Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Today's important political news and comment

Update

We voted early in Madison, WI, the second day early voting was open. I wore nothing Marine or political to the clerk's office, that might give away my leanings. While I think they'd be okay, why take a chance? 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


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

Hagans: It’s Worse Than We Thought. By Rick Henderson, Carolina Journal
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’s Senate race
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: President Obama said what? Four theories to explain his latest ‘gaffe.’ By Chris Cillizza 
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

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/
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 ballot integrity is shaken, State Representative Candidate Jim Moynihan (R-56), was shocked today when he tried to cast a vote for himself and the voting machine cast it for his opponent instead.

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.

Uncle of Benghazi Victim: Will We Ever Learn? By Michael Ingmire
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.

Worth Reading: Predatory Journalism. By Thomas Sowell 
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 officials to find out whether any investigation is ongoing. Such attempts have been unsuccessful as of the time this story was last updated.

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
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)

US troops deployed to battle Ebola in West Africa WON'T be equipped with Hazmat suits. Soldiers from 101st Airborne Division will be given only masks and gloves
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. 

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....

Rwanda to screen US visitors for Ebola

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 shockdoctor 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 – Except All the Jobs Went to Immigrants
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 of Kobani
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.

Turkey enabling Iraqi Kurdish forces to cross borders and defend Kobane
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 Become the ‘Forgotten War’ Again? By Stephanie Gaskell
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 Withdrawal: A Potential Disaster in the Making. By Peter Beinart
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.

Iran Remains the Threat in the Middle East. By Efraim Inbar
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)

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 - Ship of fools
Great Pat Condell video. ~Bob

Hamas leader's daughter received medical treatment in Israel: sources
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.

Eastern Congo Violence: Islamist Rebels Kill At Least 22, Including Eight Children
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.

1 comment:

  1. 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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