Thursday, November 13, 2014

Today's important political news and comment

General News and Comment

Excerpt: In the old Soviet Union, Kremlinologists would read the state party newspaper Pravda not so much for the news it contained, but to glean what the commissars wanted readers to believe the commissars were thinking. The closest we have to that in America is the New York Times. Obviously, it's not a state organ and there are many fine journalists there, but it does play a similar role for the Democratic Party, often reporting less on what Democrats actually think and more on what Democrats want readers to believe is the current state of Democratic thinking.

Unprincipled Principals. By Andy Weddington
Excerpt: In response to recent commentary - 'Marine Corps Leadership Explains Crushing Defeat of Obama' - that offered perspective citing the 14 Leadership Traits, readers asked, "What about the 11 Principles?" Well, the Principles are Part II.

Satire: Feminists Demand Censorship Of “Princess Leia” Catcalling Parody Video. By Kit Daniels
Excerpt: Feminists are enraged over a viral video showing various Star Wars characters catcalling Princess Leia as she walks through New York City because they claim it “trivializes” street harassment. (I suspect the makers enjoyed the feminist reaction as much as the jokes in the video. ~Bob)

Sexual harassment dialogue reveals cultural, systemic problems on Hill
Excerpt: According to a 1997 Angus Reid survey of more than half of all the women sitting in Parliament and in provincial legislatures found that one-third of Canada’s female politicians had been sexually harassed by their colleagues. Sixty per cent said they had been subject to inappropriate or demeaning remarks related to their gender. Twenty-one per cent said they knew of female colleagues who had used sex to advance their careers. (Last line of a long article. ~Bob)

From the Classroom to the Capitol: America’s Youngest Lawmaker Is All About Ideas
Excerpt: As an 18-year-old freshman, Blair ran her general election campaign from her college dorm at West Virginia University in Morgantown. When the polls closed on Election Day, she had made history, knocking off Democrat Layne Diehl, also of Martinsville, 54.5 percent to 45.5 percent, to become the youngest elected state lawmaker in West Virginia history. On the campaign trail, Saira Blair explained her race as an attempt to persuade millennials “that we shouldn’t wait until we’re 40, 50 or 60 to understand that conservative values and principles are the way to prosperity.”

Will Bribery, Two-Tiered Ice Cream Pricing Convince Kids To Buy Michelle’s Lunches?
excerpt: “Most of our children take their lunch due to food preference or medical/allergy reasons and should not be ‘bribed’ to eat school lunch.” Another parent said it’s not fair to make ice cream more expensive for kids who bring their lunches from home. “It irritated me that they weren’t giving a fair opportunity to everybody,” the mad mom told the station. (Just as under Communism in the USSR, some people get more from the Party than others. Bribery for behavior modification with something simple...eat here...then.... Barb)

Obama veers left after red wave
Excerpt: In a surprise, he announced a major deal on climate change with China during a trip to Beijing Tuesday. That followed another unanticipated move — a Monday statement pressuring the Federal Communications Commission to adopt new net neutrality rules for the Internet. The moves are helping to rally a dispirited Democratic base while re-establishing Obama’s political leadership after he was sidelined during the midterms. (Veers? No, he still is running a command economy and with no pending elections, is king. Incidentally, even the Russians have found out the command economic systems do not work without some capitalism....Barb. deal with China is non-binding--they won't keep it, of course. In my view, he'd have moved even further left if the Dems had won. ~Bob)

One Third of Part-Time Workers Struggling to Find Full-Time Work, CareerBuilder Study Finds
Excerpt: Even as full-time, permanent employment gets closer to pre-recession levels, part-time workers are still struggling to find full-time jobs. According to a new CareerBuilder study, 32 percent of part-time workers say they want to work full time, but haven't been able to land a full-time job. (But the workforce is the lowest in 40 years. ~Bob)

Elizabeth Warren and the long history of conveniently invented leadership titles. By Jaime Fuller 
Excerpt: Soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is talking with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) about a new leadership position. It would make Warren a liaison with liberal groups and ostensibly make her a bigger voice during the Democratic Party's messaging and policy brainstorm sessions. As Paul Kane notes, "Expanding the leadership table -- Warren's position was created specifically for her -- is a way to answer the critics who think that Reid's team became insulated in recent years, according to senior Democratic aides." Elizabeth Warren also happens to be exceptionally popular with the Democratic Party base, unlike many of her colleagues. Hmm, this is starting to make sense. (Well, it's about damn time the Democrats added a 0ne/thirtysecond-by-family-legend Native American to Leadership. People will think they don't include "Redskins" in their diversity meme. ~Robert A. Hall, Republican Whip, Massachusetts Senate, 1981-82 and one-sixteenth Woodland Cree according to my grandmother.)

