Obama Bundler and Solyndra Investor George Kaiser, Boasts of Milking Federal Government for Millions
Ex-Cincinnati Union Prez Pleads Guilty To Embezzling $757,000
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From Labor Union Report:
Posted September 22, 2011
Union President Pleads Guilty To Embezzling Funds
Ohio News Network
Sept. 21, 2011
CINCINNATI – A former Cincinnati union leader has pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars from employees in the Cincinnati Organized and Dedicated Employees union.
Diana Frey, 51, entered the plea Wednesday morning of one count of wire fraud and admitted that she embezzled union funds between 2005 and June 2011.
Frey faced charges of embezzling more than $757,000 from the people she was supposed to represent. Frey was the head of the CODE union and an employee with the City of Cincinnati.
Read the rest @ Ohio News Network.
LINK
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Related Link
Ohio: State Workers Fear Pay Cuts
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Other Link:
The Five Million Dollar Man
How government unions rip off the taxpayer
Excerpt:
From the president’s hometown comes an example of what he is actually supporting. The Chicago Tribune reports that an investigation it conducted with WGN-TV found “23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds.”
That’s an average of $2.4 million each, and some will rake in even more. Dennis Gannon, a former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, stands to collect some $5 million. In line for $4 million apiece are Liberato “Al” Naimoli, president of the Cement Workers Union Local 76, and James McNally, vice president of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150.
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WHO actually benefits from Obama’s giveaways to the Unions?
The members?
OR the bosses?
Money distributed throughout Unions Cosa Nostra style?
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Cosa Nostra Chart
Consigliere (Italian consigliere “counselor”, pronounced [konsiʎˈʎɛːre]) is a position in the American Mafia. The word was popularized by Mario Puzo‘s novel The Godfather(1969), and its film adaptation. In the novel, a consigliere is an adviser or counselor to the boss, with the additional responsibility of representing the don in important meetings both within the don’s crime family and with other crime families. The consigliere is a close, trusted friend and confidant, the mob’s version of an elder statesman. He is devoid of ambition and dispenses disinterested advice. This passive image of the consigliere does not correspond with what little is known of real-life consiglieri.[1]
A real-life Mafia consigliere is generally the number three person in a crime family, after don (boss) and underboss in most cases.[2] A crime family normally has only one consigliere at a time, but bosses have on occasion appointed more than one. The boss, underboss, and consigliere constitute a three-man ruling panel, or “Administration.”[3]
When a boss gives orders, he issues them in private either to the consigliere or directly to his caporegimes as part of the insulation between himself and operational acts.
LINK
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A caporegime or capodecina, usually shortened to just a capo, is a term used in the Mafia for a high ranking made member of a crime family who heads a “crew” of soldiers and has major social status and influence in the organization. Caporegime is an Italian word, which is used to signify the head of a family in Sicily, but has now come to mean a ranking member, similar to captain or sergeant. In general, the term indicates the head of a branch of an organized crime syndicate who commands a crew of soldiers and reports directly to a boss or an underboss.
LINK
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Worker Advocate Challenges Obama Labor Board Overreach in Federal Court
Mon, 09/19/2011 – 11:07 — Anthony Riedel
Worker Advocate Challenges Obama Labor Board Overreach in Federal Court
National Right to Work Foundation attorneys fight Labor Board’s decision to promote monopoly unionism in virtually every workplace in America
Washington, DC (September 16, 2011) – Today, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed a federal lawsuit challenging the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) new rules governing the notification of employee rights in the workplace.
The new rules require every employer to post incomplete information about employee rights online and in the workplace, even if they’ve never committed a violation or been accused of unfair labor practices. However, these rules do not require union officials to issue information about workers’ rights to refrain from union membership or opt out of union dues. Until the rule changes, which were implemented in late August, employers were required to post notices of workers’ rights only if a violation of labor law occurred.
National Right to Work Foundation attorneys believe the NLRB has exceeded its authority granted by Congress and violated free speech guarantees of the First Amendment.
More here………….
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Shock Poll: Palin Trails Obama By Only 5 Points, Beating Him Among Independent Voters…
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From Weasel Zippers:
September 21, 2011
Shock Poll: Palin Trails Obama By Only 5 Points, Beating Him Among Independent Voters…
And this isn’t some fly-by-night partisan polling firm, it’s a top-tier McClatchy-Marist poll. Now she needs to announce a decision, either in or out.
WASHINGTON — Look out President Barack Obama. Even Sarah Palin’s gaining on you.
