Iran claims it has circumvented sanctions
Iran's oil minister claims his country has successfully circumvented sanctions on the sale of its oil.
State TV on Sunday broadcast comments by Rostam Ghasemi that the industry was in "bad shape" about two months ago due to the oil embargo by the West, "but we left the bottleneck behind, almost."
Ghasemi also said that Iran has set up its own insurance for ships that carry its oil after Western companies refused to cover them.
Iran's oil exports have fallen by about half in recent months due to the punitive oil and banking measures enacted by the U.S. and Europe over concerns Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons. The currency has also plummeted.
Iran denies that it is developing weapons. It has taken a consistently defiant tone toward the sanctions.
http://news.yahoo.com/iran-claims-circumvented-sanctions-121154244.html
PK's NOTE: And this is the man who is supposed to be the President of ALL Americans.
Obama to Boehner: 'I Will Use Inaugural Address, State of the Union to Blame GOP'
Statesmanship at its finest: during fiscal cliff talks, President Obama reportedly told Speaker Boehner that he would use his two major speeches in January to blame Republicans for the stalled deal. According to the Wall Street Journal, the president wasn't too happy with the options House Republicans were willing to present, and made it clear he was willing to throw the GOP under the bus for the nation's financial woes.
Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn't reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech to tell the country the Republicans were at fault.Sounds like those talks are going really well.
At one point, according to notes taken by a participant, Mr. Boehner told the president, "I put $800 billion [in tax revenue] on the table. What do I get for that?"
"You get nothing," the president said. "I get that for free."
In seriousness, the article makes clear that the president has refused any and all deals Boehner has offered, even those in which Republicans capitulated on tax hikes for the wealthy, an Obama staple. It's clear that the president and the House are both unwilling to bend to one anothers' terms, and it's disconcerting to see that Obama would rather use his platform to keep pointing fingers than for some more inspiring message, nevermind swallowing his pride and accepting a semi-viable deal.
Obama claims to have modeled himself after Lincoln, but it certainly doesn't sound like he's minding his favored predecessor's example of how to compose a second inaugural address in times of turmoil:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.Imagine the man who spoke those words coming before his country in a time of distress and blaming a rival political party for all the nation's ills; it's impossible. Obama is a well-known admirer of the Lincoln biography "Team of Rivals," but while he's talking to the other side, he seems unwilling to listen. Apparently, he's content with laying blame and saving face at the expense of the nation's financial health.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katehicks/2012/12/23/obama-to-boehner-i-will-use-inaugural-address-state-of-the-union-to-blame-gop-n1473157
New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies
A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.
The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.
Again, let's review:
-President Bush went Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.
-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn't go along with the left's Affirmative Action lending policies...all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.
-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left's favorite blatantly partisan "fact-checkers," Snopes, admits (while pretending to 'set the record straight').
-Even The New York Times admitted that there is "little evidence" of any connection between the "Republican" deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Bleach-Liley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.
But non-Fox media have spent years deliberately and relentlessly inoculating people against the facts, training them to mindlessly blame Bush for being in charge when Democrat policies destroyed the economy. So here we sit, to this day, still watching Obama excuse and shrug off endless economic failures, illegal government takeovers and utter national bankruptcy with zero accountability.
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-study-confirms-economy-was-destroyed-by-democrat-policies?CID=examiner_alerts_article
America's Vicarious Christmas Vacation
President Barack Obama needs a break. It's tiring and takes a tremendous amount of effort to dismantle 250 years of what made America the great nation we once were. So, in anticipation of leaving the drudgery of governing behind, Obama abandoned the wrecking ball he's been swinging for the last four years, left the 54 holiday trees that lost their lives in the White House, and jetted off with the wife, the kids and the dog for their nine-hour flight to Oahu.
Before Americans get all bent out of shape about the frivolous nature of the time and money involved in the Obama family enjoying an annual Christmas getaway, it's important to remember that the $4 million estimated cost of the Hawaiian adventure covers things besides souvenirs and grass skirts. Flying in Air Force One at $182,000 an hour for nine hours comes to $3.3 million in round-trip airfare alone. And, in all fairness, the President does pick up the tab for the sumptuous compound on Kailuana Place.
