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

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Say Sayonara to the Global Economy

By Jim Quinn

The surreal nature of this world as we enter 2015 feels like being trapped in a Fellini movie. The .1% party like it’s 1999, central bankers not only don’t take away the punch bowl – they spike it with 200 proof grain alcohol, the purveyors of propaganda in the mainstream media encourage the party to reach Caligula orgy levels, the captured political class and their government apparatchiks propagate manipulated and massaged economic data to convince the masses their standard of living isn’t really deteriorating, and the entire façade is supposedly validated by all-time highs in the stock market. It’s nothing but mass delusion perpetuated by the issuance of prodigious amounts of debt by central bankers around the globe. And nowhere has the obliteration of a currency through money printing been more flagrant than in the land of the setting sun – Japan. The leaders of this former economic juggernaut have chosen to commit hara-kiri on behalf of the Japanese people, while enriching the elite, insiders, bankers, and their global banking co-conspirators.

Japan is just the point of the global debt spear in a world gone mad. Total world debt, excluding financial firms, now exceeds $100 trillion. The worldwide banking syndicate has an additional $130 trillion of debt on their insolvent books. As if this wasn’t enough, there are over $700 trillion of derivatives of mass destruction layered on top in this pyramid of debt. Just five Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks control 95% of the $302 trillion U.S. derivatives market. The reason Jamie Dimon and the rest of the leaders of the Wall Street criminal syndicate commanded their politician puppets in Congress to reverse the Dodd Frank rule on separating derivatives trading from normal bank lending is because these high stakes gamblers want to shift their future losses onto the backs of middle class taxpayers – again. The bankers, with the full support of their captured Washington politicians, will abscond with the deposits of the people to pay for their system destroying risk taking, just as they did in 2008 by holding taxpayers hostage for a $700 billion bailout.

Only the ignorant, intellectually dishonest, employees of the Deep State, CNBC cheerleaders for the oligarchy, or Ivy League educated Keynesian loving economists choose to be willfully ignorant regarding the true cause of the 2008 implosion of the worldwide financial system. The immense expansion of credit in the U.S. from 2000 through 2008 was created, encouraged, supported and sustained by Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and their cohorts at the Federal Reserve through their reckless lowering of interest rates and abdication of regulatory oversight, as their owner banks committed the greatest financial control fraud in world history. Total credit market debt in the U.S. grew from $25 trillion in 2000 (already up 100% from $12.5 trillion in 1990) to $53 trillion by 2008.

The bankers, politicians, mainstream media corporations, and mega-corporations that run the show lured Americans into increasing their credit card, auto loan, and student loan debt from $1.6 trillion in 2000 to $2.7 trillion in 2008, while extracting over $600 billion of phantom home equity from their McMansions. And it was all spent on things they didn’t need, produced in Chinese slave labor factories. The mal-investment boom was epic and the collapse in 2008 would have purged the bad debt, punished the risk takers, bankrupted the criminal banks, reset the financial system, and taught generations a lesson they needed to learn – excess debt kills. Instead of voluntarily abandoning the madness of never ending credit expansion and accepting the consequences of their folly, the world’s central bankers and captured politician hacks chose to save bankers, billionaires, and the ruling elite at the expense of the common people.

Sunday, January 04, 2015

WARNING FROM DOWN UNDER: How Democrats Plan to Use ‘Amnesty’ to Create a Socialist, One-Party State

By Trevor Loudon

In all the debate about President Barack Obama‘s “Executive Amnesty” for illegal aliens, few have discussed the real reason for Obama’s move.

The president has risked huge “political capital” on a very risky and possibly illegal move, that he believes will define his Presidency and secure his legacy with his “Progressive” base.

Obama is simply after the votes. He believes that by legalizing eleven to twenty million “illegals” and eventually giving them the vote, he will turn America into a permanent Democratic Party “one party state.”

Furthermore, the President intends there to be no turning back. As a long time ally of the the Gramsci-loving Marxists of Democratic Socialists of America, Obama understands that his Democratic Party is now controlled by the unions and that the unions are controlled by DSA and other Marxist groups.

He knows there will be no “20 year window” for the Republicans to build their share of the Latino vote. He understands that if the Democrats win the next one or two Presidential elections, the left will use the power of the state to divide and smash their Republican, conservative and Evangelical Christian opposition – forever.

Obama understands, even if the leadership of the GOP doesn’t, that this is not the old Republican/Democrat turnabout game. This is much more like the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, or the socialization of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez. Obama and his Marxist allies are playing for keeps – and “Amnesty” is one of their main weapons.

Thursday, January 01, 2015

IRONY: America's Economy Finally Begins to Recover Thanks to the Cheap Energy that Obama Ridicules

Some gems from Victor Davis Hanson's latest at National Review:

...Just two years ago, when up for reelection, Obama reminded Americans, “We can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices.”

