Boehner Must Go

photo credit: donkeyhotey

It’s not possible for Republicans to dump Barack Obama in the next four years. They have blown their opportunity to do that. But the next best thing they can do right now is to dump John Boehner as speaker of the House.

Though Boehner has been portrayed in the media as some kind of hardliner who is intransigent and unwilling to compromise, the truth is that he is the opposite. He is an appeaser. He is an enabler. He is an accommodationist.

Boehner began waving the white flag of surrender to Obama soon after Republicans made him speaker in 2011. Since all spending bills need to originate in the House and because the Republican majority in the House has had absolute power to freeze spending, Boehner was dealt a powerful hand to keep Obama in check. Instead, he folded. Not only did he fold repeatedly, he even signaled before negotiations about spending ever began that he intended to fold.

He has repeatedly dismissed the idea that freezing the debt limit was a political option. That’s like unilaterally disarming before one’s enemies.

But it gets worse.

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CBO: Feds Borrowing $4.8 billion Per Day in FY 2013, So Far

The federal government ran a deficit of $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013 – October and November 2012 – amounting to $4.8 billion of borrowed money each day.

“The federal budget deficit was $292 billion for the first two months of fiscal year 2013, $57 billion more than the shortfall recorded in October and November of last year,” CBO said in its Monthly Budget Review Friday.

This means that the government borrowed $4.8 billion for each calendar day so far in 2013. If the Treasury Department restricted its borrowing to only weekdays, its per day average would jump to $6.5 billion per day thus far in fiscal year 2013.

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Russia Arms Syria With Powerful Ballistic Missiles

Hours after NATO agreed on Tuesday to send Patriot missiles to Turkey because of the crisis in Syria, Russia delivered its first shipment of Iskander missiles to Syria.

The superior Iskander can travel at hypersonic speed of over 1.3 miles per second (Mach 6-7) and has a range of over 280 miles with pinpoint accuracy of destroying targets with its 1,500-pound warhead, a nightmare for any missile defense system.

According to Mashregh, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard media outlet, Russia had warned Turkey not to escalate the situation, but with Turkey’s request for Patriot missiles, it delivered its first shipment of Iskanders to Syria.

Reporting today, Mashregh said the handover occurred when Russian naval logistic vessels docked at Tartus in Syria.

The Iskandar is a surface-to-surface missile that no missile defense system can trace or destroy, Mashregh said. Russia had earlier threatened that should America put its missile defense system in Poland, it would retaliate by placing its Iskander missiles at Kaliningrad, its Baltic Sea port.

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Rich, Hypocritical Greenies Decry Endangered 20 Ton Whale Decaying on Their Prisitine Beach

Barbara Streisand woke up to the smell of nature at work this morning. As she breathed in the usually refreshing salt air of the Pacific ocean lapping at the beach below her stunning beachside Malibu mansion……

Rolling in the surf line, just upwind, was the rotting carcass of a dead fin whale.

Wildlife authorities think the whale, on the endangered species list, might have had a collision with one of the ships that ply the coastline. But the fact remained; this is a lot of nature to have going on in your front yard.

The exclusive surf side community is home to Streisand, Bob Dylan and many others in the Hollywood entertainment industry. This is ground zero for those who embrace and fund every “green” cause and proudly drive their Prius to show how pious they are about it.

Of course Barbara and her family could shift residences into the adjoining and interconnecting two other seaside mansions she owns, to try to avoid the smell of nature at work. But it seems the prevailing wind graces each residence equally.

Although rare for California, this particular stretch of beach is private. According to Carol Baker from the Los Angeles County beaches and harbors commission, the homeowners have responsibility to the high tide line and the state has control of the tide lands.

According to Cindy Reyes, executive director of the California Wildlife Center,
Los Angeles County lifeguards planned to try to pull the 40,000-pound carcass out to sea.

But fire Inspector Brian Riley said that won’t work.

“The carcass is embedded in the sand and impossible to tow free,” “Burial at low tide will be difficult as well as land removal. It’s in an area with bad access.”