For the other expenses, the Hawaii Reporter estimated that the $4 million price tag covered by the American taxpayer only covers travel, staff housing and protection, and the aforementioned enormous cost to fly Air Force One. Oh, and don't forget the supplementary cargo plane for various and sundry vacation-related accoutrements.
Moreover, the President, Michelle, Malia, Sasha, and Bo have already made voluntary sacrifices this past year. For instance, last August the first family willingly forfeited their usual multimillion-dollar Martha's Vineyard summer vacation so the President could toil away on behalf of the middle class without interruption.
Now that the election is over and Obama has securely established the fact that successful, hardworking people are to blame for most of America's problems, it's time for him to claim the just reward of a long past-due respite chock full of entertainment and leisure.
During the planned 17-day breather the President will be doing the usual "playing golf, eating at local restaurants with family members and escorting his daughters to island water parks and other activities."
In other words, while America, on both a micro and macro level, anticipates a future of making do on a painful austerity budget, Barack Obama is resting up in preparation for his splashy, high-priced inauguration party and to resume the hard work he started of fundamentally trashing...sorry, "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
As for the residents of Oahu or any poor schlub attempting to make his or her way around the island this Christmas, word to the wise: "You better leave early for any scheduled pig roasts, because for the next 2.5 weeks there are expected to be 'unannounced delays as the presidential motorcade travels around the island.'"
Leis and luaus aside, there is a potential spoiler in the Obama vacation plans. The President may have to discontinue waxing his surfboard, leave the shaved ice behind, and head home before January 6th. The glitch is that a deal was not reached to avert that fiscal cliff the President and Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner - also known as the Washington version of the notorious cliff-diving duo Thelma and Louise - are about to purposely drive America over.
Therefore, despite Obama's undying dedication to saving the middle class, as of January 2nd, "a mix of rising taxes and mandatory spending cuts are set to kick in" - thus making Barack 'Louise' Obama the proud owner of what John 'Thelma' Boehner has coined "the largest tax increase in American history."
Nonetheless, the President did not seem to be the least bit worried about how it might look luxuriating for two weeks while the nation teeters on the verge of a fiscal nightmare come January 2nd. Nor did he seem concerned one iota that those who bestowed upon him a second term might find it a tad insensitive to take a vacation with such an enormous price tag attached to it at this particular time.
And so, as he bid "aloha" before leaving for the island paradise of Hawaii, the President offered the following holiday advice to the uneasy lawmakers he left behind in Washington DC: "Enjoy some eggnog and Christmas cookies before getting back to business next week."
A more symbolic gesture would be for Washington lawmakers, in honor of the mess they've helped to make, after banging back a couple of shots of cheap whiskey to choke on some stale fruit cake.
Either way, for the rest of America struggling desperately to make ends meet this Christmas, gratefulness should still abound. Where else but in America could a nation on the brink of economic ruin have the pleasure of living vicariously through the life of the middle class's biggest champion as he and his family enjoy a $4 million vacation getaway in Hawaii?
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/americas_vicarious_christmas_vacation.html
Obama Has to Fib Even at a Funeral
Yes, everything is about Barack Obama. From the beginning, he has built his career on his own personal story, and the funeral service of former Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye at the National Cathedral on Friday apparently struck him as an opportune time to remind the world what that story was. In his 1,600-word oration, Obama even managed to work in the fact, as though someone in the universe might not have heard, that he had "a white mom [and] a black father" "and was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."
The problem, however, is not just that Obama used the word "my" 21 times, "me" 12 times, and "I" 30 times in the course of telling his story, but rather that even at a funeral, he could not keep the story straight.
Obama's oration dealt to a large degree with how he came to understand what a U.S. senator is. "Now, even though my mother and grandparents took great pride that they had voted for him," said Barack Obama of Inouye, "I confess that I wasn't paying much attention to the United States Senate at the age of four or five or six. It wasn't until I was 11 years old that I recall even learning what a U.S. senator was, or it registering, at least. It was during my summer vacation with my family -- my first trip to what those of us in Hawaii call the Mainland."
