Sunday, March 29, 2015

Catching up on important political news and opinion

Update


Came home from Milwaukee Saturday to find Britnye's pup, Caramel, sick. It was almost 8:00 pm when we got home from the emergency vet, cleaned up the car, washed the clothes he tossed up on and prepared his meds and bland food for a 10 pm feeding. Seemed fine Sunday morning, But we are still feeding him a tiny bit every two hours, plus meds. Bang went Saturday. Sorry for no post. Raw here Sunday, staying by the computer and the fire. But supposed to be in 50s Monday, 67 by Wednesday. ~Bob

General News and Comment

Let the families of those lost in the search for him decide his fate. --Todd R.

Eleanor Holmes Norton says 'you don't have a right to know' what's going on in government. By Sean Higgins
Excerpt: Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, angrily sputtered during a congressional hearing Friday that the White House should not be held up to scrutiny, saying that there was no right to know what it was doing behind closed doors. "You don't have a right to know everything in a separation-of-powers government, my friend. That is the difference between a parliamentary government and a separation-of-powers government," Norton said during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing. (Especially not during the "most transparent administration in history." ~Bob)

Gowdy: Yep, Hillary Clinton wiped her server clean after State requested her emails
Excerpt: Hey, she’s a Clinton. She’s not a fool. #SmartCorruption Gowdy says they’re not sure yet exactly when she unilaterally wiped her personal server, deciding what the public needed and what it didn’t, but it was after the State Department made its first, extremely late request for Clinton’s emails from her tenure. Clinton’s deliberately obtuse lawyer explained helpfully to taxpayers that it’s cool because she handed over everything work-related from her personal server, so no bigs.

Benghazi chairman: Clinton wiped private email server ‘clean.’ By Martin Matishak
Excerpt: The head of the House Select Committee on Benghazi says former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has erased all information from the personal email server she used while serving as the nation’s top diplomat. “We learned today, from her attorney, Secretary Clinton unilaterally decided to wipe her server clean and permanently delete all emails from her personal server,” Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said in a statement Friday. He said while it’s “not clear precisely when Secretary Clinton decided to permanently delete all emails from her server, it appears she made the decision after October 28, 2014, when the Department of State for the first time asked the Secretary to return her public record to the Department.”

Wisconsin Teachers Union Defy State Law & Fail. By Connor Wolf
Excerpt: A Wisconsin court struck down a collective bargaining agreement between a local school district and their unions for violating the labor reform law known as Act 10, according to a statement released Friday. Carrie Ann Glembocki and Kristi LaCroix, two teachers from the Kenosha School District, filed the lawsuit in 2013 to challenge a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) which they argue violated Wisconsin state law. With legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW) and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, the two have won the case.

Be All You Can Be: “I’m not MOS yet.” By Jonn Lilyea
Excerpt: Yeah, I have no words. Nose ring and sandals, hair below her collar. She tells the videographer that she’s “not MOS yet”; (Let's see, she's a SSgt, doesn't have an MOS but her field is nursing. Right. ~Bob)

Cruz declares, media goes bonkers
Excerpt: Predictably, MSNBC was the worst offender as Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski posed the question to perennial guest Donny Deutsch: “Is he the Herman Cain, the 9-9-9 of this election? Is he the, I don’t know, the Rick Perry?” Deutsch jumped in immediately with “He’s the Sarah Palin

Benghazi Remains a Major Scandal Even Without New Revelations. By Roger Aronoff
Excerpt: As with so many issues, when it comes to Benghazi, the media are divided into two camps. The liberal, mainstream media condemn any and all concerns about the 2012 Benghazi attacks as a phony scandal, while many in the conservative media wonder what damaging information the Clinton emails and the Select Committee on Benghazi investigation could bring to light. However, the Benghazi scandal has moved well past the question of whether a cover-up has occurred, and whether or not it can be proven. (SpecialOperationsSpeaks remains on top of the Benghazi disaster, with their own inputs and constant monitoring of other inputs on the situation that the rest of the media and the entire liberal establishment want desperately to bury behind a massive wall of silence. Hopefully this matter, this utterly shameful dereliction of duty by those in charge who sent the Ambassador to the most dangerous post in the world without remotely adequate security, and who then ran a slimy coverup to avoid publicity before the election, will stay clear enough in at least some memories to be a millstone around the necks of those responsible. And the full truth will be clear in the final records of history. --Del)

Worth Reading: Remembrance of Clintons past. By George F. Will
Excerpt: An abscess of anger seems to gnaw at Hillary Clinton, but the reasons for her resentments remain unclear. The world’s oldest party, which governed the nation during two world wars and is the primary architect of America’s regulatory and redistributive state, is eager to give her its presidential nomination, in recognition of . . . what? The party, adrift in identity politics, clings, as shipwrecked sailors do to floating debris, to this odd feminist heroine. Wafted into the upper reaches of American politics by stolid participation in her eventful marriage to a serial philanderer, her performance in governance has been defined by three failures.