Forcing females into combat is real ‘war on women.’ The generals don’t seem to care that women don’t have the muscle to survive the battlefield. By Elaine Donnelly
Excerpt: Now that voters have disposed of the phony “war on women,” can we talk about real women fighting future wars. More than 92 percent of active-duty Army women said in a recent official survey that they do not want and would not take direct ground combat (infantry) assignments. Nevertheless, President Obama plans to order women into the combat arms by January 2016. (Well, obviously this is another woman who is a traitor to her gender, how dare she make detailed comments against the idea of women in the infantry? But hey, maybe she is just into facts and logic. I'll go out on a limb here and bet she isn't a registered Democrat. Anyhow, let's hope that the facts and logic eventually work their way back into how the military makes decisions about sending people into combat. --Del. Elaine has been engaged in this fight a long time - she (brunette - above shoulders) is seated to Gen Barrow's immediate starboard during his 1991 SASC testimony (YouTube) on women in combat. She is the longtime president of the Center for Military Readiness. She has not served in the military. But she gets it, is bright, does her (empirical) homework, and is a meticulous analyst and superb writer. And she does not quit! --Andy)

Important: The American Century Is Over. The Eurasian Century Has Begun
Excerpt: There’s hardly a more graphic illustration of where the multipolar world is going than what just happened at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Beijing. Take a very good look at the official photos. This is all about positioning – and this being China, pregnant with symbolic meaning. Guess who’s in the place of honor, side by side with President Xi Jinping. And guess where the lame duck leader of the “indispensable nation” has been relegated. The Chinese can also be masters at sending a global message

What Many Do Not Realize about Businesses and Taxes
Excerpt: The Tax Foundation has a new report showing just how businesses are doing in today's economy. While political commentators often talk about businesses as if they are their own entities, the report begins by noting that laws that impact businesses ultimately impact people: "[T]he reality is that businesses are simply groups of people; they are workers, consumers, and shareholders." As such, a tax on business is not a tax on some faceless corporate entity, but ultimately a tax on individual citizens, whether it results in lower wages for workers or higher prices for consumers. The report offers a number of statistics and figures that many people may not realize about businesses and corporations, including: Many people believe that corporations receive excessive amounts of tax breaks; in reality, it is individuals -- not corporations -- that receive the vast majority of tax breaks. In 2014, just 13 percent of all tax expenditures will go to corporations, according to the Office of Management and Budget, while the remaining 87 percent will go to individuals. High individual income tax rates on high income earners actually tax many businesses, because many businesses are "pass-through" entities, meaning that business profits are taxed when the individual owner pays his own income taxes. Seventy-four percent of income from pass-through businesses is earned by individuals with incomes of more than $100,000.

The Midterms: Watch How an Elephant Responds When Attacked by 14 Lions

Worth Reading: This president is different. By Paul Greenberg
Excerpt: The current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has just been presented with an impressive vote of confidence -- in the opposition. Midterm elections will happen. But strong presidents don't let the well-known six-year blues bother them. They don't need validation; they know who they are, where they stand, and they just keep on keeping on. They have an identity, they've earned it over the years, and they're not about to bargain it away for a brief boost in the always evanescent polls. The country doesn't need a president who's popular, just one who's right. Even if it may take the long perspective of history to prove it.

Pill to Make You Smart?
Excerpt: It sounds like a science-fiction scenario, but scientists may have discovered a way to make you smarter that could pave the way for a new pill to boost intelligence. Researchers at Stanford University found that by interfering with PirB — a protein expressed in animal brain cells that allows skills to be recalled but which also hampers the ability to learn new skills — they could allow the brain to make faster connections, The Independent reports. In tests involving laboratory animals, lead researcher Carla Shatz and her colleagues, Dr. David Bochner and Richard Sapp they could make least one part of the brain become more malleable and more easily recover from damage, rewire itself, and learn new skills — in effect making a person smarter. (They just discovered a "stupid" virus. Now they have a "smart" pill. --Barb)

