Showing posts with label World. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Crikeys: illegal aliens released by the Obama administration have killed 19, raped 142, and committed a total of 60,000 crimes

Which is pretty much what you could have expected, because lawlessness begets lawlessness.

The Obama administration released illegal immigrants who went on to commit more crimes, including charges of 19 murders, 3 attempted murders and 142 sex crimes, the House Judiciary Committee said in a report Tuesday.

All told, the nearly 47,000 illegal immigrants the administration was notified of but declined to deport between 2008 and 2011 under its Secure Communities program had a recidivism rate of 16 percent, the committee said.

They were just part of the nearly 160,000 immigrants — most of them here legally — who were flagged by Secure Communities during the three year period but who were either not eligible to be deported or who the administration decided to release. Those immigrants went on to be charged in nearly 60,000 more crimes, according to the committee and the Congressional Research Service, which issued a report on the matter.

...In June President Obama announced yet another policy that shields most illegal immigrants age 30 and under from deportation. That policy won’t fully take effect until the middle of August, but it has already had an effect on those being deported.

As Heather Mac Donald reported in 2004, illegal immigration has been linked for decades to significant levels of violent crime.

Police commanders may not want to discuss, much less respond to, the illegal-alien crisis, but its magnitude for law enforcement is startling. Some examples:

• In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

• A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations, and commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.

• The leadership of the Columbia Lil’ Cycos gang, which uses murder and racketeering to control the drug market around L.A.’s MacArthur Park, was about 60 percent illegal in 2002, says former assistant U.S. attorney Luis Li. Francisco Martinez, a Mexican Mafia member and an illegal alien, controlled the gang from prison, while serving time for felonious reentry following deportation.

Thanks to the Obama administration's unconstitutional implementation of the "DREAM" Act by executive fiat, you can be sure that more innocent Americans will die or suffer violent crimes.

Remember in November.



Thursday, July 19, 2012

Did Eric Holder Help Spring the Suicide Bomber Mehdi Ghezali From Guantanamo Bay?

Eric Holder, prior to assuming the position of attorney general, was a partner at the law firm of Covington and Burling. The firm is infamous for its pro bono defense of Al Qaeda terrorists caught on the battlefield:

Guantanamo Bay Detainees
 

  • ...we are challenging the legality of our clients’ detentions in habeas proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  Of the seven cases that have gone to merits hearings thus far, Covington has won four, lost two, and is awaiting a decision in one other.  Two prior clients were released without a hearing.
  • The firm has been involved in the Guantánamo related litigation for the last six years.  In addition to the on-going habeas corpus proceedings, our efforts have included: bringing cases for review of enemy combatant classification decisions...; ... filing amicus briefs and coordinating the amicus effort in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld...; filing amicus briefs in support of Supreme Court review in Moussaoui v. United States..., cert denied...; challenging the government’s practice of redacting information from documents given to security-cleared habeas counsel; and challenging the abusive medical and living conditions that the detainees experience at Guantánamo.
In fact, no less than nine attorneys in the Holder Justice Department have been involved with defending Islamist terrorists from prosecution.


And, as expected, it would appear that Israeli civilians have paid the ultimate price for this kind of treasonous madness.
According to a report by The Times of Israel, Bulgarian media named Mehdi Ghezali, a Swedish citizen and former detainee at Guantanamo Bay from 2002 to 2004, as the suicide bomber responsible for an attack in Burgas, Bulgaria, on Wednesday... On Wednesday, eight people were killed when a suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. According to The Long War Journal, Mehdi Ghezali was arrested in Pakistan in December 2001. His lawyers claim he was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, The Weekly Standard reports.
Attorneys at Covington and Burley (and other firms at which current DOJ attorneys worked) are reported to have counseled prisoners at Gitmo to allege mental and/or physical abuse:
With a black baseball cap pulled tight over a mop of stringy long hair and a patchy, close-cropped beard, Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali looked more like a Metallica roadie than a disciple of Ayman al-Zawahiri. He addressed the scrum of reporters in a clipped, heavily accented Swedish and accused the American government of wrongly detaining him for three years and "physically and mentally" torturing him. A book about his experiences was in the works; a documentary crew, cobbling together a film about American human rights abuses, had requested an audience; and his legal team was plotting a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld. It was 2004, and Ghezali was a free man. Sweden's The Local reports that documents released by WikiLeaks show Ghezali was held at Guantanamo to "give general and specific information of the cultural, religious and ethnic recruitment of foreign nationals participating in the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia."
According to documents released by Wikileaks, Mehdi was considered an extremely dangerous character and "posed a threat to the United States, its interests, and its allies."
Consider this New York Post article from 26 February 2009:
ATTORNEY General Eric Holder toured Guantanamo Bay this week, a “fact finding” visit prompted by President Obama’s “close Gitmo” order... Holder’s previous job, after all, was as a senior partner with Covington and Burling – a white-shoe DC law firm that devotes considerable pro bono time to defending the Gitmo detainees. The job paid $2 million a year, and he expects to collect a like amount this year as part of his separation package. As a senior partner, he undoubtedly had significant input on what kind of charity cases his firm picked up. He surely knew that dozens of lawyers from from his firm were among the 500-plus civilian lawyers representing the 244 or so remaining detainees (on top of military-court-appointed defenders). Even now, his Covington colleagues continue to allege rampant torture at Gitmo. They’re fighting hard to have detainees tried through the US court system – essentially given the same rights as US citizens. And their arguments and plans hinge largely on having Holder issue a bad report card.
In part, thanks to the efforts of U.S. attorneys -- very likely including Eric Holder himself, his law firm, and/or other DOJ radicals hired by Holder -- Ghezali was released from Guantanamo and arrived in Sweden in 2004. My only question: how much more skulduggery will Eric Holder have to commit before the House leadership gathers the courage to impeach this disgraceful human being?


