Libya Dangerously Divided

[From article]
Unlike Tunisia, its neighbor to the west, Libya has been unable to form a cohesive government after ridding itself of Gaddafi.
The Arab Spring caused chaos in numerous nations, many having their ruling governments overthrown. Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt lost their longtime leaders and all three, as well as others, have had to contend with various terrorist groups while transitioning to new governments.
Currently, there are two competing governments that claim to be the legal representative of the Libyan people.
The internationally recognized, Western-backed Libyan Parliament, also known as the Council of Deputies, is based in the eastern port city of Tobruk. The Libyan Parliament, led by President Aguila Saleh Issa, governs the entire eastern portion of the country, as well as the southern desert region and an enclave near the northwest border with Tunisia.
The Islamist General National Congress is based in the country’s official capital city, Tripoli. The General National Congress is dominated by the radical Sunni organization Muslim Brotherhood, the same organization that assumed power after the fall of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak.
It’s worth repeating that the Muslim Brotherhood is a designated terrorist organization by Western and Arab governments. The General National Congress, led by its President Nouri Abusahmain, governs the majority of the northwest corner of the country.
The division has led to the establishment and expansion of the Islamic State in Libya, an offshoot of ISIS.
[. . .]
Regardless, the Islamic State has boldly taken advantage of the disorder in Libya, recruiting foreign fighters from Chad, Mali, and Sudan, plotting and carrying out acts of terrorism, including an attack in Tunisia on March 7 that led to the deaths of 52 people.
The international community also fears that Libya’s vast oil reserves will fall into the hands of ISIS, as is the case in Iraq and other countries.
[. . .]
Currently, several nations are taking part in operations in Libya to stem the expansion of the Islamic State. As of today, The United States, British, French, and Italians have special forces units in the country. The U.S. is carrying out airstrikes against ISIS targets and utilizing armed drones from bases in Sicily. As Matteo Renzi had alluded to, an international coalition of 5,000 to 6,000 soldiers has been discussed amongst the U.S., France, the U.K., Italy, Germany, and several Arab countries.
[. . .]
On December 23, 2015, the United Nations Security Council voted to endorse an agreement between the two rival Libyan governments to form a united governing body.
Currently, the Unity Presidential Council is based in relatively safe Tunisia, but hopes to eventually place itself in Tripoli.
[. . .]
The consequences of Libya being unable to unite and successfully combat the Islamic State would be far-reaching.
If the Islamic State is able to continue its growth in Libya, it would have a springboard to attack Europe with greater ease than conducting operations from Syria and Iraq. Currently, Libya is, for all intents and purposes, a failed state. That environment is extremely conducive for ISIS to strengthen and spread. One needs only to look at Syria and Iraq. In all three nations, the lack of a strong central government allows terrorism to operate more freely.
From Europe, ISIS operatives will be able to take advantage of the immigration system and enter the United States, as the Boston and San Bernardino bombers have.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/libya_a_nation_dangerously_divided.html

April 9, 2016
Libya: A Nation Dangerously Divided
By Derek DeLuca

Government Remains Incompetent, Power Must Be Limited

[From article]
The Constitution is pretty plain: all the powers the federal government has are articulated as legislative power in Article I, Section 8, and the role defined in Article I is very small. Basically, this is what the federal government is supposed to do: conduct diplomacy, trade, and national defense; create systems for naturalization; insure that money is sound and sovereign debt is honored; protecting intellectual property; and regulate the postal service, with such infrastructure as that may require.
Nothing in the Constitution grants the federal government power to manage health care or fund education or regulate private land use or bail out banks and other businesses or do almost anything that almost every candidate today is insisting he will do if elected president. This does not mean that "government" has no right to enter into these areas, but it means that state governments, which have all residual powers not granted directly to the federal government, have that power – to act or not to act.
The remedy in our system if the federal government lacks sufficient authority in the Constitution is to amend the Constitution, but only in three instances – the 14th Amendment requiring equal protection, the 16th Amendment allowing Congress to tax income, and the 18th Amendment mandating Prohibition – have federal powers been expanded. (The 18th Amendment was repealed.)
What ought to trouble us and the candidates seeking our votes for president is that in those limited areas in which the federal government is supposed to act, it fails wretchedly.
[. . .]



Federal currency was once redeemable in gold, then in silver, then in nothing more than the whims of the Federal Reserve system.
One hundred years ago, before the devolution of currency value by federal manipulation, much of the currency in circulation was made up of private banknotes, which were always redeemable in gold – a "dollar" is simply a measurement of precious metal – and because banks lived or died based upon their fidelity, this money was very sound. One happy consequence was that between the ratification of the Constitution and World War I, our nation had, essentially, no inflation at all.
The sovereign debt problem of state governments, which was a real problem in 1789, is as bad today as when the Constitution was adopted, but much worse, the sovereign debt of the federal government is so huge that it will never be paid off, and the simple service of that debt will soon become unmanageable.
The system of orderly and lawful naturalization in Clause 4 of Section 8 has disintegrated, and worse, when states like Arizona have attempted to at least have state officers enforce federal law, Washington has rejected that help. The borders, of course, are utterly insecure. States like Texas could close the border – and would, but for Washington.
Intellectual property is systematically pirated by other nations (so much for federal control of that function), and, of course, the trade practices of nations have effectively crippled much commerce and industry in America.
Does the federal government protect us from threats? Political correctness has gutted much sensible security action. The military is used not so much to win wars or defeat enemies as to placate domestic opinion and serve the political interests of cynical American leaders.
Ironically, that part of the original federal role that is probably done better than any others is the one most often mocked, the postal services, but even that function, with many private competitors and with cyber-mail alternatives, is increasingly irrelevant.



