“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Saturday, February 04, 2017
Americans can't handle the truth!
Wait till the shocked and awed bullshit artists start tearing the bark off this one. Trump is right, we are one of the greatest killing machines in this millennium.
The Department of Homeland Security has lost track of more than 6,000 foreign nationals who entered the United States on student visas, overstayed their welcome, and essentially vanished — exploiting a security gap that was supposed to be fixed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
“My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything,” said Peter Edge, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who oversees investigations into visa violators. “Some of them could be here to do us harm.”
Homeland Security officials disclosed the breadth of the student visa problem in response to ABC News questions submitted as part of an investigation into persistent complaints about the nation’s entry program for students.
ABC News found that immigration officials have struggled to keep track of the rapidly increasing numbers of foreign students coming to the U.S. — now in excess of one million each year. The immigration agency’s own figures show that 58,000 students overstayed their visas in the past year. Of those, 6,000 were referred to agents for follow-up because they were determined to be of heightened concern.
“They just disappear,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “They get the visas and they disappear.”
SAY WHAT?
(SEPTEMBER 2014)
We are approaching the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, and it’s apparent that we have learned nothing from the attacks. More than a third of flight schools accepting foreign students still don’t have FAA security certification to prevent terrorists from training for another suicide flight. Congress was supposed to fix the visa system — and not just for student visas — in the wake of the 9/11 Commission report, which emphasized the need for better tracking of overstays and prevention of these kinds of disappearances. Commission co-chair Thomas Kean says that almost literally nothing has been done since:
Thomas Kean 9/11 Commission Co-Chair said the government has yet to address the security gaps the program has created. He said was stunned the federal government continues to lose track of so many foreign nationals who had entered the country with student visas. He noted that, even before the 9/11 terror attacks, federal officials had been aware of the gaps in the student visa program. The man who drove the van containing explosives into the World Trade Center garage in 1993 was also a student visa holder who was a no-show at school.
“It’s been pointed out over and over and over again and the fact that nothing has been done about it yet… it’s a very dangerous thing for all of us,” Kean said. “The fact that there’s been no action on this is very bothersome.”
IS certainly one word for it. Insane, suicidal, incompetent also come to mind.
In part, the issue with visas has been caught up with comprehensive immigration reform, which has delayed any substantial action to fix the problem. The 9/11 Commission cited border security as another crisis that had to be resolved (on both borders, Canada as well as Mexico) after 9/11.
YOU THINK?
All of these efforts have been stalled by political demands to include broad normalization and the lack of independent metrics for triggers to get to it. Congress should put aside the other immigration issues and deal with the national-security threats first, before we have to get taught the same lessons we should have learned thirteen years ago. (NOW FIFTEEN)
POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2014 BY ED MORRISSEY
All of these efforts have been stalled by political demands to include broad normalization and the lack of independent metrics for triggers to get to it.
Translation: There is not much evidence any of these people have committed crimes.
Now the howler monkeys are doing what howlers do, howling in unison and throwing shit at anyone in range.
They will be so silent and have group amnesia about the hysteria of al Qaeda and their murdering sympathizers having their "constitution rights" infringed upon by Trump.
NY TIMES Could Paris Happen Here? By STEVEN SIMON and DANIEL BENJAMINNOV. 15, 2015
Hanover, N.H. — SURVEYING the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris, most Americans probably feel despair, and a presentiment that it is only a matter of time before something similar happens here. Even as Americans have felt the pain of the French, they have worried, not surprisingly, considering 9/11, about whether their country is next.
But such anxiety is unwarranted. In fact, it’s a mistake to assume that America’s security from terrorism at home is comparable to Europe’s. For many reasons, the United States is a significantly safer place. While vigilance remains essential, no one should panic.
The slaughter in France depended on four things: easy access to Paris, European citizens happy to massacre their compatriots, a Euro-jihadist infrastructure to supply weapons and security agencies that lacked resources to monitor the individuals involved. These are problems the United States does not have — at least not nearly to the degree that Europe does, undermining its ability to defend itself.
American policy makers have eyed Europe’s external border controls skeptically for many years: The Schengen rules, which allow for free border-crossing inside most of the European Union, have made life simple for criminals.
Complicating matters is the ease with which a terrorist might slip out of Syria, cross through Turkey and enter Greece and the European Union, as at least one of the Paris killers appears to have done. Counterterrorism often boils down to a search for a few individuals, and the chaos surrounding the flood of refugees — a record 218,000 entered the European Union just last month — has exacerbated the difficulty of keeping track of such incoming security threats.
But the United States doesn’t have this problem. Pretty much anyone coming to the United States from Middle Eastern war zones or the radical underground of Europe would need to come by plane, and, since 9/11, we have made it tough for such people to fly to the United States.
And it helps that America’s two immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada, have extremely cooperative security authorities, which prevents would-be terrorists from slipping across our land borders.
Then there’s the domestic challenge. It appears the Paris attacks involved both Middle Eastern operatives and Muslims from France and Belgium. But some high-profile exceptions aside, American Muslims are much less attracted to the Islamic State and its ideology than European Muslims seem to be. Americans have traveled to ISIS-controlled territories at a rate of roughly a third that of their European Union coreligionists.
