Excerpt: Round about this time in the election cycle, a presidential challenger finds himself on the stump and posing a simple test to voters: "Ask yourself — are you better off now than you were four years ago?" But, in fact, you don't need to ask yourself, because the Federal Reserve Board's Survey of Consumer Finances has done it for you. Between 2007 and 2010, Americans' median net worth fell 38.8% — or from $126,400 per family to $77,300 per family. (Steyn does it again. Simple, factual, logical dissection of the BS. --Del)
Worth Reading: The Way of the Community Organizer. By Victor Davis Hanson
Excerpt: As the campaign heats up, and the self-imposed restrictions of 2008 disappear, we will likely hear more about the once proud associations and friendships of Barack Obama that were all Trotskyized by the media ministries of truth during the unhinged summer of 2008. In that regard, when the Pew poll recently revealed that the US is more polarized than at any time in the last 25 years, it provided an answer to Rudy Giuliani’s rhetorical question in 2008 about what exactly a community organizer does. I think we now know the answer after four years of them/us divisiveness:
Tell on Me: The ballad of US agents
Too funny. ~Bob
If We Took the Constitution Seriously, Obama Would Be Impeached. By Michael Filozof
Excerpt: If the citizens of this Republic still took the Constitution seriously, Obama would be impeached for his decision to unilaterally grant amnesty to certain illegal aliens. Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution, which enumerates the power of Congress, states that "Congress shall have the Power To... establish an [sic] uniform Rule of Naturalization." Congress has passed numerous laws pertaining to immigration and naturalization, including laws requiring the deportation of illegals.
"Heroes Behind The Badge" Teaser
Upcoming documentary about the police.
Worth Reading: How shock waves will hit US if Greece drops euro. By Matthew Craft
Excerpt: They think the path of a full-blown crisis would start in Greece, quickly move to the rest of Europe and then hit the U.S. Stocks and oil would plunge, the euro would sink against the U.S. dollar, and big banks would suffer losses on complex trades. (I may have had this piece already, but the quote from Don Hank is worth reading with it. ~Bob. Quote: "There's also a (EURO)500 billion European Stability Mechanism that's supposed to be up and running next month, but Germany has yet to sign off on it." That's right. But it's worse: The Spanish bailout was only 100 billion euros, and it has been estimated that Spain needed at least 400 billion euros, so if all of the ESM money went to Greece to prop it up, then there would be no more left for Spain when it comes knocking again, and come it will. And then, there's Italy, which claims it is not going broke, just as Greece claimed it was not going broke until it almost was, and Spain, which claimed it was not going broke until it almost was. My best guess? This is not going to work. Remember that a lot of Americans are no longer eligible for unemployment too, and at the same time, the Fed probably no longer has the political clout to print more unbacked dollars (such a move would lead to a disastrous inflation rate anyway), so Europe probably can't look to America for a bailout this time. I don't make predictions. But I do have expectations. Obama has been begging Merkel for a while to step in and approve the new stability mechanism, seeing it as essential to his re-election chances. The problem is, should more than one country threaten to exit the euro, the paltry 500 billion euros won't help. It is the last resort and it is like a melting ice floe with a family of polar bears on it. The overtaxing of the ESM would completely turn around the Obama re-election game. The too big to fail dream world of the EU and its euro zone vs real market forces is truly the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. Unintended consequences get the last word again. And another word for unintended consequences is God. Don Hank)
Debt crisis: tensions mount as Angela Merkel attacks French economy
Excerpt: Mrs Merkel warned the policies of the new Socialist president could destroy the eurozone by bringing the sovereign debt crisis to France itself. The bleak assessment came on the eve of an important weekend that will see elections in Greece and France and a key G20 meeting of world leaders in Mexico. "Europe must discuss the growing differences in economic strength between France and Germany," she said.
Al Qaeda in Iraq claims credit for recent bombings
Excerpt: The Islamic State of Iraq, the political front for al Qaeda in Iraq, claimed credit for the series of bombings and attacks on June 13 that targeted Shia pilgrims and security forces nationwide and killed 70 people. Note that the Islamic State of Iraq intentionally launched the attacks as Shia began "their polytheistic visit and their pilgrimage to the graves of their idols." The statement was translated by the SITE Intelligence group; an excerpt is below: (Wish they'd read the Qur'an, so they'd find out Islam is a "religion of Peace." ~Bob.)
