Update
General News and Comment
With The
American Spirit - Not Just Survival But Endurance. By Andy Weddington
Excerpt: Thankfully, our government's incompetence
is overshadowed, and salvaged, by a competent military (exceptionally so)
and a segment of the populace (overlap noted) that goes about carrying on
in the spirit of Patrick Henry's America
How the Media Is
Covering Elizabeth Warren's Plan to Shut Down the Government. By Kevin Glass
Excerpt: During last year's government shutdown when
Republicans and Democrats couldn't come to a compromise on spending provisions
to continue to fund the government, the media portrayed it as Ted Cruz's fault
- Ted Cruz's shutdown, because he wanted to defund Obamacare. This year, Sen.
Elizabeth Warren wants to reject the bipartisan spending compromise to get rid
of business-friendly deregulatory provisions. But this year, it's not about
"Elizabeth Warren's plan to shut down the government." No, the media
can't bring themselves to go there.
Liberals: Obama
abandoned us
Excerpt: The White House’s aggressive push to salvage a
spending bill on Capitol Hill left liberal lawmakers feeling burned by
President Barack Obama — and raised significant doubts about their desire to
cooperate heading into next year’s Republican takeover of Congress. Democrats
will need every vote they can muster next year as the GOP plans to attack
liberal priorities on health care, energy and financial regulation in 2015. But
Thursday’s deadline drama offered no signal of party unity, only fresh
reminders of the post-election divisions between a president who’s looking to
govern during his last two years in office and a newly invigorated populist
wing of the party, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). (When Brown lost to Warren , the country took
a bad hit. ~Bob)
Pelosi sends holiday card to Democrats, praises them for
bucking Obama in shutdown showdown. By Stephen Dinan
Excerpt: House Minority
Leader Nancy Pelosi sent
a letter to her House colleagues Friday thanking them for joining her in going
toe-to-toe with President Obama on the $1.1 trillion spending bill and nearly
defeating it. Mrs. Pelosi portrayed
the fight as a strategy designed to achieve leverage in negotiations,
suggesting that their goal was to make Republicans worried enough over
passing the bill that they might go back and rewrite it, making it more liberal.
Excerpt: How many times has a citizen’s recording of his
encounter with a police officer (or even the cop’s own dashcam video) helped to
corroborate the civilian’s story and exonerate him? Many times, if it hadn’t
been for someone’s video footage of the confrontation, the civilian would be
locked up for years, all because of what was written in the police report.
Excerpt: Stonewalled by Sharyl Attkisson is an account of an
investigative reporter who wanted to follow the facts and refused to be
intimidated by the Obama administration. She was one of the few mainstream
journalists who tried to seek out the truth regarding what happened on that
tragic day of September 11th, 2012 in Benghazi ,
Libya Benghazi .
(Thanks again to the Special Ops Speaks guys for bringing this
article out for attention. Just more confirmation (as if anyone intelligent
needed any more) about the massive duplicity that was brought to bear on the
whole Benghazi
debacle. --Del )
IRS Makes Billions of
Improper Tax Credit Payments
Excerpt: The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the
Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC) reduce the tax burden of low income
individuals. Unfortunately, for the last decade, the Treasury Inspector General
for Tax Administration (TIGTA) has been releasing reports on these programs
that reveal a large amount of "improper payments," and a new
report on the EITC and ACTC reveals the programs continued to be
plagued with problems. Tax Foundation economist Alan Cole explains: In 2013,
the IRS between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion in "improper" EITC
payments - between 22 and 26 percent of all EITC payments from that year. The
TIGTA report estimated that between 25.2 percent and 30.5 percent of ACTC
payments for 2013 were improper, adding up to between $5.9 billion and $7.1
billion.
NYC police union
wants deBlasio banned from funerals
Excerpt: New York
City 's rank-and-file police union is urging its
members to ban Mayor Bill de Blasio from their funerals. The Patrolmen's
Benevolent Association posted a link on its website telling members not to let
de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito "insult their
sacrifice" should they be killed in the line of duty. The union posted a
waiver officers can sign requesting the two politicians not attend their
funerals due to their "consistent refusal to show police officers the
support and respect they deserve."
