Update
Hard to work on the computer when it was in the high 60s
today, sunny, light breeze. We went several places just to get out, now that
Global Cooling seems to have receded for the year. Madison St. Pat's Parade
Sunday--bet there are demonstrators. ~Bob
General News and Comment
Heroic 'marine of the
year' who risked his life to save comrade in Afghanistan
is named among 11 soldiers killed in training exercise helicopter crash off Florida
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2991902/Marine-Wisconsin-military-chopper-crash-victims.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2991902/Marine-Wisconsin-military-chopper-crash-victims.html
Excerpt: Marine Andrew Seif was one of the eleven who lost
his life.
He's credited with risking his life to save a wounded team
member while both faced heavy enemy fire during a 2012 deployment to Afghanistan . Seif,
27, is a critical skills operator with 2d Marine Special Operations Battalion,
U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command. He was named Marine of
the Year in 2013 and was awarded the Silver Star Medal at a ceremony last
week.
‘Larger than life’: Special Operations Marines recall
teammates killed in helicopter crash. By Dan Lamothe
Excerpt: On Friday, the names of all seven Marines killed in
the Tuesday night crash were released. All of them were members of Marine Corps
Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC), the elite force the service
developed less than a decade ago to carry out dangerous missions in remote
locations. Four members of the Louisiana National Guard operating the helicopter
were also killed; their names had not been released as of Friday afternoon.
Excerpt: The most perplexing question isn’t about the
e-mails themselves but why she put everything at risk over such a small detail,
declining to segregate her personal and business e-mail. There can only be one
answer, and it isn’t “convenience,” as Clinton
claims. Think of another word that begins with the letter “C”: control.
High-Ranking Federal Officials’ History of Using Personal
Email for Government Business. By Sharyl Attkisson
Excerpt: High-level federal executives routinely use
personal email for business, in likely violation of the Federal Records Act.
That’s according to a recent
survey of federal employees.
Satire--too funny: Ready for Hillary
President Hillary
Clinton would be secretive, too. Her patterns will not change if Hillary
Clinton gets into the White House. By Byron York
Excerpt: News that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a
private email account to keep secret her communications as Secretary of State
should surprise no one. She came to Washington
more than 20 years ago determined to keep secrets, and she’s still at it. In
1993, the newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton chose his wife to head his
administration’s most important domestic initiative, health care reform.
Hillary Clinton proceeded to create a task force that seemed more determined to
keep secrets than to restructure health care
Hillary’s War on the Women Who Boinked Bill. By John Hawkins
Excerpt: What you may not remember as well was the brutality
of public relations war the Clintons
waged against these women. Just to point out one particularly nasty quip out of
many, Clintonista James Carville rather famously said of Paula Jones that if
you, “drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know
what you’ll find.” Of course in the end, Paula Jones ended up getting an
$850,000 out-of-court settlement from the Clintons while Bill had to pay
$90,000 for lying in court and was stripped of his law license for five years
as part of a deal to avoid disbarment.
More Seattle
Excerpt: Seattle ’s
$15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date
approaches, restaurant across the city are making the financial decision to
close shop. The Washington
Policy Center writes that “closings have occurred across the city,
from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in
gritty Pioneer Square ,
to the Boat Street Cafe on Western
Avenue near the waterfront.” (What's the minimum
wage if you are unemployed? Seattle
votes for pie-in-the-sky, economically-ignorant progressives. Elections have
consequences. ~Bob)
Air Force Base Bans ‘Have A Blessed Day’ As A Greeting, Reverses Course
After Major Outcry. By Jonah Bennett
Excerpt: The Robins Air Force Base in Georgia has had
a quick change of heart. After banning the use of the greeting “have a blessed
day” Thursday, the base received such backlash that Air Force leaders
reversed the decision almost immediately.
UN Religious Freedom
Expert presents report to the Human Rights Council on country visit to
Vietnam
Excerpt: During his visit to Vietnam in July 2014, Mr.
Bielefeldt was obliged to cut short visits to An Giang, Gia Lai and Kontum
provinces from because of “interruptions” and reports that people he wanted to
meet were “heavily surveilled, warned, intimidated, harassed or prevented
from travelling by the police". He and his interlocuters were closely
monitored by “undeclared security or police agents”, and privacy of
meetings was undermined. In his report, the UN Special Rapporteur said he
was “outraged” by these incidents, as well as the “intimidation,
police interrogations and even physical injuries of some of his interlocutors
during and after his visit”, which were “in clear violation of the
terms of reference of country visits that had been agreed upon by the
Government prior to the visit”. (Gee, what a shock, someone really tried to
have a thorough look at religious freedom in Viet Nam , and got hassled heavily
and had to cut short his visit. But his report tells the world what some of us
know, what some of have seen for ourselves, that Hanoi makes a mockery of the
constitutional guarantee of Freedom of Religion. Will this make any difference?
