Displaying posts published in

February 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Nothing could embarrass Obama or his supporters By Jack Hellner

By on February 28th, 2018

Former president Obama actually said the following at his secret MIT speech, according to the transcript obtained by Reason magazine: “We didn’t have a scandal that embarrassed us. I know that seems like a low bar.”

It seems as though Obama set a tremendously high bar as to what would embarrass him.

It should have been embarrassing to Obama and his supporters when:

He continually lied by saying you could keep your doctor and your health plan and that premiums would go down when Obamacare passed.

He had a gun-running operation called Fast and Furious, where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives lost track of over 2,000 guns it allowed to be sold to Mexican drug cartels and people died. Obama claimed he had no idea about the project but claimed executive privilege to hide documents.

His IRS targeted political opponents, violating their free speech and freedom of association rights granted by the Constitution.

He sicced his Justice Department goons on the Little Sisters of the Poor, suing them for daring to believe they had religious freedom.

Planned Parenthood personnel were caught bragging that they crunched and crushed babies for profit. Somehow, Obama, the media, and other Democrats didn’t have any empathy for the babies and weren’t embarrassed at all about this appalling practice. Nor did they do anything to hold Planned Parenthood accountable, ignoring the law.

He left people to die in Libya while he and Hillary concocted a lie to protect their political power. He even lied to the families of those who died and had Susan Rice continually lie to the public, showing that he and Hillary have zero empathy for those who died and their families. His minions arrested and imprisoned a man they knowingly falsely blamed for an anti-Mohammed video. And people say Trump has no empathy and doesn’t discharge his duties as president.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Hezb’allah Threat in the Tri-Border Area By Zachary Leshin

By on February 28th, 2018

The Tri-Border Area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, also referred to as the Triple Frontier, is host to significant activity by various terrorist groups and criminal organizations. One of them is the Shia jihadist group Hezb’allah, which has used the region for fundraising and training, and as a means by which to carry out attacks in South America.

The Tri-Border Area forms at the convergence of the Iguazú and Paraná rivers. It covers an area of roughly 965 square miles and is surrounded by jungle. In includes the Brazilian city of Foz do Iguaçu, the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, and the Argentine city of Puerto Iguazú.

The Tri-Border Area is attractive to terrorist groups and criminal organizations for a number of reasons. In the period between 1971 and 2001, the population of the Tri-Border Area grew from 60,000 to 700,000. The construction of the Itaipú hydroelectric plant was an important driver of this growth. Such rapid population growth in the region contributed to a lack of infrastructure needed to regulate the high degree of increased commercial activity and border crossings, which has made the area significantly more difficult for law enforcement to police.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Three Hospitalized After Substance in Letter Sparks Hazmat Incident at Fort Myer By Bridget Johnson

By on February 28th, 2018

ARLINGTON, Va. — Eleven Marines were affected by an unknown substance apparently released when an envelope was opened today at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall outside D.C.

The Marine Corps said that “an envelope was received around 3:30 p.m., on the Marine Corps side of the base.”

“Shortly after receiving the letter, 11 people started to feel ill and caused the evacuation of the building,” the statement said. “After the evaluation of 11 people, three were transported in stable condition for further medical evaluations.”

The Corps said Joint Base Police Department officials were working with local HAZMAT teams, and NCIS and the FBI were investigating. The building “was screened and cleared, and the letter was removed.”

ABC7 reported that the eight people who weren’t taken to a hospital for further evaluation reported symptoms such as itching and nasal irritation. The FBI took the envelope to Quantico for testing after field tests didn’t reveal any nefarious substances, CNN reported, adding that the text of the letter “contained derogatory, at times unintelligible and ranting language, and was addressed to a commanding officer at the base.” Investigators were probing whether the sender had any connection to the base.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

A Tidal Wave of Refugees Is Coming By David P. Goldman

By on February 28th, 2018

Harden your hearts.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, 68 million people around the world are or at risk of becoming refugees. The migration of a few million people has already turned the European Union inside out and motivated the election of an America-first presidency. What we have seen so far, though, is nothing compared to what is to come.

Fertility is declining in almost all the educated and prosperous parts of the world, notably including East Asia. But it remains extremely high in the least-educated parts of the world with the worst governance and the poorest growth prospects.

At constant fertility, the number of people aged 20 to 30 years will grow from 1.2 billion to almost 4 billion over the present century, and all of the growth will occur in Africa and South Asia (notably in Pakistan, where total fertility is 3.6 children per woman vs. 2.4 in India). Africa will be the main source of new young people.
Prominent Evangelicals Weigh in on the Immigration Debate

At least 5,000 Africans died during 2016 crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. According to Frontex, a half-million attempted the crossing last year, and the United Nations estimates that 2 million have done so since 2014.

