Like Slimey Cockroaches & their crooked President, Liberals Spread Disease

[Warph]

               

U.S. can't produce $1 billion of fuel receipts in Iraq

Posted By Josh Rogin  Friday, October 26, 2012 - 1:34 PM

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cannot produce about $1 billion of receipts for fuel and other supplies it bought in Iraq using Iraqi money, a government investigation has found.

The total amount of funds unaccounted for has now reached a staggering $7 billion, officials say -- and they warn that the Iraqi government is likely to demand at least some of that money back.

The United States has been managing billions of dollars of Iraqi money through the U.N.-created Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) since 2003, money that was the result of Iraqi oil and gas sales or was left over from the "oil-for-food" program. The Army Corps of Engineers has been spending that money on energy and infrastructure programs in Iraq, but its recordkeeping was so poor that the Corps cannot prove it actually received goods for about $1 billion of the money it spent, according to the report, which was released Friday by the office of the Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction (SIGIR).

SIGIR reviewed $1.1 billion of DFI-related transactions by the Corps and found that a key document, the receiving report -- which documents that the goods or services were actually delivered to the intended recipients -- was missing for 95 percent of the transactions.

"Missing receiving reports involved commodities vulnerable to fraud and theft, such as fuel, televisions, and vehicles. SIGIR has not concluded that fraud or theft occurred, but the absence of receiving reports raises questions," the report stated. "Instead of using the required receiving reports to document fuel deliveries in Iraq, USACE officials told us that they maintained a fuel delivery log book. However, the log book is missing. In the absence of receiving reports and the fuel delivery log book, USACE has no evidence that shows whether fuel products paid for with DFI funds were received."

The Corps also didn't have enough trucks with meters to determine how much fuel was being delivered to more than 100 sites around Iraq. Nor has the Corps  completed the required financial audits, so it's impossible to determine the status of all the DFI contracts, SIGIR says.

"Without these audits, USACE cannot close out these contracts and task orders and assess whether the contractor owes the U.S. money, whether the U.S. owes the contractor money, and ultimately, whether the U.S. needs to return unused DFI funds to the [government of Iraq]," the report said.

In an interview with The Cable, Deputy Inspector General Glen Furbish said that even though there's no evidence of fraud, there's a good chance the Iraqi government will try to seek some or all of this money from the U.S. government.

"Our inability to show that goods were received will always leave that question in the minds of the Iraqis as to whether we used their money appropriately," Furbish said. "We've sensed for some time that there is probably going to be an effort to make a claim against the U.S. for the unaccountable funds and this will probably be a piece of that ultimate claim."

This latest report is only the latest in a series of reports that delve into how the DFI money was used, and the total amount of money not properly accounted for is around $7 billion, Furbish said. SIGIR will release a final report on the U.S. government's handling of the DFI funds in January.

"This primarily means that our administrative handling of this money was not good," he said. "[The Iraqi government] may assert that our failure to keep records creates a claim for them."

The SIGIR office also released today a final report on the State Department's handling of Quick Response Funds (QRF), money that was handed out in Iraq, often by Provincial Reconstruction Teams, for projects that may or may not have ever materialized.

The State Department and USAID managed about $258 million in QRF funds but the results of the projects funded are unclear.

"From the available records, we could generally determine how funds were intended to be used, but we could not assess whether all of the goods and services were actually purchased, received, or transferred to beneficiaries," the report stated.

Furbish said that for many of these projects, the money was handed out but nobody ever followed up on the programs, largely because it was too dangerous to check on small reconstruction projects in the middle of the war.

"They have always maintained that we are asking a bit too much for a wartime program, in terms of us being bean counters and asking if people got something for their money," Furbish said. "Call us bean counters if you want, but if you can't show us what you spent the money on, I think you've got a control weakness."

State has made improvements in its handling of the QRF funds going forward, but department officials told SIGIR that it's impossible to go back and figure out what happened to the money spent in the early years on these projects, Furbish said.

"Cash on the battlefield is problematic in so many ways. It probably shouldn't even be allowed," he said.

[Warph]

                                             

Report: Iraqi Corruption At All-Time Post-Invasion High

Posted By Josh Rogin  Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - 2:11 PM

Corruption in Iraq is at an all-time high and several other major indicators of progress in the country are on a downward trend, according to a new U.S. government report.

