Obama Just Played His Big ‘Trump Card’ On The Debt Ceiling

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Early Thursday morning, Potomac Research Group analyst Greg Valliere predicted that if the debt-ceiling deadline grew closer, President Barack Obama would play his “trump card” in the debate. He would remind seniors that if Congress doesn’t raise the debt ceiling, seniors wouldn’t get their Social Security checks.

“GOP strategists like Karl Rove surely know that it’s just a matter of time before President Obama throws a game-changer — warning senior citizens that their Social Security checks won’t be mailed because of John Boehner,” Valliere wrote in a note to clients.

A few hours later, Obama did just that during a speech at M. Luis Construction Company in Rockville, Md. He spent much of the speech warning that while the ongoing government shutdown was damaging, failure to raise the debt ceiling by an Oct. 17 deadline would be even worse.

“In a government shutdown, Social Security checks still go out on time. In an economic shutdown — if we don’t raise the debt ceiling — they don’t go out on time,” Obama said. “In a government shutdown, disability benefits still arrive on time. In an economic shutdown, they don’t.”

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Rand Paul Caught on a Hot Mic – What He Really Feels About Democrats and Their Shutdown Rhetoric

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Screen shot 2013-10-04 at 1.13.38 AMA local Kentucky TV news station caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul Wednesday morning discussing some congressional Republican messaging strategy regarding the showdown with Democrats over the government shutdown.

“I just did CNN and I just go over and over again ‘We’re willing to compromise. We’re willing to negotiate,” Paul is seen on-camera telling McConnell, who is standing by for his own interview remote from D.C. “I don’t think they (Democrats) poll tested ‘we won’t negotiate.’ I think it’s awful for them to say that over and over again.”

“Yeah, I do too and I — and I just came back from that two hour meeting with them and that, and that was basically the same view privately as it was publicly,” McConnell said back.

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Treasury: Under Obama, U.S Gov’t Debt Held by Public Up 90%

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. Treasury released its last Daily Treasury Statement for fiscal 2013 yesterday afternoon, revealing that during the presidency of Barack Obama the U.S. government debt held by the public has increased 90 percent.

At the close of business on Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was inaugurated, the U.S. government debt held by the public was $6,307,311,000,000, according to the Daily Treasury Statement for that day.

At the close of business on Sept. 30, 2013—the last day of fiscal 2013—the Daily Treasury Statement said the U.S. government debt held by the public was $11,976,279,000,000.

The $11,976,279,000,000 in U.S. government debt held by the public on Sept. 30, 2013 was $5,668,968,000,000 more than the $6,307,311,000,000 in debt held by the public on Obama’s first inauguration day.

That is an increase of 89.879 percent—or approximately 90 percent.

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Democrats’s Shutdown Is Refusal To Face The American People

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memorial closedWe’ve heard stories of Democrats attempting to shut down Mount Vernon and many other privately funded and run parks. They want the shutdown for use as a weapon, to “hurt and rescue” the American people. Case in point: Canyon Voyages Adventure Company.

Don Oblak’s Moab, Utah-based Canyon Voyages Adventure Co. depends on the Colorado River, which winds through breathtaking ravines in the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks.

But national parks will have to remain closed during any government shutdown. The Bureau of Land Management has told Oblak that he would not have access to rivers on its lands.

That means he’d have to cancel kayak and whitewater trips on the river, his core business.

Oblak fears that if the government shuts down even for a short time, it will affect his business for the entire month of October because his clients will cancel their trips. If that happens, he’d have to furlough all 25 employees at Canyon Voyages and cancel pre-sold tours. Combined with lost sales from his retail store, a lengthy shutdown could lead to an estimated $200,000 loss.

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IRS Sued By The National Organization For Marriage For Leaking Tax Information

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) filed suit against the federal government and the Internal Revenue Service Thursday, claiming it had “irrefutable proof” someone within the agency illegally leaked the conservative organization’s confidential tax returns to its ideological opponents last year.

NOM is seeking damages from the disclosure, as well as to overturn a statute shielding the IRS from disclosing any information about the incident, according to a complaint filed by the Act Right Legal Foundation on behalf of NOM in the Eastern District of Virginia Thursday.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) obtained the NOM’s 2008 tax returns in February 2012, which contained an unredacted list of donors, including presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The president of the HRC became a national co-chair for the Obama reelection campaign in 2012 a day later.

NOM Chairman John Eastman said the group was able to remove redaction layers from the PDF documents that were leaked, showing that they came from within the IRS. The unauthorized disclosure of tax information is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

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California Grants Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Immigrants

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Photo Credit: Rich Pedroncelli

Photo Credit: Rich Pedroncelli

California’s governor signed a bill Thursday granting illegal immigrants driver’s licenses, in a decision immigrant rights groups hailed as a major step forward for their movement.

The country’s largest state becomes the latest to reverse course and grant legal driving privileges to illegal immigrants.

