Thursday, September 6, 2012

Old Jarhead's Political Sitrep for September 7, 2012

Bringing you news and information the MSM is too busy covering American Idol, celebrity affairs and sensational missing person cases to cover. Please forward to friends who need to be informed.

I will be away Friday through Sunday, without a computer. Please plan to fill your empty, SitRep-less hours accordingly.

Lots of great stuff today. Thanks, as always to the many “feeders” who take the time to send me items for this SitRep. (Especially those who send them formatted as time prohibits me tracking down or formatting many submissions: Bold headline/URL/Excerpt of about three sentences.) There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to do this without you and I like to believe we are doing a public service. ~Bob

Resources
For those who want further information about the topics covered in this blog, I recommend the following sites. I will add to this as I find additional good sources.

Book Recommendation: A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis Hanson
I’m a long time fan of Hanson’s political columns, which I often link to from my Old Jarhead blog, so I’ve naturally started reading his books. This history makes sense of this war in a way no other has to me, by organizing it not chronologically, but by topic, such as sieges and navel warfare. Given that the war raged for 27 years, was wide spread, killed a horrific proportion of the Greek population and broke all the rules—hence the title—Hanson’s excellent writing brings clarity to a murky subject. Those interested in military or ancient history will love it. But this excellent volume also has lessons for our own age about war and the hubris of leadership.

Alternate Headline: God, Jews win squeaker with left
Dems reinstate God, Jerusalem in party platform. By Julian Pecquet and Pete Kasperowicz
Excerpt: Democrats reinstated language in their party platform recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel when their convention reconvened on Wednesday, as well as language that added "God" back into the party's decree. But the additions were just barely approved by a voice vote that seemed to split the crowd evenly.

Amazing New Allen West Ad: “Three Times They Said No to God”

Obama Saw Democratic Platform Before Convention President only sought to make changes after uproar over Jerusalem, God language
Excerpt: President Obama viewed the Democratic Party’s controversial platform regarding Israel before the convention began, but only sought to make changes after pro-Israel supporters expressed outrage over the language, according to Politico.

Midnight Regulation: Decisions in the Dark
Excerpt: The phenomenon of "midnight regulation" occurs when the federal government passes a series of new regulations in the last quarter of a presidential year. The number of new regulations is especially high when the control of the presidency switches parties, says Jerry Ellig, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. Ellig found that rushed midnight regulations -- those that were passed after a self-imposed deadline of June 1 -- tend to be more costly and ineffective than other regulations. For over three decades, executive orders have mandated that federal agencies conduct regulatory impact analyses (RIAs) to assess the quality and impact of a new regulation. In the case of midnight regulations, there tends to be lower quality RIAs and an unwillingness by agencies to use the analysis.

Is It Too Late to Fix Social Security's Finances?
Excerpt: Charles Blahous, a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and a senior research fellow with the Mercatus Center, says one of his duties as a public Social Security trustee is to explain the program's financial condition. Social Security's future, at least in the form it has existed dating back to FDR, is now greatly imperiled. A solution is rapidly becoming more difficult:

Obama Mileage Mandate Will Fuel Auto Disaster
Excerpt: On the same day the administration releases rules mandating a near-doubling of fuel economy standards, GM announces it is suspending production of its plug-in hybrid Volt amid disappointing sales. The latest "corporate average fuel economy" (CAFE) standards will require the average fuel economy of all the cars an automaker sells to almost double to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Worth Reading: The Cargo Cult. By Rick Wilson
Excerpt: Listening to the Clinton speech last night, I came to realize the Democrats are no longer a party: they're a cargo cult. The speech was an invocation to magical forces to make the Democratic Party great again and to an economic theory grounded in government as the prime mover of both society and the economy.

Fact checking Bill Clinton’s speech and other Democrats at the convention in Charlotte
Excerpt: The repeated claim that Obama’s budget reduces the deficit by $4 trillion is simply not accurate.

Bill Clinton’s DNC 2012 Speech: Good and Dishonest. By Allen Ginzburg
Excerpt: Bill Clinton gave what was, by all accounts, a very good speech last night. It was persuasive, articulate and inspiring, but there was just one problem: almost the whole speech was based completely on distortions or one-sided portrayals. What follows are excerpted claims from the speech (Black) and some factual corrections, context and explanations that were missing (in Red):

NRO Newsletters . . .Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty
Had a great riff on the Clinton speech. Here’s an Excerpt: The man impeached for committing perjury accused Republicans of lying. And the speech just kept going. The man who embarrassed his most loyal fans and followers and staff by engaging in wildly reckless behavior and then offering implausible explanations and even more implausible excuses, who once suggested the political rhetoric of his foes motivated Timothy McVeigh, now insisted that politics "can be an honorable enterprise that advances the public interest." And the speech just kept going.

