I Don't Care if Obama Thinks We're Stupid; Just Repeal Obamacare

David Limbaugh / Townhall Columnist

 

Instead of using this space to pretend the newly released CIA "torture" report confirms that the United States is the most evil nation in the history of the universe, I'm going to address Jonathan Gruber's confirmation that he believes we're all stupid.

Assuming you are not under any rocks or haven't been in an underground bunker without access to media, you will have heard that Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the principal architect of Obamacare, made some unflattering comments about his fellow Americans.

At a panel event last year, discussing how the administration was able to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, Gruber openly admitted that the administration deceived the American people in numerous important respects about the legislation, bragged about the administration's lack of transparency in the process and outright called the American people "stupid," which I think is arguably the least of these three sins, though it's the one getting the most airplay.

Read Gruber's own words: "You can't do it politically. You just literally cannot do it. OK?

Transparent financing and also transparent spending. I mean, this bill was written in a tortured way to make sure (the Congressional Budget Office) did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. OK? So it's written to do that. In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said healthy people are going to pay in -- you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money -- it would not have passed. ... Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass. ... Look, I wish (health economist) Mark (Pauly) was right (that) we could make it all transparent, but I'd rather have this law than not."

This week, Gruber, tail between his legs, desperately backpedaled before Congress, pretending that he didn't mean a thing he said, that he had only acted arrogantly in an effort to portray himself as a very smart cookie.

State Department Denies Media Requests for Hillary Clinton's Files

Sarah Jean Seman / Townhall Tipsheet

 

Several news outlets seeking to vet the Democratic Party’s most prominent presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, have encountered some difficulties. According to the Associated Press, the State Department is stonewalling several media organizations who have requested government documents pertaining to Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.

The Freedom of Information Act, enacted in 1966 by then president Lyndon B. Johnson, stipulates that:

“any person has a right, enforceable in court, to obtain access to federal agency records, except to the extent that such records (or portions of them) are protected from public disclosure by one of nine exemptions or by one of three special law enforcement record exclusions.”

When the State Department failed to disclose documents to Citizens United, pursuant with the law, the non-profit organization filed a FOIA lawsuit against the State Department on Wednesday. The organization's president, David Bossie, explained:

"As Citizens United conducts pre-production research for the sequel to Hillary The Movie, the State Department has stonewalled our request for public records on official taxpayer-funded travel overseas.The American people have a right to know who accompanied Secretary Clinton on these trips. Were there any big political contributors to previous or future Clinton campaigns on board? Were there any Clinton Foundation financial supporters on board? These are important questions that need to be answered, especially considering the allegations that arose regarding Commerce Department trade missions during the Clinton Administration in the 1990s.”

According to the AP, the State Department has also been avoiding its FOIA requests for years:

The AP requested copies of Clinton's full schedules and calendars from her four years as secretary of state; her department's decision to grant a special position for longtime aide Huma Abedin; Clinton's and the agency's roles in the Osama bin Laden raid and National Security Agency surveillance practices; and her role overseeing a major Defense Department contractor. The AP made most of its requests last summer, although one was filed in March 2010.

State Department spokesman Alec Gerlach claimed that the department's negligence was due to the estimated 19,000 FOIA requests it receives annually.

Whether the stonewalling was the result of dereliction of duty, or of secrecy, remains to be seen.

Obama’s Department of Justice Colluded with IRS to Target Conservatives, Pro-American Groups

Pamela Geller / Atlas Shrugs

The Department of Justice and the IRS under Obama are rogue agencies whose mission by objective is punitive action against “enemies of the leftist/Islamic state.”

I don’t know what emergency actions can be taken by the American people. But we must dig deep and take extraordinary action.

America is unlike any other nation in the world. We are not an ethnicity, a color, a creed — we are an idea, a shared value system. We came here — our fathers, grandfathers, forefathers — for an idea: freedom and individual rights. Equality for all before the law. The left, in league with enemies of freedom, has been at war against Americanism for decades. The coup is complete. If this is allowed to stand, the idea,...

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Biden tried to lecture Hirsi Ali about Islam

By Robert Spencer / Jihad Watch

 

Even though Ayaan Hirsi Ali was raised a Muslim in a Muslim country, and Joe Biden has almost certainly never opened a Qur’an, Biden believed he knew more about Islam than she did. Why?