Why Ted Cruz Is More Electable Than You Think. By Carl Jackson 
Excerpt: Ted Cruz is the candidate most likely to take our country from where it's arrived under the leadership of President Obama to where it should be - in the hands of "We the People." His authenticity and consistency are just two of the advantages he has over the rest of the field-in-waiting. He says what he means, he means what he says, and Washington knows it.
Expectedly, the knives are out against Sen. Cruz, and they're coming from both sides of the aisle. 

Worth Reading: A Jew Walks Into A Nazi Bakery…. By Lawrence Meyers
Excerpt: Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law is not anti-gay. It is not anti-Black. It is not anti-Semitic. It is, however, pro-religion and pro-freedom and that’s why Leftists hate it.
Let’s read the actual bill and interpret it, then figure out how the crazy Leftists have managed to spin this into the worst thing since New Coke. The law is explicit. The government cannot substantially burden anyone from exercising one’s religion. If it does so, it must “further a compelling government interest and be the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.” This is no different than the laws in 19 other states, and the Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act that passed in 1993 – by unanimous vote in the House, 97-3 in the Senate, and signed by the ultra-Right-wing-nutjob Bill Clinton.

Interesting: The Real Reason Harry Reid Is Retiring
Excerpt: But the real reason Reid is retiring may have nothing to do with any of these excuses and everything to do with his concerns that a possible Republican Presidential victory in 2016 would lead to the appointment of a Republican Attorney General in January 2017. A Republican Attorney General would be almost certain to initiate a criminal investigation into Reid’s abuse of his political power in a brazen intervention in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) issuance of EB-5 visas to investors in a Las Vegas casino and hotel that was represented by his son, Rory Reid, as was highlighted in a report released by the Inspector General of DHS last week. “I think Harry Reid’s getting out of town ahead of the posse,” former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova tells Breitbart News.

Needs independent verification: Exposed: Obama's Plan For Secret U.N. Tribunals
....So a cornerstone of Obama’s agenda is to create an authority higher than the Supreme Court – secret, unelected U.N. tribunals with the power to overrule American lawmakers and courts. What part of this is consistent with the oath he swore to preserve protect and defend the Constitution? This is a clear attack on our national sovereignty and our Constitution. Is this what Obama meant when he promised to fundamentally transform America? Is he Andreas Lubitz in the Oval Office, setting the nation on a steady, gradual yet deliberate path to oblivion? (WND often has interesting stuff, but they engage in speculation without support far too often to make me comfortable. They always put the worst possible spin on items. So I read their stuff, but look for other reports of the facts to back them up. ~Bob)

Excerpt: In Japan, you bow. You don’t try to shake hands, curtsey, lurch for a hug, and bow simultaneously, especially when you tower over the Emperor of Nihon. But hey, FLOTUS gonna do what FLOTUS gonna do: Michelle Obama has had an awkward start to her visit to Japan as she was pictured towering over Emperor Akihito and stumbling as she tried to bow, shake his hand and curtsey at once.

The 9 most brutal things Harry Reid has said about his fellow Americans
Excerpt: But even before Reid became President Obama's right-hand man in the Senate, the former boxer was known for his ability to keep opponents in check, even if it meant the occasional provocative remark. From accusing Republican lawmakers of conspiring to poison voters to suggesting the president's Tea Party critics were racists, Reid's long career in the U.S. Senate has been marked by brutal comments aimed at a great many people. Here are nine of the harshest things Reid has said about people who have crossed him and his allies:

Obama trip: 39th holiday, 222nd golf outing, $843,508 airfare, 3 beers
Excerpt: According to Air Force documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch, it costs $210,877 an hour to fly Air Force One, putting the round trip price tag at $843,508.— A recent Secrets report calculated the first family's holidays at 38, making this the 39th.... According to a press pool report: "You can tell this is a non work trip because someone forward of the press cabin ordered 3 beers at 9:26 a.m."

Senate GOP asking new questions about emails for Clinton and Abedin, who had special employment status
Excerpt: “A number of conflict-of-interest concerns arise when a government employee is simultaneously being paid by a private company, especially when that company (is) Teneo,” Grassley said in the March 19 letter to Kerry that also raised concerns about Abedin and other department employees appearing to have been “improperly categorized” as special government employees, or SGEs. Grassley says he specifically wants to know “what steps the department took to ensure that … Abedin’s outside employment with a political-intelligence and corporate-advisory firm did not conflict with her simultaneous employment at the State Department.” ... However, Abedin essentially kept the same job and was subsequently hired by Teneo and the Clinton Global Initiative.

Let's just face facts; Liberals believe that the State should have limitless power to force u to do any n all things they believe to be just

Nixon resigned the presidency over 18.5 minutes of erased tape. Hillary could become president because of the hard drive she wiped clean.

Worth Reading: The GOP Turnout Myth: To win future elections, Republicans will need more than better get-out-the-vote software. By Kimberley A. Strassel
Excerpt: What matters is how the GOP did in the battleground states. And there? Mr. Romney beat Mr. McCain's numbers in every single battleground, save Ohio. In some cases, his improvement was significant. In Virginia, 65,000 more votes than in 2008. In Florida, 117,000 more votes. In Colorado, 52,000. In Wisconsin, 146,000. Moreover, in key states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia, Mr. Romney turned out even more voters than George W. Bush did in his successful re-election in 2004.


