Charles Krauthammer: Claim of Seven Million Obamacare Enrollees Is ‘Phony Number’

Mediaite.com:

Charles Krauthammer doesn’t believe seven million people have actually enrolled in Obamacare, telling Bill O’Reilly Tuesday night that the White House is throwing out “phony numbers” by broadening their standards in order to attain a personal victory.

Both men agreed that the goal of Obamacare was to eventually convince the country to shift to full government control of the health care system, with Krauthammer saying it at least would have been clearer than “this insane mishmash” in the middle. He then charged that President Obama and the White House is not being honest when it says that a little over seven million people have signed up.

“These numbers that they are touting are phony numbers… That’s like saying anybody who goes on Amazon, orders a nifty stereo set, puts it in the shopping cart, has purchased the stereo set. I assure you it’s not going to show up at your house until you pay for it.”

Krauthammer charged that the goal from the beginning was to make health care, “the great liberal objective,” a reality by any means necessary. And he found it laughable for Democrats to keep asserting it’s the law of the land, because “nothing that’s written in the law matters, they decide what the law is every Wednesday morning.”

RELATED:  Limbaugh: ‘How Many People Are Signing Up’ for Obamacare Out of Fear?

Dating Website OkCupid Displays Liberal Terrorism: Asks Users to Boycott Mozilla Firefox Due to Browser CEO’s Gay Marriage Opposition

Mediaite.com:

OKCupid.com is now actively asking Mozilla Firefox users to reconsider their browser choice due to the new Mozilla CEO having publicly expressed his opposition to gay marriage in California.

On Monday afternoon, a note appeared on the OKCupid homepage for Mozilla users only, asking that they switch to another browser in light of Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, having been a vocal supporter of Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot initiative that created a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

Back in 2008, Eich donated $1,000 to the campaign supporting Prop 8, with Mozilla’s name attached as his employer in the public database. When he became CEO this year, boycotts emerged primarily among the web development community.

Below is a screenshot of what a Mozilla user would see on their home page, including links to download alternative browsers:

And the full text:

Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.
Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid.

Politics is normally not the business of a website, and we all know there’s a lot more wrong with the world than misguided CEOs. So you might wonder why we’re asserting ourselves today. This is why: we’ve devoted the last ten years to bringing people—all people—together. If individuals like Mr. Eich had their way, then roughly 8% of the relationships we’ve worked so hard to bring about would be illegal. Equality for gay relationships is personally important to many of us here at OkCupid. But it’s professionally important to the entire company. OkCupid is for creating love. Those who seek to deny love and instead enforce misery, shame, and frustration are our enemies, and we wish them nothing but failure.

If you want to keep using Firefox, the link at the bottom will take you through to the site.
However, we urge you to consider different software for accessing OkCupid:
[Google Chrome] [Internet Exploder] [Opera] [Safari]

Thank you,
OkCupid

Users are able to continue on to OKCupid.com after scrolling through and reading the note.
UPDATE: A Mozilla spokesperson issued the following statement:

Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples. No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally. OK cupid never reached out to us to let us know of their intentions, nor to confirm facts.

RELATED: The New Mozilla CEO's Political Past Is Imperiling His Present

Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/30/14

Hollywood, Leave My Childhood Alone: A Guide to What You Can Maim

What Happens When The Facts Don’t Fit The Progressive Script?

Homofascists Turn Their "Gay" Guns On Mississippi

Moviegoers Flood 'Noah' With $44 Million

A Whole Lotta Democratic Corruption Going On

Politico's Dylan Byers: MSNBC in Freefall

How Unborn Babies Become 'Clinical Waste'

Hundreds of Children Abandoned by Illegals Heading into US

NYT Frets as GOP States Burden Blacks Based on 'Unfounded' Vote Fraud Fear

It Has Begun: Connecticut Raises Minimum Wage to $10.10

7 Ways Noah Turns the Bible Upside Down 

Harry Reid Will Refund Campaign For Gifts

Bill O'Reilly (Rightfully) Calls Democrat Congresswoman Barbara Lee A 'Race Hustler'

Anyone who really thinks there's a single, black, Democrat politician out there who truly cares about the needs of Black people in this country is either lying to themselves or a fool:

Fox News host Bill O'Reilly brought Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on "The O'Reilly Factor" Tuesday to discuss charges of racism made by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) against the former vice presidential candidate.

In recent remarks on poverty, Ryan referred to the "tailspin of culture in our inner cities." Lee in turn called Ryan's comments a "thinly veiled racial attack."

“Let’s be clear, when Mr. Ryan says 'inner city,' when he says, 'culture,' these are simply code words for what he really means: 'black,'" Lee said in a statement.

On O'Reilly's show, Ryan said he has no bad feelings toward Lee, noting he's "a big boy" and understands that "if you challenge the status quo, sometimes you'll be misinterpreted." 

O'Reilly fervently disagreed, saying "race hustlers" such as Lee don't want to have a conversation and that they "get voted into office by portraying their constituents as victims."

"And it's all your fault and it's my fault and it's rich people's fault and the Republicans' fault," O'Reilly said. "It's everybody's fault except what's going on ... The race hustlers don't want to solve the problem."

