Saturday, November 30, 2013

China: ‘Baby box’ plan for unwanted newborns causes stir

BBC
November 30, 2013



Parents would be able to leave unwanted babies in boxes. / Photo and caption by YUMI OTA, via National Geographic.com
“Baby box” would be for unwanted infants. / Photo: YUMI OTA, (National Geographic.com)


A Chinese city’s plan for a “baby box” where parents can anonymously leave their unwanted infants is proving controversial, it’s reported.


Shenzhen has apparently applied to the Guangdong provincial authorities to pilot such a facility next year. Some social media users have warned that the box will encourage “irresponsible parents” to give away their unwanted children, the People’s Daily newspaper says.

But the head of Shenzhen’s social welfare centre, Tang Rongsheng, points out that nearly 100 abandoned infants have been handed over to his centre this year. “The shelter embodies the idea of prioritising the interest of the child,” he says.

This is crazy???????????????

Crucial weekend for Obamacare website begins with a shutdown

ROBERTA RAMPTON AND SHARON BEGLEY
Reuters
November 30, 2013

A crucial weekend for the troubled website that is the backbone of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul appears to be off to a shaky start, as the U.S. government took the HealthCare.gov site offline for an unusually long maintenance period into Saturday morning.

Just hours before the Obama administration’s self-imposed deadline to get the insurance shopping website working for the “vast majority” of its users by Saturday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that it was taking down the website for an 11-hour period that would end at 8 a.m. EST on Saturday.

It was unclear whether the extended shutdown of the website – about seven hours longer than on typical day – represented a major setback to the Obama administration’s high-stakes scramble to fix the portal that it hopes eventually will enroll about 7 million uninsured and under-insured Americans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

At the very least, the shutdown suggested that nine weeks after the website’s disastrous launch on October 1 prevented most applicants from enrolling in coverage and ignited one of the biggest crises of Obama’s administration, U.S. officials are nervous over whether Americans will see enough progress in the website to be satisfied.

Full article here

White House confident it’s met deadline to fix Healthcare.gov for most

Anita Kumar
McClatchy Newspapers
November 30, 2013

happyo

After two months of relentless criticism about the troubled rollout of the new federal health care law, Saturday marks the day when President Barack Obama pledged that the flawed website, HealthCare.gov, would be fixed.

White House officials say they expect that vow to be fulfilled, at least for the vast majority of Americans who need to access the website to sign up for health insurance. But anything less than success Saturday probably will be a crippling blow in a second term where Obama faces many tough political challenges, from budget battles to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.

The HealthCare.gov rollout disaster has sapped the president’s popularity, sending his approval rating in recent opinion polls to its lowest level ever. That gives the relaunch of the website an importance that goes beyond the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which already was considered the president’s signature domestic achievement.

Read more

What a Joke!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

NYPD To Businesses: Turn Security Cameras Toward Streets

CBS New York
November 30, 2013

a-new-york-si-gira-minority-report-ma-non-e-u-L-N1_NosThe NYPD wants business owners to help solve crime in one Harlem precinct by turning their security cameras to the street.

As 1010 WINS’ Gary Baumgarten reported Saturday, police believe crime has spun out of control in the 32nd Precinct, which is bounded by St. Nicholas and Bradhurst avenues on the west, 127th Street on the south, and the Harlem River on the north and east.

“You’ve got a lot of these gang members out here attacking people for no reason,” said one neighbor, Dwayne. “They need to just put a lot of cameras up in storefronts to lower the crime rate.”

Read more

Colorado Black Friday Gun Purchases in the Thousands

Ryan Parker
Denver Post
November 30, 2013

(RJ Sangosti, Denver Post file)
(RJ Sangosti, Denver Post file)

Criminal background checks for firearm sales in Colorado were in the thousands on Black Friday.

By the end of the evening, 3,804 checks had been processed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, according to the bureau’s social media updates.

The shopping day after Thanksgiving is the busiest for the unit that processes the gun checks, according to officials.

Read more

Friday, November 29, 2013

Russia Begins Deployment of Aerospace Defenses in Arctic

RIA Novosti
November 29, 2013

Russia has started the deployment of aerospace defense units in the Arctic and construction of an early missile warning radar in the country’s extreme north, the commander of Aerospace Defense Forces said Thursday.

The town of Vorkuta is in the extreme northeast of the Komi Republic of Russia, highlighted in orange. Credit: Marmelad via Wikipedia
The town of Vorkuta is in the extreme northeast of the Komi Republic of Russia, highlighted in orange. Credit: Marmelad via Wikipedia

“The expansion of [missile early warning] radar coverage is one of the key areas of our work, especially when it comes to [Russia’s] extreme north – we have already started the deployment of electronic warfare units in the Arctic,” Maj. Gen. Alexander Golovko said.

Golovko also said construction of an advanced early missile warning radar site has started near the town of Vorkuta, situated just north of the Arctic Circle.

Russia is planning to complete its comprehensive missile early warning network by 2018. Four Voronezh-class radar stations that can easily be relocated are already part of this network.
A Voronezh-DM radar is on combat duty in the Krasnodar Territory and a Voronezh-M radar is in the Leningrad region. The Voronezh-DM radars in the Kaliningrad and Irkutsk regions are in the testing stage of operation.

In addition to the Vorkuta radar, the preparations for construction of new-generation radars are underway in the Krasnoyarsk and the Altai territories, as well as in central Russia (the Orenburg Region), Golovko said.

Voronezh-class radars have an operational range of 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles). They are more energy-efficient, can be quickly redeployed to a new site and require a smaller crew to operate, compared to previous generation stations.

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia will put on combat duty seven Voronezh-class radars in the next five years.

The new radars will eventually replace the outdated Dnepr- and Daryal-class radars and close all gaps in radar coverage on Russia’s borders.

Chinese jets shadowed US and Japanese planes in new air defense zone

RT
November 29, 2013

Chinese fighter jets were scrambled and followed US and Japanese planes that had entered the newly-proclaimed Chinese air defense zone in the disputed area of the East China Sea, Xinhua reports.

The Chengdu J-10 was designed to be a multi-role, all-weather aircraft.  Credit: Retxham via Flickr
The Chengdu J-10 was designed to be a multi-role, all-weather aircraft. Credit: Retxham via Flickr

Two US surveillance aircraft and 10 Japanese F-15 jets were ‘tailed’ by Chinese pilots on Friday.

China ordered an urgent dispatch of its Su-30 and J-10 fighter jets to an area in the East China Sea after the foreign aircraft “invaded” the air defense zone, they said.

The reported intrusions came in defiance of the East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), established by Beijing last week.

China’s move has triggered outrage from several states in the region and critical rhetoric from the US, as the vast zone covers disputed areas, including the islets claimed by both China and Japan.

Earlier on Thursday, the Chinese Air Force conducted its first air patrol flights over the zone, as Japan and South Korea sent their own military aircraft into the zone’s airspace in an act of defiance.

China has stressed its decision to enforce the airspace identification zone – which requires all aircraft flying over or near it to identify themselves – follows common international practices and “is a necessary measure in China’s exercise of self-defense rights.”

No international flights will be affected by the setup of the zone, Chinese Air Force spokesman, Shen Jinke, told Xinhua.

Japan and its US ally blasted the decision as “unacceptable” and rejected the “unilateral” declaration, saying it would create dangerous tension. However, Chinese officials gave a reminder that both countries have long had their own ADIZ, and that the Japanese never discussed theirs with their neighbor.

“If they want it revoked, then we would ask that Japan first revoke its own air defense identification zone and China will reconsider it after 44 years,” China’s Defense Ministry spokesman, Yang Yujun, said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website on Thursday.

While possible action against the zone’s infiltrators has been vaguely defined as “defensive emergency measures,” The Global Times, a Chinese state media newspaper, on Friday called for “timely countermeasures without hesitation,” should Tokyo violate the new ADIZ.

At the same time, the paper suggested China could ignore violations by some other states, including the US. Two US military B-52 bombers flew over the area on Monday without prior notice, with a Pentagon spokesman telling Reuters we “have continued to follow our normal procedures.”

Church Group Kicked Out Of Public Park For Handing Out Thanksgiving Dinners To Homeless

Park ranger demanded church group leave for violating an alleged city ordinance

Mikael Thalen
Infowars.com
November 29, 2013

A church group in Lake Worth, FL was kicked out of a public park Thursday afternoon after a park ranger spotted them feeding homeless residents.



Members from the Acts 2 Worship Center, who headed to Palm Beach County’s John Prince Park to feed the homeless, intended to teach their children a valuable lesson about the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

“We brought our kids out here so they could see what it’s really like for people that are struggling,” Acts 2 member Brian Oakes told CBS 12.

The park’s growing homeless population, many who have been hit hard by the weakening economy, were more than thankful for the warm meal.