Excerpt: Mayor Bill de Blasio, a self-declared progressive
“man of the people,” has erected a massive new “privacy fence” to keep his
constituents from looking in on Gracie Mansion
Contractor walking
away from VA hospital in Aurora
Excerpt: The U.S. Civilian Board of Contract Appeals agreed
with Kiewit-Turner that the VA failed to meet its contractual obligation to
manage the Denver VA Medical Replacement Project. The VA did not produce a
design that could be built for $604 million but instead has designed a
project that would cost more than $1 billion, the board determined. ...
U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, who has battled the VA over construction
delays and cost overruns, said he would call a meeting of the Colorado congressional delegation and VA
officials to "find a path forward." "We have an obligation to
our veterans to get this hospital built, and we have an obligation to the
taxpayers to do everything we can to bring down the cost," he said. (This
is my Congressman, whom I know very well. I served with him in the Legislature.
He served 3 stints in Iraq
and was just re-elected in a very high profile race against the former majority
leader of the CO house. He has been after this project for at least 2 years, if
not more. There is no excuse for this...no oversight on change orders and then
blaming a well-respected contractor. --Dorothy)
Good Luck: “Sweden
Excerpt: “… even if no one really knows what that means.” An
interesting article by Nathalie
Rothschild (Foreign Policy); here’s an excerpt, though you should read the
whole piece:
Cromnibus Cronyism: Spending Bill Loaded With Favors. By Peter Fricke
Excerpt: Opponents on both sides of the aisle say the
omnibus spending bill was filled with favors for special interests that
Congress was not given time to properly debate. Washington Examiner columnist
Tim Carney noted a
section of the bill “Modification of Treatment of Certain Health Organizations.
Carney wrote, “This provision would provide protection from an Obamacare
provision for exactly one entity: Blue Cross Blue Shield.” (Be hard to vote for
something named "Cromnibus." ~Bob)
Spending Bill Lets
Feds Eavesdrop On Americans. New law 'for the 1st time statutorily authorizes
spying on U.S.
http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/spending-bill-lets-feds-eavesdrop-on-americans/?cat_orig=us
http://www.wnd.com/2014/12/spending-bill-lets-feds-eavesdrop-on-americans/?cat_orig=us
Excerpt: A legal challenge to the National Security Agency’s
spy-on-Americans program pending at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington , D.C.
Jeb Bush sending
signals that he may be getting ready for 2016 presidential run
Excerpt: Jeb Bush and his emissaries are sending
increasingly strong signals that the former Florida governor is gearing up for a 2016
presidential campaign, with associates saying he could announce his
intentions within a month. Bush recently e-mailed major Republican donors
asking them to, as several of them put it, “keep your powder dry.” His allies
are urging would-be bundlers not to commit to New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie or other potential rivals. (I'm concerned about Jeb on
immigration and Common Core, but would prefer him to Christie, who is weak on
Islamism, among other things. ~Bob)
FDNY Drops Physical Fitness Test Requirement to Boost
Female Hire Rate. By Christine
Rousselle
Excerpt: In a somewhat controversial move, the New York City
Fire Department (FDNY) has dropped the
physical test requirement for probationary firefighters. The move was done in
part to increase the number of female members in FDNY. (And if she can't carry
you out of the burning building, you can sign "Kumbaya" until the
smoke overcomes you, secure in the knowledge that your life is worth less than
the commissioner's CYP to be PC. ~Bob)
Navy Football Team
Announces THIS New Uniform That Will
Drive
Nice uniforms. That's the revolutionary War Navy Jack on
their uniforms, not the Gadsden Flag adopted by the tea Party (though same
slogan). go Navy! ~Bob
DHS Admits
Catastrophic Impact Of Emp. 130 million Americans at risk, yet feds have no
national planning scenario in place
Excerpt: Buried in a 303-page report is an assessment by the
Department of Homeland Security that a massive electromagnetic pulse event
caused by a solar flare could leave more than 130 million Americans without
power for years. In spite of the admission of the cataclysmic consequences of
an EMP event, DHS still has not added the threat to its 15 National Planning
Scenarios. The assessment of potential damage to the power grid is in a March
2012 report released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a DHS agency,
this month titled “Federal Interagency Response Plan – Space Weather 2012.”
