Saturday, October 11, 2014

Lots of interesting news and comment today

Update

The last week in Madison, WI has been mostly beautiful, sunny, cool autumn weather. But what comes next is on my mind. Between my heath regimen, some family things, the blog and keeping Bubbles and Trixie happy down at Hooters, I didn't get through all my email Saturday, but posting what I have, as I'm out of pocket Sunday. (We'll see if my bride reads the blog!) Lots of interesting items today.

Working on three essays. Your help is solicited. Please add to my examples of issues like Obamacare and Keystone, where the public is one way and the so-called "Democrats" are opposed to what the public wants. Also, send me areas where the Obama Administration has hidden or covered up the truth, such as not releasing the premium rates people are signing up for under Obamacare until after the 2014 election or destroying the IRS emails. Send to tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. I have several of both, but I'm sure I've missed some. ~Bob

General News and Comment


Lots of House Democrats voted for it. Reid killed it. Message really is, "Harry Reid to Veterans: union votes are more important than your lives." If you can vote for a Republican running for the Senate, do so. It's the only way to remove Reid. ~Bob

Must See - Funny, But Scary: This Hilarious John Oliver Video Explains How Police Can Legally Seize Your Property

Great Work: Here are 855 well sourced examples of Obama’s lying, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc.
Excerpt: As the author of this blog post, I place it into the public domain. Anyone may freely copy it in any part or in its entirely, without asking my permission, and without paying any money. I do ask you please cite a link to http://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/obama-252/ I ask you to please show this list to as many people as possible – and especially, to please show it to as many Obama supporters as possible. Sunshine really is the best disinfectant. I can’t stop Obama from doing any of these horrible things, but I can tell people about what he is doing. So please share this list with others on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Thank you. The short link for this is http://tinyurl.com/ku9vxug

Excerpt: Wisconsin voters won’t need a photo ID to cast a ballot on Nov. 4 after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a split decision Thursday night halting the requirement. The 6-3 decision came nearly a month after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the law, which had been on hold since a district judge ruled in April it was an unconstitutional barrier to voting.

Trey Gowdy Flashback Obliterates Federal Court Rulings That Voter IDs in Wisconsin & Texas ‘Racist’
Excerpt: South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy obliterated such lines of argument against voter ID laws, logical step by logical step, in a House hearing in 2013. The compelling video from the hearing is provided above.

China Is Now the World’s Largest Economy
Excerpt: Finally, it is official. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund announced China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest economy. The U.S. has held the distinction since 1873, when it overtook Great Britain. Given growth trajectories of the last few decades, this should come as no surprise. Neither is it necessarily anything for Americans to worry about. It depends on how the U.S. manages the situation. (Another entry in the Obama Legacy book. ~Bob)

Balanced, interesting: Barack Obama, disappointer in chief. By Aaron David Miller 
Excerpt: All presidents disappoint. It comes with the job, the unreasonable expectations Americans have for their presidents, and the inherent conflict and disconnect between campaigning (promising people all they can have) and governing (explaining to people why they won’t get it). So Barack Obama isn’t the first president to fail to meet expectations — and he won’t be the last. But he has come to embody something else, too: the risks and travails of reaching for greatness in the presidency without the crisis, character and capacity necessary to achieve it. ... Aaron David Miller is a distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former adviser to several secretaries of state. He is the author of “The End of Greatness: Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t Want) Another Great President”(Palgrave MacMillan), from which this essay is adapted.