Colleagues Weigh In On 'Stonewalled'
Excerpt: “Forty years ago Woodward and Bernstein exposed the rampant dishonesty inside the White House, spawning an entire generation of journalists dedicated to investigating the government and holding those in power accountable. Four decades later, one of America’s few remaining premier investigative journalists has penned an explosive book detailing just how far short her profession has fallen in keeping to those ideals. Sharyl Attkisson’s Stonewalled examines the power exerted by the corporations that control the media, the ruthless tactics used by the Obama administration and its allies to manipulate and control the news narrative, and the complacency of many of her colleagues in challenging the entrenched special interests. (New book. --Barb)

Gun News

‘It’s Very Disheartening’: Colorado Teachers Swarm Gun Training Course — But Can’t Put That Training to Use in the Classroom. By Zach Noble
Excerpt: More than 500 Colorado teachers — two-thirds of them women — flocked to a free concealed carry class on Saturday, KMGH-TV reported. The class was aimed at making schools safer, but most of the teachers won’t be able to put their training to use in the classroom, because Colorado schools are “gun-free” zones.

Ebola and Enterovirus News

Excerpt: The spokesperson for the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, Kristen Nordlund, told The Blaze that the agency could not confirm they have a database of people who are arriving in the U.S. from West African nations affected by the deadly Ebola virus. “Nordlund could not confirm if the CDC had a national database to track all persons who have arrived to the U.S. from West African nations that may have been exposed to Ebola.” So who is keeping track of these folks? (As the Israeli news group pointed out the other day, that is IF they don't lie about where they've been or whom they've been exposed to in the first place...Barb)

UPDATE: CDC Expands Risk Factors to Include Airborne Infection [WAS] Alert! CDC Removes FEVER from Ebola Case Definition & Adds Fatigue As A Symptom
http://www.pissinontheroses.blogspot.com/2014/10/alert-cdc-removes-fever-from-ebola-case.html
Excerpt: The CDC has removed fever from the Ebola Case Definition, and replaced it with the more nebulous definition of "Elevated body temperature or subjective fever or symptoms". The CDC has also added "Fatigue" to the case definition. ... Any person who meets those two above definitions and in the subject eyes of an examiner has any "signs" of concern such as elevated body temperature (98.7 deg F) is now defined as a "Person Under Investigation" for Ebola. And as such, that person is subject to forceful quarantine.

Ebola Vaccination Fury: Johnson & Johnson To Have 1/4 Million Ebola Vaccine Courses Ready By May 2015 & 1 Million By December 2015
Excerpt: According to testimony to be given tomorrow in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations Hearing on “U.S. Government Response: Fighting Ebola and Protecting America”, The Ebola vaccination furry will be underway by May 2015 when Johnson & Johnson will have 250,000 doses of Ebola vaccine ready to split up between the US government, WHO, & African Nations. The obvious outfall of this effort is that American Healthcare Workers should expect mandatory Ebola vaccination within the next year.

Race Card News

Tweet from BT ‏@back_ttys  
President who basically convicted Darren Wilson in front of the UN and CBC is now worried about violence.

Black males murder five year old white girl in Milwaukee. No national outrage
Excerpt: Two black males in Milwaukee walked up to the home of a white family, in a majority black neighborhood, and unleashed a hail of gunfire. A five year old white girl was murdered while sitting on her grandfather’s lap. Milwaukee police say there is no question the shooters were deliberating trying to kill people inside the house. At least a dozen bullets were fired directly into the house. There may have been a third person driving a getaway car. (if the girl had been black, there still would have been no outrage. Unless, of course, the shooters were white. Then the riots would go on for weeks. ~Bob)

Explosive Charges: Black Democrat Alleges Racism in Lawsuit against Ohio Democratic Party. State rep. says there is a "plantation-style management of black public officials" in the state.
Excerpt: Barnes said he feared it would harm his reputation to “associate with an organization whose moral compass he found to be troubling.” The lawsuit mentions members of the caucus who have been convicted of felony and misdemeanor offenses in the last three years. According to the complaint, Barnes ”saw little value to himself or to his district” in joining OLBC and “wanted to be treated as an individual rather than as a member of a presumed monolithic block of votes based upon his skin color.” (Now, y'all remembah that the KKK was formed by the Democratic Paaarty. That's American history..."long forgotten, look away." --Barb)

Why I Fear for the People of Ferguson: The violence seen after the Michael Brown shooting, as bad as it was, was but a dress rehearsal for the real show about to begin.
Excerpt: On the afternoon of January 20, 2009, just a few hours after President Obama was sworn in for his first term, I was in a marked police car and driving through South-Central Los Angeles. The atmosphere in the area was festive – unusual in a place where there is not often much cause for celebration. I was stopped at a red light on a busy street, and when the light changed to green I started to drive through the intersection when something in the corner of my eye caused me to brake. 