Writing in The New Republic, Laura Markham reports that a trickle of “extra-continental refugees” is infiltrating the United States via Brazil, and that this trickle is likely to turn into a flood:

Because of the high risks of crossing and the low odds of being permitted to stay, more and more would-be asylum-seekers are now forgoing Europe, choosing instead to chance the journey through the Americas … Each year, thousands of migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia make their way to South America and then move northward, bound for the United States — and their numbers have been increasing steadily. It’s impossible to know how many migrants from outside the Americas begin the journey and do not make it to the United States, or how many make it to the country and slip through undetected. But the number of “irregular migrants” — they’re called extra-continentales in Tapachula — apprehended on the U.S. side of the border with Mexico has tripled since 2010.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Real Russian Disaster By Victor Davis Hanson

By on February 28th, 2018

The Russian-reset steamroller: spreading hysteria, playing the media, exposing the FBI

Donald Trump has said a lot of silly stuff about Russia, from joking about Vladimir Putin helping to find Hillary’s deleted emails, to naïve musings about the extent of Russian interference into Western democratic elections. But far more important than what he has said is what Trump has done. That same caveat applies to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Start with two givens: Vladimir Putin is neither stupid nor content to watch an aging, shrinking, corrupt, and dysfunctional — but still large and nuclear — Russia recede to second- or third-power status. From 2009 to 2015, in one of the most remarkable and Machiavellian efforts in recent strategic history, Putin almost single-handedly parlayed a deserved losing hand into a winning one. He pulled this off by flattering, manipulating, threatening, and outsmarting an inept and politically obsessed Obama administration.

Under the Obama presidency and the tenures of Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, Russia made astounding strategic gains — given its intrinsic economic, social, and military weaknesses. The Obama reaction was usually incoherent (Putin was caricatured as a “bored kid in the back of the classroom” or as captive of a macho shtick). After each aggressive Russian act, the administration lectured that “it is not in Russia’s interest to . . . ” — as if Obama knew better than a thuggish Putin what was best for autocratic Russia.

A review of Russian inroads, presented in no particular order, is one of the more depressing chapters in post-war U.S. diplomatic history.

Just watching the film clip of Hillary Clinton presenting the red, plastic Jacuzzi button to Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva remains painful, more so than even George W. Bush’s simplistic, reassuring commentary after he looked into Putin’s eyes. Under the Obama-Clinton reset protocols, Russia was freed from even the mild sanctions installed by the Bush administration, imposed for its 2008 Ossetian aggressions. As thanks, in early 2014, Russia outright annexed Crimea. It used its newfound American partnership as an excuse to bully Europe on matters of energy and policy, confident that under American reset, it would face little NATO pushback.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Camille Paglia on Movies, #MeToo and Modern Sexuality: “Endless, Bitter Rancor Lies Ahead”

By on February 28th, 2018

The social critic and academic questions special protections for women (“Speak up now, or shut up later!”) and prescribes classic films to “inform the alluring rituals of attraction” amid Hollywood’s harassment crisis.

It’s open sex war — a grisly death match that neither men nor women will win.

Ever since The New York Times opened the floodgates last October with its report about producer Harvey Weinstein’s atrocious history of sexual harassment, there has been a torrent of accusations, ranging from the trivial to the criminal, against powerful men in all walks of life.

But no profession has been more shockingly exposed and damaged than the entertainment industry, which has posed for so long as a bastion of enlightened liberalism. Despite years of pious lip service to feminism at award shows, the fabled “casting couch” of studio-era Hollywood clearly remains stubbornly in place.

The big question is whether the present wave of revelations, often consisting of unsubstantiated allegations from decades ago, will aid women’s ambitions in the long run or whether it is already creating further problems by reviving ancient stereotypes of women as hysterical, volatile and vindictive.

My philosophy of equity feminism demands removal of all barriers to women’s advancement in the political and professional realms. However, I oppose special protections for women in the workplace. Treating women as more vulnerable, virtuous or credible than men is reactionary, regressive and ultimately counterproductive.

Complaints to the Human Resources department after the fact are no substitute for women themselves drawing the line against offensive behavior — on the spot and in the moment. Working-class women are often so dependent on their jobs that they cannot fight back, but there is no excuse for well-educated, middle-class women to elevate career advantage or fear of social embarrassment over their own dignity and self-respect as human beings. Speak up now, or shut up later! Modern democracy is predicated on principles of due process and the presumption of innocence.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

CYBERSECURITY Needed: New Ideas to Help Enable The Federal Cybersecurity Workforce: Chuck Brooks

By on February 28th, 2018

A couple of years back, The White House issued a document “Strengthening the Federal Cybersecurity Workforce”that highlights a framework necessary to best recruit, train, and maintain a skilled Federal cybersecurity workforce.

