Sunday, April 6, 2014

More Political News & Comment

Gen. Carl Mundy, 30th Commandant of the Marine Corps, dies
Excerpt: According to a biography curated at the United States Marine Corps History Division, “General Mundy was noted for his emphasis on ‘people issues’ and core values of honor, courage, and commitment. During his tenure, ‘From the Sea’ became the Navy-Marine Corps joint strategic concept, wherein the Navy and Marine Corps reoriented doctrinal focus toward littoral warfare.” (General Mundy was probably the most articulate of any Commandant that I can recall. --MasterGuns. Semper Fi, Sir. ~Bob.)

Worth Reading: Kerry's folly, Chapter 3. By Charles Krauthammer
Excerpt: When has a secretary of state been involved in so many disastrous, self-initiated negotiations? First, John Kerry convenes — against all advice and holding no cards — Geneva negotiations to resolve the Syria conflict and supposedly remove Bashar al-Assad from power. The talks collapse in acrimony and confusion. Kerry’s response? A second Geneva conference that — surprise! — breaks up in acrimony and confusion.

Worth Reading: Syria Is What Happens When Islam Wins. By Daniel Greenfield 
Excerpt: It’s not however money and weapons that splits Muslims over Syria. Money and weapons are only the symbols. What they represent is Islam. And what Islam represents is the intersection between identity and power.

Worth Reading: Hail To The Chef - Stinkburger Meister. By Andy Weddington
Excerpt: A few days ago President Obama spoke before a friendly crowd at the University of Michigan. A dopey speech merits dopey comment.

U.S. secretly created ‘Cuban Twitter’ to stir unrest
Excerpt: In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government. (I wish the media was anywhere near as good at uncovering secrets about Benghazi, the IRA political targeting, Fast &and Furious, the number of Obamacare signups who have actually paid or who didn't have insurance before the ACA was lied into existence, or Obama's hidden school records, as they are at splashing national security secrets for our enemies to read. ~Bob)

Why Is the U.S. Military Averaging More Than a Mission a Day in Africa? By Nick Terse
Excerpt: Last year, according AFRICOM commander General David Rodriguez, the US military carried out a total of 546 “activities” on the continent—a catch-all term for everything the military does in Africa. In other words, it averages about one and a half missions a day. This represents a 217 percent increase in operations, programs and exercises since the command was established in 2008.

Obama Told Military Leaders: Accept Gays In Military Or Step Down Admiral Said
Excerpt: In a meeting with the heads of the five service branches in 2010, President Obama offered the leaders a choice: Support my efforts to end the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, or resign, the Commandant of the Coast Guard said. In a video obtained by BuzzFeed via a Freedom of Information Act request, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert Papp revealed that Obama was unwilling to compromise with service leaders over DADT during a meeting in 2010. (I recall reading somewhere that a retired Marine Colonel said that General Amos told him essentially the same thing. Not that I ever doubted that the service chiefs were given that order. --MasterGuns. I think the issue of putting women into combat units like infantry is a far bigger issue and will casus much larger problems than gays. They will have to lower standards to get enough women to satisfy liberals who never served and would stroke out if one of their kids joined. That means lost fights and dead Americans, all in the name of PC. Always a hard choice when you are given orders that conflict with what you think is best for the troops, service and country. Do you resign out of principle, or do you hang on and do the distasteful in hopes you can moderate the policy a bit or make things better a little? ~Bob.)

Obama gives rosary blessed by Pope Francis to Nancy Pelosi. By Ben Johnson
Excerpt: During their first-ever meeting last week, Pope Francis gave President Barack Obama a blessed rosary. Yesterday, Obama gave that rosary to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. (Won't catch him clinging to religion. ~Bob)

Muslim Cleric Urges Homeless Women to Become Sex-Slaves. By Raymond Ibrahim 
Excerpt: Now, the same Islamic cleric who issued this last “rape fatwa” has issued another fatwa urging destitute women in war torn Syria to become the “right hand possessions” of any man willing to support them—basically, to sell themselves into sex-slavery.

The Obama EPA’s Heinous Human Experiments. By Matthew Vadum 
Excerpt: President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency has been subjecting unknowing human guinea pigs to high levels of carcinogens and potentially lethal pollutants in order to justify tough new air quality standards.

