Photo Credit: Fox NewsArizona Republican Sen. John McCain is calling on President Obama to suspend aid to Egypt after its military overthrew the country’s government.
McCain, a member of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, on Friday called for the United States to suspend its $1.5 billion in annual aid, based on long-standing federal law that prohibits the U.S. from giving aid to countries in which a military coup overthrows a democratically elected government.
“We cannot repeat the same mistakes that we made at other times in our history by supporting the removal of freely elected governments,” McCain said during a public event in Prescott, Ariz…
“The president was freely elected,” said McCain, who acknowledged that he thought “long and hard” about his request…
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-07 02:17:472016-04-11 11:19:49After Thinking “Long and Hard,” McCain Decides US Should Suspend Aid to Egypt (+video)
Photo Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesClashes between Egyptian troops, Morsi supporters turn deadly as thousands protest
By Fox News. Clashes between supporters and opponents of ousted president Mohammed Morsi reportedly have left 30 people dead across Egypt in a day that saw tens of thousands take to the streets to rally on both sides.
Emergency services official Amr Salama said 12 people died in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria when hundreds of Islamists descended on a rally by opponents of Morsi, opening fire with guns.
The state news agency MENA confirmed 12 dead in the city, bringing the nationwide toll to 30, AP reported.
In another development, an Interior Ministry spokesman said the deputy head of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater, considered the most powerful man in the organization, has been arrested.
Obama Call for Muslim Brotherhood Role Overtaken in Egypt
By Nicole Gaouette & John Walcott. The Obama administration’s call for an “inclusive” political process in Egypt with a role for the Muslim Brotherhood has been overshadowed by deadly clashes between security forces and supporters of the Islamist group.
Violent protests yesterday in Cairo and elsewhere over the military’s ouster of President Mohamed Mursi raised doubts about prospects for an eventual accommodation that would allow the Brotherhood that supports him to compete in new elections.
While President Barack Obama’s administration has stopped short of condemning the July 3 military takeover, it has called on Egyptian leaders to pursue “a transparent political process that is inclusive of all parties and groups,” including “avoiding any arbitrary arrests of Mursi and his supporters,” Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said July 4 in a statement.
The administration has urged the Egyptian military to stop using heavy-handed tactics, according to two U.S. officials who asked not to be identified commenting on private communications. They said the administration is concerned that some in the military may want to provoke the Islamists to violence and provide a rationale for crushing the movement once and for all.
Such a move would fail and probably prompt a shift to al-Qaeda type terrorist tactics by extremists in the Islamist movement in Egypt and elsewhere, the U.S. officials said. Read more from this story HERE.
Clashes erupt in major pushback by Egypt Islamists
By Lee Keath, Maggie Michael and Sarah El Deeb. Enraged Islamists pushed back against the toppling of President Mohammed Morsi, as tens of thousands of his supporters marched in Cairo on Friday to demand his reinstatement and attacked his opponents. Nighttime clashes raged with stone-throwing, firecrackers and gunfire, and military armored vehicles raced across a Nile River bridge in a counterassault on Morsi’s supporters.
Mayhem nationwide left at least 10 people dead and 210 wounded as Morsi supporters stormed government buildings, vowing to reverse the military’s removal of the country’s first freely elected president. Among the dead were four killed when troops opened fire on a peaceful march by Islamists on the Republican Guard headquarters.
In a dramatic appearance — his first since Morsi’s ouster — the supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood defiantly vowed the president would return. “God make Morsi victorious and bring him back to the palace,” Mohammed Badie proclaimed from a stage before a crowd of cheering supporters at a Cairo mosque. “We are his soldiers we defend him with our lives.”
Badie addressed the military, saying it was a matter of honor for it to abide by its pledge of loyalty to the president, in what appeared to be an attempt to pull it away from its leadership that removed Morsi. “Your leader is Morsi … Return to the people of Egypt,” he said. “Your bullets are not to be fired on your sons and your own people.”
After nightfall, moments after Badie’s speech, a large crowed of Islamists surged across 6th October Bridge over the Nile toward Tahrir Square, where a giant crowd of Morsi’s opponents had been massed all day. Battles broke out there at near the neighboring state TV building with gunfire and stone throwing and burning car barricade at an exit ramp. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: FARSIran Blames Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi for Coup
By FNA. Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said that ousted President Mohamed Mursi and Muslim Brotherhood are to be blamed for the current political crisis in Egypt.
“What happened in Egypt was actually a soft coup staged by the Egyptian army, which was unfortunately the result of repeated mistakes by ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi and Muslim Brotherhood …,” Boroujerdi said on Thursday.