Sunday, July 15, 2012

USA Today disgraces itself again: praises China's "green cities" in the midst of an environmental nightmare

The praise for the People's Republic of China isn't just coming from the likes of Barack Obama and Thomas Friedman, both of whom pine for a simpler, more -- eh -- totalitarian form of government.

The PRC party line is also gleefully recited by the hacks at USA Today, who claim that "China builds [the] most ecologically friendly cities."

Designed to be low-carbon and energy-saving, China is building more eco-cities, as they are known, than any other country, according to a survey by the University of Westminster in London. The United States ranked second.

One of the biggest will be Tianjin Eco-City, a joint development between the Chinese and Singaporean governments that will cover almost 11 square miles of wasteland and salt pans near Tianjin, a major port city east of Beijing. More than 1,000 people will move in this year, joining 100 residents. The target is 350,000 residents by 2025, says Liu Wenchuang, a senior construction official.

China's buyers don't appear motivated by environmentalism, real estate professionals say. Saving money and preserving their health look to be the big selling points.

Pity USA Today is only in the business of reformatting PRC press releases and can't concentrate on the real environmental issues in Red China. As CBS News reports, 16 of the 20 most polluted cities on the planet are in China.

Here's a taste, if you can stomach it.

Hebei Province Shexian Tianjin Iron and steel plant (河北省涉县天津钢铁厂) is a heavily polluting company. Company scale is still growing, seriously affecting the lives of local residents.

Guiyu, Guangdong province, (广东省贵屿镇) rivers and reservoirs have been contaminated, the villager is washing in a seriously polluted pond.

In the Yellow Sea coastline, countless sewage pipes buried in the beach and even extending into the deep sea.

In Inner Mongolia there were 2 “black dragons” from the Lasengmiao Power Plant (内蒙古拉僧庙发电厂) covering the nearby villages.

Large amount of the industrial wastewater flowed to Yellow River from Inner Mongolia Lasengmiao Industrial District (内蒙古拉僧庙工业园区) every day.

Longmen town in Hanchen city, Shaanxi Province (陕西省韩城市龙门镇) has large-scaled industrial development. Environment is very seriously polluted there.

There are over 100 chemical plants in Jiangsu province coastal industry district. (江苏滨海头罾沿海化工园区) Some of them discharge wastewater into the ocean; some heavily contaminated sewage is stored in 5 “Sewage Temporary Pools”. During the 2 high tides in every month, the sewage then gets discharged into the ocean with the tides...

The remainder of the photos are quite graphic. Only click through if you have a strong stomach.

The only newsworthy stories about China and the environment are the humanitarian catastrophes unfolding as we speak. Which USA Today banefully ignores.



Saturday, July 14, 2012

Speaking of offshoring: Why is President Obama holding fundraisers in Communist Red China?

Yoohoo, old media: do you think this story might be just a tad more important than Mitt Romney's start date at the Olympics?


Oh, and I'd wager that like the President's squeaky-clean website fundraising, every donation will be scrubbed to ensure it's above-board and originating with a real U.S. citizen.

For you drones reading along: that last sentence is called sarcasm.


Hat tip: The Good Doctor.

Monday, July 09, 2012

OUTRAGE: Eric Holder disarmed Brian Terry while arming his killers

Just when you thought Operation Fast and Furious -- and its cover-up -- couldn't get any worse, another layer of the onion gets unpeeled.

US Border Agent Brian Terry was shooting beanbags at cartel members before they shot him dead with assault rifles. (Truth about Guns)

For the first time the Obama Administration today admitted that Brian Terry and fellow border agents were firing beanbags and not bullets during their shootout with armed cartel members... FOX News reported, via Free Republic:

For the first time, federal officials revealed Monday that murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and an elite squad of federal agents first fired bean bags — not bullets — at a heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2011.

