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Saturday, March 15, 2014

Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry & St.Patty's Day parade Virginia City,Nevada

23rd Annual Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry Photo #1
Mark your calendars and save your appetite for the 23rd Annual Rocky Mountain Oyster Fry and St. Patrick’s Day Parade, March 15, 2014 in historic Virginia City, Nev. 
Taking a bit of a break today from politics...our lil old town is having a 'Testicle Festival' today ..lol at the tourists munching away with a smile on their face...some know what they are others not so much until they are about on their third helping and someone tells em' what they really are eating...thats when the rofl comes in... the look on their faces is priceless! Bull or Sheep testicles?....lol the grimace on the face cracks me up!

Check it out: 22nd



21st:






Time to Fix Bayonets Patriots....

I for one am sick and tired of the looney left Progressives and the looney LGBT movement telling me and others we  have to think and accept their view on life [This was tried many times in history and ended in failure~The Greeks,Romans and Hitlers Regime]...I am entitled to my opinion as are they ..but NO they continue to bully and force their lifestyle /politics on everyone[They are 3% of the population]...I say live and let live...but not so with the looney left...you either accept their philosophy on life or they will dog pile on you and try to bully you into submission .Call you racist,homophobes or whatever..when in fact they are the racists and hetrophobes...enough is enough, time to fix bayonets and charge...end this once and for all ! Speak your mind and never let the progressive movement (CPUSA) overrun your position The 1st and 2nd Amendments to the Constitution 










Ted Cruz Posters Appear in Beverly Hills


via Breitbart http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/14/Ted-Cruz-Posters-Appear-in-Beverly-Hills
Now liberals will really think Cruz smokes and has tattoos. Which might work out for conservatives in the long run as some liberals will think he’s cool and vote for him.

Mysterious posters of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) with his face photoshopped onto a tattooed body were plastered around various locations in Los Angeles, like the Beverly Hilton Hotel, late Thursday night.
Although the location of the poster says the Hilton, Senator Cruz is expected to be the keynote speaker at the Claremont Institute’s annual Winton Churchill dinner on Saturday night at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. 





Friday, March 14, 2014

Obama Social Security Number Fraud Case Awaits Judge’s Decision


by:
Back in December, Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander ruled to grant attorney Orly Taitz "an opportunity to file a second amended complaint and add allegations of SSA not doing a proper search and withholding records" in the Obama Social Security fraud case. In that report, I indicated that there should be news on that case in mid-January. However, things had not progressed as planned and part of the problem was an error by the court, which has now been corrected.

In an interview last week with Freedom Outpost, Mrs. Taitz told us that she was still waiting to hear from the courts in Washington, D.C. and Maryland. "I did have a favorable decision from Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander in Maryland, where she denied the motion to dismiss by the defense. They wanted a summary judgment ruling that there is no social security numberat… this Harry Bounel, that Obama is using his social security number."

"The judge said 'No, you did not do a proper search,' and she refused to give them the summary judgment," Taitz said.

Taitz said Judge Hollander allowed her to file an amended complaint. At that time, Taitz told us that she had one more reply to file and then there should be a decision by Judge Hollander.
Part of the reason for the delay in Judge Hollander's decision was due to the Justice Department asking for an extension so that they would have more time to respond, according to Taitz.
As of today, according to her website, evidence that had disappeared from the docket in the case before Judge Hollander has miraculously appeared. The post dated March 14, 2014 reads in part:

Judge Hollander was very kind to the clerk of the court, who removed evidence from the docket, by stating that "Doctor Taitz had difficulty seeing certain documents" and the issue was resolved by the clerk. In reality the clerk removed important documents from the docket. Not only Dr. Taitz had difficulty seeing them, the whole country had difficulty seeing them because the documents were removed. So far there were two good orders by Judge Hollander and we are hoping that the final order will be just and lawful as well, that Judge Hollander will order to finally release the SS-5, original application to Connecticut Social Security number 042-68-4425 of Harry Bounel  which Obama is fraudulently using, even though it failed both E-verify and SSNVS.

While the documents were missing, Obama supporters on one of the blogs, which is a bully pulpit for Obama's personal attorney Scott J. Tepper, attacked Taitz mercilessly, assassinated her good character and called Taitz the worst lawyer and many other names, claiming that Taitz does not know how to file documents and pleadings. Now the order by Judge Hollander revealed that Taitz knows how to file and an error was made not by Taitz, but by the court itself and it was corrected by the court itself. Taitz does not hold her breath waiting for an apology from Obama supporters. 


The documents Taitz filed on Friday can be downloaded and viewed here.
Taitz also informed us that she will be dealing with the selective service registration of Obama.

"That's a case against the Postmaster General," Taitz said.
Taitz also informed us that a retired Chief Investigator from the Special Investigations of the US Coastguard, Stephen Jeffrey Coffman, submitted an affidavit that Barack Obama's selective service registration is fabricated, and also has a fabricated postal stamp on it.

So far, Taitz has submitted her complaint in that case, and is awaiting a decision from Judge

Here’s How We Can Force Congress To Read The Bills They Vote On…

in this cartoon a woman from congress is handing uncle sam a huge ...
[Nancy Pelosi,Barack Obama & Dirty Harry Reid]

by  

ALEXANDRIA, VA — In mid-January, Congress rushed through a massive spending bill of 1,582 pages; the accompanying explanatory statements added another 1,278 pages. It was voted on only 44 hours after it was posted, giving members of Congress less than a minute to read each page — if they gave up a night’s sleep.
When asked whether he read this $1.1 trillion bill, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) was honest. He responded, “Nobody did.” This bill will fund the federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2014, which ends September 30, 2014. The bill increases federal spending by $44.8 billion this year over the spending level previously set by Congress.
How many members of Congress know that this bill gives the oil and nuclear industries $154 million more than the Energy Department requested for nuclear energy, and $141 million more than requested for fossil-fuel development? How many are aware that the bill skirts a ban on earmarks by providing more than $44 million for the Army Corps of Engineers that the administration had not requested — or that the Pentagon was given $666 million to study illnesses such as breast cancer that have little to do with matters of national defense? The list of what members of Congress do not know is in the bill is a long one.

None of this is new. In 2010, Congress passed, and President Obama signed, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. At 2,319 pages, it is significantly longer than previous financial reform laws and approaches the extraordinary length of the Affordable Care Act. By comparison, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, which established the Federal Reserve banking system and the single national currency, was 31 pages long. The Glass-Steagall Banking Act of 1933, which overhauled the entire banking system in light of hundreds of bank failures, was 37 pages long.

The complexity in legislation has created an industry of lobbyists and consultants — often former members of Congress and former congressional staff members — to help individuals and businesses to cope with what has been imposed upon them. University of London economist Anthony G. Heyes notes, “It is precisely the complex, opacity, and user-unfriendliness which underpin the value of their expertise” that translate into “selling advice to those they previously regulated.”
Peter Schweitzer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, tells the story of Amy Friend, a chief aide to Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) in crafting the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and former chief counsel to the Senate Banking Committee. “After the bill passed,” he writes, “and became law, she left Capitol Hill and became managing director at Promontory Financial Group, which describes itself as ‘a premier global financial consulting firm.’ This Washington-based consulting firm is headed up by many people like Friend — people who were once responsible for erecting or interpreting arcane financial regulations in public service and then joined the group, where they can charge high fees to help firms interpret and comply with these befuddling regulations…. Banks complain about Promontory’s high fees, which can run up to $1,500 an hour. Eugene Ludwig, the former comptroller of the currency under Bill Clinton, reportedly makes $30 million a year running Promontory.”

Or consider Daniel Meade, who was chief counsel to the Financial Services Committee under Chairman Barney Frank (the “Frank” of Dodd-Frank). Meade left Capitol Hill for Hogan-Lovells, an established lobbying firm. When Meade arrived, the firm announced that Meade was “a principal drafts person of substantial portions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.” The firm explained that Meade would be “representing financial services entities and other entities impacted by the regulation of those entities in connection with a broad range of regulatory and transactional matters, including issues related to the Dodd-Frank Act.”
John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil, saw the process at work: “They deliberately write ambiguity into the law. It’s part of a career-building process. If you are a congressional staffer, you spend your career crafting complex legislative language. This equips you to leverage your post-government competence. The whole system builds on itself.”

“For congressional staffers… it’s a huge payday,” writes Peter Schweitzer. “Sen. Ron Johnson was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 from Wisconsin. A businessman and entrepreneur, he has hired plenty of people over the years. When it came to hiring congressional staffers for his new job, he was struck by a phrase some applicants used during the interview process: ‘cashing in.’ ‘I had never heard that term before when hiring someone in the private sector,’ Johnson says. Time spent working at a lobbying firm or at a consultancy is ‘cashing in.’ Some people work on Wall Street until they have enough money to ‘cash out.’ In Washington, they set themselves up for those jobs in order to cash in.”
Alan Siegel, who for many years has advocated greater simplicity in communications and was called “Mr. Plain English” by PEOPLE magazine, says, “Complexity robs us of time, patience, understanding, money and optimism. The U.S. was founded and governed for over two centuries on the basis of a document that is six pages long. That is 0.1 per cent of the current income tax code, which currently runs a whopping 14,000 pages.” Even IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman admitted on C-SPAN that he cannot do his own personal tax return anymore because “it’s just too complicated.”

Prof. Anthony Heyes believes, “[P]eople working in regulatory agencies have too little incentive to make or keep procedures and practices simple, transparent, and user-friendly.” He argues that one-third of the costs of regulations are “transaction costs”– that is, “paying someone to help you jump through the ‘hoops and hurdles’ of the regulatory process.”
One way to simplify legislation and increase the possibility that members of Congress will read — and understand — the legislation on which they vote is to adopt a single-subject rule for all bills. Article III of the Florida Constitution, for example, “requires that every law shall embrace but one subject and matter properly connected there with.” It would be good, of course, to require members of Congress to actually read the bills they are going to vote on. Bills have been introduced that would require a seven-day waiting period between the time when a bill is ready for a vote and when the final vote actually takes place. Others suggest that all bills scheduled for a full vote on the floor be read out loud. There has even been a suggestion that all members be required to read the bills before voting — and to sign a legal affidavit attesting to that fact.
Such proposals may be fanciful considering the reality of today’s Congress. That we live in a society in which our legislators pass 1,000-bills they have not read and do not understand is beyond question. How to deal with this reality, which has been many years in the making, is a difficult challenge. It is one we would do well to confront.

Yes, Its Really Happening. This Woman Just Married A Dog

photographs jodi miller photography
oped: Stop the world I want off...everything perverted is now good...everything normal is now bad...this world is upside down and ass backwards....Just shakes my head ...will this perverted nonsense ever end? Now we have to add BA (Beastiality) to LGBT now LGBTBA

by  

Social leftists have been quick to dismiss the argument that changing the time-tested definition of marriage would lead to increasingly unorthodox demands from individuals seeking to wed relatives, inanimate objects, or even their pets.
One British woman, however, recently validated that slippery slope prediction as she made her way down the aisle to meet her new ‘husband,’ a terrier named Sheba.
According to reports, divorcee Amanda Rogers did not give up on love after her marriage dissolved almost 20 years ago. She did, however, apparently decide to switch species.
“Sheba had been in my life for years,” she said of the dog, “making me laugh and comforting me when I was feeling low. I couldn’t think of anything more I’d need from a life partner.”

She described proposing to the female pup – which would technically make this just an extension of the popular same-sex ‘marriage’ craze – and her delight at her alleged acceptance.
“I could tell by her tail wagging that she said ‘Yes,’” Rogers recalled.
Though she conceded that she understands her commitment will not be legally recognized, the ‘bride’ said her ceremony felt just as real as any other wedding.
“I’d dreamed of a perfect wedding dress since I was small,” she said, explaining “I made it myself for the ceremony.”
Attendees even joined in the unorthodox celebration.
“I gave her a kiss to seal the deal and then everyone threw confetti,” she explained.
Of course, a wedding strikes most people as an unnecessary event in the life of a dog owner. The love between man and beast does not require such a ceremony.

As marriage becomes an increasingly fluid concept, however, one might expect even more of these unions to be foisted upon society. Whether they will ever receive the same level of legitimacy that our culture has afforded same-sex ‘marriage’ is unclear. What seems inevitable, though, is that the fundamental redefinition of the biblical definition of marriage will only empower people to come up with new and disturbing ways to push the envelope regarding this once-sacred bond.

FBI Blocked in Probe Involving Sens. Harry Reid, Mike Lee


FBI headquarters / AP
oped: US Attorney General Eric Holder must be Impeached...his office is the most corrupt in US History
If the probe was just on Sen Lee (R) I am sure the investigation would be pushed by Holders office...but since it also involves Sen Reid (D)  Barack Obama's front man..USAG Eric Holder will not allow such a investigation. Enough is Enough folks Congress needs to act as well as the Senate regardless if it involves some of their own! *PERIOD* 

FBI agents and Utah state prosecutors uncovered accusations of wrongdoing by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), but the Justice Department is blocking an investigation, the Washington Times reports.
The probe, conducted by one Republican and one Democratic state prosecutor in Utah, has received accusations from an indicted businessman and political donor, interviewed other witnesses and gathered preliminary evidence such as financial records, Congressional Record statements and photographs that corroborate some aspects of the accusations, officials have told The Washington Times and ABC News.
But the Justice Department’s public integrity section — which normally handles corruption cases involving elected figures — rejected FBI agents’ bid to use a federal grand jury and subpoenas to determine whether the accusations are true and whether any federal crimes were committed by state and federal officials.

The information involving Mr. Reid and Mr. Lee is not fully developed but centers on two primary issues:
• Whether both or either politician sought or received money or other benefits from donors and/or fundraisers in connection with doing political favors or taking official actions.
• Whether Mr. Lee provided accurate information when he bought, then sold a Utah home for a big loss to a campaign contributor and federal contractor, leaving his mortgage bank to absorb large losses.

Story Continues: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/13/fbi-blocked-in-corruption-probe-involving-sens-rei/#.UyMh0NBlXM0.twitter

Jeannie C Reilly Addressed womens issues before it was cool!

what s really a shame is that most of her
Jeannie was way ahead of her time singing songs addressing womens issues,politics and corruption in the system decades ago...

Have a Listen and Enjoy!









Sarah Palin: I'll Keep Shaking Up Washington

Sarah Palin stumps for Republican candidate for Senate, John Raese ...
By Todd Beamon
Sarah Palin on Thursday endorsed Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel in his tea party-backed bid to block Republican Sen. Thad Cochran from winning a seventh term this fall.

In an exclusive question-and-answer session with Newsmax, the former governor of Alaska says she will continue to endorse conservative candidates with "integrity and a steel spine" who are willing to stand up to the permanent political class and not just go along to get along with "the corrupt status quo."

McDaniel, 41, faces Cochran in a June 3 primary. Recent polls have shown him within striking distance of the 76-year-old incumbent, the second-most-senior Republican in the Senate.

Palin also told Newsmax that the Republicans had "better" retake the Senate this fall and that if she had said "even one-tenth of the crazy things" Vice President Joe Biden had said during the 2008 presidential campaign, "the media would call for me to be institutionalized."

Here are Palin's responses to Newsmax:

Newsmax: How active are you going to be involved in getting Republicans elected this fall?

Palin: "I’m determined to work every election cycle to increase the number of commonsense conservative women leaders in D.C. who will shake things up in the good ol’ boy permanent political class."

What makes a strong candidate?

"Courage, integrity, common sense, discipline, fiscal restraint — and a firm grounding in the time-tested truths that have made our nation exceptional."

There are a number of GOP women running for Congress this fall, including former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and Rep. Shelley Moore Capito in West Virginia. Both are running for the Senate. Is that surprising?

"I don’t think of women leaders or women candidates as 'novelties.' Women have been leaders since ancient times. From Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I of England, Catherine the Great — right on down to Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher, and Angela Merkel.

"We’re half of the human race. I’ve raised my own daughters to know that they can do anything. There are no barriers they can’t overcome as women.

"Many strong women have blazed those trails before us. I honestly don’t consider gender in looking for public servants."

Are these candidates going to have tough campaigns?

"Sadly, women candidates do have to prove themselves in general. Damn men! We’re held to a different standard.






"I certainly don’t complain or whine about this, but, for example, consider the stupid stuff that comes out of Joe Biden’s mouth all the time. If I had said even one-tenth of the crazy things he said in 2008 or since then, the media would call for me to be institutionalized. Some of that is the typical media bias against conservatives, but not all of it.

"The truth is, women candidates have to work harder. Women know this. That’s what makes us tougher than men. I hung a poster in my husband’s airplane hangar that reads: 'God created men first. Then He had a better idea.' "

What's the biggest issue for the GOP this fall?

"Obamacare. Candidates can speak directly to voters about our frustrations with what the Democrats and the Obama administration have done to American households. It’s atrocious."


You said on Facebook on Wednesday that you intend to endorse more candidates this cycle. In Texas, you endorsed Attorney General Greg Abbott for governor. Who else are you supporting?

