Thursday, September 11, 2014

Colleges Reject Charge That Freshman Reading Lists Have Left-Wing Political Bias

Actually, I don't have a problem with most of the readings cited at this piece, at the Los Angeles Times.

Some of the greatest in classical literature is inherently progressive and humanistic.

The problem is when leftist professors indoctrinate students with an endless stream of race, class, gender and homosexual advocacy, at the expense of a broad pedagogical approach. And there's really no debate on whether that's happening.

In any case, here's this from the article:
Freshmen at colleges around the country for years have been assigned to read the same books as a way to bond at orientation and to encourage intellectual interactions rather than just social ones.

But this year, some of the reading selections are coming under attack.

In South Carolina, for example, the state Legislature tried to cut funding for two state universities that selected books with gay themes.

The conservative Young Americans for Freedom compiled a list of those books that they contend offer only left-leaning perspectives, including "Americanah," a novel by a celebrated Nigerian writer that was picked this year at Pomona College, Penn State, Duke University and Macalester College.

The National Assn. of Scholars had another beef. It advocates the classics and argued in a recent report that by frequently selecting contemporary literature, "colleges are implying that students have little to learn from the past. Or perhaps they simply think students' attention spans are too limited for them to want to pick up such a book and read it on their own."

The group suggested schools should instead assign such alternatives as James Fennimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans," Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," Shakespeare's plays, and selections from the Bible.

Colleges deny any political intent. They say they seek high-quality books that provoke debate and that they are encouraging it as an academic experience amid all the other events and parties during those first few days on campus. Because many schools invite authors to campus, classics by long-dead writers don't fit the bill and there are other opportunities to study them, colleges say.

A common book "is a tangible bond but it has intellectual heft as opposed to just wearing the school colors," said Cheryl Spector, director of academic first-year experiences at Cal State Northridge, where this year's common reading is "The Postmortal," a futuristic novel by Drew Magary about possible immortality and a cure for aging.

Critics misunderstand the programs' goals, she said: "The fact is we are not trying to pick literary masterpieces primarily, although we don't mind it if we hit them. But we do want engagement with students. We want to invite them to a love of reading."

Nearly 40% of colleges ask students to participate in such readings, according to a recent survey by the Assn. for Orientation, Transition and Retention in Higher Education.

UCLA this year chose baseball hero and former Bruin Jackie Robinson's autobiography, "I Never Had It Made;" the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is tackling Louise Erdich's novel "Round House," about violence on a Native American reservation; Williams and Trinity colleges selected Rebecca Skloot's "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," the history of how cancer tissue from a poor black woman influenced science.

At Pomona College, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Americanah," a novel about Nigerians who emigrate to the U.S. and Britain and return home, was selected from 40 nominated books by a panel of faculty, students and others. Copies were mailed to incoming freshmen's homes.

Pomona's dean of students, Miriam Feldblum, said Young Americans for Freedom badly mischaracterized the book. The novel, she said, offers multiple perspectives of racial topics and American and Nigerian societies and emphasizes that people should not make assumptions about culture and history. Beyond its cross-cultural themes, it's a good book for young people because it examines long friendships and life's unexpected turns, she said.

The college aims for political balance, Feldblum said, pointing to the 2008 selections of autobiographies from both presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain...
More.

FLASHBACK: "How California's Colleges Indoctrinate Students."

Thursday Teaching

I'll be working all day.

More blogging tonight.

Shop Amazon in the meanwhile!



9/11 and the Future of U.S. Foreign Policy

Former Vice President Richard Cheney, yesterday, at the American Enterprise Institute.

Also at LAT, "Cheney urges Obama to launch 'immediate' assault on Islamic State."



The 'Food Insecurity' Hoax

Another one of those leftist buzz-phrases designed to promote dependency and expand government.

And it's a hoax, via iOWNTHEWORLD.

VIDEO: College Students Don't Remember 9/11 Anniversary, Don't Know Much About ISIS

Via Red Alert Politics, "Young America’s Foundation video shows college students don’t remember 9/11 anniversary, don’t know a lot about ISIS."



Does an Untapped Market Exist for Smart-Watches?

We're about to find out, argues Stephen Green, at PJ Media, "Dear Apple: Why a Watch?"

And ICYMI, "Apple Shows Off Smartwatch, Larger-Screen iPhones."

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

VIDEO: Marxist Mayor Bill de Blasio Lacks Security Clearance to View Classified Terror Documents

Radical butt-freak Marxist. Serves the f-ker right.

At CBS News New York:

#ISIS 'Is Not Islamic' — President Obama Speech on Defeating Islamic State Jihadists

I was cringing before even a minute into the speech.

Watch it here, "President Obama Addresses the Nation on the ISIL Threat."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Obama vows to hunt Islamic State militants 'wherever they exist'."



WATCH: Roger Goodell Denies NFL Saw Ray Rice Tape, but Law Enforcement Sent Video to League in April

At the Associated Press, "AP NEWSBREAK: SOURCE SAYS RICE VIDEO SENT TO NFL."

And Norah O'Donnell has the interview with Commissioner Goodell, from this morning.

"Did the NFL drop the ball?"



PREVIOUSLY: "NFL's Roger Goodell May Be In Trouble Too."


Shelby Chesnes Photoshoot

At Egotastic!, "Shelby Chesnes Topless Playboy by Popular Demand."

It's Going to Take More Than Airstrikes to Destroy #ISIS

From Chris Woods, at Foreign Policy, "Can Airstrikes Stop the Islamic State?":
It will likely take more than just an air campaign to decimate the Islamic State. Beyond a few hundred military advisers in Iraq, however, American boots on the ground aren't an option the White House is seriously considering. Recent U.S. military actions in Libya and Yemen have focused exclusively on air power. That's Obama's preferred model for fighting the Islamic State, as well. "American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq again," the president has made clear.

Yet there's scant proof that airpower-only campaigns actually work. Much of Libya is now overrun by militant Islamists, while Yemen is actually less stable today after five years of secret U.S. drone strikes.

Ground troops will eventually be needed to hold territory once IS is forced out of the areas of Syria and Iraq it now controls. Washington and its Western allies not only have little appetite for another ground war, they don't have enough credibility to conduct one following the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq. Presumably that's why Obama has promoted the idea of a regional solution to the problem. Yet with the Syrian and Iraqi armies barely capable of stepping up, it's not clear who would fill that void.

"If you want the Iraqi Army to go capture everything in the next few weeks then yes, it's going to struggle," says Afzal Ashraf, a former Royal Air Force group captain who served in Iraq. Sorting out the Iraqi Army's disastrous leadership could take months, maybe years, and time is in short supply. Yet Ashraf thinks it's still possible to turn things around: "Once you start using [airstrikes] to gain small tactical victories, it starts to build up its expertise fairly rapidly, and they become more confident."

thers too are confident that bombing can sufficiently degrade the Islamic State enough to turn the tide of the conflict. Lt. Gen. David Deptula was an architect of the successful U.S. air campaign that destroyed the Taliban in 2001. As he notes, the Northern Alliance was actually losing the war in Afghanistan in 2001 before U.S. airpower and small teams of elite U.S. forces on the ground turned the tide -- and in just weeks.

Yet if Obama means to do the same to the Islamic State, airstrikes will have to increase by an order of magnitude, Deptula believes. "We need to institute an aggressive air campaign in which airpower is applied like a thunderstorm, and not like a drizzle." He believes many hundreds of armed sorties a day will be needed if Washington is serious about wanting to "halt, paralyze, and then render ineffective [IS]."

We'll soon find out whether Obama has the appetite for that kind of fight.
Yeah, we'll see.

And frankly, we'll at least need some special operations forces going after ISIS on the ground. Remember Michael O'Hanlon's piece from last month, "Why Iraq Air Strikes Might Not Be Enough."

Global Jihad's Plan for Islamic Domination — And Obama's Ceaseless Program of Leftist Treason

From Michelle Malkin, "Never forget: Unlike Obama, the jihadists never rest":

Simple, Free Image and File Hosting at MediaFire
Here’s the first and last rule of Islamic jihad: If at first you don’t succeed, plot, plot again.

