Widget Image
Follow PPD Social Media
follow
1,000 Followers
follow
0 Followers
follow
People's Pundit Locals Community
Saturday, January 17, 2026
SECTIONS
logo
mobile-logo
HomeStandard Blog Whole Post (Page 1035)
Economy

President Obama may be too busy with failed ObamaCare rollout efforts, but the media has no excuses for ignoring the latest economic news.

Existing home sales in the U.S. fell in September and prices rose at their slowest pace in five months, the latest sign higher mortgage rates — among other economic developments — easily precipitate a slow down in the housing market recovery.

The National Association of Realtors — the organization blocking reforms to the FHA before they end up like Fannie and Freddie — said on Monday existing home sales fell 1.9 percent to an annual rate of 5.29 million units. Though the media will never cover it, August’s sales pace was revised down to 5.39 million units from the previously reported 5.48 million units.

Economists polled by Reuters were off the mark on the housing sector again, as they had expected home resales to fall 2.9 percent to a 5.30 million-unit rate.

“The housing market recovery has lost a little steam which is not a surprise with the broader economy taking a bit of a step back recently. The housing market could be a little bumpy the rest of the year,” said Ryan Sweet, senior economist with Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

The NAR said a combination of high home prices, barely rising salaries and higher mortgage rates was weighing down the sales data due to affordability, which hit a five-year low in September.

“Expected rising mortgage interest rates will further lower affordability in upcoming months,” said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun.

The Realtors group said existing home sales had probably peaked in July and August. The drop in homes resales adds to other data that have suggested the high borrowing costs are starting to slow the housing market recovery. Overall, it is a sign that the recovery is the recovery that never was, with major economic indicators being propped up by nothing more than artificial government and monetary policy.

Contracts to buy previously owned houses declined in August for a third straight month. Confidence among homebuilders fell in October for the second consecutive month, while loans to buy a home have been in decline for the past three weeks.

Interest rates have risen sharply since May on expectations that the Federal Reserve would start cutting back on printing money to continue its monthly bond purchases this year, with the 30-year fixed mortgage rate rising a full percentage point. Economists and pundits speak of a 1 percent spike as they would have 30-years ago about a 5 percent spike, indicating an extremely fragile market.

It rose to 4.49 percent in September, the highest since July 2011, from 4.46 percent in August, according to Freddie Mac. However, mortgage rates remain low by historical standards.

The Fed surprised markets last month by sticking to its monthly $85 billion bond buying program, seeing little to no evidence of strong economic growth.

Also showing weakness in the pace of the housing market recovery, was the median price for a previously owned home rising 11.7 percent from last year to $199,200, which was the slowest pace of increase in five months.

While overall home sales rose 10.7 percent from a year ago, that increase was also the smallest in five months, and confidence in the housing market slipped with consumer confidence.

In manufacturing news, which has not been covered, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s gauge of manufacturing activity in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region fell to 19.8 in October from 22.3 the month prior. The reading indicates the factory sector expanded at a slower pace in October than it did in September. With only five consecutive months indicating an expansion in a sector that has shrunk under the Obama administration and the faux recovery, the data from the early index was troubling.

Not one week later, the New York state’s manufacturing sector also showed the pace of growth had slipped this month to its slowest since May.

The New York Fed’s “Empire State” general business conditions index fell to an abysmal 1.52 from a still not healthy 6.29 in September. Economists in this Reuters poll were even father off than they were in home resales, which on average had forecasted an index of 7.00.

The New York Fed said the results suggested “that conditions were little changed over the month.” A reading above zero indicates expansion, which is all these experts have been able to hold onto in five years regarding manufacturing.

The new orders index advanced to 7.75 from 2.35, but shipments dipped to 13.12 from 16.43, clouding any real good news.

Labor market conditions slowed, with the index for the number of employees dipping to 3.61 from 7.53 in September. The average employee workweek index, however, gained to 3.61 from 1.08.

The surveys of manufacturing plants in New York and Philadelphia are two of the earliest monthly guideposts to U.S. factory conditions, and they don’t look great. Coupled with housing and unemployment disappointments, it would seem taht the media has simply given up.

The same appears to be true of the Obama administration, who is continuing to deny that ObamaCare is not hurting the economy, despite widespread economic data, studies and reporting that it is.

The shutdown gave the administration a much needed break being subjected to the latest economic news, which shows jobs reports and indexes with negative data.

But for the media, the economic suffering of millions of Americans takes a back seat to a job-killing healthcare law that cannot even be implemented properly, particularly because it was the signature achievement of their “transformational” president.

President Obama may be too busy with

News, Politics

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said that “no one is madder than me” that the healthcare.gov site is not working as it should, “which means it’s going to get fixed.”

Obama admitted to being frustrated by the failed rollout of ObamaCare, but still defended and attempted to explain the Affordable Care Act — also known as ObamaCare — and the problems that have plagued the central website launched earlier this month to sign up consumers.

Speaking in the White House Rose Garden, with another carefully crafted backdrop of ObamaCare users, the president said “there’s no excuse” for the problems with the site.