Obama ridiculed the Republican idea of lowering gas to $2 a gallon through new oil-recovery techniques. “They’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas,” Obama mocked. “I’ll save you the suspense: Step one is drill, step two is drill, and step three is keep drilling.”

...Then, finally, oil and gas prices plunged owing to the “drill, baby, drill,” can-do attitude of the private sector. Americans should thank the U.S. oilman — from the drillers in the field to the engineers behind the scenes — who did the impossible. They vastly increased the supply of what was supposedly a permanently declining resource, and thereby helped to crash prices.

Oilmen, not the government, returned hundreds of billions of dollars to American consumers. They, not Ivy League experts and Wall Street grandees, kick-started the economy where federal subsidies had failed to. They, not the policies of the Obama administration or the rhetoric of Secretary of State John Kerry, weakened our enemies...

...Almost everything Obama tried for six years in an effort to rev the economy — from near-zero interest rates and $1 trillion annual budget deficits to Obamacare and vast increases in entitlements — has failed. His foreign-policy stances of resets and leading from behind led to chaos and emboldened enemies.

Yet the United States economy is slowly recovering with cheap energy... [and abroad] spendthrift oil producers such as hostile Iran, Russia, and Venezuela are nearly broke. Friendly rivals such as Japan and the European Union can’t compete with the U.S. energy edge.

What Obama once ridiculed is now saving him from himself — after he had championed policies that nearly destroyed him.

The Greeks had a word for it: irony.

I must politely beg to differ, Victor.

Michel de Montaigne put it this way: "Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity."


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

You won't believe the latest lie Mr. Obama told the poor souls listening to National Government Radio

His assertions are ever more brazen and ever more outlandish, but no less untruthful.

President Barack Obama claimed that illegal immigrants do not burden taxpayers and are not a drain on public resources... In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Obama also slammed and dismissed those who are concerned about the negative impact that illegal immigration often has on American workers (U.S.-born and legal immigrants) as “nativists.”

“If you’re concerned that somehow illegal immigrants are a drain on resources and forcing, you know, Americans to pay for services for these folks, well, every study shows that’s just not the case,” Obama claimed. “Generally, these folks don’t use a lot of services, and my executive action specifically is crafted so that they’re not a drain on taxpayers; instead, they’re going to be paying taxes, and we can make sure that they are.”

That, of course, is a blatant and unconscionable deception.

In July 2010, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) released the results of a study which examined the costs of illegal immigration at the federal, state and local levels. The study found that U.S. state and local governments shell out $84.2 billion annually in various services (law enforcement, schools, social services, etc.), with California taxpayers alone, spending $21 billion on illegal aliens every year... The same study found that $29 billion is spent every year in federal funds on illegal aliens.

Therefore, in 2010 alone, illegal aliens cost the American taxpayer more than $110 billion. That figure is certainly much higher now.

In fact, in December of 2012, Obama's own Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, a man with the unlikely name of Nelson Peacock, answered a question from Senate Republicans regarding the costs of deporting all illegal aliens in the United States.

“Our conservative estimate suggests that ICE would require a budget of more than $135 billion to apprehend, detain and remove the nation’s entire illegal immigrant population.”

As Dave Gibson notes, this mass deportation "would pay for itself in a little over a year".


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, December 31, 2014

BEST OF 2014: "Dear beautiful America, please, stop moving Forward"

Guest post by Aleksey


Upon migrating to the United States many years ago, I embraced my new home and left the past behind. Never could I imagine that, at some point, that past would become relevant.

But now, I am compelled to talk about it again.

In the USSR, we had state-controlled media which shaped the narrative entirely.

Our founder, Vladimir Lenin, was portrayed as a noble, charismatic, and smart man -- the champion of the underdog (the working class), the seeker of equality, defeater of the rich. The humble man with common ideas who was destined for greatness.

Lenin peered at us intently from textbooks and walls. His was the face behind the good intentions that shaped our everyday life.
As a kid, I was largely shielded by my family -- they took the brunt of "adult tasks" in everyday life. They bribed officials to accomplish the most basic of things, they conserved every kopek and piece of bread, they got me the rare medicines I needed, all through means I didn't dare fathom.

Of course, there was nothing special about those medicines, those favors, or anything else that took such effort to obtain -- in America, you can just go out and get it in a corner store. In the Soviet Union, the word "deficit" was commonly used in everyday language.

"This and this product are in deficit." This meant that you couldn't buy them. Maybe for the next three months or maybe forever, unless someone was bribed or the product was obtained via the black market, friends, or contraband. Fruits and vegetables had their "seasons" when they made an appearance in local stores -- we didn't have advanced technology like hydroponic farms.

Instead, adults were herded into collective farms, which were the Soviet antithesis of family -- or individual-owned farms. Under cheerful banners of "accomplishing a five-year plan in four," they usually underperformed and the bureaucrats responsible faked the numbers, which moved up the chain of command.