Watch the full exchange above.

UPDATE: 12:58 p.m. -- Lee released the following statement in response to O'Reilly's remarks: 

Unfortunately we’ve come to expect language like “welfare queens,” “food stamp president,” and now “race hustlers” from the right wing and Mr. O’Reilly. It is disgusting and divisive and should never be accepted in our national discourse. 

For us to achieve the American dream for all, we must engage in this conversation that has been sparked about race and poverty, even if it is difficult for some. Racial discrimination, poverty, and income inequality remain issues that must be debated and addressed, and these kinds of ‘code words’ only get in the way of solving the real problems.

As members of Congress, we must come together to present a budget and funding priorities that create opportunity for all. We must make critical investments in job creation, education, and job training. Among many issues, we must address extending unemployment insurance, raising the minimum wage, enacting criminal justice reform, and securing voting rights for communities of color, so that we can truly find solutions to these critical issues.

RELATED: The Left’s Laughable Effort to Label Paul Ryan ‘Racist’ Crumbles

New York Times Editorial Distorts, Misleads, and Lies to Readers on HHS Mandate

HotAir.com:

With many political debates, I try to give opponents the benefit of the doubt on intentions. Sure, raising taxes is a bad thing, but some politicians and pundits believe higher taxes will benefit society. Some people think we need to spend more, and others really fear climate change.

When it comes to the HHS abortifacient/contraception/sterilization mandate, however, I’ve almost stopped being that generous with the left’s media and thought leaders. This New York Times Magazine editorial is a prime example as to why. Almost from start to finish, the piece misleads and misdirects readers about the mandate, its opponents, and religious freedom.

Here are several examples:

First, the editorial says “for-profit corporations will ask the Supreme Court to take a radical turn and allow them to impose their religious views on their employees” by not providing contraception coverage as required by the mandate. This is a falsehood for at least two reasons: For one, the individual insurance market is an option for coverage, and colleges, high schools, Wal-Marts, and many other organizations provide birth control for free or very low prices.

Furthermore, most employees are “at-will” employees, meaning they can leave anytime they wish. If they want employer-covered contraception, plenty of companies will provide it.

In other words, many options exists for employees — and I haven’t even mentioned abstinence yet, which is 100 percent effective at preventing pregnancy.

Next, the editorial says exemptions from the mandate “would significantly harm other people.” This is clearly not true, as pointed out above, because options abound.

Third, the editorial makes the claim that a Supreme Court decision against the mandate “would flout the First Amendment, which forbids government from favoring one religion over another — or over nonbelievers.” In fact, the mandate gives special treatment to those who believe contraception, abortion drugs, and sterilization, and puts those who disagree with the mandate at a distinct First Amendment disadvantage with regards to speech and religion.

The editorial also argues that the mandate does not include coverage of abortion-inducing drugs:

The companies’ owners remain free to worship as they choose and to argue (incorrectly) as much as they want that some of the contraceptive drugs and devices on the F.D.A.’s list actually induce abortions.

It has been proven time and time again that the mandate covers abortion drugs. For just two examples of this, check out what Live Action’s Drew Belsky and I wrote a couple of months ago, or check out this incredibly thorough analysis of that question by Just Facts.

Finally, the editorial states that “the government plainly has a “compelling” interest in reducing the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions, and in furthering women’s health and equality.” Actually, women’s health would benefit from fewer contraceptives, and contraception use only lowers the abortion rate after increasing it dramatically. And if the editorial board wants fewer “unintended pregnancies,” it should start with encouraging abstinence. Pregnancy is a fairly common result of engaging in sexual relations, after all.

There are other statements in the editorial that need to be debunked, but this is just a sampling of the misleading and outright falsehoods it possesses.

RELATED:  Four Years of Obamacare Failures Is Long Enough

Liberals Now Smearing Paul Ryan As "RACIST!!!"

AndrewSullivan.com:

One of the worst traits of some left-liberals is their easy resort to calling those who disagree with them bigots or racists or worse. There are some sites on the web that seem almost entirely devoted to patrolling the discourse for any sign of sin. This one’s a homophobe; this one’s a racist; so-and-so said this and that could be – shock! – prejudiced. It can sometimes be a way to avoid engaging arguments rather than tackling them. And so, on cue, Paul Ryan is taking heat for these remarks:

We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

He noted that “Charles Murray or Bob Putnam over at Harvard – those guys have written books on this.” Cue liberal freakout. Josh Marshall focuses on the citation of Murray:

When you start off by basing your arguments around the work of Charles Murray you just lose your credibility from the start as someone actually interested in addressing poverty or joblessness or really doing anything other than coming up with reasons to cut off what little assistance society provides for its most marginalized members or, alternatively, pumping up people with racial resentments against black people and giving them ersatz ‘scholarship’ to justify their racial antipathies.

That’s because Murray’s public career has been based on pushing the idea that black urban poverty is primarily the fault of black people and their diseased ‘culture.’ Relatedly, and more controversially, he has argued that black people are genetically inferior to white people and other notional races with regards to intelligence. Yes, that last part should be crystal clear: Murray is best known for attempting to marshal social science evidence to argue that black people are genetically not as smart as white people.