(They'll blame it on the sun, but it will come from elsewhere.....Sun actually
has been rather dormant except for one sunspot a while back that shot off
several X-flares but we are still here. --Barb)
Excerpt: The U.S. government moved closer to hardening
sanctions on Venezuelan officials for alleged human rights abuses after Senate
lawmakers passed a bill that now heads to the lower house, which has backed a
similar proposal, for a vote this week.
Obama administration
claims a right to hide evidence before Supreme Court
Excerpt: The United
States v. June case boils down to this: Can
the federal government actively conceal... Today, the Supreme Court will hear
oral arguments in United States v. June, a case that has received little
attention, but will have far-reaching implications. The case boils down to
this: Can the federal government actively conceal material evidence in order to
escape liability? Common sense says no. The Obama administration says yes.
Worth Reading
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2014/12/10/whats-rule-of-law-n1928933?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2014/12/10/whats-rule-of-law-n1928933?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Excerpt: President Barack Obama said just before the recent Ferguson , Missouri Nuremberg laws, which led to the genocide of
European Jews, and the brutal laws of the regimes of Josef Stalin and Mao
Zedong, which led to tens of millions of murders.
Excerpt: In 1983, Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB propaganda
agent who had also worked for the Soviet news agency RIA Novosti before
defecting to Canada in the
1970s, gave a speech in Los Angeles
in which he outlined the various ways by which a free society could force its
own collapse simply by allowing itself to be subverted. Bezmenov explained how
it could happen without an external enemy even firing a shot, as a nation could
rot from within as a result of the insidious undermining of free-market and
democratic principles. Recall why the Soviet Union
imploded. (I've been saying so for years. See my book, The Coming Collapse of the American Republic. http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-American-Republic-prevent/dp/1461122538/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304815980&sr=1-5
All
royalties go to a charity to help wounded veterans. But for a free 80-page PDF
you can read on line, send me an email at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. ~Bob)
Gun News
This Major Grocery
Store Just Took a Huge Stand Against Anti-Gun Liberals
Excerpt: America ’s
largest grocery store chain has refused to accede to calls from Moms
Demand Action (MDA) to ban guns from its stores, instead asking 12 protesters
to leave.
Cincinnati-based Kroger said that the chain will continue
its policy of following the regulations of the states in which its stores
operate, according to Truth Revolt. (I've
always like the chain's business model, but now I like them even better. They
showed courage, in not buckling under to the demands of what are really PC
bullies, demanding everyone see things just the way they do. --Del )
2 Robbers Lose
Gunfight With 74-Year-Old Woman. Pawn-shop owner opens fire when armed thug
jumps counter
Excerpt: Two suspects are in custody after Springdale Police
said they robbed C & S Gun and Pawn shop at gun-point Saturday morning
(Dec. 6). ...Police said 25-year-old Marcus Gould and 20-year-old Leon Roberson
are in custody after attempting to rob the store carrying semi-automatic
pistols. They said the owner, Shirley Cornett, pulled out her .38 revolver and
shot Gould in the arm as he was jumping over the counter towards her husband,
Clint.
Race Card News
Excerpt: The angry rioter is a sacred figure in the
progressive pantheon of social justice. The shirtless men in bandanas carting
away cell phones are so outraged by injustice that they are willing to take to
the streets and do what progressive hipsters taking social justice selfies of
themselves in souvenir t-shirts plastered with the face of the latest victim of
“white supremacism” can only dream about. But the saint of the looted
convenience store is as mythical a figure as the selfless community organizer.