Loophole lets teacher union bosses collect state pensions at taxpayer expense. Taxpayers on hook for millions in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching. By Kelly Riddell 
Excerpt: Thanks to a loophole created by the Illinois legislature, retired teacher union leaders are getting pension credit for the years they did union work after leaving the classroom. The arrangement has put taxpayers on the hook for millions of dollars in retirement benefits unrelated to teaching, and further drained an already overburdened state pension fund. (Not a loophole--vote buying for Democrats for years that has left Illinois in desperate fiscal shape. The collapse is coming. ~Bob)

Brutal Video: Grimes Refuses to Say if She Voted For Obama Four Times in 40 Seconds. By Guy Benson
Excerpt: Please enjoy this short video of Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes doggedly refusing to say whether she voted for her party's standard-bearer two years ago during a meeting with a Kentucky newspaper's editorial board. As you watch, bear in mind that this woman was an Obama delegate at the 2012 Democratic National Convention:

Disgusting: Marine vet imprisoned in Mexico could face charges in California
Excerpt: Marine veteran Andrew Tahmooressi’s legal problems might not end in Mexico. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill said recently that they expect Mexican authorities will release Tahmooressi in the near future. But American legal experts now say the former sergeant could face more charges once he returns to California for allegedly traveling through the state with loaded weapons in his vehicle. (No surprise. democrats have to prove that Obama was right not to help the guy. After all, he didn't desert or betray his comrades, and he was clinging to a gun. ~Bob)

Here’s the T-Shirt That Cable Networks Decided Was “Too Offensive” to Show 


Wendy Davis is running one of the nastiest campaign ads you will ever see. By Aaron Blake, Washington Post
Excerpt: Wendy Davis is almost certainly not going to be the next governor of Texas. Apparently, though, she's willing to try just about anything to alter that reality.
Witness her new ad that begins with this visual.

Wow: Wendy Davis Attack Ad Against Disabled Opponent Features Empty Wheelchair. By Guy Benson 
Excerpt: The ad itself is here. It's entitled 'Justice,' and begins with the line, "a tree fell on Greg Abbott." Really. It goes on from there to basically attack Abbott for profiting from getting paralyzed (!) before pivoting to a series of non sequitur attacks. Team Abbott responds: 

How the White House is like ‘dating the hottest woman or man you’ve ever seen’ and more from the latest Clinton document dump. By Katie ZezimaRosalind S. Helderman and Jose A. DelReal 
Excerpt: In an email, a White House staffer wrote that Keith Olbermann, who was an MSNBC anchor at the time, wrote to the White House to apologize for "whatever part I may have played in perpetuating this ceaseless coverage (of the Lewinsky story) .... I'll be heading back to my previous career in sports as quickly as possible ...."

Boys and Girls’ a No-No at School Seeking to Be More ‘Gender Inclusive’
Excerpt: A middle school employee gave teachers training documents advising them not to use “gendered expressions” by calling students “boys and girls” or “ladies and gentlemen,” but to instead use more generic expressions such as campers, readers, athletes or even purple penguins to be more “gender inclusive.”

Worth reading: Colombian Hooker Flap a Microcosm of Administration's Problems. By Jonah Goldberg 
Excerpt: The phrase “Cartagena hooker” alone is a mellifluous gift to ink-stained wretches everywhere, but the revelation that the White House reassigned the alleged client of the aforementioned Andean call girl to the State Department’s office of “Global Women’s Issues” is the sort of flourish Tom Wolfe or Chris Buckley wouldn’t dare attempt as satire. ... On April 23, 2012, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney said there were “no specific, credible allegations of misconduct by anyone on the White House advance team or the White House staff.” ... But if the White House would falsify records and lie to the public about this, is it really so hard to imagine that it would deceive the public – and Congress – about larger issues like, say, Benghazi? (Just this week, former Obama Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that the infamous White House talking points on the attack were essentially bogus.)

Gwyneth Paltrow to President Obama: ‘You’re so handsome’
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/gwyneth-paltrow-barack-obama-handsome-111761.html
Excerpt: Gwyneth Paltrow wants President Barack Obama to know: she’s just like everyone else.
She makes $16 million per movie, sure, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not worried about Obama getting equal pay legislation through Congress. ... “It would be wonderful if we were able to give this man all of the power that he needs to pass the things that he needs to pass,” she told the crowd. (Anyone who wants ANY politician, left or right, to have "all the power he needs," is a fascist. Stalin, Hitler and Mao had all they power they needed. ~Bob)

