In case you are looking for a little climate info:
–a technical manager in Beijing, where all the factories were closed because of severe air pollution, tested the particulates in his office. Twice as high as standing in the middle of a forest fire.
–China and India, which did not go to Paris, both expect to double their use of electrical production in the coming years using coal.
–India’s actions are because they have pledged to electrify every village. They have their own coal reserves, but it would go easier if they purchased natural gas.
–the price of natural gas in the US, around $2, is causing conniptions around the world and has pretty much put solar out of business except in CA where renewables are require by law.
— environmentalists regarded natural gas with approval as a “transitional” and clean source of power when it cost $15 a decatherm but are furious with fracking now that it has made natural gas so cheap, thus undercutting the need for renewables.
But something new and important happened tonight: Cruz and Rubio, two of the best three debaters in the field, debated each other on national security and immigration.
Who won? I thought Rubio had the better of it on national security (but keep in mind that I agree with Rubio’s position) and that Cruz had the better of it on immigration (but keep in mind that I prefer Cruz’s record on this subject).
Overall, I give the advantage to Cruz for this reason: among Republican voters, the unpopularity of Rubio’s collaboration with Chuck Schumer and the rest of the immigration reform gang exceeds the unpopularity of Cruz’s softness on data collection.
Where does the race go from here? …
________________________________________
This had to happen sometime. We need to be alert. A ruling based on sharia is not a law in the USS. We cannot allow a single legal decision based on sharia.
From Drudge:
A routine municipal ceremony has become seeped in controversy after a Brooklyn Civil Court judge was sworn in using a Koran.
Carolyn Walker-Diallo, who was elected last month in Brooklyn’s 7th Municipal District, took her oath of office Thursday using the holy book of Islam as a testament to her Muslim faith.
The swearing-in session went off without a hitch, but after attendees posted video of the ceremony to social media, the backlash became so severe that some of Walker-Diallo’s supporters became concerned for her safety.
It’s always hard to pick a “winner” for something as subjective as a debate and I don’t think we had a clear one last night. In terms of doing what he needed to do, Trump came out of the event without taking any damage and stuck to his guns. He projected strength, toughness and confidence, which he really needed to do. Cruz accounted himself well, though I thought he could have been a little more aggressive. Christie gets high marks, though it’s probably too little and far too late as I mentioned above. I suppose I’d also give Rubio a passing grade for delivery but the substance of his arguments won’t be popular with conservatives. Really, in terms of the lead dogs in the field, I don’t see where anything was significantly shaken up. The people who did the most poorly are already near the bottom of the stack in the polling. We’ll have to give it until at least the weekend before we see any solid numbers in the wake of the debate, but I’d predict that not much will change.
____________________________
Interesting (Homeland is a very good show, btw, for those who aren’t familiar with it — and a recent storyline did involve a large-scale nerve gas attack warning, although I’m not sure that proves the scenario inspired this threat — one reporter suggested also that it could have been a “probe” by terrorists, just to see what the reactions of authorities would be …. )
____________________________
The threat that shut down every school in Los Angeles was a hoax that claimed to be written by a bullied Muslim and was inspired by a recent plot from the hit TV series Homeland, it has been revealed.
More than 640,000 children were ordered to stay home after the district’s superintendent received an email from a self-professed extremist jidahi threatening to attack schools with nerve gas, bombs and rifles.
According to ABC, the email which was sent to officials in LA and New York City went on: ‘Something big is going down. Something very big. It will make national headlines. Perhaps, even international ones.
‘Every school in the New York City district is being targeted. We have bombs hidden in lockers already at several schools.’
The mention of the use of nerve gas appeared to be the link made by authorities to Homeland, the popular series on Showtime starring Claire Danes, as it was part of a threat in a recent episode.
_____________________________
“There are terrorists in our midst and they arrived here using legal means right under the noses of the federal law enforcement agencies whose mission is to stop them. That is not due to malfeasance or lack of effort on the part of these officers; it is due to the restrictions placed on them by the Obama administration.
