RECENT HOUSE COMMITTEE FINDING ON BENGHAZI INCONCLUSIVE

23 Nov

No closure or real answers provided

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A friend of mine often says, “You just can’t fix stupid”.

The recent end to a 2-year House Committee hearing on Benghazi simply does not add up. The liberal media is leveraging the fact that the hearing was “GOP controlled” lends credence to the ruling.

Listen, I’m not sure I trust some of the GOP members any more than I do liberals.

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Here are some unanswered questions:

  • Why, on the anniversary of the most tragic terrorist attack on the U.S. would our government NOT have additional security at the Benghazi outpost where we knew Ambassador Stevens was assigned.
  • Are we to believe the brave members of our U.S. security team lied about being held back for 30 minutes before disobeying orders to “stand down” ?
  • Why would the President and his administration continue to blame the obscure anti-Muslim video for the attack even knowing early on that this was a terrorist attack?
  • Why was a “gag order” issued during the investigation.

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No, don’t pee down my leg and tell me it’s raining.

The Senate Committee on Benghazi led by Trey Gowdy has only has one hearing thus far.  This isn’t over.

And if in the end, the results prove there was no intentional conspiracy to withhold additional support during the attack, it will still just justify the negligence by this administration in being proactive in protecting our brave men and ambassador who lost their lives – and who administration officials have just written off as casualties of war.

No, you just can’t fix stupid.

OBAMA FOREIGN POLICY

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How to Rebuke a President

23 Nov

If not impeachment, then what?

Censure-plus.

Dec 1, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 12 • By JAY COST

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Cen·sure

 verb: 3rd person present: censures; past tense: censured; past participle: censured; gerund or present participle: censuring

  1. To express severe disapproval of (someone or something), typically in a formal statement.     
  2.  The expression of formal disapproval

For responding to a president who defies his constitutional limits, Congress is said to possess four powers: to impeach, to defund, to investigate, and to withhold confirmation of nominees.

obama censure

Gary Locke

But there is a fifth recourse, which the new Republican Congress might consider in view of President Obama’s executive amnesty for illegal immigrants: the power to censure. In fact, censure could work in tandem with Congress’s other powers, helping the legislature make the moral case for responding to the president’s lawlessness.

Presidential censure is a rare occurrence. Most notably, in 1834, the Whig-controlled Senate censured President Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, for moving federal deposits from the Second Bank of the United States to local banks, derisively called his “pets” because most were operated by loyal Democrats.

Jackson’s legal justification was dubious at best. Under the law, only the secretary of the Treasury could initiate such a transfer, and then only if the funds were deemed insecure. But the Bank had been impeccably run since Nicholas Biddle became its president in 1822. An investigation had ascertained that the funds were perfectly safe, and the House had voted overwhelmingly to affirm that fact. Treasury Secretary William Duane, moreover, refused to remove the money or to step down so Jackson could install somebody who would. Jackson fired Duane, replacing him with Roger Taney without Senate confirmation. Taney’s cronies would go on to grossly mismanage funds in Jackson’s pet bank in Baltimore.

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This series of actions added up to a severe presidential encroachment. So the Senate—led by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster—censured Jackson by passing this resolution: “Resolved, That the President, in the late Executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.”

The censure wounded the president’s bountiful pride, so much so that in 1837, Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, a fierce Jackson loyalist, had the resolution stricken from the record.

The facts surrounding Obama’s amnesty of illegal immigrants parallel those of Jackson’s deposit removal scheme. In both instances, we see a president circumventing the traditional and proper constitutional pathways to confer a partisan benefit, creating a dangerous precedent. Jackson had no right to remove deposits that Congress deemed safe; Obama has no right to exempt large classes of people from laws that were duly authorized by the government. Jackson’s actions were meant to rebuke Biddle for supporting Henry Clay for president in 1832 and, later, to supply patronage to pro-Democratic bank managers; Obama’s action is a blatant attempt to curry favor with a sought-after voting bloc and make his partisan opponents look bad in comparison. Both presidents’ unilateral measures admit of no limiting principle; the law is abrogated simply because the president finds it politically inconvenient. If this became a norm, it would destroy our system of government.