Earlier this month, the Iraqi government fired Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) Governor Sinan al-Shabibi amid allegations of corruption, a move that is both a symptom and a consequence of increased corruption in Iraq and also a possible power grab by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, according to the report, published Tuesday by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.

"This peremptory and constitutionally questionable move occurred as an audit of the CBI's foreign currency auctions surfaced. The audit purportedly found that perhaps 80% of the $1 billion purchased at weekly CBI-managed auctions was tied to illegal transactions, with the funds subject to those transactions potentially lost abroad to money laundering," the report reads.

It continues: "This development is symptomatic of a troubled year in Iraq, evidenced by increasing corruption, resurgent violence, deepening ethno-sectarian strains, growing apprehensions about the conflict in Syria, and widening divides within the coalition government."

Special Inspector Stuart Bowen, in an interview with The Cable, said it's unclear whether the firing of Shabibi was a direct power grab by Maliki, but it does open up the possibility that Maliki will now have greater access to the vast capital reserves the bank holds.

"The facts are that Governor Shabibi was widely respected around the globe amongst financial ministers for building up Iraq's reserves to about $65 billion. And I did know from my discussions in Iraq there was some desire in Iraq to access some of that money for capital expenditure purposes and Shabibi had exerted a firm hand in preventing its use," Bowen said. "The government of Iraq wanted to access some of those reserves."

The Iraqi government's public explanation is that Shabibi was not diligent enough in combatting the money laundering that was going on at the bank, mostly through weekly auctions of dollars for Iraqi dinars. Bowen said that Abdul-Basit Turki, the head of the Board of Supreme Audit, made that money-laundering determination. Basset is now the acting governor of the Central Bank of Iraq.

"The matter of corruption was brought to me by a number of ministers, who noted to me that it's as bad as it's ever been," Bowen said.

The report points to several other negative indicators. For example, Iraq suffered its worst day of violence in more than two years when Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi was sentenced to death in absentia last month, charges that are widely viewed as political in nature. Iraq's relationship with Turkey is deteriorating, the ongoing violence in Syrian presents both political and humanitarian problems for Iraq, and a temporary resolution of Baghdad's oil revenue sharing dispute with the Kurds has not solved the overall problem, the report said.

Official numbers for staffing at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, America's largest, have actually gone up despite State Department claims that the embassy was in the process of being downsized. Apparently, the number of staff had been underreported in the past.

"U.S. Embassy-Baghdad reported that 16,035 persons supported the U.S. Mission in Iraq at the end of the quarter, including 1,075 U.S. government civilian employees and 14,960 contractor personnel. The Embassy said the discrepancy was due to earlier underreporting of certain staff categories," the report stated.

"My expectation is that it will be shrinking. We had conflicting reporting about the size of the staff at the embassy," Bowen said. "We'll just have to wait to see how that evolves over the next couple of quarters."

SIGIR also announced in its report the conclusion of several investigations that resulted in either guilty pleas or convictions of persons abusing U.S. taxpayer funds in Iraq, including the guilty plea of the former chief of party in Baghdad for USIP of wire fraud.

Earlier this month, two former employees of the contractor Parsons were sentenced to prison for terms of 27 and 15 months for "conspiring to commit kickbacks, wire fraud, and mail fraud, and for filing false tax returns" and will pay about $2 million in restitution to the U.S. government. And Monday, UK-based Iraqi subcontractor Ahmed Sarchel Kazzaz was sentenced to 15 months in prison and ordered to pay about $1 million in restitution and forfeit another $1 million.

The U.S. government has obligated $60.5 billion to Iraqi relief and reconstruction since 2003.

In January, the SIGIR office will release its final lessons report and three more audits, and then the office will begin to roll up its operations unless Congress sees fit to extend its funding past March. If not, the hope is to take about 20 staffers from SIGIR's investigative unit and move them over to the Office for the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), Bowen said.

"We have over 80 cases ongoing... the Hill has expressed in continuing the investigative part of SIGIR after the office officially closes down," he said.

