Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for June 13.2013

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for June 13.2013
Click on the link to see the full SitRep
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.

New review of CYA
Robert Hall's latest book takes us through the basic concepts of protecting individuals from the pitfalls of our current society. This book is a commonsense guide for a world devoid of it. Mr. Hall's perspective and broad insight is a welcomed and refreshing change over the typical main stream "self help" guides and 12 step programs that focus on "protecting feelings" rather than personal safety, self reliance or the actual prevention of problems. Mr. Hall offers simple solutions to protect individuals from both financial and personal harm while adding a little humor and personal lessons from the perspective of former Senator and Veteran. In a world where fathers, family, faith and commonsense are in short supply, Mr. Hall offers us all a plan to be safer and keep life on the right track.

C.Y.A. Protecting Yourself in the Modern Jungle
If you order directly from CreateSpace, the PFF receives a larger royalty:
First published in 2010, this book has been reissued through CreateSpace/Amazon at a lower price, with all royalties going to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation. A humor/self-help book, this is advice with an attitude.

BREAKING NEWS: Girl at Center of Transplant Battle Getting New Lung
Excerpt: Sarah Murgnahan, the 10-year-old at the center of a court battle with the Obama administration to allow her to have a life-saving lung transplant, is being prepped for surgery, Fox News confirms. (Pray it works. 5-year survival rate is 50%, may be harder if the lung is too large and has to be cut down. ~Bob.)
‘Environmental Justice,’ EPA Style. By Steven F. Hayward
Excerpt: If the EPA wants to help low-income and minority populations, it should stick to promoting technologies that reduce pollution for everyone, rather than making environmental issues about racial justice. The elitist environmental movement has always had a problem with its limited appeal to low-income minorities, few of whom identify with the upscale, Volvo-driving profile of environmental organizations’ typical membership.

Patients shun NHS for clinics run by Polish GPs: Cut-price private surgeries where you can see a doctor seven days a week
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337682/Patients-shun-NHS-clinics-run-Polish-GPs-Cut-price-private-surgeries-doctor-seven-days-week.html#ixzz2W0Z18iGN
Excerpt: Despite charging £70 a visit, west London clinic already has almost 6,000 Britons on its books and offers 30-minute slots. Two thirds of NHS patients have to wait more than 48 hours for doctor's appointment and few slots are available outside regular working week.

ACLU sues over NSA surveillance program
Excerpt: The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the constitutionality of the U.S. government surveillance program that collects the telephone records of millions of Americans from U.S. telecommunications companies. (Racists. ~Bob.)

Who loves surveillance? It depends who’s in the White House.
Excerpt: When news broke in late 2005 that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping without warrants — surveillance that was authorized by President George W. Bush — Democrats were not happy campers. More than six in 10 (61 percent) Democrats said the practice was “unacceptable” in a Washington Post-ABC News poll shortly after the story broke. But Democrats have changed their tune in the wake of new disclosures that the NSA is tracking millions of phone records under President Obama.

Former President George W. Bush's Image Ratings Improve: Views of Bush more positive than negative for first time since 2005
Excerpt: The June 1-4 poll shows further improvement in Americans' ratings of Bush, which had not been more positive than negative since April 2005.

A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery
PDF Book you can download.

Turkish Police and Protesters Clash in Istanbul’s Taksim Square
Excerpt: Taksim Square was engulfed in chaos on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning as riot police using tear gas and water cannons forced thousands of protesters from the square, and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey struggled to contain a political crisis that has threatened the nation’s economy and paralyzed the government.

Taliban Bomb Attack Kills Court Workers in Kabul
Didn’t get the memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: Within hours of the top United Nations official in Afghanistan issuing a statement saying the Taliban had “signaled their willingness” to talk about reducing civilian casualties, militants set off a bomb that killed at least 17 civilians and wounded 39 others, many of them critically, outside the capital’s Supreme Court complex on Tuesday.

Important: Mali manual suggests al-Qaida has feared weapon
Excerpt: The 26-page document in Arabic, recovered by The Associated Press in a building that had been occupied by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in Timbuktu, strongly suggests the group now possesses the SA-7 surface-to-air missile, known to the Pentagon as the Grail, according to terrorism specialists. And it confirms that the al-Qaida cell is actively training its fighters to use these weapons, also called man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADS, which likely came from the arms depots of ex-Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi. (The fruit of Obama’s illegal war in Lybia. ~Bob.)

