The Most Equal Comrade's latest doozy of an utterance is sure to haunt him for a while

Take it away, MEC:

Sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make.

Pretty inadvisable timing on riling up this demographic.  

When the regime needs to have something stupid said, it gives the assignment to Suz

Now national security advisor Susan Rice has tweeted that the "US-Israel security relationship is stronger than it ever has been.

Cue the laugh track.

Except that it's really rather serious:

Having the National Security Adviser become a standing joke is not a good idea, for the nation and for the Obama administration. This reveals deep desperation. And a political operative who is so far out of her depth that she imperils the nation in a job with serious responsibilities.

But consider that the regime is full of such types from top to bottom.

What we're doing is inadequate to the task

It seems the appeal of ISIS ideology is more compelling to young jihad-inclined guys than the sound of US airstrikes:

More than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has so far been unchanged by airstrikes against the Islamic State and efforts by other countries to stem the flow of departures, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The magnitude of the ongoing migration suggests that the U.S.-led air campaign has neither deterred significant numbers of militants from traveling to the region nor triggered such outrage that even more are flocking to the fight because of American intervention.

“The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise,” a U.S. intelligence official said. U.S. officials cautioned, however, that there is a lag in the intelligence being examined by the CIA and other spy agencies, meaning it could be weeks before a change becomes apparent.

The trend line established over the past year would mean that the total number of foreign fighters in Syria exceeds 16,000, and the pace eclipses that of any comparable conflict in recent decades, including the 1980s war in Afghanistan.

And they get busy once they get there:

 Islamic State group militants lined up 30 men in western Iraq and shot them dead Wednesday, an official and residents said, the latest mass killing carried out by the group since its advance across the country.

The slayings, on a main street in the al-Bakir district in the town of Hit, targeted Sunnis tribal fighters allied with the government and members of the security forces that the extremists captured when they overran the town, the official and the residents said.

The militants first paraded the men through town, shouting through loudspeakers that the captured men were apostates who fought against them, residents said. The extremists then lined up the men and shot them dead with assault rifles, residents said.

A photograph obtained by The Associated Press showed a line of the men's bodies by a small pool of blood as onlookers walked by.

Anbar provincial council chairman Sabah Karhout said those killed were captured when the Islamic State group overran the town, located about 85 miles west of Baghdad, earlier this month.

So out newly composed Congress had better get busy as well as soon as it convenes in early January and use every legislative means possible to force the Most Equal Comrade to actually fight this outfit.

Desperate people can be so silly

It seems that the Freedom-Hater party has completely abandoned any notion of trying to persuade the public on substantive levels such as issues and policy, or core principles, or basic logic.

No, these last few days before Tuesday are pure silly season.

How about this Hail Mary from Mary?

Most politicians pander to their constituents, praising them and talking about what an honor it is to serve them. Landrieu tried a different approach with just a few days left before those voters go to the polls — insulting them by telling Chuck Todd that they’re racists and sexists.

Isn’t this something one claims after a loss, and not before it?

HuffPo tried to make hay out of an arcane snit between Scott Brown and a debate moderator over the juxtaposition of some New Hampshire counties, and wound up eating crow for its efforts:

“I apologize that the exchange between Pindell and Brown ended up having to be clarified,” Huffington Post politics editor Sam Stein said in an email to Breitbart News on Friday morning. “I also apologize that we had to update our article with additional information. The fault is mine, not Sabrina’s.”

On Thursday night, as Breitbart News reported, the Huffington Post carried a story about the final debate between Republican Brown and incumbent Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. The Huffington Post headline claimed Brown: “Can't Get His New Hampshire Geography Straight.”

The piece from Sabrina Siddiqui was based entirely on a point that debate co-moderator WMUR’s James Pindell has since admitted he got wrong. In fact, he actually appeared on statewide television to apologize to Brown and voters for his error. The Huffington Post story was actually, as Breitbart News reported, published after Pindell owned up to the error by sending a tweet admitting he was wrong and Brown was right.

Normally, when a media outlet makes a mistake like the Huffington Post and Siddiqui did, it will issue a correction with updated text and apologize to readers for making the mistake. For hours on Thursday evening—and until Friday morning in this email to Breitbart News from Stein—the Huffington Post did not apologize for its action.

The apology from Stein on behalf of the Huffington Post comes not just after WMUR’s Pindell apologized on television but on MSNBC on Friday morning. National Public Radio’s Cokie Roberts said, “This is why people hate the press.”

“Having that little guy just sort of ask that same little question over and over again like that and he was just trying to be so smart, and I think he [Scott Brown] handled very it well,” Roberts said. “He didn’t go the Christie route and say ‘enough with Sullivan County.’ He said ‘no, with all due respect,’ and he didn’t get flustered by it. That was the point—the point was to fluster him and show him as a carpetbagger. I think that is the biggest strike against him [Brown]. But it ended up being a much bigger strike against the member of my trade.”

 

Harry Reid is not his usual blustery self just now:

Harry Reid is now "begging" for support. He made the comment in an email to supporters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The subject for the email from Reid, the Senate majority leader, reads: "I'm begging." Which is no wonder considering his job is at stake -- if Democrats lose the Senate, Reid will no longer hold his current leadership position.

