Monday, May 6, 2013

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for May 7, 2013

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for May 7, 2013
Robert A. Hall
Your one-stop-shop for political news and opinion--who needs newspapers or TV? 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.

The Coming Collapse of the American Republic
All royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans. E-Book available at Smash Words: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/59105
Please forward and post where possible. For a free PDF of Collapse, write to me at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com.

Excerpt: Legalizing an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants will cost taxpayers at least $6.3 trillion over the coming decades, according to a study released Monday by the Heritage Foundation. The study projects illegal immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits and pay only $3.1 trillion in taxes over their lifetimes if they gain lawful status under comprehensive immigration reform pending in the Senate.

Clinton sought end-run around counter-terrorism bureau on night of Benghazi attack, witness will say
Excerpt: On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department's own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a "whistle-blower" witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.

Excerpt: As the day for three Benghazi "whistleblowers" to testify before a congressional panel draws near, President Barack Obama's fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill slammed him with statements on Sunday's national news... (This could signal a sea change. The rats are abandoning ship. The lame duck may be all alone soon. Of course, that is how wars get started when monster sized egos are at stake. --Don Hank)

Benghazi Whistleblower: Obama and Clinton “Deliberately” Left Americans To Die
Excerpt: Apparently, Obama told Delta Force operators and a special Marine FAST unit (both Tier One Special Operations) to hold off on coming to the aid of Woods and Doherty. Woods also specifically requested aid from a nearby C-130 aircraft that was meant for deep firefights like the one at the annex. Inexplicably, Allmon says Obama also turned down this request.

Obama Administration’s Benghazi Lies Exposed as State Department Cover-Up
Excerpt: Flaming skull alert at Ace of Spades for the release of e-mails confirming that (a) officials knew from the outset that the attack on the consulate in Libya was the work of terrorists, but (b) this information was suppressed for political purposes: State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to [CIA] warnings.” So, it was CIA vs. C.Y.A. at the State Department which, quite frankly, has been infiltrated by Edward Said-influenced Arab specialists to such an extent that it was practically a Muslim Brotherhood outpost even before the Obama administration took over.

BENGHAZIGATE: Obama’s Secret Gun-Running Program
Excerpt: We now know that President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA Director David Petraeus were likely behind a mishandled gun-trafficking program that ended up arming the radical jihadist rebels who stormed the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in BenghaziLibya on that fateful day. Our CIA is still playing the role of vetting which Syrian rebel groups will obtain arms including machine guns, ammunition, and rocket-propelled grenades. While Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are directly purchasing the weaponry, the Obama administration is aiding the Arab governments in shopping for these arms and transferring them from Libya, to Turkey, and finally into Syria.

Excerpt: “And hell is what is coming, one way or the other, because this time — unlike the Clinton impeachment — the big dogs are in play, in the form of hordes of very pissed-off special ops agents, patriotic spooks, forcibly retired generals and clandestine operatives who know where the bodies are buried. If the Obama administration turned its back on Chris Stevens and the three other brave Americans who died that day for crass political purposes — and, worse, if it let them die as collateral damage in its own gunrunning operation to Syria — the men and women who stand watch for this country all through the night are going to come out of the shadows, quickly.”

Official: We knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack "from the get-go"
(Video)
Excerpt… “Chris - Chris's last report, if you want to say his final report - is, 'Greg, we are under attack.'” "...I've never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as on that day," Hicks continued in his interview with investigators. "The net impact of what has transpired is, [Rice,] the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world, has basically said that the president of Libya is either a liar of doesn't know what he's talking about. ....My jaw hit the floor as I watched this." (Spin city at election time; cover up those bumps in the road….Barb)

Benghazi Whistleblower: Requests for Military Backup Denied
Excerpt: Hicks is scheduled to testify Wednesday before that committee, along with other witnesses who are expected to cast doubt on the administration’s narrative about the attack. In his written testimony, Hicks – who was in Tripoli when the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi was attacked – said he recalled that Gibson told him at the time: “I have never been so embarrassed in my life that a State Department officer has bigger balls than somebody in the military.” (Notice this is from the reliably left-leaning Daily Beast. The wheels are coming off the cover-up that stole an election. The question now becomes does enough of the American electorate care to make any difference? Ron P. No. ~Bob.)

