Even Democrats Concerned Over ObamaCrapCare

Last week the retiring Senator Max Baucus, raised concerns over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to which we refer in this blog as ObamaCrapCare. Now that concern seems to be spreading to the entire Democratic host of Senate Democrats. 

One wonders where they were when this terrible piece of legislation was passed. We also wonder why they did not see the problems when they wrote this abortion. Or were they so stupid and did not read the bill before they voted for it.

This is another example of Congressional/Senatorial malfeasance. We see it every day, on every piece of legislation.  There are NO leaders in Washington, only political hacks who vote according to their leaders. They do not focus on the impact on America, only how it will effect their re-election.

It is time for a house cleaning in Washington. We need to remove them all from office. Additionally, we must limit terms and remove all the wonderful benefits they have voted for themselves. It is time they return to the status of "public servant" instead of being hogs at the trough.

Conservative Tom


.Senate Democrats Raise Concerns Over Implementation of Obamacare

Friday, 26 Apr 2013 12:26 PM

By Lisa Barron

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Democratic lawmakers are worried about political fallout if the final implementation of Obamacare next year fails to hold down premium costs and only ends up confusing more Americans about what their options are.

According to The New York Times, the Democrats raised concerns directly with administration officials at a recent luncheon meeting with Denis McDonough, the White House chief of staff.

Their message? They are beginning to hear from constituents who are confused and worried about how the law will affect them and some lawmakers voiced concerns about programs within Obamacare that aren't being run as planned.

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, told the Times she is "hearing from a lot of small businesses in New Hampshire that do now know how to comply with the law.” She said many are still “trying to figure out whether it would be in their interest to reduce employees’ hours” to avoid the law’s requirement that they cover health insurance premiums for full-time workers.

Shaheen, who is up for re-election next year, said the White House “acknowledged that these are real concerns, and that we’ve got to do more to address them.”

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on healthcare, also voiced his concerns, telling the Times: “I am greatly disappointed —and beyond upset — that the administration chose to help pay for the Affordable Care Act in fiscal year 2013 by raiding the Public Health and Prevention Fund.”

Harkin was referring to the White House’s acknowledgement that it had transferred $322 million from the prevention fund to pay for promotion of the new insurance exchanges.

At Congressional hearings this week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius reportedly said the administration needed to tap the fund because Congress had refused to provide money for outreach activities.

In addition, Maryland Sen. Benjamin Cardin told the Times he is worried about big rate increases being sought by the largest health insurer in his state, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. He said the company is seeking increases of roughly 25 percent for individual policies that will be sold in the state health insurance exchange, and a 15 percent increase for small businesses. The company reportedly said the higher premiums reflect the costs of complying with the new law.

Meanwhile, Congressional leaders in both parties are concerned about the potential cost of healthcare for lawmakers and their staffs if the federal government does not continue to provide subsidies to them for insurance premiums they will be required to purchase from state exchanges.


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Insensitive Press

Texas Gov. Perry Demands Apology for Explosion Cartoon

Saturday, 27 Apr 2013 12:10 PM

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AUSTIN, Texas — Gov. Rick Perry said Friday he's disgusted a California newspaper ran a cartoon that depicts him boasting about booming business in Texas, then shows an explosion, a week after a fertilizer plant explosion killed 14 people in a Texas town.
Perry said he wants an apology from the Sacramento Bee on behalf of the town.
The cartoon in Thursday's edition shows Perry crowing that "Business is Booming," flanked by signs saying "Low Tax!" and "'Low Regs!" It's a play on the Republican's often-repeated mantra that his state's low-regulation, business-friendly climate has its economy humming.
The next panel reads "Boom!" as a blast engulfs the area behind the governor and his signs.
An April 17 explosion in the town of West, which is outside Waco, left a crater more than 90 feet wide and is estimated to have caused more than $100 million in damage. The blast occurred moments after a fire was reported at the West Fertilizer plant.
Ten of the people killed were first responders who rushed to the nighttime blaze.

In a letter to the Bee's editor, Perry said it "was with extreme disgust and disappointment I viewed your recent cartoon."
"While I will always welcome healthy policy debate, I won't stand for someone mocking the tragic deaths of my fellow Texans and our fellow Americans," Perry wrote. "Additionally, publishing this on the very day our state and nation paused to honor and mourn those who died only compounds the pain and suffering of the many Texans who lost family and friends in this disaster."
President Barack Obama was among those who attended a memorial service for the explosion victims Thursday at Baylor University in Waco.
The Bee's editorial page editor, Stuart Leavenworth, responded Friday that the artist, Jack Ohman, "made a strong statement about Gov. Rick Perry's disregard for worker safety, and his attempts to market Texas a place where industries can thrive with few regulations."
"It is unfortunate that Gov. Perry, and some on the blogosphere, have attempted to interpret the cartoon as being disrespectful for the victims of this tragedy," Leavenworth said. "As Ohman has made clear on his blog, he has complete empathy for the victims and people living by the plant.
"What he finds offensive is a governor who would gamble with the lives of families by not pushing for the strongest safety regulations. Perry's letter is an attempt to distract people from that message."
Ohman defended his cartoon with an Internet post, noting that the fertilizer plant "had not been inspected by the state of Texas since 2006" and that many "Texas cities have little or no zoning, resulting in homes being permitted next to sparely inspected businesses that store explosive chemicals."
"My job, as I understand it, is to be provocative," Ohman wrote. "I provoke, you decide. I don't dictate, I put out my opinion along with everyone else. I sign my name. I own it. In my opinion, I could have gone further. Much further."
California has seen Perry's touting of his state's pro-business prowess firsthand. In February, a public-private Texas marketing firm ran radio ads featuring Perry denigrating California's taxes and regulation, and then Perry traveled there to recruit jobs. He made a similar trip — this time backed by a print-media ad buy — to Chicago this past week.
Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, also a Republican, called for Ohman to be fired.
"I think it's reprehensible for a member of the media to sit in safety and mock such a profound tragedy regardless of any 'point' he is trying to make," Dewhurst said.
Perry, meanwhile, wrote that the newspaper "owes the community of West, Texas, an immediate apology for your detestable attempt at satire."

Ohman posted that he had received "varying levels of concern about the cartoon depicting Gov. Rick Perry's marketing of Texas' loose regulations, juxtaposed with the explosion of the fertilizer plant in West, Texas," but that he would draw the cartoon again without thinking twice.
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Food Stamps to Illegal Aliens

Once again our government gives millions away to NON-CITIZENS while citizens cannot visit the White House or whose flights are restricted by FAA cuts.  We need to address the needs of the citizens first and then if there are leftovers, we can give money to illegal immigrants.

Conservative Tom

USDA to Ineligible Immigrants: We’ll Still Give Your Kids Food Stamps

Friday, 26 Apr 2013 03:55 PM

By Bill Hoffmann

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Illegal immigrants can get food stamps on behalf of their eligible kids — without having to disclose their immigration status, according to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch.

The food-stamps offer is spelled out in a Spanish language flyer provided by the United States Department of Agriculture to the Mexican Embassy.

Judicial Watch said the flyer proves that the USDA is making “no effort to restrict aid to, identify, or apprehend illegal immigrants who may be on the food stamp rolls.’’

The flyer, part of the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, was made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act request made by Judicial Watch last July.


According to Judicial Watch, part of the statement, translated into English, emphasizes in bold and underlined words, “You need not divulge information regarding your immigration status in seeking this benefit for your children.”

A USDA spokesperson insisted to the Daily Caller that illegal immigrants remain ineligible for food stamps.

“Non-citizens who are unlawfully present, are not, nor have they ever been, eligible to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits,” the spokesperson said when presented with the flyer.



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Israel Teaches US How To Handle Terror Injuries

What Boston hospitals learned from Israel

Ben Sales - JTA,  April 22nd, 2013

A paramedic treating a woman who was wounded in a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv's Carmel Market, November 2004. (Flash 90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Minutes after a terrorist attack killed three at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, doctors and nurses at the city’s hospitals faced a harrowing scene — severed limbs, burned bodies, shrapnel buried in skin.

For Boston doctors, the challenge presented by last week's bombing was unprecedented — but they were prepared.

Many of the city's hospitals have doctors with actual battlefield experience. Others have trauma experience from deployments on humanitarian missions, like the one that followed the Haitian earthquake, and have learned from presentations by veterans of other terror attacks like the one at a movie theater in Colorado.

But they have benefited as well from the expertise developed by Israeli physicians over decades of treating victims of terrorist attacks — expertise that Israel has shared with scores of doctors and hospitals around the world. Eight years ago, four Israeli doctors and a staff of nurses spent two days at Massachusetts General Hospital teaching hospital staff the methods pioneered in Israel.

According to the New Yorker magazine, every Boston patient who reached the hospital alive has survived.

Alastair Conn, the chief of emergency services at Massachusetts General Hospital, acknowledged the day of the attack the help provided by Israeli experts.

“About two years ago in actual fact we asked the Israelis to come across and they helped us set up our disaster team so that we could respond in this kind of manner,” Conn told reporters.

Techniques that were routine in Israel by 2005, and helped save lives in Boston last week, began evolving in the 1990s, when Israel experienced a spate of bus bombings. Israeli doctors “rewrote the bible of blast trauma,” said Avi Rivkind, the director of the trauma center at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, where 60 percent of Israeli victims have been treated.

Much of what Israel has learned about treating attack victims was done on the fly. In 1996, a 19-year-old soldier arrived at the Hadassah hospital following a bus bombing with severe injuries to her chest and esophagus. Doctors put chest drains on her lungs and performed endoscopies twice a day to stop the bleeding. Both techniques are now regular practices.

“We were sure she was going to die, and she survived,” Rivkind said.

A riskier move came five years later when Adi Huja arrived at Hadassah with massive blood loss following an attack in downtown Jerusalem. Rivkind realized his team wasn't controlling the bleeding, so he directed staff to administer a shot of NovoSeven — a staggeringly expensive coagulant typically used for hemophiliacs that was not approved for a trauma situation. But it worked and Huja survived.

Rivkind is an internationally recognized expert in terror medicine and widely considered one of the great brains behind Israeli innovations that have been adopted around the world.

Trained at Hebrew University, the Hadassah Medical Center and the Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems in Baltimore, he has contributed to several volumes on trauma surgery and post-attack care, and authored a number of seminal medical studies. Rivkind was the personal physician for the late Israeli President Ezer Weizman, helped care for Ariel Sharon when the prime minister fell into a coma following a stroke, and has performed near-miraculous feats, once reviving a soldier shot in the heart who had been pronounced dead in the field.

But not everything Rivkind has learned about treating attack victims comes from a story with a happy ending. In 2002, Shiri Nagari was rushed to Hadassah after a bus bombing. She appeared to have escaped largely unharmed, but 45 minutes later she was dead. It was, Rivkind later wrote, the first time he ever cried after losing a patient.

“She seemed fine and talked with us,” he told JTA. “You can be very injured inside, and outside you look completely pristine.”

Organizing the emergency room, Rivkind said, is as important as treating patients correctly. During the second intifada, Hadassah developed what he called the “accordion method,” a method of moving patients through various stages of assessment with maximal efficiency. The process has become standard in hospitals across Israel and around the world.

Some of what distinguishes Israeli trauma doctors are qualities that are hard to teach. Rivkind has said he keeps two beepers and a cell phone on him at all times, even in bed. Even when calls come in the middle of the night, a small army of medical professionals can usually be relied on to arrive at their posts within minutes, sometimes even ahead of the ambulances carrying the wounded.

“Whenever there was an alarm, we jumped, ran and called our homes, and then got ready to absorb patients,” said Liora Utitz, the mass-casualty coordinator at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. “I felt very safe. The volunteerism of everyone gave me strength.”

Israel continues to export its trauma expertise. Rivkind has taught medicine in Melbourne, Australia, and Southern California. Delegations of doctors from New York and Los Angeles have visited him in Jerusalem. This week, he will speak with Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is visiting Israel, about strengthening connections between Hadassah and hospitals in Baltimore.

“We have tens of years of cumulative trauma experience,” he said. “We’ve learned not to give up.”