Sigh. Josh seems to be arguing that Murray blames all resilient urban black poverty on culture …. and then blames it all on genes! Pick one canard, would be my advice. And the truth is: in The Bell Curve, Murray was concerned about the role of genes and environment in the resilient IQ differentials among different ethnic groups, as anyone who actually read his book (I did, most liberals wouldn’t) would know. As for the notion that Murray is useless in actually attempting to help urban poverty, has Josh ever heard of the book Losing Ground? It was the key text for the Clinton welfare reforms of the 1990s – which even Obama now concedes he dismissed too easily. 
 
And it is simply untrue that Murray has argued that “black people are genetically inferior to white people and other notional races with regards to intelligence.” Murray’s work specifically insists that there are countless African-Americans with higher IQs than countless whites and Asians and Hispanics. (He has recently focused his efforts on white poverty as well – which would seem to disprove some of Josh’s claims.) It’s just that the bell curve (which was the title of the whole fricking book) starts at a slightly different place for different racial groupings – something that drives blank slate liberals nuts with cognitive dissonance. Years later, the differentials still exist. Why do you think there are de facto quotas to prevent brainy Asians from dominating the Ivy League? But of course, nothing drives ideologues nuts like reality.

One more thing: I’m sure Murray has gotten used to this distortion of his work. But it still strikes me as outrageous that a scholar like Murray is subjected to being called a racist of the worst sort and a dishonest scholar – simply because the resilient data support his core point, and because he dares to cite genetics. (It’s an old and great line that liberals believe nothing is genetic but homosexuality, while conservatives believe everything is genetic except homosexuality. For my part, it seems pretty damn obvious that almost all human behavior is a function of both – and the interaction between them.)
Josh goes another round:

Weigel notes that it’s not necessarily clear that Ryan was referencing The Bell Curve. He might just as well have been talking about Losing Ground, the critique of liberal social policies, particularly welfare, which put Murray on the map in the 1980s or his more recent work on the ‘white underclass’. To which I would say, maybe? Who knows? And really, who cares? At the risk of sounding wrenchingly corny, The Bell Curve is a bell you simply cannot un-ring. 

As Joan Walsh notes here, in the years since publishing The Bell Curve, Murray has slightly softened his argument. He now refers to IQ and what he believes is the mental inferiority of African-Americans not as ‘genetic’ but rather as ‘intractable.’ By this Murray seems to mean that there are too many factors playing into intelligence to definitively say genetics are behind what he claims are the mental/intellectual shortcomings of black people. The deficit is simply ‘intractable’ – by which he means that whatever mix of genetics, culture and circumstance create it, nothing can be done to change it in any meaningful way.

But if Josh had read the original book, he would have seen that that was Murray’s argument all along! “Intractable” means a function of both culture and genes. Now I should make clear that I’m not entirely persuaded by Charles’ thesis. I think it’s too fatalist and gloomy. The plasticity of IQ is obvious, and culture may matter far more in the long run. If Murray’s thesis requires no government action to help the poor, I’m as opposed to it as David Frum. But Murray is an intellectual adventurer. He speaks things we only talk about in our own heads. And his original prediction – that modern, SAT-based, liberal economies will, over time, lead to greater and greater inequality has not exactly been proven unfounded, has it? And referencing Murray – along with Bob Putnam, one should add – is perfectly appropriate when talking about arguments about poverty and how to tackle it.

Michael Sean Winters gives Ryan the benefit of the doubt:

First, we on the left have been complaining that Republicans like don’t give a hoot about the poor, and not without cause. I remember Cong. Ryan speaking at Georgetown in 2012 and talking about subsidiarity and federalism and how the federal government should not be the lead actor in anti-poverty efforts. I thought at the time: That would be credible if he could point to any single Republican governor or mayor who was actually attempting some innovative anti-poverty efforts, but he can’t, so the invocation of subsidiarity in this regard is a smokescreen. It is obvious that Ryan has been trying to wrestle with the issue of poverty since then, and I think we have an obligation not to throw his words back in his teeth the second they are uttered. That is not the way to create a bipartisan consensus on the need for our nation to confront lingering poverty in our midst.

By the way, check out Murray’s responses in our Ask Anything series to get his recent take on the Bell Curve criticism. A long thread on race and IQ is here.

RELATED:  MSNBC’s Alex Wagner Finally Finds Kneejerk Racism Accusation That Isn’t Legitimate

Politiks As Usual: In The News 3/16/14

Iraq Law Would Allow 9-Year-Old Girls To Marry

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Search Grows As Pilots Face Increased Scrutiny

'19 Kids and Counting' Stars: We Won't Kiss Until Marriage

What Kind of God Do You Believe In?

