Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Don't miss today's political news and opinion

Our church had a bake and craft sale Saturday. I made two low-sugar pumpkin pies, one for us, one for the church. When we got there at 9:00 am, several tables were full of great looking baked goods, none of which are on my diabetic diet. I asked the woman where I should put my low-sugar pumpkin pie. She said, "Give it to me, I'm buying it. I'm diabetic and there's nothing here I can have!" So it never hit the table. ~Bob

Bob, you'll be happy to know that here in China, your site is blocked from access.  See how infamous you have become? --Del. Makes a fellow proud! ~Bob



We went to the VA Hospital for the Marine Corps Birthday ceremony and cake cutting. The oldest Marine who received the first piece of cake was a former Gunny, now 85. I was, alas, third oldest! ~Bob



Always Worth Reading: Service Guarantees Citizenship (Part II). By Tom Kratman
Excerpt: So why are we – those of us who are in favor – even concerned with radically changing the system that has, and for the most part well enough, seen us through over two centuries? It’s simple: We think that system’s time has run, that we are not the people we were and that our ruling class is no longer worthy. Indeed, it’s not even trustworthy, let alone generally worthy. We observe that our political and economic fate has fallen into the hands of the denationalized rich, who frankly don’t care a fig for us. We see that where once we were an “ask what you can do for your country” people, we are increasingly indistinguishable from the worst third-world kleptocratic and nepotistic hellholes. We see the PC fascisti replacing us with unassimilable foreigners, often enough from cultures that are not just incompatible, but which actively hate us. We see that we are fracturing in ways that are arguably worse than anything we’ve ever seen before, worse even than before and during the Civil War. Yankees and Rebs used to, at least, mostly speak the same language. Our language today, as spoken by left and right from north and south, may sound the same but the words and concepts have changed meanings. (Tom Kratman is a retired USA LtCol, an occasional contributor to this blog, and an outstand author of military science fiction, including the A Desert Called Peace series. http://www.amazon.com/Desert-Called-Peace-Carrera-Book-ebook/dp/B00B5HJOFY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426715332&sr=8-1&keywords=Peace+Kratman ~Bob)

Happy Birthday, Marines: NO ONE JOINS THE U. S. MARINE CORPS. By Col. Andy Weddington, USMC (Ret)

Must Read: The Oldest Divide: With roots dating back to our Founding, America’s urban-rural split is wider than ever. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: Of all the growing divides in America—red-blue, conservative-liberal, Republican-Democrat, white-nonwhite—none is sharper than that between city and country. The nation’s urbanites increasingly govern those living in the hinterlands, even as vanishing rural Americans still feed and fuel the nation. At the nation’s birth, it took nine farmers to feed one city dweller. Today, one farmer supports 99 urbanites—evidence, supposedly, that almost everyone has been freed from the drudgery of agricultural work. City and country are not coequals by any demographic, political, or cultural measure. The urban is growing and ascendant; the rural shrinks and becomes increasingly culturally irrelevant. California is now the most urbanized state in the nation. ... The twenty-first century may at last see the end of a venerable consensus that rural citizens prizing liberty and freedom provide a necessary audit on the democracy of urbanites who prefer uniformity and demand equality at all costs. We have left for good the world of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and entered the age of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump—and likely with worse to come.  (One of the very best essays on people, psychology, and history that I have ever seen.  I recommend it highly.  Sadly, it does not predict the future to be ever blessed.  If enough people really lose touch with the reality of life, its challenges, the world around us, society becomes a car speeding along towards a cliff edge that no one notices. --Del)

Excerpt: Having failed in their shakedown of Chevron, New York Democrats are turning their attention to Exxon, with the office of state attorney general Eric Schneiderman attempting to prosecute Exxon for holding naughty views on the subject of global warming. Earlier this week, Exxon was served with a subpoena demanding at least a decade’s worth of financial records relating to Exxon’s own climate research and its relationship with outside activist groups that have opposed U.S. entry into the Kyoto protocols and criticized arguments for certain regulations aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions. This is a flat-out campaign aimed at punishing a corporation for having a policy disagreement with Democrats. (Liberals believe in every kind of diversity except diversity of thought. Given free rein, they will destroy freedom of speech. ~Bob)