He appealed to the public — a bit pathetically — to have patience and defended the product without offering any real answers to the very serious criticisms surrounding not just the rollout, but the costs associated with the site construction, the costs associated with the insurance, and amount of people being dropped from their existing policies.

For now, Obama said, consumers can “bypass the website,” and instead apply over the phone or by mail, though it is unclear whether or not those venues can offer the voter registration vehicles the Obama administration took such pains to include in the failed site.

If not, they can always tap the radical founder of the disgraced group ACORN — Wade Rathke — who is now helping with the ObamaCare rollout, no doubt to pick up the slack left from the HealthCare.gov site failure.

The president’s comments from the Rose Garden amounted to the most detailed explanation from the administration to date about what is going wrong with the site and what’s being done to fix it. It was also the most direct acknowledgement from the president that the site is not living up to expectations.

The president said the site “hasn’t worked as smoothly as it was supposed to work” and “nobody’s more frustrated by that than I am.”

“There’s no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have been getting stuck during the application process,” Obama said. “There’s no excuse for the problems. … These problems are getting fixed.”

Obama said his administration is doing “everything we can possibly do” to get the site — HealthCare.gov — up and running properly. He said a team of experts from the private sector has been called in to help, which will add to the already-outrageous cost associated with building the failed site. People’s Pundit Daily has confirmed and fact-checked upwards of $500 million dollars, thus far, associated with the cost of HealthCare.gov.

Obama said users, in the meantime, can download an application and apply by mail, or use the phone number now posted on the HealthCare.gov website to apply by phone.

“The Affordable Care Act is not just a website. It’s much more,” Obama said from the Rose Garden, flanked by Americans who have signed up for coverage through the troubled system.

However, the Consumer Reports in a review of HealthCare.gov and the ObamaCare law in general, have said consumers who are overwhelmed by the glitches should “stay away” from the site for “at least another month.”

Obama stressed that there’s still time for the problems to be addressed, though in reality, time to sign up enough young, healthy paying Americans is running out before the system enters an insurance death spiral.

The president spoke just as administration officials quietly began to come forward with details about what went wrong with HealthCare.gov.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Sunday posted a blog on its site with some preliminary statistics and an assurance to Americans that officials are “working around the clock” and “committed to doing better.” The department vowed a “tech surge” to address the problems.

But lawmakers, experts, and pundits on both sides of the aisle have publicly complained about the rollout, and wondered whether the tech team will be able to fix the widespread problems in time.

House lawmakers are also turning up the pressure on HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to testify. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, but so far, the Secretary Sebelius has ignored requests that she appear and refused to be held accountable in any manner.

In a bit of a twist, and perhaps without permission, Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin told “Fox News Sunday” that, “Ultimately, Secretary Sebelius will testify.”

The HHS blog says roughly 500,000 applications for coverage have been submitted. It also states that healthcare.gov has had roughly 19 million unique visits, though it’s unclear how many have actually enrolled.

The Republican National Committee on Monday sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for that information.

People’s Pundit Daily has poured over the numbers and has taken into account past reports, leaks from civil service workers at HHS — among other factors — and now is reporting that the ObamaCare enrollment numbers are far worse than is being reported.

A "frustrated" Obama said that "no one

Polls

So much for that little narrative holding that Cruz damaged the GOP so badly the American people all of a sudden like ObamaCare. In a new CNN poll, opposition to ObamaCare remains high with 56 percent opposing the law and 41 percent — an uptick of 3 percent – favoring the law.

President Obama has an approval rating of 44 percent, as opposed to 52 percent who disapprove, which is actually a bit higher than other polls. Compared to the Republicans in Congress, the American peoples’ confidence in their ability solve the major issues facing the country didn’t waver, while President Obama dropped 49 – 44 percent, roughly the same who approve of the job he is doing.

Independents disapprove of the job the president is doing by a whopping 61 – 34 percent, with 41 percent viewing his health care law as “too liberal.”

Congress, as a whole, has an abysmal 12 percent approval rating, representing an uptick from 10 percent.

A couple points about the poll of worthy of noting, for starters, is that the CNN poll never asked about the HealthCare.gov disastrous rollout, or the cost increases and plan layoffs, which broke President Obama’s many campaign promises. Second, the poll began to ask how many oppose the law because it was “too liberal” or not “liberal enough,” with 12 percent saying the law wasn’t liberal enough despite the amount of Americans claiming to be liberal has never topped 9 percent in Gallup polling (they are used as reference in CNN poll).

 

In a new CNN poll, opposition to

Policy, Politics

The president will address the nation Monday regarding the problems surrounding ObamaCare enrollment. On Saturday, the Obama administration announced the creation of 476,000 applications, but the ObamaCare enrollment numbers are even worse then they seem.

Until next month, the Obama administration is refusing to release the number of people who have actually completed the process of choosing and enrolling in a health plan. As of now, what we know for sure is that the 476,000 figure is nowhere near the number the system needs to avoid the “death spiral” that threatens to topple the whole law. We also know that those numbers contradict other reports and studies.