“We’re grateful you know. They hand out, we meet the guys and stuff. They give us a prayer and everything,” homeless resident Kevin Rudd said.

Unfortunately, a Palm Beach County park ranger “just following orders” soon approached the group and demanded they leave for violating an alleged city ordinance.

“It’s very disappointing. We didn’t intend for this today,” said Brian. “ We just wanted to give the food and be able to bless people.”

Despite being told to leave, the church group sided with humanity, defying the orders as they finished handing out the rest of their meals.

After being confronted by CBS 12 reporter Israel Balderas, the park ranger declined to comment, admitting he was given “strict orders” not to discuss the matter with anyone.

“I can’t talk to you. my bosses don’t want me to talk,” the park ranger said.

According to the park ranger, who had to radio supervisors to learn the ordinance he was enforcing, feeding the homeless was not permitted by a “large group.”

Sadly, the situation in Florida is an eye-opening representation of the country’s current state, where hoards of shoppers violently fighting over fake deals are praised, and those actually engaging in thanksgiving are defied.

This article was originally posted on Storyleak.com.

Karzai condemns US strike that killed toddler, threatens not to sign security deal

RT
November 29, 2013

President Hamid Karzai has blamed the US for a drone strike on a home in southern Afghanistan that killed a 2-year-old child and wounded two women, vowing that he will not sign a key bilateral security deal if such attacks continue.

Karzai was a CIA contractor during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan.
Karzai was a CIA contractor during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan.

“This attack shows that American forces are not respecting the life and safety of Afghan people’s houses,”Karzai said in the statement Thursday. “For years, our innocent people have become victims of the war under the name of terrorism, and they have had no safety in their homes.”

Karzai made it clear that he will not sign the security agreement if such “oppressions by foreign forces continue.”

The president stated that the airstrike was suspected to have been carried out by US “pilotless aircraft”and targeted a house in Helmand Province. Karzai added that he received his information from the governor of the province, Mohammad Naem.

No details were provided by the US-led coalition about Thursday’s airstrike. But the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said it will investigate it, adding that it “deeply regrets” any civilian deaths that happened, according to Reuters.

The strike came as US and Afghanistan are in the midst of negotiating a bilateral security agreement that has so far not fleshed out the details about under what conditions US troops will stay in Afghanistan past the NATO forces’ pullout in 2014.

Last week US had thought it finalized the deal by proposing to leave 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan to train and assist the country’s military. But, Karzai had doubts about signing the deal, expressing concerns over US meddling in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.

This week, Karzai has called on the US to cease all military operations against civilian homes and show a clear dedication to the peace process before a security pact is signed.

Karzai set the conditions in a meeting with US National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the US envoy to the region and the NATO commander in Afghanistan, Reuters reported. “President Karzai outlined new conditions for signing the agreement and indicated he is not prepared to sign the BSA promptly,” the White House said.

The conditions included returning Afghan citizens from the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay as a clear step to launch the peace process ahead of the scheduled exit of most US and NATO forces beyond 2014.

Karzai’s new conditions for a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) come after he rejected the endorsement of the security deal by an assembly of Afghan elders on Sunday. The Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, recommended Karzai to sign the agreement.

Earlier, the US government said that if the deal with Afghanistan is not signed by the end of 2013 then it will have to begin withdrawing its troops completely starting next year.

China Declares “Willing To Engage In A Protracted Confrontation” With Japan As “Prime Target”

Zero Hedge
November 29, 2013

Following the to-ing and fro-ing of the last 2 days with US and Japan “testing” China’s new Air Defense Zone (ADIZ), China has not only escalated (as we noted earlier) but as the day begins in Asia is stepping up the rhetoric significantly.


Image: Senkaku Islands (Wikimedia Commons).

Official media said that Japan is the “prime target” and it is an “urgent task for China to further train its air force to make full preparation for potential conflicts.” Japanese lawmakers, meanwhile, are pushing for a bill “demanding an immediate withdrawal of China’s ADIZ.” While the Western world goes on its merry way buying S&P futures, China’s concluding message rings its most defint so far, “We are willing to engage in a protracted confrontation with Japan. Our ultimate goal is to beat its willpower and ambition to instigate strategic confrontation against China.”

The Chinese just stepped up the rhetoric notably,

Via Yonhap,

China’s official media pointedly said Friday that Japan is the “prime target” of Beijing’s newly declared air control zone over the East China Sea, warning that China is willing to engage in “a protracted confrontation with Japan.”
China’s declaration of its Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), announced last week, has sparked strong resistance from Japan, the United States, South Korea and other neighboring Asian nations. The new zone partly overlaps those of South Korea and Japan.
The U.S. flew two B-52 bombers through the Chinese zone without informing China this week. South Korea and Japan followed suit. In response, China sent several fighter jets and an early warning aircraft on patrol Thursday into the disputed air space.
In an editorial titled “Japan prime target of ADIZ tussle,” the official Global Times newspaper said, “We should carry out timely countermeasures without hesitation against Japan when it challenges China’s newly declared ADIZ.”
If Tokyo flies its aircraft over the zone, we will be bound to send our planes to its ADIZ,” the editorial said.
“If the trend continues, there will likely be friction and confrontations and even tension in the air like in the Cold War era between the U.S. and the Soviet Union,” it said.
“It is therefore an urgent task for China to further train its air force to make full preparation for potential conflicts,” the editorial said.
“We are willing to engage in a protracted confrontation with Japan. Our ultimate goal is to beat its willpower and ambition to instigate strategic confrontation against China,” it said.
Analysts said the Chinese declaration of air control zone is mainly aimed at bolstering its claims to a group of islets in the East China Sea at the center of a bitter territorial dispute with Japan, which are known as Diaoyu in China and Senkaku in Japan.

The Japanese are not backing down…

Thursday, November 28, 2013

NYPD must face excessive force allegations in court

upi.com
November 28, 2013

A federal judge ruled New York police must face claims in court they used excessive force against two Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011.

Heather Carpenter and her fiance, Julio Jose Jimenez-Artunduaga, sued New York Police Department Chief Joseph Esposito, Chief of Patrol James Hall and three sergeants for use of excessive force, the Courthouse News Service reported.

The suit alleges one of the sergeants gratuitously grabbed Carpenter’s breast and another punched and kicked Jimenez-Artunduaga.

Read more

Defiant flights: Japan, S. Korea military planes fly into China’s air defense zone

RT
November 28, 2013

Key American allies in East Asia, Japan and South Korea, have followed US lead by sending military aircraft to fly through disputed airspace, which China unilaterally included last week in its air defense zone.

The area of China's so-called "Air Defense Zone."
The area of China’s so-called “Air Defense Zone.”

Tokyo and Seoul sent its aircraft into the disputed areas following a similar flight on Monday by two unarmed American B-52 bombers. Neither country informed the Chinese of their plans beforehand, stressing their defiance of Beijing’s claim over the airspace.

China announced last week that it now considers new airspace as part of its Air Defense Identification Zone and demanded that aircraft passing it notify Chinese authorities of their flight plans and identify themselves as they pass. The claimed zones include those over islands, the sovereignty over which China contests other nations.

Japanese military said Tuesday that it sent surveillance missions over the islands in the South China Sea, which are called the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China.

“They are carrying out surveillance activity as before in the East China Sea, including the zone,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference.

The area is routinely patrolled by Japanese naval ships and P-3C aircraft, Suga said.

“We are not going to change this [activity] out of consideration to China,” he stressed.

Meanwhile South Korean forces flew over the Socotra Rock in the Yellow Sea, the northern part of the South China Sea. Both South Korea and China consider it to be within their respective exclusive economic zones and call it Ieodo and Suyan Rock respectively.

The demonstrations of military defiance by the US and its allies so far did not draw any response from Beijing. Chinese military said it monitored the passage of the US bombers, but did not comment on whether they plan to take any action to enforce the new rules.

Some experts and policymakers believe the declaration of the defense zone was rather a symbolic gesture aimed at eroding Japanese and South Korean influence over the disputed territories rather than a practical move.

“China will not implement [the zone] fully because they do not have enough assets … but they will try to scare smaller nations,” told Reuters a source in the Japanese government, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.

While choosing to ignore China’s claims in practice, its rivals are not hesitating to voice their displeasure on diplomatic level. On Thursday, a resolution approved by PM Abe’s party demanded that China rescinded the new defense zone, calling the move “unreasonable expansionism.” The panel however refrained from using the wording “pre-modern and imperialist,” as was initially suggested.

Beijing rejected on Thursday calls from Tokyo and Seoul to rectify the zone. It also accused Japan of using double standards over the issue, pointing out that it implemented its own zone back in 1969.

“Japan consistently blames others and smears the name of other countries but never examines its own conduct,” China’s Defense Ministry spokesman, Yang Yujun, said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website.

“If they want it revoked, then we would ask that Japan first revoke its own air defense identification zone and China will reconsider it after 44 years,” Yang added.

