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

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

SHOCK: Israelis line up Muslims next to mass graves and execute them

Did I say "Israelis"?

My mistake.

I meant to say "Muslims"

I posted this video on the previous post. Youtube removed it, probably due to mass reporting for horror in content. The last part of the video actually does contain a great deal of harsh violence. But this violence is the modus operandi of the muslims who are taking over more and more parts of Iraq and Syria.

It needs to be seen at least once and believed always. However that is not the most important significance of this video. Most of us by now have seen several jihadi videos of sadistic and even pornographic violence done by muslims and even justified by scripture in some of them. This one however was done with a kind of honesty that I have not seen before.


This cannot be dismissed for geopolitical reasons or any of the other typical leftist blather.

I wonder what Dear Leader and his brilliant Secretary of State -- John Kerry -- have to say about this?

Oh, right. No "Zionists".

Nothing of interest here, so just forget you saw this.


P.S., An alternate link is here.

Top 3 news stories that our media betters Eleanor Clift and Marc Lamont Hill may have missed

Far be it from me to offer advice to the the brilliant Eleanor Clift and the deep-thinker Marc Lamont Hill, but here are a few stories they may have missed from the last day or so:

Report: At least 160 children died digging Hamas’ tunnels

Because of their size and agility, children make good tunnel-diggers. The English knew this when they were digging coal mines during the Victorian era; Hamas knows it now.

Thus, the Journal of Palestine Studies (edited by President Obama’s pro-Palestinian friend Rashid Khalidi) reported in 2012 that Hamas uses children to help dig tunnels into Israel ... “at least 160 children have been killed in the tunnels, according to Hamas officials.” And, as noted, this was as of the end of 2011. How many more Palestinian children have died digging tunnels for Hamas since then?

Media silent as Hamas command center located in Gaza City Hospital

...Hamas obviously has no interest in having a photo-layout of one of its command bunkers beneath Shifa Hospital splashed on the front pages of newspapers. After all, such pictures would show that the organization uses the sick and wounded of Gaza as human shields while launching missiles against Israeli civilians. What Hamas wants is for reporters to use very different pictures from Shifa—namely, photos of Palestinians killed and wounded by Israelis, which make Palestinians look like innocent victims of wanton Israeli brutality.

...What Hamas has done, therefore, is to turn Shifa Hospital into a Hollywood sound-stage filled with real, live war victims who are used to score propaganda points, while the terrorists inside the hospital itself are erased from photographs and news accounts through a combination of pressure and threats, in order to produce the stories that Hamas wants. So if reporters aren’t entirely to blame for participating in this sick charade, then who is?

Hamas said to execute 20 anti-war protesters

Channel 10 reports that 20 Palestinians who participated in an anti-war protest in the Gaza Strip were rounded up by Hamas and summarily executed as alleged Israeli collaborators yesterday...

I blame Bush.


Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News.

THE MIDTERMS AND IMPEACHMENT: Déjà vu all over again

Via Moe Lane, this is classic:


Let me respond appropriately:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

:Deep breath:

…HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

...Geez, read that thing. Domestic eavesdropping, government spending, Iraq, and immigration: the only reason that the economy isn’t on that list is because in March 2006 unemployment and gas prices were noticeably lower than they are right now. Basically, it really is history repeating itself – or, to quote a button I once saw: it’s History screaming “Why won’t you ever LISTEN to what I’m SAYING!” and letting fly with a club.

As the great WyBlog observes, "the only person who wants the House to impeach Barack Obama is ... Barack Obama."


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Israel's "Disproportionate" Self-Defense

By Alan Caruba


On Sunday, July 27, Eleanor Clift, a member of The McLaughlin Group panel, referred to Israel’s “disproportionate” response to the thousands of rockets and missiles that Hamas has been firing at its citizens for months, if not years.

This is a common criticism of Israel, but it is far easier to make if you are living safely somewhere other than Israel and not being awakened by alarm sirens at 5 A.M. with just a little time to make it to a bomb shelter.

Ms. Clift was hardly alone. In Great Britain, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, in contrast to Prime Minister David Cameron, also declared Israel’s response to Hamas as a “disproportionate form of collective punishment” on the citizens of Gaza.

On July 26, The Times of Israel reported that “Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in London and Paris on Saturday, calling out against Israel’s military operation in the Hamas-controlled Palestinian enclave."