9/11 wasn’t the first. 9/11 won’t be the last. It’s not “fear-mongering” to face reality. These head-chopping, throat-slitting, bloodthirsty hijackers — of planes, freedom and civilization — have conspired for decades to inflict modern mass murder on the West. Their homicidal mission is spectacular destruction in the name of the Koran.

Never forget: Eternal Muslim hatred of infidels didn’t start with George W. Bush. Or George Herbert Walker Bush. Or Ronald Reagan. Or the creation of Gitmo. Or the birth of Israel. Or the Twin Towers. Or the Khobar Towers. Or Lockerbie. Or the U.S.S. Cole. Or Fort Hood. Or the Beirut Marine barracks bombings. Or the bombings of the U.S. embassy in Africa, the bombing of U.S. military headquarters in Riyadh and the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi.

Allah’s animals can’t stop. They won’t stop. Sura 9:5, the verse of the sword, commands them to “slay the idolators wherever you find them, and take them, and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush.” No “pagan” throat is safe: American soldiers, worldly journalists, innocent schoolgirls, Jewish teenage boys and Christian missionaries alike are all targets of Sura 47′s call to “smite the necks” of the unbelievers.

Now our impuissant president sees fit, after two laggard terms in office, to unveil a “plan” for “degrading and ultimately destroying” the Muslim terrorists of ISIS.

Pffft.

To call the Obama administration’s trifling gestures a “bump in the road” to Islamic domination would be an overstatement of astronomic proportions. The bloodless words of the White House are rhetorical pebbles.

While Barack Obama singles out ISIS jihad gangsters for a $5 billion kabuki counterterrorism campaign, he continues to subsidize Hamas terrorists.

He has freed countless al-Qaida recidivists from the very Gitmo detention facility he vowed to shut down to appease international jihad enablers of the Kumbaya/Coexist coalition.

Obama’s jihad enablers have rolled out the red carpet at the White House for Islamist funders and frontmen, including:

-Esam Omeish, former head of the Muslim Brotherhood-sponsored Muslim American Society and patron of jihad cleric Anwar Awlaki, whom he helped install at Virginia’s notorious Dar al-Hijrah mosque. (That’s the same mosque where two 9/11 hijackers, terrorist financier Abdul Rahman al-Amoudi and Fort Hood Muslim mass murderer Nidal Hasan all worshiped.)

– Sheikh Abdullah bin Bayyah, a top lieutenant of Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi, who urges followers to kill every last Jew, sanctioned suicide bombings and the killing of our soldiers, and declared that the “U.S. is an enemy of Islam that has already declared war on Islam under the disguise of war on terrorism and provides Israel with unlimited support.”

–Hisham al-Talib, another Qaradawi cheerleader welcomed at the White House by Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Al-Talib is an Iraqi-born Muslim identified by the FBI as a Muslim Brotherhood operative and a major contributor to the left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights, the group of jihadi-sympathizing lawyers who helped spring suspected Benghazi terror plotter Abu Sufian bin Qumu from Gitmo.

While Obama has been hitting the golf courses and Hollywood fundraisers over the past two terms, the relentless jihadists have been training, recruiting, practicing, testing and refining.

They’ve infiltrated our prisons, our military and our universities.

They’ve penetrated our borders, abused our toothless visa programs and exploited our indiscriminate refugee system to import and export the next generation of soldiers of Allah around the world.

They’re experimenting with shoe bombs, underwear bombs, ink bombs, dry ice bombs and cargo bombs.

Their dry runs on airliners continue unabated as our Federal Air Marshal Service shrinks from insufficient funds and abandonment.
They command their own rogue freighter and aviation fleets.

While Obama finally gets around to reading his teleprompter vow to destroy ISIS this week, Osama bin Laden’s heirs are diligently fulfilling their 20-year plan...
Still more at the link.

Dick Cheney Is Still Right

From the editors at the Wall Street Journal, via Memeorandum:
President Obama will lay out his plan to counter the Islamic State on Wednesday night, and we’ll judge the strategy on its merits. But the mere fact that Mr. Obama feels obliged to send Americans to fight again in Iraq acknowledges the failure of his foreign policy. He is tacitly admitting that the liberal critique of the Bush Administration’s approach to Islamic terrorism was wrong.

Recall that Mr. Obama won the Presidency by arguing that the U.S. had alienated the world and Muslims by recklessly using force abroad. We had betrayed our values by interrogating terrorists too harshly and wiretapping too much. Our enemies hated us not because they hated our values or our influence but because we had provoked them with our interventions.

If we withdrew from the Middle East, especially from Iraq; if we avoided new entanglements, such as in Syria; and if we engaged with our adversaries, such as Iran and Russia, the anti-American furies would subside and the world would be safer. We should nation-build at home, not overseas, and slash the defense budget accordingly.

***

Mr. Obama pursued this vision starting with his Inaugural Address and throughout his first term. He tried to “reset” relations with Russia by dismantling a missile-defense deal with Poland and the Czech Republic. He muted support for the democratic uprising in Iran in 2009 lest it upset the mullahs he needed for a nuclear weapons deal.

When the Syrian revolt erupted in 2011, Mr. Obama called for Bashar Assad to go but did nothing to aid the moderate opposition. In the process he overruled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA director David Petraeus, and his ambassador to Damascus Robert Ford.

The U.S. absence left Syria’s battleground to the Russians and Iranians, who helped Assad hang on, and to the Qataris, who have funded Islamic State and the al Qaeda affiliated al-Nusrah. But Mr. Obama was unrepentant, saying as recently as August that it had “always been a fantasy” to think that arming the moderate Syrians would make a difference.

Above all Mr. Obama sought to end the U.S. presence in Iraq. He made a token effort to strike a status of forces agreement past 2011, offering so few troops that the Iraqis thought it wasn’t worth the domestic political trouble. Mr. Obama then sold his total withdrawal as a political success, claiming Iraq was “stable” and “self-reliant” and making a centerpiece of his 2012 campaign that “the tide of war is receding.” He ridiculed Mitt Romney for warning about Mr. Putin’s designs.

Mr. Obama doubled down on his peace-through-withdrawal strategy in the second term, speeding up the U.S. departure from Afghanistan. On May 23, 2013, he summed up his vision and strategy in a sort of victory speech at National Defense University:

“Today, Osama bin Laden is dead, and so are most of his top lieutenants. There have been no large-scale attacks on the United States, and our homeland is more secure. Fewer of our troops are in harm’s way, and over the next 19 months they will continue to come home. Our alliances are strong, and so is our standing in the world. In sum, we are safer because of our efforts.”

Then in January his friends at the New Yorker quoted him as comparing Islamic State to the “jayvee team,” and this summer he said Mr. Putin is doomed to fail because countries don’t invade others in “the 21st century.”

***

So where are we less than a year later?
Continue reading.

Charles Krauthammer: Obama 'Has Been Dragged Kicking and Screaming' to Accept #ISIS Threat

Video, at RealClearPolitics.

Majority of Americans Says Obama's an Epic Fail

It's a 52 percent majority, and Aaron Blake is sure to point out the question offers a "binary" choice between success and failure (and not other options, like perhaps he's only partially fail).

At the Washington Post, "A majority of Americans say Obama’s presidency is a ‘failure’."

The Obama Depression: Long-Term Job Losses Still at Record Levels

Well, things won't really being to turn around until the Depressor-in-Chief is retired for good.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Despite 'recovery,' long-term jobless still at record levels":
It has come down to this for Brian Perry: an apple or banana for lunch, Red Sox ballgames on an old Zenith TV and long walks to shake off the blues.

At 57, Perry has been unemployed and looking for work for nearly seven years, ever since that winter when the Great Recession hit and he was laid off from his job as a law firm clerk.

By his count, Perry has applied for more than 1,300 openings and has had some 30 interviews, the last one a good two years ago. With his savings running dry, this summer he put up for sale his one asset — a three-bedroom house his parents used to own in this suburb of Providence.

