A few items of interest

While I no longer have the time or energy to do the Political SitRep, I will forward a post a few items as I get to them. (I have to lay down and recover after masking the bed, and packing to move is taking forever.) ~Bob

Are less than 30% of American floating the bill for entire nation? I think we have reached the tipping point.

http://ehsmanager.blogspot.com/2013/06/are-less-than-30-of-american-floating.html

Excerpt: When you take a quick summary of our nations 316 Million people, who is left that can actually contribute to our nations economy or pay our debts? Hard to think about? Well now try to comprehend how much "more" can these same people could give over the next decade to pay down our nations $16 trillion debt and continue carrying the  costs of the other 70% of Americans? The NUMBers - "Something is not adding up"  Of the 316 Million Americans, there are 156 Million in the civilian labor force with 146 Million falling into a low-income category that does not make enough to have a net gain for contributing to tax revenues. Does that mean ONLY 10 Million people contribute to our nations economy? My NUMBers put it at 95 Million or 30% net gainers, but it may actually be that bad... but hey, I 'm an optimist!

‘Healthy’ Democrats. By Betsy McCaughey

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/healthy_democrats_5KqEzeBhVwPy7zgPa8MO4I

Excerpt: California is trying to keep secret how it spends $910 million in federal taxpayer money granted by the Obama administration to set up its health-insurance exchange, Covered California.What we’ve learned so far about the misuse of that money should raise red flags in all states setting up exchanges — including New York. In California,some of the $910 million is going for rich compensation packages for exchange employees ($360,000 a year for the executive director). More than half the funds are being handed out in contracts to third parties, and the lion’s share of those contracts are for what the exchange terms “outreach.” In truth, the money is going to build Democratic Party enrollment. (Wow, a dishonest system set up by the party in power to serve their interests.  Who would have ever thought of it? Although this one is so bad that maybe it deserves some kind of reward.  You have to admire the chutzpah. Del)

Ted Cruz Exposes Amnesty Bill: $5000 Penalty For Hiring Citizens Over Legalized Aliens

http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/06/ted-cruz-exposes-amnesty-bill-5000-penalty-for-hiring-citizens-over-legalized-aliens/

Excerpt: We can’t possibly expect our Senators to read a 1200 page bill before voting on it. Can we? Well Thank God Ted Cruz read it. Not only did Cruz read it but he schooled anyone who would listen from the Senate floor on Tuesday. Cruz found a loophole that actually penalizes an employer $5000 for hiring a citizen over a legalized alien. Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up. (Yep, some genius tucked this into the 1200 pages and nobody noticed.  Imagine the insanity of it, and what would happen as soon as some citizens got turned down for jobs that went to newly legalized aliens.  Especially if the citizen were Black and lost out to a brand-new legalized immigrant. All these giant bills are disasters in the making, inevitably the politicians either just put in stupid things out of ignorance, or put in clever things for their own gains, like John Kerry with Obamacare funding for hospitals.  Hopefully the publicity on this will get it fixed, but I'm sure there are other nice little surprises still hidden in the other pages. --Del)

Obama's Climate Plan Has No New Ideas, But Would Make Economy Worse

http://license.icopyright.net/user/viewFreeUse.act?fuid=MTcyNzg0NTA

Excerpt: In a much ballyhooed speech, President Obama on Tuesday released his Climate Action Plan. The plan contains no new ideas but would amplify the economic damage of his current policies. Except for resolve to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing power plants, this manifesto either doubles down on the subsidized green energy programs of his first term or creates mushy-to-the-point-of-meaningless new programs to weather (extreme) weather. The president's thinly veiled plans to eliminate coal from our nation's energy supply would undermine the reliability, affordability and adequacy of electricity. (Nothing actually helpful, of course, a listing of the stupid aspects of the President's campaign on the subject.  Another way to do damage to our society. --Del)

Ace in the War on Affordable Energy

http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2013/06/ace-in-war-on-coal.html

