RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/20/Obama-admin-releases-apology-video-Pakistan

Obama State Dept Releases Apology Video in Pakistan- SEP.12, 2012

So what does the media have to say about the fact that the Obama administration is running ads on Pakistani television, during riots at the American embassy in Pakistan, showing Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton essentially apologizing for a controversial YouTube video about Mohammed? The ad shows Obama stating, “Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence. None.” The video goes on to show Clinton stating, “Let me state very clearly, and I hope it is obvious, that the United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video. We absolutely reject its content and message. America’s commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.”

This is what we call appeasement.

As rioters burn flags outside our embassy in Pakistan, it is disgraceful for the State Department to use US taxpayer dollars to rip on legitimate expression under the First Amendment. And it is an apology for American values to do so.

THEN ON SEP.13 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/13/clinton-anti-islam-video-_n_1880804.html

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is sharpening her criticism of an anti-Islam video that provoked protests in the Arab world.

Clinton says the film is “disgusting and reprehensible.” She calls it a cynical attempt to offend people for their religious beliefs.

But Clinton says the U.S. would never stop Americans from expressing their views, no matter how distasteful. And she says the film is no justification for violence or attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel.

Clinton said Thursday the U.S. is monitoring protests in Yemen and elsewhere. She’s urging countries to take steps to prevent protests escalating into violence.

Note: This column is adapted from a speech I gave in New York City on May 29, announcing the publication of Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment.

Faithless Execution is about presidential lawlessness.

Specifically, my new book, which Encounter Books will release this week, is about how the Framers of our Constitution fully anticipated that a president could fail to honor his core duty to execute the laws faithfully — could fail to meet his basic fiduciary obligations to the American people.

Viewing the Obama presidency through the prism of these constitutional norms, Faithless Execution argues that we are experiencing a different kind of presidential lawlessness than our nation has ever known: a systematic undermining of our governing framework, willfully carried out by a president who made no secret of his intention to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

What is the president trying to transform?

Well, the constitutional framework he is undermining enshrines two core principles: separation-of-powers and accountability.

The first is the foundation of a free society. President Obama presumes the power to decree, amend, and repeal laws as he sees fit, effectively claiming all government power as his own. But as James Madison, the principal author of our Constitution, put it, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” And so it is.

Accountability, the second constitutional principle at issue, is how our system holds a president singularly responsible for executive lawlessness. The Constitution vests all executive power in a lone elected official — the president. Not in the broad, dizzying array of executive-branch agencies; in the president himself.

“Jim Geraghty sums up what Clinton’s Benghazi chapter really comes down to:

… is to remind people that Hillary Clinton is willing to lie, quite dramatically, boldly, and shamelessly, even in ways that can be easily checked and refuted, when her political aspirations are at stake.”

Nine days after terrorists killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya — and nine days after Clinton herself blamed the attack on a YouTube video — Hillary Clinton wants you to know that she appointed a board to investigate the attack. That, she writes, ought to count for something. Politico’s Maggie Haberman seems to agree. Haberman got the exclusive first look at Hillary’s Benghazi chapter, access that raises questions of its own.

The chapter is a mostly chronological retrospective of the attack interspersed with Clinton’s views. She points out that she ordered an investigation into what happened nine days after the attacks, and that she agreed with and implemented all 29 of the recommendations made by a review board.

Clinton hand-picked that board, which never even interviewed Clinton about Benghazi. Some review. And nine days is quite a long time for the scene of a crime/terrorist attack to get picked over and see evidence carried away or destroyed. With the 2012 presidential election just weeks after the attack, nine days was quite a long time, clearly enough time to keep the disaster from swamping the Obama campaign. Clinton had to appoint the Accountability Review Board, she had no choice. She appointed it only after she and the president and Ambassador Susan Rice had spent a fortnight blaming the attack on a video.

In addition to patting herself on the back for constructing a review that was designed not to touch her, Clinton speculates on the motives of the attackers, none of whom have been arrested yet.

“There were scores of attackers that night, almost certainly with differing motives,” she writes. “It is inaccurate to state that every single one of them was influenced by this hateful video. It is equally inaccurate to state that none of them were. Both assertions defy not only the evidence but logic as well.”

