What’s interesting in the news today?
We’ll start off with this one. A frightening story on the kidnapping of 3 women. They were all abducted as teens over a 10 year period , but thankfully all are now free. Their apparent kidnappers are in custody. Police will release more info this morning. From TheAP
“The woman’s voice was frantic and breathless, and she was choking back tears. “Help me. I’m Amanda Berry,” she told a 911 dispatcher. “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m, I’m here, I’m free now.”
Those words led police to a house near downtown Cleveland where Berry and two other women who vanished a decade ago were found Monday, elating family members and friends who’d longed to see them again.”
“At first Tejeda said she didn’t want to believe who the young woman was. “You’re not Amanda Berry,” she insisted. “Amanda Berry is dead.”
But when Berry told her she’d been kidnapped and held captive, Tejeda said she gave her the telephone to call police, who arrived within minutes and then took the other women from the house.”
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I hate to say I told you so, but…..
Welcome to the Arab Spring. In Libya, Al-Qaeda is blooming. From TheDailyBeast
“A rare interview with a top Libyan intelligence official reveals that, as an unintended consequence of the French intervention to quash a radical Muslim insurgency in nearby Mali, which forced al Qaeda in the Mahgreb to move north earlier this year, Libya has now become the main base of the terror group in the region, heightening the instability of what is already a volatile country.”
““Libya has become AQIM’s headquarters,” says the intelligence source, adding that in just the last few weeks three new al Qaeda camps have opened in southern Libya.”
“Disgruntled militiamen in league with the Muslim Brotherhood last week applied a choke hold on the government by besieging key ministries in an effort to coerce approval of a measure that is likely to collapse of the government of Ali Zeidan, plunging Libya into even greater political turmoil and weakening Libya’s ability to battle jihadists.”
On the ropes huh?
And we helped do it. We’re doing the same in Syria. And we’re about to give them more arms.
And our govt. won’t lift a finger to stop them, even when American lives are at stake. From FoxNews
“On the night of Sept. 11, as the Obama administration scrambled to respond to the Benghazi terror attacks, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a key aide effectively tried to cut the department’s own counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making, according to a “whistle-blower” witness from that bureau who will soon testify to the charge before Congress, Fox News has learned.
That witness is Mark I. Thompson, a former Marine and now the deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counterterrorism bureau. Sources tell Fox News Thompson will level the allegation against Clinton during testimony on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.
Fox News has also learned that another official from the counterterrorism bureau — independently of Thompson — voiced the same complaint about Clinton and Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy to trusted national security colleagues back in October.”
Certainly explains the order to stand down as well.
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Meanwhile back in the States, our govt found yet another way to get more tax money from us. From TheAP
“The Senate sided with traditional retailers and financially strapped state and local governments Monday by passing a bill that would widely subject online shopping — for many a largely tax-free frontier — to state sales taxes.
The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 69 to 27, getting support from Republicans and Democrats alike. But opposition from some conservatives who view it as a tax increase will make it a tougher sell in the House. President Barack Obama has conveyed his support for the measure.”
“”We ought to have a structure in place in the states that treats all retail the same,” said Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation. “Small retailers are collecting (sales tax) on the first dollar of any sale they make, and it’s only fair that other retailers who are selling to those same customers the same product have those same obligations.””
Sure. That’s the only motivation for retailers, and the extra money the govt pulls in has nothing to do with it for our elected officials. Riiiight. 🙄
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But hey it’s not all bad. The President is gonna concentrate on jobs now too. Apparently it took 4 1/2 years to focus that laser of his on jobs. He’s even gonna tour the country and tell folks about. Which will waste tons of money. Again. The Never-ending Campaign rolls on. From TheWashingtonPost
“President Obama will travel this week to Austin, where the jobs market has been booming, to kick off a new focus on the middle class and economic growth.
Obama is planning a campaign-style “Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tour” across the country, beginning Thursday in Austin, a magnet for new tech jobs. The push seems designed to help jump-start the president’s second term.”
“Now, White House officials hope that Obama, by campaigning outside of Washington, can galvanize the public and pressure Congress to back his legislative agenda, including economic measures he outlined in February’s State of the Union address.”
I love it. Hey, if you’re gonna try and grab credit for some good economic news, where else but Texas? He won’t mention that they got there by doing the opposite of what he would do, and in spite of him and his policies.
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And this last one….. The printable firearm has arrived. From HotAir
“Just to establish a baseline of what we’re talking about here, any of you who regularly watch shows like How it’s Made, Modern Marvels or any of the other science and technology offerings on cable probably already know about 3-D printing. (One of the featured manufacturers of these machines has a nice video tutorial on it.) Basically, a 3-D model is designed and the “printer” lays down one layer after another of material until the model is produced. And some of these machines are already getting down to the affordable range.
So what would you do if you got one? Well, if you’re Cody Wilson, you’d print a gun of course. Forbes has the exclusive.”
““We want to show this principle: That a handgun is printable,” says Wilson, a 24-year-old second-year law student at the University of Texas. “You don’t need to be able to put 200 rounds through it…It only has to fire once. But even if the design is a little unworkable, it doesn’t matter, as long as it has that guarantee of lethality.””