The story of the trip set up the punch line. He told Inouye's mourners that "my mother that summer would turn on the TV every night during this vacation and watch the Watergate hearings," and he was forced to watch, too. Of course, the senator who "fascinated" him most was "this man of Japanese descent with one arm, speaking in this courtly baritone, full of dignity and grace."
This story would work only if Obama had toured the United States during the summer of the Watergate hearings, 1973, when he was eleven years old going on twelve, but in his memoir Dreams from My Father, he tells another story -- a much more specific one. Yes, he made the same trip, but he did so "during the summer after my father's visit to Hawaii, before my eleventh birthday." This would have been 1972, when Watergate was still a third-rate burglary that had gotten little media traction.
In Dreams, Obama mentioned a Kansas City stop along the way, and Madelyn's youngest brother in suburban KC would later provide photographic evidence of the same. He confirmed the year as 1972. This disparity did not stop Obama from relating in Dreams how in that elusive summer he "watched the Watergate hearings every night before going to bed." There was no mention of Senator Inouye. He was apparently trying to make some other point.
This is hardly the most egregious concoction in the Obama canon. Pulitzer Prize-winner David Maraniss condemned his 2012 biography, Barack Obama, the Story, to the clearance racks by daring to suggest that Dreams was full of concoctions, some more critical than others. Obama fans wanted to hear no such thing.
Kudos to Ben Smith for daring to chronicle the obvious. "I counted 38 instances in which [Maraniss] convincingly disputes significant elements of Obama's own story of his life and his family history," wrote Smith in Buzzfeed, and even Maraniss was pulling his punches.
Post-re-election, reporters allow Obama to spin with impunity. They no longer seem worried that someone of the right will scoop them. They are confident that their media pals would ignore the scoop as well. They know that as long as they control the headlines, there can be no new Watergate -- and Obama is beginning to sense it, too.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/12/obama_has_to_fib_even_at_a_funeral.html
It's Time for Media Control
Was there anything about the Sandy Hook massacre the media got right on the day it happened? In their rush to be first, they ignored their obligation to be right. Nearly every detail they disseminated Friday was wrong, even down to the name of the killer. Their desire to sensationalize had them shoving microphones in the faces of children who couldn’t possibly comprehend the events of the day. This was just the latest example of how out of control and dangerous the media has become, and it’s time government did something to protect us.
You’re probably asking yourself, “What about the First Amendment? Freedom of the press means we can’t regulate them, right?” Technically, yes. But since they, en masse, want to ignore the Second Amendment, to claim since it was written in a time of muskets, it is outdated and doesn’t apply to new guns, let’s apply the same to the First.
The First Amendment was written in a time of movable type printing presses and quills, not 24-hour cable news channels and the Internet. Using the media’s logic, the First Amendment doesn’t apply.
I’m not suggesting we should simply outlaw any media outside of print, but if we can limit the Second Amendment however we like, we can do the same to the First.
Congress should impose massive fines on those who get facts wrong. Not newspaper reporters – that’s dealt with a different way. But TV. As liberals love to remind us, broadcasters make their living over “public airwaves.” Conveying false information over them is a violation of the trust placed in those institutions by the public and should be punished.
The media would like to punish innocent gun owners for the actions of a tiny amount of guilty ones, so all media should be regulated because of the actions of a few bad ones.
NBC News, which I’m told was once a respected news organization, deliberately edited the 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case to make George Zimmerman sound racist when he was simply answering the dispatcher’s question. In the same case, the New York Times created a new race of humans – the “white Hispanic” – specifically to sensationalize that case into a racial issue. Although The Times is in print and thus protected, it also published that story on the Internet, which is not. Let’s punish The Times.
Zimmerman is suing NBC News and should win easily. But government could impose a minimum fine of, say, $1 billion for each offense. Doing so would bring about the end of the race to be first and restore the drive to be right. It also would ruin NBC News.
http://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2012/12/23/its-time-for-media-control-n1472679
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