URGENT: Here’s the Leaked Email Warning St. Louis Citizens About Ferguson
Excerpt: Fueling the speculation that a grand jury decision will be announced soon is the fact that Ferguson, and other St. Louis area police departments, have been prepping for war. The Missouri National Guard has also been doing extensive training over the past couple of months and have recently staged themselves and their military equipment in and around Ferguson. On top of that, a leaked email from a major office building complex in downtown St. Louis warning tenants to get ready for the expected chaos, leads many to believe that riots could break out as soon as this weekend. (H/T Truth Revolt)

Obamacare/Government Healthcare News

Actually, several lies. ~Bob

Excerpt: You may remember that one of the key minds behind Obamacare, MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, was pretty sure that Obamacare subsidies couldn’t be distributed unless it happened through a state exchange . . . until he wasn’t. (That legal theory will be put to the test soon since the Supreme Court has agreed on Friday to hear the challenge.)

White House disagrees with 'stupidity' comments
Excerpt: The White House press secretary denied that the administration had obfuscated aspects of the law, saying officials and the president had spent significant time in multiple forums explaining how it would work. Instead, Earnest accused Republicans of looking to hide how they would tackle the issue of healthcare. “It is Republicans who have been less than forthright and transparent about what their proposed changes to the Affordable Care Act would do,” Earnest said. (I believe not 1 Republican voted for such. --Barb. We already know for fact that Obama lied repeatedly to get Obamacare through. ~Bob)

CBS News on Obamacare: "Higher Costs, Higher Penalties." By Guy Benson
Excerpt: CBS News summarizes several of the unhappy developments consumers will encounter in the coming days and weeks: "With the Affordable Care Act to start enrollment for its second year on Nov. 15, some unpleasant surprises may be in store for some. That's because a number of low-priced Obamacare plans will raise their rates in 2015, making those options less affordable. On top of that, penalties for failing to secure a health-insurance plan will rise steeply next year, which could take a big bite out of some families' pocketbooks. "

Pelosi Claims "I Don't Know Who He [Gruber] Is"--2009 Vid Proves She's Lying. By Greg Hengler

Excerpt: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that, not only did Jonathan Gruber not play a significant role in drafting Obamacare, but that she doesn't even "know who he is." ... But then there's this: Pelosi herself has also mentioned Gruber and his work -- back in November 2009, at the height of the Obamacare debate. Here's the transcript, via Nexis:

Gruber Says ObamaCare Built On Lies; This Is News?
Excerpt: ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber has been taking plenty of flak this week after videos surfaced of him saying lawmakers deliberately misled "stupid" Americans to get it passed. But why is this a surprise to anyone? In a tape of a 2013 conference that made the rounds this week, MIT economist Gruber says that if ObamaCare had transparent financing and premium subsidies, it never would have become law. (OK, so now everybody who is moderately awake knows that one of the architects of ObamaCare counted on deception, confusion, and the stupidity of the American voter to get the Bill passed. The article below goes into it nicely. It doesn't mention that the professor got paid $400K for his work on the Bill. So maybe we can let go of the idea that he was just a sincere guy trying to do good for all his fellow citizens. I'm wondering how all those who were so defensive of ObamaCare and how it was the "will of the people" will defend this now. --Del)

Excerpt: But wait, there’s more! A third video has been found: “It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012.

Study: Immigrants Are Boosting Obamacare’s Medicaid Expansion Rolls The Most
Excerpt: Immigrants and their families are disproportionately taking advantage of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, according to a new study from the anti-amnesty Center for Immigration Studies. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 42 percent of the growth of Medicaid enrollment between 2011 and 2013, according to the report, although they make up just 17 percent of the U.S. population. By 2013, a quarter of all immigrants and their children were on Medicaid; in contrast, 16 percent of natural-born Americans and their children are on the health program for those with low incomes.

Medicare Paying for Unnecessary Drug Testing for Seniors
Excerpt: It's far from likely that a senior citizen would use the drug "angel dust" (PCP), but Medicare spent $14 million in 2012 to test seniors for the drug. In fact, reports the Wall Street Journal, the federal drug program spent $445 million in 2012 to test for drug abuse among seniors, a 1,423 percent increase from five years earlier. What's responsible for the increase? Doctors who provide pain medication to patients are encouraged to test their patients for drug abuse, or the tests may reveal that patients are actually selling the pills to others, an issue that NCPA Senior Fellow Devon Herrick recently wrote about in a report on prescription drug fraud. In years past, doctors used basic urine tests, but Medicare became concerned that some health care providers were abusing the tests in order to bill the program for more money. As a result, Medicare limited billing for those tests, setting caps on payments. High-tech drug tests, however, have no billing limitations, and some health care providers began using those tests instead, billing Medicare for tests for a variety of drugs, including cocaine, heroin, angel dust and ecstasy. Medicare pays providers a separate amount for each drug that is tested.

