CALIFORNIA YANKEE tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-10619 2013-06-07T17:12:51-04:00 You Can't Make This Stuff Up! TypePad The New York times sacrifices its credibility on the Obama altar tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345213db69e201901d1c3944970b 2013-06-07T17:12:51-04:00 2013-06-10T20:05:05-04:00 Yesterday, the New York Times published a blistering editorial, titled "President Obama's Dragnet," which took President Obama to task for the massive amounts of data that the federal government routinely collects about our phone calls: Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights. Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. [Emphasis added.] Shortly after it was published, the editorial, which had been called "damning," was toned down. I was fortunate to have snipped a copy of the original version which is displayed above. The softened version changed the highlighted sentence to "The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue." That change makes a huge difference in meaning and tone. In making the change, which the Times has yet to disclose or acknowledge, the editorial board sacrificed its credibility for Obama's. One can only imagine the phone call between the editorial board and the White House (and maybe the National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping). We should not expect more from the Times. After all, when the Times first revealed the NSA terrorist surveillance program, it did so after sitting on the story for a year. Senator John Cornyn accused the Times of endangering American security to help James Risen sell his new book. And the Washington Post similarly took the Times to task. Back in those days I wasn't particularly bothered by the NSA's secret program to intercept al Qaeda communications. I don't think the program described by Attorney General Gonzales would bother me much even today. According to Gonzales, President Bush authorized a program that made electronic intercepts of contents of communications only where one party to the communication is outside the United States. That program was limited to situations where there was a reasonable basis to conclude that one party to the communication was a member of al Qaeda, affiliated with al Qaeda, or a member of an organization affiliated with al Qaeda, or working in support of al Qaeda. The untargeted and overbroad collection the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon revealed by The Guardian is a whole different matter that I cannot accept. Obama disagrees. Today he defended... Dan Spencer

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Yesterday, the New York Times published a blistering editorial, titled "President Obama's Dragnet," which took President Obama to task for the massive amounts of data that the federal government routinely collects about our phone calls:

Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. [Emphasis added.]

Shortly after it was published, the editorial, which had been called "damning," was toned down. I was fortunate to have snipped a copy of the original version which is displayed above. The softened version changed the highlighted sentence to "The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue." That change makes a huge difference in meaning and tone. In making the change, which the Times has yet to disclose or acknowledge, the editorial board sacrificed its credibility for Obama's. One can only imagine the phone call between the editorial board and the White House (and maybe the National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdropping).

We should not expect more from the Times. After all, when the Times first revealed the NSA terrorist surveillance program, it did so after sitting on the story for a year. Senator John Cornyn accused the Times of endangering American security to help James Risen sell his new book. And the Washington Post similarly took the Times to task.

Back in those days I wasn't particularly bothered by the NSA's secret program to intercept al Qaeda communications. I don't think the program described by Attorney General Gonzales would bother me much even today. According to Gonzales, President Bush authorized a program that made electronic intercepts of contents of communications only where one party to the communication is outside the United States. That program was limited to situations where there was a reasonable basis to conclude that one party to the communication was a member of al Qaeda, affiliated with al Qaeda, or a member of an organization affiliated with al Qaeda, or working in support of al Qaeda.

The untargeted and overbroad collection the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon revealed by The Guardian is a whole different matter that I cannot accept.

Obama disagrees. Today he defended his government's phone spying program.:

I came in with a healthy skepticism about these programs. My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly. We actually expanded some of the oversight, increased some of the safeguards, But my assessment and my team's assessment was that they help us prevent terrorist attacks. And the modest encroachments on privacy that are involved in getting phone numbers or duration without a name attached and not looking at content, that on net, it was worth us doing.

Some other folks may have a different assessment of that, but I think it's important to recognize that you can't have 100% security and also then have 100% privacy, and zero inconvenience. We're going to have to make some choices as a society.

You can watch Obama defend his phone spying program in this video.