Oregon’s first lady admits to secret past: A green-card marriage to Ethiopian teen
Excerpt: A few years ago, Oregon’s first lady, Cylvia Hayes, shared her rags-to-riches journey — from her dilapidated childhood home in Washington state, to a tent on government land in Oregon, to the governor’s mansion, where she now lives with Gov. John Kitzhaber (D). But she never mentioned the Ethiopian immigrant she married 17 years ago and divorced in 2002. When stories seeped out this week that she helped him obtain U.S. residency in exchange for $5,000, she said she needed the cash. “It was a marriage of convenience,” she said in a statement. “He needed help, and I needed financial support.” ... Although marriage fraud is a federal felony, there’s a five-year statute of limitations, meaning Hayes could not be charged as of 2002.

The Other Redskins: Here’s A Map Of The 62 High Schools That Still Use That Nickname
Excerpt: One school that still uses the nickname is Red Mesa High in Arizona, located on a Navajo reservation, and where 99.3 percent of its students are Native American. Tommie Yazzie, superintendent of the school district that oversees Red Mesa High School and a full-blooded Navajo, said he is more concerned with the use of Native American war chants and gestures during sporting events. 

Billionaires for Greg Orman
Excerpt: A small group of free-spending wildcard donors, including investment tycoons Peter Ackerman and John Burbank, are rallying to support Greg Orman’s independent Senate campaign in Kansas. Michael Bloomberg and a Jonathan Soros-backed group are also considering entering the campaign on Orman’s behalf, POLITICO has learned. It’s a dramatic twist for a candidate who staunchly opposes big money in politics... (Funny how these big Democrat donors are backing an "independent" who won't say who he will caucus with. At least publicly. ~Bob

Ebola News

The ominous math of the Ebola epidemic
Excerpt: When the experts describe the Ebola disaster, they do so with numbers. The statistics include not just the obvious ones such as caseloads, deaths and the rate of infection, but also the ones that describe the speed of the global response. Right now, the math still favors the virus.
Global health officials are looking closely at the “reproduction number,” which estimates how many people, on average, will catch the virus from each person stricken with Ebola.

More Marines land in #Ebola 'hot zone' as West African leaders plead for international help http://on.wsj.com/1o2FoGT 

Race Card News

Excerpt: Last night, a protest turned violent 24 hours after Vonderrit Deondre Myers was shot and killed by a St. Louis police officer working a neighborhood patrol while off-duty and in uniform. The veteran officer chased a trio of individuals after than ran from him, and held his fire, even after seeing what appeared to be a gun in the possession of one of the men. He only returned fire after that man— Vonderrit Deondre Myers—spun around and fired three shots, attempting to kill the officer. ... “It's a clear case of this young man being gunned down by an insensitive white officer who was off-duty,” Akbar Muhammad, part of a coalition seeking justice in the Brown shooting, told CNN affiliate KTVI.

St. Louis protesters burn American flags post-police shootings
Excerpt: Protesters in St. Louis, angry at a police officer’s return fatal gunfire on an 18-year-old black man, took to burning the American flag in the streets, chanting “no justice, no peace,” The Blaze reported.

Obamacare/Government Healthcare News

More than a dozen states plan to cancel health care policies not in compliance with ObamaCare. By Jim Angle
If you like your plan, you...oh, never mind. ~Bob

New Book: ObamaCare for Dummies. By John C. Goodman
Excerpt: Is there any place you can go to find an objective, understandable explanation of how ObamaCare works? That’s not easy. Mostly what you find is completely one-sided. Either there will be an exposition about all the benefits. Or there will be a litany of problems and harms. Is there any such thing as an objective look at health reform? Yes. It’s my new book, Living with ObamaCare: A Consumer’s Guide. By John C. Goodman. $8.96.
http://www.amazon.com/Living-With-ObamaCare-Consumers-Guide/dp/1568082347
Excerpt: The goal of the Affordable Care Act (what many people call ObamaCare) is to completely remake the nation s health care system. It is the most revolutionary public policy reform since the War on Poverty in the 1960s, with many laudable goals. But the methods are controversial. Further, this reform occurred at a time when the nation s capital is more polarized along partisan lines than at any time in recent history. As a result, no one is telling you the whole truth. Every revolutionary change produces winners and losers. There is some good and some bad. That s true of all change. But in this partisan environment, you simply cannot get objective information about what health reform means for you, at least not from anyone in Washington, D.C. This book was written to fill a vacuum. You need an objective, unbiased look at health reform, and this book will give you that perspective. 

