This and That...

[Warph]

OVER 17.5 Million More Americans on Medicaid Today
Than HHS Predicted in 2010

Thursday, May 30, 2013, 11:57 AM

In 2010 the Obama Department of Health and Human Services predicted in their Actuarial Report that 55.1 million Americans would be enrolled in Medicaid in 2013.

Here's how that prediction worked out...

A record 72,600,000 were enrolled in Medicaid for at least one month in fiscal 2012. This is more people than the population of France or the United Kingdom.

That means HHS was off by 17.5 million.
Only in government can you be so off in your predictions and still keep your jobs.

More... HHS did not do much better in their 2011 report.
http://medicaid.gov/Medicaid-CHIP-Program-Information/By-Topics/Financing-and-Reimbursement/Downloads/medicaid-actuarial-report-2011.pdf

[Warph]

((("Mooch Obuma to Elite Donors: Republicans Are Going After Your Food Stamps."

How in the hell did any of us survive before these two committed socialists liars moved into the White House?

More Americans were on food stamps in December, than the entire population of Spain.

An average 46,609,072 people were on the program every month in 2012.It's something the Obuma administration clowns are very proud of.)))

Michelle Obama told a group of top Democratic donors
last night that Republicans caused seniors to go hungry
and now they're after your food stamps!

Thursday, May 30, 2013, 10:34 AM

Via the TPM: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/michelle-obama-gives-speech-at-fundraiser-in-tory

"Just last month for example we saw the failure of common sense legislation to protect our kids from gun violence, legislation by the way that 90 percent of the American people supported. We're seeing a budget stalemate and a sequester resulting in children across the country being turned away from Head Start, and so many seniors losing their meals on wheels, and now there's talk about cutting food stamps," Obama said.

The First Lady described these cuts as "not what this country is about."

"We are so much more compassionate and fair, so much more decent than that," said Obama.

(Since when does lumping debt on your children and grand-children qualify as compassion?

For the record... The Obuma administration is paying recruiters to sign up people on food stamps)

[Warph]

Poll: Less Than Half Of Americans Now View Obuma As "Honest And Trustworthy"

(Who in their right mind finds Barack Obama honest or even worse, trustworthy?)

The latest Quinnipiac University poll, published today, will send shivers through the White House, even though Washington is experiencing its first heat wave of the year. The Quinnipiac survey (hat tip: Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot) is the first major survey to show that the wave of recent scandals hitting the Obama administration are beginning to damage President Obama's own standing with the American people. According to Quinnipiac, Barack Obama's job approval rating now stands at just 45 percent, with less than half of voters viewing the president as "honest and trustworthy."

"President Barack Obama gets a negative 45 – 49 percent job approval rating, compared to 48 – 45 percent positive in a May 1 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University, conducted before the IRS allegations surfaced.

The president's biggest drop is among independent voters, who give him a negative 37 – 57 percent score, compared to a negative 42 – 48 percent May 1. He gets a negative 9 – 86 percent from Republicans and a positive 87 – 8 percent from Democrats, both virtually unchanged. Women approve 49 – 45 percent while men give a negative 40 – 54 percent score.

Americans are divided 49 – 47 percent on whether Obama is honest and trustworthy, down from 58 – 37 percent, the last time Quinnipiac University asked the question September 1, 2011."

The Quinnipiac study also shows deep-seated disillusionment with the federal government among American voters:

"Only 3 percent of voters trust the federal government to do the right thing almost all the time, while 12 percent say they trust it most of the time; 47 percent say some of the time and 36 percent hardly ever. That compares to results of a Quinnipiac University poll in July 2010, four months before the Republican sweep that year on the back of anti-government sentiment, when 2 percent said almost always, 16 percent said most of the time; 50 percent said some of the time and 31 percent said hardly ever."

Of the three major scandals currently engulfing the presidency – the IRS targeting of conservative groups, the Obama administration's response to the Benghazi terrorist attack, and the Justice Department's seizure of phone records belonging to Associated Press journalists, the IRS issue is making the biggest impact with voters.