Diplomat: U.S. Special Forces told "you can't go" to Benghazi during attacks
Excerpt: The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa. The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized.

Bill Ayers defends Weather Underground bombings
Excerpt: Bill Ayers says people can’t equate the bombings that he and others in the Weather Underground did 40 or so years ago with the April 15 twin bombings in Boston that killed three people. Ayers, a keynote speaker at Saturday’s annual May 4 commemoration of the National Guard shootings at Kent State in 1970 that left four students dead, spoke briefly after giving his talk before an estimated 350 people on the university’s Commons.

Their War, Not Ours. By Patrick J. Buchanan
Excerpt: And if Barack Obama plunges into Syria’s civil war, it could consume his presidency, even as Iraq consumed the presidency of George W. Bush. Why would Obama even consider this? Because he blundered badly.

Funding Phantom Students: State policies insulate districts from making tough decisions. By Marguerite Roza and Jon Fullerton
Excerpt: Massachusetts distributes state aid to districts on the basis of a complex formula that considers enrollment, student need, and local ability to pay. However, the state legislature usually inserts into the budget a “hold harmless” provision that does not allow total state aid to any district to go down, essentially ignoring the careful rationale behind the state’s own formula. Extra payments to select districts are projected to total $180 million in FY13, more than 3 percent of total state education spending. 

Streamlined Obamacare Application Leaves Program Open To Insurance Fraud
Excerpt: Last month, the Federal government floated a 61-page draft application that people would use to sign up for Obamacare’s financial subsidies. After a political rebuke over the form’s length, the Department of Health and Human Services has released a streamlined, 3-page version of the same application. The rub? The government’s new form is going to be an invitation to fraud and abuse.

Big Pharma Accomplishes Big Things, Yet Obama Is Suffocating The Industry. By Sally Pipes
Excerpt: That half-trillion dollars of research has yielded more than 400 new medicines. Unfortunately, President Obama appears intent on grinding pharmaceutical research to a halt. His proposed budget would slap price controls on prescription drugs, thereby depriving the sector of billions of dollars in revenue. That’s on top of the tens of billions in new taxes Obamacare assesses on the industry.

The More Businesses Learn About Obamacare, The More Reluctant They Are To Hire. By Sally Pipes
Excerpt: Wondering why the unemployment rate has been near or above 8 percent for nearly four years? The Federal Reserve has an answer for you: Obamacare.

Excerpt: Mel Watt, President Obama’s nominee for director of the Federal Housing Finance  Agency, pushed government programs to help welfare recipients buy homes during the creation of the subprime mortgage bubble. Watt, a 20-year Member of Congress from North Carolina’s 12th district, also had a hand in programs allowing borrowers with poor credit to buy homes with no down payment.

Racism: Democrat who vowed to send Nikki Haley ‘back to wherever the hell she came from’ a major Obama fundraiser
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/06/democrat-who-vowed-to-send-nikki-haley-back-to-wherever-the-hell-she-came-from-a-major-obama-fundraiser/#ixzz2SW9KKxGS
Excerpt: South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian, who said Friday that he intends to help send Indian-American Republican Gov. Nikki Haley “back to wherever the hell she came from,” was a major campaign bundler who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Barack Obama, records reveal. Obama has yet to condemn Harpootlian’s statement, which a Haley spokesman called “the lowest common denominator.”

Syria Learns: Don’t Cross Israel’s ‘Red Line.’ By Joseph Klein
Excerpt: Israel’s air force is reported to have attacked last Thursday a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that were believed to be on their way to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Then, early Sunday, according to a Western intelligence source, Israel struck Iranian-supplied missiles headed for Hezbollah again, this time in the vicinity of the Jamraya complex, Syria’s main research center for work on biological and chemical weapons.

