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Campaigner In Chief has ended the war on terrorism (not won it) and sent Al Qaeda scrambling to safe havens.

RIGHT!!!!

Al-Qaida is on a round-the-clock mission to launch a new terrorist attack on New York City, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said on the 20th anniversary of the first World Trade Center attack.

And only the diligent work of eagle-eyed law enforcement officials has prevented another tragedy, McCarthy told Steve Malzberg on Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show.’’

“People need to understand these guys, al-Qaida and its affiliates, are trying like crazy to hit us every day,’’ McCarthy said.

“And if they had the opportunity to do it, they would do it.’’

But the former Assistant U.S. Attorney — who put Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and eleven others behind bars in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — added, “The fact they haven’t been able to do it in a dozen years is a tribute, number one, to the people who work heroically in the field.

“Our guys on the frontline have just done a fabulous job whether they’re the federal agents in the field offices or guys like Ray Kelly who are real trailblazers in counterterrorism in the New York City Police Department.’’

McCarthy, whose book “Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy,’’ is just out in paperback, said the sheik remains an extremely dangerous madman, even in a secluded prison cell.

“There’s no question that he will call for the killing of more Americans. The only thing that we have now that keeps a lid on that is the fact that he’s in relatively limited confinement,’’ McCarthy said.

“He’s in a high security federal prison and, therefore, it’s very difficult for him to get his messages out.’’

He noted that Osama bin Laden had publicly credited the sheik with issuing the fatwa, an Islamic death decree, that approved the 9/11 attacks.

“And that’s something he did from federal prison when he called for the killing of all Americans wherever and whenever they could be found,’’ McCarthy said.

The ex-lawman, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, criticized the White House for its support of Islamist nations he said continue to stonewall efforts to stop terrorists.

“This is another story that’s gotten almost no play — the Turks have in custody the son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who was an al-Qaida operative and they won’t let us talk to him,’’ McCarthy said.

“That’s our great NATO ally which, by the way, is a major financial backer of [the Muslim Palestinian extremist group] Hamas.’’

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: I had gag order on drone program

Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, discussing the Obama administration's transparency regarding the controversial drone program, said on MSNBC on Sunday that he was effectively under a gag order on the program while working for the Obama administration. Gibbs said his bosses barred him from acknowledging its existence or discussing it in any way while he was press secretary.

"When I went through the process of the press secretary, one of the first things they told me was: 'You are not even to acknowledge the drone program. you are not even to discuss that it exists,'" Gibbs said, explaining why he could not be more candid with reporters on the issue.

He added that he did not think the administration did itself any favors by stonewalling reporters on the issue.

"Our denial of the existence of a program when it's obviously happening undermines peoples' confidence overall in the decisions that their government makes," Gibbs said.

Gibbs likened the official line from the administration on the program to the "Wizard of Oz" idea of "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

"Here's what's inherently crazy about that proposition: You're being asked a question based on reporting of a program that exists," Gibbs said.

Amid protests, Brennan defends drone program
Congress looks to limit drone strikes
Critics of the drone program have raised concerns both about the lack of transparency in the execution of the program and the legal and moral issues raised by the decision to terminate individuals, including American citizens, without a trial or any semblance of due process.

Supporters contend that the unmanned drone program has greatly enhanced the efficacy of counterterrorism efforts, arguing that anyone targeted by a drone has forfeited their right to due process by identifying as an enemy combatant.

Obamacare will increase the long-term federal deficit by $6.2 trillion, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released today.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), who requested the report, revealed the findings this morning at a Senate Budget Committee hearing. The report, he said, “confirms everything critics and Republicans were saying about the faults of this bill,” and “dramatically proves that the promises made assuring the nation that the largest new entitlement program in history would not add one dime to the deficit were false.”

President Obama and other Democrats attempted to win support for the health-care bill by touting it as a fiscally responsible enterprise. “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future,” Obama told a joint-session of Congress in September 2009. “I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”

The new report exposes the “lack of honesty” surrounding such claims, Sessions argued. “The big-government crowd in Washington manipulated the numbers in order to get the financial score they wanted, in order to get their bill passed and to increase power and influence,” he said. “The goal was not truth or financial responsibility, but to pass the bill. This is how a country goes broke.”

