What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Terror training centers in the US and Texas? And just imagine the people easily smuggled in across the unsecured southern border.
From PJMedia “The Clarion Project has unearthed Federal Bureau of Investigations documents detailing a 22-site network of terrorist training villages sprawled across the United States. According to the documents, the FBI has been concerned about these facilities for about 12 years, but cannot act against them because the U.S. State Department has not yet declared that their umbrella group, MOA/Jamaat ul-Fuqra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
MOA stands for Muslims of the Americas, which is linked to radical Pakistani Muslim cleric Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani. The FBI documents that Clarion has obtained show that the group is headquartered in the well known “Islamberg” compound in rural New York. The facility in Texas is known as “Mahmoudberg.” It’s located in Brazoria county on County Road 3 near Sweeny. Sweeny is in far south Texas, southwest of Houston. The town of about 4,000 is a little under three hours’ drive from the state capital in Austin.”
“The Mahmoudberg compound was the site of a shooting incident in 2002. One member of the group apparently shot another by accident. Members of the group did not cooperate with a law enforcement investigation of the incident, according to the FBI documents. Women in the group wore veils over their faces and were not allowed to communicate directly with law enforcement officers.”
“The FBI documents show that MOA members have been involved in at least 10 murders, a disappearance, three firebombings, an attempted firebombing, two explosive bombings and an attempted bombing.”
And yet DHS is busy with imaginary right-wing terrorists, rather than real ones.
You can read the report from the Clarion Project here.
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2. Denial, it’s not just a river you know. 🙂
From NationalJournal “For nearly three years, the Democratic approach to the political unpopularity of President Obama’s health care law was denial. Deny it played a significant role in the party’s historic midterm losses in 2010. Insist, in the face of contradictory evidence, that as more voters experienced the benefits of the law, the more popular it would become. Deny it would be a major issue at all in the 2014 midterms.
The latest version of the argument points to polling showing that voters don’t want to repeal the law but prefer to see it fixed—perfectly in line with the newly adopted positions of vulnerable Democratic officeholders. In a memo leaked to the press, Democrats argue they can neutralize their health care vulnerabilities by promoting their desire to fix the law and blaming Republicans for intransigence in seeking a full repeal. But dig a bit deeper past the talking points, and it’s unclear what they want to fix—beyond their broken poll numbers.
Indeed, in a sign that Democrats are stuck in neutral on their Obamacare messaging, the “news” from the memo is months old. The strategy devised by the sharpest party operatives has already been in effect in numerous ads across the country and was promoted by the party’s top strategists two months ago. In those targeted races, public polling has shown Democratic standing worsening where the on-air Obamacare debate has already begun. (See: Landrieu, Mary; Hagan, Kay.)
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3. The sad reality is that as illegal as this all is, Republicans won’t do a thing about it.
From NationalReview “The president issued an executive order last week purporting to raise the minimum wage for employees of federal contractors to $10.10 an hour. The order is unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court made clear in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer that “the President’s power, if any, to issue the [executive] order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.” Furthermore, “when the president takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter.”
Nothing in the Constitution grants the president authority to set or raise the minimum wage independently of an act of Congress. Furthermore, although the president generally has authority to improve the efficient discharge of federal contracts, the president’s minimum-wage order is incompatible with the expressed and implied will of Congress.
Congress has made its will regarding the minimum wage for federal contractors abundantly clear in four separate statutes: The Service Contract Act, the Davis Bacon Act, the Walsh-Healey Act, and the Fair Labor Standards Act. Under those statutes, the minimum wage for many, if not most, employees of federal contractors is the prevailing minimum wage for employees in the specific job classification in the locality where the work is to be performed. For the remaining classifications of employees for whom no prevailing minimum wage exists, the minimum wage is slotted into the minimum for similar jobs, or is governed by the minimum set by Congress in the Fair Labor Standards Act, i.e., $7.25.”
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4. The CBO has chimed in on the minimum wage issue. Jobs lost, cost increases for every consumer.
From Reuters “Raising the U.S. federal minimum wage to $10.10, as President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are proposing, could result in about 500,000 jobs being lost by late 2016, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated on Tuesday.”
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5. In immigration news….
From TheHill “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he hopes President Obama will review possible administrative actions to halt the deportations of illegal immigrants now that reform legislation has stalled in Congress.
“I would hope that administratively, the president will do what he can to take a look at deportations, but he is being burdened by the law as it exists, and we need to change it,” Reid told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.”
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6. Once again, the Koch Bros. get slammed for the same thing. But like with Soros, Democrats can’t see their own hypocrisy. If it’s a perversion of the system when one side does it, it should be on both, no?
From NBCNews “Billionaire climate-change activist Tom Steyer could spend $100 million in the 2014 midterm election season — and maybe even more — to help Democratic candidates, NBC News confirms.”
“Is it going to take $100 million? I have no idea,” Steyer told the New York Times, which first reported this story. “I think that would be a really cheap price to answer the generational challenge of the world.”
Steyer is one of the biggest — and wealthiest — opponents of the politically charged Keystone XL pipeline.”
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7. Buyers remorse.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “Given a chance to do it all over again, only 79 percent of those who voted for President Obama would vote for him again and 71 percent of Obama voters now inclined to vote for somebody else “regret” their vote to reelect the president, according to a new poll.
The Economist/YouGov.com poll found that Obama would lose enough votes in a rematch with Mitt Romney that the Republican would win. “90 percent of people who voted for Romney would do it again, compared to only 79 percent of Obama voters who would,” said the poll.”
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Wandering Views 
Remember seeing the picture of the polar bear on the ice flow because of the melting due to global warming?
I see in today’s Times-News that snowy owls in the Artic are moving soutn.
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This is an interesting article reviewing recent changes to welfare programs here and in Europe.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371386/welfare-here-and-abroad-michael-tanner
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4. Despite nay-sayers whenever the min. wage is raised, unemployment is not the result. Theoretical this is supposed to happen but historically it doesn’t. Reality has a way of refuting theory.
6. Yes its a perversion of the system and an other indication that both parties are simply an expression of the corporate system.
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hwesseli
“4. Despite nay-sayers whenever the min. wage is raised, unemployment is not the result. Theoretical this is supposed to happen but historically it doesn’t. Reality has a way of refuting theory.”
Please give some examples.
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hwesseli
“4. Despite nay-sayers whenever the min. wage is raised, unemployment is not the result. Theoretical this is supposed to happen but historically it doesn’t. Reality has a way of refuting theory.”
Like socialism works.
or
Evolution has been proved.
or
Global warming, no, climate change is a proven fact.
or
The 2014 Super Bowl will be close.
or
Why does Joe Clark carry a turkey under his arm?
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HRW, If what you said is true, let’s raise the minimum wage to $250 an hour. Make everyone a millionaire.
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