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News/Politics 9-19-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. So a guy with ZERO military experience thinks he’s qualified to make these decisions? They tried this in Vietnam. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

From NationalReview  “President Obama will take a hands-on approach to the United States airstrikes in Syria against the Islamic State and will personally sign off on bombing targets in the country, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper reports that the president has put in place much stricter requirements for strikes in Syria – where the country’s ongoing civil war and President Bashar Assad’s government complicate the situation – than in Iraq, where the U.S. continues to carry out airstrikes. Officials told the Journal that President Obama views taking action in Syria as being similar to U.S. counterterrorism operations in countries such as Somalia or Yemen.”

He’s the most unqualified choice (as in most cases) to be making this type of decisions.

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2. That probably explains some of this.

From TheWashingtonPost  “Flashes of disagreement over how to fight the Islamic State are mounting between President Obama and U.S. military leaders, the latest sign of strain in what often has been an awkward and uneasy relationship.

Even as the administration has received congressional backing for its strategy, with the Senate voting Thursday to approve a plan to arm and train Syrian rebels, a series of military leaders have criticized the president’s approach against the Islamic State militant group.”

“The White House and Pentagon have scurried this week to insist there is no hint of dissent in the ranks, though in some cases their efforts have focused only more attention on the issue.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel tried to reassure the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday that civilian and military leaders at the Pentagon were in “full alignment” and in “complete agreement with every component of the president’s strategy.””

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3. The CIA thinks his strategy, if you can call it that, is doomed to fail.

From HotAir  “I’m torn between thinking this is big news and thinking it’s so obvious that it doesn’t qualify as news at all. Show of hands: Who believes a war that’s been raging for three and a half years, with hundreds of thousands of people dead, between every degenerate Sunni and Shiite jihadi outfit in the Middle East is going to be won by a few thousand amateurs who’ve had a couple months of training from Uncle Sam?

We’ve got the 16 seed in this bracket, guys. Let’s bet what’s left of our foreign policy credibility on it, what do you say?

The opposition derives from a number of factors. First, the CIA has already been covertly equipping Syrian rebels at the instruction of the White House, but has come to find the fighters increasingly disorganized and radicalized as the conflict goes on, with U.S.-supplied arms winding up in the hands of more radical fighters…

“I have heard it expressed, outside of classified contexts, that what you heard from your intelligence sources is correct, because the CIA regards the effort as doomed to failure,” the congressman said in an email. “Specifically (again without referring to classified information), the CIA thinks that it is impossible to train and equip a force of pro-Western Syrian nationals that can fight and defeat Assad, al-Nusra and ISIS, regardless of whatever air support that force may receive.”

He added that, as the CIA sees it, the ramped-up backing of rebels is an expansion of a strategy that is already not working. “The CIA also believes that its previous assignment to accomplish this was basically a fool’s errand, and they are well aware of the fact that many of the arms that they provided ended up in the wrong hands,” the congressman said, echoing intelligence sources.”

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4. Gee I wonder why this isn’t getting more press? OK, not really….

From GatewayPundit  “Congressman Jason Chaffetz broke this shocking news Wednesday that four known terrorists were apprehended at the US border in Texas on September 10 – the day before the 13th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks.

Chaffetz questioned Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on whether he is “aware of any apprehensions of suspected or known terrorists.”
Johnson dodged the question.

Tonight, Rep. Chaffetz told Megyn Kelly there were four terrorists arrested crossing the US border in Texas on September 10.

“There were actually four individuals trying to cross through the Texas border, who were apprehended at two different stations, that do have ties to known terrorist organizations in the Middle East.””

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5. This is disturbing for a lot of reasons.

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Mysterious “interceptor” cellphone towers that can listen in someone’s phone call despite not being part of any phone networks have turned up near the White House and Senate.

A company that specializes in selling secure mobile phones discovered the existence of several of the towers in and around the nation’s capitol.

“It’s highly unlikely that federal law enforcement would be using mobile interceptors near the Senate,” ESD America CEO Les Goldsmith told the technology website Venture Beat on Thursday.

The towers are also capable of loading spyware onto a mobile device before passing off a victim’s call to a legitimate network. “My suspicion is that it is a foreign entity,” he told Venture Beat.”

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6. Not shocking. It seems the White House is exaggerating ObamaCare coverage gains.

From Forbes  “Glance at recent Obamacare headlines and you might think the healthcare law has turned out to be a smashing success, its initial glitches and legal foibles forgotten in the face of incontrovertible achievements.

The proof is supposedly in the data, and we’re told the latest data is a clear victory for the Affordable Care Act. “Another day, another survey showing that Obamacare is beginning to cure American’s uninsured problem,” led HuffPo’s coverage this week of two surveys showing a drop in the uninsured rate. “CDC: Uninsured rate now the lowest on record,” ran the headline at Vox, followed by the observation that, “This is, in part, a reflection of Obamacare.”