One report claimed that ObamaCare enrollment was maybe only 7K the first day and 50K — if the administration was lucky — for the entire week. They were tipped off by workers inside the Health and Human Services Department, who were raising the flag already.

The Advisory Board, a business group that tracks health industry developments, added up the state figures available as of Friday and found that only 192,000 people had applied, and roughly 55,000 had selected a health plan, although not all of them had paid in advance for the plan, thus enrollment wasn’t even completed.

If it wasn’t for the states, then the ObamaCare enrollment would be a total disaster, as opposed to the almost-total disaster it has been thus far. But no matter what the president says tomorrow or whatever new figure he may throw out, White House officials are “very concerned” about not meeting the administration’s goals and necessities.

The administration needs at least 7 million people to have completed the ObamaCare enrollment and purchase coverage through the exchanges by the end of March, and they hope to have millions more on Medicaid. But every expert concedes that these numbers will be front-loaded by people who are not healthy, whom of which have been previously denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions. They simply cannot afford to have healthy people — who are the backbone of the system — get frustrated from the inability to navigate HealthCare.gov.

Even when people do manage to choose a plan, insurers and consultants have said that the federal government is having trouble transmitting accurate and consistent information about who is signing up for which health plan. That is a tell-tale sign that the online system is flawed on the back end, not just at the consumer entry point or server failure due to traffic.

Furthermore, the difference between enrollment and completed applications can be obfuscating, giving the impression that a certain number of people are signing up when they aren’t, which makes all the difference between failure and success.

Another complete disaster for the administration will soon no longer give the administration the ability to pretend as if the program is seeing such high interest. Duplicate enrollment was a common occurrence, resulting from widespread encounters with a cyber wall by users of HealthCare.gov. Even if only 1 out of 5 users or enrollees made such a mistake, then the administrations figure of 476,000 would be cut down to 380,800. Not to mention, the number of healthy people in that pool would be far from sufficient — millions short — from reaching their goal.

Insurance premiums would skyrocket even more than they already have been, with more and more younger, healthy and necessary Americans choosing to opt-out of the program, altogether.

House Republicans are turning up the heat on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to answer for problems with the ObamaCare website in its opening weeks.

“Ultimately, Secretary Sebelius will testify,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, told “Fox News Sunday.”

For now, it is clear that the Obama administration is doing what it does best, duck and cover and hope a complacent media loses interest until they can package together their story. But unless they turn around the program, not to mention their politics, the failure of this program will be impossible to cover up.

On Saturday, the Obama administration announced the

Polls

The group that brought you the effort to defund ObamaCare, or the Senate Conservatives Fund, will back primary challenger Matt Bevin over Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “We know that winning this primary won’t be easy. Mitch McConnell has the support of the entire Washington establishment and he will do anything to hold on to power,” the groups head Matt Hoskins, said in an email.

Senate Conservatives Fund recently sent out a poll to supporters in an email during the effort known as Don’t Fund It, when they gathered over 2 million signatures from Americans all over the country in support of Sen. Ted Cruz R-TX. The survey asked whether or not respondents would like to see Senate Conservatives Fund back Matt Bevin over Mitch McConnell, who refused to pledge that he would either defund ObamaCare or oppose the cloture vote, the vote that mattered in the end.

The results of the survey, they claim, showed over 90 percent of respondents believed that the group should support Bevin over McConnell. I personally know of 12 conservative activists who did not, though that may mean nothing.

The move puts the organization at odds with other Tea Party favorites from the past, both Sens. Rand Paul — also from KY — and Florida’s Marco Rubio, who have endorsed Mitch McConnell for the Kentucky Senate race.

The groups has had mixed success endorsing lesser-known, whom they perceive to be more conservative candidates. In 2012 Senate Conservatives backed Sen. Ted Cruz over Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Texas GOP primary, and supported Indiana candidate Richard Mourdock and Missouri candidate Todd Akin in the general election. Their 2010 endorsements include Sen. Mike Lee of Utah who unseated incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett, and failed Colorado GOP candidate Ken Buck.

Mitch McConnell has taken the endorsement — at least publicly — with a grain of salt, and poured that salt in open political wounds.

“Matt Bevin now has the dubious honor of standing with a self-serving D.C. fundraising group that made its name by recruiting and promoting unelectable candidates that ensured Barack Obama a majority in the Senate,” spokeswoman Allison Moore said in a statement. “They clearly care less about Kentuckians than they do about their reputation for supporting laughably bad candidates.”

McConnell has been trailing in recent polling against the likely Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes by an already-tightening 45 – 43 percent margin. She had been leading McConnell by 40 – 47 percent, which I argued earlier is the ceiling of support for Democratic candidates in Kentucky. It would seem that McConnell will have to worry more about his right flank than his left flank in his bid for reelection.

The group that brought you the effort

Opinion

Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz is one of my favorite liberals. He is typically a reasonable, insightful man who hates MoveOn.org and writes a magical book. That said, he shouldn’t even be teaching Constitution 101.