Bill Clinton: Please don’t judge Obama by the standards he set. By Byron York
Excerpt: Now, as he runs for re-election, Obama is caught in a trap of his own making: Many Americans who voted for him, particularly independents, are judging him not so much by what he has done in office as by what he promised to do. If voters hold Obama to that standard on Election Day, he will lose.

Clinton’s Speech: Nasty, Brutish, and Long. By Roger Kimball http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/09/06/clinton%e2%80%99s-speech-nasty-brutish-and-long/
Excerpt: Hobbes was probably right about that, but what would he have thought of the arrangements adopted by most affluent Western countries, in which the state has grown and grown, tumor-like, grinding down the initiative and independence of everything and everybody but its own encroaching bureaucracy? I think I know.

Clinton on Obama in 2008: "Give Me A Break"

Worth Reading: Clinton Is Wrong on Welfare Reform
Excerpt: Last night, in his nationally televised speech, former President Bill Clinton said the charge that President Obama has gutted welfare reform was “a real doozy.” Clinton, who vetoed welfare reform twice before signing the welfare reform law in 1996, echoed the Obama Administration and media “fact checkers,” who have sworn that Obama’s Health and Human Services Department (HHS) is actually trying to strengthen the work requirements of the law by doing away with them. The fact is that the Administration has gutted welfare reform, and Heritage has detailed reports on exactly how—and what the consequences will be.

GAO confirms Obama changed welfare to work rules in another extra-legal power grab. By Dan Spencer
Excerpt: In another blow to the so-called fact-checking propaganda wing of the Democrat Party, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said yesterday that the Obama regime must give Congress the chance to block President Obama’s scheme that lets states change, some say “gut,” the Clinton-era welfare to work rules Obama long opposed:

What my doctor thinks of ObamaCare
Excerpt: Want real health reform that is in the interest of you and your family? Don't make the same mistake that Washington did. In formulating ObamaCare, the politicians listened to lobbyists, policy wonks, academics, health theorists, regulators, and occasionally to each other. But they failed to listen to the people who actually care for patients: Doctors. (A good column with excellent input from someone who works in the middle of the whole thing. --Del)

Iran hosts Islamic resistance festival. By Najmeh Bozorgmehr
Excerpt: In a 300-year-old former caravansary, representatives from Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Amal movements, as well as Hamas and Islamic Jihad from the Palestinian territories, gathered Wednesday for the start of the third International Conference and Festival of Islamic Resistance, a two-day event. (Boy, and some people say tactical nukes have no good uses. ~Bob.)

Mali requests military assistance to free north
Excerpt: Mali's interim leader has made a formal request to West African regional body ECOWAS for military assistance to help free the country's north, which has been occupied since April by Islamist fighters, a senior Malian official said on Wednesday

“Well Done” to the Nigerian Navy: Nigerian navy retakes hijacked oil tanker; 23 Indian sailors unhurt.
Excerpt: Nigeria’s navy on Wednesday retook an oil tanker hijacked off the country’s largest city, freeing 23 Indian sailors held hostage by pirates who fled as the navy arrived, a spokesman said.

Turkish jets hit Kurdish militant positions: sources
Excerpt: Turkish fighter planes and attack helicopters pounded suspected Kurdish militant positions near the southeastern border with Syria and Iraq late on Wednesday in a major air-and-ground operation, security sources said.

Excerpt: An explosion and blaze triggered by an accidentally dropped hand grenade has killed 25 soldiers during a stock check at a Turkish ammunition depot, the government said Thursday. Four other soldiers were injured in the blast, which lit up the night sky late Wednesday with flames, and shattered windows in homes in the nearby town of Afyonkarahisar in western Turkey, terrifying residents. (Well, anyone can make a mistake with high explosives. Once. ~Bob.)

France gives Syria "liberated zones" aid, mulls weapons: source
Excerpt: France has started helping rebel-held parts of Syria so these "liberated zones" can run themselves and is considering the possibility of supplying heavy artillery to protect them from government attacks, a diplomatic source said on Wednesday. (And if the weapons were eventually used in France to kill French soldiers and French Jews, I would be completely unsurprised. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Unfortunately, there is a parallel here with the far more important case of Pakistan. This is a headache without resolution. On one hand, the United States must ensure that the regime is not overthrown by radical Islamists. On the other hand, the United States cannot trust Pakistan at all to cooperate in fighting terrorism. Indeed, Pakistan is a major world sponsor of terrorism, not only against India, but also to help the Taliban in Afghanistan and even — as we’ve vividly seen — al-Qaeda! As the United States withdraws from Afghanistan, the relationship with Pakistan should be reduced.

