Friday, November 16, 2012

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for November 17, 2012

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for November 17, 2012
Robert A. Hall

General Petraeus
I heard Geraldo Rivera refer to Gen. Petraeus as “An American Napoleon.” No, he was not the Emperor, he was Marshal Peter Ney, who served the Emperor. And like Ney, will be shot. (Unless you believe the theory that Ney escaped to America and lived out his life as a school teacher in NC, for which there is some evidence.) Why any military person would accept a civilian position in the Obama administration, knowing that you will likely be sacrificed to political expediency or required to lie for it, is beyond me. Duty or ambition, I guess. I wonder if Mrs. Petraeus has been able to resist using the MoveOn.org slur, “General Betray-us.”

Your one-stop-shop for political news and opinion. Please forward to friends who need to be informed. This SitRep (Military for “Situation Report”) is created by many readers who send me items for inclusion, which I would have likely missed or skipped. And I can only spend at most three hours a night pulling stuff, plus the healthcare or economic stuff that crosses my desk at work. As always, I—and you—owe them thanks and appreciation. I post articles because I think they are of interest and will stimulate thought and discussion. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article, or that I was able to verify the information presented, which is the responsibility of the author. I try not to post things that are false, or too far a stretch, regardless of the view point, but I don’t always succeed. As always on the Net, or in the legacy media, you must read critically and with skepticism.

Advice for my Granddaughter: For When I'm Gone
All royalties go to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.

Worth Reading: The Main Attraction and Star Distractions. by Andy Weddington
Excerpt: In the early morning hours the day after publishing commentary on General Petraeus, my cell phone alerted to incoming texts - General Allen now part of the drama and it's not especially flattering. News reports noted an extraordinary number of emails between him and a woman not his wife. The woman, befriended while the general was assigned as the deputy at Central Command in Tampa, Florida, a socialite of sorts and the General's banter rumored to have crossed the line of gentlemanly good taste for an active duty service member.

Worth Reading: Greedy voters banished from Chumbolone Nation
May require free log in. ~Bob. Excerpt: "I will not answer your questions," Jackson said. "Your questions are extremely inappropriate." Me? Inappropriate? Perhaps the Rev. King of Beers thought he was in another era, when he could call a national boycott of Budweiser, brand the company as racist, then quietly accept its homage as his sons were given the lucrative Budweiser distributorship on the North Side of Chicago.

Worth Reading: Electoral College Is Democratic, Not democratic. By Steve Chapman 
Excerpt: "With Obama's victory," he told me by email, "Democrats have now won 18 states -- the 'blue wall' -- for at least the past six consecutive elections. That's the most states Democrats have won consecutively for that often since the formation of the modern party system in 1828." He went on: "Those 18 blue-wall states (joined by the District of Columbia) now provide Democrats 242 electoral college votes" -- just 28 shy of the 270 needed to win. Republicans are swimming upstream.

Excerpt: While the US has been distracted by the presidential election, the Syrian conflict, and jihadist outbursts in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, the Gaza strip and elsewhere, Pakistan has been moving at a glacial pace to restore NATO's critical oil supply line to Afghanistan. (The “ally” we give billions to. But all the options are bad. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Afghan intelligence officials claimed today that the Taliban shadow district chief for Chak in Wardak province was assassinated by "Pakistani" gunmen in Quetta, Pakistan. Two gunmen riding on a motorcycle reportedly shot and killed Mullah Syed Ahmad Shahid Khel on Sunday afternoon.

Excerpt: An unexpectedly defensive President Obama yesterday dared Capitol Hill Republicans to “go after me” on the Benghazi consulate intelligence debacle. Well, he can’t say he didn’t ask for it. “Whoever was at fault must be held responsible, and most importantly the president, who is commander-in-chief,” said Sen. John McCain, as he called for creation of a special Senate investigating panel.

