Blog

President Obama hailed his administration for its transparency in February 2014, saying “This is the most transparent administration in history.”

Too bad his message got lost in the email.

The White House is now exempting its Office of Administration from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) saying office doesn’t have to comply with the law because it only provides administrative support and business services to the president’s executive office.  The rule change means there’ll no longer be a formal process for the public to ask that the White House voluntarily disclose records as part of what’s known as a “discretionary disclosure.”

Furthermore the White House said it was not allowing a 30-day public comment period, and so the rule change is final. It’s because of a FOIA request that it was discovered Hillary Clinton’s “personal” government-business emails were not stored on a federally operated server.

The timing of the announcement amounts to another ‘optics’ problem for the White House as President James Madison’s birthday, March 16th is known as ‘National Freedom of Information Day.’ The White House did not respond to questions about the timing of the official rule change, but did note that Obama won an award from the organizing groups of Sunshine Week in 2011 for his policies.

Don’t worry though, because at least in theory, we’ll be able to see all of Obama’s “personal” government-business emails beginning in January 2021.

Hillary Clinton claimed she used a private email address and server as a matter of convenience, not wanting to use two cells. But during a women’s conference in Santa Clara, California, Hillary said she uses two cell phones.

“I want to ask the big question — iPhone or Android?” the interviewer said.

“iPhone! Okay, in full disclosure — and a Blackberry,” Hillary responded.

Hillary also used an iPad during her time as secretary of state under President Obama, which was not cleared by the administration because it was not considered secure. But she’s been involved in scandals before including a Y2K one aptly named ‘Email-gate.’

The White House email system in the year 2000 apparently contained a glitch that allowed thousands of emails to escape record, many of which were evidence to other Clinton scandals, becoming the basis for Hillary’s first email scandal. The nature of this glitch was allegedly undisclosed in order to hide email evidence from investigators.

In 1978 and 1979, Hillary engaged in a series of trades of cattle futures contracts. Her initial $1,000 investment had generated nearly $100,000 when she stopped trading after ten months, leading to what would become known as the ‘Cattlegate.’ Many believed it to be a bribe, camouflaged as futures trades, from Tyson Foods Inc.

In March 1992, ‘Whitewater scandal’ began with investigations into the real estate investments of Bill and Hillary Clinton and their associates, Jim and Susan McDougal, in the Whitewater Development Corporation, a failed business venture in the 1970s and 1980s.

Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster was found dead July 20, 1993. He was distraught at the prospect of being grilled about the shady affairs of Hillary Clinton.  His death was ruled a suicide. Hillary later ordered the shredding of Foster’s documents in the Rose Law Firm.

The ‘Castle Grande Land-flip Scandal’ was a scandal within a scandal involving real estate development project in Arkansas. It came into National news as a result of the Whitewater investigations. In 1994, the Castle Grande billing records were subpoenaed, but were not produced at that time.

In 1996, Hillary was accused by the Senate Special Whitewater Committee of ordering the removal of potentially damaging files related to Whitewater from Foster’s office on the night of his death and telling aides to lie about their removal. A year and a half later, a White House employee, found the billing records in the private quarters of the first family, right outside Hillary’s private office.

“Travelgate’ became news in May 1993, after Hillary had seven employees of the White House Travel Office fired in order to give the pricey travel business to her Hollywood pals, Linda Bloodworth Thomason and Harry Thomason. The White House finally releases more than 2,000 documents on June 25, 1996, on the travel office firings, originally requested two years prior by congressional investigators.

During 1994 investigation into ‘Hillarycare,’ a federal judge ordered a trial to find out if Hillary’s heath care task force illegally operated in secret. It was discovered she has speculated in Health Care industry futures while overseeing legislative reform of same, failed to correct false testimony by co-defendant Ira Magaziner in Health Care trial and ordered members of the Health Care Task Force to shred documents that were the target of a court probe.

Dubbed the ‘Drug Dealer Donor Scandal,’ it involved convicted drug trafficker Jorge Cabrera. He made $20,000 donation to the Clinton’s campaign and was invited to the White house in December 1995 without Secret Service present.  Cabrera was asked for a campaign contribution while in hotel in Havana, by Vivian Mannerud, a Cuban-American businesswoman from Miami.