Unconstitutional Obamacare Website Won't Release Premium Rates Till After Mid-Term Elections. By Suzanne Hamner 
Excerpt: "The only people who don't want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide." -Barack Hussein Obama The government has released its new website which takes only 16 pages to enroll this year as opposed to the 76 pages last year. However, customers who enroll in Obamacare will not be apprised of the cost of their monthly premiums until after they have cast their vote for a candidate in the states' midterm elections.

Undocumented Democrat News

Mexico disarms police in missing students city
Excerpt: Mexican federal forces disarmed a southern city's entire police corps and took over security after officers were accused of colluding with a gang in violence that left 43 students missing.

New mass graves found in missing Mexican students case
Excerpt: The case of 43 Mexican students missing since an attack by gang-linked police took another grim turn Thursday with the discovery of new mass graves where suspects said some were buried.

"You're Greener than Gore" News

Solar Energy Plant Canceled Due to Fried Birds. By Tad Cronn
Excerpt: The feathered fireballs have been nicknamed "streamers" by workers. ... The solar farms are proving to be expensive, inefficient, land-intensive and devastating to local ecosystems. Naturally, government wants to build more of them. There is a hefty tax break that expires in 2016, and California law requires that utilities get one-third of their power from renewable sources by 2020.

Religion of Peace News

Obama and ISIS. By Jonah Goldberg, The Goldberg File
In short, imagine the rise of the Islamic State over the summer presented all of the same national-security and humanitarian problems, but no political problems for Obama. Now ask yourself, would Obama have done anything about it? Remember: The Islamic State took Fallujah and Mosul months ago and he kept calling it the “jayvee team.” As recently as August, he was telling Tom Friedman that it was ridiculous to arm the Syrian rebels. In September, he was wistfully complaining that the Islamic State made a mistake in beheading those Americans because it aroused U.S. public opinion for war. In other words, doing nothing about the Islamic State was Obama’s foreign policy until the domestic political situation made his foreign policy untenable. Chess Masters think many moves ahead, novices respond to whatever their opponent’s latest move is. Total amateurs just move pieces based on shouts from the crowd watching the game. Obama’s like a kid looking for approval every time he touches a piece. And that’s why I have no confidence that Obama will stick with his war on the Islamic State one minute longer than the polls and political expediency require. (Worth Subscribing to. It's free. ~Bob)

Islamic State fighters are threatening to overrun Iraq’s Anbar province
Excerpt: Islamic State militants are threatening to overrun a key province in western Iraq in what would be a major victory for the jihadists and an embarrassing setback for the U.S.-led coalition targeting the group. A win for the Islamic State in Anbar province would give the militants control of one of the country’s most important dams and several large army installations, potentially adding to their abundant stockpile of weapons.

Kurds Abandoned by Liberals, NDP. By Tarek Fatah
Excerpt: One female fighter reportedly charged the advancing ISIS jihadists, hurling grenades at them and then blew herself up in their midst. Another reportedly shot herself rather than be captured by ISIS when she ran out of ammunition. Moussa's tweets from one of her Kurdish contacts from inside Kobane conveyed the sense of betrayal the Kurds felt because of the lack of American help. She tweeted: "Kurdish guy from#Kobane tells me: We hoped American planes will help us. Instead American tanks in hands of ISIS are killing us."

ISIS: Can the West Win Without a Ground Game? By Jonathan Spyer
Excerpt: As the aerial campaign begins in earnest, many observers are wondering what exactly its tactical and strategic objectives are, and how they will be achieved. A number of issues immediately arise.