Washington fails at almost everything it does, and the vast majority of the things it does are not legitimate activities for the federal government under our constitutional system. It would be reassuring if someone – anyone – running for president saw the shrinking of federal power back to its original purpose to be a winning campaign issue. Sadly no one does.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/04/washington_fails_at_everything.html

April 4, 2016
Washington Fails at Everything
By Bruce Walker

Unvetted Immigration Allows Human Trafficking Of Unaccompanied Children

[From article]
The government agency responsible for settling the children with sponsors and groups failed to adequately vet them. The result is that an unknown number of illegal alien children were placed with human traffickers.
Washington Post:
The Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011, leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of government-approved caretakers, a Senate investigation has found.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, failed to do proper background checks of adults who claimed the children, allowed sponsors to take custody of multiple unrelated children, and regularly placed children in homes without visiting the locations, according to a 56-page investigative report released Thursday.
[. . .]
several Guatemalan teens were found in a dilapidated trailer park near Marion, Ohio, where they were being held captive by traffickers and forced to work at a local egg farm. The boys were among more than 125,000 unaccompanied minors who have surged into the United States since 2011, fleeing violence and unrest in
[. . .]
The report concluded that administration “policies and procedures were inadequate to protect the children in the agency’s care.”
[. . .]
It detailed nearly 30 cases where unaccompanied children had been trafficked after federal officials released them to sponsors or where there were “serious trafficking indicators.”
“HHS places children with individuals about whom it knows relatively little and without verifying the limited information provided by sponsors about their alleged relationship with the child,” the report said.
It goes without saying that no one will be fired because of this report. Apparently, deliberately handing kids over to people the government knows nothing about who then turn out to be human traffickers is just business as usual for the Obama administration.
Meanwhile, children are suffering unspeakable degradation. How many children are similarly trapped is unknown. But given the slap-dash efforts to vet sponsors to make sure they are who they say they are, it's possible that thousands of kids are being sold into virtual slavery.
The administration was so intent on moving the kids out of detention centers, that it became the overriding goal rather than finding decent homes of the children. But it also raises questions about the vetting of refugees coming from the Middle East. If the government can't keep kids out of the hands of human traffickers, how are they going to keep terrorists out of the country?

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/01/outrage_administration_may_have_handed_thousands_of_illegal_alien_kids_over_to_human_traffickers_.html

January 29, 2016
Outrage: Administration may have handed thousands of illegal alien kids over to human traffickers
By Rick Moran

Lack Of Faith In Mexican Government Leads To Vigilantism, Will US Follow?

[From article]

there were more public lynchings this past year than at any other time in more than a quarter-century. There were at least 78 lynchings last year in Mexico, more than double the number the previous year, according to data collected by Raúl Rodríguez Guillén, a professor and an author of the book “Mexico Lynchings, 1988-2014.”
[. . .]

in Mexico, where 98 percent of murders go unsolved and the state is virtually absent in some areas. By some estimates, just 12 percent of crimes are even reported in Mexico, largely because of a lack of faith that justice will ever be served.
Such a void, taken to extremes, has found its resolution in violence.
“There is a crisis in terms of the growth of violence and crime and a parallel erosion of authority and the rule of law,” Mr. Guillén said. “These lynchings acquire a double meaning. People lynch both the suspect and the symbol of authority.”



Interviews with dozens of residents about the lynching of the brothers — David and José Abraham Copado Molina — revealed little remorse. In the end, the fear that two suspects might be escaping with the help of the police outweighed concerns over spilling innocent blood.
“If they were innocent, and I’m not saying they were, then this is a case of one group paying for the crimes of another,” said Emanuel Petla, 33, near the site of the lynchings in October. “What happened the day of the lynchings is a situation that has been unraveling for some time now.”
“One thing led to the other,” he added. “Insecurity, frustration, confusion and weariness.”
The police are not exempt from mob action. Last year, five officers were badly beaten after they killed a villager during an operation. Two died from their injuries.
In the borough of Iztapalapa, residents have raised banners warning thieves that they will not be turned over to the police. Instead, vengeance will be taken on their mothers. In September, two men were set on fire in Chiapas State, having been accused of stealing a car.
Such frustration has long been an issue, along with the tendency for people to take the law into their own hands. In the last few years, self-defense groups have popped up to fight organized crime, filling the void left by government forces either incapable of combating criminal gangs, unwilling to do so or actively working alongside them.