 "I welcome this public debate" is code for "Damn it, you caught me."

Col. James Steele and the Death Squads in Iraq. By Donald Hank 
Excerpt: Americans have mistakenly supported sides, Democrat or Republican, thinking their side was "the good guys." The truth is, the majority of politicians on both sides of the aisle form a political class that has no common interest with American citizens.

Excerpt: Civilization as we know it is coming apart according to the editorial board of The New York Times. This is how last Thursday’s lead editorial addressed the failure of the states to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government is willing to pick up 100 percent of the costs of the expansion for the next few years:

Excerpt: Democratic Rep. Ed Markey drew a sharp distinction Tuesday night between “math” and “arithmetic,” suggesting that arithmetic was not, in fact, math, in spite of what your elementary school teacher may have taught you.

Worth Reading: The Dumb Police State. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: A state in which there are police will pursue criminals by using investigative techniques to profile suspects while a police state criminalizes everyone by treating the entire population of the country like suspects. Some police states are smart, calculated power grabs. Others are dumb defaults. … The United States has been on the road to becoming a dumb police state for a while now.

Excerpt: The following headline and news extract for the Selma (California) Enterprise appeared on this week's edition of my old hometown paper. Note all of the little neighboring cities are also suffering from the explosive crime rate. 

Ah, the Obama/Sgt Schultz “I know nothing” defense:
Prostitution, drugs alleged in State Department memo
Excerpt: On Tuesday, Nicholas Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, said Clinton was completely unaware of any of the investigations mentioned in the Office of the Inspector General's reports and memos, including the case involving her personal security detail allegedly soliciting prostitutes. "We learned of it from the media and don't know anything beyond what's been reported," Merrill told CNN in a written statement.

Egyptian Minister Reveals Hamas Aided Brotherhood Prison Break
Excerpt: As a direct offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas shares a similar ideological outlook and political affinity with its historical patron. Hamas has long been accused of coordinating with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood to kill protesters during the 2011 uprising, yet the Palestinian terrorist organization denies any involvement in Egypt. Now, judicial sources claim that former Egyptian Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy testified that Hamas cooperated with the Muslim Brotherhood to conduct prison breaks during the outbreak of the uprising.

Excerpt: For thousands of years, people around the world had the common sense to realize that putting young men and young women together in military operations was asking for trouble, not only for these young people of both sexes, but for the effectiveness of military forces entrusted with the fate of nations. Yet, in these politically correct times, civilian leaders who increasingly have no experience whatever in the armed forces are far more willing to try to micro-manage the military than back in the days when most members of Congress and most Presidents had served in the military.

Worth Reading: Unnecessary Tragedy. By Walter E. Williams
Excerpt: There are more than 88,000 Americans on the organ transplant waiting list. Roughly 10 percent of them will die before receiving an organ. These lost lives are not so much an act of God as they are an act of Congress because of its 1984 National Organ Transplant Act, as amended, which prohibits payment to organ donors.

Ethicists weigh in on pediatric lung transplant case
Excerpt: Deciding who gets transplants is a complex medical issue that should be decided by transplant experts, not the courts or members of Congress, experts say.

Unsure about donating organs for transplant? Don't let misinformation keep you from saving lives. By Mayo Clinic staff
Excerpt: Over 100,000 people in the U.S. are waiting for an organ donation. Unfortunately, many may never get the call saying that a suitable donor organ — and a second chance at life — has been found. It can be hard to think about what's going to happen to your body after you die, let alone donating your organs and tissue. But being an organ donor is a generous and worthwhile decision that can be a lifesaver.

Radical Environmentalism and Second Thoughts. By Arnold Ahlert 
Excerpt: Late in March, Mark Lynas, a leader in the movement against Genetically Modified (GM) crops, did something virtually unheard of within radical environmentalist circles: he apologized for demonizing “an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.” In May, Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore was equally contrite, noting that his fellow extremists “have abandoned science and logic altogether.”

Toll from Iraq carnage rises to 73 dead
Excerpt: A wave of attacks mostly targeting security forces in Sunni areas of Iraq killed at least 73 people, officials said on Tuesday, updating the toll from the violence a day earlier.