Four Times Obamacare Advocates Admitted It Will Kill Old People
Excerpt: Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who has said that he wishes to die at age 75, wrote in February 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association: Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change. He added that the Hippocratic Oath was to blame, since it encourages doctors to care for the patients before them without concern for “cost or effect on others.” ... Then there’s former Clinton Labor Secretary and Obama economic advisor Robert Reich, who explained in September 2007: “if you're very old, we're not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. 

Undocumented Democrat News

Dem Pollster: Obama Will 'Poison The Well' With Executive Move On Immigration. By Matt Vespa
Excerpt: Over at the Washington Free Beacon, they pulled this clip from a Wall Street Journal event this morning, where Democratic Pollster Peter Hart said this opening salvo for the 114th Congress will pretty much "poison the well"–and would set another very divisive tone for the upcoming 114th Congress.

Voting 'no' on Obama's immigration policies. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: In reaction, President Obama sulked, threatening to quickly push through an unpopular amnesty by executive order. Obama apparently knows that he enjoys neither public nor congressional support for his planned executive fiat. In an increasingly multiracial society, voters -- including many Mexican Americans -- see mostly illogic, hypocrisy and chaos in the present relaxed immigration policy of the partisan-minded Obama administration. They grow weary of identity politics that privilege some immigrant groups over others based on no definable, much less consistent, logic.

Video: (Rep.) Sheila Jackson Lee: Deporting Illegal Immigrants Violates The 8th Amendment

Martin Scott Catino: Drug traffickers latest trouble for U.S. at Mexican border
Excerpt: Highway 80 in southeastern Arizona is an eerie ride in this otherwise beautiful stretch of jagged mountains, boulder-strewn landscapes and powder-blue skies. U.S. border patrol vehicles punctuate this scenic and lightly traveled road, which stretches through the town of Douglas to Apache, where a monument to the surrender of Native American outlaw Geronimo stands. But the modern outlaws who roam these ranches a mere 15 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border show no sign of surrender. Heavily armed drug traffickers stealthily move in camouflaged uniforms between the shift changes of border patrol agents and in the darkness of night, using night-vision goggles, advanced communications, sophisticated movements and diversions — tactics learned from the Mexican army and other military experts. (I happen to be fortunate enough to know the author of this article personally, and he's a very consciously contributing American citizen. Yep, one of those people who clings to religion and a few personal weapons, like perhaps more than a few others on this mailing list. The article just reinforces strongly the bad situation at our border. I can't blame the cowboys and ranchers for being apprehensive about the drug cartels, they have killed people there in the past and are undoubtedly more than willing to kill anyone else who they think might be in their way. They might come in the night to anyone's house and spray automatic weapons fire through all the walls. When one rancher was really active and detained illegals passing across his ranch, he got sued by the US government for being nasty to people, and was in court for a long time at high cost. This pretty much told everyone else that the government was not interested in their problems and they should just shut up and look the other way. The damage done to property and the environment is ignored of course; if they could say that Tea Party people did the same damage, it would be a very different thing. --Del)

Apache Arizona - A Border Manifesto. By Ed Ashurst
Excerpt: I believe story telling to be an art form, certainly verbal record is the oldest form of recording history and recognized by historians worldwide. There is an old adage among those who love to tell a good tale, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." And yet there are times when the truth is even more fantastic than exaggeration. ... I reside on, and manage a large cattle ranch in the far southeastern corner of Arizona. I've been here for 13 years and in that time frame have become far too familiar with the illegal trafficking in human beings, marijuana and other illicit drugs. Some have called it "the wetback culture" or "America's border problem". Lately it's been taking steroids. (I came across this tonight, while looking at articles about the amount of environmental damage done to some of the delicate ecosystems of the deep desert inflicted by the steady traffic of people coming across the border for years on years now. That's a whole subject in itself, but reading this article by one of the people living right in the midst of it all really got my attention. How would any of us feel, living in the area and under such conditions, and with the knowledge that getting any justice for the thefts, damage, and even murders is essentially hopeless. Meanwhile, the rancher who used to capture and hold illegals until the Border Patrol came for them has finally been slammed with an $87,000 judgment for four illegals who claimed he had physically mistreated one of them. Other lawsuits cleared him of violating any civil rights of these illegals, but somehow a whole team of activist lawyers kept this going in court for several years and convinced a court that, even absent any physical evidence, he had been too unkind to these illegals and had to pay them for their pain and anguish. So we have a system in this country that can't stop illegals from coming across the border in groups, all the time, but we sure can come down on an American who tried to help stop it. How crazy is this? --Del)