But for all the government’s flaws, vigilantism rarely seems to do much better.
The initial gains of some self-defense groups give way to predatory behavior, creating a new order of bandit. Lynchings, too, seldom generate much more than public disgust and a fleeting sense of agency for the community.
And sometimes the community gets it wrong, 

[. . .]

On the day they died, the brothers had arrived in Ajalpan around 9 a.m. They had come to this city of about 60,000 people for the firm Marketing Research and Services, polling residents about tortilla consumption by children. Often their work was like this, asking basic questions of populations on behalf of businesses collecting market data.Continue reading the main story
Though the job was standard enough, the context was not. The town was swirling in a tempest of fear. In the days before the pair arrived, social media brimmed with warnings about child abductions and admonitions to be on the lookout for strangers.
Just a few hours after the Copado brothers arrived, word began to spread about the two, dressed in slacks and collared shirts, carrying shoulder bags. By evening, a group of townspeople approached the pair outside a store.
The crowd demanded to know why they were asking about children. The brothers explained and produced identification. But the residents grew more aggressive, witnesses said, until the police arrived and took the brothers away.



The police are not a source of confidence here. Nearly every resident interviewed recalled an episode a year earlier, when a man had been caught stealing money from a church collection plate and the police had released him. Villagers tried then to lynch the man, but he escaped.
“We have such culture and tradition here, our food, our crafts,” Juan Guzmán, the deputy mayor, said. “But now we are known for this.”
For others, the reputation was not such a bad thing. Some residents reckoned it would be a long time before another thief or would-be kidnapper turned up in town.
“It has an effect,” Donardo Andrade, 27, said.
In the Copado home in Mexico City, the effect has been devastation. David’s children cry often for their father, though they are too young to know what happened to him.
“They can feel his absence,” said the lynched brothers’ mother, Dulce María Montero. She has erected her own altar for her boys. For the Day of the Dead celebration here, she placed a pot of honey and guava on its mantel.
She prays that the sweet scent will guide her sons’ spirits home.

A version of this article appears in print on January 24, 2016, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: As Mexican Frustrations Rise, So Does Number of Lynchings. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/24/world/americas/as-frustrations-with-mexicos-government-rise-so-do-lynchings.html

As Frustrations With Mexico’s Government Rise, So Do Lynchings
By AZAM AHMED and PAULINA VILLEGAS
JAN 23, 2016

Citizens Must Arm Themselves, Prepare For Terror Attacks

[From article]
we can thank President Obama. So disruptive has his tenure been, so polarizing his rhetoric, that he, one of the most antigun politicians alive, has acted as the greatest gun salesman in human history. Millions of Americans have armed themselves over the past seven years, and not only with handguns, but with military-style long arms.
[. . .]
Americans have taken the first necessary step by arming themselves, like the patriots of the revolutionary era. Those who are armed need to consider if they have the weapons necessary to overcome a potential Jihadi threat. Those who have not yet purchased such weapons should do so.
After the weapons are in hand, you will need to educate yourself in their functions and capabilities. Americans believe they have an instinctive understanding of weaponry handed down from the frontier epoch. Do not fall for this. Modern firearms are complex mechanisms that can be mastered only through study, repetition, and familiarity. Make the effort. Take courses, read firearms websites, find and question experts.
Learn basic weapons tactics. These are more complex than you may think, and many are counterintuitive. (For instance, a building should not be defended from within. Instead find cover outside and engage attackers from there.)
Learn basic tactics for handling workplace shootings. There are a number of YouTube videos dealing with these in detail. For years, people were told merely to flop over and give up. Today, it’s understood that all present must attack, and attack relentlessly, with whatever weapons are available. (They speak in terms of throwing coffee cups, desk phones, computer keyboards, etc. But 9mms would probably work better.)
Stay informed about Jihadi tactics and targeting. As with anything else, these evolve and change over time.



[. . .]
Learn the warning signs of Islamist conversion: Muslim clothing, unkempt beards (or niqabs for women), sudden devotion to daily prayers, hostility and belligerence to kaffirs of all types, but Jews in particular.
[. . .]
When the time comes, it is highly unlikely -- to say the least -- that the FBI, Delta Force, or Homeland Security will appear out of the clouds, so it is best to stand up rather than be relegated to the headlines as a victim of “workplace violence.”
[. . .]
On arriving, police are likely to be confused, frightened, and flicking through their PC manual to discover what the right move is. Clearly and firmly inform them as to what is happening, point out where the attackers are hidden, and get out of their way. While in some cases, you will be turning control over to incompetents, cowards, and the type of compulsive who needs to tick off every last subclause in the rulebook before taking action (as occurred at Cheshire, Connecticut, resulting in three murders under the most horrifying circumstances imaginable) there is nothing you can do about it.
[. . .]
On September 24, 2014, in Moore, Oklahoma, Alton Nolen, a convert to Islam, committed an act of jihad that has since been buried deep by the media and government, probably on the grounds that it might provoke bad thoughts in the beta class. Nolen was an ex-con converted in prison that had been released early for unknown reasons. After adequate prayer and study, Nolen struck out at the deadliest enemy of the ummah that he could find, a 54-year-old grandmother who worked with him at Vaughan foods. After beheading her, he was taking out after another woman when he was shot by company’s CEO, Mark Vaughan, a part-time deputy.
[. . .]
This is how the country was established and maintained for many generations. It is actions like this that cleared the frontier and set the framework of the American republic in place of pure chaos. Actions like this cleared San Francisco of criminal gangs in 1851 and 1856. [. . .] An action like this in 1946 overthrew a criminal gang that had seized the town of Athens, Tennessee while the townsmen were fighting overseas. [. . .] Direct action, taken legally by citizens in support of the general peace, is how Americans do things.
[. . .]



