http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-07/washington-dc-harlem-shake-down

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=218486

Why We Are Utterly DONE As A Nation

It's much worse than I thought folks.
Remember that $850 billion number for FY 2011 on medical care that I've been tossing around?
I was sent a link to the actual FY 2012 "as spent" figures.
The numbers are worse than they appear. Materially worse.
Here's the reality: Medicare and Medicaid services, including the "slide it to the states" for Medicaid, spent $1.053 trillion in FY2012.
We took in just $201 billion in Medicare taxes.
That is, the government is spending five times what it is taking in on health care.
Where is the discrepancy? In the Medicaid department; the "as spent" figures, unless you look real closely, hide the giveaway to the states. But that of course is BS as there is no magical money fairy.
For Social Security (including disability) the government took in $572 billion in FY2012. But the government spent $773 billion on both retirement and disability, or 35% more than it taxed.
That's not the only shocker. We gave $77 billion to people in the form of Earned Income and Child credits in excess of tax liability -- that's the amount that we literally handed out in welfare for simply being alive.
And we did not spend $180 billion on interest either -- we spent $359 billion.
We can survive the Social Security problem.
We cannot possibly survive spending five times what we take in via Medicare taxes and lying about interest cost will blow up in our face as well.
This must stop now.

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/clowns-never-learn.html

Thursday, March 07, 2013 2:57 PM

Clowns Never Learn

President Obama said the sequester cuts would be "catastrophic".

Reader Tim Wallace pinged me with a few comments to help put those catastrophic cuts in perspective.

Tim asks: If you were making $50,000 per year in 2007 and you income went up to $70,000 (a 40% increase in six years), would a $1,750 pay cut to $68,250 be catastrophic?

Apparently it would be for the Obama administration. The federal budget is up 40% from 2007 and the Democrats and President are telling us they cannot afford to cut spending 2.5%.

Not that the "cuts" are real in the first place. All that is really being cut is a decrease in the projected increase. A chart of Federal Spending from PJMedia will add another perspective.

Federal Spending in Inflation-Adjusted Terms

Backing Away From Catastrophic Talk

For obvious reasons (shown above) Larry Kudlow notes The 'Catastrophic' Sequester Narrative Dies a Quick Death

However you calculate the sequester spending cuts, and however uneven they may be, the reality is that the sequester at least moves the ball in the right direction. I maintain that by reducing the government spending share of GDP, the sequester is pro-growth.

The White House and the CBO are predicting a 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent decline in GDP, post-sequester, and a loss of 750,000 jobs. All this from a spending reduction of roughly 2.4 percent over the next ten years, in which Uncle Sam's spending growth will be $44.8 trillion rather than $46 trillion.

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and other demand-siders have called for a slow, gradual federal-spending reduction. Well, that's exactly what they're going to get. The first fiscal year of sequester will see $44 billion in spending cuts, which is about one quarter of 1 percent of GDP. That's pretty gradual.

And compare that $44 billion 2013 spending cut (most of which is slower baseline growth, not a cut in spending levels) to a roughly $150 billion 2013 tax hike. Hmm, let me get this right: It's okay to raise taxes, because that won't hurt the economy, but it's not okay to cut spending, because that will lower output?

And while the business sector has survived to become highly profitable, the federal sector has become bloated, edging ever closer to debt bankruptcy.

Oh, regarding Team Obama's doom-and-gloom economic forecast, hearken back to 2009 when the White House economic gurus predicted 3 to 4 percent real economic growth in recovery, with unemployment dropping below 6 percent. That, presumably, would have been driven by a roughly $1 trillion spending increase. But instead we got the weakest recovery in modern times going back to 1947 -- an anemic 2 percent economy and unemployment just a shade below 8 percent. The trillion-dollar stimulus never panned out.

If Keynesian spending was going to work, it would have already worked.

So maybe we should try something new. Let's lower spending and free up resources for the innovative private sector, and then let's see if the results are better. I'm betting, as did deceased Nobel-prize winners Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and James Buchanan, that as the government sector shrinks, private economic growth expands.

The Republicans are right to stick to their guns on budget cuts. And if President Obama expects to point his finger at the GOP for an economic-sequester catastrophe, he's going to be mistaken.

