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Tea Party Challenges Obama, K Street on Corporate Welfare

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Photo Credit: Kevin Dietsch

Congressional Republicans and the Obama White House are headed for another clash over corporate welfare, and once again President Obama is on the side of big business while Senate conservatives are on the side of free markets.

The battleground is the Export-Import Bank, a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. exports — mostly Boeing jets — by issuing taxpayer-backed financing to foreign buyers. In 2008, candidate Obama aptly described Ex-Im as “little more than a fund for corporate welfare.”

Obama has spent four years pumping steroids into Ex-Im, setting a record $35.7 billion in taxpayer-backed financing last year. Ex-Im’s biggest subsidy program is its loan guarantees, and the agency doled out $14.5 billion of those last year, with $12.2 billion going to subsidize Boeing jets. Piloting Ex-Im as chairman for those four years has been Fred Hochberg. Late last month, Obama announced he is nominating Hochberg for a second term.

As Hochberg used the agency’s annual conference on Thursday to defend and extol his tenure, the conservative Club for Growth — a significant money source for the Tea Party insurgency in the GOP — came out against his appointment. The club announced that it would include Hochberg’s confirmation vote in its annual scorecard. In other words, if a Republican senator wants to avoid a Tea Party primary challenge, he or she would do well to oppose Hochberg.

Hochberg’s nomination would be yet another Tea Party-vs.-K Street battle within the GOP. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is firmly in Hochberg’s camp. At Ex-Im’s conference (where JPMorgan Chase was named Lender of the Year), Hochberg gave the Chairman’s Award to chamber President Tom Donohue to thank him for his group’s successful effort fighting off a Tea Party-led effort to kill Ex-Im, whose charter was up for renewal last year.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Ignores Disastrous Economic News, Continues His Grand 1% Lifestyle

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Photo Credit: AP

President Obama had another tough week in a second term filled with bad news and blunders — and he’s only 10 weeks in.

While the White House suddenly decided to drop its budget Friday in an effort to control the news, there was no covering up the disastrous jobless numbers: 90 million Americans out of the workforce, the highest level since 1979; another 663,000 joining the ranks of the long-term unemployed; a measly 88,000 jobs “created.”

But what seems stuck in the craw of a lot of you readers out there was last week’s column on the Obamas’ 1 percent lifestyle — the endless ski and beach vacations for the couple and their daughters, Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s nights in London and Paris that cost you more than $1 million, even the president’s 118th round of golf while in office.

“My kids asked me a couple of years ago why we never went on family vacations,” wrote Steve Gibson. “I told them that we had to pay all of our expenses first and there wasn’t any money left over for a family vacation. Then I keep seeing … stories about the administration taking trips everywhere and I don’t know what to think. I have been laid off twice in the past year and am currently in the job search mode again.”

Eric Zundell is in the same boat: “As someone who has not been able to afford a vacation for my family in the last 12 years, (but pays his taxes;) ), I highly applaud the message delivered by your article.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Politico Story Falsely Portrays Democratic Front Group as Hunters Backing Gun Control

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Photo Credit: AP

The liberal media will do anything to pressure lawmakers to support President Obama’s gun-control agenda. Politico published a story Wednesday with this headline: “Hunting Group Wants Background Checks.” The story gave the false impression that the millions of hunters in the U.S. support Mr. Obama’s push for “universal background checks.”

That is way off target. In fact, 31 well-known hunting and conservation groups sent a letter to Capitol Hill Thursday expressing opposition to intrusion by the federal government into private firearm transfers.

Politico only cites one small group in its story, Bull Moose Sportsmen, which claims 5,000 members. The story gives no context for the size of this group in relation to other hunting advocacy groups, nor its prominence in the community. The single poll cited in the Politico story is one commissioned by the group itself and claims 72 percent of hunters support “criminal background checks with some exceptions.”

None of the major hunting groups which represent the millions of law-abiding sportsmen was mentioned, nor the polling of those members.

In fact, Bull Moose Sportsmen is a fringe organization run by Democratic activists that has been rejected from membership into the major gun and hunting groups’ umbrella organization because it refuses to reveal its funding sources.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Apologizes For Sexually Harassing Attorney General

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Photo Credit: Ben Margot

By Michael D. Shear. President Obama late Thursday night called Kamala Harris, the California attorney general, and apologized to her for telling a group of wealthy donors that she is the “best-looking attorney general in the country.”

Read story on Obama’s remark towards CA AG HERE.

Mr. Obama made the comment on Thursday morning at a fund-raiser outside San Francisco. He praised Ms. Harris as being “brilliant,” adding, “she is dedicated and she is tough” before commenting on her looks.

There was a quick reaction on social media sites, with some people accusing Mr. Obama of being sexist and others defending his comment as harmless.

But the president’s aides apparently knew the potential for political damage. Soon after Air Force One returned Mr. Obama from his West Coast fund-raising trip, he called Ms. Harris and apologized, according to Jay Carney, the White House press secretary.

“You know, they are old friends and good friends,” Mr. Carney said, “and he did not want in any way to diminish the attorney general’s professional accomplishments and her capabilities.” Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s ‘best-looking’ remark was sexist

By Ruben Navarrette Jr. It’s a good thing that Barack Obama is only the president of the United States and leader of the free world, and that he doesn’t have a really important job like television sportscaster.

Because in that other role, as we learned a few months ago, a man is simply not allowed to publicly compliment a woman on her good looks without getting in big trouble.

