Photo Credit: Fox News Amir Hekmati, one of the Americans freed from Iran in a prisoner swap, said Tuesday he couldn’t wait to return to his home in Michigan.
“I feel alive for the first time,” the 32-year-old retired Marine told reporters outside a hospital in Germany, one day after an emotional reunion there with his family . . .
Hekmati, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and pastor Saeed Abedini arrived late Sunday at the U.S. military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center for treatment. A fourth American released in exchange for the U.S. pardoning or dropping charges against seven Iranians opted to stay in Iran, and a fifth American was released separately.
Hekmati was detained in August 2011 on espionage charges. Hekmati says he went to Iran to visit family and spend time with his ailing grandmother. After his arrest, family members say they were told to keep the matter quiet.
He was convicted of spying and sentenced to death in 2012. After a higher court ordered a retrial, he was sentenced in 2014 to 10 years on a lesser charge. (Read more from “Former US Marine Freed From Iran: ‘I Feel Alive for the First Time'” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-20 19:27:362016-04-11 10:53:36Former US Marine Freed From Iran: ‘I Feel Alive for the First Time’ [+video]
UnitedHealth Group warned nearly two months ago that new customers from the Affordable Care Act exchanges would hurt the insurer’s bottom line, but it looks like it misestimated by how much as enrollments exceeded expectations.
UnitedHealth, the U.S.’s largest insurer, says it will incur as much as $100 million more in losses associated with 2016 ACA plans than previously forecast. That brings total ACA plan loss projections for its new fiscal year to more than $500 million, up from previous estimates of $400 million to $425 million.
The company said it would reconsider its participation in the government-mandated exchanges, according to statements made during UnitedHealths earnings Tuesday . . .
UnitedHealth reported losses of $720 million last year related to exchange enrollees, including $245 million for advance recognition of 2016 losses that aren’t included in the total estimated losses for this year. That means that UnitedHealth is expected to lose up to $745 million due to its 2016 ACA enrollees. (Read more from “UnitedHealth Says Obamacare Is Costing It Billions” HERE)
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) performed over 23 million gun background checks in fiscal year 2015 and a record 3 million requests in December alone – the highest number of monthly requests since after the Sandy Hook shooting massacre in December 2012.
Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-Conn.) asked Lynch what appropriations will be necessary for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to complete its goals as it relates to NICS and the growing number of applications as well as “the increased coordination that we want to see to make sure that we have all of the records uploaded on that system.”
Lynch said the DOJ estimates it would need $121 million to run NICS for fiscal year 2016 and an additional $35 million for fiscal year 2017 “on top of that base figure.”
“That would allow us to maintain the additional positions we hope to add this year. We may not be able to add all of them right away. As I indicated, there is time required to bring federal employees on board,” said Lynch. (Read more from “NICS Performed 23 Million Gun Background Checks in 2015” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-20 19:26:062016-04-11 10:53:37NICS Performed 23 Million Gun Background Checks in 2015
Controversial Fox News Channel contributor Stacey Dash weighed in on the brewing controversy surrounding this year’s Academy Award nominations.
With a dearth of black actors up for prominent recognition, actor Jada Pinkett-Smith and director Spike Lee have announced they will be boycotting the Oscars. While Dash acknowledged that the issue being raised is worthy of discussion, she noted one inconvenient fact regarding the timing of this trend.
“What I find astonishing,” she told Fox & Friends cohost Steve Doocy, “is we’ve had a black president in office for the past eight years who gets most of his funding from the liberal elite in Hollywood, yet there aren’t many roles for people of color.”
Criticizing what she portrayed as a hypocritical ideology, Dash pointed out that there are corresponding awards ceremonies with a very blatant racial discrimination against white entertainers.
“I think it’s ludicrous,” she said of the boycott, “because we have to make up our minds. Either we have integration or segregation. And if we don’t want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET, and the BET Awards and the Image Awards – where you’re only awarded if you’re black.” (Read more from “Watch: Actress Stacey Dash Just Shut Down Oscars Boycott by Pointing out One Thing” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-20 19:25:572016-04-11 10:53:37Watch: Actress Stacey Dash Just Shut Down Oscars Boycott by Pointing out One Thing
The Supreme Court will not hear an appeal that would reinstate an Arkansas law prohibiting abortion if an unborn child has a heartbeat.