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Indeed, Clay’s denunciation of Jackson’s deposit removal rings true today: “We are in the midst of a revolution, hitherto bloodless, but rapidly tending toward a total change of the pure republican character of the government, and the concentration of all power in the hands of one man.” Obama, like Jackson before him, seeks to aggrandize the executive branch at the expense of the legislative branch, unbalancing the constitutional regime and justifying censure.

Censure alone, however, would be a meek gesture. Devoid of substance, it would signal legislative impotence; perversely, it might even strengthen Obama’s hand. Something similar happened in 1834 when, after the Senate censured Jackson, nothing changed. The money stayed in the pet banks, and all that Clay really managed to do was offend Jackson’s sense of honor. As historians David and Jeanne Heidler rightly note, “Clay won this battle, but Jackson won the war.”

Thus, censure should be wielded in conjunction with other legitimate legislative powers.

Recent news reports have suggested that Republicans have a plan in mind. As Byron York wrote in the Washington Examiner:

Republicans will work on crafting a new spending measure that funds the entire government, with the exception of the particular federal offices that will do the specific work of enforcing Obama’s order.

Republican sources liken the contemplated action to Congress’s move to stop the president from closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantánamo Bay: In 2009, lawmakers denied Obama the money he would have needed to proceed. Guantánamo remains open.

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Sign the National Petition to End the Border Crisis Now!

22 Nov

IT’S TIME TO DRAW THE LINE AND PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION!

https://secure.teapartypatriots.org/endthebordercrisis/radio714

hannity levin

“If Congress agrees to fund implementation of Obama’s new executive amnesty, it will encourage more illegals — children AND adults — to take the dangerous route across the border. That’s just wrong.” – Sean Hannity

“Since President Obama took executive action granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, Congressional action is more urgent than ever. We must block implementation of this Constitutional breach. We must secure the borders. Please sign the emergency petition  right now.” – Mark Levin

Sign the petition below for access to our new border crisis documentary, “The Border States of America”!!

. We must block implementation of this Constitutional breach. We must secure the borders. Please sign the emergency petition  right now.” – Mark Levin

Sign the petition below for access to our new border crisis documentary, “The Border States of America”!!

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S.H. TOWNSEND: The War on Women – More of a battle for some.

20 Nov

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This is the 2nd in a series from S.H. Townsend dealing with a conservative woman’s perspective on the “war on women”.

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Is there a war on women? How has it affected me? I have found myself in the midst of battles for which I was unprepared.

It was drilled into my head by my mother’s partner that all men were scum and couldn’t be trusted, but I also came to the conclusion that women couldn’t be trusted. This was after being bullied by my female peers throughout junior high school over, wouldn’t you know it, boys.

I had very few real female friends. I felt like they were all out to hurt each other. I had witnessed it many times, the catty remarks, the backhanded compliments, the unspoken competitions between women, and I didn’t want to participate in any of it. I found most females to be boy crazy. I had no interest in chatting about such insipid topics as men’s bums, or engaging in ridiculous debates about who was the hottest guy, so I became one of the guys.

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There were times when my male peers treated like the female that I am. I thought it was chauvinistic and rude, and I chastised them for it. I was woman, hear me roar! My male peers were in fact not really doing anything wrong, but I didn’t see it that way at the time.

One of the biggest battles into which I was thrust was during my first marriage. A huge portion of the battles took place at a church I attended with my first husband, who was probably the king of chauvinists. It wasn’t his fault. His father was a chauvinist, and the church he attended upheld chauvinist beliefs and had absolutely no respect for women. Women were to be seen and not heard. Women were not allowed to make important decisions. Women could play the piano and sing. Women could be Sunday school teachers and worship leaders, but a woman leader? That’s not of God! Women are subject to the men! WOMEN ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SILENT IN CHURCH!

During the last few months of my marriage, my first husband got arrested on a bench warrant. The pastor of the First Church of the Misogynist of Latter Day Saints* (and probably not the last) told me that I had no right to be angry. Of course I was angry! I had to take a day off work and spend money I didn’t have to bail him out of jail!

My marriage was nearing its eventual end. I sought help from the church. I was under the impression that churches were filled with kind people who lived to serve others, because it was what Jesus did during his lifetime. I admitted to the church that my marriage was falling apart.

Throughout my two year attendance, I was told that my husband’s sin was my fault. I didn’t pray or fast enough. I wasn’t a good wife. I did everything I thought a good wife should do. Proverbs 31 was my guide. I did every single one of the things possible to do, but it still wasn’t good enough to save my marriage. I WAS PERFECT, and it was killing me.