I was a firsthand witness to how these policies deliberately prevented scrutiny of Islamist groups. The two San Bernardino jihadists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, may have benefited from the administration’s closure of an investigation I initiated on numerous groups infiltrating radicalized individuals into this country.
While working for the Department of Homeland Security for 13 years, I identified individuals affiliated with large, but less well-known groups such as Tablighi Jamaat and the larger Deobandi movement freely transiting the United States. At the National Targeting Center, one of the premier organizations formed to “connect the dots,” I played a major role in an investigation into this trans-national Islamist network. We created records of individuals, mosques, Islamic Centers and schools across the United States that were involved in this radicalization effort. The Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque in San Bernardino was affiliated with this network and we had identified a member of it in our investigation. Farook frequented that mosque and was well-known to the congregation and mosque leadership.
Another focus of my investigation was the Pakistani women’s Islamist group al-Huda, which counted Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, as a student. While the al-Huda International Welfare Foundation distanced themselves from the actions of their former pupil, Malik’s classmates told the Daily Mail she changed significantly while studying at al-Huda, gradually becoming “more serious and strict.” More ominously, the group’s presence in the U.S. and Canada is not without its other ties to ISIS and terrorism. In 2014, three recent former students at al-Huda’s affiliate school in Canada, aged 15 to 18, left their homes to join the Islamic State in Syria.
We had these two groups in our sights; if the investigation had continued and additional links been identified and dots connected, we might have given advance warning of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The combination of Farook’s involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik’s attendance at al-Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. It could also have led to denial of Malik’s K-1 visa or possibly gotten Farook placed on the No Fly list.
But after more than six months of research and tracking; over 1,200 law enforcement actions and more than 300 terrorists identified; and a commendation for our efforts; DHS shut down the investigation at the request of the Department of State and DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?”
——————————–
“As investigators focus on what or who motivated San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, to open fire at the Inland Regional Center, a report about Malik’s comments on social media before she moved to the U.S. is raising questions about how thoroughly she was vetted.
Law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News that Malik made radical postings on Facebook as far back as 2012 — the year before she married Farook and moved to the U.S., reports CBS News correspondent Carter Evans. According to a report in the New York Times, Malik spoke openly on social media about her support for violent jihad and said she wanted to be a part of it. But none of these postings were discovered when Malik applied for a U.S. K-1 fiancé visa.
“If you’re going to start doing a deeper dive into somebody and looking at their social media postings or other things, you really want to focus your effort on the high-risk traveler, the person that you’re really worried about being a threat to the United States,” said James Carafano, national security expert and vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. “The question is, how do you identify them?”
Malik was not identified as a threat despite being interviewed at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and vetted by five different government agencies that checked her name and picture against a terror watch list and ran her fingerprints against two databases.
“This is a case where, in retrospect, we know that this is a person that had lots of red lights and red flags. How come they didn’t stand out as a high risk traveler? That’s a really, really good question,” Carafano said.”
It now seems fairly likely that Donald Trump will win the Republican presidential nomination. His success remains, to me, a puzzle. Watching him in the debate last night–I only caught the last portion–and in a post-debate interview, I thought he was a buffoon. His knowledge of the issues is almost non-existent, and I can’t tell whether he actually wants to be president, or is just campaigning as a lark.
But the bigger problem with Trump, in my mind, isn’t that he is unqualified, it is that he isn’t a conservative. Rather, he is a populist. Trump almost glories in his inability to answer questions with any insight or specificity, a classic populist characteristic. I will do a great job as president! Why? Because I’m me!
____________________________________________
Rush made a good point on his program today.
The recent attacks have nothing to do with Islam. It is just a bunch of unaffiliated radicals.
However, the FBI recognized the bomb threat that emptied the schools in LA was not a serious threat.
Why?
Allah wasn’t capitalized in the threat.
Therefore it couldn’t have be done by a Muslim.
Therefore, the threat wasn’t credible.
Makes sense?
It’s fine to listen to Obama’s “Islam is a religion of peace” rhetoric.
But don’t believe it.
