Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for December 19, 2012

Old Jarhead's Political SitRep for December 19, 2012
Robert A. Hall
Your one-stop-shop for political news and opinion. Please forward to friends who need to be informed. This SitRep (Military for “Situation Report”) is created by many readers who send me items for inclusion, which I would have likely missed or skipped. And I can only spend at most three hours a night pulling stuff, plus the healthcare or economic stuff that crosses my desk at work. As always, I—and you—owe them thanks and appreciation. I post articles because I think they are of interest and will stimulate thought and discussion. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article, or that I was able to verify the information presented, which is the responsibility of the author. I try not to post things that are false, or too far a stretch, regardless of the view point, but I don’t always succeed. As always on the Net, or in the legacy media, you must read critically and with skepticism.

Be Nice to the Taliban
Cartoon.

Advice for my Granddaughter: For When I'm Gone
All royalties go to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.

Worth Reading: Scott's Progress: The Senate's only African-American will be a Republican.
Excerpt: Mr. Scott's appointment requires him to stand for a special election in 2014, though he has a record as a House conservative in sync with Palmetto State values and emerged with the Tea Party. It's also worth noting that the movement deplored by liberals as retrogressive has done more than anything in years to increase diversity in politics—and not merely of thought. Think Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Ms. Haley herself. (Google the title and Wall Street Journal if you hit a pay wall. ~Bob.)

Conservative Black Senator Called Black Only in Skin Color by Liberals
Excerpt: Tim Scott has been appointed to fill the South Carolina Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Jim DeMint and immediately the racebaiters jumped in with both feet to attack him. One of the early hatemongers was Amos Brown, a host on a religious radio station in Indianapolis, Indiana. Brown used his Twitter account to claim that African American Tim Scott isn’t really a black man. (That Tim-Boy done run from the Democrat plantation. Loose the slave catcher dogs! ~Bob.)

Hawaii's nine-term senator, Daniel Inouye, dies at 88
Excerpt: Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, the second-longest-serving senator in U.S. history and winner of the Medal of Honor for combat heroics in World War II, has died, his office announced in a statement. He was 88. "His last words were, 'Aloha,'" his office said. (Whatever you think of his politics, he fought bravely for America in WWII, when American citizens of Japanese descent were discriminated against by the Roosevelt administration, dispossessed, and locked into camps. ~Bob.)

There are so many interesting takes on guns today, all worth reading, that I’ve tried to lump them in one section, below. ~Bob

Worth Reading: GUNS. By Andy Weddington
Excerpt: Let's suppose Adam Lanza, the killer at Sandy Hook Elementary, had been armed with machetes, baseball bats, golf clubs, axes, hammers, tire irons, crow bars, broken bottles, or a chain saw. Would the carnage have been any less? Maybe. Maybe not.

Worth Reading: Invincible Ignorance. By Thomas Sowell 
Excerpt: When it comes to the rate of gun ownership, that is higher in rural areas than in urban areas, but the murder rate is higher in urban areas. The rate of gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, but the murder rate is higher among blacks. For the country as a whole, hand gun ownership doubled in the late 20th century, while the murder rate went down.

Excerpt: Do you really see Southern-style gun culture in these videos and words and images, or do you see a different, more modern culture at work? I see youngsters raised to consider themselves little gods, who see their self-esteem as king and who believe their angst must always be taken seriously. I see youth brought up in a world where we are increasingly encouraged to cultivate a persona, preferably a dangerous, edgy one, through media like YouTube and Twitter.

Excerpt: In 1999, the National Institute of Justice published a study by criminologists Jeffrey Roth and Christopher Koper, “Impacts of the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban: 1994–96.” It examined the effects of the federal assault-weapons ban in its first two years of operation and found no statistically significant reduction in murder rates. “The ban did not produce declines in the average number of victims per incident of gun murder or gun murder victims with multiple wounds.”

