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

Friday, July 11, 2014

The Enemies Within

Trevor Loudon’s The Enemies Within: Communists, Socialists and Progressives in the US Congress is to be turned into a “game changing” movie.

Timed for release in August 2015, “The Enemies Within” will be like no other film ever released in America.

Production standards will be Hollywood quality.

Guiding values, however, will be 100% American.

The Enemies Within will name names and go where no one has gone in modern times in its quest to awaken Americans to the enemies within their own government.

Help restore America by exposing its internal enemies.

Our goal is to raise $400,000 minimum, partially from investors and partially from our grassroots support base through crowd sourcing.

Newly Revealed Contract Proves Obama Planned Border Invasion

By Investor's Business Daily

Immigration: A federal employment ad posted in January showing that 65,000 unaccompanied minors will enter the U.S. illegally shows that the administration expected this cross-border child abuse and encouraged it.

Concrete evidence has shown up proving our earlier assertion: The breach of our border by waves of unaccompanied alien children was orchestrated by the administration based on a strategy straight out of the playbook President Obama studied as a community organizer. His goal is to get his way on immigration reform by overwhelming the U.S. Border Patrol and collapsing an already weakened system.

The evidence comes in the form a government contract solicited in January by the Department of Homeland Security. The listing asked for "Escort Services for Unaccompanied Alien Children" in expectation of the arrival of 65,000 minors on our southern border without their parents or guardians.

The operative language in the listing is the statement by DHS/Immigration and Customs Enforcement that they expect there "will be approximately 65,000" alien minors requiring assistance. This is a significant increase from the 5,000 minors who are detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement annually. It also strongly suggests not only advance knowledge of the human catastrophe about to unfold but a lack of any effort to stop it.

I Fear for Moldova

By Robert D. Kaplan

"NATO's Article 5 offers little protection against Vladimir Putin's Russia," Iulian Fota, Romania's presidential national security adviser, told me on a recent visit to Bucharest. "Article 5 protects Romania and other Eastern European countries against a military invasion. But it does not protect them against subversion," that is, intelligence activities, the running of criminal networks, the buying-up of banks and other strategic assets, and indirect control of media organs to undermine public opinion. Moreover, Article 5 does not protect Eastern Europe against reliance on Russian energy. As Romanian President Traian Basescu told me, Romania is a somewhat energy-rich island surrounded by a Gazprom empire. The president ran his finger over a map showing how Romania's neighbors such as Bulgaria and Hungary were almost completely dependent on Russian natural gas, while Romania -- because of its own hydrocarbon reserves -- still has a significant measure of independence. In the 21st century, the president explained, Gazprom is more dangerous than the Russian army. The national security adviser then added: "Putin is not an apparatchik; he is a former intelligence officer," implying that Putin will act subtly. Putin's Russia will not fight conventionally for territory in the former satellite states, but unconventionally for hearts and minds, Fota went on. "Putin knows that the flaw of the Soviet Union was that it did not have soft power."

Thus, Moscow's strategy is about taking over countries from within. In this battle, it is precisely during the quiet periods, when an issue like Ukraine drifts off the front pages because of the Middle East, for example, that we should be worried. And remember that weak democracies can be more useful to Russia than strong dictatorships. A ruthless communist autocrat such as Josip Broz Tito in Yugoslavia was able to keep the Soviets out of his country during the Cold War. But a feeble polity, however democratic, such as Romania's neighbor Moldova, offers the Russians many local politicians to bribe.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

BORDER CHAOS: Forget Incompetence or Intention, Governor Perry, It's Fundamental Transformation

By Investor's Business Daily

Illegal Immigration: Texas Gov. Rick Perry states the obvious when he suggests that the flood of alien children coming to the U.S. from Latin America just might be a result of "ulterior motives" on the part of President Obama.

Obama is like an arsonist who sets fires to help rescue people from burning buildings. He's asked Congress for $2 billion to deal with a child refugee crisis of his own making, money that could have gone to seal the border instead of having Border Patrol agents acting as glorified baby-sitters by cooking, cleaning and even doing laundry.

