MSNBC Host Blasts Palin for Displaying Christmas Tree

MSNBC, the station that had employed a host that suggested someone should urinate and defecate in former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's mouth, blasted Palin on Thursday for having a Christmas tree in her home on Christmas. 

In a segment that was stranger than fiction on  The Ed Show, guest-host Joy Reid claimed Palin was going against the Bible by displaying a Christmas tree in her home when she was interviewed for a Fox & Friends Christmas special.
"Certain parts of the Bible also appear to preach against let’s say, I don’t know, Christmas trees," Reid said, according to a Newsbusters transcript. 

Reid then read Jeremiah 10-10, thinking she was indicting Palin in a game of "gotcha":

“For the practices of the peoples are worthless; they cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold; they fasten it with hammer and nails so it will not totter. Like a scare crow in a cucumber field, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good."

"Now, a Christmas purist wouldn't want to stray from the Bible on Christmas, would she?" Reid said.

As Newsbusters noted, though, authorities on the Bible have pointed out that "nothing can be further from the truth" since Jeremiah does not mention Christmas trees, and the trees in the verse that Reid mentioned are cut down to to be turned into worthless idols, which is what the verse warns against.

Read More: Breitbart

A Bad Year for Obama May Turn Worse in 2014

If President Obama were a baseball player he would have gone 0 for 2013.

No, it’s not exactly breaking news that 2013 was a bad year for the president.  But he may soon look back on the remnants of a bad year and say, “Those were the good old days.”

Mr. Obama’s biggest flop, of course, was also his biggest “accomplishment” (a word I put in quotation marks not by accident).  That would be the ironically named Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare.

The rollout, he told us, would be as smooth and easy as shopping on Amazon. If Amazon sued the president for slander, I think Amazon would win.
Then there were all those (let’s be nice and call them) misstatements of fact.

If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan.

If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

Premium costs will go down on average $2500.

Okay, let’s just stipulate that so far ObamaCare has been one great big mess.  Period!  And it’s exacted a toll on the president.

As CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger put it: “People don’t think he’s as competent as they used to think. They don’t think he’s as trustworthy as they used to think.”

But it’s not just the disastrous rollout of ObamaCare. There were also revelations in 2013 that the National Security Agency was secretly keeping tabs on all of us.  Mr. Obama defended the plan, which caused a split in his liberal base.  Turns out they don’t like secret, widespread surveillance anymore than a lot of (but not all my any means) conservatives do.

Liberals were angry, too, that the president continued to use drones to knock off terrorists – and sometimes, innocent bystanders – a program started by the one liberals detest, George W. Bush.

There was also the IRS scandal, which conservatives believe showed that the president’s team was willing to use the agency to punish conservatives and further it’s own liberal agenda –no matter what the law said.

Whether it was Republican obstruction as Mr. Obama believes, or principled GOP opposition, the president got nowhere on a jobs program; nowhere on tax reform;  nowhere on immigration reform; no hike in the minimum wage; and no expansion of background checks for gun purchases, even after the Newtown massacre, despite a strong effort by the president.

And a new CNN/ORC International poll shows a drop of 14 percentage points since the beginning of 2013 in President Obama’s approval rating.  It’s now down to 41 percent.

Another poll, this one by ABC News and the Washington Post shows that 45 percent of Americans trust Republicans to do a better job handling the economy compared to 41 percent for President Obama.

But anyone who thinks that what goes down must at some point go back up, that 2014 has got to be better than 2013, may be engaging in wishful thinking.

Read More By: Bernie Goldberg

Christians are Suffering in the Holy Land this Christmas

The Christians who still live in the Holy Land face a Christmas that will be far from happy, merry or bright. They are a persecuted minority.

“O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie…” This hymn, and dozens like it will be sung all over the world soon, as they are every Christmas. Cards depicting the scene of the holy birth will decorate millions of houses.  Nativities will be set up in homes, in shopping malls, in churches.  But as people prepare to celebrate the humanity of a man known as Jesus of Nazareth, his homeland is no longer a safe place to be for those who follow him.