The conflict gives a chance for the US to reiterate its ties with its Asian allies. In a telephone call on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told his Japanese counterpart Itsunori Onodera that the defense pact covered the disputed islands. He also commended Japan for “for exercising appropriate restraint,” a Pentagon spokesman said.

CNN and MSNBC Lose Almost Half Their Viewers in One Year

Noel Sheppard
NewsBusters.org
November 28, 2013

CNN Fox MSNBC_0It’s been a tough year for the liberal cable news outlets.


Data released Tuesday show CNN shedding 48 percent of total viewers since last November and MSNBC dropping 45 percent.

The numbers were even worse in the all important demographic of people aged 25 to 54 as CNN’s ratings dropped 59 percent and MSNBC’s 52 percent.

Read more

Watch: ObamaScare: Our Entire Economy is About to Get Hit With a Sledgehammer *Micro Documentary*

Mac Slavo
SHTFPlan.com
November 28, 2013

With the Patient Affordable Care Act now actively being integrated into American society, many still have no clue what its after-effects will actually be.

American prosperity will continue to decline as long as Obamacare keeps transferring wealth to the mega banks.  Credit: timetrax23 via Flickr
American prosperity will continue to decline as long as Obamacare keeps transferring wealth to the mega banks. Credit: timetrax23 via Flickr

Here’s the reality: The pain is coming and if you have yet to experience it in the form of higher insurance premiums, you can be assured that you’re going to feel it very soon in one way or another.

Our entire economy is about to get hit with a sledgehammer.

The following must share micro-documentary from Everything Investments details many of the changes to come, and despite what the mainstream media wants us to believe, or what those who are receiving free health care think they are getting from their government, the fact is that a dark cloud of economic malaise is going to descend upon our country.

Obamacare is turning America into a part time workforce… companies all across the nation are reducing many workers to less than 30 hours a week… this includes local and state governments.
Obamacare also has job killing mandates and other penalties on business, increasing tax burdens on smaller companies.
…Costs all around are going to rise.

Watch ObamaScare and learn just how this is going to affect our economy and YOU within a few months time:



(For More Informative Videos and Resources visit Everything Investments)

Other than Congressional members and those companies which received “special” exemptions from the health care bill because of backroom deals, these new mandates are going to put so much pressure on individuals and businesses that the destruction of America’s economy is now a foregone conclusion.

We can pretend “free” health care is free, or we can realize that the government just nationalized 1/6th of our country’s economy and they are confiscating the wealth of an entire nation in an effort to make it work.

As we noted previously there is no fix to this debacle and we can fully expect the entire system – and that includes Obamacare and our domestic economy – to detonate within one year’s time.

Buckle up, it won’t be pretty.

Professor Warns of Robots Armed With Tasers

Campaign to ban killer robots achieves success at UN

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 28, 2013

Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Noel Sharkey warns that autonomous robots armed with tasers may soon be used for crowd control purposes.



Sharkey chairs The International Committee for Robot Arms Control, a group which is seeking to achieve an international ban on robots that can act autonomously and kill humans.

“There’s certainly talk of arming robots with tasers,” Sharkey told the Alex Jones Show, adding, “but tasers are kind of deadly – 150 people died in the U.S. within a period of two years from taser abuse, so if you start arming robots with tasers then I think it’s only a short step to arming them with lethal weapons.”

Sharkey said that his organization had enjoyed recent success at the United Nations with French and American delegations in moving to prohibit armed autonomous robots by putting forward the issue as a mandate for discussion at the UN.

“There was a massive discussion and they accepted the mandate so next year the CCW committee (Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons) are setting up an expert workshop to take this on board and discuss it,” said Sharkey.

Sharkey has predicted that within the next 30 years, “Humanoid walking robots would be more in use for crowd control at games, strikes and riots. Robots will patrol city centres and trouble spots where fights are likely to break out.”

The professor sees the drones being used to run checkpoints, check IDs and make arrests with the aid of “non-lethal” weapons.

DARPA has already announced the creation of a robotic drone that looks human, with the construction of PETMAN by Boston Dynamics. Sharkey described the DARPA robots as “an incredible technical achievement, but it’s unfortunate that it’s going to be used to kill people.”

In a 50-page report published last year, Human Rights Watch also warned that artificially intelligent robots let loose on the battlefield would inevitably commit war crimes.

Former intelligence officer Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer, also wrote an essay warning of the threat posed by remorseless “killer robots” that will be used to stalk and slaughter human targets in the near future.

Last year, experts at the prestigious University of Cambridge announced a project to conduct research into the “extinction-level risks” posed to humanity by artificially intelligent robots.

Flying drones that communicate with each other are now being developed for “hunting terrorists” and other “homeland security” purposes, as well as UAVs that could one day snatch humans off the street.

The Pentagon is currently developing robots with “real brains” that would enable them to think independently and act autonomously. DARPA’s LS3 robot is already able to autonomously track humans over rugged terrain.

Robot drones that are capable of killing intruders have already been operational along the South Korean border for years.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Is Xbox Kinect Listening to Your Skype Calls?

Gamers complain of Microsoft snooping on private chats to detect swearing

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 27, 2013



Users of the new Xbox One are complaining that Kinect is monitoring their Skype conversations for swearing and then punishing them with account bans. Microsoft has admitted it is punishing gamers for bad language but denied that it is snooping on private Skype chats.

RELATED: Microsoft Denies Monitoring Skype Calls After Banning Users For Bad Language

Colorado Democrat Resigns to Forestall Recall On Gun Control Stance

Centennial State has some of the most draconian anti-2nd Amendment laws in the nation.

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 27, 2013

Colorado Democrat State Senator Evie Hudak.
Colorado Democrat State Senator Evie Hudak.

Colorado Democrat state Senator Evie Hudak’s constituents are hopping mad about her stance on the Second Amendment.

On Wednesday, the embattled politico threw in the towel ahead of a recall effort in the state.

“By resigning I am protecting these important new laws for the good of Colorado and ensuring that we can continue looking forward,” Hudak wrote in her resignation letter.

The resignation comes as a surprise. Political observers in Colorado believed Hudak would survive a recall effort by Second Amendment advocates and their supporters.

Hudak and Democrats in the state passed laws requiring background checks on all firearms sales, the outlawing of magazines capable of taking more than 15 rounds, and a ban on so-called assault weapons within Denver, the state capital.

Two other Democrat legislators, Sens. John Morse of Colorado Springs and Angela Giron of Pueblo, were thrown out of office earlier this year in response to their efforts to undermine the Second Amendment.

In March, Hudak took heat for callous comments she directed at a rape victim who testified against a bill to ban concealed-carry firearms. Faced with outrage from the public and bad PR for her insensitive comments, the senator later attempted to backtrack. Hudak said she “didn’t mean to be insensitive” in the exchange with Amanda Collins.

The Colorado Senate passed the law banning concealed-carry on college campuses.

Proof: Gun Registration Leads To Confiscation

Gun confiscations begin in New York, aided by existing firearms registry

Kit Daniels
Infowars.com
November 27, 2013

In the wake of New York’s latest gun control law, the New York Police Department is now sending out notices to registered gun owners demanding that they give up their firearms, clear proof that gun registration leads to outright confiscations.

The letter being sent out to New York City's gun owners who now possess "illegal" firearms.
The letter being sent out to New York City’s gun owners who now possess “illegal” firearms. Click to enlarge.

The notice provides gun owners, who possess firearms now prohibited under New York’s unconstitutional SAFE Act, the “options” to either surrender their firearms to the police, remove them from the city limits or otherwise render them inoperable.

The NYPD knew exactly who to send the notices to by using a centralized firearms registry which lists the city’s gun owners and what firearms they have in their possession.

With the gun database already in place, the police merely needed to compile a list of firearm makes and models now banned under the SAFE Act and send the notices to the appropriate owners.

The SAFE Act, which was passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor on the same day in January, has numerous, draconian provisions including, but not limited to:

- Outright ban of magazines holding over 10 rounds
- Restriction on more than seven rounds being loaded into a magazine; the limited exceptions do not include home defense
- Mandatory background checks for ammunition
- The creation of a firearms registry for what the state considers “assault weapons”
- A requirement for firearm permit holders to fill out a form to keep the state from publicly identifying them

These unconstitutional provisions and the overall law itself have met significant resistance.

Erie Co., N.Y. Sheriff Timothy B. Howard publicly stated that his department will not enforce the SAFE Act, adding that the law is one of the strongest examples of the government not listening to the people.

“It’s an unenforceable law and I believe it will ultimately be declared unconstitutional,” he said during a press conference. “Do you want law enforcement people that will say ‘I will do this because I’m told to do this, even if I know it’s wrong?’”

Earlier this month, Howard won his re-election due to his stance against the gun control law.