"I'm not looking for pity, just one last opportunity," said Perry, a boyish-looking man with bright blue eyes and a nasal New England brogue.

The national economy, now in its sixth year of recovery, is gaining momentum and the unemployment rate has fallen sharply over the last year to 6.1%. But the number and share of people out of work for more than six months, the so-called long-term unemployed, remain at historically high levels.

Of the 3 million long-term jobless today, about one-third have been unemployed for more than two years, Labor Department data show. A small minority — roughly 100,000 Americans like Perry — have been actively looking for at least five years.

They might be called the super long-term unemployed. While others have quit looking, taken early retirement or entered disability rolls, these workers have pressed on year after year despite the increasingly long odds of finding a new job.

Extreme as their cases are, they reflect the devastating effects of the worst economic downturn in 75 years and how much the risks of being unemployed for extended periods have increased compared with the past.

The longer people remain jobless, the more likely they are to suffer the scarring effects of unemployment that can hurt their earnings permanently and create a cycle of instability.
More.

Frankly, I'd be angry. And that "cycle of instability" could easily devolved into extremist political violence.

Gee, thanks Obama and the "equality"-obsessed Democrat Party.

PREVIOUSLY: "The Obama Depression: In Poll, 7-in-10 Say Economy Has Permanently Changed for the Worse Since '09."

Apple Shows Off Smartwatch, Larger-Screen iPhones

At WSJ, "Devices to Include Apple's New Payment Service Aimed at Making In-Store Purchases Easier":

In an ambitious blitz of new products, Apple Inc. unveiled a pair of larger-screen iPhones, an Internet-connected watch and a new payment system that allows users to make in-store purchases with a smart device.

The watch, called Apple Watch, represents the company's first new product in more than four years. Apple said the watch will start at $349 and be available in early 2015. It works through a connection to Apple's new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, unveiled Tuesday, as well as the older iPhone 5, 5c and 5s.

The wearable device comes in two sizes and three versions: Watch, Sport and Edition. Apple is offering several different straps and faces, allowing multiple designs.

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook called the watch the most-personal device Apple has created. The device allows new ways for users to communicate from their wrists, the company said, and includes sensors that can detect a pulse, count steps and suggest fitness goals.

The new iPhones, meanwhile, will have 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch displays, larger than its current four-inch screen. Apple said it expects the new phones—to be called iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus—to go on sale on Sept. 19.

"Today, we are launching the biggest advancement in the history of iPhone," Mr. Cook said.

Apple said it plans to sell the larger 5.5-inch model starting at $299 with a two-year carrier contract, higher than the $199 price for its current high-end iPhone 5S. The company said the 4.7-inch iPhone will start at $199 with a contract. The company said the new phones come with many hardware improvements, including a sharper display, better battery life and improved camera performance.

The company also unveiled a new digital-payments service that will allow consumers to make purchases using just their phones or watches, marking the company's first big push into brick-and-mortar payments.
More.

Cindy Crawford Offers to Pay for Toxic Chemical Cleanup at Malibu Schools (VIDEO)

Seems to me that Cindy Crawford would be sending her kids to private schools, but then again, this is Malibu. It's not like you're dealing with a bunch of inner-city poverty and the attendant cultural rabble.

At CBS Los Angeles, "Malibu Parents Demand Tests After Toxic Chemicals Found on 2 School Campuses":
KCAL9's Serene Branson reports parents have been pushing the district to fully test and clean up contaminated schools for four years - and concerned mom Cindy Crawford is among them.

Thank the Left's Minimum Wage Protests: McDonald’s to Offer Burger Orders by Machine

Leftists are so stupid. Demands for a $15.00 minimum wage, which have been targeted particularly at McDonald's, will backfire, resulting in more automation at the restaurant chain, and the increasing loss of entry-level jobs.

But then, leftists destroy everything they get their hands on.

At WaPo, "McDonald’s fresh hope to turn around slumping sales: Ordering burgers from a machine":
If you’ve ever felt guilty ordering at McDonald’s, the fast-food mega-chain has just the fix: You can now order your own quarter-pound bacon cheeseburger from a welcoming, non-judging machine.

Battling the worst sales slump in a decade and competition from build-your-own upstarts like Chipotle and Smashburger, McDonald’s is expanding a test concept built around ordering via tablet. Just tap on a screen and watch as your burger’s toppings (and calories) pile on, then wait for an employee to bring it over. No human interaction necessary.

McDonald’s move towards dehumanization, launched as a pilot last winter and expanded across San Diego last week, is part of a larger trend of chain eateries turning tablets into your full-time restaurant buddy: equal parts menu, server and paycheck. Applebee’s, Panera Bread and even airport bars have installed tablets to allow diners to order food or booze without a wait....

With tablet ordering, “you can serve more lunches per hour, and the customers, since so many use their smartphone for just about everything, see it as more convenient,” Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Chuck Pinson-Rose said. “We’re moving toward a point where you have to have these sorts of things. … But it hasn’t gained universal acceptance yet. I don’t know if it’s really going to move the [sales] needle in a big way.”

The tablets could give McDonald’s a few added bonuses outside sales, including helping whisk data more directly back to headquarters on what customers really want. A workforce of tablets could even potentially allow the firm to cut back in staffing. Pay at McDonald’s and other fast-food giants have recently been slammed in nationwide protests...
More.

Yes, so less people will be able to find jobs.

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

NFL's Roger Goodell May Be In Trouble Too

At LAT, "NFL faces troubling questions after a second video surfaces that leads to Ray Rice's indefinite suspension":
The grainy images, captured without sound, show a man and a woman in an elevator.

He turns toward her, then walks away. She comes at him, and he punches her on the side of the head, knocking her off her feet and into a railing. When the doors open he drags her limp body behind him.

Ray Rice, who threw the punch, was a star running back with the Baltimore Ravens. The woman was Janay Palmer, at the time Rice's fiancee, now his wife.

Within hours of the video's release by TMZ Sports, Rice's career as a professional football player was in jeopardy. His contract was terminated by the Ravens and the NFL announced he was suspended indefinitely.

But the league and its commissioner, Roger Goodell, may be in trouble too.

The surveillance video released Monday is the second look at that altercation. The first, which surfaced six months ago, shows Rice pulling Palmer out of a casino elevator. It led to Rice's being charged with third-degree assault, a felony; Palmer with simple assault, a misdemeanor. Rice agreed to enter a diversionary program, allowing him to avoid trial.

In July, the NFL suspended Rice for two games, which drew widespread criticism as too lenient.

Now, with the release of the latest video, the league is facing more troubling questions: Either its initial investigation failed to turn up the second, more graphic video; or its leaders were not being truthful Monday when they said they were seeing that footage for the first time...
More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Ray Rice Booted by Ravens After Brutal Elevator Knock-Out Video Goes Public."

BONUS: At CNN, "Sklar: NFL is an organization that needs immediate change."

Kelly Brook in London

Alright!

I miss this lady.

At Egotastic!, "Kelly Brook Looking Big in a Bright Orange Dress in London."

WSJ/NBC Poll: Fear of Terrorist Attack Soars Under Obama and the #Democrats!

Americans are more scared today than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

At NBC News, "ISIS Threat: Fear of Terror Attack Soars to 9/11 High, NBC News/WSJ Poll Finds":

The nation is on edge in the wake of brutal beheadings of journalists by Islamic extremists — with more Americans saying the United States is less safe now than at any point since 9/11, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll shows.

The exclusive poll reveals that 47% of Americans believe the country is less safe now than before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That’s a significant increase from even a year after the twin towers fell when in September 2002 just 20% of the country said the nation was less safe. The level of fear across America also is up substantially from last year when 28% felt the same way.

In fact, just 26% of Americans now feel the nation is safer than before 9/11.

The numbers are a backdrop for the primetime speech President Obama will deliver on Wednesday night outlining his plan to combat the terrorist group ISIS, which has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria, beheaded two American journalists, distributed images of the killings in via gruesome videos, and has launched a social media campaign to extend its reach.