The surveys, one from the Centers for Disease Control and the other from the U.S. Census Bureau, do indeed show a declining uninsured rate nationwide. But as with so much of the data on Obamacare, they don’t really tell us much more than that. Considered in the light of other evidence, however, they do help illuminate the shell game surrounding Obamacare, whereby the administration and the media inflate the law’s achievements and hide its growing costs from American taxpayers.”

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News/Politics 9-18-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Eric Holder really doesn’t want those F and F documents made public. Gee, I wonder why? 🙄

From TownHall  “Back in July after a long FOIA lawsuit from government watchdog Judicial Watch, a federal judge ordered the Department of Justice to produce a detailed list or Vaughn Index of documents being withheld from Congress and the American people under President Obama’s executive privilege claim. A month later in August, a federal judge ordered DOJ to turn over a privilege log of withheld documents to the House Oversight Committee. Both orders were to be completed by October 1. 

Now, Attorney General Eric Holder is asking a federal judge to delay (again) an order requiring him to turn over thousands of Fast and Furious documents, not just a detailed list. More from POLITICO: 

Attorney General Eric Holder is again asking a federal court to delay the transfer of disputed documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious to a House committee.

In a new court filing Monday night, Justice Department lawyers asked U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson not to require Holder to turn over any of the roughly 64,000 pages of documents to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee until after her rulings can be appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.”

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2. Is Holder really the best person for this job? He cries racism at the drop of a hat. No doubt he finds what he wants to find, which of course will be racial bias.

From FoxNews  “Broadening its push to improve police relations with minorities, the Justice Department has enlisted a team of criminal justice researchers to study racial bias in law enforcement in five American cities and recommend strategies to address the problem nationally, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday.

The police shooting last month of an unarmed black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri underscored the need for the long-planned initiative, Holder said in an interview with The Associated Press.

He said the three-year project could be a “silver lining” if it helps ease racial tensions and “pockets of distrust that show up between law enforcement and the communities that they serve.”

“What I saw in Ferguson confirmed for me that the need for such an effort was pretty clear,” Holder said.”

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3. No surprises here.

From HotAir  “No surprise to Hot Air readers, of course, but this allegation will come as a bombshell in a House hearing today on the VA scandal. This whistleblower claim will just be one of the issues that the Veteran Affairs committee will probe in the wait-list fraud that permeated the VA. Another will be the fact that the number of veteran deaths connected to those secret wait lists has skyrocketed from 40 to 293:

Our source, who works at VA headquarters and who spoke exclusively to CBS News, said officials inside the agency asked for a revision of the first draft. That’s standard practice, but in this case the source said it amounted to pressure on Inspector General Richard Griffin to add a line to water down the report.

“The organization was worried that the report was going to damn the organization,” the whistle-blower said. “And therefore it was important for them to introduce language that softened that blow.” …

But that conclusion, that no deaths were caused by delays, seemed to conflict with the rest of the report. For example: “28 instances of clinically significant delays” were found, including delays linked to six deaths. And findings indicated either “treatment” or “an appointment for this patient might have changed the outcome.””

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4. I still think this is a bad idea.

From TheHill  “The House overwhelmingly voted Wednesday to grant President Obama authority to train and arm moderate Syrian rebels waging war against Islamic extremists.

Despite vocal opposition from both war-weary liberals and defense hawks who feel the Syria plan should include more robust steps, majorities in both conferences voted 273-156 to back Obama’s plan to give military aid to vetted members of the Free Syrian Army.

The “yes” vote was made up of 159 Republicans and 114 Democrats; opposition was just as bipartisan, with 85 Democrats and 71 Republicans voting no. The Syria language was considered as an amendment to a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown on Oct. 1.

A coalition of unusual bedfellows voted against the amendment, including Democratic Reps. Jim McGovern (Mass.) and Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Republican Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Steve Stockman (Texas). Members on such opposite sides of the ideological spectrum rarely vote together on major issues.”

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5. Up from 12 to 17. It’s not “rare” anymore.

From KTUU2  “Enterovirus D68 is likely coming — if it hasn’t already — to a state near you. 

Since mid-August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed 140 cases of respiratory illness caused by Enterovirus D68 in 16 states: Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

New Jersey also has confirmed a case of EV-D68, according to Donna Leusner, director of communications for the New Jersey Department of Health.

And “in the upcoming weeks, more states will have confirmed cases of EV-D68 infection,” the CDC said in a statement Wednesday.”

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6. Anybody shocked? Didn’t think so….

From TheFreeBeacon  “Federal taxpayer funds continue to flow to a slew of U.S. universities that are spending the cash on programs that promote anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-American viewpoints, according to a large group of Jewish and civil rights organizations that are now pushing Congress to rectify what they call a systemic problem.

Taxpayer funds have been allocated to universities under Title VI of the Higher Education Act (HEA) since 1965. However, Congress and the Education Department have exerted little oversight, leading these funds to be spent on biased educational programs that promote radical views about Israel and even America, according to the groups.

Funding for anti-Israel programs at U.S. universities has fostered a culture of fear among the Jewish state’s supporters on campus and fueled a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents at many schools, the groups warned.”