Gun News


In the hunt to be the 2016 GOP pick, top contenders agree on 1 thing: Guns. By David A. Fahrenthold
Excerpt: There are 15 noteworthy contenders for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Together, they own at least 40 guns. Some of them have been building their collections since childhood. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) is up to 12 now, including an AR-15 assault weapon that he has talked about using if law and order ever breaks down in his neighborhood. Former Texas governor Rick Perry is so well-armed, he has a gun for jogging.


Race Card News


Indiana Democrat Says GOP Colleague’s 18-Month-Old Son Is Racist [AUDIO]
Excerpt: An Indiana Democratic state representative made a shocking claim during a floor speech earlier this week when she said a Republican colleague’s 18-month-old toddler was scared of her because she’s black. Rep. Vanessa Summers was debating the Religious Restoration Act on Monday when she speculated that Republican Rep. Jud McMillin’s young son is a fledgling racist. “I have told Representative McMillin I love his little son, but he’s scared of me because of my color,” Summers speculated. “And that’s horrible.” (I'm scared of her because of her lack of cognitive ability. Guess I'm an IQist. ~Bob)

Man beaten on MetroLink train after attacker asks him about Michael Brown, police say
Excerpt: Police said the victim, who is white, was punched and kicked by three black men, one of whom had made the reference to the teen killed in Ferguson by a police officer Aug. 9.


Blue Lives Matter: Boston 'Top Cop' in coma after being shot in face 'point-blank' during traffic stop, suspect killed (VIDEO)
Excerpt: A highly decorated Boston police officer was fighting for his life Saturday after being shot in the face "assassination-style" by a violent career criminal, authorities said.
Officer John Moynihan, 34, was shot point-blank below the right eye by suspect Angelo West, 41, who emptied his revolver at cops during a routine traffic stop in the city’s Roxbury neighborhood Friday, Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said. (White cop, black criminal. Waiting protests and statements from Obama, Holder, Jackson and Sharpton. ~Bob)

Obamacare/Government Healthcare News

Obamacare flying machine begins a death spiral. Premiums are rising rapidly and the young and healthy are bailing out. By Sean Parnell
Excerpt: The good news is the answer is probably no, but the bad news is that’s only because the death spiral has probably already started. A death spiral generally occurs when insurers are forced to raise premiums sharply to pay promised benefits. Higher premiums cause many of the healthiest policyholders, who already pay far more in premiums than they receive in benefits, to drop coverage. When healthy policyholders drop coverage, it leaves the insurer with little choice but to raise premiums again because they now have a risk pool that is less healthy than before.

Undocumented Democrat News

Obama’s Immigration Legacy: Lower Wages And Less Security For Americans
Excerpt: In fact, recent data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show that the rate of deportations in just the last three months have been cut by 43 percent compared with three years ago. Now, there’s the latest report from Judicial Watch indicating that as of April 2014, federal immigration officials released nearly 872,000 illegal aliens, of which 165,900 are convicted criminals.... The reality is, American workers are not prioritized in the president’s immigration actions, which are first and foremost about rewarding illegal aliens with work permits so they can compete with U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents for jobs. 

Did you know Obama just took new executive action on immigration?
Excerpt: Obama intends to make it easier to bring more foreign guest workers to the United States — likely at significant cost to workers already here — by loosening the rules governing something known as the L-1B visa program. Under the program, a multinational company with offices in the United States can move workers from abroad to live and work in the U.S. for as long as five years in what is known as an intra-company transfer. There are almost no rules concerning what those workers can be paid, so there is no barrier to a company firing American employees and bringing in workers from foreign facilities to replace them at much lower pay. (Tech companies have been lobbying for this for some time. POTUS so "flexible" with no future elections. Kiss your jobs and your must-have-or-pay-fine health insurance goodbye, "folks." --Barb)

"You're Greener than Gore" News

U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare
Excerpt: The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man's stewardship of the environment. But we know that's not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this. At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said. ... The only economic model in the last 150 years that has ever worked at all is capitalism.

PROF: Electric cars actually causing more pollution. By Olaf Ekberg
Excerpt: Al Gore, call your office! A University of Toronto professor says owning an electric car in some Canadian provinces could actually be worse for the environment than conventional gas-powered automobiles.

Excerpt: Things are going to get so bad with manmade global warming that women will be forced to sell themselves just to get food and water for their families. And of course, it’s all the anti-science conservatives’ fault, even though there’s no science to back up the claim that the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers are behind the effort to heat up the planet. They must not be trying hard enough, because the science shows that the planet hasn’t warmed in the past two decades. “Pro-science” liberals claim that the solution to the [non-]warming planet is to give more money and power to the failing green industry.