A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds that Obama looks increasingly vulnerable in next year’s election, with a majority of voters believing he’ll lose to any Republican, a solid plurality saying they’ll definitely vote against him and most potential Republican challengers gaining on him.
Even in potential matchups where he leads, Obama in most cases has lost ground to the Republican.
The biggest gain came for Palin, the former Alaska governor who hasn’t yet announced whether she’ll jump into the fast-changing race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.
After trailing Obama by more than 20 percentage points in polls all year, the new national survey, taken Sept. 13–14, found Palin trailing the president by just 5 points, 49–44 percent. The key reason: She now leads Obama among independents, a sharp turnaround.
Overall, the gains among Republicans “speak to Obama’s decline among independents generally, and how the middle is not his right now,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the national survey.
“This will require him to find ways to either win back the middle or energize his base in ways that hasn’t happened so farm” Miringoff said
By a margin of 49 percent to 36 percent, voters said they definitely plan to vote against Obama, according to the poll. Independents by 53 percent to 28 percent said they definitely plan to vote against him.
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Sarah Palin/Allen West 2012
CASA de Maryland: The Illegals’ ACORN
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September 20, 2011
By: James Simpson
Accuracy in Media
Headquarters of CASA de Maryland
Note: Be sure to check out the “Radical Connections” supplement to this report which explores in detail CASA de Maryland’s extremist pedigree.
The illegal immigration debate has become an urgent focal point of American politics. Liberal politicians from the White House on down have vigorously advocated for illegal immigrant amnesty and lax border enforcement in a naked attempt to bolster prospective voter rolls.[1]
This controversy has been brewing for some time in Maryland, whose Hispanic population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010.[2] Under Governor Martin O’Malley’s sanctuary policies the state has become an illegal alien magnet.[3] The current cost of illegals in Maryland is estimated to be $1.7 billion per year, more than three-quarters of the state’s $2 billion structural deficit.[4]
Taxpayer ire overflowed this March with the passage of Maryland’s Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, granting in-state college tuition rates to illegals. A nonpartisan coalition of concerned Marylanders launched a petition drive to delay the measure and place it on the 2012 ballot as a referendum. They needed 55,736 signatures. They received twice that amount.
CASA de Maryland
The driving force behind the DREAM Act was CASA de Maryland, an increasingly vocal advocate for Maryland’s illegals. The group’s aggressive tactics and questionable dealings helped provoke the outrage that drove the DREAM Act petition to overwhelming victory. CASA’s defeat, however, did not deter them. They recruited longtime Democratic National Committee chief lawyer, Joseph E. Sandler, an attorney who specializes in harassing conservatives with frivolous litigation threats. They have now sued Maryland’s Election Commission to overturn the petition.[5]
CASA receives about 40 percent of its funding from Maryland state and local governments—almost $5 million of taxpayer dollars in 2010—and spends most of it lobbying for illegal immigrant perks and exceptions. Their recent lawsuit is a blatant attempt to derail the democratic process itself. So it is a fair question to ask: what is CASA de Maryland?
CASA de Maryland was founded by a young activist named Bette “Rainbow” Hoover. CASA’s name is a metaphor for the organization’s duplicitous nature. CASA means “house” or “home” in Spanish; however, “CASA” is actually an acronym for Central American Solidarity Association. It is more in keeping with the designs and philosophies of other Central American solidarity organizations formed at the time, like the communist-founded[6] Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).
It was incorporated on February 28, 1985, but Hoover said it actually began operating in 1983,[7] based out of Takoma Park Presbyterian Church in Takoma Park, Maryland. From its modest beginnings, CASA has grown into a multi-million dollar operation, with influence reaching to the Obama White House. It is headquartered in the newly-renovated (with $10 million in taxpayer dollars), 18,000 square foot, 28-room, Langley Park Mansion, right up the street from Takoma Park. It boasts a community center and five day-labor centers spread over a 35-mile radius from the Washington, D.C. metro area to Baltimore. Recently, CASA created a political-action arm, “CASA in Action,” based at Takoma Park Presbyterian Church, bringing CASA full circle back to where it all began.
Hoover described CASA’s early days: “We just had to do something. People were coming here who really needed help…” She said that virtually all were illegals fleeing El Salvador’s civil war. Hoover added that they decided early on to help all comers, including communist guerillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)[8].
Click here to read the complete report.
***Emphasis added***
Hat tip Trevor Loudon.