“Title VI of the Higher Education Act directs federal dollars to support the intellectually corrupt field of Middle East studies, among the most politicized academic disciplines, filled with professors hostile to America, Israel, and the West,” Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, said in a statement. “American taxpayers should not fund programs that aim to weaken resolve and thwart policy.”

The University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) has been among the top abusers of federal funds, according to AMCHA, which published an in-depth study on the university’s federally funded anti-Israel programs.”

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News/Politics 9-17-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Stop, Drop, and Roll Barry!

Someone please grab the President and roll him around. His pants are on fire again.

From CNSNews  “President Obama promised that under his health care plan, “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortion,” but that’s just another broken promise, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, which indicates that public funding of abortion is happening on a large scale.

“This confirms what we have long suspected,” Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) said in a conference call with reporters on Monday.

Pitts and other Republicans asked the GAO to find out which taxpayer-subsidized plans in the Obamacare exchanges fund abortion and if consumers know about that coverage.

The report concluded that in 2014, more than a thousand federally subsidized Obamacare policies paid for abortion on demand, sometimes unbeknownst to policyholders. And in five states, every plan offered on the exchanges included abortion on demand, giving consumers no alternative, as required by law.”

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2. Who didn’t see this coming…..

Also from CNSNews  “The cost of the Obamacare subsidy that the U.S. Treasury will pay on behalf of people who earn under 400 percent of the federal poverty level and who buy a government-approved health-care plan on a government-run health-insurance exchange will increase by approximately 8-fold in its first ten years of operation, according to the latest budget estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Medicaid spending will double in the first ten years of full implementation of Obamacare, according to the CBO estimates.”

“In fiscal 2013, the year before the health insurance exchanges opened, the federal government spent $265 billion on Medicaid, according to CBO. This year, fiscal 2014, the first year that the exchanges will be in operation, the federal government will spend $305 billion on Medicaid. By 2023, the tenth year that the Obamacare exchanges will be in operation, Medicaid will cost the federal government $539 billion—more than double the $265 billion it cost in 2013.

By 2024, the last year in the CBO estimates, Medicaid spending will climb to $570 billion.”

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3. Epic Fail

From TheDailySignal  “Today, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual report on poverty. This report is noteworthy because this year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. Liberals claim that the War on Poverty has failed because we didn’t spend enough money. Their answer is just to spend more. But the facts show otherwise.

Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.

The federal government currently runs more than 80 means-tested welfare programs. These programs provide cash, food, housing and medical care to low-income Americans. Federal and state spending on these programs last year was $943 billion. (These figures do not include Social Security, Medicare, or Unemployment Insurance.)

Over 100 million people, about one third of the U.S. population, received aid from at least one welfare program at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient in 2013. If converted into cash, current means-tested spending is five times the amount needed to eliminate all poverty in the U.S.”

Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.

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4. The press leaving out relevant info? Not shocking.

From NewsBusters  “Legal battles against state governor’s with higher political aspirations keep cropping up. But looking deeper into attacks on Republican governors from Texas, Wisconsin and Louisiana reveals George Soros’ checkbook was behind it all – but the news media aren’t about to point that out.

The group that first filed an indictment charge against Texas Gov. Rick Perry was funded by Soros, the liberal billionaire, but the trail of his money didn’t end there. Both the recall election for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and an even less successful recall attempt for Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal were rooted in Soros-funded groups. Between them, these three potential Republican presidential candidates were targeted by groups receiving more than $6.3 million from Soros.

The media should be reporting on this connection, but so far they have completely ignored it. None of the broadcast news coverage of Walker’s recall election or Perry’s indictment on ABC, CBS or NBC have mentioned Soros. Attempts to recall Jindal weren’t mentioned by the networks, although left-wing outlets like The Huffington Post tried to promote them.”

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5. A respiratory illness hitting children has now been detected in 12 states and officials expect that number to grow. Where do you suppose the source of this latest “rare” outbreak came from?

From MSNNews  “A serious respiratory illness sickening U.S. children has spread to 12 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday, as it predicted that more states will report cases in coming weeks.

The growing list of states with confirmed cases now includes Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, the CDC said.

Known as enterovirus D68, the somewhat rare virus can cause symptoms ranging from mild fevers to difficulty breathing and wheezing severe enough to require hospitalization.

Since mid-August, the CDC has received reports of 130 people with confirmed cases of the virus. There is no vaccine, and infants, children and teenagers have the greatest risk of infection. So far, there have been no reported deaths from the illness, which could be fatal in serious cases.”

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News/Politics 9-16-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Again, not a revenue problem, but a spending problem.

From CNSNews  “Inflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $2,663,426,000,000 for the first 11 months of the fiscal year this August, but the federal government still ran a $589,185,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement.

Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”

The largest share of the tax revenue so far this year has come from individual income taxes, which totaled $1,233,274,000,000 in the first 11 months of fiscal 2014.