The GAO report is essentially the first attempt to isolate and calculate Obamacare’s impact on the deficit beyond the traditional ten-year budget window. GAO ran two simulations “based on broad sets of assumptions about health care spending and other components of federal spending and revenue” over a 75-year period. First, a baseline-extended simulation, which “illustrates the long-term outlook assuming federal laws (applicable at the time the simulation was run) remain unchanged,” and second, an alternative simulation, which “illustrates the long-term fiscal outlook assuming historical trends and policy preferences continue.”

The baseline scenario is far more optimistic, largely because it does not take into account the concerns — expressed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Trustees, and Medicare’s chief actuary — about “whether certain cost-containment mechanisms included in PPACA can be sustained over the long term.”

However, the GAO report concluded that even under these “more optimistic assumptions,” Obamacare’s cost-control provisions “were not sufficient to prevent an unsustainable increase in debt held by the public.”

The alternative scenario, which incorporates the more realistic “alternative projections” suggested by CBO, the CMS trustees, and the chief Medicare actuary, is even more dire. Under this scenario, the “primary deficit” increases by 0.7 percent of GDP over the 75-year period. The GAO does not put a dollar value on that figure, but Senate Budget Committee staff has calculated, and GAO has confirmed, that it would amount to a $6.2 trillion increase in the federal deficit.

After vowing no tax increases on anybody earning less thaan $250K/Yr

You've probably already noticed your paycheck is a little lighter this year, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out:

The expiration of the payroll tax cuts that knocked 2% off consumers' take-home pay is having an impact, these companies say. It will ding a household with $65,000 in annual income $1,300 this year, and shift $110 billion overall out of consumers' hands, estimates Citigroup.

And it’s not just hitting consumers and families like yours. As the Journal reports, it’s also having an effect on American businesses, which means American workers and future job creation.

Less take-home pay is causing 45.7% of consumers to curtail spending, according to a survey released on Thursday by the National Retail Federation, a trade group. A quarter of consumers are delaying big-ticket purchases, a third are reducing restaurant visits, and about a fifth of shoppers are spending less on groceries, it said.

Obama Clears the Press From Press Room ” So We Can Take Some Questions.”

You won't believe your ears!!!!

h * * P://patriotupdate.c * *
/2013/02/ (SPACE) obama-clears-the-press-from-press-room-so-we-can-take-some-questions/

A real laugher gaffe---

In an embarrassing slip of the tongue, the new US secretary of state praises US diplomats working to secure "democratic institutions" in a Central Asian country, which does not exist.

US Secretary of State John Kerry was referring to the poor, landlocked nation of 5.5 million, Kyrgyzstan, but he appeared to confuse it with its resource-rich neighbour to the north, Kazakhstan.

The State Department kindly omitted the error in the official transcript of Wednesday's speech, which Mr Kerry delivered on the eve of his first foreign trip as secretary of state.

Video of the incident shows Mr Kerry praising US diplomats working abroad: "they fight corruption in Nigeria, they support the rule of law in Burma, they support democratic institutions in Kyrzakhstan."

For adoring Hollywood party goers.

How much did it cost the taxpayers for flying FL 1 etc. Ad security task force and extra Hollywood police guards. Does $5 Million + ring a bell!!!!!

President Obama has been making a big deal about blaming Congress for the sequester, even saying at one point during his debate with Romney last year, "The sequester is not something that I've proposed," Obama said. "It is something that Congress has proposed."

He either has a short memory or is a bald faced liar, as Bob Woodward points out:

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

"There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger," Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It "was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure."

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book "The Price of Politics" shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors -- probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.

Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, "We didn't actually think it would be that hard to convince them" -- Reid and the Republicans -- to adopt the sequester. "It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table."

The president's apologists like to point out that the GOP voted for it, and are therefore culpable. But no one is saying Republicans didn't support the idea of the sequester. The question is who made it up and who is responsible for pushing it?

This is the president's baby and now, he wants to run away from it by blaming it all on his opponents. Very few in the media have acknowledged the president's lies and simply don't report the fact that it was his OMB director who came up with the idea.

It's why the GOP will probably be blamed for any pain caused by the sequester.