And I still remember it like it happened yesterday.
May God keep those Americans who died that fateful day close to his heart.
Bretagne too!
Meet Bretagne, The Last Known 9/11 Service Dog That Worked At Ground Zero...
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Thursday, September 11, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
Obama: ‘I Should’ve Anticipated The Optics’ Of Golfing After Foley Beheading
What about the “optics” of going to Vegas for a fundraiser less than 24 hours after 4 Americans died in the Benghazi debacle?
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The Daily Caller
By Brendan Bordelon
President Obama admitted on Sunday that he “should’ve anticipated the optics” of golfing just minutes after a sober statement on the brutal beheading of American journalist James Foley by ISIS, noting that “part of this job is also the theater of it.”
Obama sat down Sunday with NBC’s new “Meet The Press” host Chuck Todd for a wide-ranging interview that touched on immigration, ISIS and other White House challenges. But Todd made sure to ask about that golf game, a moment that even supporters of the president admitted made him look tone deaf and disengaged.
“I gotta ask, during that vacation,” Todd said. “You made the statement on Foley, you went and golfed. Do you want that back?”
The president claimed it’s “always a challenge when you’re supposed to be on vacation, because you’re followed everywhere. And part of what I’d love is a vacation from the press –.”
“I promise you, in two and a half years I think that happens,” Todd joked.
“But there’s no doubt that, after having talked to the families — where it was hard for me to hold back tears listening to the pain that they were going through, after the statement that I made — that I should’ve anticipated the optics,” Obama admitted. “That’s part of the job.”
“You take this stuff, and it’s serious business, and you care about it deeply,” he explained. “But part of this job is also the theater of it. How you –.”
“You hate the theater of it,” Todd replied.
“Well, it’s not something that always comes naturally to me,” Obama conceded. “But it matters. And I’m mindful of that.”
Theater?
His entire presidency is predicated on it.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Barry to Delay Executive Action (Amnesty) Until After November Election
For the same reason he dropped the employer mandate. He knows it stinks! This is just another con job perpetrated by Barry on the low information voter. Obviously this is purely political, knowing if he uses executive action now to grant 5 million amnesty it will be the kiss of death for Dem's in November.
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Two White House officials said President Obama decided on Friday to delay executive action on immigration until after the November congressional elections, as reported by the Associated Press.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the President's decision has not been announced yet but told The Associated Press, "Obama decided that circumventing Congress with executive action would politicize immigration further and hurt efforts to pass a broader immigration reform program."
There are six U.S. Senate seats vulnerable to Republican take over in the upcoming election -- Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana and North Carolina. Iowa's Democratic Senator Tom Harkin is retiring.
News reports have been surfacing over the past week suggesting Obama might delay administrative immigration reform because of the elections, but immigration groups were adamant there be no delay.
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On Friday a letter was sent to the President by 136 immigration lawyers from 32 states informing him of his powers of executive action.
Also late Friday, a coalition of grassroots groups, including LULAC, faith leaders and religious groups wrote to ask Obama not to delay as families are being torn apart daily by deportations.
The coalition's letter said, "Every day, more than 1,100 immigrants are separated from their families and their communities because of deportations. And despite assurances from your administration, immigrant workers and their families continue to live in fear of employer retaliation and intimidation, as well as racial profiling and excessive use-of-force by Department of Homeland Security agents who continues to abuse, arrest, detain, and deport our family members and loved ones. Any delay in announcement of administrative relief for aspiring Americans only compounds the suffering, changes ... are already long overdue."
LULAC's Luis Torres said it is not a political organization, but they are concerned with civil rights.
"I think we need to remember here we are talking about real human beings who are affected every day because of the broken immigration system. We are not talking about political calculations and it is unfortunate that has become a part of this conversation recently. If there are people looking at the political calculations, I would suggest they look at the long-term implications of turning their backs on the fastest growing segment of the population and that will be felt. We have Latinos being elected in record numbers, our community is coming out to vote in record numbers, it increases every single year. I think making a short term calculation would be a severe mistake," Luis Torres, director of policy and legislation for LULAC, told Latin Post.
President Obama announced in June he was willing to issue an executive order because of inaction by Congress.
The U.S. Senate did introduce immigration reform legislation which passed in June.
The Republican-led House introduced their own bill, HR 5230, a border supplemental bill with language making it easier to deport Central American children, and HR 5272, which would have ended the President's DACA program. Those bills passed just before the August recess, but they will be unacceptable to the Senate after Congress reconvenes.
In August, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stated a presidential executive action could come in September
The officials told The Associated Press that Obama had no specific time to act, but he wants to take executive steps before the end of the year.
During a press conference in Wales at the NATO summit, Obama said he would act without Congress to increase border security and upgrade processing, plus offering immigrants already in the U.S. a way to become legal residents, pay taxes, pay a fine and learn English.