Matthews A Few Race Cards Short Of A Full Deck. By Ann Coulter
Excerpt: Today, we will focus on the outstanding individual performance of the man who, since the departure of Contessa Brewer, is widely regarded by his colleagues as the stupidest on-air personality at MSNBC. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Chris Matthews.

Bibi’s ‘October surprise’ checklist. By Benny Avni
Excerpt: But sources tell me that Netanyahu’s Iran decision will largely depend on his late-September pow-wow with Obama during the annual United Nations gabfest. Will Obama follow up by publicly declaring “red lines” for when America’s patience with Iran wears out? Will he secretly promise an American attack on the nuclear facilities, say, after Election Day? Or will he call Netanyahu’s “bluff” and tell him to stuff it?

A View from the Heights With Syria in flames, Israelis are happy they held on to the Golan Heights. By Abraham Rabinovich
Excerpt: Shortly before the outbreak of violence in Syria last year, Shavit had written an article calling on the Israeli government to resume negotiations with Damascus. Peace with Syria, he argued, would be a strategic blow to Iran, bring the Palestinians to compromise, and strengthen the forces of moderation in the Arab world. On last month’s visit, he remained for hours looking out over the beautiful landscape until the sun began to set, thankful that his advice had been ignored.

Denmark: 67-year-old female bar owner becomes national hero for standing up against Muslim mafia's jizya demand
Excerpt: 67-year-old Jane Pedersen, owner of Cafe Viking, has become a national hero after she spoke out in public against the Muslim gangs that demanded "protection money" from her because she runs a cafe in "their territory".

Vet says he was defending home with shooting
Excerpt: A 92-year-old farmer and World War II veteran who fatally shot an intruder in his Kentucky home said in an interview that he had no fear of the man and aimed "right for his heart." Earl Jones said he shot a man who came up the stairs and kicked open the basement door to his home early Monday in northern Kentucky's Boone County. (WWII vet makes his little corner of the world a safer place. –Larry)

Denialist Democrats: The party of government refuses to even entertain the possibility that we can no longer afford it. By Matt Welch
Excerpt: Last night's speeches were notable less for what they contained and more for what they did not: any engagement with the issue of having a debt load (of $16 trillion) that is now larger than GDP, of having a long-forecasted entitlement time bomb marching northward toward 100 percent of federal spending, of having underfunded obligations in the trillions of dollars promised by politicians addicted to handing out "free" benefits…. One of the great ironies of this convention already is that speaker after speaker denounces Republicans for being unable to tell the truth or get their facts straight. Meanwhile, one of the most important truths of modern governance—we are well and truly out of money—sits neglected in the corner.

Muslim Persecution of Christians: July, 2012. By Raymond Ibrahim
Excerpt: Several reports appearing in July indicate that Christian minorities all around the Muslim world—especially women and children—are being abducted, tortured, raped, forced to convert to Islam, and/or enslaved. A member of the US-supported Free Syrian Army mocks Christianity by posing in a stolen cleric garment, holding a looted cross from a nearby destroyed church in one hand and a gun in the other, and standing in front of a church funeral car, suggestive of a death threat. (Lists country by country. Coming soon to America with 4 more years. –Barb)

Avoiding DNC, Hillary Clinton gets snubbed in China. By Joel Gehrke
Excerpt: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in China this week rather than at the Democratic National Convention, and she’s not getting nearly as warm a welcome as the party faithful might have given. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, regarded as the nation’s next leader, did not show up for a press conference with Clinton this morning.

DHS allows up to 825k people to enter U.S. fraudulently. By Joel Gehrke
Excerpt: Department of Homeland Security officials allowed 825,000 people to enter the United States fraudulently, according to an inspector general report on a DHS immigration security program. The inspector general warned that US-Visit, a DHS program that tracks who is entering the country through fingerprinting and other personal data, has major problems.

Senator Kelly Ayotte on HHS Mandate
Excerpt: TCA sat down with Senator Kelly Ayotte to discuss the impact of the HHS mandate on religious liberty.

FAA officials accused of pressuring staff to vote for Obama. By Keith Laing
Excerpt: The Washington, D.C.-based Cause of Action, which identifies itself as nonpartisan, said Wednesday that FAA officials at a Seattle office told employees that the agency’s funding would be more secure if Obama defeats Mitt Romney to win a second term. The allegation, if true, would be a violation of the Hatch Act, a federal law that prohibits government agencies from getting involved in partisan activities.