“A very war-weary country … seems to have woken up to the real threat that ISIS may present,” says Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted this survey with Democratic pollster Peter Hart and his colleagues at Hart Research.

“The beheadings are so chilling to the American public,” added Hart. “The only things I think of equal impact are the self-immolations back in Vietnam.”

The new poll also found that more than six in 10 respondents believe that taking military action against the Islamic militant group ISIS is in the nation’s interest.

And a whopping 94 percent of Americans say they have heard about the news of the beheaded journalists – higher than any other news event the NBC/WSJ poll has measured over the past five years.

That includes the 2011 debt-ceiling debate (77 percent), the 2012 health-care decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (78 percent), Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons in 2013 (79 percent) and this year’s botched execution in Oklahoma (68 percent).

According to the poll, 61 percent of American voters believe that the United States taking military action against ISIS is in United States’ interest, versus 13 percent who don’t. (Another 24 percent said they don’t know enough to have an opinion.)

That’s a significant change when a similar question was asked last year about the U.S. taking possible action against Syria’s government after its reported use of chemical weapons.

Back then, only 21 percent said action was in the nation’s interest, while 33 percent said it wasn’t.

“The results couldn’t be more different,” McInturff, the GOP pollster, says.

In addition, 40 percent of respondents say U.S. military action against ISIS should be limited only to air strikes; another 34 percent say it should include both air strikes and combat troops; and 15 percent say military action shouldn’t be taken.

And while a plurality of Americans (40 percent) think that the United States should be less active in world affairs, that’s a seven-point drop on this question from April (when it was 47 percent).

By comparison, 27 percent say the U.S. should be more active – an eight-point increase from April.
Devastating. Just 32 percent approve of the job Obama's doing in foreign policy, an all-time low.

VIDEO: Anne Bayefsky Blasts United Nation as the Leading Global Purveyor of Anti-Semitism

Watch, at Israel Matzav, "Into the belly of the beast: Anne Bayefsky blasts the UN as the leading global purveyor of anti-Semitism."

So, Mel Brooks Has Six Digits on His Left Hand

I saw Brooks' hand imprint yesterday on Twitter:



I thought he must have double-dipped, or something, to get that sixth finger imprint on the left hand.

But no. Here's the photo from Grauman's Chinese Theatre (now TCL Chinese Theatre) in Hollywood, at the Los Angeles Times, "Photo Mel Brooks in concrete."

RELATED: "'Young Frankenstein' has new life on 40th anniversary."

Tuesday Teaching

More blogging tonight.

Until then, shop Amazon!



'I can feel it coming in the air tonight, Oh Lord...'

Phil Collins, from yesterday afternoon's drive-time, at the Sound L.A.

Changes
David Bowie
4:56

In the Air Tonight
Phil Collins
4:51 PM

Same Old Song and Dance
Aerosmith
4:47 PM

The Letter
The Box Tops
4:45 PM

Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)
The Rolling Stones
4:41 PM

Once In a Lifetime
Talking Heads
4:37 PM

A Horse With No Name
America
4:33 PM

Paranoid
Black Sabbath
4:30 PM

Mama Told Me (Not to Come)
Three Dog Night
4:27 PM

Any Way You Want It
Journey
4:24 PM

BURNIN' FOR YOU
B.O.C.
4:20 PM

Couldn't Get It Right
Climax Blues Band
4:10 PM

More Than a Feeling
Boston
4:06 PM


The Communist Playbook

Not at all different from the Obama-Democrat playbook, at iOWNTHEWORLD.

Megyn Kelly Interviews Ward Churchill

Man, the dude is so full of hatred.

And he won't apologize for calling those killed in the 9/11 Twin Towers attacks "little Eichmanns."



James O'Keefe Video: Ebola-Infected #ISIS Jihadi Could Sneak Into U.S. from Canada

At London's Daily Mail, "Filmmaker shows 'Ebola-infected ISIS terrorist' sneaking across Lake Erie from Canada to Cleveland – and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – without being challenged once" (via Instapundit).

Analysts Warn of 'Unprecedented' Threat from #ISIS Foreign Fighters

Chilling warning.

At Free Beacon, "CNN Analysts Warn of ‘Unprecedented’ Threat from ISIL Foreign Fighters."



Monday, September 8, 2014

Fracking, New Energy Production, Spurs Rust Belt Economic and Industrial Rebound

Reality continues to intrude on the left's mindless, mendacious, and malignant ideological program.

At the New York Times, "Boom in Energy Spurs Industry in the Rust Belt":
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio — Waist-high weeds and a crumbling old Chevy mark the entrance to a rust-colored factory complex on the edge of town here, seemingly another monument to the passing of the golden age of American industry.

But deep inside the 14-acre site, the thwack-thwack-thwack sound of metal on metal tells a different story.

“We’re holding our own,” said Greg Hess, who is looking to hire draftsmen and machine operators at the company he runs, Youngstown Bending and Rolling. “I feel good that we saved this place from the wrecking ball.”

The turnaround is part of a transformation spreading across the heartland of the nation, driven by a surge in domestic oil and gas production that is changing the economic calculus for old industries and downtrodden cities alike.

Here in Ohio, in an arc stretching south from Youngstown past Canton and into the rural parts of the state where much of the natural gas is being drawn from shale deep underground, entire sectors like manufacturing, hotels, real estate and even law are being reshaped. A series of recent economic indicators, including factory hiring, shows momentum building nationally in the manufacturing sector.

New energy production is “a real game-changer in terms of the U.S. economy,” said Katy George, who leads the global manufacturing practice at McKinsey & Company, the consulting firm. “It also creates an opportunity for regions of the country to renew themselves.”

The environmental consequences of the American energy boom and the unconventional drilling techniques that have made it possible are being fiercely debated nationwide. New York officials have imposed a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, because of concerns that the fluids injected into the shale to free oil and natural gas deposits might contaminate the local drinking water.

Although that danger worries environmentalists here as well, there has been much less opposition because residents are so desperate for the kind of economic growth that fracking can bring, whatever the risks.

Vallourec, a French industrial giant, recently completed a million-square-foot plant in Youngstown to make steel pipes for the energy industry, the first mill of its kind to open here in 50 years. The facility, which cost $1.1 billion to build, will be joined next year by a smaller $80 million Vallourec plant making pipe connectors.

The change is evident in the once-moribund downtowns of northeastern Ohio cities as well as in the economic data for the state as a whole.

Ohio’s unemployment rate in July was 5.7 percent, well below the national average of 6.1 percent. That’s a sharp reversal of the situation four years ago, when unemployment in Ohio hit 10.6 percent, significantly above the country’s overall jobless rate at the time, as manufacturers here and elsewhere hemorrhaged jobs. In the Youngstown area, the jobless rate in July was 6.7 percent, compared with 13.3 percent in early 2010.

“Both Youngstown and Canton are places which experienced nothing but disinvestment for 40 years,” said Ned Hill, a professor of economic development at Cleveland State University. Now, “they’re not ghost towns anymore. You actually have to go into reverse to find a parking spot downtown.”

Youngstown and surrounding Mahoning County is hardly Silicon Valley or even Pittsburgh, which long ago bade farewell to its industrial past and sought out growth in new sectors like health care and education. Broad swaths of Youngstown look almost rural, the result of a decade-long campaign to tear down abandoned homes and factories, letting sites that were once eyesores return to nature.

And the new factories that have gone up — like Vallourec’s new complex, or a $13.2 million plant that Exterran opened in May 2013 to make oil and gas production equipment for local customers — employ only a fraction of the workers who once labored at Youngstown’s mills. Vallourec’s state-of-the-art pipe mill has about 350 workers; the old Youngstown Sheet & Tube plant that once stood on the site had a work force of 1,400 when it shut down in 1979.

But the improvement is undeniable, especially to those who grew up here. “It’s a night-and-day difference,” said Robert E. Roland, a Youngstown native who moved away when he was 18, and is now managing partner at one of Canton’s biggest law firms, Day Ketterer. “It was extremely depressed, and nobody was downtown except for people who were down and out.”
More.

