Obama the tyrant uses IRS against patriots who are in loyal opposition,. What is this KGB?

Obama the tyrant uses IRS against patriots who are in loyal opposition,. What is this KGB? The IRS and Obama’s Enemies List
Posted: 10 May 2013 11:24 AM PDT
(John Hinderaker)
The IRS has admitted, and apologized for, targeting conservative political groups for audits:
The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.
Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.
In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.
“That was wrong. That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That’s not how we go about selecting cases for further review,” Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.
“The IRS would like to apologize for that,” she added.
We actually knew about this. Some time ago, we started getting calls and emails from Tea Party groups saying that they were being audited by the IRS, and had learned that other Tea Party groups were likewise in the crosshairs. We had also heard about the IRS asking for donor lists, presumably so that they could audit the donors as well. The IRS says the improper audits occurred during the 2012 campaign, but we had heard about them prior to last summer or fall.
The IRS claims that “the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.” That last point is risible. Of course it was motivated by political bias. Ms. Lerner says further that “no high level IRS officials knew about the practice.” That, too, seems extremely doubtful. If I knew the IRS was auditing Tea Party groups, how likely is it that no senior agency officials had heard about it?
Congress should investigate this, obviously. By Congress, I mean the House of Representatives. There is zero chance of the Democratic Senate investigating anything related to the Obama administration. (See David Gelernter’s essay posted immediately below.) Come to think of it, this may be one more reason why Obama is so single-mindedly devoted to winning back the House in 2014: the way his administration’s scandals are multiplying, an all-Democrat Congress provides insurance against having to leave office via helicopter.

More on Obama and Hillary's lying betrayals on Libya

House Oversight Committee hearing on Benghazi today. The former deputy chief of mission in Libya told the committee: “The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya.” We commenced this series in response to Obama administration spokesman Susan Rice’s round of Sunday post-attack gabfest appearances asserting: ”What happened this week…in Benghazi was a result, a direct result of a heinous and offensive video that was widely disseminated, that the U.S. government had nothing to do with, that we have made clear is reprehensible and disgusting.”
Obama and Hillary lied  about it for weeks even though within hours they knew Ben Gazzi had nothing to do with the video. The narrative that terrorism was over when the bad boy was killed had to be maintained even if it meant a dead ambassador +3. shameful.

John Kerry shows true colors

John Kerry’s Shameful Moral Relativism

Seth Mandel | @SethAMandel04.22.2013 - 12:25 PM

Those who doubted the wisdom of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s apology to his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in March had their first “I told you so” moment the very next day. Speaking to Turkish reporters, Erdoganappeared to immediately backtrack on his end of the rapprochement, which included dropping the case against the Israel Defense Forces for defending themselves from the Turkish-supported flotilla activists seeking to violently crash the naval blockade of the terrorist group Hamas.

A successful normalization of relations between Israel and Turkey would be beneficial to regional stability, so Netanyahu presumably offered the apology fully aware of the risks of dealing with Erdogan and believing they were outweighed by the rewards. But one of the reasons some opposed the apology at all was because they understandably feared it would legitimize the status of victimhood claimed by the violent invaders and endorse a frightful moral relativism which already undermines Israel’s attempts to defend itself.

But the moral relativism between the IDF and the armed naval invaders, while unfortunate, is fully eclipsed by the offensive and indefensible moral relativism Secretary of State John Kerry offered this weekend in trying to soothe Erdogan’s ego. According to the Associated Press:

Kerry said he understood the anger and frustration of those Turks who lost friends and family in the raid. The former Massachusetts senator said last week’s Boston Marathon bombings made him acutely aware of the emotions involved.

“It affects the community, it affects the country. But going forward, you know, we have to find the best way to bring people together and undo these tensions and undo these stereotypes and try to make peace,” he said.

This was always a concern about putting Kerry in charge of diplomacy. Kerry possesses neither principle nor expertise, and so the odds of him saying something both daft and morally bankrupt are always high. Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon no doubt spoke for many in Israel when he responded:

“It is never helpful when a moral equivalency is made confusing terrorists with their victims,” Danon told The Times of Israel. “As our American friends were made all too aware once again last week, the only way to deal with the evils of terrorism [is] to wage an unrelenting war against its perpetrators wherever they may be,” he said.

