China Poised to Play Debt Card – for U.S. Land

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NEW YORK – Could real estate on American soil owned by China be set up as “development zones” in which the communist nation could establish Chinese-owned businesses and bring in its citizens to the U.S. to work?

That’s part of an evolving proposal Beijing has been developing quietly since 2009 to convert more than $1 trillion of U.S debt it owns into equity.

Under the plan, China would own U.S. businesses, U.S. infrastructure and U.S. high-value land, all with a U.S. government guarantee against loss.

Yu Qiao, a professor of economics in the School of Public Policy and Management at Tsighua University in Beijing, proposed in 2009 a plan for the U.S. government to guarantee foreign investments in the United States.

WND has reliable information that the Bank of China, China’s central bank, has continued to advance the plan to convert China’s holdings of U.S. debt into equity owned by China in the U.S.

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Federal Indictment Alleges Kinky Priest Who Sold Meth

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Sex toys, ruby red slippers, drug paraphernalia, and a Roman collar!

Those all were to be elements of The Land of Oz & Dorothy’s Place, a combination adult novelty shop that Monsignor Kevin Wallin apparently planned to take over and move to a new location after he was suspended from his Bridgeport, Conn., parish amid reports of him cross-dressing and having sex in the rectory.

Add methamphetamine to the list, according to the government, which alleges that the 61-year-old cleric now dubbed “Monsignor Meth” used the store to launder proceeds from a transcontinental drug enterprise.

That charge is in a criminal complaint federal prosecutors filed after Wallin was arrested on Jan. 3. He had been just hours from departing on a 12-day trip London, imparting to his latest flock a new sense of needing a priest.

“Oh no 12 days what am I going to do. No supplys lol,” a customer had texted Wallin in a message intercepted by the government.

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Inauguration Day: Obama Vows Aggressive Second-Term Agenda

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WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama began his second term Monday by setting an agenda for the next four years built on bedrock Democratic social policies, in a provocative speech coming at a time of deep partisanship in the capital and lingering economic uncertainty across the country.

With specifics not usually offered in inaugural addresses, Mr. Obama promised to preserve government health-care programs, expand rights for women and gay couples, and press for gun controls, overhauls of the tax code and immigration laws, as well as climate-change measures.

His priorities sent a message to Washington’s leaders that he is looking beyond the fiscal battles set to dominate the coming weeks, while signaling to the nation that he sees a large part of his legacy to be advocacy for underprivileged Americans.

“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it,” Mr. Obama said in a 15-minute speech that drew repeatedly on the opening phrase of the Constitution.

Mr. Obama laid out a governing agenda rooted in Democratic policy goals and equal rights, citing Seneca Falls, N.Y., Selma, Ala., and New York City’s Stonewall Inn, birthplaces of the movements for women’s equality, civil rights and gay liberation, respectively. “That is our generation’s task—to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American,” the president said.

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Flashback: Palin Predicts Obama Admin. Using Health Care to Curb Second Amendment Rights (+video)

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On August 1, 2009–just seven months into President Barack Obama’s first term–former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin predicted Obama would attempt to leverage health care to “take away” the Second Amendment rights of Americans.

In a speech to National Rifle Association members in Anchorage, Alaska, Palin said Americans should be “wary” of this “tie-in” because Obama would attempt to “take away our rights under the guise of some new health care plan”:

“And by the way, [with] health care being so big in D.C. right now, be wary when some kind of tie-in occurs. Because it will crop up: a tie-in with guns in an attempt to take away our rights under the guise of some new health care plan. You know that this is coming–that the two issues will somehow crop up and they’ll be tied together. So we have to be very wary of that.”

On Wednesday–more than three years after Palin’s warning–Obama did exactly what the former governor forecasted.

During a press conference wherein he issued 23 executive actions regarding guns and unveiled his gun control proposals, including a ban on so-called assault weapons, Obama said “doctors and other health care providers also need to be able to ask about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms, especially if their patients show signs of certain mental illnesses or if they have a young child or mentally ill family member at home.”

See video below:

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Obama’s ATF Nominee on DOJ’s ‘Fast and Furious’ Design Team

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As part of President Barack Obama’s 23-point gun control plan, he nominated Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones–who currently doubles right now as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives–to be the ATF director.

Jones was personally a part of the high-ranking Department of Justice unit that first met on October 26, 2009, to create the new DOJ policy that was used to justify “gunwalking” in Operation Fast and Furious. In Fast and Furious, the ATF “walked” roughly 2,000 firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels. That means through straw purchasers the agency allowed sales to happen and didn’t stop the guns from being trafficked, even though they had the legal authority to do so and were fully capable of doing so.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican citizens–estimates put it around at least 300–were killed with these firearms.

Obama nominated Jones after he said in his gun control plan that the “ATF has not had a confirmed director for six years. There is no excuse for leaving the key agency enforcing gun laws in America without a leader. It is time for Congress to confirm an ATF director.”