The senior Iranian legislator underlined that Mursi’s repeated mistakes, Muslim Brotherhood’s power grab and their lack of attention to other political groups and prominent political figures who had a part in Egypt’s developments resulted in Mursi’s ouster from power. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-06 01:40:302016-04-11 11:19:52Islamic Fundamentalists Open Fire on Anti-Morsi Demonstrators, Killing at Least 12 in Alexandria (+video)
President Obama’s decision to delay the implementation of Obamacare’s employer mandate gives no relief to Christian business owners who object to providing contraception to employees as required by the Health and Human Services mandate, which remains in effect and on pace to reach the U.S. Supreme Court in the midst of the 2014 midterm elections.
The delay of the employer mandate does not affect religious people who oppose the HHS mandate. “They’re going to be subject to a different penalty,” Kyle Duncan of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is challenging the constitutionality of the mandate on behalf of a private company, Hobby Lobby, told the Washington Examiner. “Not the $2,000 per employee penalty that the administration has said it’s going to suspend for the year, but the $100 per employee, per day, IRS excise tax which is in a different section of the IRS code, but the administration has not said they’re going to suspend that.”
Duncan explained that “the reporting requirements that trigger the excise tax, those are different reporting requirements under different Treasury regulations; they predate the Affordable Care Act altogether.”
Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s health care policy expert, agreed with Duncan’s assessment. “It’s not that the Obama administration is unwilling to relax onerous mandates on employers,” he noted in an email to the Examiner. “They just don’t think religious freedom is a good enough reason.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-06 01:20:572016-04-11 11:19:54Obama Delays Employer Mandate, but Leaves HHS Mandate in Effect for Christian Companies
Photo Credit: APSince January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.
Today, BLS reported that the seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate for June was 7.6 percent, the same it was in May.
In December 2008, the month after Obama was first elected and the month before he was inaugurated, unemployment was 7.3 percent. In January 2009, it climbed to 7.8 percent. In February, the month Obama signed what the Congressional Budget Office would later determine was an $830 billion economic stimulus law, the unemployment rate climbed to 8.3 percent.
In the Obama era, the unemployment rate peaked at 10.0 percent in October 2010. It did not dip below 9 percent until October 2011, when it hit 8.9 percent. From August to September 2012, it dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent—the first time during Obama’s tenure it went under 8 percent.
Photo Credit: Fox NewsRepublicans launch probe into ObamaCare mandate delay
By Fox News. House Republicans are investigating the Obama administration’s move to delay a key part of the health care overhaul, claiming the announcement was “completely at odds” with prior claims that ObamaCare was running on schedule and questioning what provisions might be delayed next.
“It’s clear we have no idea the full scope of delays and disarray that may be coming. The American public deserves answers,” Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement.
Republicans on Upton’s committee fired off a pair of letters on Wednesday to both the Treasury Department and Department of Health and Human Services. They demanded records detailing deliberations regarding the recently announced delay and ongoing talks about other “elements” of the law that some groups want “changed, delayed or repealed.” Read more from this story HERE.
Republicans “Stunned” Over Delay, Trying to Figure Out What to Do
By Byron York. The move stunned Republicans in Congress, who immediately asked: Whose feedback? What businesses were meeting with the White House? What deals did they make?
“These communications and the decision-making process related to the delay… have not been disclosed publicly,” wrote House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton in a letter to the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Along with 13 other Republican committee members, Upton demanded the administration reveal which businesses and which government officials were involved in the decision.
But the bigger question for Republicans is how to handle the administration’s surprise retreat. Should they focus on secretiveness, as Upton & Co. are doing? Should they push the White House to explain how Obamacare can still work when large employers don’t have to pay fines for not covering workers and, perhaps more importantly, don’t have to report their employees’ health care information to the giant new Obamacare bureaucracy, so the bureaucracy can determine whether those employees are eligible to buy coverage on the exchanges? Or should Republicans just keep pressing for repeal of the whole thing?
“I think we’ll almost certainly be sticking to a full repeal message all the way,” says one GOP Senate aide. “The question here is for the administration – not us – and it’s basically this: At what point will they realize that this law is unworkable?”
Probably never. When key Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote, after the delay announcement, that, “We are full steam ahead for the marketplaces opening on Oct. 1,” she was reflecting the administration’s determination to get the health care exchanges up and running no matter what. Delay the employer mandate? OK. Waive this or that rule? Fine. Just make sure the exchanges get going. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: M.Scott MahaskeyWhite House greases squeaky wheels on Obamacare
By David Nather. The delay of Obamacare’s employer coverage rules is giving the critics plenty of new ammunition — but that doesn’t mean the sudden movement is out of character for the administration at all.
It’s just the latest example of a pattern with the implementation of Obamacare: The Obama administration almost always listens to the squeaky wheel.
