Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for June 6, 2013
Robert A. Hall
D-day was 69 years ago today. And we think we make tough decisions.
Your one-stop-shop for political news and opinion--who needs newspapers or TV? Please forward to friends who need to be informed. This SitRep (Military for “Situation Report”) is created by many readers who send me items for inclusion, which I would have likely missed or skipped. And I can only spend at most three hours a night pulling stuff, plus the healthcare or economic stuff that crosses my desk at work. As always, I—and you—owe them thanks and appreciation. I post articles because I think they are of interest and will stimulate thought and discussion. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article, or that I was able to verify the information presented, which is the responsibility of the author. I try not to post things that are false, or too far a stretch, regardless of the view point, but I don’t always succeed. As always on the Net, or in the legacy media, you must read critically and with skepticism.
Best older posts for new blog readers
Worth Reading : America
Excerpt: Americans - the elected, the appointed, and the volunteers - of common Colors and oaths of office. But whom today, in the eyes of Jefferson , are our patriots?
Worth Reading
Excerpt: That and other studies of the time presented hard data on such things as which groups' children were doing well in school and which were not; which groups had high crime rates or high rates of alcoholism, and which groups were over-represented among people living on the dole. Such data and such differences still exist today. Immigrants from some countries are seldom on welfare but immigrants from other countries often are. Immigrants from some countries are typically people with high levels of education and skills, while immigrants from other countries seldom have much schooling or skills.
Worth Reading
Excerpt: In order to understand the liberal and progressive agenda, one must know something about their world vision and values. Let's examine some of the evidence. Why the 1970s struggle to ban DDT? Alexander King, founder of the Malthusian Club of Rome, wrote in a 1990 biographical essay: "My own doubts came when DDT was introduced for civilian use. In Guyana
Guest Post: What a Difference
Tom Donilon to resign as Obama national security adviserhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/ap-source-tom-donilon-resigns-as-obama-national-security-adviser-susan-rice-to-take-over/2013/06/05/78286c10-cdd1-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html
Excerpt: Obama national security adviser Tom Donilon will resign, according to White House officials. Susan Rice, the current U.S. U.S. compound in Benghazi
Tweet from Ron Christie @Ron_Christie3h
Just wait for it: any criticism of Susan Rice to be National Security Advisor will be called racist by her supporters. (Chris tie is black. He’s the author of How Black Leadership is Returning America
Excerpt: Even James Carville calls it an 'In your face appointment' (BHO has GOT to go. --JB)
Sebelius won't intervene in girl's transplant case
Excerpt: The U.S. health secretary said she won't intervene in an "incredibly agonizing" transplant decision about a dying Pennsylvania America
Excerpt: France said Tuesday it has confirmed that the nerve gas sarin was used “multiple times and in a localized way” in Syria
Gov’t workers rack up $29 billion in credit card charges
Excerpt: There was, arguably, an important overlooked point in a week that showed the Internal Revenue Services’ “lack of aggressive steps” in addressing misuse of government-issued credit cards IRS employees use when traveling. Almost a side note in the report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration was the fact that in fiscal 2011 the IRS travel card program had issued about 52,000 individually billed travel card accounts. That’s more than one card for every two IRS employees, a workforce that totaled 97,717 staffers at the end of 2012
CBO: Uninsured Under Obamacare Never Falls Below 30 Million
Excerpt: On the contrary, the most recent report issued by the CBO in May appears pessimistic by comparison. Of the 55 million "Uninsured Nonelderly People" the report lists for 2013, only 11 million, or 20 percent, are projected to obtain insurance during 2014; the number of uninsured falls only to 44 million next year according to the CBO. This leaves a full 80 percent uninsured, significantly more than the 67 percent found by the survey.
Yet Another Obama Appointee has a Cayman Islands Trust. By Ed Driscoll
Excerpt: In 2012, Barack Obama’s Organizing For Action political advocacy group asked, “Do you have an offshore bank account?” Pounding Mitt Romney for his: ... Perhaps they should have also asked Jack Lew, Obama’s Treasury Secretary, as NBC reported in February:
Bomb Kills 9 Afghan Children, 2 Us Troops
Excerpt: A suicide bomber targeting U.S.