The armed Turkish invaders Kerry has developed such sympathy for were on a ship funded by a terrorist organization with ties to Hamas and other jihadist groups seeking to challenge Israel’s navy in order to help Hamas. If they were victims at all, it was of their own violent ideology. Though we don’t know yet what motivated the Tsarnaev brothers to perpetrate the monstrous bombing they are believed to have carried out and the additional ones law enforcement officials believe they were planning, the biographical picture beginning to emerge paints at least the elder of the two as “increasingly militant” in his Muslim faith.

But whether the Tsarnaevs were inspired by Islamic radicalism at all is beside the point in the case of Kerry’s comments. The victims in Boston were victims of a brutal and murderous attack; the “victims” to whom Kerry compared them were in the act of carrying out their own attack. Kerry’s comments also put Israelis trying to contain a terrorist enclave next door on the same moral plane as those terrorists and their allies.

Perhaps Kerry misspoke. If not, his worldview is warped, dangerous, and dishonorable. The same administration officials who nudged Netanyahu to apologize to Erdogan should pay a visit to Kerry. The secretary of state owes a round of apologies thanks to his inauspicious start as America’s chief diplomat.

Democrats caused the mess we're in

Democrats caused the bad economy

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

Again, let's review:

-President Bush went to Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.

Timeline shows Bush, McCain warning Dems of financial and housing crisis; meltdown
-John McCain also co-sponsored urgently critical reforms that would have prevented the housing market collapse, but Democrats shut that down as well, along party lines, and even openly ridiculed anyone who suggested reforms were necessary...to protect their taxpayer-funded campaign contributions as the economy raced uncontrollably toward the cliff.

-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn't go along with the left's Affirmative Action lending policies...all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.

-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left's favorite blatantly partisan "fact-checkers," Snopes, admits (while pretending to 'set the record straight').

-Even The New York Times admitted that there is "little evidence" of any connection between the "Republican" deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Bleach-Liley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.

But non-Fox media have spent years deliberately and relentlessly inoculating people against the facts, training them to mindlessly blame Bush for being in charge when Democrat policies destroyed the economy. So here we sit, to this day, still watching Obama excuse and shrug off endless economic failures, illegal government takeovers and utter national bankruptcy with zero accountability.

Obama's State of Union wrong on every issue

Heritage Experts Analyze the State of the Union

President Barack Obama laid out an ambitious agenda last night. Here are some highlights of our experts’ analysis of his claims, his plans, and his promises. 

Responding to Newtown

All Americans, no matter what our backgrounds or political perspectives, abhor the death of innocent human beings. We were shocked by the killings in Newtown and other recent mass shootings, and grieve with those who joined the First Lady at the State of the Union.

As we try to make society safer and stronger, constitutional and complex cultural factors must be taken into consideration. As we explain in a recent Heritage paper, policymakers should avoid a rush to judgment on prescriptions that violate first principles, ignore the real root of these complex problems, or disregard careful social science research. The most important solutions lie at the state and local levels, in the community and within the family.

The Second Amendment is an important safeguard of Americans’ security. Gun laws must be constitutional and should reflect the research on their effectiveness in preserving law and order. As to the President’s emphasis on background checks: The only way to enforce universal background checks for private sales is if law enforcement authorities know what firearms are held by private citizens.  And the only way to know what firearms are held by private citizens is through the creation of a national firearms registry. Federal law currently prohibits authorities from using data in the background check system to create a national firearms registry, although there are avid gun control proponents who would like to change that—a real threat to the Second Amendment rights of legitimate gun owners.

– John Malcolm, senior legal fellow, Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and Jennifer Marshall, director, Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society

The “Voting Experience” in America

President Obama talked about voting rights, claiming we are “betraying our ideals” when any American has to “wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot.” He announced a “nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience in America.” His view of “nonpartisan” is putting two attorneys, one from his campaign and another from Governor Romney’s campaign, in charge of the effort. While there may have been some Americans who waited for long periods to vote in 2012, the vast majority did not. A recent study of the 2012 election reported that the average wait time nationally was only 14 minutes.

We already had such an election reform commission back in 2005, the Baker-Carter Commission, whose findings were largely ignored. It is especially hard to have confidence in any commission Obama might appoint, given that his attorney general has tried to stop state election reform efforts like voter ID intended to improve the security and integrity of the election process. Moreover, Obama’s commission may just be a stalking horse to implement liberals’ latest partisan fantasies of automatic and election day voter registration, so-called reforms that will stifle real improvements and endanger the integrity of our elections.

– Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow, Edwin Meese IIICenter for Legal and Judicial Studies

“Comprehensive” Immigration Reform

Well, we certainly saw this coming. Another call for comprehensive immigration reform. We learned in his inaugural that our journey is not complete until “we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity.” Who can disagree with that? The time has come, he said. And we all know what needs to be done. Really?

We have long advocated and done extensive research on various policies that will reform immigration, but comprehensive reform is not the way to proceed: It won’t fix the root problems and will likely make matters worse. It doesn’t create opportunity, but restricts it. The better way to proceed is to go about solving problems, starting where there is broad agreement, and working toward a fundamental restructuring of our immigration system to emphasize work, opportunity, and assimilation under the rule of law. There is no reason to assume—and many reasons to doubt—that a “comprehensive approach” is the only reasonable and only fair way to proceed to reform.

– Matthew Spalding, PhD, vice president, American Studies and director, B. Kenneth Simon Center for Principles and Politics

The Renewed Threat of Terrorism

The President’s statement that this nation “salutes those who defend it around the world” unfortunately rings hollow – when the Administration’s treatment of the Benghazi terrorist attack is considered. Anyone with a sense of irony would not have put such a line in the speech. And, even though the Administration has thumped its chest over the killing of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and its affiliates are growing in North Africa in places like Libya and Mali. Only a week ago, the U.S. embassy in Turkey was the target of a terrorist attack. And we are still sorting through the messy aftermath of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, which Obama has tried to move beyond.

Until this White House is willing to account for its actions and false storylines peddled following the Benghazi attack, its credibility on the issue of terrorism will continue to be severely compromised. With a President who failed miserably to show responsibility for Americans under attack, this country will continue to face grave dangers ahead.

– Helle C. Dale, senior fellow for public diplomacy, Douglasand Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies

National Education Standards: Greater Federal Control of the Classroom

“We need to give every American student opportunities like this. Four years ago, we started Race to the Top – a competition that convinced almost every state to develop smarter curricula and higher standards.”

What the President was talking about was Common Core national education standards. Since coming to Washington, the Obama Administration has been using federal dollars to “convince” states to agree to adopting national education standards. Not only is this a massive federal overreach into the nation’s classrooms, but there are various other reasons states should be concerned about these federally backed standards.  The standards are costly. Researchers project that it could amount to a total of $16 billion for states to implement the standards. Additionally, experts have expressed concern about the mediocre quality of the standards. Some states, like Massachusetts, have even been forced to “dumb down” their curriculum.

Instead of a federal takeover of curriculum, states need greater flexibility to implement the reforms they decide are best. Rather than serving the needs of Washington, schools should have the freedom to help children succeed.

– Rachel Sheffield, research associate, DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society

Afghanistan 

Perhaps the most ridiculous foreign policy statement of the evening was when President Obama said: “And by the end of next year, our war in Afghanistan will be over.” This is naivete on a dangerous level. A war doesn’t simply end just because you say it has. It is not just up to President Obama to decide when the war in Afghanistan ends. The Taliban has a say; the Pakistanis have a say; the Afghans have a say; and al-Qaeda has a say. If Afghanistan is about national security, like we have been told and like most believe, then the only responsible act is to ensure that U.S. objectives are met before any hasty troop reductions. After all, the whole point of a war is to achieve your objectives—not to leave it as soon as possible.

Any decisions taken to reduce troops numbers should be based on improved conditions on the ground and on military advice—not on a desire to end a war that, in some capacity, and regardless of what Obama thinks, will still have to be fought after 2015.

– Luke Coffey, Margaret Thatcher Fellow, The MargaretThatcher Center for Freedom

Foreign Policy in Retreat

What was striking about Obama’s remarks was how strongly his foreign policy vision contrasted with his domestic policy prescriptions. At home, it seems that very little does not qualify as an “investment”: by his way of thinking, the government exists to start programs, spend money, tax the rich, and do things.