I went to the church for help. I told them how I was doing everything in Proverbs 31, and I was told it still wasn’t enough. Upon hearing that statement, I told the pastor if the church refused to help me, I was filing for divorce. The pastor’s response was, “He’s your mule.”

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I never agreed to a marriage with a husband who ran the bars and brought other women home. (I felt more hatred toward women because he brought so many into our home.) I pointed out that the vows had broken and I was done. The pastor’s response was, “If you divorce him, you’ll go straight to Hell, and so will any man you marry.” I was beyond the valley of angry. I should have just shut up and left, but the words, “I’ll see you there,” escaped my lips. I left that church and didn’t look back.

Stay tuned for part three, where I will further discuss my experiences on the battlefield.

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Mark Caserta: Was Obamacare an intentional deception?

20 Nov

It seems that everything about this administration is built around a planned deception of the American people.

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What can we now believe?

Nov. 20, 2014 @ 12:24 AM

Evidence is rapidly developing that suggests the lies about Obamacare which helped pass the law and get President Obama elected were premeditated.

Economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the Obama administration’s consultants on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is under attack for comments he made last year in which he said the “stupidity of the American voter” was a key factor in passing Obamacare in 2010.

Gruber’s impartation regarding the president’s signature health care law emerged in a video taken at the Annual Health Economics Conference last year.

“This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” he said during a panel discussion at the University of Pennsylvania in October 2013. “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the ‘stupidity of the American voter’ or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”

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Gruber said he regretted making the comments last Tuesday during an on-air interview with MSNBC’s Ronan Farrow. But even as Gruber apologized, subsequent videos began to surface adding veracity to Gruber’s remarks acknowledging the administration’s “lack of transparency” in the legislative process.

“You can’t do it politically. You just literally cannot do it, okay, transparent financing and also transparent spending.” Gruber said. “In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed, okay.”

In a very telling fourth video Gruber not only insults the American people but portrays President Obama as being complicit in misleading Americans.

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“Barack Obama’s not a stupid man, okay?” Gruber said in a college talk at Holy Cross in March 2010. “He knew when he was running for president that quite frankly the American public doesn’t actually care that much about the uninsured. What the American public cares about is costs.”

And indeed, the president kept Americans focused on the “affordability” of his health care debacle.

As a candidate in 2008, Barack Obama repeatedly said his healthcare plan would reduce the typical family’s annual premiums by up to $2,500 per year. Often, he didn’t include the disclaimer “up to,” simply saying the “typical” family would save about $2,500 a year on premiums. Yet, this promise, as so many others, did not come to fruition for Americans.

And last Friday, just hours before the health insurance marketplace was to open to buyers seeking insurance for 2015, the Obama administration unveiled data showing that many Americans with health insurance plans purchased under the ACA could face up to 20 percent increases in their premiums unless they switch plans!

I believe these were calculated deceptions which changed the course of American history. Obamacare and very likely the election of Barack Obama would never have happened if the American people had known the truth.

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As a result, Democrat leadership and this president have stained American history, forged a legacy of deceit, and lost all credibility with the American people.

Mark Caserta is a conservative blogger, a Cabell County resident and a regular contributor to The Herald-Dispatch editorial page.

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OBAMA MAKES HIS MOVE ON IMMIGRATION

19 Nov

Emperor Obama tests his executive power

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In a broad test of his executive powers, President Barack Obama declared Wednesday he will sidestep Congress and order his own federal action on immigration — in measures that could spare from deportation as many as 5 million people illegally in the U.S. and set up one of the most pitched partisan confrontations of his presidency.

Obama declared that Washington has allowed America’s immigration problem “to fester for too long.”

The president will use an 8 p.m. EST address Thursday to announce his measures and will sign the executive actions during a rally in Las Vegas on Friday. In doing so, Obama will be taking an aggressive stand that he had once insisted was beyond his presidential power.

As many as 5 million people in the country illegally are likely to be protected from deportation and made eligible for work permits under the plan. They would not have a path to citizenship, however, and the actions could be reversed by a new president in two years. Officials said the eligible immigrants would not be entitled to federal benefits — including health care tax credits — under Obama’s plan.