The money was returned and after a few weeks, the story stopped making news.

‘Filegate’ arose in June 1996 around improper access in 1993 and 1994 to Federal Bureau of Investigation security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, director of the White House’s Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission.

‘Chinagate’ was an effort by the People’s Republic of China in 1996 to influence domestic American politics prior to and during the Clinton administration and also involved the fund-raising practices of the administration itself. The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C. was used for coordinating contributions in violation of U.S. law forbidding non-American citizens or non-permanent residents from giving monetary donations to U.S. politicians and political parties.

Federal investigators later concluded that China made off with the “crown jewels” of our nuclear weapons research under Clinton’s open-door policy. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, who served as Clinton’s front man in many Chinese deals died suddenly in a suspicious April 1996 plane crash.

Reminiscent of ‘Chinagate,” Norman Yung Yuen Hsu, a convicted pyramid investment promoter, and major Democratic donor gave nearly a million dollars to Hillary’s 2008 campaign. She was later forced to return more than $800,000 in Hsu-linked contributions in the scandal that soon became known as ‘bundlegate.’

In 2013 Hillary found herself embroiled in yet another scandal. This time it was her use of propaganda to mislead the public about the circumstances of the Benghazi terrorist attack on the American embassy in Libya that left four Americans dead.

“Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they’d go kill some Americans,” Clinton tritely screech. “What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?”

If elected in 2016, we’re sure to find out.

The first time I read the news I’m about to convey, it came through a series of ‘drunk messaging’s,’ through Facebook. I didn’t take it too seriously because as I said before, the guy messaging me, admitted he was intoxicated.

Then this morning, I received another ‘Facebook message,’ from some one who is close to the family. It was then that I reacted with: Oh. My. God.

News Talk 780 KOH Assistant Program Director Phil Parriott died in a single vehicle accident in Cedarville, California on Saturday morning.  He’s survived by his parents Sandra and Sam Parriott and sisters Jaime and Jillienne Parriott,

Funeral Services are scheduled for Saturday, March 28, 2015 at 12 noon at Ross, Burke and Knobel Mortuary, 2155 Kietzke Lane in Reno.  Phil was jus’ 29-years-old.

Democratic operative James Carville, who worked on the presidential campaigns of both Bill and Hillary Clinton, said Hillary’s use of a private email account during her time as Secretary of State was legal and because she was trying to avoid congressional oversight.

“I suspect she didn’t want Louie Gohmert riffling through her emails, which seems to me to be a kind of reasonable position for someone to take,” Carville said, referring to the Texas Republican congressman. “So, just like everything else before it, it amounts to nothing but a bunch of people flapping they jaws about nothing.”

The scandal is now being traced back to leaks from a key senior Obama advisor: Valerie Jarrett. The New York Post’s Ed Klein claims Jarrett was careful to leak sensitive information about Clinton’s tenure to contacts outside the White House, to deflect any connection to the Obama administration.

“My contacts and friends in newspapers and TV tell me that they’ve been contacted by the White House and offered all kinds of negative stories about us,” Bill Clinton reportedly said, according to one of the former president’s friends. “The Obama’s are behind the email story and they’re spreading rumors that I’ve been with women, that Hillary promoted people at the State Department who’d done favors for our foundation, that John Kerry had to clean up diplomatic messes Hillary left behind.”

Jarrett also requested that the State Department start a series of investigations into Hillary’s conduct while at the agency.  Both she and President Obama fear that if Clinton becomes president, she’ll end many programs Obama initiated.

Indiana Congresswoman Susan Brooks is calling for Hillary to pass on the email server that hosted her private address, and not jus’ copies of the relevant electronic messages.

“Right now there is no way for us to know whether we have all of the State Department communications that rightfully belong to the American people. The only way to truly know is by having access to Secretary Clinton’s personal server,” Brooks said. “That is why we are asking Secretary Clinton to turn her server over to a neutral, third-party arbiter.”