So, sure as the sun rising in the East, Dems wanna ban it.
“New York congressman Steve Israel has responded to Defense Distributed’s work by introducing a bill that would renew the Undetectable Firearms Act with new provisions aimed specifically at 3D printed components. In January, personal 3D printing firm Makerbot removed all gun components from Thingiverse, its popular site for hosting users’ printable designs.
More on the banning, and some good ol’ fashioned media fear mongering, from TheNYDailyNews
“The future just got a lot scarier.
A Texas company is set to release blueprints for making a plastic gun with a 3-D printer — a development Sen. Chuck Schumer called “stomach-churning” Sunday.
Defense Distributed, a collective of gun access advocates headed by self-described “free-market anarchist” Cody Wilson, has announced it made such an untraceable gun with the new plastic-making technology. The nonprofit Texas group intends to post blueprints for “The Liberator” (pictured) online this week.
The Liberator may look like a toy, but “this gun can fire regular bullets,” Schumer said, calling for legislation outlawing the technology’s weapons potential.”
The Daily News has no problem being a mouthpiece for anything anti-gun. Even if that means publicly attacking anyone who dares disagree. Like this, from TheNYDailyNews
“Sarah Palin showed up at the NRA convention the other day, which was merely perfect. She belonged there as much as anybody in the hall just because from the start, from the time John McCain picked her out of the chorus, Palin has most appealed to mean, dumb, angry crowds exactly like the one she found in Houston.
Palin should have worn a prom dress, but on this occasion wore a T-shirt that read “Women Hunt.” In her case, that means hunting for attention.
Or relevance.”
“She wants to be a populist and a patriot, the way the phonies cheering her on Friday think they’re patriots, and brave defenders of the Second Amendment. But all Palin did this time was turn herself out for the craziest and creepiest gun lovers on the planet. It is the same as turning yourself out for gun manufacturers.”
He goes on to whine and name call some more after calling Wayne LaPierre her pimp.
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Wandering Views 
I like the bargain of not paying sales tax online, but I am disturbed that online sellers undercut local merchants. Why shouldn’t sales tax be paid?
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Michelle, I have mixed emotions about that too. Some people shop at the mall, but buy the item online. It really isn’t fair to the store. I shopped and bought my laptop at Staples store. I don’t really like to support Amazon, but we don’t have a single book store in Hendersonville. We have a religious book store that will order books. Would you believe that I had to order The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for a Christmas present?
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Yeah, I get that. And I can certainly understand merchants views on the matter.
But we all know that the govt only has one goal. Increased revenues. It’s always their goal. They’ll hide behind the merchants to accomplish it, but do you really think for a minute it’s not just another money grab by our elected officials?
That’s the part that steams my veggies, not the merchants.
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OK, now I have another thought on the matter too.
Merchants with actual stores complain that it puts them at an unfair advantage because they have to collect and pay the sales tax to their state. That seems a fair point.
But online merchants must charge for shipping, which increases the price for consumers too. With the added sales tax, does this not put them at an unfair advantage now too? After all, in-store merchants don’t have to charge for shipping. Doesn’t this just change who get’s gored? It doesn’t seem like they “leveled the field” at all. The only real winner seems to be govt purses.
And another thing about the complaint on sales tax. If you buy online, you’re supposed to report and pay the sales tax at tax time anyway. I know most don’t, but you are supposed to.
That’s the only thing govt cares about. They don’t think people are paying it often enough, so this ensures for them that they get their unearned money out of the transaction. That’s their true motivation. Saying they’re looking out for merchants is just a good cover.
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Completely different but exactly the same.
I live in Crescent City, California, 17 miles from the Chevron gas station in Brookings Oregon. Gasoline in Oregon is at least $0.30 a gallon cheaper. Should I drive 7 miles into Crescent City to get gas or should I take my gas cans the 17 miles to Oregon?
Next time we buy a computer we will have it sent to our son in Oregon. No sales tax in Oregon.
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I’m with you, Chas. I like shopping where I can pick up and examine the item I want to buy. I usually force myself to buy it at that store, but am SO tempted to go home and order it off the Internet.
Most of the places where I order online have free shipping. For $79 a year, Amazon ships everything overnight for free. Even stuff I don’t need that fast. They got me.
As a result, the book stores are dying away and thus people are less likely to buy new authors and thus help new careers.
Someone at our church donated $700 to beef up the kid’s library with new books. I am the board of education that oversees the church library, and I got to make all the purchased. Talk about fun!
After thinking and praying, I went to the local Christian book store–since my double aim was to increase kids’ desire to read Christian books, and thus, maybe someday, encourage to buy one of mine.
I bought one copy of every kids’ book in the store (except what I deemed ridiculous), the first foray with $200. The store manager, whom I know because I had a book signing there last year, volunteered to order anything I wanted.
“Here’s the deal,” I said. “Why don’t I tell you what I want and you order it then put it on your shelf for two weeks. Anything you sell to people who come into the store, you just reorder for me. You have a guaranteed sale, your options are enlarged and people may find new authors (some of whom, I admit, are my friends).”