Keynesian and Monetarist Clowns Never Learn

Kudlow says "If Keynesian spending was going to work, it would have already worked."

Indeed. Yet clowns want more and more, even though Japan proved in spades how foolish Keynesian and Monetarist policies are. See In Praise of Theft and Fraud (But Not Deceit).

Bernanke (a known QE Monetarist clown) now proudly wears two clown hats with his intrusion into the fiscal policy debate. Clown never learn, they just keep trying bigger and bigger doses of what clearly doesn't.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/03/clowns-never-learn.html#FaOuSpZsympozlte.99

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2013/03/07/rand-pauls-filibuster-vs-republican-wining-and-dining-with-obama

( shows how the DC establishment game is played out - Uni-Party based on continued reckless spending and endless war , right out in the open... )

Blog Buzz: GOP Establishment Charms While Tea Party Filibusters

The blogosphere reacts to Paul's filibuster and President Obama's dinner with other Senate Republicans

By TERESA WELSH

March 7, 2013 RSS Feed Print

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., leaves the floor of the Senate after his filibuster of the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director on Capitol Hill in Washington, early Thursday, March 7, 2013.

Members of the Republican Party took two remarkably different approaches in dealing with their opposition to President Barack Obama and his polices on Wednesday. Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky conducted an almost 13-hour filibuster against CIA director nominee John Brennan to demand more information on the administration's drone policies, while Republican senators including John McCain and Lindsey Graham had dinner with Obama at a Washington hotel. The blogosphere reacted to the two very different political strategies of an increasingly divided party:

Jana Brock of PolicyMic said the attention garnered by Paul's filibuster shows the value of the tactic and demonstrated his growing position of influence within the GOP:

In just 24 hours, it has rejuvenated a Republican Party brought down by the fiscal cliff debacle and other partisan garbage.

This is proof that the GOP is innovating. Paul spoke at CPAClast year and will be a speaker again this year. But he's riding a wave right now. He is fighting back against a brutish Democratic establishment and is at this moment, beating them at their own game.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Tea Party.]

Noah Rothman at Mediaite too said the filibuster showed the promise of the future of the conservative movement and its opposition to Obama's agenda, and called Paul a "martyr:"

Before Wednesday, however, Paul spoke for a narrow slice of the Republican Party's coalition. Today, he speaks for a reinvigorated GOP base. But as the hours wore on, another phenomenon began to take shape—Paul's ultimately unsuccessful efforts to rein in the president spoke directly to the forgotten millions of Americans wary of the ever-expanding scope of the unconstrained global war on terror. Paul offered himself up as something of a martyr. His voice, once lonely, grew in stature as his Republican colleagues—one after the next—shared his demand for redress from the White House, though all knew that would not be forthcoming. It was poetic. It was romantic. What may be most important, it reframed Congressional Republicans. All of the sudden, they were fighting for a cause with self-evident nobility that requires no public education campaign: life, liberty, and due process. In filibustering, Paul chipped away at the monopoly on romance that the left has enjoyed for more than a century.

Margaret Hartmann from the Daily Intelligencer writes that Paul's "stunt" fed into raising his national profile and elevated his opposition to Obama and his drone policies:

Yet, overall the stunt was a massive success for the Kentucky senator. Aside from accomplishing his stated goal of drawing more attention to the Obama administration's suggestion that it has the right to take out a U.S. citizens on American soil in a drone attack (though Attorney General Eric Holder says they probably won't), Rand drew bipartisan support and ensured that he'd be featured on every news program along with clips from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—which is definitely a plus for a potential 2016 presidential candidate.

Jass Shaw of Hot Air, however, was critical of Paul's use of the filibuster, saying the senator was drawing attention for the wrong reasons and a subtler approach may have indeed been more effective:

Mission accomplished, to borrow a now infamous phrase. But the filibuster wound on for almost another eight hours. Why? With the vote called off, the job was done. And there's only so many times you can rephrase the same set of arguments over and over again before it gets repetitive. I was left feeling as if the continued steamrolling was beginning to detract from the popular appeal of the senator's decision to climb this mountain in the first place. Might it not have been better to yield the floor, save his voice and energy, and take it up again in the morning? And having thwarted the vote once—a vote which, let's face it, is going to take place at some point—might he not simply use the mass appeal and attention drawn by the first five hours to gin up some serious PAC money and run national ads to bring more public attention to the question of drones and US citizens defined as enemy combatants? In the end, I simply don't know why it went on for as long as it did.

