Obama Family’s June Africa Trip Could Cost a Colossal $100 Million

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Photo Credit: senorglory

When President Obama makes his first extended trip to sub-
Saharan Africa this month, the federal agencies charged with keeping him safe won’t be taking any chances.

Hundreds of U.S. Secret Service agents will be dispatched to secure facilities in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship, with a fully staffed medical trauma center, will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.

Military cargo planes will airlift in 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines and three trucks loaded with sheets of bullet­proof glass to cover the windows of the hotels where the first family will stay. Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president’s airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close.

The elaborate security provisions — which will cost the government tens of millions of dollars — are outlined in a confidential internal planning document obtained by The Washington Post. While the preparations appear to be in line with similar travels in the past, the document offers an unusual glimpse into the colossal efforts to protect the U.S. commander in chief on trips abroad.

Any journey by the president, such as one scheduled next week for Northern Ireland and Germany, is an immense and costly logistical challenge. But the trip to Africa is complicated by a confluence of factors that could make it one of the most expensive of Obama’s tenure, according to people familiar with the planning.

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True Size of the Deficit? Try $106 Trillion

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Photo Credit: National Review

…Obama officials came into the initial meetings on the Hill [regarding the long term budget deficit] reiterating the president’s position that $4 trillion in deficit reduction would basically solve the problem for now.

But according to GOP deficit projections … the true size of the problem is staggering, and surprised even many of the seasoned budget negotiators involved.

$4 trillion? Try $106 trillion, the medium estimate. That’s $106,954,000,000,000. Even the lowest, extremely conservative estimate comes in at $72 trillion; the highest is over $120 trillion.

The amounts are so large that some controversial reforms appear inconsequential in comparison. Take Obama’s “chained CPI” proposal: it would save an estimated $89 billion over ten years, or 1.3 percent of the total deficit over those same ten years…

The Senate GOP’s projections are based on CBO’s cost projections and generally conservative.

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Obama’s Number 2 Pick for the CIA Read Erotic Novels Aloud for Group Entertainment

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Photo Credit: AP

The former host of “Erotica Night” at a Baltimore bookstore will be the first-ever female No. 2 official at the CIA.

On Wednesday, Barack Obama nominated Avril Danica Haines to be the deputy director of the CIA, replacing Michael Morell, who twice served as acting director of the agency but took much of the blame for editing the highly controversial talking points around the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi. As a lawyer in the White House Counsel’s office, Haines oversaw the approval process for the CIA’s covert actions, acting as a vital link between the CIA and the president.

But 20 years ago, Haines opened and co-owned Adrian’s Book Café in the Baltimore waterfront neighborhood of Fells Point. She opened Adrian’s after dropping out of a graduate program in physics at Johns Hopkins University. The store featured regular “Erotica Nights.” including dinner and a series of readings by guests of published work or their own prose, according to a 1995 report in the Baltimore Sun; couples could attend for $30, while singles paid $17.

“Erotica has become more prevalent because people are trying to have sex without having sex. Others are trying to find new fantasies to make their monogamous relationships more satisfying,” Haines, then in her 20s, told the Sun. “What the erotic offers is spontaneity, twists and turns. And it affects everyone.” (She also told Baltimore Sun reporter Mary Corey that friends heckled “you just want a mass orgy in your bookstore, while she and her co-owner were initially worried only “dirty old men” would show up.)

The event Corey attended at the bookstore featured a room lit with red candles where guests held chicken tostadas, waiting to eat as Haines read aloud the opening pages of The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, by Anne Rice writing under the pseudonym A.N. Roquelaire, which features [pornographic] passages…

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IG: More Than 1,000 IRS Employees Misused Government Charge Cards; Wrote 325 Bad Checks

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Photo Credit: AP

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed in a recently released audit report that in fiscal years 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 Internal Revenue Service employees misused government charge cards issued by Citibank.

The report said that during the two years in question agency employees sent Citibank a total of 325 bad checks written on personal accounts that had insufficient funds to cover them, that agency officials with top-secret security clearances had their charge accounts suspended for failure to pay the balances, and that the IRS had a tendency of being “overly lenient” in disciplining those who misued the cards.