Go after me
Good cartoon. ~Bob

Condi Rice, a black woman, able to withstand tireless constant verbal assaults. Susan Rice, a black woman is delicate & needs protection.

Excerpt: It’s no surprise that working couples in big cities are struggling to raise children while paying off mortgages and student debt. What is surprising is that they’re lumped in with the so-called “wealthy” if they jointly earn $250,000 a year. 

Hospitals: Protect our payments in deficit deal
Excerpt: A major hospital group warned lawmakers Thursday that its members "cannot absorb" further cuts that could come as part of a deficit-reduction deal. The Federation of American Hospitals (FAH), which represents for-profit hospitals, is the latest stakeholder group to raise concerns about possible cuts. 

McKayla Maroney not impressed with Obama?
Excerpt: Star vaulter McKayla Maroney tweeted about her White House visit on Thursday: “Did I just do the Not Impressed face with the President..?” (Tweet from @RBPundit And now the tolerant left will unleash its hate on a teenaged girl for daring to have a personal opinion.)

#HamasBumperStickers Honk If You're About to be Taken Out by an Israeli Air to Surface Missile

Worth Reading: Details about the GOP’s alternative to the DREAM Act emerge
http://dailycaller.com/2012/11/15/details-about-the-gops-alternate-to-the-dream-act-emerge/#ixzz2CKcXZZoY
Excerpt: - “Applicant must not have committed a felony, must not have committed more than one misdemeanor with a jail term of more than 30 days, must not have committed a crime of moral turpitude, and must not have a final order of removal pending”‘ Must have knowledge of the English language, U.S. history, “and of principles of U.S. government” (Yes. Immigrants who want to join our culture, adopt our values, learn our language and participate in the economic and political life of the nation should be welcomed. Colonizers who want to establish separate, failed cultures based on the societies they came, which living off ours as parasites, from must be turned away. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Three years ago, Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, took an initiative that would only be considered radical in the health care industry: He posted online a list of prices for 112 common surgical procedures. 

Exposed: Pallywood Returns to Gaza
Excerpt: What happens when the cameras turn up at the scene of an airstrike in Gaza and there simply aren’t enough Palestinian dead and injured to produce dramatic footage that can be used against Israel in the international media? We’ve seen it before. Palestinians who appear to be injured or even dead for the benefit of the TV cameras turn out to be nothing of the sort once they are no longer the focus.

The Growing Budget Cost of Insurance Subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. By Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Excerpt: The American Action Forum today released a new study finding that the cost of the central feature of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has increased by nearly 25 percent, and will likely continue to rise. The insurance subsidies are the means for increased health care coverage, the primary goal of the ACA. AAF finds that since passage in 2010, projected costs been revised upward by nearly 25 percent.

Companies Warn About Cutbacks
Excerpt: Some big American companies are making plans to slow investments, lay off workers and pay less-generous dividends if Congress and the Obama administration don't find a way to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, says the Wall Street Journal. The fiscal cliff refers to a combination of tax increases and spending cuts that will take place unless Congress finds another solution to the deficit. There is projected to be $600 billion in cuts to government spending and the end of tax breaks. The defense industry will be especially impacted by the cuts, as will many welfare programs. Lockheed Martin, for example, says the automatic cuts would force it to lay off 10,000 workers.

Big Green
Part of what irks me about BO's "green initiative" is that he is wasting money on impossible projects when our national security demands real answers. The sooner we disrupt the riches the Arabs derive from oil, the safer we become. But if wind and solar are the answer, why didn't Edison, Tesla and Steinmetz go that way? Does Barry the community organizer - who probably doesn't know how to wire a light bulb - know more about power generation than those three Protean thinkers? --TH