[Warph]

                   

The Morning After the 'War on Women'

By Daniel Allott on 11.1.12 @ 6:10AM

A partial transcript from November 7:

ROBIN ROBERTS, Good Morning America Co-Anchor: Good morning and hello to you on this Wednesday, November 7th. I'm Robin Roberts, and for those of you who went to bed early last night, it appears that Mitt Romney has won the presidential election.

Romney's victory is sending shock waves across the country. It certainly surprised many political analysts. What's most interesting is that exit polls show the decisive votes were cast by women voters.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, Good Morning America Co-Anchor: That's right, Robin, it seems hard to believe now. Back in 2008, Barack Obama captured 56 percent of female voters -- more than any Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.

And by Inauguration Day, his approval rating stood at 71% among women.

But that support was nowhere to be found yesterday, as Mitt Romney narrowly won the female vote, and with it the election.

For a look at what went wrong for President Obama, here's Jake Tapper in Washington.

JAKE TAPPER, ABC Senior White House Correspondent: Even as the election results continue to sink in, there seems to be an emerging consensus among political strategists that Democrats erred badly in their strategy with women.

Without the economy to run on, Democrats based their appeal to women voters on abortion and birth control, and it clearly backfired.

Throughout the campaign, abortion rights groups and the Democratic Party claimed that Republicans and the Catholic Church wanted to take away women's birth control and that it constituted a "war on women." A Planned Parenthood ad charged that "Mitt Romney would turn back the clock for women."

At the height of the hysteria, Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee said, "I think the next act will be dragging women out of patient rooms into the streets and screaming over their bodies as they get dragged out of getting access to women's health care."

The Obama campaign also embraced the "war on women" theme. Health And Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius accused Republicans of wanting to "roll back the last 50 years in progress women have made in comprehensive health care in America."

On its official Tumblr, the Obama campaign posted an electronic greeting card that said, "Vote like your lady parts depend on it. Because they kinda do."

Another Obama ad showed a woman saying, "It's a scary time to be a woman."

Many of you remember Georgetown Law student and abortion activist Sandra Fluke, who complained at a congressional hearing that her Catholic school would not pay for her friends' birth control. She became a central component of the Democrats' campaign, even earning a prime speaking slot at September's Democratic National Convention.

Democrats seemed not to notice that their allegations just didn't ring true to many women or men, who don't equate women's health with abortion. And most voters understood that the real debate with the Obamacare mandate was about religious freedom, about whether religious institutions should be forced to pay for their employees' birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.

The public also saw politics in the controversy. In March, a public opinion poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that half of respondents said they believed the mandate debate was "mostly being driven by election-year politics."

Many Democratic strategists failed to understand that the idea that women don't have access to or can't afford birth control just didn't measure up with reality of a society swamped with free and cheap contraceptives.

But President Obama inexplicably continued to make the false allegation. In mid-October, he told a crowd at a campaign event at George Mason University, "I don't think a college student in Fairfax should have to choose between text books or the preventive care that she needs."

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So, Jake, if I may interrupt, why the obsession with abortion and contraceptives?

JAKE TAPPER: That's a good question, George. These scare tactics certainly brought in a lot of money to abortion groups and energized their base. But Democrats seemed oblivious to polls that found abortion and birth control ranked last among issues most voters cared about.

A Pew Research poll found abortion and birth control ranked next to last on a list of 18 voter priorities.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that less than one percent of respondents mentioned women's health or birth control as top election issues.

In the closing weeks of the campaign, Fluke and Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards were campaigning full time on behalf of Obama but drawing sparse crowds. One event with Fluke drew just 10 people.

By mid-October polls began to show that the scare tactics just weren't working. The 20-point lead Obama enjoyed among women for much of the campaign quickly evaporated and polls began to show the race a dead heat.

Exit polls from yesterday showed Romney won among women because women cared about the same issues as men, most of all the economy. That spelled defeat for a president whose term saw the number of unemployed women rise by 450,000 and the poverty rate for women rise higher than at any time in 17 years.

Romney, meanwhile, kept his attention on the economy. But he was careful not to back off his pro-life position. A key part of Romney's pitch was that he would repeal Obamacare, including its contraceptive and abortion mandate. And only a few weeks ago, the president-elect reiterated his pledge to defund Planned Parenthood "immediately" upon entering office.

Robin and George, the Democrats' scare tactics on women's issues will be looked back on by political historians as one of the biggest strategic blunders in recent American political history.

Yes, the Democrats became defined by their preoccupation with abortion and birth control, and they paid a high political price for it. Some Democrats are already suggesting that the party enter a period of soul-searching about the wisdom of taking a position on abortion that's increasingly out of step with the electorate.

Back to you in New York.

[Warph]

                    


LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL EXCORIATES OBAMA AS "UNWORTHY":  

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/benghazi-blunder-obama-unworthy-commander-in-chief-176736441.html

WOW.  I've never seen anything quite like this.  An editorial in today's Las Vegas Review-Journal–the largest daily circulation paper in Nevada.... absolutely slams Obama as an incompetent leader, starting with the Benghazi non-response:

The Obama administration sat by doing nothing for seven hours that night, ignoring calls to dispatch help from our bases in Italy, less than two hours away. It has spent the past seven weeks stretching the story out, engaging in misdirection and deception involving supposed indigenous outrage over an obscure anti-Muslim video, confident that with the aid of a docile press corps this infamous climax to four years of misguided foreign policy can be swept under the rug, at least until after Tuesday's election.

[Warph]

                       


                 Sandra Fluke, Your 15 Minutes are Up


Noted moocher makes appearance at University of Florida, no one notices.


Was it a Fluke.... or another case of media bias?

There stood Obama surrogate Sandra Fluke -- you might remember the controversy surrounding her talk to House Democrats earlier this year about ObamaCare and free contraceptive coverage, which drew a Rush Limbaugh "slut" response -- ready to tell a Sak 'N Save crowd in Reno, Nev., why she supports another four years of President Obama.

Only, well, the crowd wasn't even enough to field the kickoff at a nearby high school football game.

Ten people -- yes, a crowd of 10 -- took the time to stop and listen to Fluke as she touted the federal health care overhaul and condemned Mitt Romney's call to cut federal taxpayer support to Planned Parenthood.

And this:

Sandra Fluke, the infamous former Georgetown law student who begged for free birth control in front of Congress, "rallied" a crowd of just 40 people on the University of Florida campus yesterday.

Women's rights activist Sandra Fluke made an appearance on Turlington Plaza on Wednesday to encourage students to utilize early voting for next week's presidential election.

Fluke stopped at UF as part of her "It's On You" Youth Early Vote Campus Outreach tour.

About 40 students gathered by the potato statue to listen.

[Warph]

Barone: Going out on a limb... Romney beats
Obama, handily

By Michael Barone

Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That's bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president.

But it's also true that most voters oppose Obama's major policies and consider unsatisfactory the very sluggish economic recovery -- Friday's jobs report showed an unemployment uptick.

Also, both national and target state polls show that independents, voters who don't identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans, break for Romney.

That might not matter if Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 39 to 32 percent, as they did in the 2008 exit poll. But just about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting -- and about their candidate -- than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so.

That's been apparent in early or absentee voting, in which Democrats trail their 2008 numbers in target states Virginia, Ohio, Iowa and Nevada.

The Obama campaign strategy, from the beginning, has recognized these handicaps, running barrages of early anti-Romney ads in states that Obama carried narrowly. But other states, not so heavily barraged, have come into contention.

Which candidate will get the electoral votes of the target states? I'll go out on a limb and predict them, in ascending order of 2008 Obama percentages -- fully aware that I'm likely to get some wrong.

Indiana (11 electoral votes). Uncontested. Romney.

North Carolina (15 electoral votes). Obama has abandoned this target. Romney.

Florida (29). The biggest target state has trended Romney since the Denver debate. I don't see any segment of the electorate favoring Obama more than in 2008, and I see some (South Florida Jews) favoring him less. Romney.

Ohio (18). The anti-Romney auto bailout ads have Obama running well enough among blue-collar voters for him to lead most polls. But many polls anticipate a more Democratic electorate than in 2008. Early voting tells another story, and so does the registration decline in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County. In 2004, intensity among rural, small -town and evangelical voters, undetected by political reporters who don't mix in such circles, produced a narrow Bush victory. I see that happening again. Romney.

Virginia (13). Post-debate polling mildly favors Romney, and early voting is way down in heavily Democratic Arlington, Alexandria, Richmond and Norfolk. Northern Virginia Asians may trend Romney. Romney.

Colorado (9). Unlike 2008, registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats, and more Republicans than Democrats have voted early. The Republican trend in 2010 was squandered by weak candidates for governor and senator. Not this time. Romney.

Iowa (6). The unexpected Romney endorsements by the Des Moines Register and three other newspapers gave voice to buyer's remorse in a state Obama carried by 10 points. Democrats' traditional margin in early voting has declined. Romney.

Minnesota (10). A surprise last-minute media buy for the Romney campaign. But probably a bridge too far. Obama.
New Hampshire (4). Polls are very tight here. I think superior Republican intensity will prevail. Romney.

Pennsylvania (20). Everyone would have picked Obama two weeks ago. I think higher turnout in pro-coal Western Pennsylvania and higher Republican percentages in the Philadelphia suburbs could produce a surprise. The Romney team evidently thinks so too. Their investment in TV time is too expensive to be a mere feint, and, as this is written, Romney is planning a Sunday event in Bucks County outside Philly. Wobbling on my limb, Romney.

Nevada (6). Democratic early-voting turnout is down from 2008 in Las Vegas' Clark County, 70 percent of the state. But the casino unions' turnout machine on Election Day re-elected an unpopular Harry Reid in 2010, and I think they'll get enough Latinos and Filipinos out this time. Obama.

Wisconsin (10). Recent polling is discouraging for Republicans. But Gov. Scott Walker handily survived the recall effort in June with a great organizational push. Democrats depend heavily on margins in inner-city Milwaukee (population down) and the Madison university community. But early voting is down in university towns in other states. The Obama campaign is prepared to turn out a big student vote, but you don't see many Obama signs on campuses. Romney.

Oregon (7), New Mexico (5), New Jersey (14). Uncontested. Obama.

Michigan (16). Romney chose Pennsylvania, where there's no auto bailout issue. Obama.

Bottom line: Romney 315, Obama 223. That sounds high for Romney. But he could drop Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still win the election. Fundamentals.

Michael Barone,The Examiner's senior political analyst, can be contacted at mbarone@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday, and his stories and blog posts appear on washingtonexaminer.com.

[Warph]

             

Au Revoir, Mr. President

By Emmett Tyrrell
11/1/2012

Reviewing the last few months of this tumultuous presidential campaign, I see the debates as having a wondrous salience. The first was the most momentous since Nixon vs. Kennedy, though that 1960 confrontation was mostly a matter of cosmetics. Listening to it on radio, many in the audience came away thinking that the participant with the five-o'clock shadow had won. That would have been Richard Nixon.

In debate this time around, Mitt Romney hammered Barack Obama mercilessly. Under the ongoing assault Obama's knees buckled and he repeatedly looked glassy-eyed. If the contest were a prizefight, the referee would have stepped in. Actually, I felt sorry for Obama. My tax-bracket notwithstanding, I did not want to see Mitt hit him again, but he did: the economy! the national debt! joblessness! However, the debate was not a prizefight. It was the first of three presidential debates and, though restrained in the next two contests, Romney accomplished just what he wanted. The debates left him looking reasonable, informed, competent and presidential.

During these final two debates all Romney had to do was continue to look presidential. He glided suavely through them, as his opponent snarled, looking spiteful, petty, mean-spirited and second-rate. In sum, Obama looked like the challenger and not a very gifted challenger at that. In the end, most Americans went away feeling that Romney has the right stuff to be president, and some wondered why a majority ever elected Obama president in 2008. Obama's presidency proves that not just anyone can serve in the country's highest office. In 2012, the charisma of a showman has about exhausted itself as a qualification to lead America. Only the Washington press corps still hankers for a "thrill going up the leg" or "a perfectly creased pant leg" or whatever other literary device was meant to convey a pundit's enthrallment to the community organizer from Chicago. How about a fast-beating heart or tummy flutters?

Obama has come across as an amazingly close approximation of Jimmy Carter, complete with a slow-growth economy and a foreign policy disaster, though one of Obama's empty boasts was he understood the Arab world especially well. His backup team of David Axelrod and David Plouffe serve as second-rate Jody Powells and Ham Jordans. Frankly, I preferred Jody and Ham.

I must, in all humility, admit that it took me all of two weeks into his presidency to recognize that Obama was over his head. On February 5, 2009, I said in this space that Obama's presidency was doomed. I pronounced him a dud, unlikely to be reelected president. Said I, " ... with the economy in crisis and American national security in the hands of a starry-eyed novice, one can argue that we are in for a reprise of the Carter years complete with the self-righteous pout." Well, I argued this for almost four years and today I rest my case. Next week President Obama goes into retirement. I hope he will consider Hawaii.

Given my perspective, it was an easy case to call. A few months back I published my findings in "The Death of Liberalism." In that book I noted that in the conservative deluge of 2010, independents combined with conservatives to turn the Liberals out. The independents do not always share the conservatives' social values, but they are very ardent for prudent economic policies. The growing debt and unbalanced budgets (both state and federal) had roused the independent vote. I said they would vote with the conservatives for years to come, because Obama and his cohorts in Congress were going to pile up trillion dollar deficits for years to come. Along with the conservatives and independents, next week will come the "uncommitted" voter. The uncommitted always goes with the challenger.

There are two numbers that have been relatively underemphasized in this election, 18 percent and 24 percent. Eighteen percent is the standard cut the federal government takes of GDP. Twenty-four percent is the cut that Obama's government is taking. He says that to pay for this engorgement of the federal government all we need to do is raise taxes on the rich. The conservatives and independents recognize that there is not enough money earned by the top percentage of taxpayers to pay for it and probably not enough down below. Pithily put, we cannot afford Liberalism. That is why we shall be getting a new government next week.

[Warph]

                         
                       

Obama Needs Secretary of Business as Clinton
Needed an Intern- and for Same Reason

By John Ransom
11/1/2012

As the clock heads toward midnight on the Barack Obama experiment, it's nice to see that he continues to be the guy we said he was all along. I'm beginning to doubt he was even any good at being a community organizer.

After churning over all the options available to him- using the full-faith and credit of the United States; a one billion dollar campaign war-chest; $37 million in staffing costs at the executive office per year; a trillion dollars in pork barrel spending; QE4EVER!; recommendations from Nobel-prize winning economists (ha!), the top business experts that political contributions can buy (ouch!) and (deep breath) presumably THE 1-800 HELPLINE at the Small Business Administration... and here's the plan to jumpstart our economy in the second term: Obama wants to create a U.S. Department of Business, with a cabinet-level secretary.

Yep. That's it.

Secretary Van Jones anyone?

Someone has to coordinate the upward revisions of the already ridiculous jobs, GDP and voter registration numbers. Someone has to wear the presidential knee pads when the economy won't cooperate.

"Isn't this rich? Saturday Night Live couldn't have thought of anything better," writes the Washington Post's Ed Roger. "When I read this headline [about appointing a Secretary of Business], I had to make sure it wasn't coming from The Onion."

No, didn't come from the Onion but it sure does stink, doesn't it?

"Speaking to the hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday, Obama said a Secretary of Business would serve to consolidate several commerce-related government agencies, a plan he originally proposed in January," reports the Huffington Post.

Can't tell if the tears are Onion-related from the cutting humor or just shell shock for the sheer futility of our president's brain.

Because yeah, the plan DC came up with to create an intelligence Czar at a new Department of Homeland Security to coordinate the safety of transportation workers' rights to see what a women looks like naked at the airport- that plan has worked out so well.

Or how about the creation of the Department of Education, even as the United States falls farther and farther behind other countries in education, while spending more money than anyone else?

Or how about the time we created the Department of Energy to address our growing dependence on foreign sources of oil?

That's worked out sooooo well.

We really needed a whole department to make us MORE dependent on foreign energy. To be fair, as hard as Obama works at making us less energy independent, a whole bureaucracy actually could help Obama achieve more dependency on foreign oil, which seems to be his goal.

Raise your hand if you are a liberal who wants to point out, as our president has, that we currently import less foreign oil than ever before.

That answer just proves how stoopid you both are.

We're using less oil because our economy is a giant, festering, open wound.

The fact that we import less oil is an indictment of the whole Barack Obama Experience. In a healthy economy we would be using more oil, more coal, more nuclear, more fracking, more of the things that made our country great, not less.