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A Point Without Partisanship — A Scandal Everyone Should Be Concerned About
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From RedState
By Erick Erickson
September 21, 2011
With the exception of CBS News, few media outlets have paid much attention to Operation Gun Walker a/k/a “Fast and Furious,” which has no relation to Vin Diesel.
The lack of media attention may be about to change. This is a huge and troublesome scandal. The left is, I think, afraid to touch it because of just how far up within the Obama Justice Department the scandal appears to go. The right has been focused more on other fights. The media is focused elsewhere. But the wind is shifting. Without throwing any partisan punches, let me just objectively get in to this business and why the left, the right, and the media should be paying attention.
I wrote about Operation Gun Walker back in March. In short, the ATF allowed Mexican drug lords to buy guns in the United States and walk them across the Mexican border. The too clever by half theory was that the American government would be able to then track the guns via their serial numbers and paint a picture of drug cartel activity by where the guns showed up.
The federal government never advised Mexico nor sought Mexico’s permission. Perversely, the ATF reported decided to then use the gun sales it authorized as evidence that the federal government needed more gun regulations.
As you might expect, the whole operation blew up in the ATF’s face. Using a Gun Walker gun, Mexican drug lords killed an American border patrol agent. Recently another murder on this side of the border turned up tied to a Gun Walker gun.
New evidence in the investigation conservative shows more than 200 murders linked to Operation Gun Walker guns.
Now, even more damning evidence is showing up in the form of secret recordings obtained by CBS News. According to the tapes, made between ATF Agent Hope MacAllister and a gun dealer named Andre Howard, Agent MacAllister admitted she had suggested the ATF hire a private investigator to dig up dirt on U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley to persuade Grassley to stop investigating the ATF.
Now forget all the partisan points for a minute. We have more than 200 deaths attributed to this operation and an ATF agent on tape saying she thought the ATF needed to dig up dirt on a U.S. Senator to stop him from investigating the ATF. At some point we all, left, right, and center, need to recognize when the inmates have taken over the asylum.
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Congressmen demand gun-running scandal documents from the White House
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Rep. Allen West Calls for Eric Holder’s Removal
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Is the Justice Department covering up ‘Fast and Furious’? Is the White House Involved?
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Whatever happened to Obama’s pledge during the 2008 election cycle of promising to be an “Open and Transparent” government?
Listen to Obama’s OWN WORDS:
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SEIU’s Lerner Calls for Mass Action to Create “Crisis”
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From Trevor Loudon
September 20, 2011
The SEIU’s Stephen Lerner calls for a mass escalation of protests, strikes and civil disobedience to create crisis and revolution.
In April, Lerner wrote in the socialist journal In These Times:
The third step is to supercharge the activity with a growing campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience, sit-ins, office occupations and resistance to business-as-usual. While maintaining the moral high ground, we must:
•Stage sit-ins at banks and Wall Street offices and nonviolently block foreclosures and evictions to defend homeowners and taxpayers. This will both build momentum and excitement and also have a real impact on Wall Street’s ability to profit from people’s suffering.
•Move into politicians’ offices to hold them accountable for the actions of the corporations that fund their campaigns and challenge them not to be apologists for Wall Street. Moving families that have lost their homes, jobs or benefits into the offices of politicians who received contributions from the offending corporation will highlight how big business buys politicians.
•Use direct action and mass civil disobedience to occupy workplaces that are being shuttered and the corporate offices of companies that won’t invest in local communities to highlight what is wrong.
If the left gets its way, the next year will be the most turbulent in US history, at least since the 1960s.
Hat Tip: The Blaze
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Related Link:
Washington, D.C. to Experience Van Jones and the Communist/Socialist “Collective” Then Freedom Plaza Occupation Starting October 6, 2011
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Intimidation: Obama’s Dept. of Labor To Supply Replacement Worker’s Names AND Addresses to Union Thugs
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Will we see more Eddie York style attacks by the likes of Union bosses like Richard Trumka? **Read link at bottom of this post**
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By Warner Todd Huston
September 20, 2011
“Since 1975,” a study of union violence says, there has been “more than 9,000 reports of union violence.” With that in mind, wouldn’t it scare you if you were told that your name and address would be made public knowledge if you were hired as a temporary or replacement worker during a union strike? If you had any sense you sure would.
Well, now that is exactly what the Obama administration wants to do. Obama’s Department of Labor wants to make a new rule that businesses must disclose the names and addresses of individuals that are hired during strikes to replace unionized workers, whether permanently or temporarily.