Just think if we'd been pursuing a national economic program based on American energy independence and competitiveness. The success stories of Ohio would be spread across the entire nation. Instead, the Dems have brought us homosexual marriage, "equal pay," ObamaCare, and retreat from global leadership.

2016 can't come soon enough.

At Least Two Dead in Arizona Flooding

At the Arizona Republic, "Pima, Pinal county motorists die as vehicles swamped."

But also at Tucson's Arizona Daily Star, "A 76-year-old woman was killed when she was swept away in a flooded wash today near Oracle Junction."

Also at KABC-15 Phoenix:



Rothenberg Predicts Substantial Republican Wave in November

Stuart Rothenberg's quite bullish on GOP prospects in November.

See, "Rothenberg: Senate GOP Gains At Least 7 Seats":
After looking at recent national, state and congressional survey data and comparing this election cycle to previous ones, I am currently expecting a sizable Republican Senate wave.

The combination of an unpopular president and a midterm election (indeed, a second midterm) can produce disastrous results for the president’s party. President Barack Obama’s numbers could rally, of course, and that would change my expectations in the blink of an eye. But as long as his approval sits in the 40-percent range (the August NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll), the signs are ominous for Democrats.

The generic congressional ballot currently is about even among registered voters. If that doesn’t change, it is likely to translate into a Republican advantage of a few points among “likely” voters. And recent elections when Republicans have even a small advantage have resulted in significant GOP years.

The map, which has always been the single biggest reason why Republicans will gain Senate seats, continues to give Republicans plenty of opportunities and Democrats relatively few (though the Kansas developments change that slightly). In an anti-Obama election, most of those Democratic opportunities will evaporate.

Given the president’s standing, the public’s disappointment with the direction of the country, the makeup of the midterm electorate and the ’14 Senate map, I expect a strong breeze at the back of the GOP this year.

And if there is a strong breeze, most of the races now regarded as competitive will fall one way — toward Republicans. That doesn’t happen all of the time, of course, but it’s far from unusual...
I can't wait!

The Dems are going to get hammered!

Oh, and even Larry Sabato's getting more bullish on the GOP's chances, at Politico, "Surf's Up: Will there be a GOP wave in the Senate—or a wipeout?"

Ashley Judd Attends 'Dolphin Tale 2' Los Angeles Premiere

At Egotastic!, "Why can't Ashley Judd wear a revealing dress top just because she's pimping a cute animal flick for the kids?"

Ray Rice Booted by Ravens After Brutal Elevator Knock-Out Video Goes Public

Following-up from this morning, "Ray Rice Fiancée Elevator Knock-Out Video."

At the Los Angeles Times, "Ray Rice is released by Ravens and suspended indefinitely by NFL."

Looks like the dude sucker-punched himself out of an NFL career.

More at Memeorandum.

Bob Schieffer: 9/11 'Forgive Me, But I've Been Through This Before...'

I like Bob Schieffer.

A great commentary yesterday morning:



Ray Rice Fiancée Elevator Knock-Out Video

At TMZ, "Ray Rice -- ELEVATOR KNOCKOUT ... Fiancee Takes Crushing Punch (Video)."

And at WaPo, "Graphic new video shows Ravens’ Ray Rice domestic violence incident."

More, at Hot Air, "Newly released video calls NFL action on Ray Rice into question … again; Update: NFL says they never saw it."

Amanda Marcotte on the Unbearable Unfairness of Ideals

From Darleen Click, at Protein Wisdom.

Islamic Rape Gangs: #Rotherham is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

From James Delingpole, at Breitbart London.

PREVIOUS Rotherham blogging here.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Ted Cruz #ISIS Strategy: 'Take Them Out'

Via Truth Revolt.



Government Now the Villain in Pop Culture

Via Nice Deb, "Culture Trend? Government Now the Villain in Pop Teen Movies & Books."



Is Canada Now More American Than America?

From John Fund, at National Review:
The merger of U.S. hamburger giant Burger King with Tim Hortons, Canada’s favorite coffee shop, will create the world’s third largest fast-food company, with a total of 18,000 restaurants in over 100 countries. It is also a piercing wake-up call for the U.S., because the new company will make its global headquarters in Canada’s province of Ontario. That underscores what savvy businesses everywhere have learned — the U.S. is an increasingly less attractive place to do business. “Canada has quietly and politely become, well, more American than America,” says columnist Stephen Green.

Since 2003, more than 35 major U.S. companies have moved their headquarters and reincorporated overseas. Rather than rail against such “inversions,” as President Obama does, or call for an economic boycott, as Ohio’s Democratic senator Sherrod Brown does, we should figure out what is driving U.S. companies offshore. Here’s a clue: The U.S. now has the highest corporate tax rate of any industrialized country, and the Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration is “even now looking for ways it can unilaterally raise corporate taxes without going to Congress.”
Without going to Congress?

Same as it ever was...

More.

PRESIDENT COWARD

From Bill Whittle:



#Angels Sweep Twins in Spectacular Style

Outstanding baseball from the Angels, especially yesterday's comeback win.

But today's game was a blowout. The Twins looked hapless.

At LAT, "Angels have strong all-around performance in 14-4 win over Twins."



Is the Boycott Movement Anti-Semitic?

Indeed it is, argues Professor Cary Nelson, at Inside Higher Ed.


BONUS: From Jonathan Marks, at Commentary, "“Scholarship and Politics Don’t Mix!” Say Those Who Mix Scholarship and Politics."

Hottest Instagrams of the Week

At Co-Ed, "THE TOP 40 SEXIEST INSTAGRAM PICS OF THE WEEK [SEPTEMBER 1ST - 6TH]."

Callie Bundy is particularly hot, heh.

Remembering the Munich Massacre

At Atlas Shrugs, "In Memoriam: Victims of Munich Jihad Massacre at the 1972 Olympics."

Tampa Bay's David DeJesus Inside-the-Park Home Run

Amazing.



'Anti-Fascist' Demonstrators Face-Off Against Police in Calais

"Anti-fascist" is correct-speak for leftists and communists.

At Telegraph UK:


Police and anti-fascist demonstrators were involved in a standoff on Sunday in the French port town of Calais.

The stand off came during a march by left-wing activists who were protesting at a separate march by far right anti-immigration activists.

Calais is facing rising tensions over immigration with about 1,300 migrants from the Horn of Africa, Sudan and Afghanistan currently there.

Protesting leftists said they were defending the migrants and were trying to disrupt the demonstration by anti-immigration activists protesting the influx of migrants camping out in Calais while they wait to try and sneak across the English Channel into Britain.

Police barricaded streets and sought to keep the groups apart.
Also at London's Daily Mail, "Calais migrant tensions simmer as Britain offers to send fences from Nato summit."

And previously, "Calais is 'besieged by gangs of migrants': Fury of port chief as riot police are called in and France accuses Britain of being a soft touch."

Joan Rivers Talks to Her Daughter Melissa Before Surgery

Video, from 2011, "Joan Rivers Moments Before Surgery - No Makeup."

Via Ann Althouse, "'I don’t want some rabbi rambling on; I want Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents'."

'As the Left becomes more and more tied to Islamic fanatics, anti-Semitism is going to become more and more of a staple of leftist dogma...'

From Caroline Glick, "The dilemma of the Jewish leftist."

Tilly Bagshawe

Louise Mensch's sister, who is also a novelist:



Obama to Outline Plan to Take on #ISIS in National Speech Wednesday

At NYDN, "'The next phase is now to start going on some offense,' Obama said Sunday in a preview of the highly anticipated speech, which will occur a day before the 13th anniversary of 9/11. Obama has repeatedly vowed to take the fight to ISIS in the weeks since the bloodthirsty jihadist group posted gruesome videos of its members beheading U.S. journalists."


