Fewer voters now identify themselves as “socially liberal” than they have in the past.

◼ A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 29% of Likely U.S. Voters now consider themselves liberal on social issues such as abortion, public prayer and church-state topics. That’s the lowest number of self-identified social liberals since early last year. - Rasmussen

Just as many (30%) consider themselves moderate on such issues, the highest since October 2012, while 37% say they are conservative, up four points from September.

Edward Snowden declares mission 'accomplished'

◼ National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden declared victory in his fight with the government, saying that his "mission's already accomplished." - Washington Examiner

In an interview published Tuesday in the Washington Post, Snowden said that his disclosures about the extent of NSA surveillance on phone and internet traffic had achieved his goal of sparking a debate over the nation's intelligence operations.

“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” said Snowden. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated."

"I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself,” Snowden said about his leaks....

“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” Snowden told the Washington Post. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”

◼ "I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it." Says Edward Snowden. - Althouse
◼ Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished - Barton Gellman/Washington Post

Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed....

The NSA’s business is “information dominance,” the use of other people’s secrets to shape events. At 29, Snowden upended the agency on its own turf....

By his own terms, Snowden succeeded beyond plausible ambition. The NSA, accustomed to watching without being watched, faces scrutiny it has not endured since the 1970s, or perhaps ever....

People who accuse him of disloyalty, he said, mistake his purpose.

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,” he said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

What entitled Snowden, now 30, to take on that responsibility?

“That whole question — who elected you? — inverts the model,” he said. “They elected me. The overseers.”

He named the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees.

“Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions” in committee hearings, he said. “Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. . . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

◼ Greenwald Snarks at MSNBC: I Defend Snowden Like You Defend Obama ’24 Hours a Day’ - Mediaite

The fight for “tolerance,” “liberation,” and “equality” therefore becomes a fight to destroy society through intolerance, oppression, and inequality

◼ The Intolerance Towards Normalcy - Political Hat

...They themselves will refuse to show the tolerance that they demand of others. This is because they define the views they disagree with as “intolerance,” “H8,” et al. and the opposition to those views as necessarily being for “tolerance” and against “H8″ regardless of the actual lack of tolerance or hatred that they show. ◼ In other words:

“It’s pretty simple: if your choices aren’t their choices, then your choices are wrong, illegitimate, and societally harmful....”

◼ ‘We Haven’t Won Yet’: GLAAD Calls For Broader Censorship - Pat Dollard
◼ The gay advocacy organization that pressured the A&E network into silencing Phil Robertson and Duck Dynasty has repeatedly called for censorship against content with which they disagree.... - Jake Hammer/Daily Caller
◼ 'Duck Dynasty' controversy should remind Christians what they stand for - Cal Thomas/Washington Examiner

The Tax Whammy of 2014

◼ (T)here are major storm clouds on the horizon and the coming torrent is all about taxes... - Larry Johnson/No Quarter

I did not realize we were facing so many new taxes or loss of deductions. I know what I am going to do–cut back on spending. But it does not stop there.

◼ New ObamaCare fees coming in 2014 - S.A. Miller and Geoff Earle/NY Post

The cost of President Obama’s massive health-care law will hit Americans in 2014 as new taxes pile up on their insurance premiums and on their income-tax bills.

Most insurers aren’t advertising the ObamaCare taxes that are added on to premiums, opting instead to discretely pass them on to customers while quietly lobbying lawmakers for a break.

But one insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama, laid bare the taxes on its bills with a separate line item for “Affordable Care Act Fees and Taxes.”

...But ObamaCare taxes don’t stop with health-plan premiums.

Americans also will pay hidden taxes, such as the 2.3 percent medical-device tax that will inflate the cost of items such as pacemakers, stents and prosthetic limbs.

Those with high out-of-pocket medical expenses also will get smaller income-tax deductions.
Americans are currently allowed to deduct expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their annual income. The threshold jumps to 10 percent under ObamaCare, costing taxpayers about $15 billion over 10 years.

Then there’s the new Medicare tax.

"It’s probably just a coincidence. Let’s not get paranoid."

◼ BIZARRE RADIO MELTDOWN DURING NSA INTERVIEW 'We lost control of the software. It's all going nuts' - WND

Aaron Klein’s WABC Radio show experienced what the host called a “tech meltdown” while he was conducting a live, on-air interview with the lawyer who won an injunction against the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records.

Software used by the radio station dropped the guest, Larry Klayman, and listeners who had called in to ask Klayman questions were cut off in mid-sentence. Other callers could not be put on the air due to technical difficulties at the radio station.

Audio clips saved on an independent system played at the wrong time.

Klein’s headphones had massive feedback that could be heard on the air.

At one point, the WABC call screener said, “We lost control of the software. It’s all going nuts.”

The technical difficulties started on the show about 10 minutes prior to the Klayman interview. They subsided following the two segments that featured Klayman.

“In my three years of broadcasting at WABC we never had such a technological meltdown as we are having today,” Klein told the audience.

He continued: “Calls are dropping. We cant get the guests on. Once the guests are on they are dropping. We’ve had several meltdowns. Feedback from the microphone. I can barely broadcast. … However we are going to land this airplane and we’re going to have fun doing it.”

25 Examples of What America Would Be Like if We Were All Christian Conservative Tea Partiers

◼ 1) …There would be fewer regulations, lower taxes, a business-friendly environment, and a much smaller government that would lead to considerably stronger economic growth and job creation. In fact, we’d probably have to dramatically increase the number of work permits we hand out to foreign workers, not because there are “jobs Americans won’t do” (which don’t actually exist), but because so many Americans would be employed that we’d have to bring in more people to do all of the available work. - John Hawkins/Right Wing News
2) …The richest Americans would have more money. Of course, so would the middle class and the poor. In fact, the only Americans who wouldn’t benefit economically would be the Americans who spend their lives relying on the government, instead of their own effort, to pay their bills.... read the rest at the link