Is Mali the next Afganistan or Worse?

 

MOPTI, Mali (AP) — Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are burrowing into the earth, erecting a formidable set of defenses to protect what has essentially become al-Qaida’s new country.

They have used the bulldozers, earth movers and Caterpillar machines left behind by fleeing construction crews to dig what residents and local officials describe as an elaborate network of tunnels, trenches, shafts and ramparts. In just one case, inside a cave large enough to drive trucks into, they have stored up to 100 drums of gasoline, guaranteeing their fuel supply in the face of a foreign intervention, according to experts.

Northern Mali is now the biggest territory held by al-Qaida and its allies. And as the world hesitates, delaying a military intervention, the extremists who seized control of the area earlier this year are preparing for a war they boast will be worse than the decade-old struggle in Afghanistan.

“Al-Qaida never owned Afghanistan,” said former United Nations diplomat Robert Fowler, a Canadian kidnapped and held for 130 days by al-Qaida’s local chapter, whose fighters now control the main cities in the north. “They do own northern Mali.”

Al-Qaida’s affiliate in Africa has been a shadowy presence for years in the forests and deserts of Mali, a country hobbled by poverty and a relentless cycle of hunger. In recent months, the terror syndicate and its allies have taken advantage of political instability within the country to push out of their hiding place and into the towns, taking over an enormous territory which they are using to stock arms, train forces and prepare for global jihad.

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, operates not just in Mali, but in a corridor along much of the northern Sahel. This 7,000-kilometer (4,300-mile) long ribbon of land runs across the widest part of Africa, and includes sections of Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso and Chad.

Read More: Associated Press

More of Valerie Jarrett's Radical Roots

 

Another of Obama's Socialist String Pullers

Like so many Obama appointees, Valerie Jarrett bears the unmistakable imprint of the president’s ideology. She is a leftist to her core, with notable personal ties to the communist movement. Jarrett’s maternal grandfather, for instance, was a Chicagoan named Robert Taylor, who in the 1940s was involved with such communist fronts as the American Peace Mobilization and the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee. Also a member of these groups was Frank Marshall Davis, the communist journalist who in the 1970s would mentor a young Barack Obama.

Jarrett’s mother (and Robert Taylor’s daughter) is early-childhood-education author Barbara Taylor Bowman, who co-founded a Chicago-based graduate school in child development known as the Erikson Institute, named after the psychoanalyst Erik Erikson; in 1950 Erikson became a hero to the left by choosing to resign from his professorship at the University of California rather than sign an anti-communist loyalty oath as the school required. 

Indicative of the Erikson Institute’s radical political orientation is the fact that its board of trustees has included, in addition to Bowman, such figures as Tom Ayers (father of the former Weather Underground terrorist and lifelong Marxist Bill Ayers) and Bernardine Dohrn (longtime wife of Bill Ayers).

In 1983 Valerie Jarrett married the son of Vernon Jarrett, a black journalist who formerly wrote for the communist-influenced Chicago Defender. In the 1940s, Mr. Jarrett was a leader of the Chicago chapter of American Youth for Democracy—youth wing of the Communist Party USA. He also served on a publicity committee for the Packinghouse Workers Union, a Chicago-based entity dominated by the CPUSA. In each of these endeavors, Mr. Jarrett had close contact with the aforementioned communist, Frank Marshall Davis.

Much More: Front Page Mag

Even More Fiscal Cliff Cartoons

OBAMA is a Socialist.

 

What Kind of Socialist Is Barack Obama?

The assertion that Barack Obama is a socialist became a hallmark of the 2008 presidential campaign. His opponent, John McCain, used Obama’s own extemporaneous words to an Ohio plumber as Exhibit A: “When you spread the wealth around,” Obama had said, “it’s good for everybody.” That, McCain insisted, sounded “a lot like socialism,” as did Obama’s proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy and high earners for the explicit purpose of taking better care of the lower and middle classes with that redistributed money.
 
Republicans believed they had hit a rhetorical mother lode with this line of argument in 2008, but their efforts to make hay of Obama’s putative socialism proved unedifying, if not outright comic. The National Committee of the Republican Party even formally considered a resolution on whether the Democratic party should change its name to “the Democratic Socialist Party” of the United States. The stunt was shelved infavor of compromise language lamenting the Democrats’ “march toward socialism.”
 
Fourteen months into his presidency, in March 2010, Obama succeeded in muscling through Congress a partial government takeover of the national health-care system. That legislative accomplishment followed Obama’s decision a year earlier, without congressional approval, to nationalize two of the country’s Big Three automobile companies. In the intervening months, he had also imposed specific wage ceilings on employees at banks that had taken federal bailout money—the first such federal wage controls since an ill-fated experiment by Richard Nixon in 1971. 