JILLARY’S WARS

Call them Jillary: as in Jill Abramson plus Hillary Clinton, two women of an age, of a kind, and of a political genre, the reigning queens of modern identity politics, each rising high and becoming a model for generations of feminists who admired their guts and brashness and gall. And call him Pinch: Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the Prince Charles of the house of New York Times, heir to the throne of one of the few modern-day institutions that still runs on the monarchical principle in which the first son of the reigning family is given great power (deserved or not), a backer of Hillary and employer of Jill—at least until May 14, when he tossed her under the bus and then backed up and ran over her, breaking the rules set for gender-relations and setting off rows in the gender-identity complex not seen in its annals before.
Was she fired for cause? Fired for being a woman in power. Or, as the Times had often insisted when a powerful woman was under discussion, could “cause” be an issue at all? Thus in the same week when Hillary’s backers were claiming it was out of bounds for her to be questioned by men about anything that could be said to have gone wrong in her tenure as secretary of state, two units of her team were engaged in a cage match, breaking an alliance of 20 years’ standing, and putting them and their project at risk.

In the beginning, it all seemed much simpler. The early 1990s were the critical years for them all. Hillary went from being the lawyer-wife of an unknown southern governor to being first lady and feminist icon. Jill was at work on the book which would make her a player, Strange Justice, which she wrote with Jane Mayer, about the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas war of words in the course of his Supreme Court nomination. Pinch took over the Times. He hated the concept of white male privilege as only a millionaire who inherited a job passed from his great-grandfather down through the generations could do. “He was like a silversmith, noisily banging the New York Times into a shape that reflected his own values, beliefs, and personality,” wrote Alex S. Jones and Susan E. Tifft in The Trust, their 1999 book about the New York Times Company, quoting a colleague who said Pinch was “not nearly as fully formed as he appeared to be.”

Declaring diversity to be the most critical challenge facing the paper, Pinch embraced the cause of gay and lesbian rights, hired blacks as editors, critics, and columnists, promoted women, and like his employees resolutely took Anita Hill’s side in the Hill-Thomas sexual harassment showdown. This made him a good fit for Abramson, whom he would hire away from the Wall Street Journal in 1997 and whose views seemed to mirror his own: While treating liberal blacks with kid gloves and much reverence, the Times would make a practice of profiling conservatives such as Clarence Thomas and quota foe Ward Connerly as disturbed personalities whose judgment was wanting.

The new codes were drawn up by the Jills and Hil-larys in the belief that the men to be caught would all be conservatives just like Clarence Thomas, and the snaring of a president supported by feminists at first took them all by surprise. But not for long: In no time at all, the girls on the bus ditched their vulnerable, working-class sisters for the powerful male who sat in the White House. In Vanity Fair, the late and great essayist Marjorie Williams outlined the charges brought against Clinton: that he exposed himself to a state employee making $6.35 an hour (Paula Jones); that he groped a volunteer when she asked for a job that paid money (Kathleen Willey); that as president he had an affair with a 21-year-old intern who came to deliver pizza and stayed to dispense more intimate favors (Monica Lewinsky); that he used state personnel to procure sexual partners; and that he used “staff members, lawyers, and private investigators to tar the reputation of any woman who tries to call him to account” for his acts. “Can you find the problems with his behavior?” Williams then asked us. She continued:

Take your time: These problems are apparently of an order so subtle as to escape the notice of many of the smartest women in America—the writers, lawyers, activists, officeholders and academics who call themselves feminists. When news broke that Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr was investigating whether President Clinton had lied under oath .  .  . the cacophony that ensued was notable for the absence of one set of voices: the sisterly chorus that backed up Anita Hill seven years earlier when her charges of sexual harassment nearly stopped Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.

The enormity of the slaughters of the “religion of peace” are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. — Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.

Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.

According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). — Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site

80 Million?! The conquistadors’ crimes pale into insignificance at that number. No wonder Hitler admired Islam as a fighting religion. He stood in awe of Islam, whose butchery even he did not surpass.

Over 110 Million Blacks were killed by Islam.

… a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. — John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

On June 10, the Knesset will elect President Shimon Peres’s successor. As he departs the President’s Residence at the end of June, the media will provide saturation coverage of his final days and tell us over and over that Peres is the greatest statesman in Jewish history. His personal gravitas is Israel’s single most important asset in the world, they will say as they warn of our bleak future without him.

The upcoming Peres-is-a-Superhero festival will just be the latest of the narcissistic, tasteless celebrations of this man, always choreographed expertly by Peres and his retinue of media groupies.

