Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
To hear the Left tell it, the debate over mass Muslim immigration — especially from conflict zones — is a simple contest between compassionate tolerance and cowardly xenophobia. They claim their opponents are cowards because the percentage of refugees or immigrants who are terrorists is very small (your bathtub is more dangerous than a Muslim immigrant), and they’re xenophobes because they have no understanding or appreciation for the blessings and benefits of diversity. Conservatives are all fear and no heart.
According to the rules of this debate, there are but two kinds of Muslim immigrants — the tiny few terrorists and the overwhelmingly deserving, suffering majority. Question this narrative, or call attention to the vast cultural gaps between the refugees and the Western nations they’re fleeing to, and you’re a racist. After all, our cultural elite understands the Muslim world better than you do. They went to Harvard with Muslims, and the Muslims they know have great accents, cool customs, and — most importantly — tales of imperialist oppression that turn the leftist heart to mush. What’s not to love?
The recent events in Cologne and other German and Austrian cities represent a necessary, reality-based corrective to this absurd binary thinking...
CONCORD - A new NH1 News poll in New Hampshire indicates Donald Trump remains well out in front of the rest of the Republican presidential field. But the survey stands out by suggesting that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are battling for second.
And the automated telephone survey, released Friday, indicates a divide between undeclared voters and registered Republicans when it comes to support for Trump, the front runner in virtually all polls since last summer. And the survey point to a gender gap, with Trump surprising holding larger lead among female voter than their male counterparts.
The survey, conducted Thursday by REACH Communications, questioned 1,000 Republicans and independents likely to vote in the Feb. 9 GOP primary in the Granite State.
Among the overall sample, Trump grabs 31.7% support. Bush is at 11.9%, with Kasich at 11.8% and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 11%. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is backed by 9.7% of those questioned, with Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida at 8.9%. Taking into account the overall poll's 3.1% sampling error, all four candidates are basically all knotted up.
Following further behind are businesswoman Carly Fiorina (4.6%), famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson (3.8%), Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky (3%), former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (2.6%), and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (1%).
Among registered Republicans, Trump stands at 26.2%. But his support surges to 35.6% among undeclared voters likely to vote in the GOP primary...
Trump's support surges to 35.6 percent among undeclared voters who might vote in the Republican primary.
I thought Jeb was done by now, but he's apparently camped out in the Granite State and has probably shaken a lot of hands.
BERLIN—For years, Klaus Armstroff, head of an obscure German far-right party that calls for sweeping nationalizations, the death penalty and the return of lost pre-World War II territories, struggled to market his ideas. Now he can hardly keep up with demand for his “propaganda material.”
“People call us who have nothing to do with our party. But they order material to wake up their neighbors,” said Mr. Armstroff, who founded the party, called The Third Way, in 2013. Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said, “is playing into our hands.”
Public angst about the government’s decision to open the country’s doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants and the absence of a counterproposal from Germany’s mainstream parties have energized a far-right scene that, until recently, had appeared on the verge of political extinction....
Ballhausen, in the eastern German state of Thuringia, is one of many towns and villages where far-right activists have harnessed anxiety about the migrants to push their agenda, as Dorothea Schröder, a 59-year-old social worker, found out recently.
When Ms. Schröder and her local church decided to help refugees this autumn, she first turned to neighbors in Ballhausen for support. But it wasn’t forthcoming. After she and the local parish announced that they would host a migrant family in a house owned by the church, Ms. Schröder and her few supporters found stickers from The Third Way opposing refugees on mailboxes and doors. The village’s bus stops are currently daubed with a swastika and the runes of the Nazi Waffen-SS unit.
Known far-right activists turned up at a meeting on the issue that the church organized last month. The gathering soon descended into a shouting match, and police had to intervene to restore order.
“Some said the migrants should all drown in the Mediterranean, they should all be put into mines and be buried, or that they should fight in Syria and help to rebuild their country just as the Germans did after 1945,” Ms. Schröder said.
The NPD, the most well-known of Germany’s few, small extreme-right parties, had limited electoral success regionally in the past decade but has since become marginalized. Now, local politicians say, its former and current leaders are often among the organizers of the anti-migrant and anti-Muslim protests that have popped up across the country this year, particularly in the former communist east. And police said they suspected neo-Nazi activists of coordinating a rising wave of attacks against refugee shelters, which have quadrupled to more than 800 this year from 2014.
The Pacific Patriot Network (PPP), a so-called "umbrella group" for local militias, is putting pressure on the Bundy militiamen to wind down the occupation. Their leaders met with law enforcement authorities and spoke out for a "deescalation" at a press conference yesterday afternoon. At the video below is Joseph Rice, one of the founders of the PPP.
