Saturday, July 7, 2012

Political Digest for July 7, 2012


Still away on borrowed computer, but home soon. Sorry if the formatting is wonky, ~Bob.

Iran: We Can Hit 35 US Bases in 'Minutes'
Excerpt: An Iranian military commander said that his country has detailed contingency plans to strike nearly three dozen U.S. military bases in the region should Iran be attacked, local media reported Wednesday.

Transportation Secretary Praises Murderous Communists as “More Successful.” By Erick Erickson
Excerpt: Obama Administration Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood has come out in favor of the Chicoms over Americans claiming that in China “only three people make the decision. In our country, 3,000 people do.” … Likewise, the famed high spec rail system in China has come under investigation for corruption, is not making money, and has repeated broken down. The same three people who make decisions decided to make the man in charge of the rail system disappear.

Transparency Ends at the White House Door, By Jacob Laksin
Excerpt: On his first day in office, President Obama vowed to create “a new level of transparency, accountability and participation for America’s citizens.” But the president has not lived up to his transparency rhetoric – and now even the left is taking note.
Liberal magazine Mother Jones laments this week that the Obama administration spent a record-high $12 billion in 2011 to keep government information classified.

Whatever Happened to Occupy Wall Street? By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: Yesterday I took a walk down to the oldest part of New York City, where the Dutch landed and planted their flag near the current location of the Staten Island Ferry, where George Washington stood his officers rounds at Fraunces Tavern, now filled with Wall Street types, and where a bunch of smelly hippies stirred by an anti-Semitic Canadian magazine decided to squat a park in order to make a statement about their own need for attention.

America Apologizes to Pakistan Over U.S. Soldiers Defending Themselves. By Rick Moran
Excerpt: While some details of the incident at the border may never be known, what was clear from the military’s investigation into the incident was that Pakistan failed to inform the US of the position of the Pakistani soldiers, and that the border guards fired on US and Afghan soldiers. In essence, Secretary Clinton has apologized to the Pakistani government for our soldiers defending themselves from attack.

Egypt’s First ‘Sex Slave Marriage.’ By Raymond Ibrahim
Excerpt: Last Monday, on the Egyptian TV show Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), journalist Wael al-Ibrashi began the program by airing a video-clip of a man, Abd al-Rauf Awn, “marrying” his “slave.” Before making the woman, who had a non-Egyptian accent, repeat the Koran’s Surat al-Ikhlas after him, instead of saying the customary “I marry myself to you,” the woman said “I enslave myself to you,” and kissed him in front of an applauding audience. (In keeping with the Holy Qur'an, of course. Bob.)

U.S. Navy Sails the Ocean Green. By Lloyd Billingsley
Excerpt: As the politically correct line has it, conventional fuel is scarce, environmentally destructive, and has to be procured from dangerous areas of the world. Therefore, biofuels made domestically from seeds, algae, chicken fat and such will enhance the security of the military and the nation itself. A great deal more than security is in play here. Consider, for example, the source of the biofuels.

Abu Jindal has no remorse for Mumbai carnage, say investigators
Excerpt: There is no remorse in Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jindal Hamza, the Indian national who has confessed to being in the control room in Karachi during the 2008 terror siege of Mumbai, say investigators, describing him as an intensely devout man who believes he did his "religious duty". (didn't get the “Islam is a religion of Peace” memo. ~Bob.)

France: Two Muslims arrested in antisemitic attack on a 17-year old
Excerpt: A 17-year-old was the victim of a violent anti-Semitic attack Wednesday night on a train from Lyon to Toulouse, the Interior Ministry announced Thursday. (Didn't get the memo. ~Bob.)

UK: Celebrity photographer accused of assault on Muslim, yet she is the only one with injuries
Excerpt: And the plaintiffs are members of a group that has a long history of spuriously claiming victim status.

Woman, two children beheaded in Afghanistan honor killing
Excerpt: Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring."

Thousands in Pakistan beat a man to death, burn corpse over Qur’an desecration
Excerpt: Thousands of people dragged a Pakistani man accused of desecrating Islam's holy book from a police station in central Pakistan, beat him to death and then set his body on fire, a police official said Wednesday. The incident highlighted the highly charged nature of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, under which anyone found guilty of insulting Islam's Prophet or the Qur’an can be sentenced to death.