As time passes, more organized action must be taken against Islamist influence. It is common knowledge that students in schools across the country have been subject to Islamic indoctrination, taken on “tours” of mosques, taught to memorize passages of the Koran, and even led in repeating the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith. All of these have been excused as “multicultural education.” (Try teaching a public school class the Shema or the Pater Noster and see where that gets you.) Clearly, the only way to halt this is to get on the school board and act.
Similarly, many priests and ministers -- and, hard as it to believe, a few rabbis -- have allied themselves with Islamists of various stripes on the grounds of “ecumenism.” These are then utilized as what the Soviets called “useful idiots,” shields for illicit behavior.
[. . .]
The same must be said about city councils, political committees, public service organizations such as YM/WCA, scouting organizations, and so on. These have been or will be targeted by Jihadi sympathizers and their collaborators.
[. . .]
Warn your kids -- young girls in particular -- against indoctrination and all other types of approaches. Remember Rotherham, where over a thousand young girls were turned out by Islamic pimps while the government, police, media, and their fathers, uncles, and brothers looked the other way. This is still occurring in Rotherham and other British towns. There will be attempts to duplicate it in the U.S.
[. . .]
Once again: the government will not protect us. We are on our own. Self-defense is not a crime; reacting to a threat is not paranoia. We are at war -- in war, you do not make excuses.
I was working five blocks away from the WTC in September 2001. Hundreds of people whom I knew -- whom I travelled with, whom I spoke to, whom I worked beside -- were massacred in that apocalypse.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/01/curtailing_jihad.html

January 13, 2016
Curtailing Jihad
By J.R. Dunn

Morals of Media and Government Diminishing Respect of Taxpayers, Voters, Readers

[From article]
Not since the presidential election of 1932 has the American electorate been so mired in discontent. Despite the best efforts of the media to portray this discontentment as limited to the Republican base, numerous polls have confirmed a vast majority of the populace shares this same sense of disgruntlement. Yet the nation’s political, academic and corporate classes, whose lifestyles have never been better than they are today, are surprised and dumbfounded by this phenomenon. These elites prefer to look at this chapter in America’s political history as just the ranting of an immature and essentially ignorant citizenry who will, in time, see the error of their ways and settle for whatever crumbs the ruling class throws their direction.
[. . .]



With so much power and opportunity to enrich oneself, the overwhelming majority of the elected and appointed members of this fraternity will do anything to remain in office. As a consequence there is now a permanent cycle of corruption at play in Washington D.C. Large corporate interests (including unions and Wall Street), assorted large special interest organizations and the super wealthy, through their financial contributions to the political parties, either make certain that their interests are protected or that they have access to government largess.
Because of the corrupting influence of an unimaginable amount of money and power and the fact that this nation can only function politically with two national parties, the founding fathers’ vision of a government of the people, by the people and for the people is rapidly becoming one that is by and for the ruling class.



Rather than view education as the means for the people to attain success in a competitive world, the nation’s elites have recast it into a vehicle for their pet theories and political views. Whether it is the promulgation of self-esteem, the obsession with the evils of the nation’s past, or the perils the planet faces due to mankind’s very existence, among other inane curricula, the education establishment has assured that the American people are rapidly becoming among the least well-educated populations in the world.
[. . .]



Using the cudgel of the mainstream media and the entertainment complex, they have successfully inculcated a plurality of the American people into believing that there are no moral absolutes and that the state can grant any rights that it so chooses to whomever they choose.
Thus abortion and the subsequent sale of human body parts as well as the loss of respect for human life, the erosion of religious freedom, runaway out of wedlock birth, the glorification of violence in entertainment, and the undermining of any ethical or behavioral standards combined with a woeful educational regime has resulted in a nation without a rudder and two generations of Americans unsure of who they are and unable to cope with whatever the future may bring.
[. . .]



they all hide behind the fig leaf of caring and compassion for their fellow Americans.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/10/a_nation_of_discontent.html

October 9, 2015
A Nation of Discontent
By Steve McCann

EPA Dumps Toxic Waste Water Into Colorado River. Your Tax Dollars At Work

Colorado River, Painted Orange By the EPA

[From article]