Before the Board of County Commissioners for Harney County State of Oregon
Proposal for Resolution of the Peaceful Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by Citizens for Constitutional Freedom
First Request
The Harney County Board of Commissioners and Sheriff have been presented with a Redress of Grievance by the Committee of Safety, detailing out concern’s of the citizens. Harney County Administration has stated they wish to work with the Committee of Safety, yet have failed to respond nor answer the Committee’s Redress of Grievance.
Therefore;
Citizens for Constitutional Freedom request the Harney County Government address all stated grievances in writing, demonstrating they intend to work with the newly formed Committee of Safety addressing matters of county citizens concern.
Second Request
Two witness have come forward and provided recorded eye witness accounts of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), using drip torches, lighting fire along the boundary of the Hammond Ranch. One BLM crew started at the south end of the ranch and the second BLM crew started on the east side of the ranch creating a horseshoe of fire around the Hammond ranch. The Hammond’s responded with lighting back burns to prevent fire spread onto their ranch protecting their private property. The witness was interview[ed] by Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) Frank Papagni, Jr. AUSA Papagni never called on this witness, nor in pre trial discovery reported to the defense the existence of these witnesses.
Therefore;
Citizens for Constitutional Freedom request the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conduct a criminal investigation into prosecutorial misconduct for unlawfully withholding eyewitness testimony which would have aided in the Hammond’s defense. The withholding of evidence and action’s by U.S. Attorney Amanda Marshal has further lead to the violation of the Hammond’s 5th Amendment and 8th Amendment Constitutional Rights.
Third Request
The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, publicly owned land, is currently undermanagement by the United States Fish & Wildlife Service, a Federal Government agency. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the United States Constitution clearly states what land the Federal Government may own, with permission of the State. Article 6, Section 2, Clause 2 define the United States Constitution as the supreme law of the land.
Therefore;
Citizens for Constitutional Freedom request Harney County Government petition and give notice to the Federal Government for the transfer and unconditional return to local control of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge as allowed by Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2. Harney County Government in equal Partnership with the Burns Paiute Tribe will manage and administer this publicly owned land to the values and vision of the local community.
NOW, THEREFORE, based on the foregoing, Citizens for Constitutional Freedom put forth these requests, to be individually address in written format and entered into the official record, to bring resolution to the peaceful occupation of publicly owned land currently identified as the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Upon deliver and posting of documents in the official record, Citizens for Constitutional Freedom will vacate the aforementioned land within 24 hours.
Signed this 8th day of January in the year of 2016.
I see nothing so far to indicate that the "Citizens for Constitutional Freedom" (the Bundy militiamen) are prepared to accept the PPP articles as a basis for a resolution to the crisis.
New Year's Eve in Cologne rapidly descended into a chaotic free-for-all involving sexual assault and theft, most of it apparently committed by foreigners. It has launched a bitter debate over immigration and refugees in Germany -- one that could change the country.
A lot happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne, much of it contradictory, much of it real, much of it imagined. Some was happenstance, some was exaggerated and much of it was horrifying. In its entirety, the events of Cologne on New Year's Eve and in the days that followed adhered to a script that many had feared would come true even before it actually did. The fears of both immigration supporters and virulent xenophobes came true. The fears of Pegida people and refugee helpers; the fears of unknown women and of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Even Donald Trump, the brash Republican presidential candidate in the US, felt it necessary to comment. Germany, he trumpeted, "is going through massive attacks to its people by the migrants allowed to enter the country."
For some, the events finally bring to light what they have always been saying: that too many foreigners in the country bring too many problems along with them. For the others, that which happened is what they have been afraid of from the very beginning: that ugly images of ugly behavior by migrants would endanger what has been a generally positive mood in Germany with respect to the refugees.
As inexact and unclear as the facts from Cologne may be, they carry a clear message: Difficult days are ahead. And they beg a couple of clear questions: Is Germany really sure that it can handle the influx of refugees? And: Does Germany really have the courage and the desire to become the country in Europe with the greatest number of immigrants?
The first week of 2016 was a hectic one. Tempers flared and hysteria spread. It should be noted that an attack would have triggered similar national emotions, or the murder of a child in a park or any other crime that touched on our deepest fears and serviced our long-held stereotypes -- any crime in which a foreigner was involved. On New Year's Eve in Cologne, it was -- according to numerous witness reports -- drunk young men from North Africa who formed gangs to go after defenseless individuals. They humiliated and robbed -- and they sexually assaulted women.
Their behavior, and the subsequent discussion of their behavior in the halls of political power in Berlin, in the media and on the Internet, could easily trigger a radical shift in Germany's refugee and immigration policies. The pressure built up by the images and stories from Cologne make it virtually impossible to continue on as before. That, too, is a paradox: The pressure would be no less intense even if not a single one of the refugees and migrants who arrived in 2015 were among the perpetrators...
You gotta love how Spiegel's all trying to be even handed. The fact is conservatives predicted these very outcomes from the beginning. For the left, they think the conservative reaction confirms their warning of "fascism." In the end, it's the voters who get to decide. Angela Merkel's gonna find out she made a huge mistake. Epic.
A knockout hit by Cincinnati linebacker Vontaze Burfict wound up knocking the Bengals out of the playoffs -- yet again.
Thanks to Burfict's headhunting hit to the helmet of Pittsburgh receiver Antonio Brown -- followed by an unsportsmanlike call on the Bengals after the play -- the Steelers pulled off an 18-16 victory in a wildcard game, clinching with a 39-yard field goal by Chris Boswell.
The rain-soaked crowd, delirious just minutes earlier, watched in devastated disbelief. Orange crushed.
Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who had to be carted to the locker room late in the game with a right shoulder injury (the result of another Burfict hit), came back to direct the final scoring drive.
Pittsburgh moves on to play a divisional game at Denver next weekend.
Shoot, Trump, Cruz, and Rubio all beat Hillary in head-to-head match-ups. Rubio beats her 50-41 percent. Trump's lead is within the margin of error, but folks can quit saying Hillary would beat him in the general. (And the GOP establishment should stop worrying and start boosting him.)
The FBI is bulking up its presence in the area, including setting up a staging area at the Burns airport.
And now a new group has arrived on the scene, members of the Pacific Patriot Network, who are heavily armed. They weren't welcomed by Ammon Bundy and were asked to leave.
Armed members of the Pacific Patriot Network are leaving the occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Joseph Rice, a spokesman for the network, told reporters that his group presented occupation leader Ammon Bundy and other protesters with "articles of resolution."
He didn't say what was in the document, but noted that his group wants to move the sides to an end to the standoff.
Then network members got into most of the cars and trucks they'd parked nearby and started heading out of the reserve.
Rice didn't address whether his group would return, saying only: "We are moving on to present them (the articles of resolution) to other government agencies."
The network is maintaining a neutral stance in the dispute, he said...
Knile Davis had a 106-yard kickoff return and the Kansas City defense forced five turnovers to cruise to their first playoff win since 1994, a 30-0 wild-card victory over the Houston Texans on Saturday.
On the opening kickoff, Davis got three good blocks around the 10-yard line and then simply outran the rest of the defenders for the second-longest kickoff return TD in postseason history.
The defense took over after that, harassing Brian Hoyer into a fumble and three of his career-high four interceptions before halftime to help the Chiefs (12-5) take a 13-0 lead at halftime...
Jennifer Jacobs, one of the top political reporters at the Des Moines Register, was on Special Report the other day and noted that Ted Cruz is running a phenomenal ground operation. And with his high poll numbers, it sure looks like he's the shoo-in at this point. Remember, Donald Trump is testing the theory that he can mobilize fence-sitters and people who don't normally turn out for the caucuses. It's very participatory in Iowa. You've got to mobilize people, and apparently Trump's not doing the kind of outreach at his rallies that you would normally expect from a campaign with a strong ground game.
Now, what if, hypothetically, Cruz wins Iowa and then heads into New Hampshire to knock Trump out of first place in the polls days before the election? Oh boy, this is going to be an excruciating primary season.
The man arrested for allegedly shooting a Philadelphia police officer three times in a late-night ambush traveled to Saudi Arabia in late 2011 and to Egypt in 2012, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Investigators are still trying to determine if the 30-year-old man, Edward Archer, had any connections to foreign terror suspects and whether his overseas travel is of any significance to the investigation of policeman’s shooting, the person added.
The Philadelphia Police Department is leading the investigation, with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The person familiar with the situation said Mr. Archer traveled to Saudi Arabia for a couple of weeks in October-November of 2011. The following year, he spent several months in Egypt. It wasn’t immediately clear why he traveled to those countries.
Police officials on Friday said Mr. Archer told detectives he was inspired by the Islamic State extremist group. Police Commissioner Richard Ross, however, had said that day that he didn’t know if the suspect had any connection to the group or acted alone.
Meanwhile, prosecutors on Saturday said Mr. Archer was charged with attempted murder. He is being held without bail, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said. A preliminary hearing is set for Jan. 25, according to online court records.
In addition to the attempted murder count, Mr. Archer also faces charges of aggravated assault, aggravated assault on a police officer and several gun-related offenses...
The Dow industrials tumbled more than 1,000 points this week, marking the worst first five days of any year, as volatility across the globe rattled investors.
Traders said they are bracing for further big swings in the weeks to come.
The Dow fell 1% Friday after starting the day in positive territory amid a strong U.S. jobs report and an uneventful session in China’s markets overnight. But shares slumped in afternoon trading as investors became unwilling to enter the weekend exposed to the risk of further losses.
In all, U.S. stocks lost $1.36 trillion in value this past week. The unusually severe drop highlighted the precarious position of markets caught between relatively high valuations—attributable in part to years of easy money from central banks—and a new round of uncertainty about the fundamental underpinnings of key parts of the global economy.
“The conundrum is there are parts of the world that are doing fine...and we have pockets that aren’t doing so well,” said Lawrence Kemp, head of BlackRock’s Fundamental Large Cap Growth team. “Given what’s going on in China and the rest of the world, the U.S. economy could grow a little more slowly.”
The Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky once described Stalinism as “the perfect theory for glueing up the brain.” What he meant to dramatize was the fact that a regime as monstrous as Stalin’s, which murdered 40 million people and enslaved many times more, was nonetheless able to persuade progressives and “social justice” advocates all over the world to act as its supporters and defenders. These enlightened enablers of Stalin’s crimes included leading intellectuals of the day, even Nobel Prize winners in the sciences and the arts like Frederic Joliot-Curie and Andre Gide. Brilliant as they were, they were blind to the realities of the Stalinist regime and therefore of the virtues of the societies they lived in.
What glued up their brains was the belief that a brave new world of social justice – a world governed by progressive principles - existed in embryo in Soviet Russia, and had to be defended by any means necessary. As a result of this illusion, they put their talents and prestige at the service of the totalitarian enemies of democracy, acting, in Trotsky’s words, as “frontier guards” for the Stalinist empire. They continued their efforts even after the Soviets conquered Eastern Europe, acquired nuclear weapons and initiated a “cold war” with the West. To the progressives seduced by Stalinism, democratic America represented a greater evil than the barbaric police states of the Soviet bloc. Even half a century later a progressive culture still refers to the formative phase of the Cold War as years of a “Red Scare” – as though the fifth column of American progressives whose loyalties were to the Soviet enemy, whose members included Soviet spies, was not a matter of serious concern, and as though a nuclear-armed, rapacious Soviet empire did not pose a credible threat.
How were these delusions of otherwise intelligent and well-intentioned people possible? How were otherwise informed individuals able to deny the obvious and support the most brutal and oppressive dictatorship in history? How did they come to view a relatively humane, decent, democratic society like the United States as evil, while regarding the barbarous communist regime as its victim? The answer lies in the identification of Marxism with the promise of social justice and the institution of progressive values, which will take place in a magical socialist future. Defense of the progressive idea trumped recognition of the reactionary fact.
Once the Stalin regime was identified with the imaginary progressive future, everything followed – its status as a persecuted victim, and its adversary’s role as a reactionary force standing in the way of the noble aspiration. Every fault of the Stalin regime, every crime it committed if not denied by progressives was attributed to the nefarious actions of its enemies, most glaringly the United States. Once a promise of redemption is juxtaposed to an imperfect real world actor, all of these responses become virtually inevitable. Hence the glueing of the brain.
The Soviet Union is gone, and history has moved on. But the Stalinist dynamic endures as the heritage of a post-Communist left, which remains wedded to fantasies of an impossibly beautiful future that bring it into collision with the flawed American present. This left is now the dominant force in the Democratic Party. Its extreme disconnect from real world realities is encapsulated in its support for the transparently racist movement called Black Lives Matter, which attacks law enforcement and defends street predators, excusing their crimes with the alibi that “white supremacists” create the circumstances that make them commit criminal acts. This extremist movement has the “strong support” of the entire spectrum of the “progressive” left (including 46% of the Democratic Party, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll).
Black Lives Matter is a movement built on the fiction that police have declared an open season on innocent blacks. According to progressive fictions, police are the agents of a “white supremacist society” – a claim alone that should make one wary of the sanity of those who advance it. Facts belie the very basis of the claim that there is open hunting season on African Americans. African American males, accounting for 6% of the population are responsible for more than 40% of violent crimes. But a Washington Post report on all 980 police shootings of 2015 reveals that only 4% of fatal police shootings involved white officers and black victims, while in three-quarters of the incidents, cops were either under attack themselves or defending civilians,” in other words,” as Michael Walsh observed in the NY Post, they were “doing their jobs.”
One such job done by Officer Darren Wilson in the suburb city of Ferguson, Missouri, became the launching point for the Black Lives Matter movement and its malicious claim that innocent blacks were being wantonly gunned down by racist police...
Well, at some point they're going to hold an election over there in Germany, and the collectivist establishment's going to be shocked -- shocked! -- at the strength of the purported "far-right" parties, whatever those are in Germany. Any gesture of support for traditional values is basically prohibited, since leftists will attack you as a Nazi and have you arrested. Yes, they do that in Germany. Don't be joking around with any "Sieg Heils" or you might spend the night in the slammer, to say the least.
Germany's acceptance of more than a million refugees fleeing Syria and other troubled spots last year is undergoing intense scrutiny after an outburst of reported assaults on women in at least five cities on New Year's Eve.
By Friday, nearly 300 women in Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Duesseldorf and Frankfurt had filed complaints with police saying they were groped, molested or robbed by unruly mobs of up to 1,000 young men when New Year's Eve street-party celebrations turned into wanton violence, officials said.
A spokesman for the interior ministry in Berlin said officials have questioned 31 men in their investigation of the assaults, including 18 refugees registered as seeking asylum. Among those identified were nine Algerians, eight Moroccans, five Iranians, four Syrians, one Iraqi, one Serb and one American as well as two German citizens. Two have been arrested in Cologne, where 170 complaints have been filed, according to media reports.
The assaults — and a slow trickle of information from authorities in Cologne, Hamburg and Stuttgart acknowledging that the suspects included newly arrived refugees — unsettled some Germans and appeared to at least temporarily damage public support for giving shelter to so many refugees. For many Germans, there has been a growing sense that the country of 82 million is losing control of its borders and city centers after 1.1 million people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia arrived in the last 12 months.
Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a supporter of an open policy toward refugees, said in a speech late Friday that some of the assailants in Cologne deserved to be kicked out of the country and that she is now open to changing laws to make it easier to send people who commit crimes elsewhere to serve their prison time...
She's just as bad as all the other bureaucratic barnacles handing Europe over to the Islamic barbarians. It's probably too late. But Germany's got elections coming up in 2017, so we'll see. We'll see if these people come to their senses before it's too late, if it's not too late already.
From the always thoughtful Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary:
There’s no longer any doubt that the war against ISIS will involve some American forces operating on the ground in Iraq and Syria. If U.S. troops are going to be put in harm’s way in a battle against terrorists determined to bring destruction to the entire Middle East and the West, they ought to be there with the full backing of the government. That means Congress must vote to authorize the president to wage a war that is ultimately one on which the safety of the homeland depends. But while few can be found to oppose a fight against ISIS, there is a genuine split in both parties about whether the nation ought to fully commit itself to another war in the Middle East...
A bare majority opposed ground troops in Syria and Iraq in that Field Poll this week, although the responses were totally partisan.
Either way, it's not likely we'll see major ground contingents over there any time soon, which means Islamic State's going to be going strong for awhile yet. And of course, they'll inspire more attacks on the homeland as long as they continue to exist overseas.
Interspersed with news of the mass sexual harassment and rape of women in Cologne by "asylum seekers" from Syria and their other resident Muslim colleagues and the near assassination of a cop in Philadelphia by a man who, according to that city's police commissioner, "...believed that the police defend laws that are contrary to the teachings of the Quran" comes a Pew study informing us that Islam will be the second-largest religion of the USA before 2040.
Excuse me if I'm not amused. Or should I say... trigger warning: Islamophobia?
Actually, the would-be cop killer/ISIS member in white Isla-drag (fortunately he did not achieve his goal) was correct in his evaluation. Our police do defend laws contrary to the Quran, such as monogamy, equal rights for women, separation of church and state, etc., etc. -- and that's exactly the point.
The doctrines of Islam are virtually entirely inconsistent with the founding principles of our county. And yet, per Pew, we are not-so-gradually being inundated with its adherents. Unchecked, the character of the USA will change, possibly to the extent of being unrecognizable, I doubt this is what the majority of Americans want. But it is happening nevertheless -- and we have a living, breathing illustration of the results just across the Pond. (Illustrative of how self-immolating European elites have become was the advice the female mayor of Cologne gave women of her city for dealing with the sexual assaults -- they should stand further away.)
Everyone already knows the struggle for control of the White House will be the biggest domestic story of 2016. The campaign has already generated record television ratings and volcanic eruptions of vitriol. By November, it is likely to become the most expensive political race ever. Already, it is unlike any campaign Americans have seen before.
But, as the song says, some fundamental things apply.
Presidential elections are shaped by the collision of long-term national trends and short-term political tactics. This year will be no exception. Some of the key questions that will determine which party takes the presidency will be settled within the political system itself; others will turn on events beyond the campaign. For me, six questions, drawn from both categories, seem most likely to decide the outcome...
Well, for me, I expect national security to be perhaps the decisive issue of the campaign, and could very well decide the election.
The High Sierras have gotten 100 inches of snow. And the weather was so gnarly that no one could make it up to Mammoth Mountain, so locals had the slopes to themselves.
Now, the storms have cleared out for a bit, and ski and snowboard enthusiasts are looking to have one of the best weekends for snow sports in years, if not in decades.
Local mountains, the San Gabriels and the San Bernardinos, have a few feet of fresh snow.
There's still some dangerous conditions up there, and some power outages. So, folks should use abundant caution.
BURNS — Members of a group from outside Oregon arrived on Friday at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to "secure a perimeter" around the compound and prevent "a Waco-style situation."
The arrival of the "3% of Idaho" was the latest development in the situation outside Burns, where an armed occupation of the refuge by an Ammon Bundy-led militant group entered its seventh day.
"They just keep an eye on everything that is going on" to make sure "nothing stupid happens," Bundy said Friday afternoon outside refuge headquarters.
"If they weren't here," Bundy said, referring to the Idaho group, "I'd worry" about a Waco-style siege by federal officials.
The group's website says it stands for "freedom, liberty and the Constitution. We will combat all those who are corrupt." The website displays the motto, "When Tyranny Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty!"
Brandon Curtiss, the president of the 3% of Idaho, would not reveal in a phone interview how many people his group was sending, although a handful of them had already arrived at the bird sanctuary. Some had what appeared to be handguns on their hips. Curtiss said he was on his way to the refuge.
He also declined to reveal specifically whether the group would circle the refuge headquarters or form some other sort of perimeter.
Curtiss and Chris McIntire, another group spokesman, called the situation a "double-edged sword" – the perimeter is meant to protect the occupiers from an outside attack but also to protect the Harney County community from those who arrive in solidarity with Bundy's cause but may be prone to violence, they said. The Idaho group is here to keep the situation "peaceful" and reassure the community that it isn't in danger, they said.
McIntire said the majority of the group's members would be heading for Eastern Oregon on Friday.
Boy, this is one hella story, especially being one day after Barack Hussein's town hall on national gun violence, gun violence that has nothing to do with Islam.
Word has it that the suspect used a stolen weapon. I'll update on that with more shortly.
So, has CAIR made a statement yet that the shooter doesn't represent Islam?
We're almost to the point of a jihadist attack a day. Either that, or an arrest and an attack per day, considering yesterday's arrests in California, Texas, and Minnesota.
And fully one-third of respondents say future attack are "very likely."
Remember, California's a far-left classic blue state, so the results are an especially bad statement on the administration's national security policies.
Erick Santiago, a college student from San Bernardino, lives not too far from where terror suspects carried out their deadly rampage during a holiday party last month at the Inland Regional Center.
Fourteen people were killed and 22 injured in the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001. While officials pursue charges against the Riverside man who allegedly provided the assault weapons used on Dec. 2, Santiago said he remains concerned about another terror strike happening in California.
“It seems like a trend that is going to continue,” he said.
Others living east of Los Angeles, and across the state, share his anxiety.
A new statewide Field Poll shows Californians increasingly believe similar bloodshed is very likely to occur here in the near future. One in three of the state’s registered voters think more terrorist attacks are quite probable. By comparison, just 20 percent thought an assault was forthcoming in California following the violence in New York and Washington on 9/11.
“That’s a pretty big change,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the poll. “When the attacks occur in your own backyard it actually impacts public opinion here.”
James Negrete, another poll respondent from San Bernardino, said his worry about another attack has little to do with proximity to the last horrific event. Negrete said he works a safe distance from the site of the shooting.
Negrete said his unease about more violence brought by terrorists is heightened by the fact that “there are many people in the world that don’t like America.”
“It may be ISIS, or it could be an unknown terror group,” Negrete said. “It’s unrealistic to expect nothing to happen in the future because bad things happen.”
Survey participants were only somewhat confident in the ability of federal agencies such as the FBI and CIA and others in law enforcement to thwart a major incident. The poll found just 21 percent very confident that the officials are prepared to prevent similar types of terror attacks from happening on domestic soil.
Many others, including Negrete, say they worry the U.S. government will take things too far in its attempts to institute anti-terrorism programs. Some 55 percent are concerned, or somewhat concerned, about losing their freedoms and personal liberties, up from 42 percent who felt that way in December 2001.
Negrete decried what he views as privacy abuses, and likened the collection of bulk data to allowing relentless agents in one’s backyard with listening devices.
“It is going too far,” he said, instructing officials to “get a warrant.”
Overall, the poll found 71 percent view a future attack as very or somewhat likely. DiCamillo noted voters across San Bernardino and the Inland Empire are more likely than those statewide to think such attacks are very likely to occur here. In that region, 44 percent of voters believe this to be the case. By comparison, just 21 percent of Bay Area voters felt such attacks were very likely...
PPP's newest New Hampshire poll finds Donald Trump leading in the state by 14 points. Trump's position in the state has been steady over the last three months- we found him at 28% in mid-October, 27% in early December, and we find him at 29% this month. 5 other candidates are in double digits but pretty closely clustered and all well behind Trump- Marco Rubio at 15%, Chris Christie and John Kasich at 11%, and Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz at 10%. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina at 4%, Rand Paul at 3%, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum at 1%, and Jim Gilmore with less than 1% round out the field...
If Trump falls short of an Iowa win, it's no doubt going to be a lot closer race in New Hampshire. Frankly, it's pretty fascinating at this point. Kinda weird, too, that the actually caucuses and primaries are actually upon us. It's all speculation and polling until then. It's going to shake out rather quickly after that, I expect. Forget that brokered convention talk, even with all the proportional representation and what not. The contests in February are going winnow the field drastically. Trump, Cruz, and Rubio will be left standing, I suspect.
BEIRUT — Aid agencies expressed alarm Thursday about dire conditions in a besieged town west of Damascus where people have been eating cats and grass to stay alive and as many as 23 people are reported to have died of hunger.
No food has arrived in the rural town of Madaya since October, and desperate residents have posted photographs on the Internet showing frail, skeletal corpses and emaciated people, including children.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said 23 people have died of starvation since Dec. 1 at a clinic the group supports in Madaya, six of them infants less than 1 year old.
The town has become “an open-air prison,” Brice de le Vingne, director of operations for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement. Desperate people who try to flee have been injured or killed by bullets or by land mines planted around the town, he added...
Federal agents have arrested an Iraqi refugee in Sacramento on a charge that he lied to immigration authorities over his ties to terror groups and travel to Syria, where he allegedly fought before returning to the United States in 2014.
Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, an Iraqi-born Palestinian, is named in a criminal complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Sacramento and unsealed late Thursday as word of his arrest began to spread.
He is to appear in federal court on Friday at 2 p.m.
“Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab allegedly traveled overseas to fight alongside terrorist organizations and lied to U.S. authorities about his activities,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General John Carlin said in a statement. “The National Security Division’s highest priority is protecting the nation from terrorism, and we will continue to hold accountable those who seek to join or aid the cause of terrorism, whether at home or abroad.”
Word of the complaint came amid reports of terror-related investigations in Milwaukee and Houston and the announcement of another Iraqi refugee being arrested in the Texas city.
The arrest of Al-Jayab, who is being held in the Sacramento County jail without bail, was confirmed by U.S. Attorney Ben Wagner’s office in Sacramento.
“According to the allegations in the complaint, the defendant traveled to Syria to take up arms with terrorist organizations and concealed that conduct from immigration authorities,” Wagner said. “While he represented a potential safety threat, there is no indication that he planned any acts of terrorism in this country.”
The criminal complaint and 18-page supporting FBI affidavit say Al-Jayab emigrated from Syria to the United States in October 2012, where he initially lived in Tucson, Ariz., and then moved to Milwaukee before traveling overseas.
While he was living in Milwaukee, Al-Jayab allegedly began communicating with individuals in Syria about traveling there and about his past experience fighting overseas, the complaint says.
“America will not isolate me from my Islamic duty,” Al-Jayab allegedly wrote on April 8, 2013, to one acquaintance. “Only death will do us part. My only wish is to see you and start the action.”
At one point, Al-Jayab wrote to another person that “I am at the shooting club. I want to learn long-range shooting,” and sent photos from a gun range in Wisconsin as well as photos of himself with various weapons, the complaint states.
Investigators say Al-Jayab received about $4,500 from an auto insurance claim in November 2013 and bought an airline ticket from Chicago to Istanbul, Turkey, from which he crossed the border into Syria. While he was overseas, he allegedly communicated with associates and relatives about traveling to Syria to join up with terror groups to fight with them...
In our more honest moment[s], we will admit to ourselves, if not to others, that from time to time – perhaps unwittingly, perhaps unconsciously – we use human tragedies to advance our own political agendas. That doesn’t mean the sympathy we feel is false; it only means that our feelings are driven by multiple and often unstated factors...
He's awfully generous toward the Tear-Jerker-in-Chief.
A new playbook is emerging while some contenders seem to be reading from the old playbook and wondering why the plays they’re calling aren’t working.
And the GOP is struggling. In Virginia the state Republican Party wants a so-called loyalty oath in the March 1 presidential primary. Virginia is an open-primary state—any registered voter can vote in either primary—but the GOP apparently wants to discourage independents and Democrats from voting for Mr. Trump. So they’ve decided voters should sign a statement of affiliation with the GOP before they get to cast a ballot. This is so idiotic it’s almost unbelievable. When Democrats and independents want to vote in your primary you should be happy. Politics is a game of addition! You want headlines that say “Massive GOP Turnout.” You don’t greet first-time voters with an oath but with cookies, ginger ale and balloons. Ronald Reagan reached out to Democrats in 1984: “Come too, come walk with me.” We still speak of Reagan Democrats.
I do not understand the inability or refusal of Republican leaders to take Mr. Trump seriously. They take his numbers seriously—they can read a poll—but they think, as Mr. Bush said, that his support is all about anger, angst and theatrics. That’s part of the story, but the other, more consequential part has to do with real policy issues. The establishment refuses to see that, because to admit it is to implicate themselves and their leadership. Political consultants can’t see it because they don’t think issues matter—not to them and certainly not to the dumb voters.
But issues do matter, and Mr. Trump has functioned this year not as a great communicator or great compromiser but as the great disruptor. He brags that he has brought up great questions and forced other candidates to face them and sometimes change their stands—and he has. He changed the debate on illegal immigration. He said he’d build a wall and close the border and as the months passed and his competitors saw his surge, they too were suddenly, clearly, aggressively for ending illegal immigration.
Mr. Trump touched an important nerve in opposing the political correctness that has angered the American people for a quarter century. He changed the debate when he asked for a pause in Muslim immigration until America “can figure out what’s going on.” In the age of terror, that looked suspiciously like common sense. Americans do not want America to become what Europe is becoming.