Can We Stop Government Purchases of Ammo

Will a bill to limit government agency munitions purchases be successful?  We hope so as it is inconceivable that the government needs as much materiel that it has ordered. 

Guns, ammo and combat vehicles in the hands of domestic non-law enforcement agencies is a recipe for disaster and abuse of the citizenry.  We need to get this stopped immediately!   

Conservative Tom

GOP LAWMAKERS HOPE TO COMBAT AMMUNITION STOCKPILING BY GOV’T AGENCIES WITH AMMO ACT

Apr. 25, 2013 8:00pm Jason Howerton

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Republicans in the Senate and House are expected to introduce a joint bill Friday that would limit the amount of ammunition that federal agencies are allowed to buy and stockpile over the next six months, the Washington Free Beacon reports.

The bill, titled the Ammunition Management for More Accountability or “AMMO” Act, is being proposed after several lawmakers have voiced concerns about some federal agencies, like the Department of Homeland Security, seemingly stockpiling large quantities of ammo.

“DHS, for instance, has placed two-years worth of ammunition, or nearly 247 million rounds, in its inventory,” the Free Beacon notes.

In a statement provided to the Washington Free Beacon, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), said federal agencies must provide more “transparency and accountability” in regards to its “stockpiles of ammunition.”

“President Obama has been adamant about curbing law-abiding Americans’ access and opportunities to exercise their Second Amendment rights…One way the Obama administration is able to do this is by limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition,” the statement adds.

More from the Free Beacon:

[T]he legislation would prevent all government agencies except for the Defense Department from purchasing and storing what lawmakers say is an excess amount of ammunition.

The bill’s reach would include DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), two agencies that have found themselves at the center of the ammo controversy.

“As the public learned in a House committee hearing this week, the Department of Homeland Security has two years worth of ammo on hand and allots nearly 1,000 more rounds of ammunition for DHS officers than is used on average by our Army officers,” Inhofe said. “The AMMO Act of 2013 will enforce transparency and accountability of federal agencies’ ammunition supply while also protecting law-abiding citizens access to these resources.”

An agency covered by the legislation would not be permitted to purchase or store more ammunition than that agency retained on average between 2001 and 2009, according to an advance copy of the legislation provided to the Free Beacon.

Additionally, the AMMO Act would encourage the Government Accountability Office to audit federal agencies’ ammo purchases.

“The Comptroller General of the United States shall submit to Congress a report regarding the purchasing of ammunition by agencies, which shall include an assessment of the effect of the purchasing of ammunition by agencies on the supply of ammunition available to the public,” the bill reads, according to a copy reviewed by the Free Beacon.

There have been more concerns over reports of DHS’s plan to purchase another 750 million rounds of ammunition over the next five years, despite having a two-year stockpile saved up. Meanwhile, gun shops across the country are reporting ammunition shortages.

Boston Bomber Questionning Halted Due To Miranda

Although we believe that we should get everything that we can from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one cannot forget that he is an American CITIZEN.  That designation gives him certain rights that his older brother would not have been eligible since he was a foreign national and not a citizen. 

We strongly disagree with Giuliani and Mike Rogers, regardless of the depravity of what these guys did, the younger brother has the rights guaranteed all Americans whether they were born here or naturalized.  Sure we would like to hang him by his fingers until he screamed but we don't do that in this country especially to fellow citizens.

We must protect fellow citizens Constitutionally guaranteed rights regardless how hateful their actions are.  To not protect their rights, means our own rights are might be forfeited in the future.  

Both of these gentlemen are great people and inspirations to us, however, on this matter, we disagree. Our rights are too valuable and must be protected at all cost.

Conservative Tom

Giuliani: Judge's Abrupt Halt to Terror Questioning 'Mind-Boggling'

Friday, 26 Apr 2013 11:49 AM

By Kenneth Hanner and Sandy Fitzgerald

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Republican outrage is rising over the decision to read teenage Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights just as he was beginning to open up about the blast that killed three and injured about 270 people.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said it was “ridiculous” that a judge stopped the questioning while the 19-year-old was talking to FBI agents.

And House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers called the decision to intervene a “God-awful policy.”

