Jihad In Paris

The unfolding of a new model for jihad: striking multiple and proximate soft targets simultaneously.

Islamic terrorism in the City of Lights.

Multiple sites attacked.

Hostages held and being murdered one by one in Bataclan, the concert hall.

National borders closed.

France in a state of national emergency.

Fox News is reporting that a suspect arrested has told the police, "I am from ISIS." He has also said that he is from Syria and is on a mission for ISIS. This is the only arrest so far reported.

More coverage at France 24 and BBC News

UPDATE : Reliapundit:

This was a Mumbai/Nairobi style urban attack.

I expect we shall be seeing more of this all over Europe, and in the USA...

Targets selected because they are crowded and soft...

ObamaCare Comes Up Short

Get ready for major hikes in health-insurance premiums, notwithstanding all the promises from "The One."

From Obamacare shorts health insurers $2.5 billion:

Insurers will get far less money than promised from the federal government this year — and a few billion dollars less than they requested — to help pay for their sickest customers.

Insurers learned late Thursday [October 1, 2015] that they'll receive just $362 million out of the $2.9 billion in requested for 2014 for the program, according to an announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services.

That's because a program created under the 2010 Affordable Care Act hasn't brought in nearly as much money as it needs to pay out. As insurers enrolled more older, sicker Americans under the new healthcare law, they were promised some federal money to help cover their new costs, through a program known as risk corridors.

This shortage in funding ObamaCare was totally predictable, of course. People with chronic health conditions typically cost more in healthcare dollars. The cycle of life.  All the utopianism in the world can't change the natural order of the universe.

HILLARY CLINTON'S PRIVATE SERVER

According to the Daily Beast (August 12, 2015):

Underlying all this is the question of why Hillary Clinton decided to employ her own private email and server to handle so much of her official State Department business. This is, to say the least, highly irregular—not to mention a violation of numerous U.S. government rules and regulations—so there had to be a compelling reason to do this. What was it?

There are only so many reasons that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would have been using a private server in the first place.  A few possibilities:

(1) paranoia about "the vast right wing conspiracy"

(2) to hide something untoward — something personal or political

(3) distrust of the Obama administration

(4) to hide something about her health — perhaps the brain incident and her drinking.

Additional reading from Number of Classified Emails on Hillary’s Private Server Grows to 60:

The number of emails containing classified information that went through Hillary Clinton’s private server has grown to 60, according to the State Department. And that number is likely to grow as the investigation plows through the 30,000 emails Clinton didn’t delete.

INCOMPETENCE RULES THE DAY!

Four recent pieces of evidence:

1. Contamination at NIH’s clinical pharmacy center halts operations

2. SAT's went missing from high-end school in Loudoun County, Virginia

3. Military Shipped Live Anthrax Samples to 51 Labs in U.S., Abroad

4. How did 2 killers escape from a maximum security prison?

And last year...

CDC: Smallpox found in NIH storage room is alive

Corruption and incompetence at the top trickle down. Did not Shakespeare's Hamlet make that very point centuries ago?

IMPLIED LICENSE

Go ahead and spend big bucks for a John Deere, but you don't really own it. Instead, you have an implied license for the life of the vehicle to operate the vehicle [source, dated April 21, 2015].

Furthermore, this war on private ownership is not limited to John Deere. General Motors is involved as well.

Using the DMCA in this manner is an excellent method of squashing innovation — not to mention removing the joy of tinkering for those inclined to that activity.

Also see Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years under the DMCA.

NEGOTIATING WITH IRAN

The Ayatollah Khameini's response to President Obama's Nowruz greeting:


Obama is looking for unicorns to come over the rise. What is coming over the rise, however, is not unicorns.

ISLAMIC TERRORISM AND DENIAL

One of my Facebook finds and, sadly for America and the rest of the West, accurate:

CAN WE GOVERN OURSELVES?

The most recent immigration bill to pass the United States Senate is 1198 pages long in PDF fomat.

1198 pages!

HERE are the hot-linked subtitles for various sections of the immigration bill S.744.ES. You have to see that list to believe it!

This is what we're paying our elected public servants to do? See their salaries HERE.

Congress Critters today make famous sufferers of hypergraphia pale in comparison.

POST-ELECTION STRATEGY

Post-election euphoria on the part of the victors is normal. Euphoria, however, is not governance.

What are the realities of the American political situation once the new Congress takes office in January?

Let's talk specifics — feasible specifics.

ELECTION 2014 RESULTS

Obama this morning?

He's suffering from electile dysfunction (hat tip to Western Hero for that term):

(hat tip to FreeThinke for the above graphic)

NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

Yes, this 2014 election cycle is a contentious one. It's tradition and predates the founding of America!