Those elements included:

1) Expanding the Cybersecurity Workforce through Education and Training;

2) Recruiting the Nation’s Best Cyber Talent for Federal Service;

3) Retaining and Develop Highly Skilled Talent; and

4) Identifying Cybersecurity Workforce needs.

The document provided a good suggestions to improve the Federal cybersecurity workforce. There are a variety of additional ways to consider to better enable the precepts of the framework.

To expand the cybersecurity workforce, cultivation and training of a next generation of technicians and SMEs must be a priority. The cyber-threat risk environment is growing exponentially every day and there has not been enough resources dedicated to keeping up with governments cybersecurity requirements.

An investment in developing talent from economically depressed areas is a programmatic solution to consider. An investment in training those in economically depressed areas in an accelerated cybersecurity curriculum — combined with real-world experience through internships and fellowships — would yield high dividends. At the same time.it would bolster the nation’s pipeline for skilled digital workers.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Baroness Ruth Deech (Oxford Academic) explains the futility and hypocrisy of the Israel boycotters. Must see video

By on February 28th, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kpn1qx9S218

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EDUCATION, MEDIA Comments turned off

Academia, Internet Giants vs. Free Speech Frank V. Vernuccio, Jr., J.D see note please

By on February 28th, 2018

Social media giants are routinely “disappearing” content and squelching free speech.
(Be sure to access the Project Veritas videos specifically related to Twitter’s admission of encoding parameters to provide automatic shadowbanning). – Janet Levy

The growing threats to free speech throughout the United States come from a number of sources, including government officials, academia, and the rising influence and power of social media giants.
The threats by government leaders, such as former attorney general Loretta Lynch who, while in office, considered “criminally prosecuting” anyone who disagreed with President Obama on climate change, and the move by Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) to limit the application of the First Amendment concerning paid political speech, may have diminished due to the results of the 2016 election. But in other circles, the pressure to mothball free speech rights continues.
The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has released a vital document, which charts academic freedom over the past 103 years. According to author David Randall, “We publish this chart today because America faces a growing crisis about who can say what on our college campuses.”
According to the study, “At root this is a crisis of authority. In recent decades university administrators, professors, and student activists have quietly excluded more and more voices from the exchange of views on campus. This has taken shape in several ways, not all of which are reducible to violations of ‘academic freedom.’ The narrowing of campus debate by de-selection of conservatives from faculty positions, for example, is not directly a question of academic freedom though it has proven to have dire consequences in various fields where professors have severely limited the range of ideas they present in courses …Potent threats to academic freedom can arise from the collective will of faculty members themselves. This is the situation that confronts us today. Decades of progressive orthodoxy in hiring, textbooks, syllabi, student affairs, and public events have created campus cultures where legitimate intellectual debates are stifled and where dissenters, when they do venture forth, are often met with censorious and sometimes violent responses. Student mobs, egged on by professors and administrators, now sometimes riot to prevent such dissent. The idea of “safe spaces” and a new view of academic freedom as a threat to the psychological wellbeing of disadvantaged minorities have gained astonishing popularity among students.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s protests responded to a complex of crises: David Goldman

By on February 28th, 2018

Popular protests against the policies of the Iranian regime and in some cases against the regime itself affected 70 Iranian cities between Dec. 28, 2017 and Jan. 4, 2018. Nearly 4,000 protesters were arrested and 23 killed before the demonstrations stopped as suddenly as they had begun. Although the Iranian government tried to cast blame on foreign actors, the protests surprised Western observers, as well as the various Iranian exile movements, who struggled to understand what had happened after the fact. The leadership of the 2009 “Green Revolution” protests against vote fraud in the re-election of then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to have played no role. The events of the last days of December and the first days of January appear to have been a spontaneous outburst of popular frustration with deteriorating conditions of life. Lacking structure, organization and a political program, the eruption stopped as quickly as it began.

Because the protests had no organization or centralized leadership, they represent no threat to the Iranian regime in the near term. There is another side to this coin: spontaneous expressions of popular anger on a national scale reflects a deep malaise in Iran’s economy that cannot easily be fixed, if indeed it can be fixed at all. Since the Iranian revolution of 1979, the revolutionary regime has borrowed massively from Iran’s future, in economics, finance, the environment and demographics. It has allowed corruption to determine the allocation of financial resources on the scale of an African kleptocracy. And it has channeled resources into expensive foreign adventures at the expense of desperately-needed spending at home. It cannot employ its present generation of young people, who suffer an official unemployment rate of 20% and an effective unemployment rate of perhaps 35%. The next generation of young people will be much smaller due to an unprecedented decline in Iran’s birth rate.

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