There are 14 million Christians throughout the Holy Land but they are a rapidly dwindling minority. Many of them are so desperately vulnerable that they feel they have no choice now but to emigrate. In Iraq alone, since the fall of Saddam, a startling two-thirds have fled.  Since 2003 at least a million have left. Most of them went to Syria. Now they face a second wave of displacement as they are no longer protected there.  There have been reports of rape, murder and attacks directed at them and the Christian community lives in terror.  When they feel they have to run for their lives they head for Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. It is said that the ancient Syrian Armenian community has all but gone.

Egypt has seen churches being burnt and anti-Coptic rioting. In Gaza and on the West Bank, Christians are caught up in chaotic uncertainty. To be Christian in the Holy Land, the birthplace of Jesus, is to live in fear.  The Vatican has confirmed as credible the estimate that 100,000 Christians are killed every year for their beliefs.

Historian Tom Holland has noted how deeply ironic it is, that two devoutly Christian leaders, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, brought about, inadvertently, the final demise of Christianity in the Middle East by invading Iraq. Now the Arab Spring has proven the final knell, as Christians are all too easy targets for extremists and are living in dire jeopardy.

The major Christian celebrations are still national holidays in Syria, and this is testament to the fact that Syria has long been a sanctuary for Middle Eastern Christians.  One of the oldest parts of Damascus is the Christian Quarter at Bab Touma.  Islamic and Christian communities used to live side by side in such ease, that sacred spaces were shared.  There was ethnic and religious tolerance, mutual respect and understanding.  Now, along with so much in Syria, that harmonious co-habitation has been ripped apart.

Speaking about his deep concerns for the beleaguered Christians of the Middle East, has been HRH Prince Charles. At an inter-faith reception he said he is very troubled by what he calls the “intimidation, false accusation and organized persecution” to the Christian faith communities.  It is a problem affecting Syria, Egypt, Palestine and Iraq as well as other Arab countries. The prince says it is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to the targeting of these Christians by “fundamentalist Islamic militants.”

The birthplace of Jesus and the founding site of Christianity now has less than 4 percent of Christians making up the entire population of the Middle East and North Africa;  a number that has dropped dramatically over the past 100 years.  Prince Charles sees this as a great threat to possible peace in these regions as Christians are renowned for their bridge-building capabilities.  He himself had been trying to build a bridge between Islam and Christianity for the last 20 years, but these efforts have been beset by those with “vested interests” in destroying them.

Read More: Liberty Voice

CIA CONTRADICTS GOV’T BENGHAZI ACCOUNT

CIA agents on the ground in Benghazi testified to lawmakers they were loaded into vehicles and ready to aid the besieged U.S. special mission on Sept. 11, 2012, but were told by superiors to “wait,” a congressman privy to the testimony has revealed. 

Unreported is that the new accounts seem to contradict claims made by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, or ARB, which states that the response team one mile away in the CIA annex was “not delayed by orders from superiors.” 

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, R-Ga., head of the House intelligence subcommittee that interviewed the CIA employees, explained that while there was no “stand-down order,” there was a disagreement at the nearby CIA annex about how quickly to respond. 

Westmoreland revealed that some CIA agents wanted to storm the Benghazi compound immediately, but they were told to wait while the agency collected intelligence on the ongoing attack. 

“Some CIA security contractors disagreed with their bosses and wanted to move more quickly,” the Associated Press reported, drawing from Westmoreland’s comments.

 The AP reported: Westmoreland said the CIA security contractors loaded into two vehicles, with weapons ready, the moment they heard the radio call for help from the diplomatic building. Some wanted to rush to the U.S. compound roughly a mile away, and their agitation grew as they heard increasing panic when the diplomats reported the militants were setting the compound on fire. The CIA team leader and the CIA chief at the Benghazi annex told committee members that they were trying to gather Libyan allies and intelligence before racing into the fray, worried that they might be sending their security team into an ambush with little or no backup. At least one of those security contractors, a former U.S. Army Ranger, was told to “wait” at least twice, and he argued with his security team leader, according to his testimony, related by Westmoreland. Westmoreland declined to share the names of the officers who testified because they are still CIA employees. 

