspondent had contacted the organization’s lawyer to say he was being watched by the FBI.
“Michael Hastings was a journalist who definitely gave the government trouble, the Pentagon trouble, so if they were surveilling him it wouldn’t be that surprising,” said friend and fellow journalist Cenk Uygur. Read more from this story HERE.
WikiLeaks says Michael Hastings contacted it just before his death. Are they implying he was murdered?
By Tim Stanley. WikiLeaks just threw some gasoline onto the conspiracy fire. On Wednesday night, they Tweeted: “Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.”
What exactly are they trying to say?
Michael Hastings was a much admired freelance journalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and helped to bring down General Stanley McChrystal. He was tragically killed this week in a car crash in Los Angeles, after his car hit a tree. Hastings is believed to have been alone in the vehicle. Read more from this story HERE.
My friend Michael Hastings died in Los Angeles on Tuesday. His death leaves a journalistic void, and not just the one created by the loss of a fearless reporter. Michael’s untimely death at 33 deprives Washington journalists and national security professionals of one of their favorite people to sneer at, condescend to, and ignorantly deride.
It occurred to me last night, as I stared into the drink I drank to toast my friend’s memory, that I spent more time defending Michael to colleagues, military officers, bureaucrats, tweeps and random people than I did actually talking to him in person.
You might think Michael’s track record needs no defending. He wrote an immortal Rolling Stone article that exposed a caustic military contempt for the Obama administration and which led within days to the resignation of the Afghanistan war’s commanding general, Stanley McChrystal. The coterie of national security journalists around Washington began to fear that there would be a before- and after-Hastings period in journalistic-military relations. Yet, a bit more than a month after the piece, I was in Afghanistan on an embed with the US military, without any evident post-Hastings professional reprisal.
I heard a lot about Hastings while in Afghanistan. Very little of it was from the soldiers and air force personnel I was with. Nearly all of it was from fellow journalists, and none of it was positive. How could Hastings publish off-the-record jibes made by officers who were trying to be welcoming to him, the complaints went; what kind of arrogance led him to want to make a name for himself like this? What was his problem with McChrystal, anyway? Didn’t he know McChrystal was trying to rein in the war?
As Michael would spend the rest of his life explaining – I can’t believe I’m writing those words – he didn’t publish anything that was explicitly off-the-record; but neither did he stop observing the boorish behavior of McChrystal’s senior aides while the beers flowed. There’s a reasonable professional journalistic debate to be had about what to do with material uttered by sources when they’re drunk. But I found few people were interested in chewing over that question. They simply wanted to feel superior to Hastings. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-21 03:55:442013-06-21 03:55:44Reporter Michael Hastings Consulted With WikiLeaks Lawyer, Complained About FBI Surveillance, Prior to Deadly Fiery Crash (+videos)
The petition to reopen the probe comes before the July release of a documentary — “TWA Flight 800” — that features testimony from former investigators who raise doubts about the National Transportation Safety Board’s conclusion that the crash was caused by a center fuel tank explosion, probably caused by a spark from a short-circuit in the wiring. The documentary is scheduled to air in July on the 17th anniversary of the crash.
“We don’t know who fired the missile,” said Jim Speer, an accident investigator for the Air Line Pilots Association, one of those seeking a new review of the probe. “But we have a lot more confidence that it was a missile.”
In a statement, the NTSB called the 4-year-long Flight 800 investigation among the “most detailed” in the agency’s history. The accident report covered 400 pages and had 17,000 pages of supporting material.
The NTSB said that the probable-cause findings only could be reconsidered based on “the discovery of new evidence or on a showing that the board’s findings are erroneous.”
Those calling for a review of the investigation include former NTSB accident investigator Hank Hughes and Bob Young, a former senior accident investigator for the now-defunct TWA. Tom Stalcup, a physicist and co-founder of a group called Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, also questions the NTSB’s original findings and is featured prominently in the documentary.
Senator Rand Paul appeared on Sirius XM Patriot 125 and, in a wide-ranging interview with Mike Church, hammered the National Intelligence Director James Clapper for lying to Congress. Paul contends that that creates trust issues regarding anything the clandestine services tell Americans:
You know, in March of this year, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper came to the Senate and he was asked directly by Senator Wyden, “Are you collecting data on American citizens,” and he said, “No.” And interestingly, he’d been prepped for the questions. Senator Wyden’s office called him in advance and said, “We’re going to ask you are you collecting data on Americans.” So wasn’t not like he fumbled around and kind of gave a wrong answer, he just decided to lie.
When he was caught in the lie he said well I said the least untruthful thing I could think of. Well, that does make us a little bit skeptical of what they’re saying.
Rand Paul then goes on to explain that Clapper excused his lie, arguing that the truth was classified.
Senator Paul makes it clear that he supports the efforts the feds undertake to protect Americans from terrorists, but that he is concerned about the potential of the enormous power of the federal government being wielded against innocent U.S. citizens.