The Environmental Protection Agency, the federal agency committed to protecting “human health and the environment,” jeopardized both Wednesday by accidentally releasing one million gallons of wastewater into Colorado’s Animas River.
EPA bureaucrats were using heavy machinery to nose around the Gold King Mine near Durango, Colorado, when they triggered the release of wastewater containing heavy metals like zinc, iron, and copper.
The Denver Post reported that residents of Durango “gathered along the Animas River to watch as the blue waters turned a thick, radiant orange and yellow just after 8 p.m., nearly 34 hours after the spill started.”
“The river looks pretty nasty,” Deputy Stephen Lowrance of the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office told the Post. “It doesn’t look like water; it just looks like sludge.”

http://freebeacon.com/issues/epa-dumps-one-million-gallons-of-wastewater-into-colorado-river/

EPA Dumps One Million Gallons of Wastewater Into Colorado River
BY: Blake Seitz
August 7, 2015 1:44 pm

The Watchman

Don't know if any or all of the figures cited herein are accurate. But the pattern described is very much a true account of how government works. 

NIGHT WATCHMAN
Once upon a time the government had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert.

Congress said, "Someone may steal from it at night."

So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job.

Then Congress said, "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?"

So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies.

Then Congress said, "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?"

So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One was to do the studies and one was to write the reports.

Then Congress said, "How are these people going to get paid?"

So they created two positions: a time keeper and a payroll officer then hired two people.

Then Congress said, "Who will be accountable for all of these people?"

So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary.

Then Congress said, "We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $918,000 over budget, we must cut back."

So they laid-off the night watchman.

NOW slowly, let it sink in.

Quietly, we go like sheep to slaughter. Does anybody remember the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY during the Carter administration?

Anybody?

Anything?

No?

Didn't think so!

Bottom line is, we've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency, the reason for which very few people who read this can remember!

Ready??

It was very simple... and at the time, everybody thought it very appropriate.

The Department of Energy was instituted on 8/04/1977, TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

Hey, pretty efficient, huh???

AND NOW IT'S 2015 -- 38 YEARS LATER -- AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS "NECESSARY" DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR. IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES; AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!

(THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY, "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?")
38 years ago 30% of our oil consumption was foreign imports. Today 70% of our oil consumption is foreign imports.

Ah, yes --
good old Federal bureaucracy.

NOW, WE HAVE TURNED OVER THE BANKING SYSTEM, HEALTH CARE, AND THE AUTO INDUSTRY TO THE SAME GOVERNMENT?

Hello!! Anybody Home?

Signed....The Night Watchman

University Administrators With Politicians Perpetrating Fraud on Taxpayers

[From article]

I gather from Obama’s “free” community college proposal that his plan for dealing with the Republican Congress over the next two years is to throw out ridiculously expensive ideas no one has ever heard of before, and then denounce Republicans for being naysayers.
Community college is already incredibly inexpensive. The only thing that will jack up the price is making it “free.” How about a big federal program to provide every American with free toilet paper? Coincidentally, that’s about all most college degrees are good for these days.

[. . .]

They’re teaching gender studies, ethnic studies, moral equivalence, and hatred of America. Did the Japanese Really Start World War II or Did We?It’s worse than not reading Shakespeare. They’re reading Shakespeare for homosexual imagery. As Yale professor Daniel Gelernter says, colleges are “threatening to become an elaborate, extremely expensive practical joke.”

[. . .]

But liberals won’t make a peep about the College Industrial Complex because college professors are brainwashing students into leftist politics. Every year, another 10 million graduates emerge, hating God, their parents, America, and Republicans. For this, parents are spending $50,000 a year.

http://humanevents.com/2015/01/14/as-long-as-obama-brought-up-the-cost-of-college/?utm_source=coulterdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

As long as Obama brought up the cost of college…

Ann Coulter

Wednesday Jan 14, 2015 7:29 PM

Washington DC Dysfunction is Bipartisan

[From article]
Leadership on the Hill is not a virtue like character.
[. . .]
Both political parties agree the least that you can do for any social problem is to throw money at it.
[. . .]
Republicans and Democrats are in a foot race to the right when the subject is Vladimir Putin and a mad dash to the left, can’t genuflect fast enough, if the subject is Mohamed or Muslims. Never mind that America has everything in common with Moscow and near nothing in common with Mecca.
[. . .]
in almost any American election, apathy is the loudest voice in the public square.
Overall, about 35 percent of eligibles voted.
[. . .]
The mid-term election in any case was not about Republicans, it was about failed leadership, the lack of tactical and strategic vision in Washington.
[. . .]
Neither party is willing to recognize, nor confront in any meaningful way, the real security challenge of the 21st Century which is a 3rd World War which has already begun, the blitzkrieg of imperial religious fascism.
[. . .]
Playing the clock for legacy is all that remains for President Obama, a self-defined victim just a half step from ignominy.
[. . .]
To date, Obama foreign policy is a tale of serial incompetence. Yet the White House still blows in Sunni and now Shia ears as we speak. Cutting Shia Iran some slack on nuclear programs might serve two purposes, Obama legacy and another eye poke for Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s the Chicago way.
With Obama, foreign affairs, as with most of his politics, are personal.
[. . .]
Desperate deeds and delusional men are constant companions. Or as  the lady used to sing, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
[. . .]
Obama was the first world leader to get a Nobel Prize for wishful thinking about peace and arms control.  The president has delivered neither.
[. . .]
Even a wounded politician is dangerous. Two years is a policy eternity. Weakness, compounded by ego, makes for a perilous mix. Misuse of executive orders puts the rule of law and separation of powers at risk at home.
[. . .]
Both parties now elevate the Russian to ogre yet haven’t a clue about what to do with Islamic wolves.
[. .  .]
Irredentism seems to be a war of necessity for Islam.
[. . .]
For the next two years Barack Hussein Obama, as the world’s most visible apologist for Islamism, will still be the most dangerous politician on the planet.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/regime_change_in_america.html

