U.S. Gov’t ‘Buying Up’ AK-47 Rifles (+video)

/2 Comments/in , /by

ak-47Secretary of State John Kerry signing the a United Nations small arms treaty is nothing more than empty symbolism, and President Obama will get nowhere in his latest attempt to advance gun-control legislation, says Bill Frady, host of “Lock ‘n’ Load Radio” presented by Gun Owners of America, who also noted that the U.S. government has been buying up AK-47 rifles and ammunition.

Kerry signed the U.N.’s Arms Trade Treaty this week while in New York City for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. Supporters say it would clamp down on weapons trafficking between rogue regimes and terrorist organizations. Frady told WND it would have a restricting effect on law-abiding gun owners in the U.S. as well.

“It also dictates to the signing states that they have to impose new rules and regulations within their nations to make sure they’re able to comply with this treaty and that covers small arms,” Frady said. “Terrorists are not running around with American-made weapons. They’re running around with AKs. There’s various nations that will underwrite any cause (such as) Russia, China. The AK is the prevalent weapon on the planet. So we’re not the problem. I did notice that along the way (Obama) did manage to get in there and back Syrian rebels to the tune of $340 million.

“I’m sure he wants to arm them,” he said. “The United States Army has been buying AKs and AK magazines and AK ammo. I’m just presuming that they want to send that to our Syrian brethren, the great rebel freedom fighters, so they’ll have something they’re accustomed to.”

Like any treaty, this one would need two-thirds support in the U.S. Senate to be ratified in this country. A procedural vote months ago shows the plan cannot even draw a simple majority in the Democratically controlled chamber. As a result, Frady said Kerry and Obama embracing the treaty is just window dressing.

Read more from this story HERE.

Ted Cruz Might Just Have Won the Future for the GOP

/9 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: The Washington Post

Photo Credit: The Washington Post

Make no mistake about it: the “extended speech” by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had absolutely nothing to do with defunding the Affordable Care Act—or even delaying it for one go*da** day.

As the long list of Senate Republicans who declined to back a full-blown, fill-your-hands-you-son-of-a-bitch filibuster over Obamacare could tell you, it’s a done deal that the president’s consistently unpopular health-care law is going forward even if the government shuts down. Come next week, the enrollment period is going to start, and come January 1, 2014, the plan will kick into gear despite every reason to believe it will be a clusterfudge of epic proportions.

So what exactly was Cruz doing up there, hogging the limelight on C-SPAN’s low-wattage webstream for a couple of hours, if he wasn’t serious about stopping Obamacare? He was playing his part in a pretty goddamned brilliant strategy to win the future not for himself but for the Republican Party.

Cruz and his fellow Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) are the best-known of the gaggle of legislators that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) denounced as “wacko birds” earlier this year. “It’s always the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone,” sputtered McCain in the wake of Paul’s immensely popular and influential filibuster, which called much-needed attention to the Obama administration’s glib attitude toward civil liberties and executive branch overreach.

Read more from this story HERE.

Lawmakers Seek to End Bulk NSA Phone Records Collection

/0 Comments/in , /by

picture - NSADemocratic and Republican senators introduced legislation Wednesday to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of Americans’ communication records and set other new controls on the government’s electronic eavesdropping programs.

The measure introduced by Democrats Ron Wyden, Mark Udall and Richard Blumenthal and Republican Rand Paul is one of several efforts making their way through Congress to rein in sweeping surveillance programs.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is holding a public hearing Thursday where the panel’s leaders are expected to discuss their surveillance reforms. The Senate Judiciary Committee is addressing the issue, and several members of the House of Representatives have also introduced legislation.

“The disclosures over the last 100 days have caused a sea change in the way the public views the surveillance system,” said Wyden, a leading congressional advocate for tighter privacy controls, told a news conference.

The surveillance programs have come under intense scrutiny since disclosures this spring by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the government collects far more Internet and telephone data than previously known.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama on Obamacare: “We did Raise Taxes on Some Things.”

/5 Comments/in /by

Obama-self-satisfiedDuring his Tuesday remarks at the Clinton Global Initiative, President Obama admitted that his health care law raises taxes: “So what we did — it’s paid for by a combination of things. We did raise taxes on some things.”

“Some things” is an understatement. Below is just a partial list of Obamacare’s new or higher taxes on Americans:

Starting in tax year 2013:

Obamacare Medical Device Tax: Medical device manufacturers employ 409,000 people in 12,000 plants across the country. Obamacare imposes a new 2.3 percent excise tax on gross sales – even if the company does not earn a profit in a given year. In addition to killing small business jobs and impacting research and development budgets, this will make everything from pacemakers to artificial hips more expensive.

Obamacare High Medical Bills Tax: Before Obamacare, Americans facing high medical expenses were allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceeded 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). Obamacare now imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Therefore, Obamacare not only makes it more difficult to claim this deduction, it widens the net of taxable income.

Read more from this story HERE.