Despite the more than 1,000 IRS employees who misused the charge cards, the inspector general’s report found that the IRS did a “generally effective” job in controlling its employees use of the cards.

“We found that the IRS was generally effective in implementing travel card controls,” said the IG report. “However, in some instances controls were not implemented effectively, which increased the risk for misuse and resulted in some travel card misuse going undetected.”

The report, which is dated April 18, 2013, was released on May 29.

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Americans’ Confidence in Congress Falls to Lowest on Record

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Americans’ confidence in Congress as an institution is down to 10%, ranking the legislative body last on a list of 16 societal institutions for the fourth straight year. This is the lowest level of confidence Gallup has found, not only for Congress, but for any institution on record. Americans remain most confident in the military, at 76%.

Photo Credit: Gallup

Small business and the police also continue to rank highly, with 65% and 57% of Americans, respectively, expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in these institutions. Joining Congress at the bottom of the list are Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) and organized labor. Congress’ low position is further underscored when one looks at the percentage of Americans who have little or no confidence in each institution. The slight majority of Americans, 52%, have this level of confidence in Congress, compared with 31% for HMOs.

Americans’ confidence in several institutions measured in the June 1-4 Gallup poll has shifted since last year. Americans have become more confident in banks, organized religion, and public schools, and less confident in the U.S. medical system, the Supreme Court, and Congress.

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Troubling News for the Surveillance State: Younger Generations Surprisingly Want Privacy

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Photo Credit: AP

The generation that’s grown up posting their lives online wants a little privacy. That’s not what we might expect as we debate just how much access the government should have to our mobile and online lives.

But as it turns out, young people are much more complex than some may think when determining what personal information they want to share.

Sure, they’re as likely as ever to post photos of themselves online, as well as their location and even phone numbers — and assume that at least some of their information is shared among website providers — say those who track their high-tech habits. But as they approach adulthood, they’re also getting more adept at hiding and pruning their online lives.

Despite their propensity for sharing, many young adults also are surprisingly big advocates for privacy — in some cases, more than their elders.

That attitude showed up most recently in a poll done over the weekend for the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and The Washington Post. The poll, tied to the disclosure of broad federal surveillance, found that young adults were much more divided than older generations when asked if the government should tread on their privacy to thwart terrorism.

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President Obama Got By With a Little Help From His Friends at DOJ, IRS, MSM and Now Even the NSA?

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Photo Credit: Irish Central

As America gets assaulted with one scandal after another surrounding the Obama administration, there is speculation more is to come….And that speculation adds fuel to a bonfire of suspicion that this administration would stop at nothing to win its’ re-election.

The 2012 presidential election was really not decided on a national level, it was always about who could take the edge in the deciding 9 swing/battleground states.

According to polls leading up to the election, the race was razor thin between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama in many of those important states.

Hindsight is 20/20 and if the public knew in November 2012, what it knows today, would the election results have been different?

A characteristic lack of curiosity by the main stream media into any malfeasance by the Obama administration helped the President. This lack of curiosity helped quell outrage by the American public just prior to the election, as our Libyan Ambassador was killed. The cover story and the cover up by the administration to hide the magnitude of failure in foreign policy should have been a major campaign issue. But this news was suppressed with the aid and abetting of the major media.

Perhaps there is an easy answer when you see the inbreeding between the White House and influential members of the main stream media….The connections are astounding. Read the full story here in the Washington Post.

Suppose the latest scandal of IRS targeting of conservative organizations and individual donors had been exposed back in 2010-2011 and brought to a halt? As more gets revealed on this scandal it seems this was a deliberate attempt to suppress a major segment of opposition to the Obama campaign.

How much of a difference did it make in organizing voter turn out and support for the Romney campaign? Romney received 2-3 million votes less than McCain did in 2008. Perhaps if the TEA Party and other conservative groups weren’t being bullied by the federal government, they could have at least boosted voter turnout and matched voter numbers of 2008. See conservative vote was suppressed.

Many states prior to the 2012 elections had been trying to clean up their voter rolls as well as help stop vote fraud by requiring picture ID in order to vote. This was in response to widespread suspicion and reports of tainted elections due to vote fraud. But the Justice Department under Eric Holder, fought these safeguards tooth and nail and filed suit to delay any changes. Did not having strengthened voter ID laws and other safeguards have an effect on the election? Did precincts in heavily Democrat areas reporting 140% voter turnout help sway the outcome See Holder blocks Voter ID at every turn.

