Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Today's political news and conservative comment

General News and Comment

My Random Thoughts for August, 2014

President Obama’s impeachment is a fantasy — for both parties
Excerpt: President Obama is not being impeached. But for several years, Republicans have been indulging and even encouraging that fantasy on the part of the far-right edges of their party’s base. ... And now Democrats are raising millions off the idea that the GOP is serious about doing it. “I would not discount that possibility,” presidential adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Friday. (As a Republican who voted against Obama twice, I think the talk of impeaching him is just dumb. Have we forgotten how the impeachment of Bill Clinton allowed the media and Democrats too picture him as a victim, saving his presidency? And today he is the revered elder statesman, having joined the rich one-percent through paid speeches. But no, on it goes. First, to convict him, even if the GOP wins the senate in November, you'd need at least 12 Democrat votes. No Democrat would vote to impeach, if Obama was caught raping a nun. They are dependent on the minority votes in their base; they would not care what the evidence was. Then if you convicted and removed him, there would be riots in the cities, with millions, maybe billions of dollars in destruction, and hundreds of deaths. That might give even Republicans pause. And after that settles down--and you foot the reconstruction bill through our taxes--say these two words: "President Biden." Not only would he continue Obama's policies, and provide even more inept and dithering leadership in the world, he would instantly be the Democrat nominee and likely front runner to be elected president in 2016. ~Bob)

Worth Reading: The survival of the left. By Thomas Sowell
Excerpt: The academic world is the natural habitat of half-baked ideas, except for those fields in which there are decisive tests, such as science, mathematics, engineering, medicine;and athletics. In all these fields, in their differing ways, there comes a time when you must either put up or shut up. It should not be surprising that all of these fields are notable exceptions to the complete domination by the left on campuses across the country. (From Barbarians Inside the Gates, an excellent 2001 collection of Dr. Sowell's columns from the 1990s, all still relevant. ~Bob)

Worth Reading: Jim Crow and the Donkey: A True History the Left Loves to Ignore. By Ken Blackwell 
Excerpt: That’s the Left’s narrative on Jim Crow, and it’s dead wrong in both fact and analysis. Here is the heart of the issue, where the left has hijacked the true history of Jim Crow. The dividing line over Jim Crow was never liberals vs. conservatives; it’s far more accurate to describe it as Democrats versus Republicans. Not only in the 1800s, when the KKK served as the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party, but right into the 1950s and 1960s. Bookman’s assertion that “conservatives in the Republican Party … fought against civil rights” is utterly false. As historian Dr. John Fonte noted on NRO in 2003, staunchly conservative Republicans led the fight for civil rights in the Senate, including Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, Ohio Senator Robert Taft, and California Senator Bill Knowland. (The writer is black. ~Bob)

The Truth About Jim Crow

Worth Reading: Statesmanship and The Little Rock 9
Excerpt: The Supreme Court ruling had been clear. "Separate But Equal" was anything but equal, and the right to an education, regardless of skin color, would never be realized until our nation's schools were integrated. So down in Little Rock, Arkansas nine African American children would dare to walk into the front doors of Little Rock's Central High School on a fateful day in 1957. And there were plenty of vicious racists who were determined that they wouldn't, including Governor Orval Faubus, Arkansas's most unlikely governor, even for that state, at that time. ... Airborne to Little Rock... So Dwight Eisenhower, Republican, faced down Orval Faubus, a Democrat, even in the face of the Democratically controlled "solid south" who were adamantly opposed to racial equality. 

No Joke: California Parents and Religious Leaders Fight to Make Skin Color Criteria for Teaching
Excerpt: Rev. Karen Crozier, local pastor and activist, is leading an effort to protest the district’s decision. She explained: ... We didn’t fight for a white male or female teacher to educate our babies. ... In other words, Rev. Crozier supports discrimination of skin color for the position of teaching about the evils of discrimination of skin color.

The View: 'Get A Gun' To Protect Yourself And Your Children. By Awr Hawkins
Excerpt: On the July 29 airing of The View, three of the four people on a panel agreed women need a gun in the house to protect themselves and their children.

49% Believe Government Programs Increase Poverty in America
Excerpt: Congress is debating a plan by Republican Congressman Paul Ryan to reform government welfare programs. Most Americans still believe current government anti-poverty programs have no impact on poverty in this country or actually increase it.