I would hope so, but with Hanoi ,
it's hard to know if anything can make them give up the least amount of power
and control. --Del )
Four fallacies of EU
foreign policy. By Andrew Rettman
Excerpt: Any reader of EU foreign policy statements will be
familiar with four maxims: the EU doesn’t recognise Russia ’s
annexation of Crimea; there’s no military solution to the Ukraine conflict; Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad
must go; and the EU supports a two-state solution on Israel
and Palestine . All
of them are false.
Excerpt: The ability of the U.S.
and Canadian military to defend North America
could be jeopardized by stepped up Russian military activity, according to the
commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Adm. William Gortney
told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that Russia is
continuing to work on its program to deploy "long-range conventionally
armed cruise missiles," that can be launched from its bomber aircraft,
submarines and warships. This is giving the Kremlin "deterrent"
options "short of the nuclear threshold," Gortney said. (Haven't
heard about NORAD for long time, this caught me eye. Putin wants old Russia back. O
wants new and impotent America .
--Susan)
Important: What Navy’s New Maritime Strategy Should
Say. By John Lehman and Rep. J. Randy Forbes
Excerpt: After years of ill-considered budget cuts and a
focus on large-scale land wars, the U.S. Navy had entered a period of
qualitative and quantitative decline, diminished readiness, and a lack of
confidence in its own mission and capabilities. Foreign adversaries seemed
ascendant, including a radical theocracy in Iran
and an expansionist Russia .
Many American political leaders seemed resigned to a significantly reduced
global role, and the Navy showed signs of abandoning its historic inclination
toward an aggressive, offensive-minded spirit. We refer not to the present day
but rather to the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then, as now, the U.S. Navy faced
a deteriorating international security environment, an aging and shrinking
fleet, and an administration woefully inadequate to the tasks before it. Ronald
Reagan’s ascension to the presidency and determination to reverse the country’s
military decline required a new strategy for the Navy. (Very timely and
important article. --Del.
It's not clear that we can any longer afford to defend the country. If we don't
provide bread and games for the Headcount, there will be riots. ~Bob)
Excerpt:
The Vietnamese regime is extremely paranoid over organized religion, for it
competes with and is in direct opposition to the political religion of
communism. The regime’s greatest fears are Christianity and Buddhism. In
2001, Christian Montagnards in the Central Highlands of Vietnam held
mass demonstrations seeking the right to worship freely. This triggered severe
crackdowns by the repressive communist regime that resulted in large numbers of
Montagnards killed, thousands of others arrested, tortured and imprisoned, many
of whom remain so today. After the protests, thousands of Montagnards fled the
brutality and sought asylum in neighboring Cambodia
causing an international political embarrassment and change in Vietnam ’s
communist party leadership. How terribly, terribly sad this is. The USA should be trying to really put pressure on Hanoi to back off these
consistent persecutions of religious people, but right now this doesn't seem to
show up on the radar of either the President or Congress at all. There is every
reason for this country to bring pressure to bear for basic human rights in Viet Nam , but
to our shame, it is not happening. --Del. Don't you follow the news? Anyone who
doesn't like Communists is racist! ~Bob)
Dakota Meyer, Medal
of Honor recipient, engaged to Sarah Palin's daughter
Excerpt: Former Marine Corps Sgt. Dakota Meyer, whose
heroism in Afghanistan
earned him a Medal of Honor for his "daring initiative and bold fighting
spirit," is engaged to be married to the daughter of a former vice
presidential nominee. His fiancee is Bristol Palin. She is a reality television
personality and the daughter of former Alaska
governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president.
It’s Tocqueville’s
birthday: Here’s what he predicted despotism in America
Excerpt: In honor of Alexis de Tocqueville’s birthday some
209 years ago, we present this excerpt from the very end of his “Democracy in America,” in which Tocqueville expounds upon
his fears about how a democratic society like America might fall to despotism
[emphasis ours]. The first thing that
strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike,
incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which
they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate
of all the rest—his children and his private friends constitute to him the
whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them,
but he sees them not—he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in
himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may
be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which
takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their
fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be
like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to
prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual
childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they
think of nothing but rejoicing. (As much as we refer to de Tocqueville
as a wonderful source about America
as it was, I have never read him. This excerpt below I find really fascinating,
it's got a wonderful clarity of view in it, a real chunk of distilled wisdom. And
I can see only too well how it applies at this very time. --Del )
Race Card News
What Patrick Moynihan
knew about the importance of two parents. By George F. Will
Excerpt: In the mid-1960s, a social scientist noted
something ominous that came to be called “Moynihan’s
Scissors”: Two lines on a graph crossed, replicating the blades of a
scissors. The descending line charted the decline in the minority male
unemployment rate. The ascending line charted the simultaneous rise of new
welfare cases. The broken correlation of improvements in unemployment and
decreased welfare dependency shattered confidence in social salvation through
economic growth and reduced barriers to individual striving. Perhaps the
decisive factors in combating poverty and enabling upward mobility were not
economic but cultural — the habits, mores and dispositions that equip
individuals to take advantage of opportunities.