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Republican Party.]

And Chris Cillizza of The Fix wonders why the filibuster got so much attention in the first place, because when it comes down to it, "It's the economy, stupid:"

Ask the average American what issue he/she cares most about and two-thirds will say the economy. If one percent say drones, we would be—somewhat—surprised. It's simply not an issue that galvanizes large numbers of the American public and, as we noted above, to the extent people pay any attention to drones, they are supportive of using them. So, while President Obama was making nice—or at least sharing a meal—with 11 Republican Senators and reaching out to Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to talk about the economy, the GOP was talking about drones. And, in case you forgot, the party still lacks a big-picture vision on the way forward regarding the country's debt and spending issues that goes beyond simply saying: "No new taxes."

Steve Benen from the Maddow Blog noted that the groundswell of support around Paul wasn't as much about supporting Paul than it was opposing Obama:

But as Paul's allies grew throughout the day, it was hard not to wonder whether at least some of his new-found friends endorsed him on the substance or whether "Stand with Rand" had become a temporary fad on the right, driven by Republicans who were simply happy to see President Obama's national security agenda facing criticism, even if they happen to agree with President Obama's national security agenda.

...

There's room for a real debate about the balance between civil liberties and national security, and if Paul helps spark that conversation, I'd be delighted. But I'll be eager to know just how much yesterday's spectacle changed minds and how much of it was about putting on a show.

[See a collection of political cartoons on Congress.]

Sean Hannity gets to the heart of the differences between Paul's stunt and the dinner between Obama and Senate Republicans:

There is also something interesting happening as a result of Rand Paul's filibuster and that is a seeming divide within the Republican Party. Today, Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain took to the floor of the Senate to chastise Rand Paul for his "political stunt" and express disappointment with Republican colleagues who supported him. McCain says, "If Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids. I don't think what happened yesterday is helpful to the American people."

If anything, Rand Paul managed to bring to the forefront an issue that most in the mainstream media haven't really covered. Politically, the groundswell of support for Senator Rand Paul, particularly on Twitter, was remarkable. Perhaps this is just the type of principled leadership that conservative Americans have been craving, though some within the Republican leadership apparently beg to differ.

Michael Crowley at Swampland notes that McCain and Graham have long approached politics from a different angle than the Tea Party:

Tea Party activists still haven't forgiven Graham for the way he played footsie with Obama early in the President's first term on issues ranging from immigration to climate change to closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp. Back then, Graham almost seemed to revel in defying his party's base. "Everything I'm doing now ... is completely opposite of where the Tea Party movement's at," Graham told the New York Times in June 2010. He called the movement "just unsustainable" and said, "It will die out." It didn't, of course, and Graham has since backed away from his conciliatory positions.

...

But in Washington you can smack someone with one hand while extending the other for a handshake. Which is why McCain and Graham are keen to make it clear they carry no grudge against Obama. "I've been the same way with other Presidents. I called for the resignation of Rumsfeld over Iraq," McCain says. "It's not personal," Graham says. "This is a business to me. You disagree on Monday, and on Tuesday you work together."

[Check out our editorial cartoons on President Obama.]

Steve Benen of the Maddow Blog doubts the goodwill dinner is really an indication that Washington is ready to work together:

[T]here's a predictable trajectory to this process that we've seen before. I hate to sound like a cynic, but consider the usual pattern: a Republican says, "We demand President Obama support X." The White House says, "Fine, we're willing to put X on the table." At which point Republicans respond, "We no longer accept X; and now demand Obama support Y."

I'm glad the participants at last night's dinner had a good time, and if some GOP senators learned something about the president's offer they did not previously know, it was probably time well spent. But are Republicans now (or will they ever be) open to new revenue? Can they apply savings from closed tax loopholes to deficit reduction instead of more tax cuts? Will their desire for a deal outweigh their fear of a primary challenge?