Female Soldier Reflects on Injuries, Military Service
Excerpt: To date, more than 80 women have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hundreds have come home with combat injuries. Among them is Army Spc. Sue Downes from Tazewell, Tenn., who sustained serious injuries — including the loss of both of her legs — in Afghanistan.

Twitter Forced to Hand Over Occupy Wall Street Protester's Tweets, User Info
Excerpt: A Manhattan judge has ordered Twitter to hand over three months' worth of tweets and user information on an Occupy Wall Street protester, paving the way for future subpoenas of social networks.

Soviet Experience Shows Why ObamaCare Won't Work By Svetlana Kunin
Excerpt: I came from a country where everyone had guaranteed access to free medical care, which was paid for by confiscatory taxes imposed on working people. … In the USSR, taxpayers and their families faced low-quality medical care, medication shortages and overcrowded hospitals with outdated technology, while government officials had access to the best hospitals.

A Settlement Freeze Can Advance Israeli-Palestinian Peace. By Alan M. Dershowitz
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3150/settlement-freeze
Excerpt: Now that Israel has a broad and secure national unity government, the time is ripe for that government to make a bold peace offer to the Palestinian Authority. (Sounds like Dershowitz is carrying Obama's water again. This is the classic liberals' approach to negotiating with an obdurate despotism: reward the tyrant for deigning to come to the table. This supine tactic has been tried over and over again without success. How about Dershowitz demand a concession in return for a concession in order to negotiate? The Palestinians want to stop further inroads into what they consider their territory? Fine, agree in return for this: Israel wants its territorial integrity respected; Palestinians will give up the claim of return in return for cessation of settlement expansion. Following that, they can negotiate borders, water, etc. I should be shocked that a legendary negotiator and litigator such as Dershowitz would make this argument, but this is part of the classic pattern of nice liberals conceding legitimacy of the opponent's demand in order to coax their opponents to the table. Once something is given up for nothing, the liberals are already halfway to granting their interlocutors their maximalist positions. The other guys are more than smart enough to expect that they can get more and give a  whole lot less. Next time I need to write a contract or do a real estate deal I'll look for a lawyer in Dearborn MI. Cordially, Larry Greenberg)

Obama Administration Stabs Israel in the Back. By Shoshana Bryen
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3148/obama-administration-stabs-israel
Excerpt: The Founders in their wisdom divided the powers of government; some to the Executive, some to the Legislative. The power of the purse went to Congress; diplomacy to the Executive. How that shakes out matters to the U.S. and our democratic allies. (The Obama administration practices supine diplomacy, catering to those who oppose US interests and commit human rights abuses as standard operating practice. Obama lies to the American public and defies Congress about his intention to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability by applying crippling economic sanctions. Touting his toughness against Iran's inexorable march to weaponization, he grants waivers to potential enemies and allies to continue funding the theocracy in Tehran. Cordially, Larry Greenberg)

Chief Justice Roberts' Dred Scott Moment. By Pamela Geller
Excerpt: Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote that blacks were,beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect. This was a shocking violation of the founding principle of our great republic, individual rights. Clearly, personal subjectivity and partisan politics motivated this ruling. And here we are again, courtesy of Chief Justice John Roberts.

The FBI could cut your internet access in four days (here’s how to prevent it)
Excerpt: For months now, the FBI has been warning people that a blackout of their access to the Internet could be coming.  The warnings about the Internet problem have been splashed across Facebook and Google, and Internet service providers have sent notices as well.

Mitt Romney’s Electoral College Advantage
Excerpt: Suppose that this November’s presidential election is so close that one candidate wins the popular vote and the other wins the Electoral College (and thus the election). Which candidate, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, or neither, holds an edge in the Electoral College system for choosing U.S. presidents? Though his advantage is small, I believe it belongs to Romney.