"Deficit." I heard this term a lot, as I stood in long lines for bread and milk in stores with cheerfully generic names like "Progress" or "Sunrise."

The lines resembled those formed by hipsters in America lining up for the sale of the next iPhone model -- except we stood in them every day.

As much as my family shielded me from their troubles, they couldn't protect me from factors beyond their control. They couldn't raise my level of living above theirs. And they certainly couldn't get me anesthetics for dental visits. Sitting in the gray, sterile corridor for two hours, hearing the sobbing of the kids already in the dental chair as their teeth were drilled without anesthetics, water, or suction, and knowing that your turn was coming -- some handled it better than others.

In the local clinic, needles were resterilized and reused. Ambulances took three hours to arrive, if they came at all.
That was our "free" healthcare.

We also lived in a "free" apartment, which was suffocatingly small by American standards, and it took years, if not decades, for an average couple to obtain such a place. Usually, several generations of a family lived under one roof until the government bestowed upon its citizens another gray five- to sixteen-story building that looked just like its gray neighbor and had the same exact green-painted swings in the yard.

Since almost nobody had cars, people could rarely afford to move to another city or republic.

Public transportation, which we all had to use, consisted of cranky people squeezed tightly like sardines inside a rusty box on wheels. Despite that, when I was eight, I wanted to be a trolley bus driver. Partially because of all the buttons he flipped to open and close doors, but mostly because there was a wall between him and the sardine can.

The walls in Soviet apartments were poorly insulated from noise and cold. Therefore, wall carpets were dominant in Soviet culture. They all looked similar, usually colored red with abstract, curving patterns.

Soviet factories were state-controlled. Variety was not a concept. The color red was all over the place -- it garnished the banners hanging off the sides of gray five-story buildings, with profiles of Lenin, Marx, and Engels fluttering lightly in the wind, proclaiming that "Marxism-Leninism is the symbol of our times." Others stated, "Forward toward Communism!"

Red was splattered on our classroom walls and our school uniforms.

In grade school, you became an "Octyabronok" (named after the October 1917 revolution) and wore a Lenin-faced star on your lapel. You got a free newspaper, the "Young Leninist." Later, you became a "Pioneer" and swapped the star for a red tie. After that, you moved on to "Komsomol" (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League). Those who did not follow the groupthink enough to make it to "Komsomol" lost access to crucial resources and careers later in life.

I grew up with no concept of "brands." If I wanted to get that shoddy water pistol that suddenly appeared in a store, and my parents let me, then that was the water pistol. It broke in two weeks, of course.

Bread in the stores was the bread. Milk was the milk. Kolbasa was the kolbasa. Everything was manufactured by the state to provide the minimum required survivability, and minimum expected functionality. Improvements in design and the manufacturing process did not exist.

When I came to America and laid down on an American bed, it struck me that it was more comfortable than any bed I'd ever experienced. It was the result of evolving design oriented toward customer satisfaction -- a concept alien to my former homeland.
The two famous brands of Soviet cars, Zaporozhets and Moskvich (both named after their places of origin), just... existed. We didn't really have Zaporozhets 1980 followed by a new and improved Zaporozhets 1981 -- now with power steering! No such thing. It was a car, and it required no further improvement. There was no customer demand, because people were poor, the state-controlled prices were very high, and product evolution crawled at snail's pace.

The very concept of "customer convenience" did not exist. We didn't have bottles sculpted to fit the shape of your hand, nor did we have polite cashiers, for they were under no obligation to please anyone -- they worked for the state. The abacus was still in common use in our stores while American stores had electric change machines, credit card readers, and sliding doors.

Like most things, clothes were in "deficit" and thus traveled from older to younger siblings in every family over time. Broken things weren't thrown away but repaired.

Our giant lamp television was carried in the family since about the time I was born. It received three channels -- all State-controlled. On our evening news program, the Chernobyl disaster announcement was calm and lasted fifteen seconds. Our state papers, such as Pravda and Izvestia, were not read but used as invaluable sources of free toilet paper. This is not a joke.

Our propaganda put the big focus on the noble working class and how there was no such thing as a "lower" profession. Much emphasis was made on the nobility of simple working man, and certainly there is something to that.

But when the janitor receives roughly the same salary as a teacher who is paid roughly the same as a surgeon who is paid roughly the same as a programmer, all of them surrounded by peers who get paid the same no matter how well or poorly they perform, some people start carrying the team, and then they just give up. Everyone performs poorly in the end.

It was painfully obvious to everyone just how low the desire of the average person is to produce goods for other people. Without competition or opportunity to get ahead, with the state controlling production and paying equal salaries to workers regardless of their contributions, we had no concept of abundance.

With our "free" services, we regularly experienced water and electrical outages and sometimes went to a nearby forest to get water. Once you fill that bathtub with water, you can't use it for anything else.