And The IRS Scandal Expands As New Revelations Suggest It Also Targeted Pro-Israel Groups. By Caroline Schaeffer 
Excerpt: But recently discovered emails pull another group into the mix and shows that the IRS was engaged in a pattern of silencing groups whose views did not fit with the Administration’s agenda. In 2009, the pro-Israel group Z Street applied for tax-exempt status, according to the WSJ. The organization’s purpose is to educate the public on “Israel-related issues.” In 2010 an IRS agent told Z Street that its application was delayed because the tax agency’s Washington, D.C. office was giving special scrutiny to groups whose missions might conflict with Administration policies.

History Professor: Convicted Cop Killer Mumia Should Be Celebrated Like Martin Luther King Jr. in Schools. By Katie Pavlich
Excerpt: Last night on the Kelly File Baruch College History Professor Joanna Fernandez argued that unrepentant convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, who murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981 by shooting him five times in the face, should be celebrated in schools just like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She also argued using words like "militant" and "convicted cop killer" to describe Mumia, is racist. Another nice nugget? A California teacher's union feels the same way. (Well, the left loves Mao, Stalin and Ché--what's one more ruthless murderer in their pantheon of heroes? ~Bob)

The Insiders: Democratic phonies are on the run. By Ed Rogers
Excerpt: What’s with all the Democratic Senate candidates being caught displaying a condescending, insulting contempt for voters? The latest embarrassing incident involves Georgia Senate candidate Michelle Nunn, who suffered the indignity of having her 144-page campaign plan leaked. ... The plan involves trying to create a fake, gun-toting, rural-friendly image for the wannabe Georgian senator supplied by a Democratic PR firm based in San Francisco, and exposes her positions on issues as basic as her commitment to Israel as contrived to drive her fundraising efforts. But Michelle Nunn is only the latest Senate Democratic candidate to be exposed as a phony.

Congressman Paul Ryan has introduced a proposal, Expanding Opportunity in America, to bring together different federal anti-poverty programs into one. Ryan focuses on the Earned Income Tax Credit, housing and home-energy assistance, education assistance, food stamps (SNAP), and criminal sentencing reform. Ryan’s proposal hinges on the Opportunity Grant (OG). States would apply for OGs that would roll some or all of this federal money into one lump sum. However, it would not just be turned over to states as a block grant. States, civil-society organizations, and recipients themselves would all be responsible for measuring and achieving outcomes. The OG would have one overriding goal: To facilitate recipients moving out of dependency and into self-reliance. (Doesn't matter, it's not going anywhere anyway. The Democrat poverty pimps and program bureaucrats would never let Harry Reid bring it to the floor or Obama sign it. Poverty is their rice bowl, and they will fight tooth and nail to keep the dollars flowing into the current system. The rest o us will hardly notice the fight. ~Bob)

WaPo Editorial: Hollywood myth-making on Valerie Plame controversy
From 2010, but worth knowing about. ~Bob. Excerpt: In fact, "Fair Game," based on books by Mr. Wilson and his wife, is full of distortions - not to mention outright inventions. To start with the most sensational: The movie portrays Ms. Plame as having cultivated a group of Iraqi scientists and arranged for them to leave the country, and it suggests that once her cover was blown, the operation was aborted and the scientists were abandoned. This is simply false. ... Hollywood has a habit of making movies about historical events without regard for the truth; "Fair Game" is just one more example. But the film's reception illustrates a more troubling trend of political debates in Washington in which established facts are willfully ignored

Worth Reading: Obama's Misleading Minimum Wage Statistics: Don't buy the argument that a higher minimum wage enhances job creation.
Excerpt: Basic economics teaches that forcing up the price of something makes people less willing to buy that something. This reasoning, for example, is behind the administration’s recent hike in tariffs on Korean steel. The president correctly understands that forcing up the price of Korean steel will cause Americans to buy less of it. Contrary to Obama’s suggestion, the same logic holds for labor. Forcing up labor’s price will cause employers to hire less of it (by, for example, supermarkets using self-checkout computers instead of cashiers).