The announcement came as the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging five individuals allegedly involved in Terry’s death. A sixth suspect has also been charged in a related incident.

The U.S. is also offering a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest of four outstanding suspects believed to hiding out in Mexico. The names of the four suspects were revealed, and their pictures released, to the public. Police in the US and in Mexico are cooperating and under intense pressure to find them.


[Commenter] Roark added: "Disarmed by the very bureaucrats that armed their killers."
This is the biggest political scandal in the last century. And vintage media, for the most part, refuses to report on it.

The mass murders facilitated by Eric Holder -- and the subsequent cover-up by the Obama administration and Holder -- make Watergate look like a parking violation.

Every Republican in Congress needs to demand Eric Holder's immediate resignation. Contact your Representative now and ask them whether they have done so. If not, why the hell not?


Hat tip: JTT.

Monday, July 02, 2012

Independence Day in Paris

Red Square writes:

The recent story of Obama celebrating Independence Day in Paris with a massive fundraiser has prompted us to envision the Dear Leader as a dreamy French mime. It was only logical then to place French Mime Obama in some American context with the caption, "Ever feel like you’re in the wrong place?"


Visit the rest of displaced mime history by clicking here.


Friday, June 29, 2012

Here are the Bombshell Transcripts: Secret Wiretap Applications Prove Eric Holder Lied to Congress

Gee, I wonder if the Democrats and vintage media can keep their fingers in the information dike now:

In the midst of a fiery floor debate over contempt proceedings for Attorney General Eric Holder, House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) quietly dropped a bombshell letter into the Congressional Record.

The May 24 letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), ranking member on the panel, quotes from and describes in detail a secret wiretap application that has become a point of debate in the GOP’s “Fast and Furious” gun-walking probe.

The wiretap applications are under court seal, and releasing such information to the public would ordinarily be illegal. But Issa appears to be protected by the Speech or Debate Clause in the Constitution, which offers immunity for Congressional speech, especially on a chamber’s floor.

...the wiretap applications contained a startling amount of detail about the operation, which would have tipped off anyone who read them closely about what tactics were being used...

Holder and Cummings have both maintained that the wiretap applications did not contain such details and that the applications were reviewed narrowly for probable cause, not for whether any investigatory tactics contained followed Justice Department policy... The wiretap applications were signed by senior DOJ officials...

After some searching, I was able to locate the actual details in the Congressional Record, which appear on pages H4409 through H4411 of Thursday’s official register.

...The use of federal wire intercepts requires a significant amount of case-related information to be sent to senior Department officials for review and approval. All applications for federal wiretaps are authorized under the authority of the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division

...A central aim of our investigation has been to find out why and how such a dangerous plan could have been conceived, approved, and implemented. Who in ATF and the Justice Department knew about the volume of guns being purchased? Who approved of the case at various stages as it unfolded? Under whose authority did this occur? Who could have—and should have—stopped it? By closely examining this disastrous program, our Committee hopes to prevent similar reckless operations...

...The Committee has obtained a copy of a Fast and Furious wiretap application, dated
March 15, 2010. The application includes a memorandum dated March 10, 2010, from Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer to Paul M. O’Brien, Director, Office of Enforcement Operations, authorizing the wiretap application on behalf of the Attorney General...

...Before the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 8, 2011, the Attorney General testified:

...I don’t think the wiretap applications—I’ve not seen—I’ve not seen them. But I don’t know—I don’t have any information that indicates that those wiretap applications had anything in them that talked about the tactics that have made this such a bone of contention and have legitimately raised the concern of members of Congress, as well as those of us in the Justice Department. I—I’d be surprised if the tactics themselves about gun walking were actually contained in those—in those applications. I have not seen them, but I would be surprise[d] [if that] were the case...

..At a hearing before our Committee on February 2, 2012, the Attorney General also denied that any information relating to tactics appeared in the wiretap affidavits... He testified:

...I think, first off, there is no indication that Mr. Breuer or my former deputy were aware of the tactics that were employed in this matter until everybody I think became aware of them...

...Contrary to the Attorney General’s statements, the enclosed wiretap affidavit contains clear information that agents were willfully allowing known straw buyers to acquire firearms for drug cartels and failing to interdict them—in some cases even allowing them to walk to Mexico. In particular, the affidavit explicitly describes the most controversial tactic of all: abandoning surveillance of known straw purchasers, resulting in the failure to interdict firearms...

...MARCH 2010 WIRETAP APPLICATION STATES THE MAIN SUSPECT HAD INTENT TO ACQUIRE FIREARMS FOR THE PURPOSE OF TRANSPORTING THEM TO MEXICO...

...The affidavit acknowledges that while monitoring the DEA target telephone numbers, law enforcement officers intercepted calls that demonstrated that Target 1 was conspiring to purchase and transport firearms for the purpose of trafficking the firearms from the United States to Mexico...