The AP reported the CIA agents said a quicker response would not have saved the lives of those killed in the attacks, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. That claim cannot be immediately verified because of the lack of information regarding what happened to Stevens the night of the attacks. 

The narrative of “orders to wait” seems to directly contradict Page 23 of the ARB report. 

The page states: “Just prior to receiving the TDY RSO’s distress call shortly after 2142 local, the head of Annex security heard multiple explosions coming from the north in the direction of the SMC. 

The ARB report said “the Annex response team departed its compound in two vehicles at approximately 2205 local.” 

“The departure of the Annex team was not delayed by orders from superiors; the team leader decided on his own to depart the Annex compound once it was apparent, despite a brief delay to permit their continuing efforts, that rapid support from local security elements was not forthcoming.”

Read More: Klein Online

As Many As 50 Obama-backed Green Energy Failures

 

The October bankruptcy of solar company Satcon Technology Corp. puts the number of bankrupt or troubled green energy companies as high as 50, according to one estimate.

During the first presidential debate, Republican candidate Mitt Romney said the Obama administration had doled out $90 billion to green energy companies, half of which he said had failed, which sparked a media-wide debate over the accuracy of the claim.

The Romney campaign later clarified that he was talking about the DOE’s 1705 loan program which doled out $16.1 billion to green energy companies, according to the Washington Post. Of the 33 companies that received 1705 loan guarantees, only three have declared bankruptcy.

However, when other subsidies, outside of the 1705 loan guarantees are factored in, the number of government-backed green energy failures is much higher.

The blog Green Corruption’s “Obama green-energy failure” list contains 23 bankrupt and 27 troubled green energy companies which were backed by the federal government. This list uses data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, but also includes some things the conservative think tank doesn’t.

According to the Heritage Foundation, $80 billion was set aside in the 2009 stimulus package for clean energy loans, grants, and tax credits, and 10 percent of these funds have gone to companies that have filed for bankruptcy or are in dire straits.

The Green Corruption estimates are on the high end as others have total number of bankrupt and troubled green energy firms much lower.

The Heritage Foundation’s list contains 34 companies that have either filed for bankruptcy or are faltering as of October 18. Of those 34 listed, nineteen have filed for bankruptcy and fifteen are considered faltering.

The Heritage list only contains companies that received federal funds from the Obama administration’s Energy Department and other agencies, and does not include “other state, local, and federal tax credits and subsidies,” which would raise the amount of taxpayer dollars that was given to these companies.

Another list compiled by the Senate Republican Policy Committee shows a total of 19 government-backed green energy companies that have either gone bankrupt, are in distress, or failing — twelve bankrupt, six in distress, and one failing.

The committee’s list, however, does not include the most recent green energy failure, Satcon Technology Corp., which received a $3 million DOE grant earlier this year and filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 17, making it the second green energy company to file for bankruptcy that week.

Read More: The Daily Caller

OBAMA the 'SHAM-WOW' PRESIDENT

It’s time to see Obamacare for what it is: The world’s first trillion dollar Ponzi Scheme perpetrated with lies, misrepresentations, and pure fraud by a late night Ginsu knife salesman named Obama.

But Obamacare is just the tip of the sinking Obama iceberg. More on that in a moment.

First, let’s focus on what just happened to America. Let’s say a TV pitchman promised free health insurance. Let’s say he promised “If you don’t like mine, you can keep your current health insurance…PERIOD!” Then millions of Americans, thinking they had nothing to lose, took him up on it. And then, because of this conman’s lies, fraud and misrepresentations they found the policies they liked and their families depended on cancelled. When they went to his web site for help, to try to save themselves, they found it not only defective, but deceptive as well.  