The race riot isn’t a bubbling stew of outrage out of which wounded souls
emerge to cry out for justice. It’s a complicated criminal conspiracy in which
the perpetrators rarely suffer any consequences. (Very nice analysis of how
riots are created by manipulators interested only in their own power agenda. And
who is it really working up the crowd and why. --Del )
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/12/columbia_university_law_school_offers_to_reschedule_exams_for_students_impaired_by_trauma_over_grand_juries.html
Excerpt: What kind of lawyers does Columbia
University plan to foist on the courts
and public of the United
States ? Apparently people so emotionally
vulnerable that an action of a grand jury could traumatize and in effect
disable them are worthy of a law degree from one of the nation’s most
prestigious law schools. Clients beware: your Columbia-certified future lawyer
might fall apart if a ruling goes against him or her and become unable to
represent your interests! (OK, so now we have people, Law students no less, who
are so psychologically delicate that some current events can blow them away and
leave them unable to prepare for their exams? If I wasn't worried before about
the decline of mental capacities in our society, this would have put me right
over the edge into anxiety about our future. This is STUPID, and what's worse
than the students saying they need it, is that the school is run by idiots who
will then act on such silly, pantywaist complaints. Clearly none of these
people will ever make it to practice law in an open court that would be far,
far too stressful for their delicate minds. --Del. This speaks to the state of decline
this country is experiencing with respect to our citizenry in general. Oh the
horrors we seem to face! The conditioning of our citizens is well underway. I
fear for America …Greg)
SAVAGE: Is Burning
Whites The NEW ‘Knock Out’ Game for Blacks?
Excerpt: Is burning whites the new knock-out game? Scroll
down to see the stories of 16 WHITE people that were burned by BLACKS in the
last few years. With the endless media frenzy focused on Michael Brown and
Trayvon Martin, you will not hear about most of these from the mainstream
media. Why? Because they are white.
Worth Seeing: Lady Drops Viral Ferguson Rant On Who
She Thinks is To Blame for the Michael Brown Shooting
Graphic language, but this black woman pulls no punches. A
black Marine friend said in his view, if the cop says stop, you stop. And if
you don't stop, what happens next is on you. ~Bob
Black Lives Matter...Well Sort Of. By Ryan Bomberger
Excerpt: We live in a hashtag world. It’s much easier to
deal with a few emotionally charged words than the fact that those words
misrepresent reality.
#BlackLivesMatter. Well, it depends.
Excerpt: Don’t tell Al Sharpton, Barack Obama or Eric
Holder…But, blacks commit twenty-five more assaults against whites than whites
do against blacks. It’s an inconvenient truth.
(25X seems high to me. In murder rates, The FBI says that in 2011, 193 black
folks were killed by whites and 2,447 by other blacks, while 448 whites were
killed by blacks, while 2,630 were killed by other whites. ~Bob)
Obamacare/Government Healthcare News
More Videos: Gruber Talks About Writing Obamacare; Said
Under Oath He Didn't Write It. By Katie Pavlich
Excerpt: During an
exchange with Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis, Gruber said he did not
"draft the legislation" and argued he was simply an adviser to the
White House before Obamacare was pushed through in 2010. ... But now new video
dug up by investment
advisor Rich Weinstein, the man behind Grubergate, shows the Obamacare
architect boasted on numerous occasions about writing the legislation.
The unfairness of
Obamacare. The search begins for health care based on the free market. By
Ben S. Carson
Excerpt: Next year, when the employer mandate of Obamacare
is activated, millions of Americans will be screaming in pain as their
health insurance premiums skyrocket or as they lose their health insurance
altogether. It will be just one more piece of the rapidly crumbling health care
system that was forced upon the unsuspecting American people through political
manipulation and deception.
Obamacare Numbers Don't Spell Success
Obamacare Numbers Don't Spell Success
Excerpt: While insurance coverage increased from 2013 to
2014, so did costs. For building the exchanges alone, those costs reached
almost $5 billion for taxpayers. Medicaid growth was responsible for 7.1
percent of the health insurance coverage growth during the first half of 2014
-- 6.1 million people out of the 8.5 million that had enrolled during the first
half of the year. As of October 2014, there were 6.7 million exchange enrollees
according to the Department of Health and Human Services. But because almost 4
million Americans lost employer-based health insurance during the first half of
2014, Moffit and Manyari-Magro say the net gain in private health insurance was
just 2.4 million.