Because her opinion of the religion was negative, and the possibility that such a view could have any merit whatsoever is inconceivable in Washington circles. Those who hold it must be ignorant.

“Ayaan Hirsi Ali fights radical Islam’s real war on women,” by Ashe Schow, Washington Examiner, December 8, 2014:

In early April of this year, Brandeis University, under pressure from student activists and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, reversed its decision to give an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a global advocate for women’s rights.

The decision was triggered by Hirsi Ali’s outspoken criticisms of Islam. The Somali-born activist has sounded alarms about the prevalence of extremism in Muslim countries and the misogyny that pervades even mainstream Islam.

During the Brandeis controversy, a CAIR spokesman called her “one of the worst of the worst of the Islam-haters in America.”

But Hirsi Ali’s warnings about Islamic extremism were quickly supported by world events, as just a week after Brandeis rescinded her honorary degree, the Islamist terrorist organization Boko Haram kidnapped more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in the first of many such abductions throughout the summer. A few months after the kidnappings began, news spread that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, another terrorist group, was selling Yazidi women into sexual slavery….

John Yoo: I Was Never Asked to Testify for Torture Report   

Bill Hoffmann / NEWSMAX

John Yoo, the ex-Justice Department official who drafted the so-called "torture memos" that guided the CIA in grilling terror suspects, says he would have happily testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that issued a damning report about the controversial interrogations, but was never asked.

"This committee, the [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein committee, chose not to interview anybody. They did not interview any of the government officials including myself. Didn't even call, didn't even ask me. I would've been happy to testify," Yoo said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"This committee, the [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein committee, chose not to interview anybody. They did not interview any of the government officials including myself. Didn't even call, didn't even ask me. I would've been happy to testify," Yoo said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

Story continues below video.

http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/John-Yoo-torture-report-Dianne-Feinstein-waterboarding/2014/12/11/id/612526/?ns_mail_uid=32379927&ns_mail_job=1599323_12122014&s=al&dkt_nbr=whbqbmy4

"This means that the report has to be bias and flawed. It's as if in a court a judge had said, 'OK, the prosecution gets to make its case and we're not going to call any witnesses and the defense never gets to show up.'"

The report — released Tuesday by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Feinstein — says the CIA misled Congress and White House officials about its interrogations of terror suspects and mismanaged a program that was far more brutal and less effective than publicly portrayed.

It told of techniques such as waterboarding, rectal feeding, forced nudity, and extended periods of confinement in a coffin-sized box in attempts to get information from suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks.

Republicans counter that Democrats knew about and approved of the techniques and are doing an about-face and slamming the CIA for political purposes. They say the release of the report endangers Americans all over the world.

CIA Director John Brennan admitted the agency made mistakes and was not prepared for the interrogation of terror suspects a decade ago — but has reformed its policies.

Brennan said the ultimate effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation techniques" used to gain information from suspects is "unknowable" even as he said the program overall provided useful information that thwarted attacks and saved lives.

Op-ed: 
A Report That Should NEVER Have Been
By: Diane Sori

"Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured."
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein

Fact: Barack HUSSEIN Obama loves NOTHING better than to apologize for America as he continuously tells the world what's wrong with this country and especially what he perceives to be wrong with our military.

And now he's done it again via the just released Senate report condemning the CIA for tactics used in 'enhanced' interrogation of the enemy. But this time his actions go beyond mere words into outright condemnation of this country as he and his fellow Democrats...thorns in the side of American patriotism and allegiance...still do NOT get that waterbording and other so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques used on islmic terrorists in the aftermath of 9/11 should be heralded and applauded NOT demeaned or condemned for there was and still is NO politically correct nor civilized way to deal with those out to kill us all.

Need I remind both Obama and his islamic sympathizing Democrats of that sunny day back in September of 2001 when life as we know it here in America changed forever. Need I remind them that on that day 3000 innocent Americans lost their lives when islam...YES islam...declared war on our county. Need I remind them of the pictures of our fellow countrymen leaping to their deaths trying to escape the fires of hell that would have engulfed them are now and forever engrained in our collective consciousness or the shock and heart-stopping moment when we gasped in horror as two buildings fell forever entombing those many of us held dear.