From my liberal legislative colleague
My point about federal tax payer states voting Democratic and deadbeat states voting Republican is that, were Romney right in whining about not getting the votes of people receiving "gifts" from Washington, then states with more Obama voters would tend to be those whose residents get more from Washington than they pay in taxes, while Romney states would be those with a predominance of people not receiving any government "gifts", and paying in more than their state gets back. But just the opposite is true, putting the lie to Romney's latest excuse. While you show the depth of your Republican concern for the unemployed and folks' 401(k)s by the gleeful way you report the recent stock market drop, you fail to mention that the Dow is still 6,000 points above where it was in the wake of the disaster of the last Republican presidency, and unemployment is well below where it was in the afterglow of eight years of Bush. Democrats "scapegoat" Bush for the simple reason that the 2008 meltdown was his fault. The current (so far) relatively minor correction was caused by problems in Europe and the markets' fear that congressional Republican intransigence and extremism will drive us over the financial cliff when the ball goes down in Times Square. As for Sandy, there is no doubt that she caused some temporary job losses, but I guess the Republicans feel they had dibs on using Sandy as a "scapegoat" for their electoral shellacking. –PLM

Not a Photoshop
http://moonbattery.com/?p=21093
Excerpt:
As noted previously, the corrupt, substance-abusing, mentally ill ultra-leftist Jesse Jackson Junior easily won reelection in Chicago from the bughouse, despite not bothering to campaign. Now they say he will give up the seat already, providing he gets a sufficiently lucrative “disability package.” The shakedowns never stop in the Jackson clan.

Excerpt: Yesterday the House Financial Services Committee confirmed what we already know, namely that former Goldman Sachs CEO Jon Corzine deliberately stole customer funds when he was CEO of MF Global. 

Angela Merkel Calls Christianity the ‘World’s Most Persecuted Faith.’ By Andrew E. Harrod 
Excerpt: Speaking on November 5, 2012, before a synod of Germany's Lutheran Church (Evangelische Kirche Deutschlands or EKD), German chancellor Angela Merkel recently incited national controversy. Merkel's address in Timmendorfer Strand in the German province of Schleswig-Holstein included the passing comment that "Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world." The German federal government had thus made the protection of religious freedom, including that of Christians, into a goal of German foreign policy. (Wow.... someone who dared to actually bring up an "inconvenient truth". It'd be nice if the PC idiots would knock off the blind stupidity and just examine the facts. --Del. Be nice if I won the lottery, too, Del--and that's more likely. ~Bob.)

Rockets? What Hamas Rockets?
Excerpt: Violence between Israeli Defense Forces and Palestinian terrorist organizations in Gaza this week is prompting the usual outcry from Islamist groups in America and abroad. Rallies are planned in major cities throughout the United States Friday. Twitter feeds teemed with righteous outrage at what Islamists describe as Israeli aggression. (Of course. It is acceptable for Jews to die, but not to fight back. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: I voted for Obama. ... I did not vote for Obama because I think I am paying too little in taxes. Like many people I know, I am “rich” by Obama’s standards. (This will give you a frisson of Schadenfreude. Where has she been for five years? ~Bob)

4 Reported Dead When Train Hits Veterans' Parade
Excerpt: A train collided with a truck carrying veterans in a West Texas parade, killing at least 4 and critically wounding 10 
Decline in Fitness--Union blocks efforts to require physical fitness of police at Andrews
Excerpt: The nation’s largest federal employee union has blocked the U.S. Air Force from implementing basic fitness standards for civilian police officers at Joint Base Andrews, home to Air Force One. The 1401 Chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) objected to new fitness standards ordered by the Department of Defense (DOD) in April 2012 because base officials did not consult the labor group before implementing the rule.

FEMA orders citizens to stop helping others
Excerpt: Newspaper: FEMA orders residents to stop giving out supplies after Hurricane Sandy — It was great until they stepped in, says local woman. Televised and published pictures plus personal appeals of Hurricane Sandy victims in New York and New Jersey touched the hearts of Shelter Islanders who generously filled truckloads of clothing and other goods bound for Island Park and Long Beach last week. But the word from the Federal Emergency Management Agency now is “stop.” (Who was it said, “no bureaucracy, no red tape” to interfere with help? Of, yes, the pre-election Obama. ~Bob.)