This president has always been opaque to me. I’ve never had much of a sense of who he is, to be honest. He’s the life-sized cardboard cutout of Obama that stood in our newsroom on election night in 2008 (despite the disapproval of a few of us who still believed in real journalism with neutral newsrooms and staffs).
I have a friend who’s convinced he’s Muslim. I don’t agree with her, although he seems to have an affection for Islam (probably due to his upbringing) and a deep-seated animosity toward Israel.
Primarily he’s a committed leftist (despite his campaign for a “purple” undivided America, remember that?) and that’s the problem.
(Interestingly, my former boyfriend, still a devout Democrat but always more of a ‘moderate’ one, told me in ’08 that he was a supporter of Obama right out of the gate, he thought Obama was beyond great — when I said I figured he’d be more of a Hillary supporter as she was more moderate, he insisted that Obama was the more moderate of the two; he’s really smart, but he’s always tended to get carried away with certain politicians, strangely, so I chalked it up to that at the time; he also may have become more liberal in the years since we talked much about these matters, he wound up becoming a college prof so being entrenched in academia all these years may have skewed his vision leftward, just a bit.)
Obama may wind up being the ultimate Trojan Horse for the U.S., depending on how things unfold from here on out. It will be interesting to see how history views him (though I may not live long enough for much of a long-range perspective to develop).
“When Paul Ryan was handed the speaker’s gavel in late October, he pledged to restore normal order to the People’s House and eliminate the sort of backroom deals that rank-and-file members complain are shoved down their throats at the 11th hour. So, late Tuesday night, Ryan unveiled a few thousand pages of consequential tax, spending, and regulatory legislation costing roughly $2 trillion and gave Congress and the public two whole days to review everything.
To be fair to Ryan, the buzzer-beating legislating has more to do with the workload and deadlines John Boehner left him than anything he did wrong. The agreement Ryan reached with fellow congressional negotiators also looks much like one Boehner would have reached: Each side scores some points, but Republican congressional majorities again will fail to deliver a high-profile, base-pumping, ideological victory over some nefarious aspect of the “Obama agenda” on which conservatives had drawn a red line. Will this land Ryan in the same hot water that eventually cooked Boehner? He’ll get a pass, for now.
The two towering paper stacks are the 2016 omnibus appropriations package, which funds the government through next September, and a “tax-extenders” bill that, well, extends (and in many cases makes permanent) a bunch of tax breaks that were set to expire. Though they will be voted on separately, they were negotiated together. The omnibus is more favorable to Democrats, and the tax extenders are more favorable to Republicans.
Considered as a whole, an overriding theme is that everyone gets a lot of money but neither side hammers home that big-ticket ideological victory. In other words, it’s a compromise, something Democrats usually accept as part of the process while Republicans scream bloody murder.”
——————————-
Even Planned Parenthood and Obama are praising it. So much for Ryan’s alleged “budget smarts”…… 🙄
“In advance of the release of Congress’ year-end spending package, the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)80%
is highlighting some terrorists who were recently granted access to the U.S. through the nation’s immigration system.
In an email to reporters Tuesday, a Sessions aide listed more than 30 examples of immigrants admitted to the U.S. who were recently implicated in terrorist activities.
Sessions, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, and other conservative lawmakers have warned against passing a spending bill that does not place limitations on admissions — in particular refugee admission — to the U.S.
“Congress must cancel the President’s blank refugee check and put Congress back in charge of the program. We cannot allow the President to unilaterally decide how many refugees he wishes to admit, nor continue to force taxpayers to pick up the tab for the tens of billions of unpaid-for welfare and entitlement costs,” Sessions and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)68%
, the chairman of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations subcommittee, said in a joint statement last week.
The pair added that passing the spending deal without limiting language “would put the U.S. on a path to approve admission for hundreds of thousands of migrants from a broad range of countries with jihadists movements over the next 12 months, on top of all the other autopilot annual immigration – absent language to reduce the numbers.””
————————————–
And not just jihadists…..
Let’s not forget that our southern border is being overrun. Again.