The few who could get on, found they had to enter their personal information (before being given a single choice of plans or prices), even if all they wanted to do was compare plans and prices. And, once they did this they were trapped. Their personal information would be used to extort them. They were warned that if they didn’t buy, they’d be fined.

But wait, there’s more. Their personal information wasn’t even secure. The web site was built so poorly, the personal information of consumers could be easily stolen. And it’s not just online scam artists we’re worried about. The “Obama navigators” themselves might do the stealing- afterall it turns out many of them have criminal records.

But wait, there’s more. The government gave a NO BID contract for hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm of one of Michelle Obama’s buddies. Now the taxpayers are out hundreds of millions, the site doesn’t work, and someone must have $50 to $100 million in a Swiss bank account.

Can you imagine if this happened at a private sector company? Or at a publicly-traded company? Can you imagine the outrage and criminal accusations coming from consumer protection advocates? Can you imagine how quickly the federal government would shut down the business? Can you imagine how quickly a grand jury would be convened to indict the CEO? Can you picture the CEO and his top executives being “perp walked” in handcuffs, in front of the waiting TV news cameras?

The government would throw the book at these executives. For ripping off millions of consumers, including the elderly and innocent young children, the CEO would get life in prison.

Read More: Breitbart

FUNNIES FROM ARTHUR Classified Ad: FIFTY YEAR OLD MANURE SPREADER - $1

Fifty-year old manure spreader. Not sure of brand. Said to have been produced in Kenya. 

Used for a few years in Indonesia before being smuggled into the US via Hawaii. 

Of questionable pedigree. Does not appear to have ever been worked hard.

Apparently, it was pampered by various owners over the years. 

It doesn't work very often, but when it does it can sling shit for amazing distances. I really don't want it hanging around getting in the way. I would prefer a foreign buyer to relocate the manure spreader out of the country. 

I would be willing to trade it for a nicely framed copy of the United States Constitution.

Julie Borowski on the Stossel Show with John Stossel

One of Green Energy's Dirty Little Secrets

CORYDON, Iowa (AP) - The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.

Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country "stronger, cleaner and more secure."

But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.

As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.

Five million acres of land set aside for conservation - more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined - have vanished on Obama's watch.

Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.

Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can't survive.

The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.

Farmers planted 15 million more acres of corn last year than before the ethanol boom, and the effects are visible in places like south central Iowa.

The hilly, once-grassy landscape is made up of fragile soil that, unlike the earth in the rest of the state, is poorly suited for corn. Nevertheless, it has yielded to America's demand for it.

"They're raping the land," said Bill Alley, a member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon pharmacy.

All energy comes at a cost. The environmental consequences of drilling for oil and natural gas are well documented and severe. But in the president's push to reduce greenhouse gases and curtail global warming, his administration has allowed so-called green energy to do not-so-green things.

Read More: My Way News

The EPA might be headed for a bruising at the Ole Supreme Court

Does federal law empower the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate every non-moving source of carbon dioxide in America? The Supreme Court will decide that question in early 2014.  

The Supreme Court decided Massachusetts v. EPA in 2007, a lawsuit brought by the Bay State (with the support of Gov. Mitt Romney) to force the Bush EPA to make a finding as to whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers the environment. The Court surprised many legal experts when it held in a 5-4 decision, led by the liberal wing of the Court, that states have standing under Article III of the Constitution to sue the federal government over questions of federal law, despite the fact that it was disputed (1) whether global warming is even happening at all, (2) if so, whether it is caused by human activity generating GHGs (greenhouse gases) like carbon dioxide, and further (3) that is undisputed that only 20 percent of GHGs come from the United States, so no Supreme Court order could effectively remedy this problem even if it exists.

After Barack Obama became president in 2009, the EPA issued an official finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant that harms the environment, notwithstanding the fact that (1) all animals exhale carbon dioxide, (2) that it is necessary for plants to live, and (3) that every form of fire and combustion generates carbon emissions.