"First off, I don’t endorse anyone who hasn’t first requested an endorsement. I don’t believe in inviting myself to anyone else’s rodeo. I only want to be helpful, so I don’t jump in if I’m not asked to.

"Second, I look for people who are willing to stand up to the permanent political class in D.C. and not just go along to get along with what is all too often a corrupt status quo bankrupting our country. We need people of intelligence, ingenuity, and integrity in D.C. now more than ever.

"I look for someone who, hopefully, has a track record that shows that they were willing to be courageous in working to get things done for the people who elected them — whether that be fighting to balance a budget or pushing through fiscal reforms or fighting cronyism and corruption.

"I look for people who have integrity and a steel spine and who clearly understand the problems facing our nation today.

"Finally, I do adhere to the old wisdom to look for the strongest conservative who can win. I don’t mind backing a long-shot candidate, but they have to be a good candidate who has it together and can run a credible campaign.

"For example, I was honored to back Sen. Ted Cruz in 2012. Even though he was a long-shot candidate when I endorsed him, I knew he was a great candidate with a good campaign organization behind him. He just needed something to help his campaign soar.

"His victory is his own because all the ingredients for success were there when I endorsed him. I just got to hand him a proverbial megaphone, and the voters wisely chose him."

Any more this year?

"You betcha! Good, bad, or ugly — when they ask for my endorsement and receive it, the curiosity factor kicks in!"

You endorsed 18 candidates for state, House, and Senate races in the 2012 cycle — including six women. Even though not all of them won, how do you think your endorsements help?

"We helped shine a light on candidates who may not necessarily get enough attention because they’re outsiders, not part of the political machine.

"As for women candidates in particular, I think the 'Mama Grizzly' effect of all those conservative women running in 2010 really shook things up. I think it really scared the Democrats who suddenly realized that they couldn’t take things for granted.

"You didn’t see any of the 'war on women' stuff being thrown at the GOP in 2010, and I think that’s because the 'Mama Grizzlies' were a force to be reckoned with."

With the GOP on the cusp of re-taking the Senate, what must the Republican Party do win?

"Don’t speak down to women. Don’t speak down to working-class, blue-collar Reagan Democrats. Don’t pander either. Everyone can spot a phony.

"You reach out to voters by speaking up for the American principles that have made our country great. Speak up for liberty and opportunity and prosperity. That’s a message that every America responds to."

Turnout is generally lower in midterm elections. What's your advice to voters?

"Get involved. Don’t get discouraged. Get energized. Keep the faith. We’re going to turn things around. If you don’t vote, then you can’t complain.

"Don’t use gender as the barometer either, because there are good male candidates too — though I always say, 'Behind every good man stands a surprised woman!'"




With training and partnerships, U.S. military treads lightly in Africa

Nigerien soldiers practice apprehending a suspect during Flintlock 2014 in Diffa
By David Lewis
DIFFA, Niger (Reuters) - On a dusty training ground in Niger, U.S. Special Forces teach local troops to deal with suspects who resist arrest. "Speed, aggression, surprise!" an instructor barks as two Nigeriens wrestle a U.S. adviser out of a car.
The drill in the border town of Diffa is part of Exercise Flintlock, a counter-terrorism exercise for nations on the Sahara's southern flanks that the United States organizes each year. Washington's aim is to tackle Islamist militants in the Sahel region while keeping its military presence in Africa light.
A growing number of European nations taking part shows their increasing concern about security in West Africa. Central to the international effort is a blossoming relationship between the United States and France, the former colonial power and traditional "policeman" of the turbulent region. 

When Paris deployed 4,000 troops to fight Islamist militants in neighboring Mali last year, the U.S. military lent a hand by airlifting French soldiers and equipment, providing intelligence and training African forces to join the operation.
French troops are stretched by hunting the militants in Mali and tackling religious violence in Central African Republic, so only a handful participated in Flintlock. Nevertheless, they welcomed their new partnership with Washington.
"The Americans want to get involved in Africa. That's good for us. We know that with the Americans it will be more efficient," said a French Special Forces officer, who asked not to be named. "We use American logistics - that's what we are missing. On the other hand, we provide the local knowledge."
The United States fast-tracked the sale of 12 Reaper drones to France last year, the first two of which started operating in Niger in January alongside U.S. drones already there. 

In a reminder of the partnership, a drone quietly taxied past troops and dignitaries at Flintlock's closing ceremony in the capital of Niamey before taking off to scour the Sahara.
U.S. FACING BUDGET CUTS
Military experts say direct U.S. military action in Africa is limited to short raids on "high-value" targets in places such as Somalia and Libya, while French troops take on longer, bigger operations.
J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the U.S.-based Atlantic Council, said this arrangement suited U.S. military planners who face budget cuts and a diminished American appetite for combat after conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
However, he warned that the French military was at the limit of its ability to strike militants hard. "If the French are not able to provide that blunt instrument, is the U.S. willing to do so?"
Nine years after the Flintlock exercises began, the enemy has evolved from a group of Algerian-dominated fighters focused on northern Mali and now threatens nations across the Sahara and the arid Sahel belt to the south. 

For most of 2012, militants occupied northern Mali, a desert zone the size of France. Scattered by a French offensive last year, many are believed to be regrouping in southern Libya.
Hundreds of people are being killed every month in clashes with Boko Haram militants in northern Nigeria. Many in Niger fear this conflict could spill over the border and the government in Niamey has appealed for more military support.
"Instability in neighboring states has given everybody a new incentive," General James Linder, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Africa, told Reuters while visiting Niger
This year's three-week Flintlock exercise - involving over 1,000 troops from 18 nations - was the biggest yet and runs alongside more permanent training by U.S. Special Forces in Niger, Mauritania, Senegal and Chad.
Training in Diffa, only a few kilometers from where Boko Haram militants are fighting the Nigerian army across the border, ranged from basic patrolling skills and setting up checkpoints to sharing intelligence and providing medical care. 

In a region where armies often lack basics such as ammunition for target practice and fuel for vehicles, the quality and tempo of the U.S.-sponsored exercise eclipses the training most soldiers in the region receive in a year.
Colonel Mounkaila Sofiani, the local Niger commander, said Flintlock and other U.S. initiatives helped his country to tackle threats from the west, north and south better. "Little by little people are being trained," he said. "Once there are enough, they'll form the spine of a reliable force."
Training is meant to build up coordination between armies but Sofiani said just finding radio equipment compatible between nations is difficult. In the field, officers exchange mobile phone numbers to bypass blockages in official channels.
A lack of trust between governments also hinders responses. At a recent meeting of intelligence chiefs, the Nigerien and Libyan representatives argued over the risk of instability spreading from Libya's lawless south, a diplomat told Reuters. 

Coups in Mauritania, Niger and Mali since the Flintlock exercises began also halted cooperation until civilian rule was restored. Mali's 2012 coup, led by a captain with U.S. training, opened the door to the Islamist takeover of the north, prompting questions about what the years of exercises had achieved.
Pham said better military capabilities had not been matched by improvements in governance, citing a failure by Mali to tackle corruption. Chad's military, however, has won praise for leading the charge alongside French troops in flushing out the militants from Mali's desolate northern mountains.
U.S. officials stress the exercise is African-led and are wary about people reading too much into U.S. troops being on the ground near African conflicts. But the show of foreign support is popular in Diffa.
"It sends a message to Boko Haram and others," said Inoussa Saouna, the central government's representative in Diffa. "Before Mali, we thought terrorism was a problem for whites but now we've experienced it ourselves."
(This version of the story was refiled to correct title of drills to Exercise Flintlock)
(Editing by Daniel Flynn and David Stamp)

Crimea, Ukraine and the Agony of Impotence

Hillary Clinton funny face: Smagios H. Clinton veido išraiškos

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently compared actions by Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine to those of Adolf Hitler in 1938 in Czechoslovakia. Although this is hyperbole bordering on veritable absurdity, there are similarities that may explain the roots of the current conflict. In both instances the seeds of despair were planted about twenty years earlier by reckless politicians who drew maps of new countries with flagrant disregard to people’s culture, religion and language. In Germany they were driven by revenge and in the Crimea by expediency.
Germany’s 1938 invasion of Czechoslovakia was ingrained in the 1919 punitive Treaties of Versailles. Under the Treaties forced on Germany by victorious France, Britain and the USA, the Sudetenland was handed to the earlier created country of Czechoslovakia to make sure Germany would not start another war. As a result three million Germans found themselves under the suppression of Czech rule. Shortly after Hitler came to power, someone asked at a dignitaries dinner in London, “Where was Hitler born?” “At Versailles,” replied Lady Astor.