Oregon Gun Owner Stops Clackamas Shooting Spree, Proving Guns Save Lives. By James Street
Excerpt: Nick drew down on the shooter as they made eye contact, and Nick prepared to fire. However, he determined (like any conscious firearms owner should) that there were other people behind Roberts, and his shot was not safe. The only shot fired after this point was Roberts taking his own life. 

Worst School Massacre in U.S. history: Not a Shooting
Excerpt: But by limiting their discussion only to shootings, they ignore the worst school massacre in U.S. history which wasn't a shooting at all. Virginia Tech, 2007: 33 dead. Newtown, Connecticut, 2012: 28 dead. University of Texas, 1966: 16 dead. Columbine, Colorado, 1999: 15 dead. This is Bath Township, Michigan, 1927: 45 dead and not a single shooting death.

Worth Reading: Gun control, thought control and people control. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: The gun control debate, like all debates with the left, is reducible to the question of whether we are individuals who make our own decisions or a great squishy social mass that helplessly responds to stimuli. Do people kill with guns or does the availability of guns kill people? Do bad eating habits kill people or does the availability of junk food kill people? To the left these are distinctions without a difference.

Gun Prosecutions Down 40% During Obama Presidency
Excerpt: Now Barack Obama is using the Newtown tragedy to call for more gun control, but since he has been president, prosecutions for breaking gun laws have diminished sharply. The number of weapons prosecutions has dropped 40 percent since the zenith reached under George W. Bush, which was 11,000.

Watch what happens when Guns are banned in Australia

'Guns are not bling... they are killing machines': Judge's warning as he jails gangsters for 81 years for killing man they mistook for crack dealer
Excerpt: Three members of a gang who executed an innocent man after mistaking him for drug dealer were jailed for a total of at least 81 years today. Anthony McKenzie, 23, Samir Yusuf, 24, and Devana Palmer, 21, were all handed lengthy prison terms for the murder of Kenrick Wickham who was shot in the back of the head as he begged for mercy. (Boy, they need gun control. Oh, wait, this is Britain where they already have strong gun control, and thus only the thugs are armed. ~Bob.)

Double Standards on Death. By Lloyd Billingsley 
Excerpt: President Obama, meanwhile, did not make a televised speech at Brian Terry’s memorial service. Neither did the president appear on television in the wake of Major Nidal Hasan’s murderous rampage in 2009 at Fort Hood. Hasan’s 13 victims included Aaron Nemelka, 19, and Francheska Velez, 22 and pregnant with her first child. 

Excerpt: Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old Connecticut man who killed over 20 people in an elementary school last week, was an avid computer video game player, and some have suggested a causal relationship between the two. But according to Fisher’s examination of video games and murder rates in 10 different countries, no connection exists….David Axelrod, an adviser to President Obama, called for stricter regulation of both guns and violent video games in response to the Sandy Hook shooting. “…. But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?” he tweeted on Sunday. (The 2nd coming must be this Friday, 12/21/12…I find myself actually agreeing with Axelrod about video games…. Promoting violence has been a Hollywood $$ maker for decades; whether Bambi’s mother, the wicked witch, the plant kid or Tarentino’s latest blood bath. Handheld video games or megascreen-sized reality games on your TV only draw these kids’ minds in more… make it more “personal” and the message? The more you “kill” the more is revealed, the more you win. What is the message being brainwashed? What social skills are they gleaming? Are they interacting physically with other kids their age [other than remotely in gaming rooms] as we did in the “older generation.” Getting sunshine and activity? Reality? Let alone, heaven forbid, Sunday school or religion? By the same WaPo logic, guns don’t kill people; people kill people. This kid was set up with a lose/lose scenario by a mother who should have known better. Sorry for the rest of society which will continue to pay the price with leftist agenda taking advantage of any good crisis. Of course, we have a POTUS with his black rooms with 20-year-olds using armed drones to terrorize and perform live kills of men/women in the thousands and children by the hundreds in foreign countries. Oh, right, children shouldn’t be treated this way but held tight…great for photo op status post tragedy, but really, just more bumps in the road…to what? –Barb. I don’t think the drones are being controlled by 20-year-olds. The vast majority of gun owners, game players, car owners, knife owners, bat owners and shovel owners never try to kill everyone. When I was much younger, I loved the games Risk, Tactics II and D-Day. And I haven’t tried to conquer the world. So far. ~Bob.)