The war against Exxon Mobil. By Robert J. Samuelson 
Excerpt: If you care about free speech, you should pay attention to the campaign now being waged against Exxon Mobil. More than 50 environmental and civil rights groups have written Attorney General Loretta Lynch urging her to open a “federal probe” of the giant energy firm. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have also joined the chorus. The charge is that Exxon Mobil “systematically misled the public” on climate change, even as its executives recognized the dangers. New York’s attorney general has already launched an investigation. ... Exxon Mobil (2014 earnings: $32.5 billion) does not command our sympathy. But free speech does not belong only to the sympathetic. Casting Exxon Mobil as the scapegoat for global warming’s dilemmas is historically inaccurate and a political cheap shot with troubling constitutional implications.

Congress passes $607 billion defense bill that also bans moving Guantanamo detainees to US
Excerpt: Senate overwhelmingly approves $607 billion defense bill that also bans moving Guantanamo detainees to the US mainland. Though President Obama is opposed to the bill's Guantanamo provision, he has not threatened a veto.  (Why move them to the US when you can send them back to al Qaeda to kill Americans? ~Bob)

Your Tax Dollars at Work: A $1 billion push to offer online immigration applications yields 1 form
Excerpt: Heaving under mountains of paperwork, the government has spent more than $1 billion trying to replace its antiquated approach to managing immigration with a system of digitized records, online applications and a full suite of nearly 100 electronic forms. A decade in, all that officials have to show for the effort is a single form that’s now available for online applications and a single type of fee that immigrants pay electronically. The 94 other forms can be filed only with paper.

WaPo Fact Checker: Hillary Clinton’s claim that 90 percent of her emails were ‘in the system’
Excerpt: While not all of the e-mails she submitted to the State Department have been released, what has been made available so far suggests that a substantial majority are to and from at least one “state.gov” e-mail address. It is not an unreasonable assumption that these e-mails are contained somewhere within the bowels of the State Department. But Clinton cannot make a definitive statement and certainly cannot attribute that to the State Department. In the interest of precision, Clinton would do better to say that “my staff has calculated that 90 percent were sent to or from a state.gov e-mail address” rather than “90 percent were already in the system.” Three Pinocchios

Interesting: If Edward Snowden Is Right About Clinton's Emails, Bernie Sanders Will Win a Landslide Victory
Excerpt: What if Edward Snowden is correct to believe that it's "completely ridiculous" to think Clinton's emails were safe? If this is true, then it's feasible to foresee a breakthrough in the FBI investigation. Yes, it's logical to assume that national security was jeopardized if Snowden and others feel Clinton was reckless with her intelligence protocol. We're then looking at a Bernie Sanders landslide victory in the Democratic primaries. Edward Snowden isn't part of a GOP conspiracy and has no incentive other than to illustrate a relevant viewpoint, when he addressed Clinton's private emails and server. I have no incentive to write this piece other than to highlight a key distinction between two Democratic candidates. Also, I am voting only for Senator Bernie Sanders and nobody else. (Polling trajectory: Well, Walker was going up, so he should win the nomination. No, Trump going up so he should win. No Carson going up.... ~Bob)

Interesting: Sanders is trying to correct record on debate exchange over Clinton’s e-mails. By Chris Cillizza, Washington Post
Excerpt: It was clear that Sanders had that line ready going into the debate. That he interjected after Clinton finished her answer suggested that he was executing a play put together by his campaign in debate prep. But it didn’t go to plan. When the Clinton-Sanders back-and-forth happened, I wondered aloud (I talk to myself a lot) whether he had been misunderstood, whether accidentally or, more likely, on purpose, by Clinton. What I took Sanders to mean was that Clinton’s e-mail issue was a major distraction in the race and that she was to blame for it.