The 5 million estimate includes extending deportation protections to parents and spouses of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who have been in the country for five years. The president also is likely to expand his 2-year-old program that protects young immigrants from deportation. The administration had considered extending the executive action to parents of young immigrants covered under the 2012 Obama directive, but immigration advocates said they did not expect the parents to be included in the final plan.

“What I’m going to be laying out is the things that I can do with my lawful authority as president to make the system better, even as I continue to work with Congress and encourage them to get a bipartisan, comprehensive bill that can solve the entire problem,” Obama said in a video on Facebook.

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Laying the groundwork for his actions, Obama invited 18 Democratic members of the House and Senate — but no Republicans — to dinner at the White House on Wednesday. Among the networks airing his Thursday speech will be Univision, which will interrupt the Latin Grammys to carry his remarks, assuring him a huge Spanish-speaking audience. The major broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — were not planning to air the speech, but cable news networks were.

Obama is to speak at Las Vegas’ Del Sol High School on Friday, a school with a large population of non-English speaking students where Obama unveiled his blueprint for comprehensive immigration legislation in 2013.

Republicans vehemently oppose the president’s likely actions but are deeply divided and have spent much of the week intensely debating how to respond. Some conservative members have threatened to pursue a government shutdown and one — two-term Republican Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama — raised the specter of impeachment on Wednesday.

House Speaker John Boehner’s spokesman criticized Obama’s planned announcement, noting that the president himself had said in the past that he was not “emperor” and was limited in his ability to act.

“If ‘Emperor Obama’ ignores the American people and announces an amnesty plan that he himself has said over and over again exceeds his constitutional authority, he will cement his legacy of lawlessness and ruin the chances for congressional action on this issue — and many others,” the spokesman, Michael Steel, said.

A wide-ranging immigration bill passed the Senate last year, but stalled in the Republican-led House. Senate Democratic leaders on Wednesday took turns declaring their support for Obama’s unilateral action, blaming Republican inaction for forcing Obama to act.

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“There’s one more chance: Just put the bill on the floor, Speaker Boehner,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a lead author of the bill that passed the Senate. “Pass the bill and we will not even have to debate executive action.”

Even Republicans who supported the Senate bill that would have overhauled immigration laws said Obama’s go-it-alone approach would backfire. Still, they cautioned their party colleagues not to overreach in their response.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who worked on the Senate legislation, said the executive actions would leave the status of millions of immigrants unresolved and would not address what he called a broken immigration system.

“Our response has to be measured — can’t capitulate, can’t overreact,” he said. “Impeachment or shutting down the entire government would be an unwise move.”

Adjustments also are expected to a 2012 program that allowed immigrants under 31 who had arrived before June 2007 to apply for a reprieve from deportation and a work permit. More than 600,000 young immigrants have been shielded from deportation to date under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Removing the upper age limit so that applicants don’t have to be under 31 — one option under consideration — would make an additional 200,000 people eligible.

In one specific example, about 250,000 farm workers in the United States illegally would receive work permits under Obama’s actions, according to Giev Kashkooli, the national political legislative director of the United Farm Workers who met with White House officials and with Obama on Wednesday. The UFW had been hoping for a specific program that would provide work permits to more farm workers.

The 250,000 farm workers would be eligible by being parents of children who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

The beneficiaries of Obama’s new executive action would be treated in the same manner as those immigrants who were shielded from deportation in his 2012 directive, according to one official who discussed the limits of Obama’s action on the condition of anonymity, lacking authority to speak on the record at this point.

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Those young immigrants covered by the 2012 action can obtain work permits but are not eligible for food stamps, federal welfare benefits or disability benefits under the Supplemental Security Income program. They also are ineligible for tax credits under Obama’s health care law, though they can buy health coverage at full price on the exchanges created by the law. They may be eligible for public benefits provided by some states.

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DOUG SMITH: THE ODOR OF MENDACITY

19 Nov

An Obama consistency: An odiferous approach to governing.

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There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity …You can smell it. It smells like death,”

Big Daddy, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Not surprisingly, to anyone who has not been in a coma since 2008, Barack Obama lied about immigration reform.

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Candidate Obama in 2008 promised to “put comprehensive immigration reform back on the nation’s agenda during my first year in office.”

Then in March 2009, President Obama said it was “a serious concern, but not an urgent one.”

In June, “I want to actively get something done and not put it off until a year, two years, three years, five years from now.”