According to a congressional report from House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley, Jones was one of several senior DOJ officials in the meeting. Before the meeting, then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden disseminated a strategy that became the new law enforcement platform on which gunwalking was based.

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Bill Ayers to Keynote Nat’l Association of Teacher Educators Annual Meeting

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By Rebel Pundit. Domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is set to be a keynote speaker at the annual meeting for the Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) next month in Atlanta, GA.

ATE’s website for the meeting describes Ayers’ work on the topic of education. It fails to mention any of his prior radical activities, including his domestic terrorism activities, political actions from his days in the Weather Underground, or that he is a self-proclaimed “Communist–with a lower case c.”

By whitewashing the most prominent aspects of Ayers’s resume and passing off a domestic terrorist as an appropriate and benign speaker at their meeting, ATE is taking a radical political position. Read more from this story HERE.

You can read more about about the Association of Teacher Educators HERE. The announcement for Ayer’s keynote states that he is a

formerly Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, has written extensively about social justice, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise.

His articles have appeared in numerous scholarly and popular journals, and his books include Teaching Toward Freedom; A Kind and Just Parent; Fugitive Days; On the Side of the Child; Teaching the Personal and the Political; (with Ryan Alexander-Tanner) To Teach: The Journey, in Comics; (with Kevin Kumashiro, Erica Meiners, Therese Quinn, and David Stovall) Teaching Toward Democracy; (with Bernardine Dohrn) Race Course. Edited books include (with Janet Miller) A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the Unfinished Conversation; (with Therese Quinn and Jean Ann Hunt) Teaching for Social Justice; and (with Therese Quinn and David Stovall) the Handbook of Social Justice in Education.

Premiums Set to Rise This Year in Run-Up to ObamaCare Tax on Insurance Industry

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photo credit: stockmonkeys.com

While the most sweeping provisions of the health care overhaul have not yet gone into effect, plenty of Americans will still be paying higher insurance premiums this year — as insurance companies try to preemptively cover the cost of a tax increase included in President Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

That tax doesn’t take effect until next year, when other major provisions like the so-called “individual mandate” and insurance subsidies also kick in. But that hasn’t stopped insurance companies from charging higher premiums this year to cover the hike, as well as the cost of ObamaCare benefits such as free birth control and preventive care.

Premiums for individuals and small businesses are projected to increase due to the tax by roughly 2 percent this year and by as much as 3.7 percent in 2023, according to a widely cited analysis by the insurance industry.

Officials will argue about who is to blame for the hike — insurance companies for sticking customers with the cost, or the government for imposing the industry tax hike in the first place. But the projected increases are the latest sign that Americans, in exchange for expanding and strengthening insurance coverage, will in many cases be paying more.

Already, a pair of taxes has hit higher-income households to cover the law. Those making more than $250,000 are seeing a .9 percentage point increase in their Medicare tax, and another 3.8 percentage point hike on investment income.

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Rand Paul: GOP Must ‘Evolve and Adapt’

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photo credit: gage skidmore

Sen. Rand Paul said on Sunday that he will make a decision on a 2016 presidential run within two years and plans to be a force in the refashioning the Republican Party regardless of whether he seeks the Oval Office.

“We will continue to pursue and, you know, try to make that decision over the next two years or so,” the Kentucky Republican told WABC Radio’s Aaron Klein when asked about a potential White House bid.

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In the meantime, Paul said, he will “try to be part of the national debate,” adding that he hopes to play a major role in directing the future of the Republican Party.

“Whether or not I am going to run for president, that decision will come probably in two years, and [we] will in the meantime try to be part of the national debate,” Paul said. “We think the Republican Party needs to evolve and adapt, or we are going to become a permanent minority party.”

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Obama Sworn In For Second Term During White House Ceremony

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President Obama was sworn in for his second term on Sunday, accompanied by his family in a short ceremony in the White House.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office to Obama in the Blue Room, as the swearing-in was watched by a press pool and broadcast by cable networks.

Obama followed presidential precedent in choosing Roberts as chief justice to administer the oath of office to him.

The 44th president used a bible from first lady Michelle Obama’s family to swear in for his second term. The first lady held the bible during the ceremony, as the Obamas’ daughters, Sasha and Malia, stood between her and Roberts.

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CBS News Political Director’s Astonishing Advice: Obama ‘Must Go for the Throat,’ ‘Pulverize’ & ‘Declare War’ on the GOP

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President Barack Obama needs to “pulverize” and “destroy” his Republican opponents if he wants to leave any kind of legacy — according to CBS News’ political director.

“Go for the throat!” declares the title of John Dickerson’s latest column for Slate, posted Friday. Its subtitle: “Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party.”

In it, Dickerson — who was named CBS News political director in 2011 — says Obama, facing political gridlock and endless clashes with House Republicans, has the challenge of “how to be great when the environment stinks”:

“The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.”

Read more from this story HERE.