Man Tries To Drown Wife In Dog Bowl After Fight Over Frozen Pizza
Excerpt: Orange City police say a man tried to kill his wife by holding her head in a dog bowl full of water after they fought over pizza. (Liberals will now demand that we ban Assault Dog Bowls. To which I reply: “When dog bowls are outlawed, only outlaws will have dog bowls!” ~Bob.)

In the Muslim World, with a majority of members of “The Religion of Peace,” the Newtown slaughter would be forgotten in a day, as the next wave of murder rolled in. See the next two articles. ~Bob.

Bomb attacks in Iraq kill at least 25
Excerpt: Car and truck bombs were detonated mainly in ethnically diverse towns and villages in northern Iraq. The area is a source of dispute between the Iraqi government and the Kurdish minority, which governs an autonomous region in the north.

Pakistan blast: Market bomb 'kills 17' in Khyber
Excerpt: At least 17 people have been killed and more than 70 hurt in a car bomb attack on a market in the Khyber tribal area in north-west Pakistan, officials say.

Worth Reading: Global Economic Slowdown Signals Sad New Year. By Brandon Smith
Excerpt: The markets, as most people reading this should now well know, no longer reflect in any way the true economic health of our country. If one were to measure the financial "recovery" of this Nation by the strength of global stocks, he would likely come to the conclusion that the collapse of 2008 was mere hiccup in the overall success of the worldwide economic system. However, electronically traded equities with little more to back their value than scraps of receipt paper and numbers on a screen have no bearing on what is going to happen to you and to me over the course of the coming year. The stock market is a sideshow, a movie, a façade. The real drama is going on behind the scenes and revealed in fundamentals that mainstream analysts no longer discuss. (A while back I had added a few of my mostly Dem-liberal former classmates to this distribution list. Some, whose sentiments were closest to Democrat officialdom, were incensed and lashed out bitterly against the economic figures I was providing, although they were backed up by actual data available in the mainstream press and government agencies. After all, these figures and facts made their messiah look bad. Among the articles and my personal comments were strong recommendations to get out of the stock market to avoid the coming collapse. A few months later, the person who had reacted most violently to my feeds sent an email to the group saying that her investment agent had advised her to get out of stocks altogether. What a surprise! (For her, since she had asked me to take her off the list). I could have responded with an 'I told you so,' but that was so obvious that I figured they knew that anyway, and besides, my aim was not to hurt anyone's feelings but to warn people out of sincere friendship and a desire to help. But people have a need to be lied to in times like these, and while I don't fully understand that, I respect their right to be willfully ignorant. Nota bene: These hard times are when national leaders turn their thoughts toward war. China is, of course, one of the nations most likely to be hurt by this global slowdown. Thanks to the actions of N W O movers and shakers like Nixon and Kissinger, who insisted in the 70s (at the apogee of Chairman Mao's madness) that China was a big buyer's market that would provide us with a positive trade balance, we have entered into trade agreements with China that have given us increasingly disastrous trade balances for years. This has only strengthened China (while weakening us) by enabling her to build weapons aimed at our cities (as evidenced by a Chinese language military journal that I read over a year ago. No translation ever appeared, to my knowledge). A perfect storm approaches thanks to the gullibility of Americans since the 70s. Needless to say, both parties are to blame. --Don Hank)

What deficit? California pays psychiatrists five times more than governor
Excerpt: A psychiatrist in a California mental hospital is making $822,302 annually at the cost of taxpayers, which is five times more than the governor. He is among 16 state psychiatrists making more than $400,000 a year. Mohammad Safi, a graduate of a medical school in Afghanistan, only worked at a California mental hospital for five years before his salary grew from $90,682 to $822,302, according to a report by Bloomberg News. The man was paid for an average of 17 hours a day, even though he did not work that many hours and took time off.