Vietnam War veteran's 'Born on the Fourth of July' account disputed by comrades' memories
Excerpt: Rudy Molina Jr. says some of Kovic's story is just plain wrong and wants to set the record straight. Molina, 65, served with Kovic in H&S Co., 1st AmTrac Battalion, 3rd Marine Division in the late 1960s. (Interesting. I envy no man confined to a wheelchair, and acknowledge that Kovic started out as a good Marine, and certainly was up front where the lead was flying.  However, it's difficult to find much positive about his antiwar career and his bitterness.  Now it seems his memory of battlefield events differs a good deal from others who were there, but such things do happen. --Del)

GOTCHA! British police arrest 6 jihadist suspects in London
Excerpt: Police on Thursday arrested five men and a woman in London who are suspected of preparing terrorist strikes against targets in Britain. (Doubtless enraged Baptists, ~Bob)

Why Is Obama So Angry These Days?
Excerpt: Somebody needs to tell President Obama to dial back the "angry militant black" posture he's been presenting for the last few weeks.  He looks almost exactly like those Black Panthers wielding clubs in front of that polling station in 2008.    That's not a good sell if he hopes to have any chance of victory in November; after all, it was Obama himself that promised to bring a new degree of civility and transparency to Washington D.C.

CA Cities Consider Seizing Mortgages:Well-connected political cronies to benefit from eminent domain. By Arnold Ahlert
Excerpt: In a move best described as an unholy alliance between over-reaching government and crony capitalism, some local government officials in California are exploring ways to invoke eminent domain in order to restructure mortgages for underwater homeowners. California's San Bernardino County and two of its largest cities, Ontario and Fontana, would seize mortgages from the private investors who currently own them, cut the loan and principle to the current property value, and resell them to new investors.

Global Warming Blame-ologists Play with Fire. By Michelle Malkin
Excerpt: Al Gore slithered out of the political morgue to bemoan nationwide heat records and pimp his new "Climate Reality Project," which blames global warming for the wildfire outbreak. NBC meteorologist Doug Kammerer asserted: "If we did not have global warming, we wouldn't see this." Agriculture Department Undersecretary Harris Sherman, who oversees the Forest Service, claimed to the Washington Post: "The climate is changing, and these fires are a very strong indicator of that." (And yet, the leading pro-AGW scientists admit there has been no warming since 1995. So why fires and heat waves now? Money, votes and power. ~Bob.)

Worth Reading: Symptoms of a Sick Culture. By Jonah Goldberg
Excerpt: The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously remarked that, "The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself." I've always liked that quote, but I think it misleads.

The Imperial Presidency Revisited. By Charles Krauthammer
Excerpt: Though overshadowed by the shocking Supreme Court decision on health care, the court's Arizona immigration decision, issued three days earlier, remains far more significant than appreciated. It was generally viewed as mixed or ambiguous because the Justice Department succeeded in striking down three of the law's provisions. However, regarding the law's central and most controversial element -- requiring officers to inquire into the immigration status of anyone picked up for some other violation -- the ruling was definitive, indeed unanimous.

Chicago-Sized Test of Wills. By George Will.
Excerpt: Unions are besieged, especially public-sector unions, particularly teachers unions, and nowhere more than here. Teachers unions have been bombarded with bad publicity, much of it earned, including the movie "Waiting for 'Superman,'" and have courted trouble by cashing in on sentimentality, cloaking every acquisitive demand in gauzy rhetoric about how everything is "for the children."

Gallup: Fewer Adults Getting Health Insurance Through Employer
Excerpt: Fewer adults between 26-64 are getting health insurance through their employer in 2012 than they were in 2008, a downward trend that has continued through the Obama administration, according to a new Gallup poll. (Wait until Obamacare kicks in. ~Bob.)

Obama Administration to Spend $20 Million on Green Energy Plan – For Africa
Excerpt: The U.S. government is spending $20 million to “help clean energy projects in Africa get started.” Those projects include wind farms and solar panels, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced at the recent Rio +20 Conference in Brazil. But the government watchdog Judicial Watch criticized the spending as wasteful, given the administration’s track record in trying to pick green energy winners.

ORI finds Parkinson’s-pesticides researcher guilty of faking data; two papers to be retracted
Excerpt: The U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has found that a neuroscientist who studied the effects of pesticides on a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease made up data. (People die because of slime like this. ~Bob.)