The first time I entered an American food market at the age of seventeen, I froze.

Older Soviets who visited American stores for the first time, got hit harder -- all the lies they were taught from childhood through the decades of their lives -- until that last moment, they expected them to be at least partially true.

Sure, they heard stories from overseas, but come on, those were just the Potemkin villages, mirages created to make the Soviets jealous. How can one imagine the unimaginable?

"They told us in Odessa, that in San Francisco it's hard to find milk."

This is the typical Soviet mentality, and they were used to it, and they bought into it, and then they entered that American supermarket and saw the rows upon rows of milk of different brands and kinds and fat percentages.

This is where some have been known to cry. It is the realization that their lives were stolen from them by the regime. A realization of what could've been, if they had been lucky enough to be born in this place which, from everything they knew, could not possibly exist.

I now live in Northern California, in the heart of the Bay Area, thousands of miles away from my homeland.

And yet the poison of Soviet propaganda seeps through college dorms just as it did in Soviet classrooms.

Stop a random youth on the street and you'll find out what he thinks about capitalism (bad!) and communism/socialism (good!). Their favorite news programs are the "Daily Show" and the "Colbert Report," where comedians reinforce their brainwashing via short, catchy clips.

Walk through Berkeley and you will see wall graffiti of the same hammer and sickle that adorned the big red flags of the Soviet era.

This doesn't extend to just youths. People of all ages, even acquaintances that I otherwise respect and admire, are like this. They support the "progressive" leader Barack Obama, worship the nanny state, and believe in equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity.

They badmouth capitalism and complain that only one percent of the American population has the "American dream." They buy into the class warfare rhetoric hook, line, and sinker. They want artificially raised minimum wage, government handouts, and believe that Obamacare is the greatest thing since the invention of pockets.

I look at them and the red ties materialize, familiarly, around their necks.

There are "academic" speakers now who advocate that having too many choices is "bad for you." Too stressful to choose, you see.
Living in the Soviet Union, being bombarded with similar nonsense, we had nothing to contradict it. When we walked outside the school, the everyday reality had no traces of the wealth afforded by capitalism. We lived in the grayness and that grayness was all there was.

Americans leave school to go home and they drop by a mall to buy something from an incredible selection of wealth and choice afforded by capitalism. They drop by a small corner store, which could probably feed a savvy Soviet village for a month (dog food is food, too, you know), and they pick up some "entertainment food" that did not exist in the USSR, in quantities that weren't affordable for an average Soviet family.

Then they go home and write essays on their expensive iPads about how they don't have the American Dream.

Now, most American news sources are no different than Pravda and Izvestia. Now, the government used the IRS to stifle political opposition. Now, ObamaCare is a wealth redistribution platform disguised as a common good. Now, Obama is being portrayed in academia and the media alike as a charismatic, messianic, "progressive" figure, fighting for the "underdog." He would feel right at home as the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Now, Obama Youths are me, from decades ago. Leninist academia has had its way with them. Now, just like Soviet leaders, American leaders give lip-service to "social justice" while stocking up on personal wealth for their families.

There's nothing new under the sun. I'm hardly the only ex-Soviet to point out the parallels. But some things matter enough to bear repeating.

Dear beautiful America, please, stop moving Forward.


Hat tip: BadBlue News

Monday, December 29, 2014

Did the Saudis and the US Really Collude to Smash Oil Prices?

By Andrew Topf

The oil price drop that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks has been framed almost exclusively in terms of oil market economics, with most media outlets blaming Saudi Arabia, through its OPEC Trojan horse, for driving down the price, thus causing serious damage to the world's major oil exporters – most notably Russia.

While the market explanation is partially true, it is simplistic, and fails to address key geopolitical pressure points in the Middle East.

Oilprice.com looked beyond the headlines for the reason behind the oil price drop, and found that the explanation, while difficult to prove, may revolve around control of oil and gas in the Middle East and the weakening of Russia, Iran and Syria by flooding the market with cheap oil.

The oil weapon

We don't have to look too far back in history to see Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter and producer, using the oil price to achieve its foreign policy objectives. In 1973, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat convinced Saudi King Faisal to cut production and raise prices, then to go as far as embargoing oil exports, all with the goal of punishing the United States for supporting Israel against the Arab states. It worked. The “oil price shock” quadrupled prices.

It happened again in 1986, when Saudi Arabia-led OPEC allowed prices to drop precipitously, and then in 1990, when the Saudis sent prices plummeting as a way of taking out Russia, which was seen as a threat to their oil supremacy. In 1998, they succeeded. When the oil price was halved from $25 to $12, Russia defaulted on its debt.

The Saudis and other OPEC members have, of course, used the oil price for the obverse effect, that is, suppressing production to keep prices artificially high and member states swimming in “petrodollars”. In 2008, oil peaked at $147 a barrel.

Turning to the current price drop, the Saudis and OPEC have a vested interest in taking out higher-cost competitors, such as US shale oil producers, who will certainly be hurt by the lower price. Even before the price drop, the Saudis were selling their oil to China at a discount. OPEC's refusal on Nov. 27 to cut production seemed like the baldest evidence yet that the oil price drop was really an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and the US.

However, analysis shows the reasoning is complex, and may go beyond simply taking down the price to gain back lost marketshare.

“What is the reason for the United States and some U.S. allies wanting to drive down the price of oil?” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro asked rhetorically in October. “To harm Russia.”

Many believe the oil price plunge is the result of deliberate and well-planned collusion on the part of the United States and Saudi Arabia to punish Russia and Iran for supporting the murderous Assad regime in Syria.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

GELERNTER: States Can End "Executive Amnesty" Without a Lawsuit

Writing in National Review, Josh Gelernter offers a very different spin on the "nullification" debate. While acknowledging that the judiciary has consistently ruled against the nullification doctrine, insisting only it has the authority to declare laws unconstitutional, Obama's "Executive Amnesty" is something very different from a law.

This week, Tennessee became the 25th state to join a lawsuit against the president’s executive amnesty order. The lawsuit may work, but there’s another, more direct, and considerably more interesting redress against executive overreach [first p]roposed in 1798 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

...The nullification doctrine posits that, as the federal government is the product of the Constitution, and the Constitution is a compact of the states, it’s the states that have the final say on any law’s constitutionality. If a state determines that a law exceeds the terms of the compact to which it agreed, it has the right to nullify that law within its own borders.

Jefferson and Madison’s idea was for states to declare the Alien and Sedition Acts null and void. Instead of joining a lawsuit against the executive amnesty, those 25 states could simply deem the executive amnesty null and void, and refuse to recognize illegal aliens’ work permits or issue them driver’s licenses.

Why, you wonder, would that be better than filing a lawsuit? In a certain sense, it wouldn’t — because winning that suit would strike down Mr. Obama’s order in all 50 states. Which is not an unlikely outcome, given the order’s extremely shaky legal footing. However —

The judiciary has consistently ruled against the nullification doctrine, asserting its unique, judicial right to declare laws unconstitutional. But this executive order isn’t a law. And given its extremely shaky legal footing, it isn’t difficult to imagine a federal bench recognizing the states’ right to disregard federal orders that don’t clearly have the force of law. And that would be a tremendous — tremendous — blow against the executive’s assumption of legislative powers.

But in the shorter, directer term: It [nullification] would force the Obama administration to go on offense, suing the states to enforce a law that isn’t a law. And I don’t think that case can be made.

I think this is an intriguing idea. Gelernter notes that your state's governor and attorney general should be contacted, especially if you live in a red or purple state.

Nullification may be a non-starter under normal circumstances, but nullifying non-laws should be anything but controversial.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

EXCELLENT NEWS: Mainstream, Moderate Muslim Group Cheers Unveiling of ISIS Flag on Mt. Everest

Yes, really. Muslim Matters is a news hub for all things Islamic, with a special focus on Western countries. MM has a mere 425,000 "likes" on Facebook, which indicates it is quite mainstream.


Of course, he's not just holding up a book; he's also holding up a flag. And not just any flag, the black flag of ISIS.


When even Al-Arabiya is reporting that ISIS has committed crimes against humanity, you may want to rethink the cheerleading, fellows. To wit, "Massacres, beheading boys as young as 15, and amputations and lashings in public squares that residents -- including children -- are forced to watch figure on the list of crimes, as does the widespread use of child soldiers, stoning women to death for suspected adultery and holding women as sexual slaves and forcing them to bear children for the fighters."

Or is ISIS now what passes for moderate, mainstream Islam?


Hat tip: BadBlue News. Reference: "Know Your Terror Flags."

Monday, December 22, 2014

BOTH PC's ARE DOWN: North Korea Suffering a Complete Internet Blackout

While there are credible reports that North Korea may not have been behind the Sony hack, that hasn't stopped someone from taking out the DPRK's entire Internet infrastructure.

Which means both Commodore 64's are down.

[DPRK] has just four networks that connect to the world wide web -- and none of them are working today. "The situation now is they are totally offline," Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Dyn Research told Bloomberg. After a weekend of spotty connections, the country's pipeline to the outside world reportedly went down this morning. "This isn't normal for them," Madory said. "Usually they are up solid. It is kind of out of the ordinary. This is not like anything I've seen before."

The Network researcher didn't go out of his way to suggest that North Korea's internet service is under direct attack, but the idea has some merit. Just last week the FBI officially stated that it believed North Korea to be behind the recent hack at Sony Pictures, and US President Barack Obama promised to "respond proportionally, and in a place, time and manner that we choose." Considering the events of the past week, it's an easy suspicion to cling to, but it's also very unconfirmed: White House National Security spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan stated that the White House has no new comments on North Korea today. "If in fact North Korea's internet has gone down," she wrote to Bloomberg, "We'd refer you to that government for comment."