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones also questioned the practical implications of Obama's meal with Republicans:

I doubt very much that it will accomplish anything. LBJ's legendary schmoozing, the touchstone for this kind of thing, has always been overhyped, but even at the height of his powers he would have had little luck with the kind of Congress Obama has to deal with. It's true that there have long been a few Republican senators willing to break ranks on taxes, but there's little reason to think the rest of them will be swayed by any kind of sweet talk or detailed white papers. And that goes double for the House. It's just not in the cards. This stuff is driven by policy and ideology, not by personalities.

Shared sacrifice - the point of the sequester is we have to cut spending , right ? But not spending everywhere or for everyone.....

http://usdailyreview.com/in-spite-sequester-tsa-gets-new-uniforms

In Spite Sequester, TSA Gets New Uniforms

Posted on 06 March 2013 by kprice

by US Daily Review.

The impending sequester did not prevent the TSA from acting in late February to seal a $50-million deal to purchase new uniforms for its agents–uniforms that will be partly manufactured in Mexico.The TSA employs 50,000 security officers, inspectors, air marshals and managers. That means that the uniform contract will pay the equivalent of $1,000 per TSA agent over the course of the year.

See Full Story by Liz Harrington: http://cnsnews.com/news/article/tsa-sealed-50-million-sequester-eve-deal-buy-new-uniforms

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/06/sequester-911-compensation_n_2821425.html

WASHINGTON -- The victims and survivors of 9/11 are being forced again to sacrifice -- this time by the sequestration budget cuts that are dipping into revenue set aside for ailing first responders and using it for deficit reduction.

When the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act passed Congress at the end of 2010, the bill's authors carefully made the $4.3 billion fund one of the federal government's "mandatory" spending programs, shielded from the annual budget-making process and the usual politics involved.

The law included two new, dedicated revenue streams dreamed up by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) that not only pay for a compensation fund and treatment program, but also spin off some surplus to cut the deficit by $433 million.

One source is a visa fee, and the other is a tariff on foreign companies that get federal government business, but whose own nations don't let United States companies get their government contracts. Neither of those revenue streams are affected by sequestration, and the funds continue to flow into the U.S. Treasury at the same rate. Yet sequestration increases the take the federal government is siphoning off -- this year by about $27 million.

The effect is to dock cash meant for victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, and use it to pay the nation's other bills.

“Nothing exemplifies this unbalanced and irresponsible approach to deficit reduction more than asking our heroes who have already sacrificed so much to sacrifice yet again,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the act's sponsors who along with Schumer and other members of the New York delegation are trying to persuade other leaders to spare the 9/11 funds.

“The Zadroga Act fully pays for itself, reduces the deficit by over $400 million and would be immune from the sequester if not for the technicality of when it was signed into law," Gillibrand said, referring to language in the sequestration law that exempted health funds for nuclear workers and others that had passed earlier than Zadroga.

"First responders have already been to 12 funerals this year alone for brave heroes who got sick at Ground Zero -- they deserve to be treated as more than a technicality," she said. "Our 9/11 heroes who answered the call of duty and risked their lives should be treated with the same dignity as our veterans. It's now time for Congress to do the right thing and exempt this vital program from the sequester just like 6 other similar programs."

Gillibrand and Schumer have filed a bill to fix the problem, but its prospects are far from certain. They could try to bring it to a vote on the Senate floor, or add it to another bill as an amendment, perhaps the measure working its way through Congress currently to fund the government after March 27.

If the sequestration remains in force for the Zadroga Act, it could slow contracts in the $1.5 billion treatment program to help people sickened by their work to recover after 9/11. The larger impact would likely be to the compensation program. It is not clear that the $2.7 billion set aside will be adequate for the thousands of people expected to be eligible. The cuts would also make it more difficult for the 9/11 compensation fund's special master to figure out how to divide payments not knowing how the remaining years of sequestration will play out.

All told, the cuts would approach $200 million if sequestration is not altered.

Silly ass PR cuts like this but the real moolah in foreign aid keeps on rolling ....