November 17, 2014
Regime Change in America?
By G. Murphy Donovan

FBI Reveals, Duh! Domestic Institutions Vulnerable to Cyber Attacks

Here's an idea. There are hundreds of programmers creating apps for city governments across the nation. Do you think any of them may be anarchists, or criminals? Duh! Here's another. For the past eight years Harvard University IT employees, and criminals employed by local police tampered with my home computer. Do you think that police and academic hackers can thwart attacks from other nations? Just asking. With no plan, clueless officials fund creation of more and more digital systems that remain vulnerable. More evidence that leadership positions in government, corporations and universities are being filled by weak persons with relaxed rectitude. See, Roger Morris's book, Partners in Power, about the Clintons. 

[From article]
“If you have a device connected to the Internet, you can’t ever have high confidence that you’re safe,” he said.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/9/fbi-director-us-vulnerable-major-cyberattack/

FBI director: U.S. vulnerable to major cyberattack
By Phillip Swarts
The Washington Times
Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Democrats Fight Culture Wars, Republicans Focus on Government, Culture Wins

[From article]
Liberals expend tremendous effort changing the culture. Conservatives expend tremendous effort changing elected officials every other November — and then are surprised that it doesn't make much difference.
Culture trumps politics — which is why, once the question's been settled culturally, conservatives are reduced to playing catch-up, twisting themselves into pretzels to explain why gay marriage is really conservative after all, or why 30 million unskilled immigrants with a majority of births out of wedlock are "natural allies" of the Republican Party.
[. . .]
In 1986, in a concurrence to a majority opinion, the chief justice of the United States declared that "there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy." A blink of an eye, and his successors are discovering fundamental rights to commit homosexual marriage.
[. . .]
If the culture's liberal, if the schools are liberal, if the churches are liberal, if the hip, groovy business elite is liberal, if the guys who make the movies and the pop songs are liberal, then electing a guy with an "R" after his name isn't going to make a lot of difference.
Nor should it. In free societies, politics is the art of the possible. In the 729 days between elections, the left is very good at making its causes so possible that in American politics almost anything of consequence is now impossible, from enforcing immigration law to controlling spending.
[. . .]
Culture is the long view; politics is the here and now.
Yet in America vast cultural changes occur in nothing flat, while, under our sclerotic political institutions, men elected to two-year terms of office announce ambitious plans to balance the budget a decade after their terms end. Here, again, liberals show a greater understanding of where the action is.
[. . .]
On the other hand, the nationalization of the family proceeds apace, and America is as well advanced on that path as anywhere else. "The West has nationalized families over the last 60 years," writes Vaidyanathan. "Old age, ill health, single motherhood — everything is the responsibility of the state."

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/1014/steyn102014.php3

Why the real battle for America is over culture, not elections
By Mark Steyn
Published Oct. 20, 2014

White House Excels at Wasting and Spending Other People's Money

One Ebola Czar Is Never Enough

[From article]

July 16, 2013 Lurie's job is to plan for the unthinkable. A global flu pandemic? She has a plan. A bioterror attack? She's on it. Massive earthquake? Yep. Her responsibilities as assistant secretary span public health, global health, and homeland security. That means a lot of coordination with her colleagues at HHS, as well as state and local officials and other federal agencies. It also means a mission that includes both science and communications strategy. In the digital age, she is working to improve the department's data capabilities—the better to know who lives in a given community when disaster strikes—and its ability to harness social media to deliver messages about how to stay safe.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/decision-makers/health/nicole-lurie-assistant-secretary-preparedness-and-response-20130716

Health and Human Services Department
Nicole Lurie, Assistant Secretary, Preparedness and Response
By Margot Sanger-Katz