I praised Alan Dershowitz for his courage during the George Zimmerman trial, when he called out special prosecutor Angela Corey for tainting our judicial system with her own political ambition, demanding her disbarment.

I am also quick to praise his new book, Taking The Stand: My Life In The Law, which I would highly recommend and wish him the greatest of success with sales. However, his interview on Geraldo Rivera, during which he debated Fox News’ Eric Bolling over ObamaCare, Sen. Ted Cruz and the shutdown, was deeply troubling.

As a professor at Harvard, who teaches constitutional law no less, several of his arguments and claims reflect only one of two possibilities, neither of which are particularly encouraging. Let’s begin with Alan Dershowitz suggesting that we should revoke the power of the purse held by the House of Representatives — or, even modify its power in certain circumstances — i.e., in the event of a “perceived” threat of default or government shutdown.

The first possibility, though an unlikely one, is that somehow Alan Dershowitz made it through his entire academic career without fully grasping why our Founders thought it was a self-evident, common sense necessity to entrust the power of the purse to the body of government that best reflects the will of We the People — the House of Representatives. The second possibility, and far more historically likely, is a great deal more nefarious in nature.

Alan Dershowitz, as all progressives, dream of having an unrestrained ruler, because We the People are too stupid to know what we truly need or want from and for our government. The Senate, with a popularly elected “permanent share of government,” is a rubber stamp for a “rich and well-born” dynamic executive branch, and the only obstacle to total control is that pesky will of the people, who are too stupid to even know that we are already ruled. Of course, the will of We the People manifests in the House of Representatives, where lawmakers are most responsive to their constituents, as they are the closest body to We the People.

Regardless, if we look at the example of ObamaCare, it becomes illogical and indefensible to hold either position, while still maintaining that progressivism holds the promise of freedom and liberty. The Constitution is a liberty-defending document, and every progressive defilement to its rule of law in the past, as well as current or future propositions made by Dershowitz and others, has and will always result in tyranny, government dysfunction, social unrest and democratic despotism.

The Tea Party, for instance, is a demon of the president’s own design, an equal and opposite Natural Law reaction to Obama and the Democrats’ attempts — which were successful, unfortunately — to impose unpopular policy on the American people. During the ObamaCare debate, neither the president nor the lock-step, rubber-stamp lawmakers in the Democratic Party felt obliged to respond to constituent opposition over the government takeover of healthcare.

And in their minds they didn’t have to, because the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment has long ensured states no longer have their constitutional power to oppose policy that is not in their interest, which left it up to the House of Representatives to be the sole voice of the vast majority of Americans who didn’t — and still do not — even want the law in the first place.

In true despotic fashion, Obama and the Democrats ignored those voices, rammed through the bill, and sacrificed the last of the conservative Democrats in the House who still believed in a responsive, representative republic over “cannibalistic Democracy,” as Madison described it.

Intimidating the Supreme Court in the Rose Garden, coupled with an order to the state-run media to ostracize him, resulted in Chief Justice Roberts actually switching his vote, upholding the law that everyone knows is unconstitutional. Now, any attempt to rollback, improve, or dismantle a failed law by the branch of government who actually possesses the power to do so, is answered by the tyrant with a “crisis and leviathan,” which is where Alan Dershowitz made another unreconcilable mistake in his argument against Eric Bolling.

Eric Bolling correctly argued, and a Moody’s memo affirmed, there was never any threat of default, just a manufactured “perception” as Dershowitz claims. But who manufactured that perception if not Barack Obama and his rubber-stamping, Democrat Majority Leader Harry Reid-controlled Senate? I am certain a despot like Barack Obama would love to adopt the proposal by Alan Dershowitz to reform the power of the purse. Barack Obama is already manufacturing crisis after crisis at a rate that would result in the House never holding the purse strings under such a proposal.

For those who aren’t convinced progressivism is a tyrannical ideology, the definition of a despot is “a ruler with absolute power and authority, who exercises that power tyrannically.” Tyrannical, is defined as “ruling against the will of those he rules, often in an unfair and cruel manner.”

Steamrolling over the House of Representatives, the American people, and a cowardly Supreme Court justice fits the definition above, verbatim.

Now, more than ever, we must trust and ally with lawmakers in the House of Representatives, because now that they have corrupted our representative republic with the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, the people’s House is all that stands between We the People and a despotic executive who enjoys the full support of a complacent Senate.

Eric Bolling, twice, expressed his disbelief that parents would take out their checkbook and pay for their children to be educated in all matters constitutional in a class headed up by Alan Dershowitz, to which, both Geraldo Rivera and Dershowitz quickly responded with slight outrage that Bolling was out of line disrespecting a Harvard professor. But which instance should We the People in a freedom-loving society be more outraged over? Eric Bolling breaking some constructed societal rule or, a man who is either ignorantly or willfully teaching our children despotic, dangerous philosophy that will result in tyranny by popular support?