One FHer state committee is going all Tony Soprano:

Democrats are telling voters that they had better head to the polls — or else.

The New York State Democratic Committee is bullying people into voting next week with intimidating letters warning that it can easily find out which slackers fail to cast a ballot next Tuesday.

“Who you vote for is your secret. But whether or not you vote is public record,” the letter says.

“We will be reviewing voting records . . . to determine whether you joined your neighbors who voted in 2014.”

It ends with a line better suited to a mob movie than a major political party: “If you do not vote this year, we will be interested to hear why not.”

The letter and accompanying post card was criticized even by party members, with one Democratic consultant saying it was the wrong way to inspire votes.

“It’s a threatening letter. It’s a scare piece that is unnecessary and inappropriate,” the insider said.

Brooklyn and Manhattan residents who received the note Wednesday were furious, calling it an attempt to browbeat them into showing up at the polls.

“I’m outraged. Whether I vote or not is none of your business!” said a Manhattan voter, who was so incensed that she complained to a local Democratic leader.

In the realm of race cards, Abortion Barbie sees Landrieu's  insinuation and raises her a direct accusation:

In a racially inflammatory ad, Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis strongly implies that her Republican opponent Greg Abbott doesn’t want African-Americans to vote.

“Greg Abbot is bad news,” says the African-American narrator. “As Attorney General, Greg Abbott tried to overturn the Voting Rights Act. Guess who Greg Abbott doesn’t want to vote?”

Technically, Abbott only tried to overturn part of the Voting Rights Act, the part that required Texas to receive approval from the federal government before changing its voting laws. But the campaign ad, being a campaign ad, lacks that nuance.

The ad then goes through a litany of grievances against Abbott, including his opposition to the minimum, and ties him to Ted Nugent’s comments that President Obama is a “chimpanzee.” “So, if you don’t want Greg Abbott to do more damage to our community, you gotta get out to vote.”

That was amusing, but now it's time to get our grown-up on.  Anybody up for some free-market economics, Judeo-Christian values, and foreign policy based on what history tells us about human nature?

The pointlessness of post-America's approach to fighting jihad

This is just pathetic:

As many as 20 to 30 former Guantanamo Bay detainees -- some of whom were released within the last three years -- are suspected by intelligence and Defense officials of having joined forces with the Islamic State and other militant groups inside Syria, Fox News has learned. 

The development has cemented fears that the U.S. military would once again encounter militants taken off the battlefield. 

The intelligence offers a mixed picture, and officials say the figures are not exact. But they are certain at least some of the released detainees are fighting with the Islamic State, or ISIS, on the ground inside Syria. Others are believed to be supporting Al Qaeda or the affiliated al-Nusra Front in Syria. 

A number of former detainees also have chosen to help these groups from outside the country, financing operations and supporting their propaganda campaigns. 

What is the point of capturing and holding them in the first place?

Ever-slimmer pickins on the exchanges

How much slimmer?  This much:

More than 214,000 doctors will not participate in new plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

According to a survey conducted this year by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), a trade association comprised of multi-physician medical practices, “as many as 214,524 American physicians will not be participating in any ACA exchange products.” Reasons abound as to why, but, “chief among them is the fact that exchange plans are more likely to offer significantly lower reimbursement rates than private market plans, confusion among consumers about the obligations associated with high deductibles, and fear that patients will stop paying premiums and providers will be unable to recover their losses”

And, of course, the slimmer pickins are going to cost more.  See some of the tweets in the linked article about 78 percent increases in premiums.  My own premium jumps from $613 to $780 come January.  My fitness trainer told me this morning hers is set to triple.

Because we have to have coverage for every last possible reason to visit a doctor or pharmacy.  Can you imagine what your car insurance would cost if it covered oil changes and replacing brake lights?

Once again, economic freedom is so elegantly simple compared to any kind of collectivist scheme.

Illegal aliens in the voting booth

John Fund at NRO on a really creepy factor in the nation's electoral process:

A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, indicated that 6.4 percent of all non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2 percent in the 2010 midterms. Given that 80 percent of non-citizens lean Democratic, they cite Al Franken ’s 312-vote win in the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race as one likely tipped by non-citizen voting. As a senator, Franken cast the 60th vote needed to make Obamacare law.

North Carolina features one of the closest Senate races in the country this year, between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis. So what guerrilla filmmaker James O’Keefe, the man who has uncovered voter irregularities in states ranging from Colorado to New Hampshire, has learned in North Carolina is disturbing. This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote. Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.

Just what went down in North Carolina? This little exchange:

Greg Amick: Here’s a couple of things you can do. You do not have to have your driver’s license, but do you have any sort of identification?
Project Veritas investigator: But I do have my driver’s license.
Amick: Oh, you do. Show ’em that and you’re good.
PV: But the only problem, you know, I don’t want to vote if I’m not legal. I think that’s going to be a problem. I’m not sure.
Amick: It won’t be, it shouldn’t be an issue at all.
PV: No?
Amick: As long as you are registered to vote, you’ll be fine.

