Underground Stories 01-09-14

Hillary Clinton and Obama admitted they opposed Iraq troop surge only to look good politically, 

claims former defense secretary Robert Gates in damning new book

Hillary Rodham Clinton, a likely Democratic Party standard-bearer in the 2016 presidential contest, staked out her military-related positions in the 2008 race based on how they would play politically, according to a former secretary of defense who served in both the Obama and Bush administrations.

Describing a 'remarkable' exchange he witnessed, Robert Gates writes in a book due out next week that 'Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary.'
Obama, too, 'conceded vaguely that [his] opposition to the Iraq surge had been political,' Gates recounts. 'To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.'
And Gates recounts how, as the president lost faith in Gen. David Petraeus' handling of hostilities in Afghanistan, he – Gates – lost faith in Obama's commitment to accomplishing much of anything.
'As I sat there,' he recalls, 'I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand [President Hamid] Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his.'
'For him, it’s all about getting out.'

Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move!’ initiative an epic failure

As if the unpopularity of Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch program weren’t enough, it turns out kids were equally unimpressed with the “Let’s Move!” exercise program.
Results of a 2012 survey released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show only 1 in 4 U.S. kids aged 12-15 meet the initiative’s one-hour-a-day activity requirements.
The “Let’s Move!” campaign, launched in 2010, adopted the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, which made the recommendation that children participate in “daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes.”
CDC researchers would not admit the results were dismal.
“There’s always room for improvement,” the lead author of the study, CDC’s Tala Fakhouri told The Associated Press, adding that the national results provide important information to initiatives designed to increase physical fitness.
About 800 kids self-reported their physical activity outside of school-based physical education or gym classes and received physical examinations. Other key findings of the study reported:

Basketball was the most common activity reported among active boys, followed by running, football, bike riding, and walking.
Running was the most common activity among active girls, followed by walking, basketball, dancing, and bike riding.
The percentage of male youth who were physically active for at least 60 minutes daily decreased as weight status increased.

As part of the overall initiative, the first lady also urged schools to put in place revised federal school lunch guidelines last year, prompting a barrage of bad press. Students in Kentucky complained the food tasted like vomit and an Indiana school district reported a $300,000 loss in revenue when students stopped buying the lunches.

WH blames global warming for record cold, report says no warming since 1866

Despite a report posted Thursday at Real Science that says there has been "almost no net change in temperature" in the northern hemisphere since 1866, White House science adviser John Holdren blames global warming for the record cold temperatures seen in many parts of the country in a video released by the administration, The Gateway Pundit said Wednesday.
"If you’ve been hearing that extreme cold spells like the one that we’re having in the United States now disproves global warming, don’t believe it. The fact is that no single weather episode can either prove or disprove global climate change. Climate is the pattern of weather that we observe geographically and over the seasons. And it’s described in terms of averages, variations and probabilities," Holdren says in the video.

Obama Issues Creepy Order To Start Dividing Cities Into ‘Promise Zones’

Continuing to use Hitler’s rise to power in pre-war Germany as his template, Obama today issued the order to begin creating ‘promise zones’ with the dangling carrot of free government entitlements to take control. History can be a wonderful teaching tool for those who wide awake and taking notes.
How’s your notebook doing?
USA Today: President Obama will designate troubled neighborhoods in five cities and areas as “Promise Zones,” eligible for tax breaks and other forms of assistance designed to create jobs and improve education, housing and public safety.
The first five Promise Zones will be located in San Antonio, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, southeastern Kentucky, and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said a White House statement. Obama plans to make a formal announcement Thursday.

Obama Administration Directs All Public Schools How They Can And Cannot Discipline Minority Students

Oh my.  Orwellian indeed.  The Obama Department of Justice just released a warning to all public school districts in the nation warning of what Eric Holder deems unfair disciplining against minority students.  In essence, they are charging these schools with racism and making it clear they will prosecute those school districts.  How many parents feel safer knowing their student’s security is being placed in the hands of some Washington D.C. policy pencil pusher intent on racializing every aspect of public education?