Lobbyists to help nominate Obama for reelection in Charlotte. By Kevin Bogardus
Excerpt: Despite President Obama’s harsh rhetoric toward K Street, lobbyists will be on the convention floor as delegates in Charlotte Wednesday when he is nominated for a second term. That lobbyists will help nominate the president for reelection is a delicious irony, considering Obama’s moves to keep his distance from the influence industry. …But lobbyists remain a vital cog in the Democratic Party machine, and a number of them are serving as delegates at this week’s convention.

Rep. Hunter seeks to block California giving illegals driver’s licenses
Excerpt: Looking to block California Governor Jerry Brown’s effort to allow illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses under President Obama’s deferred action executive order, Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA) released draft legislation today that would restrict some federal funding to any states that give DREAMers (kids under the age of 30) permission to drive.

Obama Prepares Huge Bailout for Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
Excerpt: The Obama administration is close to finalizing a massive $1-billion bailout for the increasingly totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood regime ruling over Egypt, according to U.S. government officials cited in news reports. The move is already drawing fierce criticism from opponents arguing that bailing out the new Islamist ruler, who is already working to bolster Egyptian ties with the communist Chinese dictatorship while becoming increasingly despotic at home, would be a mistake on multiple levels.

Obama Fails To Submit Annual Regulation Plan Required By Law. By Warner Todd Huston
Excerpt: Early every spring, the White House administration is required by law to submit its regulatory plans for the year. Obama, however, has refused to submit this report as he faces reelection. The spring 2012 Regulatory Agenda is supposed to be submitted so that both Congress and the nation can get a handle on the regulatory changes the president intends to make.

Obama says he’ll be taking ‘executive actions’ without Congress on ‘regular basis’ to ‘heal the economy.’ By Nicholas Ballasy
Excerpt: President Barack Obama told an audience in Nevada on Monday that he will be regularly announcing “executive actions” his administration will take to “heal the economy” without the “dysfunctional” Congress. “I’m here to say to all of you and to say to the people of Nevada and the people of Las Vegas, we can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job. Where they won’t act, I will,” Obama said.

Cronyism’s Costs: Documenting corruption in the Obama administration. By Tom Blumer
Excerpt: GM received at least $50 billion in government aid and thus far has saddled taxpayers with a $25 billion loss. Thanks to a special break approved by the Obama Treasury Department, it is escaping and will continue to escape paying tens of billions in income taxes on its post-bankruptcy income by carrying forward its pre-bankruptcy losses, something other firms emerging from insolvency cannot do. At least $70 billion in these and other subsidies, tax benefits, and assorted favors — an amount which is probably greater than the cronyism losses seen during any other single presidential term before the turn of the century – has been expended in the name of protecting roughly 70,000 jobs (that’s $1 million per job) and keeping the United Auto Workers Union alive.

Democratic Party Theology Explained: There is a God and They Hate Him. By Stella Paul
Excerpt: Trying to figure out Democratic party theology has never been easy. … Thankfully, the Democratic National Convention has answered all of our questions. On Wednesday, the All Mighty was inserted back into the party platform to a chorus of loud boos. So there is a God. And Democrats hate Him.

Bill and Hillary and Huma and Anthony. By Stella Paul
Excerpt: As Bill Clinton once again takes center stage at the Democratic National Convention, let's amuse ourselves by screening the vilest soap opera in American history: Bill and Hillary and Huma and Anthony. This one's got it all: two sham marriages, sexual perversions, and national treachery at the highest level.

The end of the Democrats as an American Party
Excerpt: The Democrat Convention was supposed to be the big kick off for Obama’s reelection. By any stretch of the imagination, even despite the cheerleading by the drive by media, this has been a disaster. This convention may well mark the week that the Democrat Party ceased to be an American party.

Local reporter takes Obama to the woodshed on constitutionality of ‘kill list.’ By Geoffrey Malloy
Excerpt: President Barack Obama on Monday refused to acknowledge the existence of a presidential “kill list” despite multiple assertions by top-ranking officials in his administration that the list exists. Ben Swann, a reporter for Cincinnati’s FOX 19, asked the president, “How do you as president utilize that power [of the presidential kill list] to assassinate … U.S. citizens?” “You’re basing this on reports in the news that have never been confirmed by me, and I don’t talk about our national security decisions in that way,” the president responded.