Obama also made the federal government the direct provider of student loans, and did so by putting that significant change in American policy inside the larger health-care bill. In a September 2009 press conference, Obama suggested that a publicly funded health-care system might help “avoid. . .some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs”—thus mistaking the act of making money, the foundational cornerstone of capitalism itself, with the generation of unnecessary expenses.

Given his conduct and rhetoric as president, we have every reason to reopen the question from 2008 and ask, quite simply, 

What kind of socialist is Barack Obama? 

Read More: Commentary Magazine

Obama “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”

 

Mark Levin interviewed gun rights advocate John Lott. He recounted a conversation with then-Senator Obama who told Lott: “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”

CONFIRMED Economy was destroyed by Democrat policies

 

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.
Again, let's review:

President Bush went Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.

-John McCain also co-sponsored urgently critical reforms that would have prevented the housing market collapse, but Democrats shut that down as well, along party lines, and even openly ridiculed anyone who suggested reforms were necessary...to protect their taxpayer-funded campaign contributions as the economy raced uncontrollably toward the cliff.

-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn't go along with the left's Affirmative Action lending policies...all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.

-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left's favorite blatantly partisan "fact-checkers," Snopes, admits (while pretending to 'set the record straight').

-Even The New York Times admitted that there is "little evidence" of any connection between the "Republican" deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Bleach-Liley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.

But non-Fox media have spent years deliberately and relentlessly inoculating people against the facts, training them to mindlessly blame Bush for being in charge when Democrat policies destroyed the economy. So here we sit, to this day, still watching Obama excuse and shrug off endless economic failures, illegal government takeovers and utter national bankruptcy with zero accountability.

Courtesy: The Examiner 

The Drones Are Coming

 

Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponized.

By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in US domestic airspace. Photograph: US navy/Reuters

In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by the defense sector" to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won't necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.

Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them. 

An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS news expands on this unprecedented and unconstitutional step – one that formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic populations on US soil, which is the bright line that separates a democracy from a military oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for the deployment of National Guard units by governors, who are answerable to the people; but this system is intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from taking action aimed at US citizens domestically.)

Read The Rest of the Story: The Guardian

 

If a Pilot Can Carry, Why Not a Teacher?

 

If a Pilot Can Carry, Why Not a Teacher?  Crazy, I know, but isn’t it crazy someone shot 20 defenseless 1st Graders and their teachers?  Isn’t it crazy to take the same guns criminals use out of the hands of private citizens?
After the Sandy Hook shooting, I heard a newscaster say, “Let’s try to make sense out of this senseless violence.”  You cannot make sense out of senseless violence.  So what does make sense?

Does it make sense for teachers to “carry” in schools across the country?  First reaction seems to be “hell no” not around my children!  After 9-11-2001, consider, your children may have been or will be on a flight to Grandma’s house and the pilot on your flight may be carrying.  That’s OK?  After 9-11, no one seems to have a problem with a pilot having a gun.  Maybe parents, who don’t want teachers to carry, think teachers can’t handle a gun as well as an airplane pilot?  If a kid wanting an easy target, knew teachers were carrying, wouldn’t they think twice?  Maybe teachers should carry?

There’s a lack of involvement and a lack of caring with regard to parent and teachers in schools today, these same parents that are for gun control.  They expect to drop the kids off at school and they become someone else’s problem.  My spouse worked in the classroom.  I know a number of teachers who work in the classroom and most of them are disenchanted with the parents and the system.  Some of them complain about the behavioral problems with the students.  So come to think of it, maybe teachers shouldn’t be allowed to carry guns?   If my spouse was still in the classroom and it was legal to carry, I would want her to carry.  The only other way I see around this senseless slaughter in schools, would be to ensure armed guards carrying equal to or superior weaponry to that which can be obtained on the streets, were guarding the school.  Otherwise the carnage will continue.

Read More: Idea Capitalist 

BENGHAZI MISSION VIOLATED INTERNATIONAL LAW?