By August, his words had changed to:

“And what we’ve said is in the fall when we come back, we’re going to complete health care reform. We still have to act on energy legislation that has passed the House … We still have financial regulatory reform that has to get done … That’s a pretty big stack of bills.”

In March 2011, President Obama said “the nation’s laws are clear enough that for me to simply, through executive order, ignore those congressional mandates would not conform to my appropriate role as president.”

Now, it seems, he is about to act, albeit illegally, when he could have done so legally – and not “now” in 2009, but “five years from now” in 2014.

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One wonders, why now? He could have done it with a Democrat majority in both Houses from 2009 to 2010. Could it be that he also knew that to do so would cost him so much political capital that the Affordable Care Act, which cost so much, would have failed? Was he worried about 2010? No, as he told the Dems, who lost in a landslide, no worries, you’ve got me now!

He may have been worried about 2012. Because it seems likely this would have made him a one term President.

Whatever his reasons then, he clearly lied to the supporters.

So why now?

Well, now his feelings are hurt because he has been roundly rejected by the American public. He is in a mood to punish the voters for not liking him. He is in a mood to pick a fight with the GOP.

He is a Leftist, so it is all about how he feels, never what he does. Bill Clinton can feel your pain, and that is supposed to be enough. He never worked as hard in his life as he did on this. The fact that he was talking about a failure did not matter, he FELT right. And so back to Barack. He is hurt and angry, and his feelings dictate his actions. He also feels, (never reasons), that, since the voters can no longer punish Him (sorry Mary Landrieu), the GOP options to fight back are:

  1. Talk angrily
  2. Sue him
  3. Cut funding
  4. Impeach him

Now, he doesn’t care how angrily they talk. They don’t like him. He doesn’t like anyone But HIM, and doesn’t care what they may say. Let them talk.

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Sue him. ( Hahahahaha) That is funny. He has been sued. He has had federal judges issue orders, which he has roundly ignored. What is a lawsuit? If you are going to violate the Constitution, why would you worry what a court says? Even if courts rule against him, it will likely take until he is out of office, or nearly so, for SCOTUS to give the final ruling on the question anyway.

Cut funding? Yes. A legitimate, and intended tool of Congress to force compliance or negotiation with a President. But, history shows him that if they don’t give him everything he wants, in the Trillions, he can balk and let the government shut down, and they will get the blame for it. Of course, should it happen after January, he won’t have Harry Reid to shield him. He will have to veto a budget that defunds his actions, or defunds the ACA, and let the government shut down. But so what? He doesn’t care. He still thinks the press will blame the GOP. He wants what he wants, and to him, that is a law. He is betting they won’t have the stomach for the fight.

Impeach him? He is willing to bet the store, or more properly, the country, that the political will does not exist to impeach him. He is convinced that as egregious as his actions may be, and as much harm as they may cause, the bar for impeaching the first black President is impossibly high. In any event, he is convinced that the GOP will not have the stomach for it in the next 2 years.

He may be right. But he should not be. The legitimate roles of the Congress to check an overreaching Executive should always be on the table. Remember Civics class? Checks and balances. The balance was in November. He has gone too far, and his policies are rejected. The country wants him to moderate his actions. But he will not, if the will to check him does not exist.

Barack Obama is governing like a petulant child. In November, the voters said, loudly, let’s have the adults take charge again.

Here’s hoping they do.

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S.H. TOWNSEND: IS THERE A WAR ON WOMEN? QUESTIONS REMAIN UNANSWERED

18 Nov

To my loyal readers:  This is the first column in my series dealing candidly with the so-called “war on women” in the United States. 

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Is there a war on women? If so, how has it affected me? These questions sound like a run of the mill college essay questions for a women’s studies course, don’t they? I find these questions thought provoking.

This is not just a topic limited to the female population of readers. I would like for the men to weigh in as well. I’m fairly sure that men on the sidelines of some of the battles have witnessed injuries, as well as casualties in this war. Maybe the women in their lives have inexplicably found themselves locked in a battle for which they hadn’t prepared.

I too have been thrust into battles for which I had not prepared. In my defense, I wasn’t aware that I needed to prepare for battle. Nobody informed me about this war, but little did I know I was being groomed for it by one of its key players.