Man alleged to have slashed friends after they voiced support for Woolwich victim, Lee Rigby
Didn’t get the memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: A MAN is facing court over claims he slashed two friends when they sympathised with murdered soldier Lee Rigby.
Ziko Sulliman - from Sudan - is said to have attacked his friends as they chatted days after the gunner's death.

For Aleppo bishop, boy's brutal killing shows jihadist danger
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=28170&sendtofriend=10887
Excerpt: Muhammad al-Qatta, a 14-year-old coffee seller, was killed on Sunday by a group of Islamists, executed in public, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. For Bishop Jean Clement Jeanbart, a jihadist victory would mean that Christians could no longer practice their religion in Syria. In an appeal to all Catholics, he calls on them to pray for an end to the war and for the reconciliation of the Syrian people.

Egyptian author appeals for protection following Islamist threats
Excerpt: A Germany-based Egyptian author has requested protection from Egyptian authorities after ultra-conservative Islamists in Egypt declared him an "apostate" and launched an online campaign calling for his death. … At the forum, Abdel-Samad asserted that "Islamic fascism" could trace its origins to "the return of the Muslims to Mecca [some 1500 years ago], when they... destroyed all the pagan idols."

Number of Islamists in Germany Grows
Excerpt: During the past year, Islamist organizations experienced a surge in support in Germany according to an annual report from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution obtained by SPIEGEL in advance of its planned public release on Tuesday.

2008: NSA mocked personal phone calls from the battlefield
Excerpt: The defenders of the NSA during this controversial time like to point out that they aren’t watching you, per se, but rather they’re just looking for patterns in the massive swaths of data collected. The problem is that claim is simply not true, as evidenced by the 2008 report detailing how NSA officials were listening in on American soldiers during their most intimate moments. A former Navy Arab linguist David Faulk, who worked at the NSA center in Georgia, told ABC about the NSA eavesdropping and even mocking U.S. citizens overseas:

The Eye Of Moloch by Glenn Beck
Excerpt: The battle lines in this bitter rivalry are as old as civilization itself: On one side, an unlikely band of ordinary Americans ready to make their last stand in defense of self-rule, freedom, and liberty—and on the other, an elite cabal of self-styled tyrants who believe that unlimited power should be wielded only by the chosen few. That group, led by an aging, trillionaire puppet-master named Aaron Doyle, will stop at nothing to destroy the myth that man is capable of ruling himself. (Haven’t read, reading pile is too large with non-fiction. Sounds like several others I’ve seen over the years. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: A 19-year-old pornographic model was charged with trespassing and public nudity after taking naked photos of herself at the Catholic high school she once attended. Valerie Dodds, whose pornographic photos appear on her blog under the stage name Val Midwest, also claimed that she pleasured herself with sex toys and a crucifix while visiting the campus of St. Pius X High School in Lincoln, Nebraska late at night. (Catholic school grounds. –Barb. I suggest she make a real statement by doing it at a mosque with a statue of Mohammad. ~Bob)

Rapper Ice-T Narrates New Pro-Gun Documentary
excerpt: On radio this morning, Glenn played a clip from a new pro-gun documentary, Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire, that seeks to change the public perception of gun ownership. It couldn’t come at a better time considering Glenn went on to share a few other stories that demonstrate the sorry state of America. One town has gone so far as to implement a gun-buyback program – for toy guns.

Short Cuts from The Patriot Post
"At this point the only way to prevent people from hearing your conversations is to have them on MSNBC." --Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX)

"We wanted a president that listens to all Americans -- now we have one. ... If Obama wants to put this snooping thing to good use, how about spying on the IRS next time they throw a $4 million party." --comedian Jay Leno

"Anyway, I'm putting 'NSA: Do not read this email' at the top of all my emails, because I assume there is some sort of opt out on this thing." --humorist Frank J. Fleming

"Congress heard testimony from real people who'd been targeted by the IRS because they'd sought exemption for their conservative groups. The IRS questions were so intrusive. The only organizations they didn't red flag were the ones that have a red flag." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"A new report just came out. It says someone close to the president knew about the IRS scandal and kept his mouth shut. In other words, we can rule out Joe Biden." --comedian Conan O'Brien

Lawsuits mount against U.S. government
Excerpt: The ACLU and the NYCLU filed the first major lawsuit against the U.S. government Wednesday since The Guardian revealed last week that the NSA has been collecting the phone data of all U.S. calls for the past seven years.