Like his 80th and 85th birthdays, Peres’s 90th birthday celebration went on for a month. As the serving president, his last two monthlong benders cost the taxpayers millions of shekels and broke the budget of the President’s Residence.

All were replete with international celebrity guests like Nelson Mandela, Bono and Bill Clinton whom the press drooled over.

Hyperventilating reporters paused between drinks to mournfully note that after Peres leaves office, the parties will end and the A-listers will stop visiting.

And that’s the problem with Peres’s showboating. It’s always been all about him, never about us.

Peres’s popularity among the jet-setters never translates into international support for the State of Israel. Israel is but a prop for him – a means of securing the continued support of the beautiful people.

Actually, it’s worse than that. Peres’s international popularity has always grown in indirect proportion to Israel’s. The more Hollywood stars he adds to his collection, the worse Israel’s international isolation.

American banking authorities are threatening to slap a 10 billion dollar fine on France’s top bank, BNP Paribas, accused of handling transactions in dollars from 2002-9 for customers from Iran, Cuba, and Sudan, in violation of an American embargo. What does this have to do with the Front National? Would an anti-Islamization party be shocked by the Iranian ties of our flagship bank? Or perhaps the Front National, sworn enemy of Big Finance, will be pleased to see a money-grubbing bank get its fingers slapped and its stockholders deprived of one year’s dividends?
Probably not. Marine Le Pen accuses the United States of imposing sanctions to prevent French companies from trading with Iran the better to allow American companies to prepare a bright commercial future there. At the same time she accuses France of joining the US in a veritable war on Iran.
Aymeric Chauprade has been Marine Le Pen’s foreign policy advisor since she became party president in 2011. Elected this month EU deputy from the district that includes Paris, he is expected to pilot the Group that Le Pen is striving to put together. Chauprade is eminently presentable, handsomely academic, poised and soft-spoken. He calls himself a “dissident,” replacing the Soviet Union with oppressive Western democracies. His carefully constructed discourse has all the marks of the accomplished geostrategist with a solid academic background and broad international experience. Except that it veers off into riffs about the machinations of the “Atlantico-Zionist conspiracy” alternating with lyrical passages in praise of Vladimir Putin. As he spins his fascinating tale about the real forces at work in our world, the balance of power, the sources of conflict, the causes of violence, the historical realities—e.g. Islamic jihad and its scriptural foundations—are metamorphosed into marionettes manipulated by imperialist America.
Keeping in mind that Marine Le Pen needs 2 more allies to form a 7-nation Group at the European Parliament, we may justifiably extend our inquiry into the words and deeds of her foreign policy advisor, Aymeric Chauprade. To what extent are his policies acceptable to the leaders of the four parties already allied with the Front National—Geert Wilders, Harald Wilinsky, Gerald Annemans, and Matteo Salvini?
Revelations about the Front National are often but not always found in media that could be labeled “leftwing” or “anti-fascist.” The anti-jihad discourse adopted by Marine Le Pen at the beginning of her presidential campaign led to uncritical acceptance of the Front National by thinkers and activists concerned with the dangers of 21st century Islamic conquest. Many, if not the great majority of these people were awakened to this issue by the 9/11 jihad attack against the United States. They do not appreciate being rejected as right wing racist xenophobic Islamophobes. Is the triumph of the Front National good news for them?

The Israeli leadership would do well to bear in mind that commitment to the principle of democratic governance is not a suicide pact.

Incredibly, today, except for detail in nuance and tone, the formal positions of the major “right-wing” faction, the Likud, has become indistinguishable from positions expounded by the far-left Meretz faction.

In terms of political affiliation, 51 percent of respondents said they were right-wing, 22% said they were in the Center and 27% defined themselves as left-wing. Among young people, a greater percentage called themselves right-wing than left-wing

– Recent opinion poll, “Israel today – the state of the nation,” Ynetnews, May 5.

At first glance, the findings of the poll conducted over the last week of April should be cause of great encouragement and satisfaction for the political “Right.” That is until you examine political realities and take a long, hard look at the political “Right’s” performance over the past two-and-a-half decades.

Organizational victory, ideological defeat

According to the survey, over half the population holds views presumably compatible with what might be expected of “right-wing” political platforms – almost double that found for what presumably might be expected of the political platforms of its “left-wing” rivals. No less significant, the “Right” enjoys greater support than the “Left” among the young.It seem the younger the age group, the stronger the support for the “Right.”