Two things about Obama's weak defense of his telephone spy program. First, we can not make choices about balancing security versus privacy if everything is top secret. Second, Obama said during his first inaugural address that "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." How can he square that with what he said today?

 http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2013/06/the-new-york-times-sacrifices-its-crebibility-on-the-obama-alter.html Obama rewards Susan Rice for misleading the American people tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345213db69e20192aac2cda1970d 2013-06-05T10:48:40-04:00 2013-06-05T13:07:37-04:00 This afternoon President Obama will announce that Tom Donilon will be departing as National Security Adviser in early July and will be succeeded by United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice. The National Security Adviser position is Rice's reward for appearing on five Sunday news shows on September 16, 2012 and misleading the American people -- claiming the vicious attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, was unplanned and provoked only by an anti-Islam video. Rice's comments were so misleading that even a member in good standing of the so-called fact-checking wing of the Democrats' party, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, awarded Rice two Pinocchios. Kessler continues to "fact check" Obama's Benghazi obfuscation, including Obama's reticence to call the Benghazi incident a "terrorist attack," and Obama spokesman Carney's downplaying the State Department's involvement in redrafting the talking points. Rice's National Security Adviser appointment is really her consolation prize. She wanted to be Secretary of State, but after her participation in the Obama regime's obfuscation about what happened in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks against America, Rice would not have been confirmed. Rice will be replaced at the United Nations by Samantha Power. That's right, the same Samantha Power who served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign until she called Hillary a "monster." You can watch Joe Scarborough, Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd discuss these issues in this video from MSNBC’s "Morning Joe." Dan Spencer

This afternoon President Obama will announce that Tom Donilon will be departing as National Security Adviser in early July and will be succeeded by United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice.

The National Security Adviser position is Rice's reward for appearing on five Sunday news shows on September 16, 2012 and misleading the American people -- claiming the vicious attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, was unplanned and provoked only by an anti-Islam video.

Rice's comments were so misleading that even a member in good standing of the so-called fact-checking wing of the Democrats' party, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, awarded Rice two Pinocchios. Kessler continues to "fact check" Obama's Benghazi obfuscation, including Obama's reticence to call the Benghazi incident a "terrorist attack," and Obama spokesman Carney's downplaying the State Department's involvement in redrafting the talking points.

Rice's National Security Adviser appointment is really her consolation prize. She wanted to be Secretary of State, but after her participation in the Obama regime's obfuscation about what happened in Benghazi on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks against America, Rice would not have been confirmed.

Rice will be replaced at the United Nations by Samantha Power. That's right, the same Samantha Power who served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign until she called Hillary a "monster."

You can watch Joe Scarborough, Tom Brokaw and Chuck Todd discuss these issues in this video from MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."