“Unaccompanied minors are crossing the U.S. Southwest border in growing numbers again, sparking concerns that the new influx of children could eventually approach the levels that last year prompted the Obama administration to declare a humanitarian crisis.
In October and November, more than 10,500 children crossed the U.S.-Mexico border by themselves, the vast majority from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to U.S. government data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. That’s a 106 percent increase over the same period last year, reflecting a steady increase that began in March.
The numbers are still far below the peak period last year, when more than 10,600 unaccompanied minors crossed the border just in the month of June, swamping federal resources. And the administration, widely believed to have missed the warning signs before the previous surge, “is certainly a lot more concerned and on top of it than they were two years ago,” said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the policy institute.”
—————————-
Why are they concerned? They’re the ones who sent out the invitations.
Wandering Views 
In case you are looking for a little climate info:
–a technical manager in Beijing, where all the factories were closed because of severe air pollution, tested the particulates in his office. Twice as high as standing in the middle of a forest fire.
–China and India, which did not go to Paris, both expect to double their use of electrical production in the coming years using coal.
–India’s actions are because they have pledged to electrify every village. They have their own coal reserves, but it would go easier if they purchased natural gas.
–the price of natural gas in the US, around $2, is causing conniptions around the world and has pretty much put solar out of business except in CA where renewables are require by law.
— environmentalists regarded natural gas with approval as a “transitional” and clean source of power when it cost $15 a decatherm but are furious with fracking now that it has made natural gas so cheap, thus undercutting the need for renewables.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I went to bed. Did anyone win last night?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I only watched part of the debate, Trump seemed very confident and was getting a lot of laughs.
Here’s the powerline take on it all, referring to Trump as the Great White Whale of Moby Dick fame, which is really kind of funny.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/12/tonights-debate-more-of-the-same-but-with-a-key-difference.php
_______________________________________
But something new and important happened tonight: Cruz and Rubio, two of the best three debaters in the field, debated each other on national security and immigration.
Who won? I thought Rubio had the better of it on national security (but keep in mind that I agree with Rubio’s position) and that Cruz had the better of it on immigration (but keep in mind that I prefer Cruz’s record on this subject).
Overall, I give the advantage to Cruz for this reason: among Republican voters, the unpopularity of Rubio’s collaboration with Chuck Schumer and the rest of the immigration reform gang exceeds the unpopularity of Cruz’s softness on data collection.
Where does the race go from here? …
________________________________________
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This had to happen sometime. We need to be alert. A ruling based on sharia is not a law in the USS. We cannot allow a single legal decision based on sharia.
From Drudge:
A routine municipal ceremony has become seeped in controversy after a Brooklyn Civil Court judge was sworn in using a Koran.
Carolyn Walker-Diallo, who was elected last month in Brooklyn’s 7th Municipal District, took her oath of office Thursday using the holy book of Islam as a testament to her Muslim faith.
The swearing-in session went off without a hitch, but after attendees posted video of the ceremony to social media, the backlash became so severe that some of Walker-Diallo’s supporters became concerned for her safety.
“
“
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Another “morning after” assessment:
http://hotair.com/archives/2015/12/16/morning-after-debate-hangover-wrap-up/
____________________________
It’s always hard to pick a “winner” for something as subjective as a debate and I don’t think we had a clear one last night. In terms of doing what he needed to do, Trump came out of the event without taking any damage and stuck to his guns. He projected strength, toughness and confidence, which he really needed to do. Cruz accounted himself well, though I thought he could have been a little more aggressive. Christie gets high marks, though it’s probably too little and far too late as I mentioned above. I suppose I’d also give Rubio a passing grade for delivery but the substance of his arguments won’t be popular with conservatives. Really, in terms of the lead dogs in the field, I don’t see where anything was significantly shaken up. The people who did the most poorly are already near the bottom of the stack in the polling. We’ll have to give it until at least the weekend before we see any solid numbers in the wake of the debate, but I’d predict that not much will change.