Newly released probe may raise unintended questions about U.S. facility

by Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM — Was the U.S. mission in Benghazi established in violation of international law?
According to the 39-page report released this week by independent investigators probing the September 11^th attacks at the diplomatic facility, the U.S. mission in Benghazi was set up without the knowledge of the new Libyan government.
Reads the report: “Another key driver behind the weak security platform in Benghazi was the decision to treat Benghazi as a temporary, residential facility, not officially notified to the host government, even though it was also a full-time office facility.”
“This resulted in the Special Mission compound being excepted from office facility standards and accountability under the Secure Embassy Construction and Counter-Terrorism Act of 1999 (SECCA) and the Overseas Security Policy Board (OSPB).”
The report, based on a probe led by former U.S. diplomat Thomas Pickering, calls the facility a “Special U.S. Mission.”
Until now, government descriptions routinely referred to the facility as a “mission,” while the news media largely wrongly labeled the building a “consulate.”

Read More: Klein Online

NY Gov: Gun Confiscation and Forced Buy-back an Option

 

NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the state of New York is serious about gun confiscation. The Democrat and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development told an Albany radio station he plans to propose a package of draconian legislation during his State of the State address next month.

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” Cuomo said, according to the New York Times. “There is a balance here — I understand the rights of gun owners; I understand the rights of hunters.”

Cuomo indicated the state will likely force some kind of permit process on owners of semi-automatic “assault weapons.” In addition to generating revenue and expanding the size and reach of government, the effort will allow the state to confiscate the weapons of citizens who do not comply.
“Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the state could be an option. Permitting could be an option — keep your gun but permit it,” the governor said.

Cuomo’s confiscation scheme follows remarks by liberal members of the establishment media who demand the government seize firearms from law-abiding citizens. Earlier this week, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz tweeted in favor of gun confiscation.
 
“We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets,” said CNN’s Don Lemon following the Sandy Hook massacre. “They should only be available to police officers and to hunt al-Qaeda and the Taliban and not hunt elementary school children.”

Anti-Second Amendment advocates have attacked gun ownership from a number of angles. On Thursday, anti-gun zealot and filmmaker Michael Moore said the desire to own firearms and support the Second Amendment is tied to racism.

“I think we’re a very frightened people,” Moore said. “I think we’ve been frightened ever since we landed on these shores. We were frightened of the native people… we were frightened of the slaves we brought over, as we should have been.”

Moore said gun ownership “cuts down to the heart of our race problem that we still haven’t resolved.”

Courtesy: Info Wars

Susan Rice has ties to Iran

Harry Reid just another hypocrite on guns.

Feinstein: Hypocrite in her own words.

'I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did'

April 27, 1995, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) spoke at the US Senate hearing on terrorism shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing. 

During the hearing, she referenced her concealed carry permit and how she carried a gun with her in the 1970's, citing the urge to arm yourself for protection- in her case from threats.

She states:

"I know the sense of helplessness that people feel. I know the urge to arm yourself because that's what I did. I was trained in firearms. I walked to the hospital when my husband was sick. I carried a concealed weapon and I made the determination if somebody was going to try and take me out, I was going to take them with me."

In 1994, Sen. Feinstein championed the federal assault weapons ban which expired in 2004 due to sunset provisions in the law.

Now, after recent shooting tragedies, Feinstein is making another push for tighter gun control. 

Thanks To: The Media Research Center

Solar Panels cause Rate Increases in California

 

Booming rooftop solar installations in California are bringing an unwelcome surprise to the homes and businesses that don't have the devices: an extra $1.3 billion added to their annual bills, more than half of that for Pacific Gas & Electric customers.
Power companies in the state, the nation's biggest for solar power, are required to buy electricity from home solar generators at the same price they resell it to other customers, meaning utilities earn nothing to cover their fixed costs. The rules are shortsighted because eventually rates must be raised to make up the difference, according to Southern California Edison, which has joined with competitors to estimate potential losses.
As more homes and warehouses get covered in solar panels, higher rates imposed on traditional consumers risk a growing conflict between renewable-energy advocates and power companies that foresee a backlash in California and 42 other states with similar policies. The tension has also emerged in countries including Spain and Germany, where solar investments are curbing investment in the power grid.
"You get into a situation where you have a transmission and distribution system with nobody paying for it," said Akbar Jazayeri, vice president of regulatory operations at Edison, a unit of Edison International and California's second-largest electric utility.
To deter losses as solar abounds, states typically set a cap on the amount of photovoltaic power utilities must buy under what is called net-metering policies. Those allow a meter to run backward during the hours a day when a home or business is selling the power to the utility. California's limit is 5 percent of a utility's aggregate peak load.

Read More: SFGate

REMEMBER WHEN? Holder called for anti-gun info campaign: 'Brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way'

 

President Obama promised “meaningful action” to prevent gun violence, but he didn’t explain exactly what that meant. Although a push for some kind of gun control legislation seems likely, there’s also the possibility of an anti-gun “informational campaign” as described in 1995 by then-U.S. Attorney Eric Holder.