Father Asks Obama To Use Executive Order To Bring Son Slain By Illegal Alien Back To Life
Excerpt: While your Executive Order pad is out, can you write one to bring my son and the tens of thousands (actually over 100,000) killed by illegal aliens back to life and to bring our destroyed families back together?” asks Don Rosenberg in a letter to Obama. His son Drew was killed by an illegal alien who ran over him in 2010.

4 Turkish (men) caught in Texas after being smuggled across border
Excerpt: Four men flew from Istanbul through Paris to Mexico City in late August, where they were met by a Turkish-speaking man who stashed them in a safe house until their Sept. 3 attempt to cross into the U.S. over the border with Mexico.

Wow. Look What an Illegal Immigrant Did to a 3-Year-Old Girl Waiting for the Ice Cream Truck
Excerpt: A drunk 18-year-old illegal immigrant driving without a license on Sunday crashed through a fence and killed a 3-year-old girl as she waited in line for an ice cream truck in Porterville, Calif. Adolfo Balbuena killed Angeles Moreno, he then backed up and drove away. Three others, including a worker in the ice cream truck, were also treated for their injuries.

Report: Obama Executive Amnesty, 10-Point Plan Coming As Early As Next Week [VIDEO]
Excerpt: President Obama is preparing to announce a 10-part plan next week to redo the immigration system, which would include the suspension of deportations for millions of immigrants residing in the nation illegally and boost border security, according to a Fox News report Wednesday night. Among the most contentious items on the agenda is the administration’s plan to extend “deferred action” to millions of young people. ...Also in the fold within the 10-point agenda is the administration’s plan is to expand the number of young people allowed to remain in the U.S.

"You're Greener than Gore" News


White House hints at veto of Keystone bill
Excerpt: The White House on Thursday hinted that President Obama could veto congressional legislation approving the Keystone XL pipeline as lawmakers in both the House and Senate were readying votes on the controversial construction project. "Our dim view of these kinds of proposals has not changed,” press secretary Josh Earnest said. Earnest reiterated that the State Department was still reviewing the controversial pipeline project, and that litigation in a Nebraska court still needed to be resolved.

Senate Democrats Said to Consider Keystone Vote Soon. By Kathleen Hunter and Jim Snyder 
Excerpt: Senate Democrats are looking at taking a vote in the lame-duck session starting today to force approval of TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL pipeline, in an effort to bolster Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu’s re-election chances, a party aide said.

Excerpt: President Obama’s “historic” agreement with China on climate change will cost you more money. Not only will it raise energy costs for all Americans, it will weaken our economy and decrease our nation’s competitive advantage. (And when China doesn't honor the agreement, we will send then a strongly-worded note along with our next request to borrow money to fund vote buying. ~Bob)

Common fracking chemicals no more toxic than household substances. By Laura Snider, CU-Boulder Media Relations
Excerpt: The “surfactant” chemicals found in samples of fracking fluid collected in five states were no more toxic than substances commonly found in homes, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers at the Univ. of Colorado Boulder. Fracking fluid is largely comprised of water and sand, but oil and gas companies also add a variety of other chemicals, including anti-bacterial agents, corrosion inhibitors and surfactants. Surfactants reduce the surface tension between water and oil, allowing for more oil to be extracted from porous rock underground. (I am very glad to see some actual science applied to the controversy about fracking. As a chemist and an environmentalist, I do believe that any insertion of materials, even plain old water, into deep underground strata must be carefully watched. It is too easy sometimes to make a mess of things as undesirable side effects of something productive. Burning coal to make the power we all love to live with makes coal ash, so that has to be dealt with. (Personally I haven't figured out why it isn't just trucked down into old mines, seems a reasonable thing to do.) We don't want our grandchildren to wake up to some kind of disaster 40 years from now because of fracking, but so far it seems as if this has been a practice dating back decades in PA, with no trace of bad results. I would like to hope that both the people doing it and the government have done and continue to do studies about the long term effects of the practice. --Del)

Feds Aim To Control Virtually 'Any Wet Spot': 'Largest expansion of power ever proposed'
Excerpt: The change to the definition of water and water bodies could impact millions of landowners, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has won water-related disputes at the U.S. Supreme Court. “On its face, the proposed rule covers virtually every water in the nation,” the team told the government in a comment procedure in advance of any final decision on the plan.... The rule is so broad “it could lead to practically unlimited expansion of federal control over property nationwide.”

