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News/Politics 3-10-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. It’s time to drag her in and get some answers.

From FoxNews  “In the depths of the hacker and IT-blogger community, a skirmish has broken out over the nature of Hillary Clinton’s email server — a debate that could have profound implications for national security during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, and for investigators hoping to mine her emails for evidentiary purposes.

The questions center on where, exactly, Hillary Clinton’s email server is, or was, physically located; which private-sector firms may have been hosting it; and how secure Clinton’s emails were at any given point. 

Why does the physical location matter? Because if the server was not in Clinton’s home, and was maintained at some other site, then the secretary of state and the Diplomatic Security corps that guarded her were not in physical control of her server. This would have raised the possibility for compromise of Clinton’s account, either from an inside job, carried out by the very firm retained to host the server, or from external actors that could range from the Kremlin to China to independent hackers.”

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2. The dispute intensifies…

From MSN/WaPo  “An already heated battle between the White House and Republicans over negotiations to curtail Iran’s nuclear program grew more tense Monday when 47 Republican senators sent a letter to Iran designed to kill any potential deal.

The White House responded by accusing the Republicans of conspiring with Iranian hardliners, who oppose the delicate negotiations, and suggested that their goal was to push the U.S. into a military conflict.

“It’s surprising to me that there are some Republican senators who are seeking to establish a back channel with the hard-liners in Iran to undermine an agreement between Iran and the broader international community,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest on Monday.

He characterized the Republican effort as a “rush to war or at least a rush to the military option that …is not at all in the best interest of the United States.”

The letter’s main author Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) described the one-page letter as a remedial civics lesson to help Iran’s mullahs better understand the limits of presidential power.”

Says the guy who wants to give those same hardliners a nuclear weapon…

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3. Jihad, American style.

From TheTelegraph  “Egyptis facing a new campaign of violence, this time a series of attacks targeting western companies like KFC and Vodafone.

A series of bombings has killed at least three people and injured scores more in Cairo and Alexandria in recent weeks, separate from the intense jihadist violence being inflicted by Isil-backed terrorists against the police and military.

It seems in part inspired by an American Muslim convert with an anti-capitalist agenda, who posts texts online urging Egyptians to throw off a “neo-liberal” order in favour of Islam.

Shahid King Bolsen – born Shannon Morris – served time in Dubai for killing a German businessman, and hiding his body in a suit-case. Now he inspires young radicalised Egyptians with online calls for action – though he told The Telegraph he does not approve of violence.”

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4. Hold his feet to the fire.

From WND  “Pro-life activist Jill Stanek is joining with the Christian Defense Coalition later this month to stage a sit-in on Capitol Hill over lack of action on a late-term abortion ban that was supposed to be passed in January.

The sit-in is scheduled for 11.a.m. EST on March 25 outside the office of House Speaker John Boehner.

At issue is the GOP leadership’s handling of the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” which bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy but includes exceptions for victims of rape and incest.”

“The bill was supposed to be voted on Jan. 22 in conjunction with the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion and while Washington was filled with pro-life activists for the annual March for Life. Stanek said the concept is very simple.

“It is a ban on abortion past 20 weeks,” she explained. “It is known that by 20 weeks, and probably before, children feel pain. When they are aborted at 20 weeks, they are literally drawn and quartered. They’re just ripped apart, limb by limb. So this ban would make it a federal offense [and] ban abortions past 20 weeks.” But the bill, which sailed through the House with a smaller Republican majority in the previous Congress, never received a vote.”

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5. Oh boy…. 🙄

From CNSNews  “Many people are living longer, but not to age 112 or beyond — except in the records of the Social Security Administration.

The SSA’s inspector general has identified 6.5 million number-holders age 112 — or older — for whom no death date has been entered in the main electronic file, called Numident.

The audit, dated March 4, 2015, concluded that SSA lacks the controls necessary to annote death information on the records of number-holders who exceed “maximum reasonable life expectancies.”

“We obtained Numident data that identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders born before June 16, 1901 who did not have a date of death on their record,” the report states.

Some of the numbers assigned to long-dead people were used fraudulently to open bank accounts. And thousands of those numbers apparently were used by illegal immigrants to apply for work:”

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21 thoughts on “News/Politics 3-10-15”

  1. I got this e-mail from a friend:
    “This is an album of pictures of a Muslim hand sign. It is the Muslim way of silently saying the shadaha,“the only god is allah and mohammed is his prophet”. Index finger extended vertically, symbolizing “one god.” IMPORTANT: look at the pictures at the very end.”

    The picture is three Islamic terrorists holding up their fingers in the shadaha position. The last picture is Obama doing the same thing.

    The surprising thing to me is this:
    I knew nothing about Islam before 9/11/01. I thought “Allah” was just the Muslim’s word for God. Like we say “God”, “Jehovah” rather than Yhwh. (no vowels in Hebrew)..

    Since then, I have read extensively on Islam, their religion and culture, including the Koran. I know that “Allah” is not just another word for the God we worship. However:
    I have never heard of this sign. I have not passed the e-mails on. This is new to me.
    But it wouldn’t be a surprise if true.

    Has anyone else heard of this?

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  4. Thanks for the input Kathaleena. As I said, I had never seen or heard of this before in my readings. I won’t pass it on. But, as I said, I would not be surprised if it were true.
    My first impression is that sign, to a Christian, means One Way.
    Another meaning for sports fans, is “We’re number one”.
    It’s hard to make the index finger a significant symbol.

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  5. I remember it as the symbol used by young Christians in my day, in the 1970s. It’s probably been used to mean all kinds of things depending on the context and person using it.

