RUTHFULLY YOURS

At Friday’s Department of Defense press briefing, Brigadier General Thomas Weidley gave it the full Baghdad Bob:

In Ramadi, after a period of relative stability in the tactical situation, Daesh [Isis] executed a complex attack on Iraqi Security Forces today. These forces were able to repel most of these attacks, but some gains were made by Daesh in previously contested areas…

Iraqi Security Forces, as well as federal and local police, continue to control most of the key facilities, infrastructure and lines of communication in the area. Ramadi is a major population center, the provincial capital of Iraq’s largest province, and a location where Iraqi Security Forces, police and local tribes have been working together for nearly a year to defend.

Since the beginning of OIR [Operation Inherent Resolve – seriously], the coalition has provided precision air support for the ISF with approximately 420 airstrikes in the Fallujah-Ramadi area. In the past month, we’ve conducted 165 airstrikes in support of Iraqi Security Forces in Ramadi, which have destroyed operational resources and facilities such as Daesh-controlled buildings, fighting positions, armored and technical vehicles…

The Obama administration had a deftly coordinated response to the sacking of Ramadi by ISIS: This, too, shall pass, and hopefully quickly so we don’t have to answer more questions about the failure.

Secretary of State John Kerry got the spin rolling early on a stop in South Korea, predicting that “as the forces are redeployed and as the days flow in the weeks ahead, that’s going to change, because overall in Iraq, Daesh has been driven back.”

“It is possible to have the kind of attack we’ve seen in , but I am absolutely confident in the days ahead that will be reversed,” Kerry said. “Large numbers of Daesh were killed in the last few days and will be in the next days, because that seems to be the only thing they understand. There is no negotiation. There is no proposal whatsoever to educate a child or build a school or a hospital or do something positive.” ISIS has launched the Islamic State Health Service and has been luring Western doctors [1] to work in their hospitals, including Australian Dr. Tareq Kamleh.

“And I think the people of Iraq and the people of the region understand that, which is why every single country in the region, bar none, is opposed to Daesh and is engaged in fighting them,” Kerry added.

On board Air Force One en route to New Jersey today, White House spokesman Eric Schultz acknowledged ISIS’ seizure of Ramadi, 80 miles west of Baghdad, was a “setback.”

“But there’s also no denying that we will help the Iraqis take back Ramadi,” Schultz said. “The president is being kept up to date on the situation there. I don’t have any new strategy to preview or that’s under contemplation right now, because as we’ve said for a while now, this was going to be a long-term proposition, that there would be ebbs and flows in this fight.”

Watergate Redux? Will Sid ‘Vicious’ Upend Hillary? by Roger L Simon

Another shoe, a big one this time, dropped in the endless Benghazi-missing-emails-erased-servers-what-difference-does-it-make controversy that the Clintonistas are trying so hard to push under the rug before it upends Dame Hillary’s presidential campaign. And the scoop comes, once again, from the New York Times, of all places, not some rascally website run by rightwing lunatics like this one.

Emails have surfaced from long-time Clinton bag man Sid Blumenthal indicating the whole Libya debacle was instigated by a cast of sleazy lowlife profiteers out of an Elmore Leonard novel. Smarmy Sid was pumping info from this dramatis personae to Hillary (at more than one email address) about goings on in that benighted country and our then secretary of state believed him — at least most of the time — passing his “knowledge” on to her underlings.

And this is a woman who wants to be president?

Higher premiums, impenetrable bureaucracy — where’s the upside?

Obamacare has enmeshed many Americans in a bureaucratic nightmare. True, the law has helped some uninsured people obtain coverage. But millions of people have seen their health-insurance plans canceled, because the plans did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Others, particularly young Americans, have seen premiums rise to pay for the roster of newly added benefits.

Tommy Groves (not his real name), a young professional working at a small firm in Washington, D.C., was among the nearly 5 million Americans who received termination-of-coverage letters from their health-insurance providers because their plans did not comply with the ACA’s requirements. While about half the states offered to extend canceled plans for another year, later increased to two years, the District of Columbia required its residents to get new insurance.

