What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Yesterday the President blamed others, mostly the intel community, for his not noticing the rise of ISIS. His friends in the media had some excuses too. Eugene Robinson says there’s just too much info for one President to handle.
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But I think it has more to do with the fact that he’s missed over half his daily briefings.
From Breitbart “A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014.
The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second.
The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at the feet of his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.”
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There’s no accountability with this guy. He was warned by others repeatedly as well.
From TheFreeBeacon “Top government officials and military brass repeatedly warned of the consequences of sticking to a timetable on full Iraq War troop withdrawal, but President Obama proceeded with the plan in 2011 anyway.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker cautioned against such a move in the years beforehand.
“I am certain that abandoning or drastically curtailing our efforts will bring failure,” he said in 2007. “An Iraq that falls into chaos or civil war will mean massive human suffering, well beyond what has already occurred within Iraq’s borders.””
“The Daily Beast quoted one former Pentagon official saying, “Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bull&%@%%&@#.”
Obama has already tried to rewrite history in the ongoing Iraq debacle by trying to pass responsibility for full troop withdrawal to the Bush administration.”
The buck always stops somewhere else.
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2. Obama’s pass the buck presidency.
From NationalJournal ” In attempting to downplay the political damage from a slew of second-term controversies, President Obama has counted on the American people having a very short memory span and a healthy suspension of disbelief. The time-tested strategy for Obama: Claim he’s in the dark about his own administration’s activities, blame the mess on subordinates, and hope that with the passage of time, all will be forgotten. Harry Truman, the president isn’t. He’s more likely to pass the buck.
His latest eyebrow-raiser came on 60 Minutes on Sunday, when the president blamed the failure to anticipate the rise of ISIS on his intelligence community for not informing him of the growing threat. “I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” Obama said. Most early news reports dutifully pinned the blame on the intelligence agencies, with the president escaping any further scrutiny.”
“The elements of the administration’s blame, deny, and wait-it-out communications strategy has been front and center amid all the recent controversies. When the administration badly botched the launch of the health care exchange website, Obama said he was “not informed directly that the website would not be working the way it was supposed to.” This, for his signature achievement in office. Blame was later pinned on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who left the administration in April.
When officials at the Internal Revenue Service improperly targeted conservative outside groups for scrutiny, Obama first feigned outrage, saying he had “no patience for” the misconduct. But months later, as the public’s anger subsided, Obama said there “wasn’t even a smidgen of corruption” at the agency, and the administration has done little to hold anyone accountable since.”
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3. I feel safer already. After all, Obama’s told us repeatedly that religion plays no part in recent terror attacks all over the world, including Oklahoma. 🙄
From FoxNews “The Justice Department is set to announce broad restrictions on racial and religious profiling in federal investigations, including those involving matters of national security.
The expected ban comes amid heightened concerns of Islamic militant groups executing a terror attack on U.S. soil and was reportedly opposed by national security officials.
A Justice Department official told Fox News on Monday that outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder will announce the policy change in the coming weeks and that it will also put an end to profiling based on ethnicity and sexual orientation.
Holder intended to announce the policy change several months ago, but the White House ordered a last-minute hold so the Department of Homeland Security could review the national security implications, a congressional aide told The Los Angeles Times, which on Saturday first reported the story.
The new policy will add to long-standing bans on racial profiling and extend them for the first time to national-security probes.”
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4. Northeast liberals losing House seats is a good thing.
From TheWashingtonExaminer “The Northeast, once the nation’s political engine that produced presidents, House speakers and Senate giants including the late Edward M. Kennedy, is losing clout in Washington as citizens flee the high-tax region, according to experts worried about the trend.
The Census Bureau reports that population growth has shifted to the South and the result is that the 11 states that make up the Northeast are being bled dry of representation in Washington.
Critics blame rising taxes in states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut for limiting population growth in the Northeast to just 15 percent from 1983 to 2013, while the rest of the nation grew more than 41 percent.
The biggest impact comes in the loss of congressional representation.”
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5. I wonder why this isn’t bigger news? OK, not really.
From HotAir “We haven’t heard anything on the debacle at the Veterans Administration in a while, but it’s refreshing to see that when it made it back into the news it was for something good. Three of the original whistle blowers at the Phoenix VA medical center have been granted an undisclosed settlement for the retaliation they suffered for speaking out about abuse in the system.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has come to terms with three Phoenix whistle-blowers who filed retaliation complaints after helping expose mismanagement and health-care breakdowns in the Phoenix VA medical center.
The trio — Dr. Katherine Mitchell, Paula Pedene and Damian Reese — accepted mostly confidential settlements for demotions and harassment they suffered at the hands of VA administrators after exposing delays in patient care, fraudulent wait-time data, bullying and other misconduct.”