Susan Rice's miserable record at the UN. Richard Grenell
Excerpt: Most reporters haven’t been following Ambassador Susan Rice’s performance at the United Nations since her appointment in January 2009. To many journalists, Rice’s misleading interviews on the five Sunday Shows the weekend after the 9/11/12 terrorist attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others were one of the first times they had heard from her. To veteran foreign policy observers, Rice’s shameful performance that Sunday was one of many blunders over the last four years. (yes, but she has two important qualifications: the right skin color and willing to lie on command to protect Obama. ~Bob.)

Too funny: The News in Zingers
Excerpt: James Bond's Skyfall showcases England's top spy as a man who kills terrorists and sleeps around. The CIA's top spy had to resign for doing the same thing. It's what we get for allowing the Puritans to establish our country's work ethic instead of the Episcopalians.

Cheating Fair and Square
Good visuals on this site. ~Bob

President Obama's silly, sexist defense of Susan Rice. By Kirsten Powers
Excerpt: Don't pick on the little lady. Wednesday, President Obama bizarrely cast the U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, as some delicate flower the boys should stop picking on for her dissembling claims on five Sunday talk shows following the killing of 4 Americans in Benghazi. But, there is no damsel in distress and Obama's paternalistic bravado in defense of a top administration official is going to come back to haunt him.

Obama’s Ridiculous Damsel in Distress Act Signals a Nasty Second Term
Excerpt: In defending Rice, Obama played brave knight to the ambassador’s damsel in distress. That’s an interesting twist on the old fables, in which the brave knight did not actually put the damsel in her distress so that he could stage a fake rescue. That’s exactly what Obama has done in Susan Rice’s case; she delivered Benghazi misinformation on his director orders, inviting the Republican criticism of her. (Unfortunately, the logic of this article requires a firm belief in cause and effect, a concept only vaguely familiar to magical-thinking liberals. Like preaching to the choir, it will convince only those who already believe it to be true. Ron P.)

Petraeus Knew ‘Almost Immediately’ Terrorists Responsible for Benghazi Attack
Excerpt: Rice talking points were different than former CIA director's, came from elsewhere in admin

I Think I Owe an Apology to George W. Bush. By Jonah Goldberg
Excerpt: William F. Buckley once noted that he was 19 when the Cold War began at the Yalta conference. The year the Berlin Wall came down, he became a senior citizen. In other words, he explained, anti-Communism was a defining feature of conservatism his entire adult life. Domestically, meanwhile, the right was largely a "leave me alone coalition": Religious and traditional conservatives, overtaxed businessmen, Western libertarians, and others fed up with government social engineering and economic folly. 

Jill Kelley Helped Muslim Nations, Hezbollah Infiltrate Central Command, MacDill Base; “Go To Girl” For Muslim Parties w/ Generals. By Debbie Schlussel
Excerpt: Jill Khawam Kelley was the hand-picked lobbyist for Muslim nations and their agenda at Central Command.

Excerpt: In Washington, there is one issue on everyone’s minds: the “fiscal cliff.” With time running out before a massive tax hike strikes on January 1, and wide-ranging budget cuts scheduled to hit at the same time, the economy is bracing for another storm. Today, five public policy organizations including The Heritage Foundation are presenting their plans to first slam on the brakes before driving off the cliff, and then to reverse course and tackle our massive spending challenges as the federal government moves ever closer to the debt limit.

Walmart’s answer to NYC’s slaps. By Naomi Schaefer Riley
Excerpt: When New York was down, Walmart stood up. The city has thumbed its nose at the company time and time again, blocking the retail giant from opening a store here — yet Walmart stepped up to help New Yorkers affected by the storm. In cash and in-kind donations over the past two weeks, Walmart has given more than $2 million to Sandy relief efforts — over a million bottles of water, plus everything from cleaning supplies to board games to families stuck in shelters. 