Highest-Paid California Trooper Is Chief Banking $484,000
Excerpt: California Highway Patrol division chief Jeff Talbott retired last year as the best-paid officer in the 12 most-populous U.S. states, collecting $483,581 in salary, pension and other compensation. (I don’t know if I should be disgusted or jealous. ~Bob.)

Domino's founder sues Obama administration over birth control rule
Excerpt: The founder of Domino's Pizza has sued the Obama administration over the mandate that health plans cover birth control. A devout Catholic, billionaire Tom Monaghan called contraception "gravely immoral" and said the mandate violates his religious freedom by requiring his employee health plan to serve as a vehicle for birth control.

House GOP seeks more documents in probe of health law's subsidies
Excerpt: House Republicans demanded more documents Monday in an investigation they hope will derail a key feature of President Obama's healthcare law. Reps. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said the IRS redacted documents about how it decided to handle the law's insurance subsidies. The lawmakers are now asking for an unfiltered look at the decision-making process.

 Quotes
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled."--Mark Twain

"The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live." --Leo Tolstoy

Woman Wins Workers' Comp Over Sex Accident On Business Trip
Excerpt: An Australian court has ruled that a bureaucrat who was injured while having sex on a business trip is eligible for worker's compensation benefits. … During the sex, a glass light fitting was torn from its mount above the bed and landed on her face, injuring her nose and mouth. She later suffered depression and was unable to continue working for the government. (Recently, a US family successful sued a doctor for millions for not warning their son that strenuous activity was dangerous, after he had a heart attack during a threesome. Crazy world we live in. ~Bob.)

Worth Reading: Al Qaeda Lives: By Thomas Joscelyn
Excerpt: What actually happened in Egypt and Libya on September 11, 2012? The story from the U.S. government has changed many times in an effort to craft a narrative that causes as little damage as possible to the Obama administration. Now the administration seems to have settled on something approaching a final version.

Govt Offering $378,000 To Teach Chinese Firms U.S. Shale Gas 'Technologies.' By Wynton Hall
Excerpt: An independent U.S. Government foreign assistance agency funded by the U.S. Congress is offering a $378,000 contract to host workshops with members of the Chinese shale gas industry to “help introduce Chinese energy sector officials and project sponsors to U.S. shale gas best practices, policies and technologies.”

Under-Secretary Of Defense Gave ‘Restricted Information’ To ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Team
Excerpt: Under Secretary of Defense Michael Vickers, considered to be one of the Obama White House's top choices for the CIA Director's position, leaked restricted information to the makers of the Osama bin Laden feature "Zero Dark Thirty." The news, revealed by McClatchy Newspapers today, is separate from an investigation into possible Obama administration leaks to the film's crew currently underway by Judicial Watch.

Thousands Dead by U.S. Drone Strikes: Is There Method to the Madness? By Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.
Excerpt: It appears that none of the deaths authorized by the president meets these criteria. In these interviews, the president consistently defends the fact that he orders drone strikes to assassinate people based on nothing more than his suspicion that they threaten U.S. national security. 

'Did we just kill a kid?': The moment drone operator who assassinated Afghans with the push of a button on a computer in the U.S. realized he had vaporized a child... and could not go on. By Helen Pow 
Excerpt: A former U.S. drone operator has opened up about the toll of killing scores of innocent people by pressing a button from a control room in New Mexico. Brandon Bryant, 27, from MissoulaMontana, spent six years in the Air Force operating Predator drones from inside a dark container. But, after following orders to shoot and kill a child in Afghanistan, he knew he couldn't keep doing what he was doing and quit the military. (The penultimate video game; hypocrisy in policy. –Barb. Personally. I lay responsibility for the innocent dead on the terrorists. If they ceased attacking us in the name of Allah, the killing would cease. ~Bob.)

