Three Strikes -- the Third One -- You're Out

The entero virus has hit America's children fairly hard in the last month.  It is not a new virus; it was first diagnosed in the USA about 50 years ago.  What is different this year, however, is that this virus has appeared across the country in a rapid movement that is not consistent with the normal spread of a disease.  Instead of starting in one area and then spreading to a few more, the virus appeared in multiple locations and then almost immediately hit the rest of the country.  Another big difference from previous years is that instead of a few sporadic cases, the virus has been strong and widespread almost everywhere.

The entero virus presents as nothing much more than a bad cold.  Most of the infected children have a bout with the disease and then get better.  Children with asthma or other respiratory problems, however, can face life threatening problems from the virus.  With proper hospital treatment, however, even those children beat the virus.  Now, however, we are hearing that a small group of children who have had the entero virus are getting hit with paralysis.  No one yet knows if the paralysis and muscle weakness is permanent or transitory.  We just know that there may be thousands of kids paralyzed across the country.

The worst part of the entero virus problem is that it seems to be the direct result of all of those children entering the country illegally over the summer.  In Central and South America, you see, the entero virus is commonplace.  Unlike the USA where almost none of the kids have had the virus, nearly all the children in these Latin American countries have had the disease.  Now they have brought it to the USA.  As president Obama and his people dispersed these kids in secret across the country, they also spread the entero virus to children in all fifty states.  Obama political stunt of keeping the kids rather than sending them home has subjected children across the country to this virus.

 

Three Strikes -- the Second One

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq and there are over seven million people in its metropolitan area.  At the moment, reports say that ISIS forces are roughly two miles outside of the city.  In other words, it is possible that if the Iraqi troops do not stand up to ISIS, the capital city could fall to the terrorists in the near future.

It is hard to explain just how terrible a capture of Baghdad by ISIS would be.  First of all, there would be death, death and more death.  Just how many Americans, other westerners, Christians, and Shiites would fall to the knives held by the butchers of ISIS?  We could see slaughter on a scale that would be monstrous even for a group that has previously killed thousands.  Second, there would be the refugees.  Without a doubt, fear would drive millions of Iraqis from Baghdad towards the south.  There is simply no way that all those people could be feed, housed and given water.  The end result would be death, death and more death.  Third would be the great victory that the Sunni jihadi terrorists have been seeking since 9-11.  The caliphate would indeed be re-established.  Thousands or tens of thousands of new recruits would come to join the ISIS cause.  Fourth would be the disintegration of Iraq and the entrance of new and evil actors onto the scene.  There is little doubt that Iranian forces would cross the border to try to oust ISIS from Baghdad.  Once in place, the Iranians would be there to stay.

There are more horrors to list, but these four ought to be enough for now.  ISIS is two miles outside of Baghdad, and for now president Obama is doing essentially nothing to change that situation.  There may be a speech or two coming, but no real action.  Let's hope that ISIS does not move into Baghdad.  If they do, however, it will be Obama's fault.

Oh, and please send emails to the White House to warn Obama about the danger to Baghdad.  I don't want to hear in three months that Obama did not know about this.

 

Three Strikes -- The First One

It is a scene that anyone who watches second rate horror movies or SyFy on cable knows well:  the head of the CDC or some other federal health organization tells America about the outbreak of some virus or other disease and explains that there is nothing to fear.  Then anywhere from five to fifteen minutes later in the show, we get scenes of the country after the plague has infected nearly everyone.  It is the apocalypse.  Sometimes it comes with zombies, but many times it does not.

Today, we had a real life version of the first scene.  The head of the CDC held a news conference to announce that the first case of Ebola had been diagnosed in Texas.  The patient was contagious for a minimum of four days before he was quarantined in a Texas hospital.  We do not yet know just how many people were exposed to the virus before appropriate health measures were put in place.  We just know that there could be a major problem.  Oh, an because of privacy laws, we do not know who the patient is or where he was staying or, indeed, any of the details that might allow people who came in contact with him to seek help if necessary.

I understand that Ebola is not an easy disease to catch.  Up until now, it has always spread by contact with bodily fluids of the diseased patient.  Hopefully, that remains the case.   Even so, we are at a point where the privacy rights of the patient are outweighed by the need to stop this virus before it spreads.  The ought never be a situation in which the government cannot warn people who might have been exposed to the virus to take precautions or to get other help.  Only a fool would think otherwise.

Let's pray that the patient in Texas recovers and that no one else has caught the disease from him.

 

Hypocrisy or Realization?

There is a report today that president Obama has relaxed the restrictions on American air strikes in Syria against ISIS and al Qaeda so as to allow those strikes to proceed even when there is no certainty that civilian casualties will not result from the attack.  The news came out because in the village of Kafr Daryan, an attack by American missiles against al Nusra terrorists allegedly resulted in the deaths of a dozen Syrian civilians.

It certainly is not surprising that president Obama relaxed the standards that must be met before launching an attack in an area where civilians might be located.  Both ISIS and al Qaeda (al Nusra) often put their military posts in the center of civilian areas in the hope that any attack will result in civilian casualties that can be used for their propaganda value.  Without relaxing the standards regarding the likelihood of civilian casualties, Obama would have left the terrorists with the ability to operate free from attack at these locations. 