Cardinal Dolan ‘Fully Supportive’ of Teaching That Homosexual Activity is Immoral

Priebus: Jolly Election Spotlights Republicans' 'Positive Vision'

Sen. Rand Paul Wins Presidential Survey

50 Years Later, We Know That the NYT Distorted the Kitty Genovese Story to Drive an Agenda

Networks Minimize Bad News For Dems, Tout Obama Shopping at the Gap

Air Force: Christians' Religious Speech Not Legally Protected Right

Maine Hospital Facing $27 Million In Costs Due To Obamacare

Why Some Christians' Kids Blow Off God – and Why Mine Didn't

Bipartisan Group of Legal Scholars: Critics 'Egregiously Misrepresented' Arizona's SB 1062

Newsbusters.org:

The Arizona governor’s decision Wednesday to veto a bill widely seen as pitting religious protections against gay rights puts an end to two controversial amendments proposed by lawmakers.

But it leaves standing the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which continues to empower individuals to sue when they believe state or local laws – including antidiscrimination laws – are violating their religious rights.

In announcing her decision to veto the amendments, known as SB 1062, Gov. Jan Brewer (R) said that religious liberty is valued in Arizona. She added that the state also values the principle of nondiscrimination.

How those two goals coexist in Arizona in the future remains unclear. But it is clear from the governor’s veto that the potential downside of following through with the amendments outweighed the advantages.

“I sincerely believe that SB 1062 has the potential to create more problems than it purports to solve,” she said in a brief statement.

While the Brewer veto ends the current dispute in a way that appears to deliver a clear victory to gay rights advocates and their supporters, the underlying causes of the conflict remain unresolved.

On one side are Arizona residents seeking to live their lives in accord with traditional moral positions embraced in the Bible’s Old Testament – positions that condemn homosexuality. On the other side are gay men, lesbians, bisexual, and transsexual individuals fighting for equal rights and equal dignity in communities they also call home.

The Arizona Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) seeks to protect religious faith from coercive laws. That protection continues to exist throughout Arizona.

What is changing is a growing recognition of civil rights for gay Americans that is clashing with traditional religious teachings. For example, Arizona law offers no protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation, but three Arizona cities – Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff – have passed ordinances banning sexual orientation discrimination in their jurisdictions.

The two proposed amendments to the Arizona RFRA were an attempt to address the issue in a way that favored religious adherents. Brewer’s veto eliminates the attempt, but it does nothing to address the underlying clash.

The veto was issued amid a growing controversy in Arizona over what had been a little-noticed state law patterned on a 21-year-old federal statute designed to shield religious adherents from government measures that violate their beliefs.

The original Religious Freedom Restoration Act, far from a hate-inspired antigay measure, sailed through the US House of Representatives on a voice vote and passed the US Senate 97 to 3 before being signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993.

The law was written to fill a vacuum left after the US Supreme Court embraced a significantly narrower reading of the protections of religious liberty under the First Amendment’s free exercise of religion clause. Congress responded with RFRA.

RELATED:  Tea Party Leader: Arizona Veto Enslaves Christians into Baking Giant Penis Cakes

Liberal Scumbag Harry Reid Calls All ObamaCare Victims 'Liars'

FOXNews.com:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is being hammered by Republican lawmakers after he claimed on the Senate floor that all the ObamaCare "horror stories" being circulated are untrue.

Reid tried to clarify his remarks late Wednesday by saying he was only referring to the “vast majority” of stories featured in ads funded by Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group, and not the complaints of everyday Americans. However, he added fuel to the fire by continuing to slam the group’s backers, the Koch brothers, calling them “un-American.” 

Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, in response, said Reid had effectively "attacked the character and integrity of every American who had the courage to share how they're being hurt by the president's health care law." 

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., called Reid's original remarks "astounding and offensive." 

Reid said Wednesday morning on the Senate floor that he believes Americans for Prosperity hires actors in their ads to tell fake stories about canceled policies, higher premiums and ruined lives under ObamaCare.

“There’s plenty of horror stories being told,” Reid said. “All of them are untrue. But they’re being told all over America.” 

It was an apparent reference to, among other instances, an AFP ad that featured a woman with cancer who claimed her health care became unaffordable under the law. Her story was called into question by critics, but she and AFP are standing by the ad. 

The outcry over Reid's comments from Republican lawmakers was swift. Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said he is demanding Reid apologize to those who have felt ill effects from ObamaCare.

“The majority leader, and any Democrat who agrees with him, owes an apology to all Americans who are suffering under this disastrous law and whose personal stories he has dismissed as ‘untrue,’” he said.

RELATED:  Cancer Patient Who Lost Insurance Due to Obamacare Demands Apology from Harry Reid

Greenpeace Co-founder Patrick Moore: No Scientific Proof Humans Are Dominant Cause of Warming Climate

FOXNews.com:

A co-founder of Greenpeace told lawmakers there is no evidence man is contributing to climate change, and said he left the group when it became more interested in politics than the environment.

Patrick Moore, a Canadian ecologist and business consultant who was a member of Greenpeace from 1971-86, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee environmental groups like the one he helped establish use faulty computer models and scare tactics in promoting claims man-made gases are heating up the planet.

“There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years,” he said.

Even if the planet is warming up, Moore claimed it would not be calamitous for men, which he described as a “subtropical species.”

Skeptics of manmade climate change say there is no evidence the Earth is warming. A UN report on the scientific data behind global warming released in September indicated that global surface temperatures have not increased for the past 15 years, but scientists who believe climate change due to man is occurring say it has merely paused because of several factors and will soon resume.