US involvement isn't the only possibility either -- North Korean's own infrastructure could simply be buckling due to poor maintenance or, more likely, China (the country through which North Korea pipes all of its internet connections)could be disrupting service directly.

Rumor has it that the country's chubby, mass-murdering dictator is highly exercised that he no longer has access to his favorite, eh, "lingerie" sites.


BRILLIANT: U.S. offers $5 million reward for Al Qaeda terrorist it released from Gitmo

Just when you think the Left's tactics have hit rock bottom, they pull out a Tunnel Boring Machine and start digging a new sub-level. Judicial Watch has the summary of another brilliant maneuver by the Smartest President Ever™ with an assist from everyone who thinks Gitmo should be shut down:

Years after liberating an Al Qaeda operative from the military prison at Guantanamo, the United States government has put him on a global terrorist list and offered a $5 million reward for information on his whereabouts.

The unbelievable story comes as President Obama frees more and more terrorists—including four to Afghanistan over the weekend— long held in the military compound at the U.S. Naval base in southeastern Cuba. The president’s goal is to close the prison, a campaign promise that dates back to 2008, by relocating the last of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. Still left at the facility are 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi as well as USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.

Hundreds of Gitmo terrorists have been discharged over the years under a program that started with President George W. Bush and continued full-throttle with this administration. Intelligence report after intelligence report has revealed that many rejoin terrorist missions after leaving the military prison. In fact, Judicial Watch has been reporting this for years. Back in 2010 JW wrote about a report that the Director of National Intelligence gave Congress documenting that 150 former Gitmo detainees were confirmed or suspected of “reengaging in terrorist or insurgent activities after transfer.” At least 83 remained at large, according to the document.

Sunday, December 21, 2014

U.S. College Chancellors Admit BDS Goal Is the Elimination of Israel

By Tammi Benjamin

Santa Cruz, CA, Dec. 18, 2014 – Twenty-two groups wrote to nine University of California (UC) Chancellors today, demanding they publicly state their commitment to upholding UC policies which prohibit academic student employees (ASEs) from using their instructional positions to promote a boycott of Israel.

The UC Regents Policy on Course Content prohibits ASEs from promoting political propaganda or advocacy in the classroom. UAW 2865, the union representing 13,000 graduate instructors on nine University of California (UC) campuses, voted last week to join the international campaign for “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” (BDS) against Israel.

“We represent 22 organizations with hundreds of thousands of members and supporters nationwide, who are deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of Jewish students at colleges and universities across the country in light of the rising tide of anti-Israel sentiment and the rapid growth of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on many campuses,” wrote the groups. “While we support the right of every member of UAW 2865 to exercise his or her freedom of speech outside of the instructional setting, we are greatly concerned that these union members, who are responsible for instructing hundreds of thousands of undergraduate students, will bring their unscholarly, politically motivated and antisemitic propaganda and advocacy into UC classrooms, where it certainly does not belong.”

The BDS movement has become increasingly explicit in expressing its ultimate goal of eliminating Israel. This goal was echoed by members of the UAW 2865 BDS Caucus panel at UC Berkeley last month, when they stated that the purpose of BDS is “isolating Zionism” and “bringing down Israel.” In embracing a movement that calls for the elimination of the world’s only Jewish state, UAW 2865 members are trafficking in open antisemitism.

Furthermore, the BDS movement calls for a campaign of anti-normalization whose goal is to delegitimize and silence anyone who accepts the legitimacy of Israel. On numerous college campuses, including at the University of California, aggressive anti-normalization campaigns have targeted Jewish and pro-Israel students for harassment, intimidation, bullying and physical assault.

MIKE LEE: How Illegal Aliens Will Receive Fast Track to Citizenship Under Obama’s Executive Amnesty

By Senator Mike Lee (R-UT)

As we all know, the President has recently announced executive action on immigration — what he calls “deferred action” for millions of aliens who are here illegally, but who have children who were born here and are therefore U.S. citizens. 

The President has repeatedly assured the American people that he is not creating a path to citizenship for those people.  But the President is not telling the truth.  He and his Administration have cleared the pathway to citizenship for millions of people who crossed our border illegally; they know that’s what they’ve done; and it is illegal.

Immigration law is very complicated, but here’s the bottom line:  If you are a foreign national and a parent of a U.S. citizen, when that child reaches age 21, assuming you haven’t committed certain crimes or done certain other things, you can get a green card and, eventually, citizenship. 

However, if you crossed the U.S. border illegally — “entered without inspection” as the law says — you first have to leave the country, wait a period of either 3 or 10 years before returning (depending on how long you had resided in the U.S.) and then come back into the United States lawfully in order to get back on the path to citizenship.

That’s how the system is designed to work. That’s what the law says.