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/03/05/its-come-to-this-sequestration-forces-cancellation-of-white-house-tours/

It’s come to this: Sequestration forces cancellation of … White House tours

POSTED AT 4:41 PM ON MARCH 5, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

I was prepared to laugh it off but then I found out they’re canceling tours at Joe Biden’s home too. Obviously it’s serious.

No, really, though, our president’s a joke:

The White House announced Tuesday that it was canceling all public tours of the president’s home because of the sequester spending cuts.

“Due to staffing reductions resulting from sequestration, we regret to inform you that White House Tours will be canceled effective Saturday, March 9, 2013 until further notice. Unfortunately, we will not be able to reschedule affected tours,” the White House said in an email.

The Daily Caller’s right, of course, that this is a particularly ham-handed demonstration of the “Fireman First” approach to budget cuts — so ham-handed that I wonder if it’ll backfire on O. It’s an invitation to his critics to riff on what the executive branch could do without in lieu of torpedoing tours for the public. The most popular one on Twitter as I write this is cutting Air Force One’s expenses by having His Highness take a break from jetting around the country to campaign against the sequester. One less hour in the air meansan extra $180,000 for tour guides. I prefer Jim Geraghty’s idea to furlough the White House chefs instead and let The One subsist on baloney sandwiches for awhile. The Tea Party Patriots have a thoughtful suggestion too: Instead of paying $50 million for new TSA uniforms, how about making airport security “stretch” the clothes they’ve got for another year just like so many American families have had to do during the golden age of Obamanomics?

There’s a problem with each of those options, though: They impose no pain on the public, which is the whole point of Obama’s sequester strategy. That’s why he rejected the GOP’s offer to grant him extra flexibility in deciding what to cut, that’s why Janet Napolitano decided to save money by easing off on immigration-law enforcement (with more to come!), that’s why not even something as petty as White House tours can be spared. If the public doesn’t end up suffering, in ways great or small, to remind them that the feds must never, ever cut spending unless Democrats approve, then he’s lost. Says Conn Carroll:

For perhaps the first time in the history of the United States, it is in the political interest of a president to inflict maximum pain on the American people. Obama could have spent the last 16 months preparing to mitigate sequestration’s impact on the American people, as any responsible manager would have. Instead, he has done the opposite, explicitly ordering government agencies not to prepare for the worst. And he has refused all Republican efforts to pass legislation that would minimize the sequester’s pain.

“The president understands that to get anything done, he needs a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives,” Rep. Steve Israel,D-N.Y., told The Post “To have a legacy in 2016, he will need a House majority in 2014, and that work has to start now.”

Bearing that in mind, go read the e-mail at the Washington Times that an Agriculture Department got from higher up the chain when he asked what he could do to mitigate the effect of cuts. Exit quotation: “[I]t is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

But the foreign aid boondoggles go onward at a time when Americans are told to suck it up...... Why isn't this aid subject to across the board cuts ?

http://beforeitsnews.com/economics-and-politics/2013/03/obamas-billion-dollar-giveaway-to-the-muslim-brotherhood-2450438.html

In the past few weeks, Americans have been subjected to a barrage of doomsday predictions regarding the disaster that would befall us should the sequester come to pass. Many were rightly incensed, then, that last Thursday, only one day before the “devastating” sequester cuts were scheduled to kick in, newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the Obama administration will be giving $60 million to a group of Syrian rebels fighting Bashsar Assad.

This hypocrisy was quickly followed up with an announcement on Sunday by Kerry that the administration will be giving Egypt’s increasingly anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood government $250 million in return for promises of economic reform—which will rise to $1 billion if that reform is deemed successful.

Kerry made the first announcement, on Syrian rebel aid, while attending an international conference on Syria in Rome. After asserting that Syrian President Bahsar Assad is “out of time and must be out of power,” Kerry revealed that the United States will be sending food rations known as M.R.E.s, as well as medicine to the rebels, via their central military headquarters. American advisors will supervise the distribution. Other countries will send additional aid, and Kerry is convinced the “totality” of that effort will impress Assad.

The rationale behind the funding is that something must be done to counter the extremist rebel factions who have better-organized networks for providing political and humanitarian services to Syrians resisting the Assad regime.