Obamacare Encourages Consolidation, Discourages Independent Medical Practices
Excerpt: In 2008, 62 percent of American physicians were
"independent," meaning they had their own practices and were not
employed by hospitals. By 2012, that number had fallen to 49 percent. Today,
just 35 percent of American doctors are independent. Why? One of the many
effects of the Affordable Care Act, writes Scott Gottlieb, a physician and
resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has been the loss of
private practices in favor of consolidated health systems that employ doctors
as salaried workers.
Undocumented Democrat News
Illegal Alien
Pedophiles: 4,317 Charges Filed Against Illegals in ONE YEAR… in ONE STATE
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/12/illegal-alien-pedophiles-4317-charges-filed-illegals-one-year-one-state-10th-largest/
http://freedomoutpost.com/2014/12/illegal-alien-pedophiles-4317-charges-filed-illegals-one-year-one-state-10th-largest/
Excerpt: York .
4,317 charges of sexual
assault on minors were recently recorded in a 12 month period in America's
10th largest state — North Carolina.
"You're Greener than Gore" News
Climate Catastrophe. By John Stossel
Excerpt: People argue about whether the “consensus” of
scientists is that we face disaster because of global warming. Instead of
debating whether man’s greenhouse gasses will raise temperatures, we should
argue about how we gauge disasters. If you take most environmentalists and
climate scientists at their word, the Earth heated up about 1.4 degrees
Fahrenheit over the past century, not much more than it heated up the century
before that. Warming may increase, but no one can be certain of that.
CBO makes the fracking
case
Excerpt: In the past decade, the United States has suffered a
housing implosion, a catastrophic financial crisis and the agonizingly slow
growth of a jobless, low-wage recovery.
But not all news has been bad, as the Congressional Budget
Office made plain this week with a new report on the fracking revolution. The report
should remind members of the new Congress that they should ignore the dishonest environmental radicals and their false propaganda and help make the nation a net petroleum
exporter again.
Religion of Peace News
Congress must enable
the president to stop the Islamic State. By Marco Rubio
Excerpt: It is clear that our efforts to defeat the Islamic
State have been inadequate. Half-measures will not work against a growing
threat from radical Islamists that are uniting fractured terrorist groups
around the world under one banner. Over the past six months, as the Obama
administration has continued to develop its strategy for defeating the group,
our enemies have not been standing still. The Islamic State now reaches
from North
Africa through the Middle East, Pakistan
and South Asia and into Southeast
Asia. Libya , with its
absence of government control and its vast stocks of weapons, has become a
particularly deadly terrorist haven that is allowing the Islamic State to
broaden its map, gain strength and plot attacks against Europe and the United States .
Gen. John Allen
carries a heavy rucksack in the fight against the Islamic State. By David
Ignatius
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-gen-john-allen-carries-a-heavy-rucksack-against-the-islamic-state/2014/12/11/49ac2030-8184-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opin&wpmm=1
Excerpt: Gen. John Allen must sometimes feel as if he’s
navigating a maze as he organizes the coalition to defeat the Islamic State:
Iran is a silent partner in Iraq but a potential adversary in Syria and
elsewhere; Turkey and Saudi Arabia are crucial allies but skittish and
self-interested ones; the very map of battle is uncertain, as boundaries in the
region begin to blur. When Allen took the job in September, Islamic
State fighters had overrun much of Iraq
and Syria , and President
Obama was worried that Jordan
and Saudi Arabia
might be next.
A Travesty of a
Report. By Charles
Krauthammer
Excerpt: It’s a kind of temporary-insanity defense for the
Bush administration. And it is not just unctuous condescension but hypocritical
nonsense. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was nothing irrational about
believing that a second attack was a serious possibility and therefore
everything should be done to prevent it. Indeed, this was the considered
opinion of the CIA, the administration, the congressional leadership and the
American people.