New York Towns Threaten Secession Over Gov. Cuomo's Ban On Fracking. By Christopher Mathias
Excerpt: Fifteen New York towns that are upset at Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to ban fracking have threatened to secede from the state and join neighboring Pennsylvania, where fracking is allowed. The towns, all members of the Upstate New York Towns Association, have expressed interest in secession, Conklin Town Supervisor Jim Finch told The Huffington Post. The association is compiling a report to assess the feasibility of joining Pennsylvania.

The Cooling World. By Denis Dutton
Excerpt: Here is the text of Newsweek’s 1975 story on the trend toward global cooling. It may look foolish today, but in fact world temperatures had been falling since about 1940. It was around 1979 that they reversed direction and resumed the general rise that had begun in the 1880s, bringing us today back to around 1940 levels. A PDF of the original is available here. A fine short history of warming and cooling scares has recently been produced. It is available here. We invite readers interested in finding out about both sides of the debate over global warming to visit our website: Climate Debate Daily (Yep, 40 years ago the was major concern over the earth cooling down, and the shortened growing seasons were going to make food production drop sharply. The article below doesn't take that long to read, or even just to skim over, but it shows how some scientists then were seriously concerned about what might be happening with the weather. The only thing that is certain is that planetary weather is a complex process with all kinds of factors affecting it, many of which we don't understand, and certainly some of which we know little to nothing at all. But we have people building computer models based on theories that have no hard supporting data, which is why the predictions of warming made using the data from 17 years ago have not been borne out at all. What these scientists proved beyond any doubt is that their models were completely flawed, which in turn says their assumptions about what affects the weather are all incorrect. But nobody wants to stand up and say the truth, which is that they have demonstrated conclusively that they don't really know what they're talking about. Yet we are supposed to twist our economics into knots by adopting policies to cut back seriously on generating energy by burning coal, oil, and gas. This is like taking a bitter medicine when the doctor prescribing it has just demonstrated he knows nothing about the real condition of your health. --Del. The Science is Settled--Pluto is a Planet! ~Bob)

Religion of Peace News


Worth Reading: How the Yemen conflict risks new chaos in the Middle East. By Liz Sly
Excerpt: The meltdown in Yemen is pushing the Middle East dangerously closer to the wider regional conflagration many long have feared would arise from the chaos unleashed by the Arab Spring revolts. What began as a peaceful struggle to unseat a Yemeni strongman four years ago and then mutated into civil strife now risks spiraling into a full-blown war between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran over a country that lies at the choke point of one of the world’s major oil supply routes.

Why Yemen Matters. By Daniel Pipes
Excerpt: The Middle East witnessed something radically new two days ago, when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia responded to a plea by Yemen's president and led a 10-country coalition to intervene in the air and on the ground in the country. "Operation Decisive Storm" prompts many reflections: Saudi and Egypt in alliance: Half a century ago, Riyadh and Cairo were active in a Yemen war, but then they supported opposing sides, respectively the status-quo forces and the revolutionaries. Their now being allies points to continuity in Saudi Arabia along with profound changes in Egypt.

The Backstory on the Iran Ploy.

The CIA Doesn't Know Why Muslims Join ISIS. By Raymond Ibrahim
Excerpt: Speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations on March 13, CIA Director John Brennan said that "the Islamic State had 'snowballed' beyond Iraq and Syria, estimating that at least 20,000 fighters from more than 90 countries have gone to join the militant group, several thousand of them from Western nations, including the United States." "Left unchecked, the group would pose a serious danger not only to Syria and Iraq, but to the wider region and beyond, including the threat of attacks in the homelands of the United States and our partners," said Brennan. Left unclear in his speech is why the Islamic State—which Obama and his crew regularly insist has nothing to do with Islam—is "snowballing"; why 20,000 "fighters" (AKA "Muslims") are joining it.

Contrary To The Viral Internet Reports, There Is NO Hard Evidence That The Germanwings Co-Pilot, Andreas Gunter Lubitz, Was A Convert To Islam. By Shoebat Foundation
Excerpt: Bare Naked Islam’s website has been deluged with people screaming because it is not reporting the story that the Germanwings “co-pilot was a Muslim convert.” However, ALL the so-called ‘evidence’ is coming from a single internet source, German website Speisa, in which the only ‘hard evidence’ provided is that the author, himself, says so. Should any real hard evidence come to light, BNI will not hesitate to post it.

Excerpt: Quietly, the Obama administration has released details of Israel's nuclear program through the Defense Department. It was no accident, and could have a devastating impact on the balance of power in the region.