Yes, some of the worst attacks of recent years here at home have been by deeply alienated Muslims, including Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and the Tsarnaev brothers, perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing. But the incidence of such malcontents is lower than in Europe, whose larger Muslim communities, social science data shows, are markedly less integrated.
If anything, what the Paris attacks show is that the world needs America’s intelligence and security resources even more than its military might. The American intelligence community is the indispensable hub of global counterterrorism efforts, but the large numbers and geographic spread of the Islamic State mean that the United States must commit even more resources. Europe must step up and help build the basis for a deeper, more far-reaching collaboration.
REPEAT
If anything, what the Paris attacks show is that the world needs America’s intelligence and security resources even more than its military might. The American intelligence community is the indispensable hub of global counterterrorism efforts, but the large numbers and geographic spread of the Islamic State mean that the United States must commit even more resources. Europe must step up and help build the basis for a deeper, more far-reaching collaboration.
The Howlers in their hoodies, constitutional scholars, one and all, are even causing chaos at airports, setting the stage for the next mennonite in dynamite.
By Carlo Muñoz - The Washington Times - Thursday, February 2, 2017
A former Defense Department official under the Obama administration has raised the specter of a military coup to remove President Donald Trump from power.
In an editorial penned for Foreign Policy, senior Pentagon policy official Rosa Brooks publicly suggested a military insurrection against the Trump administration may be the only option to oust one of the most divisive presidents in American history.
“Donald Trump’s first week as president has made it all too clear: Yes, he is as crazy as everyone feared,” Ms. Brooks wrote. “[One] possibility is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders.”
For the first time in her career in public service, including three years as senior counselor to the Pentagon’s policy chief from 2009 to 2011, “I can imagine plausible scenarios in which senior military officials might simply tell the president: ‘No, sir. We’re not doing that.’”
Across all branches of military service, Trump had a strong majority, Military.com reported. A total of 17,149 respondents completed the questionnaire, the website reported. A breakdown by service found Trump has the support of 74 percent of Marines and Marine Corps Reserve respondents; 68 percent of Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard; 68 percent of Air Force, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard; and 62 percent of Navy and Navy Reserve respondents. He has 63 percent of just active-duty respondents; 55 percent of active duty officers are counted: He has 63 percent of that group.
Given President Trump’s bold moves in his first few days in his office and his muscular approach to military and national security matters, my guess is that today his approval numbers among military personnel (who naturally tend to be politically conservative) would be even higher.
Brooks is — surprise, surprise — a professor at and an associate dean of Georgetown University Law Center.
She was a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of State, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, a fellow at the Carr Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a board member of Amnesty International USA, a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a lecturer at Yale Law School, a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragile States, the board of the National Security Network and the Steering Committee of the White Oak Foreign Policy Leaders Project.
In 2006-2007 she was Special Counsel to the President at George Soros’s Open Society Institute in New York.
The Federal Judge in Washington State is something of a 'partisan' on immigration matters. On the side he is doing a lot of probono work for immigrants, legal and otherwise, for instance. Likes the Black Lives Matter folks, etc.
Appointed by Bush, he's taken up Seattle ways.
Thinks very highly of himself.
This now goes to the 9th Circuit Court of Schamiels, as Michael Savage calls them, and God only knows what they might do.
Then, off to the new 9 member Supreme Court we go....
Notorious BLM activist judge halts Trump travel ban nationwide By Pamela Geller - on February 4, 2017 HOW THE LEFT DESTROYS THE NATION
It is absurd to think it “unconstitutional” to take national security measures to protect the American people. Other Presidents have instituted immigration measures; why is President Trump exempt? And where in the Constitution does it say that terrorists or any foreign national have a constitutional right to come here?
For those who never fully understood how deeply the enemies of freedom have firmly entrenched themselves in the courts, academia, government agencies, etc., this should be a wake-up call. Those of us doing this work day in, day out are keenly aware, but America is getting a real education in just how subversive and dangerous the left is.
They know where to file these lawsuits and which judges to go before. The web is extensive and well-funded.
This was another Bush spineless liberal appointee. The notorious activist U.S. District Judge James Robart has expressed a strong anti-police bias when dealing with a case involving Seattle police union’s contract negotiations. Judge Robart went on a rant against police and proclaimed, “Black Lives Matter.”
Robart is an activist judge who sees the court system as means to change law, not enforce it.
This is why the Supreme Court is so critical to our defense of freedom....
Protesters demonstrate against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley Feb. 1. Hundreds of people rallied and eventually forced the cancellation of Yiannopoulos' speech at UC Berkeley, and dozens of businesses were vandalized and storefront windows smashed. (Noah Berger / European Pressphoto Agency) The Times Editorial Board
The cancellation Wednesday of a speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley was, according to a university spokesman, “not a proud night for this campus, the home of the free speech movement.”
That’s putting it mildly. Even if the cancellation was justified by concerns about public safety after an outbreak of violence and property destruction, the fact that Yiannopoulos was prevented from speaking to a willing audience of campus Republicans should make supporters of free speech shiver.
