Steyn: Kindly Note the Impending Bankruptcy

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Previously on The Perils of Pauline:

Last year, our plucky heroine, the wholesome apple-cheeked American republic, was trapped in an express elevator hurtling out of control toward the debt ceiling. Would she crash into it? Or would she make some miraculous escape?

Yes! At the very last minute of her white-knuckle thrill ride to her rendezvous with destiny, she was rescued by Congress’s decision to set up . . . a Super Committee! Those who can, do. Those who can’t, form a committee. Those who really can’t, form a Super Committee — and then put John Kerry on it for good measure. The bipartisan Super Committee of Super Friends was supposed to find $1.2 trillion dollars of deficit reduction by last Thanksgiving, or plucky little America would wind up trussed like a turkey and carved up by “automatic sequestration.”

Sequestration sounds like castration, only more so: It would chop off everything in sight. It would be so savage in its dismemberment of poor helpless America that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the course of a decade the sequestration cuts would reduce the federal debt by $153 billion. Sorry, I meant to put on my Dr. Evil voice for that: ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS!!! Which is about what the United States government currently borrows every month. No sane person could willingly countenance brutally saving a month’s worth of debt over the course of a decade.

So now we have the latest cliffhanger: the Fiscal Cliff, below which lies a bottomless abyss of sequestration, tax-cut-extension expiries, Alternative Minimum Tax adjustments, new Obamacare taxes, the expiry of the deferment of the Medicare Sustainable Growth Rate, as well as the expiry of the deferment of the implementation of the adjustment of the correction of the extension of the reduction to the proposed increase of the Alternative Minimum Growth Sustainability Reduction Rate. They don’t call it a yawning chasm for nothing.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Sibling Rivalry In The Womb?

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photo credit: eraphernalia vintage

Researchers at London’s Center for Fetal Care came up with some interesting footage, while conducting an MRI on a patient pregnant with twins.

Caught on tape, the siblings appear to be competing for space in the womb.

Proof positive that some afflictions we are just born with.

Check out the video:

Study: American Households Hit 43-Year Low In Net Worth

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Washington – The median net worth of American households has dropped to a 43-year low as the lower and middle classes appear poorer and less stable than they have been since 1969.

According to a recent study by New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff, median net worth is at the decades-low figure of $57,000 (in 2010 dollars). And as the numbers in his study reflect, the situation only appears worse when all the statistics are taken as a whole.

According to Wolff, between 1983 and 2010, the percentage of households with less than $10,000 in assets (using constant 1995 dollars) rose from 29.7 percent to 37.1 percent. The “less than $10,000″ figure includes the numerous households that have no assets at all, or “negative assets,” which is otherwise known as “debt.”

Over that same period of time, the wealthiest 1 percent of American households increased their average wealth by 71 percent.

As noted by Daily Finance, from 1983 to 2010 the share of total wealth held by the richest 10 percent of American households increased from 68.2 percent to 76.7 percent. Meanwhile, all the rest of Americans lost financial ground.

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Opposed New Iran Sanctions

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photo credit: adam jones

The White House announced its opposition to a new round of Iran sanctions that the Senate unanimously approved Friday, in the latest instance of Congress pushing for more aggressive punitive measures on Iran than the administration deems prudent.

On Thursday, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) introduced the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, which the Senate passed 94-0. The new legislative language would blacklist Iran’s energy, port, shipping, and shipbuilding sectors, while also placing new restrictions on Iran’s ability to get insurance for all these industries. The legislation would also vastly expand U.S. support for human rights inside Iran and impose new sanctions on Iranians who divert humanitarian assistance from its intended purpose.

“The window is closing. The time for the waiting game is over,” Menendez said on the Senate floor Thursday night. “Yes, our sanctions are having a demonstrable effect on the Iranian economy, but Iran is still working just as hard to develop nuclear weapons.”

But the White House told several Senate offices Thursday evening that the administration was opposed to the amendment. National Security Spokesman Tommy Vietor sent The Cable the administration’s official position, explaining the White House’s view the sanctions aren’t needed and aren’t helpful at this time.

“As we focus with our partners on effectively implementing these efforts, we believe additional authorities now threaten to undercut these efforts,” he said. “We also have concerns with some of the formulations as currently drafted in the text and want to work through them with our congressional partners to make the law more effective and consistent with the current sanctions law to ensure we don’t undercut our success to date.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: The Real Danger Is Not Going Over The ‘Fiscal Cliff’

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In an interview with CNBC earlier this week, economist Peter Schiff suggested that the time for austerity is now. The real danger, he says, is not going over the ‘fiscal cliff.’

In his view, continuing down the road we’re on will only make matters worse, and eventually Asia will stop loaning money to a dead-beat customer who can’t pay back its loans.

See interview below.

Midwife in California Arrested by Armed Thugs, Cash Taken From Home

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A 60-year old midwife who has delivered hundreds of healthy babies in California was arrested by armed agents in her home earlier this month. A local TV station reported that

Brenda Capps was booked for violation of Business and Professions Code section 2052, which is unlicensed practice of medicine.

Investigators with the Medical Board’s Operation Safe Medicine conducted an undercover investigation that led to Capp’s arrest.

The Medical Board first became aware of Capps during another investigation and successful criminal prosecution of an unlicensed person for practicing midwifery and medicine. During the initial investigation of Capps, Medical Board investigators confirmed that she was unlicensed and warned her not to practice midwifery without being properly licensed.

Following her arrest, Ms. Capps was booked in the county jail on felony charges.

Unlike other recent midwifery prosecution cases, Ms. Capps’ case did not involve any allegations of medical malpractice. Rather, the heavy hand of California’s Medical Board police (yes, they have guns) was brought to bear against Ms. Capps, apparently to send a message to other liberty-minded practitioners that unlicensed birthing will not be tolerated on the left-Coast.