Eric Holder .. RESIGN NOW. By Fred Brownbill
Excerpt: The Save America Foundation joins the writer below, Republican John Cornyn from Texas, in calling upon the Attorney general, Mr Eric Holder, to do the first honorable thing he has ever done, and that is to resign and to stop bringing the high office he holds into disrespect and dishonor. He has shown repeatedly, that his decision making skills are poor, and are often racist and divisive to the nation, and his refusal to co-operate with the House into various investigations shows utter contempt to the constitution, something he took an oath to defend and uphold. It is long past time for his removal from office and for the investigations into his actions to be stepped up, and for his arrest and prosecution in the crimes he has committed against the American people.
Barry’s damned if you do moment
Excerpt: The economy is tanking and Obama is bringing in almost a million people to compete with Americans for jobs. Anyone want to take a guess what this is going to do to the unemployment rate in this nation? It will probably drive it up high enough that even the Obama Regime cannot cook those numbers. (But probably not before the election. ~Bob.
Brewer Blasts Obama's Surprise 'Backdoor Amnesty' Move
Excerpt: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was taken by surprise at President Barack Obama’s immigration announcement, calling it “backdoor amnesty,” in an interview with Neil Cavuto of Fox News. (Folks, if you are wondering what to think about this un-Constitutional amnesty, remember that the US government will NEVER refuse entry to a mother or father of a child legally in the US. I know because I have lived among Hispanics for over 3 years and hear the stories all the time of parents who readily get visas to visit children in the US. So by granting amnesty to these young people, they are automatically granting amnesty to the parents, and then to the relatives of the parents, etc. The increase in the "legal" immigrant population will grow exponentially at a time when we need less mouths to feed, not more. I suspect this will backfire on Obama. --Don Hank)
Boycott "Blood Cashews" From Vietnam
Excerpt: Coalition to Abolish Modern-day Slavery in Asia (CAMSA) calls on consumers around the globe to boycott cashews exported by Vietnam because they are a product of modern-day slavery. Human Rights Watch, in its publication titled "The Rehab Archipelago," reports that forced labor has been used in drug rehabilitation centers across Vietnam, where inmates have to husk and peel cashews, working six to seven hours a day for $3 a month. According to the report, between 2000 and 2010, over 309,000 people passed through 56 drug detention centers in Vietnam. Cashew export brings in 1.5 billion US dollars a year for Vietnam. (Another mess from the communists. --Del)
US gov’t opposes forcing Iran to reveal assets: Top lawyer accuses Department of Justice of "aiding and abetting" state-sponsored terror after it files amicus brief.
Excerpt: Lawyers for American victims of a Hamas triple suicide bombing who successfully sued Iran for damages have slammed the US Department of Justice’s backing of a court ruling preventing the plaintiffs from obtaining information about Iran’s US-based assets, The Jerusalem Post learned this week. (You might ask whose side Obama and Holder are on. But only if you haven't been paying attention. ~~Bob.)
Justice Kennedy lets Arizona keep voter registration rule
Excerpt: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has agreed to let Arizona’s proof-of-citizenship requirement for people registering to vote remain in effect until further notice. The state had asked the nation’s highest court to let the requirement remain in effect during the current election cycle and as the state appeals an April 17 decision by the 9th Circuit Court Appeals that concluded that federal election law trumps Arizona’s registration requirement.
AQAP destroys tombs in southern Yemen
Excerpt: As the Yemeni military presses its offensive against al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula strongholds in Abyan province, the terror group released a video of the destruction of a tomb in Jaar just before they withdrew from the city. The scene is reminiscent of the Afghan Taliban's destruction of statues of Buddha in March 2001. The videotape was released by the Madad News Agency and showed members of Ansar al Sharia, AQAP's political front, demolishing tombs in the villages of Al Tareyyah, Al Darjaj, and Sayhan near Jaar in Abyan province.
New California budget looks a lot like old budgets. By Dan Walters
Excerpt: The Legislature's Democratic leaders insist that their new state budget is balanced, honest and contains an adequate reserve. "Our budget contains no additional borrowing or so-called gimmicks," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said this week as details were unveiled. Not. It's "balanced" only with some very shaky income and outgo assumptions, it's "honest" only if one ignores dozens of bookkeeping tricks, fund shifts and other gimmicks, and its reserve is half of what Gov. Jerry Brown wants and a fraction of what it should be. (At least there's someone in the CA media who's ready to tell it like it is. The state is still running along that cliff edge, swaying back and forth, wheels just inches from disaster, but no one is ready to really turn the steering wheel to move away from that edge. And the wheels keep getting closer..... --Del)
U.N. suspends mission in Syria because of increasing violence
Excerpt: The United Nations suspended its monitoring mission in Syria on Saturday, a day after the chief observer there warned that spiraling bloodshed was hindering the ability of his team to fulfill its obligations. Maj. General Robert Mood, the chief of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria, announced the suspension in a brief statement that cited the “significant risks” to the lives of the monitors posed by the escalating violence. (Send Hillary--she's been under fire before. ~Bob.)