Are US drones terrorising civilians?
Excerpt: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that out of the approximately 3,300 people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, at least 176 are reported to be children…. "The insurgency in Afghanistan has become worse. There's a much larger number of individuals who are transiting across the border from Pakistan to attack NATOUS and Afghan forces. So a tool which was initially used for counter-terrorism has now become a counter-insurgency tool." (Let’s blame it on a video nobody has heard of….Barb)

Excerpt: The first transsexual style magazine has taken on the first lady for the cover of its Winter 2012 issue, enlisting former model/performer and current fashion illustrator/designer Connie Fleming to pose as Michelle Obama in a most convincing fashion. 

Where are the Benghazi Survivors? Will Hillary Clinton Testify About Them on December 20?
Excerpt: Where are the Benghazi Survivors? … There were others at the compound, but what happened to them? It has been reported that 20 to 30 Americans were evacuated on the night of the attack, but reports are conflicting. Where are the survivors and can they shed any light on the events before and during the terror attack?

The rise and fall of Susan Rice
Excerpt: In truth, Rice’s confirmation hearing would have been the opening act of a public probe into what the White House knew about the terror attack in Libya on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. Having ducked the question during the campaign, the president’s Praetorian Guard isn’t eager to come clean now, either. …They might get away with it because there is a media double standard on everything about Barack Obama. (Transparency stonewalled, just like Fast and Furious; same MO. –Barb)

Saudi rights activist faces apostasy charge
Excerpt: A Saudi court on Monday referred a rights activist to a higher court for alleged apostasy, a charge that could lead to the death penalty in the ultra-conservative kingdom, activists said.

Egypt: Women without hijabs were prevented from voting
Excerpt: So were Christians. 

Good US Debt comment posted on my blog
The national debt clock http://www.usdebtclock.org/# is a good source of information. It runs constantly. At present it indicates that there are about $122 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The national assets are estimated at about $92 trillion (a few years earlier it was estimated at $155 trillion, which, if accurate, means that the national assets of the USA have declined by $63 trillion) , so Assets -Liabilities = $30 trillion. In other words if the USA were a company and had to sell off its assets to pay its liabilities, we would be short by $30 trillion. So even if we sold off all the assets of the United States, we would be short $30 trillion and have to go into bankruptcy, because no other country has that much, i.e., nothing is too big to fail. And all of this is only Federal debt. –Howie M.

Worth Reading: Modern Wisdom from Ancient Minds. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville put forth a thesis that American democracy had a chance because the small-scale entrepreneur (see above) and autonomous, self-reliant agrarian were not so prone to the Siren-calls of the European mob. He felt that we in American would not perhaps follow the model of the fourth-century Athenian dêmos or imperial Roman vulgus that flocked to the cities for the dole, and hated the wealthy the more they taxed them (don’t think Obama will be happy with just raising rates on “millionaires”) — as if the ability to pay high taxes was always proof of the ability to pay even more.

Proposed Cuts from SS, Medicare and the Military; but not the Executive Branch?http://MinuteMenNews.com/2012/12/proposed-cuts-from-ss-medicare-and-the-military-but-not-the-executive-branch/
Excerpt: You are hearing ad nauseam in the discussion of the fiscal cliff about entitlement reform and tax reform (tax increases). What you’re not going to hear hardly anyone talking about is Executive branch reform. Why? I don’t know, but it is very disturbing. 

Obama’s Sandy Relief Bill Filled With Pork Barrel Projects
http://politicaloutcast.com/2012/12/obamas-sandy-relief-bill-filled-with-pork-barrel-projects/
Excerpt: If you’re opposed to disaster relief funding, then that means you want disaster victims to continue to suffer as much as possible. Conservative representatives in Congress would only vote against such legislation because they’re cold and heartless individuals. This is generally what liberals and big government Republicans think of those who are not in favor of the federal government giving handouts to storm victims.

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