Outrage as KISS Player Mouths Off on Muslims

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Photo Credit: smh.comKISS bass player Gene Simmons has caused an uproar among Australia’s Muslim community by launching an attack on Islamic culture while in Melbourne.

The lizard-tongued rock god who is touring Australia with the world’s most enduring glam rock band launched an attack on Muslim extremists during an interview on Melbourne’s 3AW radio – including comments which were labelled inaccurate.

“Extremism believes that it’s okay to strap bombs on to your children and send them to paradise and whatever else and to behead people,” he said yesterday.

The Israeli-born US musician went on to say Islam was a “vile culture” that treated women worse than dogs.

Muslim women had to walk behind their men and were not allowed to be educated or own houses, he said. “Your dog, however, can walk side by side, your dog is allowed to have its own dog house… you can send your dog to school to learn tricks, sit, beg, do all that stuff – none of the women have that advantage.”

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Insurers Predict 100%-400% Obamacare Rate Explosion

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Internal cost estimates from 17 of the nation’s largest insurance companies indicate that health insurance premiums will grow an average of 100 percent under Obamacare, and that some will soar more than 400 percent, crushing the administration’s goal of affordability.

New regulations, policies, taxes, fees and mandates are the reason for the unexpected “rate shock,” according to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which released a report Monday based on internal documents provided by the insurance companies. The 17 companies include Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser Foundation.

The report found that individuals will face “premium increases of nearly 100 percent on average, with potential highs eclipsing 400 percent. Meanwhile, small businesses can expect average premium increases in the small group market of up to 50 percent, with potential highs over 100 percent.”

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The Grand Old Poseurs

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Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ostentatiously announced their intention to fight implementation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). They sent a letter to the President decrying the way IPAB will “impact America’s seniors … in the absence of the democratic process.” Sadly, the exercise was a charade. McConnell and Boehner know perfectly well that Obama has no intention of setting up this controversial rationing board until after 2015.

IPAB, as you will recall, was created by the authors of Obamacare to do the dirty work of cutting Medicare costs. It will be, for all intents and purposes, a death panel composed of 15 unelected apparatchiks whose method of “cost control” will be old-fashioned government rationing. It will simply deny payment for expensive medical procedures without which the lives of many seniors will be forfeit. However, as David Hogberg pointed out last month, the President has made no move to implement this integral component of “reform.”

Why not? Well, IPAB comes into play only if Medicare costs increase at a certain rate above the Consumer Price Index. Perhaps Obama had a presentiment that the program’s costs, which have been out of control for decades, would miraculously stop increasing at their usual rate. As it happens, that is precisely what his new CMS actuary has reported. On April 30, acting actuary Paul Spitalnic advised his boss that “the projected 5-year Medicare per capita growth rate” won’t hit the trigger amount that would require the intervention of IPAB.

This memo was sent 9 days before Boehner and McConnell sent their meaningless missive. They have no doubt been planning for some time to make IPAB an issue in the 2014 midterms, and were caught flat-footed when our wily President and his creatures at HHS contrived to put off implementation until after those crucial elections. In other words, these two Republican “leaders” have once again been outmaneuvered by President Obama and are now attempting to obscure that pathetic reality with empty words and impotent posturing.

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Multiple Agencies Involved with IRS Intimidation

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Photo Credit: APTea party groups’ allegations that the IRS has long been targeting them for their political beliefs were recently confirmed by an apology from the IRS. The scandal gained traction as congressional leaders began efforts to hold the IRS accountable and understand the depths of the federal government’s politically-motivated abuses of power.

Yet given the history of such abuses, the problem may extend further than the IRS, and require a “government-wide” probe across several agencies, as Senate [Minority] Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has suggested.

The issue was initially believed to only involve groups with “Tea Party” or “patriots” in their names being singled out for greater scrutiny by the IRS, but recent admissions reveal that a wide range of conservative and constitution-oriented groups were singled out by the federal government. Most media outlets have focused on 2012 as the year the abuses occurred, but one prominent Tea Party-initiated organization, True the Vote, began to run into alleged federal government abuses in 2010–from a variety of agencies.

True the Vote, a Houston-based nonprofit which focuses on election integrity issues, was formed by Catherine Engelbrecht and her King Street Patriots Tea Party group. True the Vote applied to the IRS for their 501(c3) non-profit status in July 2010, and almost immediately their problems began.

Within two years, multiple federal agencies, along with an EPA-affiliated Texas state agency, began auditing True the Vote and its founders, visiting their group, their businesses, and asking questions of people who knew them. The IRS was not the only governmental agency involved.

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Father Dies After Begging For Life While Cops Struck Him With Batons; Cellphone Videos Seized

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Photo Credit: KERO-TVA California father of four died after being beaten by police outside of a Bakersfield hospital, while witnesses say he begged for his life. A couple witnesses filmed the gruesome scene, but say they were later forced to give their cellphones to authorities and have yet to receive their devices back.

The Bakersfield Californian reported 33-year-old David Sal Silva died early Wednesday morning in the hospital after he was struck an unknown amount of times by nine authorities seeking to subdue him. Silva was considered possibly intoxicated and an autopsy is expected to reveal if he was killed by injuries sustained in the beating or other complications.