Trusting the Ayatollahs: What's in a Fatwa? By Raymond Ibrahim
Excerpt: As Iran continues edging closer to developing nuclear weapons—a major threat to the entire Mideast region, especially longstanding U.S. ally Israel—U.S. President Obama has come to the aid of the Islamic Republic, by citing an Islamic fatwa no less.
In a video recording posted on the White House's website, Obama said, "Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has said that Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon."
This is the same Rouhani who, after recently showcasing Iran's newly developed missiles, described his nation's diplomatic talks with the U.S. as an active "jihad":

Worth Reading: The Islam reformers vs. the Muslim zealots. By Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Excerpt: The ferment we see in the Muslim world today is not solely due to despotic political systems, and it is not solely due to failing economies and the poverty they breed. Rather, it is also due largely to Islam itself and the incompatibility of certain of that faith’s key tenets with modernity. That is why the most important conflict in the world today is between those who are hell-bent on preserving, and even increasing, these incompatibilities, and those who are bravely prepared to challenge them — not to overthrow Islam but to reform it. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a fellow of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a visiting fellow of the American Enterprise Institute and founder of the AHA Foundation. She is the author of the newly published book “Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now.” (She is also a former Muslim who suffered FGM as a child, a former member of the Dutch Parliament, and made a movie about the oppression of women in Islam for which the producer, Theo van Gogh, was murdered on the street by a Muslim. She lived under death threats for years. She is one of the few feminists willing to fight for the rights of women under Islam--most are silent or in denial. Her earlier book, Infidel is a must read. ~Bob

Putin letter to Arab summit triggers strong Saudi attack. By Yara Bayoumy and Mahmoud Mourad
Excerpt: Saudi Arabia accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of hypocrisy on Sunday, telling an Arab summit that he should not express support for the Middle East while fuelling instability by supporting Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. In a rare move, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced that a letter from Putin would be read out to the gathering in Egypt, where Arab leaders discussed an array of regional crises, including conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Libya.

Sudan: University student swaps jeans for niqab, joins Islamic State. By Robert Spencer, JihadWatch.org
Excerpt: The correlation between devoutness in Islamic observance and jihad terrorist sentiments is nearly one to one, and so the mainstream media and Islamic do their best to obscure it. Reality, however, keeps breaking through. ... This group, which included both medical students and new graduates, are worlds apart from the stereotypical profile of many militants – poor, disaffected, angry, youths. Most of them come from well-to-do families who have no connection to extremist circles in Khartoum.

Father who blamed police for not stopping his daughter joining ISIS, attended 2012 rally led by hate preacher Anjem Choudary and attended by Lee Rigby killer
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3013703/Father-jihadi-bride-schoolgirl-attended-2012-Islamist-rally-attended-Lee-Rigby-s-killer-led-preacher-Anjem-Choudary.html
Excerpt: The video shows Abase Hussen marching at the front of the demonstrators, behind a banner reading: 'The followers of Mohammed will conquer America'. He was filmed chanting 'Allahu Akbar' amid dozens of protesters and standing just yards away as the American flag is burned. 

Important: Gunmen kill 15 in Nigeria during tense election
Excerpt: Boko Haram militants, who are trying to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in religiously-mixed Nigeria, reject democracy, and their leader Abubakar Shekau has threatened to kill Nigerians who go to vote ... Voters queued for hours just to get accredited. ... When Buhari, a northern Muslim, lost to Jonathan, a southern Christian, in 2011, it triggered rioting in the mostly Muslim north that killed 800 people and destroyed the homes of 65,000. (Imagine American voters "queuing for hours" to register under threat of death. ~Bob)

Shock Claim: Why Obama Refused To Help Fight Boko Haram. Top White House adviser working to elect Muslim dictator who wants Shariah law
Excerpt: Allegations are mounting that the Obama administration withheld weapons and intelligence support from Nigeria’s fight against Boko Haram in an effort to boost the chances of the Muslim candidate for president, who is a client of the political firm founded by key Obama strategist David Axelrod. Nigerians this weekend are deciding a very competitive race between incumbent Christian President Dr. Ebele Goodluck Jonathan and retired Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, who ruled as dictator there from 1983 until 1985, when he was removed through a coup. ...With the guidance of Axelrod’s firm, Buhari has tamped down talk of Shariah nearing election day and even added a Pentecostal Christian as his running mate

NY gang boss resurfaced at Florida mosque, sending radicalized jihadists overseas, say feds. By Malia Zimmerman
Excerpt: A Muslim extremist who once led a murderous New York gang dubbed “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” and then resurfaced decades later as a radical imam at a Florida mosque is begging for help funding his legal defense against charges he committed tax fraud to, according to authorities, finance terror training for his followers.

Saudi Arabian Nuha Mohammed Al-Doaifi faces hate crime after spitting on people in Florida Walmart. By Michael Sheridan
Excerpt: A Saudi Arabian national faces hate crimes charges after allegedly spitting on several people at a Florida Walmart. Nuha Mohammed Al-Doaifi was arrested in Palm Bay after police responded to a 911 call, Florida Today reported Tuesday. The 21-year-old, who was with her 2-year-old son at the time, allegedly admitted to authorities she spat on several people because "Americans are pushing us around."

'Huge Surge' Of 'Unscreened' Muslims Flooding U.S. By Greg Corombos
Excerpt: Muslim immigration from dangerous nations is dramatically higher in recent years, and government assurances that immigrants are being properly screened is “a farce,” according to accomplished author and columnist Paul Sperry. “It’s a huge surge under Obama. In the last three years, he’s averaged 100,000 new immigrants from Muslim nations a year. That is very alarming. It’s more than we’re importing both from Central America and Mexico combined. This is a big shift in immigration flows,” said Sperry, who is the author of “Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives Have Penetrated Washington” and co-author of “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.”