[Warph]

Wild time around 10am this morning... we live a hop, skip and a jump from the Deer Vally Airport where we heard two private planes crash into each other.  We heard the sound of the crash and then saw balck smoke bellowing up in the distance.  We heard that 3 to 4 people lost their lives.  I wondered how long it would be before something like this happened.  Thank G-D it didnt happen over our community, tho' it came mighty close. ...Warph

Published on May 31, 2013

Arizona Pane Crash: Two planes collided in midair over Arizona before crash; 4 are dead Arizona Pane Crash: Two planes collided in midair over Arizona before crash; 4 are dead Four people were killed Friday morning after two single-engine planes collided above north Phoenix, authorities say.

A pilot reported seeing two small aircraft collide in midair about 15 miles northwest of Deer Valley Airport, according to Ian McGregor of the Federal Aviation Administration.

The agency said it received reports of one of the downed planes at 10 a.m. Friday at mile post 7 on New River Road, north of the Carefree Highway and east of Lake Pleasant.

Fire crews went to the area west of Lake Pleasant and found the two planes. One plane, a Cessna, caught fire after impact and was destroyed, according to Capt. Dave Wilson of the Daisy Mountain Fire Department.

The other aircraft, a Piper Archer, was mostly intact found about 100 yards from the first plane with two male occupants.

"I thought possibly we might have survivors," said battalion Chief Gary Bernard of the Peoria Fire Department. According to Capt. Darren Salotti of the Daisy Mountain Fire Department, the mostly intact aircraft looked like it tried to land. Both occupants of that plane were confirmed dead.

Phoenix Police Department is investigating the cause of the crash, along with investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

"This is a tragic event," Sgt. Steve Martos said.

The identities of the victims have not been released.

The Cessna is registered to Westwind Aircraft Leasing LLC, which has an office at Deer Valley Airport. The Piper was registered to Bird Acquisition LLC, which also has an office at Deer Valley Airport. The address is the same as TransPac Aviation Academy.

Deer Valley Airport is one of the busiest general aviation airports in the country and has more than 1,200 planes based there.

It has a fueling station, avionics repair, aircraft rentals, new and used aircraft sales, a pilot shop, a restaurant, charter flights and two flight-training schools, Westwind School of Aeronautics and TransPac Aviation Academy.

Four Dead After Two Planes Collide in Mid-Air in Arizona

Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arizona-fire-officials-4-killed-when-small-planes-collided-then-crash-in-desert-in-phoenix/2013/05/31/41bb65cc-ca4f-11e2-9cd9-3b9a22a4000a_story.html

PHOENIX (AP) --  Two small planes collided and then crashed in the desert on Friday, killing all four pople aboard the two aircraft, officials said.

Phoenix and Daisy Mountain Fire Department officials said the collision and crash involved two single-engine planes with two people in each aircraft.

Officials said the crash occurred around 10 a.m. in far north Phoenix, some 15 miles northwest of Deer Valley Airport.

One of the planes was registered to Bird Acquisition LLC, which does business as TransPac Aviation Academy, a school for commercial pilots in north Phoenix.

TransPac issued a statement Friday afternoon that said two of its instructors died in the crash.

The business said it wasn't immediately releasing the names of the two men or any personal information about them "out of respect for the families during this time of sadness and grieving."

The plane that burned reportedly was registered to an aircraft leasing company that has an office at Deer Valley Airport.

Several bystanders reported seeing the Cessna and Piper collide but the flight directions of the planes before the crash or other details weren't immediately available, authorities said.

"Both of them collided. We don't know how or what," said Phoenix Fire Department Capt. Larry Nunez. "The skies are clear."

An initial report said three people were killed and two people were injured. Fire officials with the Phoenix and Peoria city fire departments and Daisy Mountain Fire Department later said four people had died and there were no survivors.

Television news footage showed only charred wreckage left from one of the planes, while the other was fairly intact.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA will investigate.

Gregor said federal investigators were en route to the crash scene Friday afternoon, but it typically takes several months for the NTSB investigation to determine a probable cause for air accidents.