“The SAFE Act was a major issue in this [Erie Co. Sheriff] election,” Carl J. Calabrese, a political consultant, said to the Buffalo News. “A lot of people in Erie County, both Republicans and Democrats, are hunters, gun owners and shooters … These are motivated people who get out and vote.”

“In a low-turnout election year like this one, it can make a huge difference.”

Howard told the newspaper that he did what he thought was the right thing to do.

“People in Western New York feel strongly about the Constitution and Albany’s misreading of it,” he added.

While the City of New York’s notice proves that gun registration leads to outright confiscations, Howard’s re-election also proves that Americans are beginning to reassert their birth rights as recognized by the Constitution.

(H/T: The Truth About Guns)

London mayor: Gulf between rich and poor inevitable because millions of people are too stupid

mirror.co.uk
Novemb er 27, 2013

The growing gulf between rich and poor is inevitable because millions of people are too stupid to get on in life, top Tory Boris Johnson suggested tonight.

Mr Johnson said that the resentment felt towards the super rich in the wake of the financial crisis and “fives years of recession” was irrational.

“It would be wrong to persecute the rich, and madness to try and stifle wealth creation and futile to try to stamp out inequality,” he said.

Read more

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Video: Police Attack Cameramen and Peaceful Protestors at JFK Protest

Infowars.com
November 26, 2013



Infowars has compiled footage (above) of the Dallas County Sheriff’s department violently confronting activists, amid peaceful demonstrations last Friday during the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination.

Just as protesters were allowed to cross barricades set up to keep them out of the formal assembly, police, without warning, began converging on activists, grabbing, shoving and even choking protesters absent of any provocation. See the raw footage below.



RELATED: Dallas Sheriff’s Deputies Assault Free Speech Activists, Punch Alex Jones

Legalized Theft of Guns

Dean Weingarten
Ammo Land.com
November 26, 2013



Uploaded by Victor9876 at en.wikipedia, via Wikimedia Commons
Uploaded by Victor9876, via Wikimedia Commons

An anti-freedom policy has been spreading across United States police departments, the legalized theft of citizens guns.


Recently, it occurred in Georgia. I am not talking about forfeiture laws. They are related but have been covered elsewhere.

This is a problem in many urban areas, and it is spreading. The policy is to impound guns, in extreme cases, all guns that officers come across, whether involved in any crime or not, then to refuse to return the guns until a judge issues an order to return them. As the attorney fees needed to obtain a court order can easily be 10 times what the gun is worth, most people do not bother.

Read more

Busting Eight Common Excuses for NSA Mass Surveillance

Cindy Cohn and Trevor Timm
EFF.org
November 26, 2013

We’ve heard from lots of folks who are passionately concerned about the NSA’s mass spying, but are struggling to get their friends and family to understand the problem and join the over a half-million people who have demanded change through stopwatching.us and elsewhere.

Of course, you can show them the Stop Watching Us video and this great segment from Stephen Colbert. And if you’d like a detailed refresher on all the ways NSA is conducing mass surveillance, ProPublica has a handy explainer here.

You can also check out this new video from filmmaker Brian Knappenberger (writer and director of We Are Legion: the Story of the Hacktivists):



Note: clicking this thumbnail will take you to the New York Times’ website.

But you also need to be prepared to respond to the common refrains of folks confused, nonplussed, or simply exhausted from the headlines. So here’s a cheat sheet to help you talk about the NSA spying when you’re with family and friends.

I have nothing to hide from the government, so why should I worry?

There are a few ways to respond to this, depending on what you think will work best for the person raising the question.

• Point out how mass surveillance leaves you at the mercy of not only the NSA, but also to the DEA, the FBI and even the IRS. We know that the government claims that any evidence of a “crime” can be sent to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.
• Tell them that, even if you don’t think you have something to hide, it’s possible the government thinks you do, or can create some concern about you (or your friends or loved ones). There are so many laws and regulations on the books, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner said the Congressional Research Service did not have the resources to count them all. One legal expert has argued that the average person likely commits three felonies a day without ever realizing. So, you may be technically breaking a law you have no idea about.
• We all benefit from a system that allows privacy. For example, when journalists can speak to sources without the specter of surveillance, helping fuel investigative journalism and the free flow of information. And this is not just a hypothetical—the Department of Justice subpoenaed the phone records of Associated Press journalists in an effort to track down government whistleblowers. And it’s not just journalists. Activists, political organizers, lawyers, individuals conducting sensitive research, businesses that want to keep their strategies confidential, and many others rely on secure, private, surveillance-free communication.

Isn’t the NSA using the mass spying to stop terrorists?

Even the NSA cannot point to a single terrorist attack they’ve stopped using the Patriot Act phone surveillance program that sweeps up virtually every phone record in the United States. They’ve thrown out many numbers claiming that the information was helpful in some capacity, including repeatedly claiming that it thwarted some 54 attacks, but those numbers have been thoroughly debunked.

The only remaining example the NSA points to is known as the “Zazi case.” However, in that case, the Associated Press reported that the government could have easily stopped the plot without the NSA program, under authorities that comply with the Constitution. Sens. Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been saying this for a long time.

That’s the point here: we can stop terrorists with law enforcement authorities that this country has been using for decades. We don’t need to upend the Constitution to keep the nation safe.

The government will not abuse its power.

Some people believe that the government will never abuse its power, especially when the party they support is in office. You should remind these people that the government has a long history of overstretching its surveillance powers and using that information to try to blackmail people. Example of this include the NSA spying on Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, and even some sitting senators in the 1960s. Imagine how Sen. Joe McCarthy’s investigations might have gone if he had access to this kind of spying.

We already have evidence of abuse of power. We know that the NSA analysts were using their surveillance powers to track their ex-wives and husbands, and other love interests. They even had a name for it, LOVEINT. The FISA court has also cited the NSA for violating or ignoring court orders for years at a time. And those are just self-reported abuses. An independent investigation might reveal even more.

Allowing mass spying is patriotic.

Stopping untargeted seizure of information is one of the key reasons we fought the War of Independence and drafted the Fourth Amendment. During colonial times, the “crime” was tax evasion—remember the Boston Tea Party? The British crown issued Writs of Assistance, which were general warrants that allowed the British authorities to search through anyone’s papers in order to find those who were skirting the taxes. American patriot James Otis Jr. argued against the “hated writs” but lost his case in the British courts. John Adams noted that from that case, “the child independence was born.”

Since that time, warrants have had to specify the persons and places searched. Mass surveillance by the NSA does neither. In short, one of our countries’ founding principles is the prohibition on mass searches and seizures.

Kids today (or my friends) post everything they do on Facebook or Twitter, why should we care if the government can see too?

What people choose to put on Facebook or Twitter (or Instagram or Tumblr or some other service) is almost always curated. People put the best or sometimes the worst things that happen to them online, but studies show they still keep things private, and restrict the audience for other information. A new poll shows young people may even be more privacy conscious than older adults.

We all know someone whose Facebook feed continued to show happy pictures even as they went through a terrible breakup or divorce. The point of privacy is control over the information that is available about you. Some people choose to share more, some choose to share less, but nearly everyone wants the power to pick and choose what information is available about them to their friends and to strangers, like future employers or NSA agents.

Google and Facebook have my information, so why shouldn’t the NSA?

There are many privacy problems with how the giant Internet companies gather and use so much of your personal data. However, Google and Facebook do not have the power to arrest you and, unlike government surveillance, there are other choices for communication tools. For example, you can use DuckDuckGo instead of Google search.

Remember: while we may not like how companies collect a lot of our information, they are not under the same requirement to follow the Fourth Amendment. We need to protect the private information held by companies too, but the Constitution provides a foundation that always protects our communications from the prying eyes of government.

It’s just metadata, so why should I care?

For the mass phone record collection program, the NSA has said it is not “listening in” to telephone calls. Instead they are collecting a record of everyone you call, who calls you, when you’re on the phone, the length of your phone call, and at times, even your location.

This “metadata” can be as invasive as the content of your conversations. It can reveal your religious and political views, who you are dating (and when you break up), who your spouse and children are, your movements, and even information your closest friends and family don’t know, such as medical conditions.

Additionally, the government is getting more than just metadata. We also know the government has obtained online content, including email, under separate programs, and used the data based on a guess that you are 51 percent likely to be foreign, by scanning large a portion of the total number of emails entering and exiting the United States. Metadata is only a part of the government spying programs.

This sucks, but there’s nothing I can do!

Actually there is plenty you can do! First, join the over half-million others and sign our petition at stopwatching.us. Then call your representative in Congress—there are bills going through Congress right now that could curtail some of this spying and bring real transparency and accountability to the NSA. There are also some that need to be opposed so we don’t end up legalizing much of this illegal surveillance.

There’s lots you can do to fight NSA surveillance. But one of the most important things you can do is explain why this issue is important to friends and family. So please share this guide widely.