The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in one of his all-time great speeches, vowing to defend Israel at "whatever the cost" -- including at the UN.


Rep. Maxine Waters Believes Americans are Bigots for Opposing Sharia Law
http://sonsoflibertymedia.com/2014/09/maxine-waters-believes-americans-bigots-opposing-sharia-law/
Excerpt: It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that socialist Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) spoke at an Islamic Society of Orange County town hall meeting on the issue of the Constitution and Sharia law. Keep in mind that this town hall meeting took place in 2012, but her words are still relevant today because she and others like her continue to think like this. Also keep in mind that the Islamic Society of Orange County claims to be a “non-political organization.” (So if you oppose wife beating, child marriage, polygamy, stoning women, including rape victims, accused of adultery, hanging gays and executing anyone who leaves Islam--all in Shari'a Law--you are a racist. Count me in. ~Bob)

*****
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:

Friday, March 27, 2015

More interesting political news and conservative comment

Update

Fleeting time! I expect to be out-of-pocket Saturday, in Milwaukee for a Third Marine Division WI Chapter lunch. Shorter post today ~Bob


General News and Comment

Getting some traction on this story: Ethics complaint filed against Dane County sheriff over ad in Supreme Court race. By Jason Stein, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Excerpt: The complaint filed by Robert Hall of Madison points to a Dane County ordinance that forbids the use of county vehicles or uniforms for political activity. "It is gravely concerning that our sheriff prioritizes the use of county property for the benefit of a political campaign over his duty to provide for and administer the county's public safety," the complaint reads. Mahoney and the Bradley campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment. (SCR 60.03 A judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge's activities. (1) A judge shall respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary. .. Actual improprieties under this standard include violations of law, court rules or other specific provisions of this chapter. [Supreme Court Administrative Rules, which have the force of law, I understand. ~Bob]

Flashback: Justice Bradley Defends the Rights of Necrophiliacs
Excerpt: Bradley, for instance, wrote the dissenting opinion in a 2008 case in which the Supreme Court ruled to reinstate charges against three men accused of digging up a corpse with which to have sex. The majority opinion made clear state law does indeed prohibit sexual intercourse with anyone who does not give consent, whether a victim is dead or alive. In short, Justice Patience Roggensack wrote, dead bodies cannot give consent. Bradley did not agree. “This justice is so extreme, so far to the left that in that particular case even the chief justice (Shirley Abrahamson), who also is pretty far to the left, even she concurred with the opinion of the majority,” said Hans von Spakovsky, legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said in a Wisconsin Reporter story last month. (Defending down-trodden corpse-boinkers. There's always a victims group for the left to embrace. ~B ob)
Excerpt: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced Friday he will retire at the end of his term, closing a long and controversial career in Congress that spanned four decades. 
The five-term Nevada Democratic senator announced the decision in a YouTube video message. 

Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz declared unfit to work, officials say. By Michael Pearson, Laura Smith-Spark and Faith Karimi, CNN
Excerpt: Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was hiding an illness from his employers and had been declared unfit to work by a doctor, according to German authorities investigating what could have prompted the seemingly competent and stable pilot to steer his jetliner into a French mountain. Investigators found a letter saying that Lubitz, 27, wasn't fit to do his job in the waste bin of his Dusseldorf, Germany, apartment, city prosecutor Christoph Kumpa said Friday. The note, Kumpa said, had been "slashed." (Did the doctor alert the authorities? Of course not. The mentally-ill are another victim group whose rights must be protected. If that mean 149 people, including 15 teens and two infants, die, well, at least the powers-that-be get to feel all warm and fuzzy about their compassion. ~Bob)

Can Family Breakdown in Low-Education America Be Reversed? Maybe. By Michael Barone ·
Excerpt: Our kids, at least many of them, are not doing very well. The reason, writes Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his just-published “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis,” is the “two-tier pattern of family structure” that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s and continues to prevail today. Starting in the late 1960s, rates of divorce, unmarried births and single parenthood rose sharply among all segments of society. About a decade later, they fell and leveled off among the college-educated, who almost entirely raise their kids in Ozzie-and-Harriet style families today (except that Mom usually works outside the home). Among the bottom third of Americans in education and income, however, the negative trend accelerated. (Before Obama, the 1960s fundamentally transformed America. These are just some of the results. Tune in, turn on ,drop out indeed. ~Bob)