RELATED:  John Kerry’s Phony Climate War

Jan Brewer Vetos Religious Freedom SB1062 Bill and Caves To Godless, White Liberals

Is it any wonder so many social conservatives in this country have lost faith in the Republican party? With losers like John McCain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and the 3 Arizona Republican members who caved to liberal lies and hyperbole on SB1062 and changed their mind, who needs the GOP?

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer made a statement Wednesday night declaring she already vetoed the controversial SB1062 bill that would permit state businesses to discriminate against LGBT individuals, confirming an earlier report that she was planning to veto the bill.

Advocates of the bill have argued that the bill was meant to protect people’s religious liberty, while opponents insisted it’s just the government adding on another layer of discrimination that gay people have to face in their lives.

Brewer previously pledged she would “do the right thing for Arizona,” and deferred questions by saying she had until Friday to make her decision. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce came out against the bill, as did many businesses (Apple and Marriott among them), and a number of high-profile Republicans, including both of Arizona’s GOP senators, called on Brewer to veto the bill.

RELATED:  7 Myths About Arizona's Religious Freedom Law

Arizona Religious Liberty Law Does Not Cause Discrimination, It Prevents it

RenewAmerica.com:

Arizona's new religious liberty bill is exactly that – a bill that protects the religious liberty of faith-driven businessmen in the Copper State. Lawmakers there are seeking to prevent the truly un-American and shameful things that have happened in New Mexico, Oregon and Colorado where wedding vendors are facing state-imposed penalties, including possible jail time, for simply running their businesses according to deeply-held religious values.

There is no question that homosexuality is a sin according to Christian teaching, and that marriage is exclusively a man-woman proposition. Same-sex "marriages" are thus counterfeit marriages, and no wedding vendor should be compelled against his conscience and Christian conviction to positively affirm something that Scripture condemns.

Now the right to the free exercise of religion – "exercise" means it applies all the time, 24 hour a day, seven days a week – is enshrined in the Constitution. In fact, it is the very first of the unalienable rights the Founders protected in the Bill of Rights.

Conversely, there is no express right in the Constitution to engage in sodomy. You can read the Constitution from left to right, from right to left, backwards, upside down and in Sanskrit and you will find no mention of sodomy whatsoever. But the right to religious liberty is right there in black and white, staring you in the face in the first sentence of the Bill of Rights.

In addition, every state in the Union, including Arizona, prohibits discrimination on the basis or religion. I submit that throwing a practicing Christian in jail because of his religious views is egregious discrimination, and should be in the eyes of any clear-thinking individual whose mind and heart have not been darkened by the spirit of the age.

So the Arizona bill simply affirms protections that are already found in the Constitution and state law. It prevents unconstitutional and illegal discrimination rather than causing it.

Just as no homosexual printer should be forced against his will to produce pamphlets for the Family Research Council, so no Christian baker should be forced to participate in the solemnizing of a ceremony that violates Scripture's view of human sexuality.

The Bible is straightforward and unambiguous: "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them" (Ephesians 5:11).

The bullies and bigots of Big Gay find themselves in the untenable position of wanting to use the tyrannical power of government to force Christians to commit sin and to violate their most deeply held convictions. This is offensive to a colossal degree and violates every classic American value you can mention.

If homosexuals actually believed in tolerance, they would respect the convictions of Christian businessmen and happily and contentedly go to other vendors. It's worth noting that every one of the complaining homosexual couples readily found other vendors to photograph their ceremonies, make their flower arrangements, and bake their cakes.

But the truth is they don't believe in tolerance at all. In reality, they are jack-booted homofascist thugs who want to use the totalitarian and tyrannical power of the state to send men of faith to jail. That sounds far more like Nazi Germany than the United States of America.

RELATED: Kirsten Powers’ Understanding Of Sin And Conscience Lacks A Biblical Foundation

Barack Obama: California Central Valley Drought Due to Climate Change

Of course, it must be global warming:

While the East Coast and Midwest suffer through a cold and snow-heavy winter, the people of California are in the midst of a drought — and a particularly bad one, even for a state that has regular battles with droughts over the course of my lifetime. Most people don’t recall this, but those of us who grew up with gas rationing in the Golden State during the energy crises of the 1970s also grew up with water rationing, too — including odd/even days for watering lawns and gardens, and request-only glasses of water in restaurants.  Most of Southern California would naturally be a desert if it wasn’t for water management even in the best of years, and the Central Valley would never have become an agricultural powerhouse without it.