____________________________
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Interesting (Homeland is a very good show, btw, for those who aren’t familiar with it — and a recent storyline did involve a large-scale nerve gas attack warning, although I’m not sure that proves the scenario inspired this threat — one reporter suggested also that it could have been a “probe” by terrorists, just to see what the reactions of authorities would be …. )
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3361870/Hoax-Homeland-inspired-email-bomb-NERVE-gas-threat-NY-LA-schools-claimed-bullied-devout-Muslim-student-joined-jihadi-cell-gave-game-away-misspelling-Allah-small-a.html
____________________________
The threat that shut down every school in Los Angeles was a hoax that claimed to be written by a bullied Muslim and was inspired by a recent plot from the hit TV series Homeland, it has been revealed.
More than 640,000 children were ordered to stay home after the district’s superintendent received an email from a self-professed extremist jidahi threatening to attack schools with nerve gas, bombs and rifles.
According to ABC, the email which was sent to officials in LA and New York City went on: ‘Something big is going down. Something very big. It will make national headlines. Perhaps, even international ones.
‘Every school in the New York City district is being targeted. We have bombs hidden in lockers already at several schools.’
The mention of the use of nerve gas appeared to be the link made by authorities to Homeland, the popular series on Showtime starring Claire Danes, as it was part of a threat in a recent episode.
_____________________________
LikeLike
deleted: I believe that both China and India were at the Paris conference.
LikeLike
Oh look…
Anyone surprised? Me neither…..
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/263284-administration-nixed-probe-into-southern-california
“There are terrorists in our midst and they arrived here using legal means right under the noses of the federal law enforcement agencies whose mission is to stop them. That is not due to malfeasance or lack of effort on the part of these officers; it is due to the restrictions placed on them by the Obama administration.
I was a firsthand witness to how these policies deliberately prevented scrutiny of Islamist groups. The two San Bernardino jihadists, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, may have benefited from the administration’s closure of an investigation I initiated on numerous groups infiltrating radicalized individuals into this country.
While working for the Department of Homeland Security for 13 years, I identified individuals affiliated with large, but less well-known groups such as Tablighi Jamaat and the larger Deobandi movement freely transiting the United States. At the National Targeting Center, one of the premier organizations formed to “connect the dots,” I played a major role in an investigation into this trans-national Islamist network. We created records of individuals, mosques, Islamic Centers and schools across the United States that were involved in this radicalization effort. The Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque in San Bernardino was affiliated with this network and we had identified a member of it in our investigation. Farook frequented that mosque and was well-known to the congregation and mosque leadership.
Another focus of my investigation was the Pakistani women’s Islamist group al-Huda, which counted Farook’s wife, Tashfeen Malik, as a student. While the al-Huda International Welfare Foundation distanced themselves from the actions of their former pupil, Malik’s classmates told the Daily Mail she changed significantly while studying at al-Huda, gradually becoming “more serious and strict.” More ominously, the group’s presence in the U.S. and Canada is not without its other ties to ISIS and terrorism. In 2014, three recent former students at al-Huda’s affiliate school in Canada, aged 15 to 18, left their homes to join the Islamic State in Syria.
We had these two groups in our sights; if the investigation had continued and additional links been identified and dots connected, we might have given advance warning of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. The combination of Farook’s involvement with the Dar Al Uloom Al Islamiyah Mosque and Malik’s attendance at al-Huda would have indicated, at minimum, an urgent need for comprehensive screening. It could also have led to denial of Malik’s K-1 visa or possibly gotten Farook placed on the No Fly list.
But after more than six months of research and tracking; over 1,200 law enforcement actions and more than 300 terrorists identified; and a commendation for our efforts; DHS shut down the investigation at the request of the Department of State and DHS’ own Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Division. They claimed that since the Islamist groups in question were not Specially Designated Terrorist Organizations (SDTOs) tracking individuals related to these groups was a violation of the travelers’ civil liberties. These were almost exclusively foreign nationals: When were they granted the civil rights and liberties of American citizens?”
——————————–
Thanks Barry…. for nothin’……
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So much for the Obama admin’s so-called “vetting.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/san-bernardino-shooting-investigation-wife-tashfeen-malik-facebook-radical-postings/
“As investigators focus on what or who motivated San Bernardino shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, to open fire at the Inland Regional Center, a report about Malik’s comments on social media before she moved to the U.S. is raising questions about how thoroughly she was vetted.