All of this seems to bode a rosy future for the “Right” in Israel. This, however, would be a highly simplistic – even deceptive—take on Israeli political realities. For the political outcomes that have taken place in the past, and seem probable in the future, provide a very different picture.

Although it is true that there has been serious erosion in the electoral strength of the “Left” and of its representation in the Knesset, the ideology it embraced has totally eclipsed that of its “right-wing” rivals.

After all, since the early 1990s, political realities in Israel have clearly shown that electoral victory has little bearing on the policies resultant governments will pursue.

Quite the reverse.

As I have pointed out in previous columns, the official ideology adopted by the allegedly “right-wing” Likud is demonstratively far more concessionary than that embraced by the post-Oslo Labor Party under the Nobel peace laureate Yitzhak Rabin. Yet any Israeli leader who were to adopt Rabin’s prescription for a permanent settlement with the Palestinians would be immediately dismissed as an unrealistic extremist.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/nebraska-2014-candidates-for-congress-where-they-stand?f=must_reads

Primary: May 13, 2014

To see the actual voting records of all incumbents on other issues such as Foreign Policy, Second Amendment Issues, Homeland Security, and other issues as well as their rankings by special interest groups please use the links followed by two stars (**).
U.S. Senate

Deb Fischer (R) Next election in 2018
Mike Johanns (R) Is retiring in 2014
Ben Sasse (R) Challenger
https://www.sassefornebraska.com/
ISSUES
HEALTHCARE He opposes ObamaCare not just because:
it was passed by a dishonest legislative gimmick
it is based on a premise that Government can successfully plan 18% of our economy
it puts bureaucrats between patients and doctors
it infringes on religious liberty and forces people of conscience to pay for abortion
its information technology systems won’t work, and will likely lead to massive data leaks of Americans’ confidential financial and health data
…though all those things are true.

He’s also against it for a much more basic reason: Ben opposes ObamaCare because he rejects the worldview underlying it. It’s a worldview that says:

“If there’s a problem, only the Federal Government can solve it.”

“Fake budget projections are fine, it’s OK to hide the truth from the American people because “DC knows what America needs and the ends justify the means”

“The Executive branch has the authority to just fill in parts of the law that are unfinished, grant special waivers to politically connected friends, and change parts of the law that are politically inconvenient.”

“The American people need Government to care for them and permanent dependency isn’t just an acceptable outcome, it’s a goal of this Administration.”

This does not work. Republicans must be ready with conservative solutions to the crisis Obamacare has caused. Otherwise we will be forced into a single-payer system.
Real health care reform can only be achieved through patient-centered health policy solutions, not more bureaucracy. The health care sector was a mess before Obamacare-not because we didn’t have enough government, but because we already had too much.
JOBS AND ECONOMY Ben knows that the government does not create jobs – businesses and local communities create jobs. The way to get a real economic growth agenda is by rolling back the regulatory state and letting job creators go to work. One area where over-regulation has been most obvious is the energy sector. The Keystone XL pipeline should have been approved years ago. Ben believes that we need an all-of-the-above energy policy. This approach would lower energy prices, create as many as three million jobs, and reduce our dependence on the Middle East.
When government gets out of the way, America can compete – and win – in any industry. We’ve got the people; we’ve got the talent; and most of all we have the work ethic – the will to create something lasting for our families and our neighbors- if we can just get the federal government out of the way, and let our people build.
IMMIGRATION The Federal Government’s primary responsibility is to protect Americans from enemies foreign and domestic. The American people are not safe unless we know who is entering and leaving our country. Neither Party has been willing to get serious about border security, dating back to the mid-80s when a Republican president agreed to amnesty in exchange for promises of securing the border later. It never happened.

President “You can keep your doctor” Obama refuses to lead on this issue because he is more concerned about turning Texas into a Democrat state than he is about solving the problem. Republicans must not make a deal with President Obama. We must secure the border. End of story.
FOREIGN POLICY A strong America is a more prosperous and secure America, and American leadership makes for a safer and more peaceful world. But President Obama’s policies have done more to weaken our nation than anyone since Jimmy Carter. Under the Obama Administration, America’s global standing has deteriorated to dangerous levels. Our adversaries don’t fear us and our friends don’t trust us. Russia’s attack on Ukraine shows the folly of President Obama’s naive, liberal worldview that international aggression is out of date. Dictatorships like China and North Korea have become emboldened by Obama’s lead-from-behind weakness. His passivity on Syria has led to a dramatic increase in the number of jihadist terrorists, and on his watch Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon than ever before. Restoring America’s credibility means strengthening our alliances, deterring our enemies, and leading the world from the front.

