Tuesday, February 17, 2015
The most important article about ISIS you will read this year
The entire article is an absolute must-read, but a digest version -- summarizing the key graphs -- is excerpted below. It's a very short-form version of Graeme's work, which you simply must read when you have the time to fully absorb it. The gravity of his findings cannot be overstated.
[ISIS] seized Mosul, Iraq, last June, and already rules an area larger than the United Kingdom. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been its leader since May 2010, but until last summer, his most recent known appearance on film was a grainy mug shot from a stay in U.S. captivity at Camp Bucca during the occupation of Iraq. Then, on July 5 of last year, he stepped into the pulpit of the Great Mosque of al-Nuri in Mosul, to deliver a Ramadan sermon as the first caliph in generations—upgrading his resolution from grainy to high-definition, and his position from hunted guerrilla to commander of all Muslims. The inflow of jihadists that followed, from around the world, was unprecedented in its pace and volume, and is continuing.
Our ignorance of the Islamic State is in some ways understandable: It is a hermit kingdom; few have gone there and returned. Baghdadi has spoken on camera only once. But his address, and the Islamic State’s countless other propaganda videos and encyclicals, are online, and the caliphate’s supporters have toiled mightily to make their project knowable. We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world...
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? U.S. Expects to Quadruple the Number of Syrian Refugees Imported into U.S.
Though there are many trouble spots around the world, as a general rule it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs Jews in "Palestine", Muslims vs Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs Christians in Africa, Muslims vs Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs backpacking tourists in Bali, Muslims vs Danish cartoonists in Scandinavia. The environmentalists may claim to think globally but act locally, but these guys live it.
With that as background, please consider "U.S. Expects to Quadruple the Number of Syrian Refugees Brought Here."
The United States has "a long tradition of welcoming refugees," and it expects to welcome thousands more of them from Syria in 2015 and 2016, despite concerns about foreign fighters, the State Department said.
"The United States has admitted 524 Syrians since 2011. We’re likely to admit 1,000 to 2,000 Syrian refugees for permanent resettlement in Fiscal Year 2015 and a somewhat higher number, though still in the low thousands, in Fiscal Year 2016," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday.
...Psaki repeated that "one of our values is bringing in and welcoming refugees who have fled horrors around the world, and that continues to be central to what we believe in."
In response to a question, Psaki said she's aware of only "two incidents" involving "two Iraqis" who were admitted to Kentucky and were later accused of trying to send weapons and money to al Qaida in Iraq.
Far be it from me to challenge the genius of the Hillary/Kerry State Department, but one wonders whether Psaki needs a fungo-sized konk in the noggin from our legendary clue-bat.
According to State Department spokeserson Marie Harf, ISIS can be stopped in its tracks with a unique military strategy: offering the burgeoning Caliphate members entry-level jobs. Say, changing oil at JiffyLube or refilling the
Of course, an accurate representation of ISIS' goals would require candor and resolve, which is why you'll never hear a peep about any of that from the most transparent administration evah.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Democrats Freaking Out as Obamacare Tax-Penalty-Fee-Fines Loom for Millions of Americans
Who could have predicted that 2,500 pages of law and 50,000 pages of regulations -- that not one person read in toto -- would turn out to be a complete cluster?
The official sign-up season for President Barack Obama's health care law may be over, but leading congressional Democrats say millions of Americans facing new tax penalties deserve a second chance.
Three senior House members strongly urged the administration Monday to grant a special sign-up opportunity for uninsured taxpayers who will be facing fines under the law for the first time this year.
The three are Michigan's Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, and Democratic Reps. Jim McDermott of Washington, and Lloyd Doggett of Texas. All worked to help steer Obama's law through rancorous congressional debates from 2009-2010.
How many people are alive because one man ignored Sonic's request to leave his handgun at home?
On February 8 2015, a customer who ignored Sonic’s request that “customers refrain from bringing guns to the restaurant” was able to pull his gun and shoot one of three alleged armed robbers, killing him and stopping the would-be robbery.
I previously reported that on May 30, 2014, Sonic asked law-abiding citizens to come to the restaurant unarmed. We also reported that a Sonic in Topeka, Kansas, was robbed the very day that customers were asked to come and eat while defenseless.
But on February 8 2015, the tables were turned. Atlanta’s NBC 11 reports that 23-year-old Joseph Toombs “was waiting in line at the drive-thru [in DeKalb County, Georgia,] when he saw three suspects approach him on foot.” Toombs alleges that “at least one of the suspects” had a gun.
