Update
We voted early in Madison ,
WI Madison is a Democrat
stronghold, and I still remember 2004. Milwaukee
is the huge Democrat stronghold--without it, Wisconsin would be solidly red. According to
an investigation by the left-of-center Milwaukee
paper, Milwaukee
reported 5,000 move votes than they recorded voters. You know none of those
were GOP votes. This came to light several months after Kerry had been
certified winner of the state's electoral votes, by a margin of 14,000. In Dane
county on Election Day, at GOP headquarters, we got a report of a Democrat
operative showing up with a van of about 10 people who were in a group home for
what used to be called the retarded. Of course, since they are handicapped,
they got to have a helper--the operative--go in and help them vote. No GOP
votes there, either. All perfectly legal, I suppose--if hardly ethical.
Some people said they couldn't see our condo (AKA Marine
Barracks Madison )
in the last picture I posted. As fortune would have it, my bride had her
son-in-law trim the tree branches that were blocking our kitchen view, so I
took another photo, above, Monday morning as I left for PT Rehab at about 8:00.
Enjoy. ~Bob
Oh, Lord. Saturday is Saint Crispin's Day. Grandpa will get
roaring full of mead, invite the neighbors in and show off his scars. He'll go
on for hours about Exeter and Bedford and Harry the King.... (St. Crispin's
Day Speech: He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the
vigil feast his neighbours, And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.” Then will he
strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s
day.”)
General News and Comment
The Undemocratic
Party. By Robert A. Hall
Feel free to post or forward
Tweets from Paul
Woolverton @FO_Woolverton
Pro-Hagan flyer has a picture of a lynching. Was put on cars
parked at a Fayetteville
church on Sunday. @ProgressGA
Fliers were put on cars at a black church, suggesting the target audience is
black Obama supporters who don’t want him impeached
Excerpt: From a report filed early Saturday by WRAL-TV news,
we have confirmation that
a cluster of businesses owned by Democratic U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan’s husband and
other family members collected even more subsidies from taxpayers than
initially reported. While Carolina Journal’s Don Carrington has
highlighted a stimulus
grant totaling $250,644 that was paid to JDC Manufacturing, a real
estate business co-owned by Hagan’s husband, Chip, and his brothers John and
David, WRAL confirmed that JDC received an additional $137,000 in energy tax
credits from the project. (Some of the relevant documents are here.) ...
It’s important to put the story into perspective, because the Hagan camp
relentlessly deflects and spins, portraying these taxpayer handouts passed
around from one family-owned company to another as nothing improper. And — this
is the most laughable contention — that the Hagan family somehow received no
benefit from nearly a half-million bucks in taxpayer largess. Please.
Kay Hagan’s Bad Math:
A case study in one of the great scams in American politics.
Excerpt: Liberals often struggle at math, notably when
describing government funding. A case in point is North Carolina , where Democratic Sen. Kay
Hagan is bludgeoning Republican opponent Thom Tillis with a bogus set of
education-funding numbers. Ms. Hagan and her allies are blanketing the airwaves
with ads claiming Mr. Tillis, North
Carolina ’s House speaker, slashed $500 million from
school funding. ... Even the media fact checkers—usually no friends to
Republicans—have called the $500 million an imaginary number. (The WSJ ran
this article, which is finally factual about the whole education funding thing
in NC. Since I know a bunch of the teachers from all my lecturing in the schools,
I know that actually even most of them admit that the final total of money for
the schools is better now than it was all the time before Tillis took over in
the House. And they have said that the thrust of the comments and the ads are
misinformation. Now here's the WSJ bringing up the same thing. It's really
dirty politics all the way, and outside donors are spending millions to push
these false claim ads, along with lots of others. Some are fair enough in that
Tillis is a pro-life guy, and that's as real as it gets, people get to make of
it what they will. But the rest of the "sliming" is over the top,
Hagan is really fearful of losing this time and is not holding back anything.
--Del )
Ebola, Islamic State
shift dynamics for Hagan, Tillis in North
Carolina
Excerpt: Hagan has found herself on the defensive, acknowledging
that she missed a classified briefing about national security threats to attend
a campaign fundraiser in New York
in February. On Friday, she called on Obama to temporarily ban the travel of non-U.S. citizens from affected
countries in West Africa, just days after saying that such a tactic “is not
going to help” unless it was part of a broader strategy.