Clinton claims she has no plans to turn over the server and that all work-related emails are in the hands of the State Department. The House Select Committee has issued a subpoena for Hillary’s server following the original email revelations.

Stop being jealous of others.
Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own.
Ask yourself this:  “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”

Detectives searching for Karen Mitchell are interested in talking to Manhattan real estate heir Robert Durst in the disappearance of the 16-year-old.  Karen vanished on November 25, 1997 after volunteering at a homeless shelter in Eureka, California.

At the time of her disappearance a command center was set up in a donated room at the Eureka Inn and since, stacks of papers on the case fill more than 30 volumes and stands over six-feet high. Law enforcement has combed through every lead given to them including the driver of a car that had slowed to speak with a girl resembling Karen the day she disappeared.

The car, a light blue 1977 Ford Granada, ultimately failed to get a solid lead.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

There was a caller, who claimed to have heard details of Karen’s kidnapping and murder and a letter to the Times-Standard from “Topaz,” who said police should try looking behind Taco Bell and Bayshore Mall. A search of the area found nothing.

Police said that after leaving the shelter, Karen walked over to the Bayshore Mall to visit her aunt, Annie Casper, at her shoe store. Then she left for her aunt’s home, and has not been seen since.

At the time, Annie and Bill Casper were both well-known in the business and law enforcement communities; Annie owned Annie’s Shoes, while Bill worked as the supervisor of the state Department of Justice crime lab in Eureka. She moved to Humboldt County from Southern California when she was 13.

The day Karen disappeared she had been filling out college applications. She was planning to go to Humboldt State University and was interested in politics, especially involving the environment, and in children.

In 1999, officers interviewed confessed serial killer Wayne Ford after he walked into the sheriff’s department carrying a female breast in his pocket, telling officers he had killed a woman. In the end, investigators could not connect him to Karen’s case.

In 2004, police set off on the largest land search since she disappeared. Investigators and cadaver-sniffing dogs inspected a fence line near Truesdale Street and another along Hilfiker Lane, looking for clues.

Durst lived in Trinidad at the time and visited Casper’s store, while dressed in drag, at least four times. Durst was recently arrested in New Orleans and is charged with murder in Los Angeles and has been suspected but never charged in the disappearance of his first wife in New York.

In 2003, he was acquitted of murder in a dismemberment death in Texas.  Durst is also a person of interest in the disappearance of 18-year-old Kristen Modafferi, who vanished on June 23, 1997 after leaving work in San Francisco.

While everyone’s heard of ISIS or ISIL, there is a new name for the group gaining popularity and supposedly the radical Islamic terror group hates it. This new name — Daesh — is already starting to be used by governments officials.

“In less than three months, the international community has come together to form a coalition that is already taking important steps to degrade and defeat ISIL, or Daesh,” SOS John Kerry said from NATO headquarters in Brussels in December 2014.

Say what?

Daesh, pronounced Die-esh, apparently comes from the Arabic name with which ISIL refer to themselves, “al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham.”  The claimed hate at being called Daesh is that its supposedly like the verb ‘Daes,’ which means “one who crushes something underfoot.” It also sounds like ‘Dahes,’ or “one who sows discord.”

On the surface, this is yet another Progressive ploy at word play as revealed by France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius: “This is a terrorist group and not a state. I do not recommend using the term Islamic State because it blurs the lines between Islam, Muslims and Islamists.”

We need to stop trying to reinvent the enemy by altering its name to avoid offending the very people who’re dedicated to destroying us.

President Obama is trying to force his foreign policy on our next President by creating ‘a third term.’ The very week that ISIL beheaded 21 Coptic Christians, Obama sent an “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” to Congress restricting our fight against the radial Islamic group.

So what’s in Obama’s AUMF?

— Authorization to use force against the Islamic State and any related group.
— No restrictions on where in the world.
— No authorization to conduct “enduring offensive ground combat operations”.
— The Authorization would automatically end after three years unless Congress reauthorizes it.
— It repeals the 2002 AUMF for Iraq.