Law enforcement sources confirmed to CBS News that Malik made radical postings on Facebook as far back as 2012 — the year before she married Farook and moved to the U.S., reports CBS News correspondent Carter Evans. According to a report in the New York Times, Malik spoke openly on social media about her support for violent jihad and said she wanted to be a part of it. But none of these postings were discovered when Malik applied for a U.S. K-1 fiancé visa.
“If you’re going to start doing a deeper dive into somebody and looking at their social media postings or other things, you really want to focus your effort on the high-risk traveler, the person that you’re really worried about being a threat to the United States,” said James Carafano, national security expert and vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at the Heritage Foundation. “The question is, how do you identify them?”
Malik was not identified as a threat despite being interviewed at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and vetted by five different government agencies that checked her name and picture against a terror watch list and ran her fingerprints against two databases.
“This is a case where, in retrospect, we know that this is a person that had lots of red lights and red flags. How come they didn’t stand out as a high risk traveler? That’s a really, really good question,” Carafano said.”
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The unthinkable is right. 😦 I can only hope that first sentence isn’t true.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/12/thinking-about-the-unthinkable-2.php
____________________________________________
It now seems fairly likely that Donald Trump will win the Republican presidential nomination. His success remains, to me, a puzzle. Watching him in the debate last night–I only caught the last portion–and in a post-debate interview, I thought he was a buffoon. His knowledge of the issues is almost non-existent, and I can’t tell whether he actually wants to be president, or is just campaigning as a lark.
But the bigger problem with Trump, in my mind, isn’t that he is unqualified, it is that he isn’t a conservative. Rather, he is a populist. Trump almost glories in his inability to answer questions with any insight or specificity, a classic populist characteristic. I will do a great job as president! Why? Because I’m me!
____________________________________________
LikeLike
Rush made a good point on his program today.
The recent attacks have nothing to do with Islam. It is just a bunch of unaffiliated radicals.
However, the FBI recognized the bomb threat that emptied the schools in LA was not a serious threat.
Why?
Allah wasn’t capitalized in the threat.
Therefore it couldn’t have be done by a Muslim.
Therefore, the threat wasn’t credible.
Makes sense?
It’s fine to listen to Obama’s “Islam is a religion of peace” rhetoric.
But don’t believe it.
LikeLike
Probably no surprises here, but sobering all the same: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/12/obamas_theology_of_original_sin_fundamental_transformation_and_utopia.html
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allah typo?
I’m not convinced it was an out-and-out “hoax” (as in some kid messing around). But terrorists typically don’t announce what they’re about to do.
Either way, I’m sure (hoping!?) it’s helping us all become more savvy and aware in our assessment techniques.
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This president has always been opaque to me. I’ve never had much of a sense of who he is, to be honest. He’s the life-sized cardboard cutout of Obama that stood in our newsroom on election night in 2008 (despite the disapproval of a few of us who still believed in real journalism with neutral newsrooms and staffs).
I have a friend who’s convinced he’s Muslim. I don’t agree with her, although he seems to have an affection for Islam (probably due to his upbringing) and a deep-seated animosity toward Israel.
Primarily he’s a committed leftist (despite his campaign for a “purple” undivided America, remember that?) and that’s the problem.
(Interestingly, my former boyfriend, still a devout Democrat but always more of a ‘moderate’ one, told me in ’08 that he was a supporter of Obama right out of the gate, he thought Obama was beyond great — when I said I figured he’d be more of a Hillary supporter as she was more moderate, he insisted that Obama was the more moderate of the two; he’s really smart, but he’s always tended to get carried away with certain politicians, strangely, so I chalked it up to that at the time; he also may have become more liberal in the years since we talked much about these matters, he wound up becoming a college prof so being entrenched in academia all these years may have skewed his vision leftward, just a bit.)
Obama may wind up being the ultimate Trojan Horse for the U.S., depending on how things unfold from here on out. It will be interesting to see how history views him (though I may not live long enough for much of a long-range perspective to develop).