Just ask Brent Musburger. In January, after the BCS National Championship game, the ESPN commentator came under fire in the media and blogosphere. At issue: off-handed comments that Musburger made about University of Alabama quarterback A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend, Katherine Webb.

ESPN issued an apology, saying that the 73-year-old veteran sportscaster “went too far” in his commentary. In an interview with the New York Times, Michigan State University journalism professor Sue Carter called what Musburger said “extraordinarily inappropriate.” On the sports news website, BleacherReport.com, Jessica Isner suggested that his remarks were, at the least, “weird and creepy.”

It went on and on.

So what did Musburger say back then that was so terrible? As the camera focused on Webb, a former Miss Alabama, in the stands, the sportscaster turned to his co-announcer Kirk Herbstreit, a former quarterback at Ohio State University, and said: “You quarterbacks, you get all the good-looking women. What a beautiful woman.” Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Budget to Include Cuts to Programs in Hopes of Deal

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President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.

In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations.

Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.

Mr. Obama’s proposed deficit reduction would replace those cuts. And if Republicans continue to resist the president, the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis.

Besides the tax increases that most Republicans continue to oppose, Mr. Obama’s budget will propose a new inflation formula that would have the effect of reducing cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits, though with financial protections for low-income and very old beneficiaries, administration officials said. The idea, known as chained C.P.I., has infuriated some Democrats and advocacy groups to Mr. Obama’s left, and they have already mobilized in opposition.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama: Sexual-Harasser-in-Chief?

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Photo Credit: J. Scott Applewhite

President Barack Obama knows a good-looking attorney general when he sees one — but some think that his noting it publicly was not so gentlemanly. Obama sparked criticism when he spoke about California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris at a suburban San Francisco fundraiser Wednesday night.

“You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you’d want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,” Obama said of Harris. He then added, “She also happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general in the country.”

“Obama’s comment about Kamala Harris is disgraceful and really terrible for workplace equality,” tweeted Jonathan Chait of New York magazine.

“Give @BarackObama a break, everyone in CA is pretty,” tweeted David M. Drucker, senior editor at Roll Call.

“Does merely stating the obvious make the president sexist?” Robin Abcarian wrote in The Los Angeles Times. “More wolfish than sexist, I’d say.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Hypocrite-in-Chief: Blaming Sequester, Medicare Cancer Patients Turned Away While Obama Gives $1.2 Billion to Green Energy

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Photo Credit: Sarah L. Voisin

Cancer clinics across the country have begun turning away thousands of Medicare patients, blaming the sequester budget cuts.

Oncologists say the reduced funding, which took effect for Medicare on April 1, makes it impossible to administer expensive chemotherapy drugs while staying afloat financially. Patients at these clinics would need to seek treatment elsewhere, such as at hospitals that might not have the capacity to accommodate them.

“If we treated the patients receiving the most expensive drugs, we’d be out of business in six months to a year,” said Jeff Vacirca, chief executive of North Shore Hematology Oncology Associates in New York. “The drugs we’re going to lose money on we’re not going to administer right now.”

After an emergency meeting Tuesday, Vacirca’s clinics decided that they would no longer see one-third of their 16,000 Medicare patients. “A lot of us are in disbelief that this is happening,” he said. “It’s a choice between seeing these patients and staying in business.”

Some who have been pushing the federal government to spend less on health care say this is not the right approach.

Read more from this story HERE.

To read about the $1.2 billion giveaway to green energy companies, click HERE.

Obama’s Insulting Salary Stunt

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Photo Credit: EPA/Tannen Maury

I once had a boss who was independently rich, and when I asked him for a raise, he turned me down, adding that he, too, had forsaken a raise that year. A surge of anger, resentment and sheer hatred welled up in me, and were it not that I needed the job, I would have gone for his throat. His unthinking and unthinkable attempt to make common cause with me brought to mind Anatole France’s observation that “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Now it brings to mind Barack Obama.

The president yesterday announced that he would return 5 percent of his salary to the Treasury Department. This is an effort to make common cause with federal employees who may have to take a similar paycut. This is the way this tone-deaf White House put it:

The president has decided that to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants across the federal government that are affected by the sequester, he will contribute a portion of his salary back to the Treasury.
The president makes $400,000 a year…

Read more from this story HERE.

Judge: Catholic Company Doesn’t Have to Follow Obama HHS Mandate

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

A federal judge in Minnesota has given a Catholic-owned and operated business a reprieve from the onerous provisions of the Obamacare HHS mandate. The mandate compels companies to pay for birth control and drugs for their employees that may cause abortions.

U.S. District Court Judge John R. Tunheim issued a ruling yesterday for an injunction against complying with the mandate for American Manufacturing Company. The attorney for the client, Thomas Mathews, told a news outlet, “He was conflicted with owning a company that would provide the types of insurance that he finds morally offensive and objectionable.”

More from the report:

In working with its current insurance company, Medica, American Manufacturing was able to cut the birth control coverage from an existing group health insurance plan…

Read more from this story HERE.

President Obama Would Get 3 Terms Under Pending House Resolution

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Americans around the nation were shocked Friday as they heard about H.J.Res. 15. H.J.Res 15 proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment. This would remove the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President. Rep. José Serrano (D- NY15) introduced the controversial joint resolution on Friday, the second day of the 2013 legislative session…

The last President to serve more than two terms was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt served three full terms as President and was elected to a fourth term. Roosevelt died 83 days into his fourth term in office.

Congress passed the Twenty-second Amendment on March 21, 1947. The required number of states ratified it in 1951.

Read more from this story HERE.