 http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2013/06/obama-rewards-susan-rice-for-misleading-the-american-people.html McAuliffe's stalled electric car company salary raises funding scheme questions tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345213db69e20192aa7677f1970d 2013-05-29T09:17:45-04:00 2013-05-29T17:29:08-04:00 At this point the failures and false promises of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s electric car company, GreenTech, have been well documented. For those who need a refresher, Clinton fundraiser and party insider McAuliffe re-christened himself a 'Virginia businessman' in his second quest for the Old Dominion governorship and touted several supposed job-creating ventures on the campaign trail, one being a wood pellet firm that has yet to become operational, and another was GreenTech Automotive, which he pledged would create thousands of jobs. First, it was revealed that those promised jobs were to be created in Mississippi, not Virginia. Then, McAuliffe was caught fibbing about why the company chose to locate outside the state, claiming Virginia authorities had rejected their application before it was made clear that GreenTech had never completed its application materials. Then the revelation that Virginia officials were concerned that the company was "a visa-for-sale scheme" given its lack of a credible business plan and utilization of the EB-5 funding mechanism, which hands out U.S. visas to foreign investors (more on this later). Eventually, it came out that McAuliffe had resigned from GreenTech in December 2012 despite continuing to use his role with the company as a key talking point as he campaigned around Virginia. It is GreenTech’s participation in the EB-5 program that raises questions about why McAuliffe broke precedent and took a salary from the fledgling company. The Statement of Economic Interests released by McAuliffe in March, shows that he received at least $10,000 in salary and wages from GreenTech in 2012. On its face, this may not seem odd given that McAuliffe was the Chairman of the company during that period. However, when one considers that GreenTech was the only company McAuliffe took a salary from between 2008 and 2012, McAuliffe has a history of declining salary from organizations he’s been involved with (he did not take a salary as DNC Chairman from 2001-2005 and vowed to donate his salary during his 2009 run for governor), and $10,000 is chump change to multi-millionaire McAuliffe, it makes less sense. The requirements for businesses looking to utilize the EB-5 visa program – which grants foreign investors in U.S. companies green cards in exchange for investing $500,000 or more – include creating a minimum of "10 full-time jobs" within two years. Considering GreenTech’s failure to create jobs in any significant numbers, it begs the question: Was McAuliffe accepting a salary to enable GreenTech to be eligible for EB-5 funding? And if so, doesn’t that bear out concerns from Virginia Economic Development Partnership officials about GreenTech’s "(lack of) management expertise, (lack of) market preparation" and the potential that the company was "a visa-for-sale scheme with potential national security implications?" The only person who can answer these questions is Terry McAuliffe and to date he’s kept mum on any details concerning GreenTech’s job creation, production, and why the company has fallen so short of the projections he gleefully cited in past months. So it's unlikely he will open... Dan Spencer

At this point the failures and false promises of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s electric car company, GreenTech, have been well documented.

For those who need a refresher, Clinton fundraiser and party insider McAuliffe re-christened himself a 'Virginia businessman' in his second quest for the Old Dominion governorship and touted several supposed job-creating ventures on the campaign trail, one being a wood pellet firm that has yet to become operational, and another was GreenTech Automotive, which he pledged would create thousands of jobs. 

First, it was revealed that those promised jobs were to be created in Mississippi, not Virginia. Then, McAuliffe was caught fibbing about why the company chose to locate outside the state, claiming Virginia authorities had rejected their application before it was made clear that GreenTech had never completed its application materials. Then the revelation that Virginia officials were concerned that the company was "a visa-for-sale scheme" given its lack of a credible business plan and utilization of the EB-5 funding mechanism, which hands out U.S. visas to foreign investors (more on this later). 

Eventually, it came out that McAuliffe had resigned from GreenTech in December 2012 despite continuing to use his role with the company as a key talking point as he campaigned around Virginia.

It is GreenTech’s participation in the EB-5 program that raises questions about why McAuliffe broke precedent and took a salary from the fledgling company. 

The Statement of Economic Interests  released by McAuliffe in March, shows that he received at least $10,000 in salary and wages from GreenTech in 2012. On its face, this may not seem odd given that McAuliffe was the Chairman of the company during that period. However, when one considers that GreenTech was the only company McAuliffe took a salary from between 2008 and 2012, McAuliffe has a history of declining salary from organizations he’s been involved with (he did not take a salary as DNC Chairman from 2001-2005 and vowed to donate his salary during his 2009 run for governor), and $10,000 is chump change to multi-millionaire McAuliffe, it makes less sense.

The requirements for businesses looking to utilize the EB-5 visa program – which grants foreign investors in U.S. companies green cards in exchange for investing $500,000 or more – include creating a minimum of "10 full-time jobs" within two years. Considering GreenTech’s failure to create jobs in any significant numbers, it begs the question: Was McAuliffe accepting a salary to enable GreenTech to be eligible for EB-5 funding?  And if so, doesn’t that bear out concerns from Virginia Economic Development Partnership officials about GreenTech’s "(lack of) management expertise, (lack of) market preparation" and the potential that the company was "a visa-for-sale scheme with potential national security implications?"

The only person who can answer these questions is Terry McAuliffe and to date he’s kept mum on any details concerning GreenTech’s job creation, production, and why the company has fallen so short of the projections he gleefully cited in past months. So it's unlikely he will open up about his role in enabling his company to become "the largest project to ever depend upon the EB-5 program for at least a part of its funding," according to a Mississippi Business Journal report. 