Similarly, the Crimean dilemma emanated from the breakup of the Soviet Union. The future leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan, in a coup d’état to oust Mikhail Gorbachev and after consuming undefined quantities of vodka and being in an advanced state of intoxication, hastily created a few new countries. Millions of Russians were trapped in those new lands, most of them in Ukraine.
Crimea had been part of Russia since the 18th century, when the Russians wrestled the region from the Ottoman Empire in a bloody war, was given to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine as a gift by Khrushchev in 1954. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, it became part of the new Ukraine. The Russians that composed 60 percent of the population found themselves under the tyranny of the minority. The Russian language was banned, Russian books, newspapers and television programs were forbidden, and Russian-language movies needed to be translated into Ukrainian before being shown.

Making matters worse, the Russians have never accepted Crimea as part of anything but Russia. Every square meter of Sevastopol’s land is soaked with Russian blood spilled in numerous wars for this strategic corner of Russia. This is the Russian heritage; it is Leningrad on the Black Sea.
Unfortunately, our untutored president and his secretary of state are not students of history and do not understand the underlying roots of the current conflict. Obama’s rhetoric, despite eloquence and indignation, is unfortunately not matched by a commensurate grasp of reality. His position is irrational, inconsistent and dishonest. “The proposed referendum on the future of Crimea would violate the constitution and violate international law,” Obama said. “We are well beyond the days when borders can be redrawn over the heads of democratic leaders” he continued.

What constitution is the president referring to? Could it be the constitution of the Soviet Union, which was violated when the state of Ukraine was created out of the “single indivisible Soviet Union”? Or perhaps the president is talking about the Ukrainian constitution? In this case his argument does not hold water, because Kosovo’s 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia, in violation of the Serbian constitution, was in fact supported by the United States and upheld by the International Court of Justice and, therefore, formed a legal precedent for Crimea.
It is also not clear what democratic leaders Obama is talking about. Could it be the grisly gang of Ukrainian nationalists and followers of Stepan Bandera, whose precursors were involved in mass killings of Jews, who overthrew a legitimate government and took power in Kiev literally behind the barrel of a gun? Yes, Yanukovych’s government was incompetent and corrupt. But that does not justify its violent overthrow. Using the same standard, our government should have been overthrown long ago, but instead the president was re-elected. Which just confirms one of Winston Churchill’s famous dictums: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise.”

And what about “beyond the days when borders can be redrawn”? Isn’t that what the Obama administration is doing by pressuring Israel in order to accommodate a Palestinian terrorist state?  During a recent round of political talk shows, US Secretary of State John Kerry stated, “You don’t just invade another country on a phony pretext in order to assert your own interests.” It is apparent that cognitive memories have escaped the members of this administration and the history lessons of recent incursions into Iraq, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan have never been learned. This president and his secretary of state, either unable or unwilling to differentiate the truth from spin, exhibit the virtuoso’s gift to say anything, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, in an effort to defend their indefensible position.

If we strip away the rhetoric, the media drum, and the theatrical performance before the teleprompter, we will be forced to recognize that it is not about international law, fairness or historical precedents; it is about power and prestige. The United States under Obama wants to be an international gendarme, prosecutor, judge, and executioner. However, in the world of political chess, the former community organizer has been consistently losing to the former KGB colonel. The Obama-Kerry amateur team was outclassed by the Putin-Lavrov side of well-educated and highly competent professionals, and found itself in a position called Zugzwang. This is a situation in which a player has to make a move but any possible move will worsen his position. Putin could only smile watching Kerry chasing Lavrov around Europe in an agony of impotence. Impotence because Kerry refuses to understand that the conflict has reached a point beyond the capacity of diplomacy; Kerry has nothing to offer Putin that Putin does not already have.  The only thing Obama and his Western allies have left is issuing threads, obviously unaware of the KGB motto: threats are a weapon of the weak against weaklings. Hence, Putin will just ignore them.

Unlike Obama, Putin has been well prepared for it. Early on he recognized that America’s drive to socialism would require enormous spending on social programs, which in combination with continuous wars will eventually deplete the US treasury and weaken American resolve. While America was spending on food stamps, welfare and solar energy, Putin was spending billions on modernizing the Russian army. He also worked hard to increase the West’s dependence on Russian gas and oil. Since American friend Pakistan, despite the billions of dollars in financial aid, does not allow the passage of military materiel over its territory, Russia became the major supply route for the American army in Afghanistan. Cancellation of the shuttle program made American space exploration dependent on Russian rockets. Putin skillfully exploited American weakness and political chaos in Kiev to make his move.

The first phase of Putin’s comprehensive strategy to rebuild the Russian Empire is almost complete with the de facto annexation of Crimea. Phase two is not difficult to predict. Ukraine will be divided into three autonomous regions: Crimea, Eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine, with the capital city of Kharkov, will include Lugansk, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov provinces. Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, with its considerable industrial capabilities, will become part of Russia. Western Ukraine, with the capital city of Kiev, will be adopted by Western Europe and become a black hole for billions of dollars and euros. Unfortunately, civil war is likely to erupt between the “democratic” factions of Ukrainian nationalists, who are motivated not by concern for stability but rather by the billions in financial aid.
This time our president cannot say he has not been warned. Nevertheless, warned or not, there is nothing he can do about it.


IMF Bailout Exposes Schism in Party

John McCain, Lindsey Graham, John Kerry, and Barack Obama fund, arm ...
... Lindsey Graham Offering His RINO Services To John Kerry… | The Last
Daniel Horowitz
If you are looking for an illustration of why we need to replace most of these failed Republican incumbents, look no further than Lindsey Graham’s hot mic comment to John Kerry today.
As I noted earlier, Senate Democrats have attached to the Ukraine bill an IMF bailout that will weaken our power on the international stage.  McConnell and the Senate Republican Surrender Conference are willing to capitulate.  However, as of now, Speaker Boehner is opposed to the IMF provision.  Take a look at this video and watch Lindsey Graham sell us out to Kerry.   After Kerry pitched the IMF proposal to the Senate committee, Graham was caught reassuring Kerry: “Hey John, good job. Let me know what I can do to help you with Boehner.”

This type of behavior will not change with a Senate majority so long as the same members are in charge.
On the other hand, Senator Cruz is taking the lead on the issue.  He is sending a letter to Senate colleagues urging them to oppose this rider to the Ukraine loan bill.

cruz letter

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Ben Carson Compares America to Third Reich

Dr. Ben Carson
 oped: Indeed 
SEE: http://sharlaslabyrinth.blogspot.com/2013/08/revisiting-pink-swastika.html

By Melissa Clyne
America today is tantamount to Nazi Germany, "a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe," provocative conservative Dr. Ben Carson told a gathering at The New York Meeting this week, Breitbart reports.

Carson said that just like Germany under Hitler’s reign, "the government using its tools to intimidate the population" is manifesting in the United States in 2014.

The 62-year-old retired Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon and conservative columnist packed the house at the New York City meeting of elected officials, journalists, business leaders and conservative authors, according to Breitbart.

Editor's Note: Ben Carson in 2016? See His Vision.

He chided "political correctness" and spoke bluntly about "living in a Gestapo age," according to CNN, which notes Carson’s rise to favored status in the GOP occurred after publicly criticizing President Obama’s policies in front of the president at last year’s National Prayer Breakfast.

At the New York Meeting, Carson criticized politicians, the media and "the PC [politically correct] police."

Fear of retribution for speaking honestly is harming the country, he said.

"The reason that is so horrible is because the only way you have harmony and reach consensus is by talking," Carson said. "But if, in fact, people are afraid to talk, you never reach consensus. And instead you grow further and further apart. And that’s exactly what’s happening — creating a horrible schism that will destroy our nation."

Related Stories:

Government Agencies Failing On Freedom Of Information

freedom-of-information.jpg1.gif
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A watchdog report out this week reveals that none of the Federal agencies that receive the greatest number of Freedom of Information Act requests are going to great effort to provide Americans with access to information. The Center for Effective Government report, titled “Making the Grade: Access to Information Scorecard 2014,” rates seven of the 15 agencies with an “F” in the transparency department. None of the agencies in the group that handles 90 percent of FOIA requests received an “A.”
The Center for Effective government graded the agencies on the following criteria:
  1. Processing requests for information (the rate of disclosure, the fullness of information provided, and timeliness of the response);
  2. Establishing rules for information access (effectiveness of agency policy on withholding information and communicating with requesters); and
  3. Creating user-friendly websites (facilitating the flow of information to citizens, online services, and up-to-date reading rooms).
The watchdog group called the findings of the analysis “sobering.”
“The low scores are not due to impossibly high expectations. In each of three performance areas, at least one agency earned an A, showing that excellence is possible,” The Center for Effective Government said in a release explaining the results. “But the fact that no agency was able to demonstrate excellence across all three areas illustrates the difficulty agencies seem to be having in consistently combining all the elements of an effective disclosure policy.”

Here’s how the agencies stacked up: 

overall grades summary table 

The report detailing Federal agencies’ FOIA failures comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill are giving serious thought to transparency reforms to strengthen FOIA.
Last month, a bipartisan FOIA reform bill introduced by House Oversight Committee Representatives Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) passed with unanimous support.
The Senate has yet to pass a version of the popular House legislation. But during a Judiciary hearing Tuesday, the lack of Federal transparency in recent years was at the center of discussion.
Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) expressed interest bringing forth the FOIA Oversight and Implementation Act to increase government transparency and require that Government Information Services, which was established in 2007 to serve as a sort of FOIA ombudsman, answer to Congress. Currently, OGIS takes recommendations and reports to the White House Office of Budget and Management.
Meanwhile, FOIA activists want to take away the exemptions that Federal agencies so often use to avoid complying with FOIA requests.
“Foremost among these, the open government community would like to see Congress put tighter boundaries around the government’s overuse of FOIA’s Exemption 5, or, as many requesters like to refer to it, the ‘We don’t want to give it to you’ exemption,” said Amy Bennett, the assistant director at OpenTheGovernment.org. “Exemption 5 is intended to protect the government’s deliberative process and was intended to have narrow application. Over time, federal agencies have expanded the scope of Exemption 5 to the point that it covers practically anything that is not a final version of a document.”

Night Of The ManBearPig: The Senate Sleeps Over

Night Of The ManBearPig: The Senate Sleeps Over
by  
Inspired, perhaps, by President Barack Obama’s State of the Union declaration that they’re as important to governing as a motorcycle is to a fish, the U.S. Senate took some action of their own this week. While their efforts might not equate to an Obama-esque “year of action,” they did manage to cobble together a night of action. Well, some of our beloved Senators took time out of their busy schedules to participate in a Senatorial bull session. All right, a handful of them got their jammies and blankies and threw themselves a Senate-floor sleepover.
But let’s not indict the absentees for missing out on the chance to toast marshmallows and tell ghost stories. It’s not as if they missed out on anything more than a good night’s rest. The Senate’s big night in didn’t produce, or even discuss, the trillions of dollars Obama has added to our crushing National debt. They didn’t untangle us from the fraudulent knots of Obamacare. They didn’t hear articles of impeachment against Obama for illegally deploying the Internal Revenue Service as a political cudgel. They didn’t demand Obama and his accomplices pull back the curtain of lies they’ve thrown over Operation Fast and Furious, Benghazi and the funneling of weapons to al-Qaida in Syria. They didn’t even put an end to the Orwellian machinations of the National Security Agency and the illegal surveillance they swear they’re not conducting on American citizens.

Nope, rather than use their late-night lock-in to lighten the load our increasingly sinister executive branch has laid across our backs, 28 members of the upper house of Congress burned the midnight oil to discuss a discredited theory that is so divorced from actual science that its pushers have been forced to change its name no fewer than three times in the past three decades. With the exception of Democrats who are facing re-election bids in States where job- and industry-crushing pseudoscience sell like a Hillary Clinton campaign speech to a Sheriff Joe Arpaio fundraiser (not to mention Senators with better dinner plans), the people charged with handling Congress’ heaviest lifting spent an entire evening in an ersatz hippie drum circle discussing “global cooling” “global warming” “climate change” “ManBearPig.”
More than two dozen of what ostensibly ought to be some of the finest leaders our great Nation can produce spent an entire night exhaling enough carbon dioxide emissions for a year’s worth of Al Gore’s private jet travels — but over neither Presidential lying, spying nor crying. Instead, they talked about “global warming,” clearly blissfully ignorant of the epic cold, snow and ice delivered by this record-setting winter.
The Senate’s lock-in was led by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and featured face time from the usual suspects, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Chuck Schumer (D-the closest camera). Actually, as I perused the roster of attendees to the Senate Climate Action Task Force’s 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. babblefest, something occurred to me: Those 28 Senators spent the wee small hours talking about — but not actually doing anything about — a cartoonish hoax that would need a boost to reach the lofty scientific heights of phrenology and Piltdown Man. And I can’t think of a better place, or time, for all 28 of them.

White Voters Abandon Obama In Droves

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Hello, I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty. Have you seen Barack Obama’s poll numbers? They are among the lowest in history. As of last week, Obama’s approval rating is at 38 percent. That’s just barely above Richard Nixon. But that’s not the big story here.
Keep in mind that Obama has the support of about 35 percent to 40 percent of the population that will never abandon him — no matter what he does, no matter how bad the jobs numbers look, no matter how low the economy goes, no matter how much scandal and corruption are exposed, no matter how strong the facts are against him. Nothing will ever change their minds. These are the “low-information voters” of the Democratic Party.
In many cases, they love Obama because of the color of his skin — and nothing else. They will never abandon a black President — even though black unemployment is at record levels; even though black youth unemployment is at record levels; even though black poverty is at record levels; even though Obama’s exact policies have been in place for more than 50 years in Detroit (a majority black city run by black Democrat politicians) and the black population has been devastated, destroyed and discarded, left for dead in an abandoned, bankrupt city with very few streetlights operating and the police leaving residents in many areas to fend for themselves.

So just think about those poll numbers for a moment. Let those numbers sink in. If 35 percent to 40 percent of the population would support a Democrat for President if he ran from a prison cell, if 35 percent to 40 percent would support Obama no matter what he does, no matter how far America sinks under his leadership (even if they have no jobs and their own lives are in total misery), how could Obama’s approval rating be at only 38 percent?
That means that among the rest of America, outside of loyal, lifelong, Kool-Aid-drinking Democrats, Obama’s ratings are nil. Among voters who don’t identify as Democrat, he is the lowest-rated President in history. No numbers like this have ever been recorded, if you filter out the Kool-Aid-drinking low-information and partisan voters.
Obama’s approval among the heartland of America (middle-class Americans) is lower than Nixon’s, lower than George W. Bush’s, lower than Lyndon Johnson’s at the height of the Vietnam War, lower than Jimmy Carter’s at the height of the Iranian hostage crisis with the added burden of an economy in misery and malaise.
I’m betting that outside of lifelong Democrats and welfare recipients (I know; I repeat myself), Obama’s ratings are in the unimaginable range of single digits.
I’m betting that outside of food stamp recipients, Obama’s ratings are in the single digits.
Among the white middle class, I’m betting Obama’s ratings are in the single digits… or lower.
Keep in mind many of the white middle class originally voted for Obama. He could not have been elected without white support.

Among those who actually own small businesses, pay most of the taxes and create most of the jobs, I’m betting Obama’s ratings are in the vicinity of zero.
Actually, if you take the white middle class and subtract out a few Ivy League intellectuals, Hollywood liberals and pathetic Upper West Side of Manhattan Democratic zombies, there are few Obama supporters left to be found anywhere in America.
Remember that about 47 percent of Americans get entitlement checks from government. Obama is paying for their support and he still has only 38 percent approval. You know you’re unpopular when even bribes don’t work anymore!
This man has managed to pull off something remarkable and historical: He has alienated almost every single American who actually works for a living and pays taxes, outside of Chicago, Manhattan, Hollywood and Detroit. He has virtually zero support among the 53 percent who aren’t getting a check from government. You can’t find another instance of that in the history of American politics.

Obama is amazing!
Now… one last bit of housekeeping. I do want to answer my critics whose only response will be: “All of these white voters who don’t support Obama are racists. It’s all about race.”
First of all, the very definition of racism is voting for a black candidate because… he’s black. That’s racism. The fact that 92 percent of black voters voted for Obama and 96 percent of black women voted for Obama is nothing but voting based on race.
As far as white voters abandoning Obama in droves, I’ve yet to meet one white voter who bases it on the color of Obama’s skin. We all base it on the color of his policies. The color of his policies is red — as in communist red. We hate his policies, not the man and not the color of his skin.
We hate the record-setting $12 trillion in debt he’ll have piled up by the time his second term is finished, because Obama has ruined the future of America with that debt. And he’s ruined our children’s future quality of life with that debt. We hate Obama’s big tax increases for the middle class and small business, and the fact that those tax increases haven’t helped the economy or created new jobs because the money was handed to Obama’s voters and donors — for more entitlements, more welfare, more food stamps, bailouts, stimulus and wasted failing green energy “investments.”
We hate the fact that Obama has killed millions of jobs. We hate the fact that the economy is in ruins under his leadership, except for Wall Street. Of course, Wall Street goes up because Obama has directed the Fed to print trillions in fake dollars to make his biggest donors richer than they ever imagined.

We hate the fact that Obama ruined the finest healthcare system in the world, which about 80 percent of Americans were happy with in the first place. We hate the fact that he is a liar and fraud who promised “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” Now we either don’t have insurance, or our prices have been raised through the roof. He has damaged our lives beyond belief. The color of his skin has nothing to do with it. But the facts have everything to do with it.
Over the years, I hated the policies of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter. They were both white. So did that mean I hated whites? Today, I hate the policies of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Does that mean I hate Italians and Mormons? I hate the policies of Hillary Clinton. Does that mean I hate women? I hate the policies of Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Senator Chuck Schumer. Does that mean I hate Jews? Well guess what? I’m Jewish. There goes that argument.
And I hate the policies of Joe Biden. Does that mean I hate idiots? I’m just kidding… kind of.
The point is in every case, it’s the politics and policies that we hate — not the person or the race. So the argument is just plain misleading, fraudulent and stupid.
It all comes down to common sense. White, middle-class Americans are suffering because of the policies of an incompetent, fraudulent, lying Marxist. And we’re not in delusion and denial, simply because we’re not blinded by the color of his skin. The fact is we don’t care about the color of his skin. So we can see the plain truth.
That’s why Obama’s poll numbers are amazing. That’s why among Americans who are not Kool-Aid drinkers blinded by the color of his skin, Obama’s poll numbers are the lowest in history.

New poll finds the Benghazi attack still hurts Clinton


[Hillary Clinton arrives to speak on September 12, 2012 on the killing of US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and 3 staff members at the US Consulate building in Benghazi, Libya, from the Treaty Room of the Department of State.(PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images) ]

By
Democrats have adopted a dismissive, almost bemused posture when it comes to the conservative fixation with the 2012 attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, confident in the knowledge that the facts bear little resemblance to what they see as the Right's conspiracy theories.
On one hand, they're correct. Countless congressional committee reports, administration probes, and journalistic investigations have cleared then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of any wrongdoing, and found there was little else the Obama administration could have done once the attacks began. "Ghazi" has become shorthand for a partisan-driven scandal.
But Democrats are in denial if they think Benghazi won't be an issue in the 2016 presidential race, should Clinton run.
 
A new poll from Pew Research Center and USA Today shows the danger. When respondents were asked to name in their own words the biggest negative for Clinton from her long career in public service, the most common response was Benghazi. Sure, it's only 15 percent who gave that answer, but that's still a lot.
And it's not just Republicans; Democrats also picked it more often than anything else, with 8 percent listing the attack as Clinton's biggest negative.

Just because Democrats believe there was nothing nefarious about Clinton's role in Benghazi doesn't mean there are no grounds from which to criticize her. Besides, they should have learned from "a government takeover of health care" and "you didn't build that" that bumper-sticker slogans can still deliver blows. That's politics.
Respondents to the Pew survey weren't given a list of options to choose from, but had to volunteer their own answers—almost 20 percent couldn't come up with any negative at all—and it's not a good thing for Clinton that a plurality of voters had Benghazi on the top of their minds.
Bill Clinton and his dalliances were the next most frequent answer, at 9 percent. The rest of the responses—her party affiliation, "general dislike," "dishonestly," and "career politician"—were offered by 2 percent or 3 percent of respondents each.
And you can bet that Republicans will put Benghazi front and center if Clinton runs, says Tim Miller, the executive director of America Rising, a Republican super PAC dedicated to opposition research. While he acknowledges that there's been some "silly-season" claims on Benghazi from his own side, "there is a central argument about competence and preparedness that's worth discussing."

His group is working on an "authoritative ticktock" of the attack based on existing sources, which he says will be used to raise difficult questions about Clinton and the administration's handling of events surrounding the attack, from diplomatic security beforehand to how the White House responded afterward.
Clinton's tenure at the State Department is one of her biggest assets, as the Pew poll clearly shows. But just 12 percent volunteered it as the most positive aspect of her career, slightly fewer than those who cited Benghazi as the most negative.
It would be political malpractice for Republicans to leave her tenure at State unquestioned, and Benghazi represents the clearest way for them to go after Clinton's biggest strength. "The overthrow of [Muammar] Qaddafi is seen as one of her signature accomplishments," Miller notes of the former Libyan dictator.
Benghazi undermines one of Clinton's key messages, says Katie Packer Gage, who was Mitt Romney's deputy campaign manager in 2012 and recently started a consulting firm aimed at helping Republicans perform better with female voters. "When she ran last time, she made the case that she was the one who could take that 3:00 a.m. phone call. Well, that 3:00 a.m. phone call came for her, from Benghazi, and I'm not sure that was a particularly strong moment for her as secretary of State," Gage says.

Democrats point out that the attack didn't seem to cause President Obama much harm during the 2012 election, even though it was much fresher in people's minds then. And they argue that the Republican obsession with the attack could backfire when they overreach, as House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has while trying to tie Clinton to Benghazi.
Besides, it's only 15 percent of respondents, they say. "Unlike many in the GOP who remain obsessed with pointing fingers, Secretary Clinton immediately put policies into place to ensure this tragedy never occurs again," says Adrienne Elrod, the communications director of Correct the Record, a Democratic super PAC. "This poll shows that the GOP's relentless attempts to politicize a tragedy aren't working and that a majority of Americans don't buy it."
But in a tight race, 15 percent might be something Clinton needs to seriously worry about. It might behoove her allies to stop laughing at it.

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Anonymous caller: Senator Harry Reid is a pedophile..!

these luciferians are hot and heavy on this stuff very
... Harry Reid (D) should just zip it, because we're NOT going away! EVER


via: GB The Blaze TV
Harry Reid made a wild claim with no evidence and accused Mitt Romney of being a felon. His evidence? A call he got to the office. That’s it. He then doubled down by saying that ‘the word is out there – Mitt has to prove he paid taxes’. It’s such a pathetic and false attack it’s a wonder how Harry Reid lives with himself.
Here is Reid’s statement on Romney’s taxes:
“The word’s out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for 10 years. Let him prove that he has paid them. Where is the proof that he has paid taxes? The one partial tax return shows that he has money hidden in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, in a Swiss bank account.”
Writers note: If Romney released the tax return to the public that showed the accounts he holds his money in …how exactly is that “hidden”? Curious minds want to know, Harry Reid…
Reid continues…
“I’m not making that up. That’s in the partial year that he gave us. Mitt Romney makes more money in a single day than the average class family makes in two years.”
That last line ia about the only thing that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wasn’t making up in his statements.
Just as Glenn was about to get worked up about the Majority Leader’s completely unAmerican comments, an “anonymous” call came in (from someone who sounded a LOT like Stu) with their own idiotic, baseless claims…

GLENN: Hello.
CALLER: I have information.
GLENN: You have information you want to share with me? What is it?
VOICE: About Harry Reid.
GLENN: About Harry Reid?
VOICE: Yes. I can’t tell you exactly how I know this.
GLENN: Okay.
VOICE: But Harry Reid is a pedophile rapist.
GLENN: He’s a pedophile rapist?
VOICE: Yes.
GLENN: Wow. I mean, if somebody came before Congress and wanted to be a – you know, somebody wanted to be a, you know, a cabinet member, you couldn’t be a pedophile rapist. How long has he been a pedophile rapist?
VOICE: Approximately 25 years.
GLENN: 25 years.
VOICE: Now, I should be – I just wanted to be clear. He is not a pedophile. He’s a pedophile rapist, meaning that he’s raping pedophiles.
GLENN: He’s raping pedophiles?
VOICE: Right. He’s a pedophile rapist. He’s not a pedophile. I’m definitely not accusing him of that.
GLENN: Okay.
VOICE: But I am saying that he is a pedophile rapist.
GLENN: All right. Okay. Thank you very much for your phone call. Appreciate it.


After Glenn shared the (disturbing and baseless) claim from Stu the caller that Harry Reid is allegedly a pedophile rapist,  Pat obviously wanted to know the facts of the situation. After all, only an idiot would take seriously anything an anonymous sourced with no facts and then share the information with the public.
Right, Harry?

A Journalist’s Plea :Hollywood, Take Mel Gibson Off Your Blacklist

200px-Mel_Gibson_Cannes_2011.jpg
oped: Indeed I totally agree...No one does it better than Mel...from his start in Mad Max...all the way through the Passion.and beyond..Mel captivated his audience with believable characters and great story lines!
 

Passion of the Christ:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htNO2k3I9TE

And my Fav Mel Movie...being a Vn era Vet he captured this story right on the money:  

We Were Soldiers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYK4jrhepdU  


Addendum: Before the Hollywood Elite,the Jewish Community and the LGBT community attacks a person they really should learn from history the true story: Take a step back in time History 101 WWII era:

http://sharlaslabyrinth.blogspot.com/2013/08/revisiting-pink-swastika.html

 So how about it, Hollywood?






How ironic is it that Hollywood studios walk on eggshells with faith-based groups hoping their religious epics like Noah do a fraction of the business Mel Gibson did with The Passion Of The Christ, while those studios continue to shun Gibson like a leper? What better way to commemorate Passion‘s 10th anniversary than journalist Allison Hope Weiner‘s examination of her relationship with Gibson and how it evolved from harsh coverage to the point where she feels strongly enough about his good qualities and recovery to urge Hollywood to consider giving him another chance. Weiner has written about Gibson for Deadline before, as well as The New York Times and other national magazines. – MF  


It has been a decade since Mel Gibson made The Passion Of The Christ and watched it become the biggest-grossing independent film with $612 million in worldwide ticket sales. In the years that followed, Gibson made several comments that went public, made him seem anti-Semitic and racist. They made him persona non grata at major studios and agencies, the same ones that work with others who’ve committed felonies and done things far more serious than Gibson, who essentially used his tongue as a lethal weapon. As a journalist who vilified Gibson in The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly until my coverage allowed me to get to know him, I want to make the case here that it is time for those Hollywood agencies and studios to end their quiet blacklisting of Mel Gibson. Once Hollywood’s biggest movie star whose film Braveheart won five Oscars and whose collective box office totals $3.6 billion, Gibson hasn’t been directly employed by a studio since Passion Of The Christ was released in 2004.

The Gibson I’ve come to know isn’t a man who’ll shout from the rooftops that he’s not anti-Semitic, or hold a press conference to tell media those audiotapes were released as part of a shakedown, and that he never assaulted the mother of his infant daughter. He won’t explain to people that he first got himself into a career spiral because he’s a long struggling alcoholic who fell off the wagon and spewed hateful anti-Semitic remarks to an arresting officer who was Jewish. He won’t tell you that he’s still got a lot to offer Hollywood as a filmmaker.
The fact that he won’t jump to his own defense is part of his problem, but also part of why I have grown to respect him. That is why on the occasion of this 10th anniversary of Passion, a film about an innocent man’s willingness to forgive the greatest injustice, I propose to Hollywood that it’s time to forgive Mel Gibson. He has been in the doghouse long enough. It’s time to give the guy another chance.

For those who are skeptical, I understand. For the longest time, I disliked Gibson and thought he was a Holocaust-denier, homophobic, misogynistic, racist drunk. I wrote as much in articles for EW and the NY Times. And whenever I wrote about him, I would get irate calls from his representatives saying I didn’t know him.
Then something happened that I never expected. I came to rethink my harsh assessment after I got to know the man. It started when I interviewed him in 2006 for an EW cover. I could see that he was smart, expressing sincere empathy for the people he’d hurt. I had to admit to myself that I was impressed that he hadn’t shied away from answering my tough questions.
We next spoke when he was working on a script about Vikings with his Braveheart writer Randall Wallace. After that, we spoke occasionally on the phone and met for lunch at his Icon Production offices to discuss Get The Gringo. Our conversations were mostly about business, but would carry over to movies or books we liked, trips we’d taken. I liked how his mind worked. Like the movies he directs, the stories he told were incredibly visual. He never asked me for anything or tried to play me, and I’ve interviewed enough movie stars to know when they are working you. Gibson was unafraid to disagree with and challenge me. Our conversations broadened to family, our relationships, religion. 

It developed into something that felt like friendship, which doesn’t often happen with investigative journalists and the subjects they cover. Odder still was that it happened with a man disdained by my colleagues, friends and my family, who, like me, are observant Jews. At this point, Gibson’s career had gone all kinds of wrong, starting with that 2006 DUI arrest, when he told that cop that “the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Four years later, he sounded positively unhinged and racist in surreptitious recordings of an angry phone exchange between Gibson and ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva — the mother of his infant daughter. The whole world heard him shout abusively at her and make racist remarks.
It was after the latter episode that my relationship with Gibson truly changed. It’s very difficult to get to know anyone in a journalistic context — one rarely gets any real insight into the person you’re interviewing. In Gibson’s case, this was particularly true. He wasn’t the kind of person to open up a vein and publicly plead for forgiveness as some do. But a conversation that came months after that changed our relationship. 

I was on vacation with my family when Gibson called me. During his breakup with Grigorieva, he’d gone through a terrible emotional breakdown and struggled to get healthy, gain joint custody of his infant daughter and deal with the fallout from the publication of those awful tapes. He was in a very bad place and we talked for some time about how difficult it was for him to deal with the pain he’d inflicted on his family — his ex-wife Robyn and his seven children, his infant daughter. He got so upset talking about that period in his life that he ended our call abruptly. He’d shared some very deep, personal feelings with me and was in so much pain, that I was honestly worried about him. It wasn’t the type of conversation that one has with an interview subjects. I decided we were friends now and that I could no longer write objectively about him.
Since then, I’ve gotten to know Gibson extremely well. I thought it would be difficult for him to have a friend in the media, but he has been surprisingly honest and trusting. As a lawyer-turned-reporter, I have no problem asking tough questions, even of friends. Gibson never wavered or equivocated when I confronted him, whether the subject was his drinking, his politics, his religion or his relationships with women. It soon became clear that my early journalistic assessment of him wasn’t right.
This crystallized when we met each other’s families. It was hard to blame his family for being skeptical of a journalist, but the issues with my own family were more challenging. Gibson asked to meet them at my son’s bar mitzvah celebration. Imagine the scene: A room filled with Jews. In walks the person who, in their minds, might be the most notorious anti-Semite in America. Gibson attended alone and I can only imagine what was going through his head when he walked into the party. 

Before the evening was over, he was chatting with many of my relatives, who saw a funny, kind, charming guy and not the demon they’d read about. Gutsier still, he attended our Yom Kippur break fast dinner. Anyone who has attended such a gathering knows there is nothing more imposing than making friends in a room full of Jews who haven’t eaten in 24 hours.
It might sound naïve after 20 years writing about celebrities, but my friendship with Gibson made me reconsider other celebrities whose public images became tarnished by the media’s rush to judge and marginalize the rich and famous. Whether it’s Gibson, Tom Cruise or Alec Baldwin, the descent from media darling to pariah can happen quickly after they do something dumb. I was part of that pack of journalists paid to pounce, so I know. I consider myself intelligent, someone who makes up her own mind, but just like readers do, I have accepted some reports at face value. The press said that based on Gibson’s statements, he was a homophobe, a misogynist, a bully, an ant-Semite, so he must be. What he was, I discovered, was an alcoholic whose first outburst was captured after he fell off the wagon. What the later release of audiotapes showed was a man with a frightening temper, capable of saying whatever will most offend the target of his anger. 

I’ve discussed the Holocaust with Gibson and whether his views differed from those of his father. Just as he refused to condemn his father in that TV interview with Diane Sawyer, Gibson refused to discuss his dad with me. Similar to what he told Sawyer, Gibson told me that he believed that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. “Do I believe that there were concentration camps where defenseless and innocent Jews died cruelly under the Nazi regime? Of course I do; absolutely,” he told Sawyer. “It was an atrocity of monumental proportion.” In our conversations, I took that a step further. Why, I asked him “did you say those things about the Jews starting all the wars? Where did those unkind things come from?” Gibson thought for a moment, then answered that he’d been terribly hurt by the very personal criticism of him from the Jewish community over The Passion Of The Christ. He said that while he’d been criticized for films before, this was personal and cruel. He said that when he drinks, he can be a mean drunk and “Stuff comes out in a distorted manner…” His own faith led him to make his version of Christ’s story, and he found himself being attacked for making a film that might get Jews killed, and that he was insensitive that his depiction of Jews as Christ’s killer could inflame religious tensions. He was called names by numerous Jewish leaders and a few people literally spat on him. “The criticism was still eating at me,” he told me. “This was a different kind of hammering. A very personal attack.” 

Based on my exchanges with Gibson and my own reporting on his transgressions, I’ve stopped doubting him. He worked in Hollywood for 30 years without a single report he was anti-Semitic. Before that drunken evening in July 2006, he worked all the time with producers, directors, actors and crew who happened to be Jewish, without incident. But, even if I accept the comments from those who believe his drunken remarks tapped into some deep-seated anti-Semitism back then, the Gibson I know now is clearly a different man, one who has worked on his sobriety since that awful night in Malibu.
Gibson would later tell me that he was grateful the officer pulled him off the road that night because he might have killed someone else or himself. He felt so badly for verbally attacking LA County Sheriff’s Deputy James Mee that night that he later asked him out for coffee to personally apologize. Like many things he does, Gibson never publicized that.
I am not nominating Gibson as an altar boy. It takes a certain kind of person to make movies with the intensity of Braveheart, The Passion Of The Christ, and Apocalypto. As I’ve seen with other temperamental stars, there is a wildness in his blue eyes, an electricity that is part of what has made him a big movie star and a great director. One has only to interview the man to see that there’s something a little different in how he sees the world. He’s intense and rash, and he struggles with alcoholism. Despite the Australian bravado, and the crude humor, he is actually quite sensitive to criticism, even if he doesn’t publicly challenge or deflect it. 

In his second apology on the anti-Semitic statements, Gibson promised to reach out to Jewish leaders. Gibson followed up by meeting with a wide variety of them. He gave me their names when I asked, but Gibson asked me not to publish them because he didn’t want them dragged into public controversy or worse, think he was using them. The meetings were not some photo op to him, he told me, but rather his desire to understand Judaism and personally apologize for the unkind things he said. He has learned much about the Jewish religion, befriending a number of Rabbis and attending his share of Shabbat dinners, Passover Seders and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur dinners. I believe that effort, along with our conversations, helped him understand why Jewish people reacted as they did to The Passion Of The Christ and why there was Jewish support for the Second Vatican Council. Gibson has quietly donated millions to charitable Jewish causes, in keeping with one of the highest forms of Tzedakah in the Jewish faith, giving when the recipient doesn’t know your identity.
Gibson went well beyond a mea culpa tour. He came out of that experience determined to film the Jewish version of Braveheart. He set at Warner Bros a film about Judah Maccabee, who with his father and four brothers led the Jewish revolt against the Greek-Syrian armies that had conquered Judea in the second century B.C. That seminal story is celebrated by Jews all over the world through Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights. Gibson planned to direct, but the effort was undermined by the decision to hire Joe Eszterhas to write it. The screenwriter’s penchant for making public spectacles of private matters (he famously leaked a conversation when he said ex-agent Mike Ovitz threatened him), and Gibson’s unwillingness to publicly defend himself, doomed the film. 

After Eszterhas traveled to Gibson’s Costa Rica estate to discuss a draft he’d written, things got ugly. I’ve heard from sources at Warner Bros that Eszterhas turned in a shoddy script that was rejected. Gibson was upset, the writer’s son taped the outburst and Eszterhas leaked a nine-page memo to a website happy to take his side. Eszterhas said he did all this for reasons that ranged from persuading Gibson to get help to protecting the Jews and Gibson’s estranged girlfriend from his violent rage. Was it possibly a convenient smokescreen to obscure taking a studio paycheck and not putting in the work, or maybe something more, since the writer turned the episode into a windfall when he used the controversy to get an e-book deal?
Gibson will never win in some quarters, but his penchant for not hitting back makes him the dictionary definition of a good punching bag. I’ve observed hypocrisy in several examples where Gibson was vilified. For instance, when agent Ari Emanuel wrote a column for the Huffington Post urging Hollywood to shun Gibson, the actor’s longtime agent, Ed Limato, told me that Emanuel tried to poach Gibson as a client as recently as when The Passion Of The Christ was released. “For some people in my business to publicly try to destroy Mel Gibson because of this incident the other night I find very hypocritical,” Limato told me, “since I know Ari and a few others, who even after The Passion Of The Christ have been calling Mr. Gibson and trying to entice him to their agency as a client weekly.” 

While talent including director Roman Polanski (drugged and sodomized a minor, and fled), Mike Tyson (rape conviction), Chris Brown (beat up ex-girlfriend Rihanna), T.I. (weapons charge), and many others are repped by major agencies, no agency has touched Gibson since Emanuel discharged him as a WME client after those tapes surfaced and he used the “N” word. Gibson has been shunned not for doing anything criminal; his greatest offenses amount to use of harsh language.
I’ve spoken to numerous colleagues who forgave Gibson for his anti-Semitic remarks (that list includes Dean Devlin, Mike Medavoy and Richard Donner) and they are quick to remind you who Gibson helped along the way. Start with Robert Downey Jr, who at one point was broke and an insurance risk on films. Gibson put up the insurance bond himself to secure Downey to star in The Singing Detective, which Gibson’s Icon produced. It was a performance that ignited the actor’s resurgence. I know that he also helped Britney Spears when she hit bottom, and that he tried to save Whitney Houston from the drug abuse that ultimately killed her. Not everybody is that generous: when Gibson himself needed a break that came when Warner Bros hired him for a showy role in The Hangover Part II, he was abruptly dropped when cast complained to director Todd Phillips. Mind you, these same actors happily worked with Tyson despite his felony conviction for rape. 

I don’t bring all this up to excuse anything Gibson has done wrong, but sometimes it’s worth a closer look. Take the notorious audiotapes released during his row with ex-girlfriend Grigorieva. From my own investigation of the incident, I am persuaded Gibson did not beat her or give her a black eye. I base this on interviews with her lawyer and the deputy district attorney who handled the case. Gibson admitted to “tapping” Grigorieva on the head during an argument in which she shook their infant daughter. This was at a time when Gibson was going through an emotional breakdown, and Grigorieva capitalized on that by secretly taping their calls in an effort to shake money out of him.
On March 11, 2011, Gibson was charged with misdemeanor battery and pleaded no contest, without admitting guilt. I covered the case for Newsweek (before Gibson and I crossed the friendship line). The L.A. District Attorney’s office determined that Gibson was responsible for misdemeanor assault but that there was also evidence of extortion by Grigorieva. “There is no question there was admissible evidence of extortion,” former Deputy District Attorney John Lynch said at the time. “The problem, however, was whether the D.A. could get a jury to convict.” Lynch added, “As a practical matter, you have to choose between the two cases. In the one case of domestic abuse, the victim could potentially be a defendant in the other case of extortion. If we’d filed an extortion charge against Ms. Grigorieva and tried to call her as a witness in the domestic abuse case, no defense attorney on the planet would allow her to answer questions.” 

Although the police initially contemplated charging Gibson with a felony, they declined. As one investigator with knowledge of the case told me at the time, “they had enormous problems with the credibility of the complaining witness [Grigorieva].” This statement was also confirmed by sources within the District Attorney’s office.
I’ve since learned from Gibson about his personal spiral that occurred between his 2006 DUI arrest and the breakup with Grigorieva. The day after the DUI, Gibson’s wife asked him to leave the family home. Gibson was suddenly single and alone for the first time in 30 years, cut off from his seven children and wife as he struggled to stop drinking. He was depressed and lonely, his career in shambles as he apologized to anyone who’d listen. Alone in a new house, he tried to stay off the sauce. It was then that he met Grigorieva, a Russian pianist who’d dated composer David Foster after being married to actor Timothy Dalton.
The relationship got rocky when Gibson asked her to sign a co-habitation agreement. Shortly after, according to published emails, Grigorieva began arguing with Gibson about whether he would provide for her if they split. This intensified after the birth of their daughter in October 2009, when she began taping the recordings that she allegedly leaked to the press despite a judge’s order. Those recordings revealed a man in personal turmoil. While they contain racist and misogynistic statements, there is also evidence that the comments she made to provoke those statements were conveniently edited out. No matter. You can’t make any of what he said OK, and Gibson paid a price much higher than whatever monies Grigorieva walked away with. Whatever good will Gibson had in Hollywood evaporated. 

I’ve asked him why he didn’t defend himself when the tapes surfaced. Why didn’t he challenge the assertion he was crazy? He shrugged his shoulders and said his comments just seem to make things worse. So he continues to say nothing.
Hollywood has long been a town famous for loving a good comeback story. In Gibson’s case, I believe that a few powerful people have gone out of their way to prevent that.
I’m telling you, my friend Mel Gibson has pulled himself together. He is sober seven years, hitting the gym for a role in an independent film, and thinking positively about the future. It has been 11 years since he was paid by a major studio to star in a film, and he hasn’t directed a studio film since Braveheart won five Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. He wasn’t the bad person I thought he was back when I first wrote about him, and I’m telling you, he is now not the person you think he is. As one A-list star told me recently, “Mel has spent enough time in the penalty box.”
So how about it, Hollywood?