What Obama really saw at the ‘Door of No Return,’ a disputed memorial to the slave trade

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/28/what-obama-really-saw-at-the-door-of-no-return-a-debunked-memorial-to-the-slave-trade/?hpid=z2&wpisrc=nl_pmpol

Excerpt: But if you ask Africa scholars, they’ll tell you a very different story. “There are literally no historians who believe the Slave House is what they’re claiming it to be, or that believe Goree was statistically significant in terms of the slave trade,” Ralph Austen, who as a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago has written several academic articles on the subject, told the Associated Press. (Slavery was more than a chapter in world history. Every culture enslaved and every people held slaves and were enslaved, usually by their own kind, until western civilization turned against it. William Wilberforce and William Lloyd Garrison deserve to be remembered. In his excellent essay, “The real history of slavery,” Dr. Thomas Sowell points out that at the same time half a million African slaves were brought to North America (but many more to South & Central America), a million European slaves were kidnapped by Muslims to Africa. Muslims also probably held more African slaves than Americans, as slavery is endorsed in the Qur’an. Mohammad, who is considered the perfect example of conduct for Muslims, held slaves and endorsed sex with slave women, making it halal for Muslims today. Unfortunately, slavery still exists in the world today, and not only in Muslim countries, but in many western countries including the US where women are brought for sex work and held captive. See some of the raids on “Asian Massage Parlors.” ~Bob)

Tennessee imam: Jews and Christians filthy, their lives and property can be taken in jihad by the Muslims

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/06/tennessee-imam-jews-and-christians-filthy-their-lives-and-property-can-be-taken-in-jihad-by-the-musl.html

Excerpt: Note also his words about jihad, quoting Muhammad: "I have been commanded to fight the people until they testify la illaha illa Allah [there is no god but Allah]." And Qadhi says: "The life and property of a mushrik [one who worships others besides Allah] holds no value in the state of jihad....which means if they don't sayla illaha illa Allah, their lives and property are halal" -- that is, permitted to be taken by the Muslims.

Egyptian Protesters Storm Headquarters of Ruling Party

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/02/world/middleeast/egypt-protests.html?hp&_r=0

Excerpt: As millions of Egyptians streamed into the streets of cities across the country to demand the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi, attackers stormed the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood here early on Monday after hours of clashes with armed people trapped inside. (Photo: https://twitter.com/TakeIt_RAWW/status/351524989687721984/photo/1)

Hey, Remember When the Media Covered the Tahir Square Uprising As If It Were the Most Important Democratic Event Since the Fall of the Soviet Union?

http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/30/Hey-Remember-When-the-Media-Covered-the-Tahir-Square-Uprising-As-If-It-Were-the-Most-Important-Democratic-Event-Since-the-Fall-of-the-Soviet-Union

Excerpt: Is it because the thrill of democracy was only thrilling to the media last time because it could be portrayed as vindicating Obama's very-much-implied Messianic power to change the world? Why is a democratic, reformist, more secular movement not exciting to the media now? Some reports say that seventeen million have taken to the streets to protest Morsi's Islamist, repressive, backwards, corrupt, and thuggish government; where is the media interest in the democrats?

Pedophiles want same rights as homosexuals: Claim unfair to be stigmatized for sexual orientation. By Jack Minor

http://www.greeleygazette.com/press/?p=11517

Excerpt: Using the same tactics used by “gay” rights activists, pedophiles have begun to seek similar status arguing their desire for children is a sexual orientation no different than heterosexual or homosexuals. (OK, now it is REALLY starting to go to Hell in a handbasket!  And some people are ready to support this..... great. Hopefully there will be such a screaming uproar that this will get buried deep, deep under the outrage. --Del)

Syrian rebels behead a Catholic priest before a cheering crowd. Where's the Main Stream Media reaction? By Damian Thompson

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100224075/syrian-rebels-behead-a-catholic-priest-before-a-cheering-crowd-wheres-the-msm-reaction/