Amick is campaign manager for a sheriff candidate.

Fund puts the lie to the notion that voter fraud is a negligible problem:

It’s no wonder that the two Old Dominion professors concluded that non-citizen votes may have been responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. “Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.”
The authors’ paper is consistent with other credible reports of non-citizen voting. For example, Colorado’s Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler, unveiled a study in 2011 showing that almost 5,000 illegal aliens cast votes in the U.S. Senate election in that state in 2010.
In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period in one of the 94 current U.S. district courts were non-citizens.
In 2012, a local NBC station in Fort Myers, Fla., found that at least 100 individuals in one county had been excused from jury duty because they were not citizens but were registered to vote. Hinako Dennett, who is not a citizen, told the station that she voted “every year.”

A 1996 congressional race in California may have been stolen by non-citizen voting. Democrat Loretta Sanchez won by only 979 votes, and an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight turned up 624 invalid ballots cast by non-citizens who were on federal immigration records, along with 124 improper absentee ballots. The committee found “circumstantial” evidence of 196 additional non-citizen votes that it did not include in its tally. Its investigation could not determine the number of illegal-alien votes that might have been cast: “If there is a significant number of ‘documented aliens’ in INS records and on the Orange County voter registration rolls, how many illegal or undocumented aliens may be  registered to vote in Orange County?”

This is why it's important to win big.  Cheating is ineffective if you're getting your doors blown off.

 

Human rights commissions: hotbeds of pointy-headed busy work and leftist mischief

The other tab that I have open besides this one on which I'm composing this post is a video of the latest meeting of the human rights commission in the city where I live.

My public-policy focus is generally not local, and so I only ever had a vague notion of what the human rights commission did.  A couple of years ago, I had an assignment for a local magazine (note to new readers: My day job is freelance writing.)  to look at how area businesses can make themselves more accessible to handicapped folks.  My editor, understandably, suggested I start with the human rights commission.  I met with the head lady in her office in city hall.  She was your typical smiley-face government bureaucrat.  I was looking for stuff above and beyond the letter of the law, so I could make it a human-interest story, but she just kept coming back to "compliance" with state and federal codes.

God, I hate that word: "compliance."

Can you imagine sitting around all day going online to look up arcane specifications for restaurant doorway widths and restroom sink heights?  What a dismal existence.

Lately the fact of its presence has come across my radar screen as a result of conversations and news items in the local media.  So I thought, just what does this outfit do?

So here I am, checking out the proceedings.  So far, they've given a plaque to one guy and thanked him for his service.  Some lady gave a report about a recent audit that the city got from state and federal departments of transportation, the point of which was to make sure that city public transportation was  - you guessed it - "in compliance" with regs, that is, not discriminating against anybody.  What do they suspect us of?  Some kind of Rosa Parks treatment of bus riders?

It was called a Title VI audit.  The city had to undergo it because it receives state and federal funds.

Now, here's a really basic question, and I suppose those with extensive backgrounds in transportation will find it the height of naiveté: Why aren't we able to cover all the costs of our public transportation with local dollars?

Ah, now, some other lady - or maybe it's the same one; the camera is set pretty far back from the action - is talking about going to some conference at which the Department of Justice - yes, Eric- Holder's bastion of tyranny, corruption and diversity-hustling - was providing guidelines to municipalities on how to not discriminate against Muslims.

By the way, is our city any closer to determining who spray-painted jihadist graffiti on three churches one Saturday night in August?

Now we're getting somewhere.  There's a national-scope angle to this stuff after all.

Now we're back to bureaucratic doo-doo: forming a subcommittee for self-audit or whatever.

Now the lady is talking about going to a meeting of the diversity council of a local university.  Planning MLK Day activities.

A report on a project that enlists high school students to come up with ideas for how to help the commission fulfill its mission, which is "bringing awareness to the community."  Sheesh, are we paying the folks on this outfit to pass their time with this kind of nothingness?

Now there's some kind of discussion about getting disabled people on the mayor's advisory council's sidewalk subcommittee.  I thought I remembered hearing that that stuff had been dealt with when I wrote my article.

Now some guy is talking about poverty being a human-rights issue and how the commission should work with United Way on stuff like getting more people to get at least two years of high school.  Various people mentioning people associated with various agencies around town that they can network with.

More stuff about how to thank those who have contributed to the commission's activity.  Planning an annual dinner or something.

Finally over!  That was nearly interminable.  I feel like I need a bracing cocktail, and it's the middle of the day.

Seriously, what a lot of busy-work, self-congratulation, involvement of the federal leviathan in the life of the community, and Muslim suck-up.  How did we ever get along without this taxpayer-funded playpen?

Because the Israel-hatred goes all the way to the top

That's why Jen Psaki said this:

Jen Psaki made it clear that the Obama administration has no interest in trying to find out who made recent inflammatory comments about Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Is the administration trying to figure out who made these inappropriate and counter-productive comments?” Reuters reporter Arshad Mohammed asked.