With the long, long history of murder, property damage, beatings, and general harassment that unions have engaged in since unions came to this nation, the idea of having a worker’s name and address released to these union thugs so that unions can create hit lists of employees to attack is unconscionable.
Obama plans to put the property, family, and the very lives of thousands of workers in danger just so he can again give a big payoff to Big Labor.
This month the DOL has a public comment period on a 160 page rule change and tucked into that new rule is a section that will require staffing agencies to file with the government when they supply temp workers to businesses experiencing strikes, walkouts, or slow downs initiated by unions.
The new rule seems to also require that the people these temp agencies hire to also file their names and addresses with the DOL via a new form they would have to fill out. (See Labor Union Report for a copy of the form in question and for more technical info on this rule.)
These forms will be public knowledge as soon as the government gets its hands on them. That means that workers’ names and home addresses will also be public knowledge. That means that union thugs can get hold of these names and addresses so that they can amass lists of workers to scare away from their job in order to save union jobs.
Unfortunately, we only have one more day to tell Obama’s union thugs that they should not be allowed to have the names and home addresses of replacement workers. The public comments period closes at the end of the business day on Wednesday, Sept. 21.
You don’t have to be an employer or some anti-union advocate to make a comment. Any American can tell Obama that his idea of allowing unions to attack workers is a bad one. So please do go and make a short comment telling Obama that you are against his new rule putting worker’s lives in danger.
Here is the web address: http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=LMSO-2011-0002-0001
This is yet one more example of the perfect storm of regulation changes that this administration is attempting to throw at the business community.
While Obama sits there on his mountaintop scolding businesses for not hiring, not expanding, and not growing, while he mouths the nice sounding words of “cutting regulations” his regulatory agencies are issuing one business-killing new rule after another. Every month is a new anti-business rules change and this one could result in blood being spilled by his dangerous union pals.
LINK
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Related Links:
Union Thuggery: Ohio Business Owner Terrorized and SHOT for being NON-UNION
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1993: Trumka Goons Gunned Down Eddie York. Union Intimidation and Tactics Exposed. **PLUS: Saul Alinsky’s time with the Mafia
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Is Obama a Pro-Business President or is he a Unionist that rules by fiat?
YOU DECIDE
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Bird Death Fines Depend On Who Kills The Birds
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From Canada Free Press:
– by Jack Dini
September 19, 2011
Oil companies face heavy fines: Wind farms get a free pass
Seven oil companies have recently been charged in federal court with killing migratory birds that died after allegedly landing in oil waste pits in western North Dakota. The charges involve 28 dead birds that were discovered in oil waste pits between May 6 and June 20. The maximum penalty for each charge under the Migratory Bird Act is six months in prison and a $15,000 fine. (1)
There’s more: In July 2009, Pacificorp agreed to pay $10.5 million in fines, restitution and equipment upgrade costs for the deaths of at least 232 golden eagles, 46 hawks, 50 owls and nearly 200 other birds that had been electrocuted in Wyoming since January 2007. The cost per bird computes to a little less than $20,000. (2) “On August 13, 2009, ExxonMobil pled guilty in federal court to charges that it killed 85 birds—all of which were protected under the Migratory Bird Act. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees for the bird kills, which occurred after the animals came in contact with hydrocarbons in uncovered tanks and waste water facilities on company properties located in five western states,” reports Robert Bryce. Each bird kill cost the company over $7,000. (3)
WIND FARMS
The Fish and Wildlife service estimated in 2009 that about 440,000 birds were being killed by wind turbines. Yet the wind industry has yet to face a single charge.
10,000 annual bird deaths occur in the Altamont Pass wind turbines in northern California
One example is a study by the Alameda County Community Development Agency which reported that 10,000 annual bird deaths occur in the Altamont Pass wind turbines in northern California. Deaths include 75 to 100 golden eagles, 380 burrowing owls, 300 red-tailed hawks, and 333 American kestrels(falcons) killed annually be Altamont turbines. (4) [Emphasis added]
With an anticipated twelve-fold energy build-out by the year 2030, bird mortality is expected to dramatically increase in the coming years, absent significant changes in the way wind farms are sited and operated.