Here's the full transcript of Obama's remarks, via Memeorandum:



Sunday Cartoons

At Flopping Aces, "Sunday Funnies."

 photo Obama_Doctrine_zps3bd54349.jpg


Also at Randy's Roundtable, "Friday Nite Funnies," and Reaganite Republican, "Reaganite's SUNDAY FUNNIES."

More at Legal Insurrection, "Branco Cartoon – Not A Hard Choice."

CARTOON CREDIT: William Warren.

Elizabeth Drew Tries to Put Lipstick on a Pig

Here's Elizabeth Drew trying her damnedest to blame Republicans for the current disaster that is the Obama administration at year six.

At the New York Review of Books, "Obama & the Coming Election":
Obama did much to pull the country out of the deep recession he inherited, including a rescue of the automobile industry, but a lot of people still don’t benefit from the improved economy, or have dropped out of the labor market, or have been forced into part-time jobs and lower wages.

No doubt it would have been beneficial if more money had been approved for rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, but the votes in Congress weren’t there, just as they weren’t for a single-payer health system, and no amount of presidential rhetoric or arm-twisting—about which there is a fair amount of mythology—would have made a difference.

Obama’s one great disappointment was the failure to win comprehensive immigration reform. After the 2012 election the Republicans were panicking that if they didn’t back immigration reform, Hispanics would punish them mightily in 2016. But then they panicked that if they did back it, Tea Party candidates would upset them in their primaries in 2014.

It’s been evident for quite a while that a certain chilliness on Obama’s part has affected his relations with Congress, but it’s also questionable how much substantive difference this has made. A Cabinet officer said to me, “He’s a loner, and one result is that few Democrats are willing to take the hill for him.” Obama rose swiftly in politics and essentially on his own—he’d been on his own for most of his life—and political camaraderie is of little interest to him. His golfing foursomes are most often made up of junior White House staff and close nonpolitical friends from Chicago. This might not make much difference in the number of bills passed but it has had one very serious effect on his presidency: the Democrats’ unwillingness to praise, defend, much less celebrate the president has left the field clear to his multitude of attackers.

Obama tended to proceed on the theory that if he made some concessions to the Republicans—say, by speeding up deportations of undocumented immigrants—they might be more cooperative; but this hasn’t worked out. It’s true that he is innately cautious, and it’s also true that it is a lot easier to declare what he should have done than to show how he could actually have gotten the votes for that. Little is as simple in the Oval Office as it is to outside critics...
Hmm. Ms. Drew's still in the early stages of grief at the utter collapse of the Great Promise of American Politics, Barack Hussein Obama, who was supposed to be accompanied by unicorns and rainbows.

More at the link.

'Radicals didn’t “hijack” feminism. Radicals own the feminist plane. Anyone woman who buys a ticket on Feminist Airlines should not be surprised when she arrives at her lesbian destination...'

Another #RadFem opus, at the Other McCain, "Is Rachel @Maddow’s Haircut Waging War Against Heteronormative Patriarchy?"



Controlling Home-Grown Western Islamic Terrorists

From Professor Michael Curtis, at American Thinker:
Theresa May, the home secretary in the British Conservative government, in a speech in the House of Commons on September 3, 2014, spoke of ISIS as a “group of murderous psychopaths.”  The videos of the two American journalist hostages about to be brutally beheaded show a level of evil that should draw the attention of the World Council of Churches, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, and the “scholars” of the American Studies Association, hitherto almost exclusively preoccupied with criticism of alleged violations of humanitarian rights by Israel.

The beheading of the second journalist, Steven Sotloff, is even more poignant than that of James Foley based on the knowledge that he was the grandson of Holocaust survivors, and the son of a mother who taught at a Jewish school in Miami.  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is not alone in regarding this cruelty of ISIS as “an act of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask.”  We are now aware that ISIS has committed other such acts, especially the execution by firing squads in desert areas of Iraq of more than 500, and possibly as many as 770, people.

Almost everyone, except perhaps for those named above, now appreciates that ISIS is not simply a “manageable problem,” as President Barack Obama described it, but is a group that must be crushed.  It is not sufficient to condemn the violent Islamist preaching with which the West has become familiar.  It is essential to end the brutality and the menace of ISIS by every means in the Western armory.  The wheels of judgment should not grind exceeding slow....

At the NATO meeting on September 4, 2014 at Celtic Manor near Cardiff, Wales, President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron urged their fellow members of NATO to confront the “brutal and poisonous” Islamic state.  A possible NATO coalition may be created to implement this response through a variety of measures: military power, diplomatic activity, and economic constraints.  However, it is disappointing that no specific pledges of action have been agreed upon.

It was more encouraging that NATO members understood that the more urgent and important issue facing the alliance is not the threat of Russia, however objectionable the policy of Putin towards Ukraine, but the Islamic threat from ISIS and other terrorist groups not only in Iraq and Syria, but also in their own countries.

It should be an international priority to end the caliphate announced by ISIS as soon as possible before it spreads its control over areas in the Middle East.  But equally urgent is the need for policies to deal with the threat of Europeans and Americans – namely, home-grown terrorists, who have fought for ISIS and may return to their countries of origin and undertake terrorist activities.

This issue is not easy to resolve, because what animates Western jihadists remains a mystery.  What makes Muslim citizens of Europe and the United States leave to join the ISIS group and be prepared to commit murderous attacks in their countries of origin when they return?  Are they psychopaths, or are they motivated to act through conviction on political and social issues?

Psychologists tend to suggest that there is no conclusive evidence to determine if terrorists or others who take pleasure in violence are insane, disturbed, or abnormal.  Regarding non-Islamic issues, one can identify the lunacy of the multi-murderer Ted Bundy, an apparently charming man, who confessed, “I just like to kill.  I wanted to kill.”  Likewise with the murderous Baader-Meinhof group (Red Army Faction), the far-left militant group in West Germany from 1970 1998 responsible for bank robberies and the deaths of at least 34 people.  They may have genuinely believed they were engaged in an anti-imperialist struggle and were acting on behalf of the counter-culture.
More.

No. 14 USC Rallies to Beat No. 10 Stanford 13-10 On the Road

At LAT, "USC rallies to defeat Stanford, 13-10":


USC faced an uphill battle Saturday, opening Pac-12 Conference play at Stanford, which was owner of a 17-game home-field winning streak.

The streak was the longest in the nation. Past tense.

Andre Heidari kicked a career-long 53-yard field goal with less than three minutes to play and USC’s defense fell on a last-minute Stanford fumble as the Trojans came away with a 13-10 victory.

It was Heidari's second game-winning kick against the Cardinal in the last two seasons.

USC’s last five games against Stanford have been decided by seven points or less.

"It just always seems to come down to the last series of the game and our guys did just a great job of executing," USC Coach Steve Sarkisian said during a televised postgame interview.
More.

VIDEO: Jihad Preacher Anjem Choudary Confirms Terrorism is Part of Islam

Via Astute Bloggers, "ANJEM CHOUDHARY CONFIRMS TERROR IS PART OF ISLAM."


Choudary: Well, you know, as a lecturer in Sharia law I would say to the people in Russia, the Muslims and the non-Muslims, that every action for a Muslim must be based upon the Koran, the word of Allah, and the teachings of the messenger Mohammed...who is the final messenger for mankind. I mean I would first invite the people to think about and embrace Islam but those who are already Muslim must know that Allah mentions in the Koran, in fact if you look in chapter 8 verse 60 he said prepare as much as you can "steeds of war" to terrorize the enemy. So terrorizing the enemy is in fact part of Islam. I mean this is something that we must embrace and understand as far as the jurisprudence of Islam is concerned.
As I've been saying, Choudary is telling the truth.

Leftist defenders of Islamofascism are foisting the big lie on the West.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

'The only way to win a war is to kill the enemy, all of them if possible, and that means total war with unconditional surrender...'

Today's Democrats don't do "total war," and we're all the worse for it.

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Thought of the Day: Islamic Brutality, We Have Seen this Picture Before."

The Ranks of Street Vendors Have Swelled to Include Laid-Off Professionals, War Veterans, Single Mothers

But hey, let's push for a $15.00 minimum wage and put more people out of work.

The Democrats are f-king morons.

At LAT, "More Angelenos are becoming street vendors amid weak economy."

Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Suffering From Depression, Now Lives in Trailer Park

Secretary Bowen is speaking out. She's suffered from depression in the past, and is currently having a relapse. She mentioned that she wanted to go public with her illness, especially in light of Robin Williams' death. She's termed out of office after this year, but now folks are questioning her continuing fitness to serve.

At LAT, "Secretary of State Debra Bowen tells of struggle with depression."

Also, "Secretary of state's disclosure of depression draws support, concern."

Feces, Urine Dumped on Autistic Boy Participating in Ice Bucket Challenge

This kind of cruelty is simply unfathomable to me.

But then again, leftists would abort a child with autism of they could diagnose it in the womb, so dumping feces and urine on an autistic boy is another evil that we bear in this "progressive" culture.

At Gateway Pundit, "Awful. Bucket of Urine & Feces Poured on Autistic Teen in Ice Bucket Challenge (Video)."

Intelligence Gaps Crippled Mission to Rescue U.S. Hostages Held by Islamic State

It wasn't just intelligence gaps, but White House indecision as well.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Intelligence Gaps Crippled Mission in Syria to Rescue Hostages James Foley, Steven Sotloff":

U.S. Raid on Oil-Storage Facility Was Too Late to Save Hostages Held by Islamic State:WASHINGTON—On a moonless night in early July, several dozen Army Delta Force commandos touched down at an oil-storage facility in eastern Syria.

The plan: Neutralize the terrorist guards, search a makeshift prison, find American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and other hostages, and fly off to safety. It was all supposed to take 20 minutes.

More than an hour later, the Army team was headed back to its launchpad outside Syria empty-handed.

"It was a dry hole," a senior U.S. military official said, using jargon for a mission whose target couldn't be found.

One model for the operation was the 2011 mission that killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, down to choosing the darkest of nights to cloak the raiders. But this raid, the first known U.S. incursion into Syria since its civil war erupted, was in many ways a far bigger gamble, according to current and former U.S. defense and government officials.

The U.S. had limited visibility into Syria, including the suspected prison site just miles from the main operations base of Islamic State, the militant group once known as ISIS that has overrun large parts of Syria and Iraq. Weeks before the raid, the Pentagon drafted a plan for surveillance flights in Syria but dropped the idea after concluding the White House wouldn't approve them, U.S. officials said.

A senior administration official said the only Pentagon request for surveillance flights the White House received came just before the mission.

Before the commandos' helicopters landed in the early morning hours of July 3, the Joint Special Operations team, part of the elite Delta Force, had been practicing for several weeks at a U.S. base in North Carolina—based on intelligence showing the makeshift prison between storage containers, oil derricks and other structures in a bleak desert landscape.

They had prepared for contingencies such as booby-trapped buildings and a large militant force guarding the hostages. Delta Force took part in the ill-fated 1993 "Black Hawk Down" raid in Somalia, and some officials worried the Syria operation carried similar risks.

As they drilled, the team conducting the mission was anxious to get the green light. "There were lots of rehearsals. They were ready for a period of time. It was a matter of waiting on a decision," said a defense official. "Once the decision was made, they went."

They went too late. The U.S. now believes the militants moved the hostages away as little as 72 hours earlier.

The Islamic State's communications discipline was strong, the U.S. officials said, honed by its leaders during the U.S. war in Iraq, making it hard to track the hostages. The U.S. had few informants on the ground to fill gaps in intelligence from satellites and other systems, they said, and the country the U.S. first approached about providing a base for the operation didn't want its territory used as the launch pad.

Videos showing the brutal killing of Messrs. Foley and Sotloff emerged a few weeks later, galvanizing U.S. and international calls to more directly counter Islamic State.

A reconstruction of events surrounding the failed rescue, based on interviews with current and former U.S. officials and foreign diplomats, and with other people familiar with the hostage situation, shows the extent to which it was a calculated gamble under intense time pressure.

The Pentagon proposed and President Barack Obama approved an elaborate operation in hostile territory with imperfect information. The Pentagon, worried about the risk to commandos and hostages, deployed a bigger-than-usual force, including a large team poised to intervene if the raid went sour.

The president "accepted a higher degree of risk than we expected," said one of the U.S. defense officials.

U.S. military and government officials defended their approach, noting that they had to make difficult choices quickly and that intelligence is always incomplete. Even in the bin Laden raid, a spectacular success, American officials were far from certain he was even at the targeted compound.

Officials also were painfully aware the hostages would be at even greater risk once Mr. Obama ordered airstrikes against Islamic State. Officials believed such a decision was imminent, which narrowed the window for any raid.

They also worried that putting drones overhead before the operation risked tipping off the militants. While such flights might have increased U.S. awareness about militant facilities, these officials said, they may not have changed the outcome and might have endangered the hostages if detected.

Officials involved in planning the mission said they concluded that the hostages' survival chances were already so low that a risky raid was the best option. "These are all tough decisions," said one of the officials.

Mr. Obama has for years expressed caution over becoming entangled in Syria's civil war, reflecting his concern that even a small intervention could lead the U.S. into another major Middle Eastern conflict and potentially run afoul of international law.

But over time, the White House has inched toward playing a greater role in Syria and Iraq, pushed by events on the ground. Two years after completing the U.S. pullout from Iraq, Mr. Obama secretly agreed to resume surveillance flights in Iraq to gather intelligence on Islamic State camps near the Syrian border. The group was one of the most effective forces battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces. The program was tiny, initially one drone flight a month.

In June, after Islamic State militants seized Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, the Pentagon drafted an order that called for deploying military advisers to Baghdad and allowing what it called "intrusive" surveillance flights into Syria.

But Pentagon leaders revised the order to take out the overflight authorization because they believed the White House would reject it. A senior defense official said that decision was made after some consultation with the White House. White House and some Pentagon officials argued that incursions into Syrian airspace would violate the country's sovereignty and deepen U.S. involvement in the civil war. "The president wasn't ready to go there," said one of the U.S. officials.

A senior Obama administration official said the Pentagon didn't bring the initial June order for surveillance flights in Syria to the White House for consideration.

In early summer, U.S. intelligence agencies narrowed their search for the American hostages to a small building near an oil facility southeast of Raqqa, the effective capital of Islamic State. Mr. Obama secretly authorized Special Operations forces to begin planning for a rescue mission, which would be led by the Pentagon with support from the Central Intelligence Agency.
Still more at that top link.

Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea Hot 'Booty' Teaser

At London's Daily Mail, "Two hot! Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea get suggestive as they flaunt their figures in sexy swimsuits for Booty remix teaser."

And watch it: "Jennifer Lopez - Booty (feat. Iggy Azalea) [Teaser] #JLoBooty."

L.A.'s Venomous White Cobra Sent to San Diego Zoo

The snake was putting a little fear into the local community where it went missing, with good reason. How'd you like to get nipped by that thing?

At LAT, "White cobra caught in Thousand Oaks arrives at San Diego Zoo."



U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Places Limits on 'Free Speech'

The ultimate in civility bullshit.

Christina Hoff Sommers tweets:



And see Downtrend, "U.C. Berkeley Sets Free Speech Limits: Must Be Courteous and Respectful."

'The more feminists tell me I shouldn’t objectify a woman’s body, the more I want to...'

Heh.

At iOWNTHEWORLD, "Let’s Get Critical, Critical."

Critical of Kate Upton, that is.

So, Alex 'Ping Pong Balls' Pareene Is Blogging at Andrew Sullivan's?

Alex Pareene, some might recall, is the Salon alumnus who attacked Michelle Malkin with racist Asian "ping pong balls" jokes back in 2006.

So, I guess there's ample irony in his posting --- as an invited guest blogger, no less --- at Andrew "Trig Truther" Sullivan's the Dish.

See, "A Second Look At The Giant Garbage Pile That Is Online Media, 2014."