In a characteristically knee-jerk reaction to Wednesday’s events, President Trump tweeted: “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”
That would be a ludicrous overreaction even if it were true that the university had been on the wrong side of the issue. But actually, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks had steadfastly defended the right of the Republicans to invite Yiannopoulos to speak, rejecting a request by a group of professors that the Breitbart News writer’s appearance be canceled because he engaged in “hate speech” and, based on his appearance at another university, might harass or belittle individual students.
In responding to the professors, the chancellor’s office pointed out — correctly and courageously — that “the courts have made it very clear that there is no general exception to 1st Amendment protection for ‘hate’ speech or speech that is deemed to be discriminatory. Our Constitution does not permit the university to engage in prior restraint of a speaker out of fear that he might engage in even hateful verbal attacks.”
The university insists that it made elaborate preparations for protests. It canceled the speech only after what it called an “unprecedented” invasion of the campus by “more than 100 armed individuals clad all in black” who engaged in violent, destructive behavior. They hurled metal barricades, threw Molotov cocktails and smashed windows at the student union.
In his own self-serving response, Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook: “One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.” That’s a gross generalization: Many of Yiannopoulos’ critics object to his outrageous statements — such as his claim that feminism is a “cancer” — but wouldn’t deny his right to express them. It’s also true that one can protest at a speaker’s appearance without trying to shout him down.
Yet it’s also true that, on colleges campuses and elsewhere, some “progressive” voices do call for the stifling of speech they don’t approve of. A leaflet circulated at the Berkeley protest said Yiannopoulos has “no right to speak at Cal or anywhere else” because he’s a “tool of Trump’s possessive fascist government."
This is just the latest variation on the age-old argument of the censor that “error has no rights,” or, put another way, that one only has a right to free speech if one is speaking the “truth.” It’s an insidious notion that needs to be opposed in every generation.
Further, all these elected officials in 'sanctuary cities' ought to be charged with criminal conspiracy, harboring felons, aiding and abetting criminal activity, etc etc.
Liberal lynch mob trolling Trump could bring down US democracy
The Left's non-stop temper tantrum since Trump's election win is revealing an ugly underbelly of the Democratic Party - think Rosie O'Donnell mud-wrestling with a pig - where a rogues’ gallery of provocateurs aims to delegitimize conservative rule.
First, some necessary background: for 15 uninterrupted years of US military escapades abroad, eight of those years on Obama's watch, the Liberal Left could not be awakened from its somnambulist slumber, not even to hold a meaningful antiwar protest in the spirit of their Vietnam-era forebears.
University students, for example, no longer concerned about conscription since the US military became a professional fighting force in 1973, rarely speaks out against the plight of foreign civilians trapped in US-made wars – America’s most lucrative export industry bar none. Sadly and tellingly, these demonstration dropouts would even have trouble citing a single modern anti-war song to match the hundreds of comparable tracks heard around the nation during the Vietnam War.
For eight carefree years under Obama’s tedious tutelage, these precious snowflakes threw their collective damp mass behind radical cultural experiments, like legalizing marijuana, institutionalizing same-sex marriages and opening the door to transgender bathrooms from sea to shining sea. America’s Founding Fathers must have been watching over these solemn, patriotic endeavors in God's Country with tremendous pride and equanimity.
However, when a Republican real estate mogul named Trump crashed the impossible party, Liberals hit the streets running and screaming. Suddenly, the Left had found common cause to get out of the house and smash stuff, as they did when Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-leaning editor at Breitbart News, was forced to cancel an appearance at UC-Berkeley - ironically the home of the Free Speech Movement - after protesters broke campus windows, burned trees and hurled projectiles at police.
{...}The underlining message from these social justice warriors is that Liberals love the idea of other individuals freely expressing their thoughts, but only if those thoughts support the basis of their own thoughts. I may be mistaken, but that sounds disturbingly close to the rationale behind Nazi book-burning events and other such historical smashups.{...}
At the same time American universities were erecting virtual walls around their campuses, not to mention their minds, a dazzling array of Hollywood celebrities (here, here and here), aging and youthful rockers (here, here and here) and painfully overrated comedians (here and here) quickly discovered in Donald Trump a convenient bogeyman for resuscitating flagging careers with dramatic and dim-witted political performances.
First, it should be emphasized that not every Hollywood superstar is against Trump. Many do support his ambitious political vision to "Make America Great Again." That was plain to see by the painful expressions on some of the famous faces in attendance at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards as Meryl Streep delivered an anti–Trump diatribe during her acceptance speech.
The sheer hypocrisy of Streep's lecture was not lost on many listeners in light of America's long string of military misadventures under Obama the Democrat.
As fellow RT contributor Danielle Ryan asked, "Where was Streep as the Nobel Peace Prize winner bombed not one, two or three — but seven different countries? To be fair to Streep, she probably didn’t notice because the “principled press” didn’t seem to either. Funny thing about that too, since Streep and her friends are worried about Trump’s apparent disdain for foreigners: All of the countries bombed by the Obama administration were Muslim countries."
