This is a weird story without too many details to come to a decision. But on the initial reports it does look like a ridiculous governmental overreach.  The family tried to avoid any contact with government, self-identify as “preppers” and homeschool their kids…
(Via Truth Revolt) group of fully-armed sheriff’s deputies entered an Arkansas family’s home and removed their seven children for 72 hours after an anonymous tip led them to find a mineral supplement used by the father for its alleged health benefits.
On Monday afternoon of last week, a search warrant was issued at the home of Hal Stanley after an anonymous caller tipped off officers to search for a product known as Miracle Mineral Solution. This substance is said to be used to treat serious medical conditions — even by the Red Cross in Africa for malaria — and is used as a water purification agent.

The FDA has issued a warning to users of the product saying it turns into a “potent bleach” when mixed according to the directions and has caused “some users” to experience nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and dehydration.
Stanley said that he is the only one in the home that uses the supplement and that he adds it to the water that feeds their vegetable garden.
(more…)

Toward the end of President Obama’s SOU speech you find:

 […] Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different.
Understand — a better politics isn’t one where Democrats abandon their agenda or Republicans simply embrace mine.
A better politics is one where we appeal to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears.
A better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other; where we talk issues, and values, and principles, and facts, rather than “gotcha” moments, or trivial gaffes, or fake controversies that have nothing to do with people’s daily lives.

Immediately followed by this: (more…)

The resounding shockwave came within moments of the beginning:

[…]… In two weeks, I will send this Congress a budget filled with ideas that are practical, not partisan. And in the months ahead, I’ll crisscross the country making a case for those ideas….

“In two weeks, I will send this Congress a budget“… If true, this would represent the first time in his entire presidency when President Obama would have submitted a federal budget proposal by the statutorily required deadline.
The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 requires the President to submit his budget request for the upcoming fiscal year no later than the first Monday of February.  He never does.  Last year’s Obama budget arrived April 10th 2014.
[…] “filled with ideas that are practical, not partisan”… In addition to six consecutive years of missed budget proposal deadlines, you also have six years of almost every DEMOCRAT in congress voting against the proposals (again and again) contained within the late budgets.   A cynic might well remember the last federal budget signed into law was signed in September of 2007, yes, NEARING EIGHT FULL YEARS AGO.
Beginning in 2008 Senator -then President- Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have used continuing resolutions (CR’s) to fund government while raising the debt ceiling.  I wonder what changed this year?
Oh yeah,

(more…)

Everyone can rest easy knowing Obama has the priorities in order.

OBAMA: In the Asia Pacific, we are modernizing alliances while making sure that other nations play by the rules — in how they trade, how they resolve maritime disputes, and how they participate in meeting common international challenges like nonproliferation and disaster relief. And no challenge — no challenge — poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.

2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn’t make a trend, but this does — 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century. (more…)

I’ve spent some time going back through the post election -yet pre-holiday- white house briefings, and comparing them to recent pre-SOU leaks.
What strikes me as odd is how people are discussing the Obama “Legislative Proposals“, ie. “free college” and “tax the rich”, as if he actually means it. I’m sure people reading this understand that: ♦ the legislative branch passes laws; ♦ the executive branch enforces laws; and ♦ the judicial branch interprets laws.
So why is so much attention being paid to President Obama’s “legislative proposals”?
Why doesn’t everyone in congress just ignore him. Elections have consequences, he lost.
Let President Obama banter on listening to his own voice at yet another grand State of The Union speech, filled with so much rhetoric and nonsense, that no-one can ever remember from year to year. And then ignore it. I certainly hope the “GOP response” which customarily follows the SOU doesn’t give the “legislative proposals” any mention, because there is simply no need to.
Republicans control the House and the Senate chambers with majorities in both legislative houses – they don’t need to engage in a futile discussion about legislation they will never bring forward, so why talk about it. (more…)

Waaaay back in 2009 when the official policy and advisory team of President Obama was introduced to the world there were a few people who said, essentially: “wow, look at this group, he’s putting kids in charge“; because he was.
While I think it is safe to say most people recognize President Obama is just merely a figurehead representation of an entire presidential office that is in way over their head, it is still appropriate to hold the Chief Executive accountable for all his staff’s decisions.