Fed worker on disability busted after appearing on ‘Price is Right’
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/04/fed-worker-on-disability-busted-appearing-on-price-is-right/#ixzz2VIQ10erE
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/04/fed-worker-on-disability-busted-appearing-on-price-is-right/#ixzz2VIQ10erE
Excerpt: A North Carolina
President Transparency's Spokesman: No Comment on Secret White House Email Account
Excerpt: Since President Obama's EPA administrator, HHS Secretary, and nominee for Labor Secretary have all been exposed for using pseudonymous email accounts as an end-run around transparency efforts, have any officials inside the White House employed the same trick? Sorry, the spokesman for the "most transparent administration in history" won't comment on that:
Hasan: I Shot Comrades to Defend Taliban
Excerpt: Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan said twice this week that he waged the 2009 Fort Hood
Excerpt: The proliferation of "temporary marriages" shows how Muslims in Britain Britain
Tweet from BLACK REPUBLICAN Ξ @blackrepublican1h
Follow @erika4congress, Black Conservative running for Illinois
I.R.S. Spent $4.1 Million on Conference, Audit Finds
The Internal Revenue Service spent $4.1 million on a single conference in Southern California in 2010, paying top dollar for hotel rooms, $27,500 for a keynote speaker and tens of thousands of dollars for gifts to the 2,600 people who attended, according to a newly released Treasury Department audit. (Tweet from David Burge @iowahawkblog: How to celebrate harassing 20 Tea Partiers in Dubuque
Komen cancels 3-Day walk in District, six other cities in 2014
Excerpt: The Susan G. Komen foundation canceled its signature 3-Day walk in Washington
Excerpt: About 50 "gun control" bills, mostly unconstitutional, are being rammed through the CA legislature now. This will mean nearly the end of our Second Amendment rights if all pass and are enforced. With 2/3 Progressive majority, it is likely.
Excerpt: It’s not looking good for the essential enforcement mechanism of ObamaCare. It turns out that not only is the IRS prone to apply a political litmus test to applicants for tax-exempt status, but it isn’t even very good at issuing legally required tax credits.
One of the lesser-known provisions of the Affordable Care Act was an expanded tax credit for families that adopt children.
Excerpt: For a wide variety of reasons, many states and municipalities are turning a critical eye toward their employee retirement plans. As various parties debate the merits of different reform measures, it is important to keep in mind that in many states the law limits potential reform options, says Amy Monahan, a professor and the Solly Robbins Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota Law School.
Solar Industry Anxious Over Defective Panels
Excerpt: The solar panels covering a vast warehouse roof in the sun-soaked Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles
High-Speed Rail in Europe and Asia: Lessons for the United States
Excerpt: From a financial standpoint, things don’t look good. The majority of high-speed rail lines require large government subsidies from both general taxpayers and drivers. Even with generous subsidies, traveling by high-speed rail is still more expensive than flying for 12 of the 23 most popular high-speed rail routes in the world. The evidence suggests that high-speed rail can only be competitive on routes that are between 200 and 500 miles in length. (Doesn’t matter. Like global warming, voter suppression through IDs, banning guns reduces murder, bigger government is always better, Islamophobia is a great threat, multiculturalism, fossil and nuke fuel is bad, and green energy, high speed rail is part of the Progressive Confession of Faith, not subject to modification by facts. ~Bob.)
Worth Reading
Excerpt: The main problem is that the new draft ignores the spate of science since 2010 detailing the long-predicted (at least, by some of us) lowering of temperature projections. … Would they ever produce a report saying that their issue is of diminishing importance — so much so that EPA regulations of greenhouse gases are simply not needed? No, not unless they are tired of first-class travel and the praise of their universities, which are hopelessly addicted to the 50 percent “overhead” they charge on science grants.