Dave Domina (D) Challenger
http://www.davedomina.com/

District 1

Jeff Fortenberry (R) Incumbent
http://www.supportfort.com/wpmain/ http://fortenberry.house.gov/#dialog
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/Jeff_Fortenberry.htm**
Rated -3 by AAI, indicating anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012

ISSUES

NUCLEAR LEADERSHIP
American nuclear leadership: America’s role as the leading enforcer of the norms and laws guiding the global nuclear security order.orMaintaining a strong American deterrent: Making the right investments to ensure a strong and affordable U.S. deterrent to combat 21st century threats, including the role of missile defense, Global Strike, and cyberspace.
Preventing nuclear terror: Preventing dangerous regimes or sub-state actors from acquiring or advancing nuclear ambitions and capabilities.
Securing global nuclear materials: Advancing efforts to secure nuclear materials worldwide
Safe civilian nuclear power: Ensuring that responsible nations can utilize nuclear power without increasing nuclear proliferation.

ENERGY Voted YES on opening Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling.
Voted YES on barring EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.
Voted NO on enforcing limits on CO2 global warming pollution.
Voted for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline without limiting amendments.

HEALTHCARE Rep. Jeff Fortenberry wants to retain portions of the Affordable Care Act while moving to a new health care reform model that combines catastrophic care coverage with expanded use of individual health savings accounts.
August 8, 2013-Nebraska Republican Jeff Fortenberry was pressed at a town hall in his district this week about the many votes the House GOP has taken to repeal or dismantle parts of Obamacare.
Fortenberry called the 40 votes the House has taken on the health care law “theatrics,” the Columbus Telegram reported on Thursday. “Some people are beginning to ridicule us for that. To be honest, some of it is theatrics. You keep doing this over and over and over again and it doesn’t get anywhere. It is theatrics,” Fortenberry said according to the paper. He said he remains opposed to the law, but was supportive of some of the more popular provisions like allowing children to stay on their parent’s health plan until they turn 26.

Dennis Crawford (D) Challenger
http://denniscrawford2014.com/

ISSUES

CREATING JOBS My top priority will be to work across party lines to pass legislation that will create jobs. That’s why I support government investments in infrastructure. We need to upgrade our aging highways, bridges and electrical grid. Currently, the infrastructure in the U.S. is ranked 14th in the world and is declining. As recently as 2008, our infrastructure was ranked 7th. In 2011, a jobs bill was introduced in the Congress that would have invested in infrastructure and cut the Social Security payroll tax. This legislation – if enacted – would have created almost 2 million jobs while reducing the unemployment rate by 1 percentage point. It was supported by both the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. As both AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue said: “[W]e hope that Democrats and Republicans in Congress will also join together to build America’s infrastructure.” Unfortunately, the bill has never been granted an up or down vote. This is yet another example of how Washington’s dysfunction is hurting the economy and the people of Nebraska CD 1.
MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK The government shutdown that Jeff Fortenberry supported and voted for on September 20th, 2013 is unacceptable. It cost our economy $24 Billion and 120 thousand jobs. I plan to reach across party lines to arrive at solutions that are beneficial to the people of CD1. We need a farm bill and a jobs bill. I’m running because I want my children and their generation to have the same kind of opportunities my wife and I had when we were growing up.
EXPANDING CLEAN ENERGY Every time I drive down I-80 through Iowa, I marvel at all of the wind turbines. We need to do the same thing here in Nebraska. We have great potential here in Nebraska to produce great amounts of wind energy. That is why I support investments in renewable sources such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. The development of renewable energy is a great job creation tool as well as a way to reduce America’s dependence upon oil from unstable parts of the world. The development of renewable energy sources has the potential to bring about the same kind of positive technological and economic spin offs that we saw from the interstate highway system and the space program in the 1950s and 1960s. The production of more renewable energy will also reduce the amount of green house gases emitted into the atmosphere. This is truly a win-win proposition for everybody in Nebraska CD1. If I’m elected, I would make this one of my top priorities.
PROTECTING ELECTION INTEGRITY We need to begin to take steps to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United. That decision made it possible for well-heeled special interests to pour large amounts of anonymous money into political campaigns. An activist majority on the U.S. Supreme Court created a new, dysfunctional campaign finance system that is now one dollar, one vote. We need to get special interest money out of campaigns and restore the voices of the middle class and working people by overturning Citizens United.