It was for this very reason I wrote Our Virtuous Republic, to remind Americans not just of the reasons behind these structural constitutional measures, but also of their unique national identity. The progressive academic establishment, both in secondary and higher education, refuses to teach the true American heritage, which is a heritage of empowerment that rendered government almost completely unnecessary and improper. America was a nightmare for despots, because when people have little or no need for dependence on government, the tyrant rules over no one and nothing.

And if conservatives or, all freedom-loving Americans of all stripes, want to keep the freedom they love so much, then they must win the argument, which cannot be done without educating more Americans about the dangers of progressive, relative government Alan Dershowitz favors. We cannot win the argument by allowing ourselves to be confined to the cage of political correctness that was purposely constructed to control the debate.

As for Alan Dershowitz, he wrote a really great book, but rather than teach our children about the Constitution, Dershowitz should go back to the drawing board of human history and study tyranny, because he can’t even recognize it when it is on full display.

Alan Dershowitz is one of my favorite

News, Politics

A top Democratic senator said Sunday that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius will testify before Congress about the problem-plagued ObamaCare website, amid a growing call for her to accept requests to testify.

“Ultimately, Secretary Sebelius will testify,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, told “Fox News Sunday.”

Sebelius and the entire Obama administration has declined requests to testify on Capitol Hill about the site, which has been plagued by crashes, slow responses and other glitches since it went online Oct. 1.

House Republicans are turning up the heat on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to answer for problems with the ObamaCare website in its opening weeks.

Senior lawmakers from the Energy and Commerce Committee are pressuring for public hearing after the Obama administration and crony companies involved in the site’s development and launch said the online health care exchange was “on track” for the October 1 launch.

HealthCare.gov, which provides a s-called exchange of insurance plans in the 36 states who do not have their own site, has been plagued by a rash of problems, including crashing under unknown amounts of user traffic, failing to let customers register or purchase plans, and reportedly logging inaccurate information.

Committee Chairman Fred Upton R-MI, has honed in on Secretary Sebelius after she appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” last week to talk about the website.

“Secretary Sebelius had time for Jon Stewart, and we expect her to have time for Congress,” the Michigan Republican keeps hammering.

As of now, the committee is scheduled to hold a hearing this Thursday, which will be centered on whether officials involved with the site’s construction “Didn’t Know or Didn’t Disclose” problems. Widespread reports have come out showing the Obama administration intentionally kept site problems quite to aid Obama’s reelection.

Apparently, operatives in the Obama campaign didn’t want to give Republicans electoral ammunition to attack the president and other Democratic candidates.

In just the past two days the committee members have three-times publicly called upon the Obama administration to send witnesses to testify on Capitol Hill who can provide answers.

So far, all the requests have been rejected by the Obama administration, even the letter sent Thursday directly to Secretary Sebelius.

Within the first couple of days following the failed launch, Obama said that the problems were merely “glitches” caused by the overwhelming interest in HealthCare.gov. Yet, according to Kantar U.S. Insights, over the first 13 days following the launch, the number of site visitors dropped by 88 percent, which was based on the findings of the Millward Brown Digital research firm.

Officials continue to make fixes to the software, which includes taking the insurance application part of the site offline for several overnight hours during the weekend, but amid the issues the administration still decided to add a software program that acts as a voter registration drive.

The Obama administration still has time before insurance coverage begins Jan. 1, 2013, albeit not very much if the problem is architectural in nature. Furthermore, the problem-plagued start has greatly diminished the chance of reaching the president’s goal of providing insurance for 7 million Americans in the first year, which could send ObamaCare into an insurance death spiral. If enough young, healthy individuals do not sign up to cover the cost of unhealthy and older Americans, the system will collapse.

Even if the Obama administration fails, again, relief for Americans is nowhere in sight. Analysts say the administration must fix the site by mid-February so Americans won’t have to pay a tax penalty March 31 for failing to enroll, but no plans have been made to excuse Americans, because they need the revenue from the penalties to make the system halfway solvent.

The committee is also requesting enrollment figures, which the administration has promised to release but has so far withheld.

“It’s well past time for the administration to be straight and transparent with the American people,” Upton said recently. “Top administration officials repeatedly testified everything was on track, but the broad technological failures reveal that was not the case… The president and top officials were quick to boast the number of visitors to HealthCare.gov, but they have since gone silent.”

The calls for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to resign, which began with Sen. Pat Roberts of her home state of Kansas,have been growing by the day.

“There must be accountability for this astounding failure and waste of taxpayer money. We’re seeing more than just a ‘glitch’ or two; this is systemic failure,” Reince Priebus, Chairmen of the Republican National Committee wrote in a statement.

“The Obama administration had red flags and warning signs that ObamaCare wasn’t ready for primetime, but Sebelius and company ignored them, flipped the switch and watched as the site crashed. Sebelius abused the trust and tax dollars of the American people. If this were a company and not the government, she’d already be gone. She should be fired,” Priebus added.