Worth Reading: Analysis: Does the Islamic State Really Have 'Nothing to Do with Islam'? By Jeffrey M. Bale
Excerpt: In all such cases, however, the perpetrators of these violent actions not only proudly insist that their actions are inspired by the Qur'an and the exemplary words and deeds of Muhammad himself (as recorded in the canonical hadith collections), but explicitly cite and the reported actions of their prophet to justify those actions. Therefore, to argue that jihadist terrorists are not directly inspired and primarily motivated by their interpretations of Islamic doctrines and by clear precedents from early Islamic history, one must stubbornly ignore what the actual protagonists keep telling the entire world. ... University

'Our youngest martyr yet' - ISIL boasts about death of 10-year-old
Excerpt: Fighters from the Islamic State have proudly posted photos of a child who they claim is the youngest person to die while fighting on their side.
The 10-year-old boy is named by the Islamists as Abu Ubaidah.

The Double Game Our Allies Play. By Charles Krauthammer
Excerpt: During the 1944 Warsaw uprising, Stalin ordered the advancing Red Army to stop at the outskirts of the city while the Nazis, for 63 days, annihilated the non-Communist Polish partisans. Only then did Stalin take Warsaw. No one can match Stalin for merciless cynicism, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is offering a determined echo by ordering Turkish tanks massed on the Syrian border, within sight of the besieged Syrian town of Kobane, to sit and do nothing.

Excerpt: Arabic media outlets are reporting the deaths of at least 63 individuals as the result of two suicide attacks in Sana'a and eastern Hadramout province in Yemen today. The attacks came only a few hours after the latest development in the country's ongoing political crisis, when Prime Minister-designate Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak rejected his nomination by Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi under heavy pressure from the Houthi rebels.

Gitmo becomes another gift to the GOP. By Jennifer Rubin 
Excerpt: Republicans greeted with fury a Wall Street Journal report Friday that President Obama is considering options to act in violation of the law by transferring the remaining foreign combatants held at Guantanamo Bay to this country. The White House pleaded that it did not know where the report is coming from but did not deny something was in the works.

Excerpt: President Barack Obama is considering the use of executive power to override a congressional ban on bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States, which would allow him to achieve a long-desired goal of closing the detention facility, according to senior White House officials. A senior administration official told The Wall Street Journal that Obama is "unwavering in his commitment" to closing the prison before he leaves office, and wants to keep all options open on his campaign promise, which he considers part of his presidential legacy.

ISIS threatens to kill Twitter employees for suspending terrorists' accounts: CEO
Excerpt: ISIS might have a new target: Twitter employees. After the site began cracking down on the terrorists, suspending their Twitter accounts, its staff received a slew of death threats from the Islamic fighters, the company's CEO Dick Costolo told Vanity Fair. Costolo did not detail the contents of the messages, but said ISIS fighters threatened to "assassinate" him and other Twitter employees. (This is, of course, how the Islamic State deals with anyone who dares get in their way. Theirs is a rule of total savagery and brutality. And the West’s partial and inadequate response to it is not going to come close to making Obama’s vow to destroy it a reality. --Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org.)

Excerpt: (Crime statistics from Denmark, showing the top ten backgrounds of criminals. All from Muslim countries are (far) above average, all from non-Muslim countries are below average.)

Excerpt: Sweden’s population is skyrocketing due to Muslim immigration, and the consequences are extreme: in just a single year — 2013 — illegal threats increased six percent, muggings 11 percent, burglaries 12 percent, and sexual assaults (not including the horrifying rape stats) increased seven percent. Including the estimated amount of unreported sexual crimes, Sweden has 75,000 sexual crimes yearly. Some calculations suggest that the risk for a Swedish woman to be raped during her lifetime is one out of four

Excerpt: Lisa Nasim Basari, a 28-year-old Coptic Christian girl living with a very few remaining family in Minya province, Egypt, recently made a video descrying the advances of a Muslim man who has been pressuring her to convert to Islam and marry her. ... At that point, things took an ugly turn. Among other things, he attacked and burned portions of the grocery store she worked in, tore her clothes, and sexually abused her.