Kamikaze Nation
The United States is under direct and sustained attack by the combined forces of the tyrannical far left and radical Islam, punctuated by humiliation abroad and despair at home.
We are losing because unlike Walter Mitty, whose delusions were confined to his own head, Barack Obama has been permitted to play out his most destructive leftist and pro-Islamic fantasies in real-time from the most powerful office on the planet.Obama behaves like a dictator not just because he is a narcissist, but because his political beliefs are, at their core, authoritarian. He represents a perfect anti-American storm, the amalgamation of twin totalitarian ideologies, Marxist-Leninism and Islamic extremism, both dedicated to the destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization.
Obama cannot counter threats from abroad because he is sympathetic to them, while simultaneously pursuing domestic policies that generate economic malaise, fiscal bankruptcy, and social chaos; conditions that undermine American democracy and are the foundation of his fundamental transformation of the country.
Obama would not be a problem, nor would he even be President, if we did not have a hopelessly corrupt political-media culture.
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Misunderstanderers of Islam may be preparing to set fire to a cage full of "infidel" children
Weasel Zippers reports that this was tweeted out from an apparent ISIS-related account:
هل سيصل صوت أطفال الغوطة الآن لهذا العالم الصامت ؟! pic.twitter.com/gj6NRdw5zS
— الدمشقي #خلافة (@Dimashki4) February 15, 2015But I guess this is just another case of a bunch of folks who are random victims of zealots, right, Mr. President?
Update: The Right Planet has more information on this picture. It's unclear whether it's a simulated protest or something real, but rest assured the President is on it, just like he was on "#BringBackOurGirls."
Update II: "ISIS Releases Video of 21 Christians Being Beheaded in Libya."
Hat tip: BadBlue News
Boston Logan Shuttered Again Due to Global Warming and Six Feet of Snow, But Mostly Six Feet of Snow
Fat tails in nature, Boston snow edition pic.twitter.com/q62LueANK8 cc @nntaleb
— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) February 15, 2015You know global warming is getting bad when towns in New Hampshire cancel their annual Ice Carnival - http://t.co/vGdxX7S89Y @algore
— Doug Ross (@directorblue) February 15, 2015As the founder of the Weather Channel said not long ago, "global warming [is] the greatest scam in history."
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Why you haven't heard anything about the killer of Muslims in NC
Was the brutal murder of three Muslims in North Carolina this week a case of “random violence,” or were the three targeted because of their Muslim faith? And why, of all the murders committed across the country this week, did these three grab so much national media attention? The FBI has now joined the investigation.
Perhaps the lessons learned from Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January of 2011 could inform the answers to these questions, and serve as a reminder of the dangers of biased reporting on murder cases. But, unfortunately, the mainstream media continue to perpetuate a confusing double standard when it comes to reporting on the deaths of innocents.
Why, for example, did the deaths of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina gain traction at The Washington Post, Reuters, and many other media outlets which speculated that it was a possible hate crime, while this black teen murdering a white classmate and taking a selfie with the corpse didn’t receive anywhere near the same treatment? And what about the murders occurring in Chicago every day? Don’t those deserve headlines, and candlelight vigils too?
“However, I do think it’s fair to say that attributing political motives to individual killings is much more of a phenomenon on the left than on the right,” argues Mark Hemingway for The Weekly Standard in a column regarding the recent execution-style shootings of Deah Barakat, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha.
The alleged shooter, Craig Stephen Hicks, liked the “Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Freedom from Religion Foundation, Bill Nye ‘The Science Guy,’ Neil deGrasse Tyson, Gay Marriage groups and similar progressive pages” on Facebook, notes Hemingway. Maddow didn’t mention any of that on her show when talking about the incident.
Hicks displayed a habit of posting snarky pictures with slogans like, “Democrats aren’t perfect but at least they haven’t been shoving poor Jesus up my c—ch and Ronald Reagan down my throat.” Another picture he promoted reads, “So Rick Santorum thinks that when people get educated they stop believing in God? Best advertisement for Atheism I’ve ever heard.”
THIS CHART TELLS THE STORY: The Middle Class Thrived After World War II... Until Obama
The Davos World Economic Summit has long been a parade for the insider agenda, putting the power players’ plans for the world’s economies on display as a preview to their playing out for the rest of the year.
But so far, the 2015 elite retreat in the Swiss Alps has proven to be full of apprehension, and even horror… with many of its own members expressing regret at the world they have built.
The Guardian reported:
The billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this week are getting worried about inequality… even the architects of the crisis-ridden international economic order are starting to see the dangers. It’s not just the maverick hedge-funder George Soros, who likes to describe himself as a class traitor. Paul Polman, Unilever chief executive, frets about the “capitalist threat to capitalism”. Christine Lagarde, the IMF managing director, fears capitalism might indeed carry Marx’s “seeds of its own destruction” and warns that something needs to be done.
The scale of the crisis has been laid out for them by the charity Oxfam. Just 80 individuals now have the same net wealth as 3.5 billion people – half the entire global population. Last year, the best-off 1% owned 48% of the world’s wealth, up from 44% five years ago. On current trends, the richest 1% will have pocketed more than the other 99% put together next year. The 0.1% have been doing even better, quadrupling their share of US income since the 1980s.
These billionaires are not concerned with a fair or truly equitable world, of course. But they may well be concerned about having pushed the system beyond the brink, and triggering global collapse or unrest as a result of things gone way too far.
On top of a bloated super-surveillance police state that is still expanding in the age of Big Data and continuing terrorism, it is a “wealth grab on a grotesque scale” that has stood out the most in 2015.
In 2015, it has become obvious that inequality has become just plain cynical, unsettling and, perhaps, downright revolutionary… and even the insulated, egocentric billionaires have taken notice.
UNBELIEVABLE: Obamnesty Extended to Allow In Relatives Of Illegals
Senator Jeff Sessions‘ statement on new USCIS “guidelines” allowing amnestied illegal immigrants to bring in relatives:
“One of the President’s most shocking unilateral actions is his chain migration program for the relatives of illegal immigrants. Guidance issued yesterday from USCIS declares that many illegal immigrants’ foreign relatives may legally join them in the U.S. Under this decree, the Administration is allowing the Central American relatives of those covered by the President’s amnesty order to come to the U.S. as ‘refugees’ or ‘parolees.’
In effect, the President’s answer to the ongoing run on the border is to order government officials to transport many of those same individuals from Central America into the U.S. with lawful paperwork and guaranteed access to federal benefits.
This government-ordered amnesty chain migration will impose enormous costs on federal taxpayers and jobseekers, as those who arrive as refugees will be able to receive automatic federal benefits. We must be taking action to reduce the incentive to enter the country illegally. Helping illegal immigrants bring their relatives here as refugees only provides further incentive for illegal immigration. More broadly, we must be taking steps to curb the flow of unskilled labor and help families already living here—whether past immigrants or U.S.-born—find good jobs, good schools, and thriving communities.”
[NOTE: The U.S. currently admits 1 million permanent immigrants each year along with 70,000 refugees and asylees. According to Gallup, Americans want to see record immigration reduced, not increased, by a 2-1 margin.]
Emphases added. As far as I can see, this story has been picked up nowhere in the MSM.
Hat tip: BadBlue News.
Friday, February 13, 2015
READING IS FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION: Obamnesty flooding school systems with illegal aliens
Costs for schooling a surging number of limited English proficiency students are soaring — $2.5 billion in the Washington, D.C., region alone. But the federal government, responsible for the influx of immigrants, is ducking the bill.
A new study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that taxpayers in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia are incurring budget-busting costs to accommodate a rising tide of English-deficient pupils, most of them first-generation immigrants.Alexandria, Va., for example, is spending $25,538 per LEP student. With 4,183 such students enrolled this year, the city’s school district is paying out $107,719,214 for those LEP pupils — a whopping 45.8 percent of the district’s annual instructional budget.
The ranks of LEP students, many of whom come from households where no English is spoken, have jumped 125 percent in the Northern Virginia city since the 2005-2006 school year.
Similar increases are found in neighboring Fairfax and Arlington counties, as well as in D.C. and its Maryland suburbs.
Because LEP students require more intensive and specialized services, district outlays for them run 40 to 50 percent higher than for non-LEP students. And because the federal government is not reimbursing for the rising costs, local school districts and their counties are diverting funds from other programs, says Eric Ruark, director of research for FAIR.
Barack Obama is mainstreaming anti-Semitism in America
President Barack Obama is mainstreaming anti-Semitism in America.
This week, apropos of seemingly nothing, in an interview with Mathew Yglesias from the Vox.com website, Obama was asked about terrorism. In his answer the president said the terrorism threat is overrated. And that was far from the most disturbing statement he made.
Moving from the general to the specific, Obama referred to the jihadists who committed last month’s massacres in Paris as “a bunch of violent vicious zealots,” who “randomly shot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.”