Yesterday, Barack Obama came to California’s Central Valley to declare that global warming is what has made the drought so difficult for farmers there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQzSycdHevU

Actually, the problem for Central Valley farmers is that their water got taken from them by a federal judge, who put a baitfish ahead of human beings. Central Valley’s water-management system was designed to deal with droughts that last as long as five years, but the reservoirs that held its lifeblood got emptied into the ocean to rescue the Delta smelt. It began five years ago, and as Investors Business Daily reports, the locals remember it better than Obama does:

The one thing that will mitigate droughts in California — a permanent feature of the state — is to restore the water flow from California’s water-heavy north to farmers in the central and south. That’s just what House Bill 3964, which passed by a 229-191 vote last week, does.
But Obama’s plan is not to get that worthy bill through the Senate (where Democrats are holding it up) but to shovel pork to environmental activists and their victims, insultingly offering out-of-work farmers a “summer meal plan” in his package.
“We are not interested in welfare; we want water,” Nunes told IBD this week. He and his fellow legislator Valadao are both farmers who represent the worst-hit regions of the Central Valley in Congress and can only look at the president’s approach with disbelief.

“He’s not addressing the situation,” Valadao told us.

“They want to blame the drought for the lack of water, but they wasted water for the past five years,” said Nunes.

The two explain that California’s system of aqueducts and storage tanks was designed long ago to take advantage of rain and mountain runoff from wet years and store it for use in dry years.

But it’s now inactive — by design. “California’s forefathers built a system (of aqueducts and storage facilities) designed to withstand five years of drought,” said Nunes.

“We have infrastructure dating from the 1960s for transporting water, but by the 1990s the policies had changed,” said Valadao.

Environmental special interests managed to dismantle the system by diverting water meant for farms to pet projects, such as saving delta smelt, a baitfish. That move forced the flushing of 3 million acre-feet of water originally slated for the Central Valley into the ocean over the past five years.

In fact, Obama threatened to veto a bill that would have resolved this situation almost exactly two years ago.  Instead, Obama insisted that the environmentalists needed to keep channeling water away from this rich agricultural resource and from the farmers who had worked it for generations, thanks to their own engineering genius at defeating droughts, to pour that water into the Pacific Ocean instead.

This isn’t global warming. It’s what happens when you stop irrigating land by purposefully taking water away. That buck stops at the podium Obama used to blame Gaia and carbon for his own sins of commission and omission.

RELATED:  Obama: I’ll veto bill that will provide water to California’s Central Valley

Liberals Draw a Blank When Asked About Tea Party Racism

These are the naive idiots liberals rely on to keep their Godless agenda moving forward:

When asked by a Fox news reporter for examples of Tea Party racism liberal protesters get uneasy. According to one woman, "they're racist against Blacks, Hispanics...I think their racist against...women." 

RELATED: Don’t blame the Tea Party for America’s inward tilt

CNBC Host Joe Kernen Trashes Al Gore as ‘Charlatan and Villain’

Mediaite.com:

Who had the most impact on the world in the past 25 years? It’s not an easy question to answer, but it’s one that CNBC is asking people to vote on, but on CNBC today, Andrew Ross Sorkin suggested another name on the list: Al Gore. This choice did not sit well with co-host Joe Kernen.

Sorkin argued that even if you don’t accept the premise of Gore’s global warming arguments, it’s difficult to argue that his global warming push hasn’t had a profound effect on the business world and how companies are looking to be greener.

Kernen shot back, “Yeah, if we put charlatans and villains on there.” He said if Gore’s going to be on the list, they might as well add Ken Lay or Bernie Madoff too.

Kernen has previously gone off about the “bonafide cult” of “enviro-socialists” speaking out on climate change.

RELATED:  Global warming skeptics fire back at Al Gore

Liberal Media's Most Embarrassing Efforts to Spin CBO’s Obamacare Report as ‘Good’ News

Mediaite.com:

A bombshell Congressional Budget report released this week indicated that the Affordable Care Act will result in the equivalent of 2.5 million workers voluntarily leaving the workforce by 2024, all taking their productivity with them. The report is politically devastating for ACA supporters, and they know it. Their flailing reaction to that report speaks to the adverse impact it could have on Democrats’ political position ahead of the 2014 midterms.


The last 48 hours have produced some of the finest, most rarified examples of spin the political universe has been privy to in some time. It’s been a veritable windfall for consumers of political discourse who enjoy observing painful rhetorical contortions. 

The majority of those recklessly twisting this impending economic disaster into a welcome development have generally tried to focus on the expanded “opportunity” that will result from creating publicly-funded incentives for people not to work. 

“Many workers, however, will see not having to ‘work for the man’ to get health coverage as liberation,” wrote liberal columnist Froma Harrop, channeling David Crosby. 

She went on to label as “anecdotal” the prediction that “some employers may reduce worker’s hours to avoid paying the employer mandate,” a function of the ACA that has not even taken effect yet. In the following paragraph, however, she said the opportunity provided by not working will allow others to “start the business they’ve always dreamed of,” or allow parents to “spend more time with their children.” Some anecdotes appear are more equal than others. 

The more thoughtful E.J. Dionne took a stab at spinning the news himself. On Thursday, Dionne offered up his own anecdote, one about a 64-year-old looking to work less to spend more time with the kids. “Many on the right love family values until they are taken seriously enough to involve giving parents/workers more control over their lives,” he wrote. I take back what I said about being thoughtful. 

“And it’s sometimes an economic benefit when some share of the labor force reduces hours or stops working altogether,” Dionne added. “At a time of elevated unemployment, others will take their place. The CBO was careful to underscore — the CBO is always careful — that ‘if some people seek to work less, other applicants will be readily available to fill those positions and the overall effect on employment will be muted.’”