But Hillary's home serves was secure! ISIS 'cyber caliphate' hacks 54,000 Twitter accounts and posts phone numbers of heads of the CIA and FBI in revenge for the drone attack that killed a British extremist
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3308734/ISIS-cyber-caliphate-takes-54-000-Twitter-accounts-Terrorists-hack-social-media-site-spread-vile-propaganda.html#ixzz3qv4m2Qfm

Watch: It's wrong to distrust all Muslims
Even if one is in a Burka sometimes tries to stab you to death! ~Bob

German teachers union warns girls to stay away from refugee men
Just because Muslim immigrants have made Sweden the rape capital of Europe and Muslim rape gangs in Britain prayed on young girls in no reason to go all Islamophobic. ~Bob

Survey: Alarming Portion of Syrian Immigrants in Europe Are Islamic State Sympathizers
Excerpt: As the United States moves forward in letting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the country, a survey says that 13 percent of the Syrian refugees in Europe sympathize with the Islamic State. The poll by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies surveyed 900 refugees in what it called “the largest public opinion poll conducted in the Arab region.” The survey also found that 10 percent of the displaced Syrian refugees have a mixed or lukewarm — but not entirely negative — view of the terror group. In response to the survey’s findings, Investors Business Daily pointed out, “That means 23% — or almost 1 in 4 — could be susceptible to ISIS recruitment.”

Watch: Caught on Camera; Moderate Jihadist sent directly to his 72 virgins by SAA Artillery shell

Afghan mullah leading stoning inquiry condones practice

Gun-Slinging Mom Fights Off Armed Attackers, Saves Her Child [VIDEO]
Excerpt: Semantha Bunce, 21, suffered serious injuries after being shot by the intruders, but was able to scare them off by returning fire, according to WSOC TV. Paul Bunce, Semantha’s husband, told WSOC, “I think it was a shock to the intruders just as much as it was to her.” At the time of the shooting, their baby was only feet away. Semantha is a trained combat medic with the National Guard, and her husband believes that her training likely saved her life during the gun battle. While Semantha is expected to survive her wounds, she will still need at least one more surgery.

Not Really: Politico Admits Fabricating A Hit Piece On Ben Carson. Politico's editorial staff on Friday conceded that entire basis of attack on Carson was invented out of whole cloth. By Mollie Hemingway
Excerpt: Now, as for Kyle Cheney’s concession that he fabricated his piece on Carson. He didn’t. That’s how I’m interpreting his decision to stealthily edit his piece to remove much of the error. But Ben Carson didn’t “admit” or “concede” to fabrication and he’s been tarred by Cheney as if he had. So I’ll keep the headline.


We will see: Obamacare Heading for Life Support: Humana drops 100,000 patients, citing unexpectedly higher costs.
I've seen a lot of stories like this since it was jammed through in 2010, and it's still here. If it does collapse, there will be a huge lobby among patients, providers and insurance companies to cover the losses. it may last until the fiscal collapse. ~Bob

Obamacare's Enrollment Is Flatlining. By Sally Pipes
Excerpt: According to the Obama administration, 10.5 million Americans remain uninsured. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell has noted that these people “are going to be harder to reach” this time around.
That’s an understatement. Many individuals aren’t interested in what Obamacare’s exchanges are selling. Premiums and deductibles are surging as networks narrow. As a result, many Americans have decided that they might be better off financially by going without insurance next year — and just paying the ACA’s tax penalty for refusing coverage. And if enrollment stalls, then Obamacare may well, too.