Lawmakers are demanding to know why Tsarnaev, who has confessed to being involved in the planting of two bombs near the Boston Marathon finish line, was read his Miranda rights in the middle of his interrogation.

“That’s just mind-boggling,” Giuliani said in an interview with Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren.

“This guy is kind of telling you about how he’s coming to New York and do a bombing, a judge walks in and we cut off the questioning?” Giuliani said. “What are we, crazy?”

Tsarnaev had been under interrogation for about 16 hours in his hospital room before a magistrate and representatives from the U.S. Attorney’s Office entered the room and read him his Miranda rights. He then stopped talking, according to sources briefed on the interrogation.

Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, said rules need to be loosened for law-enforcement officials who are conducting terror probes.

“One of the FBI agents said he thought it would be illegal to keep the guy on the list. Of course, there’d be nothing illegal about it,” said Giuliani, who was mayor of the Big Apple  at the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Some of the explanations that I’m getting make me very nervous that the FBI is erring on the side of caution, when I want them to err on the side of safety.”

Giuliani also criticized the administration of Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick for refusing to release records of welfare payments the Boston terror bombings may have received, saying it was essential information in determining how they financed their activities.

“What possible privacy interest do you have in that?” he asked. “They either got welfare or they didn’t get welfare. And that would also be important to how were they financed.

“I’d like to know how much they were getting in welfare. A trip to Russia for six months is a pretty darn expensive proposition. I’ve wondered, was anybody financing them?”

While federal law-enforcement officials can subpoena the records for their ongoing investigation, Giuliani said the only reason Massachusetts is keeping the records private is to avoid embarrassment.

“I can’t figure out what the heck the privacy interest is, except maybe an embarrassment that by mistake, Massachusetts was giving welfare to potential terrorists,” he said.

Meanwhile, Rogers said he will be demanding answers from Attorney General Eric Holder about the decision to Mirandize the baby-face bomb suspect.

“We can’t have, in a case like this, the judiciary deciding, because it’s on TV and it might look bad for them … that they were going to somehow intercede in this,” the Michigan Republican told MSNBC.

“It’s confusing, it is horrible, [a] God-awful policy, and dangerous to the greater community,” said Rogers. “We have got to get to the bottom of this, and we’ve got to fix it right now.”

He said the Justice Department has “a lot of explaining to do.”

According to the Department of Justice, prosecutors, the federal defender, a court reporter, the U.S. Marshal Service, and the hospital all coordinated in having Tsarnaev read his rights.

Before that happened, the University of Massachusetts sophomore had reportedly told authorities that his brother, Tamerlan, 26, had only recently recruited him to be part of a plot to detonate pressure-cooker bombs at the marathon's finish line and that they planned to go on to detonate more bombs in New York City.

Tamerlan was killed in a police shootout on Friday last week.

Lawmakers have long disagreed over whether to read terrorism suspects their rights after they are captured in the United States. Some prominent Republican lawmakers have called for Tsarnaev to be considered an enemy combatant, but the Obama administration opted to try him in civilian criminal court proceedings instead.

The Supreme Court created a public safety exemption to the Miranda warning almost 30 years ago, meaning suspects can be interrogated if the public could be in danger, but Rogers said he still wants to know why the FBI's interrogation was interrupted.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia said he favors asking a suspect questions about who else may have been involved in a terror plot, whether there are future attacks in the works, or if other weapons have been discovered.

Most courts will not admit statements made before suspects are officially made aware of their rights, and if cases are to be tried in a civilian, rather than military court, a suspect must be read the warning.

Even some Democrats have questioned the decision. Rep. Adam Schiff of California said, “I would have thought the public safety exception would have allowed more time for the questioning of the suspect prior to the arraignment and/or advising of rights.”

The issue has come up in other cases, including in 2010, when Holder ordered “underwear bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to be read his rights. He eventually was sentenced to life in prison.

Tsarnaev has been moved to a prison hospital at Fort Devens, Mass., the U.S. Marshals Service said Friday. He continues to recover from numerous gunshot wounds. The federal prison where he is housed specializes in inmates who need long-term medical or mental health care, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

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