Worth Reading: Hayek Quote. By Jonah Goldberg, The Goldberg File
This reminded me of a great line from this wonderful video essay on Hayek's "On the Use of Knowledge in Society" over at the Marginal Revolution University. It's arguably Hayek's most important contribution -- which is saying a lot. ... So here's Hayek: "The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate "given" resources — if "given" is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these "data." It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality." (If only Progressives got it--but they keep wanting to put their best and brightest in charge of making economic decisions for you. ~Bob)


Obama’s Stand-up Routine Is Laughable Indeed: Too bad the joke is on his youthful audience. By Jonah Goldberg
Excerpt: President Obama was doing his favorite thing this week: talking to crowds of adoring young people who already agree with him while acting like he persuaded them about something. They also seemed to give Obama the impression that he’s a really funny guy.

Why every world map you're looking at is WRONG: Africa, China and India are distorted despite access to accurate satellite data


Mr. Scam Man song

Report: 13K In Maryland Lost Insurance Thanks to Obamacare and Never Got It Back
http://politicaloutcast.com/2014/04/report-13k-maryland-lost-insurance-thanks-obamacare-never-got-back/#Ikow532yRuqePz2O.99
Excerpt: The head of the Maryland Health Insurance Exchange testified Thursday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that only 60,000 people have signed up for Obamacare through the state’s exchange - 13,000 less than the number of individuals reported to lose their insurance due to Obamacare. (Probably more than 13k lost it, because many of the 60k who signed up were, so they claim, the uninsured who the law was aimed at. ~Bob)

What Happens When Teachers, Delivery People And Fast Food Workers Don’t Care Anymore… By Michael Snyder
Excerpt: One of the big problems in America today is that a lot of people simply do not seem to care about what they are doing anymore. The level of sloth, laziness and apathy that we are witnessing in this country is absolutely mind-numbing. Of course this is not true of everyone. There are still many Americans that are extremely hard working. But overall, it really appears that people are not taking as much pride in their work as they once did. Some of the examples that I am about to show you are quite funny. 

Obamacare’s unhealthy peer pressure on millennials: Health care law puts the squeeze on young adults
Excerpt: Kids, ask your mom about it. Wives, talk to your husbands about it. Lonely single females, talk to your cat about it, or have a cup of hot cocoa with your pajama-clad hipster friend. But whatever you do, don’t actually take it upon yourself to learn about Obamacare or do the math to realize what a bad deal health care reform is.

Marine Kyle Carpenter to receive Medal of Honor
Excerpt: William Kyle Carpenter, 24, a medically retired corporal, will become the service's third Medal of Honor recipient of the nation's highest combat valor award from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which date to October 2001. 

Jackson Diehl: Kerry's dangerous Mideast delusions
Excerpt: During a tour of the Middle East in November, Secretary of State John F. Kerry portrayed the region as on its way to a stunning series of breakthroughs, thanks to U.S. diplomacy. In Egypt, he said, "the roadmap" to democracy "is being carried out, to the best of our perception." In Syria, a peace conference would soon replace the Assad regime with a transitional government, because "the Russians and the Iranians . . . will make certain that the Syrian regime will live up to its obligation." Last but hardly least, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was on its way to a final settlement — by April. "This is not mission impossible," insisted the secretary of state. "This can happen." Some people heaped praise on Kerry for his bold ambitions, saying he was injecting vision and energy into the Obama administration's inert foreign policy. Others, including me, said he was delusional.

Excerpt: We have what amounts to a national police force. The FBI is severely constrained by statute as to what kind of crimes for which they can intervene. The EPA, Education Department, NOAA and most other agencies have few, if any restrictions and can bend and shape the law to interpret a mandate just about any way they wish. Congress has had hearings on police powers for individual agencies but the broad problem of militarizing the federal government has not been examined.

Pelosi: Dems Proud Of ObamaCare

Excerpt: If they start campaigning on this, there might not be a democrat left after Election Day!
Check it out: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told State of the Union’s Candy Crowley Sunday morning that Democrats were openly embracing the success of the Affordable Care Act, and that the candidates who were distancing themselves from the law were the exception.