...MARCH 2010 WIRETAP APPLICATION STATES THAT NEARLY 1,000 FIREARMS HAD ALREADY BEEN PURCHASED, AND THAT MANY WERE RECOVERED IN MEXICO...

...The Probable Cause section of the affidavit shows that ATF was aware that from September 2009 to March 15, 2010, Target I acquired at least 852 firearms valued at approximately $500,000 through straw purchasers...

...MARCH 2010 WIRETAP APPLICATION DESCRIBES HOW SMUGGLERS WERE BRINGING FIREARMS INTO MEXICO...

...According to the affidavit: The potential interceptees conspire with each other and others known to illegally traffic firearms to Mexico...

...The fact that ATF knew that Target 1 had acquired 852 firearms and had the present intent to move them to Mexico should have prompted Department officials to act...

...MARCH 2010 WIRETAP APPLICATION CONTAINS DETAILS OF DROPPED SURVEILLANCE...

...On December 24, 2009, Straw Purchaser Z bought even more firearms, purchasing 40
AK–47 type rifles from an FFL. All of these rifles were recovered on January 13, 2010, in El Paso, Texas, near the U.S./Mexico border. Although the individual found in possession of all these guns provided the first name of the purchaser, agents did not arrest the individual or the purchaser. Though the wiretap application states that agents were conducting surveillance of known straw purchasers, none of these weapons were interdicted. No arrests were made...

...MARCH 2010 WIRETAP DETAILS HOW FAST AND FURIOUS FIREARMS HAD BEEN FOUND AT
CRIME SCENES IN MEXICO...

...The wiretap affidavit also details the very sort ‘‘time-to-crime’’ for many of the firearms purchased during Fast nd Furious. For example, on November 6, 2009, November 12, 2009, and November 14, 2009, Straw Purchaser Y purchased a total of 25 AK–47 type firearms from an FFL in Arizona. On November 20, 2009—just eight days later—Mexican officials recovered 17 of these firearms in Naco, Sonora, Mexico. Another straw purchaser, Straw Purchaser Q, purchased a total of 17 AK–47 type firearms from an FFL on November 3, 2009, November 10, 2009, and November 12, 2009. Then, on December 9, 2009, Mexican officials recovered 11 of these firearms in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico, along with approximately 421 kilograms of cocaine, 60 kilograms of methamphetamine, 48 additional firearms, 392 ammunition cartridges, $2 million in U.S. currency, and $800,000 in Mexican currency. Once again, although ATF was aware of these facts, no one was arrested, and ATF failed to even approach the straw purchasers...

...The wiretap affidavit reveals a remarkable amount of specific information about Operation Operation Fast and Furious. The affidavit reveals that the Justice Department has been misrepresenting important facts to Congress and withholding critical details about Fast and Furious from the Committee for months on end.

Buh-bye, Eric.


Related: Top 10 Takeways from the Obama-Holder Coverup

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Don't click on this!

After all, it could be a social-engineering attack.

McAfee and Guardian Analytics have revealed the results of a months-long study that uncovered a global financial services cyber-crime operation. "Operation High Roller" targeted the online banking accounts used by high-net worth individuals and companies.

The attacks ranged from the EU, to Latin America, and most recently to the U.S. All sizes of banks were targeted, from global institutions to local credit unions. As for the size of the thefts: "the total attempted fraud could be as high as €2 billion."

Initially, the infection pattern seen in Europe was similar to other SpyEye and Zeus fraud activities, but performed hands-free, automated transactions. This is the standard flow:

• A Phishing email is sent to individuals or businesses that bank with a specific financial institution
• The email contains a disguised link. When the victim clicks the link, they visit a web page that starts a malicious sequence:
  – The page contains a blackhole exploit kit or other similar framework. The kit will look for an appropriate vulnerability in the victim’s browser, and upon finding one, will load exploit scripts that compromise the victim’s computer.
  – The exploit script installs a Downloader Trojan.
  – The Downloader Trojan then will install SpyEye or Zeus on the victim’s device.
  – The next time the victim logs into online banking, the malware will check certain parameters, such as the type of accounts and account balances. If the client parameters are what the malware is seeking, the SpyEye/Zeus Trojan contacts the command and control server and pulls down the appropriate web inject for the victim’s financial institution. The web inject carries a JavaScript payload.
• The fraud process starts when the account holder subsequently attempts to log into his account from the infected computer
• The victim sees his standard, genuine bank portal, but it displays the fraudsters’ custom JavaScript web injection to capture the information needed for the victim’s bank
• The injected script takes control of the session and contacts the fraudsters’ server for specific instructions. It may insert content within the session, such as a transaction field or error message. For example, as the victim logs in, he may be asked to answer a security question and get an error. The error message creates the delay that allows the fraudster’s software to perform the transaction.
• At this point the victim has not actually authenticated and typically is stalled with a “please wait” message for about 60 seconds (see Figure 4).