Worth Reading
Excerpt: President Obama told MSNBC host Al Sharpton in a
radio interview Monday that it made little difference to him whether Senate
Democrats in tough races didn't want him to campaign for them, because "these
are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress."
Republicans immediately seized on the comment as the latest evidence that no
matter how hard people like Mark Pryor, Mary Landrieu and Alison Lundergan
Grimes try to run away from the president, Obama himself is making very clear
that a vote for any one of them is a vote for his legislative agenda.
Important: Obama makes rare campaign trail
appearance, people leave early. By Jeff Mason, Reuters
Excerpt: President Barack Obama made a rare appearance on
the campaign trail on Sunday with a rally to support the Democratic candidate
for governor in Maryland ,
but early departures of crowd members while he spoke underscored his continuing
unpopularity. ... Most candidates from his party have been wary of appearing
with him during their election races because of his sagging popularity.
(Democrat candidates who don't invite Obama to campaign with them are,
obviously, racists. But maybe the people who left didn't get to keep their
plan, or heard him bragging about ending the war in Iraq . ~Bob)
What Really Ended the Great Depression. By Stephen Moore
Excerpt: “What is history but a fable agreed upon?” as
Napoleon once put it, and never has that been more true than the story of the
Great Depression and its aftermath. With liberals again pitching more
government spending “stimulus” in Washington ,
it’s critical we get this history right. In a previous column I unmasked the
historical lie that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs ended the Great
Depression. After seven years of New Deal-era explosions in federal debt and
spending, the U.S.
economy was still flat on its back, and misery could be seen on the street
corners.
Excerpt: Okay, let's stop the bitching about gay marriage. Let's
let our politicians know that we're tired of spending taxpayer dollars to fight
this thing, state by state, in court. The Supremes have already shown which way
they are going on this so it's time to end the futility of preserving the
concept of traditional family. Folks, there are very few "traditional
families" these days. Let's look at a few things here and see why we just
might give up fighting gay marriage and why that might be a good thing. First
and foremost, if we give up sniping about gay marriage maybe they'll stop
marching in St. Patrick's Day Parades and taking Macy's to court for preventing
them from blowing up a monster condom meant to promote Aids awareness. And if
we all let gays marry maybe they'll be so busy having domestic spats that
they'll have less energy to get in our face with their gayness. (Gays getting
married is not the threat. The threat is straights having kids and NOT getting
married. Single parenthood is highly correlated with poverty, drug abuse, crime
and domestic violence. Something like 70% of black babies, 50% of Hispanic
babies and 30% of white babies are non-marital births. ~Bob)
Government Case
Implodes As Its Former Lawyers Allege Fraud Against Holder DOJ
Excerpt: The New York Observer reports that two former
Assistant United States Attorneys say the Holder Justice Department engaged in
deceit and corruption of justice in connection with the DOJ’s litigation
against Sierra Pacific Industries, a California
lumber company.
As a result of the allegations, a federal district judge has
ordered the recusal from the case of every judge in the Eastern District of
California. He reasons that the court may have been defrauded by the
government, thus requiring the appointment of an outside judge to handle the
matter going forward. (This is what a politicized DOJ led by a self-confessed
maverick and with a lot of biased and highly ambitious attorneys leads to. Just
doing the wrong, immoral, unethical thing for some particular reason that has
nothing to do with service to the nation. --Del. Say, "Supreme Court Justice Eric
Holder." Then get as many sensible people to vote November 4 as possible.
~Bob)
A New Food Stamp
Pattern
Excerpt: The food stamp program (more formally, the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) is intended to help
low-income Americans with their food bills. Traditionally, the number of
Americans receiving SNAP benefits rises during poor economic times and falls
during good ones. But that is not what is happening today, says Robert Doar,
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. While SNAP responded as one would
expect to changes in employment levels from 1969 through 2003, it began to grow
from 2003 to 2007, despite the drop in unemployment that took place during that
time. Today, says Doar, there are tens of millions of Americans on food stamps.
In December 2012, the program hit a record high, with 47.8 million recipients.