Oppressed by the Ivy League: What Dartmouth's president should have told bullying students.
Excerpt: Academia has been obsessed over identity politics for two generations, so there's some justice in the newest addition to the matrix of oppression: an Ivy League education, according to the Dartmouth College students who this week took over the president's office.
On Tuesday Dartmouth's finest seized the main administration building and disrupted college business. The squatters were allowed to remain until Thursday night, when the dean of the college negotiated and signed an exit settlement assuring them the non-dialogue would continue. (And we thought that the days of campus radicalism and obnoxiousness were in the past? No way, Jose. The demands now are really serious, just look over the article below. When did the students get granted the final authority on one happens on campus and how the school is run? [College health plan has to cover sex-change operations- WHAT???] It's way past time to tell these kids to take a hike, hit the bricks, follow the road, and don't come back until you've had major reworking of your head's wiring. Imagine graduating all thse rabid demanders out into society. I'm sure they would do SO well in job interviews...... for the New Weathermen! --Del)

Excerpt: Prof. KC Johnson, best known for his investigative work regarding abysmal university and faculty handling of the Duke Lacrosse case, has a post at Minding the Campus regarding a disturbing appointment at Dartmouth‘Why Have a Hearing? Just Expel Him’: “Why could we not expel a student based on an allegation?” That astonishing question was posed at a conference on how colleges respond to sexual assault issues by Amanda Childress, Sexual Assault Awareness Program coordinator at Dartmouth. According to Inside Higher Ed, Childress continued: “It seems to me that we value fair and equitable processes more than we value the safety of our students. And higher education is not a right. Safety is a right. Higher education is a privilege.” Give Childress credit for candor–even the campus spokespersons for increasing the number of guilty findings in campus tribunals usually aren’t so bald in their disdain for basic principles of due process. (OK, rape statistics from US colleges are both shocking and infuriating. Apparently it has become all too common for the guys to ply a girl with a few drinks, then get into "petting" and then slide a lot further to the initiation of good old sex, even if the lady is not happy about it or even protesting vigorously. This is a scandal, and really makes you wonder what in hell is wrong with these guys, but the next sad truth is that too often the system has not brought the victim any real satisfaction of justice being done. Part of this is in a way no one's fault. When the forced sex happens in a place with no witnesses, and the girl had been to the party and had been drinking, it ends up in a "he said/she said" situation, and that's very hard to take into court. (And it must be said that sometimes the girl really wasn't protesting, but decided later that she was raped, not seduced, and now it's an unfair attack on the guy.) Getting to the unvarnished truth in these situations is near impossible, and in our criminal system, you are innocent until proven guilty. Do we really want to move away from that ideal? The answer for some people is Yes. Personally, I would rather see a lot of emphasis on getting the women to understand the hazards of drinking and hanging out with a bunch of pickled guys, and a lot of emphasis on getting the men to understand that engaging a woman in sex under any circumstances other than she being fully awake, rational, and expressing definite willingness, is a big No-No. And lastly, if a woman wakes up feeling raped, you go to the police, NOW, and start things moving. Schools should be involved in these matters only when it's clear what role they can play. --Del. One wonders if they would be for expelling a student based on an allegation of theft or cheating? Suppose the student was a minority? ~Bob)

The real "War on Women," ignored by the left and their media sycophants. ~Bob. Excerpt: Monday night at Fox, I had the pleasure of meeting Qanta Ahmed through our mutual friend, Brooke Goldstein (of the Lawfare Project). Dr. Ahmed is a British- and U.S.-educated medical doctor from Pakistan. She is also a believing Muslim, and has been deeply involved in Honor Diaries, a film that exposes honor killings and other systematic abuse and inequality that women face in Muslim-majority societies. Today, Dr. Ahmed has an important article on our homepage about the film and the campaign to suppress it now being waged by the Muslim Brotherhood’s professional Islamic grievance industry.

Muslim backlash against film will hurt women, says 'Honor Diaries' team
Excerpt: The film showcases nine Muslim women who speak about their experiences with honor practices, forced marriage at young ages and the denial of education. Some of the women are victims or have family members who were victims and describe the painful and up-close realities they endured. The film weaves the experiences of honor violence victims together with commentary from activists and experts.