• If during the automated attack, the financial institution requests a transaction authorization number (TAN), the fraudsters’ client-side web injection displays a fake TAN page to the victim and the malware proceeds as follows:
  – The malware collects the TAN from the victim’s screen and presents the authentic TAN to the financial institution to enable the fraudulent transaction, while delaying the victim from accessing their account.
  – The malware uses the intercepted credentials to initiate a silent, separate transaction to a mule account (either individual or business) or in one case, a prepaid debit card.
  – The malware looks up a valid mule account from a separate database, automating a traditionally manual step in the process. The transaction is performed in a hidden iFrame, a parallel instance of the online banking session on the client that operates in the background. The code navigates to the transaction page and initiates an automated form submission that adds the mule information.
• The user is allowed to proceed with the session
• The mule withdraws the money and converts it to a Western Union or Liberty Reserve payment that he remits to the fraudster. The mule retains a small percentage of the take, and the money is untraceable within a few days.
To conceal the theft, the malware will stay resident in memory on the victim’s computer. It will alter the victim’s bank statement to show a false balance, remove line items associated with the transaction, and block printing of statements that would show the true account balance and transaction sequences.

Put simply, don't click on any email you don't have 100 percent confidence in. Even one from me.



Sunday, June 24, 2012

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Remember when WE used to be able to send people into space?

Of course, that kind of antiquated activity predates the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.

I refer to this BBC story:

China Shenzhou-9 spacecraft to try first manual docking

China is to make its first ever attempt at manually docking a spacecraft with another space module.

Astronauts on the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft will try to dock with the Tiangong-1 lab module without relying on an automated system.

Jing Haipeng, Liu Wang and China's first female astronaut, Liu Yang, will attempt the manoeuvre, which must be carried out very delicately.

Authorities in China said the docking would take place at around 04:00 GMT.

Liu Wang will be in charge of the manual docking manoeuvres, while Liu Yang will conduct aerospace experiments, according to AFP news agency.

For the first time since the era of Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Democrat and Republican Presidents alike -- the United States no longer has the ability to put a man into space.

China is on the move. And America is unilaterally disarming itself at the worst possible time.


Friday, June 22, 2012

The economic history of the last 2,000 years in one graph

That's what The Atlantic calls this graph:

That headline is a big promise. But here it is: The economic history of the world going back to Year 1 showing the major powers' share of world GDP, from a research letter written by Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy at JP Morgan. 



...Before the Industrial Revolution, there wasn't really any such thing as lasting income growth from productivity. In the thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution, civilization was stuck in the Malthusian Trap. If lots of people died, incomes tended to go up, as fewer workers benefited from a stable supply of crops. If lots of people were born, however, incomes would fall, which often led to more deaths. That explains the "trap," and it also explains why populations so closely approximated GDP around the world...

Which is why the chart is interesting, but misleading. A better illustration would use multiple logarithmic scales to depict the size of aggregate GDP.

The Industrial Revolution and the technological advances in the West during the 19th and 20th centuries transformed global GDP and permitted the United States, especially, to scale productivity at a record-setting clip.

Of course, that was when the U.S. had a true, unfettered free market system and not a federal government that intrudes on every aspect of human activity -- be it the size of your toilet tank, the kind of light bulbs you're allowed to buy, and how much you should pay for your health care.

Funny. I didn't see any of those powers enumerated in the Constitution.


Thursday, June 07, 2012

Two speeches on D-Day

On 6 June 1984, on the cliffs of Normandy, President Ronald Reagan honored the sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen who participated in D-Day. Many veterans of that day attended the speech, while thousands of other heroes never left France, having paid the ultimate price to defend liberty. During his career in politics, Reagan gave many great speeches, but none perhaps as moving as that which he delivered on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.

...The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

On 6 June 2012, President Barack Obama did not bother to commemorate D-Day. He did, however, fly to Hollywood to attend six separate fundraisers, including one that featured Cher in the front row of the audience.

President Obama had one of the biggest star-studded fundraising nights of his re-election campaign last night, less than a month after he attended a celebrity fundraiser hosted by George Clooney in May... Obama attended two LGBT (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) events - one in San Francisco and one in Los Angeles - that featured Hollywood stars Ellen DeGeneres, Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon and Glee actors Jane Lynch and Darrin Criss.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Obama has now held 150 fundraisers, more than the five previous presidents combined.

Obviously the president had more important things to do than commemorate the invasion of D-Day and those who fought, bled and died to defeat the scourge of Nazism. Those heroes didn't even merit a mention by the president.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Obama: Lord High Executioner

Dan from New York (who now has a well-deserved gig at PJMedia's Tatler) sends this one along:

Finally, Obama finds a job that suits him: playing god.