That appears to be what we’re doing now, under the old AUMF. And, it’s clearly not enough as ISIL keeps advancing, killing men, women and children in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.  This includes ‘sub-sets’ of people like Christians and homosexuals.

If enacted Obama’s AUMF would keep the next president from waging a ground war against ISIL until 2018.  Also, by having his AUMF passed by Congress, Obama will be able to claim he’s ‘acting’ under the terms of the agreement approved by Congress.

Finally, this AUMF, with its new controlling terms is unconstitutional.

Obama appears to on the verge of creating a precedent that would have Congress lessen the commander-in-chief’s use of force. And while Congress has the ability to “declare war,” it doesn’t have the power to limit the president in the execution of such a declaration.

The framers of the Constitution put all executive power into a single official office commonly referred to as the Commander-in-Chief or President.  So, if Congress approves Obama’s AUMF, it will permanently cripple that framework.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey all recently pressed for congressional approval of the AUMF.

The truth doesn’t seem to mean much to those who claim the mantle of national leadership these days. Worse yet, it appears to matter even less to those who follow those same so-called leaders.

‘If you like your healthcare,” President Obama promised, “you can keep your healthcare.”

While hundreds went to Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the march across the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry said it wasn’t about celebrating ‘voter rights.’

“Folks who are clearly out here marching because they believe that reproductive rights continue to be threatened in this country, and particularly in the South,” Harris-Perry said. “This is truly motivated by what the president has called, and, of course, in quoting Martin Luther King, Jr., ‘the fierce urgency of now.’”

Then there is Hillary Clinton, who claimed ‘convenience,’ as the reason she used a private e-mail account to conduct State Department business.

“Looking back, it would have been better for me to use two separate phones and two separate e-mail accounts,” Clinton said. “I thought using one device would be simpler. Obviously, it hasn’t worked out that way.”

Finally, Senator Harry Reid issued a message to the 47 Senate Republicans who signed onto a letter to Iranian leadership, instructing them on how our U.S. Constitution works.

“I’m disappointed that some of my Republican colleagues are destroying the long tradition of bipartisanship in defending Israel and stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” Reid said. “We’re witnessing a fundamental test of Republicans’ ability to govern. They’re treating nuclear negotiations as a chance to play political games.”

With such tripe being bantered about it’s not hard to think about how 2 Timothy 4:3-4 reads: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

Activist Gloria Steinem said it best for the Progressive who may be reading this: “The truth will set you free — but first it will piss you off.”

President Obama has already enacted amnesty through executive fiat and now, he’s eyeing unilateral tax increases. This comes after a self-described democratic socialist and Vermont Senator, Bernie Sanders called on Obama to raise more than $100 billion in taxes through IRS executive action.

As the ranking minority member on the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders wants executive action if Congress refuses to pass his version of tax reform.  Sanders’ letter calls on Obama to close these “tax loopholes:”

— The Check the Box Loophole
— The Hewlett-Packard Loophole
— The Real Estate Investment Trusts Loophole
— The Corporate Inversion Loophole
— The Carried Interest Loophole
— The Valuation Discount Loophole

The problem with Sanders’ request is that is fails to acknowledge the relationship between Congress and Treasury. The department has no more power than Congress delegates to it.

But if Obama can handout work permits, Social Security numbers, and driver’s licenses to millions of illegal aliens, then tax increases would be easy as White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest points out: “Now I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there is some imminent announcement, there is not, at least that I know of. But the president has asked his team to look at the array of executive authorities that are available to him to try to make progress on his goals.”

Those actions, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will raise federal deficits by $8.8 billion over the next ten years. Meanwhile, unconcerned with deficits, Obama wants more tax reporting too – but few are talking about this.

Businesses that purchase more than $600 worth of goods or services from a contractor would have to get that contractor’s Taxpayer Identification Number and check it with the IRS. If it doesn’t check out, the business would have to withhold from 15-percent to 35-percent of the payment, sending it off to the IRS, doubling or tripling the reporting obligations of small businesses.

The timing of Sanders’ letter and Earnest’s response should be a wake-up call to leaders in Congress as this nation fought a revolution, in part, because of taxes levied by a despot.