“No longer are undocumented people in the shadows. They are alive and well and respected in the State of California,” Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, said as he signed the measure in Los Angeles.

The state has until the beginning of 2015 to set up the new licenses, but Mr. Brown said when they are in effect, the state will be safer.

Mr. Brown still has several other major immigration bills pending on his desk that he must sign or reject by Oct. 13, including one that would let local police ignore immigration authorities who ask that dangerous criminals be held for transfer to the federal government.

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Part Three: FMCS Executives Forced Whistleblower to Retract Fraud Complaint

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Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Photo Credit: Thinkstock

Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service employees’ use of purchase cards amounted to rampant violation of federal procurement law, specialists say, and when an employee wrote to the General Services Administration to ask for a compliance review, the agency director and another top official forced her to send a “retraction,” according to documents reviewed by the Washington Examiner.

The FMCS is a small agency whose sole purpose is to mediate labor-management conflicts.

When accountant Carol Booth became concerned about luxury goods being delivered to employees’ homes, spending on unnecessary services and indifference to federal regulations, she sought help from the GSA, which oversees federal purchase cards, writing that “it has come to my attention that we, the FMCS, have violated several rules, regulations and/or laws concerning the government-issued purchase card program.”

That infuriated FMCS director George H. Cohen and chief financial officer Frances L. Leonard, who together sought to evade outside scrutiny by helping compose a retraction to which Booth would sign her name…

Part three of a five-part Washington Examiner series, “Just Sign Here: Federal Workers Max Out at Taxpayer Expense.” See the entire series — and FMCS workers’ salaries — at this link.

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Need Health Care Coverage? Just Dial 1-800-F**KYO to Reach Obamacare’s National Hotline

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Photo Credit: Chris Barrett, https://www.prserve.com.

Photo Credit: Chris Barrett, https://www.prserve.com.

Need health insurance? The Obama administration has you covered. Simply dial 1-800-FUCKYO to reach the next available health-care provider.

Far from being a mistype, that’s the official number that Health and Human Services wants Americans to dial when seeking health care. Obamacare’s national call center really did list its number as 1-800-318-2596, helpfully spelling out President Barack Obama’s tendency to blatantly flip the bird in plain view.

After allowing for the lack of letters attached to 1 on a traditional American telephone keypad, the number spells out a clear message.

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The EPA as Energy Master

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Photo Credit: National Review

Photo Credit: National Review

The imperial EPA has once again raised its scepter, this time proposing the first hard caps on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. The proposed coal rule merits a deeper assessment than it has yet received. The impacts of this and other EPA rules targeting coal go far beyond the coal industry. The EPA is undermining the very foundations of economic productivity.

The EPA’s first group of greenhouse-gas rules, which were hastily promulgated in 2010, require only a relatively light increase in the burden placed on power plants for the purpose of increasing energy efficiency, for now. By contrast, the coal rules proposed on September 20 — called New Source Performance Standards — are the EPA’s first direct regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2). The rule’s numerical limits for emissions of CO2 from any new coal-fired power plants are commercially unachievable and lay the groundwork for the final blow to coal: the future demand for an impossible reduction of CO2 from existing power plants. In essence, the EPA is proposing the de facto elimination of the coal-fired plants that have provided 40 percent of America’s electricity over the last twelve months.

The EPA’s standards for coal plants are unachievable because use of the much-ballyhooed technology called carbon capture and storage (CCS) is infeasible on a large scale. The EPA’s own studies agree that CCS is not commercially viable. But never mind, says the EPA, CCS has been adequately demonstrated.

No one in the business of generating electricity believes CCS is anywhere near commercially demonstrated — no one, that is, who hasn’t just received a federal loan guarantee of half a billion dollars. Several heavily subsidized small pilot projects already have failed miserably, and the remaining projects, supported by more of those millions in loan guarantees and grants, are incomplete without evidence of viability. When a carbon-control technology must utilize 50 percent of the electricity generated by the plant, the enterprise simply is not viable.

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Monuments and Memorials Remained Open During Previous Shutdowns

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Although President Obama claims that he can’t avoid shutting down public sites and monuments, war memorials were in fact kept open during the 1995/1996 government shutdowns. The administration’s decision to barricade the Lincoln Memorial marks the first time in its history the memorial has been totally off limits to visitors during a shutdown.

The administration has also balked at efforts by non-governmental groups to maintain access to public sites.

But during the Clinton-era shutdown, World War II veterans kept the Pearl Harbor memorial open.

“Despite the federal government shutdown and an unrepaired sign that reads ‘Arizona Memorial closed,’ tourists are still getting expert commentary about the World War II memorial at Pearl Harbor,” wrote the Associated Press on January 1, 1996.

“It’s our way of helping to preserve the history of this place,” Bob Kinzler, president of the Aloha Chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors, told the AP.

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