Excerpt: The headline is taken from a Tweet from Dan Hannan, who's rightly bemused by the absence of coverage of this filthy murder except on religious websites (see below):

France's triumphant 'Joan of Arc' promise to bring back the franc and destroy euro. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10151286/Frances-triumphant-Joan-of-Arc-vows-to-bring-back-franc-and-destroy-euro.html

Excerpt: It is no longer an implausible prospect. "We cannot be seduced," she said, brimming with confidence after her party secured 46pc of the vote in a by-election earthquake a week ago. Her candidate trounced the ruling Socialists in their own bastion of Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

WH Touts Kenyan Program to Obtain National ID Cards for Voter Registration

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wh-touts-kenyan-program-obtain-national-id-cards-voter-registration_737990.html

Excerpt: As President Obama and his family continue their tour of Africa, the White House put out a Fact Sheet entitled "U.S. Support for Strengthening Democratic Institutions, Rule of Law, and Human Rights in Sub-Saharan Africa." One of the first items highlighted by the White House is a $53 million program in Kenya that helps young people "obtain National identification cards, a prerequisite to voter registration." (Ah, say, how do we reconcile these two different points of view coming from the same source?  "Cognitive dissonance" in action? So it's fine in Africa to require official ID to vote, but back here it's an "unnecessary obstacle".  It must just be bad wiring in my brain, but somehow that just doesn't work out for me.  Call me old fashioned, but I like consistency in policies. --Del)

Could South Vietnam Have Been Saved? New scholarship raises questions about the antiwar consensus of Vietnam historians. By Mark Moyar

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323949904578540402202969658.html

Excerpt: Fifty years ago, South Vietnamese generals, with the covert support of the U.S. government, assassinated President Ngo Dinh Diem in one of the most momentous events of the Vietnam War. For the next four decades, American opinions of Diem were informed primarily by the accounts of journalists like David Halberstam and Stanley Karnow, who depicted him as an aloof and obtuse reactionary. Hence Diem's overthrow constituted merely the transfer of power from one hopeless South Vietnamese government to another. (Dr. Mark Moyar, a leader among the new wave of historians researching the war in Viet Nam, has brought to the public's attention three new books on the war which also depart from the "conventional" view.  (Which supports the narrative that it was a civil war, none of our business, unwinnable from day one, and a form of military loss by US forces.) It's an uphill battle to rebut that basically antiwar narrative, which was established in the later days of the war by the wave of antiwar figures who had become professors or media figures.  For over 20 years their writings have dominated the literature on the war, and now a second and even third generation of professors and reporters accept that view as gospel.  Fortunately there have emerged some excellent historians who have explored that history more carefully and factually, and have contributed to its revised (and more accurate) version.  They of course have been attacked by the establishment in academia, but no solid rebuttals of their research (some of which depends on examination of the records in Hanoi) are to be found. We can hope that with more time, more research, and more historians who do truly objective writing, a much more valid understanding of the war will gradually be accepted. --Del)

The Buck Stops Here. By Mark Steyn

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/352389/buck-stops-here-mark-steyn

Excerpt: "I just received an 8 page letter from the USDA, telling me that by July 29 I need to have in place a written disaster plan, detailing all the steps I would take to help get my rabbit through a disaster, such as a tornado, fire, flood, etc. They not only want to know how I will protect my rabbit during a disaster, but also what I will do after the disaster, to make sure my rabbit gets cared for properly.  I am not kidding–before the end of July I need to have this written rabbit disaster plan in place, or I am breaking the law." (Step one: Shoot, cook and eat the rabbit. Step two: Shoot any bureaucrats coming around to check on the rabbit. ~Bob)

Washington's Decadent Lawmaking Lives In The Shadows. By Mark Steyn

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/062813-661860-washington-home-to-corrupt-bureaucracy-and-pseudo-legislature.htm?fromcampaign=1#ixzz2Xbv4C9mc