June Job Creation at 80,000; Rate Holds Steady at 8.2%
Excerpt: The U.S. economy created just 80,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent, reflecting continued slow growth in the economy with the presidential election just four months away. (Looks like another typical “Obama recovery Summer.” ~Bob.)

Worth Reading: Atlas Still Shrugging . . .By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: The only mystery over the release of unemployment statistics was not whether it was going to be bad — everyone can sense the stasis in their own community first-hand — but whom would Barack Obama blame:

Four Years of Disappointing Jobs Reports. By Jim Geraghty
Excerpt: Yes, today’s jobs report was a disappointment. Almost all of them for the past four years have been disappointing (yes, the economy started losing jobs in February 2008).

President Obama’s troubling trend line on jobs . By Chris Cillizza
Excerpt: While the June report is bad news in and of itself for Obama’s political prospects, it’s the broader trend line that it reaffirms that should be of the most concern to the White House. This is the third straight month in which the jobs report has underwhelmed

Worth Reading: The Flip Side to Illegal Immigration. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: The simple fact is that once someone chooses to enter the U.S. illegally and remain here illegally, breaking the law, either deliberately or through indifference, becomes easier and habitual: obtaining false IDs, avoiding normal bureaucratic requirements, violating zoning laws, etc. And when the host, whether federal, state, or local government, sends a message that the issue is now entirely political rather than legal, often the illegal immigrant senses that he is (and should be) generally exempt from the mundane laws that others must follow.

Romania’s 20-Year Nightmare: Unraveling Socialized Health Care. By Ion Mihai Pacepa
Excerpt: In my other life in Communist Romania, I managed a large intelligence organization that, among other tasks, was charged with keeping alive a nationalized health care system which in the end bankrupted the country and generated popular contempt. That system, very similar to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, was a bureaucratic nightmare. And it still is a nightmare in the former Soviet empire.

Obama's Imperial Presidency: When Congress won't do what he wants, he ignores it and acts anyway. By Kim Strassel
Excerpt: The ObamaCare litigation is history, with the president's takeover of the health sector deemed constitutional. Now we can focus on the rest of the Obama imperial presidency. Where, you are wondering, have you recently heard that term? (Is a consistent pattern of usurpation of the legislative power by a president an impeachable offense? I'm not saying these actions are the "high crimes and misdemeanors" as expressed in the Constitution. However, a president takes an oath to "protect and defend" the Constitution. The Constitution specifies that the executive must execute laws duly passed by Congress. Is a president free to pick and choose which laws to enforce? Is a president free to rule by decree? History shows that in the many gray areas between acts of Congress and presidential discretion, power has consistently accrued to the presidency, a pattern of behavior that the public has tacitly endorsed by not noticing. In this presidency, how many acts of rule by diktat will the electorate consider failure to respect the Constitution? A bill of impeachment is bad politics, but monarchical instincts and actions must be rejected at the polls. Cordially, Larry Greenberg)

How Chicago Plays Ball. By Dr. Robert Owens
Excerpt: In Chicago they also play another kind of ball that is rough, and everyone knows the rules.  They call it politics.  In other places they call it organized crime.

Racial violence explodes in more states: Dangerous and chaotic scenes rock cities on big holiday. By Colin Flaherty
Excerpt: While most Americans were commemorating the nation’s birthday, racial violence, lawlessness and animosity marred Independence Day celebrations in Georgia, Florida, Ohio, California and Illinois. Chris Rock started the day off with a bang: “Happy white peoples Independence Day,” he tweeted. “The slaves weren’t free but I’m sure they enjoyed fireworks.” (It all started with this speech:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57403200-503544/obama-if-i-had-a-son-hed-look-like-trayvon/ The rest was 100% predictable. The White House resident got exactly what he wanted, black on white hatred and violence in supposedly post-racial America. But if people are smart enough to understand that he deliberately caused riots, will they vote for him again? --Don Hank)

A Health Care Contract with America. By John Goodman and Peter Ferrara
Excerpt: Critics of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) need an alternative vision. What follows is a short explanation of the core ideas posted at the Congressional Health Care Caucus and developed in greater detail in the book Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis.

