Saturday, February 25, 2012

Political Digest for February 25, 2012

The Old Jarhead Blog: Bringing you news and information the MSM is too busy covering American Idol, celebrity affairs and sensational missing person cases to cover. Please forward to friends who need to be informed.

Resources
For those who want further information about the topics covered in this blog, I recommend the following sites. I will add to this as I find additional good sources.

Wonderful Column: A Black History Month story that shouldn't be forgotten: How Eunice Hunton Carter battled Lucky Luciano, and won by John Kass
Excerpt: Even though this is Black History Month, much of America still doesn't know about Eunice Carter and her battle against New York's boss of bosses, Charles "Lucky" Luciano. (It is one of the tragedies of Black America that someone like Whitney Houston is held up as a role model, while the positive, heroic contributions of people like Eunice Carter are forgotten or ignored. ~Bob.)

Occupy London is Now Basically A Holding Camp for the Mentally Ill. It's Time to Call it a Day. - by Brendan O'Neill, Telegraph UK
Excerpt: Even though I am an absolutist with it comes to the right to protest, I couldn't help feeling relieved when a court decided this week that the Occupy camp outside St Paul's Cathedral should sling its hook. For what started life as a middle-class shantytown packed with self-righteous haters of the rich – an annoying spectacle, yes, but hardly the end of world – has in recent weeks descended into something far more degenerate. Occupy London is now effectively a holding camp for the mentally ill, a space where the psychologically afflicted and deeply troubled can gather to eat, drink and be un-merry.

I Tried to Open a Lemonade Stand
Excerpt: Eventually, Police Chief Kelly Morningstar explained, "We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade and of what the lemonade was made with." Give me a break. If she doesn't know, so what? But kids trying their first experiment with entrepreneurship are being shut down all over America. Officials in Hazelwood, Illinois, ordered little girls to stop selling Girl Scout cookies. (I actually have one of the Certified Food Safety Manager certificates Stossel mentions. Hey, Ron, weren’t you in the convenience store business? Yes, but we brewed hot coffee. So, we had to have a restaurant license. Once each month (I won't mention which town this was in), the local Health Department would come through “to examine our facility.” Without exception, the inspector would ask how often we cleaned the grease trap. After six months of futilely pointing out we created no grease since we cooked nothing, and listening to a 20 minute lecture on why we needed one anyway, I just lied and told him weekly. That satisfied him because he could now check off the box. Thank goodness he never asked to see the grease trap as it didn’t exist. Ron P. How Freedom was lost, one cookie at a time. ~Bob.)

Pentagon defended Bible burning in 2009
Excerpt: Experts on radical Islam say the U.S. military is sadly mistaken if it believes groveling at the feet of Muslims after copies of the Quran were accidentally burned will help win the hearts and minds of the world’s Islamic community. The reaction of the U.S. military toward a recent report that NATO forces may have unintentionally burned copies of the Muslim holy book stands in stark contrast to its response when U.S. forces burned copies of the Bible in 2009 – when it refused to apologize and even defended the practice.

Flashback: Iran launches Bible-burning campaign
Excerpt: Iranian authorities began to systematically seize and destroy Bibles after a Shiite cleric issued an urgent warning about the spread of Christianity. Authorities in northwestern Iran seized 6,500 Bibles, according to the Iranian Christian news organization Mohabat News, which quotes an official as saying of the seizure that “all religions are strengthening their power to confront Islam; otherwise, what does this huge number of Bibles mean?”

Nation might reach $16.4 trillion debt limit close to Election Day
Excerpt: The $16.4 trillion debt ceiling could be reached just weeks after Election Day, according to a new report. The analysis raises the possibility that lawmakers might have to raise the nation's borrowing limit before the election, a scenario they took pains to avoid in the debt deal passed in August. (Though I am not the type to ever stop fighting, I am increasingly resigned to the fact that the Republic is headed to disaster. Pray I’m wrong. ~Bob.)

Worth Reading—you should follow the NCPA: Restructuring Public Education for the 21st Century
Excerpt: American public education needs a complete restructuring in order to support the development of critical thinkers ready to assume their positions as productive citizens of a free society. Neglecting to change the system will only contribute to America losing its position as the leader of the free world, says Linus Wright, an undersecretary of education during the Reagan administration and senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis. Students in dozens of other countries, including China, South Korea, Germany and Finland, outperformed American students in reading, math and science, according to the Program for International Student Assessment results released in December 2010. The United States ranked 23rd in science, 17th in reading and -- worst of all -- 31st in math. These results suggest that the United States is in need of a public education makeover. Indeed, students are inadequately prepared in elementary and middle school for academic success in high school. Consider, 75 percent to 80 percent of urban children begin kindergarten with inadequate to non-existent vocabulary for learning. Over time, many become discouraged and drop out, leaving the United States in the unenviable position of having one of the highest dropout rates in the world -- the United States' secondary education graduation rate was 76 percent in 2009, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); six percentage points behind the OECD average of 82 percent. (Want to bet that the 82% in the other OECD countries would kill most of our 76% on general knowledge tests? ~Bob.)