Worth Reading: Vindicated: Bergdahl Platoon Members React to Desertion Charges, Obama Administration Smears. By Katie Pavlich
Excerpt: Shortly after the prisoner swap, which was celebrated by President Obama with a White House Rose Garden ceremony, Bergdahl's platoon mates started to publicly come forward with desertion allegations. They were quickly dismissed and smeared by the administration. Now, they're speaking out about the new charges. "The truth has been out there the entire time. We've been telling everybody that wants to listen what the truth is from shortly after Bergdahl disappeared to the initial Army investigation to when he was traded back last year. Everybody that was around him, knew what the truth was and it's just a relief that the United States Army did the right thing in charging Bergdahl with desertion and misconduct," former Army medic Josh Cornelison, who served in Bergdahl's platoon, said last night on The Kelly File. (What I find interesting about the Bergdahl story is that it is the quintessential Obama fiasco. If you were compiling a checklist of all the things that drive conservatives crazy -- and by conservatives I basically mean people who are (a) paying attention and (b) not enthralled in the Obama cult of personality -- the Bergdahl story would achieve a near-perfect score. The Obama M.O. remains remarkably consistent. He announces some initiative, policy, or presidential action. The public rationale for the move is always rhetorically grounded in some deep, universally shared principle, even if the real agenda is something far more ideological or partisan. The facts driving the decision are never as the White House presents them. Indeed, the more confident the White House appears to be about the facts, the more likely it is they’re playing games with them. Sometimes the facts are simply made up. There are millions of “shovel ready jobs” right around the corner! “You can keep your doctor!” The Benghazi attack was “about a video!” “One in five women are raped!” “The Islamic State isn’t Islamic!” “These exclamation points are totally necessary!” At other times, the facts are selectively deployed. “Something something tax breaks for corporate jets mumble mumble poor Warren Buffet’s secretary’s tax bill blah blah Spain is winning the future with solar panels” and, course, “core al-Qaeda has been decimated” (in which “core al-Qaeda” is defined as “the bits of al-Qaeda that have been decimated”) -- Jonah Goldberg, The Goldberg File http://www.nationalreview.com/newsletters.)

(The Obama Position:) "What kind of scum would slander this fine brave patriotic US soldier!" "His platoon mates." "And you actually believe those baby killers?"

Modern Problems: Guardian Column: Straight Women in Baggy Clothes Are Appropriating Lesbian Culture
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415990/guardian-column-straight-women-baggy-clothes-are-appropriating-lesbian-culture
Excerpt: “Unisex” clothing styles are ruining everything. A lesbian columnist wrote a piece in the Guardian complaining that the straight women who wear less-than-feminine clothing are “appropriating” lesbian culture and making it too hard for lesbians to tell who the other lesbians are.

Handicapping the 2016 Field. By Charles Krauthammer
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416059/handicapping-2016-field-charles-krauthammer Excerpt From the top tier to the hopeless, my odds for the current candidates. With Ted Cruz announcing and Rand Paul and Marco Rubio soon to follow, it’s time to start handicapping the horses and making enemies. No point in wasting time on the Democratic field. There is none. The only thing that can stop Hillary Clinton is an act of God, and he seems otherwise occupied. As does Elizabeth Warren, the only Democrat who could conceivably defeat her.

Watch: 'Obama is Out of Control.' Democratic assemblyman slams Obama who is 'desperate' for a foreign policy accomplishment at Israel's expense.
excerpt: The Democratic assemblyman (Dov Hikind, D-NY) admitted "I don't understand Obama, you know he's a little bit out of control." ..."Obama is more difficult, I think now he's very very upset, but he's upset - it's silly to be honest - he's upset that Obama lost, the people of Israel won, it's a democracy," he noted. Hinting at Obama's own elections, Hikind noted that he won in a campaign in which "many things were done, some of them controversial even by the Democratic party."

Interesting: The ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian Non-Linear War
Excerpt: Call it non-linear war (which I prefer), or hybrid war, or special, Russia’s operations first in Crimea and then eastern Ukraine have demonstrated that Moscow is increasingly focusing on new forms of politically-focused operations in the future. In many ways this is an extension of what elsewhere I’ve called Russia’s ‘guerrilla geopolitics,’ an appreciation of the fact that in a world shaped by an international order the Kremlin finds increasingly irksome and facing powers and alliances with greater raw military, political and economic power, new tactics are needed which focus on the enemy’s weaknesses and avoid direct and overt confrontations.

Hard to Prove: Bernie Sanders’ Wife May Have Defrauded State Agency, Bank
Excerpt: Jane Sanders was the president of tiny Burlington College in Burlington, Vermont for seven years, from 2004 until 2011. During her tenure, Sanders masterminded an ambitious expansion plan that would have more than doubled the size of the school. To do so, she had the college take on $10 million in debt to finance the purchase of a new, far more expansive campus. The move backfired massively, leading to Sanders’ departure from the college and the near-collapse of the institution. According to Jonna Spilbor, an attorney who reviewed the documents for TheDCNF, “the college APPEARS to have committed a pretty sophisticated crime” by exaggerating donor commitments in order to secure financing for the deal.