Corzine is having no fun in the shun: Shamed pol a Hamptons pariah. By Selim Algar and Leonard Greene
Excerpt: It seems like only yesterday that Jon Corzine was the life of the party, holding court on the Hamptons political circuit, raising money for Barack Obama. Now, Corzine — just months removed from a humiliating financial scandal — is persona non grata in the tony playground of the rich, and it’s clearly taking its toll, insiders said.

Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld
Excerpt: Count Robert de La Rochefoucauld, who has died aged 88, escaped from Occupied France to join the Special Operations Executive (SOE); parachuted back on sabotage missions, he twice faced execution, only to escape on both occasions, once dressed as a Nazi guard. (The most interesting man in the world? --George S.)

Teachers’ Union Expelled from School District. By John Ransom
Excerpt: The trouble with education in this country starts and ends with unions. They are out-of- touch museum relics, fitting for a day that used rotary presses to distribute the news, but wildly inappropriate for an age that‘s both wired and wireless. Unions have prevented, and continue to prevent, much-needed reforms in education, public finance and government.

PJM Exclusive: Interior Dept. IG to be Investigated in Alleged White House Drilling Moratorium Cover-Up  By Bridget Johnson
Excerpt: A trio of senators have won their request for an investigation into Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s inspector general regarding a potential cover-up of documents that led to the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil spill.  Sens. David Vitter (R-La.), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked the Integrity Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency in a May 24 letter to investigate the Interior Department’s Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall, whom they say “failed to ensure an independent, impartial and complete investigation into the Administration’s offshore drilling moratorium and related activities.”

Guantanamo upgrade: US to spend $40 mil on renovation
Excerpt: Despite promises to close Guantanamo Bay, Washington is now preparing to invest tens of millions into renovating the controversial facility's infrastructure. ([We just didn't know that he meant closing for renovation." --Jay Leno –Jer)

AZ DOC officer arrested for smuggling marijuana
Excerpt: An Arizona Department of Corrections officer is one of five individuals arrested Monday in separate incidents for allegedly transporting marijuana into the United States through the Douglas Port of Entry. Ramon Cruz, 28, applied for entry into the United States when a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer noticed his Department of Corrections uniform with attached badge lying in the back seat of his Ford pickup truck.

Army scraps eye-catching pixel camo uniforms
Excerpt: According to insiders, the design was selected after the Marines had switched to an eye-catching pixel-driven pattern. "That's what this really comes down to," the editor of Soldier Systems Daily said. "'We can't allow the Marine Corps to look more cool than the Army.'" (No worries. It's not the uniforms. ~Bob.)

Quote
"Ask not what your government can do for you. Ask what your government can do to you."
--Doug Newman

Liberal talk show host: I hate this godd–n country
Excerpt: The 4th of July has concluded. And with its conclusion, a refreshing burst of honesty has at last emerged from the Left to remind us all what emotion, precisely, they actually feel for America’s tradition of freedom and personal responsibility. Apparently, in at least one case, that emotion is sheer, bone-chilling hate.

When the Moore Family Lost Power. Sweltering in the dark: a glimpse into America's future if the greens have their way. By Stephen Moore http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304708604577503043226524250.htmlExcerpt:
Last weekend the Moore household was one of nearly a million homes in the Washington, D.C., area without power. The temperature was between 95 and 105 degrees and it was so humid you felt like you needed gills to breathe. Sure, I explained to my three children, we're miserable, but look at the bright side: Think how much we've reduced our carbon footprint! Consider it a life lesson in what it means to live green. (This droll insight shows how utterly dependent we are on electrons that move over a wire. I have read that the TX population is growing faster than they can grow production of electricity and will be in deficit quite soon. How can Texans live without 72 inch TVs, 5,000 square foot homes with thermostats set at 68 and any number of computer games? There are probably not enough wind, recoverable cow farts or solar voltaics to make up the difference. Cordially, Larry Greenberg)

US drones kill 17 'militants' in North Waziristan strike
Excerpt: The US killed 17 suspected "militants" in a strike in an area of the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan that is known to host la Qaeda's top leaders.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)