But the President is now opening a huge loophole, using a program called “advance parole,” that will allow millions of illegal aliens, who are not currently eligible for citizenship, to bypass the rules and become eligible for green cards and eventually citizenship.

Here’s how it works:

Friday, December 19, 2014

NO. PRINTABLE. COMMENT: Obama Apologizes to Castro

Yes, really. Michael Warren reports:

Barack Obama apologized to Cuban president Raul Castro during their phone conversation after the American commander in chief's opening remarks... Obama began the phone call with Castro with what he described as 15 minutes of opening comments. It was the first conversation between the heads of state in both countries since 1961.

"I apologized for taking such a long time," Obama said... According to the president, Raul Castro proceeded to speak to Obama uninterrupted for 30 minutes.

I tremble to think what additional damage this President will do to liberty, both here and abroad, in his remaining 25 months in office. Twenty. Five. Months.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

IF ONLY AUSTRALIA WOULD GET OUT OF "PALESTINE": Islamists Take Hostages in Downtown Sydney

Islamonazi terrorists displaying the flag of ISIS have raided a busy Sydney cafe and taken as many as 50 hostages.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families, who were disarmed beginning in 1996 with draconian gun control laws that literally read "personal protection [shall] not be regarded as a genuine reason for owning, possessing or using a firearm."

I'll bet there are many people in Australia today who wish concealed carry permits were as plentiful as they are in the U.S.

...live TV footage showed people standing inside a café with their hands pressed against the windows. At least one of the attackers was caught on camera wearing a traditional Islamic cap.


...The hostages were forced to hold a black flag with an Arabic inscription, prompting fears that ruthless Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants were behind the attack.

...The gunmen’s attack, which took place in Sydney’s central business district, forced nearby buildings in Martin Place – including the Reserve Bank of Australia – to go on lockdown... Soon after news of the hostage situation emerged, Sydney’s iconic Opera House was also evacuated. The move was reportedly prompted by a suspicious package found inside the building.

But this tragedy is just another coincidence, eh, Ben Affleck?


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

HEY, WHY NOT? Boehner Omnibus Spending Bill Funds Social Security Benefits for Obama's Amnesty Aliens

What else would you expect?

Pages 958 and 959 of the 1,603-page omnibus spending bill from House Speaker John Boehner include a provision that gives Social Security benefits to illegal aliens under President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty...

...Right after Obama’s executive amnesty announcement, the White House confirmed to the Washington Post that illegal aliens who get amnesty from Obama—paid for by Boehner, and any Republican who votes for this omnibus bill—will have access to Social Security benefits.

By not including language saying that Social Security benefits can’t go to illegal aliens under the executive amnesty—just as they didn’t include language going after funding for the implementation of the executive amnesty itself—Republicans are completely surrendering, ensuring that millions of illegal aliens will get Social Security.

...[A] GOP aide said he’s not surprised Boehner caved to Obama’s amnesty... “I can’t say I’m surprised by this, given the apparent lack of will to protect the American people against Obama’s illegal actions,” the aide said.

I get the feeling that the Oligarchs in Washington can be segmented not as Democrats and Republicans, but as "Traitors" and "Quislings", respectively.

Yeah, you can use that one, royalty-free. It's the least I can do.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

JUST SUPER: FBI Most Wanted Al Qaeda terrorist "crossed back and forth" between US and Mexico for years

The invaluable Judicial Watch reports that deportations of illegal aliens has hit another new low. And the inevitable result is as disgusting as it is predictable.

Illegal border crossings have "skyrocketed":

Obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this month by a mainstream newspaper, the figures reveal that President Obama deported fewer illegal aliens in the last year than at any time during his tenure. This despite the fact that federal agents caught nearly half a million people trying to cross into the U.S. in the fiscal year ending in September. “An even bigger decline came in the numbers of people removed after living for some time in the U.S., mostly after being ensnared in the criminal justice system,” the newspaper reports.

Oh, wait! It gets better. An FBI "Most Wanted" Al Qaeda terrorist crossed freely back and forth between the U.S. and Canada "for years".

The news could not come at a worse time, on the heels of a shocking case reported by Judicial Watch this week involving an Al Qaeda terrorist on the FBI’s most wanted list who for years crossed back and forth into the United States from Mexico. The jihadist, Adnan G. El Shukrijumah (also known as “Javier Robles”), met with fellow militant Islamists in El Paso Texas, according to JW’s law enforcement sources, and even piloted an aircraft into the Cielo Dorado airfield in Anthony New Mexico earlier this year. Shukrijumah is the poster child for the need to secure the perpetually porous southern border.

Instead, Obama has issued an administrative amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. while the border remains particularly vulnerable. The new ICE report says that federal agents removed 315,943 last year, a 14% drop from the previous year. The administration went even easier on illegal aliens with criminal records, removing only 102,000, a 23% drop from 2013 and fewer than half the number of people deported in 2011. Only two-thirds of the illegal immigrants caught at the border were sent back, marking a 9% decline from the previous year.