In London, the second Saturday in a row, the protest was estimated to have drawn more than 10,000 participants. “Demonstrators held placards reading ‘Stop Israeli State Terror’. ‘Freedom for Palestine’ and ‘Gaza—End the Siege.’ They also chanted ‘Shame on you David Cameron’ as they filed past the British prime minister’s Downing Street office.” By contrast, Paris cracked down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations and, along with Germany and Italy, denounced expressions of anti-Semitism.

No doubt the expressions of support were welcome in Israel, but when it strikes back against its enemies it tends to run out of friends rather swiftly. Scandinavia, Denmark, Finland and Norway all backed the Palestinians but the European Union did condemn the rocket attacks by Hamas, as well as its use of human shields.

Departing from President Obama’s pro-forma statement on Israel’s right to defend itself, South American nations condemned Israel in tune with their general acceptance of the view that Israel is an aggressor and occupier despite the fact that in relinquished control of Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005. Joining in the chorus of condemnations were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

The hypocrisy of those who raise the issue of “proportionate response” is breathtaking.

How Richard Nixon Saved Israel

Funny. Never heard about this in history class:

Since land was set aside by the United Nations to establish the State of Israel in 1948, a series of regional and ideological conflicts – and, indeed, often violent fighting – has broken out between Israel and the Arab States, collectively known as the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Six Day War of 1967 was one of them, and resulted in a decisive Israeli victory, gaining new boundaries for Israel. Syria and Egypt, two leading nations in the Arab world, desired their lost land, declaring afterward in a summit that there would be “no peace, no recognition, and no negotiation with Israel.” Egyptian President Anwar Sadat publicly decried the Jewish state, and announced that even a slight admission of defeat by Israel may alter the status-quo in the unstable region. It is then no surprise that Israel began a military buildup and attempted to heavily fortify its borders.

Then came the attacks of October 6, 1973 – a coordinated, surprise attack on Yom Kippur, the Holiest of days in the Jewish calendar. To demonstrate how much Israel was up against: 180 Israeli tanks faced over 1400 Syrian tanks; closer to the Suez Canal, a mere 436 Israeli infantry were poised to fight over 80,000 Egyptian soldiers – this even after Israel’s military buildup. The attacks by Egypt and Syria were backed by nine Arab states – as well as one non-Arab state: the Soviet Union.

Richard Nixon’s role, and that of those within his Administration, in the Yom Kippur War has been credited with literally saving Israel from an onslaught of potentially devastating attacks. The President recognized the threat that an Arab victory posed, the “threat of victory by Soviet arms,” according to author Conrad Black. The Soviet government was the Arab world’s chief supplier of munitions, and was strategically attempting to spread its influence throughout the region.

THAT'S A RELIEF: "Ebola could easily arrive in the USA on board a plane, but wouldn't spread far, experts say"

And the quote doesn't come to us from some tabloid click-bait farm, it's actually from USA Today:

The growing Ebola outbreak in West Africa serves as a grim reminder that deadly viruses are only a plane ride away from the USA, health experts say.

The outbreak is the largest and deadliest on record, with more than 670 deaths and more than 1,200 infections in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fatality rates for Ebola have been as high as 90% in past outbreaks, according to the World Health Organization.

The virus — which has an incubation period of a few days to three weeks — could easily travel to the USA through infected travelers...


Yet while Ebola is a fearsome disease, the virus "would not pose a major public health risk" in the USA... That's because people need to be in intimate contact to spread the virus...

Ebola is actually much harder to spread than respiratory infections, such as influenza or measles. Those viruses pose a much greater threat on a plane or in any confined space, says Osterholm, who notes that people cannot spread the Ebola virus simply by sneezing or coughing.

Let's hope this crop of experts is a tad more accurate than the clan of scammers who tried to market global warming climate change climate disruption.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Sunday, July 27, 2014

Our Nation's Absent Father

Even foreign media have noticed that our President has, uhm, checked out:

Consider this: In recent days, a) Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down, apparently by Russian separatists in Ukraine, b) In the Gaza strip, the numbers killed continued to mount as Israelis and Palestinians exchange rocket fire, c) a huge influx of children fleeing Central American poverty and gang warfare swamped America’s southern border, creating a humanitarian crisis.

And, oh yeah, d) Christians living in Mosul were given the choice to either convert to Islam or flee the area they have inhabited for nearly two thousand years.

You know what else has happened during this time? a) Obama played many rounds of golf, b) he attended numerous fund-raisers, c) he dined on barbecue in Texas and burgers in Delaware, and d) he almost appeared on the comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night television show in Hollywood.