Official: U.S. Only Knew About Syria Airstrikes After the Fact: Intelligence official says the U.S. was not given any warning before the airstrikes in Syria allegedly carried out by Israel.
Don't trust Obama. Smart. ~Bob. Excerpt: A U.S. intelligence official said on Sunday that the United States was not given any warning before the recent airstrikes in Syria, that were allegedly carried out by Israel. The official would not confirm that Israel was behind the attacks, but said that the United States was essentially told of the air raids "after the fact" and was notified as the bombs went off.

Obama’s Big Brotherhood Bet. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: Obama was following through on an idea that had long been an article of faith on the left. The idea was that the United States had invested in a defunct status quo and that our biggest problems were our allies. The only way out was to toss them all overboard.

Syria crisis: UN's del Ponte says evidence rebels 'used sarin'
Excerpt: Testimony from victims of the Syrian conflict suggests rebels have used the nerve agent sarin, according to a leading United Nations investigator. Carla del Ponte told Swiss TV there were "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof".

UN: Rebels, not Assad, appear to have used chemical weapons
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/297853-un-rebels-not-assad-appear-to-have-used-chemical-weapons-in-syria#ixzz2SUIodGx9
Excerpt: United Nations human rights investigators said Sunday they have gathered testimony from outside Syria suggesting rebels, not Bashar Assad's regime, may have used chemical weapons. “Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Carla Del Ponte, a member of the independent commission of inquiry on Syria, told Swiss-Italian television. “This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.” (Felt this. Assad would not do this; it would bring the wrath of the world on him and his country. And he still coexists with Christians. So who is supplying the Syrian rebels, MB? --Barb)

Karzai Says He Was Assured C.I.A. Would Continue Delivering Bags of Cash
Excerpt: The C.I.A.’s station chief here met with President Hamid Karzai on Saturday, and the Afghan leader said he had been assured that the agency would continue dropping off stacks of cash at his office despite a storm of criticism that has erupted since the payments were disclosed.

7 American service members killed in Afghanistan
They are now dying only to save face for Obama, not to win. Past time to go. ~Bob. Excerpt: Seven U.S. soldiers and a member of the NATO-led coalition were killed on Saturday in one of the deadliest days for Americans and other foreign troops in Afghanistan in recent months, as the Taliban continued attacks as part of their spring offensive.

No 'Happy Easter': The Muslim Brotherhood's Bizarre Religious Intolerance
Obama's friends. ~Bob. Excerpt: Yet because Morsi's decision comes on the heels of a Brotherhood fatwa prohibiting Muslims from wishing Christians a "Happy Easter," Morsi's coldness towards Christians reflects a central paradox of the Brotherhood's Islamism: despite its longtime promise to "implement the sharia" upon achieving power, the Brotherhood only offers specific interpretations of Islamic legal principles when it needs to justify its most intolerant impulses.

Five men jailed for sexually exploiting maid. Woman fell off balcony and left seriously injured while trying to escape human trafficking ring
Can't condemn them--it's their culture. The Holy Qur'an endorses sex slavery. ~Bob.

Pakistan: Islamic supremacists warn that it's "un-Islamic" for women to vote
Excerpt: Oddly enough, Western feminists are completely silent about this. Actually, it isn't odd at all.

Graduate from Saudi jihadi rehab program killed in Syrian jihad: "killed a large number of Christians before his acceptance by God"
Excerpt: After spending two years in Saudi prison for fighting in Iraq, Khalid al-Suwid graduated in 2012, a free man, from the kingdom's well-regarded rehabilitation program for religious extremists, Saudi officials said. Mr. Suwid was a government-certified ex-jihadist. ... Mr. Suwid "killed a large number of Christians before his acceptance by God," said the notice, which appeared on a Facebook FB -2.27% page—"Foreigners in theSyrian [sic] Revolution"—that anonymously records and lauds foreigners killed fighting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Carbon tax backers quietly forge ahead
Excerpt: Activists are quietly forging ahead with their campaign for carbon taxes despite long odds on Capitol Hill. Bob Inglis, a former GOP House member from South Carolina, is part of a very loose collection of policy wonks and advocates fighting to change the politics of taxing emissions. It would happen, he said, by “immaculate conception,” but not until 2015 or 2016.

Floridians Told To Report Their Neighbors Who Are Anti-Government
Excerpt: There’s a brand new $1 million dollar program being put together by Palm Beach County Florida’s Sheriff, Ric Bradshaw. It’s objective? To get friends and neighbors to snitch on people who ‘hate government.’ According to the Palm Beach Post, “Bradshaw plans to use the extra $1 million to launch “prevention intervention” units featuring specially trained deputies, mental health professionals and caseworkers. The teams will respond to citizen phone calls to a 24-hour hotline with a knock on the door and a referral to services, if needed.” (Article adds: “What next? Are we going to see dissidents carted off to ‘mental hospitals’ like the good old days in Soviet Russia?” So much for Free Speech versus PC. --Barb)

Chicago’s new Scarface: Joaquin ‘Chapo’ Guzman
Excerpt: Chicago’s new Scarface is a shadowy Mexican drug kingpin nicknamed Chapo — “Shorty” in Spanish. His cash crop is marijuana, which his cartel sells by the ton and protects with horrific violence.

9.5 Million People Have Left the Workforce Under Obama. By Elizabeth Harrington
Excerpt: 9.5 million Americans have left the workforce during the presidency of Barack Obama, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

My week in the online terror underworld
Excerpt: ...it seemed implausible that the Web had somehow made Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev into jihadists. But it did strike me that the world of online jihad could have had another effect on the Boston bombers: it might well have inured them to violence. The further I crawled down the extremist rabbit hole and the more caved-in skulls and headless corpses I saw, the more I found that my natural revulsion, usually an uncontrollable instinct, was easier to suppress. (The author tells what he found in seven days, approaching with no ideological bent toward the material he found. How different might his experience have been if he’d already been a believer, one who was already feeling out of place in Western culture? I suspect his journey might have been a bit more frightening, both to him and to his readers. Ron P.)

It’s Not About Syria, Stupid (Think Iran and Russia, and…). By Michael Ledeen
Excerpt: As information about the apparent Israeli strikes on targets inside Syria continues to pour in, it’s easy to lose sight of the central fact: the two reported Israeli attacks are part of an ongoing war, the big war against the West. While the attacks were in Syria, the mission was primarily a major strike against Iran and Russia, two key components of the global alliance arrayed against us. Both are desperately trying to shore up the Assad regime in Damascus. (Be sure to read the final line of Ledeen’ column. --Ron P.)

Six Md. veterans plead guilty to Agent Orange benefits fraud
Excerpt: Six veterans have pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges after receiving payments for falsely claiming exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, according to the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office. They obtained a combined total of more than $500,000 in cash and tax benefits after allegedly paying Maryland Veterans Administration employee David Clark, 68, to falsify their claims, according to Maryland federal district court documents.

"I wish there was a 'morning after pill' for this administration." ~ Greg Gutfield

SEC charges PA’s capital city with fraud
Another Democrat run paradise. ~Bob. Excerpt: Federal investigators say city of Harrisburg officials misled the public and investors about how bad the municipality’s finances really were. The Securities Exchange Commission on Monday charged the city of Harrisburg with securities fraud in connection with misleading financial statements made to the public.

These so-called Benghazi "whistleblowers" obviously have a petty political vendetta against Hillary just because she left them to die.

Excerpt: The Obama administration will have a hard time cobbling together even a modicum of popular support for the (inevitable, IMO) U.S. military intervention into Syria without a re-mobilization of that once-noisy but recently scarce tribe of armchair agitators known as the Liberal Hawks. Right on cue comes Bill Keller in today's New York Times, making the argument that "Syria Is Not Iraq." Which is, I suppose, a much more succinct headline than "Listen to Me About Bombing a Middle Eastern Country in 2013 Even Though I Was Totally Wrong About it in 2003."

Photos from the US-Mexico Border

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