Vice President Cheney said on Monday that the deal the U.S. and its international partners reached with Iran last month over its nuclear program is suspect because of some of the Obama administration’s initial missteps in implementing the president’s new health care law.
“I don’t think that Barack Obama believes that the U.S. is an exceptional nation,” Cheney complained on Fox and Friends. “Nobody cares much in the Middle East anymore what the U.S. thinks because we don’t keep our commitments.”
The former vice president moved to Iran and without mentioning any specific criticisms of the agreement, claimed it’s bad because of unrelated health care issues. “We don’t follow through and Iran we’ve got a very serious problem going forward and a deal now been cut,” he said. “The same people that brought us you can keep your insurance if you want are telling us they’ve got a great deal in Iran with respect to their nuclear program. I don’t believe it.”
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh lashed out the press and the White House this Friday for making Nelson Mandela’s death “all about Obama.”
“Without Mandela there might not have been an Obama? I’ll tell you who’s putting this out there. It’s Obama doing everything and anything he can to link himself to Mandela, and the Clintons are the same thing. We got a nickname for him, The Funeral Crashers. I mean, they’ll show up anywhere where there’s a camera. This kind of stuff, the Drive-Bys, I’m telling you, they’re doing everything they can to make the news of Mandela’s death all about Obama,” he said.
President Barack Obama has made no secret about the fact that the late South African leader was an inspiration.
“I cannot fully imagine my own life without the example set by Nelson Mandela,” he said during an official statement following the 95-year-old’s death.
Limbaugh, as per usual, was unimpressed.
“Now, if you’re Obama — speaking quite honestly here, folks — who could blame Obama for thinking everything is about him?,” Limbaugh said. “The media makes everything about him.”
What kind of world are we living in, when the man responsible for freeing millions of people from an oppressed system, is denounced and dismissed as if ending such a horrible system as apartheid is a common, everyday routine.
When Nelson Mandela died at the age of ninety five, people from around the world recognized the importance of the man and the life he lived. But here in America, a certain group couldn’t get pass the fact that Mandela, at a certain point in his life and in the struggle for freedom from apartheid, took a considerably unpopular path along the way. That small path in all his 95 years was enough to labeled him a terrorist. And it is this small path the naysayers focus on.
These naysayers, mostly in the Republican party, expressed their views when Ted Cruz and Newt Gingrich spoke positively about Mandela on Facebook. Some of their views got so unbearable, Newt felt the need to respond.
Mandela was faced with a vicious apartheid regime that eliminated all rights for blacks and gave them no hope for the future. This was a regime which used secret police, prisons and military force to crush all efforts at seeking freedom by blacks.
What would you have done faced with that crushing government?
What would you do here in America if you had that kind of oppression?
Some of the people who are most opposed to oppression from Washington attack Mandela when he was opposed to oppression in his own country.
After years of preaching non-violence, using the political system, making his case as a defendant in court, Mandela resorted to violence against a government that was ruthless and violent in its suppression of free speech.
As Americans we celebrate the farmers at Lexington and Concord who used force to oppose British tyranny. We praise George Washington for spending eight years in the field fighting the British Army’s dictatorial assault on our freedom.
Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote and the Continental Congress adopted that “all men are created equal, and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Doesn’t this apply to Nelson Mandela and his people?
Some conservatives say, ah, but he was a communist.
Actually Mandela was raised in a Methodist school, was a devout Christian, turned to communism in desperation only after South Africa was taken over by an extraordinarily racist government determined to eliminate all rights for blacks.
I would ask of his critics: where were some of these conservatives as allies against tyranny? Where were the masses of conservatives opposing Apartheid? In a desperate struggle against an overpowering government, you accept the allies you have just as Washington was grateful for a French monarchy helping him defeat the British.
Finally, if you had been imprisoned for 27 years, 18 of them in a cell eight foot by seven foot, how do you think you would have emerged? Would you have been angry? Would you have been bitter?
Now I personally have not seen this ad and I’m an avid viewer MSNBC, but I’ve been bumping into it all over the internet, so I am now forced to post it here on EzKool. It is an ad based on the War on Christmas, and it has been popping up on MSNBC and Fox News.
The ad, which was produced by St. Mary’s Parish of Barnegat, New Jersey, is quite frankly terrorizing. It features a little girl who the narrator refers to as Amy. She is the focal point of the ad as the narrator explains what he believes is the War on Christmas.
From the narrator:
“This is Amy. She lives in America. She’s free to smile to show she’s happy. Everyone’s OK with this.