Holder, now Obama’s attorney general, proposed using various levers of media and pop culture to attach a social stigma to guns, just as smoking has been stigmatized in recent decades.

“One thing that I think is clear with young people and with adults as well, is that we just have to be repetitive about this,” Holder told the Women’s National Democratic Club while discussing how to curb gun violence in D.C. “It’s not enough to simply have a catchy ad on a Monday and then only do it every Monday.  We need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way.”

To that end, he called for the “creative community” — “those ad agencies that create these snappy ads and make me buy things that I don’t really need” — to focus on convincing young people that “it’s not acceptable, it’s not hip to carry a gun anymore.” He emphasized that newspapers and television need to devote prime space to these ads.

Holder also called for people who have influence over youngsters, entertainers,  athletes, to be involved in this program as well” — an idea that could plausibly be revived in the wake of the murder-suicide recently carried out by the Kansas City Chiefs’ Javon Belcher.  “But not only them – community leaders, Jesse Jackson, Mayor Barry,  people who have credibility with young people should be on the television, on the radio, as much as we possibly can and telling these youngsters that it’s wrong to carry a gun,” Holder added.

To be sure, Holder came up with this idea 17 years ago to address a problem of local gun violence; there’s no guarantee he’d revive it now. But the Obama administration has hired public relations firms to promote Obamacare and crafted advertisements to drive participation in the food stamp program, so it’s not implausible that the president’s team adopt similar tactics on the gun issue.

Courtesy: The Washington Examiner

Ann Coulter makes the point: Al Sharpton is a racist

 

From Ann Coulter’s Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America

Immediately after Jared Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson, Americans were lectured on civility by the likes of Keith “the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party” Olbermann.

 But the media turned to one man more than any other to discuss how rhetoric can lead to violence: Al Sharpton—someone whose rhetoric actually had inspired violent mobs. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Sharpton was interviewed on NBC’s Meet the Press, on National Public Radio, on CNN, and repeatedly on MSNBC. The Washington Post ran an op-ed on the shootings by Sharpton.

 It was an in-your-face move for the media to turn to Sharpton for counsel as they were blaming “rhetoric” for the Arizona shootings. That’s right, we’re going to have Al Sharpton on to discuss ugly rhetoric that can lead to violence. Do something about it.

 From 1987 to 1988, Sharpton was libeling innocent men in the Tawana Brawley hoax, falsely accusing them of a sickening rape. A long and expensive grand jury investigation determined that the entire case was a hoax. New York attorney general Robert Abrams concluded that Sharpton had engaged in “abominable behavior, deplorable, disgraceful, reprehensible, irresponsible.”

 A few years later, in 1990, all was calm at the trial of the Central Park jogger’s rapists—except, according to the New York Times, when Al Sharpton arrived. Saying the proceedings were “just like the old Scottsboro boys case,” he even brought hoax perpetrator Brawley to the trial. He said she was there to “observe how differently a white victim was treated and how the accused in this case have been mishandled a lot differently from the people she [Brawley] accused.^"

 The stunt with Brawley, the London Guardian reported, turned the Central Park rape trial into a “racial showdown.” Venomous mobs outside the courtroom destroyed television equipment and punched cameramen and reporters. Those who tried to argue with the protesters got their faces smashed. The Sharpton supporters chanted, “The jogger’s a whore!” “Slut!” “The jogger’s a drug addict!” “The jogger’s an actress!” “Lynch the boyfriend!” “Lynch all her boyfriends!” When the frail, off-balance jogger showed up at court one day to testify, the mob chased her van to continue hurling abuse at her.

 In the courtroom, Sharpton’s supporters jeered and cackled at defense witnesses and screamed “Liar!” at the prosecutor. Only when Sharpton was absent for a few weeks on account of his own trial for fraud and larceny was the courthouse calm, according to the Times, with spectators consisting mostly of “young college and law students and four rows of reporters.”

 The following year, in 1991, Sharpton whipped up angry rock-throwing mobs in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights after a car accident killed a black child, Gavin Cato. In the rioting after the accident, a rabbinical student, Yankel Rosenbaum, had been knifed to death.

 After days of violent tumult, Sharpton gave a speech at Cato’s funeral declaring that his death had not been an accident and, indeed, that a Jewish ambulance had refused to transport the black child to the hospital. “The world will tell us he was killed by accident,” Sharpton said. “Yes, it was a social accident.… It’s an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights.” This conspiracy theory arose from the fact that the police had instructed the Jewish-owned Hatzolah ambulance to take only the Hasidim because a city ambulance had already been called for the other victims. (I thought liberals liked government health care!) Sharpton went on to denounce the “diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights” and then led the angry mob on a march through the Hasidic center of Crown Heights.