British Government Confirms Passenger Jet Dodged a Missile in Egypt Earlier This Year. European investigators state categorically that crash was not an accident.
Excerpt: A Thomson Airways passenger jet with 189 people aboard was forced to dodge a missile that came within 1000 feet of the aircraft earlier this year as it was descending to land at the same airport from which the crashed Russian Metrojet took off... “We investigated the reported incident at the time and concluded that it was not a targeted attack and was likely to be connected to routine exercises being conducted by the Egyptian military in the area at the time,” the spokesman said in a statement. In a statement, Thomson Airways said “an event was reported by the crew of flight TOM 476″ on August 23.  (The Other story:  Unidentified male caller to Michael Savage program days ago stated it was a missile, the type of missile, that it could reach the plane, that the Russians had the satellite imaging on it, and that "Obama knows it."  He stated the bomb story would be pushed to further tighten TSA searches and powers.  The folks don't mind giving up their freedoms.....  It was the video, you know. --Barb)

University cuts Pledge of Allegiance from Veterans Day chapel because it makes some ‘uncomfortable’
And reportedly American flag.  See update. --Barb. There is no way this society can survive. ~Bob

Too Low: Ex-GAO head: US debt is three times more than you think
“If you end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion rather than $18 trillion, and it’s growing automatically absent reforms,” (I've seen estimates from reliable sources that the unfunded liability runs from $87T to $240T plus the $18T official debt. It depends on who is counting, what is counted and how far out you count. The "Social Security trust Fund) has no money in it, only the bonds the government wrote to itself when it spent the money, which cannot be sold on the open market. ~Bob)

Worth Reading: 20 Questions Conservatives Would Love To See Asked At The Next Democrat Debate. By John Hawkins
No chance. The Clinton Protective Society, AKA the media, won't ask her anything she might have trouble with. ~Bob

ISI engaging Indian Mujahideen terrorists to carry out vandalism at religious places
Excerpt: Pakistani spy agency Inter–Services Intelligence (ISI) has engaged Indian Mujahideen terrorists to carry out vandalism at religious places in India for stoking communal tension.

Did you hear Obama's strong statement about this school violence? Me neither.

The Dark Specter of Vietnam. By Allen West
Excerpt: This past week President Obama stated that he would be deploying fifty US Special Operations troops to Syria. This appears to be a reaction; a response to the events that have dictated to the Commander-in-Chief what he must do. After the recent Taliban attack, brief seizure of the Afghanistan city of Kunduz, and the raid against two Al Qaeda bases in Kandahar province, we certainly know that combat operations have not ended. In both of those situations, US special operations forces were utilized. Then there was the recent Iraqi Soldiers hostage rescue mission in which US Army Operations Detachment (Delta) was involved and MSG Joshua Wheeler lost his life. That is a clear indicator that combat operations have not ended in Iraq and we do have “combat boots” on the ground. The Obama administration struggled through semantic hoops to align the hostage rescue mission with “training, advising, and assisting” and not combat. (Col West makes excellent points here. --Del)

Excerpt: Today, there are virtually no moderate or liberal Republicans. Yet the Right has never been more interested in hunting heretics. John McCain, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Jeb Bush — men such as they have to stand in for moderates and liberals, since there are no real ones anymore in the party. They have to be targets of attack. Paul Ryan used to be a prince of conservatism, a prince of the Right, until he veered an inch or two away from whatever the Right’s orthodoxy was that day. Then he was “Paul Ryano.” (We used to apply “RINO” — Republican in Name Only — to pols such as the Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter. Now it is applied to Ryan and anyone else who incurs the displeasure of the commissars, however temporarily.)  (Donald Trump is the Uber-RINO, but the far right loves him. ~Bob Why Liberals Should Love Donald Trump. By Robert A. Hall
Excerpt: Canadian journalist Ezra Levant takes a different view than most of the American press. He explains in the below video that three emails sent by Clinton on the night of the Benghazi attack to her daughter, the Libyan president and the Egyptian foreign minister clearly show Clinton knew this violence was a terrorist attack from the start. Here is one of these emails cited by Levant that Clinton sent to her daughter Chelsea (who was using the pen name "Diane Reynolds.") on the night of the attack:

SANDERS: MEDIA SCRUTINY OF BEN CARSON IS WHY PEOPLE HATE POLITICS
Excerpt: Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Democratic presidential candidate Sen. 
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said the aggressive media scrutiny of Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson is the  “reason so many people are turned off to the political process.” When asked if the scrutiny of Carson it is fair game Sanders said, “No. Look, I listened to the interview with Dr. Carson and it’s interesting. But you know what, Chuck? The American people want to know why the middle-class of this country is disappearing. Why we have 47 million people living in poverty. Why we have massive income and wealth inequality. 