Taliban Oops Reveals Mailing List IDs
Excerpt: Somewhere out there, Mullah Omar must be shaking his head. In a Dilbert-esque faux pax, a Taliban spokesperson sent out a routine email last week with one notable difference. He publicly CC'd the names of everyone on his mailing list. (Now Obama can write them and say, “Come after me!” ~Bob.)

Obama promised transparency, delivered secrecy
Excerpt: Candidate Obama promised transparency. President Obama talks as if he has delivered it. People paying close attention know he hasn’t. Mike Riggs at Reason magazine lays out Obama’s pattern of secrecy, especially with regard to national security.

This Pretty Much Sums It Up …By Bernard Goldberg
http://www.bernardgoldberg.com/this-pretty-much-sums-it-up/?utm_source=BernardGoldberg.com+Newsletter&utm_campaign=6908f45b9c-NEWSLETTER&utm_medium=email
Excerpt: I received this from a friend … and wanted to share with all of you. Please tell me what you think. Some people have the vocabulary to sum up things in a way that you can quickly understand them. This quote came from the Czech Republic. Someone over there has it figured out.... (A version of this has been around awhile, but I like this one best. I disagree with one aspect of the premise, though. I don't think it will be possible to undo the damage the Obama administration is causing. Barring a violent revolution, the America I grew up and loved is gone forever. – LLW. There will be violence, but it will be riots and thugs as we collapse, not a revolution. ~Bob.)

Quote from The Patriot Post
"Well, maybe, I'm with the Eleventh Amendment so, ah, er, is it the Eleventh Amendment that, uh? Ha ha! Fourteenth is it? But whatever it is, I'm with the Constitution of the United States." --Nancy Pelosi, attempting to answer a question about taxing and spending

Congressional report ties Middle East terrorists to Mexican drug cartels
Excerpt: In a statement, McCaul said that “Middle East terrorist networks that continue to plot against the United States are expanding their ties to Mexican drug trafficking organizations, better positioning themselves for a possible attack on our homeland.” “This report documents the increased presence of Iran and Hezbollah in Latin America and addresses the growing concern that terrorist organizations will exploit burgeoning relationships with Mexican drug cartels to infiltrate the Southwest border undetected,” McCaul said. (Anyone who thinks the cartels wouldn’t take cash to smuggle in terrorists and weapons—perhaps WMDs—is an idiot. ~Bob.)

Equality – The Great Socialist Ideal
http://lewrockwell.com/thomas-jeff/thomas-jeff14.1.html
Excerpt: Socialism claims to be the great equaliser. However, it does not lift those at the lower levels to a higher economic level. Instead, it takes from those that have achieved a higher economic level, discouraging their ideas, abilities and ambitions, assuring a form of lower equality for all, through the elimination of the motivation to achieve.(The great lie must be believed in order for socialism to appeal to the masses. --MM )

Petraeus Breaks From Obama – “Terrorism From The Start”
Excerpt: Former CIA Director David Petraeus apparently made clear to Congressional lawmakers this morning that the CIA deemed the attacks against the Benghazi consulate in Libya on September 11th, 2012 to have been terrorism within hours of the event. This estimate was then, according to Petraeus, altered by someone with direct ties to the Obama White House and then later repeatedly communicated to the American public by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice days after the attacks. 

Twinkies maker Hostess plans to go out of business
Excerpt: Hostess Brands Inc, the bankrupt maker of Twinkies snack cakes and loaves of Wonder Bread, is seeking a U.S. court's permission to go out of business after failing to get wage and benefit cuts from thousands of its striking bakery workers. … The Irving, Texas-based company said the liquidation would mean that most of its 18,500 employees would lose their jobs. (Death by union—not the first or the last. One of my college summer jobs was being a vacation manager in a convenience store chair. I had a Wonder Bread salesman who used to twist their slogan to, “Wonder Bread builds strong bodies eight ways—makes you look like an octopus!” Gone now, I guess. But I was a Tastykake kid, never a Twinkies guy. Internet jokes: Wonder Bread is Toast. Big Bird is alive, Twinkies are dead. ~Bob.)