 On account of Sharpton’s presence at the funeral, the city was forced to deploy “vastly” more police than there were marchers, as the Times put it. The full cavalry was there—double lines of cops on both sides of the street along the march, motorcycle patrols, and even a circling police helicopter. Sharpton would later brag that his march was peaceful.

 Then, in 1995, Sharpton famously incited an anti-Semitic pogrom against a Jewish-owned store in Harlem, Freddy’s Fashion Mart, telling angry mobs, “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.” There were weeks of violent protests outside the store, which finally ended in a blaze of bullets and a fire that left several employees dead.

 Of course, after all this, Sharpton became a pariah—Oh wait! No, in the opposite of paying a penalty, he became famous and ran for president and Al Gore kissed his ring after these spectacles.

 In light of Sharpton’s history, you’d think that, in the middle of liberals blaming the Arizona shooting on “rhetoric,” someone in his organization might have said, Hey boss, I’d keep a low profile for the next couple of weeks. We just don’t want you to be on TV right now because someone is going to say, “Hey, how about Freddy’s? What about Gavin Cato’s funeral? Weren’t you the guy stirring up the violent rabble at the trial of the Central Park jogger’s rapists?”

 But liberals, being a mob, are perfectly capable of holding two completely contradictory ideas in their heads at the same time. They can believe that Jared Loughner was inspired by Sarah Palin—even though there’s no evidence Loughner liked Palin or even knew who she was. But at the same time, they can resolutely deny Al Sharpton had anything to do with inciting people who were known to have heard Sharpton, and who believed they were following him, when they assaulted, attacked, and murdered those he had denounced as “white interlopers,” “diamond merchants,” and “racists.”

More Fiscal Cliff Funnies

Fiscal Cliff Funnies

You Write What You Are Told

Some of the blood on Al Sharpton's Hands

 

Angelina Marrero . . . Cynthia Martinez . . . Luz Ramos . . . Mayra Rentas . . . Olga Garcia . . . Garnette Ramautar . . . Kareem Brunner their names will forever be remembered as the seven victims of the massacre at Freddy's Fashion Mart.  Their deaths can be traced to the racial incitement of one man.. the faux Reverend Al Sharpton.

It all started as a rent dispute in the summer of 1995:

The United House of Prayer, a large African-American church was also a major landlord in Harlem. They raised the rent Freddy's Fashion Mart, a Jewish-owned clothing store which had operated from the same Harlem location for over 40 years. In turn Freddy's had to raise the rent on its sub-tenant, a black-owned record store. A landlord-tenant dispute ensued. As he has done so often in his life, Al Sharpton turned this non-racial economic dispute into a racial conflict.

The Sharpton-led protests began in August and came to a head on the morning of Friday, December 8th when Roland James Smith, Jr., who had been part of the Sharpton's protests, walked into Freddy's Fashion Mart, pulled out a gun, ordered all the black customers to leave, spilled paint thinner on several bins of clothing and set them on fire -- a fire that resulted in killing 7 people plus Smith. The only African American left in the story was Freddy's security guard Kareem Brunner, 22-years-old, who was ordered to stay by the mass murderer Smith.

At the time the faux-preacher claimed he wasn't involved in the protests, he was only there to mediate. He also claimed there was no Antisemitism involved in the protests, but he has been proven to be a liar.

Soon after the massacre, the Jewish Action Alliance, a New York-based civil-rights group, released audiotapes of several of Sharpton's weekly radio show in which Morris Powell, leader of the 125th Street Vendor's Association, can be heard using racial and anti-Semitic language to encourage Harlem residents to boycott Freddy's. Learning from his Crown Heights experience Sharpton let others push the anti-Semitic hatred but it was all done on his show. 

Read More: The Lid

Guns Do Not Kill People by The Token Libertarian Girl

Bloomberg: Obama Must Take 'Immediate Action' Against Guns

The Libs never let a crisis go to waste. They just can't wait to waive the flag of stupidity. SF

 

Today, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an ardent gun control advocate, moved to politicize the monstrous school shooting in Connecticut, issuing the following statement:

With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen. It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their A,B,Cs are safe. We heard after Columbine that it was too soon to talk about gun laws. We heard it after Virginia Tech. After Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek. And now we are hearing it again. For every day we wait, 34 more people are murdered with guns. Today, many of them were five-year olds. President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership – not from the White House and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response. My deepest sympathies are with the families of all those affected, and my determination to stop this madness is stronger than ever.