But abroad, the government exists mostly to stop doing things. One of the President’s biggest lines was the promise of bringing the troops home from Afghanistan and ending the war, under the mistaken belief that al-Qaeda has been defeated. He reiterated his stale promise to rely on diplomacy to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, an approach that has been tested to exhaustion by successive administrations and is nothing more than a program of kicking the can down the road. His approach to nuclear weapons was, predictably, to argue for doing less, and—in the face of the North Korean and Iranian evidence—to imply that cuts in the U.S. nuclear stockpile will induce others to behave better. And in the President’s telling, cyber attacks on the U.S. appear to stem from nowhere in particular; naming China, among others, might not be tactful, but it would have had the virtue of pointing out that this is not an abstract threat.

The overwhelming impression left by the address was of a foreign policy in recessional, and one that relies on rhetoric and the promise of future negotiations to create the impression of action and achievement.

– Ted Bromund, PhD, senior research fellow in Anglo-American relations, The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom

Infrastructure “Investments” Don’t Deliver On Promises

President Obama is right to point out that the country’s infrastructure—its ports and waterways, roads, and bridges, are aging and in many cases “badly in need of repair.” Extensive, healthy infrastructure is crucial for commerce and to keep the country economically competitive. His “Fix-It-First” program solution, however, doubles down on failed policies of the past—federal stimulus with no way to pay for it.

He made another bold push for infrastructure investments (read: spending) to achieve his vision of a “smarter government.” Bold—in the irresponsible sense—because suchfederal stimulus failed to jumpstart the economy following the 2009 stimulus package, and it will fail in future iterations.

The private sector will not join in backing financially unviable projects, a reality from which the government could take a cue. Amazingly, the President insists on revisiting this financing mechanism with his new “Partnership to Rebuild America” initiative.

– Emily Goff, research associate, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

State of the…Climate?

Swept into office four years ago based, in part, on promises to slow sea-level rise, President Obama initiated a radical climate agenda. It seems we are seeing a rerun in 2013. It is worth asking what is different four years after his first State of the Union Address?

There have been four more years of no global warming. In 2010, there had been no significant world temperature increase for over a decade. The streak is now 16 years long. We have four years of costly lessons on the waste and inefficiency of green-energy subsidies.

The scientific basis for catastrophic climate change gets weaker and weaker. The economic argument for green subsidies has already collapsed. It is time for the administration to quit using both arguments to justify a regulatory and fiscal power grab.

– David W. Kreutzer, PhD, research fellow in energy economics and climate change, Center for Data Analysis

“Balance” in Obamaspeak

Tonight’s State of the Union address reflected President Obama’s liberal ideology: Everything starts with government. His proposals for new “investments” in manufacturing, infrastructure, and so on rest on the false belief that only government can figure out how to make the economy grow. Hence his “Fix-it-First” program, and his Partnership to Rebuild America. If government doesn’t do it, it won’t happen.

When he claims his new spending proposals won’t add to the deficit, it proves he just doesn’t get it. The deficit is a symptom of excess spending; it’s spending that has to be controlled.

With the government drowning in red ink, Obama offers a life preserver made of lead: more spending. He has already pocketed a $618 billion tax increase in the fiscal cliff deal (in addition to $1 trillion in new Obamacare taxes). He needs to accept that true “balance” has two sides—and start cutting spending.

– Patrick Louis Knudsen, Grover M. Hermann Senior Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

Obama Blames Conservatives for Whatever Happens with Sequestration

The President has executed the greatest act of political jujitsu in the modern age. His people convinced congressional leaders to put sequestration into the Budget Control Act, and then denied it when it looked unpopular.

Now, the President is smugly looking at conservatives and saying, “If only you guys were not so ideological, you’d let me raise taxes (again), and save Defense!” It does not seem to matter that only conservatives have offered solutions; only conservatives see the massive spending on entitlements as the problem (as do all reputable economists); and suddenly, the Joint Chiefs have finally started admitting what a disaster sequestration will be for our national readiness.

The kicker is that the President will get to “blame” conservatives for whatever happens. The sad truth is the ones who will “pay” for this are the young troops who get sent to the next conflict situation ill-prepared.

– Steve Bucci, director, Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies

America’s Hurting Workers

The President said that “for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged.” If spending and debt continue growing on their current trajectory, wages and salaries will be depressed because of the highest U.S. debt in a decade.