A little-noted University of Texas, El Paso study, dated March 20 and titled "Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) Project," found that "the biggest issue with UACs is the high maintenance that is associated with caring, feeding and clothing them." These tasks have fallen to the Border Patrol, the guardian of our borders.

It has also fallen to states like Texas, whose governor, Rick Perry, said during a U.S. House field hearing last Thursday that the feds need to reimburse Texas $500 million that the state has spent trying to pick up the federal slack in securing the border.

"We have been fulfilling a federal responsibility," Perry told the panel. "The hardworking people of the state of Texas shouldn't be shouldering that cost."

Perry also told ABC's "This Week" on Sunday, "I have to believe that when you don't respond in any way that you are either inept or you have some ulterior motive."

Wednesday, July 09, 2014

BILL WHITTLE: I want to know where you live, Mark Zuckerberg

Another riveting must-watch Firewall by Bill Whittle.


Today I want to make three points regarding the current, artificially created emergency on the southern border, as children are used as innocent pawns to force an issue in order to gain political power.

First.

President Obama has said that if congress does not act, he will, through executive order, simply dictate a solution.

Godwin’s Law states that the longer an internet discussion goes on, the likelier it is that someone will invoke the Nazis. Invoking the Nazis is considered bad form, you see – it’s a sign of desperation and hyperbolic exaggeration.

Well, I’m not going to invoke the words “Nazi” or “Hitler.”

So: shortly after assuming power, the legally appointed chancellor of Germany and the leader of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party was faced with a looming national crisis. The National Socialist Chancellor appeared before the democratically elected parliament of the German Republic, known as the Reichstag. This Chancellor asked them to vote on what became known as the Enabling Act of 1933. It was pretty simple, really: he asked the legislature to approve his ability to create law on his own – through what could be best described as emergency executive orders. The Reichstag approved this request by the National Socialist Chancellor of Germany, giving him the power to dictate law as he saw fit.

The constitutionally limited, democratically elected German Republic simply voted itself out of existence, and half of the representatives of the Reichstag were cheering the National Socialist leader of their own party as they did so.

Now, of course, that could never happen here – not in America. Why if an American President were to stand before congress and tell the legislative body that he would assume the power to write his own laws if they did not provide the legislation he desired – well, here in America that President would be booed and mocked and jeered out of the room – he’d be arrested and impeached. Right?

Tuesday, July 08, 2014

The Mother of All Meltdowns

By Dan from New York:

An "incident" here and an" incident" there, to America’s eyes and its media, they all seem unconnected. But the origin of the current chaos circling the globe has a nexus - 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where the man in the White House has, with malice aforethought, opened the Gates of Hell.

Buckle up friends, and say your prayers. This is going to be one for the ages.


Hamas rockets reach Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

Floodgates open as ISIS takes over swaths of both Syria and Iraq

Iran nuclear talks: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejects pressure from West


Israel mulls Gaza ground invasion

In Deep South Texas, a Daily Tide of Poor Migrants

Yemeni Shi'ites capture city after fighting kills 200

Chicago mayor: 82 shot, 14 dead over weekend is 'totally unacceptable'

Afghan candidate rejects election results as violence escalates

Ukraine crisis: Bridges destroyed outside Donetsk

The Islamization of Belgium and the Netherlands in 2013

BBC investigation reveals Gaza pictures not what they claim to be

Libyan ex-general battling Islamist militias faces dwindling support

Editor's note: can America really survive another two-and-a-half years of this administration?


Monday, July 07, 2014

OBAMA FINALLY UNITES BLACK AND WHITE AMERICANS: In Opposition to La Raza and His Illegal "Amnesty" Program

It's come to this: the radical Latino racial separatist group La Raza (which literally stands for "Master Race") is in Murrieta ready to battle U.S. citizens over control of the border.