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I was raised in an “alternative” household. That’s what they called it during my childhood. To put it into terminology that everyone can fully comprehend, I was raised by a lesbian couple. My brother and I were instructed to keep quiet about it, because had the authorities been alerted, we would have been immediately removed from the home and taken away a mother who loved us and took care of us.

Please understand, I am not trying to turn this into an article about gay couples raising children, nor will I engage in a debate on this topic. My upbringing is imperative to my perspective of the war on women. I understand that people are curious, and I encourage valid inquiries about my upbringing. I also understand that people can be rude and judgmental. I had my fair share of teasing in junior high regarding the fact that I was raised by a lesbian couple.

My mother’s former partner was a misogynist. She abhorred men with a passion. She was proud to be a woman, but she wanted to be treated like man. Her attitude toward both genders left me quite perplexed as a child.

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When my mother’s partner was a child, her identity was stolen from her by her mother. She was forced to wear dresses and have long hair. The same thing was then done to me by her. Gone were my lace dresses and patent leather shoes, replaced by caps, jeans, and tee shirts.

When I became interested in boys, which tends to happen during teenagedom (a term I coined, because teenagers think they rule and reign) my mother’s partner hated every single guy I brought home. She informed me that I was just as good as any man, and none of those boys were worth my time or energy. She was thrilled when I broke my engagement, and angry when I attempted to reconcile with him. We were unable to repair our relationship.

Is there a war on women? I was thrown into this war from birth, and I never even got to choose whether or not I wanted to participate.

How has it affected me? I will discuss how the war has affected me in part two.

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DOUG SMITH: THE STATISTICS LIE ON THE COMET

17 Nov

DOUG SMITH PIC

“I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet.”

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.”

– Mark Twain

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Alright, I admit it: I am a geek. So I was fascinated at the pictures this week of a probe resting on a comet.  How far, in some ways, we have come.  I am anxious for more of those million dollar photos and lots of cool stuff we never knew about comets.  I also remember that Mr. Twain was born within days of Halley’s Comet, and, true to his prediction, died just after its closest approach to Earth.

I was also fascinated, rather like a bird watching a snake, at the comments of our latest “scientific expert”, Jonathon Gruber. (Is it a bad thing that when I hear his name, I think Blucher, and hear horses neighing?)

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Well, the comic opera of a comet whizzing across our brief attention span, while Gruber ( horses neighing ) alternately brags about, defends, and apologizes for his 2500 page tissue paper of lies got me to thinking.

What would the estimable Mr. Clemons have thought of Mr. Gruber (Yep, horses again), I wonder?

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Twain had the benefit of history on his side. He hardly had to wait for our boy Johnny to hear the horse chips he is spreading today. Karl Marx, about the time Sam was a young boy in Hannibal, began to pen his Das Capital, in which he criticized money and all those who gather or possess it. Productivity, i.e. the work of the masses, was the only true source of wealth, he argued.  He wrote a few books, which sold very poorly, and lived, along with his family, in dire poverty.  Ah, but he did have one thing in his favor.  His wealthy friend, Frederic Engels, son of a textile manufacturer, supported Marx for most of his life.  While Das Capital was bad stuff, apparently Dis Capital which his rich buddy put in his pocket was ok.  This, in his mind, qualified him as an expert (this is defined as a guy travelling to another town to quote his own book as proof that he is right) on what other people should do with their money.

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Well, now, our own little “expert” has been running his mouth about how all the rest of us who were working had a duty to pay the bills for the ones who don’t.  Now, of course, we are too stupid to realize how truly good that is, so it was necessary to lie to us about it for the greater good of getting to pick our pockets. It seems also that the greater good involved putting 4 million bucks in Gruber’s (Neigh!) grubby hands for being a liar and pickpocket.  It seems once again, that the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few. Except when the “few” are the self-righteous experts telling us how we need to pay for their great ideas, while they get fat in the process and everyone loses, except the experts.

So, back to our original point, what would Mark Twain think about Jonathon Gruber (Whinny)?   I expect he would poke fun at him just like he did with lawyers. (Perhaps slap a horse every time he was around, just for comic relief.)

Mark Twain invested most of his money in an automatic typesetting machine.  It was complicated, and obsolete due to the invention of the Linotype, before he could make his money back. He went bankrupt.  He called on, not an expert, but a no nonsense, evil banker (oh perish the thought) to take charge of his finances. He embarked on a world speaking tour that kept him away for over a year.  At the end of the process, he paid off all his creditors in full, though bankruptcy protection did not require him to do so.