[Warph]

May 30, 2013 8:00 PM

Obama's Dorothy Doctrine

Declaring the War on Terror over won't make it so.

"This war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises. . . . "

— Barack Obama, May 23

Nice thought. But much as Obama would like to close his eyes, click his heels three times, and declare the War on Terror over, war is a two-way street.

That''s what history advises: Two sides to fight it, two to end it. By surrender (World War II), by armistice (Korea and Vietnam), or when the enemy simply disappears from the field (the Cold War).

Obama says enough is enough. He doesn't want us on "a perpetual wartime footing." Well, the Cold War lasted 45 years. The War on Terror, twelve so far. By Obama's calculus, we should have declared the Cold War over in 1958 and left Western Europe, our Pacific allies, the entire free world, to fend for itself — and consigned Eastern Europe to endless darkness.

John F. Kennedy summoned the nation to the burdens of the long twilight struggle. Obama, agonizing publicly about the awful burdens of command (which he twice sought in election), wants out. For him and for us.

He doesn't just want to revise and update the September 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which many conservatives have called for. He wants to repeal it.

He admits that the AUMF establishes the basis both in domestic and international law to conduct crucial defensive operations, such as drone strikes. Why, then, abolish the authority to do what we sometimes need to do? Because that will make the war go away? Persuade our enemies to retire to their caves?

This is John Lennon, bumper-sticker foreign policy – "Imagine World Peace." Obama pretends that the tide of war is receding. But it's demonstrably not. It's metastasizing to Mali, to the Algerian desert, to the North African states falling under the Muslim Brotherhood, to Yemen, to the savage civil war in Syria, now spilling over into Lebanon and destabilizing Jordan. Even Sinai, tranquil for 35 years, is descending into chaos.

It's not war that's receding. It's America. Under Obama. And it is precisely in the power vacuum left behind that war is rising. Obama declares Assad must go. The same wish-as-policy fecklessness from our bystander president. Two years — and 70,000 dead — later, Obama keeps repeating the wish even as the tide of battle is altered by the new arbiters of Syria's future — Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. Where does every party to the Syrian conflict go on bended knee? To Moscow, as Washington recedes into irrelevance.

But the ultimate expression of Obama's Dorothy Doctrine is Guantanamo. It must close. Must, mind you.

Okay. Let's accept the dubious proposition that the Yemeni prisoners could be sent home without coming back to fight us. And that others could be convicted in court and put in U.S. prisons. Now the rub. Obama openly admits that "even after we take these steps one issue will remain — just how to deal with those Gitmo detainees who we know have participated in dangerous plots or attacks but who cannot be prosecuted."

Well, yes. That's always been the problem with Gitmo. It's not a question of geography. The issue is indefinite detention — whether at Gitmo, a Colorado supermax, or St. Helena. Can't try 'em, can't release 'em. Having posed the central question, what is Obama's answer? "I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved."

That's it! I kid you not. He's had four-plus years to think this one through — and he openly admits he's got no answer.

Because there is none. Hence the need for Gitmo. Other wars end, at which point prisoners are repatriated. But in this war, the other side has no intention of surrender or armistice. They will fight until the caliphate is established or until jihadism is as utterly defeated as fascism and Communism. That's the reason — the only reason — for the detention conundrum. There is no solution to indefinite detention when the detainees are committed to indefinite war.

Obama's fantasies are twinned. He can no more wish the detention away than he can the war.

We were defenseless on 9/11 because, despite bin Laden's open written declaration of war in 1996, we pretended for years that no war against us had even begun. Obama would return us to pre-9/11 defenselessness — casting Islamist terror as a law-enforcement issue and removing the legal basis for treating it as armed conflict — by pretending that the war is over.

It's enough to make you weep.