We get word from Matthew Boyle today that John Boehner's insane "Omnibus" spending bill gives Social Security benefits to Obama's Amnesty aliens.

Rest assured that this means you and I will be paying for the Social Security benefits of terrorists (not to mention gang-bangers, felons, kidnappers, murderers and other illegal alien criminals).

How's your rear end feel?


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

DRONES ARE JUST PEACHY: Ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-KS) Slams Dianne Feinstein for enhanced interrogation hypocrisy

Alex Griswold points us to a disappointed Andrea Mitchell, whose face resembles papier-mâché (not that there's anything wrong with that) when confronted with the stark idiocy of Democrat policy positions.

Former Democratic Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey called out Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” for her “incompatible” positions in support of droning terrorists, but in opposition to using enhanced interrogation.

“Well the other thing is, you’ve got guys out there right now running drones. Dianne Feinstein supports the use of drones,” he noted. “What happens if ten years from now, there is another investigation saying those guys violated international law as well?”

“I mean you’re basically saying, ‘I can’t interrogate Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, but I can put him out with his family and drop a drone [strike] on him.’ There seems to be something incompatible with those two positions.

Well, let's put it this way, Bob: wiping out a terrorist's family with a drone strike is no more hypocritical than Michelle Obama gorging on fast food while insisting that growing kids starve themselves.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

THE ENERGY BUST: What it heralds for the economy

By Michael Snyder

Are much lower oil prices good news for the U.S. economy? Only if you like collapsing capital expenditures, rising unemployment and a potential financial implosion on Wall Street. Yes, lower gasoline prices are good news for the middle class. I certainly would rather pay two dollars for a gallon of gas than four dollars. But in order to have money to fill up your vehicle you have got to have an income first. And since the last recession, the energy sector has been the number one creator of good jobs in the U.S. economy by far. Barack Obama loves to stand up and take credit for the fact that the employment picture in this country has been improving slightly, but without the energy industry boom, unemployment would be through the roof. And now that the “energy boom” is rapidly becoming an “energy bust”, what will happen to the struggling U.S. economy as we head into 2015?

At the start of this article I mentioned that much lower oil prices would result in “collapsing capital expenditures”.

Monday, December 08, 2014

Analysis of Obama's Executive Amnesty Scheme: It Will Put an End to Secure Communities

By Dan Cadman

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson testified before the House of Representatives on December 2 that he thinks it's a "bad idea" for Congress to consider a short-term funding bill in lieu of full funding for his department, so that it can implement the stunningly broad sweep of "executive actions" on immigration announced by the president during a nationally televised speech on November 20. He may think so, but it's not at all clear why the House should adopt that view given the executive branch usurpation of authorities granted to the legislature under Article I of the Constitution, and the undermining of an entire system of federal immigration laws.

Concurrent with the president's speech, Johnson issued a series of 10 policy memos outlining the various programs covering 10 key areas that would constitute this "executive action".

One of the 10 memos announced an end to Secure Communities, a program that uses electronic matching of fingerprints to identify alien criminals in near-real-time among the people arrested by police nationwide. It's to be replaced with a new "Priority Enforcement Program (PEP)" ... that uses electronic matching of fingerprints to identify alien criminals in near-real-time among the people arrested by police nationwide.

Don't think, though, that this is just a re-branding of Secure Communities under a puerile new name such as "PEP" in order to escape the controversy that has been its hallmark. Most assuredly it's not — the changes are substantive and damaging.

RESET: China Conducts Third Test of Game-Changing "Carrier Killer" Missile System

By Investor's Business Daily

Defense Threat: China conducts its third test in a year of a hypersonic glide vehicle designed to evade our missile and other defense systems, including the Aegis defense system guarding our carrier battle groups.

As we downsize our military, scale back weapons procurement and development, China proceeds at top speed towards weapons designed to counter our once-huge technical advantage and qualitative superiority. Case in point is the third flight test of a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV), dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, following earlier tests on Jan. 9 and Aug. 7 of this year.

The U.S. Navy is particularly concerned, as an HGV would be a potent weapon against U.S. carrier battle groups in the western Pacific.

A Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile — the road-mobile DF-21D, called a "carrier killer" by some — already poses a potent threat, but it is countered by our extraordinarily capable sea-based Aegis missile defense.

In February 2008, the Aegis missile cruiser Lake Erie shot down a National Reconnaissance Office 2.5-ton spy satellite before it could strike the Earth with its deadly hydrazine fuel tank nearly full.

"The beauty of the HGV (hypersonic glide vehicle) is that it can perform hypersonic precision strikes while maintaining a relatively low altitude and flat trajectory, making it far less vulnerable to missile defenses," says Rick Fisher, a China military affairs expert with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.