Satire: North Korean Olympic Team Likely to Win Inaugural Hunger Games Event
Excerpt: In a historic sweep, the North Korean Men’s and Women’s Hunger Games teams swept the event’s Olympic debut. North Korea beat out other competing nations such as Somalia, Haiti, Tajikistan and the Central African Republic. Patterned after the popular book series and feature film, the controversial new Olympic event features all the terror, mayhem and betrayal of the games depicted by The Hunger Games.
Fareed Zakaria: Time For Democrats To Face Facts On Public Pension Reform
Writing for Time magazine, Fareed Zakaria has made a solid argument for public sector pension reform. He makes no bones about who is at fault in what he labels "the single biggest threat to the U.S.'s fiscal health." [O]n the central issue of the [Wisconsin] recall--the costs of public-sector employees--the Democratic Party is wrong on the substance, clinging to its constituents rather than doing the right thing.
President Obama: The Biggest Government Spender In World History. By Peter Ferrara
Excerpt: The U.S. has never before had a President who thinks so little of the American people that he imagines he can win re-election running on the opposite of reality. But that is the reality of President Obama today. Waving a planted press commentary, Obama recently claimed on the campaign stump, “federal spending since I took office has risen at the slowest pace of any President in almost 60 years.”
7th man found guilty in North Carolina terror ring
Excerpt: A North Carolina resident was found guilty Thursday on terrorism charges including conspiracy to murder, kidnap, maim and injure people overseas. Anes Subasic, a 35-year old naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Bosnia, also was convicted of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. He will face up to life in prison at sentencing in August. (Yet another US-Muslim found guilty in terror plot as America's Islamist leadership harps endlessly about 'Islamophobia'. --Tarek Fatah @TarekFatah, Toronto Sun columnist, Muslim against Islamists.)
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World
Excerpt: We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.
Obama Campaign Manager Behind Anti-Gay Ad
Excerpt: Obama campaign manager Jim Messina was behind an infamous 2002 anti-gay ad that aired in Montana, according to a profile by Joshua Green in Businessweek. The ad was run against Mike Taylor, a Republican challenger to Senator Max Baucus of Montana.
Analysis: Obama takes a risk on immigration front. By Charles Babington
Excerpt: There's not much President Obama can do to boost the economy in the next five months, and that alone might cost him the November election. But on a range of social issues, Obama is bypassing Congress and aggressively using his executive powers to make it easier for gays to marry, women to obtain birth control, and, now, young illegal immigrants to avoid deportation. (Interesting, even the MSM are noticing Obama's freewheeling use of Executive Orders to bypass Congress, the courts, and the American people. Between these moves and his myriad "czars" he has done more to impose his personal will on the nation than anyone since maybe FDR. Where is all the screaming about behavior that is more like the all-powerful The Leader than an elected President responsible to the Constitution and the people? Del. Too bad Reagan and Bush didn't know the President had the authority to bypass Congress. Think what they could have done. But President Romney will know! ~Bob.)
Obama on Executive Orders.... then
Below is a link to a lovely clear video of Mr. Obama explaining why he cannot use an Executive Order to stop deportations of illegal immigrants. Of course, that was then.... and this is now. An election year now when he needs the Latino vote. Don't you just love this? And where are the MSM on a story like this? (Rhetorical question) --Del
A Comprehensive List Of Obama’s Worst Executive Orders. By Laurie Roth
Excerpt: There have been over 900 Executive orders put forth from Obama, and he is not even through his first term yet. He is creating a martial law ‘Disney Land’ of control covering everything imaginable. Some of the executive orders he has signed recently have been exposed thanks to ‘Friends of Conservative Action Alerts.’