The subhead on the Telegraph's story is brutal: "The degree to which Barack Obama is now phoning it in – sleepwalking perfunctorily through his second term, amid golf rounds and dinner parties – is astonishing."

And when you've lost Dianne Feinstein:

Listing the numerous global crises currently facing the United States, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) questioned whether President Obama is devoting enough attention to these issues rather than focusing on political fundraisers and events.

“This is a very hard time,” she said on MSNBC on Monday, referencing the ongoing civil war in Syria, the continued push by ISIS in Iraq, the state of Iranian nuclear negotiations, the Gaza–Israel conflict, and the dispute between Russia and Ukraine. “I’m not going to tell the president what to do, but I think the world would very much respect his increased attention on this matter, and I think there ought to be increased attention.”

Feinstein’s call for Obama to be more focused and attentive comes as he is ... on a three-day trip to the West Coast for Democratic fundraisers in Seattle, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles.

I repeat my call for Section 8 Housing for Illegal Aliens on Martha's Vineyard. Which would appear to be the only way to get Dear Leader to pay attention.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

SESSIONS: All Americans must help stop Obama's dictatorial threats to expand Amnesty to millions

By Senator Jeff Sessions

I call on the American public to rally Congress against the President’s openly declared threat to implement, by executive order, the amnesty that Congress has rejected:

How Congress chooses to act in the coming hours and days will determine whether the President succeeds in his plan to nullify the immigration laws of the United States.

Just yesterday, TIME magazine reported that the President is considering a grant of ‘work authorization for perhaps several million undocumented immigrants.’ Permitting those illegally present in the U.S. to work and take jobs is contrary to plain law, which the President has no power to change. Yet Democratic members of Congress have openly crowed about these planned executive actions.

It has now been extensively reported that these executive actions will likely expand his Deferred Action program (DACA) to apply to an additional 5–6 million adult illegal immigrants. The existing DACA program has been widely misunderstood. The executive action did not, as The Hill writes today, only result in ‘deferred deportations for young undocumented immigrants.’ Illegal immigrants in the interior of the U.S. have already, as a practical matter, been immune from enforcement under this Administration. DACA applies to individuals up to 30 years of age and provides actual amnesty papers, photo ID, and work permits to illegal immigrants—who can then take any job in America.

The President’s planned executive orders would expand this permitting program to another 5–6 million illegal immigrants. This would effectively end immigration enforcement in America.

No Member—House or Senate, Democrat or Republican—should support any bill with respect to the border crisis that does not include language explicitly prohibiting the Administration from taking such action. Congress must foreclose any possibility of these unlawful executive actions before congressional funding is granted. This is an essential precondition.

The American people have begged and pleaded for years for our laws to be enforced.  We have people in our own country living in violence, fear, and poverty every single day.  They have demanded an immigration policy that puts their jobs, wages, and communities first. Every citizen should pick up the phone and ask of their congressional representative: where do you stand?

CALL CONGRESS NOW AND DEMAND IT BLOCK OBAMA'S PLANNED DICTATORIAL AMNESTY ORDER.

Saturday, July 26, 2014

8 Insane Things Put in Place by John McCain's $100 Million Pro-Invasion Spending Bill

We always knew John McCain was a kook. His anti-First Amendment and incumbent protection bill -- McCain-Feingold -- was an outrage. His lies to the people of Arizona when he was up for reelection in 2010 ("Secure the dang border!") were pathetic. His feckless promotion of intervention in Syria culminated in his glamour shots with members of ISIS. And his serial abuse of the Constitution and Constitutional conservatives like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee deserve nothing but scorn.

So just when you thought McCain couldn't get any dumber or more malicious, we get word of his $100,000,000 bill that promote illegal immigration. Consider the eight key facets of this epic treason:

1) Spends $100,000,000.

2) Asserts acts that are already illegal are now illegal.

3) Makes it a federal crime to tell someone where a DHS, HHS or Border Patrol bus carrying illegal aliens is spotted, coming from or headed.

4) Makes it a federal crime to prohibit a DHS, HHS or Border Patrol bus from moving from point A to point B.

5) Does absolutely nothing to secure the border and stop the invasion in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. These southern borders will remain wide open and the bill doesn’t address this.

6) Creates a communication channel between HHS and states about newly recommended facilities for housing illegal aliens.

7) Opens up U.S. facilities in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador for the purpose of processing illegal aliens on foreign soil.

8) Calls for 15,000 “refugees” from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to be processed on foreign soil and transported into the U.S. this year alone.