Birds of a feather.



Cuba's Communist Intelligence Services Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics as Spies and Influence Agents

Well, they'd be hitting the mother load at Lawyers, Guns and Money, lol.

At Free Beacon, "FBI: Cuban Intelligence Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics as Spies, Influence Agents."

Pamela Geller on Rick Amato Show Discussing Obama's Capitulation to Global Jihad

At Atlas Shrugs, "VIDEO: Pamela Geller on One America News Network Discussing US Journalist beheading, Obama’s epic failures, and global jihad."


#GamerGate: Online Gaming Community Gets Violently Misogynistic

I'm not a gamer, so the gamer culture is completely foreign to me, but the threatening nature of the Internet underworld is not. These threats ultimately spin out of control and end up hurting people in real life.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Gamergate-related controversy reveals ugly side of gaming community":

This column is usually dedicated to discussing video games, but in the past week and a half, you’d be forgiven for not having the stomach to play one. I haven’t.

Infighting, finger-pointing and the airing of dirty laundry have dominated the late summer in video games. For those who have played an online multiplayer game, this may sound like any other day in video games. But it’s not. Now the attacks are so threatening in nature that even the FBI has taken notice.

A long-simmering schism among select, very vocal members of the gaming community and others in the industry has come to the fore over the last two weeks, resulting in unprecedented levels of death threats and harassment directed at game designers and writers — many of them women.

This is not, to be clear, some trash-talking in a “Call of Duty” match. The hateful social media posts, a number of them threatening rape and crippling injury, have been so violent that some intended targets have gone into hiding.

The fury started in mid-August. The exact incident, in which the spurned ex of a female independent game designer reportedly published embarrassing personal details of their relationship and accused her of infidelity, is now beside the point. That moment has become an excuse, an opportunity to rail against designers and writers who are attempting to intellectualize the medium — “social justice warriors,” as they’ve been labeled by their online assailants.

These “social justice warriors” are seen as capable of destroying the very essence of what some players love about video games: violence, fantasy and scantily clad women.

Far from making a point, the ugly reaction has instead exposed the rage and rampant misogyny that lies beneath the surface of an industry that’s still struggling to mature.

Much of the ire has been aimed at Anita Sarkeesian, a respected pop-culture critic whose series of videos under the Feminist Frequency banner analyzes sexism in mainstream video games. On Aug. 26, she posted to Twitter that “some very scary threats have just been made against me and my family. Contacting authorities now.”

Sarkeesian, whose biting, unflinching observations have long made her a punching bag for those who feel she’s attacking the games they love, has been candid on social media in exposing the recent barrage of harassment. “I hope you die” is one of the few tweets slung her way this week that’s actually printable.

Her most recent supposed offense is posting a video that analyzes how top-shelf video games often resort to using women as background decorations, such as a cringe-inducing strip-club setting of the gunfight in “Mafia II: Joe’s Adventures,” in which bullets soar over the body of a dead, barely clothed exotic dancer.

Attempts to reach Sarkeesian this week have thus far been unsuccessful, as have attempts to reach a number of the other women affected. But anonymous message board postings calling for a game designer who’s been outspoken on social issues to receive a “good solid injury to the knees” is not uncommon.
More.

Ed Morrissey has more, at Hot Air, "A few more thoughts on GamerGate."

ADDED: As the necessary caveat, I've gotta add these tweets from Christina Hoff Sommers, via Ed Morrissey's post:



Nervous Senate Democrats Force Obama to Delay Amnesty for Illegal Aliens

Well, the news keeps getting worse for the Democrats all around, on the economy, foreign policy, and even ObamaCare.

No surprise that idiotic amnesty is off the table for now.

At NYT, "Obama Delays Immigration Action, Yielding to Democratic Concerns."

And it's all the GOP's fault, naturally:
WASHINGTON — President Obama has delayed action to reshape the nation’s immigration system without congressional approval until after the November elections, bowing to the concerns of Senate Democrats on the ballots, White House officials said on Saturday.

The decision is a striking reversal of Mr. Obama’s vow to take action on immigration soon after summer’s end. The president made that promise on June 30, standing in the Rose Garden, where he angrily denounced Republican obstruction and said he would use the power of his office to protect immigrant families from the threat of deportation.

“Because of the Republicans’ extreme politicization of this issue, the president believes it would be harmful to the policy itself and to the long-term prospects for comprehensive immigration reform to announce administrative action before the elections,” a White House official said. “Because he wants to do this in a way that’s sustainable, the president will take action on immigration before the end of the year.”
More.

No worries. We're good with only 10 percent of the workforce illegal immigrants for now. Your kids may still be able to find entry level jobs.

America's Dangerous Aversion to Conflict

A great piece, from Robert Kagan, at WSJ, "The U.S. increasingly yearns to escape the harsh realities of war, but as recent events make clear, raw force remains a key element in international politics."

Friday, September 5, 2014

Al Qaeda Wasn’t 'On the Run'

Of course not.

Lies are the only thing that spew from O's mouth.

From Stephen Hayes, at the Weekly Standard, "Why haven’t we seen the documents retrieved in the bin Laden raid?":
In the early morning hours of May 2, 2011, an elite team of 25 American military and intelligence professionals landed inside the walls of a compound just outside the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. CIA analysts had painstakingly tracked a courier to the compound and spent months monitoring the activity inside the walls. They’d concluded, with varying levels of confidence, that the expansive white building at the center of the lot was the hideout of Osama bin Laden.

They were correct. And minutes after the team landed, the search for bin Laden ended with a shot to his head.

The primary objective of Operation Neptune Spear was to capture or kill the leader of al Qaeda. But a handful of those on the ground that night were part of a “Sensitive Site Exploitation” team that had a secondary mission: to gather as much intelligence from the compound as they could.

With bin Laden dead and the building secure, they got to work. Moving quickly—as locals began to gather outside the compound and before the Pakistani military, which had not been notified of the raid in advance, could scramble its response—they shoved armload after armload of bin Laden’s belongings into large canvas bags. The entire operation took less than 40 minutes.

The intelligence trove was immense. At a Pentagon briefing one day after the raid, a senior official described the haul as a “robust collection of materials.” It included 10 hard drives, nearly 100 thumb drives, and a dozen cell phones—along with data cards, DVDs, audiotapes, magazines, newspapers, paper files. In an interview on Meet the Press just days after the raid, Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, told David Gregory that the material could fill “a small college library.” A senior military intelligence official who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on May 7 said: “As a result of the raid, we’ve acquired the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever.”

In all, the U.S. government would have access to more than a million documents detailing al Qaeda’s funding, training, personnel, and future plans. The raid promised to be a turning point in America’s war on terror, not only because it eliminated al Qaeda’s leader, but also because the materials taken from his compound had great intelligence value. Analysts and policymakers would no longer need to depend on the inherently incomplete picture that had emerged from the piecing together of disparate threads of intelligence—collected via methods with varying records of success and from sources of uneven reliability. The bin Laden documents were primary source material, providing unmediated access to the thinking of al Qaeda leaders expressed in their own words.

A comprehensive and systematic examination of those documents could give U.S. intelligence officials—and eventually the American public—a better understanding of al Qaeda’s leadership, its affiliates, its recruitment efforts, its methods of communication; a better understanding, that is, of the enemy America has fought for over a decade now, at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives.

Incredibly, such a comprehensive study—a thorough “document exploitation,” in the parlance of the intelligence community—never took place. The Weekly Standard has spoken to more than two dozen individuals with knowledge of the U.S. government’s handling of the bin Laden documents. And on that, there is widespread agreement.

“They haven’t done anything close to a full exploitation,” says Derek Harvey, a former senior intelligence analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency and ex-director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Center of Excellence at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

“A full exploitation? No,” he says. “Not even close. Maybe 10 percent.”

More disturbing, many of the analysts and military experts with access to the documents were struck by a glaring contradiction: As President Obama and his team campaigned on the coming demise of al Qaeda in the runup to the 2012 election, the documents told a very different story...
More.