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Study: Desperate for Attention, White House Reporters Abandon Tough Questions of Obama

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Photo Credit: Pete SouzaA groundbreaking new study of White House press conferences over the past 23 years reveals that the events are in a death spiral, especially under President Obama. Reporters, desperate to keep the press conferences alive, have switched to asking easy questions in a bid to coax the president to host more of them, the study says.

Noting that the days when reporters like Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas pestered President Reagan are long gone, the study in the authoritative journal American Politics Research said that adversarial questions have become rare as presidents have rebelled at them.

“The press want to encourage presidents to hold more of these direct exchanges to benefit their own reputations and media’s prestige,” said the study provided to Secrets. “The press will be less adversarial in these rare meetings to encourage more of them.”

The trend started with former President Clinton as he, former President George W. Bush and Obama curtailed press conferences and especially cut back on solo meetings with the press. Joint press conferences generally feature the president with a foreign leader and are considered easier to handle, said the study. In his first term, Obama held 38 joint and 27 solo press conferences, according to the study.

Read more from this story HERE.

They Say Success has Many Fathers, but Benghazi Libya is the Orphan on the White House Step

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Photo Credit: Irish CentralThis snippet from a CNN feature story after the fall of Libya’s strongman Moammar Gadhafi put the whole gambit in Libya into proper political perspective:

“The fall of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is a significant foreign policy triumph for U.S. President Barrack Obama.” It further went on to say “Gadhafi’s utter defeat seemingly put new wind in the sails of humanitarian intervention.”

This was to be the “good” foreign policy military intervention for the administration to show us how it’s done.

Hillary Clinton sealed the deal for the removal of Gadahfi when she stated: “left unchecked, Gadahfi will commit unspeakable atrocities.”

National Security Council Senior Director Samantha Power, led the drafting of PSD-10, the Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities, used as the policy justification to topple Gadahfi.

So there was a lot of prestige riding on the decision to remove Gadahfi by the Obama administration and see a triumphant Libya blossom under a new government.

Although Gadahfi was brutal in his attempts to stifle dissension, there were also many reasons to leave the country alone and let it settle its own differences without interfering.

Gadahfi had become an ally in the terror war and was providing valuable intelligence to us …He had even given up his nuclear ambitions to show his sincerity. Under Gadahfis 40 year rule, Libya became one of the most prosperous and peaceful countries in Africa.

But the decision was made to get rid of Gadahfi by the Obama administration. After his regime collapsed, his arsenals were left unguarded and an estimated 20 thousand shoulder launched missiles and countless high powered weapons, were let into the hands of terrorists and extremists. Israel reported these missiles were right on their border.

Military experts say to leave these arsenals unguarded was a grievous error in planning and should have been taken into account by the Obama administration when they moved to help topple Gadahfi.

The looting of the arsenals was downplayed and ominously, so was the emergence of strong militant groups linked to Al Qaeda and Islamic radicals, evidently unforeseen by the Obama administration.

But to give the air of success and normalcy, especially with a presidential election on the horizon, evidently it was felt best to keep a low profile for embassy security in Libya….In spite of repeated requests by the soon to be murdered ambassador Stevens for more force to protect him.

Eight months after the attack on our consulate, many of the key players involved in the decisions on Libya have distanced themselves from the administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has retired, so have Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and CIA Director David Petraeus. Senior National Security Advisor, Samantha Power & UN Ambassador Susan Rice, both resigned to “spend more time with their families.” Many of the top military commanders in that region of the world have been replaced.

Eight months after the murder of our ambassador and 3 other Americans, no one has been brought to justice, as President Obama promised.

With the announcement of new Congressional hearings on Benghazi coming at the beginning of May and the promise whistle blowers will be testifying, perhaps we will be seeing someone brought to justice soon.

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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.

Baby Killers are Having a Good Week

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Photo Credit: Washington TimesUnborn and newborn babies aren’t getting much support from the White House this week. President Obama continues to refuse to weigh in on the case of alleged serial killer abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. Instead, he agreed to give the keynote address at Planned Parenthood’s annual gala dinner on Thursday night.

The White House realized Wednesday that the public outcry was too loud and made up an excuse why Mr. Obama couldn’t give the major address, but would do a smaller speech at a Friday breakfast. It is unheard of for a president to cancel a scheduled speech or event — especially with one day notice — unless in the case of a major domestic or international crisis. Spending extra times with the families of victims of the fertilizer factory in Waco, Texas does not fit those criteria.

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, Dr. Gosnell apparently thinks his case is a slam dunk. His lawyer rested the case Wednesday without putting a single witness on the stand to rebut the five weeks of testimony from the prosecution.