“No,” Psaki said. “There are anonymous sources in all of your stories every single day. If we spent all of our time focused on that effort we wouldn’t be working on diplomacy.”

Why would they want to out whoever it was and get that person in trouble when they all think the same thing?

Two good ones we're sending to Washington

Cliff Smith at the American Spectator remarks that House candidate from Alabama Gary Palmer and Senate candidate from Nebraska Ben Sasse haven't been getting as much attention as participants in other races around the country recently - mainly because they're both likely to win handily.

But they're noteworthy for sure.  They'll be great assets on the Hill.

Palmer's creds:

Palmer, an unassuming sixty-year-old white evangelical from a ruby-red Alabama district, is not the kind of candidate that gets the media excited. Yet he may well be the most important congressional freshman in recent history. Around 1980, after spending a dozen years as an engineer, Palmer felt called to political leadership after attending a conference sponsored by Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Yet unlike most of those aspiring to influence public policy, that didn’t initially translate into the desire to run for office. Instead, Palmer started what became the Alabama Policy Institute, the premier think-tank in the state, which he led for twenty-four years.

Initially dedicated to social issues, Palmer’s project became the full-spectrum conservative think tank in Alabama. The Alabama Policy Institute successfully fought a gigantic tax increase, and also successfully advocated for school vouchers, a longtime conservative goal that has been stymied even in conservative states like Utah. This is just a sampling. For more, just check their website: analysis of Alabama’s 2015 budget, papers on how to assure more freedom for local governments or how the legislature should address the state trust fund. Palmer himself has written about Medicaid, education, even Native American issues, and just about everything else you can think of. While state and federal issues are different, they are interrelated and the underlying problems and tensions are usually quite similar. Palmer also has been appointed to several state commissions over the years. When it comes to policy, he already has more knowledge and ideas than most current members of Congress.

If this wasn’t enough, in 1992 Palmer also helped found the State Policy Network, an umbrella group that helps dozens of similarly minded state think-tanks grow by sharing resources, training scholars, and teaching best practices. Furthermore, the State Policy Network provides a forum to share ideas and work together on common issues. The SPN has chocked up a series of victories, and state-level think tanks on the right have flourished. There are now sixty-five, and every state counts at least one. Palmer likes to say he’ll be the only incoming member of Congress with a fifty-state network. He’s right.

So he knows the lay of the land and can dive right into a variety of issues.

Possessor of a master's degree in history that I am, I like Sasse's background:

A Harvard- and Yale-educated Ph.D. in history, Sasse is more a young hotshot reaching his peak than an old hand taking on a new role. Sasse was most recently the president of Midland College, where he turned a large deficit into a large surplus and doubled the student population. However, before this, not only was he an faculty member of the University of Texas, but he served in political and policy capacities in three federal departments: Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. Throw in stints as a management consultant and as chief of staff to Nebraska Congressman Jeff Fortenberry, and you have one of the most broadly and deeply experienced public servants to take office in the Senate since Daniel Patrick Moynihan was first elected back in 1976.

It's a quality field all over the country this time.  We may be at the point where the Tea Party - Establishment divide is morphing into something more constructive.  True, we still have to endure the possibility that Jeb or Chris Christie may suck up considerable campaign-finance oxygen as the 2016 race gets underway in earnest, but we're building a solid bench of folks whose ideas are rooted in unwavering principle.

In short, the situation is improving markedly for conservatives.

All things are relative, of course.  The Most Equal Comrade, while increasingly unpopular, still commands a vast executive branch full of departments and agencies eager to do his bidding.  And we have a sewer for a culture and a populace that could use some actual educating.

But resistance is strengthening.

Glad this is coming out now

It was pretty well known that Mary Burke was not the greatest executive Trek ever had.  Now we discover that her own family had to swallow hard and make the decision to can her:

Burke has claimed that, after two years heading Trek Bicycles’ European operations during which sales figures rose substantially, she was “burnt out” and left for a several month “snowboarding tour.” Now, several former Trek executives claim that the story is entirely false.

They claim that Burke was in fact fired, and by her own family, which controls Trek Bicycles. Sales were not rising substantially under her watch, but were in fact plummeting, and morale was terrible among the European sales staff. This, they allege, was the real reason for Burke’s extended snowboarding tour — her family wanted her away from the company.

Gary Ellerman, a 21-year employee and head of Trek’s Human Resources Department (the article discloses that Ellerman is the current head of the Jefferson County Republican Party) said of Burke:

She was underperforming. She was [in] so far over her head; she didn’t understand the bike business.

Ellerman also claims that Burke’s father Richard Burke, founder and then-CEO of Trek, sent Tom Albers, then-president and CFO, to Amsterdam to evaluate Mary Burke’s performance. Albers reportedly found the European operations in disarray. As a result of Elbers’ review, Burke’s brother John — then-VP of sales and marketing and current Trek president — was obliged to let his sister go.

Asked about a possible political motivation for the disclosure considering his current political role, Ellerman stated:

I was there. This is what went down.