He did not shirk his debts, nor did he expect others to pay them for him, nor did he employ “experts” to tell others why it was their responsibility to do so.  I believe I can deduce what Mark Twain would say about Mr. Gruber, from his comfortable perch on that comet, watching over the foolishness of his countrymen.

There are three kinds of liars. There are ordinary liars, there are outrageous liars, and there are scientific experts.

Now why in the world are we expected to take any of them seriously? Gruber, Gruber, Gruber. (Cue horses. Fade to black. )

that's all folks

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War with Isis: Islamic militants have army of 200,000, claims senior Kurdish leader

16 Nov

ISIS GROWING STRONGER…OBAMA’S PLAN IS FAILING

Under attack: A shell explodes in Kobani, Syria
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images
 Exclusive: CIA has hugely underestimated the number of jihadis, who now rule an area the size of Britain
Patrick Cockburn  

The Islamic State (Isis) has recruited an army hundreds of thousands strong, far larger than previous estimates by the CIA, according to a senior Kurdish leader. He said the ability of Isis to attack on many widely separated fronts in Iraq and Syria at the same time shows that the number of militant fighters is at least 200,000, seven or eight times bigger than foreign in intelligence estimates of up to 31,500 men.

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President Massoud Barzani said in an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday that “I am talking about hundreds of thousands of fighters because they are able to mobilise Arab young men in the territory they have taken.”

He estimates that Isis rules a third of Iraq and a third of Syria with a population of between 10 and 12 million living in an area of 250,000 square kilometres, the same size as Great Britain. This gives the jihadis a large pool of potential recruits.

Proof that Isis has created a large field army at great speed is that it has been launching attacks against the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Iraqi army close to Baghdad at the same time as it is fighting in Syria. “They are fighting in Kobani,” said Mr Hussein. “In Kurdistan last month they were attacking in seven different places as well as in Ramadi [capital of Anbar province west of Baghdad] and Jalawla [an Arab-Kurdish town close to Iranian border]. It is impossible to talk of 20,000 men or so.”

The high figure for Isis’s combat strength is important because it underlines how difficult it will be eliminate Isis even with US air strikes. In September, the CIA produced an estimate of Isis numbers which calculated that the movement had between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters. The underestimate of the size of the force that Isis can deploy may explain why the US and other foreign governments have been repeatedly caught by surprise over the past five months as IS inflicted successive defeats on the Iraqi army, Syrian army, Syrian rebels and Kurdish peshmerga.

The US and its allies are beginning to take on board the obstacles to fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to degrade and destroy Isis. General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Baghdad on Friday in a surprise visit. He said he wanted “to get a sense from our side about how our contribution is going”. Earlier in the week, he told Congress that to defeat Isis an efficient army of 80,000 men would be necessary. Few in Iraq believe that the regular army is up to the task, despite winning a success last week by retaking the refinery town of Baiji and lifting the siege of the refinery, the largest in Iraq.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Hussein spelled out the new balance of power in Iraq in the wake of the Islamic militants’ summer offensive and the military re-engagement of the US. The Kurdistan Regional Government now faces Isis units along a 650-mile front line cutting across northern Iraq between Iran and Syria. Mr Hussein said that the US air intervention had enabled the Kurds to hold out when the unexpected Isis assault in August defeated the peshmerga and came close to capturing the Kurdish capital Irbil: “They were fighting with a strategy of fear that affected the morale of everybody, including the peshmerga.”

As well as terrifying its opponents by publicising its own atrocities, Isis had developed an effective cocktail of tactics that includes suicide bombers, mines, snipers and use of US equipment captured from the Iraqi army such as Humvees, artillery and tanks. To combat them, Mr Hussein says the Kurds need Apache helicopters and heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery.

The Kurdish leaders are now much more relaxed about Isis because they have a US guarantee of their security. The grim experience of the US in seeing the collapse of the government and army in Baghdad, which the Americans had fostered at vast expense, also works in favour of the Kurds.