On Tuesday, Judge Jeffrey P. Minehart acquitted the abortion doctor of three of the first-degree murder charges, leaving the defendant facing four counts of first-degree murder for allegedly killing babies after they were born by cutting their spinal cords with scissors. He also faces a charge of third-degree murder for giving too much medication to a woman during an abortion at his clinic, according to the prosecution.

The president followed the lead of the liberal mainstream media by ignoring the Grosnell trial, in the hopes that the public would as well. Conservative outlets — particularly Fox News, which has been covering the case since 2011 — have been the only ones bringing the horrific details of the abortion clinic to the public. On April 15, Fox News’ Ed Henry was the first of the White House press corps to ask Press Secretary Jay Carney about the Gosnell trial. The spokesman would only say that the president is “aware” of it and “does not and cannot take a position on an ongoing trial.”

Read more from this story HERE.

White House Finally Gets the Sequester Ax: 480 Budget Office Staffers Face Furloughs

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Photo Credit: Reuters

A total of 480 employees at the White House budget office face reduced working hours as $85 billion in overall automatic federal spending cuts hit President Barack Obama’s staff, the White House said on Monday…

The staffers from the Office of Management and Budget were the only White House employees that spokesman Jay Carney would confirm as having been affected, though he acknowledged, “within the Executive Office of the President, several offices have sent furlough notices to their staff.”

The $85 billion in cuts kicked in March 1 after Democratic and Republican lawmakers failed to reach a budget agreement to avert so-called “sequestration” spending restrictions.

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Senate Votes To Keep White House Closed, Slaughterhouses Open

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Photo Credit: Damian Dovarganes

Senators voted Wednesday to make the first significant changes to the budget sequesters, shifting money to keep slaughterhouse inspectors on the job full time but refusing to rearrange money to reopen the White House for public tours.

The votes came as the Senate debated and passed a bill to fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year — sending it back to the House for final expected approval later this week and averting a government shutdown.

“This is indeed a very important moment,” said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the Maryland Democrat and chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee who shepherded the bill through the floor. “We didn’t want brinkmanship, we didn’t want ultimatum politics.”

The 73-26 vote also signals a growing sense in Congress that the shutdown showdowns of the past two years didn’t help either party. The bill funds basic operations through Sept. 30. It does not undo the level of sequester cuts, but it did begin to rewrite a few priorities, including restoring the military’s tuition assistance programs and restoring the money for food inspections.

Without that addition money, federal inspectors were going to have to be furloughed, and meat-packing plants can’t operate without inspectors on site. That would have made a serious dent in U.S. meat production.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Now Blames his Guards for Closing White House Tours

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

President Barack Obama is blaming the U.S. Secret Service for the politically damaging decision to close the popular White House tours, and also suggested he would restart the tours.

“You know, I have to say this was not — a decision that went up to the White House,” he claimed in an interview broadcast Wednesday by ABC News.

“What the Secret Service explained to us was that they’re gonna have to furlough some folks,” he insisted to ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos, who worked as top aide to the nation’s previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

His claim clashes with a March 7 statement by his press secretary, Jay Carney, who declared that “the White House made the decision that we would, unfortunately, have to temporarily suspend these tours.”

Obama is now trying to backtrack.

“Well, what I’m asking them is are there ways, for example, for us to accommodate school groups — you know, who may have traveled here with some bake sales,” he said. “Can we make sure that — kids, potentially, can — can still come to tour?”

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Email Tells Feds To Make Sequester As Painful As Promised (+video)

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Photo Credit: Carolyn KasterThe White House announced Tuesday that it is canceling tours of the president’s home for the foreseeable future as the sequester spending cuts begin to bite and the administration makes good on its warnings of painful decisions.

Announcement of the decision — made in an email from the White House Visitors Office — came hours after The Washington Times reported on another administration email that seemed to show at least one agency has been instructed to make sure the cuts are as painful as President Obama promised they would be.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.

Neither Mr. Brown nor the main APHIS office in Washington returned calls seeking comment, but Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack, who oversees the agency, told Congress he is trying to give flexibility where he can.

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Sources: White House To Issue Cybersecurity Order Wednesday

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Photo Credit: maizersThe White House is poised to release an executive order aimed at thwarting cyberattacks against critical infrastructure on Wednesday, two people familiar with the matter told The Hill.

The highly anticipated directive from President Obama is expected to be released at a briefing Wednesday morning at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where senior administration officials will provide an update about cybersecurity policy.

The executive order would establish a voluntary program in which companies operating critical infrastructure would elect to meet cybersecurity best practices and standards crafted, in part, by the government.

Observers are expecting the president to briefly mention the need for the country to improve its defenses against cyberattacks during his State of the Union address on Tuesday.