Police and county sheriffs were responding to a call regarding a possibly intoxicated man outside Kern Medical Center Tuesday night and say Silva resisted them.

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Monthly Federal Tax Revenues Hit All-Time Record in April; Individual Income Taxes Up 36%

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Photo Credit: APFederal tax revenues hit an all-time non-inflation-adjusted monthly high of approximately $406.7 billion in April, according to newly released data from the U.S. Treasury.

Overall federal tax revenues in April 2013 were up 28 percent from April 2012, and individual-income-tax revenues specifically were up 36 percent.

Because federal income tax returns are due on April 15, April is almost always the peak month for federal tax revenues. (Over the past twelve years, the only year that deviated from that pattern was 2010, when the federal government took in $251 billion in July compared to $245.3 billion in April.)

Prior to this April, nominal federal monthly tax revenues had hit their historic peak in April 2008, when they reached approximately $403.8 billion. The third highest month for federal tax revenues was April 2007, when they hit $383.6 billion, and the fourth highest month was April 2012, when they hit $318.8 billion.

The $406.7 billion in overall tax revenue the Treasury raked in this April was an increase of about 28 percent from the $318.8 billion raked in last April.

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Benghazi Scapegoat Remains in Prison for Film

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Photo Credit: APThe man who made the anti-Islam film that Obama administration officials erroneously blamed for the Benghazi, Libya, terror attacks remains in federal prison eight months later, serving a yearlong sentence for probation violations committed as a result of his involvement with the video.

Mark Basseley Youssef, who made the film “Innocence of the Muslims” under the pseudonym Sam Bacile, was sentenced in November after pleading guilty to four violations of a supervised release order, which included lying to his probation officer, using aliases, and using the Internet, according to court records.

“There has been no change in his status that we’re aware of,” an official with the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Central District of California, the office that charged him, said Monday on condition of anonymity. The Federal Bureau of Prisons lists his release date as Sept. 26.

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Fox in the Hen House: Iran to Chair United Nations Arms Control Forum

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Photo Credit: APIran will preside over the United Nations arms control forum this month, despite the fact that it is under U.N. sanctions for illicit nuclear activities and routinely supplies arms to the terrorist organization Hezbollah in violation of international law.

The U.N.’s annual Conference on Disarmament, which Iran is slated to lead from May 27 to June 23, is the organization’s primary multilateral forum for negotiating arms control agreements.

The forum has given way to major international treaties on nuclear non-proliferation, prohibitions on chemical weapons, and bans on nuclear tests.

UN Watch, a Geneva-based watchdog group, blasted the decision to allow Iran to chair the conference.

“This is like putting Jack the Ripper in charge of a women’s shelter,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer in a statement. “Iran is an international outlaw state that illegally supplies rockets to Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, aiding and abetting mass murder and terrorism. To make this rogue regime head of world arms control is simply an outrage. Abusers of international norms should not be the public face of the U.N.”

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Indian Point To Become First Nuclear Plant To Operate With Expired License

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Photo Credit: Mario Tama/GettyImagesOne of two reactors at the Indian Point nuclear plant north of New York City will soon be operating with an expired license.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials said Monday that the situation resulted in part from a complicated license-renewal process for nuclear reactors, the Journal News reported.

Indian Point 2′s 40-year license expires on Sept. 28. NRC regional administrator Bill Dean said that’s at least a year before any decision will be made on whether to extend it for another 20 years.

Dean said the reactor can keep operating because Entergy Nuclear, its owner, filed for renewal more than five years before the expiration date.

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Obama’s Missile Defense Giveaway Feeding Impeachment Movement

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As many Restoring Liberty readers will remember, in March of last year Obama was caught on a hot mic promising Putin stooge Dmitry Medvedev that after his “last election,” he would have far more flexibility on missile defense issues. Medvedev obediently responded that he’d “transmit this information to Vladmimir.”

At the time, Charles Hurt, of the Washington Times, observed – tongue in cheek – that this proved Obama was not “Kenyan after all. He’s KGB.” Hurt went on to note – more seriously – that the hot mic event revealed Obama “plotting with the leader of one of our oldest adversaries to thwart the will of American voters and advance the interests of enemies who want to see the world’s last remaining beacon of freedom finally destroyed.”

And what exactly did Obama promise Russia? Obama whispered, “On these issues — but particularly missile defense — this can be solved.”

Fast forward to May 2013. Obama has gone through his “last election.” Apparently, he’s now making good on his 2012 “secret” promise to the Russians. According to the Associated Press, the “head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency says that the Obama administration has discussed declassifying key data on U.S. missile defense in order to provide it to Russia.”

Why? Purportedly, Obama is “exploring how to ease Russian concerns that the U.S. missile defense shield is aimed at countering Russia’s nuclear arsenal.”

So the plan is to give away critical missile defense data to a nuclear power that is in bed with Iran’s Ahmadinejad as well as other radical US enemies throughout the world.

This is insanity.

The GOP-controlled house should add this to its myriad of reasons to seek Obama’s impeachment.