Holding on: Kurdish chief of staff Fuad Hussein with John Kerry in June Holding on: Kurdish chief of staff Fuad Hussein with John Kerry in June AFP/Getty
Mr Hussein does not like to talk about it today, but the Kurdistan Regional Government got a nasty surprise in August when it asked the Turkish government for help in stopping Isis only to be told Ankara planned no immediate assistance. It was only then that the Kurds turned to Iran and the US, both of which immediately acted to prevent a complete victory by the Islamic militants. Iran sent some officers, military units and artillery while the US started air strikes on 8 August.

Mr Hussein speculates that the CIA and US intelligence agencies may only have been speaking about “core” fighters in claiming that the jihadis had at most 31,500 men under arms. But the fighting over the past five months has shown that Isis has become a formidable military force. “We are talking about a state that has a military and ideological basis,” said Mr Hussein, “so that means they want everyone to learn how to use a rifle, but they also want everybody to have training in their ideology, in other words brainwashing.”

A sign of the military professionalism of Isis is the speed with which they learned to use captured US tanks, artillery and other heavy equipment captured after the fall of Mosul on 10 June. The same thing happened in Syria where Isis captured Russian-made arms which it rapidly started using. The most likely explanation for this is that IS’s ranks contain many former Iraqi and Syrian soldiers whose skills Isis has identified. Mr Hussein says that the peshmerga has been impressed during the fighting by Isis’s training and discipline.

“They will fight until death, and are dangerous because they are so well-trained,” said Mr Hussein. “For instance, they have the best snipers, but to be a good sniper you need not only training on how to shoot, but discipline in staying put for up to five hours so you can hit your target.”

There is supporting evidence for Mr Hussein’s high estimate for Isis numbers. A study by the National Security Adviser’s office in Baghdad before the Isis offensive showed that, when 100 jihadis entered a district, they would soon recruit between five and 10 times their original number. There are reports of many young men volunteering to fight for Isis when they were in the full flood of success in the summer. This enthusiasm may have ebbed since the US started air strikes and the Isis run of victories ended with their failure to capture Kobani in northern Syria despite a long siege.

In an impoverished region with few jobs, Isis pay of $400 (£250) a month is also attractive. Moreover, Mr Hussein says that in the places they have conquered Isis is remodelling society in its own image, aiming to educate people into accepting Isis ideology.

A fighter jet takes off from a US war ship A fighter jet takes off from a US war ship Reuters
The Kurds have recovered their military self-confidence in the knowledge that they are backed by the US and Iran. The peshmerga have taken back some towns lost in August, notably Zumar close to the Syrian border, but not Tal Afar and Sinjar where 8,500 Yazidis are still besieged on their mountain top. But there are limits to how far the Kurds are willing to advance even if they succeed in doing so. Mr Hussein says that the Kurds can help an Iraqi army, supposing a non-sectarian one is created, but “the Kurds cannot liberate the Sunni Arab areas”.

This is the great problem facing a counter offensive against Isis by Baghdad or the Kurds: it will be seen by the five or six million Sunni Arabs in Iraq as directed against their whole community. Hitherto, the US has been hoping to repeat its success between 2006 and 2008 in turning many Sunni against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Mr Hussein ticks off the reasons why repeating this will be very difficult: the Americans then had 150,000 soldiers in Iraq to back up anti-al-Qaeda tribal leaders. Isis will savagely punish anybody who opposes it. “We have seen what happened in Anbar to the Albu Nimr tribe [that rose up against Isis]. They stood bravely against the terrorist but 500 were killed. It was a disaster.”

Overall, Mr Hussein says he does not see any convincing sign of resistance from the Sunni Arabs. Many of them may be unhappy, particularly in Mosul, but this is not translating into effective opposition. Nor is it clear what outside force could organise resistance. The Iraqi army might be acceptable in Sunni areas but only if it is reconstituted so that is not dominated by the Shia.

At the moment, the Kurds see little sign of its presence. They have been asking for regular troops to defend the Mosul Dam on the Euphrates so they can use up to 3,000 peshmerga stationed there, but no Iraqi troops have turned up. “Those who are now defending Baghdad are the army of the [Shia] parties. To re-establish a professional army needs time.”

Mr Hussein did not say so, but it may be too late to establish a competent cross-confessional regular army in Iraq. The counter-offensive by Baghdad is led by the three main Shia militias which have almost the same ideological fervour and sectarian hatred as Isis. Any advance on the battlefield leads to the population deemed loyal to the losing side taking flight so the whole of northern Iraq has become a land of refugees.

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