White House press secretary Jay Carney declined Monday to say whether the president would discuss cybersecurity during his Tuesday address to Congress, saying the president believes that it’s “a very important issue.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Report: White House Set To Cut Nuclear Arsenal By One-Third

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Photo Credit: Glyn Lowe PhotoworksPresident Obama is poised to sign off on a new internal review of U.S. nuclear weapons strategy that would reduce the arsenal by one-third, resulting in billions in savings to the Pentagon and Energy Department.

The recommended reductions were included in a draft version of a classified decision directive compiled by top defense and national security officials inside the White House, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity issued Friday.

While the president has yet to officially approve the directive, including the recommended one-third cut to the nuclear arsenal, sources tell CPI Obama has voiced no objection to the directive’s findings.

Representatives from State Department, Strategic Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the office of Vice President Biden also played a part in drafting the directive.

White House officials had pushed to get the new directive finalized late last year, according to the CPI report. However, the administration pushed back against that plan.

Read more from this story HERE.

This Is Not “Let’s Make A Deal” and David Axelrod is Not Monty Hall

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The White House re-election campaign wants to make a deal. In exchange for GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney releasing five years of tax returns, they will stop criticizing him for not releasing more. While hiding behind the skirt of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the White House campaign alleges there may be as many as ten years when Romney evaded paying income taxes.

Romney says that over the past decade he has paid at least 13 percent in federal income taxes. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, a non-partisan group, middle income families average paying 12.8 percent in federal income tax.

Critics complain that Romney pays too few taxes. At his income level, Romney pays plenty of taxes. Romney made every penny he has. Hence every dime he uses to make investments has already been taxed at wage income rates. Romney pays a lower tax rate than wage earners because a majority of his income comes from investments, which are taxed at a lower rate than wages. Investment income is taxed at a lower rate because, unlike wages, investments are at risk.

If Romney was guilty of income tax evasion, the IRS would already be after him and his campaign for the White House would long be over. The IRS falls within the Department of Treasury. At the behest of the White House, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the IRS would be all over Romney like a ravenous pack of hyenas.

Romney has released his 2010 tax records and vowed to release his 2011 returns. That matches the number of returns released in 2008 by Senator John McCain when he was the GOP candidate. The number of tax returns released by McCain was never an issue.
This is not Let’s Make A Deal, and David Axelrod is not Monty Hall. For Mitt Romney, only a booby prize or worse waits behind curtain number three.

This bait and switch by the White House and their “progressive” co-conspirators is more than simply a distraction from the issues.
Throughout a shadowy, veiled, mystery shrouded political career where his own past has been intentionally concealed, obtaining confidential information about political opponents and distorting that information to smear them has been the signature move of this candidate.

Remember, the current Oval Office occupier is the same clandestine, shadowy figure caught in an open-mic moment with then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev saying that after his re-election he would have “more flexibility.”

Flexibility for … ?

Three members of a Russian punk band were found guilty and sentenced to two years in jail for protesting against Russian president Vladamir Putin. The band members were arrested on March 3rd and charged with “hooliganism”. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30 have been in jail ever since.

What kind of flexibility is this secretive, anti-business, hostile to constitutionally protected individual Liberty White House promising to a Russian president who imprisons people for free speech?

Is this flexibility related to non-military federal agencies purchasing millions of rounds of hollow point bullets?

Could this flexibility include plans to tighten the iron grip of power by imposing Martial Law and suspending elections to ensure he can finish the “fundamental transformation” of America through the imposition of a form of government completely foreign to every principle espoused by its Founding Fathers?

By agreeing to release any additional tax returns, Mitt Romney would be making a crucial mistake. Let the White House re-election campaign go into grand mal seizure. Let them scream like banshees and howl at the moon. Let them cry like babies. Let them wet themselves. Let them posture, threaten, intimidate and bully. You can bet your underwater sub-prime mortgage they will do anything, be it lie, cheat and steal to win this election.

To borrow a phrase from another popular television game show:  No deal.

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Michael Fell is a former MCA recording artist from the seminal punk rock era who toured America from coast to coast. Today, he’s a leading voice in the L.A. Tea Party movement, active since the February 2009 inception. Mr. Fell currently chairs the Westwood Tea Party, is a founding member of the L.A. Metro Tea Party Coalition, serves as the Vice Chairman of the Westside Republicans Club in L.A. CA, and is an elected Republican delegate to the L.A. 47th AD Central Committee. He’s been Campaign Manager for a primary winning Congressional candidate, as well as Santa Monica and L.A. City Council candidates. Mr. Fell is a contributing writer for https://conservativedailynews.com/, https://rightwingnews.com/, https://www.hollywoodrepublican.net/, https://beforeitsnews.com, https://www.redcounty.com/, https://www.uspatriotpac.com and, https://westsiderepublicans.com/. His opinions on today’s news events and political climate can be found on his blog: https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/