La Raza or “The Race” which is a group of Hispanic Supremacy group has dispatched their brown beret thugs for when the buses arrive from San Diego and protesters try to block them. La Raza brown berets are ready to cause trouble the second they see something they don’t like. This could get really nasty.


Black and white American patriots are together standing against this lawless disrespect of American's sovereignty and its borders. Jim Hoft reports:

A group of black Americans spoke out in support of protecting women and children in America before worrying about the rest of the world. This occurred at the Murrieta California Border Patrol Station on July 4th, 2014.

The young man pictured [at right] said...

"If somebody brought six children to your house and you've got no job, are you going to take them in?"

"Are you going to try to find out where they came from? Are you going to try to send them back? What are we going to do for the people who are here who are starving already? Why would we add to the problem?"

The woman [at left] added...

"It’s just too much. We've already got starvation, kids walking without with... shoes."

"We are already taking that on in America."

"We don’t need other people’s kids to bring more problems.”

As Hoft reminds us, the unemployment rate for Black Americans remains abnormally high, despite the massive "Stimulus"; "Cash for Clunkers"; HAMP; HARP; HAAP; Obamacare; Recovery Summers II, III, IV and V; and countless Obama pivots to jobs.

Black and White and Latino and Asian Americans deserve better. They deserve a President who puts their interests and that of America before those of illegal aliens.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

INCOMPETENCE OR TREACHERY: You Make the Call

By Lawrence Sellin

For many, it is difficult to decide whether Barack Obama is intentionally trying to destroy the United States or that he is doing so as a consequence of some type of ideology-induced stupidity.

The damage wrought through the implementation of his absurd and impractical liberal "solutions" to national problems is readily evident.

When Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009 the national debt of the United States was $10,626,877,048,913. As of Jun 26, 2014, the debt was $17,512,592,730,102.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2007 on the eve of the recession, there were 146.6 million Americans working. Today, after six years of the Obama Administration, there are 145.8 million Americans in jobs, 800,000 below the previous peak. Since Obama came into office in 2009, 7.2 million people have left the workforce, making the true unemployment rate 8.3 percent, not 6.1 percent. Median household income is down almost $2,300 from what it was when Obama took office. Real wages are lower than they were in 1999. Growth in the first quarter of this year was a negative 2.9%, the biggest downward revision from the agency's second GDP estimate since records began in 1976.

In April, prior to the present massive and growing surge in illegal minor immigration, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Obama has created an "open borders" situation by failing to enforce U.S. immigration law. One could fairly conclude that the current crisis was a deliberate policy decision because the Obama indicated that he would expand Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that offers amnesty for illegal immigrant children and provides an incentive for exactly the type of mass illegal invasion we are witnessing on our southern border.

There should be little doubt that Obama's open borders policy is meant to fundamentally transform the country's demographics, produce millions of additional Democratic voters and welfare recipients and permanently undermine the national security of the United States.

Sunday, July 06, 2014

Top General: Mexico Border Security Now ‘Existential’ Threat to U.S.

Methinks Major General Kelly may soon be entering an early and unplanned retirement.

A top United States general in charge of protecting the southern border says he’s been unable to combat the steady flow of illegal drugs, weapons and people from Central America, and is looking to Congress for urgent help.

Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command, has asked Congress this year for more money, drones and ships for his mission – a request unlikely to be met. Since October, an influx of nearly 100,000 migrants has made the dangerous journey north from Latin America to the United States border. Most are children, and three-quarters of the unaccompanied minors have traveled thousands of miles from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

“In comparison to other global threats, the near collapse of societies in the hemisphere with the associated drug and [undocumented immigrant] flow are frequently viewed to be of low importance,” Kelly told Defense One. “Many argue these threats are not existential and do not challenge our national security. I disagree.”

...Gen. Kelly says the poverty and violence prompting the migration have created a real threat to U.S. national security. Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have the first, fourth and fifth-highest homicide rates in the world and “have left near-broken societies in their wake,” he said.


Comforting, ain't it?