So, what’s the life of a bird worth? If you’re Big Oil it can range from $7,000 to $20,000 per bird. Yet, if you’re wind energy, it costs nothing. There are hundreds of cases that federal officials have brought against oil and gas companies over the last two decades for violations of the Migratory Bird Act, a statute on the books since 1918. No question the cases were justified, but not one case was brought against wind farms even though they kill many more birds. Somebody has given the wind industry a get-out-of-jail-free card. [Emphasis added]
More here……
REFERENCES:
- Dave Kolpack, “Oil companies charged in ND migratory bird deaths,” forbes.com, August 25, 2011
- Ruffin Prevost, “Utility to pay for bird deaths,” Billings Gazette, June 11, 2009
- Robert Bryce, “Bird kills? What bird kills?”, September 11, 2009
- Andrew Walden, “Wind energy’s ghosts,” American Thinker, February 15, 2010
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“[I]f you’re wind energy, it costs nothing. There are hundreds of cases that federal officials have brought against oil and gas companies over the last two decades for violations of the Migratory Bird Act, a statute on the books since 1918.”
So where are the tree huggers, the Save the Wildlife groups on THIS? The Environmentalists?
New Government Fees in Deficit Proposal Would Hit Airline Passengers, Military Retirees
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Published September 19, 2011
| Associated Press
WASHINGTON — It’s not just millionaires who’d pay more under President Obama’s latest plan to combat the deficit.
Air travelers, federal workers, military retirees, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries and people taking out new mortgages are among those who would pay more than $130 billion in government revenues raised through new or increased fees. [Emphasis added]
Airline passengers would see their federal security fees double from $5 to $10 for a nonstop round-trip flight and triple to $15 by 2017, raising $25 billion over the coming decade. Federal workers would face an additional 1.2 percentage point deduction from their paychecks to contribute $21 billion more for their pensions over the same period. Military retirees would pay a $200 fee upon turning 65 to have the government pay their out-of-pocket Medicare expenses. [Emphasis added]
They’d also pay more for non-generic prescription drugs.
And it’ll cost corporate jet owners a new $100 fee for each flight.
The fees aren’t taxes. They’re charged to people who use government services or receive benefits such as taxpayer-subsidized health care, and they typically defray the government’s cost of providing a service. The fee on corporate jets and other private passenger planes, for example, would raise about $1 billion a year to help finance the cost of air traffic control. Recreational flyers won’t have to pay.
Many of Obama’s proposals are retreads from earlier budget proposals, including those submitted by his predecessors. Most have been rejected year after year. Some ideas, like requiring wealthier veterans to pay more for their health care, stir up opposition from powerful interest groups. Others, like the bigger security fee for flyers, seem too close to a ticket tax increase.
Administration budget documents describe the fees as savings.
But unlike Obama’s tax proposals, the new fees aren’t necessarily dead on arrival with Republicans. A group led by Vice President Joe Biden had tentatively agreed to increase the airline security fee before talks between the White House and Congress collapsed in June. The Biden-led group was also weighing an increase in pension contributions by federal workers, an idea that has riled organized labor and other Democratic-friendly interest groups.
“Why (would) the administration … propose a Social Security payroll tax holiday in its jobs bill, but simultaneously suggest a tax increase for middle-class federal workers?” asked Joseph Beaudoin, president of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association.
Continue reading here……
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So those that THINK Obama only wants to “tax” the rich had better re-read the above. The Obama plan WILL AFFECT a LARGE MAJORITY of Americans and workers.
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Since Obama insists on spewing the “Buffet Rule”, Read this:
IRS Data Show Most Millionaires Pay Taxes at Higher Rate Than Middle Class
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AND THIS:
AP FACT CHECKS OBAMA: ARE THE RICH REALLY TAXED LESS THAN SECRETARIES?
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“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
– Alexis de Tocqueville
LINK
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****Personal change to the above Tocqueville quote:***
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress AND PRESIDENT OBAMA discover that they can bribe the public with the public’s money.
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Warnings Came Months Ago; The Demagoguery and Lies within Our Government
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Knowledge IS power.
Obama has #attackwatch; Glenn Beck launches his own #conspiracy watch.
As his own network system, Glenn Beck now speaks the truth without Fox News constraints and demands of Political correctness running rampant within our borders.
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Related Links:
Israel Being Ominously Attacked/Intimidated by Egypt, Iran and Turkey. Obama’s Response?
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With Turkey’s Hatred toward Israel, WHY would the Obama Administration Consider This?
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Post Egyptian Uprising in Middle East: EGYPTIAN ISLAMIST OFFICIAL CALLS FOR WORLDWIDE SHARIA & THREATENS CHRISTIAN EXTERMINATION
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