The Man Who Never Calls. By Mark Steyn
Excerpt: There was an odd moment during a White House press briefing recently when Ed Henry of Fox News noted that the President was sometimes spending three out of five days a week fundraising for his party, and wondered, in effect, whether he still did any work. Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded: Well, I will hazard a guess that a significant portion of the President's time each of those days will be dedicated to participating in the presidential daily briefing, getting updates from his national security team about the situation on the ground, making phone calls to world leaders, consulting with his national security officials who are traveling across the world... Well, I will "hazard a guess" that he's actually making very few "phone calls to world leaders". 

Study: Hundreds of rules passed by Obama administration are technically illegal. By Juliet Eilperin 
Excerpt: Over the past two years, the Obama administration has published hundreds and hundreds of rules — on how wheelchairs should be stowed aboard U.S. aircraft, how foreign trade zones should be regulated, how voting assistance should be provided for U.S. citizens overseas, and so on. There’s a problem, however: Technically speaking, these and some 1,800 other regulations shouldn’t be in effect because they weren’t reported to Congress as required. Yet there is little that lawmakers or the courts can do about it.

Sickening: Another Travesty of Justice: Carr Brothers Given Leniency. By Jack Kerwick
Excerpt: But it wasn’t until three days after thismurder that the Carrs’ campaign of evil reached its horrifying climax.... Armed with guns, the Carrs made their victims perform sexual acts on one another. The women were forced to penetrate each other’s vaginas orally and digitally, and the men were forced to have sex with the women. Yet when the Carrs discovered that Befort and “H.G.” were romantically involved, they prevented them from having sexual intercourse with one another, choosing instead to force Befort watch as they coerced his friends to essentially rape his fiancée to be. .. Yet on Friday, July 25, by a 6-1 decision, the Kansas Supreme Court, citing procedural problems, maintained the convictions whileoverturning the Carrs’ death sentences. (If the victims had been black and the killers white, everyone would know their names. ~Bob)

Another Hoax? Obama Takes Bold Step to Geoengineer Climate Change
The person who sent me this item in the last post reports that it is phony. ~Bob

Emails show ex-IRS official Lerner using derogatory terms for Republicans
Excerpt: House Republicans have dug up emails from Lois Lerner in which the former IRS official refers to some in the Republican Party as “---holes” and "crazies" – an exchange they say shows her “animus” toward conservatives.

Undocumented Democrat News

Poll: Americans Cool to Border-Crossing Children
Excerpt: Americans are wary of granting refugee status to children crossing the U.S. border to flee strife-torn countries in Central America, and most in an Associated Press-GfK poll say the U.S. does not have a moral obligation to accept asylum seekers generally.
The new poll found 53 percent of Americans believe the United States has no moral obligation to offer asylum to people who escape violence or political persecution, while 44 percent believe it has that responsibility.

Religion of Peace News

US is no safer after 13 years of war, a top Pentagon official says. The outgoing head of the Defense Intelligence Agency says that new players on the scene are more radical than Al Qaeda, and the core Al Qaeda ideology has lost none of its potency. By Anna Mulrine
Excerpt: “We have a whole gang of new actors out there that are far more extreme than Al Qaeda,” says Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which employs some 17,000 American intelligence collectors in 140 countries around the world.

Belief U.S. Is Winning War on Terror Falls to 10-Year Low
Excerpt: Belief that the United States is winning the War on Terror has plummeted to its lowest level in over 10 years of regular tracking. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 27% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror. 

Polling shows Democrats need to self-reflect on Israel. By Jennifer Rubin
Excerpt: A Pew poll tells us: “As violence between Israel and Hamas shows no signs of abating, the sympathies of the American public continue to lie with Israel rather than the Palestinians. And dating back to the late 1970s, the partisan gap in Mideast sympathies has never been wider. Currently, 51% of Americans say that in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians, they sympathize more with Israel. Just 14% sympathize more with the Palestinians, while 15% volunteer that they sympathize with neither side and 3% sympathize with both.” (You can support Israel or you can support Democrats and Hamas. ~Bob)

Excerpt: More than 100,000 Arabs have been killed in the war raging in Syria. How many more Arabs have been killed in Iraq by other Arabs since the U.S. pulled out all its troops? How many Arabs have been killed by other Arabs before and since the Arab Spring? Let’s just say, lots. And what is the reaction here in America and around the world? A great big yawn. If anyone really cares about Arabs killing Arabs, they’re not doing a good job showing it. (Like the high number of blacks being murdered that no one cares about because the killers are black. But in the rare case when the killer is white, then it's marches and riots to get votes and concessions and money. ~Bob)