In other words, Ahmedy Coulibaly, the terrorist at Hyper Cacher, the kosher supermarket he targeted, was just some zealot. The Jews he murdered while they were shopping for Shabbat were just “a bunch of folks in a deli,” presumably shot down while ordering their turkey and cheese sandwiches.
No matter that Coulibaly called a French TV station from the kosher supermarket and said he was an al-Qaida terrorist and that he chose the kosher supermarket because he wanted to kill Jews.
As far as the leader of the free world is concerned, his massacre of four Jews at the market can teach us nothing about anything other than that some random people are mean and some random people are unlucky.
Pssst, @MADDOnline: White House Ordering Border Patrol to Release Drunk Drivers, “Allow Them to Go On Their Way”
The Obama administration has ordered federal agents responsible for protecting one of the nation’s busiest and most crime-infested regions near Mexico to stop apprehending drunk drivers, according to an internal government memo that also concedes an officer that elects to detain them is “acting within the course and scope of his employment.”
Obtained by Judicial Watch this week, the notice is titled “Enforcement Options With Alcohol-Impaired Drivers” and directs the 4,000-plus U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Tucson, Arizona sector to “release” individuals under the influence and “allow them to go on their way.” The document acknowledges that this feels counter-intuitive for Border Patrol agents, but eases concerns by answering a hypothetical question for the officers who have sworn to uphold the law: “If you allow this driver to continue down the road and they kill someone, aren’t you liable?” The answer is no, according to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo. “There is no legal requirement for a Border Patrol agent to intervene in a state crime, including DUI,” the order says, adding that “therefore there is generally no liability that will attach to the agent or agency for failing to act in this situation.”
The directive offers another scenario—detaining the impaired individual at the request of state or local law enforcement officers (LEO). “There is no duty to detain the alcohol-impaired individual,” the memo says, “but if you do this option can raise potential liability for the agent and the agency.” The document goes on to say that Border Patrol policy is to cooperate with local and state law enforcement officers who alert of suspected violations under state law. That means the agent would be considered to have been acting within the course and scope of his employment while detaining a drunk driver at the request of local law enforcement officers under Arizona law, the document confirms.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Kayla Mueller dies of climate change and Islamonazi fanatics, but mostly Islamonazi fanatics
Leadership: An administration that views climate change as a greater threat than terrorism blames its most recent foolish comments on cable news and poor word choice. Will Brian Williams be the next press secretary?
According to President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and White House press secretary Josh Earnest, 26-year-old humanitarian worker Kayla Mueller was killed by global warming, not by an Islamic State that beheads and incinerates those who resist its barbarism.In trying to explain Obama's remarks on climate change and terrorism, Earnest told the Vox website, "The point that the president is making is that there are many more people on an annual basis who have to confront the direct impact on their lives of climate change, or of the spread of a disease, than of terrorism."
Sorry, but we're all feeling the direct impact of terrorism on the life of Mueller, her friends and her family. We're also feeling it on the lives of the four Jews killed in a kosher market in Paris, lives dismissed by President Obama as "a bunch of folks in a deli" who were shot at "random" and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Earnest blamed the controversy on Obama's choice of an adverb. But we're not as insensitive or callous as a president who thinks his job is like running a big city. Perhaps he had Detroit in mind.
It's Another Historic First!
The rate of Obama's decline is quickening. The downward spiral is accelerating. Perhaps the only positive development this late in his tenure is the fact that we don’t have to wait long before more of Obama’s terminal lies fall flat -- and kick our country in the teeth. The one thing that comes as a surprise these days is that there are still so many Americans who are in denial, willfully ignoring the true nature of the man. Really, do people actually think Obama has a shred of credibility left? One is both too many and more than enough.
• Flashback: Obama Touts Yemen As Success Story (Sept, 2014)
• UN Chief Warns Yemen ‘Collapsing’ as Al Qaeda Group Makes Gains (Today)
Thanks, Obama!
"Americans will have the last word, Mr. Obama"
Springer was a first-time Fabulous 50 Blog Award Winner in 2014. So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
MARK LEVIN: I'm convinced that Obama is seeking to destroy Israel
Mark Levin said on his radio show tonight that he’s convinced that Obama is seeking to destroy Israel.
He said if Christianity were on the march, slaughtering Muslims and Jews and anyone else that disagreed with them, Obama would point that out. But the Obama administration censors themselves, Levin notes, because Obama wants to protect Islam.