Susan Sarandon, meanwhile, one of those rare Hollywood luminaries who manage to sound intelligent and knowledgeable when elucidating upon politics, bravely spoke her mind in an industry that is notoriously cliquish.
In an interview with The Young Turks, Sarandon said she believed Clinton was more dangerous than Trump because - wait for it - the media failed to adequately cover the less glorious moments from her political past.
“She did not learn from Iraq, and she is an interventionist, and she has done horrible things, and very callously, I don’t know if she is overcompensating or what her trip is,” Sarandon said, adding, “I think we’ll be in Iran in two seconds.”
However, Sarandon's thoughtful views, which were quickly buried, would never be confused as orthodox thinking in the film business. In fact, Hollywood's fiery condemnation of the Republican leader, who won convincingly in a legitimate election, often pushes the boundaries of respectability among people who should really know better.
Robert De Niro and Jay Leno, for example, are just two examples of Hollywood personalities who have actually suggested physical violence against Donald Trump. Considering the sway these two stars enjoy, that is sending a disturbing public message. Take a moment and conduct a thought experiment and imagine how it would have gone for right-leaning Clint Eastwood, for example, had he said he wanted to punch Barack Obama in the face, as De Niro said he'd like to do to Trump.
However, the best was yet to come, and I am sure even this latest incredible outburst will be bested soon enough as well. Just this week, the potty-mouthed actress/comedian Sarah Silverman ratcheted up the manic meter several notches when she called for the violent overthrow of the "mad king" in an all-caps Tweet.
Silverman's stupid stunt came just days after aging 'material girl' Madonna told a crowd at the Women's March on Washington that she's "thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House".
"It took this horrific moment of darkness to wake us the f**k up," she said. "It seems as though we had all slipped into a false sense of comfort, that justice would prevail and that good would win in the end."
She then proceeded to belt out some bawdy R-rated lyrics that clashed with the purpose of the demonstration.
Are these prima donnas so far detached from reality that they believe they are above the law? Like veritable untouchables, they believe they can spew whatever dangerous nonsense that creeps into their muddled minds with total impunity. Personally, I'm betting that one of these misguided madonnas will sooner or later find themselves sporting cuffs for pushing the boundaries of free speech too far, even for them.
It seems a big part of the problem for these publicity-seeking celebrities is that watching the real-life saga of Donald Trump evolve in real-time against the backdrop of their staged, ego-centered personae is simply too painful and, well, real; their only recourse is to strike out against this genuine force of nature, this very real political animal, with every drop of energy left in their waxen figures.
However, many of these deluded personalities could blame their intellectually-challenged political positions on a severely biased media for putting out a 24/7 message of hate and fear against Donald Trump.
Robert Bridge, an American writer and journalist based in Moscow, Russia, is the author of the book on corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”, released in 2013.
Electing Trump is kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. In just casual conversations I've noticed a distinct rise in anti-americanism. On Friday I asked an acquaintance whether they were going to Florida again this year. The answer was NO, and they were deliberately avoiding the purchase of any American products.
If we are not number one, who is?
ReplyDeleteListening to someone talking about Putin to Ingraham yesterday, to wit: "10,000 Killed in Ukraine,"
ReplyDeleterealized I stopped keeping track of the results of our good deeds somewhere back in the hundreds of thousands.
Oh shit, ya, fer sure, America is NUMBER #1 in all sorts of stats - but that's not a good thing!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone is saying it is, Ash.
.
DeleteTry to say it in a way that's more easily understood.
America is exceptional.
ReplyDeleteVisas for al Qaeda:
ReplyDeleteThe Department of Homeland Security has lost track of more than 6,000 foreign nationals who entered the United States on student visas, overstayed their welcome, and essentially vanished — exploiting a security gap that was supposed to be fixed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
“My greatest concern is that they could be doing anything,” said Peter Edge, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who oversees investigations into visa violators. “Some of them could be here to do us harm.”
Homeland Security officials disclosed the breadth of the student visa problem in response to ABC News questions submitted as part of an investigation into persistent complaints about the nation’s entry program for students.
ABC News found that immigration officials have struggled to keep track of the rapidly increasing numbers of foreign students coming to the U.S. — now in excess of one million each year. The immigration agency’s own figures show that 58,000 students overstayed their visas in the past year. Of those, 6,000 were referred to agents for follow-up because they were determined to be of heightened concern.
“They just disappear,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “They get the visas and they disappear.”
SAY WHAT?
(SEPTEMBER 2014)
We are approaching the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11, and it’s apparent that we have learned nothing from the attacks. More than a third of flight schools accepting foreign students still don’t have FAA security certification to prevent terrorists from training for another suicide flight. Congress was supposed to fix the visa system — and not just for student visas — in the wake of the 9/11 Commission report, which emphasized the need for better tracking of overstays and prevention of these kinds of disappearances. Commission co-chair Thomas Kean says that almost literally nothing has been done since:
Thomas Kean 9/11 Commission Co-Chair said the government has yet to address the security gaps the program has created. He said was stunned the federal government continues to lose track of so many foreign nationals who had entered the country with student visas. He noted that, even before the 9/11 terror attacks, federal officials had been aware of the gaps in the student visa program. The man who drove the van containing explosives into the World Trade Center garage in 1993 was also a student visa holder who was a no-show at school.