Excerpt:  … Gregory Roseman, deputy director of acquisitions (whatever that means), became the second IRS official to take the Fifth Amendment, after he was questioned about awarding the largest contract in IRS history, totaling some half-a-billion dollars, to his close friend Braulio Castillo, who qualified under a federal "set-aside" program favoring disadvantaged groups — in this case, disabled veterans. For the purposes of federal contracting, Mr. Castillo is a "disabled veteran" because he twisted his ankle during a football game at the U.S. Military Academy prep school 27 years ago. How he overcame this crippling disability to win a half-billion-dollar IRS contract is the heartwarming stuff of an inspiring Lifetime TV movie. (Steyn does it again, using the scalpels of facts and wit to dissect the sad, sometimes disgusting facts of US politics as practiced today.  It is enough to make you want to weep or scream. While he does it from a clearly conservative point of view, there is enough in his complaint that is not partisan at all, just basic protest at a messed up and counterproductive way that things are done.  Things that in the end will have serious repercussions on the lives of all of us.  When legislators don't have any understanding of what they are voting for, sometimes of what they supposedly wrote, we are all in trouble. --Del)

Flashback Video: Paula Deen Embraces Michelle Obama, Compares To Jackie O

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/06/26/Flashback-Video-Paule-Deen-Embraces-Michelle-Obama-Compares-to-jackie-O

Excerpt: The media aren't all that interested in Bill Maher calling an innocent five-year-old child a "retard," and seem to be even less interested in a Democratic lawmaker hurling a racial slur at Justice Clarence Thomas yesterday. But pounding away at the Food Network's Paula Deen over some racist moments in her past has been a very high media priority going back to last week.

20 Signs America is in Decline. By John Hawkins

http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/06/29/20-signs-america-is-in-decline-n1630414?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Excerpt: Those who attack American culture and tradition should recall that historically, freedom and prosperity are the aberrations, not servitude and poverty. Our nation's success is not a happy accident or part of a natural, unstoppable progression that can't be changed. Nothing could be more foolish than to abandon the traditions, religion, work ethic, family structure, moral code and culture that made this country wealthy and free while expecting to continue to reap the rewards of practices we now scorn as too demanding and judgmental. (Frankly, I think we may be at the tipping point.. For a free PDF of my 80-page book, “The Coming Collapse of the American Republic” write tartanmarine(at)gmail.com All royalties go to help wounded veterans. ~Bob)

Swedish Court Hands Out Light Sentence to Muslim Teen Rapists: Statistics show that due to immigration, a Swedish woman now has a one in four chance of being raped in her lifetime.

http://www.clarionproject.org/news/swedish-court-hands-out-light-sentence-muslim-teen-rapists

Excerpt: A light sentence has been handed out to six teenage boys, aged 15 to 17, from the diverse Muslim community in Sweden for raping a 15-year-old girl in a north-western suburb of Stockholm in March. Five of the teens were found guilty of aggravated rape by the Solna District Court, with the sixth guilty of attempted aggravated rape. Immigrants refusing to assimilate, and being taught that women who expose any part of their bodies are asking for rape, and it's no crime to oblige them.  The Swedes are the consummate PC people, and as a result they have created a ton of social problems for themselves.  Being on the dole in Sweden gives you a solid middle class lifestyle, and you can stay on it almost indefinitely.  In Denmark, with Muslims as something like 4% of the population, they made up something like 70% of the people on the dole.  The Danes did finally react, and put through a whole new bunch of laws about immigration, that have drastically cut the number of people coming it. --Del)

And don’t forget: Eddie Grabowski's Gift: A Marine Christmas Story. By Robert A. Hall

https://www.createspace.com/4252748

http://www.amazon.com/Eddie-Grabowskis-Gift-Marine-Christmas/dp/1484165861/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366731117&sr=1-4&keywords=Grabowski

Eddie Grabowski’s Gift is a short novella, with an old Marine’s lessons on life, love and giving. All author royalties are donated to the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation to support the National Museum of the Marine Corps. The MCHF receives a larger royalty when you order directly from CrateSpace.com