RUTHFULLY YOURS

A new video released by ISIS on Wednesday praises the recent terror attacks in Paris and threatens a new attack in New York City’s Time Square.

The video was released by the Furat Media Center, ISIS’s media arm, and features several men speaking in Arabic and French. They congratulate ISIS over the Paris attacks and promise that they will prevail.

Before scenes from Times Square are shown, an ISIS jihadist declares that “the attacks in Paris were just the beginning.”

Via Fox News:

The video then cuts to a militant donning a bomb vest mixed with footage of flashing billboards and yellow taxi cabs.
The video ends with a message on screen that reads “and what is to come will be worse and more bitter.”

We all know people of towering arrogance and we all know people of staggering incompetence, but Barack Obama is quite possibly the perfect package. No one on the scene today combines these two qualities in quite the same way as Mr. Obama.

On the incompetence side, and sticking just with the president’s policies and record in the greater Middle East, there is Mr. Obama’s mishandling of the rise of the Islamic State, which just last year he referred to as the “jayvee team” and just last week declared was “contained.” Recall his threat to Syrian President Assad that if Assad used chemical weapons on his own people it would constitute crossing a “red line” (Assad did and Obama did nothing), and his stop-start-stop support for opposition forces in Syria.

Then there is the president’s decision to pull out all American troops from Iraq, which had disastrous consequences; his failures in Afghanistan (including announcing a withdrawal date even as he was announcing a surge in troops); his bungled relations with Egypt; his failure to support the Green Revolution in Iran in 2009 and his nuclear deal with Iran in 2015, which Charles Krauthammer called “the worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history.” Add to that Mr. Obama declaring his policies in Libya, Yemen and Somalia to be models of success before things collapses in all three countries, his alienation and mistreatment of Israel, and his botched handling of relations with our Arab allies – not to mention policies that have allowed Russia a presence in the Middle East unlike any its had since Anwar Sadat expelled the Soviet Union from Egypt in the early 1970s – and you have a catastrophic foreign policy record. It was only in the summer of last year that the Wall Street Journal reported, “The breadth of global instability now unfolding hasn’t been seen since the late 1970s” – and things are more disordered, chaotic and violent now then it was then. Things are so bad that the president has even lost CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

Now most of us, with this almost unblemished record of ineptness, might feel some embarrassment. We might show a touch of self-reflection. And we would at least resist the temptation to lecture others. But not Mr. Obama. In his press conference in Turkey earlier this week, the president was prickly, petulant, condescending and small-minded. Consider just these two paragraphs

US authorities have charged at least 66 men and women with ISIS-related terror plots on American soil – including a handful of refugees, Daily Mail Online can reveal. The terror group has set its sights on Washington, D.C. as it vows to further infiltrate the West and ramp up its blood-soaked offensive.

President Obama insists that ‘slamming the door’ on Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS would be a betrayal of American values.But 34 governors are refusing to take in any more, in case jihadi fighters slip into their states and repeat the carnage of Paris.

Analysis by Daily Mail Online reveals that a handful of foiled plots have already involved immigrants accused of harboring sympathy for ISIS. The threat also comes from within, with American teenagers and Islamic converts among those seduced by the group’s torrent of chilling online propaganda.

They include a U.S. Air Force veteran accused of waging war on the country he once served and a National Guard soldier who allegedly plotted to gun down his own colleagues. Others are seemingly ordinary American citizens, including a young nurse, a pizza parlor boss and schoolgirls tricked into becoming shrouded ISIS brides.

Some have conspired to travel or send friends abroad to link up with fundamentalist fighters while others have planned for jihad closer to home – with Capitol Hill among the targets for a foiled bombing raid.

The incidents detailed here are among dozens of alleged disrupted by police and federal agents since ISIS began to rise from the flames of the Syrian civil war. The earliest arrest was 18 months ago.

They include:

While Christians and Yazidis are the two groups most persecuted in this Muslim religious war, they are also the least likely to be admitted as refugees by Obama.