Other Trek employees — who reportedly requested anonymity — claim that European managers described Burke as a “pit bull on crack,” and “Attila the Hun.” Says Ellerman:

There is a dark side to Mary that the people at Trek have seen. … She can explode on people. She can be the cruelest person you ever met.

In the course of her campaign, Burke has repeatedly claimed that European sales climbed to some $50M on her watch. Her 2004 résumé, submitted to the Doyle administration when she was being considered for commerce secretary, claims that the figure was closer to $60M. Despite repeated requests by reporters, Trek has refused to issue any confirmation of the claims, citing the company’s status as a closely held family business.

Ellerman says those sales figures are fabricated.

Heads up, Wisconsinites:  Plenty of time for those of you who were about to make the wrong choice to rethink it.

This is extra beautiful and glorious coming as it does on the heels of the audience-thinning-as-the-Most-Equal-Comrade-stumps-for-Burke-in-similar-fashion-to-what-happened-in-Maryland story that was the subject of today's first post.

Playin' ugly

Freedom-Haters think the race card is so effective that they don't even have to use it truthfully:

Trayvon Marin was shot dead in February 2012 after jumping a neighborhood watchman. The shooter, George Zimmerman, suffered a fractured nose and lacerations on the back of her head. Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder but was found not guilty by a Florida jury. 

This week Harry Reid’s Super PAC tied Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis to the death of Trayvon Martin in an attempt to motivate black voters to get out and vote.

“Tillis won’t fight for us,” the ad says, per the New Yorker. “Instead, he made it harder for communities of color to vote, by restricting early voting and voter registration. Tillis even led the effort to pass the type of ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws that caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.”

National Review says the ad is not only extremely ugly, it is also flatly dishonest.

Stand You Ground had absolutely nothing to do with Trayvon Martin’s death. And nor, for that matter, did George Zimmerman even hint at invoking the defense.

But, Harry Reid does not value facts – he values any lie that will motivate Democrats to get out and vote.

This is the kind of human being - I use the term loosely - who has the gall to ask for your vote to let him / her govern you.

Vote next Tuesday, and vote Republican.  Otherwise, you're the enemy.

Managing to ruin one of our five most important alliances in the world

Israel is not taking kindly the anonymous remarks of a post-American official:

“The United States administration is planning to throw Israel under the bus,” Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday night, responding to harsh words against Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu which were attributed to senior officials in the Obama administration.

“Israel is stronger than all those who curse it,” said Bennett, after Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic quoted officials in Washington as having described Netanyahu as “chickens**t”, among other things.

“The prime minister is not a private individual, but the leader of the Jewish State and the Jewish world as a whole. Serious curses such as these against the Israeli Prime Minister are harmful to millions of citizens of Israel and Jews worldwide,” added Bennett.

“Neither the leader of Syria, who has slaughtered 150,000 of his citizens, nor the leader of Saudi Arabia, who stones women and gays, have been called ‘chickens**t. If what is written is true, then the current administration intends to throw Israel under the wheels of the bus,” he said.

“Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, and it has struggled for its existence over the past 66 years. Israel is the vanguard of the free world against the Islamic terrorism of ISIS, Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran,” noted Bennett.

“Instead of attacking Israel and forcing suicide conditions upon it, it should be strengthened.  I call upon the U.S. administration to renounce these abusive remarks and reject them outright,” he concluded.

The comments that were published Tuesday highlight growing tensions between Jerusalem and Washington in recent months, the latest revolving around Netanyahu’s giving instructions for the building of about 660 homes in Ramat Shlomo, in northern Jerusalem, and about 400 more in Har Homa, in the capital's southern section.

The overlords of the Most Equal Comrade's regime are most willing to play patty-cake with Iran all the way up to its acquiring a nuclear arsenal, most willing to keep sending aid to Gaza even as Hamas rebuilds its tunnels, and most willing to call residential construction projects in East Jerusalem "settlements," but regard Israel with a contempt suitable for enemies.

That's because they hate the civilization that spawned them.

What are the other four most important allies alluded to in this post's title, you may ask?  Well, that list would be subject to a variety of learned opinions.  I would imagine most lists would include the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan.  Maybe South Korea.  Maybe Poland, and / or the Czech Republic.  But no matter the composition of the rest of the list, it most certainly would include Israel.

Chance to see the Most Equal Comrade live? Meh - today's edition

Just like in Maryland a few days ago, the crowd started filing out of a Wisconsin hall while the MEC stumped for gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke.

They have the tools they need to counter our airstrike strategy

ISIS loves to show off hardware it acquires.  They've come across quite a treasure trove recently, it seems:

New images released by the Islamic State reveal that the terrorist group is in possession of surface-to-air missiles capable of shooting down helicopters and civilian aircraft.

Military experts at Jane’s Defence identified the weapons as Chinese-made FN-6 Man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADs, which can reach up to 12,500 feet vertically.

Although the range of the FN-6 puts most military and commercial aircraft out of reach, they are capable of shooting down any aircraft during takeoff and landing, posing a significant threat to flights in and out of Baghdad airport.

More troubling, however, is the fact that terrorists are now sharing information on “the best way to shoot down an Apache helicopter” on the Internet.

What is the next move?