Family Christian Bookstores would not allow her to do that. If I ordered something, I had to pick it up. She could not offer anything corporate didn’t purchase ahead of time.
I brought in the CBD catalogue and marked up what I wanted to buy. She could only order half of my choices. Frustrated, she told me I was better off buying from CBD.
That, friends, is a tragic state of affairs.
But, the kids have got a lot of good books and I see them going out all the time.
Would sales tax make a difference?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I do love the fact that if I order something from Land’s End and I don’t like it, etc., I can return it for free to Sears . . .
So now, I try it on at Sears first.
See, I’m terrible.
Except, being able to try things on means I usually buy it from Sears. That option has saved me a lot of time and trouble. I’d rather buy clothes in a store.
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““Here’s the deal,” I said. “Why don’t I tell you what I want and you order it then put it on your shelf for two weeks. Anything you sell to people who come into the store, you just reorder for me. You have a guaranteed sale, your options are enlarged and people may find new authors (some of whom, I admit, are my friends).””
That’s genius! 🙂
And a nice way to help out a small business owner. Nice job Michelle. 🙂
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Jerusalem Post via Drudge.
Murphy at work again?
Three explosions were heard in western Tehran on Tuesday, in an area where Iran carries out missile research and storage, according to a Tweet by a BBC Persian journalist.
It was not immediately clear if there were injuries or damage in the incident.
………………..
A mysterious and massive explosion rocked a military arms depot near Tehran in November 2011, killing 17 Revolutionary Guards Corps officers and wounding 17 others.
Iranian officials said the blast was caused by an accident as soldiers moved munitions at the base in Bidganeh, near Shahriar, 45 km. west of the Iranian capital. The base is also believed to be the storage center for some of Iran’s most-advanced long-range ballistic missiles, such as the Shahab 3.
Israel and the United States have been accused over the years of working to sabotage the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and ballistic-missile programs.
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/3-explosions-heard-in-Tehran-near-missile-facility-312369
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The Constitution does not allow the states to tax interstate commerce. Charging sales tax for online sales from out of state vendors is blatantly unconstitutional.
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Didymus,
Sadly, that won’t stop them. 😦
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OK, just for fun, wouldn’t you kinda like to see a Democrat primary between Hillary and Michelle? 🙂
She does kinda seem tone-deaf enough to think it’s all about her, like her husband. With the same machine Obama had behind her, does Hillary become the almost nominee again?
Tone-deaf…….
Need a Mother’s Day gift? They got ya’ covered. 😉
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/05/michelle-obama-briefly-restarts-book-tour-stalled-163403.html
“First lady Michelle Obama briefly returned to promoting her 2012 book “American Grown” on Tuesday, telling a Washington crowd that her husband’s re-election campaign made it tough to do much when the book was released a year ago.
“If you recall, when the book came out, we were in the middle of this campaign or something or other,” she told the crowd at Politics and Prose, a bookstore in the leafy Northwest corner of the city. “So we were a little busy.”
“This second signing came just in time for a holiday when the book might sell well. “Buy away, it’s Mother’s Day coming up,” she said. “I would say I was going to give this as a gift to my mother, but she already has like 10 copies. But I might buy her another one, just for the heck of it.”
Yeah, the book completely coincidentally comes out again at Mother’s Day. Sure. 🙂 Now I don’t begrudge her the re-release/signing. That’s good marketing for a targeted audience. Just don’t act like it’s not.
But then you read something else on it this and it just get’s worse. Once again, it’s what’s often left out.
Tone. Deaf.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/07/michelle-obama-white-house-garden-semi-open-to-the-public-can-be-seen-through-the-fence/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
“Michelle Obama told an audience attending her book signing Tuesday that the White House garden is still “semi-open to the public” because visitors can see it through the fence.”
““[M]y goal in this book is to share the story of the creation of the garden,” Michelle Obama said during the Tuesday morning signing at Washington’s Politics and Prose Bookstore, “because while it is semi-open to the public — because if you visit the White House along the South Lawn, you can see the garden from outside of the White House.””
“Visitors standing outside the fence of the South Lawn can see portions of the garden at least 100 yards away, though the view can be somewhat obscured by a wall of trees and shrubbery.”
And don’t forget, the White House and grounds are closed to visitors. Sequester or something. But take the time to see a lovely photo of the view you can get from outside the WH at the DC link, taken this morning. Think 10 ft. high security structure with chains, concrete highway medians, topped by what looks like a monstrous grill grate, that judging by the amount of electrical conductors behind it, you could be fried on. Only thing missing is some barb wire. But yeah, you can make out the garden in between the grate. Somewhat. Kinda.
If you’re gonna give me veggies and circuses, at least make it believable and entertaining. Is that asking too much?
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AJ, that’s pretty funny. All the ‘little people’ peeking through the fence. 🙂
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So tomorrow’s hearings on Benghazi should be interesting. I saw where an msnbc commentator, though, said this is a “nonstory,” he can’t figure out why all the fuss … 😉 Of course he can’t …
Reminds me of how so many Republicans dismissed Watergate in the early days. What’s the big deal?
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