http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324886704579051480246727444.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion Twelve years after 9/11, the U.S. remains a prime target of al Qaeda, with New York City as the bull’s-eye. Yet in the interval, New York hasn’t been successfully struck again. “Enemies Within” suggests an explanation for the city’s good fortune. Written by Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman, reporters with the Associated Press, the […]
http://londoncenter.org/2013/09/syrian-slam-dunk/?utm_source=Weekly+Commentary+%289-4-13%29&utm_campaign=weekly_commentary&utm_medium=email For a few days, President Obama almost had us convinced. Not that we should use military force to punish Syria, but that he actually was going to take responsibility for something. But Saturday’s sudden announcement shocked even those closest to Obama. Instead of just attacking Syria, Obama decided to ask Congress for another “authorization […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/357582/syria-i-respectfully-dissent-andrew-c-mccarthy I respectfully dissent from the editors’ support for U.S. military intervention in Syria, which expands on the corporate position National Review staked out last week. While the credibility of an American president is no small thing, it is simply wrong to equate Barack Obama’s credibility with that of the United States, as the editors […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/357511/print
Well, an Egyptian official recently described McCain’s judgment as “moronic,” and it seems the senator is hell-bent on proving him right.
A Muslim repeatedly screams “Allahu Akbar!” while shooting down a plane. Sounds like a violent jihadist, right? Heavens no, replies John McCain — it’s a . . . “moderate!”
Andrew has the report below. Discussing a member of the Syrian mujahideen shooting a plane out of the sky, Senator McCain told the Fox & Friends crew this morning that the jihadist’s cries of “Allahu Akbar!” — echoing jihad mass-murderer Nidal Hassan, to take one of innumerable examples — were really no different from “an American Christian saying, ‘Thank God, thank God.’”
Well, an Egyptian official recently described McCain’s judgment as “moronic,” and it seems the senator is hell-bent on proving him right.
I discussed the phrase in Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy:
As it has demonstrated in each “Arab Spring” venue, the Muslim Brotherhood remains the ummah’s most significant organization. It still proclaims unabashedly it’s 90-year-old motto: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope. Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” The motto’s coda is not just rote chanting. Allahu akbar!, which also serves as the chillingly familiar exclamation of Muslim terrorists, is commonly translated as “God is greatest!” But that’s not exactly right. It literally means, “Allah is greater!” – the greater God, the mightier, more fearsome power. It is a comparative, ubiquitously invoked by a civilization that sees itself surrounded by hostile forces, forever competing for dominance.
The October, 2013 issue of Discover Magazine has an interview titled “Harper Reed: Game Changer”. Discover will not put it online for several months. The quotes in the article are from the article.
The article is an overview of what they did to get people to be active, to get out the vote and to elect Barak Obama. There are statements that bring into question the role of Internet sites like Facebook, Twitter, email providers and Google. There are many unasked and unanswered questions.
Q (Discover Magazine): Was it the technology itself that was transformational?
A (Harper Reed): l think the real innovation was the team, not the technology and the decision to bring people in-house from outside of politics. Previous campaigns had mostly outsourced technology to political vendors like Blue State Digital, a tech company that cut its teeth on Howard Dean’s [failed presidential] Campaign in 2004. In contrast, we brought people in from Google, from Facebook, from Twitter and from companies all around Chicago. We didn’t want inventors or visionaries or anyone who was going to make things complicated, We just wanted people to come in, work their hardest, not require us to train them, and to aggressively execute.
Were these people paid while they volunteered to work for the Obama campaign? If so, who paid the salaries? If they were paid by their employers, were their salaries listed as campaign contributions?
Would their employers extended the same privileges if they volunteered for the Republican campaign?
Q (DM): In 2008, the Obama campaign use of social media and online tracking tools expanded the Democratic Party’s data information base by at least tenfold.
A (HR): We spent a lot of time figuring out how to integrate databases that were all over the place.
Did the Democratic Party pay to access this data as would any commercial user such as Amazon? If they didn’t, would the same free terms be offered to the Republican Party?