CARSON’S RIGHT: IN 2008 THE MEDIA IGNORED MORE THAN 30 LIES IN OBAMA’S BIO
Not to mention: "You can keep your plan," "You can keep your doctor," "Obamacare will bring your premiums down $2500," "Benghazi was caused by a YouTube video," "The IRS..." Oh, never mind. ~Bob

Jordanian officer shoots dead two Americans, one South African at security training site

Commies Lie? Who Knew? China Burns Much More Coal Than Reported, Complicating Climate Talks
Excerpt: China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases from coal, has been burning up to 17 percent more coal a year than the government previously disclosed, according to newly released data. The finding could complicate the already difficult efforts to limit global warming. Even for a country of China’s size, the scale of the correction is immense. The sharp upward revision in official figures means that China has released much more carbon dioxide — almost a billion more tons a year according to initial calculations — than previously estimated.

Worth Watching: Chinese Coexist With Coal
While killing some time, I was reading the Hong Kong newspaper.  Very interesting to see what news is reported in other nations, and how.  But one op-ed piece really got me, about the horrendous pollution in China. The author was a Brit living in HK, who has partnered on a book about the pollution situation, which blames heavily on the use of coal fired generating plants.  China has built very many such, and keeps building more, although their "promise" to Obama is that by 2030 they will level off their generation of CO2.  (That's far enough away so that it doesn't really mean anything.) But the point the guy wanted to make in his article was that the true villain for the pollution is the USA.  That's because when China started to manufacture cheap stuff and kept the yuan low to the dollar, American companies jumped on it, American consumers jumped on it, and that encouraged and enabled China to build so many generating plants and also generate so much chemical waste. I read this stuff and would like to scream.  The Chinese government had a very good plan to expand industrially, depending on selling whatever they could to Western nations and anyone else with solid money.  Right now the yuan is near 8 to the US dollar, it should be half that, but they keep it low so they can sell, sell, sell.  And not everything they sell goes to USA, Chinese made goods appear in stores all over the world. But this jerk has to blame the USA for the situation.  This is the kind
of "blame America" thinking that seems to go on so very often, for just about anything someone wants to complain about.  While the USA was not, is not, won't be perfect anytime soon, this kind of crap is just ridiculous. --Del. Well, think of all the carbon we released going to Britain's aide in WWI and WWII. ~Bob)

Obama’s olive branches are lifelines for authoritarian regimes. By Jackson Diehl, Washington Post Deputy editorial page editor

Worth Reading: GEORGE ARMITAGE MILLER WAS NOT A MARINE, BUT... By Col. Andy Weddington, USMC (Ret)


Our future leaders: The New Intolerance of Student Activism. A fight over Halloween costumes at Yale has devolved into an effort to censor dissenting views.
Long, but amazing.  If these are our future leaders then I fear for us. The good news is that it appears that the coddled youth movement is imploding.  Looks like there may be a little money in therapy. --George. This article was unbelievable to me...especially if it is indicative of other  supposedly top-notch universities.  In addition to the coddling, the politically correct movement has developed a peter-pan mentality fostering adult children.  Where is the military finding men for our Armed Services?   Will Trump's tongue-in-cheek insults trump the milk toasts?  --ME. There has been a controversy at Yale and the University of Missouri where students what other students punished for wearing non-PC, offensive Halloween costumes. They want any administrator who defends free speech fired. If their protests offend the administrator, should they be punished? If crosses and dogs offend Muslim students, should they be banned from campus? If wearing a hijab or other Muslim garb offends Christian students, should the Muslims be punished? It would never end. This is the age-old totalitarian impulse of the left, who want to ban speech if they disagree with it. ~Bob