You only have to look at what is reported to have happened in Cologne, Germany, on New Years Eve to get a sense that Europe’s establishment, with its politically correct thinking, is losing control. Angela Merkel is a great lady and most of her leadership has been sound as a drum, but she will probably lose her job eventually because of her epic miscalculation in accepting more than a million Mideastern refugees....
Actually, the big story is the long lines of people looking to get into the event, and the heartbreaking disappointment of those who were left out in the cold.
Jess Bidgood of the New York Times tweeted:
Probably a couple hundred people still in line as police say no one else can get in to a Trump rally. "This is soul crushing," says 15-yo.
Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday offered her strongest remarks yet on armed militants' six-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, calling the action "unlawful" and demanding the group "decamp immediately."
Brown's poke at "outsiders," in a statement issued by her office, came about the same time as Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward parleyed with protest leader Ammon Bundy about how to end the occupation without bloodshed.
But Brown's office said the governor's stance was moved by two events Wednesday.
Early in the day, members of the Burns Paiute Tribe held a news conference asking the militants "to get the hell" off refuge land the tribe has traditionally seen as its own.
Then, Wednesday night, hundreds of Oregonians who live near the refuge gathered for a community meeting where they expressed sympathy for the militants' message criticizing federal land management but nonetheless said the group had worn out its welcome in Harney County...
To outsiders, one of the puzzling aspects of the anti-government militia’s takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is its location. Twenty-five million birds a year visit the refuge in the high desert of southeastern Oregon, but few people have heard of it. Yet Malheur is a place of bitterly contested human histories that remain potent today.
Years ago, when I first visited the refuge, I stumbled upon five dead coyotes tossed across a trail, their necks sliced open, blood clotted on their fur, paws hacked off, entrails draining into the river. Ranchers on the edge of failure feel threatened by predators snatching away their calves, and some lash out against that threat. But these five dead coyotes signaled more than just economic anxiety — they were emblematic of past hatreds that are still a powerful force in the Malheur basin. Anger at predators, environmentalists and federal managers who threaten the mythic past of cowboys on the range is as strong there as anywhere in the West.
In the late 1970s and the 1980s, many Western ranchers, miners and loggers felt increasingly threatened, partly by globalization, which created new competition, and partly by federal regulations that seemed to value wildlife more than people. What became known as the Sagebrush Rebellion gave locals a focus for their concern.
Environmentalists, they argued, were conspiring to destroy America, starting with rural communities. Many ranchers bitterly complained about the federal land management agencies. They felt powerless, hemmed in by policies they had little hand in shaping. They feared that economic gains were passing them by.
These complaints contain elements of truth: Rural communities in the West are poorer than urban communities, and environmental protections enacted since the 1980s have reduced grazing on federal lands. But locals told an interesting version of this history. Before the federal agencies came, they said, we lived in paradise. The grass was thick, the water was abundant and the towns were thriving. We were independent, working out our problems. When the feds came, they stole our resources, and our economies collapsed.
The implication was clear: If they got rid of the federal government, they’d have control over their land and lives again.
This version of history bears little resemblance to the actual past...
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A man suspected of slashing a woman in a an apparently random attack in Chelsea was awaiting a court appearance late Thursday, while the victim of the attack spoke out.
As CBS2’s Dave Carlin reported, police said suspect Kari Bazemore, 41, of the Bronx has 32 prior arrests for a variety of crimes, according to police.
Bazemore did not speak as he was hauled from the 13th Precinct in Gramercy Park in handcuffs Thursday evening, CBS2’s Tracee Carrasco reported. He was to appear in Manhattan Criminal Court on the charges, but late Thursday, he was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center and his court appearance was not expected to take place before the end of the night...
Describing the odds of winning Saturday's Powerball drawing as "slim" would be an understatement — but it would also be an understatement to call the jackpot "big."
For the 18th consecutive time, no one matched all six numbers to the Powerball lottery jackpot Wednesday night. As a result, the estimated prize for Saturday’s drawing has ballooned to an unprecedented $700 million.
Just to put that jackpot in global perspective, it’s larger than the gross domestic product for nine of the world’s island nations, according to the World Bank: Comoros, Dominica, Tonga, São Tomé and Príncipe, Micronesia, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Tuvalu.
Wednesday’s jackpot was already more than a half-billion dollars. With the prize climbing to a level never reached, lottery officials expect the public’s excitement to reach a fever pitch by Saturday.
“I don’t even know how to describe it. This has never happened before,” said California State Lottery spokesman Alex Traverso. “All I can imagine now is seeing how the next three days unfold. Our sales just started today.
Powerball is played in 44 states and three U.S. territories. The jackpot minimum is $40 million because there are so many participants. On an average week in California, there’s maybe $6 million in sales divided between the Wednesday and Saturday drawings, Traverso said...
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