The Fiscal Health Of The States
Excerpt: The troubled condition of the federal budget has overshadowed the poor fiscal health of the 50 states. State debts are underreported, and state budgets are on an unsustainable long-term path. If current spending patterns continue, the ratio of state debt to output will increase without bound. (Why I devoted a separate chapter to the fiscal problems of the states and cities in The Coming Collapse of the American Republic. ~Bob.)

Labor’s Under-the-Radar Power Grab
Excerpt: Big Labor has made many ambitious and high-profile efforts to attract national attention, such as the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, better known as “card-check”), stacking the National Labor Relations Board with union-friendly hacks, and impeding Boeing’s plans in right-to-work states like South Carolina… Far more rewarding for labor than these high-profile endeavors, however, have been comparatively under-the-radar efforts at the local and state level to steer lucrative municipal, county, and school district construction projects to union-only shops, especially in jurisdictions where free labor predominates.

Same-sex marriage bill approved by Maryland Senate
Excerpt: Supporters have cast the bill as a major advance in equal rights. Opponents have called it a misguided attempt to redefine the institution of marriage. Despite one of the largest Democratic majorities in any state legislature, backers of gay marriage in Maryland had to overcome fierce opposition from blocks of African American lawmakers and those with strong Catholic and evangelical views to cobble together coalitions big enough to pass both chambers. (Wait a minute! I thought only homophobic Republicans had any hesitations about gay marriage? Does this mean there are homophobic Democrats, too? Isn't it true this issue goes beyond party--and racial--lines? Ron P. Personally, I’ve never thought that the lesbian couples we know getting married would hurt me or my marriage in any way, but some people have weak marriages. Like Muslims thinking their god is so weak they must riot to protect him from any perceived insult. I suppose this makes me a RINO, I’ll be thrown out of the party and have to campaign for Obama! But I think the major issues are 1. Debt and the economy. 2. Jihad. 3. Illegal colonization of our culture. 4. The rise of China as an economic and military power. Period. ~Bob.)

A Troubling Trend in the Courts
Excerpt: Should judges act based upon reasoned legal arguments, or based upon their personal feelings and media coverage? A controversial recent "statement" made by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer in a case that was the legal equivalent of a slam dunk raises serious questions about what really guides some judges.

Obama Proposes Tax Revamp
Excerpt: "How can we create more jobs…if we tell the pass-through entities that their taxes are going to go up, if we tell the oil and gas companies that they're not going to be able to drill, and if we tell our corporate folks that we're only going to get to 28 apparently in the president's proposal [as the] corporate tax rate, and not even the average of what the world is at 25?" Rep. Pat Tiberi (R., Ohio) asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at a hearing last week.

The $4 Billion Obamacare Slush Fund for Progressives By Michelle Malkin
Excerpt: If you like how the Obama administration's multibillion-dollar "investments" in bankrupt solar companies have turned out, you'll love the latest federal loan program to nowhere. It's the Obamacare loyalty rewards program for progressives. To appease liberal Democrats pushing for the so-called "public option" (the full frontal government takeover of our health care system), the White House settled for the creation of a $6 billion network of nonprofit "CO-OPs" that will "compete" with private insurers.

Solyndra abandons efforts to go clean and green: Environmental mess left at plant
Excerpt: The company plans on paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to clean up its own property in Fremont, Calif., but a separate leased property in nearby Milpitas sits vacant with barrels of unknown chemicals and lead-contaminated equipment, attorneys for the landlord, iStarCTL I L.P., said in recent bankruptcy court filings. (Well, remember Solyndra et al wasn’t about the environment. It was about photo ops for Obama and making rich progressives feel all green and fuzzy at your expense. ~Bob.)

Obama and Israel: The Silence of 'Friends' by Robert M. Goldberg
Excerpt: Oscar Wilde noted "true friends stab you in the front." Which explains why President Obama-- the self-proclaimed "best friend Israel ever had" -- has decided to cut funding for the Jewish state's missile defense system at the same time he wants to restore funding to UNESCO. (Israel's best friends will remember that the President was forced to cut support to the traditional anti-Israel agency by federal law because the organization recognized the Palestinian Authority as a state.)