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

An increasing number of members of the journalistic community is no longer willing to be the compliant propaganda arm for the Most Equal Comrade's regime.

Susan Page let loose Saturday night with this assessment, for instance:

USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page has added a sharper edge to this set of knives. Speaking Saturday at a White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) seminar, Page called the current White House not only “more restrictive” but also “more dangerous” to the press than any other in history, a clear reference to the Obama administration’s leak investigations and its naming of Fox News’s James Rosen as a possible “co-conspirator” in a violation of the Espionage Act.

She's not alone:

. . . former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson, . . . said, “It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering”; New York Times reporter James Risen, who said, “I think Obama hates the press”; and CBS News’s Bob Schieffer, who said, “This administration exercises more control than George W. Bush’s did, and his before that.” 

But the very biggest story in this regard is Sheryl Attkisson's realization that the regime had hacked her computer and installed malware on it:

In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed.

“This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn’t have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America,” Attkisson quotes the source saying.

She speculates that the motive was to lay the groundwork for possible charges against her or her sources.

Attkisson says the source, who’s “connected to government three-letter agencies,” told her the computer was hacked into by “a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency: either the CIA, FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency or the National Security Agency.”

The breach was accomplished through an “otherwise innocuous e-mail” that Attkisson says she got in February 2012, then twice “redone” and “refreshed” through a satellite hookup and a Wi-Fi connection at a Ritz-Carlton hotel.

The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.

“The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,” she wrote in “Stonewalled: My Fight for Truth Against the Forces of Obstruction, Intimidation, and Harassment in Obama’s Washington.”

This is Cuba-level stuff.

While it is very late in the day, it is gratifying to see America, particularly the up-until-now-water-carrying media sector, wake up to what it has swallowed and imposed on the nation.

We now see that these goose-stepping jackboots dressed up as wonks and champions of the beleaguered will attempt complete totalitarian rule if we don't stop them cold.

There is still a little time to go about it peacefully and Constitutionally.  Vote a week from today, and vote Republican.  If you don't you're the enemy.

Why that religion and not another?

Roger L. Simon at PJ Media nails it regarding why the "lone wolf who just happened to find direction in jihadist ideology"meme won't wash:

You don’t see “lone wolves” adhering to another religion or ideology. Those guys up in Canada and the New York nut case with the hatchet, they weren’t spouting Mahayana Buddhism or Zoroastrianism or the Book of Mormon or the Book of Mark or the Bhagavad Gita or Kabbalah or even, these days, Marxism-Leninism-Mao-Tse-tung thought… or have I missed something?

So our so-called protective agencies — foreign and domestic — living in this PC nightmare, don’t even get to ask the most obvious operative questions such as: Just what is it about Islam that attracts these people? (Can you imagine the discontent this creates inside the FBI, intel agencies and especially the military? The memoirs are just beginning.)

And so no lasting progress is made, no traction is gained, in the war against jihad.

The Freedom-Hater party tries to nationalize the non-existent racial angle of the Ferguson shooting

The FHers would be well-advised to drop it, except for the fact that they don't have anything with which to lob Hail Mary passes in these last eight days besides identity-politics grievance-mongering.  So we get this kind of thing:

A flyer distributed by the Georgia Democratic Party (Ferguson is in Missouri) warns:

“On August 9, 2014, an unarmed 18-year old African-American named Michael Brown was fatally shot six times and killed by a white police officer, his body left in a pool of blood for four hours. Ferguson Missouri’s population is 67% African-American. But the city’s mayor, 5 of its 6 city council members, and 94% of its police force are white. What are we going to do about it? If we want a better, safer future for our children, it’s up to us to vote for change.”

Note first that this flyer was distributed in Georgia, not Missouri. In other words, according to Democrats: Republicans everywhere are racists. Moreover, if 67 percent of Ferguson citizens are black and they elect a white mayor and city council members shouldn’t that be applauded as a sign that they are committed to America’s inclusive ideal, and are not voting along racial lines? Wouldn’t Democrats be saying that if white majority populations were voting for blacks (as they in fact do)? Once again the claim that this reflects white racism is itself a racist claim, one that is typical of self-hating progressive whites.

The flyer’s timing couldn’t have been worse. The just released autopsy report shows that Michael Brown was only unarmed because he failed to wrestle Officer Darren Wilson’s gun from his holster, when he attacked Officer Wilson in his police car. How many innocent citizens attack a policeman in his police car and attempt to grab his gun from him?

Aren't the FHers aware that even Bill Maher sees what the deal is?

Assume that we'll be exposed to an ever-more-ratcheted-up shrillness level for the next week.

When a petty bureaucrat with an axe to grind can make a citizen acting within his rights undergo months of monumental inconvenience

Remember my post from the other day in which I mused on the Most Equal Comrade's very odd brand of totalitarianism?  I observed that most tyrants like to strut their stuff on the world stage, engage in some aggression, and that, while the MEC certainly fits the qualification for a totalitarian socialist at home, he's strangely unicorns-and-rainbows / defer-to-pointy-heads-in-international-bureacracies in his attitude toward post-Amrica's role in the world at large.