Multiple reports from the Washington Post and others have exposed flaws and potential abuse within the EB-5 program, which has come under fire for national security implications, "fuzzy" job-creation estimates, and the charges that an inordinate number of jobs have gone to "consultants, brokers and other fee-seeking middlemen."

It would seem that raising investment funds via EB-5 is just about all that GreenTech has to show for itself. A recent report by a Virginia NBC affiliate found no evidence of any significant infrastructure or production at the company’s Mississippi site. With a number of recent incidents of fraudulent and/or failed businesses taking advantage of EB-5 to the point that investors are getting cold feet, McAuliffe needs to answer questions about his role in developing and implementing GreenTech’s funding mechanism.

Perhaps McAuliffe has perfectly reasonable explanations on all of these points. But it seems unlikely given his reticence and changing stories on the issue. Until McAuliffe comes clean, Virginia voters (and reporters) should be asking him questions like: How much did you earn from GreenTech? Did you take that salary so the company would qualify for the EB-5 visa program? And all of your activities with regard to GreenTech were above board, why won’t you release your tax returns to prove it?

Or does Terry McAuliffe not think that Virginians deserve a governor with a commitment to honesty and transparency? The answer thus far is a resounding "no."

 http://cayankee.blogs.com/cayankee/2013/05/mcauliffe-salary-from-stalled-electric-car-company-raises-questions-about-funding-scheme.html Michele Bachmann won't seek reelection in 2014 tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d8345213db69e20192aa7510b6970d 2013-05-29T06:40:58-04:00 2013-05-29T08:28:37-04:00 Minnesota Republican Representative Michele Bachmann announced Wednesday that she would not seek a fifth term in Congress next year: My good friends: After a great deal of thought and deliberation, I have decided next year I will not seek a fifth congressional term to represent the wonderful people of the Sixth District of Minnesota. After serious consideration, I am confident that this is the right decision. Bachmann's announcement was made in an eight-and-a-half-minute video during which she emphatically stated her decision was "not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign or my former presidential staff." The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating allegations that her presidential campaign may have improperly used money raised by one of her House-affiliated political action committees to help her presidential bid in the run up to the Iowa presidential caucuses in January 2012. She also said her decision was "not in any way influenced by any concerns about my being reelected to Congress." Bachmann was being challenged again by Democrat Jim Graves, whom she defeated by fewer than 5,000 votes, or 1.2 percent last November. Bachmann left the door open to future political campaigns: "There is no future option or opportunity, be it directly in the political area or otherwise, that I won’t be giving serious consideration if it can help save and protect our great nation for future generations." You can watch Bachmann's video announcement below: Bachmann has served in the House since 2007, is the first Republican woman to represent of Minnesota in Congress, and is the founder of the TEA Party Caucus. Dan Spencer

Minnesota Republican Representative Michele Bachmann announced Wednesday that she would not seek a fifth term in Congress next year:

My good friends: After a great deal of thought and deliberation, I have decided next year I will not seek a fifth congressional term to represent the wonderful people of the Sixth District of Minnesota. After serious consideration, I am confident that this is the right decision.

Bachmann's announcement was made in an eight-and-a-half-minute video during which she emphatically stated her decision was "not impacted in any way by the recent inquiries into the activities of my former presidential campaign or my former presidential staff." The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating allegations that her presidential campaign may have improperly used money raised by one of her House-affiliated political action committees to help her presidential bid in the run up to the Iowa presidential caucuses in January 2012.

She also said her decision was "not in any way influenced by any concerns about my being reelected to Congress." Bachmann was being challenged again by Democrat Jim Graves, whom she defeated by fewer than 5,000 votes, or 1.2 percent last November.

Bachmann left the door open to future political campaigns:

"There is no future option or opportunity, be it directly in the political area or otherwise, that I won’t be giving serious consideration if it can help save and protect our great nation for future generations."

You can watch Bachmann's video announcement below: