I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on.
Resources
For those who want further information about the topics covered in this blog, I recommend the following sites. I will add to this as I find additional good sources.
Libya—Gaddafi Must Die!
I think Gaddafi is going to die. If he is alive living in splendor in exile or, even worse, still in power threatening us and killing the rebels in his prisons in 2012, it will threaten Obama’s re-election. Now that we are in, Obama can say whatever he wants about Gaddafi not being a target, but Obama must have him killed, no matter how many Libyans or Americans die doing it, or what anti-American Jihadists come to power afterwards, or what some liberal senators said about the Constitution and the President’s war powers in the past. Gaddafi knows this, of course, and will fight like a trapped rat. Unless we get very lucky, this will get far uglier. Other tyrants take note—giving up nukes doesn’t save you—having them does. ~Bob.
Must Read: Is it America's duty to intervene wherever regime change is needed?
Excerpt: The missile strikes that inaugurated America’s latest attempt at regime change were launched 29 days before the 50th anniversary of another such — the Bay of Pigs of April 17, 1961. Then the hubris of American planners was proportional to their ignorance of everything relevant, from Cuban sentiment to Cuba’s geography. The fiasco was a singularly feckless investment of American power. Does practice make perfect? In today’s episode, America has intervened in a civil war in a tribal society, the dynamics of which America does not understand. And America is supporting one faction, the nature of which it does not know. “We are standing with the people of Libya,” says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, evidently confident that “the” people are a harmonious unit. Many in the media call Moammar Gaddafi’s opponents “freedom fighters,” and perhaps they are, but no one calling them that really knows how the insurgents regard one another, or understand freedom, or if freedom, however understood, is their priority. But, then, knowing is rarely required in the regime-change business. The Weekly Standard, a magazine for regime-change enthusiasts, serenely says: “The Libyan state is a one-man operation. Eliminate that man and the whole edifice may come tumbling down.” And then good things must sprout? The late Donald Westlake gave one of his comic novels the mordant title “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” People who do not find that darkly funny should not make foreign policy.
Gates: Libya was not 'a vital interest'; Clinton: President took the 'best available option'
So as Senators Obama and Biden said the President had no authority to attack anyone unless there was an “imminent threat” to the US. And as President and Veep, they do just that. ~Bob. Excerpt: Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday defended the U.S. military’s role in airstrikes against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces but said that Libya was not an imminent threat to the United States when the president ordered them. In two separate interviews Gates acknowledged that Libya did not hold “a vital interest” for the U.S., although he emphasized the geopolitical importance of Libya in a region fraught with recent instability.
On-the-job training for the president
Excerpt: There's nothing like someone saying "boo!" in the night to scatter a coalition of the unhappy, the unmanageable and the unwilling. Nobody has to be afraid of the Americans now. This is the change Barack Obama promised and delivered. Muammar Gadaffi is sitting pretty, or at least sitting not-so-bad, only a week after the beginning and end of whatever it is that the French and the British cooked up and dragged in the reluctant Americans to do the dishes. Gadaffi is the sleeping dwarf, to paraphrase Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbor (if you believe history as written by Hollywood), and filled him with a terrible rage for revenge. The allies, such as they are, are bumping, grinding and stumbling over each other to get out of his way. At the end of the week they were trying to come up with a committee to turn everything over to. The French insist that those bombs their bombers are dropping on Libya don't really constitute "an act of war," though you couldn't prove it by anybody on the ground. President Obama vows there won't be a single American boot on the ground in Libya, but you can't tell that to the Marines, specifically the 2,200 men of the 26thMarine Expeditionary Force aboard the USS Kearsage lying off Tripoli. Some of those 4,400 boots (assuming no peg-leg Marines) have already been on the ground, to rescue a downed American pilot. None of the rescuers arrived in either Nikes or Adidas, only boots. The White House says the operation will be over in a matter of "days, not weeks." French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe says it will be a matter of "days or weeks but not months." Other American officials suggested that nobody knows.
New coalition airstrikes reportedly underway in Libya; strikes help rebels advance
This is not a “No Fly” zone, folks. This is combat close air support of one side of a civil war—a side that includes folks who tried to murder Americans in Iraq. I say again, this will not end well, any more than the leftists support for the Mullahs against the Shah ended well, not just for us, but for women, gays and other dissidents in Iran. ~Bob. Excerpt: Libyan state television reported Sunday night that international airstrikes were targeting Moammar Gaddafi’s hometown and stronghold of Sirte for the first time. Foreign journalists in the city reported loud explosions and warplanes flying overheard. And an Associated Press reporter in the capital said international forces were also heavily bombarding the city that is Gaddafi’s main support base. There were at least nine loud explosions in Tripoli after nightfall and anti-aircraft fire was heard. “Civilian and military areas in Tripoli were hit a short while ago by the crusader, colonialist aggressors,” Libyan state television said in a written news flash.
Foreign Interests and Intervention in Libya
Interesting map. What happened to, “No Blood for Oil”? ~Bob.
The Republicans’ Hispanic problem
Republicans cannot outbid the Democrats on spending borrowed or printed dollars to buy the votes of the non-productive. The only hope is to win the votes of those who are hard-working Americans of Hispanic descent, who do not want to be taxed of all they own to import the failed culture they or their ancestors fled. ~Bob. Excerpt: If demographics is destiny, then Republicans may have a major political problem on their hands. Why? Because numbers released by the Census Bureau late last week showed massive growth in the nation’s Hispanic population, a community that Republicans have struggled mightily to reach in recent years. The numbers are eye-opening. Hispanics now account for more than 16 percent of the total population, making them the largest minority group in the country. More than half of all population growth in the United States over the past decade came from Hispanics. Perhaps most amazing is that nearly a quarter — 23 percent — of all children age 17 or younger are Latino.
Excerpt: The Republicans have no plan to insure the uninsured. How do I know that? A New York Times editorial told me. So did Ezra Klein, writing in The Washington Post. Matt Miller, also writing in the Post, went further. “I’m willing to repeal ObamaCare,” he wrote, provided the Republicans can “cover the same number of uninsured” and “do it at a lower cost.” So why don’t the Republicans have a plan? That’s easy. “They’re against reform because it would cover the uninsured — and that’s something they just don’t want to do,” wrote Paul Krugman in The New York Times. The Times’ own editorial said the same thing. All this has caused me to suffer a bout of severe depression. But, wait a minute. Wasn’t health care the biggest issue in the last presidential election? And…how memory fades…didn’t the Obama campaign spend millions of dollars…promoting his own plan?…no, that’s not right… Ah, now I remember. The Obama campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on TV commercials attacking the John McCain health plan! It spent more money than has ever been spent for or against any policy proposal in the history of American politics. The McCain plan, for all those suffering from collective amnesia, proposed to replace all existing health care tax and spending subsidies with a universal health grant, structured like a refundable tax credit. The Patients’ Choice Act version of the idea is sponsored by Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Paul Ryan (R-WI). It promises $2,300 (individual) or $5,700 (family) to everyone who isn’t enrolled in a government health plan. So what was candidate Obama’s problem with that? Did he object that the plan wasn’t generous enough? Too few regulations? No, none of that. The Obama TV ads focused like a laser on raw self-interest. McCain’s health plan, the ads said, will cause your withholding taxes to go up (without mentioning the offsetting credit that would cause them to go down).
Pull the Plug on Electric Car Subsidies
Wow, think how clean the environment will be with a million cars running off coal-generated electricity. ~Bob. Excerpt: Despite these significant flaws, the government is determined to jump-start sales for plug-ins by putting taxpayers on the hook. The $7,500 federal tax credit per PEV is nothing more than a federal subsidy that will add to the deficit. There are also federal tax credits for installing charging stations in homes and businesses and for building battery factories and upgrading the electric grid. The administration's goal—one million PEVs on the road by 2015— could cost taxpayers $7.5 billion. Outlays for recharging infrastructure will add billions more.
Market Reforms in Health Care
Market? The dumb public cannot be allowed to make healthcare decisions—or car or light bulb decisions—in the market, when brilliant bureaucrats can make them for them. ~Bob. Excerpt: Health care in the United States has made remarkable advances during the past 40 years. Yet our health care system also has several well-known problems: high costs, significant numbers of people without insurance, and glaring gaps in quality and efficiency -- and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is not the answer. In an updated second edition of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, R. Glenn Hubbard, John F. Cogan and Daniel P. Kessler detail a better approach, offering fundamental reform alternatives centering on tax changes, insurance market changes, and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid. The book proposes five specific reforms to improve the ability of markets to create a lower-cost, higher-quality health care system that is responsive to the needs of individuals, including: Increasing individual involvement. Deregulating insurance markets and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid. Improving availability and quality of information. Enhancing competition. And reforming the malpractice system. The authors show that, by promoting cost-conscious behavior and competition in both private markets and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, we can slow the rate of growth of health care costs, expand access to high-quality health care, and slow down runaway spending.
What Would Democrats Cut?
Excerpt: As a third temporary spending bill expires next week, the attention of Capitol Hill will once again be focused on producing a permanent spending bill to keep the federal government open and operating. The threat of a government shutdown would not exist had the Democratically controlled 111th Congress passed a budget for this fiscal year. In fact, not only did they fail to pass a budget, but for the for the first time in the history of the budget-making process, last year’s Congress failed to even vote on a budget. And now, even as the consequences of their failure are just days a way, the Democrats have still failed to agree on a plan that cuts spending. Thirty-eight days ago, on February 19, the House of Representatives passed a budget that would keep the federal government open for the rest of this fiscal year. Responding to the overwhelming mandate from the American people delivered last November to cut federal spending, that House budget cut $61 billion in spending from 2010 levels. The Democrats then produced a plan that they said “cut spending,” but even The Washington Post Fact Checker found no real cuts. And they will not even go on record identifying which cuts in the House’s bill they are willing to accept. The Post explains why: “Such a move would force Democrats to go on record defending programs that Republicans had identified as wasteful.”
Iranian Rulers, Believing Pre-Messianic Destruction Is Imminent, Make Film To Prepare Muslims
Excerpt: According to the Hadith, in the age of The Coming a revolution takes place in Iran. This is a key sign indicating that the reappearance is near, and serves as the initial preparation in the worldwide movement for The Coming of the last messiah. Based on this belief, the leaders of Iran see it as their duty to prepare the ground for The Coming. One of the most important keys to securing the reappearance of the last messiah — as called for in the Hadith — is the annihilation of Israel, and the conquering of Beitol Moghadas (Jerusalem). They state with conviction that Islam will soon conquer the world, and that all infidels will be destroyed. The pursuit of nuclear bombs by the radicals ruling Iran is directly connected to this belief: war, chaos, and lawlessness must engulf the world to pave the way for Imam Mahdi’s reappearance. (This video/film is behind a paywall, at least for now, so I haven’t seen it. Nevertheless, these reports are scary. This isn’t like a bum waving a “The End Is Near” sign down on Skid Row. This is more like seeing your state’s entire Congressional delegation march down Main Street to get the last rites in the middle of a sunny September morning when you weren’t expecting any problems. Ron P.)
Wisconsin GOP Investigates Illegal Political Activity, Makes the Left Angry
Excerpt: Laws are for the little people and nutty right wingers. If there is a key difference between conservatives and liberals it is their view on the rule of law. Speaking in broad terms liberals believe that a person is not accountable for their actions if their cause is just or if they have the “right” background or the “right” politics. So not a peep is heard about the clown car that is the Ninth Circus but the left goes crazy about the benign appearances of Justices Scalia and Alito. Cass Sustein and Goodwin Liu can hold legal opinions that not only put them outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence but also on the fringe of American society and no one says boo. John Yoo, on the other hand, was excoriated for writing an opinion attempting to define “torture.” Union thugs, the New Black Panther Party, and anti-globalization crazies should not be prosecuted. Tea parties, on the other hand, are dog whistle calls for anti-government violence and should be suppressed. Probably no where is this attitude more on display than in academia. Case in point is the case of University of Wisconsin professor William Cronon, recently elected president of the American Historical Association and Democrat party hack.
Wade Rathke’s Startling Admission: ‘Economic Terrorism’ Engineer Stephen Lerner Is Still on SEIU Payroll
Excerpt: ACORN founder Wade Rathke has been busy mocking the story that broke on The Blaze earlier this week about a multi-front plot to target JP Morgan Chase in an attempt to crash the stock market. We’ll look at his criticisms in a second. No need to bury the lede here. Rathke seems to answer the question we’ve been asking all week — does bank plotter Stephen Lerner still work for SEIU? Rathke says Lerner is still very much on the SEIU payroll: “Lerner has not been “fired” by SEIU as they report. He was placed on paid leave last fall to think through his contribution to the union, but was certainly present at the recent international executive board meeting.” This is important for several reasons — not the least of which is that this ties the plot to destroy the American economy much more closely within the ranks of the organization that time and time again President Obama has declared to be most important to him strategically and politically.
Syria: Lose your illusions, Barack
Excerpt: When President Obama addresses the nation tonight to better explain his Libya war, he could do the public a lot of good by also adding a few thoughts on the next Mideast battles -- and most urgently on Syria. There's a lot to explain: Since taking office, Obama has done much to reverse President George W. Bush's policy of shunning one of the region's most repressive tyrants. Informed by a misguided notion that Syria's Bashar Assad can sign a peace treaty with Israel and turn his back on his only reliable ally, Iran, the Obama administration engaged, courted and befriended a Syrian leader who's clearly always been much more interested in maintaining his relations with our most formidable enemies than in putting any effort into building new ones with us. But that was then -- before Mideast street protesters forced Obama to acknowledge that Bush's aim of freeing the region from the yoke of tyrants isn't that insane after all. So why are administration officials still walking on eggshells when asked about Syria? On CBS yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Assad to respond to his "people's needs, not to engage in violence, permit peaceful protests and begin a process of economic and political reform." Clinton's phrasing must be understood in context. The Obama administration uses two basic messages to address uprisings in the region: There's the tough "tyrant X must go" language, and then there's the gentler "we urge reform" phrasing.
House Republicans Blinked on Spending, So Now What?
Doesn’t matter. The Democrats are trying to put out the fire with thimbles of water, the Republicans with tea cups. The house is going to burn. Might save the cellar hole, but I’m not optimistic. ~Bob. Excerpt: It is difficult to dream up a more ideal time to have a high-profile showdown with intransient Democrats than today. Utterly incapable of governing, Democrats last year did not even attempt to pass a budget through Congress. After a decisive electoral loss and with our nation at the tipping point of fiscal ruin with a $1.6 trillion debt, Democrats refuse to contemplate any real cuts to spending. And the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, goes to the floor and waxes poetic about the urgent national priority of funding the Cowboy Poetry Festival. What did Republicans in the House do? They blinked by passing a series of short-term continuing resolutions to avoid a large-scale showdown over spending. The big spending fight of 2011 will come in several months when Congress considers raising the debt limit. The debate is likely to unfold very similarly to how the short-term funding fight has played out. Will Congress demand transformational changes in exchange for raising the debt limit? One hero of the new Congress is Florida Rep. Allen West. Last week, West told a local rally, “There were some of those new freshmen that you sent up to Washington, DC that you thought would hold the vanguard and they didn’t.”
This is Your Brain on Interventitron
Excerpt: You might not have given much thought to it—perhaps no one you know suffers from this addiction—but the most dangerous mind-altering substance afflicting Americans today is a drug called Interventitron. Developed in 1917 by the Princeton researcher (and American President) Woodrow Wilson, Interventitron is better known by street names applied to various brands by different dealers: “War to End All Wars," "Just Cause,” “Enduring Freedom,” and most recently “Odyssey Dawn.” This drug was once confined to certain subcultures in Washington, D.C., and parts of Manhattan, and it has been shown to have legitimate use in treating diseases—for instance, its application from 1941-1945 proved to be life-saving. But the drug proved highly addictive, and was frequently over-prescribed in subsequent decades for phantom illnesses, or conditions where its medical benefits were clearly outweighed by its potent side effects. Among these side-effects, clinicians have identified the following as the most serious:
Don't overstate anti-Muslim bias
Excerpt: Despite what may have gone on in Murfreesboro with the mosque its adherents have wanted to build, the larger story of anti-Islamic bias in America does not hold water. Let's start with the national numbers: 8.4 percent of religious hate crimes in America were anti-Muslim in 2009 (the most recent date for which statistics are available). By contrast, that same year, nearly 72 percent of religious hate crimes in America were anti-Jewish (Muslims in America faced 107 incidents of bias in 2009; Jews faced 931). This pattern has remained fairly consistent over the past decade.
Mideastern behind-the-scenes extremists
Excerpt: It’s no secret how the KGB was actively involved in bankrolling and furthering the radical student and hippie movements of the 1960s in hopes that stinky, stoned hippies and violent America-hating radicals like Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and dupes in the Weathermen, Students for a Democratic Society and others would topple America or cause it great harm. Why do you think they call it dope? Just a few years after the 1960s hippies largely became extinct, a man named Ronald Reagan brought the Soviet Union to its knees, proving that communism, socialism and anti-Americans like Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were no match for the strongest force ever developed by man: capitalism. Excellence has its rewards - never forget that. Tragically, American colleges remain infested with leftover liberals who spout socialist and communist idiocy from their insulated, ivory towers. However, the majority of Americans find liberalism to be a bankrupt, brain-dead political ideology that destroys instead of builds and creates dependence instead of independence.
Important: Flunking the Citizenship Test
Excerpt: Newsweek magazine recently announced its disgust after it offered the government's official citizenship test (the one we require immigrants to pass before being naturalized) to 1,000 Americans. Thirty-eight percent of the sample failed. Newsweek worried in its headline: "The country's future is imperiled by our ignorance."….It's easy to get discouraged with the results. Sixty-five percent couldn't figure out that the Constitution was penned and adopted at the Constitutional Convention; 63 couldn't identify how many justices were on the Supreme Court (nine); and 73 percent couldn't identify that communism was what we opposed in the Cold War. Current national leaders aren't so well known: 29 percent could not identify the current vice president (Joe Biden) and twice that percentage didn't identify the Speaker of the House (John Boehner)…. A daring principal could make passage of the citizenship test a high-school graduation requirement. Promoting better civic and historical knowledge is an important cause. But this leads to a follow-up question for Newsweek and its media colleagues: Do journalists see building civic knowledge as an important part of their job?
Slavery in Islam
Excerpt: Slavery, making one human the property of another, was widely practiced in the past by many societies. Regrettably, even in the 21st Century, the horrid practice continues in certain areas, most notably among Muslims. Islam’s genesis was the Arabian peninsula of the seventh century AD, known for its primitive beliefs and savage practices. So, it is of no surprise that Islam incorporated slavery and much of the ethos of the culture of its birthplace. Is discussing slavery beating a dead horse? Regrettably, it is not. The Anti-Slavery Society has documented numerous contemporary instances, most of them from Islamic countries. The repugnant practice of slavery presents a real threat to human dignity as Islamic fundamentalism is surging. The Islamic law—the Shariah—is based on the provisions of the Quran. And the Quran explicitly and implicitly condones slavery in dozens of suras (chapters). Muhammad himself took numerous slaves, mostly women, as spoils of war. Some of the women Muhammad took for himself he called concubines, hardly a consolation to the helpless enslaved women. (When Don John of Austria defeated the Muslims at the navel battle of Lepanto in 1571, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed. Their descendents are, of course, due “reparations” from Islamic countries, especially Turkey as it was mainly a Turkish fleet that was defeated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto I’ve always loved Chesterton’s poem Lepanto. ~Bob.)
Obama: The Absent-Minded President
Many Americans are familiar with the "absent minded professor", a stock character of fiction and Disney movies, but few Americans expected that Barack Obama, the political darling of Hollywood, would emerge as the quintessentially inept, absent-minded professor. Or that, that "absent-minded" might be the most positive way to spin his actions over the past 27 months of his presidency. Clearly, Obama keeps looking for the magic that will make his actions logical, a magic which has so far eluded him. President Obama seems to be having trouble remembering, and thus learning, from past mistakes. Instead, it seems that Obama needs to be drilled in the most basic facts, over and over again, before he seems to grasp the concepts. Could the President be absent minded? Let's just look at his actions during the first few months of 2011.
Why Liberals Hate Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin
Excerpt: Slaves who had the temerity to run away from their plantation “home” paid dearly if they were caught and returned. Measures were taken to make them an example to others who might harbor similar thoughts about freedom. Among those measures were brutal public beatings of rebels to which other slaves were forced to bear witness and digest with great clarity the price of rebelliousness. Such is the fate today of those uppity souls who choose to challenge the authority and legitimacy of our inexorably growing government plantation. Those with interests for the care and feeding of this plantation cannot physically punish these rebels with the whip. Their whip is the mainstream media and the means of punishment of this virtual whip is not beating of a physical body but assassination of character.
Is Key ICE Agent’s Degree Real or Not?
Excerpt: Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first–and probably not nearly the last–time that a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official lied about his/her resume and used a phony college degree. So, does Jorge Guzman, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles (who has top secret security clearance) have a real degree or not? It’s being litigated in court, and I’m confused as to which side is in the right here. Only time will tell. (Headhunters estimate that over 20% of the resumes they get list bogus credentials. The degree mill business is thriving—suggested reading, Degree Mills by John Bear. Or Google “Degree Mills.” ~Bob.)
We are uncertain how this ends...
Excerpt: Since the national mission is not clear, Admiral Mullen’s uncertainty is understandable, but his words are inexcusable. Our nation’s top military officer is obligated to demand from the Commander in Chief a clearly defined mission with a clearly expected outcome (how this ends) – the objective. He owes that to the serving men and women and their families who are being asked to lay it on the line. If he does not have the fortitude to demand that from the CINC, then he needs to call on any remaining honor and courage that he has left and resign. (Once again, SgtMaj Pendry hits the nail squarely on the head. --MasterGuns)
Can We Save America?
Excerpt: Not having had the opportunity to experience a childhood and unable to escape the events of the past, I came to this country already old beyond my years and as a consequence I was never able to be fully absorbed into the mainstream of the culture. I, as did other survivors of the War or those who lived through the deprivations of the Soviet Union or the re-education camps of Red China and immigrated to the United States, became not only the most loyal of citizens but in essence outside observers and part-time participants in the passing American scene. These past sixty years have been a watershed in the history of America. In that extraordinarily short era in the life of a nation, the United States, which during this period became the most powerful country in the history of mankind, is now facing national insolvency and a rapid descent into mediocrity. The people of the country, once brimming with confidence, are now fearful of the future for their progeny. A nation whose founders gave it an ability to correct its failings and which finally did so in the 1960's by guaranteeing equality to all its citizens now finds itself bogged down in a quagmire of "political correctness", intimidation and animosity among its citizens.
For all of you folks that have a passing interest in new (secret) military aircraft
As the F-117 “Stealth Fighter” emerged out of the night time skies to take most Americans by surprise the night it struck Saddam Hussein’s infrastructure at the beginning of the Gulf War it seems we have now a new cloak and dagger aerial vehicle. Dept of Defense and the Skunk Works or perhaps the Phantom Works apparently have something new waiting in the wings. The aerial vehicle has been lurking around the moonless and overcast skies of the Midwest for several years now. Every once in a while a civilian out and about in the wee hours of the morning has been confronted by something very large, motionless, and silent. The aircraft hovers effortlessly and silently and then accelerates quickly and silently away. Note the above URL/link. A year or so ago two Missouri police officers were out and about conducting their rounds not far from Whiteman AFB. They were outside their respective vehicles batting the breeze and sipping coffee when both fell silent. They looked up and the stars presently shining down upon them had all disappeared---in a very large triangular shape. The police officers realized that there was a “craft” sitting silently and motionlessly above them. After just a few minutes the craft departed swiftly and silently. The police officers were not particularly alarmed as this craft had been rumored by folks in the area for quite some time. Now we find it roaming the night time skies over Colorado. Many here may well remember the night time or daybreak sightings of the Stealth Fighter that were pooh-poohed by local officials, DOD, the press etc. Now we have this seemingly gargantuan aircraft that silently hovers in space and effortlessly, silently and swiftly accelerates away. No doubt our enemies will one day find themselves looking up into the night time sky at triangular spaces of the heavens devoid of stars just prior to their existence being violently terminated. God Bless America. --Tom C. U.S. Marine Corps (ret)
The Daily Caller Interview: 'Raising Righteous and Rowdy Girls' author Doug Giles
Excerpt: Like most parents, Clash Radio host and Townhall.com columnist Doug Giles is proud of his children. His daughter Hannah helped take down ACORN in 2009, when she partnered up with James O’Keefe to produce revealing undercover videos. Giles’ other daughter, Regis, started the campaign “Girls Just Wanna Have Guns,” which, among other things, aims to instruct young women on how to protect and defend themselves against predators. He has every reason to brag about his no-nonsense girls, both of whom partially inspired his new book, “Raising Righteous and Rowdy Girls,” which provides 14 chapters on how to rear females in today’s world. The Townhall.com contributor advises parents to teach their girls classiness and the value of intellect, but it’s not all work and no play for the Giles clan. Giles thinks it’s important for young women to know how to hunt, fight, rebel, date decent guys and even party. Giles recently agreed to answer some questions about his new book and other topics of interest from TheDC:
Mark Steyn: Closet Case
Excerpt: As the unaware $500-a-head invitees dined on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese, grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps, veteran reporter Scott Powers was locked away. The Orlando Sentinel reporter was ushered into the closet inside wealthy property developer Alan Ginsburg’s Winter Falls mansion, after being told that Joe Biden and Senator Bill Nelson had not yet arrived. (I don’t object to locking reporters in a closet. I am opposed to letting them out. ~Bob.)
Illegal alien charged with assaulting ICE officer with box cutter
Excerpt: A Mexican national was charged Thursday with assaulting a federal immigration officer with a box cutter. The charges resulted from an investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). A criminal complaint filed March 24 alleges that Jose Luis Ramirez-Rico, 31, of Wichita, picked up a box cutter and lunged at an ICE ERO officer on March 17 while the officer was looking for another man thought to live at the same address. The ICE ERO officer was not injured.
Face of Oxford Graduate Behind Invasion of Fortnum & Mason
Excerpt: With a first-class English degree from Oxford University, he is the sort of chap you might expect to find sipping £18-a-pot tea at Fortnum & Mason. But this weekend, Thom Costello was more interested in masterminding his hundreds of followers to storm the luxury grocer. As the leader of protest group UK Uncut, the 22-year-old graduate set up the group that directed the mob of activists who broke through police lines. UK Uncut is Britain’s newest campaign group and Mr Costello has created a remarkable following, numbering more than 24,000 in just five months. The middle-class activist founded the anti-capitalist outfit after a brainstorming session with friends in a trendy pub in Islington, North London, last October. (The idiots are crapping in their own nests. ~Bob.)
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Robert A. Hall
I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on.
Resources
For those who want further information about the topics covered in this blog, I recommend the following sites. I will add to this as I find additional good sources.
Libya—Gaddafi Must Die!
I think Gaddafi is going to die. If he is alive living in splendor in exile or, even worse, still in power threatening us and killing the rebels in his prisons in 2012, it will threaten Obama’s re-election. Now that we are in, Obama can say whatever he wants about Gaddafi not being a target, but Obama must have him killed, no matter how many Libyans or Americans die doing it, or what anti-American Jihadists come to power afterwards, or what some liberal senators said about the Constitution and the President’s war powers in the past. Gaddafi knows this, of course, and will fight like a trapped rat. Unless we get very lucky, this will get far uglier. Other tyrants take note—giving up nukes doesn’t save you—having them does. ~Bob.
Must Read: Is it America's duty to intervene wherever regime change is needed?
Excerpt: The missile strikes that inaugurated America’s latest attempt at regime change were launched 29 days before the 50th anniversary of another such — the Bay of Pigs of April 17, 1961. Then the hubris of American planners was proportional to their ignorance of everything relevant, from Cuban sentiment to Cuba’s geography. The fiasco was a singularly feckless investment of American power. Does practice make perfect? In today’s episode, America has intervened in a civil war in a tribal society, the dynamics of which America does not understand. And America is supporting one faction, the nature of which it does not know. “We are standing with the people of Libya,” says Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, evidently confident that “the” people are a harmonious unit. Many in the media call Moammar Gaddafi’s opponents “freedom fighters,” and perhaps they are, but no one calling them that really knows how the insurgents regard one another, or understand freedom, or if freedom, however understood, is their priority. But, then, knowing is rarely required in the regime-change business. The Weekly Standard, a magazine for regime-change enthusiasts, serenely says: “The Libyan state is a one-man operation. Eliminate that man and the whole edifice may come tumbling down.” And then good things must sprout? The late Donald Westlake gave one of his comic novels the mordant title “What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” People who do not find that darkly funny should not make foreign policy.
Gates: Libya was not 'a vital interest'; Clinton: President took the 'best available option'
So as Senators Obama and Biden said the President had no authority to attack anyone unless there was an “imminent threat” to the US. And as President and Veep, they do just that. ~Bob. Excerpt: Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday defended the U.S. military’s role in airstrikes against Col. Moammar Gadhafi's forces but said that Libya was not an imminent threat to the United States when the president ordered them. In two separate interviews Gates acknowledged that Libya did not hold “a vital interest” for the U.S., although he emphasized the geopolitical importance of Libya in a region fraught with recent instability.
On-the-job training for the president
Excerpt: There's nothing like someone saying "boo!" in the night to scatter a coalition of the unhappy, the unmanageable and the unwilling. Nobody has to be afraid of the Americans now. This is the change Barack Obama promised and delivered. Muammar Gadaffi is sitting pretty, or at least sitting not-so-bad, only a week after the beginning and end of whatever it is that the French and the British cooked up and dragged in the reluctant Americans to do the dishes. Gadaffi is the sleeping dwarf, to paraphrase Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbor (if you believe history as written by Hollywood), and filled him with a terrible rage for revenge. The allies, such as they are, are bumping, grinding and stumbling over each other to get out of his way. At the end of the week they were trying to come up with a committee to turn everything over to. The French insist that those bombs their bombers are dropping on Libya don't really constitute "an act of war," though you couldn't prove it by anybody on the ground. President Obama vows there won't be a single American boot on the ground in Libya, but you can't tell that to the Marines, specifically the 2,200 men of the 26thMarine Expeditionary Force aboard the USS Kearsage lying off Tripoli. Some of those 4,400 boots (assuming no peg-leg Marines) have already been on the ground, to rescue a downed American pilot. None of the rescuers arrived in either Nikes or Adidas, only boots. The White House says the operation will be over in a matter of "days, not weeks." French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe says it will be a matter of "days or weeks but not months." Other American officials suggested that nobody knows.
New coalition airstrikes reportedly underway in Libya; strikes help rebels advance
This is not a “No Fly” zone, folks. This is combat close air support of one side of a civil war—a side that includes folks who tried to murder Americans in Iraq. I say again, this will not end well, any more than the leftists support for the Mullahs against the Shah ended well, not just for us, but for women, gays and other dissidents in Iran. ~Bob. Excerpt: Libyan state television reported Sunday night that international airstrikes were targeting Moammar Gaddafi’s hometown and stronghold of Sirte for the first time. Foreign journalists in the city reported loud explosions and warplanes flying overheard. And an Associated Press reporter in the capital said international forces were also heavily bombarding the city that is Gaddafi’s main support base. There were at least nine loud explosions in Tripoli after nightfall and anti-aircraft fire was heard. “Civilian and military areas in Tripoli were hit a short while ago by the crusader, colonialist aggressors,” Libyan state television said in a written news flash.
Foreign Interests and Intervention in Libya
Interesting map. What happened to, “No Blood for Oil”? ~Bob.
The Republicans’ Hispanic problem
Republicans cannot outbid the Democrats on spending borrowed or printed dollars to buy the votes of the non-productive. The only hope is to win the votes of those who are hard-working Americans of Hispanic descent, who do not want to be taxed of all they own to import the failed culture they or their ancestors fled. ~Bob. Excerpt: If demographics is destiny, then Republicans may have a major political problem on their hands. Why? Because numbers released by the Census Bureau late last week showed massive growth in the nation’s Hispanic population, a community that Republicans have struggled mightily to reach in recent years. The numbers are eye-opening. Hispanics now account for more than 16 percent of the total population, making them the largest minority group in the country. More than half of all population growth in the United States over the past decade came from Hispanics. Perhaps most amazing is that nearly a quarter — 23 percent — of all children age 17 or younger are Latino.
Excerpt: The Republicans have no plan to insure the uninsured. How do I know that? A New York Times editorial told me. So did Ezra Klein, writing in The Washington Post. Matt Miller, also writing in the Post, went further. “I’m willing to repeal ObamaCare,” he wrote, provided the Republicans can “cover the same number of uninsured” and “do it at a lower cost.” So why don’t the Republicans have a plan? That’s easy. “They’re against reform because it would cover the uninsured — and that’s something they just don’t want to do,” wrote Paul Krugman in The New York Times. The Times’ own editorial said the same thing. All this has caused me to suffer a bout of severe depression. But, wait a minute. Wasn’t health care the biggest issue in the last presidential election? And…how memory fades…didn’t the Obama campaign spend millions of dollars…promoting his own plan?…no, that’s not right… Ah, now I remember. The Obama campaign spent tens of millions of dollars on TV commercials attacking the John McCain health plan! It spent more money than has ever been spent for or against any policy proposal in the history of American politics. The McCain plan, for all those suffering from collective amnesia, proposed to replace all existing health care tax and spending subsidies with a universal health grant, structured like a refundable tax credit. The Patients’ Choice Act version of the idea is sponsored by Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Paul Ryan (R-WI). It promises $2,300 (individual) or $5,700 (family) to everyone who isn’t enrolled in a government health plan. So what was candidate Obama’s problem with that? Did he object that the plan wasn’t generous enough? Too few regulations? No, none of that. The Obama TV ads focused like a laser on raw self-interest. McCain’s health plan, the ads said, will cause your withholding taxes to go up (without mentioning the offsetting credit that would cause them to go down).
Pull the Plug on Electric Car Subsidies
Wow, think how clean the environment will be with a million cars running off coal-generated electricity. ~Bob. Excerpt: Despite these significant flaws, the government is determined to jump-start sales for plug-ins by putting taxpayers on the hook. The $7,500 federal tax credit per PEV is nothing more than a federal subsidy that will add to the deficit. There are also federal tax credits for installing charging stations in homes and businesses and for building battery factories and upgrading the electric grid. The administration's goal—one million PEVs on the road by 2015— could cost taxpayers $7.5 billion. Outlays for recharging infrastructure will add billions more.
Market Reforms in Health Care
Market? The dumb public cannot be allowed to make healthcare decisions—or car or light bulb decisions—in the market, when brilliant bureaucrats can make them for them. ~Bob. Excerpt: Health care in the United States has made remarkable advances during the past 40 years. Yet our health care system also has several well-known problems: high costs, significant numbers of people without insurance, and glaring gaps in quality and efficiency -- and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is not the answer. In an updated second edition of Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, R. Glenn Hubbard, John F. Cogan and Daniel P. Kessler detail a better approach, offering fundamental reform alternatives centering on tax changes, insurance market changes, and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid. The book proposes five specific reforms to improve the ability of markets to create a lower-cost, higher-quality health care system that is responsive to the needs of individuals, including: Increasing individual involvement. Deregulating insurance markets and redesigning Medicare and Medicaid. Improving availability and quality of information. Enhancing competition. And reforming the malpractice system. The authors show that, by promoting cost-conscious behavior and competition in both private markets and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, we can slow the rate of growth of health care costs, expand access to high-quality health care, and slow down runaway spending.
What Would Democrats Cut?
Excerpt: As a third temporary spending bill expires next week, the attention of Capitol Hill will once again be focused on producing a permanent spending bill to keep the federal government open and operating. The threat of a government shutdown would not exist had the Democratically controlled 111th Congress passed a budget for this fiscal year. In fact, not only did they fail to pass a budget, but for the for the first time in the history of the budget-making process, last year’s Congress failed to even vote on a budget. And now, even as the consequences of their failure are just days a way, the Democrats have still failed to agree on a plan that cuts spending. Thirty-eight days ago, on February 19, the House of Representatives passed a budget that would keep the federal government open for the rest of this fiscal year. Responding to the overwhelming mandate from the American people delivered last November to cut federal spending, that House budget cut $61 billion in spending from 2010 levels. The Democrats then produced a plan that they said “cut spending,” but even The Washington Post Fact Checker found no real cuts. And they will not even go on record identifying which cuts in the House’s bill they are willing to accept. The Post explains why: “Such a move would force Democrats to go on record defending programs that Republicans had identified as wasteful.”
Iranian Rulers, Believing Pre-Messianic Destruction Is Imminent, Make Film To Prepare Muslims
Excerpt: According to the Hadith, in the age of The Coming a revolution takes place in Iran. This is a key sign indicating that the reappearance is near, and serves as the initial preparation in the worldwide movement for The Coming of the last messiah. Based on this belief, the leaders of Iran see it as their duty to prepare the ground for The Coming. One of the most important keys to securing the reappearance of the last messiah — as called for in the Hadith — is the annihilation of Israel, and the conquering of Beitol Moghadas (Jerusalem). They state with conviction that Islam will soon conquer the world, and that all infidels will be destroyed. The pursuit of nuclear bombs by the radicals ruling Iran is directly connected to this belief: war, chaos, and lawlessness must engulf the world to pave the way for Imam Mahdi’s reappearance. (This video/film is behind a paywall, at least for now, so I haven’t seen it. Nevertheless, these reports are scary. This isn’t like a bum waving a “The End Is Near” sign down on Skid Row. This is more like seeing your state’s entire Congressional delegation march down Main Street to get the last rites in the middle of a sunny September morning when you weren’t expecting any problems. Ron P.)
Wisconsin GOP Investigates Illegal Political Activity, Makes the Left Angry
Excerpt: Laws are for the little people and nutty right wingers. If there is a key difference between conservatives and liberals it is their view on the rule of law. Speaking in broad terms liberals believe that a person is not accountable for their actions if their cause is just or if they have the “right” background or the “right” politics. So not a peep is heard about the clown car that is the Ninth Circus but the left goes crazy about the benign appearances of Justices Scalia and Alito. Cass Sustein and Goodwin Liu can hold legal opinions that not only put them outside the mainstream of American jurisprudence but also on the fringe of American society and no one says boo. John Yoo, on the other hand, was excoriated for writing an opinion attempting to define “torture.” Union thugs, the New Black Panther Party, and anti-globalization crazies should not be prosecuted. Tea parties, on the other hand, are dog whistle calls for anti-government violence and should be suppressed. Probably no where is this attitude more on display than in academia. Case in point is the case of University of Wisconsin professor William Cronon, recently elected president of the American Historical Association and Democrat party hack.
Wade Rathke’s Startling Admission: ‘Economic Terrorism’ Engineer Stephen Lerner Is Still on SEIU Payroll
Excerpt: ACORN founder Wade Rathke has been busy mocking the story that broke on The Blaze earlier this week about a multi-front plot to target JP Morgan Chase in an attempt to crash the stock market. We’ll look at his criticisms in a second. No need to bury the lede here. Rathke seems to answer the question we’ve been asking all week — does bank plotter Stephen Lerner still work for SEIU? Rathke says Lerner is still very much on the SEIU payroll: “Lerner has not been “fired” by SEIU as they report. He was placed on paid leave last fall to think through his contribution to the union, but was certainly present at the recent international executive board meeting.” This is important for several reasons — not the least of which is that this ties the plot to destroy the American economy much more closely within the ranks of the organization that time and time again President Obama has declared to be most important to him strategically and politically.
Syria: Lose your illusions, Barack
Excerpt: When President Obama addresses the nation tonight to better explain his Libya war, he could do the public a lot of good by also adding a few thoughts on the next Mideast battles -- and most urgently on Syria. There's a lot to explain: Since taking office, Obama has done much to reverse President George W. Bush's policy of shunning one of the region's most repressive tyrants. Informed by a misguided notion that Syria's Bashar Assad can sign a peace treaty with Israel and turn his back on his only reliable ally, Iran, the Obama administration engaged, courted and befriended a Syrian leader who's clearly always been much more interested in maintaining his relations with our most formidable enemies than in putting any effort into building new ones with us. But that was then -- before Mideast street protesters forced Obama to acknowledge that Bush's aim of freeing the region from the yoke of tyrants isn't that insane after all. So why are administration officials still walking on eggshells when asked about Syria? On CBS yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Assad to respond to his "people's needs, not to engage in violence, permit peaceful protests and begin a process of economic and political reform." Clinton's phrasing must be understood in context. The Obama administration uses two basic messages to address uprisings in the region: There's the tough "tyrant X must go" language, and then there's the gentler "we urge reform" phrasing.
House Republicans Blinked on Spending, So Now What?
Doesn’t matter. The Democrats are trying to put out the fire with thimbles of water, the Republicans with tea cups. The house is going to burn. Might save the cellar hole, but I’m not optimistic. ~Bob. Excerpt: It is difficult to dream up a more ideal time to have a high-profile showdown with intransient Democrats than today. Utterly incapable of governing, Democrats last year did not even attempt to pass a budget through Congress. After a decisive electoral loss and with our nation at the tipping point of fiscal ruin with a $1.6 trillion debt, Democrats refuse to contemplate any real cuts to spending. And the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, goes to the floor and waxes poetic about the urgent national priority of funding the Cowboy Poetry Festival. What did Republicans in the House do? They blinked by passing a series of short-term continuing resolutions to avoid a large-scale showdown over spending. The big spending fight of 2011 will come in several months when Congress considers raising the debt limit. The debate is likely to unfold very similarly to how the short-term funding fight has played out. Will Congress demand transformational changes in exchange for raising the debt limit? One hero of the new Congress is Florida Rep. Allen West. Last week, West told a local rally, “There were some of those new freshmen that you sent up to Washington, DC that you thought would hold the vanguard and they didn’t.”
This is Your Brain on Interventitron
Excerpt: You might not have given much thought to it—perhaps no one you know suffers from this addiction—but the most dangerous mind-altering substance afflicting Americans today is a drug called Interventitron. Developed in 1917 by the Princeton researcher (and American President) Woodrow Wilson, Interventitron is better known by street names applied to various brands by different dealers: “War to End All Wars," "Just Cause,” “Enduring Freedom,” and most recently “Odyssey Dawn.” This drug was once confined to certain subcultures in Washington, D.C., and parts of Manhattan, and it has been shown to have legitimate use in treating diseases—for instance, its application from 1941-1945 proved to be life-saving. But the drug proved highly addictive, and was frequently over-prescribed in subsequent decades for phantom illnesses, or conditions where its medical benefits were clearly outweighed by its potent side effects. Among these side-effects, clinicians have identified the following as the most serious:
Don't overstate anti-Muslim bias
Excerpt: Despite what may have gone on in Murfreesboro with the mosque its adherents have wanted to build, the larger story of anti-Islamic bias in America does not hold water. Let's start with the national numbers: 8.4 percent of religious hate crimes in America were anti-Muslim in 2009 (the most recent date for which statistics are available). By contrast, that same year, nearly 72 percent of religious hate crimes in America were anti-Jewish (Muslims in America faced 107 incidents of bias in 2009; Jews faced 931). This pattern has remained fairly consistent over the past decade.
Mideastern behind-the-scenes extremists
Excerpt: It’s no secret how the KGB was actively involved in bankrolling and furthering the radical student and hippie movements of the 1960s in hopes that stinky, stoned hippies and violent America-hating radicals like Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn and dupes in the Weathermen, Students for a Democratic Society and others would topple America or cause it great harm. Why do you think they call it dope? Just a few years after the 1960s hippies largely became extinct, a man named Ronald Reagan brought the Soviet Union to its knees, proving that communism, socialism and anti-Americans like Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were no match for the strongest force ever developed by man: capitalism. Excellence has its rewards - never forget that. Tragically, American colleges remain infested with leftover liberals who spout socialist and communist idiocy from their insulated, ivory towers. However, the majority of Americans find liberalism to be a bankrupt, brain-dead political ideology that destroys instead of builds and creates dependence instead of independence.
Important: Flunking the Citizenship Test
Excerpt: Newsweek magazine recently announced its disgust after it offered the government's official citizenship test (the one we require immigrants to pass before being naturalized) to 1,000 Americans. Thirty-eight percent of the sample failed. Newsweek worried in its headline: "The country's future is imperiled by our ignorance."….It's easy to get discouraged with the results. Sixty-five percent couldn't figure out that the Constitution was penned and adopted at the Constitutional Convention; 63 couldn't identify how many justices were on the Supreme Court (nine); and 73 percent couldn't identify that communism was what we opposed in the Cold War. Current national leaders aren't so well known: 29 percent could not identify the current vice president (Joe Biden) and twice that percentage didn't identify the Speaker of the House (John Boehner)…. A daring principal could make passage of the citizenship test a high-school graduation requirement. Promoting better civic and historical knowledge is an important cause. But this leads to a follow-up question for Newsweek and its media colleagues: Do journalists see building civic knowledge as an important part of their job?
Slavery in Islam
Excerpt: Slavery, making one human the property of another, was widely practiced in the past by many societies. Regrettably, even in the 21st Century, the horrid practice continues in certain areas, most notably among Muslims. Islam’s genesis was the Arabian peninsula of the seventh century AD, known for its primitive beliefs and savage practices. So, it is of no surprise that Islam incorporated slavery and much of the ethos of the culture of its birthplace. Is discussing slavery beating a dead horse? Regrettably, it is not. The Anti-Slavery Society has documented numerous contemporary instances, most of them from Islamic countries. The repugnant practice of slavery presents a real threat to human dignity as Islamic fundamentalism is surging. The Islamic law—the Shariah—is based on the provisions of the Quran. And the Quran explicitly and implicitly condones slavery in dozens of suras (chapters). Muhammad himself took numerous slaves, mostly women, as spoils of war. Some of the women Muhammad took for himself he called concubines, hardly a consolation to the helpless enslaved women. (When Don John of Austria defeated the Muslims at the navel battle of Lepanto in 1571, 12,000 Christian galley slaves were freed. Their descendents are, of course, due “reparations” from Islamic countries, especially Turkey as it was mainly a Turkish fleet that was defeated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto I’ve always loved Chesterton’s poem Lepanto. ~Bob.)
Obama: The Absent-Minded President
Many Americans are familiar with the "absent minded professor", a stock character of fiction and Disney movies, but few Americans expected that Barack Obama, the political darling of Hollywood, would emerge as the quintessentially inept, absent-minded professor. Or that, that "absent-minded" might be the most positive way to spin his actions over the past 27 months of his presidency. Clearly, Obama keeps looking for the magic that will make his actions logical, a magic which has so far eluded him. President Obama seems to be having trouble remembering, and thus learning, from past mistakes. Instead, it seems that Obama needs to be drilled in the most basic facts, over and over again, before he seems to grasp the concepts. Could the President be absent minded? Let's just look at his actions during the first few months of 2011.