“It’s been pointed out over and over and over again and the fact that nothing has been done about it yet… it’s a very dangerous thing for all of us,” Kean said. “The fact that there’s been no action on this is very bothersome.”
Assholes to the Left
DeleteAssholes to the Right
Who will own this mess, that Trump is trying to clean up, when the next Islamic murderer takes down a hundred or two of ordinary Americans?
Will any of these brainless fools step forward and say they were wrong and should have supported Trump?
Not fucking likely.
DeleteBOTHERSOME
DeleteIS certainly one word for it. Insane, suicidal, incompetent also come to mind.
In part, the issue with visas has been caught up with comprehensive immigration reform, which has delayed any substantial action to fix the problem. The 9/11 Commission cited border security as another crisis that had to be resolved (on both borders, Canada as well as Mexico) after 9/11.
YOU THINK?
All of these efforts have been stalled by political demands to include broad normalization and the lack of independent metrics for triggers to get to it. Congress should put aside the other immigration issues and deal with the national-security threats first, before we have to get taught the same lessons we should have learned thirteen years ago. (NOW FIFTEEN)
POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON SEPTEMBER 2, 2014 BY ED MORRISSEY
.
DeleteAll of these efforts have been stalled by political demands to include broad normalization and the lack of independent metrics for triggers to get to it.
Translation: There is not much evidence any of these people have committed crimes.
:o)
Now the howler monkeys are doing what howlers do, howling in unison and throwing shit at anyone in range.
ReplyDeleteThey will be so silent and have group amnesia about the hysteria of al Qaeda and their murdering sympathizers having their "constitution rights" infringed upon by Trump.
NY TIMES
ReplyDeleteCould Paris Happen Here?
By STEVEN SIMON and DANIEL BENJAMINNOV. 15, 2015
Hanover, N.H. — SURVEYING the aftermath of the terror attacks in Paris, most Americans probably feel despair, and a presentiment that it is only a matter of time before something similar happens here. Even as Americans have felt the pain of the French, they have worried, not surprisingly, considering 9/11, about whether their country is next.
But such anxiety is unwarranted. In fact, it’s a mistake to assume that America’s security from terrorism at home is comparable to Europe’s. For many reasons, the United States is a significantly safer place. While vigilance remains essential, no one should panic.
The slaughter in France depended on four things: easy access to Paris, European citizens happy to massacre their compatriots, a Euro-jihadist infrastructure to supply weapons and security agencies that lacked resources to monitor the individuals involved. These are problems the United States does not have — at least not nearly to the degree that Europe does, undermining its ability to defend itself.
American policy makers have eyed Europe’s external border controls skeptically for many years: The Schengen rules, which allow for free border-crossing inside most of the European Union, have made life simple for criminals.
Complicating matters is the ease with which a terrorist might slip out of Syria, cross through Turkey and enter Greece and the European Union, as at least one of the Paris killers appears to have done. Counterterrorism often boils down to a search for a few individuals, and the chaos surrounding the flood of refugees — a record 218,000 entered the European Union just last month — has exacerbated the difficulty of keeping track of such incoming security threats.
But the United States doesn’t have this problem. Pretty much anyone coming to the United States from Middle Eastern war zones or the radical underground of Europe would need to come by plane, and, since 9/11, we have made it tough for such people to fly to the United States.
And it helps that America’s two immediate neighbors, Mexico and Canada, have extremely cooperative security authorities, which prevents would-be terrorists from slipping across our land borders.
Then there’s the domestic challenge. It appears the Paris attacks involved both Middle Eastern operatives and Muslims from France and Belgium. But some high-profile exceptions aside, American Muslims are much less attracted to the Islamic State and its ideology than European Muslims seem to be. Americans have traveled to ISIS-controlled territories at a rate of roughly a third that of their European Union coreligionists.
Yes, some of the worst attacks of recent years here at home have been by deeply alienated Muslims, including Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and the Tsarnaev brothers, perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing. But the incidence of such malcontents is lower than in Europe, whose larger Muslim communities, social science data shows, are markedly less integrated.
AH, BUT THERE IS MORE:
DeleteIf anything, what the Paris attacks show is that the world needs America’s intelligence and security resources even more than its military might. The American intelligence community is the indispensable hub of global counterterrorism efforts, but the large numbers and geographic spread of the Islamic State mean that the United States must commit even more resources. Europe must step up and help build the basis for a deeper, more far-reaching collaboration.
REPEAT
If anything, what the Paris attacks show is that the world needs America’s intelligence and security resources even more than its military might. The American intelligence community is the indispensable hub of global counterterrorism efforts, but the large numbers and geographic spread of the Islamic State mean that the United States must commit even more resources. Europe must step up and help build the basis for a deeper, more far-reaching collaboration.
The Howlers in their hoodies, constitutional scholars, one and all, are even causing chaos at airports, setting the stage for the next mennonite in dynamite.