This treasonous, reckless behavior must stop.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Top 10 things that will happen if Israel allows itself to win in Gaza

By Dan from New York


1. Iran loses one of its tentacles it meant to use to strangle Israel.

2. Having had one tentacle amputated in Gaza, Iran is loathe to lose the other one in southern Lebanon.

3. Talk about "isolation." A new calculus takes hold in Judea and Samaria. Fatah, the PA and Abbas know they're living from day to day - by the good graces of the IDF.

4. With the pressure relaxed on those fronts, Israel dusts off its plans to destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure.

5. Having successfully defied Obama and his anti-Zionist cats-paws, Israel still has to respect the lame-duck snake, but can do so with greater confidence.

15 Reasons the Party on Wall Street is About to End in Tears

Writing at The Spectator, Liam Halligan summarizes the troubling nature of the state of the global economic system:

...alarming evidence is amassing that the global recovery is shaky, stock markets are over-hyped and the large western banks, for all the talk of reform, remain a serious liability. The reality, and it gives me no pleasure to write this, is that we could see a re-run of the ghastly credit crunch of 2007/08.

To paraphrase Clubber Lang, the following are 15 reasons that the central banking party fueling our economy will end in "pain".

1. The US Gross Domestic Product fell at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent on official figures, the first drop we’ve seen since the dark days of 2011.

2. The Eurozone, meanwhile, remains on the brink of recession, with GDP across the 18-nation currency area expanding a mere 0.2 per cent.

3. Despite this lack of growth, stock indices in the US and across the western world have repeatedly hit all-time highs in recent months.

4. Even though U.S. GDP is contracting and that US first-quarter corporate earnings were down 3.4 per cent, the S&P500 (the world’s most watched stock index) has broken its daily closing price record more than 20 times this year.

5. The reason for this dichotomy is the Federal Reserve’s money-printing machine, which has created thousands of billions of virtual dollars since 2008. Much of this has found its way into global stock markets, sending equity prices sky-high. Designed as an emergency measure, QE has since become a lifestyle choice, the financial and political equivalent of crack cocaine.

LET'S GIVE 'EM A STATE: Hamas announces it will give 250,000 grenades to Palestinian Children

Would you expect any different from a group with a heritage that includes Hitler and the Third Reich?


A Hamas spokesman announced that Hamas had manufactured 250,000 hand grenades that would be given to Palestinian youth to use to fight Israel instead of rocks.

It's all in the parenting, I always say.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

BORDER PATROL SAYS DEMOCRATS AND MEDIA ARE LYING: Illegal Surge Is Mostly Families, Not Unaccompanied Kids

By Jessica Vaughan

Border Patrol statistics found buried on a government website confirm that most of the Central American illegal aliens apprehended in the recent surge are family units. Less than one-fourth (22 percent) of all those apprehended are unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from Central America. The number of illegally arriving families shot up five times faster than UAC arrivals over last year.

The document was revealed this week by Washington Times columnist Ernest Istook.

In the first nine months of the fiscal year (October through June), the number of apprehensions along the southwest border of family units (each of which has, by definition, more than one person in it) has increased from 9,350 in 2013 to 55,420 in 2014 – an increase of nearly 500 percent.

Apprehensions of UACs went from 27,884 to 57,525 in the same period, an increase of about 100 percent.

The total number of southwest border apprehensions of aliens from countries "other than Mexico" (OTMs) was 202,951 through the end of June 2014, compared to 154,606 at this time last year.

These figures indicate that the number of individuals from Central America who arrived by June of this year as part of family units was at least 111,000 (assuming only two individuals in each family unit), but was probably closer to 145,000 (which is the number of OTMs who are not UACs).

These figures suggest that, while policies on handling UACs are important and may need to be tweaked a little, the focus of lawmakers should be on ending the administration's catch-and-release policies and reversing the general decay in immigration enforcement, which the illegal migrants themselves say has motivated them to come now.


Read more at Center for Immigration Studies

Thursday, July 24, 2014

MATT BRACKEN: The True History of the Southwest

By Matt Bracken


The fallacies surrounding the history of the Southwest are staggering, chief among them the “Aztlan” fairy tales. What is the truth? How did the Spanish Europeans conquer the Southwest? The “conquistadores” (that means “conquerors”) did it with the lance, and the lash.