The Human Heartbeat Protection Act barred abortionists from aborting a baby after 12 weeks if “the fetus that a pregnant woman is carrying possesses a detectible heartbeat.”
U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, who presided over Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton, struck down the Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act in March 2014, ruling that it “impermissibly infringes a woman’s Fourteenth Amendment right to elect to terminate a pregnancy.” Her ruling was upheld by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in St. Louis, last May . . .
The ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights, which brought the lawsuit, was overjoyed that the lower court rulings will stand.
“Arkansas politicians cannot pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they want to uphold,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “The Supreme Court has never wavered in affirming that every woman has a right to safely and legally end a pregnancy in the U.S — and this extreme abortion ban was a direct affront to that right.” (Read more from “Supreme Court Rejects Heartbeat Bill Appeal” HERE)
“They won’t be able to be slurping off the gravy train.” ~ Sarah Palin, during her speech endorsing Donald Trump.
Throughout the debate over birthright citizenship last year, we were told by the liberal elites in both parties that foreign nationals have the right to violate our sovereignty, drop an anchor baby in our country, assert jurisdiction, and unilaterally demand citizenship and welfare on the taxpayer dime. At its core, the anchor baby strategy is designed to legitimize an illegitimate entitlement to other people’s sovereignty and money, absent their consent.
In the same respect, we can say the ethanol mandate is the anchor baby of our economic system. Energy is the lifeblood of a free economy. Much like immigration stands at the nexus of our culture, security and fiscal solvency, energy stands at the nexus of the bread and butter economic issues – jobs, income, and cost of living. Rather than allowing Americans to use our freedom to purchase the best form of fuel, the Washington cartel ethanol lobbyists have violated our sovereignty as individual consumers and used the boot of government to mandate that we only purchase fuel blended with their ineffective product.
To paraphrase Donald Trump, only the pathetic losers and dummies in the political establishment could think it’s a good idea to take 40% of the corn crop and shove it into our engines, thereby raising the cost of food and fuel—the two staples of middle class households in America.
Just how devastating is the ethanol mandate?
According to a study cited by the Heartland Institute, families are forced to pay $2,055 more for food every year because 40% of the corn crop – the antecedent of the food chain – is used for fuel. A study from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that restaurants pay $18,000 more per year.
Ethanol is so impotent as a fuel for automobiles that when Rep. Ron DeSantis offered an amendment to repeal the mandate, he was told by the Congressional Budget Office that it would increase the deficit by decreasing tax revenue. How? By alleviating consumers from purchasing diluted fuel and allowing them to actually fill up their tanks with unvarnished gasoline, motorists wouldn’t have to refill their tanks as often as they do now. That would result in less revenue for the government!
Hence, we have an entire venture socialist, government/corporate racket embedded in our economy that relies upon coercing individuals to purchase a terrible product. Much like Obamacare has wreaked havoc on affordable insurance plans, we have an energy mandate that bankrupts food producers, restaurants, and consumers, all so a few cronies can slurp off the gravy train.
The ethanol mandate was foisted upon the American people by the establishment in both parties. Not surprisingly, Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who is the textbook definition of the GOP establishment, is trashing Ted Cruz for opposing the anchor baby of energy policy. Evidently, Donald Trump loves the establishment so long as they support the ethanol anchor baby.
Wow, the highly respected Governor of Iowa just stated that "Ted Cruz must be defeated." Big shoker! People do not like Ted.
Over the past few months, I’ve criticized some of the “D.C. conservative movement types” for focusing on small-potato issues while ignoring the issues pertaining to our sovereignty, security, and society. But ethanol is not some in-the-weeds fiscal issue. It pollutes the lifeblood of our free economy and represents the most tyrannical venture socialist policies of the political establishment. To force Americans to purchase the defective product of well-connected cronies to service our most vital needs is a violation of our individual sovereignty the same way unconditional birthright citizenship violates our national sovereignty.
Nobody can call themselves a conservative, much less a populist conservative, and associate themselves with the ethanol gravy train. To quote Joe Biden: the ethanol mandate is a “big…deal.”