If Bloomberg’s deepest sympathies were with the family, he wouldn’t use this as an opportunity to get on his soapbox about gun control. We don’t know all the facts of the case yet, Connecticut has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country, and it seems that the shooter obtained his guns legally.

 By: Ben Shapiro Breitbart

 

A little of what Bloomberg doesn't know about Guns

 

In the wake of the mass shooting in Colorado, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on police to join him in fighting for more gun control: "I don't understand why the police officers across this country don't stand up collectively and say we're going to go on strike." It is illegal for police to go on strike, and Mr. Bloomberg later backed off his statement. But the mayor is just as far off the mark in his assumption that police agree with him on gun control.

Take the annual survey by the National Association of Chiefs of Police of more than 20,000 chiefs of police and sheriffs. In 2010 it found that 95% believed "any law-abiding citizen [should] be able to purchase a firearm for sport or self-defense." Seventy-seven percent believed that concealed-handgun permits issued in one state should be honored by other states "in the way that drivers' licenses are recognized through the country"—and that making citizens' permits portable would "facilitate the violent crime-fighting potential of the professional law enforcement community."

National surveys of street officers are rare, but they show officers to be overwhelmingly in favor of law-abiding civilians owning and carrying guns. A 2007 national survey of sworn police officers by Police Magazine found that 88% disagreed that "tighter restrictions on handgun ownership would increase or enhance public safety." In the same survey, 67% opposed tighter gun control because the "law would only be obeyed by law-abiding citizens."
Regional or local surveys show similar patterns. For example, a 1997 survey conducted by the San Diego Police Officers Association found that 82% of its officers opposed an "assault weapons" ban, 82% opposed a limitation on magazine capacity, and 85% supported letting law-abiding private citizens carry concealed handguns.

These are not views consistent with Mayor Bloomberg's assertion: "The bottom line is if we had fewer guns, we would have a lot fewer murders." Police generally understand that too often the laws disarm law-abiding citizens, not criminals, and thus make it easier for criminals to commit crime. Police are extremely important for reducing crime, but they know that virtually always they arrive at the crime scene after the crime has been committed. When victims face a criminal by themselves, guns are critical for self-defense.

Read More: John Lott for The Wall Street Journal

Interview: John Lott Jr

An interview with
John R. Lott, Jr.
author of More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws

Question: What does the title mean: More Guns, Less Crime?
John R. Lott, Jr.: States with the largest increases in gun ownership also have the largest drops in violent crimes. Thirty-one states now have such laws—called "shall-issue" laws. These laws allow adults the right to carry concealed handguns if they do not have a criminal record or a history of significant mental illness.
Question: It just seems to defy common sense that crimes likely to involve guns would be reduced by allowing more people to carry guns. How do you explain the results?
Lott: Criminals are deterred by higher penalties. Just as higher arrest and conviction rates deter crime, so does the risk that someone committing a crime will confront someone able to defend him or herself. There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.
Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves.
Question: What is the basis for these numbers?
Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.
Question: Your argument about criminals and deterrence doesn't tell the whole story. Don't statistics show that most people are killed by someone they know?
Lott: You are referring to the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don't understand is that this "acquaintance murder" number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. "Acquaintance" covers a wide range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults. 

Read the Full Interview: Univ. of Chicago Press

Nonprofit groups battle over charitable deductions

Marxists like Obama, Reed and Pelosi, don't like charity. They want the US Gov. to be the beginning and end of charity. It's all about power. Basically, the Administration wants to redistribute money away from charities to line the pockets of the followers. SF

 

The White House and the nation’s most prominent charities are embroiled in a tense behind-the-scenes debate over President Obama’s push to scale back the nearly century-old tax deduction on donations that the charities say is crucial for their financial health.

In a series of recent meetings and calls, top White House aides have pressed nonprofit groups to line up behind the president’s plan for reducing the federal deficit and averting the year-end “fiscal cliff,” according to people familiar with the talks.

In part, the White House is seeking to win the support of nonprofit groups for Obama’s central demand that income tax rates rise for upper-end taxpayers. There are early signs that several charities, whose boards often include the wealthy, are willing to endorse this change.

But the White House is also looking to limit the charitable deduction for high-income earners, and that has prompted frustration and resistance, with leaders of major nonprofit organizations, such as the United Way, the American Red Cross and Lutheran Services in America, closing ranks in opposing any change to the deduction.

“It’s all castor oil,” said Diana Aviv, president of Independent Sector, an umbrella group representing many nonprofits. “And the members of the nonprofit sector I represent don’t want any part of it. It’s a medicine we’re not willing to drink.”