House Republicans: We’ll Move on Immigration Reform Sometime This Year

/1 Comment/in , /by

Photo Credit: TownHall

Photo Credit: TownHall

Remember immigration reform? Like Syria, it was a scalding-hot topic for awhile, only to recede to back-burner status as other political conflagrations took its place in the national spotlight. There’s been some drama percolating behind the scenes, though, and it looks like the issue may re-emerge in the coming months, as House Republicans have indicated that they’ll take it up before the calendar flips to 2014:

House Republicans intensified their outreach to Latino groups last week, offering renewed pledges that the House will deal with immigration reform this year. The effort has revived hope among advocates that a bipartisan deal can be reached to address the fate of the nation’s 11 million undocumented workers and students. The chances of a comprehensive deal passing Congress remain doubtful, advocates cautioned, and they worry that the legislative process will spill into 2014, presenting new complications in a year when lawmakers face reelection battles. But they were encouraged by signals from key GOP leaders that the House is willing to move forward on legislation that could produce a breakthrough in the stalled negotiations. Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said Thursday that his panel is working on four new pieces of legislation dealing with border-control laws. He did not disclose details but emphasized the need to resolve the status of people living in the country illegally.

Lots of caveats there. The House is likely to “deal with” reform, but the bill won’t necessarily be “comprehensive,” and a key committee chairman is holding his cards close to the vest on how the legal status question will be resolved. House leadership could either break the bill up into bite-sized pieces, or pursue a broader reform package along the lines of Rep. Raul Labrador’s proposal…

Read more from this story HERE.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew Says Oct. 17 is the Debt Ceiling Deadline

/2 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty

Photo Credit: Alex Wong/Getty

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew warned Congress in a letter Wednesday morning that Oct. 17 will be the last day that the government has the funds to meet all its obligations if the debt ceiling is not raised.

That is within the range Lew has previously indicated, and in line with projections from outside analysts. But now Congress has a specific deadline. If it does not act before Oct. 17, a Thursday, the government risks defaulting on the debt, an outcome that Lew warned “could be catastrophic.”

Lew previously said that the Treasury would exhaust the extraordinary measures it has used to create headroom under the debt limit by mid-October, at which point it would have only $50 billion in cash on hand and whatever revenues come in on a given day with which to pay the government’s bills.

Read more from this story HERE.

‘Biggest Shakeup in Talk-Radio History’

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Fulfilling a prediction he made last month, top-rated radio host Michael Savage told his listeners tonight he will take over the prime afternoon-drive slot on Cumulus Media Networks stations in January.

Opening his show with the announcement, Savage called it “the biggest shake-up in talk radio history.”

The 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Time slot is currently held by Sean Hannity, who has ended his relationship with the network.

Savage said he expects immediately to have five to six times as many listeners.

“The time slot says that something about my show has resonated with the American people,” Savage said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Team USA Stages Greatest Comeback in America’s Cup History (+video)

/0 Comments/in , /by

picture - America's CupSAN FRANCISCO – Now that Oracle Team USA has improbably retained the 34th America’s Cup, what can Larry Ellison & Co. do for an encore?

Oracle’s billionaire bankroller has many questions to answer in the weeks ahead after his team, under the never-say-die skipper Jimmy Spithill, staged the greatest comeback in 162 years of the competition.

Trailing 8-1 a week ago, Oracle sailed away from Emirates Team New Zealand by 44 seconds on Wednesday to retain the Auld Mug, the oldest trophy in international sports, in a winner-take-all finale on San Francisco Bay.

The American-backed team won eight consecutive races to win 9-8 in the first-to-nine series.

Read more from this story HERE.

Illegal Aliens Awaiting Deportation Got Preferred Jobs in U.S. Prisons

/0 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Federal Prison Industries (FPI), the government-owned corporation that operates factories in federal prisons, employed 37 inmates as of June 2012 who had been issued final deportation orders and were therefore ineligible for FPI employment.

Although those 37 illegal alien inmates represented less than one percent of Federal Prison Industries’ total inmate employees, the audit shows a “weakness in FPI’s internal controls,” says a recent report from the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

“We found that FPI’s internal controls did not ensure that aliens who were ordered deported were removed from FPI employment as required,” the report said.

Federal Prison Industries says once the matter came to its attention, it immediately removed 35 of the 37 deportable inmates from FPI employment. Of the remaining two inmates, one claimed he had been misidentified, and one had already stopped working at FPI.

Of the 12,394 inmates FPI employed as of June 2012, 1,580 (approximately 13 percent) were not U.S. citizens, but only 37 had received final deportation orders, which should have precluded them from holding FPI jobs.

Read more from this story HERE.

Poll: President Obama’s Approval Underwater

/3 Comments/in , /by

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

President Barack Obama is viewed more unfavorably than favorably for the first time in his presidency, according to a new poll.

In a Bloomberg poll released late Tuesday, 49 percent viewed Obama unfavorably compared with 47 percent who viewed him favorably, the first time he has seen a net unfavorability in Bloomberg’s polling during his presidency.

While the Republican Party is still viewed more unfavorably than Obama, 56 percent to 34 percent favorable, more people blame Obama for pursuing the wrong policies than Republicans for stymying the economy, 32 percent to 28 percent. Thirty percent of those surveyed said the recession is too severe for government to help it rebound.

Read more from this story HERE.