Excerpt: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday joined the chorus of GOP congressional leaders supporting the National Security Agency surveillance programs leaked last week, and the prosecution of the former intelligence contractor who disclosed them. Citing details declassified by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, McConnell said law and the courts enacted the controversial programs legitimately, and that 29-year-old former CIA and NSA contractor Edward Snowden should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for divulging them. (Sounds like we need establish 1-term limits and this is CYA. –Barb)

Leno: ‘Now That Tebow’s Associated With the Word "Patriot" He’s Being Audited by the IRS’ By Noel Sheppard
Excerpt: Jay Leno continued his humorous attacks on Barack Obama Tuesday.

Transplant vote seeks medical and legal balance
Excerpt: Faced with a federal judge's order in the heart-wrenching cases of two terminally ill children seeking lung transplants, a national review board sought a balance that will keep such decisions in the hands of doctors, not lawyers or judges. The executive committee of the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network held an emergency teleconference Monday evening and resisted making rule changes for children under 12 seeking lung transplants, but it created a special appeal and review system to hear such cases.

Room for Savings Found in Medicare
Excerpt: The federal government's Medicare program could have saved nearly $1 billion in 2011 if it had paid the lowest rate negotiated by private insurers for lab tests, federal investigators said in a report to be released Tuesday.

Gun sign that has everyone talking in one Arkansas deli
Excerpt: The owner of two small Arkansas sandwich shops has put out a welcome sign for those who are licensed to carry a gun, and they appreciate it. For those who don’t carry, they’re not so sure. “This is simply an accommodation for people that are legally licensed to carry,” Jim Magers, owner of Schlotzsky’s Deli told KATV 7 in Little Rock.

The fishy deal on catfish
Excerpt: Catfish is one bottom-feeder with friends in high places. In fact, they’re about to hook two prominent U.S. senators into spending $15 million a year – permanently – to build a special Catfish Office inside the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Illinois’ failing economic model: more food stamps, fewer jobs
Excerpt: Between February 2012 and February 2013, Illinois added nearly 200,000 new enrollees to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. In contrast, Illinois added only 68,400 non-farm payroll jobs during that same time period. (My eye is on the exit. I expect in 2014, I’ll be a former resident of Illinois. ~Bob.)

Mike Hill Wins Florida HD 2 Race, Becoming Legislature's Only Black Republican
Excerpt: Tea party leader Mike Hill of Pensacola is Florida's newest state legislator, and the Florida Legislature's only black Republican, cruising to an easy victory in the House District 2 race to replace the late Rep. Clay Ford, R-Gulf Breeze.

Excerpt: The Chinese Academy of Sciences in June 2013translated and published a Chinese edition of Climate Change Reconsidered and Climate Change Reconsidered: 2011 Interim Report, two hefty volumes containing more than 1,200 pages of peer-reviewed data on climate change originally published by The Heartland Institute in 2009 and 2011.

Excerpt: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is refusing to provide money to help rebuild the small Texas town where a deadly fertilizer plant explosion leveled numerous homes and a school, and killed 15 people. According to a letter obtained by The Associated Press, FEMA said it reviewed the state's appeal to help West but decided that the explosion "is not of the severity and magnitude that warrants a major disaster declaration." …..The FEMA funds would have helped pay for public repairs such as roads, sewer lines, pipes and a school that were destroyed. (POTUS got a photo op. You’re in TX. You are S.O. L. –Barb)

Excerpt: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says four members of Army special forces in Tripoli were never told to stand down after the attack last year on the U.S. diplomatic mission in BenghaziLibya. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey disputed the claim by former top diplomat Gregory Hicks, who told a House panel last month that the unit was told not to go to assist Americans under siege. Dempsey told a Senate panel on Wednesday that when the unit contacted commanders in Germany, it was told that it would be better used in Tripoli to handle any wounded.

Excerpt: The U.S. Justice Department says Rhode Island and the city of Providence violated the rights of the developmentally disabled by unnecessarily segregating them at a city school and a state-licensed employment program. The department's Civil Rights Division alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act at the Harold H. Birch Vocational School and the Training Through Placement program in letters to the city and state last week. Justice officials say a "sheltered workshop" at Birch where students worked long hours doing manual labor for little or no wages served for years as a "direct pipeline" to the similarly segregated Training Through Placement program. (Vocational school—that’s a new name for slave labor/work camp. –Barb)

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