....Charles Krauthammer
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/349733/obamas-dorothy-doctrine-charles-krauthammer

[Warph]

First on CNN: IRS on defense over employee dance video

Posted by
CNN Chief Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash
Updated 8:40 p.m. ET Friday 5/31



(CNN) – A newly obtained video has the IRS running damage control on a new front, as the embattled agency prepares for the release next week of an inspector general report that will be critical of how money was spent on staff conferences.

In the video, an apparent team-building exercise, employees are taught the Cupid Shuffle dance move as they prepare to present the dance as a group at a 2010 conference.

The IRS said Friday night the video "was unacceptable and an inappropriate use of government funds."

The video's narrator describes the group of individuals as executives from the Small Business/Self Employed (SBSE) department. They say they're competing "to become the next great dance sensation."

The IRS said the video cost $1,600 to produce, and it played at the end of a 2010 leadership and education meeting in Anaheim for 2,600 managers in the SBSE division.

"The meeting took place at a time where the IRS needed to ensure that managers had proper training to address significant new programs, major staff turnover and a substantial increase in security threats following the suicide attack on an IRS facility in Austin earlier in the year," the IRS said in a statement.

Throughout the nearly-three minute video, the employees poke fun at each other as they try to learn the dance moves.

The new video comes as the IRS takes heat over its admitted targeting of conservative groups who sought tax exempt status.

Next week, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) will release an audit showing excess spending at the IRS conference.

The IRS has already come under scrutiny for Star Trek and Gilligan's Island-themed training videos it produced that costs tens of thousands of dollars. The Star Trek video, reported earlier this year, played at the same conference as the dance video.

"And I thought doing the Star Trek video was humiliating," one woman says in the new video.

In fact, one of the employees in the Star Trek video was also in the new dancing spot.

Acting Commissioner Danny Werfel, appointed in recent weeks, said in a statement that the report will focus on an IRS conference that took place in 2010 and labeled it an "unfortunate vestige from a prior era."

"While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate and should not have occurred," he said, adding new rules have been put in place and such a conference will not happen under his watch.

Last year, the General Services Administration drew fierce congressional criticism and scrutiny for spending nearly $1 million on a conference in Las Vegas, also in 2010, that featured a controversial video and ultimately resulted in the resignation of its administrator.

[Warph]

Obama Poll Worker Who May Have Voted Six Times Pleads
Guilty To 4 Counts Illegal Voting

(Voter fraud, what voter fraud?  And of course, this was Ohio...
makes one wonder how many thousands are guilty in other states?)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/30/ohio-poll-worker-who-admitted-to-voting-twice-for-obama-is-convicted-of-voter-fraud-faces-6-years-in-prison/

The former Ohio poll worker who admitted flat-out to voting twice for President Barack Obama in November was convicted Tuesday of illegal voting, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Melowese Richardson of Madisonville, Ohio was accused of eight counts of illegal voting in the 2008, 2011 and 2012 elections. She pleaded no contest to four counts in exchange for prosecutors dropping the remaining charges, the newspaper reported. A judge immediately convicted Richardson, who now faces up to six years in prison.

Richardson had admitted to Cincinnati's WCPO-TV in February that she voted twice, after documents showed she first submitted an absentee ballot and told an official she later voted at the polls as well

[Warph]

Obama administration to blame for jailing of hero Bin Laden doctor,
says Pakistani report

(This guy is rotting away in some Pakistani shithole jail thanks to those bastard big mouths in the White House while POS Obuma runs around taking credit for killing Bin Laden. Totally Sickening!)

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/31/us-to-blame-for-jailing-hero-bin-laden-doctor-says-pakistani-report/#ixzz2Utfx2VMk

It was the Obama administration that sealed the fate of the Pakistani doctor jailed for helping nail Usama Bin Laden, by divulging key details after the fact and dooming any chance Shakil Afridi's cover story could win his freedom, according to a confidential Pakistani report.

When former Secretary of Defense and ex-CIA Director Leon Panetta publicly acknowledged Afridi's role in the ruse which helped the CIA pinpoint Bin Laden's presence in an Abbottabad compound, any chance that Pakistani authorities could help him get out of the country vanished, according to what some have called Pakistan's version of the 9/11 Commission, a 357-page report from an independent body set up to probe the aftermath of the 2011 raid by Navy SEALs in which the Al Qaeda leader was killed.

