http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-29/wapos-modest-proposal-dictator-obama
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/29/2013 12:09 -0500
And .....
WaPo's Modest Proposal: Dictator Obama
"It’s time to put that power back where it belongs," explains Jonathan Zimmerman in today's Washington Post, "Barack Obama should be allowed to stand for re election just as citizens should be allowed to vote for — or against — him. Anything less diminishes our leaders and ourselves." The 22nd Amendment, limiting the Presidential term, according to Zimmerman, reflected "a shocking lack of faith in the common sense and good judgment of the people." Of course, in the increasingly 'entitled' America, it would only cost a few hundred million to bribe all the newly downgraded Middle-to-Lower class Americans with Obamaphones in order to finally get a "dictatorial democracy" by indirectly funding the lower common denominator with $400 in free money every election cycle.
I’ve been thinking about Kilgore’s comments as I watch President Obama, whose approval rating has dipped to 37 percent in CBS News polling — the lowest ever for him — during the troubled rollout of his health-care reform. Many of Obama’s fellow Democrats have distanced themselves from the reform and from the president. Even former president Bill Clinton has said that Americans should be allowed to keep the health insurance they have....Or consider the reaction to the Iran nuclear deal. Regardless of his political approval ratings, Obama could expect Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and John McCain (Ariz.) to attack the agreement. But if Obama could run again, would he be facing such fervent objections from Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.)?Probably not. Democratic lawmakers would worry about provoking the wrath of a president who could be reelected. Thanks to term limits, though, they’ve got little to fear.Nor does Obama have to fear the voters, which might be the scariest problem of all. If he chooses, he could simply ignore their will. And if the people wanted him to serve another term, why shouldn’t they be allowed to award him one?...the GOP moved to codify it in the Constitution in 1947, when a large Republican majority took over Congress. Ratified by the states in 1951, the 22nd Amendment was an “undisguised slap at the memory of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” wrote Clinton Rossiter, one of the era’s leading political scientists. It also reflected “a shocking lack of faith in the common sense and good judgment of the people,” Rossiter said....“I think our people are to be safely trusted with their own destiny,” Sen. Claude Pepper (D-Fla.) argued in 1947. “We do not need to protect the American people with a prohibition against a president whom they do not wish to elect; and if they wanted to elect him, have we the right to deny them the power?”It’s time to put that power back where it belongs. When Ronald Reagan was serving his second term, some Republicans briefly floated the idea of removing term limits so he could run again. The effort went nowhere, but it was right on principle. Barack Obama should be allowed to stand for re election just as citizens should be allowed to vote for — or against — him. Anything less diminishes our leaders and ourselves.
It was only yesterday that we highlighted what happens when the entitled elect themselves... a brutal hangover," and the dismal waste of the Obamaphone program (among many others) suggests we are well down that route:
As Heritage reports, free cell phones for low-income Americans, one of the fastest growing welfare programs in the United States, is—by the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) own admission—rife with “waste, fraud and abuse.” And who is paying for these free Obamaphones? If you have a phone subscription, you are....According to figures supplied by the FCC to The Wall Street Journal,41 percent of subscribers were unable to prove their eligibility for the program.Indifference to abuse of the program is appalling....Lifeline has mutated from a program designed to help the needy into a glorified corporate subsidy. Abuse of the program will continue while the FCC scrambles to fix it.An all-expense-paid cell phone, courtesy of those who actually pay for their own service, is not a human right; it’s an insult to struggling families who are reminded every month that their money is lost in yet another sloppy government slush fund.
OBAMA REFERS TO TEA PARTY MEMBERS AS 'TEA-BAGGERS'
President Barak Obama used the sexually vulgar expression “tea-baggers” to refer to tea party members in a letter he wrote to a Texas grade school Teacher. The term “tea-baggers” has been used to ridicule the tea party, a group of American activists who advocate reducing taxes, shrinking the size of government, and returning to traditional family values. Obama was replying to a letter he received from Thomas Ritter, a 5th grade school teacher from Irving, Texas.