God Bless the Conservative Father. By Betsy M. Galliher
Excerpt: Michelle Obama sent yet another plea last week, imploring the common man to wish her husband a happy Father's Day. That is to say, Mrs. Obama -- who undoubtedly left the note's details to staff as limited as her time is between book tours, lavish travel, and star-studded NYC campaign events -- has again called upon the people who must toil to fuel Mrs. Obama's lavish lifestyle to heap platitudes upon her petulant composite of a husband; and with a campaign donation from what little is left of our after tax dollars nonetheless. (I guess I would say I wish I could live all the way up to this description, but it sure wasn't for lack of trying. My son wrote me today that he knew I had always tried to be the best father possible. That's true, but I know that in a variety of ways I could not measure up to that. We are all fallible, merely human, and our best is still far from perfect. But I can take at least some pride in not having been too bad a father, and in knowing our kids are really good, decent, hardworking people. (And of course a whole bunch of that is credited to their mother, not just me.) Bless all fathers who tried their best, and best wishes to the fathers now working at it, in a world more complicated and difficult than it's been for many, many years. --Del. I had a mostly conservative father, with three sons. His patriotic values took on two of us, anyway. ~Bob.)
Excerpt: Watch video to see how the Obama Administration treats former allies. House Church Christians are brutally repressed in Vietnam and hundreds of Christian prisoners rot in Vietnam's gulags and the Obama administration doesn't have the decency to mention them in their human rights reports. In fact for the FIRST TIME EVER - in 2012 the US State Department deleted ALL references to religious persecution in its Vietnam human rights reports, downplaying religious freedom and human rights in nothing but a cowardly display of betrayal.
Boko Haram suicide bombers target Nigerian churches
Didn't get the memo. ~Bob. Excerpt: Boko Haram, an al Qaeda-linked Islamist terror group in Nigeria, attempted to bomb five Christian churches in Kaduna state today. The Guardian said that three of the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers, and that 12 people were killed in those attacks: Three suicide bomb attacks on churches has rocked the northern Nigerian state of Kaduna, killing at least 12 people and wounding about 80, officials said, prompting protests in a province that has previously been strained by religious tensions.
“Religion that shall not be named” alert: Associated Press edition
Excerpt: If only we could find where this utterly random “violence” emanates we might be able to do something about it. But alas, the Associated Press hasn’t been able to track that down yet. Although Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jonnie Carson has assured us that religion has nothing to do with the violence in Nigeria, so that eliminates one possibility.”
Marine overcomes odds, masters marksmanship
Excerpt: Lance Cpl. Danthanh T. Nguyen learned the hard way how challenging it can be to master the skills of marksmanship but proved triumphant when she shot expert this April on the range at Camp Schwab. Nguyen, a Houston, Texas native, originally joined the Marine Corps in July 2009 and was discharged from Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, S.C., that October when she failed to pass rifle qualification.
Respect is Earned: It’s not a benefit of the presidency. By Donna F. Fallis
Excerpt: You demand respect for an office for which you have shown no respect. You demand respect of people whom you have sorely disrespected, and you have embarrassed those people through your callous actions. You have apologized for the noble actions of people whose intent was to aid those in harm’s way and yet, you still act as though it is your right to demand?
White House Quietly Moves Obama-Praising Text From Past Presidents’ Bios. By Warner Todd Huston
Excerpt: Originally, the Obama notations were added right into the other presidential bios as an actual part of them. Now those plaudits have been removed from the bio proper and placed in a separate box at the bottom of the bio page, distancing the Obama laudations from the presidential bio pages on which they appear.
Alabama Adopts First Official State Ban on UN Agenda 21
Excerpt: “This bill, that would bar the state from taking over private property without due process, is intended to shelter Alabamians from the United Nations Agenda 21, a sustainable development initiative that some conservatives see as a precursor for the creation of a world government,” explained Alabama GOP Executive Director T.J. Maloney when announcing that it had been signed into law. The Republican National Committee (RNC) adopted a resolution earlier this year blasting the global scheme and urging policy makers to oppose it, and state parties have followed suit.
"They run!" Worth Reading: ABC News Calls Obama Elitist
Excerpt: This can’t be happening. It can’t. But it is. ABC News, the same network and news department that gave us Charles Gibson’s on-camera sandbagging of Sarah Palin, is calling Barack Obama an elitist. The hell you say. You must be reading their report wrong. Nope.
The Department of Homeland Security underestimates the risk that human error could allow pathogens to escape from a proposed $1 billion lab designed to study lethal animal-borne diseases, a U.S. advisory panel warned on Friday. Scientists at the planned facility, known by the acronym NBAF, would study animal diseases introduced accidentally or by way of terrorism that could sicken livestock and humans. It would replace the aging Plum Island Animal Disease Center off Long Island, New York.
Bush Getting Old, Obama Finds New Scapegoat. By Irwin M. Stelzer
Excerpt: Obama has found a new cause of falling growth and stubbornly high unemployment: Europe.
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Robert A. Hall