District 2

Lee Terry (R) Incumbent
http://leeterry.com/ http://leeterry.house.gov/
http://www.ontheissues.org/house/lee_terry.htm**
Rated -2 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

ISSUES
HEALTHCARE The cost of health care poses the greatest single threat to the fiscal health of the United States, threatening our economic stability in the future. Today, the U.S. spends more on health care per person than other country in the world, yet it ranks 37th in overall quality according to the World Health Organization. Clearly, there are problems with our system and they need to be addressed, before they do serious damage.
That’s why I voted against the President’s health care reform plan. It’s already proven that more money and new government programs won’t solve our health crisis in American; but rather we need to reform our health care delivery system.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that President Obama signed into law raises taxes; increases the nation’s deficit; and, fails to address the problems of rising health care costs and insurance premiums. The end result threatens access for millions of Medicare beneficiaries and that is something that cannot be accepted.
Another reason I voted against PPACA is because it created the Independent Payment Advisory Board that puts Medicare payment decisions in the hands 15 unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats. Over three years later, evidence indicates that the new health care law is failing America’s health care system. A growing number of employers include those I’ve spoken with in Nebraska’s Second District are considering eliminating employer sponsored coverage and forcing their employees to go to an exchange. These new taxes and mandates are hurting small businesses and their ability to hire new employees.
Another way to rein in health care costs is permanent fixing Medicare’s sustain growth rate (SGR) that sets the formula for how doctors are reimbursed for their services. The SGR is an antiquated policy that it was meant to control how much Medicare pays for physician services, but it simply doesn’t fit our nation’s 21st century health care needs. Evidence of this is how many times Congress has had to pass a temporary patch for the SGR, or “doc fix.” We cannot expect Medicare patients to go year-to-year or month-to-month hoping that Congress will continually fix this broken formula. I am happy that my committee has taken the lead on addressing this major issue and I believe that rather than reimbursing doctors for the quantity of services, we need to explore ways to reward them for the quality of patient outcomes.
ENERGY Terry Reaction to State Department Delay of Keystone XL Pipeline – Washington, Apr 18 | 2014 Congressman Lee Terry (R-NE) released the following statement after today’s announcement by the State Department that they will delay making a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline:
“Yesterday, the President had the audacity to stand at the podium at the White House press office and lecture Republicans in Congress about the need to make tough decisions. But today, he punted a tough decision in the name of political expediency.
“It’s shameful that as we begin spring construction season, that hundreds of my constituents will be denied an opportunity to go to work on a project that will help secure America’s energy future solely because the President wants to placate his political base in an election year.”
IMMIGRATION Congress must act on this important issue. We have lost control of both our northern and southern borders. Our maritime border is porous and anyone with the most innocent or worst of intentions can walk or drive into and assimilate into our communities. This illegal immigration must be stopped. Securing our border is the proper first step. I support authorizing more border patrol agents, who are properly equipped with modern technology to monitor those coming into our country. More needs to be done to properly secure our ports of entry along our east and west coasts and our northern and southern borders. This is a very large, but very important task.

Employers must be provided better means to information, allowing them to determine whether or not the potential hire is properly documented. If employers fail to seek information about a potential employee, the full force of the law should be brought against them. Once the borders are secure from illegal immigrants we must reform our current, archaic immigration laws. We must develop sensible, labor-based non-amnesty guest worker programs.