The calls on not just coming from the right side of the fence,

“I hope they are working day and night to get this done,” as the former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told MSNBC he agreed. “And when they get it fixed, I hope they fire some people that were in charge of making sure this thing was supposed to work,” Gibbs said.

As of now, Kathleen Sebelius retains the full support of a president inclined to ignore outrage amid scandal.

“The White House is smart enough to know that if she steps aside or they ask her to resign, they will never get anybody else confirmed,” Ellen Gilligan, Sebelius’s sister, told the New York Times. “Plus, I don’t think they hold her responsible.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney, when asked about comments made by Gibbs and others on the left, he claimed Sebieus will be going nowhere. “The secretary does have the full confidence of the president,” Carney said.

House Republicans are turning up the heat

US

Another New York Times liberal, Gail Collins, has made it to the Daily Dunce slot, because she managed to write an entire column without making one true comment.

Gail actually mocks Louie Gohmert on Syria, as if there is still anyone — even in New York City — who would argue against the fact that the rebels are Islamic extremists. Louie Gohmert created a “mild diversion?” What about the New York Times colluding with the Obama administration to create a severe diversion away from the fact that he targeted those so-called “extremists” in the Tea Party, utilizing the IRS?

Hey Gail, before you write something so ignorant, maybe you should check to see if it wasn’t your own publication who ran an exclusive video depicting the so-called rebels shooting unarmed, shirtless men, while screaming “this is a debt paid with blood” and “avenge Allah.”

This woman is so ignorant it actually made us sick. Get out and see the world, Gail. Why not? It would be on the NYT’s dime? Perhaps, you wouldn’t look like such a hack.

Gail Collins and other latte-drinking “useful idiots” at the New York Times wouldn’t even know what is extreme and what isn’t, because they never really read the Constitution or even understand what it means. Collins wouldn’t know a despot if he ordered the National Guard to give her a wedgy on national TV. Trust me, it gets better.

If the “pragmatic Texas Republican establishment is pretty much on its back, hyperventilating,” then why is Abbot currently destroying your progressive champion — Wendy Davis — who literally made her political bones by sticking up for a woman’s right to murder a 6 month-old baby? Wendy Davis didn’t enjoy the support of women all over Texas, hardly. Her ardent supporters were those class-act ladies who threw their own female fluids all over the Capitol building.

Who is extreme now Gail Collins, the Daily — if not hourly — Dunce? The American people wholly disagree with 6-month old baby-killing, which is why the progressive left has to use activist judges to impose their cowardly rule on the rest of us.

Her whole column was paid for by Wendy Davis, “Baby-Killer Inc., for Texas Governor.” These people are the worst of the worst, masking the effort to protect their abortionist-funded fortunes under a false banner of a “woman’s right to choose.”

She also took a cheap crack at Lt. Gov. Dewhurst, at the expense of the Tea Party, mocking how Dewhurst told a crowd, “I don’t know about you, but Barack Obama ought to be impeached,”by saying he had “more fervor for the cause than for grammatical construction.”

Aside from the blatant insult to the culture of millions of Americans, she conveniently forgets about Barack Obama’s lack of “grammatical construction,” when a man who was raised as a small child in Hawaii and Indonesia pretends like he is a Baptist black preacher. Or, she is silent when Biden — an old, white guy from Delaware — tells a room full of black Americans that Mitt Romney “wants to put y’all back in chains.”

In another pathetic exploitation of her status as a privileged white liberal who writes for the New York Times, she mocked Gov. Perry by stating: ” meanwhile, back at the ranch.” What if Ted Cruz wrote, “meanwhile, back on the progressive plantation?” Let’s cut the garbage, because that is where Gail Collins and her white liberal friends want to keep black Americans for the rest of their lives, depriving them of a quality education so that they may never realize it was so-called “progressives” who filled the ranks of the KKK, not Tea Party members.

I wish I had more days of the week, then I could make her our Daily Dunce more often.

Another New York Times liberal, Gail Collins,

Science

[wzslider autoplay=”true” transition=”‘slide'” info=”true” lightbox=”true”]

A skull discovery of a 1.8 million-year-old skull has rocked the scientific community, and it wasn’t alone. There were skulls that had protruding foreheads, while others had short, flattened faces. Other skulls had simply enormous jaw muscles and big teeth, while others had gigantic heads to hold much bigger brains than scientists previously thought.

There was one thing that the skulls had in common, which was that they were all family. In fact, they were our family, our ancient family from around 2 million years ago.

The world’s first completely preserved adult hominid skull from the early Pleistocene era looks surprisingly different from other skulls of the same time period, which has given scientists a tremendous insight. Man’s early ancestors appeared as physically diverse as humans do today, and our family tree has looks to have fewer branches than today’s science books claim.

“It’s a really extraordinary find,” said paleoanthropologist Marcia S. Ponce de Leon in a press conference Wednesday when they were announcing the findings. “For the first time, we can see a population from the early Pleistocene. We only had individuals before. Now we can make comparisons and see the range of variation.”