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Boehner 2.0
Told ya we shouldn’t have trusted him…. 🙄
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/12/paul_ryan_s_first_deal_is_just_like_john_boehner_s_old_ones.html
“When Paul Ryan was handed the speaker’s gavel in late October, he pledged to restore normal order to the People’s House and eliminate the sort of backroom deals that rank-and-file members complain are shoved down their throats at the 11th hour. So, late Tuesday night, Ryan unveiled a few thousand pages of consequential tax, spending, and regulatory legislation costing roughly $2 trillion and gave Congress and the public two whole days to review everything.
To be fair to Ryan, the buzzer-beating legislating has more to do with the workload and deadlines John Boehner left him than anything he did wrong. The agreement Ryan reached with fellow congressional negotiators also looks much like one Boehner would have reached: Each side scores some points, but Republican congressional majorities again will fail to deliver a high-profile, base-pumping, ideological victory over some nefarious aspect of the “Obama agenda” on which conservatives had drawn a red line. Will this land Ryan in the same hot water that eventually cooked Boehner? He’ll get a pass, for now.
The two towering paper stacks are the 2016 omnibus appropriations package, which funds the government through next September, and a “tax-extenders” bill that, well, extends (and in many cases makes permanent) a bunch of tax breaks that were set to expire. Though they will be voted on separately, they were negotiated together. The omnibus is more favorable to Democrats, and the tax extenders are more favorable to Republicans.
Considered as a whole, an overriding theme is that everyone gets a lot of money but neither side hammers home that big-ticket ideological victory. In other words, it’s a compromise, something Democrats usually accept as part of the process while Republicans scream bloody murder.”
——————————-
Even Planned Parenthood and Obama are praising it. So much for Ryan’s alleged “budget smarts”…… 🙄
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Too late Jeff, they already funded Obama’s refugee and immigration plan. Sorry.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/12/15/30-immigrants-admitted-u-s-recently-implicated-terrorism/
“In advance of the release of Congress’ year-end spending package, the office of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL)80%
is highlighting some terrorists who were recently granted access to the U.S. through the nation’s immigration system.
In an email to reporters Tuesday, a Sessions aide listed more than 30 examples of immigrants admitted to the U.S. who were recently implicated in terrorist activities.
Sessions, the chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest, and other conservative lawmakers have warned against passing a spending bill that does not place limitations on admissions — in particular refugee admission — to the U.S.
“Congress must cancel the President’s blank refugee check and put Congress back in charge of the program. We cannot allow the President to unilaterally decide how many refugees he wishes to admit, nor continue to force taxpayers to pick up the tab for the tens of billions of unpaid-for welfare and entitlement costs,” Sessions and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)68%
, the chairman of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations subcommittee, said in a joint statement last week.
The pair added that passing the spending deal without limiting language “would put the U.S. on a path to approve admission for hundreds of thousands of migrants from a broad range of countries with jihadists movements over the next 12 months, on top of all the other autopilot annual immigration – absent language to reduce the numbers.””
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And not just jihadists…..
Let’s not forget that our southern border is being overrun. Again.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/12/16/unaccompanied-children-crossing-southern-border-in-greater-numbers-again-raising-fears-of-new-migrant-crisis/
“Unaccompanied minors are crossing the U.S. Southwest border in growing numbers again, sparking concerns that the new influx of children could eventually approach the levels that last year prompted the Obama administration to declare a humanitarian crisis.
In October and November, more than 10,500 children crossed the U.S.-Mexico border by themselves, the vast majority from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, according to U.S. government data analyzed by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. That’s a 106 percent increase over the same period last year, reflecting a steady increase that began in March.
The numbers are still far below the peak period last year, when more than 10,600 unaccompanied minors crossed the border just in the month of June, swamping federal resources. And the administration, widely believed to have missed the warning signs before the previous surge, “is certainly a lot more concerned and on top of it than they were two years ago,” said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the policy institute.”
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Why are they concerned? They’re the ones who sent out the invitations.
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