US Violates “Defense Zone” After Chinese Threat to Shoot Down Aircraft

Asia on the verge of a full blown arms race

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 26, 2013

In a move designed to challenge China’s “air defense zone,” the US flew two B-52 Bombers over disputed islands in the East China Sea just days after Beijing implicitly threatened to shoot down aircraft entering the area.

Image: B-52 Bomber (Wikimedia Commons).

Over the weekend, China released a map which included the clustered Senkaku islands and warned that all aircraft entering the zone must immediately identify themselves to Chinese authorities and face “emergency military measures.”

However, the US flew two B-52 bombers through the zone during a training mission today without notifying Beijing. There was no response from China. In conducting the mission, the Pentagon followed through on its promise that US pilots would not switch on their transponders and would defend themselves if attacked.

“We have continued to follow our normal procedures, which include not filing flight plans, not radioing ahead and not registering our frequencies,” said US Colonel Steve Warren.

Although the B-52 flyover was part of a pre-planned exercise, it has been characterized as a clear act of defiance against China’s territorial claims.

Japan responded to the Chinese threat by accusing Beijing of engaging in “profoundly dangerous acts that unilaterally change the status quo,” adding that the defense zone was “not valid at all.”

According to the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the escalating crisis represents a “watershed moment for the world” and means “Asia is on the cusp of a full-blown arms race.”

“Even if the immediate crisis can be defused, we are clearly sliding into a new Cold War,” writes Evans-Pritchard, adding, “One misjudgment by either side in the East China Sea could change our world entirely. If you are not concerned, perhaps you should be.”

Monday, November 25, 2013

Revealed: Northrop Grumman’s Unmarked Gray Helicopter Drone

Next generation UAV to spy on Americans?

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
November 25, 2013

Infowars has obtained a photograph of an unmarked gray helicopter drone manufactured by Northrop Grumman which could be used to spy on Americans domestically.


The image was sent to us by someone high up within Northrop Grumman, who told us that the drone is small enough to transported on the back of a large truck or towed in a trailer behind a pickup and can be fitted with all manner of surveillance technology.

It appears to be a smaller version of the company’s MQ-8C Fire Scout helicopter drone, which was tested for the first time earlier this month by the U.S. Navy. Unlike the MQ-8C Fire Scout, the drone seen in the image above has no markings.

The MQ-8C Fire Scout, described as a “next generation” drone, has “three times the payload capacity of the current model in the military arsenal,” and can remain airborne for twice as long.

Earlier this month, the Federal Aviation Administration released a road map that set the stage for 7,500 surveillance drones to be flying in U.S. skies within the next two years. The FAA’s chief concern is not the privacy implications of such devices, but the threat of them colliding with other aircraft.

The FAA has forecast that 30,000 surveillance drones will be in U.S. skies by the end of the decade.

At least 80 law enforcement agencies already have agreements with the FAA to fly drones for surveillance purposes. Some police departments want to use such drones to watch for “suspicious activity” in high crime areas.

Authorities are already using drones to conduct surveillance of farms and the Department of Homeland Security is also working on deploying drones for purposes of “public safety.”

Earlier this year, the Pentagon began testing to deploy two high-tech surveillance blimps over Washington DC that can remain at 10,000 feet for a month without the need for refueling. The blimps provide an “elevated, persistent over-the-horizon sensor system” and carry “powerful radars that can look deep into enemy territory.”

The U.S. Army also recently tested a football field-sized blimp over the city of New Jersey. The blimp can fly for a period of 21 hours and “is equipped with high-tech sensors that can monitor insurgents from above.”

This past August, the DHS assumed control of surveillance blimps used to monitor the US-Mexico border, a perturbing development for privacy advocates given that the federal agency considers all areas 100 miles inland of the border to be ‘constitution-free zones’ within which the Fourth Amendment does not apply.

Security at the JFK Thing in Dealey Plaza Was “Piss-Poor.” That’s Because It Wasn’t Security.

Jim Schutze
The Dallas Observer
November 25, 2013

The only truth-teller Friday was Alex Jones, who said the whole thing was a lie. By now all of the responsible parties are congratulating themselves for the seamless passage of the 50th Kennedy Assassination Anniversary event at Dealey Plaza last Friday and especially for the way the massive security apparatus worked. After all, the whole thing went by and we didn’t have a … there was no … we avoided any kind of a …

Infowars reporters engage in thought crimes.
Infowars reporters engage in thought crimes.

We avoided what? Remind me again what we were avoiding. We assembled enough marching policemen, paddy wagons and high-tech spyware for a full-scale North Korean succession of power. And we were trying to make sure there wasn’t a what again?

One of the organizers made the brilliant observation early on in this process that there was not enough security at Dealey Plaza 50 years ago (talk about 20/20 hindsight). I believe the expression was something to the effect that we would not want to allow tragedy to strike again.

What tragedy? Shoot Kennedy again?

Let me tell you two things about the security Friday. It was piss-poor. And it was never intended to prevent a security or terror event anyway.

If it was anti-terrorism security, then why was I able to get myself into the pre-party at the Meyerson Symphony Center without going through a metal detector and without any press credentials? Had I stayed, then presumably I would have been provided a bus ride with the other hoity-toities, replete with police VIP escort and screaming sirens all the way to Dealey Plaza — Wouldn’t that have been special? — where eventually I would have been asked to pass through a scanner of some sort before entering the plaza. But because they had warned me of that step beforehand, I think I might have blown up my bus full of toities on the way, had I been so inclined.

And no big problem, apparently, had I made it to Dealey Plaza and not felt like going through the scanner. Conspiracy author Jim Marrs made it right down into the center of Dealey Plaza by using the old wandering trick — just waaandering on out there. Eventually somebody did come up and ask to see his arm band, to which he said something like, “Oh, I forgot it,” and, then sure, he had to leave. But he could have taken out half the rich people in the city by then.

Hey, I have seen security where somebody in authority who knows what they are doing is seriously worried about somebody out of authority who knows what they are doing. Nobody wanders into any part of it.

This was not security. It was message management. The most elaborate precautions, like the four-story tall banner hanging from a crane hiding all of Main Street from the plaza, were designed to force visiting media to look at, hear and film only the official choreographed message. By now you know what that was: Dallas is sorry, Dallas has changed, Dallas has repainted Dealey Plaza, Dallas promises it won’t happen again.

I don’t have any particular quarrel with that message. Fine. It’s bulls***, because nobody asked. The event doesn’t really belong to Dallas in the way the event seemed to claim. But if Dallas wants to buy ownership of the Kennedy assassination with its purse full of obsequious regrets, then great, go for it. It’s a free country.

What was absolutely wrong, lugubrious and obscene was the elaborate effort to prevent anyone from saying or hearing anything that departed from the official program. In that sense, the hero of the day was Austin radio show host Alex “InfoWars” Jones and his doughty band of 150-or-so followers who marched to the barricades shouting “No more lies.” Theirs was the only truth of the day.

Their detractors always describe Jones and his followers as paranoiacs and conspiracy theorists who propound so many conspiracies at once as to make the whole world a conspiracy. But Friday’s event was a perfect example of what Jones and his followers are up against — a huge and seamless propaganda that masks the streets of real life behind banners the size of buildings.

Here is what I think is a simple proposition philosophically: If all truth is hidden behind a banner of lies, then all conspiracy theories are true. We should all be d***ed glad Alex Jones and the soldiers of InfoWars believe in conspiracy, preach conspiracy and are willing to march on the barricades of conspiracy. Who is crazy, Alex Jones on the street behind the banner shouting “no more lies” or the people in the stands staring at the banner believing it is the edge of the world and afraid of falling off?

This article originally appeared at the Dallas Observer.

Halperin: Death Panels Built Into Obamacare

Democrats who said Sarah Palin is a lunatic and death panels don’t exist are uniformly silent

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 25, 2013

Mark Halperin, a senior political analyst for Time magazine, told Newsmax TV that Democrats and the corporate media did not level with the public on death panels built into Obamacare.




Halperin said the death panel concept is a cornerstone of Obamacare. “It’s built into the plan. It’s not like a guess or like a judgment. That’s going to be part of how costs are controlled,” Halperin told Steve Malzberg. Halperin makes his comments eight minutes into the above video.

Democrats have used the term “death panel” as a pejorative after the former Republican Governor of Alaska, Sarah Plain, used it in a debate on Obamacare in 2009.

Democrats and the corporate media boast they have “debunked” the claim and insist eugenics practices are not part of Obamacare. PolitiFact characterized the term as its “Lie of Year” in 2009 and FactCheck said it represents one of its “whoppers.”

Democrats and supporters of the Obamacare fiasco have fought a running battle since the Keynesian economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said in February that in order for the collectivist welfare state to run smoothly higher taxes and death panels will be mandatory.