Here are the truly shameful numbers, from Patrick Goodenough.

Of 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted into the U.S. since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, only 53 (2.4 percent) have been Christians while 2098 (or 96 percent) have been Muslims, according to State Department statistics updated on Monday.

The remaining 33 include 1 Yazidi, 8 Jehovah Witnesses, 2 Baha’i, 6 Zoroastrians, 6 of “other religion,” 7 of “no religion,” and 3 atheists.

1 Yazidi. 53 Christians. 2,184 Muslims.

Imagine if during the Holocaust, the US had focused on taking in “moderate Nazis” while leaving the Jews to die. That is what Obama’s Muslims First refugee policy looks like. And it’s outrageous.

President Obama rode into the White House vilifying George W. Bush’s “unchecked presidential power” and “ignoring the law when it is inconvenient,” as he put it in 2007. Yet now Mr. Obama is poised to exceed any executive action his predecessor so much as contemplated as he may shut down Guantanamo Bay in defiance of inconvenient laws he signed.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Tuesday testified that she knew of no Administration plans to go around Congress, though a Justice Department spokesman later said this was not a definitive statement. This confusion comes on the heels of the U.S. release of five Guantanamo detainees who were sent to the United Arab Emirates.

Mr. Obama promised to close the terrorist prison in Cuba during his first week in office—but as journalist Charlie Savage reports in his new book “Power Wars,” Mr. Obama’s military-legal team was surprised to discover that most of the enemy combatants were as dangerous as Mr. Bush said they were. Thus Gitmo has remained open, while Mr. Obama’s bid to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the 9/11 plotters in civilian courts exploded on the launch pad amid bipartisan opposition.

President Obama on Monday assailed the U.S. political backlash against resettling more Syrian refugees, especially Muslims, calling it un-American. Well, maybe he should have thought about that before he decided to do so little in Syria and let Islamic State build a vast terror sanctuary.

“The people who are fleeing Syria are the most harmed by terrorism; they are the most vulnerable as a consequence of civil war and strife,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Turkey. “We do not close our hearts to these victims of such violence and somehow start equating the issue of refugees with the issue of terrorism.”

Mr. Obama was reacting to the political stampede, following Friday’s jihadist massacre in Paris, against the President’s decision to accept at least 10,000 of the millions of refugees fleeing Islamic State and Syria’s civil war. Every GOP presidential candidate we’ve heard is now calling for restricting the refugee flow into the U.S. At least 12 Governors are taking steps to bar them from their states, and Congress will vote sooner or later on blocking funds for Syrian refugee resettlement.
What did Mr. Obama expect? It would be nice, and we would prefer, if Americans accepted Syrians the way they have so many war refugees over the decades—from the Jews of Europe, to the Hmong and Vietnamese, to Cubans and Afghans. The West needs loyal Muslims of moderate beliefs to help defeat the radicals; we shouldn’t want to alienate them.

But refugees from those earlier foreign conflicts didn’t include agents who would continue the war on U.S. shores. As France is learning, Islamic State is only too happy to use the Syrian diaspora to plant its agents to kill the French. At least one of the killers on Friday is believed to have migrated from Syria through Greece and into Paris. Nearly all of the other migrants, Muslim and Christian, have no such bloody intent. But can you blame the average American for refusing to volunteer as a next door neighbor?

In the wake of Friday’s horrific terror attacks in Paris, Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was dispatched to the Sunday morning talk shows to spin his boss’ claim the previous day that the ISIS threat had been “contained.”

But he was also asked about the ability of the Obama administration to properly vet a wave of 10,000 Syrian refugees announced in September in light of reports that one or more of the Paris terrorists had entered and transited the EU as a Syrian refugee.

And yet Rhodes’ response that measures to properly vet the Syrian refugees are in place flatly contradicts the recent sworn congressional testimony of FBI officials.