Thinking About
Torture. By Jonah
Goldberg
Excerpt: It’s true that torture is to some extent in the eye
of the beholder. Everyone can agree that hot pokers, the rack and the iron
maiden qualify. But loud music, sleep deprivation and even waterboarding? At
first, maybe not. But over time, yes. Torture can be a lot like poison: The
dosage matters. One of the great problems with the word “torture” is that it
tolerates no ambiguity. It is a taboo word, like racism or incest. Once you
call something torture, the conversation is supposed to end. It’s a line no one
may cross. As a result, if you think the enhanced interrogation techniques are
necessary, or simply justified, you have to call them something else.
Similarly, many sincere opponents of these techniques think that if they can
simply call them “torture,” their work is done.
John Yoo: I Was Never
Asked to Testify for Torture Report. By Bill Hoffmann
Excerpt: John Yoo, the ex-Justice Department official who
drafted the so-called "torture memos" that guided the CIA in grilling
terror suspects, says he would have happily testified before the Senate
Intelligence Committee that issued a damning report about the controversial
interrogations, but was never asked. "This committee, the [Sen. Dianne]
Feinstein committee, chose not to interview anybody. They did not interview any
of the government officials including myself. Didn't even call, didn't even ask
me. I would've been happy to testify," Yoo said Thursday on
"The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV. (Here is another really excellent point being
made about the Feinstein report. Again, I do not doubt that things were handled
badly in too many instances, some very poor judgment was used, and some of it
was tragic and shameful. That was, sadly, bound to happen when everyone was
pretty much going bonkers about having watched the Towers come down and 3000
innocents slaughtered because they went to work that morning or got on a plane.
Putting an enormous effort into play in a rush guaranteed mistakes would be
made. That is not an excuse, and I still am unhappy at how many mistakes were
made. But the report was very heavily political, and pretending it was issued
solely in service to the nation is not going to fly with anyone who tries at
all to look at more than one side of the issues. And the continual yammering
that none of the interrogations produced anything valuable is a stupid lie. KSM,
the architect of 9/11, resisted all efforts to get him to talk until he was
waterboarded, after which he sang like a bird and gave up tremendous amounts of
invaluable intelligence. Condemning those who decided he should be subjected to
harsh measures is easy Monday morning quarterbacking, by people who
weren't charged with the mission of protecting this country and its citizens. Those
who were given that responsibility did their sincere best, nobody was saying
"just go treat innocents badly for the hell of it", it was all about
trying to protect us. I really wish they'd been much more careful about it, but
I will not throw that first stone, and no one who hasn't been in their
situation should be in a rush to do so. All the "holier than anybody"
critics coming out of the woodwork should just shut up and go home and be
grateful we had people who tried and succeeded in avoiding more major attacks.
--Del )\
Former Democrat Senator, Medal of Honor recipient and a Navy
SEAL Bob Kerrey took sometime yesterday to criticize in USAToday his
colleagues in the Senate for the so-called “torture report” that they released
the other day. Apparently, he’s not too happy with it for many of the reasons
that folks on the other side have cited; I do not need to read the report to
know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out
early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise
that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.
Feinstein's
Duplicity: 68 Congressional Members Briefed On Enhanced Interrogation From
2001-2007
Excerpt: While the media coverage of the Feinstein report is
talking about what the "evil CIA" may have done to some prisoners and
whether or not the information extracted from those prisoners was actionable,
missing is a discussion of when the congress was briefed about the techniques
used. To paraphrase a line from Howard Baker during the "Watergate
Hearings," America
wants to know, "What did Congress know and when did they know it?"
Ex-CIA Directors:
Interrogations Saved Lives. The Senate Intelligence investigators never spoke
to us—the leaders of the agency whose policies they are now assailing for
partisan reasons.
The following response
is from former CIA Directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V.
Hayden (a retired Air Force general), and former CIA Deputy Directors John E.
McLaughlin, Albert M. Calland (a retired Navy vice admiral) and Stephen R.