In other words AMNESTY.
In other words AMNESTY.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
From the ridiculous to the sublime
IRS says it has lost emails from 5 other employees related to probes
Next time Smidgen is called back to testify:
No "thinking" person could swallow this absurd chain of deceit. One lie to cover another.
"There's not a smidgen of corruption". Will go down in the annals of time right along with "You can keep your insurance period."
This is clearly the most far reaching breach in government corruption since the Nixon administration. How much longer can the MSM afford to look the other way?
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The IRS said Friday that it has lost emails from five other employees involved in congressional probes into the agency's targeting of conservative groups, leading one top Republican to declare "this pattern must stop."
The announcement comes after the agency said in June that it could not locate an untold number of emails to and from Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division that processes applications for tax-exempt status. The revelation set off a new round of investigations and congressional hearings.
On Friday, the IRS issued a report to Congress saying the agency also lost emails from five other employees related to the probe, including two agents who worked in a Cincinnati office processing applications for tax-exempt status.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, whose committee has been investigating the scandal, said the disclosure is yet another example of the Obama administration changing its story on the scandal.
"The IRS’s ever-changing story is practically impossible to follow at this point, as they modify it each time to accommodate new facts," Issa, R-Calif., said. "This pattern must stop."
The disclosure came on the same day the Senate's subcommittee on investigations released competing reports on how the IRS handled applications from political groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
The Democratic report, released by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said both liberal and conservative groups were mistreated, revealing no political bias by the IRS. The Republican report, issued by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said conservative groups were clearly treated worse.
The IRS inspector general set off a firestorm last year with an audit that said IRS agents singled out Tea Party and other conservative groups for inappropriate scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.
Lerner's lost emails prompted a new round of scrutiny by Congress, the Justice Department, the inspector general and at least two federal judges.
The IRS blamed computer crashes for all the lost emails. In a statement, the IRS said all the crashes happened well before Congress launched the investigations.
"Throughout this review, the IRS has found no evidence that any IRS personnel deliberately destroyed any evidence," said the IRS statement. "To the contrary, the computer issues identified appear to be the same sorts of issues routinely experienced by employees within the IRS, in other government agencies and in the private sector."
When Congress started investigating the IRS last year, the agency identified 82 employees who might have documents related to the inquiries. The IRS said 18 of those people had computer problems between September 2009 and February 2014. Of those employees, five probably lost emails -- in addition to Lerner -- the agency said Friday.
Lerner, who was placed on leave and has since retired, has emerged as a central figure in congressional investigations. The other five employees appear to be more junior than she.
In addition to the Cincinnati workers, they include a technical adviser to Lerner, a tax law specialist and a group manager in the tax-exempt division.
In general, the IRS said the workers archived emails on their computer hard drives when their email accounts became too full. When those computers crashed, the emails were lost.
"By all accounts, in each instance the user contacted IT staff and attempted to recover his or her data," said the IRS statement.
The IRS has said it stored emails on backup tapes but those tapes were re-used every six months. The inspector general's office is reviewing those tapes to see if any old emails can be retrieved.
Friday's reports by the Senate subcommittee on investigations mark the conclusion of just one investigation. The Justice Department and three other congressional committees are continuing their probes.
Levin is chairman of the investigations subcommittee and McCain is the ranking Republican. Their staffs routinely work together on investigations, and while they don't always agree on the results, it is highly unusual for them to issue such diverging reports.
"The investigation found that the IRS used inappropriate selection criteria, burdensome questions and lengthy delays in processing applications for 501(c)(4) tax exempt status from both conservative and liberal groups," Levin said in a statement.
The Democratic report slams last year's audit by the IRS inspector general. It says the IG report was incomplete because it focused only on the treatment of conservative groups. The IG's report "produced distorted audit results that continue to be misinterpreted," the Democratic report said.
The inspector general's office declined to comment Friday. A spokeswoman said they were reviewing the report.
The Republican report says far more conservative groups were singled out for extra scrutiny. They were also asked more questions and were more likely to have their applications rejected or withdrawn.
"The IRS selected conservative groups out of normal processing, placed them on a separate list, stopped work on their applications completely, forced them to answer intrusive questions about their behavior and demeanor at meetings and delayed their applications for multiple years," the Republican report said. "Our investigation has uncovered no evidence that liberal groups received the same expansive inappropriate treatment that conservative groups received."
The Democratic report said investigators reviewed 800,000 pages of documents and conducted 22 interviews with current and former workers at the IRS and the inspector general's office. The investigators, however, were not allowed to see confidential taxpayer information, so many of the documents were blacked out.
Only two committees in Congress have the authority to see confidential taxpayer information: the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. Those two committees are continuing their probes.
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