The rest of the receipts came from corporation income taxes totaling $247,200,000,000, employment and general retirement (off-budget) totaling $674,338,000,000, employment and general retirement (on-budget) totaling $209,281,000,000, unemployment insurance totaling $54,591,000,000, other retirement receipts totaling $3,155,000,000, excise taxes totaling $73,051,000,000, estate and gift taxes totaling $17,702,000,000, customs duties totaling $30,902,000,000 and miscellaneous receipts totaling $119,933,000,000.”

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2. Of course they did.

From TheDailySignal  “As the House Select Committee on Benghazi prepares for its first hearing this week, a former State Department diplomat is coming forward with a startling allegation: Hillary Clinton confidants were part of an operation to “separate” damaging documents before they were turned over to the Accountability Review Board investigating security lapses surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.”

“According to former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, the after-hours session took place over a weekend in a basement operations-type center at State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. This is the first time Maxwell has publicly come forward with the story.

At the time, Maxwell was a leader in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, which was charged with collecting emails and documents relevant to the Benghazi probe.

“I was not invited to that after-hours endeavor, but I heard about it and decided to check it out on a Sunday afternoon,” Maxwell says.

He didn’t know it then, but Maxwell would ultimately become one of four State Department officials singled out for discipline—he says scapegoated—then later cleared for devastating security lapses leading up to the attacks. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were murdered during the Benghazi attacks.”

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3. And it begins…..

From MSNNews  “U.S. officials said Monday the United States has taken the first step in its planned expanded fight against Islamic State militants, going to the aid of Iraqi security forces near Baghdad who were being attacked by enemy fighters.

The U.S. Central Command said it conducted a strike Monday in support of the Iraqi forces southwest of Baghdad. There was also an airstrike Sunday near Sinjar in northern Iraq.

The strike southwest of Baghdad represents the newly broadened mission authorized by President Barack Obama to go on the offensive against the Islamic State group wherever it is. Previous U.S. airstrikes in Iraq were conducted to protect U.S. interests and personnel, assist Iraqi refugees and secure critical infrastructure. Monday’s strike was in direct support of Iraqi forces fighting the militants, hitting fighters who were firing on them.”

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4. There’s no shortage and yet they use the lie to push for amnesty.

From USNews  “All credible research finds the same evidence about the STEM workforce: ample supply, stagnant wages and, by industry accounts, thousands of applicants for any advertised job. The real concern should be about the dim employment prospects for our best STEM graduates: The National Institutes of Health, for example, has developed a program to help new biomedical Ph.D.s find alternative careers in the face of “unattractive” job prospects in the field. Opportunities for engineers vary by the field and economic cycle – as oil exploration has increased, so has demand (and salaries) for petroleum engineers, resulting in a near tripling of petroleum engineering graduates. In contrast, average wages in the IT industry are the same as those that prevailed when Bill Clinton was president despite industry cries of a “shortage.” Overall, U.S. colleges produce twice the number of STEM graduates annually as find jobs in those fields.

In the face of these stark facts, we now see several studies that seem to be desperate Hail Mary passes, using rather unconventional means to find “shortages.” Some analysts do this by expanding the definition of STEM jobs – traditionally those involved in innovation, discovery and development – to include air conditioning technicians and even some retail jobs to make the case that this workforce is large and growing. Without any coherent meaning, such analyses now serve only rhetorical purposes to advance particular legislation.

Cries that “the STEM sky is falling” are just the latest in a cyclical pattern of shortage predictions over the past half-century, none of which were even remotely accurate. In a desert of evidence, the growth of STEM shortage claims is driven by heavy industry funding for lobbyists and think tanks. Their goal is government intervention in the market under the guise of solving national economic problems. The highly profitable IT industry, for example, is devoting millions to convince Congress and the White House to provide its employers with more low-cost, foreign guestworkers instead of trying to attract and retain employees from an ample domestic labor pool of native and immigrant citizens and permanent residents. Guestworkers currently make up two-thirds of all new IT hires, but employers are demanding further increases. If such lobbying efforts succeed, firms will have enough guestworkers for at least 100 percent of their new hiring and can continue to legally substitute these younger workers for current employees, holding down wages for both them and new hires.

 Claiming there is a skills shortage by denying the strength of the U.S. STEM workforce and student supply is possible only by ignoring the most obvious and direct evidence and obscuring the issue with statistical smokescreens – especially when the Census Bureau reports that only about one in four STEM bachelor’s degree holders has a STEM job, and Microsoft plans to downsize by 18,000 workers over the next year.”

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5. That’s what us global warming deniers have been saying for years. It’s not science driven, it’s agenda driven.

From TheDailyCaller  “Emails between top Environmental Protection Agency officials reveal they saw their fight against global warming as putting them at “forefront of progressive national policy.”

“You are at the forefront of progressive national policy on one of the critical issues of our time. Do you realize that?” former EPA chief Lisa Jackson asked former EPA policy office head Lisa Heinzerling in a Feb. 27, 2009 email.

“You’re a good boss. I do realize that. I pinch myself all the time,” Heinzerling replied that same day to Jackson, who was using an alias email account under the fake name “Richard Windsor.”

These emails, which were part of a batch obtained by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, show what top EPA officials were thinking as the agency prepared to release its greenhouse gas endangerment finding. which would give the agency the power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from tailpipes and, eventually, from power plants.

“This is not about climate,” CEI senior fellow Chris Horner told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is the progressive agenda.””

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News/Politics 9-12-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Obama: I was against the authorization for war before I was for it.

From TheCable  “President Barack Obama’s plans to ramp up U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State targets inside Iraq and potentially launch new ones inside Syria rely on a thirteen-year-old law authorizing military force against al Qaeda and its affiliates that he has publicly stated he would like to see repealed.

In a landmark speech last year in which he pledged to take the United States off a “perpetual wartime footing,” Obama said that he would work with Congress to “refine” and “ultimately repeal” the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, a measure hastily passed in the chaotic, fear-filled days following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That measure authorized “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons” responsible for the attacks.”

In his remarks Wednesday, Obama made clear that he believes he can take action against Islamic State militants without congressional approval but extended an olive branch to Capitol Hill, saying that he welcomed “congressional support for this effort in order to show the world that Americans are united in confronting this danger.” The White House is currently seeking congressional approval for a program to train and arm the Syrian opposition, one of the few things Obama doesn’t believe he can do unilaterally. To date, the administration has mostly sidestepped the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which mandates that the president seek congressional approval of any military action after 60 days of informing Congress that U.S. troops have been deployed in hostilities.”

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2. John Kerry says we’re not at war.

From CNN  “U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration’s strategy includes “many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war.”

“What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation,” Kerry told CNN’s Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “It’s going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it’s a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts.””

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3. Congress says authorization from them is needed.

From HotAir  “What started as a trickle is starting to feel like a flood. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are demanding that President Barack Obama seek their explicit approval for a new war in the Middle East, and it would be shortsighted for the president to ignore them.

The first and most salient reason why the president should seek out a congressional vote on a resolution authorizing force against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is that no such authorization currently exists. Though it remains on the books, the White House considers the 2002 Iraq resolution authorizing force to be defunct and has requested that it be repealed. It would be a perversion of the 2001 AUMF, which allows the President of the United States to attack al-Qaeda, to use that as authorization to attack the Islamic State. These terrorist organizations are two completely distinct entities and, at times, even adversaries.

Moreover, the president’s current justification for expanded “sovereignty strikes” in Iraq is particularly flimsy. The threat ISIS poses to American diplomatic and military assets in Baghdad and Erbil originally justified limited airstrikes, but using that logic to justify strikes on ISIS positions around strategically key sites like the Haditha Dam (The administration claims that the dam’s bursting could create a biblical flood which would eventually swamp the Green Zone in Baghdad) strains credulity.

Obama’s administration claims that the Constitution provides the president with the authority he needs to execute strikes in Syria, but the president did not believe he had that authority one year ago. When he sought strikes on targets in Syria in 2013, the president insisted that Congress would need to explicitly authorize that action. Today, Obama says he would welcome a congressional “buy in” in support of airstrikes inside that sovereign country, but his hand will not be stayed if that tacit consent is not forthcoming.”

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4. ISIS brothels full of kidnapped women are being run by British female jihadists.

From TheDailyMail  “Thousands of Iraqi women are being forced into sex slavery in brothels run by a ‘police force’ of British women jihadis, it has been reported.

As many as 3,000 women and girls have been taken captive from the Yazidi tribe in Iraq as Isis militants continue their reign of terror across the region.

Sources now say that British female jihadis operating a religious police force called the al-Khanssaa brigade, that punishes women for ‘un-Islamic’ behaviour, have set up brothels to for the use of Isis fighters.”

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5. And yet they’re allowed to vote….

From RasmussenReports  “Over one-third of Likely U.S. Voters remain unaware which political party controls the House of Representatives and which has a majority in the Senate – less than two months before an election that may put one party in charge of both.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 63% are aware that Republicans have majority control of the House. An identical number (63%) know that Democrats run the Senate.

Twenty percent (20%) mistakenly believe Democrats control the House, while 17% are not sure. Similarly, 18% think the GOP is in charge in the Senate, but 19% are not sure. (To see survey question wording.”

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6. Deportations of illegal immigrants is down.

From TheAP  “President Barack Obama has quietly slowed deportations by nearly 20 percent while delaying plans to act on his own potentially to shield millions of immigrants from expulsion.

The Homeland Security Department is on pace to remove the fewest number of immigrants since 2007, according to an analysis of its data by The Associated Press.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency responsible for deportations, sent home 258,608 immigrants between the start of the budget year last Oct. 1 and July 28 this summer, a decrease of nearly 20 percent from the same period in 2013, when 320,167 people were removed.

Over 10 months in 2012, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 344,624 people, some 25 percent more than this year, according to federal figures obtained by the AP.”

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7. All the more reason to send them back home.

From TheWashingtonPost  “All summer, Central American children caught at the U.S.-Mexico border have been trickling into the Washington area, sent to live with relatives in Latino communities. Now, they are descending en masse on the region’s public schools, bringing an array of problems that school officials are scrambling to address.

Ripped from distant worlds, most of the new students speak no English, and some are psychologically scarred from abuse by gangs or smugglers. Reunited with parents or other relatives they barely know, and still grieving for family and friends back home, they may feel depressed and resentful.

“Some of these kids arrive feeling very angry,” said Rina Chavez, a counselor with the Montgomery County schools. “After years of living with their grandparents, suddenly here they are with mom and a new stepdad and two younger siblings. Then they are expected in a heartbeat to sit down and learn, but they may not be ready.”

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News/Politics 9-11-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The President has announced his plan t deal with ISIS. While I disagree with much that he said, and I don’t see the reason you would announce your intent to ISIS and the world, they are a problem that needs addressing. I’ll leave the criticism for the anti-war left, who I’m sure are rallying protestors as we speak. 🙄

OK, not really. We know they only do that for Republican Presidents. But getting some backing from Congress first would be nice, but it’s obvious from his speech that Obama doesn’t feel the need for their approval.

From TheHill  “President Obama vowed to “destroy” Islamic State in Iraq and Syria terrorists in a prime-time address Wednesday that sought to restore eroding public confidence in his leadership and ability to safeguard national security.

The president announced a “systematic campaign of airstrikes” against fighters with the ISIS “wherever they exist,” signaling U.S. targets will expand from Iraq to Syria.”

“The speech marked a dramatic shift for a president largely elected on the promise to end the Iraq War. Obama has sought to use his second term to end American engagement in Afghanistan, the longest-running war in U.S. history.

Speaking on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that ushered in those conflicts, Obama took pains to say he would not commit U.S. ground troops to the new fight. He compared the new engagement against ISIS to fights in Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has used drones and government partners to attack suspected terrorists.

“I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Obama said. “It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.”

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2. His overall foreign policy is taking some friendly fire.

From HotAir  “Via Ace, something to keep in mind tonight while The One is doing his johnny-on-the-spot shtick about fighting jihadism in Iraq. “Lie” is my word, not Tim Arango’s, but read his comment and tell me what’s more likely. That the vast American intelligence community was “ignorant” of how bad things were in a country where we’d spent eight years developing assets? Or that the White House had every reason to know how dangerous Iraq was becoming but chose to suppress that information because the truth was problematic?”

“Is “ignorant” really the best word to describe willful blindness to a politically inconvenient truth? Obama got elected promising to bring the troops home; the only way he could do that without major domestic headaches was to claim that Iraq didn’t need them anymore. So he did, the truth notwithstanding. Imagine how many low-information voters will watch tonight’s speech and wonder where this bolt-from-the-blue known as ISIS came from. Last they heard, Iraq was doing just fine.

You guys know better, though. I’ve linked it more than once before but it’s worth re-reading Peter Beinart’s post from a few months ago about Obama’s history of malign neglect in Iraq. He had one Iraq goal as president — to get out, come what may, just as he promised voters he would do in 2008. And he did it, even though that meant denying Iraq a small but potent residual American force that could have held Maliki’s sectarian impulses in check (which in turn would have made Iraq’s Sunnis less inclined to turn to ISIS) and would have been well positioned to smash ISIS once it crossed the border from Syria. Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker has written about this at length. Quote:

“We used to restrain Maliki all the time,” Lieutenant General Michael Barbero, the deputy commander in Iraq until January, 2011, told me. “If Maliki was getting ready to send tanks to confront the Kurds, we would tell him and his officials, ‘We will physically block you from moving if you try to do that.’ ” Barbero was angry at the White House for not pushing harder for [a Status of Forces] agreement. “You just had this policy vacuum and this apathy,” he said. “Now we have no leverage in Iraq. Without any troops there, we’re just another group of guys.” There is no longer anyone who can serve as a referee, he said, adding, “Everything that has happened there was not just predictable—we predicted it.””

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3. The majority of the public agrees something must be done about ISIS, but they don’t exactly trust the feds ability to handle international affairs.

Also from HotAir  “Wow: Public’s trust in federal government to handle international problems now lower than during the Bush years”

“I may have buried the lede with that headline, actually. Turns out the public’s trust in the feds to handle domestic problems has also sunk below Bush levels. And not just Bush levels but Nixon levels. Per Gallup, during the Watergate months of 1974, 51 percent said they trust the feds to handle domestic problems and 73 percent said they trusted them to handle international ones.

In a week full of gruesome polls for Obama, I think this might be the most gruesome. In fact, at this point if the GOP doesn’t pick up at least 10 Senate seats this fall, they’ve arguably underperformed.”

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4. And something else to keep in mind…..

From CNSNews  “Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Ca.), a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, warned Tuesday that destroying ISIS would only empower those fighting against the terrorist group – who are almost as evil as ISIS.

“If you destroy one power in the Middle East, you empower the other side, and the four groups that are fighting ISIS now are in many ways nearly as evil as ISIS itself, and in fact, those who are fighting against ISIS today on the ground have killed far more Americans than ISIS has,” said Sherman, top Democrat on the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee.”