Laid-off Hostess workers face tough job market
Excerpt: Many production workers earned up to $20 an hour, plus had access to medical benefits, according to Michael O'Brien, a former Hostess employee who had worked at the company for 45 years, in various sales functions, before he was offered a buyout last year. … "The industry has overcapacity. We're overcapacity. Our rivals are overcapacity," Hostess CEO Gregory Rayburn said in an interview on CNBC.

Be assured we would spend much more time on the conflict in Israel if the Snack Apocalypse wasn't happening on American soil right now.

The Hostess closure looks more like "Going Galt" than other cutbacks to date. There will be more, lots more.

Teamsters v. AFL-CIO v. Twinkies
Excerpt: Today, the Teamsters Union announced its recommendation to the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM) that a vote of its Hostess members by secret ballot should be held to determine if the workers want to continue their strike of the company and force it into liquidation.

How to Think About the Future of Jobs
Excerpt: In the past, executives and those in hiring positions were able to personally read resumes and cover letters that came by their desk, but because of the Internet, that is not even an option. What used to be a personal exchange during the job process has changed into an 'un-human' approach through technology. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) are now used in almost every single large corporation to filter through key buzz-words for open job descriptions.

CNN Uses Faked Palestinian 'Casualty' Video In Coverage
Excerpt: In its pro-Palestinian coverage of the escalated violence in the Middle East, CNN used faked video footage showing Palestinian "victims" of Israel's rockets being dragged off the streets.

Tweet from RB ‏@RBPundit
They said if I voted for Romney thousands of people would lose their jobs. They were right!

Leo Thorsness: Obama used divide and conquer strategy to win, POWs should share wisdom to defend America
Excerpt: The election 11-6-12 night mirrored, only more successfully, what the North Vietnamese tried on us: Divide and Conquer. Even in solitary, thanks to the tap code, we communicated which allowed us to organize. In that harsh environment, we stood tall even as they bent us. We continued to fight for the America we knew was the pillar of personal freedom, as the example to the world that free enterprise, hard work, honesty and playing by the rules lifts all citizens.

At Pizza Hut, chatting with owner. Said they are struggling to survive, cutting everyone below 29 hrs due to Obamacare. Forward!

Inside Vietnam’s hush-hush banking crisis. By Naomi Rovnick 
Excerpt: For the last two years, we’ve all been focused on China’s wobbly economy. And all this time, China’s small neighbor Vietnam has been ever so quietly heading toward a banking crisis.

Blame a YouTube video for Benghazi. Blame Israel for Hamas rockets. But don't you dare blame unions for Hostess' bankruptcy!

Joke
Leno: 'The Economy Is So Bad MSNBC Had To Lay Off 300 Obama Spokesmen' (From Twitter—didn’t verify that Leno said it. ~Bob.)

Sorry Barry… Earth Is Not Warming – Antarctic Sees Record Growth in Sea Ice

Eat the Rich? Papa John’s Boycott and the Left’s ‘Obamamath’
http://godfatherpolitics.com/8117/eat-the-rich-papa-johns-boycott-and-the-lefts-obamamath/
Excerpt: Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter is in trouble with the Left because, like several business owners since the re-election of the Man Who Would Be King, he has said he must reduce employee hours and possibly lay off workers to deal with the costs of Obamacare and the increasing number of regulations coming out of the Obama Administration.

Sneaky submarine bad sign for U.S. readiness
Excerpt: A Russian Akula-class cruise-missile attack submarine recently transited the North Atlantic and operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for an undeclared period of time. The United States did not find out until after it left. This should not have come as a surprise.

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