The recent revelation of how the NSA has collected and stored email and phone communications of millions of Americans is disturbing. Especially when coupled with the knowledge of how this administration has used the IRS and other government agencies to target political foes.

Would it be too much of a stretch to think the administration wouldn’t tap into this massive data base to help get itself elected?

From today’s World Net Daily: According to U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif , Barack Obama now holds a database “no one has ever seen before in life” that has “information about everything on every individual.” It’s a fact Obamas election team had use of massive amounts of data that gave them an edge in the election.

It’s disturbing to know Waters made her statement back in February of 2012 long before the election and long before we were aware of this administrations abuse of power.

Any of the above factors individually, could have helped tip the election in Obamas favor in just a few of the close battleground states. But if you add them all together, it makes it an unbeatable combination.

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Ed Farnan is the conservative columnist at IrishCentral, where he has been writing on the need for energy independence, strong self defense, secure borders, 2nd amendment, smaller government and many other issues. His articles appear in many publications throughout the USA and world. He has been a guest on Fox News and a regular guest on radio stations in the US and Europe.

Sarah Palin Returning to Fox News as Contributor

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is rejoining Fox News as a contributor, network Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes told the Wall Street Journal.

In January, it was reported that the network was choosing not to renew her contract.

“I’ve had several conversations with Governor Palin in the past few weeks about her rejoining Fox News as a contributor,” Mr. Ailes said Thursday. “I have great confidence in her and am pleased that she will once again add her commentary to our programming.”

Read more from this story HERE.

FOIA: 201 IRS Agents Working Full Time on Union Work, Not Government Business

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

In a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Americans for Limited Government, the Internal Revenue Service revealed this month that 201 of its employees work full-time on union activities…

The redacted list of 201 IRS employees, whose names have been blacked out, features only those employees who are entirely engaged in union work. The list does not include employees who spend part of their time on government work and other portions on union work, according to ALG.

The list of 201 employees offers job titles, salary information, and some location information. The job titles appear innocuous and make the work appear to be focused on agency business rather than union business. Titles include “Internal Revenue Agent,” “Revenue Officer,” “Tax Specialist,” “Rev Officer,” “Clerk,” “Contact Representative,” “Case Advocate,” and the like. Some boast six-figure salaries, with the highest paid employee on the list earning $138,092.

[Americans for Limited Government President Nathan] Mehrens explained that in many cases employees are hired for a certain job classification but end up doing union work.

“This person was hired to file things,” Mehrens said of one of the employees listed on the documents under the job title “File Clerk.” ”But instead of filing things this person is doing union work. So somebody else presumably has to pick up the slack and handle that. There is not a job classification for ‘union steward’… so they are in these positions and instead of actually doing the work that would fit the job classification they are basically excused from doing that job in order to work on behalf of the union.”

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Congressman Sees IRS Agents Training with AR-15s During DHS Tour, Demands Answers

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Photo Credit: Twitter

By Dave Urbanski. This little item could give the IRS’ whole “targeting” conservatives scandal a brand-new twist.

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) tweeted that he observed IRS agents training with AR-15s when he toured the Department of Homeland Security:

Later he added:

And this, for the doubters he ran into on Twitter:

Read more from this story HERE.

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Jeff Duncan questions IRS rifle usage

By Tal Kopan. Rep. Jeff Duncan wants to know why IRS law enforcement agents are training with AR-15 rifles.

As chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, Duncan (R-S.C.) toured a federal law enforcement facility in late May and noticed agents training with the semi-automatic weapons at a firing range. They identified themselves as IRS, he said.

“When I left there, it’s been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has stand-off capability,” Duncan told POLITICO. “Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?”

While Duncan acknowledges that the IRS has an enforcement division, he questions if that level of firepower is appropriate when they could coordinate operations with other agencies, like the FBI, especially in a time of austerity.

“I think Americans raise eyebrows when you tell them that IRS agents are training with a type of weapon that has stand-off capability. It’s not like they’re carrying a sidearm and they knock on someone’s door and say, ‘You’re evading your taxes,’” Duncan said. Read more from this story HERE.