A story out of the UK shows that this new brand of Leftism is alive and well there, too.  Check out this incident for an example of the weird combination of thought-and-speech control and voluntary dhimmitude that is doing in Western civilization:

A pensioner who said ‘I’m not Muslim’ when he was asked to remove his shoes at airport security has spent more than six months facing charges for racism.

Paul Griffith, 75, pictured, set off the security scanner’s alarm at Stansted airport when travelling to Malaga for a week’s holiday.

He removed his shoes as requested, but said: ‘I am not Muslim am I?’ 

A security guard accused him of racism and called the police, saying he was upset by the remark.

'One minute I am queuing up to get on a plane and the next I am confronted by two armed policemen. 

'They said I had used racist language and took me to an office in the terminal,' Mr Griffith said yesterday. 

Mr Griffith was allowed to go on his trip but was arrested when he returned. He was charged with causing ‘racially or religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress’.

'When I got back I had to wait six hours before they interviewed me again, arrested me and said that was being charged with causing racially aggravated harassment.

'I was photographed, had my finger prints taken and they also took a DNA swab from my mouth. 'Then they said I would have to go to my local police station. 

When I went to Colchester police station I was told I had been charged with an offence under the Crime and Disorder Act but that I could accept a caution instead.

'I refused to do that - I had done nothing wrong and I wasn’t going to admit to a criminal charge if I wasn’t guilty of any crime.'

Chelmsford Magistrates' Court finally dropped the charges, but the fact that this man was inconvenienced at all bodes ill for the state of our civilization.  As does the official misuse of the term "racism."  Islam is a stinking religion.

Ukraine wants to side with the West; will we preserve a West for it to side with?

Results from Ukraine's parliamentary elections show a decidedly pro-Western tilt:

Pro-Europe parties secured a big win in an election in Ukraine, a partial vote count showed on Monday, with President Petro Poroshenko hailing people's support for his plan to end a separatist war and pursue democratic reforms sought by the West.

Early figures from the vote count showed that Poroshenko's bloc and the party of his ally, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk, were both taking over 21 percent of the votes cast from a field of 29 competing parties.

Addressing Ukrainians two hours after polling ended on Sunday night, he thanked voters for backing a "democratic, reformist, pro-Ukrainian and pro-European majority".

Which makes US Congressional elections a week from tomorrow all the more crucial.  We must let the people of Ukraine - and anywhere else - know that the people of our land intend to restore it as the United States of America and resume the lead in the defense of freedom in the world.

What we stand for

Fifty years ago tonight.  Its thunder continues to echo through the years.  This is conservatism plainly yet passionately articulated: The notion that the individual is sovereign, answerable only to his or her God for what he or she does with that sovereignty, that the state's only function is to establish sufficient order for us to enjoy maximum liberty, and that this liberty, running against the historic grain of human governance as it does, must prevail against the constant threats it faces.



You're looking at the most moral president, with the most clearly-thought-out set of core principles, that America has had since Abraham Lincoln.

Memo to Mayor Parker: Before letting loose an identity-politics whine, it behooves you to have your ducks in a row

The lez Houston mayor - she of the attempt to make pastors submit sermons and communications to the gummint - sent out a series of tweets saying that the reason her daughter had to jump through so many hoops to get a driver's license is that the girl has two lez moms.

But that's not quite what went down:

But, the mayor was not being quite honest.
The Texas DPS released a statement on the incident.
Via Addicting Info:

DPS Press Secretary Tom Vinger took issue with Parker’s recollection of events, writing in a statement:

“All individuals applying for their first Texas driver license must provide a variety of documents to prove their identity, Social Security Number, U.S. citizenship or lawful presence status, and Texas residency. In this case, the adult applicant did not initially present sufficient documentation to prove residency. Once she provided the required documentation, she was able to complete the transaction. There is no indication that any delay in the process was related to same-sex marriage.”

Source: Huffington Post

Her daughter, like many other applicants who walk into a licensing office, brought the wrong documentation.
It had nothing to do with her mother’s sexual orientation.
How sad.

Busted by Addicting Info and HuffPo, no less.  Ouch.

It's on purpose - today's edition

A hobbled post-America with lowered expectations.  That was the plan and that's what the Most Equal Comrade and his junta have accomplished:

(Reuters) - The share of part-time workers in the U.S. labor force is likely to remain high, meaning the labor market is still "far from normal," Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart said on Thursday.

In remarks prepared for delivery to a conference on workforce development, Lockhart said there was likely to be some reduction in the use of part-time workers as the economy strengthens further, but probably not to levels seen before the recession.

"In other words, preference for part-time workers is likely to persist," he said. 

"For Fed policy purposes, the balance of evidence suggests the labor market is still far from normal, even if normal is not what it used to be."

The destruction of ambition and self-reliance.  Check.

What name do you need to know to understand how North Korea and Iran became the nuclear threats that they are?