Kappes :
Excerpt: The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on
Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation of terrorists, prepared
only by the Democratic majority staff, is a missed opportunity to deliver a
serious and balanced study of an important public policy question. The
committee has given us instead a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and
interpretation—essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that
has done the most to protect America
after the 9/11 attacks. Examining how the CIA handled these matters is an
important subject of continuing relevance to a nation still at war. In no way
would we claim that we did everything perfectly, especially in the emergency
and often-chaotic circumstances we confronted in the immediate aftermath of
9/11. As in all wars, there were undoubtedly things in our program that should
not have happened. When we learned of them, we reported such instances to the
CIA inspector general or the Justice Department and sought to take corrective
action. (First off, regardless of the political intent of the Democrat Senate
Report on torture, etc, (and there was most certainly politics involved), there
is no doubt that mistakes were made by the CIA in the overall campaign to find,
arrest, and interrogate Al Queda agents. Everyone acknowledges that, and it's
disappointing and more than regrettable, but given the magnitude of the effort,
having some mistakes made was inevitable, and anyone who thinks an operation
like that could be run perfectly has no concept of what that means. All that
said, the report is absolutely one-sided, and I think it's critical to listen
to what the CIA Directors have to say about it. Those who hate George Bush and
aren't that fond of this nation in various ways would like to tell us all that
it was a total horror show, billions of dollars spent and all kinds of
innocents suffering, for no real result. Which makes us the Really Bad Guys
again. That is simply not true, it's highly inaccurate and highly
partisan. Yes, we need to understand that our own agency was less than perfect
in what they were trying to do, which was TO PROTECT ALL OF US. And then it's
time to get off the inflammatory rhetoric and self-condemnation. And to be
thankful that a lot of other attacks were shortstopped and the upper leadership
of Al Queda was badly damaged. Those are achievements worth noting and
appreciating. --Del )
Bachmann to Obama at
White House Christmas Party: Bomb Iran
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/bachmann-to-obama-at-white-house-christmas-party-bomb-iran?f=must_reads
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/bachmann-to-obama-at-white-house-christmas-party-bomb-iran?f=must_reads
Excerpt: "I turned to the president and I said, something
to the effect of, ‘Mr. President, you need to bomb the Iranian nuclear
facilities, because if you don't, Iran will have a nuclear weapon on
your watch and the course of world history will change,'" she told
the Washington Free Beacon. "And he got his condescending smile on
his face and laughed at me and said, ‘Well Michele, it's just not that easy.'
And I said to him, ‘No, Mr. President, you're the president, it will happen on
your watch, and you'll have to answer to the world for this.' And that was it
and then I left. Merry Christmas," she said with a laugh
President who vowed to end war, now seeks sweeping power to
expand it. By Stephen Dinan
Excerpt: Secretary of State John F. Kerry told Congress Tuesday
that President Obama wants expansive war powers to pursue the Islamic State
terrorists wherever and however he deems necessary, stunning lawmakers by
requesting a war authorization that would even allow the Pentagon to commit
American combat troops to the fight.
Excerpt: Systematic Islamist indoctrination in Turkey is
becoming less stealthy. Education is the new battlefield. Turkey 's
government is pushing to advance its declared policy goal of "raising
devout (Muslim) generations."
Khaled Mashal’s Road
to Damascus Runs Through Tehran
Excerpt: An interview this
week with a Hamas spokesman reveals that despite a temporary rupture in the
Palestinian organization’s ties to Iran, the group remains reliant as ever on
its benefactor, the Islamic Republic. Speaking to Iran ’s
ISNA news agency, Hamas international affairs spokesman Osama Hamdan expressed
hope that the group’s leader Khaled Mashal would soon visit Tehran to discuss “hostile acts of the
Zionist regime towards al-Aqsa Mosque.” The rest of the interview, however,
discloses the real purpose of Hamdan’s presence in Iran :
normalizing Hamas’s relations with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria .
Muslims with Dead
Baby in Trunk Allowed to Drive Away by Tennessee
Excerpt: On Wednesday a glaring case of sharia occurred in Tennessee . A police
officer allowed a car full of Saudi Arabians to drive away with a dead baby in
the trunk so as not to be “disrespectful” towards Muslims.