It will be interesting to see if red tape will be cut in order to facilitate this “rescue.”

Will these residents get special dispensation from the usual quagmire of interconnecting environmental agencies, coastal commissions, building departments, fish and game, harbor traffic safety and every other local, state and federal ABC agency you can think of?

Meanwhile, residents of La Jolla, a community south of Malibu, have been petitioning the state and federal authorities for months, just to let them wash off rocks in the ocean near their community.

The rock strewn shores have become home to large groups of protected species who deposit large amounts of their feces. Evidently the stench is unbearable. But environmentalists and government regulators are adamant about disrupting the natural order of things. This part of the California coast is home to a more politically conservative group of residents.

With the violent death of the fin whale, a capital environmental crime has been committed. The whale is an endangered species; shouldn’t a full scale investigation be conducted before the body is even remotely considered to be moved? Where is the environmental CSI team?

This talk of bulldozing up a California beach in order to bury the carcass or move it is another assault on almost every environmental nerve ending. Where is the moral outrage?

If this were a true “green community,” and the residents were really concerned for the environment, they would let the whale carcass stay where it washed up naturally and let nature take its course for the next year. The whale would provide badly needed nutrition to the local marine animal/bird community.

Letting the whale carcass stay and decompose naturally, would also make an environmental statement louder than any horn from a Prius could make.

What are the chances? The answer is blowing in the wind.

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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.

“Kill Those F***ing Yankees” Rapper to Perform For Obama’s Christmas Bash; WhiteHouse.gov Scrubs Petition to Rescind Invite

In yet another apparent White House misstep, a popular but virulently anti-American South Korean rapper is slated to perform for Obama’s “Christmas in Washington” special on December 21.

The worldwide phenomena Psy, whose “Gangman Style” YouTube video has generated almost one billion views – possibly the most popular YouTube video of all time – sung these lyrics at a concert in 2004:

Kill those f***ing Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives
Kill those f***ing Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully

A couple of years before singing these outrageous lyrics, Psy (whose real name is Park Jae-sang), destroyed a model of a US Bradley Fighting Vehicle on stage during a performance. This was purportedly in reaction to the deaths of two teenagers who were accidentally struck by an American armored vehicle while maneuvering in South Korea.

Of course eight years ago, Psy was virtually unknown internationally. Even since his “Gangman Style” video exploded across the globe a few months ago, there was little media focus on his virulent anti-American past. That is, until the media became aware that he was slated to perform for Obama’s Christmas in Washington event later this month.

Given his international stardom and growing wealth from his increasingly American following, Psy went into damage control yesterday, issuing a belated apology through MTV.

The White House seems to be following suit, going as far as to remove the White House.gov petition that called on Obama to disinvite Psy. That petition (“Rescind Invite of Gangnam Style Rapper Psy to Perform for Pres. Obama Christmas Party Over Troop Killing Song”), was taken off the White House site earlier today with no explanation other than it was “removed from the site under our Moderation Policy because it is in violation of our Terms of Participation”:

Although Obama has debased the Office of the Presidency at least as much as the philanderer and perjurer-in-chief Bill Clinton, he has a historic opportunity, almost two weeks before his Christmas in Washington special, to demonstrate his loyalty to the American combat soldier and patriotism by boycotting the event.

But I’m not holding my breath over this one. If Obama’s and his generals‘ willingness to sacrifice US soldiers’ lives over political correctness is any guide, you can pretty much guarantee the President won’t skip a beat over a Christmas performance of a rapper who wants to “Kill those f***ing Yankees.”

Efforts to Appoint “Watergate Committee” for Benghazi Gaining Steam in House

As hearings on the Benghazi murders continue on Capitol Hill, House Republicans are hopeful they have the support to establish a select committee–the kind used to probe the Watergate and Iran Contra scandals–to get to the bottom of what happened.

Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) fought late last month to set up a special select committee in the Senate. But efforts to create the committee fizzled as Senate colleagues, including Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell (Nev.), called the effort unnecessary and duplicative of ongoing efforts.

But Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said the effort he’s leading in the House has legs, with 14 co-sponsors on a just-introduced resolution and new research from the Heritage Foundation that backs up calls for a select committee on Benghazi.

“This isn’t going to be an attempt,” Wolf said. “We’re really working to do this.”

A new Heritage web posting published on Wednesday argues that precedent supports the creation of such a committee, noting that Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair, while massive political scandals, were bloodless while Benghazi was not. The committees were also employed to elicit information following the 1941 Pearl Harbor attacks and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Read more from this story HERE.

Energy Industry Concerned Obama Could Pursue End-Run on Climate Change Rules

photo credit: donkeyhotey

The United States has joined nearly 200 countries at a United Nations climate summit in Doha, Qatar, this week with the primary goal of coming together on a treaty aimed at preventing what activists are calling dangerous climate change.

Some point to superstorm Sandy as a primary example of the need to curb emissions that they believe are fundamentally disrupting the way Earth’s ecosystem works. They would like to have a treaty signed by 2015.

But many in the energy industry are concerned the Obama administration, fresh off a re-election win, will go too far with a radical environmental strategy that will have a negative impact on U.S. businesses and consumers – not just through the U.N., but executive edict.

“They brought hundreds of millions of dollars into his re-election campaign,” said Michael Whatley, vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance. He believes the president delayed consideration of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL Pipeline because he couldn’t afford to lose allies in the environmental sector, and may now feel pressure to deliver to those groups. Indeed, on the night of his re-election, Obama vowed the U.S. would be a leader in combating a “warming planet.”

For years, both Democrats and Republicans have blocked cap-and-trade legislation on Capitol Hill which would set emissions limits and fees for those who exceed them. Now, a growing number of lawmakers are sounding an alarm about what they believe will be the Executive Branch’s “end run” around Congress.

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New Lawsuit Claims Boy Scouts Failed to Stop Pedophile in Midwest

CHICAGO – A former Boy Scout who says he was sexually assaulted when he was 10 by his now-imprisoned former troop leader sued the Boy Scouts of America on Tuesday, citing recently released files the group secretly maintained on suspected molesters in its ranks.

The lawsuit claims that the Boy Scouts allowed Thomas Hacker, a Scout leader barred from the group after a 1970s felony sex abuse conviction in Indiana, to rejoin as a volunteer in Illinois in the 1980s, and he went on to molest more boys, including the plaintiff.

Hacker was arrested in 1988 and convicted in 1989 of the aggravated sexual assault of an 11-year-old member of his troop in the southwest suburbs of Chicago.

Now 75, Hacker is serving two concurrent 50-year prison terms as a result of his conviction. His defense attorney in the 1989 case called him “a classic pedophile – and sick beyond that,” according to a Chicago Tribune story at the time.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday by a man identified only as John Doe claimed that Hacker sexually assaulted him when he was 10 years old — after Hacker re-joined the Scouts in Illinois.

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U.S. and British Counter-Terrorism Intelligence May Have Been Compromised By Swiss Spy Agency

photo credit: malias

ZURICH (Reuters) – Secret information on counter-terrorism shared by foreign governments may have been compromised by a massive data theft by a senior IT technician for the NDB, Switzerland’s intelligence service, European national security sources said.

Intelligence agencies in the United States and Britain are among those who were warned by Swiss authorities that their data could have been put in jeopardy, said one of the sources, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information.

Swiss authorities arrested the technician suspected in the data theft last summer amid signs he was acting suspiciously. He later was released from prison while a criminal investigation by the office of Switzerland’s Federal Attorney General continues, according to two sources familiar with the case.

The suspect’s name was not made public. Swiss authorities believe he intended to sell the stolen data to foreign officials or commercial buyers.

A European security source said investigators now believe the suspect became disgruntled because he felt he was being ignored and his advice on operating the data systems was not being taken seriously.

Read more from this story HERE.