“Eventually we do have a problem. That the population is getting older, health care costs are rising,” Krugman said, admitting that “there is this question of how we’re going to pay for the programs… So the snarky version… which I shouldn’t even say because it will get me in trouble, is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.”

Banks Warn Fed They May Have To Start Charging Depositors

Zero Hedge
November 25, 2013

The Fed’s Catch 22 just got catchier. While most attention in the recently released FOMC minutes fell on the return of the taper as a possibility even as soon as December (making the November payrolls report the most important ever, ever, until the next one at least), a less discussed issue was the Fed’s comment that it would consider lowering the Interest on Excess Reserves to zero as a means to offset the implied tightening that would result from the reduction in the monthly flow once QE entered its terminal phase (for however briefly before the plunge in the S&P led to the Untaper). After all, the Fed’s policy book goes, if IOER is raised to tighten conditions, easing it to zero, or negative, should offset “tightening financial conditions”, right? Wrong. As the FT reports leading US banks have warned the Fed that should it lower IOER, they would be forced to start charging depositors.

Image: Chase Bank (Wikimedia Commons).

In other words, just like Europe is already toying with the idea of NIRP (and has been for over a year, if still mostly in the rheotrical and market rumor phase), so the Fed’s IOER cut would also result in a negative rate on deposits which the FT tongue-in-cheekly summarizes “depositors already have to cope with near-zero interest rates, but paying just to leave money in the bank would be highly unusual and unwelcome for companies and households.”

If cutting IOER was as much of an easing move as the Fed believes, banks should be delighted – after all, according to the Fed’s guidelines it would mean that the return on their investments (recall that all US banks slowly but surely became glorified, TBTF prop trading hedge funds since Glass Steagall was repealed, and why the Volcker Rule implementation is virtually guaranteed to never happen) would increase. And yet, they are not:

Executives at two of the top five US banks said a cut in the 0.25 per cent rate of interest on the $2.4tn in reserves they hold at the Fed would lead them to pass on the cost to depositors.
Banks say they may have to charge because taking in deposits is not free: they have to pay premiums of a few basis points to a US government insurance programme.
“Right now you can at least break even from a revenue perspective,” said one executive, adding that a rate cut by the Fed “would turn it into negative revenue – banks would be disincentivised to take deposits and potentially charge for them”.
Other bankers said that a move to negative rates would not only trim margins but could backfire for banks and the system as a whole, as it would incentivise treasury managers to find higher-yielding, riskier assets.
“It’s not as if we are suddenly going to start lending to [small and medium-sized enterprises],” said one. “There really isn’t the level of demand, so the danger is that banks are pushed into riskier assets to find yield.”

All of the above is BS: lending has never been a concern for the Fed because if it was, then one could scrap QE right now as an absolute faiure. Recall that as we showed recently, the total amount of loans and leases in commercial US banks has been unchanged since Lehman, with the only rise in deposits coming thanks to the fungible liquidity injected by the Fed.



Furthermore, contrary to what the hypocrite banker said that “the danger is that banks are pushed into riskier assets to find yield”, banks are already in the riskiest assets: just look at what JPM was doing with its hundreds of billions in excess deposits, which originated as Fed reserves on its books – we explained the process of how the Fed’s reserves are used to push the market higher most recently in “What Shadow Banking Can Tell Us About The Fed’s “Exit-Path” Dead End.”

What the real danger is, is that once the Fed lowers IOER and there is a massive outflow of deposits, that banks which have used the excess deposits as initial margin and collateral on marginable securities to chase risk to record highs (as JPM’s CIO explicitly and undisputedly did) that there would be an avalanche of selling once the negative rate deposit outflow tsunami hit.

Needless to say, the only offset would be if the proceeds from the deposits outflows were used to invest in stocks instead of staying inert in some mattress or, worse (if only from the Fed’s point of view) purchase inert assets like gold or Bitcoin.

Which brings us back to the first sentence and the Fed’s now massive Catch 22: on one hand, shoud the Fed taper, rates will surge and stocks will once again plunge, as they did, in early summer, just to teach the evil, non-appeasing Fed a lesson.

On the other hand, should the Fed cut IOER as a standalone move or concurrently to offset the tapering pain, banks will crush depositors by cutting rates, depositors will pull their money from banks en masse, and banks will have no choice but to close on a record levered $2.2 trillion in margined risk position.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

China, India, once again get virtual pass on CO2 emissions in new climate deal

Rick Moran
americanthinker.com
November 24, 2013

The Kyoto climate treaty was scuttled by the Senate on a vote of 96-0. The reason for it was simple; China and India, two rapidly growing competitors to the US in the economic sphere, were able to carve out special exemptions on CO2 emissions that gave them an unfair competitive advantage over the US.

Fast forward to today and the Warsaw climate agreement in which both emerging economic powers were once again able to get reduced emission goals out of the international community.

The Hill:

Dozens of countries reached a climate change agreement in Warsaw on Saturday, overcoming a rift between developing and more established economies.
In the talks, fast-growing economies like China and India won more lenient climate change guidelines than the U.S. and European countries originally wanted.
Countries will now make “contributions” toward reducing emissions over the next two years, instead of “commitments,” after what media reports described as negotiations that helped drive the U.N. talks in Warsaw into an extra day.
Todd Stern, the federal government’s special envoy for climate change, said Warsaw “was quite a tough negotiation” but also “quite useful.”
“This is a quintessentially global problem, so you have to have action all over the world. Climate change isn’t local – the carbon you emit anywhere in the world affects everywhere in the world,” Stern said.
“It gives a strong message to civil society and the private sector that this is going to be dealt with at the global level.”
Developing and developed countries have long been on different pages when it comes to tackling climate change.
But even a narrow agreement at Warsaw, where close to 200 countries took part, could help lay the groundwork for a longer-term agreement in 2015. Negotiators are scheduled to meet in Paris that year to discuss a potential global climate change agreement.
On Twitter, Connie Hedegaad, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, acknowledged the difficulty negotiators had in finding an agreement. “I’m sure there are more comfortable ways” to Paris in 2015, she sad, “but now we can move forward.”
Outside groups pushing for action on climate change said, that while the U.N. efforts in Warsaw might have found an agreement, countries still need to pick up the pace.
“In the nick of time, negotiators in Warsaw delivered just enough to keep things moving,” said Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute.
“World leaders better get their act together quickly. If they show up empty-handed in 2015 and don’t secure a strong international agreement, they’ll be known as the generation that clearly saw the growing threat of global climate change, and failed to try to stop it,” said Jake Schmidt of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Let’s get something straight. If the world has to act now, this minute, with no delay, on climate change – it’s probably already too late and we’re doomed. That’s been the dirty little secret that global warming hysterics forget to mention when pushing their radical, anti-development agenda. It will take many decades – if the theories and models are correct – to reduce emissions enough for any kind of positive impact on the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. If things are that bad already, might was well party down and emit to our heart’s content.

As for China and India, China emits far more greenhouse gas than the US and Western Europe while India isn’t far behind the US.. But since they know full well that no agreement is possible without their consent, they are able to wrest huge concessions from the rest of the world just so that the bureaucrats can say it’s truly a global agreement.

As far as the practical effect on global emissions of CO2 – this agreement won’t lower the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by one, single, molecule. That’s not half as important as politicians being seen “doing something about the problem. Whether it’s meaningless or not is another story.

Why Obama Thought He Could Get Away With Obamacare

Editor’s Note: If Obama got away with all this, why not go for it all?

John MacHaffie
InvestmentWatchBlog
November 24, 2013

• $6 trillion in new national debt under Obama…after he promised to decrease the deficit.
The corrupt President Barack Obama. Credit: Ari Levinson via Wikipedia
The corrupt President Barack Obama.
Credit: Ari Levinson via Wikipedia
• Obamacare —