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  9. Chas, never heard of that before. Where I was, we had to remember not to point with the index finger, not because it was a religious sign, but because it was considered a rude gesture. They used the middle finger to point, which here is considered a rude gesture. Thus do cultures vary, and make us realize how we are the ones which give meaning to simple things.
    Speaking of culture giving meaning to things, on the claim that Allah is not just another word for God, I wouldn’t tell that to the families of the 21 Christians who were executed by ISIS. Egyptian Coptics use Allah for God, because they speak Arabic. In fact, there is evidence that Arabic Christians were using Allah for God before Islam existed. There is at least one copy of the Arabic Scriptures, which predates Islam and uses Allah. Don’t forget that the Greek theos (in the Greek New Testament) and the Germanic root for the English ‘God’ are also derived from pagan roots. It isn’t the word one uses for God, which determines whether one is a Christian or not, but what one believes about Jesus Christ.

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  10. Typical Clinton…

    Start off praising yourself, take unrelated cheap shot at your political opponents, make up lame excuses, and field questions from hand picked reporters who don’t ask anything tough, and want to hear more about her philanthropic ways… 🙄

    What a joke…

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  12. To say, “There is no God But Allah and Mohammed is his prophet” makes you a Muslim.
    to say, “There is no God but God, and Mohammed was a prophet” gets your head cut off.

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  13. Chas, I have talked to Muslims, in English, about God. In those situations, both they and I used the word ‘God’. They were talking about their concept of God, and I was talking about the God of the Bible. Besides, the shahada (“There is no God but God…) is spoken all in Arabic – even where I was, the call to prayer, which included the shahada, was in Arabic, though nobody spoke Arabic. This link may help clarify it more: http://www.jdgreear.com/my_weblog/2015/03/three-christian-misconceptions-about-muslims.html.

    This is controversial, but hear me out. Muslims claim to worship the God of Adam, Abraham, and Moses. Many missionaries find it therefore helpful to start with Muslims using the Arabic term for God, “Allah” (meaning literally, “the Deity”), and from there to explain that the God Muslims seek to worship, the God of the Prophets, was the God present in bodily form in Jesus Christ, revealed most fully by him, and the One worshipped by Christians for the past two millennia. This is not the same as saying that becoming a Muslim is like a “first step to becoming a Christian.” And it certainly doesn’t mean that Islam is an alternate way of getting to heaven. It simply means that we are both referring to the only, One deity when we say “God.”

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  14. There is also this article: http://www.equip.org/articles/allah-does-not-belong-to-islam/

    Arabic-speaking Coptic, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Maronite, evangelical, and Reformed Christians worship Allah, which is simply the word or term for God in another language. Islam does not hold a copyright to the term. In fact, Arab Christians existed before Islam appeared on the scene. Christians who worship Allah number in the millions, and their biblical version of Allah differs from the Qur’anic version. To demean or demonize the word for God in another language does a great disservice to believers who speak that language…
    It is time for all of us, especially Christians, to exercise caution when it comes to attacking the term for God in a language foreign to most of us. No other term exists in Arabic for the God Christians claim to be the one, true God. Western Christians do not normally use Hebrew terms for God in their languages. They cannot expect Arab Christians to use any other term or word for theirs. Allah is equivalent to the English God, the French Dieu, or the Spanish Dios.

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  15. We’ve got a new Sunday school class on Islam and I was surprised to hear on Sunday that their concept of Allah is he created the world and then leaves it alone.

    Which, of course, means there is no interaction between believers and Allah. At Bible study today we talked about how wonderful it is we worship a God who loves us, knows us intimately and is happy to hear our prayers and respond.

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  16. Michelle, the impersonal God of Islam is comparable to the impersonal God of Judaism. Both religions reject Christ as God, and thus have no mediator. They hope to atone for their sins by their works. Many Muslims, in their day to day life, look to the spirits for intervention, and amulets and charms are worn throughout the Muslim world; some Jews also use charms against the evil eye. I often think they are symbols of what happens when the Scriptures are added to or taken away. Judaism take away the hope of the New Testament; and Islam says the Bible is not enough and adds the Quran. Both seek God, but miss Him.

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  17. “Looking back, it would have been better if I had simply used a second typewriter. I thought using one device would be simpler, and obviously it hasn’t worked out that way.”
    – Alger Hiss

    “No one wants their personal notes made public, and I think most people understand that.”
    – Julius Rosenberg

    “I took the unprecedented step of asking that the Justice Department make all of my work-related tape recordings public.”
    – Richard M. Nixon

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  18. My energy expert advises me the Keystone Pipeline is no longer needed–the price of oil has fallen so low, the Targas (sp) Sands are no longer drilling oil.

    The US at the moment has more gallons of oil in storage around the country than in the strategic oil reserves.

    We’re awash in oil, even as other nations are drilling like mad (Russian, Saudi, Venezuela) because their economies depend on it.

    Because the world economies are moribund except for the US, we’re gaining even more advantage owing to relatively cheap energy and hard workers.

    CA, of course, is leading the way in energy stupidity. Our gasoline is $3.30 a gallon. How expensive is it in the rest of the country? Average of $2.20. We’re high because of government taxes and regulations.

    New England also is having a crunch, also do to government policies. 😦

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  19. The whole opening question was just ridiculous. They pick a Turkish reporter from a country notorious for rights violations and oppressing women to ask the first and he wants to talk about womens rights and does she think they’re only doing this because she’s a woman? Are you kidding me? I bet he never asks such questions to his rulers though. How stupid do they think we are? It was so scripted it wasn’t funny.

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