It has barely budged since then, dropping only 2.7 percent. (We've changed the
American Work Ethic to a Handout Entitlement Ethic and they vote for those who
promise the most. The collapse is coming. ~Bob)
We Didn't Fight For
This: Calvin Atwood on the Bergdahl Swap
A conservative group of vets is putting out some great ads
for vets, this is the first one. The real point of it is that the population of
vets is enough in many districts to be a swing vote, and with things the way
they have been in this country for the past 6 years, if we don't like it, we
really all need to get out and vote this November. I'm certainly down with
that! This Fall is a chance to make a major difference in where the country
will go for the next two years. And I happen to be of the strong opinion that
we really, badly, need to change the way things will go for those two years.
See you at the polls. --Del
GOP Senate Challenger
Fades in Oregon
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/19/wehby-merkley-oregon-senate/17451361/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/19/wehby-merkley-oregon-senate/17451361/
Excerpt: A pediatric neurosurgeon and mother of four, she
appealed to moderate Republicans fed up with Obamacare and big government. But
polls now put Wehby behind by 10 to 15 percentage points. A poll released last
week showed only 52 percent of Republicans plan to vote for Wehby, while 22
percent said they're still undecided. (The other 48% of "Republicans"
must want more debt, more taxes, bigger government, Harry Reid as Senate
Majority Leader blocking every House-passed bill, including the bi-partisan
ones and Eric Holder on the Supreme Court. For heaven's sake, Oregon , remember what's at stake. ~Bob)
The Biggest
Lie: The Left would rather forget its old slogan, “Bush lied,
thousands died.” By Victor Davis
Hanson
Excerpt: How strange that Iraq , WMD, bombing, and preemption
reappear in the news, but now without the hysteria of the Bush era. Indeed, for
the last two years, reports of WMD of some sort have popped up weekly in Syria and Iraq .
Democrat Hypocrite: Grimes and her family's Hugh Jass
Burgers. By Chris Frates and Scott Zamost, CNN
Or is "Democrat Hypocrite" redundant? ~Bob. Excerpt:
On the campaign trail, Grimes said recently, "I'm fighting for all
Kentuckians, all working Americans across this nation. I don't believe $7.25 an
hour raises a family of four above the poverty level." But
documents and interviews with employees reveal that, like many restaurants, her
family's burger joint pays some tipped staffers minimum wage. (Grimes
non-answer illustrates what the cynics suspect — Democrats don’t really care
about whether someone is paid the minimum wage. They just want to campaign on
the issue and use it to make their opponents look harsh, selfish, and cruel.
The Nation, which pays its interns the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, wrote an
open letter to Walmart demanding that it pay its workers at least $12
per hour. The American Prospect, which frequently demands a hike in the
minimum wage, offers a $100 weekly stipend for a full-time internship. Some
unions may pay you a bit more than that, namely $8.50 per hour, to
protest and chant outside worksites where contractors are not using
union labor. -- Jim Geraghty, Morning
Jolt)
Jimmy Carter’s
Grandson Running for Governor Says Government “Doles Out . . . Rights”
http://godfatherpolitics.com/17875/jimmy-carters-grandson-running-governor-says-government-doles-rights/
http://godfatherpolitics.com/17875/jimmy-carters-grandson-running-governor-says-government-doles-rights/
Excerpt: Jason Carter is the grandson of former President
Jimmy Carter. He’s running for governor in Georgia as a Democrat on his grandfather’s
tattered coattails. “Carter’s biggest asset appears to be that he is the
grandson of the nation’s most ineffective president, former peanut farmer Jimmy
Carter. As evidenced by Carter’s record as a state senator, the apple, or
perhaps more appropriately the peanut, doesn’t fall very far from the tree.”
Chicagoland voting
machine casts candidate’s vote for his Dem opponent
Excerpt: Admitting his confidence in Cook County
Income Inequality Is
Not the Problem It's Claimed to Be
Excerpt: With more women working outside the home today (a
trend that began in the 1980s), more families have two earners. In fact,
households in the top quintile had an average of two earners in every household
in 2013; in the bottom quintile, however, households had an average of just 0.5
workers per household. Households with more earners, therefore, are going to
have higher incomes than households with one or fewer earners. Households have
also changed in size over the last three decades. Households in the bottom
income quintile tend to have fewer than two members, while households in the
top quintile have three members. Income inequality statistics do not account
for the higher costs that households with more members must pay.
Nazis who left US
still received social security
Excerpt: The US
government has paid dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals millions of dollars
in Social Security benefits after forcing them to leave the US . The
payments, funded by taxpayers, were made through a legal loophole, an Associated Press investigation has uncovered. Some
are still being paid.
Excerpt: Most news accounts of the attack on Benghazi say it cost the
lives of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. My nephew
Sean Smith was one of those other Americans. .. But when it comes to definitive
answers on what happened, how and why my nephew died that night, and what might
be done to prevent such tragedies in the future, we’re still waiting and
wondering and hurting and asking.
Poll: Obama Worse
Than Bush
Excerpt: Voters in battleground states think President Obama
is worse at “managing the basic functions of the federal government” than his
predecessor George W. Bush, according to a POLITICO poll released
Monday. In other words, voters think Obama is a less effective manager
than the man he stills blames for his failures.
Excerpt: The New York Times is again on the
warpath against what it calls "predatory lending."
Just what is predatory lending? It is lending that charges a
higher interest rate than people like those at the New York
Times approve of. According to such thinking -- or lack of thinking -- the
answer is to have the government set an interest rate ceiling at a level that
will be acceptable to third parties like the New York Times. ... Yet there is
remarkably little concern on the political left as to the actual consequences of
the laws and policies they advocate.
Surveillance Video
Apparently Catches Guy Doing Something at the Ballot Box That Left Republican
Monitor Stunned
Excerpt: An Arizona county
party official said he saw a man stuffing “hundreds” of ballots into the ballot
box and later told a local news outlet the entire incident was caught on
surveillance video. “A person wearing a Citizens for a Better Arizona T-shirt
dropped a large box of hundreds of early ballots on the table and started
stuffing the ballot box as I watched in amazement,” said A.J. LaFaro,
chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party... TheBlaze has attempted
to contact Maricopa County
Black Conservative
Leader: Obama Could Declare Martial Law, Cancel 2016 Elections. Massie accuses
administration of allowing infected illegals to swarm America
Excerpt: Black conservative leader Mychal Massie warns that
a pandemic caused by the Obama administration’s failure to secure the borders
could lead to martial law being declared and the 2016 elections being
cancelled. In an article for WND, Massie, former chairman of the National
Leadership Network of Black Conservatives-Project 21 and a nationwide media
pundit, accuses the White House of lying to the American people about the
threat posed by illegal aliens crossing the border with infectious diseases. Complaining
that Obama is working hand in hand with establishment Republicans like John
Boehner and Karl Rove to “destroy America ,” Massie accuses the
President of providing “safe harbor for disease-carrying illegal aliens” who
are contributing to the resurgence of illnesses like polio, tuberculosis, and
measles. (Unlikely. Be blood in the streets. And he wants to spend more time
golfing and making millions on the speaking circuit. ~Bob)
Ebola and Enterovirus News
The Insiders: What is
Ron Klain supposed to do about Ebola? By Ed Rogers
Excerpt: If you want to appoint someone to help stop the
spread of a lethal contagion, you would never think of Klain. But if you want
to contain the Ebola episode so it stays as quiet as possible until after the
election, he is the right guy for the job.
Excerpt: These instructions were on the CDC website, until
they were ripped apart by doctors yesterday. The ‘instructions’ have since been
removed.
Republicans say Ebola czar should have been real doctor,
not spin doctor. By Valerie Richardson
Excerpt: “I don’t know Ron Klain’s
emergency response experience — maybe the Bush-Gore recount qualified as that —
and I think that in talking to constituents, so many people said, ‘We didn’t
want somebody to give us spin, we want somebody who would give us the facts.’
And that’s what they were hopeful for,” Ms. Blackburn
said on “Face the Nation.”
Ron Klain and Solyndra: The administration’s point man on a solar fraud is now in charge of Ebola. By Andrew C. McCarthy
Ron Klain and Solyndra: The administration’s point man on a solar fraud is now in charge of Ebola. By Andrew C. McCarthy
Excerpt: Ron Klain is a sharp-elbowed Democratic
political operative with no medical expertise. Tapping him as “Ebola
czar” may not be the president’s best move when, as it is, no
one can believe a word the Obama administration says. And that’s not just
because Mr. lain is yet another lobbyist recruited
despite Mr. Obama’s vow that
his administration would shun lobbyists. Klain was also a central player in the
president’s Solyndra fraud, which soaked taxpayers for over half a billion
dollars for the benefit of Obama cronies.
Why Democrats are sounding like Republicans on Ebola and
the GOP is moving into overdrive. By Sean Sullivan,
Washington Post
Excerpt: "This is feeding into the
Republican narrative that Democrats don't know how to govern and
government is too large," said Jim Manley, a former aide to Senate
Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). Democrats, Manley said, "are
desperate to try to demonstrate that they have tough ideas to respond to the
crisis."
Obama ‘Seething’ NYT
Leak That Shows WH Worried Ebola Will Hurt Them In Midterms
Excerpt: Recently-named Politico editor Susan
Glasser told
CBS’s Bob Schieffer that the New York Times story–which included
a White House leak about a “seething” Obama–shows that the president is worried
that the political narrative is “getting away” from him.
“I think they are very eager right before that midterm election,”
Glasser said. “Let’s be honest–the political timing here is affecting what you
are seeing in terms of Washington ’s
response.”
Group Exposed To
Ebola Patient Set Free; Study Questions 21-Day Quarantine Period
Excerpt: According to Haas, statistics gathered from West
African countries afflicted by Ebola show that there is up to a 12 percent
chance someone may be infected with the virus after the 21-day period. He
wrote, "While the 21-day quarantine value currently used may have arose
from reasonable interpretation of early outbreak data, this work suggests
a reconsideration is in order, and that 21 days may not be sufficiently
protective to public health." The World Health Organization
additionally states that one in 50 individuals who contract Ebola have an
incubation period longer than than 42 days. (African roulette,
anyone? --Barb)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2799804/us-troops-deployed-battle-ebola-west-africa-won-t-equipped-hazmat-suits.html#ixzz3GkSgIyat
Excerpt: Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division deployed
to Ebola hotspots in West Africa to
battle the deadly disease will not receive full protective Hazmat suits for
their mission. Instead, the troops will be given only masks and gloves to
protect them from the potentially fatal virus, General David Rodriguez
said at a Pentagon briefing. The Kentucky-based Army division is being sent
to Liberia to
help coordinate the response to the epidemic, and will primarily be building
hospitals and treatment and training centers.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/former-border-patrol-agent-cdc-disappearing-potential-ebola-victims.html
Excerpt: The interview with 27-year Border Patrol veteran
Taylor was first conducted nearly three months ago in July, but Infowars
separately confirmed through other sources that the process was ongoing in the
aftermath of America’s first case of Ebola which occurred in Dallas last week,
including Infowars correspondent Dr. Edward Group, who spoke to senior Border
Patrol sources at a recent medical conference who told him that teams of
officials in Hazmat suits and vans were involved in the operation. Explaining
how it was unprecedented to see Centers for Disease Control officials working
with Border Patrol and Homeland Security, Taylor revealed how illegal aliens
with Ebola-like symptoms were being secretly detained and taken to an unknown location....
Tweet From Sharyl Attkisson @SharylAttkisson
Obamacare/Government Healthcare News
Click on graphic to enlarge
But Obama Promised! Politico
Poll: Seven Percent Believe Obamacare Will Lower Healthcare Costs. By Guy Benson
Excerpt: A plurality believes the quality of their care will
deteriorate under Obamacare (perhaps due to access
shock, doctor
shortages, and government rationing
decisions), while less than one-in-five expect improved care. On costs, a
pitiful seven percent believe the 'Affordable' Care Act will reduce the amount
of money they'll personally pay will decrease as a result of the law; a
solid majority expect to shell out more for coverage.
Undocumented Democrat News
Exclusive: Obama
Administration Quietly Prepares 'Surge' Of Millions Of New Immigrant IDs. By
Jonathon Strong
Excerpt: Despite no official action from the president ahead
of the election, the Obama administration has quietly begun preparing to issue
millions of work authorization permits, suggesting the implementation of a
large-scale executive amnesty may have already begun.
Unnoticed until now, a draft
solicitation for bids issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) Oct. 6 says potential vendors must be capable of handling a
“surge” scenario of 9 million id cards in one year “to support possible future
immigration reform initiative requirements.”
Excerpt: Something to keep in mind for future immigration
debates: Oregon — deep-blue, heavily Democratic, crunchy, progressive,
let-me-pour-you-another-organic-quinoa-microbrew Oregon — appears set
to decisively reject a proposal to provide driver’s permits to
individuals who cannot prove legal residence in the state.
Big Job Growth in Tennessee
Excerpt: According to new findings, virtually all of Tennessee ’s job growth
over the last 14 years has gone to immigrants both legal and illegal. The
Center for Immigration Studies, a non-partisan foundation, this week analyzed
the more recent government reports on employment in the state. Their report
rebukes immigration reformers who claim that illegals are only taking jobs that
natural-born citizens won’t do. Not only has all of the net increase in Tennessee ’s employment
sector gone to immigrants, but it has done so even as natural-born citizens
accounted for 60 percent of the state’s population growth!
Religion of Peace News
US Airdrops Arms to
Kurds in Syrian Town
Excerpt: The airdrops Sunday were the first of their kind
and followed weeks of U.S.
and coalition airstrikes in and near Kobani, near the Turkish border. The U.S. said
earlier Sunday that it had launched 11 airstrikes overnight in the Kobani area.
Wonderful: U.S.
unwittingly arms ISIS terrorists with cache of
weapons and ammo
Excerpt: During an air force weapons-drop intended for the Kurds, ISIS
seized what's believed to be a large cache of weapons and ammunition. According
to Steve Raoul Theapolis, a former police advisor in Iraq , the airdrop placed a large
shipment of rifles, ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades (RPG's) and
launchers, hand grenades, mortars and other armaments.
Excerpt: Ankara views the
Syrian Kurds with deep suspicion because of their ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a
group that has waged a decades-long insurgency in Turkey
and that Ankara and Washington regard as a terrorist
organization. Turkey's reluctance to intervene in the battle against ISIL,
which has seized large areas of neighboring Syria and Iraq, has led to growing
frustration in the United States.
Are ISIS
Fighters Learning to Fly Jets? By Leah Barkoukis
Excerpt: The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights group says some ex-Iraqi air force pilots are training members of ISIS
to fly three warplanes—believed to be MiG-21 and MiG-23 jets-- captured from
air bases in Syria .
( I personally (as a former U.S.
military aviator) would be so pleased if (indeed) ISIS
could get aircraft into the air. Assuming they got off the ground without
crashing, I (again as a U.S.
or NATO pilot) would love to hone my war-fighting skills on any of these guys.
What a joke! Any idiot stupid enough to fly into U.S. air supremacy skies deserves
to be served up as target practice. And perhaps maybe our aviators would be
willing to give the air defense guys a couple of opportunities to practice
their trade (as long as it was only a few!). This item show how little media
pundits know about the threats that exist out there. Same goes for an economy
on the verge of implosion. Where has the talk about that been lately? We need a
more attuned press..…Greg J., LtCol, USMC (Ret)
Does Kerry Think that
18 Million Muslim Refugees Are Irrelevant to ISIS ?
By David P. Goldman
Excerpt: Israel
has nothing whatever to do with any of this suffering. It is all the result of
social and political disintegration in the Muslim world itself. To blame ISIS ' recruitment of young Muslims on the refugee problem
of 1948, as Secretary of State John Kerry did last week, boggles the imagination. It
is one thing to ignore the elephant in the parlor, and another to pretend it is
not there when it is standing on one's toe.
Will Afghanistan
Excerpt: On Oct. 7, 2001, nearly a month after the
Sept. 11 attacks, the State Department sent a cable to Pakistan asking
Islamabad to pass a message to the Taliban warning that “it is in your interest
and in the interest of your survival to hand over all al-Qaeda leaders.”
The message also
included a warning to Taliban leader Mullah Omar that “every pillar of the
Taliban regime will be destroyed.” Thirteen years later, Omar is alive and
kicking despite a $10 million bounty on his head, the Taliban is still
targeting U.S. troops
in Afghanistan and Pakistan
continues to be part of the problem—and the solution.
The Afghanistan
Excerpt: But what the reporters interviewing Panetta generally
don’t ask is what he thinks about Obama’s decision to withdraw troops
from Afghanistan .
That’s a shame, because if the Iraq-troop debate is about assigning blame for
tragic decisions in the past, the Afghanistan-troop debate is about deciding
whether to implement potentially tragic decisions in the future. Afghanistan , in
other words, is the troop-withdrawal debate that really matters right now. Yet
it gets almost no play in the media. If it did, Americans might realize that we
may be headed for disaster yet again. (I knew that when Obama announced it
years ago. Beinart is a usually-pro-Obama leftie. See my 2009 poem, "When
the Taliban Come Back." http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/11/when-taliban-comes-back.html)
Taliban claims
captured Haqqani leaders visited ex-Gitmo detainees in Qatar
Excerpt: The Taliban has released
a statement concerning the recent capture
of two Haqqani Network leaders, claiming that the Afghan government has
lied about the circumstances surrounding the raid that netted them. The Taliban
also claims that the pair had recently visited the senior Taliban leaders freed
from Guantanamo
earlier this year. The Taliban's statement could not be independently verified.
Excerpt: Many pundits have decided that the Islamic State is
fundamentally changing the Middle East and
they grope for new strategies to meet the challenge. In reality, however, the
novelty of the Islamic State, as well as the magnitude of the threat it poses,
are greatly exaggerated.
Arrests Follow Acid
Attacks on Iranian Women
Excerpt: The police arrested several men Monday in
connection with at least four acid attacks on women that appear part of a
violent campaign in support of new rules that aim to punish women deemed “badly
veiled.” The attacks spread panic around Iran’s old capital, Isfahan , which is also
the country’s main tourist destination. The semiofficial Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that
men on motorcycles had splashed acid on women through open car windows. (Imam
John Kerry needs to get the True Islam out to these Muslims. ~Bob)
Canada: Muslim
acting “in the name of Allah” runs down two soldiers, flips car after chase,
charges officers with long knife, is shot. By Robert Spencer,
JihadWatch.org
Excerpt: Sun adds this: “The suspect drove off after running down
the soldiers in the parking lot of an automobile insurance outlet, police said.
Cops gave chase and the suspect lost control and rolled his car, which came to
rest on its roof at the bottom of a ditch. The suspect allegedly crawled out a
window with a long knife. Eyewitnesses say the man charged at a female police
officer.
Worth Viewing: Sweden
Great Pat Condell video. ~Bob
Hamas leader's
daughter received medical treatment in Israel
Excerpt: n Israeli hospital for emergency medical treatment
this month after she suffered complications from a routine procedure, two
sources familiar with the case said. Ismail Haniyeh's daughter's week-long
admission to a hospital in Tel Aviv - which Israeli and Palestinian officials
declined to confirm or deny - shows humanitarian coordination between the sides
continues just weeks after the Gaza war ended.
Excerpt: Just days after 27 people were killed in Congo by
suspected Ugandan rebels, 22 people, including at least eight children, were
killed in a fresh attack in the conflict-ridden eastern region of the country
on Saturday, according to a report by Agence France-Presse, or AFP. Militants
belonging to the Islamist group Allied Democratic Forces - National Army for
the Liberation of Uganda, or ADF-NALU, are suspected to be behind the attacks.
Arab Uprisings May
Doom Middle East Christians. By Hilal Khashan
Excerpt: In April 2011, Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian
activist and "journalist" who had spearheaded the blockade-breaking
Free Gaza flotilla was kidnapped from Hamas-held territory and shortly
thereafter, killed. His captors and executioners were not a branch of the
Israeli special services but members of a local Islamist group, Salafists going
by the name Jahafil al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad fi Filastin (Armies of Monotheism and
Holy War in Palestine). The Salafists released a YouTube video in which they
accused Arrigoni, a secularist, of "spreading corruption" stemming in
part from his connection to his birthplace, an "infidel state."
*****
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five
terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.
http://tiny.cc/g02s4 For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com.
Hall’s eleven books are listed here: http://tinyurl.com/o4nu65u.
His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com.
Posts
Mr. Hall, regarding Stephen Moore's claims, including that the Depression was ended by spending cuts ("What Really Ended the Great Depression"): These are easily refuted by checking historical stats long available from the U.S. Census. http://www.niftimal.com/politics/economics/moore-vs-history.pdf
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