Brad Ashford (D) Challenger
https://www.facebook.com/AshfordForOmaha

District 3

Adrian Smith (R) Incumbent
http://www.joinadrian.com/ http://www.ontheissues.org/house/adrian_smith.htm**
http://adriansmith.house.gov/
Rated -4 by AAI, indicating a anti-Arab anti-Palestine voting record. (May 2012)

ISSUES
ENERGY Smith Statement on Keystone XL Pipeline Study, Jan 31, 2014 , Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) issued the following statement after the State Department released its final environmental impact study on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. The final study concluded the pipeline would pose minimal environmental risk.
“The State Department has once again confirmed the Keystone pipeline would be safe and in the best interest of our nation. Protecting the natural resources of Nebraska and our nation has always been a key factor in considering this project. With today’s technology, we can transport energy safely while protecting our environment. “With the environmental review now complete, it’s time to move forward with this project which would improve our energy security, create jobs, and spur economic growth.
“I encourage the President to follow the science and facts, and approve this project.”
HEALTHCARE More Evidence Obamacare is Hurting Americans – New Report Predicts Millions of Job Losses, Fewer Insured – Feb 4, 2014 Issues: Congressman Adrian Smith (R-NE) made the following statement today after a new report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office predicted the President’s health care law will reduce the number of full-time workers by roughly 2.3 million people, and the online exchanges will insure 1 million fewer people this year than previously estimated:
“This new report is just the latest evidence of what Nebraskans have told me all along: Obamacare makes our health systems worse, not better, and the law discourages economic growth and job creation.
“House Republicans have offered hundreds of ideas to make health care more affordable and accessible in America. Earlier today, I joined my colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee in approving two bills to prevent part-time workers, volunteer firefighters, and other emergency workers from being hurt by the Obamacare employer mandate. “I hope this report will encourage President Obama and Senator Reid to consider these and other Republican solutions instead of continuing to block the process. As the report indicates, we can and must do better.”

Mark Sullivan (D) Challenger
http://marksullivan2014.com/
ISSUES
I will fight to preserve Social Security, Medicare, and the family farm.
I’m going to work hard for deficit reduction and job growth.
To balance our budget we need a careful, balanced , and fair approach to fiscal security. Spending cuts and Revenue increases must necessarily be equally employed to successfully deal with our deficit. This great endeavor must involve shared sacrifice. Americans have never shrunk from a challenge if they are sure they are united in their efforts and sacrifices!
To promote jobs I would encourage improving infrastructure. We need to maintain and improve our broadband services, highways, railroads, and electrical power grid. Spending on infrastructure is an investment in our nation’s future.
We must defend our nation in the most effective way possible. New technology should be employed to make our country safe, save lives, save money, and put less boots on foreign soil. We owe our citizens a strong defense, but we can’t bankrupt our nation and risk our soldier’s lives. We need to follow Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Steady diplomatic pressure and financial sanctions will continue to give us better results than gunboat diplomacy.
We must develop a comprehensive energy program. We need to expand and promote new renewable and sustainable energy sources, such as solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal. While we work on these sources we must continue to utilize our existing resources. Improved efficiency, conservation, and environmental safety should be of the highest priority. A big cash bank balance could seem very insignificant if our children and grandchildren inherit a nation with polluted air, undrinkable water, and eroded soil.

Last week, before embarking on a three-day visit to Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, Pope Francis stated that his trip would be “strictly religious.” A key reason for his short sojourn, he said, was to “pray for peace in this land that has suffered greatly.”

After arriving, however, he spent less time engaged in prayer than in politics.

This would have been completely appropriate had the bishop of Rome and the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church addressed the religious nature of the Islamist war being waged against Christians and Jews. It would have befitted the head of the Holy See to stand at the believed-to-be sites of Jesus’ birth and baptism and bemoan the fate of his flock at the hands of Muslim fanatics bent on subjugating all “infidels.” It would have been in keeping with his mission to reassure the world’s Christians that good will prevail over evil.

Sadly, this is not how the pope’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land panned out. Though he did mention the plight of his people when in Amman last Saturday, it was to praise Jordan’s “climate of serene coexistence” between Muslims and Christians.

“I thank the authorities of the kingdom for all they are doing,” he said, while meeting with King Abdullah II and Queen Rania at their palace. “And I encourage them to persevere in their efforts to seek lasting peace for the entire region. This goal urgently requires that a peaceful solution be found to the crisis in Syria, as well as a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

On Sunday, the pontiff went to Bethlehem. There he met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whom he called “a man of peace.”

As always, Abbas and his cronies put their best lies forward, undoubtedly denying Christian flight in droves from Palestinian-controlled areas on the one hand, while blaming Israel for the phenomenon on the other.

The remaining tiny Christian minority in Bethlehem was then treated to a mass delivered by the pope at Manger Square. But his words were drowned out by the muezzin of the Omar Mosque calling Muslims to prayer and blasting “Allahu akbar” (God is great) into a loudspeaker.