Amy is a Christian. She’s also free to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ to show she’s happy. But not everyone is OK with this.
We are one nation under God. No man owns Amy’s happiness. No man will define how she shows it.”
But prepare yourself. At the end if the narration while Amy is seen and heard laughing, there is a terrifying scream heard in the background as the ad came to an end. Made me remember the movie The Ring.
In a Republican party that’s gone all out against Obamacare, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval went all in.
Sandoval is the only Republican governor whose state is both running its own health insurance exchange this year and expanding its Medicaid program under the health law. He’s arguably doing more to put the Democrats’ signature law into place than any other Republican.
But in fully implementing Obamacare, Sandoval faces a double-edged sword: He’s helping bring health care coverage to a state with the second highest uninsured rate in the country, while he may be hurting his national ambitions because he’s not actively blocking the president’s law.
Sandoval has always maintained that he dislikes the health law and he’d like to see it repealed. But as long as it’s the law of the land, he says it is his job to make it work for the people of his state.
“I opposed the Affordable Care Act from its inception,” he wrote in an email. But he’s a former federal judge and in his view, once the Supreme Court upheld the legislation, “the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land.”
Even after sticking his neck out on Obamacare — which few others in his party would consider amid fear of a conservative backlash — Sandoval is overwhelmingly popular in Nevada. State lawmakers backed his Obamacare approach on a bipartisan basis, and he’s cruising toward reelection next year with no formidable opponent in sight.
“Sandoval’s approval numbers are stratospheric, so it’s a very small group of folks who are concerned about it,” said Jon Ralston, the state’s leading political analyst. The objections came from those on the far right who “seized on that because they don’t believe Sandoval is conservative enough.”
On health care, Democrats laud him too.
“I don’t know what the politics are from his standpoint but I think it’s the right decision,” said Democratic Rep. Dina Titus, whose Nevada district has one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. “People are signing up, fortunately, in Nevada and the website is working pretty well. We’ve been very aggressive.”
A 15-year-old Indiana girl whose brave struggle with cancer who inspired thousands, including stars like CeeLo Green and Tom Cruise, has died.
The purple Sarah Strong campaign began when Sarah Crane of Michiana was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer in July, one of the youngest people ever to be diagnosed with such an advanced form of the disease.
Over the last five months she endured multiple surgeries and two intensive rounds of chemotherapy but the cancer did not respond to treatment.
Sarah Crane’s grace and courage in the face of such an ordeal inspired her whole community, who turned out en masse in purple ‘Sarah Strong’ t-shirts to raise money for the Crane family in fun runs, parades, cookouts and car washes.
The teenager’s death has triggered an outpouring of grief from people around the country who were touched by Sarah Crane’s story.
‘No matter what, I’m still going to wear my shirt for Sarah,’ 13-year-old Nick Matthews told WNDU today.
Sarah was a sophomore at Elkhart Memorial High School when she became one of the youngest people ever to be diagnosed with such an advanced form of colon cancer.
In addition to costing taxpayers billions of dollars, think about the many lives that will be lost because these partisan governors decided to take away healthcare from their citizens.
Texas, Florida, Georgia, and other GOP-led states rejecting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion are costing their residents billions of dollars by making them pay taxes into a system from which they won’t benefit, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund.
Obamacare gives states general federal funding to expand their Medicaid programs to all residents making up to 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL). According to the study, the funding designated for states accepting the expansion is so substantial that it will be, on average, more than double the amount that states currently receive for transportation funds.
But since Medicaid is financed through general tax revenue, all Americans — irrespective of whether or not they live in a state participating in the expansion — will pay into the system. Consequently, Texas residents will see over $9 billion flow out of their state in 2022 to help fund the expansion in states that accept it; Georgia taxpayers will lose out on nearly $3 billion; and Florida’s rejection of the expansion will cost residents over $5 billion:
There’s at least one member of Sen. Rand Paul’s family who isn’t quite on board just yet with a 2016 run – and that’s his wife.
After a speech at the Detroit Economic Club today, Paul, a Republican senator from Kentucky, was asked whether he plans to run in 2016, and he revealed his wife’s displeasure with the idea of a run for the White House.
“Where’s my cellphone? Can I call my wife?” Paul joked. “There’s two votes in my family. My wife has both of them, and both of them are ‘no’ votes right now.
“If I’m a very able politician, I’ll tell you in a year whether I’m able to persuade my wife. Right now, I don’t know yet, but I thank you for your interest,” he added.