… In Big Science, money is power. Money is publications. Money is promotion and tenure, television time, awards, rewards and a permanent ticket out of coach. There’s simply no incentive for scientists to do anything but perpetuate their issues.
… In Big Science, money is power. Money is publications. Money is promotion and tenure, television time, awards, rewards and a permanent ticket out of coach. There’s simply no incentive for scientists to do anything but perpetuate their issues.
Study Claims Proximity to Nuclear Power Not Related to Cancer Rates
Excerpt: A study by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) on populations living near three of Ontario
Excerpt: I have come to the realization that I am not cut out to be God. I mention that because there was actually a time when I thought I could handle the job. I’m not just bragging. I just figured that if I’d been in charge, I would have prevented the Holocaust, I would have given Stalin and Mao heart attacks in their 20s, I would have done away with cancer and Alzheimer’s, I would kept the temperature in the low 70s year round here in the San Fernando Valley and I’d have steered Juan Williams into a different line of work . But I have come to the conclusion that I lack the prerequisite of patience.
Excerpt: It may be reasonable to infer, then, that Mr. Chris tie evaluated the Republican field and did not like what he saw — and that Mr. Booker is poised to win the Senate seat with relative ease.
“If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; And the sixteen being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; But be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers; And this is the tendency of all human governments. – “A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on ’til the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering … and the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” –Thomas Jefferson. (There was never a more accurate "prophesy." The further we stray from our founding philosophy and constitution, the closer we get to the philosophy of Karl Marx and Barack Obama. – LLW)
Bill Maher's Anti-Wounded Warriors Joke
Excerpt: I mean, first he sends them off to war to get their limbs blown off and then he has them over for a barbecue. This is like the Cleveland
Syrian rebels lose strategic town in boost for Assad
Excerpt: Syrian government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies seized control of the border town of Qusair
Excerpt: Tens of thousands have attended the funeral of a senior dissident cleric, in what became Iran
Turkish trade unions join protests against PM Erdogan
Excerpt: Turkish trade unionists banging drums and trailing banners marched into an Istanbul
Excerpt: Yemeni forces began on Wednesday an all-out offensive against al-Qaeda groups that recently seized villages in the southeastern province of Hadramawt
Lebanese army deploys to Tripoli
Excerpt: The latest deaths brought to toll from Monday's violence between Sunni residents of the Bab al-Tabbaneh neighbourhood and Alawites from Jabal al-Mohsen to eight.
Republican Jason Smith easily wins 8th Congressional district race
Excerpt: Conservative Republican state Rep. Jason Smith, whose steep rise in Jefferson City coincided with Missouri
Smith, 32, of Salem , easily won Tuesday’s special election for the vacant 8th Congressional district seat in southeastern Missouri
The Muslim Civil War: Standing by while the Sunnis and Shiites fight it out invites disaster. By Bret Stephens
Excerpt: What should be obvious today is that we are at the dawn of a much wider Shiite-Sunni war, the one that nearly materialized in Iraq in 2006 but didn't because the U.S. U.S.
Syria’s Religious War: The conflict between Sunnis and Shiites can’t be solved by U.S.
Excerpt: If there was a moment when the United States could have productively intervened in Syria
Shiite militants, including Hezbollah — partly at the behest of their paymasters in Iran
Obama’s Atrocities Prevention Board appears idle while Sudan
Excerpt: Wanting to ascertain whether the board was actually doing anything to help prevent crimes against humanity, some 60 scholars of genocide studies and human-rights activists from across the globe sent a letter to Samantha Power, then-chair of the board, in December. Power never responded. They sent her a second letter in January, and again received no response. When Power resigned in late February, they sent a letter to Steven Pomper, who assumed Power’s position as senior director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. He, too, never replied.
Gosnell: No Outlier: It’s not just Gosnellian houses of horrors that endanger women and kill viable babies. By Ian Tuttle
Excerpt: Since then, many have argued that Gosnell is not an “extreme outlier.” Thanks to investigations sparked by the Gosnell case, evidence for that claim — much of it painstakingly collected by pro-life organizations, whose complaints have long been ignored by government authorities — is beginning to mount.