A massive and incredibly convoluted bill which exponentially increases the federal government’s control over our personal lives…which neither Obama nor a single Democrat even read before passing, and which will likely bankrupt the nation.
• In both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the Obama campaign purposely disabled the credit card verification system for its Web site donations, allowing anyone from any foreign country to donate with no limit and no proof of identity; in both elections it was demonstrated that people overseas and people with obviously false identities were able to donate to Obama campaign, in direct violation of several laws. To this day it is not known what percentage of Obama’s campaign funds are illegally obtained, since there is no documentation.
• Billions of taxpayer dollars gambled on “green” companies like Solyndra, NextEra, Ener1, Solar Trust and many others — all of which went bankrupt.
• An intentional refusal to enforce federal immigration laws.
• Unemployment at or above 8% for almost his entire term in office (which was actually closer to 15% actual unemployment).
• Operation Fast & Furious — a government-sponsored illegal gun-running scheme designed to purposely go awry so as to induce public outcry for gun control.
• Spent 20 years listening to a racist anti-American pastor (Rev. Jeremiah Wright), whom Obama described as a mentor. On March 18, 2008, Obama gave a speech in which he said “I could no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I could disown my own grandmother” and “[Wright's church, Trinity United] embodies the black community in its entirety.” Now Obama tries to pretend that Jeremiah Wright doesn’t exist, and that his extremist anti-white philosophy didn’t influence Obama’s worldview.
• Increased the percentage of Americans dependent on food stamps to unprecedented levels (now over 15% of the nation’s population).
• Militarily intervened in Libya in 2011 without the Congressional approval required by the War Powers Act — technically an impeachable offense.
• Before he entered politics, Obama worked as a lawyer suing banks in landmark cases, forcing them to give home loans to unqualified minority borrowers — a practice now understood as one of the primary initial causes of the eventual housing bubble and market collapse.
• Handed out over 1,200 waivers to politically connected donors exempting them from the onerous requirements of Obamacare.
• Greatly expanding the number of unaccountable “czars,” which essentially amounts to unilaterally adding new federal departments with no congressional oversight — leading to a true “bureaucracy” in the original sense (rule by unelected bureaucrats).
• Using taxpayer dollars to bail out the private pension funds of autoworkers’ unions at GM & Chrysler.
• Illegally ending the welfare-to-work requirements passed by Congress.
• Doling out $800 billion in stimulus cash for “shovel-ready” jobs that didn’t exist — the money just evaporated with no measurable economic benefit.
• Alienating and isolating Israel, our strongest ally in the Middle East.
• Apologizing to Islamists and terrorists for offending them.
• Under Obama’s watch, for the first time in history America’s credit rating was downgraded, due to his poor economic policies.
• Stopped American oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, allowing other nations with worse environmental records to drill instead — thereby managing to both weaken our economy and damage the environment simultaneously.
• Proposed in 2008 to intentionally bankrupt the coal industry — and now lies to voters and workers in coal-producing regions about his true intent.
• Pretends to be concerned about skyrocketing energy prices, when in fact he vowed to increase them on purpose (so as to make alternative energy schemes more competitive.)
• In a primary debate against Hillary Clinton in 2008, Obama said he would never force people to buy health insurance, since those without it couldn’t afford to buy it. Less than two years later, he rammed through Obamacare, which does indeed force people to buy health insurance.
• During the 2008 campaign, Obama repeatedly promised that if he was elected “No family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.” This promise was broken over and over again once he was elected.
• In 2008 Obama vowed if elected to increase security along the U.S.-Mexican border — and then in 2010 stopped construction of a “virtual fence” on the border and re-routed money earmarked for border security to other projects.
• Cash for Clunkers, which doled out taxpayer money to anyone who wanted to replace their old cars, but which mostly only ended up subsidizing the puchase of foreign-made cars by people who could have afforded them on their own anyway; meanwhile, the traded-in cars were all destroyed, creating a shortage and thereby increasing the cost of used cars, hurting the pocketbooks of poor people.
• Violated the U.S. Constitution by authorizing assassinations and drone strikes to kill American citizens abroad — without due process.
• Was caught on a “hot mike” promising the President of Russia that he would cave in to their demands for a weaker missile shield — after he was re-elected and no longer had to keep up the pretense that he sought to defend America.
• Appointed Van Jones, a former avowed communist who supported a “9/11 Truth” petition, to be “Green Jobs Czar.”
• Appointed Anita Dunn, who said Chairman Mao was her “favorite philosopher,” to be White House Communications Director.
• Appointed John Holdren, who perviously entertained the notion of forced mass sterilzation to stop overpopulation, to be Science Czar.
• Appointed Steven Chu, who openly advocated an artificial increase in gasoline prices to $10/gallon (and similar increases in other energy prices) to be Secretary of Energy.
• Appointed Kevin Jennings, who led a group that promoted X-rated “sex-positive” textbooks for 13-year-olds, instructed teenagers at a conference how to perform “fisting” (anal penetration by fists), who refused to report instances of statutory rape, and who expressed admiration for a member of NAMBLA, to be America’s “Safe School’s Czar.”
• When states voted to enforce the federal immigration laws which the federal government refused to enforced, Obama sued to stop them.
• Blocked continued construction of the Keystone Pipeline, thereby intentionally reducing energy resources for the US and forcing Canada to sell more of its oil to China.
• Repeatedly changed his position on gay marriage over the years, depending on what was politically expedient at the moment and which intended audience he was addressing.
• Before he was president, Obama staunchly opposed raising the national debt limit — but once elected, he insisted that it be raised.
• When giving a 2009 speech in France that he must have assumed Americans would never hear, he described the United States as “arrogant” and “dismissive” (while also criticizing Europe elsewhere in the speech).
• When states tried to stop election fraud with voter ID laws, Obama sued to prevent them from doing so.
• Instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to stonewall any investigation into the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panthers.
• Promised in 2008 that once elected he would officially recognize the Armenian Genocide; but to this date he has still failed to do so, caving in to threats and pressure from Turkey.
• Vowed to end the influence of lobbyists in Washington, but under Obama’s watch their influence has only increased.
• When he was first running for President, Obama promised, “I will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.” Needless to say, he has broken that promise with almost every bill he has signed since.
• Aided and abetted the “Arab Spring” which deposed existing secular governments across North Africa, leading to a regional power vacuum which was filled by Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other hardline Islamists.
• Refused to provide assistance or support the the earlier secular Iranian democracy uprising, allowing them to be crushed by the Islamic fundamentalist Iranian regime.
• In his first months in office, Obama bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia, the president of China, the Emperor of Japan, and President of Mexico, among others.
• Ordered NASA to make one of its top priorities not space exploration or scientific research but “Muslim outreach.”
• Used Obamacare as a pretext to greatly increase the size and power of the IRS (which was given 16,000 new agents and additional mandates to penalize taxpayers for noncompliance).
• Used the IRS to harass conservative businesses.
• In the GM bailout, he illegally shortchanged investors who according to bankruptcy laws were first in line to be recompensed; instead, he gave their share to the unions.
• Shut down oil drilling in the US, but then turned around and lent $2 billion to Brazil to support their government-controlled oil-drilling effort — and then promised the US would become one of Brazil’s biggest oil customers.
• Sued Boeing in an effort to control where businesses could locate, kowtow to the unions, and block the creation of 1,000 jobs in South Carolina, a right-to-work (i.e. no forced unionization) state.
• Adopted a longstanding Socialist political slogan, “Forward!”, as his 2012 campaign motto.
• Sent insulting form letters to the familes of dead SEALs.
• Neither disavowed nor distanced himself from anti-Romney campaign ads which threatened or implied violence against Republicans.
• Shortly after the recent eruption of anti-American violence in North Africa, Obama went to Las Vegas to do his debate preparation in a hotel…with a romanticized North Africa theme.
• Said in an interview that the Muslim call to prayer was “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.”
• Union boss and far-left activist Andy Stern has visitied Obama in the White House at least 53 times, at last count — greater access than any other private citizen.
• Hosted at the White House many Islamist members of groups associated with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, etc.
• Sponsored performances by and attended fundraisers with radical rappers like Michael Franti and Common, both of whose lyrics have in some cases been anti-police, anti-white, and anti-America.
• Hired Timothy Geithner, who is documented as cheating on his own personal taxes, to be Secretary of the Treasury.
• Told Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher that it was good to “spread the wealth around.”
• Told small business owners nationwide in a 2012 speech that “you didn’t build that” — implying that they should not claim credit for their own success, since taxpayers (i.e. themselves and other business owners) had funded the national infrastructure.

• Insulted the British people by rudely returning to them a bust of Churchill which previously had been a ceremonial gift on display at the White House; when later confronted on this inexplicable action, he lied about it.
• Canceled plans to complete a missile defense shield in Poland, a move which was highly praised by Russia — the very nation whose missile threat would have been neutralized if the shield had been completed.
• By loudly publicizing (for personal political gain) the identity of exact SEAL teams who had killed Osama bin Laden, Obama made them a target for reprisals by Islamists; a short time later 22 SEALS were shot down and killed in Afghanistan, their worst loss of life ever.
• Established an extra-Constitutional top secret “kill list” of people (including Americans) Obama claims the right to kill on sight, and then bragged about it publicly.
• Set up a special email account, “Flag@Whitehouse.gov,” to which Americans were supposed to inform the government of anyone they heard spreading “disinformation” about Obama’s health care overhaul. (This was the first of three different “spy on your friends and neighbors” programs.)
• “Attack Watch” was Obama’s second Big Brother attempt, a Web site on which you would report “attacks” on Obama’s proposals and ideology; it was quickly shut down due to outrage and mockery.
• Finally, Obama set up the “Truth Team” program which encouraged citizens to report to the government any friends or relatives they hear repeating “lies” about Obama. The Truth Team site still exists.