* * *



[From article]
Dr. Francis Collins, who heads the National Institutes of Health (NIH), told The Huffington Post, “Frankly, if we had not gone through our 10-year slide in research support, we probably would have had a vaccine in time for this that would’ve gone through clinical trials and would have been ready.” Hillary Clinton also claimed that funding restrictions were to blame for inability to combat Ebola.
[. . .]
Conservative critics have pointed out that the federal government has spent billions upon billions of dollars on unnecessary programs promoting a political agenda rather than targeting those funds to the fight against health threats.
[. . .]
What’s particularly interesting about this discussion, then, is that nobody has even discussed the fact that the federal government not ten years ago created and funded a brand new office in the Health and Human Services Department specifically to coordinate preparation for and response to public health threats like Ebola. The woman who heads that office, and reports directly to the HHS secretary, has been mysteriously invisible from the public handling of this threat. And she’s still on the job even though three years ago she was embroiled in a huge scandal of funneling a major stream of funding to a company with ties to a Democratic donor—and away from a company that was developing a treatment now being used on Ebola patients.
[. . .]
perhaps the media could at least look at the roles that waste, fraud, mismanagement, and general incompetence play in the repeated failures to solve the problems the feds unrealistically claim they will address. In a world where a $12.5 billion slush fund at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is used to fight the privatization of liquor stores, perhaps we should complain more about mission creep and Progressive faith in the habitually unrealized magic of increased government funding.
[. . .]
Collins’ NIH is part of the Health and Human Services Department. Real spending at that agency has increased nine-fold since 1970 and now tops $900 billion. Oh, if we could all endure such “funding slides,” eh?
[. . .]
If you look at any of the information about these pieces of legislation or the office and authorities that were created, this brand new expansion of the federal government was sold to us specifically as a means to fight public health threats like Ebola. That was the entire point of why the office and authorities were created.

http://thefederalist.com/2014/10/14/president-obama-already-has-an-ebola-czar-where-is-she/

President Obama Already Has An Ebola Czar. Where Is She?
By Mollie Hemingway
October 14, 2014

http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/10/the_case_of_the_invisible_ebola_czar.html

October 15, 2014
The case of the invisible Ebola Czar
By Thomas Lifson

Uploaded on Feb 4, 2010

Dr. Lurie is Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response at the US Department of Health and Human Services at HHS. Prior to that, she was Senior Natural Scientist and the Paul O Neill Alcoa Professor of Health Policy at the RAND Corporation. There she directed RANDs public health and preparedness work as well as RANDs Center for Population Health and Health Disparities.

Charles Dickens, George Will On Trusting Government

[From article]
Will replied that we have “much more to fear from excessive faith in government than from too little faith in government.” He got right to the point.
The distilled essence of progressivism is that government is a benign -- that is disinterested force, that's false. And, (b), it is stocked with experts who are really gifted at doing things.
[. . .]
The Barnacles are the folks that have fixed themselves on the government teat. Whether they are lifer bureaucrats counting the days till they can retire on that government pension or single mothers on welfare or crony capitalists sucking up green subsidies, they have to believe in government. Otherwise they'd have to get a life. Then there's the liberal professor at a government university, or the diversity dean, or the trainers teaching men not to rape. Of course they all believe in government. They are Barnacles; they have to fix themselves to a host.
[. . .]
we know who human Stiltstockings are. George Will does too. They are the folks dreaming up all the stupid stuff so they can strut around on stilts.
It's fine-tuning the curriculum of our students K through 12. It's monitoring sex on campuses. It's deciding how much ethanol we should put in our gas tanks. It has designed our light bulbs and it's worried sick over the name of the Washington football team.
[. . .]
But liberals are liars and, worst of all, they are lying to themselves. Governments are not there to be trusted. They are simply armed insurgents occupying territory by force and taxing the inhabitants so they can reward their supporters. Governments naturally, by instinct, defend their territory against invaders and against domestic troublemakers. Some governments allow the rule of law to flourish, recognizing that settled law enables their subjects to create wealth that increases government revenue and increases government power. But mostly governments just like ordering people around while they totter around on their silly stilts. Because all power corrupts.
[. . .]
The whole point of the modern social sciences are to help government understand people so as to control them. America's psychology professionals are Barnacles and Stiltstockings. They trust government – to provide them a living and give their lives meaning.
[. . .]
Because government is the name for things the ruling class does by force.

http://americanthinker.com/2014/10/trust_in_government_is_pathological.html

October 7, 2014
Trust in Government is Pathological
By Christopher Chantrill

Poor Performance of Government

[From article]
Over the last few years the divergence between what the government promises and what it delivers, between what it says is happening or will happen and what actually is happening and does happen, between what it determines to be important and what the public wishes to be important—this gap has become abysmal, unavoidable, inescapable. We hear of “lone-wolf” terrorism, of “workplace violence,” that if you like your plan you can keep your plan. We are told that Benghazi was a spontaneous demonstration, that al Qaeda is on the run, that the border is secure as it has ever been, that Assad must go, that I didn’t draw a red line, the world drew a red line, that the IRS targeting of Tea Party groups involved not a smidgen of corruption, that the Islamic State is not Islamic. We see the government spend billions on websites that do not function, and the VA consign patients to death by waiting list and then cover it up. We are assured that Putin won’t invade; that the Islamic State is the jayvee team of terrorism; that Bowe Bergdahl served with honor and distinction; that there is a ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia.
While the public remains pro-Israel, our government negotiates with Israel’s enemies. While the public wants to reduce immigration, the preeminent legislative objective of both parties is a bill that would increase it. While the public is uninterested in global warming, while costly regulations could not pass a filibuster-proof Democratic Senate, while the scientific consensus behind the green agenda is, at the very least, fraying, the president says that climate change is the greatest threat to the United States. While Americans tell pollsters their economic situation has not improved, and that things are headed in the wrong direction—while even Democratic economists acknowledge the despondent state of the middle class—the president travels to Chicago to celebrate his economic recovery.
[. . .]
If the FAA can cancel flights to Israel, why can’t it cancel flights to and from the West African countries whence the outbreak originated?

http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-case-for-panic/

The Case for Panic
Column: Incompetent government + corrupt elite = disaster
BY: Matthew Continetti
October 3, 2014 5:00 am

Incompetent or Malicious? Why Not a Spy?