Obama Rated Poorly on Mideast Conflict
Excerpt: Just 39 percent of Americans approve of Obama’s handling of the situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip, while more than half, 52 percent, disapprove. (On issue after issue Obama and the Democrats stand against the majority opinion. Not very democratic of them. But, hey, Obama's black, so folks still support him. ~Bob)

France evacuates French and British expats from Libya
Excerpt: The French government says it has evacuated French and British nationals from Libya, as battles rage between government forces and militias. A French diplomatic source said 40 French nationals, including the ambassador, had been evacuated by ship along with seven British nationals. (I wonder if France and Britain are having second thoughts about participating in Obama's lead-from-behind, non-congressionally-authorized war that destabilized Libya. ~Bob)

Paying Ransoms, Europe Bankrolls Qaeda Terror. By Rukmini Callimachi
Excerpt: The cash filled three suitcases: 5 million euros. ... Officially, Germany had budgeted the money as humanitarian aid for the poor, landlocked nation of Mali. In truth, all sides understood that the cash was bound for an obscure group of Islamic extremists who were holding 32 European hostages, according to six senior diplomats directly involved in the exchange. ... While European governments deny paying ransoms, an investigation by The New York Times found that Al Qaeda and its direct affiliates have taken in at least $125 million in revenue from kidnappings since 2008, of which $66 million was paid just last year. (And the more they pay, the stronger the Jihadists get, so the more people they can kidnap and murder. Like paying Danegeld--as Kipling said, once you do, you never get rid of the Dane. ~Bob)

Three Israeli Troops Killed in Booby-Trapped UN Clinic
Excerpt: Three Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday when a tunnel opening they were investigating turned out to be booby-trapped. The tunnel opening was located under a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) clinic, the Times of Israel reports.

Hamas Kills Own Citizens, Blames Israel. By Onan Coca
Excerpt: Fortunately for the world, Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati was in Gaza and was able to get confirmation from witnesses that the Al Shati “massacre” was actually caused by a Hamas rocket that was misfired.

Excerpt: Three weeks into deadly fighting in Gaza and along its border, Israeli forces have been surprised to encounter an extensive, sophisticated tunnel system that has been used by Hamas to infiltrate Israeli territory and carry out raids. The destruction of that tunnel system has become a focal point of Israeli military operations, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has emphasized that any cease-fire must allow his forces to continue identifying and sealing those tunnels. To understand why these tunnels have become such a hot-button issue, one need look no further than a video released by Hamas by Tuesday, July 29. That video shows a group of fighters exiting such a tunnel and attacking an Israeli military installation. (It seems even the usually on-top-of-it Israelis were taken back to find out just how many and how sophisticated the tunnels from Gaza into Israel are. One that was inspected by a retired US general was three miles long, and very well engineered, not some crawl space through the dirt like the WW2 escape tunnels from the German POW camps. The Hamas guys were dumb enough to even put out a video from a successful raid from a tunnel that killed at least one Israeli and got them a sophisticated heavy MG for a souvenir as well. (Letting your enemy learn about your secret weapons against them just doesn't seem like a really smart idea.) The count of major tunnels is now up in the thirties, and they Israelis are looking closer than before for more of them, and their entrances in Gaza, often to be found under homes, schools, etc. It has become clear why the Gazans were always complaining about the restrictions on concrete and building materials to be brought in to the area, because so much of it was not going for homes or other buildings, but for the tunnels. This has really gotten the full attention of the Israelis, which is why they will not agree to any kind of truce that would not allow them to continue to search for and destroy invading tunnels. I can hardly blame them for that. --Del

Obama’s Muslim Founding Fathers. By Robert Spencer, Director of Jihad Watch 
Excerpt: Barack Obama asserted that “Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy.” ... You remember a few of them, don’t you? Remember the Muslim signers of the Declaration of Independence? With Yahya al-Hanqoq’s large signature front and center, so that the infidel King George III could read it without his spectacles? And then there was Ibrahim Clark of New Jersey and El-Bridge Gerry of Massachusetts.

Worth Reading: What Obama Really Wants in Gaza. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: While Israelis are fighting and dying, families huddling in bomb shelters and soldiers going off to face death, the men and women in suits and power suits moving through the great halls of diplomacy are using them as pawns in a larger game. During the Cold War, Israel was a pawn in a larger struggle between the US and the USSR. Now it is back to being a counter in a larger game.

Hamas Intimidates Western Journalists, Kills 30 "Collaborators"
Excerpt: Western journalists operating in Gaza have been threatened and harassed by Hamas for reporting instances of the terrorist groups' use of human shields, according to a Times of Israel report. Israeli officials have noted that some reporters are intimidated by Hamas' threats and have ceased documenting Hamas' exploitation of civilians throughout the conflict.

Anti-Jewish slogans return to the streets in Germany as protests sweep Europe
Excerpt: No burning the Israeli flag. No shouts of “Death to Israel.” And absolutely no repeating the slogan “Jew, Jew, cowardly pig, come out and fight alone” — a rhyming chant in German that had become increasingly common at pro-Palestinian rallies here before being nipped in the bud by German authorities.

Anti-Israel Protesters Block London Traffic, Wave Al Qaeda Flag
Excerpt: A shocking video from a major traffic artery in London shows Islamist protesters blocking the route in a loud protest which included the waving of an Al Qaeda flag.

China Xinjiang: Violence 'kills or injures dozens'
Excerpt: Dozens of people have been killed or injured in violence in China's Xinjiang region on Monday, state media say. A knife-wielding gang attacked a police station and government offices in Shache county, Xinhua news agency said. Police shot dead many attackers, it said, and "dozens" of Uighur and Han Chinese civilians were killed or hurt.

Firebombs fail to ignite at Toulouse Jewish center. Incident occurs hours after pro-Palestinian demonstration
Excerpt: Police in Toulouse arrested a man who hurled three firebombs at a Jewish community center and the officers guarding it. The incident happened Saturday, one hour after the conclusion of a demonstration against Israel’s actions against Hamas in Gaza, the AFP news agency reported.

The decision to leave their colleague alone in the hands of these barbarians was probably taken by leaders inside the police department. What I heard from a usually well-informed source is that the quickest way to make a career inside the police force is to be pro-multicultural and pro-appeasement, and to avoid riots at all cost. After this, how can the Swedes trust that the police will protect them? And with 31 firearms per 100 people, how can the Swedish authorities trust that their voters and taxpayers will not think of ways to take the law in their own hands one day? 

Greater Men Have Tried. By Paula Stern
Excerpt: Dear Secretary of State John Kerry: Because of my respect for the United States, I will attempt to afford you the honor you think you so richly deserve. It’s hard to speak to you with anything but anger, hard to feel the need, again, to start from the beginning because you clearly choose to ignore history in your quest for glory. It is a quest destined to fail but its outcome, even, or more accurately especially, in failure, will hurt Israel.

IDF Finds Hamas Training Manual; Hospitals Used as Terrorist Bases
Excerpt: Israel's Operation Protective Edge uncovered a comprehensive Hamas training manua lthat features step-by-step instructions on building homemade bombs. The terrorist manual includes detailed techniques concerning the concealing and detonation of various types explosives.

Israel Gaza Crisis: Israeli 'Wonder Woman' Gal Gadot Stirs Up Controversy With Facebook Post Supporting Israeli Soldiers
Excerpt: Then she posted a picture on her own Facebook page of herself, praying with her daughter Alma. While many Israeli stars have come forward to plead for an end to the bloodshed, it was Gal's caption that caught attention... “I am sending my love and prayers to my fellow Israeli citizens. Especially to all the boys and girls who are risking their lives protecting my country against the horrific acts conducted by Hamas, who are hiding like cowards behind women and children...We shall overcome!!! Shabbat Shalom! (She served two years in the IDF. I may have to see the movie! ~Bob)

Muslim Issues Death Threat on Obama’s FACEBOOK page: “Death to you Barack Obama” on Obama’s FB Page by Muslim
Excerpt: Did Obama neglect to invite him to the Eid dinner or was this what Obama meant by “contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation.” If this guy was a tea partier he’d be jailed for life but this guy may have just got himself an invite to a White House dinner. (Trying to appease Jihadists is like trying to appease Nazis--there is always a new demand. ~Bob)

‘Big Bang’ star Mayim Bialik helps send bulletproof vests to IDF
Excerpt: The Jewish actress and outspoken supporter of Israel wrote a brief blog post Wednesday afternoon, titled “Why I Donated Money to Send Bulletproof Vests to the IDF.”

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