Q (DM): But when people donated to BarakObama.com, the campaign asked to harvest some of their Facebook data, which meant you had the names at least of the Facebook friends. Or you knew if they responded to Facebook postings or targeted email solicitations about specific issues. Every time someone “liked” Planned Parenthood on Facebook, it registered with the Obama campaign. How was this information used?
A (HR): We also did i: on Twitter on Tumblr and even on Pinterest. We didn’t know everything you were doing on Facebook. But if you shared something or uploaded a picture and tagged it as public, we could look to see what it says. We knew if someone was interested in health care or reproductive rights based on an Internet interaction on Facebook or a response to an email. Essentially we used the technology to make sure you’re the right person to receive a particular message. Then we’d ask people if they wanted to share this message. We’d look through his or her friends and ask, “Who are the most important people for us to share this with?” And from there, we would share with these people, which continuously built our base. So if you were sharing something from the campaign, it would register on Facebook.
And with the content creation, and the postings, we tried to measure things, when you post this, what kind of clicks do you get? On Tumblr how many re-blogs, or on Twitter how many retweets? So if you go lo our Facebook page www.faeebook.com/Bararkobama, you can see the response to postings. One that got posted about an hour ago already has 54,000 likes, and 3,000 people shared it. This way, we know which messages are the most effective.
Could the Republican Party have done the same thing? If not, why not.
A question for the Republicans:
How could you run such an inept campaign? You had 4 years to do what the Democrats were doing. If you couldn’t because the companies wouldn’t let you, you could have raised a fuss about it.
But this wasn’t the only thing. Look at the debate where Candy Crowley had Obama’s answer in advance. Romney looked absolutely startled. Why did he not bring up the bias? Why didn’t he storm off pointing out this bias?
It goes on and on like this. Obama won because of his organization, because he was able to get out the vote.
If the Republicans don’t counter this now, they will not gain the Senate in 2014 and they won’t keep the House, either. And then, 2016 will be a forgone conclusion unless a real catastrophe happens and the people blame the Democrats for it.
Jan Mel Poller
janpoller@braemarnet.com
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/nine-women-remaking-the-right?f=puball
They’re talented, they’re diverse, and they have almost nothing to do with the mess in Washington. Patricia Murphy on nine women breathing new life into the GOP.http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/03/9-women-remaking-the-right.html
While the Republican National Committee brass writes autopsies for the party’s 2012 losses and GOP lawmakers in Congress fight with each other over who’s a true conservative and who’s a wacko bird, a new generation of Republican women is breathing new life into the Grand Old Party. Here, nine GOP women with the potential to revitalize the right. If you haven’t heard of them yet, you will.
1. Susana Martinez
Susana Martinez
New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez answers a question during a panel discussion at the Walmart U.S. Manufacturing Summit in Orlando, Florida, on August 22, 2013. (Phelan M. Ebenhack/AP)
If asked to name a tough, charismatic Republican governor in a blue state, most people might say Gov. Chris Christie. But make that a female Hispanic chief executive with approval ratings consistently above 60 percent and you’ll get Susana Martinez, the make-it-work governor of New Mexico whom national Republican strategists see as a star in the making. The former district attorney’s record crosses the political spectrum: she approved a state health-care exchange for New Mexico, has worked to take driver’s licenses away from illegal immigrants, required DNA sampling for all felony arrests, and pushed school reforms over the objections of union leaders. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most powerful people in the world, but she says she still shops at Ross Dress for Less and grabs Taco Bell when she can. For a party with problems wooing women, Latinos, and average Joes, it’s hard to imagine a woman better suited to win over all three groups for the GOP.
2. Rebecca Kleefisch
Rebecca Kleefisch
Lt Gov.–elect Rebecca Kleefisch speaks to supporters at Wisconsin Gov.–elect Scott Walker’s victory party in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, on November 2, 2010. (Jeffrey Phelps/AP)
There’s nothing like a national media frenzy to kick off your first days on the job, but that’s what Rebecca Kleefisch faced when she won election as Scott Walker’s lieutenant governor in Wisconsin in 2010. Walker immediately took up a battle with union leaders over collective bargaining, but at the same time, Kleefisch was undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer. Kleefisch survived her battle with cancer and made it through the recall effort that followed Walker’s union wars. That toughness got the 38-year-old noticed by national conservative leaders, who invariably call the pro-life Kleefisch “courageous” and say the former TV anchor and stay-at-home mom has a major future ahead of her. As former representative Marilyn Musgrave of the Susan B. Anthony List told The Daily Beast, “She’s definitely one to watch.”