Religion of Peace News

Interesting: Naming Names: Midterm Recipient Candidates of Islamist Donations. By Susan Horton
Excerpt: What about those Muslims who seek to replace our Constitution with the Quran and apply Sharia law in its entirety and severity? In other words, someone who seeks to not just sway a candidate to tweak the tax code but to ultimately renovate the whole Constitution of the United States for their version of Islamic law. Until now Islamists campaign contributions have been (unknown). A new initiative of the Middle East Forum’s Islamic Watch provides a first look at the dimensions of this lobby, using a sortable database. The Islamic money in Politics (IMIP) project (atislamist-watch.org/money-politics) finds out that over the past 15 years, prominent figures associated with 6 leading American Islamist organizations have donated almost $700,000 to federal U.S. candidates.

Obama seeks new Syria strategy review to deal with ISIS, al-Assad
Excerpt: President Barack Obama has asked his national security team for another review of the U.S. policy toward Syria after realizing that ISIS may not be defeated without a political transition in Syria and the removal of President Bashar al-Assad, senior U.S. officials and diplomats tell CNN. The review is a tacit admission that the initial strategy of trying to confront ISIS first in Iraq and then take the group's fighters on in Syria, without also focusing on the removal of al-Assad, was a miscalculation. (How could we have seen this coming? Well, maybe if we’d recognized that while a lot of the Syrian rebels dislike ISIS and fear the group, they really dislike Assad and really fear him and his allies. Helping them in the fight against only the former was not much of a way to build a competent opposition we liked. It’s even worse than just a sin of omission: The Syrian rebels knew, long before this was basically admitted in Washington, that the most effective fighting forces in Syria are ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the local al-Qaeda affiliate. (The next most effective fighting forces, excluding the Kurds, are just non-al-Qaeda Islamists who cooperate with al-Qaeda.) So we’re bombing their best chance at unseating Assad, while not bombing Assad. The situation is a mess, but this kind of problem is exactly why assailing Obama for not having a strategy is much more than just a cable-news canard. Incoherence won’t cut it. -- Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt http://www.nationalreview.com/newsletters)

Jabhat al-Nusra Squeezes Out U.S.-Backed Syrian Rebels. By John Rossomando
Excerpt: Gains by al-Qaida linked Jabhat al-Nusra in northwestern Syria threatens to leave the U.S. with few options on the ground in that region. Jabhat al-Nusra recently attacked and overran Harakat al-Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) led by Jamal Maarouf, two key American aligned militias that the Obama administration saw as key parts of its strategy against the Islamic State (IS). (Not to worry. We have General Barry Lead-From-Behind Obama planning our strategy. ~Bob)

A new law proposed in Iran would make walking, owning or selling a dog a crime punishable by 74 lashes and a fine of $370 to $3,700.
Excerpt: A new law proposed in Iran would make walking, owning or selling a dog a crime punishable by 74 lashes and a fine of 10 to 100 million rials ($370 to $3,700). Violators could also be arrested. Although the bill was proposed by 32 hardline MPs, many of 290 members of Iran’s Majles (parliament) are conservatives who sympathize with the hardliners. The target of the bill appears to be young people as well as wealthy Iranians who are drawn to imitate Western culture. (In about ten years, there will be proposals to legally limit dog ownership in the US, so we won't violate Muslims constitutional right not to be offended. Offending Christians and Jews will still be politically correct. ~Bob)

Holidays’ names stricken from next year’s Montgomery schools calendar. By Donna St. George
Excerpt: Christmas and Easter have been stricken from next year’s school calendar in Montgomery County. So have Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Montgomery’s Board of Education voted 7 to 1 Tuesday to eliminate references to all religious holidays on the published calendar for 2015-2016, a decision that followed a request from Muslim community leaders to give equal billing to the Muslim holy day of Eid al-Adha. (Personally, I'd have included the Muslim holidays. Good to know when to be more alert. ~Bob)