At least that’s an argument, one that can be summed up as essentially: Unemployment will remain virtually as high as it is today when the equivalent of 2.5 million productive workers perform a simple cost/benefit analysis and determine it is in their best interest to cut back on their working hours. Even Dionne might concede that it’s an argument of dubious political utility for Democrats. 

He’s not alone in making the claim that a vast exodus of able workers from the labor market might be a good thing. In U.S. News & World Reports, Danielle Kurtzleben, bravely wrote what she claims we’re all afraid to say:

What the truth might be, and what few politicians would dare say, is there might simply be some value in lower economic growth.

(Pause to allow for the reader to regain their composure.) 

She, too, invoked a “64-year-old” for anecdotal purposes, though this one is a “manufacturing worker” who just might be able to “retire a little early” because of the ACA. This “manufacturing worker” has it better than the employees of IBM or AOL, two large firms which announced this week that they were limiting their contributions to their employees’ 401(k) retirement plans as a direct result of the increased operating costs associated with compliance with the ACA.

After assuring herself that the healthcare reform law will have “zero” impact on productivity over the long run, Kurtzleben asserts that the added happiness and contentment that the ACA will provide the anecdotal figures in her head makes it all worthwhile. 

Then you have Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI), who appeared virtually incoherent Thursday on MSNBC while trying to explain away “pathetic” Republicans accurately quoting the CBO. 

After insisting that 10 million have benefited from the ACA — a figure that is impossible to verify and leads one to conclude she simply made it up — Moore went on to paraphrase the New York Times editorial board which called the federally-funded incentives for people not to work and be supported by those who do “liberating.”

“You could say people don’t want a promotion, because if they make more money they’ll have to pay more taxes,” Moore said in false equivalence. This makes sense only to those who do not currently pay income taxes on their wages – which may, in fact, be her intended audience. 

A raise, an incentive to work or a reward for hard work, is the precise opposite of a disincentive to work, like being provided taxpayer-funded subsidies which terminate after reaching a certain income threshold. Furthermore, getting a raise that bumps one to a higher income tax bracket does not mean the recipient of that raise will lose money. It means their new earnings and only the new earnings are taxed at a higher rate. This hypothetical person will always make more money after a raise. 

“The Republicans are just so determined that they would come up with any stupid economic argument they can,” she concluded with a bit of psychological projection.

RELATED: Obama admin looking at extending “administrative fix” for noncompliant individual plans — for three years?

CBO Says Obamacare Will Push 2 Million Workers out of Labor Market

What Mitt Romney warned us about:

Obamacare will push the equivalent of about 2 million workers out of the labor market by 2017 as employees decide either to work fewer hours or drop out of the job market altogether, according to estimates released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office.

The analysis set off a furious debate in Washington. The White House argued that the reduction is positive because it means Americans will forgo jobs or extra work to stay home with their children or strike out on their own as entrepreneurs. Republicans, however, said the report amounted to an “I told you so” moment and that subtracting the equivalent of 2 million workers can’t be good for the economy.

The CBO said the number of workers dropping out of the labor force will grow from 2 million in 2017 to 2.5 million by 2024.

Although part of those numbers are attributed to job cuts, the vast majority represent workers who decide it makes more sense to stay home or work fewer hours, weighing the higher taxes they pay in the workforce versus their qualifications for benefits if they drop out.

“CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 to 2 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers will choose to supply less labor — given the new taxes and other incentives they will face and the financial benefits some will receive,” the nonpartisan tax agency said in its economic outlook.

RELATED: Romney: Dishonesty in selling Obamacare is ‘rotting’ base of president’s 2nd term

Vatican Takes Rolling Stone to Task for Errors in Pope Francis Profile

Breitbart.com:

Imagine, on Super Bowl Sunday, if a sports reporter piped up and said things like, "Hey, since it's called football, can you touch the ball?" or "Hey, what's with the blocking and tackling? That's kind of mean," or "Hey, touchdowns, those are important, right?"

Yeah, that wouldn't end well.

No one would tolerate a sports reporter that showed that level of ignorance about a subject he's chosen to address, but when it comes to the Catholic Church in general and the pope in particular, the under-informed just let their freak flag fly.

Contrary to popular opinion—and the attempts of the mainstream media to portray him as such—Pope Francis is neither a politician nor a pop star. But all popes are public figures and, as such, get a full range of news coverage, from adoration to condemnation (some get both in one papacy).

Normally, the Vatican, which exists in a head space unlike any other, doesn't get visibly upset about the negative coverage, unless it's seriously inaccurate (hence the eventual removal from the Vatican Web site of the Pope Francis "interview" with octogenarian La Repubblica editor Eugenio Scalfari, who recreated the chat solely from memory, with decidedly mixed results).

When Time magazine named Francis its Person of the Year for 2013, the Vatican acknowledged it, essentially saying, "Yeah, of course you picked him. Duh." But it was left to bloggers, Twitter, and other media outlets—including, interestingly enough, Politico—to note errors in Time's bio of the pontiff (it originally cited his "rejection of church dogma," which hasn't actually ever happened), prompting a rewrite.