For example, in 1541 Coronado entered present-day New Mexico (which included present-day Arizona during the Spanish era) searching for the “lost cities of gold.” One of his first actions upon meeting the natives
was to burn hundreds of them alive in their dwellings for not handing over suspected horse thieves. That is how Spain conquered the natives of the present US Southwest—not with hugs and kisses. It was certainly no love-fest between long-lost brown-skinned soul-mates, as it is often portrayed today by the delusional Aztlaners, who spin the “new bronze race of Mestizos” toro-mierda fable.

By 1821, Mexico City was strong enough to overthrow the even more decrepit and ineffectual Spanish colonial rule. However, the distant provinces of the current U.S. Southwest were far beyond the reach of the authority of the independent but strife-torn and financially insolvent newborn government in Mexico City. These distant northern provinces received neither military protection nor needed levels of trade from the nascent Mexican government. Under Spanish colonial rule, trade with the USA was forbidden, but at least Spain provided trade and Army protection from hostile Indian attacks. Under Mexican abandonment and neglect, the Southwest received neither trade nor protection from Mexico City.

For example, Comanches and Apaches ran rampant in the 1830s in the power vacuum created by Mexican neglect, burning scores of major ranches that had been active for hundreds of years and massacring their inhabitants. Mexico City could neither defend nor keep the allegiance of its nominal subjects in these regions. Nor did it provide needed levels of trade to sustain the prior Spanish colonial era standard of living. Mexican governmental influence atrophied, withered and died at the same time that American pathfinders were opening up new routes into the region.

Increasingly, a growing United States of America was making inroads into the Southwest, via ships into California, and via wagon trains of trade goods over the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis. The standard of living of the Spanish inhabitants of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas subsequently increased enormously, which is why they did not support Mexico City in the 1846-48 war. In fact, the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the Southwest never considered themselves “Mexicans” at all, ever. They went, in their own eyes, from Spanish directly to American. To this very day, if you want a punch in the nose, just call a Hispanic native of New Mexico a “Mexican.”

Just one side in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is committing War Crimes, each and every day

Perhaps MSNBC's resident nitwit Joy Reid should visit Gaza for a few weeks. You know, to get a firsthand view into the situation.


Depravity and Sickness at the United Nations

By Anne Bayefsky


The UN Human Rights Council held a special session in Geneva on July 23, 2014 to declare effectively that Israelis do not have human rights. The vote was 29 in favor, 1 against and 17 abstentions.

The Obama administration voted against – after joining and legitimizing the virulently anti-Jewish Council for the past five years, and now feigning disappointment for American cameras.

The Europeans abstained because they did not want to upset their violent Muslim minorities, and because their sordid past didn’t leave the resolution’s message too foreign in any case. A few cowardly countries that Israelis have magnanimously befriended over the years also abstained.

But the majority of the UN world cheered – literally. Speakers during the procession of hatemongers at the Council were greeted with applause.

As is their wont, CNN, the New York Times and company derived from this spectacle the lesson that Israel is pathetic, isolated and doomed.

But the real takeaway is the polar opposite.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Obama Will Be Laughing All the Way to the Bank When Our Cities Burn as the Direct Result of His Policies...

By Michael Snyder

Did you know that the number of illegal immigrants that enter Texas each week is greater than the number of babies being born to citizens of that state? The mainstream media is shining the spotlight very brightly on all of the children that are coming over, and there is a reason for that. They are trying to tug on our heartstrings. But there is another part of the story that you aren't hearing much about. By refusing to protect our borders, Barack Obama has allowed hundreds of thousands of gang members to illegally enter the United States and settle in our major cities. In many communities, gang activity is already wildly out of control, and someday our cities will burn because of the foolishness of the federal government.

The Obama administration knows that one out of every five illegal immigrants has a criminal record. And we are not just talking about illegal immigrants taking "upskirt photos" of women like just happened in Texas. We are also talking about rapists, murderers, drug dealers and hardcore gang members.

According to Texas state Senator Dan Patrick, illegal immigrants have been formally charged with nearly half a million crimes in his state over the past four years alone. And he also says that there are "at least 100,000 illegal immigrant gang members" living in his state right now...

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

MUST BE A SLOW NEWS DAY: Obama Just Left on a Coast-to-Coast Fundraising Trip

Slow news day:

Delta Cancels All Israel Flights Over Missile Fear

Wreckage from downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 'significantly altered'

Christians in Iraq Told to Face Conversion or Die

White House reportedly dismissed border crisis as 'local problem' in 2013

Hospitals, Insurers Say Subsidies Rulings Further Confuse Obamacare

Things are so sleepy in Washington that our beloved Dear Leader has decided to fundraise some more. Even Dylan Byers, writer for the public relations arm of the Democrat Party (you may know it as Politico), can no longer hide his disgust:

Fundraising on the Titanic


President Obama is set to make a West Coast swing this week, stopping in San Francisco and Los Angeles for fundraisers and photo-ops. As Michael Shear noted over the weekend, Obama's decision to fundraise as the world burns isn't great for optics.