Barack Obama: Drone warrior

Dead terrorists can’t talk.

By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

A very strange story, a 6,000-word front-page New York Times piece on how, every Tuesday, Barack Obama shuffles “baseball cards” with the pictures and bios of suspected terrorists from around the world and chooses who shall die by drone strike. He even reserves for himself the decision of whether to proceed when the probability of killing family members or bystanders is significant.

The article could have been titled “Barack Obama: Drone Warrior.” Great detail on how Obama personally runs the assassination campaign. On-the-record quotes from the highest officials. This was no leak. This was a White House press release.



...The Osama-slayer card having been vastly overplayed, what to do? A new card: Obama, drone warrior, steely and solitary, delivering death with cool dispatch to the rest of the al-Qaida depth chart.

So the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills, has become – just in time for the 2012 campaign – Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.

A rather strange ethics. You go around the world preening about how America has turned a new moral page by electing a president profoundly offended by George W...

...You festoon your prisoners with rights – but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed. We do kill terror operatives, an important part of the war on terror, but we gratuitously forfeit potentially life-saving intelligence.

But that will cost us later. For now, we are to bask in the moral seriousness and cool purpose of our drone warrior president.

And if you're a conservative talk-radio host or a conservative blogger, I wouldn't worry (much) about reports that the administration will now deploy flying drones over the United States.


Sunday, June 03, 2012

Good News: World Economic Forum Ranks U.S. 46th for Manageability of Public Debt

Every year, the World Economic Forum publishes a Financial Development Report (PDF), which -- among other measures -- ranks 60 of the world's largest countries for their financial stability.


The news for the United States is decidedly poor: due to the phenomenal (and some would say historic) levels of debt rung up by President Obama and Democrats, who have gone a record 1,100 days without passing a budget, it ranks the United States 46th of 60, behind such stalwarts as Turkey, Tunisia, Pakistan and Spain.


Even better, the U.S. is ranked 55th for its high frequency of banking crises (fun reference quote, courtesy of Joe Biden: "The first guy we called for economic advice is Jon Corzine.") and 51st for the "distortive effect of taxes and subsidies on competition" (additional fun reference quote from President Obama: "The true engine of economic growth [is] companies like Solyndra.").

The policies of this administration are literally turning the United States into a third-world country.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Obama: Some of my best friends are Jews!

Oh, my.

From Haaretz:

Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Obama and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew met about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders. ...

"I not going to tell you again how I even feel about Israel, but why [are] we still talking about it," Obama said, reminding his guests that all his friends in Chicago were Jewish - and at the beginning of his political career he was accused of being a puppet of the Israel lobby. ...

Obama also stressed he probably knows about Judaism more than any other president, because he read about it - and wondered how come no one asks Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner or Senate minority leader Mitch McConnel [sic] about their support to Israel."


... 1. The reason no one asks John Boehner or Mitch McConnell about their support for Israel is ... because they really do support Israel. The reason people ask Barack Obama about his support for Israel is because his support for Israel has been equivocal. [Ed: at best.]

2. It's truly pathetic that Obama has to reach for the tired (to say the least) trope that some of his best friends were Jewish. Actually, one wishes more of his best friends were pro-Israel Christians. They might have had more luck convincing him, a fellow Christian, that he should be pro-Israel.

3. And the claim that Obama knows more about Judaism than any president? His vanity boggles the mind. One could begin by citing Adams and Madison, who knew Hebrew, or Harry Truman, who knew Jewish history ... but it's silly to dignify this claim with a rebuttal. In thinking about the presidents since Truman, though, I'd guess the president who knew the most about Judaism was Jimmy Carter, who taught Sunday school and had a deep interest in religion. So let's stipulate that of the modern presidents, Carter and Obama "know" the most about Judaism. But what is it they know? In Obama's case, one could ask whether what he “knows” is what he learned from Rashid Khalidi and Jeremiah Wright.

In 2008, Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft penned the best summary of Obama's extremist ties I've yet read:

Anyone who believes that Barack Obama, who spent 20 years in a Jew-hating church, with a Jew-hating pastor, and hung around Jew haters, is going to be a friend of Israel is a fool.

The complete roster of Obama's friends and supporters, first published in 2008, is truly eye-opening.


Hat tip: G.M. Roper.

Traveling abroad? You may want to leave the laptop at home

Government Security News reports that international travelers should have absolutely zero confidence in the Internet connections provided by foreign hotels.

The FBI is warning traveling commercial and government laptop users that malicious programs can worm their way onto their machines through hotel connections overseas through bogus software updates.

A May 21 bulletin from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warns that malware disguised as innocuous software updates awaits unwary travelers as they log onto hotel-hosted Internet connections. The agency said recent analysis from its investigators and other government agencies showed that Cyber criminals are targeting travelers through pop-up windows while they connect to the Internet in their hotel rooms. Apparently, criminals set up bogus hotel connections to intercept traffic before the hotel guest can reach the legitimate hotel connection.