Sarah Palin is absolutely right to rail against the crony capitalists and those who slurp off the gravy train. Hopefully she will convince Donald Trump to change his mind and ignore the gravy-slurping Terry Branstad and deport the anchor baby of our economy – once and for all. (For more from the author of “Ethanol Is the Anchor Baby of Our Economic System” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-20 19:16:002016-04-11 10:53:37Ethanol Is the Anchor Baby of Our Economic System
The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites.
For 1,400 years the compound survived assaults by nature and man, standing as a place of worship recently for U.S. troops. In earlier centuries, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches and prayed in the cool chapel. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ’s name, were carved near the entrance.
Now satellite photos obtained exclusively by The Associated Press confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationists — St. Elijah’s Monastery of Mosul has been completely wiped out.
In his office in exile in Irbil, Iraq, the Rev. Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared quietly at before- and after-images of the monastery that once perched on a hillside above his hometown of Mosul. Shaken, he flipped back to his own photos for comparison.
“I can’t describe my sadness,” he said in Arabic. “Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled. We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land.” (Read more from “Oldest Christian Monastery in Iraq Is Razed” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-20 19:14:392016-04-11 10:53:37Oldest Christian Monastery in Iraq Is Razed
British sufferers from multiple sclerosis are reporting remarkable improvements in their condition after injection with adult stem cells taken from their own bodies. The treatment is part of a clinical trial of techniques pioneered at America’s Northwestern University by Dr. Richard Burt.
The adult stem cell treatment for MS is just one of many being applied around the world for more than 100 medical conditions, many to do with diseases of the auto-immune system.
Sheffield patient Holly Drewry, a 25-year-old mother of one, went into that city’s Royal Hallamshire Hospital in a wheelchair but left on her own feet after a single treatment using her own adult stem cells, taken from her bone marrow. “I started seeing changes within days of the stem cells being put in. It was a miracle,” she told a BBC interviewer for an episode of Panorama.
Researchers for a clinical trial at Hallamshire and at a London hospital have re-examined Drewry and found her multiple sclerosis in remission.
“I couldn’t walk steadily. I couldn’t trust myself holding her [daughter Isla] in case I fell. … It is scary because you think, when is it going to end?” said Drewry. But after a two-stage treatment involving first chemotherapy to kill her malfunctioning autoimmune system and then adult stem cells to remake it, she reported that “I walked out of the hospital. I walked into my house and hugged Isla. I cried and cried. It was a bit overwhelming. It was a miracle.” (Read more from “MS Patients See ‘Miraculous’ Healings After Adult Stem Cell Treatments” HERE)
A .50-caliber rifle found at Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman’s hideout in Mexico was funneled through the gun-smuggling investigation known as Fast and Furious, sources confirmed Tuesday to Fox News.
A .50-caliber is a massive rifle that can stop a car or, as it was intended, take down a helicopter.
After the raid on Jan. 8 in the city of Los Mochis that killed five of his men and wounded one Mexican marine, officials found a number of weapons inside the house where Guzman was staying, including the rifle, officials said.
When agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives checked serial numbers of the eight weapons found in his possession, they found one of the two .50-caliber weapons traced back to the ATF program, sources said.
Federal officials told Fox News they are not sure how many of the weapons seized from Guzman’s house actually originated in the U.S. and where they were purchased, but are investigating. (Read more from “‘Fast and Furious’ Rifle Capable of Taking Down Helicopter Found in ‘El Chapo’ Cache” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-20 19:13:152016-04-11 10:53:37‘Fast and Furious’ Rifle Capable of Taking Down Helicopter Found in ‘El Chapo’ Cache
U.S. health officials are reporting new cases of a mosquito-borne virus linked to birth defects.
Three cases of the Zika virus have been confirmed in Florida, and two pregnant women tested positive in Illinois. Texas and Hawaii also have confirmed cases, including a baby born with a birth defect.
The growing cases at home are traced back to overseas, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a travel alert over the virus, warning pregnant women to avoid some of the most popular American vacation destinations, reports Elaine Quijano of CBS News’ digital network, CBSN.
In the handful of confirmed cases in the U.S., those infected traveled outside of the country and tested positive once they got home.
The Zika virus is caused by the Aedes mosquito. It’s been determined women can pass the virus to their babies, causing birth defects. (Read more from “Concerns Over Zika Virus Outbreak Growing in U.S.” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-01-20 19:12:552016-04-11 10:53:38Concerns Over Zika Virus Outbreak Growing in U.S.