Of course, over the summer, Obama and many others made a big deal out of there being civilian casualties in situations like this during the Israeli battle with the terrorists of Hamas.  Day after day, the media treated the civilian casualties as if they were the fault of the Israeli response to the attacks by Hamas rather than of the Hamas attacks that brought the retaliation upon the area.  No matter how many missiles Hamas fired into Israel, the Israelis were told by Obama and others that they had to respond in a proportionate way.  Israel had to guarantee that there would be no civilian casualties, in essence.  The drum beat was constant from the media which continually compared the number of Israeli casualties to the number of "civilians" injured in Gaza.

So where are the reports telling us about the number of casualties among civilians in Syria and Iraq due to American bombing? 

There are those who would see the current positions of the USA as being pure hypocrisy.  I prefer to think of it as a realization that when a terrorist group hides in the middle of civilians, there are going to be civilian casualties.

 

This Truly Says It All

From Breitbart:

"A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014.

The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second."

What else could one say?  If the president does not care enough about intelligence briefing to even attend half of them, how can he possibly stay up to date with what is happening?

 

Khor al Qaeda or Core al Qaeda --- What Difference Does It Make?

For president Obama and the Obamacrats, nothing seems more important than words.  The old adage is that "actions speak louder than words", but whoever came up with that phrase obviously never met Barrack Obama.

The latest manifestation of the victory of words over reality in Obamaland comes with the discussion of the Khorasan group, that previously unknown pack of terrorists who were bombed by American planes on the first night of the campaign in Syria.  It turns out that the members of the Khorasan group are men who served around Osama bin Laden at the time of 9-11 and who were relocated to Syria when that nation became a safe haven for terrorists.  In other words, Khorasan is core al Qaeda.  This is important for Obama because he told the nation since 2012 that core al Qaeda had been destroyed.  If Khorasan is core al Qaeda, then Obama's words are exposed as false.  As a result, the State Department twists and turns every discussion of terror groups into pretzels that somehow avoid the merger of any existing group with core al Qaeda.  I was reminded of that today when Jen Psaki at State told the press that Khorasan was an "affiliate" of core al Qaeda but would never say if "Khor" was actually "core".  ISIS, which was originally named "al Qaeda in Iraq" is also described by the federal government as not being part of core al Qaeda.  The al Nusrah Front in Syria which was known as al Qaeda at one point is another of the terror groups that the feds say are not core al Qaeda.

I constantly have this image in mind every time Obama or one of his stooges uses the phrase core al Qaeda.  I picture a jihadist opening his mail and receiving his official core al Qaeda membership card, good for discounts on terrorist supplies at Target (for sure) and O-sam's Club.  You also get airline miles from using the card.  The only thing is that after one million points, you get taken off the federal no-fly list as your prize.

The real truth, however, is that it does not matter which groups are core al Qaeda and which are not.  They are all murderous thugs who want to impose their version of Islam on the world by violence.  The sooner the Obama and the feds realize this truth, the safer we all will be.

 

Sometimes, It Just Gets Too Funny

The senate campaigns now underway often produce funny moments, but now there are two that I just have to repeat.

In North Carolina, Republican Tom Tillis is criticizing Democrat Kay Hagan for missing over 60% of the meetings of the Senate Armed Services Committee during the past year when ISIS has become a rising terror force and many of the hearings dealt with that threat.  So far, it is not funny, but it is hard to equate missing a committee meeting with losing to ISIS.  Clearly Hagan did not give a high priority to her work on that committee, but that does not make her liable for the rise of ISIS.  But then we get Hagan's response:  the senator calls Tillis "spineless" for criticizing her.  According to Hagan, Tillis has not produced a detailed plan for defeating ISIS, so he cannot criticize her on that subject.

Okay, let's stop here.  Hagan actually expects a "detailed plan" from Tillis (or any other senate candidate) as to how to defeat ISIS?  Really?  Who is she kidding?  Detailed plans like that are supposed to come from the military and the White House, not the senate.  And besides, Hagan herself has proposed no "detailed plan" for defeating ISIS.  Indeed, the whole idea is laughable.

In Iowa, Democrat Bruce Braley and Republican Joni Ernst held a televised debate last night.  Braley's big attack on Ernst was that she is in the pocket of the evil Koch brothers because their super PAC is advertising against Braley across the state.  Braley had no other evidence to show a tie between Ernst and the Kochs.  Braley, however, said that Ernst would be part of the Koch's efforts to cause gridlock in Washington. 

At this point, all we have is a stupid attack by a seemingly dull candidate.  Aside from the rabid part of the Democrat base (which would be voting for Braley anyway), are there really more than a dozen Iowans who care about this supposed issue?  I doubt it.

Then we got Ernst's response.  She reminded the viewers about Braley's threats of litigation when a few of his neighbor's chickens wandered across the property line and went onto his property.  As Ernst pointed out, there is no way that Iowans can believe that Braley would work across the aisle to get things done when he can't even deal with his neighbor's chickens without resorting to litigation.  It was a rather funny way to make a very telling point.