The dispute is the latest in a long-standing struggle over the popular tax provision, which allows people to deduct charitable donations from their taxable income. The battle is playing out at the highest levels of government and in the corridors of K Street.

Read More: The Washington Post

CBS, ABC, NBC All Ignore Union Violence

 

All the major television networks chose not to show footage of violent union members in Michigan tearing down a tent owned by Americans for Prosperity, or footage of a union member punching Fox News contributor Steven Crowder in the face repeatedly. This is no surprise; the mainstream media is unconcerned with reports of union violence, which they apparently feel is justified enough not to warrant coverage.

“The pro-union broadcast networks are deliberately censoring footage of thuggish union violence directed at conservatives,” said Media Research President Brent Bozell. “If a Tea Partier had physically assaulted a liberal journalist or ripped down a structure occupied by a liberal organization all on video, the footage would be broadcast on an endless loop. ABC, CBS, and NBC have a responsibility to the American people to expose what’s really happening in Michigan. Their double standard is absolutely outrageous.”
President Obama, who has piped up on issues ranging from Rush Limbaugh’s words about Sandra Fluke to the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police, remains silent about the violent activities by his union allies in Michigan.

Thank You: Breitbart

Obama Benghazi Fail Cartoons

State Dept Hiding Benghazi Survivors

 

Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R- UT) told Breitbart News on Wednesday that he has been “thwarted” by the State Department from seeing any Americans who survived the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in  Benghazi. Many people forget that there were Americans who survived the Benghazi attack, some of whom were badly injured and are still recovering.

“My understanding is that we still have some people in the hospital. I’d like to visit with them and wish them nothing but the best but the State Department has seen it unfit for me to know who those people are—or even how many there are,” Rep. Chaffetz said. "I don’t know who they are. I don’t know where they live. I don’t know what state they’re from. I don’t even know how many there are. It doesn’t seem right to me."
“This is so patently different than any other experience I’ve had. Unfortunately, people have been killed and maimed and in harm’s way in Afghanistan and Iraq and in points beyond. It’s typically been the case that they would release those names but in this case, they won’t. My challenge is to the media. You try and figure it out. They won’t let Congress know. They won’t seem to let the media know either.”
Breitbart News sent an inquiry to the State Department regarding those who survived the attack in Benghazi and is awaiting a response.

Courtesy: Breitbart Big Peace

Sharpton Way Behind on Washington, D.C. Rent Faces Eviction

 

The new, improved Reverend Al Sharpton has been establishing a Washington, D.C. presence ever since President Obama took office nearly four years ago. But apparently, the New York City-based minister, politician and media personality hasn't evolved from his attitude about the need to pay bills on time. Last week the Washington Post reported that Sharpton's nonprofit vehicle, National Action Network (NAN), is seven months behind on its rent for downtown Washington building space it sublets from the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials, or COMTO. The overall debt now exceeds $28,000. His top aide, Rachel Noerdlinger, insists NAN has made good on all past due balances. Yet given Sharpton's history of leaving creditors out in the cold, COMTO would do well to be skeptical.

Read More: National Legal Policy Center

The Other Susan Rice File

On June 8, 1999, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ms. Rice, then the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, delivered testimony on a range of issues, and little Sierra Leone was high on the list. An elected civilian government led by a former British barrister named Ahmad Kabbah had been under siege for years by a rebel group known as the Revolutionary United Front, led by a Libyan-trained guerrilla named Foday Sankoh. Events were coming to a head.

Even by the standards of Africa in the 1990s, the RUF set a high bar for brutality. Its soldiers were mostly children, abducted from their parents, fed on a diet of cocaine and speed. Its funding came from blood diamonds. It was internationally famous for chopping off the limbs of its victims. Its military campaigns bore such names as "Operation No Living Thing."

In January 1999, six months before Ms. Rice's Senate testimony, the RUF laid siege to the capital city of Freetown. "The RUF burned down houses with their occupants still inside, hacked off limbs, gouged out eyes with knives, raped children, and gunned down scores of people in the street," wrote Ryan Lizza in the New Republic. "In three weeks, the RUF killed some 6,000 people, mostly civilians."
What to do with a group like this? The Clinton administration had an idea. Initiate a peace process.

Read More: Wall Street Journal Online

Another Connection between Obama and Muslims

 

Why would Muslim oil billionaires finance and develop controlling relationships with black college students? Well, like anyone else, they would do it for self-interest. And what would their self-interest be? We all know the top two answers to that question: 1. a Palestinian state and 2. the advancement of Islam in America. The idea then was to advance blacks who would facilitate these two goals to positions of power in the Federal government, preferably, of course, the Presidency. And why would the Arabs target blacks in particular for this job? Well, for the same reason the early communists chose them as their vanguard for revolution (which literally means “change”) in America. 