The White House is indicating these suggestions are “non-binding” as a way to deflect from charges of Big Government intimidation of every school district in the country.  At the very same time though, the Holder DOJ has already went after school districts who have attempted to discipline minority students for wrongdoing – the charge being racism of course.
So while they may say these are merely non-binding suggestions, the actions of the Obama administration are already saying otherwise.  They view themselves as the true wardens of your children’s school, schools that are to follow the rules of the Obama White House, and not those of the local community and its administrators, teachers, and parents.

Will the U.S. military put down a Veterans’ March on D.C. in 2014 as in 1932?

Have you heard of Operation American Spring?
That’s the name of a planned march on Washington, D.C., on May 16.
Retired U.S. Army colonel Harry Riley is calling upon millions of patriots to march upon Washington D.C. to remove Pres. Obama, VP Biden, AG Eric Holder, Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, and Reps. John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi from office.
Riley calls it “OPERATION AMERICAN SPRING – Beginning Of Tyranny Housecleaning” and conceives of three main phases to the plan:

1. Field as many as ten million unarmed patriots to peacefully assemble in Washington, D.C.
2. At least one million of the assembled 10 million to stay in D.C. as long as it takes to see the removal from office of Obama, et al.
3. Principled politicians like former Congressman Allen West and former Sen. Jim DeMint; Senators Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul; Reps. Trey Gowdy and Pete Sessions; Gov. Scott Walker; and Dr. Ben Carson to comprise a tribunal to convene investigations and recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees who have violated the Constitution.

But my friend John J. Molloy, Vietnam War veteran and chairman of the National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition, invokes the tragedy of the Bonus Army and urges caution.

Overall Obama Regulatory Burden Nears $500 Billion

The American Action Forum, a moderate conservative research institute, released its most recent examination of the regulatory burden caused by government, finding that Federal regulations cost the U.S. economy $112 billion in 2013. Last year’s regulatory costs elevate the total economic burden of Federal regulation during the first five years of the Barack Obama Administration to nearly $500 billion.
“From 2009 to 2013, regulators have published $494 billion in final rules,” Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, wrote in the report. “This figure dwarfs the gross domestic product (GDP) from countries like Sweden, Peru, and Ireland. With more than $87.6 billion in proposed rule costs this year, burdens will continue to increase in 2014.”
The 80,224 pages of regulation imposed in 2013 cost the economy roughly $447 million for each of the 251 days that the Federal government was open, according to the report. The new measures also added 157.9 million paperwork burden hours, according to the daily tally from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
The report said that the gridlock and inactivity of the “do-nothing” Congress has done little to stem the tide of new regulation in recent years because it is balanced against a White House “content to bypass legislative activity and impose its policy agenda by administrative fiat.”

Federal law says you CAN opt out of Obamacare and CAN NOT be penalized if you do

Ever heard of a federal law 42 USC § 18115: Freedom Not to Participate in Federal Health Insurance Programs?
I haven’t either.
But thanks to FOTM reader Joseph, now we all do!
This is how Cornell University Law School’s website describes 42 USC § 18115:

No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act(or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal health insurance program expanded by this Act (or any such amendments), and there shall be no penalty or fine imposed upon any such issuer for choosing not to participate in such programs.

The website further explains that the Act referred to in 42 USC § 18115 is Obamacare:

This Act, referred to in text, is Pub. L. 111–148, Mar. 23, 2010, 124 Stat. 119, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see Short Title note set out under section 18001 of this title and Tables.

42 USC § 18115 refers to:
Title 42 – The Public Health and Welfare
Chapter 157 – Quality, Affordable Health Care For All Americans
Subchapter 6 – Miscellaneous Provisions
Section 18115 - Freedom Not to Participate in Federal Health Insurance Programs
You can see it for yourself by going on the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Law Revision Counsel’s website for United States Code.
This is what the U.S. Code website says about 42 USC § 18115:

§18115. FREEDOM NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN FEDERAL HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAMS

No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act (or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal health insurance program expanded by this Act (or any such amendments), and there shall be no penalty or fine imposed upon any such issuer for choosing not to participate in such programs.
(Pub. L. 111–148, title I, §1555, Mar. 23, 2010, 124 Stat. 260.)

References in Text

This Act, referred to in text, is Pub. L. 111–148, Mar. 23, 2010, 124 Stat. 119, known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For complete classification of this Act to the Code, see Short Title note set out under section 18001 of this title and Tables

America Abandons Afghanistan to Drug Lords

This year, Western troops will withdraw from Afghanistan after 13 years of war. They’ll leave behind an undefeated enemy – as well as an Afghan government that’s shaky, corrupt and only nominally democratic.