3. Pam Bondi
Pam Bondi
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi visits the House to follow the progress of a mortgage settlement bill during a session of the legislature on April 30, 2013, in Tallahassee. (Steve Cannon/AP)
After Pam Bondi was sworn in as Florida attorney general in 2011, she wasted no time leading the charge against the Affordable Care Act in a 26-state lawsuit against it. That move made the career prosecutor a hero on the right and buttressed the hard-charging reputation she earned after successfully suing BP and Halliburton for $5.4 billion for damages following the Deepwater Horizon spill. Back then, she vowed that the corporations “will be held accountable.” The pro-life Bondi ran in a crowded primary field for AG, including against the lieutenant governor, but a last-minute endorsement from Sarah Palin—and a number of other women on this list—helped her break away from the pack. She’s now the first woman to hold the AG job in Florida and recently announced she’s running for reelection—but that hasn’t stopped fellow Republicans from predicting Bondi will rise higher soon enough.
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/357517/print No. That’s the answer Congress should give to President Obama, who in a surprise decision late last week reversed course and asked Congress to endorse his proposed launch of a limited air attack on Syria. The president wishes to punish the Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons to murder more than a […]
The five most populous states in order are: CA, TX, NY, FL, IL. It stands to reason that they would have the highest numbers of mosques.
Islam is supremacist and triumphalist. ‘The call to prayer should be heard throughout the land.’
A mosque is NOT like a church or a synagogue. In Muslim countries, there is NO separation between mosque and state. A mosque is a symbol of ultimate authority and serves the function of organizing EVERY aspect of life in a Muslim community. It exists as a seat of government, a school, a court, a community center, a jihad training center, a military command center and often a weapons depot. In essence, the mosque is a strategic base of operations – a beachhead – in an interconnected network of bases to teach jihad, advance Islam and impose shariah in due time.
Janet Levy,
Los Angeles
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/061213-659753-all-intrusive-obama-terror-dragnet-excludes-mosques.htm
Before you read this article, take a good look at this distribution map, look at your state, and know that mosques are and have been off-limits to FBI agents because NSA surveillance completely excludes Mosques!
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2013/09/03/the-syrian-rebels-and-chemical-weapons-remembering-your-al-qaeda-history/ Myopic focus on alleged chemical weapons use by the Assad regime in Syria is wrongheaded, as it has been all along. The salient issue is whether the United States should intervene militarily on behalf of enemies of the United States — the “rebel” factions, in which ties to al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood run […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
In 2007, the new Democratic Majority Leader defied President Bush by sitting down to meet with a member of the Axis of Evil.
“We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace,” Pelosi told reporters after her talks with Assad.
Now the road to Damascus is the road to war. And Pelosi and Obama are racing down it along with everyone else.
Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour are nowhere to be found striding insouciantly through the desert or hoofing it alongside a camel. This road movie has an entirely different cast of characters.
It’s a race against time. And a race for blood.
Forget the Grand Prix or the Daytona 500, the real race right now is the race to Damascus. The racers include Syrian rebels in pickup trucks with mounted machine guns and homemade tanks, toting weapons and equipment supplied and paid for by Qatar and Turkey, and more covertly by the British and French intelligence services. Racing along with them are carloads of international diplomats urging their governments to give the militias more money and more weapons.
Everyone is on the road to Damascus in this amazing race. Christian refugees from Aleppo and Alawites packing in behind the tanks of the Syrian army, Iraqi militias that used to plant IEDs in front of American Humvees who have found new work blowing up churches and taking over Syrian bases.
There are international activists from around the world, reporters or citizen-journalists embedded with the rebels, Russian advisers embedded with Syrian units, Qatari trainers turning children into child soldiers with the rebels and Turkish officers trying to get the entire rabble moving in the right direction toward Damascus.