[From article]
Our unsecured border is really a case of the Federal government waging war on one hated demographic, and one obsolete demographic. The elites of this country hate white people for being too independent minded; in 2012 a USDA office disdainfully described white Appalachian residents who would not take food stamps as being afflicted with “mountain pride.”
The US Chamber of Commerce simply cares far more about corporate profits than the citizens of the country, as evident by their endless push for amnesty. They are nakedly advocating in order to drive wages down. Such a scheme can only work when government’s large safety net picks up the legions of unemployed. The foolish business-Republicans have clearly not considered the taxes which will surely be required to pay for this policy. The American citizenry is getting in the way of the American government.
The case is even sadder for Black America. They simply are not breeding fast enough, and have fallen out of favor with the Democratic Party. Black Americans are being driven from the workforce, and even historically black neighborhoods like Compton, Los Angeles by the new, more favored demographic.

http://americanthinker.com/2014/08/where_governmental_incompetence_ends_and_malice_begins.html

August 26, 2014
Where Governmental Incompetence Ends and Malice Begins
By Brae Jaeger

Obama's Delay Authorizing Rescue of James Foley May Have Caused His Death

[From article]
One thing we know by now is that President Obama is loath to make tough choices, and often dithers. He is the opposite of a true leader.

http://americanthinker.com/blog/2014/08/did_the_dithererinchief_delay_rescue_of_foley_until_it_was_too_late.html

August 25, 2014
Did the Ditherer-in-Chief delay rescue of Foley until it was too late?
By Thomas Lifson

New Loose Guidelines To Label Americans Terrorists Without Evidence

[From article]
The “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.
[. . .]
“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,” says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out.” Shamsi, who reviewed the document, added, “These criteria should never have been kept secret.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/23/blacklisted/

The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist
By Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux
23 Jul 2014, 2:45 PM EDT

Another Right Wing Conspiracy?

[From article]
After all, Obama will claim — perhaps in perfect candor — that he never intended to raise tensions with China, pick a fight with Russia or set the Middle East ablaze. That he managed to achieve the exact opposite of his stated intent must appear to him perverse; explicable only as some malevolent plot hatched by Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh.
[. . .]
The one thing we can say with certainty about the 21st century is this: peaceful or war-torn, it isn’t going to be boring.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2014/07/09/joyride/

Joyride
July 9th, 2014 - 5:19 pm
Richard Fernandez

NYPD Arrests Man For Stealing His Own Car, He Sues Police

This man's damages were 30 minutes in police custody and the after-effects. I'm glad he is suing. Police have no concern of how much damages false computer files do to ordinary citizens. For the past 24 years I've lived with a state computer data file which indicates two arrests. The original charge was resolved one year after the arrest. It was a police frame-up. The arrest was supposed to be erased from their files after one year. But 24 years later it remains. Whenever anyone investigates me as they do about every month, they see that arrest. Then they try to recreate the same police frame-up by provoking me in order to arrest me again. This has gone on for 24 years. No lawyer would help me get the file erased. Seven lawyers were paid to not put on a defense to the original arrest. Federal criminal data files have an estimated 40 percent error rate.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7467732/ns/technology_and_science-security/t/criminal-background-checks-incomplete/#.U78wrvbFZ4M
But the President, his accomplices the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security use taxpayer funds appropriated for border security to provide lawyers for illegal aliens who cross the border in violation of law. It shows that this lawless government is not only out of control using taxpayer money contrary to public policy, but they also are lying about what they do with the money that Congress appropriated. Law abiding American Citizens have no right to taxpayer funded civil court controversies and matters. But non citizens are being prioritized over citizens and legal immigrants. The current White House appears to be run by criminals or maybe spies, who try to destroy the nation from within.

[From article]
In his Brooklyn federal suit, Clinton Pittman claims that his 1999 Honda Civic was stolen in September 2011 in Jamaica, Queens and that he reported the theft to police.
The vehicle was located by cops the next day and Pittman picked it up from the 48th Precinct stationhouse in The Bronx, the suit states.
Pittman claims that he was driving the same car along the Van Wyck Service Road with his then 11-year-old son two months later when an unmarked NYPD vehicle suddenly swerved in front of him and cut him off at an intersection.
[. . .]
After handing over his identification, the cops finally let him go after roughly 30 minutes of armed grilling, the suit states.

http://nypost.com/2014/07/09/man-arrested-for-stealing-his-own-car-suing-nypd-for-mistake/

Man arrested for stealing his own car suing NYPD for mistake
By Selim Algar
New York Post
July 9, 2014 | 10:20pm