ReplyDeleteAssholes to the left, assholes to the right.
Fuck you too Google.
ReplyDeleteBUT WAIT THERE IS MORE:
ReplyDeleteBy Carlo Muñoz - The Washington Times - Thursday, February 2, 2017
A former Defense Department official under the Obama administration has raised the specter of a military coup to remove President Donald Trump from power.
In an editorial penned for Foreign Policy, senior Pentagon policy official Rosa Brooks publicly suggested a military insurrection against the Trump administration may be the only option to oust one of the most divisive presidents in American history.
“Donald Trump’s first week as president has made it all too clear: Yes, he is as crazy as everyone feared,” Ms. Brooks wrote. “[One] possibility is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders.”
For the first time in her career in public service, including three years as senior counselor to the Pentagon’s policy chief from 2009 to 2011, “I can imagine plausible scenarios in which senior military officials might simply tell the president: ‘No, sir. We’re not doing that.’”
Rosa Brooks?
DeleteWell Rosa, try this:
Across all branches of military service, Trump had a strong majority, Military.com reported. A total of 17,149 respondents completed the questionnaire, the website reported. A breakdown by service found Trump has the support of 74 percent of Marines and Marine Corps Reserve respondents; 68 percent of Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard; 68 percent of Air Force, Air Force Reserve and Air National Guard; and 62 percent of Navy and Navy Reserve respondents. He has 63 percent of just active-duty respondents; 55 percent of active duty officers are counted: He has 63 percent of that group.
Given President Trump’s bold moves in his first few days in his office and his muscular approach to military and national security matters, my guess is that today his approval numbers among military personnel (who naturally tend to be politically conservative) would be even higher.
WHO IS THIS BITCH?
ReplyDeleteRosa Brooks
Brooks is — surprise, surprise — a professor at and an associate dean of Georgetown University Law Center.
She was a senior advisor at the U.S. Department of State, a consultant for Human Rights Watch, a fellow at the Carr Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a board member of Amnesty International USA, a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a lecturer at Yale Law School, a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Fragile States, the board of the National Security Network and the Steering Committee of the White Oak Foreign Policy Leaders Project.
In 2006-2007 she was Special Counsel to the President at George Soros’s Open Society Institute in New York.
Of course she was.
Any questions?
ReplyDeleteThe Federal Judge in Washington State is something of a 'partisan' on immigration matters. On the side he is doing a lot of probono work for immigrants, legal and otherwise, for instance. Likes the Black Lives Matter folks, etc.
ReplyDeleteAppointed by Bush, he's taken up Seattle ways.
Thinks very highly of himself.
This now goes to the 9th Circuit Court of Schamiels, as Michael Savage calls them, and God only knows what they might do.
Then, off to the new 9 member Supreme Court we go....
Notorious BLM activist judge halts Trump travel ban nationwide
DeleteBy Pamela Geller - on February 4, 2017
HOW THE LEFT DESTROYS THE NATION
It is absurd to think it “unconstitutional” to take national security measures to protect the American people. Other Presidents have instituted immigration measures; why is President Trump exempt? And where in the Constitution does it say that terrorists or any foreign national have a constitutional right to come here?
For those who never fully understood how deeply the enemies of freedom have firmly entrenched themselves in the courts, academia, government agencies, etc., this should be a wake-up call. Those of us doing this work day in, day out are keenly aware, but America is getting a real education in just how subversive and dangerous the left is.
They know where to file these lawsuits and which judges to go before. The web is extensive and well-funded.
This was another Bush spineless liberal appointee. The notorious activist U.S. District Judge James Robart has expressed a strong anti-police bias when dealing with a case involving Seattle police union’s contract negotiations. Judge Robart went on a rant against police and proclaimed, “Black Lives Matter.”
Robart is an activist judge who sees the court system as means to change law, not enforce it.
This is why the Supreme Court is so critical to our defense of freedom....
http://pamelageller.com/2017/02/notorious-blm-activist-judge-halts-trump-travel-ban-nationwide.html/
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ReplyDeleteSNL Does Spicer
Speaking of howlers, anyone who has watched a Sean Spicer presser will understand the joke(s)...
Watch the extended version video (full screen).
'I'm here to swallow gum and take names': Melissa McCarthy undergoes incredible transformation to play blustering Press Secretary Sean Spicer on SNL
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4192684/Melissa-McCarthy-plays-Sean-Spicer-Saturday-Night-Live.html#ixzz4Xn8BJUNI
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
SNL sucks.
DeleteIt was much better many years ago.
Only the easily entertained and distracted like it these days.
People that like monkey grinders and pop up toy clowns out of boxes....
DeleteAll these people rioting around ought to be charged with sedition.
ReplyDeleteThey should be protesting politely, like the Tea Party folks used to do.
People get tired of it.
"If totalitarianism comes to the USA it will come from the left not the right"
Now we are hearing calls, and not just a few, to assassinate the President.
And it's time Soros be charged with something too.