It said recent cases show the malware presents the traveler with a pop-up window telling them to update a widely-used software product.

In these instances, the travelers attempting to set up the hotel room Internet connection and was presented with a pop-up window notifying the user to update a widely used software product, it said. The pop-up window looks like a common software update notice, according to the agency. If the laptop user clicks on “accept” to install the update, they install the malware.

IC3 recommended all government, private industry, and academic personnel traveling abroad be extra cautious before updating software using hotel Internet connections. It also recommended checking the author or digital certificate of any prompted update to see if it corresponds to the software vendor. If it doesn’t, it may reveal an attempted attack, it said.

The only way to even try to mitigate these kinds of threats is to surf immediately to a known SSL proxy site (e.g., your company's SSL VPN). By surfing to a known SSL site first, you can avoid the most common man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks.

A typical MITM attack delivers a non-SSL web page to your browser, but also includes some very special (and unwelcome) malware. The intent is to exploit your browser's vulnerabilities using specially crafted HTTP/HTML-based attacks. Or, in the case, the MITM attempts a social engineering attack, using the promise of a software update.

Surfing directly to a safe SSL site may help -- but isn't guaranteed -- to mitigate the threat. SSL to a trusted site is, in nearly all cases, impossible to MITM. But I say it isn't guaranteed because a hotel could deliver a landing page (e.g., to prompt you to enter the hotel's Internet pass-phrase) prior to letting you surf SSL. And that landing page could theoretically launch an attack.

The best advice would be to dispense with the laptop on your trip abroad. If you can't do that, travel with a pristine (newly imaged) laptop and then get it re-imaged when you return.


Monday, May 28, 2012

Transmit THIS Information to Vladimir: Today, On Memorial Day, We Will Not Forget What's At Stake For America In November

This Memorial Day, when we remember those who paid the ultimate price protecting our precious country, I ask you to remember one recent incident that demonstrates what our president really thinks of us. It occurred in March, when ABC News' Jake Tapper reported that President Obama was caught on an open microphone telling Russian President Medvedev that once he's reelected, he won't have to bother with those pesky Americans who are worried about sharing missile defense secrets.

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.

President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…

President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.

President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Senior GOP officials are rightfully concerned, given that missile defense is a critical element of U.S. national security.

“If there was any doubt how dangerous Barack Obama would be for America’s security in a second term, the president put all uncertainty to rest today,” said the source, who closely tracks foreign policy matters. “The president just told us that he is itching to hand over America’s most secret missile defense data to a country that is arming Syria and fueling Iran’s Bushehr reactor—and he would do it today but for his re-election concerns. With no political constraints in a second term, who knows what Obama will do.”

The adviser also said Obama’s remarks should cause concern among pro-Israel forces in America.

If this is what the president’s promising the Russians on missile defense, God only knows what he’s promising Arab leaders about Israel,” noted the souce. “If you think Barack Obama was bad for Israel in term one, put your seatbelt on and get ready for term two.”

At that time, Rep. Michael Turner, Chairman of a House Armed Services Subcommittee, wrote to President Obama and warned him not to defy Congress by sharing sensitive information with the enemy.

As you know, in the FY12 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress enacted, and you signed into law, a provision constraining your ability to share classified U.S. missile defense information with the Russian Federation. Congress took this step because it was clear based on official testimony and Administration comments in the press that classified information about U.S. missile defenses, including hit-to-kill technology and velocity at burnout information, may be on the table as negotiating leverage for your reset with Russia. Despite signing the FY12 defense authorization legislation into law, you then issued a signing statement signaling that you may treat that provision protecting U.S. missile defense information as non-binding. This morning’s comments, on top of that action, suggests that you and your administration have plans for U.S. missile defenses that you believe will not stand up to electoral scrutiny.

Congress has made exquisitely clear to your Administration and to other nations that it will block all attempts to weaken U.S. missile defenses. As the Chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, which authorizes U.S. missile defense and nuclear weapons policy, I want to make perfectly clear that my colleagues and I will not allow any attempts to trade missile defense of the United States to Russia or any other country.

Once again, I've been forced to update President Barack Obama's Complete List of Historic Firsts to include this missive: "First President to Openly Defy a Congressional Order Not To Share Sensitive Nuclear Defense Secrets With the Russian Government."

Which also helps explain why a recent Gallup survey showed Mitt Romney holding a whopping 28-point lead over Obama among male veterans.


Sunday, May 27, 2012

The Two Charts President Obama Never Wanted You to See

When President Obama used a risible column by MarketWatch's Rex Nutting to claim to be a deficit hawk, even the Associated Press couldn't keep a straight face.