Rhodes appeared on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper. It brought this exchange:

TAPPER: I think there is a question about how good this intelligence apparatus is, Christiane Amanpour – Christiane Amanpour reporting this morning that at least one of the terrorists, according to French authorities, seems to have smuggled himself into Europe by embedding with refugees.

Ben, are you confident enough in our vetting process as the United States brings Syrian refugees into our country to pledge that this will never happen here?

RHODES: Well, first of all, Jake, the threat of foreign fighters has been front and center from the very beginning of this counter-ISIL campaign. We have made that a focus, so that we’re working with countries to share information, to improve their laws and authorities to be able to monitor and detain people.

And we’re going to continue to do that. That will be a focus of discussion here in Turkey. With respect to refugees, we have the most extensive security vetting that we have ever had to deal with Syrian refugees coming into the United States that involves not just the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department, but also our intelligence community, the National Counterterrorism Center, so that anybody who comes to the United States, we are carefully vetting against all of our information.

A report by a renowned journalist states that Christians are to be excluded from an impending official United States government declaration of ISIS genocide. If true, it would reflect a familiar pattern within the administration of a politically correct bias that views Christians — even non-Western congregations such as those in Iraq and Syria — never as victims but always as Inquisition-style oppressors. (That a State Department genocide designation for ISIS may be imminent was acknowledged last week in congressional testimony, by Ambassador Anne Patterson, the assistant secretary of the State Department’s Near East Bureau.)

Yazidis, according to the story by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, are going to be officially recognized as genocide victims, and rightly so. Yet Christians, who are also among the most vulnerable religious minority groups that have been deliberately and mercilessly targeted for eradication by ISIS, are not. This is not an academic matter. A genocide designation would have significant policy implications for American efforts to restore property and lands taken from the minority groups and for offers of aid, asylum, and other protections to such victims. Worse, it would mean that, under the Genocide Convention, the United States and other governments would not be bound to act to suppress or even prevent the genocide of these Christians.

What’s the best place to get a no-show job? The federal government.

Uncle Sam pays corrupt or incompetent employees not to come to work – because it’s easier than firing them.

Never mind the cost to taxpayers.

Congress is trying to get to the bottom of this outrageous waste. But so far, true to form, the Obama administration is stonewalling.

In fact, President Obama and Democrats in Congress are pushing for even more perks and pay hikes for federal workers. But get ready for a battle, because the new speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, is vowing to slow the gravy train.

Right now, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is pressing for answers about the $3.1 billion spent on no-show jobs in the last three years. The Department of Homeland Security has paid 88 employees to stay home for at least a year, including three who have been twiddling their thumbs for three years.

The preposterous explanation from the DHS is that the allegations against these workers are so serious they can’t be allowed back to work, but not conclusive enough to fire them. The Veterans Administration also kept 46 employees on paid leave for a year or longer with explanations that Grassley calls “vague, incomplete or incoherent.”

Anyone able to quit the city has done so, leaving the urban wasteland of a humbled metropolis to the feral dogs, the desolate ruins of abandoned suburbs and all the other relics of a shining future that has come and gone. Poverty is never pretty, the policies that inflict it on a community even less so
Detroit was the second American city I ever visited. It was fifty years ago, and it was then at the apogee of its prosperity. It never occurred to me—I don’t suppose it ever occurred to anyone else either—that half a century later it would be an inhabited ruin, a dystopian novel come to life, a city that has taken a book by J.G. Ballard not as a warning but as a blueprint.

Not long ago I was invited to a conference in Dearborn, still the headquarters of the Ford Motor Company. I could see Detroit in the far distance from my hotel window, dominated by the dark round towers of the Renaissance Center. The Renaissance Center—I like that: it testifies to Man’s permanent temptation to magical thinking. If one gives a thing a name, it will become or act like that name. In Britain, we give the vertical concrete prisons in which we incarcerate the young unemployed, the schizophrenic, the domestically-abused single mothers, the asylum-seekers, and the psychopathic drug dealers, the names of great writers—Addison House, Jane Austen Tower—in the hope that it will educate them and refine their behaviour.