In his letter to the President, Ritter expressed deep concern that the Affordable Care Act was a law that “caused such a divisive, derisive and toxic environment.” Ritter said that he wrote to the President with great trepidation because he feared “retribution.” He asserted, “The reality is that any citizen that disagrees with your administration is targeted and ridiculed.” Moreover, Ritter begged the President to, “Do the right thing not the political thing. Suggest a bill that Americans can support.”
Ritter went on to accuse the President of making fun of "tea-baggers” and blamed White House Press Secretary Jay Carney for ridiculing Sarah Palin, noting that it was “beneath the dignity of the White House” to engage in this kind of political targeting. Obama defended himself, writing, “I... appreciate your concern about the toxic political environment right now. I do have to challenge you, though, on the notion that any citizen that disagrees with me has been 'targeted and ridiculed' or that I have 'made fun' of tea-baggers.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-29/hit-and-miss-obamacare-site-still-frustrating-at-deadline.html
Hit-and-Miss Obamacare Site Still Frustrating at Deadline
By Shannon Pettypiece, Alison Vekshin & Mark Niquette - Nov 29, 2013 1:05 PM ET
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Ines Leyva works with Marlene Portuondo, an insurance agent with Sunshine Life and Health Advisors, as she looks to purchase an insurance policy under the Affordable Care Act at the store setup in the Westland Mall on Nov. 14, 2013 in Hialeah, Florida.
The Obama administration has said the government’s troubled healthcare.gov websitewill function smoothly by the end of tomorrow. Those paid to help enroll Americans in Obamacare remain doubtful.
Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg White House correspondent Julianna Goldman reports on President Barack Obama’s daily checks on the progress of improvements to the Healthcare.gov website and expectations for improvements by this Friday’s deadline. She speaks on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers.”
From Florida to Alaska, the “navigators” designated to sign people up for insurance under the U.S. health-care overhaul say that while the online federal insurance exchange has improved in many ways since its Oct. 1 debut, outages and errors continue to prevent many from using it to buy their coverage.
The site is “kind of hit and miss,” said Karen Basha Egozi of the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, a U.S. designated navigator. “There have definitely been more hits lately than in the past. But I know there are cases where people still get locked out when they try to purchase a plan.”
Tyann Boling, chief operating officer of Enroll Alaska, a unit of Anchorage-based Northrim Benefits Group LLC, said she now rates the site a four out of 10, with 10 being fully functional. “It’s got a long ways to go,” she said.
Healthcare.gov, which serves 36 states including Florida and Alaska, was designed to help uninsured Americans buy new health plans by March 31, as required under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Delays and software problems, though, have plagued the site since its rollout, giving support to the law’s harshest critics.
Weekend Fixes
Enroll Alaska has signed up 52 people in health plans out of about 2,200 who have requested help since the site opened. Boling said she is mostly successful on the site with simple cases, like a single adult making a set income. For uncommon financial situations, “the website is not able to function at the capacity yet that capture the complications of people’s lives,” she said.
On a Nov. 27 conference call with reporters, Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, reiterated the administration’s pledge to have the site working smoothly for “the vast majority of users” by Dec. 1. Technicians working on the site will continue making repairs through the weekend, she said.
The government has added storage capacity to the data center and boosted processing power so it should be able to handle 800,000 visits a day and 50,000 users simultaneously, according to Bataille. Still, she said there will likely continue to be unexpected outages, periods of slowness and times when traffic is heavier than the site can handle.
Obama’s Legacy
President Barack Obama said the health-care law will “be a legacy I am extraordinarily proud of,” during an interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters airing today on “20/20.”
“Obviously my most recent concern has been that my website’s not working,” Obama said, according to a summary of the interview by ABC News. “We’re evaluating why it is exactly that I didn’t know soon enough that [it] wasn’t going to work the way it needed to.”