The skull in the spotlight is a complete, 1.8-million-year-old ancestor of mankind, found in Dmanisi, Georgia, which is in eastern Europe. This is the fifth such skull from the same region and it’s known as of now as “Skull 5.” Scientists have not yet given the skull a true name as they did for Lucy, whos is the Africa

n skeleton found back in the 1970s. Lucy dates back 3.4 million years, making her an even more distant relative of modern humans.

Such artifacts are extremely rare, which makes studying them very difficult. Past skulls dating back 2 million-years-ago have showed distinct differences in shape, enough so that scientists have labeled them different species altogether. Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, is one such example.

Skull 5 is different from the 4 other skulls recently found at Dmanisi. The Skull was found in 2005, and later matched up to a jaw found in 2000, which resulted in a complete skull. However, following 8 years of study, scientists on Thursday published a paper claiming that Skull 5 is simply not that different from other findings.

“The five Dmanisi individuals are no more different from each other than any five modern humans or chimpanzees,” said neurobiologist Christoph Zollikofer, who is a co-author of the paper with Ponce de Leon. Both scientists work at the Anthropological Institute and Museum in Zurich, Switzerland.

“The brain case is very small — around a third of [the size of] modern humans at 546 cubic centimeters — and at the same time, we have the face that is quite large, and the jaws are quite massive, and the teeth are big and large,” Leon explained.

“This is a strange combination of features that we didn’t know before in early homo,” she said. Even though such a skull shape was previously unknown, it was actually more similar to the others than it was different.

“Dmanisi is the first site where we can really look into and quantify variation in fossil hominid population,” Zollikofer said.

The site where it was discovered in more than interesting. David Lordkipanidze from the Georgian National Museum Tbilisi, Georgia — who is an author of yet a third paper — described the site as “a medieval city on a hilltop.”

There were signs of civilized life far more elaborate than previously understood. At the period of time the early hominids were walking around and about — 2 million years ago — the climate was temperate and relatively humid. The site was just a short distance from water, which was located on top of remnants of a lava flow. Scattered evidence of daily life remained to this day, as well, with a wide variety of plant and animal remains diversely spread about over an area spanning roughly 1.2 acres.

“We found stone tools and cut marks on animal bones, which indicate that hominids were actively involved in meat-processing,” Lordkipanidze said. One of the skulls found had a wound on its cheek, which could have come from a fight following an argument or  a simple injury sustained by a fall.

“This was a place with stiff competition between carnivores and hominids. We found almost a hundred carnivores and it seems they were fighting for the carcasses. Fortunately for the hominids — and fortunately for us — they were not always successful.”

What other secrets the mountain may still be holding out on, is to be determined in time. But these ancient creatures, who had long legs and short arms yet smaller brains than us, do tell us that once-again we still do not have all the pieces to the puzzle that is the human story.

“We still have a lot to discover,” he said. It certainly looks like it.

The discovery of a 1.8 million-year-old skull

News, Policy, World

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has attempted to sneak more than $1.6 billion in military and economic aid to Pakistan, despite foreign aid being suspended after relations between the two countries soured over the Osama bin Laden raid and the U.S. airstrikes against Pakistani soldiers.

Despite the recent debt ceiling debate, which led to Fitch Ratings revising the U.S. credit outlook downward, administration officials, congressional Democrats, neoconservatives and congressional aides, have all said relations have improved enough to again allow the foreign aid to be transferred.

American and NATO supply routes to Afghanistan are open, while controversial U.S. drone strikes are down. U.S. and Pakistan officials recently announced the restart of their “strategic dialogue” after a prolonged silence between the countries. The new Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, also announced he will be traveling to Washington this week for talks with President Barack Obama.

However, the summer plagued the administration with foreign policy debates at home surrounding the coup in Egypt against the Obama-backed Morsi government, and a failed attempt to strike Syria after a chemical weapons attack. The foreign policy debacles made Obama look small and weak on a  big international stage, thus the administration has resolved not to promote the transfer of foreign aid to Pakistan. Obviously, in an attempt to not bite the hand that feeds, neither has the Pakistani leader.

Congress, quietly and with a coalition of lock-step Democrats and neoconservatives, has thus far authorized most of the money the Obama administration proposed, and it will start transferring early next year.

Over a three week span, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development informed Congress that it had plans to ramp up assistance, which is mostly and supposedly dedicated to helping Pakistan fight terrorism. The Obama administration believes that their foreign aid proposal is essential if they are to begin to withdraw troops from neighboring Afghanistan next year.

They state they are trying to leave a stable government behind, but the Obama administration raced to the exits in Iraq, as well, leaving behind the only functioning representative government in the Middle East other than Israel, who was ill-equipped to deal with security. Iraq has now begun to fall apart, wasting tremendous U.S. blood and treasure sacrificed and left behind.

The Obama administration claims they are not pro-nation building, but the funds focus on a wide range of nation-building items, including help for Pakistani law enforcement and a multibillion-dollar dam in disputed territory.

