Greenspan: Economic ‘Uncertainty’ Greatest I Have Known

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Landov

Photo Credit: Reuters/Landov

Uncertainty now represents the biggest problem plaguing the economy, says former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

While the Fed’s massive easing program has stabilized much of the economy, “the issue goes beyond that, because, even though we have very major expansion of the balance sheets, it has not essentially spilled over in lending by commercial banks into the usual pattern that one sees when reserves go up,” he told CNN’s “GPS” program.

So why aren’t banks lending more?

“The first and most important issue to recognize in the United States — and it’s a problem to an extent in other countries as well — is that the level of uncertainty about the very long-term future is far greater than at any time I particularly remember,” Greenspan said.

And one political argument is that “the extent of government intervention has been so horrendous that businesses cannot basically decide what to do about the future,” Greenspan said.

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Report: Obama Administration Knew Syrian Rebels Had Access to Chemical Weapons

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Photo Credit: Stringer / Reuters

Photo Credit: Stringer / Reuters

The Obama administration knew that a Syrian rebel faction had the ability to make chemical weapons but omitted that knowledge when building their case for a strike on Syria, an explosive new report alleges.

Seymour Hersh reports in the London Review of Books on Sunday that President Obama, while pitching the administration’s case for war, “failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country’s civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack.”

The report, the thrust of which the Obama Administration denies, calls into question the narrative that the administration has outlined since an August 21 chemical attack on a Damascus suburb that almost led the United States into an air war with Syria. The march toward war was based on what Obama and his top aides have characterized as conclusive evidence that Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian government had carried out the attack.

The Hersh article is based in part on a four-page secret cable given to a top official at the Defense Intelligence Agency on June 20, one of a group of intelligence community documents allegedly stating that jihadi rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra has the ability to make sarin gas. Sarin is the chemical believed to have been used in the Aug 21 chemical attack in Ghouta that crossed Obama’s “red line” and prompted the administration to push for a strike on Assad’s regime. The story is sourced mainly to intelligence and military officers and consultants.

“When the attack occurred al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad,” Hersh writes.

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Rand Paul Wary of 2016 Run’s Impact on Family

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) said Sunday he was seriously considering a run for the presidency in 2016, but acknowledged potential opposition from his wife was a complicating factor.

Mr. Paul, a favorite of tea party activists, said he would take the next year to explore further the possibility of running and to discuss the process with his family.

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Sheriff Defies Obama, Will Not Lower US Flag for Mandela (+video)

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Photo Credit: mrsdkrebs

Photo Credit: mrsdkrebs

The American flag that flies over the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office will be raised high tonight despite an order by President Barack Obama that flags across the country be lowered to half-staff to honor the death of iconic South African leader Nelson Mandela.

Sheriff Rick Clark told The Greenville News that he has ordered the flag be raised at the end of today because he said the honor of lowering flags to half-staff should be reserved for Americans.

“The flag at half-staff is for Americans’ ultimate sacrifice for our country,” Clark said. “We should never stray away from that.”

The flag has flown at half-staff and will continue to during daylight hours today in honor of a Lowcountry law enforcement officer who was killed and in honor of Pearl Harbor Day, Clark said.

However, come tonight, the flag will be raised, he said.

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Angelina Jolie Directing Movie “Unbroken” About Olympian/WWII POW Redeemed by Jesus

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Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

Photo Credit: Universal Pictures

Actress Angelina Jolie, like other powerful stars in Hollywood, has begun directing her own movies. Surprisingly, her next project is about a Christian athlete, with a script penned by the notorious Coen brothers (Fargo, Raising Arizona and True Grit).

The movie, Unbroken, is based on writer Laura Hillenbrand’s biography of Louis Zamperini, the Depression-era Olympic track athlete turned World War II hero turned follower of Jesus Christ via a Billy Graham crusade turned internationally renowned inspirational speaker. Talk about a cinema-worthy story arc.

Born the son of Italian immigrants in 1917, Zamperini was a smoker by age 5, a school bully by third grade and a menace to society by high school. Thankfully, Zamperini was encouraged to put his talents toward more productive pursuits, such as running track. Successful in the sport and eventually known as “the tornado from Torrance,” Zamperini was invited to train for the 1936 Olympics and eventually enrolled at the University of Southern California on a scholarship.

At the 1936 Olympics in Nazi-ridden Berlin, Zamperini’s most notorious fan was Adolf Hitler. After his disappointing placement in the 1936 games, Zamperini hoped to requalify for the Olympic team in 1940, but the games were canceled due to the outbreak of World War II.

A bombardier in WWII, Zamperini’s aircraft crashed into the Pacific Ocean. He and one other survivor spent 47 days at sea in a life raft, drifting some 2,000 miles, only to be picked up by a Japanese war ship. The Japanese put Zamperini and his companion into their horrific prison camps, where he was tortured beyond depiction for two years. He was made a special object of cruelty by the infamous Japanese torturer known as “The Bird.”

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Satanists Seek Spot Next to Ten Commandments Monument on Steps of Oklahoma’s Statehouse

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

In their zeal to tout their faith in the public square, conservatives in Oklahoma may have unwittingly opened the door to a wide range of religious groups, including satanists who are seeking to put their own statue next to a Ten Commandments monument on the Statehouse steps.

The Republican-controlled Legislature in this state known as the buckle of the Bible Belt authorized the privately funded Ten Commandments monument in 2009, and it was placed on the Capitol grounds last year despite criticism from legal experts who questioned its constitutionality. The Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking its removal.

But the New York-based Satanic Temple saw an opportunity. It notified the state’s Capitol Preservation Commission that it wants to donate a monument and plans to submit one of several possible designs this month, said Lucien Greaves, a spokesman for the temple.

“We believe that all monuments should be in good taste and consistent with community standards,” Greaves wrote in letter to state officials. “Our proposed monument, as an homage to the historic/literary Satan, will certainly abide by these guidelines.”

Greaves said one potential design involves a pentagram, a satanic symbol, while another is meant to be an interactive display for children. He said he expects the monument, if approved by Oklahoma officials, would cost about $20,000.

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NYC Group Puts Bounty on ‘Knockout Game’ Participants

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Photo Credit: YouTube Screenshot

Photo Credit: YouTube Screenshot

A Jewish group in New York City has begun offering a bounty of $5,000 on participants in the so-called knockout game in which participants attack innocent bystanders, attempting to render them unconscious with a blow to the head.

The game, which has spread nationwide, usually ends with a video of the attack uploaded to social media websites and has resulted in several deaths.

Most of the victims of the attacks in New York have been Jewish.

The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, an umbrella organization coordinating activities among various Jewish organizations in the city, is now “offering a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrators of ‘knockout’ attacks,” David Pollock, Director of Government Relations & Security at the JCRC, told The Jerusalem Post.

The organization, he said, has been in close contact with the New York Police Department, which he said has increased its patrols in the neighborhoods in which attacks have occurred.

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UIW Police Officer Involved in Fatal Shooting

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Photo Credit: JOHN DAVENPORT/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Photo Credit: JOHN DAVENPORT/SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

Just before University of the Incarnate Word senior Robert Cameron Redus was fatally shot in a struggle with a UIW police officer Friday morning, a neighbor overheard what may have been his last words.

“I heard (a man) say, ‘Oh, you’re gonna shoot me?’ like sarcastic almost,” said Mohammad Haidarasl, 22, who was on his couch in his ground-floor unit at the Treehouse Apartments in Alamo Heights at about 2 a.m.

Less than a minute later, Haidarasl heard four to six gunshots.

“I jumped up and hid in my closet,” he said.

Haidarasl didn’t look out the window until he heard emergency vehicles converging on the quiet apartment complex. It wasn’t until later that he realized the person shot was his upstairs neighbor, whom he described as “the nicest guy.”

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Obama Reveals How A Future GOP President Can Gut ObamaCare

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606x404-2efe36e30370e6ba74d76342f78fc799I owe Mitt Romney an apology. During the 2012 Republican presidential primary season, I repeatedly criticized Romney — and personally challenged him during his editorial board meeting with the Washington Examiner — for promising that if elected, on day one of his presidency, he would grant Obamacare waivers to all 50 states.

As I reported, under the text of the law, the ability to offer waivers to states was subject to many restrictions and wouldn’t even be an option until 2017, four years after his hypothetical swearing in.

Though I still believe I was right about what the statute said, as it turns out, I was being old-fashioned by taking the letter of the law so literally.

Having watched President Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius over the past several months unilaterally alter or outright ignore major portions of the law, I now believe that a future Republican president would have greater latitude to gut Obamacare than I once thought possible.

The changes instituted by the Obama administration in response to implementation snags have ranged from perfectly legal areas of administrative discretion stemming from the vast regulatory powers granted to the HHS secretary under Obamacare, to more creative interpretations of that discretion, to Obama simply choosing to ignore parts of the law that became inconvenient.

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Ted Cruz and Mike Lee Being Vindicated on Shutdown

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The GOP establishment is loath to admit it, but the government shutdown is turning out to be a brilliant political chess move on the part of Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. The Obamacare disaster, fully predictable by anyone who understands the effect of incentives and the fundamental incompetence of academic theorists and left wing ideologues, has made the go-for-broke attempt to stop it an obvious profile in courage.

Just take a look at this chart from the Huffington Post, via Charlie Cook:

generic ballot 12 13

Cook, a seasoned observer, sees the polling data moving against Democrats, and wonders, “Can Democrats Recover From the Obamacare Catastrophe?” But he fails to connect the dots, and dishes some typical establishmentarian snark at Cruz and Lee.

…in August, statements started coming from some of the more exotic Republicans in the House and Senate that perhaps it was a good idea to shut down the government over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Notwithstanding warnings from House and Senate Republican leaders and experienced (and wiser) members that such an effort would be a disaster for the party, the Republicans in the “kamikaze caucus” barreled ahead, over the cliff, shutting down the government.

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