Sadly, I guess I do need to remind him and them of the past, as well as remind us all of today's ongoing mass executions of Christians; of women and children being burned alive; of children being beheaded; of men...including American men...being beheaded; of crucifixions; of women and gays being stoned to death; of children and women being gang raped; to name but a few. This, my dear reader, is the ongoing face of islam and it has NOT changed since 632 AD.

And the Democrats complain about a little waterboarding of the enemy...please... give me a break.

And sadly, bringing up techniques used by our people to secure information from those who did and still do these evil and vile acts is being done for NO other reason than for political fodder, political gain, and political expediency, all in a misguided attempt to pay 'We the People' back for their and Obama's mid-term shellacking of just a few short weeks ago.

Issued after months of negotiations with Obama and his people about what should or should NOT be censored (redacted), five hundred pages...including an executive summary and conclusion...out of a still-classified 6,700-page report were released. And after reviewing six million documents the committee requested and secured from the CIA...or so they claim...those investigating said they could find NO example of what the CIA called "unique, life-saving intelligence gleaned from coercive techniques."

This lynch-mob of sorts could find NO examples but you know what...who really gives a damn what they could or could NOT find as the recipients of these techniques...techniques that included sleep deprivation, slapping and slamming terrorists against walls, keeping them isolated from the general prison population for prolonged periods of time, threatening some with death, and using the technique known as 'waterboarding' on the worst of the worst (George W. Bush acknowledged in 2010 that his administration had waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and said that he would "do it again to save lives") just shows that the folks on this committee care more about the barbarians who delighted and relished in the spilling of American blood than they do about the Americans whose blood was spilled.

This committee claimed the CIA misled both Congress and the Obama White House about the use of these so-called 'enhanced' techniques...'torture' they called it...by saying they were NOT effective and did NOT produce critical information that would have led to the killing of Osama bin Laden and other known operatives. But I beg to differ for the very techniques the Democrats condemn did in fact lead to the capture of other key al-Qaida leaders and operatives thus saving the lives of countless American troops in the process.

And the troops I speak of are the very troops who had their hands tied behind their backs by Obama because he wanted them to 'win the hearts and minds' of the enemy...our enemy NOT his enemy...instead of killing those trying to kill them.

And of course Obama had to chime in when the Senate report was released and once again side with those whose bloodlines he shares for these legally used techniques were what worried this man while America's enemy cutting the heads off fellow Americans sent him running off to the golf course. By declaring these past practices...and the key word here is 'past' as these techniques are NO longer used thanks to the CIA having to cater to Obama's liberal sensibilities of having these practices discontinued when he took office...to be "contrary to our values" and pledging that, "I will continue to use my authority as president to make sure we never resort to those methods again," meaning he'll be using his infamous pen and phone to once again protect his brethren instead of protecting those he and his cronies have now placed in harm's way.

So too did 'Prince' Harry Reid chime in saying, "Not only is torture wrong, but it doesn't work...it got us nothing except a bad name." But you know what...who cares what our enemies think or say about us for its time our enemies feared us NOT laugh at us as they are doing now.

And anyway, all this is being done for revenge against those who dared to do what Obama and the Democrats will NEVER do...as in bring these barbarians to justice...and taking out Osama bin-Laden solely to win an election is NOT what I'm talking about. Also, in NO way is what was done by the CIA "a stain on our nation's history" as Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein called it, for the only stain on our nation's history is that we now have traitors amongst us who by their very actions are now helping to 'aid and abet' the enemy for the enemy now knows what we might do to certain 'key' prisoners. And know that they will surely use that knowledge against both our troops and any U.S. civilians caught within the still ongoing war zone, let alone use it as fodder for recruitment to seek their own revenge of sorts.

Thankfully, former Bush CIA officials challenged the report and so did Senate Republicans. Accusing Democrats of inaccuracies, sloppy analysis, and picking and choosing evidence to reach their predetermined conclusion, the only think I can add to all this is a statement issued by former Vice-President Dick Cheney, "The only thing I would have done differently than the Bush Administration was to kill them once we had gotten all the information we could get out of them."

And how right he is.