Janet Napolitano Claims Ignorance in Second Gun Link to ICE Agent's Murder
Excerpt: Two days ago CBS's Sharyl Attkisson reported that a second gun related to the Obama administration's gunwalking operation had been positively linked to the murder of ICE agent Jaime Zapata on February 15, 2011. Zapata's and fellow agent, Victor Avila's SUV was ambushed as the two men were driving back to Mexico City from a meeting in San Luis Potosi. According to documents obtained by CBS one of the guns retrieved at the scene was linked directly to a Texas gun trafficker under ATF surveillance for six months prior to Zapata's death.

Offended Muslim chokes atheist, and then ...
Excerpt: A Muslim judge in Pennsylvania – who scolded a local atheist for offending Islam, called him a doofus and accused him of “using the First Amendment” to madden Muslims – dismissed harassment charges against the Muslim defendant who purportedly choked the atheist during a Halloween parade.

Comedian Bill Maher donates $1 million to Obama super PAC
Excerpt: A surprise donation Thursday from comedian Bill Maher made a Super PAC supporting President Obama $1 million richer. The promise of the big check came during a live performance of Maher's stand-up show, CrazyStupidPolitics. (Wish I watched Maher so I could stop. ~Bob.)

Civil War Photos
Many I’ve never seen. ~Bob.

President Obama Confident He's Got Five More Years in White House by Kimberly Schwandt
Excerpt: President Obama pressed with confidence about his future at the White House saying, "I've got another five years coming up," when asked why he hasn't passed immigration reform in a radio interview Wednesday with Univision. (Lets see. They’ve had a reported 16 vacations so far, so that’s only about 26 more we have to pay for on our Bank of Red China credit card. ~Bob.)

Obama campaign co-chair tied to subprime mortgage crisis
Excerpt: Gov. Deval Patrick, the Democrat who was named a national co-chair of President Obama’s re-election campaign on Wednesday, served on the board of a company that is widely blamed for helping start the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007. Beginning in 2004, Patrick served two years on the five-member board of ACC Capital Holdings, the parent company of Ameriquest Mortgage. He was paid a $360,000 annual salary for his efforts, according to “All The Devils Are Here,” a history of the financial crisis by Bethany McClean and Joe Nocera.

New: the EU budget - it has never been so green
Excerpt from the editor’s accompanying email: Over the last decade a steady stream of directives, guidelines, communications, reports - a mountain of paper - has come out of Brussels urging and prodding us onward on the road to decarbonisation. (…) The next EU budget, which runs from 2014 to 2020, will be decided on by the end of this year. It is worth €1 trillion and, as far as the Commission is concerned, fully 20% of this is to be devoted to the decarbonisation agenda. That's right, that's €200 billion for "the climate". (The editor isn’t quite dancing a jig, but his enthusiasm for this comes through clearly. Ron P.)

Father whipped family, daughter tells murder trial
Excerpt: A daughter of a man who is on trial for murdering his wife at the Adelaide Convention Centre has told the Supreme Court she saw her father being pulled off her mother with a knife in his hand… The woman told the court her father said he was not a man if he did not teach his family a lesson and he swore on the Koran that he would kill them. (Allah is badly offended if you accidentally burn a Qur’an, but swearing to murder your family on one is pleasing to him. Got it? ~Bob.)

5 Biggest Whoppers In Obama's Energy Speech
Excerpt: The White House billed President Obama's energy policy speech as a response to mounting criticism of record high gas prices. What he delivered was a grab bag of excuses and outright falsehoods. Obama's main message to struggling motorists was: It's not my fault, so stop whining. The speech only got worse from there, recycling excuses and myths that Obama's peddled for years. But there were some standout whoppers that deserve debunking.

Jobless disability claims soar to record $200B as of January
Excerpt: Standing too many months on the unemployment line is driving Americans crazy — literally — and it’s costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. With their unemployment-insurance checks running out, some of the country’s long-term jobless are scrambling to fill the gap by filing claims for mental illness and other disabilities with Social Security — a surge that hobbles taxpayers and making the employment rate look healthier than it should as these people drop out of the job statistics.

Why Muslim Student Group Concerned the NYPD
Excerpt: The Muslim community expressed its outrage this week over a New York Police Department surveillance report from 2006 that the Associated Press reported on Monday. The report disclosed that the NYPD monitored Muslim Students Association (MSA) chapters in the Northeast. The outrage, centered on the perceived violation of privacy, is based on an incorrect presumption that law enforcement had no cause for concern with the MSA. The organization's history with radical dogma, convicted terrorists and radicalized alumni tell a different story.