Bill prohibiting federal workers from watching porn at work passes House committee
The Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act, which would prohibit federal employees from accessing pornographic or explicit material on government computers and devices, passed through the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Wednesday....The new bill is an extension of the prior one, which stems from a May 2014 inspector general's report on federal employees watching pornography while at work. The report revealed a top-level employee at the Environmental Protection Agency was viewing as many as six hours of pornography a day in his office on his government computer. (So many fed employees paid x2 what local folks get, aren't subject to Obamacare (?), most not ever fired despite inefficiency/breaking rules, allowed to double- and triple-dip pensions, and watch porn versus work? And we idiots pay for this? --Barb. Probably set up a system whereby the supervisor has to view all porn in advance to clear it. ~Bob))

Gun News


Race Card News


Obamacare/Government Healthcare News

Half of ObamaCare subsidy recipients will owe on their taxes
Excerpt: Half of all households that received ObamaCare tax credits last year will likely owe money to the federal government, a new study found. Nearly all families that received tax credits will either owe money or receive extra money because their tax filings had changed after they calculated their ObamaCare subsidies, according to a new report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Bet Obama issues an executive order forgiving their debts. ~Bob)

Undocumented Democrat News

DHS released another 30,000 criminal aliens onto streets. By Stephen Dinan 
Excerpt: Federal immigration officers released another 30,000 immigrants with criminal records last year, following the 36,000 it released in 2013, the government announced Wednesday — though it promised to take steps to cut down on the problem. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that handles detention and removal of illegal immigrants, said it will no longer allow overcrowding to be the main reason a dangerous illegal immigrant is released, and will require a top supervisor to approve the cases of any serious criminals that officers want to release. (I was previously unaware of the magnitude of this problem, where we can't get rid of some illegals because their home country won't take them back. (It seems they are happy to have their problem citizens be our problem instead of theirs.) Clearly the majority of such people were convicted of things like drunk driving (certainly a bad thing), but I put into bold some of the really special cases that caught my eye. Homicides, sexual assaults, and kidnappings really seem worthy of concern. Do we really want any such people let loose in our society? And they can't watch them all, all the time. My own answer to things like this is simple, but of course we can't do it. Which is to parachute the people into their home countries, or drop them on a beach if they have coastlines. You, Mr. Foreign Country, don't get to tell me you won't take back your own citizen when they've made problems here. I'll take back all the Americans you want to get rid of, fair enough? --Del)

Religion of Peace News

Worth Reading: Obama's Mideast 'free fall.' Mounting chaos in the region puts the administration on the defensive. By Michael Crowley
Excerpt: Barack Obama faces a slew of Middle East crises that some call the worst in a generation, as new chaos from Yemen to Iraq — along with deteriorating U.S.-Israeli relations — is confounding the president’s efforts to stabilize the region and strike a nuclear deal with Iran. The meltdown has Obama officials defending their management of a region that some call impossible to control, even as critics say U.S. policies there are partly to blame for the spreading anarchy. ... “We’re in a goddamn free fall here,” said James Jeffrey, who served as Obama’s ambassador to Iraq and was a top national security aide in the George W. Bush White House. ... Now the U.S. is in the strange position of fighting ISIL alongside Iran at the same time it backs the Sunni campaign against Iran’s allies in Yemen — even as Secretary of State John Kerry hopes to seal a nuclear deal with Iran in Switzerland within days.

Worth Reading: What Netanyahu didn’t say. By Clifford D. May
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/may-clifford-d-what-netanyahu-didnt-say/
Excerpt: What is it about Israel in general and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular that leads to so much careless reporting and tendentious commentary? Start with The New York Times, trendsetter that it is, which ran this headline on March 16: “Netanyahu Says No to Statehood for Palestinians.” An editorial then referred to the prime minister’s “outright rejection of a Palestinian state.” Columnist Thomas Friedman piled on, accusing Mr. Netanyahu of having “declared” he would “never permit a two state-solution between Israelis and Palestinians.” Here’s what Mr. Netanyahu actually said to an Israeli reporter shortly before last week’s election: “I think that anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state today and evacuate lands is giving attack grounds to radical Islam against the state of Israel.” (The Islamists will be glad to accept a two-state solution--one state for Hamas, one state for Fatah--after the Jews are all dead. ~Bob)


Somali special forces storm Mogadishu hotel where Al-Shabaab mounted deadly attack
Excerpt: Terrified victims leapt from windows as Somali special forces stormed a Mogadishu hotel where Muslim extremists from Al-Shabaab mounted a deadly attack Friday, first exploding a car bomb at the gate and then mounting a siege of the compound frequented by government officials. 

Rethinking Operation Protective Edge. The 2014 Gaza War. By Eitan Shamir
Excerpt: On July 8, 2014, in response to a barrage of rockets and missiles on its population centers from the Gaza Strip, Israel launched heavy air and artillery strikes against the Islamist terror group Hamas that had ruled the area since 2007. As these failed to stop the attacks, on July 17, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invaded the Strip in strength. After three weeks of heavy fighting, the IDF withdrew to the international border and sustained the air campaign until a cease-fire came into effect on August 26. Operation Protective Edge, as the campaign was codenamed, was Israel's third war against Hamas in five years, and, unlike the previous two encounters, its outcome has been far from conclusive.

Excerpt: First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt and nationalizes the Internet.

*****
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: