This and That...

[Ross]

I think the Obamnation in office is trying to
DESTROY
our nation from every angle!
Isn't it time for
IMPEACHMENT ?

Obama secretly negotiating away U.S. sovereignty

Published: 1 day ago

Aaron Klein

2-pronged assault on economy, consumer rights, domestic law

Consumer protections and the use of domestic law in the U.S. may drastically change as President Obama forges ahead with two secretive international deals that impact major aspects of the economy, privacy and beyond.

Wednesday, Obama defended a proposed mega free-trade zone between the world's two largest economies, the United States and the European Union.

"I have fought my entire political career, and as president, to strengthen consumer protections. I have no intention of signing legislation that would weaken those protections," Obama said during a visit to the EU headquarters in Brussels.

Obama was responding to criticism of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, which the U.S. has been negotiated with the EU since last July.

Besides creating the world's biggest free-trade zone, the TTIP will also bring about closer cooperation between EU and U.S. regulatory bodies while more closely integrating the two economies.

Aaron Klein's "Impeachable Offenses: The Case to Remove Barack Obama from Office" is available, autographed, at WND's Superstore

One leak about the TTIP revealed a proposed "Regulatory Cooperation Council" that would evaluate existing regulations in the U.S. and EU and recommend future rules while coordinating a response to the current regulations.

Writing in the left-leaning the Nation magazine, foreign policy analyst Andrew Erwin said the TTIP was less about reducing tariffs and "more about weakening the power of average citizens to defend themselves against corporate labor and environmental abuses."

Erwin took particular issue with a section in the TTIP called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement, which stipulates foreign corporations can sue the government utilizing a special international tribunal instead of the country's own domestic system that uses U.S. law.

"The tribunals are not accountable to any national public or democratically elected body," wrote Erwin.

Last December, a coalition of more than 200 environmentalists, labor unions and consumer advocacy organizations drafted a letter asking for the Investor-State Dispute Settlement section to be dropped.

The New York Times, meanwhile, reported earlier this week that some American companies "are concerned that protections for investors will not be part of a deal."

While Obama is negotiating the TTIP largely in secret, talks continue to forge ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. The expansive plan is a proposed free-trade agreement between the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.

The agreement would create new guidelines for everything from food safety to fracking, financial markets, medical prices, copyright rules and Internet freedom.

On Tuesday, the leaders of Canada and Japan reportedly met on the sidelines of a nuclear summit at the Hague to discuss the TPP.

The TPP negotiations have been criticized by politicians and advocacy groups alike for their secrecy. The few aspects of the partnership leaked to the public indicate an expansive agenda with highly limited congressional oversight.

A New York Times opinion piece previously called the deal the "most significant international commercial agreement since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1995."

Last October, the White House website released a joint statement with the other proposed TPP signatories affirming "our countries are on track to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations."

"Ministers and negotiators have made significant progress in recent months on all the legal texts and annexes on access to our respective goods, services, investment, financial services, government procurement, and temporary entry markets," the White House said.

The statement did not divulge details of the partnership other than to suggest a final TPP agreement "must reflect our common vision to establish a comprehensive, next-generation model for addressing both new and traditional trade and investment issues, supporting the creation and retention of jobs and promoting economic development in our countries."

Secrecy

In February, the Open the Government organization sent a letter to Obama blasting the lack of transparency surrounding the TPP talks, stating the negotiations have been "conducted in unprecedented secrecy."

"Despite the fact the deal may significantly affect the way we live our lives by limiting our public protections, there has been no public access to even the most fundamental draft agreement texts and other documents," read the letter.

The missive was signed by advocacy groups such as OpenTheGovernment.org, Project On Government Oversight, ARTICLE 19 and the Global Campaign for Freedom of Expression and Information.

The groups warned issues being secretly negotiated include "patent and copyright, land use, food and product standards, natural resources, professional licensing, government procurement, financial practices, healthcare, energy, telecommunications, and other service sector regulations."

Lack of oversight

Normally free-trade agreements must be authorized by a majority of the House and Senate, usually in lengthy proceedings.

However, the White House is seeking what is known as "trade promotion authority" which would fast track approval of the TPP by requiring Congress to vote on the likely lengthy trade agreement within 90 days and without any amendments.

The authority also allows Obama to sign the agreement before Congress even has a chance to vote on it, with lawmakers getting only a quick post-facto vote.

A number of lawmakers have been speaking out about the secret TPP talks.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., recently proposed legislation requiring the White House to disclose all TPP documents to members of Congress.

"The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement," said Wyden.

However, Obama has so far refused to give Congress a copy of the draft agreement.

Regulates food, Internet, medicine, commerce

The TPP is "more than just a trade deal," wrote Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch in a New York Times op-ed last June.

"Only 5 of its 29 chapters cover traditional trade matters, like tariffs or quotas. The others impose parameters on nontrade policies. Existing and future American laws must be altered to conform with these terms, or trade sanctions can be imposed against American exports."

Wallach and Beachy spotlighted several leaks in the proposed TPP text, including one that would regulate the price of medicine.

"Pharmaceutical companies, which are among those enjoying access to negotiators as 'advisers,' have long lobbied against government efforts to keep the cost of medicines down. Under the agreement, these companies could challenge such measures by claiming that they undermined their new rights granted by the deal."

Amnesty International USA warned draft TPP provisions related to patents for pharmaceuticals "risk stifling the development and production of generic medicines, by strengthening and deepening monopoly protections."

Another leak revealed the TPP would grant more incentives to relocate domestic manufacturing offshore, Wallach and Beachy related.

Jim Hightower, a progressive activist, wrote the TPP incorporates elements similar to the Stop Online Piracy Act.

Hightower wrote the deal would "transform Internet service providers into a private, Big Brother police force, empowered to monitor our 'user activity,' arbitrarily take down our content and cut off our access to the Internet."

Indeed, Internet freedom advocacy groups have been protesting the TPP, taking specific issue with leaked proposals that would enact strict intellectual property restraints that would effectively change U.S. copyright law.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation argued the TPP would "restrict the ability of Congress to engage in domestic law reform to meet the evolving IP needs of American citizens and the innovative technology sector."

In a petition signed by more than 30 Internet freedom organizations, the group warned the TPP would "rewrite global rules on intellectual property enforcement."

With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/obama-secretly-negotiating-away-u-s-sovereignty/#5kMy9C1qiwE8pKQg.99

[Warph]

Could HAARP Be Involved?

Booms and quakes are increasing dramatically in the Oklahoma area and around the great New Madrid fault where the largest quake in recorded US history occurred.
The area of that nearly 8.0 quake was hardly populated in 1811 but today it is a major population center in the USA home to millions of people and major cities in the mid west including Chicago, Illinois.

There were 20 earthquakes in Oklahoma with booms (like bombs going off they said) on Saturday alone.

Booms that precede great geological upheavals of major proportions have been recorded down through history. As huge earthquakes grew nearer, the booms grew more frequent and more loud.

Oklahoma is not alone as residents of many states are reporting these loud booms and earth shaking from Great Lakes states to New Jersey (Manchester area), to Missouri and Texas. The  growing number and loudness of the booms are frightening residents and causing great alarm, especially since the area being effected is so huge.

The area assaulted by the Deep Water Gulf oil spill and the ongoing catastrophe at Bayou Corne (sinkhole) may also be having a serious effect on these areas because of the increased pressure placed on the earth's crust.

This week booms and quakes in South Carolina and Georgia frightened residents there.

The Augusta water tower was cracked by the quakes that happened just 20 miles from the Augusta National Golf Course. 

There are those who like to mock and giggle about such things.

With an already horrible drought in California about to drive vegetable and fruit prices through the roof, a major quake or disaster in the Midwest, the bread basket of the US (and much of the world for that matter), could trigger even worst scenarios.

Here's what the booms sound like:

Some news articles about the booms:

Oklahoma:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/residents-baffled-terrifying-loud-booms-oklahoma/story?id=22543356

http://newsok.com/loud-booms-frighten-residents-cause-damage-between-near-guthrie/article/3933913

[Warph]

Obama's Family Trips on Air Force One Cost Taxpayers $15.9M plus

Thursday, 27 Mar 2014 01:27 PM
By Drew MacKenzie

Obama Trips To Hawaii, Martha's Vineyard And Africa Cost $17 Million... For Airfare Alone...

(The Clown gives the Pope a pack of vegetable seeds... Prob'ly had the limo stop at Walmart on the way to the airport.

Grifters, my friends.  Nothing but grifters.  WE pay the bill while they live the high life.  Disgusting people)

Via Newsmax:
http://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/Obama-Judicial-Watch-trips-cost/2014/03/27/id/562138/?promo_code=F269-1


President Barack Obama's family vacations abroad at taxpayer expense has been slammed by a watchdog group keeping tabs on the bills.

The president, first lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters, traveled to Africa last summer and then to Honolulu over the winter – and the cost of the flights alone on Air Force One came to $15,888,585, according to Judicial Watch.

The organization, which unearthed the figure through the Freedom of Information Act, found that the flights in and around Africa by the Obamas in June and July 2013 came to 35.5 hours at a cost of $228,288 an hour, totaling $8,104,224.

The family's flights on Air Force One for their 17-day Christmas vacation to Honolulu between December 2013 and January 2014 totaled 36.9 hours at a cost of $210,877 an hour, adding up to $7,781,361.

Furthermore, Judicial Watch also revealed that the flight costs for the family's trip in August last year to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, was $1,164,268.

"The costs to taxpayers of President Obama's travel, especially his luxury vacation travel, are beyond the pale," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. "And the secrecy surrounding these costs shows that Obama's vows of transparency are rubbish."

[Warph]

As Obuma Prepares To Visit Saudi Arabia, Textbooks There Continue To Teach Students Gays Should Be Executed By Fire, Stoning, Or Thrown From High Places

As Obuma Prepares To Visit Saudi Arabia, Textbooks There Continue To Teach Students Gays Should Be Executed By Fire, Stoning, Or Thrown From High Place

(I'm guessing he left lover-boy Reggie Love home)

Via FDD:
President Obama is set to visit Saudi Arabia this Friday for discussions with Saudi officials focusing on regional developments and repairing the strained relations between the U.S. and the Kingdom. It is unclear whether the president will raise concerns about Saudi Arabia's controversial educational curriculum. Saudi textbooks help propagate jihadist ideology and are distributed around the globe.

A new FDD report reveals that the State Department has declined to release a taxpayer-funded study on Saudi textbooks submitted to the Department in 2012. The Saudi Ministry of Education continues to allow dangerous and deeply offensive material to appear in Saudi Arabia's textbooks for the 2013-2014 school year.

For example, a twelfth grade textbook on Quranic interpretation professes that "treachery, betrayal, and the denunciation of covenants" are among the attributes of the Jews. The anti-Semitic libel "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is presented as historical fact in a tenth grade textbook on Hadith and Islamic Culture.

A book from the same series for the eleventh grade teaches that cosmopolitan universities in the Middle East such as the American Universities in Beirut and Cairo are examples of a modern-day crusade by Christians against Islam.

Homosexuals fare even worse in Saudi Arabia's educational materials. A tenth grade textbook on jurisprudence states that the punishment for homosexuality is death. The text goes on to suggest that the most important debate about homosexuals is how best to execute them, including death by fire, stoning, or being thrown from a high place.

A twelfth grade monotheism textbook asserts that the punishment for conversion away from Islam is execution. If the apostate does not repent, "it is incumbent upon the ruler to kill him," the text reads. The book also argues that authorities can forcibly separate an apostate from his or her spouse and confiscate their property.

[Ross]

[Warph]

Did Obama Lie About What Was Said During His Meeting With Pope Francis?

Frick and Frack on either side of the Pope

(We saw a similar vast difference in accounts of what was said in his phone call with Putin yesterday...
http://weaselzippers.us/181058-putin-calls-obama-two-vastly-different-impressions-of-what-was-said/)

Via Washington Times:
President Obama's first meeting with Pope Francis produced a little schism of its own.

The Vatican and White House gave starkly different versions Thursday of Mr. Obama's meeting with Francis.

PHOTOS: Awesome rifles: The best and the baddest
The president's account downplayed the Catholic Church's concerns about religious freedom in the United States and Obamacare's mandate to pay for contraception.

The pontiff and the president were cordial in the televised portions of their meeting, but a subtle competition to set the agenda played out after the meeting, which went well beyond its scheduled half-hour.

"We actually didn't talk a whole lot about social schisms in my conversations with His Holiness," Mr. Obama said at a press conference in Rome. "In fact, that really was not a topic of conversation."

Mr. Obama deflected a reporter's question about the extent of his discussion with the pope on the contraceptive mandate by saying that Francis "actually did not touch in detail" on the subject. The administration has been locked in a lengthy legal and political battle with the U.S. Catholic Church hierarchy over Obamacare and issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

The Vatican, however, issued a statement after the meeting saying the president's discussions with Francis and two other top Vatican officials focused "on questions of particular relevance for the [Catholic] Church in [the United States], such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection" — issues that have fueled divisions between Mr. Obama and the church.

[Warph]

Remember When Presidents Stood Up To Russia?

Liberals say we don't need any more "Cowboy" Presidents

Via Allen B. West
Thirty-five years ago I was finishing up my senior year of high school and heading to my first year at the University of Tennessee. Something also happened that year — the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and began the 10 year Soviet-Afghan War. If anyone had told me in 1979 that one day, 26 years later, I would be landing at the Kabul Airport in Afghanistan, I would have thought them crazy. However, history does indeed repeat itself for those who fail to learn from it.

So here we are in 2014 with a weak president, just as 35 years ago, watching another invasion. Once again we have a president who has diminished our military capacity. Once again we have a president who is limiting our energy security advancement in favor of radical environmentalists.

There are so many parallels between the tenures of presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama some postulate this is what a second Carter presidency would have resembled.

This past week, President Obama was in Europe displaying his failure to comprehend strategic level geopolitics. Europe has always been a battleground between East and West, between liberty and tyranny. The difference now is that we do not have resolute leadership such as President John F. Kennedy who went to West Berlin and stated, "Ich bin ein Berliner" meaning to say he was a citizen of Berlin (not a "Berliner" jelly-filled doughnut). And young Kennedy was indeed challenged by the brutish belligerence of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev by way of the Cuban missile crisis. Yet he stood his ground.

[Warph]

George Soros Nudges Obuma to Release Strategic Oil
Reserves to "Ruin" Russia

by Michael Bastasch

http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/03/george-soros-nudges-obama-release-strategic-oil-reserves-ruin-russia/


Liberal billionaire George Soros suggested that President Barack Obama release oil from the country's strategic reserves to lower gas prices and "ruin" Russia's energy-dependent economy.

Soros told a panel in Berlin last week that the best way to sanction Russia for its actions in Ukraine "is in the hands of the United States," because its oil reserves can depress the price of oil, reports Bloomberg.

"The strongest deterrent is in the hands of the United States because it can release oil from the strategic oil reserve, which would then reduce the price of oil, and that would ruin the Russian economy, which lives on oil," he told Marketplace in an interview published Wednesday.

"The Russian economy is very weak because the oligarchs who run the country don't trust it and they send their money abroad," he added. "So if you stop the inflow of funds, that will bring the Russian economy to its knees."

"Ukraine is determined to reform, but it needs protection," Soros continued.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has dismissed the idea of using the U.S.'s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to punish Russia, but others have gravitated towards the idea. Former Ford and Carter administration official Philip Verleger said that U.S. SPR reserves could reduce oil prices by $12 per barrel by releasing 500,000 barrels of oil.

Verleger added that lower oil prices would cost Russia about $40 billion in oil and gas revenues, or about 2 percent of its economy. Carl Larry, president of Oil Outlooks & Opinions LLC, told Bloomberg that releasing SPR oil would also lower costs for refiners and boost U.S. exports while reducing U.S. oil imports.

"We can increase exports and the U.S. wins on all levels," Larry said. "Refiners have better margins in the U.S. and we push out exports from Russia."

But releasing oil from the SPR is a double-edged sword. Oil prices are set in global markets, meaning that hurting Russian oil revenues would also hurt the bottom lines of U.S. oil companies.

"If you use oil and aim it at Russia, you'll hit Texas," Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners LLC, told Bloomberg. "Besides the intrinsic problem of taking your safety net and burning it for a flash in the pan, we're not the low-cost producer."

The effects of an SPR release will also likely be temporary. When the Obama administration released 30 million barrels of oil from the SPR in 2011 during the Libyan civil war, prices were only depressed for a few days. Within a week, oil prices were right back to where they were before the SPR release — which was also complemented by the release of 30 million barrels from other countries.

The reserve was established in the aftermath of the 1973-74 oil embargo. It has a capacity of 727 million barrels of oil and was intended to give the president a tool to respond to disruptions in the oil supply that threaten the U.S. economy. The government has released oil from the reserve three times in the past

[Warph]

Global Warming Will Cause War, Pestilence, Famine and Death,
Says New IPCC Report Inevitably

(Oh my, I just pooped all over myself.  I'm so scared.  Tell me what to do!)

Today sees the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) latest findings on the state of "global warming" and the news isn't good.
Here are some of the highlights:

•Giant malarial mosquitoes the size of crane flies may descend en masse and drain us of our blood so quickly with their powerful razor sharp probosces that we won't even have time to be infected - we'll be dead before we hit the floor;

•Bangladesh, Tuvalu, The Maldives and Florida will all be submerged;
•Four horsemen with skulls for faces, glowing red eyes and huge scythes will gallop across the blighted land on skeletal horses spreading fire, pestilence, famine, and disease. Men will pray for the quick release of death. Children will clutch their parents and say: "Why didn't we listen?";

•The populations of horrid things like cockroaches and scorpions will quintuple, while all the cute animals - wrens, robins, meerkats, baby polar bears, kittens, sea otters - will vanish as if they had never been;

•Men will say openly that Christ and His saints slept;

•There will be war, war and more war.

We know this because the Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg is on the case. She has got in her climate doom predictions early and though she based her report on a leaked sneak preview rather than the finished document, she has undoubtedly captured the general tone, which is this: things are even worse than we thought!

And are things really even worse than we thought?

Rest of story at:
http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/03/31/Global-Warming-Will-Cause-War-Pestilence-Famine-and-Death-Says-New-IPCC-Report-Inevitably

[Ross]