Judge OKs 'show me your papers' provision of Arizona immigration law SB 1070
Excerpt: A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Arizona authorities can enforce the most contentious section of the state's immigration law, which critics have dubbed the "show me your papers" provision.

The Chevy Volt: Dead or alive?
Excerpt: Two pieces of ostensibly conflicting news last week gave fodder to proponents and opponents of GM's pathbreaking plug-in hybrid car. (It lives! It Lives! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKZXlFAWJRY ~Bob.)

Disaster Drill--By Robert Stacy McCain
Excerpt: The weather excuse produced scoffing -- a local meteorologist said Thursday promised the best weather all week -- and Republican skeptics immediately suggested the change of venue reflected the Democrats' inability to fill the stadium.

Tweet from @ross_m88
Did you donate your money to the DNC? They BLEW $2.2 million of it RENTING Bank of America Stadium and aren't even going to use it.

Syrian General: We're Protecting Europe from Islamists http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159721
Excerpt: A Syrian general in charge of operations in west Aleppo has told AFP that Europeans are exhibiting "blindness" in supporting the rebels against President Bashar Assad's regime. Assad's forces are "the last dam that is holding back the flood of Islamists in Europe," he said.

Excerpt: Are you surprised? At the Democratic National Convention, where one speaker after the next swears they love free enterprise, delegates and attendees (maybe some media, who knows?) were asked by Peter Schiff, posing as a anti-corporate activist, if they would support capping or banning corporate profit. Well, there seems to be plenty of enthusiasm for the idea in Charlotte this week — and not from the fringe. (There goes every IRA, 401k, union retirement fund and university endowment in America. Who is surprised at the economic ignorance of Democrats? ~Bob.

US, Egypt Conducting Joint Military Exercises. By David Lev First
Excerpt: Just days after a report that the U.S. was sharply cutting its participation in a military exercise scheduled with Israel, U.S. planes landed in Egypt Tuesday for a joint exercise, the first since the fall of Hosni Mubarak.

Op-Ed: Obama's Coup: A Look into His View of America's Future. By Stanley Zir http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12146
Excerpt: Wednesday night, September 7, 2011, one day before President Obama addressed the nation. I found it quite shocking that for weeks on end, the best of our political analysts were unsure what the President would say when addressing the nation about the status of our economy and jobs. The truth is, his speech on this topic is always the same — attempting to replace our free-market system of competitive ideas with an American-style, Chinese-type government-controlled economy.

Clinton, Democrat Abortionpalooza Bombs in Ratings
Excerpt: This should come as news only to those “reporters” out there who were soiling themselves last night. Instead of watching tired old sexual harassers, fake Indians and 57-year-old college students playing the victim, Americans tuned out in droves for some traditional American fare: Football.

Excerpt: This morning I became aware of a lie being spread on left-wing blog sites that the Romney campaign and conservative groups had already given up on Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Surprise! Steelworker Featured at DNC Didn’t Work for Bain - he was a union organizer
Another day, another fake. ~Bob.

"The Breakup"
Great ad! Share. ~Bob

Obama’s Lawless, Job-Killing Immigration Policy. By J. Christian Adams http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/09/05/obama%e2%80%99s-lawless-job-killing-immigration-policy/
Excerpt: We won’t be hearing many details from the DNC podium this week about President Obama’s immigration policies. The DNC can’t talk about details because it combines two main characteristics of Obama’s presidency – job-killing policies and lawlessness….The new policy is called deferred action.

There’s More Missing from the Democratic Platform Than God and Jerusalem. By Andrew C. McCarthy
Excerpt: The omission of God and Jerusalem from the Democratic Party’s 2012 platform was quite intentionally meant as a demotion, very much in keeping with Obama administration policy. …As for God, there’s not room in this universe for two The Ones. In cases of conflict, the president has made it abundantly clear that his pieties control, and the pious better get with the program:

Floor Fight Coverup: How Politico Buried And Disappeared A Scoop Damaging to Obama
Excerpt: Politico was told by a source that all the spin coming from the White House and the Obama campaign wasn't true -- that, in fact, Obama had seen the new language long before the media uproar and did not seek to change it. Not only is this news a big deal and the kind of story that should launch a thousand more inquiries, but it makes sense.

Justice Dept. Gallup lawsuit came after Axelrod criticized pollsters. By Matthew Boyle
Excerpt: Internal emails between senior officials at The Gallup Organization, obtained by The Daily Caller, show senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod attempting to subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president. After Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, Obama’s Department of Justice hit it with an unrelated lawsuit that appears damning on its face.

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