"The statement by the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who was the CIA Director when May 2 happened, confirming the role of Dr. Afridi in making the U.S. assassination mission a success, rendered much of what Afridi told the Commission very questionable if not outright lies," states the report, which has not been released, but which FoxNews.com has viewed.

Indeed, Panetta and others in the Obama administration were sharply criticized domestically for discussing the raid and efforts involving Afridi to obtain DNA from the compound's occupants by posing as a medical team offering vaccinations. Nearly five months before Afridi's sentencing, while the doctor was being held and interrogated by Pakistan's shadowy intelligence agency , Panetta spoke on record in an interview to CBS "60 Minutes" confirming Afridi's role in late January 2012. The statements came after Afridi had testified to the commission, and sharply contradicted his story.

"This was an individual, in fact that helped provide intelligence, that was very helpful in regards to this operation and he was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan," Panetta told the program in January, 2012, in the first acknowledgement of Afridi's role.
That prompted the Pakistani commission to conclude in its report that "Dr. Afridi had been cultivated by the CIA and ultimately used in its project to assassinate Usama Bin Laden."

[Warph]

Former Obuma Aides Cashing In

(Public servants... Sh!t)

Via Washington Post:
The decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline is a political headache for President Obama. But to five of his former aides, it represents a business opportunity. Four of them — Bill Burton, Stephanie Cutter, Jim Papa and Paul Tewes — work as consultants for opponents of the project, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. Another, former White House communications director Anita Dunn, counts the project's sponsor, TransCanada, among the clients of her communications firm.

Keystone XL is just one of several upcoming administration decisions providing lucrative work for former Obama advisers on issues ranging from gun control to mining to legalized gambling. Just this week, three of Obama's top former political advisers —Robert Gibbs, Jim Messina and David Plouffe — were given five-figure checks to deliver remarks at a forum in the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, which is in the midst of a campaign to burnish its image in Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-obamas-ex-aides-its-time-to-cash-in-on-experience/2013/05/30/a649ccde-c867-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html

[Warph]

The Drawdown Diet: Marines Deprived Of Hot Meal In Afghanistan

(This POS isn't worried... Shameful)

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/31/18592339-the-drawdown-diet-marines-steamed-by-loss-of-hot-meal-at-afghanistan-base?lite

Marines at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan will lose a key daily meal starting Saturday, causing some to forgo a hot breakfast and others to work six-plus hours without refueling on cooked food, according to Marines at the base and Marine Corps officials.

The midnight ration service — known there as "midrats" — supplies breakfast to Marines on midnight-to-noon shifts and dinner to Marines who are ending noon-to-midnight work periods. It's described as one of the few times the Marines at Leatherneck can be together in one place.

The base, which is located in Afghanistan's southwestern Helmand Province, flanked by Iran and Pakistan, also will remove its 24-hour sandwich bar. It plans to replace the dishes long offered at midnight with pre-packaged MREs, said Marine Corps Lt. Col. Cliff Gilmore, who has been deployed in Afghanistan since February.

The moves, though unpopular with many Marines on the ground and their families back home, are emblematic of the massive drawdown of American troops in Afghanistan and the dismantling of U.S. military facilities. More than 30,000 U.S. service members will leave Afghanistan in coming months as the U.S. prepares to hand responsibility for security to Afghan forces in 2014.

While no Marine at Camp Leatherneck agreed to speak on the record, many are privately angry about the hit on base morale.

"This boils my skin. One of my entire shifts will go 6.5 hours without a meal. If we need to cut back on money I could come up with 100 other places," one Leatherneck-based Marine wrote in an email this week to his wife and shared with NBC News. (The Marine declined to speak on the record.) "Instead, we will target the biggest contributor to morale. I must be losing my mind. What is our senior leadership thinking? I just got back from flying my ass off and in a few days, I will not have a meal to replenish me after being away for over 9 hours."