Man Reportedly Told Victim, ‘I’m Going to Kill You White
Boy’ Before Slitting His Throat on NYC
Street
Excerpt: The 24-year-old victim was walking down the street
with his girlfriend, an assailant ran up to him and screamed, “I’m going to
kill you white boy” in Spanish, according to the New York Police Department.
(Oh, now there will be a backlash, with whites rioting, looting stores and
attacking innocent minorities. No? ~Bob)
Obamacare/Government Healthcare News
American Hospitals
Must Consolidate or Die
Excerpt: Equally upsetting, the federal government, which on
the one hand is largely responsible for the new calculus in American
healthcare, is, on the other, also the largest obstacle to the industry’s
natural remedy for it....Admittedly, only 4 percent of the mergers of the past
5 years have been challenged by the FTC in court, but a case decided just this
past month, FTC v. St. Luke’s Health System in Salt Lake City, Utah,
where the FTC succeeded in rolling back a hospital/physician group merger, is
predicted to have a chilling effect on future consolidations ... Despite these,
American hospitals have managed to find salvation in mergers and acquisitions,
the only way that they can manage to preserve patient access, affordability,
and quality, while ensuring a sustainable business model. (Locally,
hospitals are turning into megamonopolies, gobbling physician practice groups,
family care providers, and small rural hospitals and clinics. The Stark law
specifically prevents physicians referring patients to services/products in
which they own an interest without notification of such. Established practices
are finding their patients (customers) usurped by hospitals with their
associated networks of new specialists after a patient is admitted, since the
records are no longer sacrosanct to a practice but available electronically
(for "better" healthcare) to the hospital and its new competitive
groups. Your patient was admitted? Frequently, MD not informed and patient
"guided" to the new service, owned by the hospital, when referral
made to their group specialist. Occasionally, patients will demand to be seen
by their MD. FTC is realizing it has created monopolies with its policies; this
article is biased towards "hospital survival" stating "providing
better care." Depends on your POV. Many specialists see their practices
drying up, between hospitals siphoning off patient base and additional demands
by ACA regulations/Medicare/Medicaid. This will, in turn, lead to fewer MDs
other than those "gobbled" or brought in by hospitals. And many of
"new faces" are black; also apparently instructed by regime since
blacks want their own kind for MDs, not a white in a white outfit. Yes,
segregation is back. MDs coming from Haiti ,
Africa , you name it. --Barb)
Undocumented Democrat News
Excerpt: U.S.
Border Patrol agents in one part of Texas
have noticed a disturbing trend: a spike in sex offenders trying to sneak in to
the country illegally. KRGV-TV said just in the past five months, agents from
the Rio Grande Valley Sector apprehended 144 sex offenders crossing the border
from Mexico .
In the same period last year agents in the valley nailed 93 sex offenders
trying to slip into the U.S.
(The term "Sex Offender" is a racist dog whistle. The PC term in
"Undocumented Lover." ~Bob)
"You're Greener than Gore" News
Fossil Fuels Will Save
the World (Really). There are problems with oil, gas and coal, but their
benefits for people—and the planet—are beyond dispute. By Matt Ridley
Excerpt: The environmental movement has advanced three
arguments in recent years for giving up fossil fuels: (1) that we will soon run
out of them anyway; (2) that alternative sources of energy will price them out
of the marketplace; and (3) that we cannot afford the climate consequences of
burning them. These days, not one of the three arguments is looking very
healthy. In fact, a more realistic assessment of our energy and environmental
situation suggests that, for decades to come, we will continue to rely
overwhelmingly on the fossil fuels that have contributed so dramatically to the
world’s prosperity and progress. (Well, as Nancy Pelosi said, we don't have to
use fossil fuels, we can use clean natural gas instead. ~Bob)
Religion of Peace News
Worth Reading :
War with Iran
Excerpt: Nonetheless, we might absorb some strikes.
Wrenchingly, that might be the price of averting the heavier losses that we and
others would suffer in the larger Middle Eastern conflagration that is the
likely outcome of Iran ’s
drive to the bomb. Were Iran ,
which is already embroiled in Iraq ,
Syria , Yemen , Lebanon
and Gaza , further emboldened by becoming a
“nuclear threshold state,” it would probably overreach, kindling bigger wars —
with Israel ,
Arab states or both. The United
States would probably be drawn in, just as
we have been in many other wars from which we had hoped to remain aloof. ... Joshua Muravchik is a fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of Johns Hopkins
University ’s School
of Advanced International Studies Iran US
Excerpt: “The Islamic revolution is advancing with good
speed, its example being the ever-increasing export of the revolution,” he
declared. “Not only Palestine and Lebanon acknowledge
the influential role of the Islamic Republic but so do the people of Iraq and Syria . They appreciate the nation
of Iran .”