Rising government spending and huge deficits are threatening to ring in a period of depressed growth and fewer opportunities for Americans. Without sequester-level spending cuts, publicly held debt is projected to reach almost 90 percent of GDP in 10 years. Debt levels this high are associated with significantly slower growth for a prolonged period of time.

The President and Congress should balance the budget in 10 years by making necessary and prudent reforms to entitlement programs and cutting inappropriate, and often times wasteful, federal spending.

– Romina Boccia, research coordinator, Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies

For more analysis, including the President’s education initiatives for preschool and higher ed,visit the full State of the Union roundup.

Obama Arab Spring and consequences

Obama wanted Mubarack out. Consequences 

Report: Hamas militiamen helped prop up Morsi
Posted: 09 Feb 2013 09:17 AM PST
(Paul Mirengoff)
According to Khaled Abu Toameh at the Gatestone Institute website, there are reports that Hamas dispatched as many as 7,000 militiamen from Gaza to protect the regime of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who faces a popular uprising. The reports quoted unidentified Egyptian security officials as saying that the Hamas militiamen had been spotted in the Egyptian border town of Rafah before they headed toward Cairo to shore up the Muslim Brotherhood regime of Morsi, which Hamas may have feared was in danger of collapse. The officials claimed that the Hamas militiamen had been deployed in a number of sensitive locations in the Egyptian capital, including the Al-Ittihadiyeh Presidential Palace.
These reports find support in documents published this week by a Gulf newspaper, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, that purport to show that Hamas, with the financial backing of Qatar, had plans to send hundreds of militiamen to Egypt to help Morsi’s regime. One of the classified documents, signed by Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin al-Kassam, talks about the need to send “warriors to help our brothers in Egypt who are facing attempts by the former regime [of Hosni Mubarak] to return to power.”
Hamas would, of course, have every reason to supply Morsi with shock troops, and not just because of their ideological afinity. As Toameh reminds us:
The downfall of the Mubarak regime has been a great blessing for Hamas, which has since emerged as a major player in the Palestinian and regional arena. Thanks to Morsi, an Egyptian prime minister visited the Gaza Strip for the first time ever last November to express solidarity with Hamas during Israel’s “Pillar of Defense” military operation. Such a visit would have been unthinkable under Mubarak, who did everything he could to weaken Hamas and stop it from meddling in the internal affairs of Egypt.
But now Hamas knows that it can always rely on Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to stay in power and increase Hamas’s influence. In return, Morsi apparently expects Hamas to reward him by sending its men to defend his palace.
Jonathan Tobin concludes:
The Hamas connection should send a chill down the spines of anyone who still held onto hope that the Arab Spring would produce more, rather than less, freedom for Egypt. But it should also remind Americans that they are still sending more than $1 billion a year in U.S. aid and selling F-16 aircraft to Morsi’s Egypt. Members of Congress who continue to back this foolish policy need to ask themselves whether it makes sense to funnel taxpayer dollars to Egypt in the hope of supporting regional stability if what they are really doing is bolstering a government that depends on Hamas terrorists to stay in power.
And while they are at it, members of the Senate should insist that Chuck Hagel, as a condition of a vote on his confirmation, produce the information that will tell us whether he received money from “Friends of Hamas” or like-minded outfits.

Obama’s nauseating hypocrisy.

The Secretary of the Treasury: from tax cheat to “tax scam” beneficiary Posted: 09 Feb 2013 01:44 PM PST (Paul Mirengoff) The Washington Post reports that Jack Lew, President Obama’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, held money in an investment fund registered in the very Cayman Islands building that Obama called a notorious haven for tax abuse. The address of the fund is a building called the Ugland House. Obama singled out that building in a 2009 speech against tax haven abuse. With his characteristic subtely, the president declared, “Either this is the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world.” Obama’s screeds against holding money in off-shore funds aren’t limited to this occasion, of course. During the 2012 campaign, he attacked Mitt Romney on similar grounds. Personally, I have no problem with Lew holding money in any legal investment instrument, and the fund in question appears to be perfectly legal. Moreover, there is no indication that Lew cheated on his taxes, as his predecessor Tim Geithner did. Thus, his use of what Obama calls a tax scam doesn’t bear on his fitness to head the Treasury Department. What we have, instead, is the umpteenth installment of Obama’s nauseating hypocrisy. If I live long enough, I’m confident of one day learning that Obama himself has benefited from this or that mechanism he has denounced as a tax scam.