Hat tips: Hot Air and BadBlue Real-Time News.

DELIGHTFUL: 90% of online accounts intercepted by NSA weren't targets; program expanded dramatically under Obama

"Ms. Smith", writing at Network World, offers us an incisive summary of the latest Snowden revelations.

Although NSA officials were not sure about what all documents Edward Snowden took with him, they’ve changed their tune a few times after some new leak proves their previous proclamations to be false…like when former NSA Chief Keith Alexander admitted to lying about phone surveillance stopping 54 terror plots. Despite a year of NSA officials claiming that Edward Snowden had access to reports about NSA surveillance, but no access to actual surveillance intercepts, that ends up being lie too.

Snowden gave the Washington Post a sampling of actual intercepted communications; after months of reviewing about 160,000 intercepted emails and instant messages and 7,900 documents taken from over 11,000 online accounts, the Post said nine out of 10 account holders in the large cache of intercepted communications were not even surveillance targets. In fact, the collateral damage is astounding. The Post reported:

Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S. residents.

The intercepted communications were collected from 2009 to 2012, during President Obama’s first term; under the President, formerly a “constitutional law professor,” the Post noted that the NSA’s domestic collection program underwent a “period of exponential growth.” Interestingly, a research paper released last week explained how the government can exploit legal and technical loopholes in order to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans...

LA Times: Drug Cartels and Obama Administration Actively Collaborating to Profit from Illegal Immigration

When even The Los Angeles Times dares to speak truth to power, you know things have gotten completely out of control. Such is the situation on our southern border, where tens or hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants have swarmed into our country seeking an "Obama Amnesty".

And the interests of Mexico's powerful drug cartels and the White House are aligned in this endeavor. For the former, the motivation is cash. And for the Obama administration, the reward is the promise of votes in the form of a veritable panoply of new Democrat voters, largely uneducated, dependent upon the state for subsistence, and completely unfamiliar with America's history, culture, and traditions.

Brian Bennett reports.

President Obama and his aides have repeatedly sought to dispel the rumors driving thousands of children and teens from Central America to cross the U.S. border each month with the expectation they will be given a permiso and allowed to stay.

But under the Obama administration, those reports have proved increasingly true.

The number of immigrants under 18 who were deported or turned away at ports of entry fell from 8,143 in 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 1,669 last year, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data released under a Freedom of Information Act request...


...The previously unavailable deportation data are likely to fuel the political debate over whether Obama administration policies are partly responsible for the 52,000 children and teens who have surrendered to or been caught by Border Patrol agents since last October, spurring fresh concerns about U.S. border security and immigration law.

...Organized crime groups in Central America have exploited the slow U.S. legal process and the compassion shown to children in apparent crisis, according to David Leopold, an immigration attorney in Cleveland.

He said smugglers, who may charge a family up to $12,000 to deliver a child to the border, often tell them exactly what to say to American officials.

"The cartels have figured out where the hole is," he said.

Did you ever think you'd see the day when the Democrat Party, the White House, and the Mexican drug cartels would all be working hand-in-hand to dismantle the United States? Well, that day has arrived.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Friday, July 04, 2014

ISIS, LATEST MISUNDERSTANDERERS OF ISLAM, NOW IN GAZA STRIP: Publicly Threaten Jews With Holocaust 2.0

Two stories on the front page of BadBlue News caught my eye, both involving the Al Qaeda offshoot group known as ISIS.

1. ISIS Already in Gaza Strip:
Hamas seems to be losing control of the dozens of terror cells in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas prevented local journalists from covering the ISIS rally in the Gaza Strip last month as part of its effort to deny the existence of ISIS in the Gaza Strip. But Hamas seems to be trying to cover the sun with one finger.

The Gaza Strip is no longer only a threat to Israel, but also to Egypt. The only way to confront this threat is through security cooperation between Israel and Egypt.

2. ISIS Threatens Holocaust Against Jews:
A Twitter post Thursday by supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), now calling itself the Islamic State (IS), has promised a Holocaust against the Jews.