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5. Here comes the other shoe.

From TownHall  “Dan wrote up yesterday’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, which was jammed with crooked numbers for President Obama.  Most striking was the (30/55) majority deeming Obama’s presidency “a failure,” along with the prevailing opinion that he’s divided the country, and his unsightly leadership score.  The survey also included a dreadful (38/56) presidential approval rating on the implementation of Obamacare; support for the law itself was also underwater, with an outright majority opposed, despite this polling series’ silly question wording that omits any mention of ‘Obamacare’ or the ‘Affordable Care Act.’  A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll produces similar findings, with support for the president’s signature domestic accomplishment swamped by opposition. It’s been this way for years, across hundreds of national surveys.

One major reason for the enduring opposition is that the law has violated virtually every major promise erected in dishonest ideologues’ sales pitch.  Another is that an ongoing parade of unpleasant developments continues to make headlines, including the recent revelation that Healthcare.gov was hacked last month.  Apologists can cherry-pick useful data points to try to convince the public that Obamacare is reducing premium costs and driving down costs, but that’s simply not the case.  Individual market premiums exploded in 2014, and are expected to grow by roughly eight percent in 2015 (with many consumers confronting double-digit spikes) — to say nothing of high out-of-pocket costs and narrow coverage networks. Overall health spending continues an upward climb.  The law was billed as a dramatic premium reducer that would also bend down the so-called “cost curve.”  Healthcare industry expert Bob Laszewski is out with a must-read post on next steps for Obamacare.  He argues that the law may have been largely out of the news for the last few months, but a fresh round of cancellations and the coming open enrollment period are about to change all that:”

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News/Politics 9-10-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. President Obama met with a group of foreign policy experts on what to do about ISIS. He also invited Sandy Berger, I assume for his expert advice on how to get rid of incriminating documents. You know, like the ones showing the Obama admin aiding “moderate Syrian rebels,” some who fight with Al-Qaeda and some that have now merged with ISIS.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “President Obama hosted “a private dinner with a group of foreign policy experts,” the White House announced last night. Among them: Sandy Berger, who was caught stealing and destroying classified documents that related to President Clinton’s record on terrorism issues.”

“Here’s the White House’s announcement of the dinner:

Tonight the President and Vice President are having a private dinner with a group of foreign policy experts, including former Administration officials from Republican and Democratic Administrations, academics and think tank experts. The President looks forward to engaging with this group and hearing their views on a range of national security and foreign policy issues.”

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2. Moderates huh?

From TheDailyCaller  “A spokesman for the family of murdered journalist Steven Sotloff claimed Monday night that Sotloff was sold to the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) by Syria’s “so-called moderate rebels.”

Sotloff family spokesman Barak Barfi, a foreign policy research fellow at the New American Foundation, made the startling claim in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.”

“Asked how he knows this, Barfi referred to sources he and the Sotloff family have “on the ground.”

Barfi then turned his ire toward the Obama administration for making “a number of inaccurate statements.”

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3. And about those other “foreign policy experts”…..

Also from TheDailyCaller  “MSNBC’S Andrea Mitchell claimed President Barack Obama’s new cabal of foreign policy advisers “looks like a review of our guest list” on the liberal cable news network, with the AP’s Julie Pace explaining that the White House is trying to bring the commentators “into the fold.”

Mitchell spoke Tuesday with Pace about Obama’s Monday night dinner with the DC foreign policy intelligentsia, presumably designed to help craft a strategy to contain an aggressive Russia and defeat ISIS in the Middle East.

But as the MSNBC host ticked off the guests — including former Clinton aide Sandy Berger, longtime Democratic adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman — she couldn’t help but notice a trend.

“It looks like a review of our guest list here at ‘Andrea Mitchell Reports,’” she said. “Julie, why did the president finally reach out and bring in all of these different voices on foreign policy?”

“It was a pretty unusual thing for the president to do,” Pace explained. “Not only does he not usually reach out to folks like this, he actually has criticized what he calls ‘the Washington chattering class,’ people who tend to comment from the outside.”

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4. Looks like Sandy Burglar may have some work to do disappearing some more incriminating documents.

From PJMedia  “Last week here at PJ Media, I reported on the ongoing relations between the U.S.-backed “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army and ISIS. I also noted that, at this time last year, the received wisdom of the Washington, D.C. foreign policy establishment was that the Syrian rebels were largely moderate.

Now, a report in this past Sunday’s L.A. Times from the frontlines in Syria finds that another “vetted moderate” rebel group, Harakat Hazm – which has received anti-tank missiles from the U.S. — has been working with al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra: a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.”

“As Al-Akhbar reported back in May, in addition to having U.S. backing, Harakat Hazm is also backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey, and Qatar.”

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5. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….

From FoxNews  “The company that runs the conservative Breitbart.com news site says the IRS has selected the network for an audit, in a move company executives suggest is politically motivated.

Breitbart News Network, a California-based company which runs several conservative websites, says the IRS recently audited its 2012 financial information.