If you look back to the key positions filled by the Chicago Team of professional agitators and leftists you find names like: Samantha Power (wife of Cass Sustein and now U.N Ambassador), Denis McDonough (now chief of staff), Tony Blinkin, Ben Rhodes, Dan Pfieffer and other inexperienced immature professional leftists who are profoundly in-over-their-heads.
This college frat house mentality extends toward other names like Tommy “dude” Vietor and throughout the State Dept with Patrick Kennedy, and Marie Harf etc. Almost everywhere you look you see childish immaturity playing out as a key component of the past six years of Obama policy advancement. The 2010 WikiLeaks/State Dept. cable leaks yet another stark reminder amid a litany of other childish examples. (more…)

Schemes, Gimmicks and Tricks….

WASHINGTON – On Saturday night the White House leaked the major tax hike details of the president’s upcoming budget. The common theme is higher taxes on savings and investment, totaling $320 billion over the next ten years.
“Democrats are demanding, yet again, tax increases on America. This never ends. When it comes to tax hikes Democrats are like a teenage boy on a prom date: they keep asking the same question different ways but always to the same point,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.
Here are the major tax increases in the President’s upcoming budget:
​1. Capital Gains Rate Hike: raises capital gains and dividends tax rate from 23.8% today (20% plus 3.8% Obamacare surtax) to 28% (including the Obamacare surtax).

The capital gains tax has not been that high since President Clinton signed a rate cut in 1997.

It would represent a massive hike in the rate since Obama took office. When he was sworn in, the rate was 15%. He proposes to nearly double it to 28% in the twilight of his administration. (more…)

Tilting at windmills is very very costly ….
(H/t Small Dead Animals)
A  good friend of mine runs a business in the County. He has done so for 40 years. He showed me his electricity bill last week. In December, he spent $770 on electricity. It was one of the least expensive lines on his bill. The global adjustment charge was $4,267.32. There was also a delivery charge, a debt retirement charge and an array of taxes.
In total, he spent nearly $10,000 in December—for $770 of electricity. He doesn’t know where this money is going. He is not sure he can keep up. He isn’t alone.

The Liberal Government of Ontario, in a feverish bit of “do-goodism” social justice advocacy, made the decision to significantly idle their fully paid for, clean, effective hydro-electric generating stations to pivot to a “diversified” “green” energy policy that relied upon solar and wind.  to replace older, coal-powered generating stations that were being phased out as part of the “anti-coal” ideology so in vogue with the far Left.  This is the same energy policy that is currently being pursued by the Germans, and, combined with “cap and trade” swaps, is the holy grail of energy policy for the Obama Administration.  Obama did warn Americans that after his energy policies were fully implemented, “electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket” ….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4
(more…)

The outlaw parents told by the STATE if they allow their children, 10 and 6-years-old, to be outside the home -unattended by adult supervision- their children will be taken by Child Protective Services and the parents will be arrested.

(Via Daily Signal) Two parents in Silver Spring, Md. are under investigation after authorities picked up their 6-year-old daughter and 10-year old son walking by themselves back from Woodside Park, which is a located a mile from their house.

Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say after after the Dec. 20 apprehension of their kids, they have been unfairly targeted by authorities as neglectful parents, according to The Washington Post. The Meitvs are advocates of “free-range” parenting, generally requiring their children to carry cards stating, “I am not lost. I am a free-range kid.”
“The world is actually even safer than when I was a child, and I just want to give them the same freedom and independence that I had — basically an old-fashioned childhood,” Danielle Meitv told the Post. (more…)

If you’ve been with us for a while, and you know about the 2010 Rivkin Project, you are able to see the profound confirmation to our 2011 analysis contained within this message from President Obama.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Europe must do more to better integrate its Muslim communities, and not “simply respond with a hammer”, US President Barack Obama said Friday in the wake of last week’s terror attacks in France.

“Our biggest advantage, major, is that our Muslim populations – they feel themselves to be Americans,” Obama told a joint press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

“There are parts of Europe in which that’s not the case. And that’s probably the greatest danger that Europe faces… it’s important for Europe not to simply respond with a hammer and law enforcement and military approaches to these problems.”

Understand the Rivkin Project HERE