But once again, no accountability for anyone involved. Nobody pays for their actions, except the taxpayers paying the bills and judgments.
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Wandering Views 
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/09/obama_will_pay_a_price_for_blaming_intelligence_services_for_isis_failures_the_only_question_is_how_high_it_will_be.html
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Yesterday I asked what this even means “Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed.” Chas answered what the “hope” was but my point was that it’s a pretty stupid sentence. I’m guessing it means “Every recent hope of Arab countries has been betrayed” but I think that the “hope of … modern history” is a dumb construct.
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From #1.
“The buck always stops somewhere else.”
That means the buck never got there.
Obama never knew about it until he saw it in the papers.
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#2, that is. Just the wrong key and not paying attention. 😦
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“Yesterday the President blamed others, mostly the intel community, for his not noticing the rise of ISIS. His friends in the media had some excuses too. Eugene Robinson says there’s just too much info for one President to handle.”
Roosevelt handled a depression and WW II. In a wheelchair.
But he had an advantage over Obama.
He couldn’t play golf.
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#4. It is not a good thing that the northeast is NOT a good thing.
The people in the high tax states are moving to NC and making the reelection of Kay Hagan a possibility.
They are bring with them the same philosophies that made the states they are fleeing.
When they ruin this state, there’s no other place to go.
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Ricky would say come to Texas, Chas. 🙂
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This was interesting to me from a reporter’s standpoint:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/09/30/Michelle-Obama-Tells-Reporters-Not-to-Talk-to-Audience-Members
“Meg Kissinger, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, took to her Facebook page this week to report the demands of the first lady’s team as she tried to cover Obama’s visit to Milwaukee to support Democrat candidate for Governor, Mary Burke.
” ‘[A]ssigned to cover Michelle Obama’s speech today,’ the reporter posted, ‘and was told by a Mary Burke aide and one for the White House that I could not speak to the people in the crowd. To say that I was creeped out is an understatement. This is what reporters do in America: we speak to people.’ …”
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Yikes! I forgot to tell you my nephew the soccer star is going to the White House today to meet the president!
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4. when was the last time we had a president from the Northeast? Kennedy was over 50 years ago.
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kBells – Although he moved his family to Texas when he was in his 20s, George H.W. Bush was born in Massachusetts & raised in Connecticut. George W. Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut (same city I was born in), but raised in Texas.
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Michelle – Too bad it’s this president your nephew gets to meet. (Although, meeting any president is pretty cool.)
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Kbells: George H. W. Bush was born and raised in Massachusetts. I only know this because I recently read that his son, George W. Bush, was from Connecticut, and I thought “Really? I thought he was from Texas.” So I had to look it up, and sure enough, G. W. Bush was born in Connecticut, his family being from New England, and raised in Texas.
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Karen & I cross posted 🙂
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1,2. To be fair, the bush admin ignored warnings of a domestic terrorist attack. In Obama’s case, it was s more general warning. I’m not sure which is the easiest to miss — a one time very specific actionable warning or a gradual intelligence notice of increased Islamic power in the Syrian opposition. The latter seems to be something that should have been picked up but the former could have led to a more specific reaction. And to be fair again, Bush supporters gave a similar excuse. In both cases its a valid point but that’s why you have a team and experts which need to be listened too. Or maybe they should’ve had a better team. I think Bush was let down by his team wheras I don’t think Obama has that excuse.
Chas, FDR missed Pearl harbor but some conspiracy theorist will argue he did it on purpose.
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Chas beat me to it. You may have less northeastern liberals in Congress but you will have more Virginia liberals.
Donna – very strange request. Either the governor or the first lady’s aide is biting the hand that feeds them. However managing the message or messaged appears to be the name of the game.
Chas, yesterday you mentioned algebra as the only contribution of Islamic civilization but that’s not entirely true. I would their greatest contribution to western civilization was the preservation on ancient literature and philosophy. While the Catholic church ushered in the dark ages by burning ancient heretical manuscripts, several of the caliphates preserved and translated them. Of course, the phrase what have you done lately comes to mind.
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hwesseli,
I don’t remember that warning to W. Help me. what was that warning?
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Roscuro – I read that the first George was born in Mass., but the family moved to Greenwich, Connecticut when he was still a baby.
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Some missteps in the Dallas ebola case:
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/10/01/health-ebola-usa-idINKCN0HQ4QH20141001
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Chas, Donna J is right. You are still welcome here in Fort Worth. If Fort Worth goes commie, we can always move to Lubbock.
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There are three varying standards of whether a person is a Texan:
Strict: Were you born here?
Moderate: Is at least one of your parents a Texan?
Lax: Did you go to high school here?
Poor Little Bush fails every test, but he has our accent and we did elect him as governor.
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Bob — just google bush warned about 911. Its been in the media for years.
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