IMHO
DeleteEditorial The No Free Speech Movement at Berkeley
Protest at UC Berkeley
Protesters demonstrate against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley Feb. 1. Hundreds of people rallied and eventually forced the cancellation of Yiannopoulos' speech at UC Berkeley, and dozens of businesses were vandalized and storefront windows smashed. (Noah Berger / European Pressphoto Agency)
The Times Editorial Board
The cancellation Wednesday of a speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley was, according to a university spokesman, “not a proud night for this campus, the home of the free speech movement.”
That’s putting it mildly. Even if the cancellation was justified by concerns about public safety after an outbreak of violence and property destruction, the fact that Yiannopoulos was prevented from speaking to a willing audience of campus Republicans should make supporters of free speech shiver.
In a characteristically knee-jerk reaction to Wednesday’s events, President Trump tweeted: “If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view — NO FEDERAL FUNDS?”
That would be a ludicrous overreaction even if it were true that the university had been on the wrong side of the issue. But actually, UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks had steadfastly defended the right of the Republicans to invite Yiannopoulos to speak, rejecting a request by a group of professors that the Breitbart News writer’s appearance be canceled because he engaged in “hate speech” and, based on his appearance at another university, might harass or belittle individual students.
In responding to the professors, the chancellor’s office pointed out — correctly and courageously — that “the courts have made it very clear that there is no general exception to 1st Amendment protection for ‘hate’ speech or speech that is deemed to be discriminatory. Our Constitution does not permit the university to engage in prior restraint of a speaker out of fear that he might engage in even hateful verbal attacks.”
The university insists that it made elaborate preparations for protests. It canceled the speech only after what it called an “unprecedented” invasion of the campus by “more than 100 armed individuals clad all in black” who engaged in violent, destructive behavior. They hurled metal barricades, threw Molotov cocktails and smashed windows at the student union.
In his own self-serving response, Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook: “One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.” That’s a gross generalization: Many of Yiannopoulos’ critics object to his outrageous statements — such as his claim that feminism is a “cancer” — but wouldn’t deny his right to express them. It’s also true that one can protest at a speaker’s appearance without trying to shout him down.
Yet it’s also true that, on colleges campuses and elsewhere, some “progressive” voices do call for the stifling of speech they don’t approve of. A leaflet circulated at the Berkeley protest said Yiannopoulos has “no right to speak at Cal or anywhere else” because he’s a “tool of Trump’s possessive fascist government."
This is just the latest variation on the age-old argument of the censor that “error has no rights,” or, put another way, that one only has a right to free speech if one is speaking the “truth.” It’s an insidious notion that needs to be opposed in every generation.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-milo-berkeley-20170203-story.html
Who is the biggest killer these days ?
ReplyDeleteObama.
For taking the troops out of Iraq too soon, after which all hell arose there.
Perhaps Pooty, Assad, the Iranians for their actions in Syria.
Saddam was doing a good job for a while there too....
Lots of candidates.
Further, all these elected officials in 'sanctuary cities' ought to be charged with criminal conspiracy, harboring felons, aiding and abetting criminal activity, etc etc.
ReplyDeleteThat would sober 'em up.
Trump = Themistocles
ReplyDeletePresident Trump; A Modern Day Themistocles (And That’s A GOOD Thing)
by Jeff Dunetz | Feb 2, 2017 | Politics
http://lidblog.com/president-trump-modern-day-themistocles-thats-good-thing/
Excellent long article.
Not much has changed....
And....another good article:
DeleteThe Trump White House is already preparing for a second vacancy.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444571/donald-trump-supreme-court-nominees
Justice Kennedy the next vacancy ?
Excellent protest sign down at Mar de Lago:
ReplyDeleteMelania - Blink Twice If You Need Help !
Heh
So, there's some wit among these folks after all.
The protesters are said now to be debating whether to try to storm across the bridge, or not....
Liberal lynch mob trolling Trump could bring down US democracy
ReplyDeleteThe Left's non-stop temper tantrum since Trump's election win is revealing an ugly underbelly of the Democratic Party - think Rosie O'Donnell mud-wrestling with a pig - where a rogues’ gallery of provocateurs aims to delegitimize conservative rule.
First, some necessary background: for 15 uninterrupted years of US military escapades abroad, eight of those years on Obama's watch, the Liberal Left could not be awakened from its somnambulist slumber, not even to hold a meaningful antiwar protest in the spirit of their Vietnam-era forebears.
University students, for example, no longer concerned about conscription since the US military became a professional fighting force in 1973, rarely speaks out against the plight of foreign civilians trapped in US-made wars – America’s most lucrative export industry bar none. Sadly and tellingly, these demonstration dropouts would even have trouble citing a single modern anti-war song to match the hundreds of comparable tracks heard around the nation during the Vietnam War.
For eight carefree years under Obama’s tedious tutelage, these precious snowflakes threw their collective damp mass behind radical cultural experiments, like legalizing marijuana, institutionalizing same-sex marriages and opening the door to transgender bathrooms from sea to shining sea. America’s Founding Fathers must have been watching over these solemn, patriotic endeavors in God's Country with tremendous pride and equanimity.
