What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The many costs of Obama’s amnesty.
From Investors.com “Seeing as the costs will come due only after President Obama has left the White House, I guess he doesn’t care how high those costs are. But the costs are horrendous, as just added up by our country’s foremost authority on such things, Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation.
Rector told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week that the lifetime costs of Social Security and Medicare benefits paid to the millions of immigrants to whom Obama is granting legal status will be about $1.3 trillion.
Rector’s calculation is based on his assumption that at least 3.97 million immigrants will receive legal status under Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, and the average DAPA beneficiary has only a 10th-grade education.
DAPA recipients, according to Rector’s calculations, will receive $7.8 billion every year once they get access to the refundable earned income tax credit and the refundable additional child tax credit. Those EITC and ACTC recipients will also be allowed to claim credit for three years of illegal work, which will sock U.S. taxpayers for another $23.5 billion.”
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2. Tell us something we don’t know.
From TheTimesOfIsrael “he White House was directly involved in an attempt to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last week’s general election, during a nadir in ties between the Israeli leader and US President Barack Obama, a senior Jerusalem official said Tuesday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Times of Israel that “it’s no secret” that the Obama administration had attempted to influence the outcome of the election, having been partially motivated by a desire for revenge over Netanyahu’s polarizing speech before Congress earlier this month, which sought to undermine the president’s key foreign policy initiative – a nuclear deal with Iran.
“The White House is driven by three main motives,” the senior official said. “The first is revenge [over the Congress speech]. The second is frustration: It’s no secret that they were involved in an attempt to bring down the Netanyahu government – something that we have clear knowledge of – and failed. The third [motive] is the administration’s attempt to divert attention from the negotiations with Iran to the Palestinian issue.”
Netanyahu’s latest term in office has seen an unprecedented, unmasked animus seep into the relationship between the administration and his government, much of it over the emerging deal with Iran. On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had spied on the talks, an accusation firmly denied by senior Israeli ministers and that Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman attributed to efforts to undermine ties between Jerusalem and Washington.”
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3. It ain’t broke, so Obama wants to fix it.
From TheGreatFallsTribune “The Obama administration said Friday it is tightening rules on fracking with regulations that it says will preserve the oil and gas extraction method while protecting water supplies and the environment.
The new rules, which take effect in June, require oil and gas companies to disclose the chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing and to build large barriers to shield nearby water sources.
Environmental groups complimented the new rules on fracking, though some said the administration should simply ban the practice.
Members and supporters of the oil and gas industries denounced the new regulations and said they will damage a booming energy industry. Some immediately filed suit against the administration.”
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4. Are smartphones making kids mentally ill? I know it has that effect on some adults. 🙂
From TheTelegraph “Julie Lynn Evans has been a child psychotherapist for 25 years, working in hospitals, schools and with families, and she says she has never been so busy.
“In the 1990s, I would have had one or two attempted suicides a year – mainly teenaged girls taking overdoses, the things that don’t get reported. Now, I could have as many as four a month.”
And it’s not, she notes, simply a question of her reputation as both a practitioner and a writer drawing so many people to the door of her cosy consulting rooms in west London where we meet. “If I try to refer people on, everyone else is choc-a-bloc too. We are all saying the same thing. There has been an explosion in numbers in mental health problems amongst youngsters.”
“Official figures confirm the picture she paints, with emergency admissions to child psychiatric wards doubling in four years, and those young adults hospitalised for self-harm up by 70 per cent in a decade.
“Something is clearly happening,” she says, “because I am seeing the evidence in the numbers of depressive, anorexic, cutting children who come to see me. And it always has something to do with the computer, the Internet and the smartphone.””
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5. Oh boy…… 🙄
Just like in Syria and Egypt.
From TheWashingtonPost “The Pentagon is unable to account for more than $500 million in U.S. military aid given to Yemen, amid fears that the weaponry, aircraft and equipment is at risk of being seized by Iranian-backed rebels or al-Qaeda, according to U.S. officials.
With Yemen in turmoil and its government splintering, the Defense Department has lost its ability to monitor the whereabouts of small arms, ammunition, night-vision goggles, patrol boats, vehicles and other supplies donated by the United States. The situation has grown worse since the United States closed its embassy in Sanaa, the capital, last month and withdrew many of its military advisers.
In recent weeks, members of Congress have held closed-door meetings with U.S. military officials to press for an accounting of the arms and equipment. Pentagon officials have said that they have little information to go on and that there is little they can do at this point to prevent the weapons and gear from falling into the wrong hands.
“We have to assume it’s completely compromised and gone,” said a legislative aide on Capitol Hill who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.”
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Wandering Views 
#5. Most of the weapons ISIS is using originally belonged to us.
Some from Russia and China. ISIS can’t manufacture weapons. Nor ammunition.
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#5: The Hillary-Obama manufactured, packaged, and sold Arab Spring continues to go smashingly well. The latest: Yemen, touted by this President as one of his administration’s success stories, is now in all-out civil war. As indicated in the above story, we are one of the main reasons.
It seems almost inconceivable, even for the blunderers in this administration, to allow weapons to fall in the hands of terrorists – first, in Libya, then Syria, then Iraq and now Yemen. Yet, either that happened, or we gift-wrapped and delivered them.
Now, the Yemeni defense minister is asking the Saudis for help to combat the rebels, who are primarily Shiites. Since we supply weapons to the Saudis, who, along with the current Yemeni regime, are supposed to be our allies, we’re getting neck deep in another proxy war. Oh, but be real quiet about it because we don’t want to upset our new friends, the predominantly Shiite Iranians. What an awful mess!
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5 terrorist, 2 of which we already know are returning to their jihadi ways, for 1 deserter.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/03/25/bowe-bergdahl-once-missing-u-s-soldier-charged-with-desertion/?hpid=z1
“Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who was recovered in Afghanistan last spring after five years in captivity, faces charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy, according to his lawyer.
Eugene Fidell, Bergdahl’s attorney, told The Washington Post that his client was handed a charge sheet on Tuesday. Army officials announced they will provide an update in his case at 3:30 p.m. at Fort Bragg, N.C., but declined to discuss new developments ahead of the news conference.”
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And just a reminder of how Obama sold this to the public…
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