EPA went on to invoke the Clean Air Act, passed by Congress in 1970, as authorizing it to regulate these carbon emissions. Various lawsuits were filed, challenging the unprecedentedly broad scope of these new EPA rules.

On Oct. 15, the Supreme Court granted review in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, limiting the Court’s review in this first modern case exploring this subject to determining whether the EPA’s permitting scheme for new cars legally authorizes the EPA to also regulate all stationary sources of GHGs. If so, then the federal EPA in Washington, DC can regulate not just your local power plant, but also your home stove, fireplace, campfire, and furnace.  

Arguments are likely to be scheduled around February, with a decision before July 2014.

Thank You: Breitbart

Another Big Green Energy Fail

Now here’s a fine mess, as Laurel and Hardy used to say. One of the biggest electric vehicle charging companies, Arizona-based ECOtality (a Nissan Leaf partner), went bankrupt, stranding about 13,000 commercial and residential stations. We all have a stake in this, because American tax dollars supported these installations through the so-called EV Project.

In the early rounds, only one bidder emerged, an unknown company called Tellus Power, which proposed acquiring ECOtality's assets for just $3 million. Consider that the federal grants totaled almost $115 million (of which almost $100 million was spent) and you begin to see the issue here. There are clear parallels to what happened to the U.S. investment in Fisker Automotive, which went bankrupt after spending $192 million of a $529 million loan (the feds then seized $21 million in assets).

But just as I was writing this, the Florida-based Car Charging Group said that it had won the prize, price unspecified. "We believe this will solidify our position as the leader in the electric vehicle charging industry," said Michael Farkas, the CEO. CCG has been aggressively expansionist, and owns pay-to-charge stations in such places as the parking garages of New York City. He's right; this makes the company a big player.

One of the issues with ECOtality's bankruptcy was making sure its network remains active, so users can swipe cards and get billed for the electricity. The worst possible outcome would have been to have ECOtality’s 3,300 public chargers (the rest are residential) inoperable because nobody could turn on their billing and operating systems. Nissan was so concerned about the network that it lent ECOtality $1.25 million to get through the auction, spokesman Brian Brockman confirmed.

Come to think of it, if those home units didn’t work, that would have been horrible, too. If you see parallels to the big and still-evolving government shutdown, you’re paying attention. It’s not quite veterans unable to get into war memorials, but it’s along the same lines.

Read More: The Huffington Post

PROOF: HBO’s Bill Maher is a pathetic little fool.

The DNC has a Budget Crisis of their own.

 

There's another budget crisis in Washington, and it's unfolding inside the Democratic party. The Democratic National Committee remains so deeply in the hole from spending in the last election that it is struggling to pay its own vendors.

It is a highly unusual state of affairs for a national party -- especially one that can deploy the President as its fundraiser-in-chief -- and it speaks to the quiet but serious organizational problems the party has yet to address since the last election, obscured in part by the much messier spectacle of GOP infighting.

The Democrats' numbers speak for themselves: Through August, 10 months after helping President Obama secure a second term, the DNC owed its various creditors a total of $18.1 million, compared to the $12.5 million cash cushion the Republican National Committee is holding.

Several executives at firms that contract to provide services to the party -- speaking anonymously to avoid antagonizing what remains an important if troubled client -- describe an organization playing for time as they raise alarms about past-due bills falling further behind. And senior strategists close to the DNC say they worry the organization appears to have no road map back to solvency. "They really thought they could get this money raised by the summer," one said, "but the fact is, from talking to people over there, they have no real plan for how to solve this."

DNC national press secretary Michael Czin says the committee is working with vendors on a case-by-case basis to pay down their tabs. And filings show the organization over the last five months has made $4.5 million in payments to the Amalgamated Bank and appears to be hewing to a $1 million-per-month installment schedule now. 