Eric Holder defends using Justice Department airplane for 27 personal trips. By Nick Sorrentino
Excerpt: There is a culture of privilege which runs deep through our government. And its nothing new, though it does seem to have been taken up a notch with this administration. Why shouldn’t Eric Holder fly where he pleases on the taxpayer dime? Don’t the taxpayers know that he’s a big shot, the chief cop of the universe. We should be happy we can help him fly where he wants for personal reasons. (Questioning black politicians' abuses of power is now racist. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Dreary crime news all this week. In Detroit a caucasian tree trimmer is driving home when a Black youth steps off the curb and onto the street, and is hit by the tree trimmer's truck. The White Driver stops to render aid and to call for help. Some fifty urban Blacks attack the driver and beat and kick him senseless and leaves him to die in the street. He is now in a medically induced coma, in critical condition, and his chances to live are dicey. Two days ago, here in Phoenix, a 67 year old man walks up to the 7-11 in his neighborhood, buys a six pack of beer, and in a spirt of charity, offers a can of cold beer to two hispanics just entering the store. The two Mexicans follow the guy out of the store and, apparently offended at being spoken to by a gringo, follow the old guy down the street. The Mexican in the passenger seat jumps out, runs over to the old man begins pounding on the back of the old man's head until he crashes to the sidewalk and lays inert and unresponsive. He too is in the hospital in critical condition.

Muslim cleric arrested with grenade in Eastleigh denied bail
Excerpt: A Muslim cleric and his wife allegedly found with two grenades during a swoop in Nairobi’s Eastleigh estate following a terrorist attack in which six people were killed have been denied bail.

Burnings and beheadings strike fear in south Thailand
Excerpt: The recent burning and beheading of female victims in Thailand’s southern Muslim provinces marks a renewed campaign of terror by insurgent groups, according to a Human Rights Watch statement released today. At least three Thai Buddhist women have been killed and mutilated by insurgents since February, according to HRW.

Islamist suicide bombers kill 15 in oil field attack in Nigeria
Excerpt: SUSPECTED Islamist suicide bombers killed 15 civilians in a failed attack on a state oil company facility in northeast Nigeria, when soldiers at a checkpoint opened fire on their explosive-packed vehicles, the military said today.

What Happened to Chicago’s Murder Rate After Illinois Upheld Concealed Carry and Why it Matters
Excerpt: This week, Chicago police announced that the city’s first quarter murder rate was the lowest since 1958. Check it out: In July of 2013, Illinois became the last state in the union to enact a concealed carry law. In January of this year, the state began accepting applications for permits. This week, Chicago police announced that the city’s first quarter murder rate was the lowest since 1958.

Nancy Pelosi: We've Finally Filled The George Bush Jobs Hole
Excerpt: The latest jobs report contained a politically important fact for Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) -- America finally replaced the jobs lost from the "Bush economic policies," the House minority leader said Friday, blaming Republicans for the slow pace of recovery. Pelosi's declaration came shortly after the Labor Department announced the U.S. economy added 192,000 jobs in March, in the latest sign of ongoing job growth too tepid to bring down the unemployment rate. But private payroll employment did pass a milestone Democrats wanted to commemorate. (Has all that Botox gone to her brain? --JB)

Democrats try to make the Koch brothers the new face of the GOP. By Kathleen Parker
Excerpt: For the uninitiated, the brothers are libertarian billionaires whose vast industriesin petroleum, asphalt, natural gas liquids, coal and ethanol employ 60,000 people. More to the point, they are spending gobs of their own money to sway politics toward free-market principles and away from current government expansionist trends. For this, they have been targeted by Democrats, who are not exactly penniless when it comes to advancing their own politicians and policies. 

Leaked Recording: Russian Ambassadors Discuss Invasion of Miami & California
Excerpt: A few days ago, Ben Swann reported on an audio recording of Turkish leaders planning a false flag operation in Syria. In February, Assistant US Secretary of State Victoria Nuland's phone conversation, regarding the political crisis in Ukrainewas leaked, for which she issued an unrepentant apology. Yesterday, reports surfaced of a conversation between two Russian Ambassadors that discussed a possible future invasion of the United States and Eastern Europe. (Too much Vodka. ~Bob)

$6 Billion Goes Missing at State Department

Excerpt: The State Department has no idea what happened to $6 billion used to pay its contractors. In a special “management alert” made public Thursday, the State Department’s Inspector General Steve Linick warned “significant financial risk and a lack of internal control at the department has led to billions of unaccounted dollars over the last six years.

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