Hot Mic Moment: NSA boss praising FBI chiefs for supportive testimony: 'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer:'

We owe them all a friggin' firing...

Via The Daily Mail:

The director of the National Security Agency was overheard offering a round of beer to the FBI's second-in-command following Tuesday's congressional hearing on the NSA's controversial surveillance programs. The three-hour hearing had just wrapped up around 1 p.m. when NSA Director Keith Alexander turned to FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and praised him for his testimony. 'Thank you, Sean,' Alexander said, according to a clip of the exchange that was first reported by Ben Doernberg. 'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer,' he added.

Read more here...

Gallop: Only 25% of Americans have confidence in newspapers...

That 25% is mostly liberals because the rest of us can see the bias. Only 15% of Conservatives have confidence in newspapers. The number is 36% for liberals and 25% for Independents...

Via Gallop:

Continuing a decades-long downward trend, fewer than one-fourth of Americans have confidence in newspapers, according to a recent Gallup poll.

The percentage of Americans saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers dropped to 23 percent this year from 25 percent last year, according to a report on the poll, which was released Monday.

American confidence in newspapers reached its peak at 51 percent in 1979, and a low of 22 percent in 2008.

But newspapers don't stand alone. Confidence in television news has also been slipping — it's tied with newspapers this year at 23 percent, which is slightly up from last year's all-time low of 21 percent. Newspapers and television news rank near the bottom of a list of 16 "societal institutions," according to the report. The only institutions television news and newspapers beat out this year are big business, organized labor, health maintenance organizations and Congress. Americans expressed the most confidence in the military, at 76 percent, and small businesses, at 65 percent.

The IRS tried to crush the Tea Party and today is payback...

There will be a massive Tea Party rally today at noon n the West Lawn of the Capitol.Look for Obama and Democrats to try and not notice...

Via The Daily Caller:

Conservative activists are planning to storm Capitol Hill on Wednesday for what they are predicting will be “the largest Tea Party protest since 2010.”

The protest — drawing tea partiers like TV host Glenn Beck and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul — is in response to the Internal Revenue Service’s recent admission that it has been specifically targeting conservative groups for extra scrutiny.

The gathering on the West Lawn of the Capitol is being called the “Audit the IRS” Rally.

“At noon tomorrow, we are going to tell the world about how the IRS tried to crush the Tea Party movement,” organizers with the Tea Party Patriots organization said in an email to supporters. “Thousands of volunteers will rally in the largest demonstration of Tea Party support since 2010.”

Read more here...

I am calling BS on the CBO report showing Gang of Eight Immigration Bill reduces budget deficit and here is why...

Check out the revenue sources for the 1st 10 yeas in this screen capture from the report. I have highlighted the off budget revenues ($214.3 billion) in red. These are mostly from social security payroll taxes. Keep in mind most of the newly legalized immigrants will be years from retirement and the few that are close won't have a lot of years paying in to raise their benefit level. As you might expect off budget the outlay in the 1st ten years is very small. Actually, it's only $2.6 billion (highlight in blue) of the expected $216.8 billion in expected new spending. If you don't consider off budget items such as social security, there is a $14.2 billion deficit. When you consider how optimistic and wrong most CBO projections are (take a look at their first Obamacare projection compared to the most recent), this deficit will balloon significantly in later years. The social security and medicare for these new immigrants will have to be paid eventually.

CNN Poll: Sixty-two percent think border security should be main focus in immigration reform...

The current Gang of Eight bill puts border security after legalization of illegals. Democrats will have no motivation to support stronger border security at that point. Anyone who believes otherwise is naive.

Via The Washington Examiner:

CNN also asked another question: “What should be the main focus of the U.S. government in dealing with immigration policy?” The possible answers were “Creating a path to citizenship for many immigrants who are in this country without permission from the U.S. government” and “Increasing border security to reduce or eliminate the number of immigrants coming into this country without permission from the U.S. government.”