That’s also why he trashed Christianity, Levin said.
Listen to the full clip here or read the bulk of the transcript:
Genocide is going on on his watch and he triggered it. He triggered it by the way he cut loose from Iraq. He triggered it!
As I said a couple of weeks ago, he has blood on his hands and that big mashed-potato face, John Kerry, has blood on his hands and Biden has blood on his hands and Hillary has blood on her hands. They all do! They all do.
[Obama speaking]: My first job is to protect the American people. It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent, vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.
There you go. Randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.
Do you know why he says that? He’s trying to protect the Muslim faith.
Obama Desperately Tries to Get Toothpaste Back in the Tube
The dilemma the Obama Administration created when it chose not to identify Jihad of Islamic terrorists was graphically on display yesterday in daily press briefings at both the White House and State Department. This was in response to remarks by President Obama in a Vox.com interview when he spoke of “violent extremists” who “randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris." Josh Earnest, White House Press Spokesperson and Jen Psaki at the State Department Daily Press Briefing were questioned about who were the victims at the Hyper Cacher Kosher Supermarket when attacked by Jihadist, the late Amedy Coulibaly, meaning his four Jewish victims. The jihadist martyr has been the inspiration to thousands of foreign fighters like his common-law widow Hayat Boumeddiene to join up with the Islamic State in Syria. In the same Vox.com interview, the President also suggested that climate change was a worse threat than terrorism. We gather he may have been referring to victims like my relatives in snowbound Boston with over five feet of snow on the ground in the metro area. Why Earnest and Psaki were avoiding identifying the Paris Jewish victims of Jihad is a mystery especially since both French and US governments in press reports identified the Paris kosher supermarket attack as Antisemitic.
Watch Ms. Psaki’s painful response to the question posed by AP White House correspondent Matt Lee reflected in this excerpted C-Span video exchange:
Nuclear Shot and Chaser
And if in fact what they [Iran's mullahs] claim is true, which is they have no aspiration to get a nuclear weapon, that in fact, according to their Supreme Leader, it would be contrary to their faith to obtain a nuclear weapon, if that is true, there should be the possibility of getting a deal. They should be able to get to yes. But we don’t know if that’s going to happen.
CHASER: Iranians Celebrate Revolution With Chants Of “Death To America” As Nuke Deadline Nears:
Iran is marking the 36th anniversary of its 1979 Islamic Revolution with massive state-sponsored rallies. State television aired scenes from the rallies in Tehran and around the country on February 11, showing participants chanting (Persian link) “down with the U.S.”, “death to America” and “death to Israel.”
I pray that it doesn't happen, but I fear a lot of people are going to die because this feckless, narcissistic failure is more concerned with his "legacy" (such as it is) than a nuclear device detonating in an American, European or Israeli city.
Hat tip: BadBlue News
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Brian Williams is just the latest symptom of a diseased legacy media
“When reporters forfeit their credibility by making up stories, sources, or quotes, we are right to mock them. When their violations are significant or repeated, they should be fired,” says Charles Lipson, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. “Demanding honest reporting has nothing to do with the reporter’s politics, personality, or personal life. It is about professional standards and our reasonable expectations.”
Writing at RealClearPolitics.com, Prof. Lipson concluded by saying, “It’s essential for our news organizations, and it matters for our democracy.”
Are we seeing a trend here? Dan Rather at CBS and now Brian Williams at NBC? Well, two news anchors are not a trend, but biased and bad reporting is. It’s not new, but it does seem to be gathering momentum and nowhere has it been more apparent than the millions of words written and spoken about “global warming” and now “climate change.”
It would be easy and convenient to lay the blame on America’s Liar-in-Chief, President Barack Obama, but the “global warming” hoax began well before he came on the scene. It was the invention of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dating back to its creation in 1988 when it was established by the UN Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization.
The IPCC came to world attention with the creation of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that committed the nations that signed it to reduce “greenhouse gas emissions” based on the premise that global warming—a dramatic increase—was real and that it was man-made. The Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997. The United States Senate rejected it and our neighbor, Canada, later withdrew from it. Both China and India were exempted, free to continue building numerous coal-fired plants to generate the energy they need for development.
Today, though, the President is an unrelenting voice about the dangers of “climate change” which he and John Kerry, our Secretary of State, have rated the “greatest threat” to the world. Obama’s national security strategy document was released just a day before he equated the history of Christianity with the barbarism of today’s Islamic State.


