'I Am Not Malala' Day Observed by Pakistani Schools
Excerpt: A network of private schools in Pakistan observed “I am not Malala day” in protest against Malala Yousafzai, a young Pakistani activist for girls' education. The All Pakistan Private Schools Federation condemned Malala for her perceived support of controversial novelist Sir Salman Rushdie. The federation had previous banned Yousafzai's autobiography for what it said was the book’s "anti-Pakistan and anti-Islam content." (Our schools should have "I am Malala Day." But of course, it would offend Muslims. Who were not offended when the Taliban shot her in the head. ~Bob)

Fighting the Real War on Women: From FGM Victims, These Women Became Anti-FGM Activists
Excerpt: Jaha hopes to raise awareness and fight FGM: she wants to debunk the myth that FGM happens only in far-off countries; rather it is a very real and current issue also in the United States. Although FGM is illegal in the USA, many find ways of carrying out this practice either through secret procedures or by smuggling girls overseas to undergo the procedure. Jaha started an organization Safe Hands for Girls in order to give girls all over the US the chance to share their problems and speak up against FGM. (Of course, Progressives are silent about FMG, because "all cultures are equally valid." ~Bob)

'Muslims of the Americas' Says Hitler Was Not Enemy of U.S.
Excerpt: The Pakistan-based, anti-Semitic leader of the Muslims of the Americas organization has published a shocking new statement downplaying the evil of Hitler and accusing the British government of using the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS) as a front. Muslims of the Americas (MOA) is led by Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani and says it has 22 “Islamic villages” around the U.S., including its 70-acre "Islamberg" headquarters in New York. MOA is a splinter group of Gilani’s militant Jamaat ul-Fuqra group in Pakistan.

Watch This Little Syrian Hero Runs Through Sniper Fire To Save Girl

A Turkish Quest to "Liberate" Jerusalem. By Burak Bekdil
Excerpt: Turks have a different understanding of what constitutes an occupation and a conquest of a city. The Turkish rule is very simple: The capture of a foreign city by force is an occupation if that city is Turkish (or Muslim) and the capture of a city by force is conquest if the city belongs to a foreign nation (or non-Muslims). For instance, Turks still think the capture of Istanbul in 1453 was not occupation; it was conquest.

The Islamic State Billboards of Raqqa (Part 2). By Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi
Excerpt: As an appropriate follow-up to my Jihadology archive of billboards put up by what was then the Islamic State in/of Iraq and ash-Sham [ISIS] in the city of Raqqa during the summer and fall of last year, here is the latest series of billboards put up by what is now just the Islamic State [IS] in Raqqa. The difference in dynamics this time is that the city is solely controlled by IS, rather than power sharing with Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. Unsurprisingly, given the ongoing international coalition campaign against IS, much emphasis is put on the war with the Western-led coalition.

Fear and Loathing in Jerusalem. By Jonathan Spyer
Excerpt: The current atmosphere in Jerusalem is reminiscent of the Second Intifada's opening days, in the autumn of 2000. Tension and fear. A sense of foreboding. "I can feel it in my bones, what's coming," says Daniella, a native Jerusalemite who owns a restaurant in central west Jerusalem, and whose sister was killed in a suicide bombing in 2002.

Egypt sailors missing after navy ship attacked in Med
Excerpt: Gunmen have attacked an Egyptian navy ship in the Mediterranean Sea, state media say, leaving five servicemen injured and eight more missing at sea. The vessel reportedly caught fire in the assault, some 70km (45 miles) off the northern port of Damietta. In two further attacks in northern Sinai, militants killed five policemen and soldiers, officials said. (think the gunmen were the hated Jews? ~Bob)

Libya bombings: Tobruk and al-Bayda attacked
More fruit of Obama unauthorized lead-from-behind war. ~Bob

Young Dutch Turks’ radical views worry MPs, call for more research
Excerpt: MPs from across the political spectrum have called for more research into the attitudes of young Dutch Turks to the Islamic State, after a poll of 300 showed 80% saw nothing wrong in jihad, or holy war, against non-believers. The research, carried out by the Motivaction group in Amsterdam, was commissioned by the Forum multicultural institute.

Iranian Official: Some of Obama's Letters Were Answered
Excerpt: Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, later responded to the reports of the letter and said, “We are in no way engaged in any coordination - military coordination - with Iran on countering ISIS.” Khamenei has more than once called for Israel's destruction, the latest incident coming just this week, when he launched a Twitter tirade against Israel, saying that the only “cure” for Israel is its annihilation.

*****

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://tiny.cc/g02s4 For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. Hall’s eleven books are listed here: http://tinyurl.com/o4nu65u. His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com.

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