The Vatican's general attitude seems to be gratitude for the nice or neutral coverage and a resigned indifference to the negative and unusual. When gay magazine The Advocate named Francis its Person of the Year in December, the Vatican was unruffled. Of course, it helped that the article was well-researched and well-written. While the writer obviously didn't agree with all of Francis's (and the Church's) position on issues relating to persons with same-sex attraction, at least he understood them and was able to find some (accurate) common ground.

For its February issue, Rolling Stone put Francis on its cover—months after featuring a Tiger Beat-worthy photo of doe-eyed Boston Bombing terror suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnev—accompanied by a long feature piece featuring a lot of purple prose and factual errors about the papacy.

For example, writer Mark Binelli refers to the pope as "supposedly infallible," which displays a complete lack of knowledge about the meaning of papal infallibility, answers about which are just a Google away. And he refers to Jesus as a "homeless proto-hippie."

Don't worry, there's more.

At one point, for reasons that seem more related to the writer's inner life than that of his subject, Binelli compares Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's appearance to that of "Nightmare on Elm Street" character Freddy Kreuger, saying, "he looked like he should be wearing a striped shirt with knife-fingered gloves and menacing teenagers in their nightmares."

Apparently no one told these Catholic teens at the 2005 World Youth Day gathering in Cologne, Germany, that, upon seeing Benedict, they should run for their lives.

RELATED:  9 ridiculous claims in Rolling Stone’s cover story on Pope Francis

Robert Gibbs Admits Barack Obama Gave Up on Trying to Change Washington A Long Time Ago

DailyCaller.com:

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was uncharacteristically candid during an appearance on MSNBC Tusday morning, claiming “the White House sort of stopped trying” to change the “dysfunction” in Washington, D.C.

Gibbs spoke on a “Morning Joe” panel about President Obama’s relative lack of measurable accomplishments as he goes into his State of the Union speech this evening. “Robert, I know you’re not in the White House anymore –” MSNBC host Willie Geist began. “Thank God!” Gibbs interjected, prompting some incredulous laughs from the panel. ”Well, there’s a moment of honestly,” Geist grinned.

“But you’re obviously — you know the president very well,” the host continued. “We know what this poll says about how the country’s feeling about him. How is he feeling about the country right now? I mean, this is a guy who came in five years ago saying, ‘Change comes from outside Washington. We’re gonna break the fever, we’re going to change the way Washington does business. We’re going to get things done.’ And he’s learned some pretty hard lessons in how Washington actually works and doesn’t work.”

“Well, I think the ability to change Washington is something that, long ago, the White House sort of stopped trying to do,” Gibbs began. “Whether or not that’s a good thing, we’ll look back on history. I do think that, you know, this is a story of Washington dysfunction . . . Everything in this speech is what the public wants to hear. The public just doesn’t simply think that this group of people assembled in this room is remotely capable of solving those problems.”

“2013 was a lost year for the president,” the former press secretary continued. “He was buffeted by crisis after crisis. I think the test of this speech will be, do the American people who do watch, do they feel like this president has a plan to get some of those things done? Or is this just another speech out of Washington?”

Gibbs is a long-time Obama loyalist, joining the president’s Illinois Senate campaign way back in 2004. He followed him through the Senate to the White House, where he served as press secretary and close personal adviser to President Obama until early 2011. Some of his recent commentary, however, suggests the communications professional may have soured on the president’s leadership — and certainly shows relief that his tenure as White House spin doctor is now over.

RELATED: Gibbs: If Dems Lose Senate, 2015 SOTU ‘Will Be an Exceedingly Minimal Affair’

Nancy Pelosi: "We Did Not Treat President Bush This Way"

Amazing how often this insane woman can lie straight to people's faces:

Democrats are looking to President Obama to really help kick the populist agenda they have been re-devising for the 2014 campaign season into high gear with his address this evening, and in previewing the SOTU on MSNBC this morning, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was really in her element, hitting all of the latest “obstructionist,” “income inequality opportunity gap,”  “executive action” talking points like so many carefully concocted whack-a-moles. That it always and necessarily takes two parties to tango is a piece of logic that never seems to enter into that kind of woe-is-us, nobody-else-has-ever-had-to-deal-with-a-divided-government brand of thinking:

The point is that, since that time, under President Obama’s administration, we have eight million jobs created… We have an opportunity gap that the president will be addressing, but let’s remember where we were and how far we have come from the Bush economic policies to where we are now. … The point is, what is happening here now, and let’s, since you’re trying to analyze it, is we have a large segment of the Republican party that is anti-government. We don’t want any more government than we need, but they’re anti-government, anti-science, and anti-Obama. They have a trifecta that is going. I say to the Republicans, take back your party. …To obstruct every initiative that the president has put forth on jobs and say, ‘Why don’t we have more jobs?’ Well, we do have more jobs, but no thanks to the Congress of the United States. … We did not treat President Bush this way. … This obstruction to President Obama is something quite stunning, and something quite different.

RELATED: Pelosi: Bush 'a total failure'