In November of 2011, the U.S. mistakenly killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers and Islamabad responded by shutting land supply routes for U.S and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The routes stayed closed until it received a U.S. apology seven months later.

Administration officials in the State Department claimed that the U.S. hadn’t conducted any significant military financing for Pakistan, because of the “challenging and rapidly changing period of U.S.-Pakistan relations” in 2011 and 2012. The department emphasized how so-called important it was to beef-up Pakistan’s anti-terrorism capabilities. They hope better communications, night vision capabilities, maritime security and precision striking with F-16 fighter jets, will do just that.

The department told Congress — even though they should be asking — on July 25, that it would spend $295 million to help Pakistan’s military. And just 12 days later it announced another $386 million more. On Aug. 13 even more proposals came pouring in worth $705 million, which focus on helping Pakistani troops and air forces operating in the militant hotbeds of western Pakistan, and other counterinsurgency efforts.

The Obama administration had until the end of September to provide Congress with a “reprogramming” plan, or they would be forfeiting a portion of the money, which spans federal budgets from 2009-2013.

The officials who gave this story up for media coverage weren’t authorized to talk publicly about the aid relationship before Sharif’s visit. But they said the money would start reaching Pakistan in 2014, even though it would take several years to completely transfer the funds, which will end up untraceable once they hit the regime’s hands.

“Pakistan’s long-term stability is of critical national security interest to the U.S., so we remain committed to helping achieve a more secure, democratic and prosperous state, including through continued civilian and military assistance,” said Dan Feldman, the State Department’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said the assistance plan will deliver results for both countries — although, strangely, he didn’t specify whether those would be good or bad results — and enhance Pakistan’s ability to fight terrorism.

In its notifications to Congress, the department described fighting terrorism as a mutual concern, but they said almost nothing about the whether or not the will of Pakistan’s government, army and intelligence services is even to crack down on militant groups. These groups have often operated with impunity in Pakistan while wreaking havoc on U.S. and international forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Many U.S. leaders, with good reason, have relentlessly questioned Pakistan’s interest and commitment to counterterrorism.

In 2011, Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the militant Haqqani network as a “veritable arm” of Pakistani intelligence. Lawmakers, and even the Obama administration, have admitted there is Pakistani support for the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, as well as other militant groups.

Last month, the Obama administration sent officials from several agencies to attend closed-doors briefings with members of the House and Senate foreign relations committees. Quietly, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee has cleared all of the notifications and requests, while arguing how concerned they are about the debt. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is still considering a $280 million bloc of military aid.

“The committee held up the projects to get more information and express concerns,” said the office of Rep. Ed Royce, R-CA, the House panel’s chairman. “Though they went forward, the committee continues its close oversight.”

While Washington has publicly challenged Islamabad to step up its fight against militant groups, Pakistan’s biggest complaint has been the huge surge in drone strikes on terrorist targets, which Pakistanis see as violations of their sovereignty. The number of attacks has dropped dramatically this year.

The countries say they’re now moving past the flaps and mishaps that soured their partnership in recent years. During an August trip to Pakistan, Secretary of State John Kerry announced the restart of a high-level “strategic dialogue” with Pakistan on fighting terrorism, controlling borders and fostering investment.

Nation-building projects, the very chief criticism of the Bush administration by then-Senator Barack Obama, is disguised as economic aid programs, including support for the Diamer-Basha dam near the conflict prone Pakistani border with India. While the AP and Reuters have attempted to underscore the potential for “tremendous benefit,” they have neglected to highlight the hypocrisy, international cronyism, and the potential for disaster since the border is still in dispute and the scene of frequent violence.

There is little wonder why the Pakistani government has been unable to secure money for the project from the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank is waiting to hear from the United States and India before providing financing to help construction. The dam faces massive funding shortfalls for a reason.

In its July 24 notification to Congress, USAID claimed that the project could cost up to $15 billion — at least — and take a full decade to complete. The agency promised only to provide “financial and technical assistance” for studies, including on environmental and social aspects, while pointing at its construction as a means of helping a country with chronic power shortages. However, the nation cranks much of its nuclear power up to churn uranium.

State Department officials put the bill for the studies at $20 million, which is wholly unreliable historically speaking.

Typical rhetoric designed to distract from the realities of the U.S. financial condition and Pakistani ties to terrorism, has dominated this debate among Washington elites. If only the dam were ultimately built, wrote the USAID, it could provide electricity for 60 million people and 1 million acres of crop land, and provide a ready supply of water for millions more. It noted that Pakistani officials have sought American support at the “highest levels.”

Suspiciously, congressional aides said Pakistan’s government has lobbied particularly hard for the dam money to be unlocked.

Pakistan’s embassy in Washington refused to comment on the aid or say if Sharif would bring up any specific programs in talks at the White House.

The Obama administration has attempted to sneak

People's Pundit Daily
You have %%pigeonMeterAvailable%% free %%pigeonCopyPage%% remaining this month. Get unlimited access and support reader-funded, independent data journalism.

Start a 14-day free trial now. Pay later!

Start Trial

Subscribe