First more than 1,200 employers and health plans got waivers from early coverage rules. Next, many states that couldn’t decide whether to build a health insurance exchange or let the feds do it for them were given repeated extensions. And then, when Republican governors were holding out on expanding Medicaid, they were finally told there’s no deadline at all.
So when the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it would delay the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate for employers for a year, it was just one more piece of evidence that the administration is perfectly willing to bend the rules for some powerful interests — a a welcome invitation for other players to raise their hands in the coming months as the law heads into overdrive.
Already, other groups are grumbling at the decision. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Liberals blame GOP, Fox, Drudge in Obamacare fiasco
By Paul Bedard. The pro-Obama media watchdog Media Matters Wednesday, defending the administration’s surprise move to cancel implementation of major elements of Obamacare, said that Republicans were to blame and accused conservative media leaders like Fox News and the Drudge Report for ignoring the GOP’s role.
In a release, the liberal group said that Fox and Drudge instead charged that the one-year delay was political with the goal of pushing off the expected initial implementation disaster until after the 2014 elections.
“Fox News and the Drudge Report are ignoring years of Republicans obstructing the implementation of health care reform to accuse the Obama administration of delaying the law for political gain, in the process dismissing the fact that businesses are praising the administration’s move,” said Media Matters. Read more from this story HERE.
Realities Force President to Scale Back Vision for Obamacare
By Todd Beamon. Six years ago, presidential candidate Barack Obama stood before Iowa voters and introduced a plan designed to extend healthcare to all Americans.
“We can do this,” he said with confidence. “The time has come for universal, affordable healthcare in America.”
Three years ago, President Obama signed into law a plan designed to extend coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people.
“This is what change looks like,” he exulted.
But it has become clear that Obama’s vision for universal health care is dramatically different than it was that day in Iowa. The president been forced to cut, reshape and compromise on his signature Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because of economic — and political — realities. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: APWall Street Journal Apologizes for Not Fighting Hard Enough Against Obamacare
By Wall Street Journal. These columns fought the Affordable Care Act from start to passage, and we’d now like to apologize to our readers. It turns out we weren’t nearly critical enough. The law’s implementation is turning into a fiasco for the ages, and this week’s version is the lawless White House decision to delay the law’s insurance mandate for businesses, though not for individuals.
The employer mandate is central to ObamaCare’s claim of providing universal coverage. Companies with 50 or more “employee equivalents” must pay a $2,000 penalty per full-time employee if they don’t provide government-approved health insurance. The provision was supposed to start in January, and delaying it is like Ford saying its electric car is ready to go, except the electric battery doesn’t work.
But all of a sudden on Tuesday evening Mark Mazur—you know him as the deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy—published a blog post canceling the insurance reporting rules and tax enforcement until 2015 as Washington began to evacuate for the long Independence Day weekend. Enjoy the holiday, mate.
White House fixer Valerie Jarrett tried to contain the fallout with a separate blog post promising that ObamaCare is otherwise “staying the course.” That’s true only if she’s referring to the carelessness and improvisation that have defined the law so far. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-05 02:53:162016-04-11 11:19:55“Stunned” GOP Launches Probe into Obamacare Delay While Obama Continues to Grease the Skids (+video)
Photo Credit: GettyIs it just incompetence, or is there something else going on here?
Obama’s only real competence, it seems, lies in spying on Americans and imposing new restrictions on their liberty. This fact may be the key to understanding this president. He has shown himself sympathetic toward every anti-American dictator on the planet, warmly embracing Hugo Chávez, lifting travel restrictions to Castro’s Cuba, and (when he thought no one could hear him) promising a cozy second term with President Putin.
Obama’s love affair with Marxist tyrants has not earned him any favors — not even the return of one globe-trotting traitor. The best he can do is issue a weak protest and direct his new secretary of state to remark that Hong Kong’s and Russia’s actions in regard to Snowden are really “disappointing.” That kind of swagger should make the Chinese and Russian leadership wet their britches.
For his part, Obama has done nothing, perhaps because he is still in thrall of anyone who calls himself a Marxist. The only people he really distrusts are Americans, especially those patriotic Tea Party members who care about their country’s future.
Does President Obama really hate the American people that much?
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-04 03:27:372016-04-11 11:20:00Obama’s Fundamental Transformation of a Nation He Despises
Photo Credit: APBy Brendan Bordelon. Texas Republican Sen.Ted Cruz blasted the Obama administration’s policy toward Egypt in a scathing op-ed in Foreign Policy magazine, slamming the president’s stance on the Muslim Brotherhood “one of the most stunning diplomatic failures in recent memory.”