Jennifer Palmieri, the White House communications director, defended the decision. “It is rarely a good idea to return to the White House just for show, when the situation can be handled responsibly from the road," she told Shear at the time. "Abrupt changes to his schedule can have the unintended consequence of unduly alarming the American people or creating a false sense of crisis."

...That this White House can be hypocritical — comically hypocritcal, even — is news to no one who covers it. The salient point is that in the midst of Gaza, Ukraine and the ongoing border crisis, it might not be a bad time to put the fundraising on hold.

Some days I wonder whether all of this is just a really, really bad nightmare brought on by reading The Gulag Archipelago.


Image: AllTheRightSnark.org.

Monday, July 21, 2014

OPEN BORDERS AND THIRD WORLD PROBLEMS: Deadly, mosquito-borne virus spreading at record pace in U.S.

By Michael Snyder

Cases of the chikungunya virus are appearing in the United States at a level that is far higher than anything health officials have seen in recent years, and now there are two confirmed cases of people that have not even traveled out of the country getting the virus.

That means that the chikungunya virus is starting to spread in America, and once it starts spreading it is really hard to stop. Instead of spreading human to human, this virus actually spreads “person-to-mosquito-to-person”. If you live in an area of the country where there are a lot of mosquitos, you should pay close attention to this article.

You do not want to get the chikungunya virus. According to Slate, the name of this virus “comes from a Makonde word meaning ‘that which bends up,’ referring to the contortions sufferers put themselves through due to intense joint pain.” That does not sound fun at all. Fortunately, the U.S. has not really been affected by this disease in recent years, but an epidemic has already been declared in Puerto Rico, and some experts are now saying that it is only a matter of time before we see one in the United States.

From 2006 to 2013, the largest number of cases of the chikungunya virus in the U.S. in a single year was just 65.

But by July 15th of this year there were already 357 reported cases, and health officials are bracing for the worst.

Of course of biggest concern is what just happened in Florida. For the first time, health officials have isolated cases of the chikungunya virus that they know were transmitted locally

SMART POWER: In 2010, Russian Military Hackers Penetrated NASDAQ Stock Exchange With Intent to Wipe it Out

"Reset", indeed!

When the FBI notified Nasdaq of the intrusion, it turned out the company had detected anomalies on its own but had yet to report the attack. After negotiations over privacy concerns, Nasdaq agreed to let U.S. officials into its networks. Investigation teams arrived at the company’s headquarters at One Liberty Plaza in New York City and its data center in Carteret, N.J., where they found multiple indications of an intelligence agency or military.

The hackers had used two zero-day vulnerabilities in combination. A zero day is a previously unknown flaw in computer code—developers have had “zero days” to address it—that allows hackers to easily take remote command of a computer. It’s a valuable commodity, sometimes selling for tens of thousands of dollars in underground markets. The use of one zero day indicates a sophisticated hacker; more than one suggests government. Stuxnet deployed four—a sign that the code’s authors had done advanced reconnaissance and knew precisely how various systems worked together.

Whoever hit Nasdaq had done similar prep work and had similar resources. The clincher was the hackers’ malware pulled from Nasdaq’s computer banks. The NSA had seen a version before, designed and built by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB), that country’s main spy agency. And it was more than spyware: Although the tool could be used to steal data, it also had a function designed to create widespread disruption within a computer network. The NSA believed it might be capable of wiping out the entire exchange.

In early January, the NSA presented its conclusions to top national security officials: Elite Russian hackers had breached the stock exchange and inserted a digital bomb. The best case was that the hackers had packed their malware with a destruction module in case they were detected and needed to create havoc in Nasdaq computer banks to throw off their pursuers. The worst case was that creating havoc was their intention. President Obama was briefed on the findings.

And what did Obama do? I was going to construct a multiple choice answer involving golf, fundraising, and golf, but I think you already know the answer.

I've got an explanation for Obama's ambivalence about the Russians nuking an American stock exchange.

Hey, anything that can accelerate the Democrats' Cloward-Piven Strategy is probably just fine by Dear Leader!


Hat tip: BadBlue Tech News.