Excerpt: This is the insatiable voice of children who object at the insufficiency of their coddling. In another outrage, no one powders the bottoms of Mizzou students after they go potty. (I suspect the University of Missouri president resigned because he took the job expecting to be president of a university that personified the liberal values of tolerance and free speech, not director of a kindergarten for incorrigible children.  ~Bob)

Excerpt: No rational, sentient human being believes system presidents can be responsible for what lunatics do with their own feces, or that they can prevent any given student from shouting racial slurs. Not even the worst communist dictatorships could control the speech of all their subjects. Wolfe couldn’t stop drunk undergraduates from hurling insensitive insults even if he established his own gulag and deployed commissars across campus. (What liberals don't realize is that eventually, they will come for them! ~Bob)

White House Praises Protesters After Forcing University Of Missouri President To Step Down
Excerpt: The Obama administration is praising protesters who successfully forced University  of Missouri President Tim Wolfe to announce his resignation.  White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest praised the group of protesters for rallying together and demanding change, pointing out that Obama’s first presidential campaign was embodied by the same spirit. “I think this also illustrates something that the president talked a lot about in the context of – in his campaign, that a few people speaking up and speaking out can have a profound impact on the communities where we live and work,” he said during the daily press briefing today.

How Many Slaves Landed in the US?  HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.
In the same time period, the estimate is that a million white Europeans were kidnapped into slavery into Muslim North Africa. White slaves were still being sold in Cairo as late as the 1880s. The Muslim areas also imported a great many black slaves from sub-Sahara Africa, but except for those attractive enough to be selected for harems, they didn't survive to breed. ~Bob
Islam and Slavery
Even the left: Climate change: Seven indisputable facts
In today’s left-leaning liberal Washington Post, the WaPo Editorial Board actually stated that Obama’s rejection of the Keystone pipeline was “a political decision, not an environmental one.” Sec. of State John Kerry essentially acknowledged that the rejection was not based on hard evidence, but to show that the U.S. was serious about “climate change” in advance of the climate change conference in Paris. The Post said:  “Perceptions of U.S. climate leadership depend on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules to reduce emissions from U.S. power plants and cars, not on a domestic political psycho drama.” The Post goes on to say:  “Cultivating enthusiasm with a victory on Keystone XL, might lead to meaningful progress in other areas of climate policy, the thinking goes.  Not only does this view infantilize environmentalists, its illogic could justify all sorts of irrational, arbitrary decision-making.” Negotiators in Paris must strike a deal “to hold countries accountable for the emissions commitments they make,” but not kill “a pipeline in order to satisfy emotional needs.” CLEARLY, even the left-leaning Post admits that Obama has gone too far.  (Just ask the labor unions who are seeking jobs.) The real problem with Obama’s focus on climate change is that it is not really based on real science.  Not being an independent thinker, and more interested in the trappings of office, Obama relies on socialist advisers, such as Valerie Jarrett, to make decisions for him.  More than one news source has stated that he caved in to the radical environmentalists. When future historians finally get a hold of Obama’s sealed records, and evaluate his performance, I have no doubt he will go down as the worst president in our history.  I am embarrassed that the American people voted for, and reelected, this incompetent, spender of U.S. tax dollars, promoter of racial and class divides, and supporter of climate change science fiction. --Paul S.

Justice Dept. asks Supreme Court to weigh in on Obama immigration actions
Excerpt: The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to review a US Appeals Court ruling that blocks President Obama's executive actions on immigration. 

Bill O’Reilly makes a mess of history. By George F. Will

WSW: The Transition From Military to Civilian Life. By GORDON EVANS

Jews not invited to Swedish Kristallnacht commemoration: “security risk”


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