Sixty-two percent said that increasing border security should be the main focus of the government, while 36 percent said creating a path to citizenship. There were significant differences between the parties. Democrats favored path to citizenship by a 50-49 margin. Independents answered border security by a 65-33 margin. And Republicans favored border security by a 74-24 margin.

The Gang of Eight bill under consideration is based on a sequence in which currently-illegal immigrants are first awarded legal status, and then border security is increased, and then the immigrants move to a path to citizenship.[...] Keep on reading...

Tweet Of The Day From Ted Cruz… (Outstanding)

This is going to leave a mark...

Anyone know if President Obama intends to perform background checks on the Syrian rebels before providing them weapons?
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) June 18, 2013

Shameful: Rubio, McCain, Graham, and Flake vote against building border fence...

No immigration bill is better than a bad immigration bill...

Via WT: 

Senators on Tuesday rejected building the 700 miles of double-tier border fencing Congress authorized just seven years ago, with a majority of the Senate saying they didn’t want to delay granting illegal immigrants legal status while the fence was being built.

The 54-39 vote to reject the fence shows the core of the immigration deal is holding. The vote broke mostly along party lines, though five Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio and the rest of the bill’s authors, voted against the fence, and two Democrats voted for it.

Republicans had offered the fence as a way to build the confidence of voters skeptical that the government will enforce its laws, but opponents said building more fencing is costly, would take too long, and shouldn’t be dictated by Washington.

“I think we should leave that to the best judgment of the Border Patrol,” said Sen. John McCain, one of the eight senators who wrote the immigration bill.

Green Fail: GM Pins Another $4000 To Chevy Volts In Attempt To Get Anyone To Buy Them...

Let's add the incentives up: $4000 from GM, $7500 from federal taxpayers, $2000 from may states. That comes to about $14,000  per vehicle and GM reportedly is selling them for a large loss. 

General Motors has announced a $4,000 rebate (or $3,000 and a four year, zero interest loan from government-owned Ally Financial) on the slow-selling Chevy Volt. The company had a choice regarding how to deal with an excess supply of Volts that is growing faster than demand. GM could have, once again, temporarily halted production until inventory (currently at about a 6 month supply) came down to reasonable levels. It instead chooses to lose more millions of dollars by spending on incentives designed to manufacture demand that otherwise is practically nonexistent.

The much-hyped Chevy Volt was originally presented by GM as a green wonder-car that would be a savior for the company with sales expected in the 10,000 per month range by now. Almost three years after first hitting showrooms, the Volt now sees sales stabilizing at a dismal rate of approximately 1,500 per month. That's roughly one Volt every two months for each Chevy dealership.

Unlikely: Holly Paz claims IRS used term "Tea Party" for all political groups...

How come liberal groups sailed through during this time period and no Tea Party group was approved for 27 months?  In 2010 everyone knew the Tea party was a conservative/libertarian movement. During this time, many groups with the term "Progressive" in their name got approval.

Via Washington Examiner:

Internal Revenue Service agents used “Tea Party” as “shorthand” for any group filing for tax-exempt status that the agents thought was dedicating too much time to campaign activities and not just to single out conservative groups, a former top IRS deputy told congressional investigators.

Holly Paz, recently fired from her job as director of the agency’s rulings and agreements office, told congressional staffers investigating the IRS that use of the term “Tea Party” was not a way to single out conservative groups. Rather, the term was used as a synonym for agency’s definition of “campaign intervention,” which, according to the IRS, “includes any activities that favor or oppose one or more candidates for public office.” Groups that fit that description could be denied tax-exempt status, she said.

“It was sort of a shorthand reference,” Paz said, according to a transcript of her interview with congressional investigators. “It’s like calling soda ‘Coke’ or, you know, tissue ‘Kleenex.’ They knew what they meant, and the issue was campaign intervention.”

Keep on reading…