Paul has been frank in admitting he is considering a 2016 presidential bid and has said he is discussing the option with his wife and family
President Obama used his weekly address to continue his call for Congress to extend unemployment benefits.
… if Members of Congress don’t act before they leave on their vacations, 1.3 million Americans will lose this lifeline. These are people we know. They’re our friends and neighbors; they sit next to us in church and volunteer in our communities; their kids play with our kids. And they include 20,000 veterans who’ve served this country with honor.
… We also have to look out for the Americans working hard to get those jobs. That’s why, as a country, we offer temporary unemployment insurance – so that job-seekers don’t fall into poverty, and so that when they get that job, they bounce back more quickly.
For many families, it can be the difference between hardship and catastrophe.
It makes a difference for a mother who suddenly doesn’t know if she’ll be able to put food on the table for her kids. It makes a difference for a father who lost his job and is looking for a new one. Last year alone, it lifted 2.5 million people out of poverty, and cushioned the blow for many more.
(AP) — A couple married just three weeks lured a Pennsylvania man to his death with a Craigslist ad because they wanted to kill someone together, police said.
Elytte Barbour
Elytte Barbour told officers before his arrest Friday night that he and his wife, Miranda, had planned to kill before but their plans never worked out until last month when Troy LaFerrara responded to an online posting that promised companionship in return for money.
Elytte Barbour, 22, and Miranda Barbour, 18, both face criminal homicide charges in LaFerrara’s death. His body was found Nov. 12 in an alley in Sunbury, a small city northwest of Philadelphia. The couple recently moved to nearby Selinsgrove from North Carolina.
According to Sunbury police, Elytte Barbour told investigators he hid in the backseat of the couple’s SUV as his wife picked up LaFerrara at a mall on Nov. 11. He told police that, on his wife’s signal, he wrapped a cord around LaFerrara’s neck, restraining him while Miranda Barbour stabbed him.
The 42-year-old man was stabbed 20 times, police said.
Miranda Barbour
Miranda Barbour was charged Wednesday. She initially denied knowing LaFerrara, but her story evolved as investigators gathered evidence, including the discovery that the last call received by the victim’s cellphone was made from her number, according to a police affidavit.
The affidavit said Miranda Barbour acknowledged meeting the victim in Selinsgrove then driving with him to Sunbury, where they parked. She said LaFerrara groped her and she took a knife from between the front seats and stabbed him after he put his hand around her throat, according to the affidavit.
Police said Miranda Barbour had told them she purchased cleaning supplies at a department store after stabbing LaFerrara, then picked up her husband and took him to a strip club for his birthday. On Friday, police said Elytte Barbour told them it was he that had purchased the cleaning products, an account investigators said was backed up by surveillance footage.
Following his wife’s arrest, Elytte Barbour told The Daily Item of Sunbury his wife, whom he married on Oct. 22, regularly hired herself out as a “companion” to men she met on various websites, a business venture he said he supported because it did not involve sexual contact.
Barbour said his wife made anywhere from $50 to $850 for meeting with men for such activities as having dinner or walking around a mall. The ads she placed on websites including Craigslist all said upfront that sex was not part of the deal, he said.
US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle will travel to South Africa next week to pay their respects to the late Nelson Mandela together with former first couple George W. and Laura Bush.
Ex-president Bill Clinton, who was in office when Mandela took power to become South Africa’s first black president, also said that he would be making the trip with his family.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obamas would “participate in memorial events” for the iconic leader who died Thursday at age 95.
Carney declined to provide more details on the trip, saying more information would be provided once it becomes available.
A South Carolina sheriff is defying the orders of President Obama to honor the passing of Nelson Mandela by lowering the flag at half staff.
Sheriff Rick Clark made his promise in a Facebook post to keep flying the flag at the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office at full height.
“I usually don’t post political items, but today is different. I received this notification today, ‘As a mark of respect for the memory of Nelson Mandela, the President orders that the flag of the United States be flown at half-staff effective immediately until sunset, December 9, 2013,'” Clark wrote. “Nelson Mandela did great things for his country and was a brave man but he was not an AMERICAN!!! The flag should be lowered at our Embassy in S. Africa, but not here.”
Clark said the flags at the Sheriff’s Office were at half staff Friday to mourn a deceased deputy. Clark said the flag would remain at half mast Saturday to mark Pearl Harbor Day. After that, he said, he “ordered that the flag here at my office back up” (sic).
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