Day of insurgent
violence kills 19 in Afghanistan
Excerpt: Three separate Taliban attacks killed at least 19
people in Afghanistan
on Saturday, including a senior judicial official and personnel working to
clear one of the most heavily mined regions of the world. ... The Taliban
claimed responsibility for the Saturday attacks, as well as one late Friday in
which two American soldiers were killed, according to an international military
official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as the
information wasn’t authorized for release.
Rebels in northern Syria say U.S.
Excerpt: The United States
has stopped paying most of the pro-western rebels fighting in northern Syria and has
suspended the delivery of arms to them, rebel commanders told McClatchy
Tuesday. A top civilian coordinator for rebel forces estimated that the cutoff
affects 8,000 of the estimated 10,000 fighters in Idlib and Hama
provinces, where the so-called moderate rebels face a severe challenge from the
Nusra Front, al Qaida’s affiliate in Syria . (Maybe Obama read in my blog
that there are No Good Guys in Syria.
~Bob)
Why moderates don't speak out: Imam who condemns
Islamic State stabbed in N-W Bosnia
Excerpt: An imam of the Islamic Community in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (BiH), known for his opposition to the recruiting of young men in
BiH to fight for Islamic State, has been stabbed and seriously injured, Dnevni
Avaz daily said on Tuesday, adding that police were investigating the attack.
Iraqi churches used
as Islamic State prisons
Excerpt: The Iraqi city of Mosul was once a majority-Christian city, but
is now an Islamic State (IS) stronghold, where militants have repurposed
deserted church buildings as prisons. (Imagine the world wide outcry if
Christians were using mosques as prisons. ~Bob)
Excerpt: Some 100 evangelical Christians in eastern Ethiopia were
without a central place for worship Friday, December 5, after local authorities
destroyed their church building, a church official and rights activists said.
The Y Semay Birihan Church, or Heaven's Light
Church , was demolished last week by
Shenkore district police in the heavily Islamic city of Harar , said Pastor Zemach Tadesse, the
30-year-old senior pastor of the church.
Poll shows strong
Palestinian support for attacks
Excerpt: The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe
the shrine is in grave danger from Israel . It said 80 percent
supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or
rammed cars into crowded train stations.
British 'Vicar of Baghdad ' claims ISIS beheaded
four children for refusing to convert to Islam
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/British-Vicar-of-Baghdad-claims-ISIS-beheaded-four-children-for-refusing-to-convert-to-Islam/articleshow/45429107.cms
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/British-Vicar-of-Baghdad-claims-ISIS-beheaded-four-children-for-refusing-to-convert-to-Islam/articleshow/45429107.cms
Excerpt: Canon Andrew White, who is known as the 'vicar of Baghdad ', told Orthodox Christian Network that the
killings happened in a Christian enclave close to Baghdad
which has been taken over by ISIS (formerly
known as Islamic State).
ISIS in Syria
Excerpt: The man was killed in a public square in the town
of Sulouk on
Monday in front of a crowd that included children, the British-based
Observatory for Human Rights said. Rights groups say ISIS has beheaded and
stoned to death many people in areas it controls in Syria
and Iraq
for actions they see as violating their interpretation of Islamic law, such as
adultery, stealing and blasphemy.
Cañon City Police
Department: Suspect in officer stabbing made 'Islamic-type statements'
Excerpt: The 32-year-old man who was shot five times after
allegedly stabbing a Cañon City Police Department officer made
"Islamic-type statements" prior to the incident, according to the
CCPD. ... "At that point in time, Mr. Clark walked inside the store and he
shoplifted a 9mm handgun and put it inside his waistband, walked out the back
door," Schultz said. ... "The suspect at this point dropped to the
ground, never lost consciousness, was bleeding profusely and continued to make
comments," Schultz said. "Next to him was the Qur'an, which fell out
onto the ground and during this first aid situation at this point, he did ask
for his Qur'an."
*****
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.
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