However, when a Republican real estate mogul named Trump crashed the impossible party, Liberals hit the streets running and screaming. Suddenly, the Left had found common cause to get out of the house and smash stuff, as they did when Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-leaning editor at Breitbart News, was forced to cancel an appearance at UC-Berkeley - ironically the home of the Free Speech Movement - after protesters broke campus windows, burned trees and hurled projectiles at police.
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{...}The underlining message from these social justice warriors is that Liberals love the idea of other individuals freely expressing their thoughts, but only if those thoughts support the basis of their own thoughts. I may be mistaken, but that sounds disturbingly close to the rationale behind Nazi book-burning events and other such historical smashups.{...}
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DeleteHollywood, stage Left
At the same time American universities were erecting virtual walls around their campuses, not to mention their minds, a dazzling array of Hollywood celebrities (here, here and here), aging and youthful rockers (here, here and here) and painfully overrated comedians (here and here) quickly discovered in Donald Trump a convenient bogeyman for resuscitating flagging careers with dramatic and dim-witted political performances.
First, it should be emphasized that not every Hollywood superstar is against Trump. Many do support his ambitious political vision to "Make America Great Again." That was plain to see by the painful expressions on some of the famous faces in attendance at the 2017 Golden Globe Awards as Meryl Streep delivered an anti–Trump diatribe during her acceptance speech.
The sheer hypocrisy of Streep's lecture was not lost on many listeners in light of America's long string of military misadventures under Obama the Democrat.
As fellow RT contributor Danielle Ryan asked, "Where was Streep as the Nobel Peace Prize winner bombed not one, two or three — but seven different countries? To be fair to Streep, she probably didn’t notice because the “principled press” didn’t seem to either. Funny thing about that too, since Streep and her friends are worried about Trump’s apparent disdain for foreigners: All of the countries bombed by the Obama administration were Muslim countries."
Susan Sarandon, meanwhile, one of those rare Hollywood luminaries who manage to sound intelligent and knowledgeable when elucidating upon politics, bravely spoke her mind in an industry that is notoriously cliquish.
In an interview with The Young Turks, Sarandon said she believed Clinton was more dangerous than Trump because - wait for it - the media failed to adequately cover the less glorious moments from her political past.
“She did not learn from Iraq, and she is an interventionist, and she has done horrible things, and very callously, I don’t know if she is overcompensating or what her trip is,” Sarandon said, adding, “I think we’ll be in Iran in two seconds.”
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DeleteHowever, Sarandon's thoughtful views, which were quickly buried, would never be confused as orthodox thinking in the film business. In fact, Hollywood's fiery condemnation of the Republican leader, who won convincingly in a legitimate election, often pushes the boundaries of respectability among people who should really know better.
Robert De Niro and Jay Leno, for example, are just two examples of Hollywood personalities who have actually suggested physical violence against Donald Trump. Considering the sway these two stars enjoy, that is sending a disturbing public message. Take a moment and conduct a thought experiment and imagine how it would have gone for right-leaning Clint Eastwood, for example, had he said he wanted to punch Barack Obama in the face, as De Niro said he'd like to do to Trump.
However, the best was yet to come, and I am sure even this latest incredible outburst will be bested soon enough as well. Just this week, the potty-mouthed actress/comedian Sarah Silverman ratcheted up the manic meter several notches when she called for the violent overthrow of the "mad king" in an all-caps Tweet.
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DeleteSilverman's stupid stunt came just days after aging 'material girl' Madonna told a crowd at the Women's March on Washington that she's "thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House".
"It took this horrific moment of darkness to wake us the f**k up," she said. "It seems as though we had all slipped into a false sense of comfort, that justice would prevail and that good would win in the end."
She then proceeded to belt out some bawdy R-rated lyrics that clashed with the purpose of the demonstration.
Are these prima donnas so far detached from reality that they believe they are above the law? Like veritable untouchables, they believe they can spew whatever dangerous nonsense that creeps into their muddled minds with total impunity. Personally, I'm betting that one of these misguided madonnas will sooner or later find themselves sporting cuffs for pushing the boundaries of free speech too far, even for them.
It seems a big part of the problem for these publicity-seeking celebrities is that watching the real-life saga of Donald Trump evolve in real-time against the backdrop of their staged, ego-centered personae is simply too painful and, well, real; their only recourse is to strike out against this genuine force of nature, this very real political animal, with every drop of energy left in their waxen figures.
However, many of these deluded personalities could blame their intellectually-challenged political positions on a severely biased media for putting out a 24/7 message of hate and fear against Donald Trump.
DeleteRobert Bridge, an American writer and journalist based in Moscow, Russia, is the author of the book on corporate power, “Midnight in the American Empire”, released in 2013.
Electing Trump is kind of like shooting yourself in the foot. In just casual conversations I've noticed a distinct rise in anti-americanism. On Friday I asked an acquaintance whether they were going to Florida again this year. The answer was NO, and they were deliberately avoiding the purchase of any American products.
ReplyDeleteThen there is thus from Germany
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38867961
What are you seeing in Australia Sam?
Ash, Ask Floridians if they enjoy the invasion of rude Canadians to their state in Feb/March. You won't like the answer.
ReplyDelete