“The Obama administration’s timing on this is exquisite, but try as they might through various methods to silence us, we will only get more emboldened,” Stephen K. Bannon, executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, said in a written statement.”

“The IRS asked for a litany of documents, including logs of its receipts and expenses, but also its partnership agreement and a “written narrative” of the business.”

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6. Hmmmm…..

From Cincinnati.com  “Medical officials admitted a record number of children to a local hospital over the weekend because of what they believe to be a rare respiratory virus spreading throughout the country.

Although there’s been no confirmed cases of the enterovirus at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, officials admitted 540 patients Friday, said Dr. Derek Wheeler, associate chief of staff at the hospital.

The previous record was around 515, Wheeler said.

Some reports out of Missouri and Colorado suggest the virus, with symptoms similar to the common cold, brought sicker patients to hospitals, Wheeler said.”

“This particular type of enterovirus — EV-D68 — is uncommon, but not new. It was first identified in the 1960s. “I suspect that it’s something that hasn’t been around for a while and so there’s a lot of people susceptible to it,” Wheeler said.

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7. But hey, it’s not all bad news today, at least if this guys correct. 🙂

From Politico  “Political analyst Stu Rothenberg sees a wave election coming for Senate Republicans in November.

In a Roll Call column published Monday, the electoral expert said he is expecting Republicans to gain at least seven seats in the Senate and earn a November victory more dramatic than several pollsters have suggested.

“I am now expecting a substantial Republican Senate wave in November, with a net gain of at least seven seats,” he said. “But I wouldn’t be shocked by a larger gain.””

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News/Politics 9-9-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

I’m a little under the weather, so just a few from me today.

1. Sadly, it’s Mission Accomplished for the Obama admin. The new wussified version of the US Army Drill Instructor is officially complete. They’re no longer fearsome, just fabulous. 🙄 

From StarsAndStripes  “In the old Army, this probably would be accompanied by a torrent of curses and oaths. Butts would be kicked. But this is the new Army and Brooks just shakes her head, sternly calls the group together and starts instructing the recruits on the right way to do the exercise.

“I don’t like to yell and scream a lot,” said Brooks, who has trained recruits for nine 10-week cycles over the past three years. “If you’re yelling and screaming all the time, when are you going to teach them? Patience is a virtue when you are trying to instill discipline.””

“Brooks doesn’t fit the image Hollywood usually assigns to Army drill sergeants or Marine drill instructors. They most often are portrayed as hulking, red-faced, profanity-spewing brutes, a terror to any recruit unfortunate enough to enter their universe.

Conversely, Brooks is 5-foot-41/2-inches tall, and proud of the half inch. She lives in Northeast Richland with her wife, Shakerian. And she spent five years as a vocalist with the U.S. Army Europe Band and Chorus.”

“”We don’t smoke people anymore,” said Brooks, meaning using excessive physical training — running or push-ups — to break or wash out a recruit. “But sometimes you have to give them a little extra TLC.”

🙄

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2. Just like the Boston bombers, they operate in plain sight with no fear of the authorities. You’d think after the bombers, the feds would keep an eye on them, but I guess that’s asking too much from this administration.

From TheNYPost  “When it was revealed that the Boston Marathon bombers attended a Cambridge, Mass., mosque, its leaders were quick to disavow their actions.

Elder brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s ideology was not their own, the leaders of the Islamic Society mosque claimed. In fact, he was admonished for an extremist outburst he made during one sermon.

So, one crackpot in a congregation. Who can blame the mosque?

But what about eight — including a prominent member of ISIS?

“Now it can be revealed that another regular worshipper at the Islamic Society mosque was Ahmad Abousamra, who is now the top propagandist for ISIS.”

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3. Sacrificing the 1st Amendment to rally the base. That’s low, even for Democrats.

From HotAir  “Democrats have a real problem with their base voters. Heading into a contentious midterm election season in which the party faces headwinds and the increasingly likely prospect of losing control of the Senate, this condition is forcing the “in-party” to act in a peculiar and erratic fashion.

President Barack Obama rendered the judgment of Solomon over the weekend when he decided to save vulnerable red state Democrats a headache and postponed the issuing of an executive order which would have extended legal status to millions of illegal immigrants. While a handful of embattled incumbent Democrats are breathing easier today, a number of progressive activists, liberal lawmakers, and immigration groups are hyperventilating.

This decision will only exacerbate the problems Democrats have mobilizing their traditionally unenthusiastic base voters to turn out in a midterm year. To satisfy the wounded liberal ego, Democrats in Congress are turning to another progressive bête noire in order to gin up some enthusiasm among their supporters: That pesky First Amendment to the Constitution.

Yes, the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights has been driving Democrats nuts ever since the Supreme Court ruled in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms, which would have prohibited the airing of a corporately-financed documentary critical of Hillary Clinton within 30 days of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, were unconstitutional. The decision paved the way to allow corporations, unions, and other groups to spend unlimited sums on political speech and advocacy. To prohibit such activities would constitute a violation of the First Amendment.”

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