Hanin Zoabi’s Nephew
Endorses Netanyahu at Rally. By Ari Yashar, INN
Excerpt: Mohammed Zoabi,
the fearless Zionist Arab youth from Nazareth
who received death threats and had to go
underground after criticizing his radical pro-Hamas aunt MK
Hanin Zoabi, gave an impassioned speech of support for Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu at a Likud rally this week. In a video clip posted
to Netanyahu’s Facebook page earlier this week, the young Zoabi
is seen at the podium declaring forcefully “I’m a proud Israeli Arab Zionist."
The video of Zoabi’s speech, in Hebrew, can be seen below.
Jewish Teens
Assaulted, Robbed Outside French Synagogue. Two teens targeted in Marseille by
attackers 'of African origin,' after attackers shouted 'dirty Jews, we'll
exterminate you all.'
Excerpt: The New York
Times had an interesting piece about military vets–unsatisfied with
civilian life–returning to Iraq
to fight ISIS . Patrick Maxwell is one of them.
With the rise of ISIS, Maxwell, a former sergeant in the Iraq War who was
selling real estate in Texas , was finally able
to see “the enemy” that was more like a phantom when he was deployed in Anbar Province ISIS ,
Maxwell decided to volunteer to fight the Islamic State, along with other
veterans.
Islamic State
amputates hands of five people caught smoking. By Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org
Excerpt: The Islamic State probably judged that they were
spreading corruption upon the earth. “Indeed, the penalty for those who wage
war against Allah and His Messenger and strive upon earth corruption is none
but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands and feet be cut off
from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land. That is for them a
disgrace in this world; and for them in the Hereafter is a great punishment.”
(Qur’an 5:33)
Excerpt: “You shall find the strongest people in enmity
towards the believers to the Jews and the polytheists.” That’s Qur’an 5:82.
“Fight them until there is no fitna [‘strife’], and religion belongs to Allah
alone.” That’s Qur’an 8:39. “Fitna is worse than killing.” That’s Qur’an 2:191
and 2:217. Will some moderate Muslim leader please explain how Ismail Al-Wahwah
is misunderstanding and misinterpreting the Qur’an? Meanwhile, “Al-Wahwah”
would be the perfect name for a Muslim leader whining about “Islamophobia.” I
hope that will be the subject of this learned imam’s next Friday sermon.
Excerpt: These officials and other experts tracking the terror
group tell us that the Islamic State's Shura and Sharia councils, the advisory
bodies that help inform the major decisions of the group's leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi, remain intact, notwithstanding one close call in November for
Baghdadi. Although airstrikes and military campaigns have killed several
regional administrators and designated “governors,” the Islamic State has
quickly replaced them and maintains its command-and-control capabilities. This
assessment of progress against the Islamic State differs sharply from public
statements by top Obama administration officials as recently as last month ...
Iraqi Kurds Claim To
Have Evidence ISIS Used Chemical Weapon. By
Isabel Coles
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/14/isis-kurds-chemical-weapon_n_6869788.html
Excerpt: Iraqi Kurdish authorities said on Saturday they had evidence that Islamic State had used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against their peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq in January. The Security Council of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region said in a statement to Reuters that the peshmerga had taken soil and clothing samples after an Islamic State car bombing attempt on Jan. 23. It said laboratory analysis showed "the samples contained levels of chlorine that suggested the substance was used in weaponised form." (And where would they have gotten supplies of chlorine gas to use against their opponents? Not that it matters much, and of course why would we expect any kind of restraint from them in their murderous campaigns? --Del )
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/14/isis-kurds-chemical-weapon_n_6869788.html
Excerpt: Iraqi Kurdish authorities said on Saturday they had evidence that Islamic State had used chlorine gas as a chemical weapon against their peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq in January. The Security Council of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region said in a statement to Reuters that the peshmerga had taken soil and clothing samples after an Islamic State car bombing attempt on Jan. 23. It said laboratory analysis showed "the samples contained levels of chlorine that suggested the substance was used in weaponised form." (And where would they have gotten supplies of chlorine gas to use against their opponents? Not that it matters much, and of course why would we expect any kind of restraint from them in their murderous campaigns? --
*****
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://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-American-Republic-prevent/dp/1461122538/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304815980&sr=1-5
For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. Hall’s
eleven books are listed here:
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-book-published.html.
His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com.
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