The conundrum which is playing out in Afghanistan could have been solved by using one simple word, contraband...by Congressman Allen West
Excerpt: The conundrum which is playing out in Afghanistan could have been solved by using one simple word, contraband. Individuals had been detained at the Parwan facility and had written in their Korans to pass jihadist messages. Therefore these Islamic terrorists captured on the battlefield defiled the book, and turned it into contraband which was rightly destroyed, according to Islamic culture and detention facility procedures. Instead we overreacted defensively, issued apologies (from the highest level), and now American Soldiers are dead. When tolerance becomes a one way street it leads to cultural suicide.....in this case it immediately led to the death of two of my Warrior Brothers. Where is our apology Mr Karzai?

2 cutters removed from FY13 Coast Guard budget
Excerpt: They’re gone. In a move that could trim about $1.4 billion from its shipbuilding plan, the Coast Guard lost two of its newest, largest, most capable — and most expensive — cutters in the fiscal 2013 budget request sent to Congress on last week. (Great news for drug dealers. ~Bob.)

‘Invisible’ Lung Disease Called A Death Sentence By Doctors
Excerpt: Have you ever heard of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis? Probably not. But every year it kills just as many people as breast cancer. But there are no marches, no ribbons, not even much research for Pulmonary Fibrosis. There is no cure. (Probably more, as a lot of PF patients die of heart failure due to oxygen deprivation, but the cause is listed as HF. ~Bob.)

Abortion investigation: doctor caught falsifying sex selection paperwork
Excerpt: The Calthorpe Clinic has been exposed for illicitly completing abortion forms amid concerns that doctors are not properly consulting patients before agreeing to terminations. A doctor at the clinic in Edgbaston, Birmingham, was also secretly filmed offering to arrange an abortion for a woman who said she wanted to terminate her pregnancy because the baby was a girl. “It’s like female infanticide isn’t it?” said Dr Raj Mohan before agreeing to conduct the procedure. (India loses half a million girls a year because of the intersection of abortion, ultra-sound and traditional preferences for male babies. Wonder if this was what the feminists expected. ~Bob.)

Mark Steyn: The all-you-can-eat salad bar of rights
Excerpt: That's the real "hot topic" here – whether a majority of citizens, in America as elsewhere in the West, is willing to "leave it up to the government" to make decisions on everything that matters. On the face of it, the choice between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church should not be a tough one. On the one hand, we have the plain language of the First Amendment as stated in the U.S. Constitution since 1791:

So much for “quietly.” ~Bob. Excerpt: The State Department has begun coordinating with Syria's neighbors to prepare for the handling of President Bashar al-Assad's extensive WMD assets if and when his regime collapses, The Cable has learned. This week, the State Department sent a diplomatic demarche to Syria's neighbors Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia, warning them about the possibility of Syria's WMDs crossing their borders and offering U.S. government help in dealing with the problem, three Obama administration officials confirmed to The Cable.

Obama Promotes Pond Scum as Renewable Fuel Source
Excerpt: Faced with the highest oil prices in nine months, President Barack Obama is backing pond scum as a path to energy independence, pitting the nascent algae-based biofuels industry against critics of his energy plan. .. Algae, a plant-like organism, can be harvested from ponds near industrial sites, where it can grow from power-plant carbon emissions or wastewater substances, the White House said in a fact sheet. (In response, algae said that, “Obama is a human-like organism.” Doesn’t using “pond scum” threaten the progressive movement? Does algae emit the deadly global warming poison CO2? ~Bob.)

Dear General Dempsey
Excerpt: Are mass murder, mass torture, and mass rape in Iran and Syria “rational”? Is that the sort of “stability” you’re afraid an Israeli attack will undo? I rather doubt that the people of Homs, or Damascus, or Tehran or Tabriz would share your implied assessment that destabilizing the current situation is a bad thing.

Excerpt: But such pique is even odder, given that such partisan politics are an Obama forte. He voted against raising the debt ceiling as a senator when the deficits were far less than his own have been. He filibustered the Alito and Bolton nominations, when there were not enough votes to stop their appointments — only to later criticize just that tactic as president. Ditto his recess-appointment turnabout. Short-term political advantage led him to subvert the public financing of presidential campaigns, the first candidate to ignore that liberal-inspired law in a general election.

Obama Threatens To “Hold Accountable” U.S. Soldiers for Burning of Koran
Excerpt: Multiple reports now circulating of President Obama quickly taking the side of Muslims against American soldiers who were simply following orders to remove and burn materials taken from terrorist detainment cells in Afghanistan – including already defaced copies of the Koran. (Didn’t the Democrats hold Bush accountable for things in Iraq the troops did? So why isn’t this Obama’s responsibility? ~Bob.)

1 comment:

  1. ....looks pretty healthy.  “. I was fit. I never did smoke. I never did drugs. I had a great healthy life. I did every thing right.”

    He sounds like my father who died of this at 53 who also did everything right.

    ReplyDelete