The aid will be given to the Syrian Opposition Coalition, the ostensible counter-weight to the Islamist al-Nusra Front, deemed a terrorist organization by the United States. “We need to help them to be able to deliver basic services and to protect the legitimate institutions of the state,” said Kerry. “You have a vulnerable population today that needs to be able to resist the pleas to engage in extremism.”

Despite Kerry’s announcement, such resistance isn’t costing American taxpayers a total of $60 million. That money is earmarked for essential services, such as sanitation and education, in areas currently controlled by rebels. Another $50 million dollars has already been spent providing assistance, such as communications equipment, to activists and local councils. Both amounts are in addition to the $385 million this administration has provided in humanitarian aid to the war-weary Syrian population.

and Israel aid and secret bunker programs as well....

Why Is The US Spending Hundreds Of Millions On These Secret Israeli Bunkers?

Robert Johnson | Mar. 7, 2013, 1:50 AM | 54,840 | 52

Photoshop/Wikimedia

Last year it was announced the U.S. was looking to build a secret underground complex in Israel. On February 13 a contract was awarded to Conti Corp Federal Services in Edison, NJ to complete the project.

Their bid of almost $63 million came in well below the possible $100 million set aside for the project.

Conti's bid went toward building five underground levels and six above ground buildings that they have 900 days from February 13 to complete.

The U.S. government then issued another request for proposal December 28 to construct Site 81 Phase II. Also in Israel, also partially underground, this project calls for up to $100,000,000 to refinish six underground facilities and some currently occupied surface buildings.

Walter Pincus from the Washington Post fleshed out the original Proposal construction project, called Site 911 in November.

That nearly $63 million project awarded to Conti can be built only by workers from specific countries with proper security

clearances.

When complete the well-guarded compound will have five levels buried underground and six additional outbuildings on the above grounds, within the perimeter. At about 127,000 square feet, the first three floors will house classrooms, an auditorium, and a laboratory — all wedged behind shock resistant doors — with radiation protection and massive security.

Only one gate will allow workers entrance and exit during the project and that will be guarded by only Israelis.

The bottom two floors are smaller, according to the full line of schematics uploaded to the Army's Acquisition Business Web Site, and possibly used for equipment and storage

As impressive as the American design features already are, Ada Karmi-Melamede Architects will decorate the entire site with rocks it chooses, but are paid for by the contractor, and provide three outdoor picnic tables.

Pincus also found this detailed description of the mezuzahs that will adorn every door in the facility:

These mezuzas, notes the [US Army] Corps, “shall be written in in-erasable ink, on . . . un-coated leather parchment” and be handwritten by a scribe “holding a written authorization according to Jewish law.” The writing may be “Ashkenazik or Sepharadik” but “not a mixture” and “must be uniform.”

Also, “The Mezuzahs shall be proof-read by a computer at an authorized institution for Mezuzah inspection, as well as manually proof-read for the form of the letters by a proof-reader authorized by the Chief Rabbinate.” The mezuza shall be supplied with an aluminum housing with holes so it can be connected to the door frame or opening. Finally, “All Mezuzahs for the facility shall be affixed by the Base’s Rabbi or his appointed representative and not by the contractor staff.”

Pincus finds the “complex facility with site development challenges” requiring services that include “electrical, communication, mechanical/ HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning] and plumbing” requirements telling; and along with the fact that the contractor must posses a U.S. or Israeli Secret Security Clearance, he believes this phase to be a secure

command center.

Pulitzer Prize winning, Yale grad, born in 1932 whose worked intelligence and media in D.C. since 1955 closes his piece with these shadowy words.

"The purpose of Site 911 is [un] clear." Our calls to the project leader for Site 81, Michael Pearson, sent us to a disconnected number and we are awaiting an email reply.

http://www.israel.com/news/hagel-tells-barak-us-will-keep-funding-israeli-missile-defense

Hagel tells Barak US will keep funding Israeli missile defense

Despite financial constraints, administration will maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge, new secretary of defense promises in warm first confab with foreign counterpart...

Catharsis Ours

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Washington DC does its version of the Harlem Shake ( down the taxpayer... ) Sequester this they all tell us !