Yup we really need more legislators like Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Maxine Waters, Debbie Wasserman, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jan Schakowsky, and other sterling examples of liberal women ….oh yes and don’t forget Susan Collins Republican mediocrity…. we want the best and toughest legislators regardless of gender and proportional representation….rsk

Earlier this month, I predicted that a scheduled hearing at the Federal Election Commission was shaping up to be nothing more than a presentation of “the goofy gender ideology and politics of the progressive Left and academia.” And, oh, how right I was.

The May 12 forum on “Women in Politics” was organized by FEC chairwoman Ann Ravel without the approval of any of her colleagues and outside the legal authority of the FEC’s authorizing statute. Its avowed purpose: to “begin an open discussion” of why women are supposedly “significantly underrepresented in politics.”

But the question that hangs over Rotherham — and which even the latest independent review could not answer — is why so many people got away with these crimes for so long. It was left to a few intrepid journalists and four private citizens to uphold the law.

“It appears inevitable that Mr. Rahman will denounce this judgement as yet another instance of the racism and Islamophobia that have hounded him. … It is nothing of the sort. The law must apply fairly and equally to everyone. Otherwise we are lost.” — Judge Richard Mawrey QC.

Bad people do bad things, but when all the institutions of state fail to stop them, that is a problem for us all.

A veteran of the 1968 protest movements of 1968 once confided what, looking back, troubled him about his generation’s rebellion. “All young people rebel.” he said. “What is strange is that our parents’ generation gave in.” It is a sentiment that could just as easily be applied to modern Britain, if not the West. It is not surprising that people do bad things. What is surprising is that so many institutions and authorities allow them to get away with it.

Oh no! Not the International Criminal Court! [2]

What will North Korea possibly do if we refer it to the International Criminal Court? Besides laugh a lot.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday accused North Korea of a litany of crimes and atrocities while reassuring South Korea of America’s “ironclad” security commitments.

Obama Inc. also made “ironclad” security promises to the Gulf Arabs and Israel, so we know what those are worth.

Rampant, blind greed warps the perspectives of those who suffer from that ailment. Consider politicians who have declared that aliens who trespass on the United States and evade the inspections process conducted at ports of entry are “entitled” to United States citizenship or, at the very least, lawful status.

The outrageous view ignores both commonsense and the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and the 9/11 Commission Staff.

Our borders and our immigration laws are America’s first line of defense and last line of defense against international terrorists and transnational criminals, but you would never know this by reading most newspapers or watching most “news programs” in the mainstream media. You also would not learn the true importance of our borders and our immigration laws if you listened to Mr. Obama, leaders of his administration ranging from Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of Homeland Security or Loretta Lynch, the newly confirmed Attorney General.

We can’t fight for freedom while endorsing Sharia constitutions.

ISIS_Coptic_Christians Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Obama can’t defeat ISIS with soft power, though ISIS could beat him with soft power assuming its Caliph ever decided to agree to sit down at a table with John Kerry without beheading him. Iran has picked up billions in sanctions relief and the right to take over Yemen and raid ships in international waters in the Persian Gulf just for agreeing to listen to Kerry talk for an hour. And that might be a fair exchange.

As bad as having your capital or ship seized by Iran is, listening to John Kerry talk is even worse.

If ISIS were to agree to a deal, it could pick up Baghdad and Damascus just in exchange for showing up. All it would have to do is find a Jihadi who hasn’t chopped off any heads on camera to present as a moderate. The administration and its media operatives would accuse anyone who disagreed of aiding the ISIS hardliners at the expense of the ISIS moderates who also represent the hardliners.

If Obama did that, he would at least lose in a way that he understands; instead of in a way he doesn’t.

So far ISIS has preferred the classical approach of killing everything in its path. The approach, deemed insufficiently nuanced by masters of subtlety like Obama and Kerry, has worked surprisingly well. Their response, which is big on the Bush arsenal of drone strikes, Special Forces raids and selective air strikes, hasn’t. But Bush was fighting terrorist groups, not unrecognized states capable of taking on armies.

ACORN’s successor group in Missouri has been paying protesters $5,000 a month to generate civil unrest in Ferguson, the troubled St. Louis suburb where black youth Michael Brown was killed by a white police officer last August.

We know this because some of the protesters haven’t been paid and, now, they are demanding what they were promised. They held a sit-in at the offices of Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment (MORE) and posted a demand letter online.