"The Real Zionist Holocaust is Predicted in the Hadiths! The Hour [resurrection] will not take place until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, and the tree will say: "Oh, Muslim, servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, kill him! THE PROMISED Holocaust," the terrorist group's Islamic State Media a graphic posted on its @ISIS_Conquests's Twitter account said.

This hadith has proven popular with Islamic extremists of all stripes, ranging from IS to Hamas – and even on television in the Middle East ... Anti-Semitic propaganda has played an important role in the terrorist group's recruitment effort. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, placed Jews on the side of evil in a speech posted Tuesday on the Internet in which he called on Muslims to join him.

"O ummah of Islam, the world today has been divided into two camps and two trenches … The camp of Islam and faith, and the camp of kufr (disbelief) and hypocrisy … all being led by America and Russia, and being mobilized by the Jews," al-Baghdadi said.

In another such video released on Twitter, IS told jihadists to "Break the crosses and destroy the lin­eage of the grand­sons of mon­keys."

Click the image to enbignify.

Not to worry, however: only half a year ago, our heroic president called this virulent strain of Al Qaeda "a JV team". That was right before they successfully invaded large swaths of Syria and Iraq. In which case, I'd hate to see the Varsity.


Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.

Thursday, July 03, 2014

GOOD NEWS: Obama Seeks Alliance with Iran and Syria to Combat the ISIS Threat He Helped Create!

It seems like only months ago that President Obama was drawing a "Red Line" regarding Bashar Assad's Hitler-esque use of chemical weapons.

And now, his administration is reported to be considering an alliance with the Syrian dictator thanks to a complete foreign policy meltdown in Iraq.

There’s a battle raging inside the Obama administration about whether the United States ought to push away from its goal of toppling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and into a de facto alliance with the Damascus regime to fight ISIS and other Sunni extremists in the region.

As President Obama slowly but surely increases the U.S. military presence on the ground in Iraq, his administration is grappling with the immediate need to stop the ISIS advance and push for a political solution in Baghdad. The 3 1/2-year grinding civil war is Syria has been put on a back burner for now. Some officials inside the administration are proposing that the drive to remove Assad from power, which Obama announced as U.S. policy in 2012, be set aside, too. The focus, these officials argue, should instead be on the region’s security and stability. Governments fighting for survival against extremists should be shored up, not undermined.

A "political solution" to a Jihadist group so extreme (ISIS) that Al Qaeda cut ties with them? Good one. That's some quality Comedy Central material right there.

“Anyone calling for regime change in Syria is frankly blind to the past decade; and the collapse of eastern Syria, and growth of Jihadistan, leading to 30 to 50 suicide attacks a month in Iraq,” one senior Obama administration official who works on Iraq policy told The Daily Beast.

In effect, the American government has been in a limited partnership with the Assad regime for almost a year. The U.S., Russian, and Syrian governments made a deal last September to destroy Assad’s stockpile of chemical weapons—and relied on Damascus to account for and transport those weapons, in effect legitimizing his claim to continued power.

As far back as last December, top White House officials, including Deputy National Security Advisor Tony Blinken, have suggested that the rising threat of extremism was creating a “convergence of interests” between the U.S., Russia, and its allies in the Iranian and the Syrian governments to come to a political deal before the Islamists became too powerful.

Interesting. I hadn't realized the U.S. has allies in the genocidal Syrian regime and its Iranian puppet-masters who have pledged to wipe the Great Satan (the U.S.) and the Little Satan (Israel) from the face of the Earth. Partners!

Of course, sensible folks have yet to talk sense into the Obama administration.

... “The people who think Bashar al Assad’s regime is the answer to containing and eventually eliminating the Islamic-based threat do not understand the historic relationship between the regime and ISIS. [They] don’t understand the current relationship between Assad and ISIS and how they are working on the ground together directly and indirectly inside Syria,” Robert Ford, the recently departed U.S. ambassador to Syria, told The Daily Beast. “The people who think Assad’s regime survival is essential have not explained how his survival would solve the problem of extremism in Syria.”

Oh, it gets better.

Some administration officials are also suggesting that Iran could be a partner in a post-war Syria, helping to ensure security there during a transition period, after which Assad would negotiate his own departure.

When it comes to this administration, one has to ask: is it incompetence or evil?

As an aside, The Daily Beast's Eli Lake and Josh Rogin should be running neck-and-neck in the Pulitzer competition this year, but given that they both speak truth to power, the odds of their seeing such an award are roughly akin to me being able to sneak a pizza out of Michael Moore's mansion.


Hat tip: Moe Lane.

FOREIGN MEDIA REVEAL: Obama Administration's Lawless Policies Responsible for Child Refugee Crisis

Americans are increasingly forced to turn to foreign media to find out what's actually happening in their own country. Vintage media appears useful only insofar as the news consumer wants to hear the Obama administration's latest talking points. As for actual facts?

When it comes to dissecting the true reasons for the Obama Refugee Crisis on the southern border, for instance, we discover Malaysia's The Star, where Reuters' Jose Cortes offers us the straight scoop.

Executive summary: while the cartels are responsible for spreading rumors about “permisos,” “permits,” or free passes for those who make it into the United States, the author of that notion is Obama himself.

Driven from home by threats of gang violence and extortion and drawn to the U.S. by hopes of education and opportunity, Carlos, a 15-year-old from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, is stuck in southern Mexico, living in a shelter and trying to figure out how to get to California.

He says he has an uncle there, who told him that in America he can go to school and find a job. He says that back in Honduras there's a local gang that wants to kill him. He's thinking of climbing on board "La Bestia", or "The Beast", one of the freight trains that carry thousands of illegal immigrants north through Mexico.


Speaking last week from the rail yards in the town of Ixtepec, Oaxaca, Carlos is one of the thousands of young people hoping to reach the U.S. from their impoverished and violent homes in Central America. In the eight months ended June 15, the U.S. has detained about 52,000 children at the Mexican border, double the figure the year earlier. There's no telling how many have gotten through...

...Some combination of hope and fear is driving these children, but the hope side of it is probably illusory. Human traffickers are spreading rumors that illegal immigrants will receive permits to stay in the U.S, while some news stories published in Central America reinforce the idea that children who make it to the U.S. will be treated leniently...

...In fact, there have been some policy changes in the past few years that may be fuelling the rumour mill. In 2011, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) gave immigration officials discretion to weigh various factors in apprehension, detention, and deportation, particularly in the case of children.

And in 2012, Obama's administration said young immigrants who had been in the United States since 2007, and never been convicted of a felony among other requirements, could apply for a two-year authorization to stay and work in the country.

Donald Douglas concludes his analysis with more candor than is legally approved for antique media:

A humane presidential administration would take decisive action to protect these children. Migrants would be turned back at the border. The U.S. government would rebuke Mexico for its callous porousness, and the State Department would be warning foreign government of sanctions for encouraging their citizens to flood the American Southwest.

Of course, none of this is happening, because the Obama White House is mounting a demonic Alinskyite campaign of manufactured crisis, putting untold alien migrant lives at risk, to say nothing of the dozens upon dozens of American communities now fearing for their safety and trying to protect themselves from Third World diseases.

Of course, a humane administration wouldn't have sent thousands of assault weapons to the Mexican Cartels, or gone to sleep while ignoring cries for help from an Ambassador's mission in Libya, or used the IRS to target its political opponents, to name but a few.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

THE TET OFFENSIVE REDUX: The Sunni Ramadan Campaign

By George Friedman

In February 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a general offensive in Vietnam during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. From mid-1966 onward, the North Vietnamese had found themselves under increasing pressure from American and South Vietnamese forces. They were far from defeated, but they were weakening and the likelihood of their military victory was receding. The North Vietnamese decided to reverse the course of the war militarily and politically by marshaling available forces, retaining only limited reserves and going on the offensive throughout South Vietnam.

The attack had three strategic purposes. First, the North Vietnamese wanted to trigger a general uprising against the Americans and the South Vietnamese government. Second, they wanted to move the insurgency to the next stage by seizing and holding significant territory and resisting counterattack. And third, they wanted to destabilize their enemy psychologically by demonstrating that intelligence reports indicating their increasing weakness were wrong. They also wanted to impose casualties on the Americans at an unprecedented rate. The American metric in the war was the body count; increasing the body count dramatically would therefore create a crisis of confidence in the U.S. public and within the military and intelligence community.

General Offensives and Crises of Confidence

From a military standpoint, the offensive was a failure. The North Vietnamese military was crippled by its losses. While seizing Hue and other locations, the North Vietnamese were unable to hold them. But they succeeded psychologically and politically by raising doubts about U.S. intelligence and by creating a political crisis in the United States. In war, perception of the enemy's strength and will, and confidence in your own evaluation of those things, shifts the manner in which one fights. The U.S. intelligence estimate before Tet was more right than wrong, but by marshaling all forces for a general offensive, the North caused U.S. trust in that evaluation to collapse. Even though the North Vietnamese were militarily far weaker after the offensive, the military failure proved less relevant than this creation of a crisis of confidence.

ROLL OUT THE WELCOME MAT: Ready for a Flood of Illegals to be Dumped in Your City or Town?

By Tori Richards

Tens of thousands of immigrants who illegally crossed the Mexico border into Texas are in the process of being released into communities throughout the nation rather than being indefinitely detained or immediately deported, a congressman told Watchdog.org.

The releases have already started and the Border Patrol did not disclose how many. At least 60,000 Central Americans have entered the country illegally this year, though some news reports say the figure is as high as 170,000. An effort is under way to place children in foster homes or with relatives already living in the U.S., said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas.

The adults are being given a “notice to appear,” something like to a traffic ticket that requires they show up for a deportation hearing. Following that notice, they are simply being released. Those who return for the hearing will face a federal immigration judge to determine their fate.

“You know good and well they won’t show up and we won’t go looking for them,” Gohmert said. “When they get their piece of paper saying report back on such a day at such a time, they take that as their legal permit to stay in the country and they go do what they want.”

A senior Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detective who routinely deals with illegal immigrants said a “massive number – 80 to 90 percent” do not show up for deportation hearings. Detention is not even being considered because Homeland Security facilities are not equipped to hold a large number of people, said the detective, who spoke on a guarantee of anonymity.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

PHOTOS: After World War II

Great photo collection at The Atlantic illustrating the aftermath of The Big One, Double-U Double-U Two.


This 1946 photograph shows ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), the first general purpose electronic computer - a 30-ton machine housed at the University of Pennsylvania. Developed in secret starting in 1943, ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory. The completed machine was announced to the public on February 14, 1946. The inventors of ENIAC promoted the spread of the new technologies through a series of influential lectures on the construction of electronic digital computers at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, known as the Moore School Lectures. (AP Photo)


Hat tip: Papa B.

THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED: Only 40 Percent of Liberal Democrats "Proud to be American"

Perhaps they can emigrate to a country they're actually proud of:

If you are a “solid liberal” in the United States, you are unlikely to be “proud to be American,” according to a new Pew Research poll.

The Washington Post explains:

According to a new Pew Research Center study, only 40 percent of consistently liberal Americans say they often feel proud to be Americans.

The other 60 percent say that doesn’t describe them. [...]

By contrast, more than seven in 10 “steadfast conservatives” and eight in 10 “business conservatives” say they are generally proud to be Americans.

The poll results also show that only half of liberals see themselves as “typical Americans.”

The poll also shows many liberals don’t liken themselves to your average American. Just 51 percent say they feel as though they are ”typical Americans” — as compared to three-quarters of conservatives and at least two-thirds of all the other groups.


Don't these feelings strike you as both utterly bizarre and stunningly ungrateful? These Democrats are blessed to live in the greatest country on Earth; the most beneficent, charitable and opportunity-rich society in the history of the planet.

In little more than two hundred years, Americans empowered the individual; defeated slavery, Nazism, military Shintoism and Communism; refined mass production; invented human flight; created 75% of all medical innovations on the planet; put a man on the moon; invented the telephone, the Internet and the search engine; and advanced humankind in millions of other ways, in every field and endeavor.

And these Democrats prefer some other land, some other country.

Would that they would move there, permanently.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

"A Complete Collapse of Reason"

By Baron Bodissey

Last November Pope Francis issued an exhortation entitled Evangelii Gaudium in which he made the following assertions about Islam:

In order to sustain dialogue with Islam, suitable training is essential for all involved, not only so that they can be solidly and joyfully grounded in their own identity, but so that they can also acknowledge the values of others, appreciate the concerns underlying their demands and shed light on shared beliefs. We Christians should embrace with affection and respect Muslim immigrants to our countries in the same way that we hope and ask to be received and respected in countries of Islamic tradition. I ask and I humbly entreat those countries to grant Christians freedom to worship and to practice their faith, in light of the freedom which followers of Islam enjoy in Western countries! Faced with disconcerting episodes of violent fundamentalism, our respect for true followers of Islam should lead us to avoid hateful generalisations, for authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence.

As has been reported here at length over the past couple of weeks (see the list of links at the bottom of this post), a Muslim imam was invited to participate in the “prayer for peace” event at the Vatican on June 8. The esteemed alumnus of Al-Azhar University went off-script, however, and asked Allah to help him gain victory over the unbelievers.

The Vatican at first denied that any such thing had happened, and an edited video of the event was released that supported their denial. However, as we reported last week, the end of Sura 2 Verse 286 from the Koran that the imam quoted — which had been judiciously removed from the publicized version — was most assuredly included in the cleric’s Arabic-language prayer.

To provide context for this momentous event, the following information is instructive. Regular readers should bear with me; I know you’ve seen this all before.

’Umdat al-salik wa ’uddat al-nasik, or The reliance of the traveller and tools of the worshipper is commonly referred to as Reliance of the Traveller when cited in English.

The Revised Edition (published 1991, revised 1994) is “The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law ’Umdat al-Salik by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 769/1368) in Arabic with Facing English Text, Commentary, and Appendices”, edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller. The publisher is listed as amana publications in Beltsville, Maryland.

This an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law, because it is certified as such by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. There is no higher authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine than Al-Azhar; it is the closest equivalent to the Vatican that can be found in Islam.

Consider this passage from Reliance of the Traveller, chapter O, o9.0:

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

24 Questions About the Massive Surge of Illegal Aliens on Our Purposely Unguarded Southern Border

By Ronald W. Mortensen

Much has been written about the large numbers of unaccompanied minors illegally entering the United States. However there are a myriad of questions that need to be asked and answered about the effect that this will have on the United States. Here are a couple of dozen:

Who Is Paying?

  1. Are American taxpayers covering the $1.4 billion to $2 billion costs to care for children illegally entering the United States while still continuing to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign assistance to the home countries of these children?

  2. Is the United States using the funds set aside for foreign aid to these countries to cover the costs incurred by their children illegally entering the United States and to send them home? If not, why not?

Impact on Education

  1. What happens to the tens of thousands poorly educated young people who don't speak English once they arrive at their final destinations in the United States?

  2. How much will it cost taxpayers to teach these children English and bring them up to grade level so they can eventually graduate from high school?

  3. How do public schools take thousands of poorly educated teens who don't speak English and prepare them to graduate from high school?

  4. What percentage of these teens and other unaccompanied minors who illegally enter the United States will drop out of school?

Impact on Criminal and Gang Activities

  1. How many young men being allowed to enter the United States illegally already have gang ties in their home countries?