FBI expert: Quran is 'revealed word of God.' Agency sterilizes records to satisfy Muslim critics. By Bob Unruh
Excerpt: The FBI has censored and modified hundreds of pages of materials to satisfy Muslim critics, including a change that was made because an agency “expert” insisted the Quran “is the revealed word of God.”
Jihad on Egypt Chris tian Children. By Raymond Ibrahim
Excerpt: Attacks on Chris tian children in Egypt
Black mob violence at carnivals and fairs. By Colin Flaherty
Excerpt: Every discussion of the explosion of black mob violence at carnivals and state fairs around the country should begin with two words: Lori Lavorato. Lori was the spokeswoman for the Des Moines
VA disability claims for sleep apnea skyrocket to over $1.2 billion per year
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/04/va-disability-claims-for-sleep-apnea-skyrocket-in-recent-years/
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/04/va-disability-claims-for-sleep-apnea-skyrocket-in-recent-years/
Hummm. I have sleep apnea…~Bob
Tweet from Andrew Exum @abumuqawama16m
Not "fighting and winning our nation's wars?" MT @HayesBrown Odierno: I told my soldiers preventing sexual assault our "No. 1 priority."
IRS gave $17,000 in taxpayer money to ‘rehab’ portrait artist
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/04/irs-gave-17000-in-taxpayer-money-to-rehab-portrait-artist/#ixzz2VMAMY1A6
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/04/irs-gave-17000-in-taxpayer-money-to-rehab-portrait-artist/#ixzz2VMAMY1A6
Excerpt: The Internal Revenue Service paid artist and motivational speaker Erik Wahl $17,000 to perform a presentation at an IRS conference in Anaheim , California
Excerpt: Chilling new details emerged yesterday about the IRS targeting scandal, as representatives from six conservative groups testified before Congress about the scrutiny and demands they faced from Obama administration bureaucrats. Yesterday's testimony reminded us once again why Washington
Scarlett Johansson's 'Rodham' Role May Be Playing Hillary Clinton
Scarlett Johansson may have found her next role. The 28-year-old actress is rumored to be in the running to play former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in the upcoming biopic, "Rodham." (Per Internet, Jessica Chastain and Reese Witherspoon declined or not in running, though rumored previously. Rush Limbaugh’s zinger—There is a makeup artist that will win an Academy Award! –Barb)
IRS Exempts Terror Front Group Over Tea Party: Reinstated despite years of delinquent filings
http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/irs-exempts-terror-front-group-over-tea-party/#q4AmI6yKcfBB96IA.99
http://www.wnd.com/2013/06/irs-exempts-terror-front-group-over-tea-party/#q4AmI6yKcfBB96IA.99
Show me your shocked face. ~Bob. Excerpt: Last year, the politicized agency reinstated the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations’ tax-exempt status despite years of delinquent tax filings. CAIR officials had met with officials inside the White House before the decision was made.
The horror, the horror. ~Bob
Stop the Obamacare train wreck. By Tom Price
Excerpt: It has been three years since President Barack Obama led a partisan effort by Washington Democrats to pass an overhaul of America Georgia
President Obama is responsible for his administration
Excerpt: The Internal Revenue Service has admitted that for years, the agency had been subjecting conservative and religious organizations to additional scrutiny as they applied for tax-exempt status. They've demanded details on the contents of church prayers and political book club reports. This is absolutely chilling.
Excerpt: In total, Treasury has recouped $30.6 billion. At current trading prices, Treasury would lose around $10 billion on its GM bailout.
You tax dollars at play. ~Bob. Excerpt: A warehouse maintained by contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency contained secret rooms full of exercise equipment, televisions and couches, according to an internal audit. EPA’s inspector general found contractors used partitions, screens and piled up boxes to hide the rooms from security cameras in the 70,000 square-foot building located in Landover, Md. The warehouse -- used for inventory storage -- is owned by the General Services Administration and leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year.
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