"While we work to retire our debt, we're not taking our foot off the pedal and are making the investments that will help ensure that Democrats are successful in 2014, 2016, and beyond," Czin said. He pointed to ongoing work by the DNC's National Finance Committee, which met over the weekend in Colorado to discuss fundraising strategy.

Sources close to the DNC say officials there have quietly laid the blame in part on the White House. It's no secret that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also represents an area around Miami in the U.S. House, lacks strong relationships inside the administration. But it's not even clear who at the White House should be minding the problem these days, following the exodus of President Obama's top political brains.

By the DNC's count, the President has headlined 15 DNC fundraisers this year. In an indication Obama is stepping up his commitment, two of those took place last week alone -- the first tacked onto his trip to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting, and the second later in the week at The Jefferson, a posh hotel a half-mile north of the White House on 16^th Street. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

Read More: Fortune

Global Warming Fools are Feeling the Heat

On Friday Sept. 27th the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivers its latest verdict on the state of man-made global warming. Though the details are a secret, one thing is clear: the version of events you will see and hear in much of the media, especially from partis pris organisations like the BBC, will be the opposite of what the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report actually says.

Already we have had a taste of the nonsense to come: a pre-announcement to the effect that “climate scientists” are now “95 per cent certain” that humans are to blame for climate change; an evidence-free declaration by the economist who wrote the discredited Stern Report that the computer models cited by the IPCC “substantially underestimate” the scale of the problem; a statement by the panel’s chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, that “the scientific evidence of… climate change has strengthened year after year”.

As an exercise in bravura spin, these claims are up there with Churchill’s attempts to reinvent the British Expeditionary Force’s humiliating retreat from Dunkirk as a victory. In truth, though, the new report offers scant consolation to those many alarmists whose careers depend on talking up the threat. It says not that they are winning the war to persuade the world of the case for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change – but that the battle is all but lost.

At the heart of the problem lie the computer models which, for 25 years, have formed the basis for the IPCC’s scaremongering: they predicted runaway global warming, when the real rise in temperatures has been much more modest. So modest, indeed, that it has fallen outside the lowest parameters of the IPCC’s prediction range. The computer models, in short, are bunk.

Read More: The Telegraph

FUNNIES FROM ARTHUR Cartoons and Comics

Maybe Obama is the Food Stamp President After All

After Obama's election in 2009 a small grocery store/convenience store in Florida changed its name to the Obama Express. Several other stores across the country did the same thing. One of those was a location in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, in 2013, the Maryland outlet is under investigation, accused of illegally trafficking in food stamps.

On September 17, WBAL reported that nine retailers in Baltimore County had been arrested for illegally redeeming food stamps for cash and kicking back a portion to food stamp recipients. The retailers did not sell them any merchandise or food.

One of those indicted was one Abdullah Aljaradi who allegedly obtained $2 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cash from Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards.

Abdullah Aljaradi, age 51, of Baltimore; Second Obama Express and D&M Deli and Grocery, 901 Harlem Avenue, Suite A and B, respectively. From October 2010 through July 2013, Aljaradi allegedly obtained more than $2 million in payments for food sales that never occurred.

The office of the US Attorney, District of Maryland, has further information on the charges:

The indictments allege that the defendants exchanged EBT benefits for cash, in violation of the food stamp program rules. The indictments allege that the defendants typically paid half the value of the EBT benefits in cash. To avoid detection, the defendants often debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days. As a result of unlawful cash transactions, the defendants obtained more than $6,898,000 in EBT deposits for transactions in which the stores did not provide food.

If convicted, the nine retailers could get 20 years each in jail.

Breitbart

Democrat Alan Grayson Praises the Creation of Stealth Socialism in America

Congressman Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) — who once said in an elaborate presentation that the Republican healthcare plan is for the sick to “die quickly” — praised the creation of “stealth socialism” in America in a recent interview with David Dayen at Salon.