Allow me to quote Trotsky, in 1939: “The American Negroes, for centuries the most oppressed section of American society and the most discriminated against, are potentially the most revolutionary element of the population. They are designated by their historical past to be, under adequate leadership, the very vanguard of the proletarian revolution.” 

Substitute the word “Islam” for the words “the proletarian revolution,” and you most clearly get the picture, as Islam is a revolutionary movement just like communism is. (Trivia: it is from this very quote that Van Jones takes his name. Van is short for vanguard. He was born “Anthony”). 

In addition, long before 1979, blacks had become the vanguard of the spread of Islam in America, especially in prisons.

 

Interestingly, in context with the fact that this article was written by her father-in-law, Valerie Jarrett has an unusual amount of influence over Obama (along with personal security that may be even better than his, another unusual and intriguing bit of business here). And equally interesting is that Obama, who may have been a beneficiary of this Muslim money, and may now be in this Muslim debt, has aggressively pursued both of the Muslim agendas I cited above. And, also equally interesting, is that Obama has paid a king’s ransom for court ordered seals of any such records of this potential financing of his college education, and perhaps, of other of his expenses.

Lastly, it’s very important to note that the main source for the article is Khalid Mansour, “the same lawyer who allegedly helped arrange for the entrance of Barack Obama into Harvard Law School in 1988.” (Valerie Jarrett, by the way, was born in Iran. The one country protected by Obama from the sweep of the Arab Spring.) Now all of this may seem sensational, but let’s face facts. What makes it most disturbing is that not only is it all logical, but it suddenly makes a lot of previously confusing things make perfect sense. – Pat Dollard

Read More: Pat Dollard The War Starts Here

Al Sharpton another Fail-buddy for Obama

How can anyone have any respect for this man. The good Reverend has a heck of a history and Tax Cheat is the least of his unsavory labels. SF 

 

Taxes Are For The Little People

As The Post’s Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein reported last year, Sharpton “owe[d] the IRS $2.6 million in income tax, and nearly $900,000 in state tax.”

And his personal pride and joy National Action Network owed more than $880,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes, interest and penalties, Vincent and Klein found.

Which makes Obama’s decision to invite Sharpton (and several other MSNBC hosts) baffling. Why ask a man with a terminal case of tax allergies to make the case for higher rates for everybody else?

The Rev’s issues go back decades: In 1993, for example, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor tax crime to avoid two felony charges. In the years since, the IRS has issued a dozen liens against Sharpton’s groups, including one against him for $538,652 in 2010. Asked about all this yesterday — specifically, whether he’s gotten square with the tax man — Sharpton said simply that he has “resolved all matters.” But his spokeswoman later refused to respond to a simple question: Has Sharpton actually paid his taxes? Nevertheless, it’s clear that the reverend intends to preach Obama’s tax-hike gospel. After leaving the White House Tuesday, he dedicated a 12-minute segment on his MSNBC show to the need for “a tax increase on the richest in this country.”

Since Obama is targeting those who make more than $200,000 a year, the “richest” set actually includes Sharpton himself — who pulls in $240,000 annually from the National Action Network alone, and never mind his MSNBC gig.

But here’s the bottom line: Sharpton is happy to spread the gospel about “tax fairness,” but if tax law were “fair” — that is, if it were applied to him like everybody else — he’d have been out of the picture a very long time ago. It’s as simple as that.

Courtesy: The New York Post

New Record High Food Stamp Dependency

Part of me wishes this were all due to fraud. At least we could sleep easier know that we were being robbed, as opposed to, the knowledge that Americans in need is a number growing by the hour.

Where is your savior now?

SF

 

The need for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, reached another high in September, according to new data released by the United Stated Department of Agriculture.

 

The most recent data on SNAP participation were released Friday, and showed that 47,710,324 people were enrolled in the program in September, an increase of 607,559 from the 47,102,765 enrolled in August.

The number of households enrolled in the program also increased from 22,684,463 in August to 22,973,698 in September, an increase of 289,235. The average benefit, according to the new data, was $134.29 per person and $278.89 per household. Texas, California, and Florida were the states with the most recipients, the Agriculture Department reported.

The new numbers mean that an estimated one in 6.5 people in America were on food stamps in September.

In the 1970s, one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Since 2001, spending on the program has quadrupled and doubled in the last four years.

Read More: The Daily Caller