Here’s what Ms. Capps’ husband, an itinerant pastor, had to say about the jack-booted arrest of his wife:

[A]fter 22 years of faithful midwifery ministry the [California] Medical Board came into our home and arrested Brenda Capps on Thursday Nov. 15th 2012 around 11 a.m. Brenda works under The Religious Exemption Clause and has every client sign the form for her care. We have obtained an outstanding attorney (David Faulkner of Bakersfield) and the Midwives all over [California] and USA and even out of the country are calling and in support. We seek your prayers. My wife is fearful. We are staying with her at all times. We will fight this to victory. All babies due are being delivered by other midwives in support of midwifery. Brenda Capps works as a Christian Domiciliary Midwife and within her rights of the law. The MB people who were all over our home with guns took $500.00 cash money from Brenda’s desk that was her birthday money.

Read more concerning this story HERE.

Ambassador: Al-Qaeda Probably Has U.S. Weaponry

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WASHINGTON – Robert S. Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, says it’s possible that arms and munitions paid for by the United States are finding their way into al-Qaeda hands in Syria.

It was at a panel discussion held by the Middle East Institute in Washington that he declared, “We strongly, strongly, strongly support the efforts of the Syrian opposition coalition to develop its organization….we think they are absolutely…they are a legitimate representative of the Syrian peoples’ aspiration and we will work with them, we will cooperate with them.”

But there has been evidence of growing activity by al-Qaida and Islamic extremist elements inside Syria as part of that opposition coalition, officials note. And they may be getting some of the military supplies.

Ford acknowledged that there is no way to be able to track the destinations of all of the weapons help that is going into the region, and it’s possible al-Qaeda – or other anti-American jihadist groups – could be collecting some.

Read more from this story HERE.

Conservative Activist Threatens to Steer Donors From RNC if GOP Raises Taxes

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist and fundraiser, is threatening to steer donors away from the Republican Party if GOP lawmakers sign a deal to raise taxes.

Bozell sent a letter to Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus on Wednesday pledging to make it his mission to counsel conservative donors to shun the party if its leaders in Congress agree to raise taxes.

Bozell, the chairman of ForAmerica Inc., has been active in conservative political circles for three decades and estimates he has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for “an alphabet soup of conservative causes.”

“Reince, it pains me to say this, but if the Republican Party breaks its word to the American people and goes along with President Obama with tax increases, it will have betrayed conservatives for the final time,” Bozell wrote.

“I will make it my mission to ensure that every conservative donor to the Republican Party that I have worked with for the last three decades — and there are many and they have given tens of millions to Republican causes — gives not one penny more to the Republican Party or any member of Congress that votes for tax increases,” he warned.

Read more from this story HERE.

No Answers in Death of Technician Linked to Andrew Breitbart

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In the early afternoon of April 18, 2012, Michael Cormier, an autopsy technician at the Los Angeles coroner’s office, drove himself to Kaiser Permanente Hospital complaining of heart and stomach pain and diarrhea. The doctors suspected a heart issue or an ulcer and recommended he follow up with his regular physician. Two days later, Cormier asked his wife to call 911. An ambulance took him Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where he died several hours later from massive organ failure.

While he was at Providence St. Joseph, an unidentified family member called and recommended that the hospital check Cormier for poison. A screen test found a significant amount of arsenic in Cormier’s system, and the hospital contacted the Los Angeles Police Department. In the early stages of the investigation into Cormier’s death, the police wouldn’t rule out an accident, suicide, or something more nefarious, and the coroner deferred the cause of death pending further toxicology results.

In all, it was not a remarkable set of circumstances, but Cormier’s death made national news when numerous right-wing blogs linked it to the death of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative media juggernaut and Tea Party hero who had died on March 1 at the age of 43.

“According to early reports, Michael Cormier was ‘seemingly healthy,’ yet ‘suddenly stricken’ with a fatal condition—just like Andrew Breitbart,” read a post on Infowars.com.

The blogs were already speculating that Breitbart—who had announced shortly before his death that he had acquired deeply damaging video footage of President Obama—had been assassinated by the president or his supporters. When Cormier died on the day the coroner’s office announced Breitbart’s cause of death as a heart attack, the right-wing conspiracy theories became more heated. Infowars asked, “Was Cormier targeted because he knew something” about Breitbart’s death which contradicted the official findings?

Read more from this story HERE.

UK Doctor’s Horrifying Admission Reveals How Sick & Disabled Babies Are Put on ‘Death Pathways’, Deprived of Food & Fluid for 10 Days

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Sick children and even disabled newborn babies, are reportedly being discharged from NHS hospitals in England only to die slowly at home or in hospices in an unfathomable manner. The innocent children are being put on controversial “death pathways,” once only thought to have involved elderly and terminally ill adult patients.

The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), an organization that facilitates end-of-life treatment, is behind the inhumane program. The Daily Mail has learned the process of “withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.” In other words, patients — young and old — are slowly starved and dehydrated to death.

One doctor, acting as a whistle blower, admitted to starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal unit of one hospital in a leading medical journal. The doctor describes it as a 10-day process, during which the baby becomes “smaller an shrunken.”

Roughly 130,000 elderly and terminally ill patients reportedly die on the Liverpool Care Pathway, or “death pathways.” LCP is now being independently investigated at the orders of ministers in England.

The Daily Mail has more details on this tragic story:

“The investigation, which will include child patients, will look at whether cash payments to hospitals to hit death pathway targets have influenced doctors’ decisions. Medical critics of the LCP insist it is impossible to say when a patient will die and as a result the LCP death becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They say it is a form of euthanasia, used to clear hospital beds and save the NHS money.”

Read more from this story HERE.