As the Egyptian military ends President Mohamed Morsi’s rule, Cruz points out that the ire of many people in the streets of Cairo is not reserved for the Muslim Brotherhood alone.
“The people protesting in the streets were not only carrying anti-Morsi signs,” Cruz writes. “They were also carrying signs with slogans like ‘Obama Supports Terrorism’ and ‘Obama Supports Morsi,’ as well as pictures of the American ambassador to Egypt, Anne Patterson, with a large red ‘X’ through her face.”
Cruz believes that the 22 million Egyptians committed to ending Morsi’s rule are largely secular, pro-democratic people dismayed at the religious authoritarianism slowly strangling their country.
By throwing America’s weight behind Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Cruz argues that President Obama has alienated potential allies in the region.
By AFP. The Egyptian police have orders to arrest 300 leaders and members of Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood after the army deposed the Islamist president on Wednesday, the website of the official Al-Ahram newspaper reported early Thursday.
A senior interior ministry official confirmed to AFP that arrest warrants have been issued for “Muslim Brotherhood members”, but provided no further details. Read more from this story HERE.
Photo Credit: Moyan_BrennPssst, did you hear? President Obama is replacing Ambassador Howard Gutman in Belgium. You remember Ambassador Gutman, don’t you? He’s the big Democrat donor President Obama nominated to represent his policies in Belgium and who, it is alleged, trolled for prostitutes — some of them children! — in a park near his official residence.
Late in the day on Friday, June 21, the White House released a list of new nominees for various posts, and Denise Bauer was listed for the United States Ambassador to Belgium post. For the cynics, this is similar to a Friday night document dump — a strategy the Obama Administration employs to release controversial information or items unflattering to them after the nightly news cycle is over and most people tune out for the weekend.
Denise Bauer was the Finance Chair of Women for Obama during the last election and served on the Obama for America National Finance Committee for the 2008 and 2012 elections. She was also a donor and a bundler. According to the New York Times, Bauer has raised $4,367,187 for Obama since 2007.
In a speech on May 5, 2013, Ambassador Gutman announced that he was leaving the post. CBS News reported about a month later that a memo obtained from the Department of State (DOS) Inspector General’s (IG) office noted that the DOS has known about the prostitution rumors since 2011, but higher-ups in the DOS stopped the investigation of Ambassador Gutman. He was allowed to remain America’s representative to Belgium for two more years, and, if the speech is any indication, he is leaving with his head held high, even amidst rumors that his pants had been around his ankles during much of his tenure.
The biographical information about Gutman on the website says he was a “Special Assistant to F.B.I. Director William H. Webster, focusing on counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence.” What do you think counter-intelligence officers from other countries would do with information that a U.S. Ambassador bought prostitutes of all ages in a park in Belgium? Can you say “blackmail”? His background seems to imply he should have known how risky and stupid actions like that could be, and yet, if the rumors prove true, he jettisoned his judgment in favor of his sexual proclivities.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-04 03:17:532016-04-11 11:20:02Obama Quietly Replacing US Ambassador Who Allegedly Trolled European Parks to Molest Children
President Barack Obama said at a town hall event in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Saturday that unless we find new way of producing energy “the planet will boil over” if people in Africa are allowed to attain air conditioning, automobiles and big houses.
“Ultimately, if you think about all the youth that everybody has mentioned here in Africa, if everybody is raising living standards to the point where everybody has got a car and everybody has got air conditioning, and everybody has got a big house, well, the planet will boil over — unless we find new ways of producing energy.”
The president’s comments, made the day before unveiling his “Power Africa” initiative for a “sustainable” African energy strategy, came while speaking at University of Johannesburg-Soweto.
According to Obama, global warming constitutes “the biggest challenge we have environmentally,” one greater than all other environmental calamities like “dirty water, dirty air.”
However, the President’s statements do not reflect statistics released by the United Nations…
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-02 03:32:502013-07-02 03:32:50Obama: ‘Planet Will Boil Over’ If Young Africans Are Allowed Cars, Air-Conditioning, Big Houses (+video)
Former Rep. Allen B. West had some harsh words for President Obama and the Supreme Court on Sunday night, taking to Facebook to express his disdain for the court’s decision on Proposition 8.
“This week we’ll celebrate the 237th anniversary of our independence. But are we a free people?” Mr. West, a Florida Republican, asked.
“SCOTUS made an ill-conceived ruling believing the choice of sexual behavior should trump the people’s referendum. We are free to love anyone or anything we desire in America, but that does not correlate to rights beyond the unalienable ones Jefferson articulated 237 years ago.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-02 03:21:072013-07-02 03:21:07Allen West: Time to Teach Obama ‘Lesson Our Forefathers Taught King George III’