The boy from Kosovo who grew up to be a suicide bomber. By Linda Pressly
Excerpt: In Kosovo it used to be the case that families were culturally Muslim, but rarely devout believers. Recently though some young people have become radicalised. Up to 200 are thought to be fighting in Syria and Iraq causing heartbreak for those left behind. (Here yet again we see the direct connection: a secular Muslim becomes devout and then turns to violent jihad. Does this mean that every devout Muslim will become a violent jihadist? Of course not. But despite attempts to deny and obscure this, every violent jihadist is a devout Muslim. Bland assurances that jihad terror doesn’t have anything to do with Islam don’t do a thing to address or remedy this fact. --Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org.)

Outraged Mother Exposes Schools Attempt to Proselytize Third Graders for Islam. By Tim Brown
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/10/outraged-mother-exposes-schools-attempt-proselytize-third-graders-islam/
Excerpt: Jennette Hall's Facebook post said that Jenison High School gave an assignment to 10th graders to create a pamphlet that would be used to "introduce Islam to 3rd graders." (The pamphlet is full of factual errors. Islam, for example, means "submission," not "peace." ~Bob)

Lady al Qaeda: The World's Most Wanted Woman. The Taliban wanted to trade Bergdahl for her. The Islamic State offered to swap Foley. Why does every jihadi group want the U.S. to free Aafia Siddiqui? By Shane Harris
Excerpt: According to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the proposal, President Barack Obama's national security advisors swiftly rejected the offer. To free the prisoner, Aafia Siddiqui, who's linked to al Qaeda and was convicted in 2010 of attempting to kill Americans in Afghanistan, would violate the administration's policy of not granting concessions to terrorist groups, the officials concluded. It would also put a potentially dangerous fighter back on the street. (So, instead, they freed five terrorist leaders. Probably because she was in prison in Texas, and they knew Texas wouldn't cooperate. ~Bob.)

This Video Shows EXACTLY What Islam Is Doing To England, And It’s Scary
http://conservativebyte.com/2014/10/video-shows-exactly-islam-england-scary/

How Turkey Went Bad. By Daniel Pipes
Excerpt: Only twelve years ago, the Republic of Turkey was correctly seen as a stalwart NATO ally, the model of a pro-Western Muslim state, and a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. A strong military bond with the Pentagon undergirded broader economic and cultural ties with Americans. For those of us who work on the Middle East, time in Istanbul, Ankara, and other Turkish cities was a refreshing oasis from the turmoil of the region. And then, starting with the still-astonishing election of 2002, the country dramatically changed course. 

Excerpt: Ansar al Sharia Libya, the jihadist group notorious for its role in the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, has released a 42-minute video highlighting its recent operations. The video, titled "Enter Upon Them By The Gate," focuses on Ansar al Sharia's opposition to General Khalifa Haftar's forces. Haftar is a former Libyan general who has opposed the jihadists' advances in eastern Libya. In the video, Ansar al Sharia's leaders again emphasize their goal of establishing Islamic governance inside Benghazi. And the production also features Wissam Bin Hamid, a jihadist leader US officials once considered an ally in post-Muammar Qaddafi Libya.

Paktika Mullah Imam kills himself and his mother by own explosives
Excerpt: A Mullah Imam of a mosque was blown up by own explosives in southeastern Paktika province of Afghanistan, local officials said. The mother of the prayer leader who was accompanying him was also killed following the explosion. (Kids--they blow up so fast these days. Funny an Imam doesn't know john Kerry's "Real Islam." ~Bob)

Lebanese student accused of child sexual abuse after marrying a girl, 12, facing 25 years’ jail

Excerpt: He originally faced 25 charges of sexual intercourse with a child after marrying the girl in a religious ceremony at her 62-year-old father’s Hunter Valley home in January. The prosecution, however, withdrew the 25 charges yesterday and replaced them with one count of persistent sexual abuse of a child. (It's their culture, and as liberals say, all cultures are equally valid. he was just following the "perfect example" of Mohammed (PBUH). From one of the strongest of the Hadith: “The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death)” (Bukhari 7.62.88).~Bob. 

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