Wendy Sherman.  She has been involved in appeasing the Kim dynasty for many years:

Sherman displayed a disturbing tendency to gush about Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator with whom she negotiated. Apparently flattery of politically powerful people was a career strategy she mastered. Foreign Policy Magazine noted in 2011:

Sherman, who served as State Department counselor and North Korea policy coordinator under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, traveled to Pyongyang with Albright in 2000. Here's how the NPR obit on Kim, who died this past weekend, described her take on Kim:

 Wendy Sherman, a special adviser to President Clinton on North Korea, accompanied then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Pyongyang in 2001, and met Kim along with Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson.

"We shared similar impressions of meeting him. He was smart and a quick problem-solver," Sherman says. "He is also witty and humorous. Our overall impression was very different from the way he was known to the outside world."

Sherman sat next to Kim at a stadium to watch a huge festival of synchronized dancing. She says she turned to Kim and told him she had the sense that in some other life, he was a "great director."

"He clearly took such delight in putting these performances together," she says. "And he says, yes, that he cared about this a great deal and that he owned every Academy Award movie, he had watched them all, and he also had every film of Michael Jordan's NBA basketball games and had watched them as well."

Fast forward to 2014:

The brutal and repressive dictatorship may now have the ability to hit the western United States with a nuclear warhead, not to mention the ability of hit Japan. That nation’s response is yet to be seen, but one can expect the Japanese “nuclear allergy” to fade even more in the face of a potential mortal threat.

Even more ominously:

Gen. Scaparrotti said North Korea may have gained know-how on warhead-miniaturization technology through its relationships with Iran and Pakistan.

Iran does not yet possess nuclear weapons.  What are the odds that North Korea, hard-pressed for foreign exchange, will sell missiles, warheads, and related technologies to Iran?

And guess who is on the job negotiating with Iran on preventing that country from obtaining nuclear weapons? None other than Wendy Sherman, now head of the US negotiating team, bringing her appeasement approach to the mullahs.

And what qualifies her to be in such a position?

Ms. Sherman brings just the sort of credentials you would expect in a Clinton and Obama appointee, currently the fourth-ranking employee in the Department of State:

• A degree and work experience in social work;
• The former director of EMILY’S list, the abortion-supporting political fundraising organization contributing almost exclusive to Democrats;
• Former head of the DC office of the failed Dukakis presidential campaign;
• The former director of the office of child welfare of Maryland
• Founding president of the Fannie Mae foundation, a money-dispensing offshoot of the quasi-governmental agency that more than anyone else was responsible for the 2008 mortgage crisis.

A quintessentially FHer curriculum vitae.

This passes for serious national-security and foreign-policy conduct with the post-American overlords.

When pressure makes principled righties go wobbly

Ramesh Ponnuru's column at Bloomberg today asserts that Ohio's governor is on the wrong path on a rather important issue:

Kasich is one of several Republican governors trying to do the same balancing act: opposing Obamacare while taking its Medicaid money. He pushed Ohio to participate in this expansion over the objections of many state Republicans. His remarks highlight the difficulty his party is having on Medicaid -- and point to a weakness that could hurt his chance at the presidential nomination.

Medicaid is structured in a way that makes it hard even for Republican governors to resist its expansion. Even before Obamacare passed, when a state would increase Medicaid benefits, the federal government would typically pick up half the cost. So governors and state lawmakers could offer voters two dollars of benefits for every dollar in taxes they imposed. Other states' taxpayers would make up the difference.

Obamacare offers an exaggerated version of this deal, in which the federal government picks up almost all of the extra costs of the Medicaid expansion. A state that opts out of the expansion doesn't save money; it just sees its tax dollars go to other states.

Why do governors like Kasich do it?

Few of them are doing it because they want to seem like compassionate conservatives (Kasich stands alone in vigorously making that case). They're doing it because, looked at from the narrow perspective of a state with no concern about federal spending, it simply makes sense to take the money -- and it makes sense even if Medicaid provides few health benefits for the people who receive it.
Conservatives have tried to counter this budget logic, but not very persuasively. They say that the federal government, facing a long-term debt problem, might one day renege on its deal and stop covering all the Medicaid costs it says it will. That's not a prediction that fits well with the federal track record, or with the picture conservatives usually paint of reckless federal spending.

This "compassionate conservatism" stuff (who the hell thought up that term, anyway?) can even infect great men like the governor of proud and prosperous Texas:

Kasich is in a class of his own on the issue. He has repeatedly suggested that those who oppose the Medicaid expansion are showing a lack of Christian charity toward the poor. It's an argument reminiscent of Texas Governor Rick Perry's line, in a 2011 debate, that those who oppose in-state tuition for the kids of illegal immigrants are heartless. Kasich's argument is also opportunistic. He never proposed this kind of Medicaid expansion when he was in Congress, and would almost certainly not have found it so compelling if he had to find a way to pay for it. 

These are busy men, with full daily schedules and many issues, from the detailed and pragmatic to the lofty and timeless, on their plates.  They meet hundreds of people weekly.  Still, is it too much to ask of them that they remember the demarcation between volitional charity and coerced state remedies to people's challenges?

When you waver from your conservative principles, you open the door to being mired in all kinds of nonsense.

Never do it.