But the West will be counting the true cost of the war for years to come – no longer in blood and treasure but in an epidemic of heroin addiction that’s sweeping the world, driven by an explosion of Afghan opium production.

Afghanistan’s drug output is up by nearly 50 percent in the last year, according to a recent United Nations report. Afghan opium profits totaled $68 billion globally, but less than 10 percent of that remains in Afghanistan, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The opium trade has a total export value of “about $4 billion, with a quarter [of that] being earned by opium farmers and the rest going to district officials, insurgents, warlords, and drug traffickers,” according to the UNODC.

At the same time, heroin addiction rates are soaring in the United States and even more in a wide ring of countries around Afghanistan, from Russia to Pakistan.

In December, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine warned that “a heroin epidemic” has seized his state; at the same time, Russian drugs czar Viktor Ivanov called heroin a “dragon” that is “ravaging our youth.

The question for many from the coalition countries who invaded Afghanistan in 2001 is: Have we really spent twice as much time and money as it took to fight World War II just to make Afghanistan safe for poppy farmers who are busy turning suburban kids into junkies?

In 2008, at the end of President George W. Bush’s second term, U.S. special envoy to Kabul Richard Holbrooke wrote that “breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential, or all else will fail.” So why is a mission which began with the intention of rebuilding Afghanistan’s war-shattered economy and breaking the drug trade coming to an end with opium production at record levels?

Part of the answer is that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan – failed to provide Afghan opium farmers with an alternative source of income.

Since 2001, the U.S. government alone spent more than $6 billion to curb opium production, including crop eradication programs and subsidies for alternative crops. That clearly wasn’t enough: Opium is five to six times more lucrative than other crops, so the incentives – or penalties – have to be enormous to effectively discourage poppy farming. The next biggest export crop after opium is nuts – 7.4 percent of Afghanistan’s total official exports of $376 million. Farmers can earn as much as $203 a kilogram for harvested opium, according to the UNODC.

And despite more than $100 billion spent on social services in the country over the same period, the West has failed to build anything resembling a real Afghan economy. In the 1970s, Afghanistan grew all its own food. Now it has to import vast quantities of food to feed its 32 million people. 

Why John Roberts (Likely) Is Protecting Obamacare

On Monday, without comment (because he could not make a coherent one),  Chief Justice John Roberts denied a request by the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons and the Alliance for Natural Health USA for a stay in the implementation of Obamacare. The groups had made their application last Friday, arguing that since the bill had been declared a tax by the Supreme Court (with Justice Roberts himself the deciding vote), and it had originated in the Senate (the Constitution says revenue bills may not originate), the law was therefore unconstitutional; and implementation of Obamacare  should at least be stayed pending further examination.
While there are other minor issues attached to the application that were also not addressed, the truth of the matter is clear: John Roberts will never do anything to derail Obamacare, no matter what arguments against it are brought before him.
There is very good reason to believe that regardless of the media’s skillful smothering of the story, John Roberts is being blackmailed to make certain Obamacare never falls in a Supreme Court case. The basis of this charge surrounds the fact that a series of strange (and probably felonious) acts are attached to the adoption of his two children.
In 2005, when they thought they were doing the Democrats’ bidding, the New York Times dug into apparently easily accessible records and found that the children Roberts and his wife adopted in “South America” started life as Irish citizens. This is a red flag. The laws of Ireland regarding adoptions are very clear: adoptions by non-citizens are prohibited, as are private adoptions.
Apparently, when the Democrats realized they could control a Supreme Court Justice’s vote through blackmail over his having committed a number of international crimes, the Times pulled back and dropped its investigation. The Democrat paper of record pulled back because it didn’t want to “ break the seal of an adoption case” – as if violating laws ever means anything to Democrats in their quest for power. Keep in mind Barack Obama’s violation of his opponents’ “sealed” divorce records propelled him to a US Senate seat.
What does the Roberts problem mean for the average American who looks to Washington for relief from Democrat oppression? It means we won’t be getting any relief from the Roberts Court, period.
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