The Polling by William Hogarth (1697-1764)

From Folger Magazine:

Public fascination with elections is as old as politics itself. In the seventeenth century, the press was increasingly filled with election pamphlets offering advice on whom to vote for and even more importantly whom to oppose.

Printed election material originated in the 1640s, reflecting public interest in the political process, especially in a time of civil war and domestic upheaval. Secrecy surrounding politics had broken down; votes needed to be earned and voters persuaded. Elections became increasingly contested and divided along party lines.

Even voting itself was not a secret process in early modern England. The poll book, at right, published the names of all the voters in London and which candidates and party they voted for in 1710. Each voter was able to cast one vote (indicated at right by a dash) for each of the four seats up for grabs in their constituency. Some crossed party lines, but the vast majority followed a party ticket.

See the rest of the article HERE.

So, carry on.

In less than two weeks will begin the Monday morning quarterbacking, immediately followed by the pontificating about the next election, the 2016 National Election. It's like riding a political carousel.

.
In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say.”

DEADLY DUMBING DOWN

The result of abandoning the proper teaching of geography?

With a hat tip to Barnhardt:

“He said he was from Liberia, not Africa…”

From this thread over at Lucianne.com. Emphases mine.

Reply 29 – Posted by: gone2pot, 10/3/2014 5:50:33 PM (No. 10030644)
It´s us. We are the reason for the panic. We vote for it, educate our kids with it, watch it on TV, “like” and “follow” it, and listen to its music. Here´s anecdotal evidence; my wife´s hospital is caddy corner to Dallas Presby, home of the ebola incident. The docs at her hospital left Presby to start a new, less screwed up system. So, they know Presby and keep in contact with former colleagues. Well, according to the old Presby docs, the thirty-something Dallas Presby nurse´s answer to the CDC was, “He said he was from Liberia, not Africa.” So, next time you want to believe the tin foil hat conspiracy theory answer, remember instead that we ARE that stupid and our stupidity is why we create the cases for panic.

Is the above anecdote true? I don't know, but it could be.  And I don't mean only with regard to the aforementioned nurse!  It's not out of the question that a doctor wouldn't know that Liberia is in Africa.

I myself so often see the dumbing-down — and not only among the middle-school and high-school students I teach: here we are in the Information Age with many people lacking enough sense or intellectual curiosity to look up something when the information is at their fingertips via Google search; at the same time, these same people are keen to update their Facebook status or check their email at every possible opportunity.

Now, about that triage nurse in the emergency department....

I do not blame her for not recognizing that Mr. Duncan had Ebola Virus on his first visit to the hospital.  His temperature wasn't high enough according to the protocol then in effect, and he lied to her and said that he had not been around anyone who was sick.  Let us keep in mind that Mr. Duncan lied on those forms in Liberia, too.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF HANNAH GRAHAM

Hannah Graham, who went missing in Charlottesville, Virginia, on September 12, 2014

What is this "person of interest" wearing? Surveillance photo of Jesse Matthew:

He appears to be wearing a jalabiya from the Sudan or other African nations.


Person of interest, Nursing Assistant Jesse Matthew, now after being briefly questioned by the Charlottesville Police Department:

More information about the Hannah Graham Case HERE and HERE. Find additional information (including updates) on HERE on Facebook.

THE LONG ARM OF THE EPA

Power grabs on the part of the federal government continue apace and at an escalating rate of acceleration. The new EPA rule was quietly announced last week in the Federal Register.

From the Washington Times (dated July 8, 2014):

The Environmental Protection Agency has quietly floated a rule claiming authority to bypass the courts and unilaterally garnish paychecks of those accused of violating its rules, a power currently used by agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service [which puts the burden of proof on the debtor, not on the federal agency].

[...]

...[T]he threat of garnishing wages would be a powerful incentive for people to agree to expensive settlements rather than fight EPA charges.

EPA officials did not respond to repeated questions by The Washington Times about why they thought it was necessary to garnish people's wages.

The EPA announced the plan last week in a notice in the Federal Register, saying federal law allows it "to garnish non-Federal wages to collect delinquent non-tax debts owed the United States without first obtaining a court order."...

Read more details about the above HERE.

Movie Trailer: Aisha and Muhammad

Note the caveat, which reflects the power that Islamofascism has even in the West:

Viewers are requested to take note that Lars Hedegaard and Ingrid Carlqvist did not wish to be part of this movie at the last moment for safety reasons, but I could not remove their names and appearance from it because of time constraints. Therefore, they should not be held responsible for this movie in any way whatsoever.