Recent fixes have made it possible for most consumers to create an account and calculate how much their insurance will cost, according to insurance brokers and non-profit groups helping people enroll. The breakdown often comes at the final step of purchasing a plan, they said.
That’s caused some consumers to give up on the federal exchange with less than a month left for them to buy a plan that will put their coverage in effect on Jan. 1. Increasingly, people are bypassing the federal site and turning directly to insurers, even though that means they can’t get immediate access to U.S. subsidies, said Raymond Magnuson, owner of Magnuson & Associates, a Tucson, Arizona-based insurance broker.
‘Breaking Point’
“This week has become the breaking point,” Magnuson said by telephone. “I have several clients this week that have said exactly that: ‘I give up. I don’t care what the federal subsidy is. Enroll me in a plan. I’ll pay the premium.’”
In those instances, he said, they’re guaranteed coverage for Jan. 1, “but they’re giving up, in some cases, hundreds if not thousands of dollars in federal subsidies because of it.”
Those buying directly through an insurer website would still have to go through healthcare.gov to find out if they qualify for a subsidy, federal officials have said. If they’re applying with the insurer by telephone, they can apply for a subsidy separately through the federal site and have it applied to their plan. The payment then is sent directly to the insurer.
Seeking a Subsidy
While accessing the site may be easier as the result of recent software fixes, using it to figure out the actual cost of a plan can be problematic, said John Foley, supervising attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, a navigator group in Florida.
Some of the data provided on consumer subsidies has turned out to be incorrect in individual cases so people may be charged more or less than they thought. There’s no consistency, he said.
The Legal Aid Society has only managed to sign up 10 to 15 people out of “hundreds” who have come to the organization for help, according to Foley. Even those successes are questionable, he said, because the group hasn’t yet heard that anyone has received notices from their insurers confirming enrollment.
“It’s slow going,” Foley said.
Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director for the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, a navigator group, is telling people to log on in the evening after peak hours, recommending paper applications when people get frustrated and the call center, if necessary.
‘Buy it Month’
Healthcare.gov “is improving, literally week-over-week and day-over-day,” Hamler-Fugitt said. “October was homework month, November is window-shopping month. So we certainly hope December becomes ‘let’s buy it’ month.”
In the meantime, navigators are trying to keep consumers calm.
“The message we’re giving people is be patient, that yeah, whenever you have something big, it takes awhile,” said Sue Berkowitz, director of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center. “But there’s still time, and you can make this happen.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/29/world/americas/ire-in-canada-over-report-nsa-spied-from-ottawa.html?_r=0
Ire in Canada Over Report N.S.A. Spied From Ottawa
By IAN AUSTEN
Published: November 28, 2013
OTTAWA — Canadian opposition politicians expressed shock and anger on Thursday over a report that the National Security Agencyconducted widespread surveillance during a summit meeting of world leaders in Canada in June 2010.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, citing a confidential briefing paper obtained by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, reported on Wednesday night that the N.S.A. turned the United States Embassy in Ottawa into a command post for a six-day surveillance operation that coincided with the Group of 20 summit meeting in Toronto and the Group of 8 meeting in Huntsville, Ontario.
According to the document, the operation was “closely coordinated with the Canadian partner,” an apparent reference to the Communications Security Establishment Canada, a Canadian electronic surveillance agency.
Exactly who or what the N.S.A. was monitoring, however, was unclear from the CBC’s description of the report. The document does indicate, however, that the N.S.A. believed that its mandate during the summit meetings included “providing support to policy makers.”
In the House of Commons, several opposition politicians said that the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping operation violated several Canadian laws. Among other things, they pointed out, Canada’s electronic eavesdropping agency is prohibited from monitoring the communications of anyone within Canada’s borders. It is also barred from effectively contracting out that task to a foreign agency.
“Why would the prime minister allow a foreign agency to set up shop on Canadian soil and spy on some of our closest allies?” asked Joyce Murray, a Liberal member of Parliament.