Some former Obama aides get it.

Bill Daley was appointed chief of staff to Obama when Rahm Emanuel left the post. The Daley appointment was considered a kind of olive branch to the business community who somehow got the idea that the record number of regulations aimed at killing jobs and profits was a bad idea.

Daley, in a way, was the first Secretary of Business. And he got right to business by inviting business leaders to share their pain.

"One by one, exasperated executives stood to air their grievances on environmental regulations and stalled free-trade deals," reported the Washington Post. "And Daley, the former banker tasked with building ties with industry, found himself looking for the right balance between empathy and defending his boss."

But (ha, ha, ha) he couldn't find his balance.

"Daley said he did not have many good answers, appearing to throw up his hands in frustration at what he called 'bureaucratic stuff that's hard to defend.'"

"'Sometimes you can't defend the indefensible,' he said."

No, you can't. But apparently Obama thinks the very least we can do is build a really big government agency to coordinate the indefensible. Or the unbelievable. Or both if you make it a really big bureaucracy.

I bet he could do it with four more years.

[Warph]

               

As you head to the polls to vote in the Presidental election, you may have a few questions other than which candidate is best.


If vote, will I be called for jury duty?
Serving jury duty seems as definite as death and taxes, which is why some folks try to dodge the obligation by avoiding the voting booths altogether. That doesn't work, though. According to the New York City Voter Assistance Commission website, "Jurors are drawn from lists of state taxpayers and licensed drivers as well as from voter registration rolls. Do not give up your right to vote in the hope that you will avoid jury duty. Chances are, if you pay taxes or drive a car, you will still be called."

Do convicted felons really lose their right to vote?
In most cases, a person loses the right to vote if he or she has been convicted of a felony, but the restriction varies from state to state. Felons may be eligible to have their voting rights restored if they've served their sentence or have been pardoned.

In New York City, for example, convicted felons can vote if they have not been sentenced to prison or if the sentence of imprisonment has been suspended. Convicted felons also can vote in New York City if they have finished their maximum sentence and are currently serving probation.

Once I'm in the voting booth, how long do I have to cast my ballot?
In most states, voters are given three minutes to pull the lever, as determined by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed in 2002. If a poll worker thinks a voter is taking too long, the worker may ask him or her if assistance is needed. A family member or friend is allowed to enter the booth if the voter needs help reading the ballot.

Can you vote if you have just moved to a new place?
In order to register to vote, every state requires that a person live in the precinct in which they wish to vote for at least 30 days prior to an election. This prevents people from fraudulently voting in two locations.

Can I vote if I'm a hospital patient?
If you're in the hospital on Election Day, you can still make your vote count. It works somewhat like an absentee ballot, and although specific rules vary by state, generally you can ask a hospital staff member for a voting form. Once you complete it, have your physician sign it to verify that you are a patient, seal it, and have a staff member or friend deliver it to the polling center.

Can a ballot be corrected if a voter makes a mistake?
Under HAVA, all voters should be given the opportunity to change the ballot if they feel that they have made a mistake while voting. Poll workers are required to give a voter a new ballot to correct any errors made while voting the first time. The old ballot is then voided and replaced by the intended vote.

Can the names of dead people really be used to cast fraudulent votes?
Literally referred to as "dead voters," this form of fraud is actually much less widespread than the way it has been portrayed in movies and the media. Since its passing, HAVA has made voting regulations stricter and cut down on fraudulent voting, including people using the names of the deceased to garner additional votes.

It's easy to see how, prior to HAVA's eagle-eyed monitoring of voter status, "dead voters" may have fallen through the cracks. The elderly are very politically active : "Voters ages 65 to 75 and 75 and older are the categories which had the highest amount of registered voters, with 78.4 and 77.6 percent of them registering to vote," Robert Bernstein, a representative for the U.S. Census Bureau, told Life's Little Mysteries regarding the 2006 congressional elections. If someone's records had not yet been updated as deceased, an unscrupulous individual could have used a dead person's name to produce a vote without raising red flags.

[Warph]

You need to watch: 

Why we don't need economic illiterates trivializing the dangers
of socialized medicine.

This is a rebuttal to the video "Why We Need Government-Run
Universal Socialized Health Insurance."