The movie uses avatars and animation, and we do know why:


More information HERE at YouTube, including the following:

Trailer of the upcoming movie, 'Aisha and Muhammad', based on original Islamic sources. The movie will show Prophet Muhammad's treatment and sexual abuse of his child-wife Aisha, and his treatment of and attitude towards women in general.

BELGISTAN RISING

Worth your time (with thanks to Mustang, who emailed me the link to the video below):



Is the United States on a similar path?

Reading for today: see "Moslem Trends" at A Montpelier View.

SOMETHING ABOUT ERIC SHINSEKI

General Shinseki

I do not wish to malign Eric Shinseki.

He served with honor on the battlefield, sustained severe wounds, and eventually attained the rank of four star general.

However, I think that something needs to be brought to light.

From this source (All other sources were scrubbed between 7:00 A.M., May 30, 2014, and 7:00 A.M., May 31, 2014!):

View PostSharkhaywood, on 29 May 2014 - 02:32 PM, said:

The guy has been on the job for 5 years now so it's not like he is brand new to the position. I browsed the guy's Wiki page and he is a very decorated soldier. However, he doesn't have any medical background. It would seem to me that a person with some kind of medical background would be best suited to run the VA. It did also show the following:

Forgotten by many is the fact that much of the problems with infrastructure deterioration and neglect at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, as well as the lack of funding for repairs, occurred initially during Shinseki's tenure as the 34th Army Chief of Staff.

Whistleblowers to the problems were summarily squashed and funding for improvements were routinely and regularly denied. For instance, the problems associated with Building 18 were not new to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center community. As early as 1999 the extensive problems with Building 18 were identified to senior level leadership, and funding for renovations and improvements were denied. Prior to its role housing wounded warriors, Building 18 had long served as the barracks of WRAMC Student Company. Between 1999 and 2001, under the Command of then Captain Michael D. Dake, the Student Company leadership identified the deplorable conditions in and around Building 18 to two Medical Center Brigade Commanders (COL Terry D. Carroll, and COL Larry S. Bolton respectively). By 2002, the requests for funding to improve conditions in and around Building 18 had made it to the attention of Major General Kevin C. Kiley. Kiley, who toured the facility as part of his Commander's in-brief after arriving in June, personally inspected the facility and spoke to the Soldiers and the Leadership. He then also denied funding for improvements. By 2004, renovation of Building 18 had been anticipated in connection with the enhanced use lease of Building 40, but since the post was slated for closure under BRAC in 2005, the anticipated in-kind services by the Building 40 developer did not materialize.

Funding for repairs at Walter Reed never did materialize during Shinseki's tenure as Army Chief of Staff; despite the fact Shinseki's directive to develop and wear the new Black Beret for all service members resulted in such enormous waste that, in one case with a cancelled manufacturing contract with a Chinese national firm, as much as $37.9 million U.S. dollars was lost to contracting errors, unlawful foreign sourcing and import law violations.

I am not suggesting that Eric Shinseki is a corrupt man or a corrupt leader.

What I am suggesting is this: Shinseki was the wrong man to appoint as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.  He already had a history as a poor manager of allocated funds.

CINCO DE MAYO ANTI-AMERICANISM

From the Daily Caller:

Students, It’s Illegal To Wear An American Flag Shirt On Cinco De Mayo

Students in a California school district will not be allowed to wear American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo, due to concerns that such displays of patriotism would inflame racial tensions by offending Mexican students on their holiday.

The district’s policy concerned many free speech advocates, but was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

[...]

“They silenced a symbol of patriotism and freedom in America,” said Georgine Scott-Codiga, president of the Gillroy-Morgan Hill Patriots, in a statement to KCBS....

For some time, our courts have been Trojan Horses and determined to bring about the downfall of American principles.

Why are WE THE PEOPLE putting up with this subversion?

OUR ECONOMY: THE TIPPING POINT

The takers now far exceed the givers!

From CNS News:

86M Full-Time Private-Sector Workers Sustain 148M Benefit Takers

Buried deep on the website of the U.S. Census Bureau is a number every American citizen, and especially those entrusted with public office, should know. It is 86,429,000.

That is the number of Americans who in 2012 got up every morning and went to work — in the private sector — and did it week after week after week.

[...]

It is not a rancher with a few hundred head of cattle that is attacking their habitat, nor an energy company developing a fossil fuel. It is big government and its primary weapon — an ever-expanding welfare state....

HOW DO WE PUT A STOP TO THIS?

HYPOCRISY ON DISPLAY

At the March 2014 National Young Feminist Leadership Conference, those claiming to be tolerant and inclusive bully female conservative reporter:

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has; they serve him better than any others, and receive no wages. — Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832)