The defense minister, Rob Nicholson, whose portfolio includes the eavesdropping agency, repeatedly avoided commenting on the CBC report during the question period in Parliament.
Instead, he cited the law governing the agency and noted that the independent official charged with overseeing its operations had never found that it broke any laws. In a report released in August, however, that official, Robert Décary, said that a lack of information had made it impossible for him to determine if laws had been broken in some cases.
“We know it was prohibited. The question is, did they do it?” a visibly frustrated Thomas Mulcair, the leader of the New Democratic Party, said to Mr. Nicholson, a member of the governing Conservative Party.
Another N.S.A. document leaked by Mr. Snowden in June suggested that Canada and the N.S.A. worked with British intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on world leaders at conferences in London in 2009.
Given Canada’s role in spying on world leaders in London, Wesley K. Wark, who studies intelligence issues at the University of Ottawa, said that “the obvious inference to draw” was that the N.S.A. had again spied on world leaders, this time in Canada. But he said that the relatively limited information reported by the CBC made it impossible to definitively reach that conclusion.
While Professor Wark said that a joint effort by the Canadian and American agencies to monitor other countries’ leaders at the meeting would be “quite alarming and possibly illegal,” it was also possible that the N.S.A. operation in Ottawa was nothing more than a part of the general security operations surrounding President Obama’s trip.
He also noted that the Canadian agency was not identified in the news report, leaving open the possibility that the N.S.A. worked with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada’s equivalent to the C.I.A.
In an emailed statement, the N.S.A. said that “the U.S. government has made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations.”
http://www.infowars.com/karzai-condemns-us-strike-that-killed-toddler-threatens-not-to-sign-security-deal/
Karzai condemns US strike that killed toddler, threatens not to sign security deal
RT
November 29, 2013
November 29, 2013
President Hamid Karzai has blamed the US for a drone strike on a home in southern Afghanistan that killed a 2-year-old child and wounded two women, vowing that he will not sign a key bilateral security deal if such attacks continue.
Karzai was a CIA contractor during the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan.
“This attack shows that American forces are not respecting the life and safety of Afghan people’s houses,”Karzai said in the statement Thursday. “For years, our innocent people have become victims of the war under the name of terrorism, and they have had no safety in their homes.”
Karzai made it clear that he will not sign the security agreement if such “oppressions by foreign forces continue.”
The president stated that the airstrike was suspected to have been carried out by US“pilotless aircraft”and targeted a house in Helmand Province. Karzai added that he received his information from the governor of the province, Mohammad Naem.
No details were provided by the US-led coalition about Thursday’s airstrike. But the NATO-led force in Afghanistan said it will investigate it, adding that it “deeply regrets”any civilian deaths that happened, according to Reuters.
The strike came as US and Afghanistan are in the midst of negotiating a bilateral security agreement that has so far not fleshed out the details about under what conditions US troops will stay in Afghanistan past the NATO forces’ pullout in 2014.
Last week US had thought it finalized the deal by proposing to leave 15,000 soldiers in Afghanistan to train and assist the country’s military. But, Karzai had doubts about signing the deal, expressing concerns over US meddling in Afghanistan’s internal affairs.
This week, Karzai has called on the US to cease all military operations against civilian homes and show a clear dedication to the peace process before a security pact is signed.
Karzai set the conditions in a meeting with US National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the US envoy to the region and the NATO commander in Afghanistan, Reuters reported. “President Karzai outlined new conditions for signing the agreement and indicated he is not prepared to sign the BSA promptly,” the White House said.
The conditions included returning Afghan citizens from the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay as a clear step to launch the peace process ahead of the scheduled exit of most US and NATO forces beyond 2014.
Karzai’s new conditions for a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) come after he rejected the endorsement of the security deal by an assembly of Afghan elders on Sunday. The Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, recommended Karzai to sign the agreement.
Earlier, the US government said that if the deal with Afghanistan is not signed by the end of 2013 then it will have to begin withdrawing its troops completely starting next year.
And .....
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