• Twisted the arms of defense contractors to not issue layoff notices in early November, so as to avoid causing bad news for Obama right before the election — even though federal law (the “WARN Act”) requires such notices.
• After the attacks on American interests in North Africa on September 11, 2012, Obama gave a speech to the U.N. and declared “The future must not belong to those who slander The Prophet of Islam” — transferring the blame from the attackers onto the makers of a film trailer that supposedly “offended” the Islamists.
• Repeatedly snubbed and got into public tiffs with Benjamin Netanyahu, who as the leader of Israel is supposed to be Obama’s closest colleague in international affairs.
• On May 19, 2011, Obama told Israel they must return to the 1967 borders as a pre-condition for continuing talks with the Palestinians — even though the status of the borders was the main issue the talks were supposed to address.
• Encouraged politically biased hiring practices in the Justice Department.
• Soon after taking office, Obama rescinded the “Mexico City Policy,” which previously had banned NGOs which are supported by American taxpayer funds from using those funds to perform abortions in foreign countries.
• Attempted to force returning veterans to pay huge increases for their health coverage…as a way to generate more funding for his Obamacare provisions.
• In June of 2011, he anointed his own underage daughters as “senior staff members” so that their vacation to Africa would be paid for with taxpayer money.
• Interviews with high school classmates revealed that Obama was a heavy and frequent user of marijuana in his teenage years (not to mention his self-admitted cocaine use in college).
• Played over 100 rounds of golf during his first three years in office, meaning that he was on the links close to 10% of the days he has been president.
• Voted to allow post-birth abortions (i.e. facilitating the deaths of babies who survive late-term abortions) not just once but three times in a row as an Illinois state senator.
• The pastor whom Obama selected to give the national benediction at his 2009 inauguration recently declared that “all white people are going to Hell.”
• Sided with Hugo Chavez and the Castro regime regarding the Honduran Constitutional Crisis of 2009, the first time ever that the U.S. formed a political alliance with socialist governments in Latin America.
• Obama Administration OKed the nomination of Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council (which coordinates intelligence reports from all government agencies), despite the fact that he was openly hostile to Israel and strongly favored Arabist goals. (He later withdrew under pressure.)
• Chinese pianist Lang Lang played an offensively anti-American song at a 2011 White House dinner where Obama hosted Chinese president Hu Jintao, to the delight and amazement of the communist Chinese visitors, while Obama just sat there and smiled (the song’s Chinese lyrics describe Americans as “warmongering jackals”).
• There was a great deal of (still unverified) suspicion that the company LightSquared received favorable treatment from the Obama administration for approval of its broadband technology which interfered with the GPS system; an Air Force general claimed he was pressured by the Obama administration to downplay his criticism of LightSquared’s technology in sworn testimony.
• Obama’s Department of Energy awarded $529 million to Fisker Automotive to build their Karma hybrid electric cars — even though they are manufactured in Finland, cost over $100,000 each, and tend to explode.
• When Inspector General Gerald Walpin discovered during a 2009 investigation that one of Obama’s political allies (the mayor of Sacramento) was misusing government funds for personal gain, Obama unceremoniously fired Walpin — even though rooting out fraud was the job description of the Inspector General.
Barack Obama is undergoing a historic collapse in approval ratings.
Barack Obama is undergoing a historic collapse in approval ratings.
 
 
• More than once Obama made so-called “recess appointments” when the Senate was not actually in recess, which directly violates Constitutional rules about how appointments must be made; in each case it was his way of getting his political allies into certain key positions without them being vetted or approved by the Senate, as required.
• After Nidal Malik Hasan massacred 13 people at Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akbar” so as to become a martyr for Islam, the Obama administration refused to classify his action as “terrorism” and instead deemed it merely “workplace violence.”
• Despite the fact that the Falkland Islands have been part of Great Britain since 1833 and that Great Britain is supposed to be our strongest ally, Obama essentially sided with Argentina in its new claim on the Falklands, not only by adopting the Argentine position that their status is open to negotiation, but even by (attempting to) refer to the islands by their Spanish name (Malvinas).
• Convened the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (a.k.a. the Simpson-Bowles commission) in order to address a major economic crisis…and then summarily dismissed and ignored their recommendations.
• Criticized the Supreme Court’s legal reasoning (about the Citizen’s United decision) during a State of the Union address, which many considered a dangerous precedent as it appeared to place political pressure on the court, violating the Constitution’s separation of powers; but his bullying seems to have later paid off, when the Supreme Court apparently altered its Obamacare decision so as to not ruffle any political feathers.
• On April 27, 2009, Obama’s staff (possibly at his direction) ordered Air Force One to make an unnecessary very low flight over part of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, which many residents mistakenly assumed must be a second 9/11 attack in progress; turned out that it was just a stunt to get a photo op of Obama’s plane next to the Statue of Liberty.
• Obama somehow managed to insert mentions of himself into the official biographies of earlier presidents on the White House Web site — even presidents from the 19th century. After public outcry, the narcissistic Obama mentions were quietly removed without comment.
• Intentionally misquotes the Declaration of Independence in speeches, often leaving out the words “by their Creator” in the famous passage “…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” which Obama instead has recited as “…are endowed with certain unalienable rights.”
• In June of 2009, Obama’s Solicitor General (and now Supreme Court Justice) Elena Kagan filed a legal brief to prevent the families of 9/11 victims from appealing their lawsuits against the Saudi royal family for financing the 9/11 attacks.
• The 2009 National Christmas Tree in the White House was decorated with ornaments depicting Chairman Mao, a drag queen, and a picture of Mount Rushmore that included Obama’s own head next to George Washington’s.
• Compelled Catholic and other religious organizations to provide health plans with free contraception, even though such requirements violate their rights of religious freedom and conscience.
• It was revealed only after Obama became president that during the 1990s he was a leading member of the “New Party,” a socialist-aligned far-left radical group in Chicago.
• Lied about his close associations with former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers; pretended the two barely knew each other, when multiple sources document they were friends and close colleagues for years.
• When Obama was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009, he at first flubbed the oath of office, so he had to re-take it behind closed doors for his inauguration to be valid. He did so, but during this second, true inauguration in private, he purposely failed to place his hand on a Bible, as is traditional — the first president ever to not swear the oath of office on the Bible.
• Obama’s own author bio in his literary agent’s catalog and on their Web site stated for 17 consecutive years that he was born in Kenya; this claim remained intact despite other portions of the bio being altered and updated repeatedly. It was only in 2007 after he decided to run for the presidency that the “born in Kenya” claim was taken down. The original info must necessarily have come from Obama himself; some theorize he likely falsely claimed foreign birth in order to gain admission or scholarships in college, and never bothered to fix his lie.
• After winning the 2008 election but before being sworn in, Obama bombastically concocted the official-seeming “Office of the President-Elect” as if it was some kind of real government department; in fact, it was just a self-congratulatory title he made up to look important before he actually became president.
• Obama administration came up with the bizarre euphemism “man-caused disasters” to describe acts of terrorism — because he wants to downplay terrorism as a significant political issue.
• For three years in a row his official budget proposals to Congress received exactly zero votes — not even a single vote from Democrats.
• Relied on an Islamic fundamentalist militia group called “The Martyrs of the February the 17th Revolution Brigade” to provide security at the American mission in Benghazi — and they not only failed to prevent the attack but perhaps even joined in on it.
• During the debate over Obamacare in 2009, Obama bluntly stated that doctors like to perform amputations rather than practice preventive medicine for no other reason than that they make a greater profit from amputations. The American College of Surgeons demanded an apology, which never arrived.
• Since 2008 the Los Angeles Times has been in possession of a videotape showing Obama honoring and praising anti-Western anti-Israel academic Edward Said, but they have steadfastly refused to release it to this day, for no discernible reason other than their belief it would damage Obama’s reputation.
• When the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe recently held a conference on human rights, Obama sent an American representative — Salam al-Marayati, a Truther who blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks and who also praises Hezbollah and Hamas. To the nations of Europe, al-Marayati spoke for all Americans on the topic of human rights.
• Obama’s Department of Homeland Security specifically warned that Americans who are “dedicated to a
single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration” are potential terrorists, as are libertarian-minded voters who “favor of state or local authority” over centralized power. These “rightwing extremists” (who hold political beliefs shared by a majority of Americans) are deemed a greater threat to the nation than actual revolutionaries or jihadists.
• While campaigning in 2008 Obama declared that it was “unpatriotic” that Bush had increased the national debt at a rate of half a trillion dollars per year; but under Obama the rate of national debt increase has accelerated to almost three times the Bush rate ($6 trillion in new debt in under four years) — yet Obama has never apologized nor declared himself unpatriotic.
• For decades, every president has attended a “daily intelligence briefing” which updates him on critical world events each morning. Obama has skipped 60% of his daily intelligence briefings, including the ones leading up to the attack in Benghazi.

For more deep research go to Investmentwatchblog.com.