Of course, Obama, Nutting and the rest of the sycophants avoid the real comparison: actual deficits rung up by each president's policy choices (and those of Congress). In the case of President Obama's first two years in office, Democrat super-majorities in the House and the Senate helped him enact a virtual wish-list of Fabian socialism, from the Stimulus, to multiple attempts to fix the housing market, to "financial reform", to Obamacare.

The real comparison, then, is appropriately illustrated as follows.

Over the past 50 years, 10 U.S. presidents have made annual budget requests to Congress, projecting deficits both big and small. But no other president compares to Barack Obama when it comes to the size and scale of the current budget deficit facing the United States.


The country is facing an 8.3 percent estimated average national deficit of a two-term Obama administration — the biggest of the past 50 years.

As for the Left's claims that President George W. Bush "lied us into wasting an unfathomable amount of money on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan", let's ignore for the moment the so-called lies (we know that both military actions had overwhelming support from both parties). But let's ignore that duplicity for the moment.

In the last decade, how much federal spending actually went to national defense?

A striking chart showing that, over the last decade, 65 percent of federal expenditures went to pay for entitlement commitments, not wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense, or national security:


"About 65 percent of federal expenditures over the last ten years have gone towards entitlements," Paul Miller writes. "By comparison, about 15 percent has gone towards national defense, excluding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq has cost three percent, and only about one percent has gone towards the war in Afghanistan (including the cost of ongoing military operations and all reconstruction and stabilization assistance combined), according to my analysis of figures from OMB."

In other words, Miller says, "Afghanistan is the second-cheapest major war in U.S. history as a percentage of GDP, according to the Congressional Research Service."

Iraq and Afghanistan represent a pittance, a rounding error, for this federal leviathan.

And yet another Democrat myth gets obliterated like the propaganda it is. One day these clowns might actually get something right, though that would require kicking the Marxist-Progressive Fifth Column out of the party.


Saturday, May 19, 2012

An Islamist Spills the Beans [Dan from NY]

Dan from NY:


You should make it a priority to view the video referenced below.


Via andrewbostom.org:


Dr. Wafa Sultan, a remarkably courageous and thoughtful Muslim freethinker, recently debated Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad.


Dr. Sultan watched passively while the good Sheik expressed without equivocation his pious views—in full accord with classical, mainstream Islamic doctrine on jihad —and then politely added her own plain spoken commentary in response.


This less than 8-minute video segment, if viewed objectively and dispassionately, could do more to educate the American public on the theory animating the practice of “Islamic international relations,” without any further explanation required.

Ruh Roh: Europe's Invisible Bank Run Accelerates

The inevitable result of the Left's policies -- unchecked deficit spending, powerful public sector unions, easy access to welfare, and open borders -- is now unfolding in Europe. The endgame is certain to be as profound as it is cataclysmic.

...Worries about a run on Greek banks have rattled Athens this week, after savers withdrew at least 700 million euros on Monday alone, according to minutes of Papoulias’s comments to political leaders posted on the presidency’s website.

It is not only Greeks who are worried about their savings. Data shows depositors have also taken flight from banks in Belgium, France and Italy. And on Thursday, Spain’s Bankia was reported to have seen more than 1 billion euros drained by its customers in the past week.

Greeks are afraid they could be hit by rapid devaluation if the country leaves the European single currency, while customers at Bankia have been rattled by the government’s takeover of the recently floated bank on May 9 and growing uncertainty about the final cost of Spain’s banking reforms... “The entire Greek banking system is in danger: The banks are now facing the worst of all outcomes, deposit flight,” said Arnaud Poutier, deputy CEO of IG Markets France.

...Greece’s banks have lost 72 billion euros in deposits since the start of 2010, or about 30 percent, according to data compiled by Thomson Reuters. Five of Greece’s top banks saw 37 billion euros taken out last year, including 12 billion from EFG Eurobank and 8-9 billion apiece at National Bank of Greece, Piraeus and Alpha Bank.

...Savers have shifted to property, gold and other banks, or stashed it privately. In Greece, this slow-speed run on deposits has not caused panic. But that could quickly change if there is a sudden loss of confidence in the banks.

Savers lost faith in Britain’s Northern Rock overnight in September 2008, queuing for hours in the days that followed to take out their cash, despite a guarantee safeguarding most deposits. The British government ended up nationalizing the bank.

...Cash flooded into Britain; more than 140 billion euros was deposited in four big banks alone. The U.K. benefits from its position outside the eurozone and its Asia-focused banks HSBC and Standard Chartered are seen as safe havens.

Other banks to see big inflows included Barclays, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, Switzerland’s Credit Suisse and UBS and Russia’s Sberbank and VTB.

All of these repudiations to collectivist policies should -- but won't -- serve as an object lesson to Democrats. That's because the modern Democrat Party is immune to introspection and unwilling to examine facts, logic, history and reason.

Which is why it must be politically obliterated in November -- before it's too late to save this precious Republic.