Why Liberals Hate Clarence Thomas and Sarah Palin
Excerpt: Slaves who had the temerity to run away from their plantation “home” paid dearly if they were caught and returned. Measures were taken to make them an example to others who might harbor similar thoughts about freedom. Among those measures were brutal public beatings of rebels to which other slaves were forced to bear witness and digest with great clarity the price of rebelliousness. Such is the fate today of those uppity souls who choose to challenge the authority and legitimacy of our inexorably growing government plantation. Those with interests for the care and feeding of this plantation cannot physically punish these rebels with the whip. Their whip is the mainstream media and the means of punishment of this virtual whip is not beating of a physical body but assassination of character.
Is Key ICE Agent’s Degree Real or Not?
Excerpt: Sadly, it wouldn’t be the first–and probably not nearly the last–time that a high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official lied about his/her resume and used a phony college degree. So, does Jorge Guzman, Assistant Special Agent in Charge for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles (who has top secret security clearance) have a real degree or not? It’s being litigated in court, and I’m confused as to which side is in the right here. Only time will tell. (Headhunters estimate that over 20% of the resumes they get list bogus credentials. The degree mill business is thriving—suggested reading, Degree Mills by John Bear. Or Google “Degree Mills.” ~Bob.)
We are uncertain how this ends...
Excerpt: Since the national mission is not clear, Admiral Mullen’s uncertainty is understandable, but his words are inexcusable. Our nation’s top military officer is obligated to demand from the Commander in Chief a clearly defined mission with a clearly expected outcome (how this ends) – the objective. He owes that to the serving men and women and their families who are being asked to lay it on the line. If he does not have the fortitude to demand that from the CINC, then he needs to call on any remaining honor and courage that he has left and resign. (Once again, SgtMaj Pendry hits the nail squarely on the head. --MasterGuns)
Can We Save America?
Excerpt: Not having had the opportunity to experience a childhood and unable to escape the events of the past, I came to this country already old beyond my years and as a consequence I was never able to be fully absorbed into the mainstream of the culture. I, as did other survivors of the War or those who lived through the deprivations of the Soviet Union or the re-education camps of Red China and immigrated to the United States, became not only the most loyal of citizens but in essence outside observers and part-time participants in the passing American scene. These past sixty years have been a watershed in the history of America. In that extraordinarily short era in the life of a nation, the United States, which during this period became the most powerful country in the history of mankind, is now facing national insolvency and a rapid descent into mediocrity. The people of the country, once brimming with confidence, are now fearful of the future for their progeny. A nation whose founders gave it an ability to correct its failings and which finally did so in the 1960's by guaranteeing equality to all its citizens now finds itself bogged down in a quagmire of "political correctness", intimidation and animosity among its citizens.
For all of you folks that have a passing interest in new (secret) military aircraft
As the F-117 “Stealth Fighter” emerged out of the night time skies to take most Americans by surprise the night it struck Saddam Hussein’s infrastructure at the beginning of the Gulf War it seems we have now a new cloak and dagger aerial vehicle. Dept of Defense and the Skunk Works or perhaps the Phantom Works apparently have something new waiting in the wings. The aerial vehicle has been lurking around the moonless and overcast skies of the Midwest for several years now. Every once in a while a civilian out and about in the wee hours of the morning has been confronted by something very large, motionless, and silent. The aircraft hovers effortlessly and silently and then accelerates quickly and silently away. Note the above URL/link. A year or so ago two Missouri police officers were out and about conducting their rounds not far from Whiteman AFB. They were outside their respective vehicles batting the breeze and sipping coffee when both fell silent. They looked up and the stars presently shining down upon them had all disappeared---in a very large triangular shape. The police officers realized that there was a “craft” sitting silently and motionlessly above them. After just a few minutes the craft departed swiftly and silently. The police officers were not particularly alarmed as this craft had been rumored by folks in the area for quite some time. Now we find it roaming the night time skies over Colorado. Many here may well remember the night time or daybreak sightings of the Stealth Fighter that were pooh-poohed by local officials, DOD, the press etc. Now we have this seemingly gargantuan aircraft that silently hovers in space and effortlessly, silently and swiftly accelerates away. No doubt our enemies will one day find themselves looking up into the night time sky at triangular spaces of the heavens devoid of stars just prior to their existence being violently terminated. God Bless America. --Tom C. U.S. Marine Corps (ret)
The Daily Caller Interview: 'Raising Righteous and Rowdy Girls' author Doug Giles
Excerpt: Like most parents, Clash Radio host and Townhall.com columnist Doug Giles is proud of his children. His daughter Hannah helped take down ACORN in 2009, when she partnered up with James O’Keefe to produce revealing undercover videos. Giles’ other daughter, Regis, started the campaign “Girls Just Wanna Have Guns,” which, among other things, aims to instruct young women on how to protect and defend themselves against predators. He has every reason to brag about his no-nonsense girls, both of whom partially inspired his new book, “Raising Righteous and Rowdy Girls,” which provides 14 chapters on how to rear females in today’s world. The Townhall.com contributor advises parents to teach their girls classiness and the value of intellect, but it’s not all work and no play for the Giles clan. Giles thinks it’s important for young women to know how to hunt, fight, rebel, date decent guys and even party. Giles recently agreed to answer some questions about his new book and other topics of interest from TheDC:
Mark Steyn: Closet Case
Excerpt: As the unaware $500-a-head invitees dined on caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese, grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps, veteran reporter Scott Powers was locked away. The Orlando Sentinel reporter was ushered into the closet inside wealthy property developer Alan Ginsburg’s Winter Falls mansion, after being told that Joe Biden and Senator Bill Nelson had not yet arrived. (I don’t object to locking reporters in a closet. I am opposed to letting them out. ~Bob.)
Illegal alien charged with assaulting ICE officer with box cutter
Excerpt: A Mexican national was charged Thursday with assaulting a federal immigration officer with a box cutter. The charges resulted from an investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO). A criminal complaint filed March 24 alleges that Jose Luis Ramirez-Rico, 31, of Wichita, picked up a box cutter and lunged at an ICE ERO officer on March 17 while the officer was looking for another man thought to live at the same address. The ICE ERO officer was not injured.
Face of Oxford Graduate Behind Invasion of Fortnum & Mason
Excerpt: With a first-class English degree from Oxford University, he is the sort of chap you might expect to find sipping £18-a-pot tea at Fortnum & Mason. But this weekend, Thom Costello was more interested in masterminding his hundreds of followers to storm the luxury grocer. As the leader of protest group UK Uncut, the 22-year-old graduate set up the group that directed the mob of activists who broke through police lines. UK Uncut is Britain’s newest campaign group and Mr Costello has created a remarkable following, numbering more than 24,000 in just five months. The middle-class activist founded the anti-capitalist outfit after a brainstorming session with friends in a trendy pub in Islington, North London, last October. (The idiots are crapping in their own nests. ~Bob.)
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Robert A. Hall
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