Speaking about the Federal Reserve’s rapidly-growing balance sheet, Grayson remarked:

We’ve had a government takeover of the bond market. Stealth socialism’s been created. Government simply ends up owning more and more and more. If government had taken over the steel industry, maybe it would have been more noticeable. They’ve taken over the financing of housing industry as well, with a desired result.

The “desired result” of said “stealth socialism,” the congressman said, is “housing ticking up again” and “setting a foundation for recovery for the U.S. economy.”

The Harvard-educated economist also spoke about the broader policies of the Federal Reserve and quantitative easing.

“Conceivably, we might be in a situation where the Fed has to buy $70 billion in assets in perpetuity,” he said. “It’s puzzling why there’s been no market reaction to that. But it has had its apparent intended purpose. It leaves you scratching your head a bit about how it worked and why it worked. You would think more than tripling the balance sheet would have some effect on the value of money, but so far no. There’s been no effect on inflation; in fact, it appears to have prevented deflation, an economic spiral and rounds of bankruptcy.” 

Grayson concluded the interview with a story of how he negotiated a 50 percent increase for bilingual HUD housing counseling, saying he did so by telling the Republicans to “put up or shut up” if they really want to improve their image among Hispanics.

“When push came to shove, they accepted the amendment, they wouldn’t allow a roll call vote on it. They didn’t want to have their people vote against Spanish-language housing counseling,” he said.  “They didn’t do it because I made pals with them. I scared the crap out of them!”

Jorge Bonilla (R), a U.S. Navy veteran whose parents immigrated to the United States from Puerto Rico, is running against Grayson in 2014.  He ridiculed Grayson’s remarks, noting that while Grayson claims to be able to “[scare] the crap” out of Republicans, he has so far refused Bonilla’s offer to debate.

“Mr. Grayson touts current monetary policy as providing a baseline for recovery, yet fails to notice that current job creation does not keep up with population growth, and that labor participation continues to crater (312,000 alone dropped out of the labor force last month),” a statement on Bonilla’s website reads.  

“The fact is that with his votes for Obamacare, the stimulus and anti-business Dodd-Frank legislation, Mr. Grayson is jointly responsible for this administration’s abysmal failure to create jobs or improve the economy.”

Bonilla suggested Grayson explain the benefits of “stealth socialism” to all those whose hours have been cut, who have lost their jobs, or “who have been dropped from their health care coverage due to the onerous mandates that he voted for.”

Thank You: The Blaze

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is changing their tune on Global Warming

There have already been leaks from this 31-page document, which summarizes 1,914 pages of scientific discussion, but thanks to a senior climate scientist, I have had a glimpse of the key prediction at the heart of the document. The big news is that, for the first time since these reports started coming out in 1990, the new one dials back the alarm. It states that the temperature rise we can expect as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than the IPCC thought in 2007.

Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is. It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.

Specifically, the draft report says that "equilibrium climate sensitivity" (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur—is "extremely likely" to be above 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), "likely" to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and "very likely" to be below 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was "likely" to be above 2 degrees Celsius and "very likely" to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit. Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.

Still, the downward movement since 2007 is clear, especially at the bottom of the "likely" range. The most probable value (3 degrees Celsius last time) is for some reason not stated this time.

A more immediately relevant measure of likely warming has also come down: "transient climate response" (TCR)—the actual temperature change expected from a doubling of carbon dioxide about 70 years from now, without the delayed effects that come in the next century. The new report will say that this change is "likely" to be 1 to 2.5 degrees Celsius and "extremely unlikely" to be greater than 3 degrees. This again is lower than when last estimated in 2007 ("very likely" warming of 1 to 3 degrees Celsius, based on models, or 1 to 3.5 degrees, based on observational studies).

Most experts believe that warming of less than 2 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels will result in no net economic and ecological damage. Therefore, the new report is effectively saying (based on the middle of the range of the IPCC's emissions scenarios) that there is a better than 50-50 chance that by 2083, the benefits of climate change will still outweigh the harm.

Read More: The Wall Street Journal