The New Terror Plan

There is new evidence today that the terror groups like al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah have adopted a new strategy in attacking the West:  they now are recruiting citizens of Western countries to carry out the attacks.  Let's look at the evidence:

Back in 2001, the men who carried out the 9-11 attacks were all foreign nationals, mostly Saudis.  Similarly, the failed attempts to attack American targets in the USA were undertaken by foreigners for nearly a decade after that.  Then came the Times Square attempted bombing which was the work of an American Moslem from Connecticut.  Major Hassan shot up Fort Hood at about the same time, so we had another big terror attack from a US Moslem.  There were more attempts by home grown terrorists which culminated in the Boston Marathon bombing by two local Moslem brothers, one of whom was a US citizen and the other a permanent resident.

Yesterday, Bulgaria disclosed that the two men who were instrumental in the terror bombing last year in Burgas were a Canadian and an Australian.  Both were Moslems.

What all this means is that the terror groups are now fully committed to using local Moslems to actually carry out their attacks in the West. 

 

Hysteria As News

I just came across the headline on Yahoo News that says that the cost of the warming Arctic is sixty trillion dollars.  Wow!  That's an enormous number.  So, I read the article.

Guess what?  The article says that if the warming of the Arctic causes methane gases which are now held by permafrost on land and crystalline structures under the sea to be released into the atmosphere, then the damage done will total about sixty trillion dollars.  Of course, last winter was one of the coldest in recent memory across the lands bordering the Arctic and the ice cover up there grew larger by the end of the winter than it had been the year before.  In addition, there is no evidence that warming the Arctic by even two degrees on average (which is more than even the biggest global warming alarmists predict in the coming decades) will cause any additional release of methane gas.  Even the methane releases seen each summer may be nothing more than an annual event that was not previously noticed since no one was looking for them.  In other words, this is yet another of those stories of global warming that is extremely short on evidence and made up of nearly all hysteria.

Why doesn't Yahoo News run a story with the headline "Worldwide Pandemic Cost: 100 Trillion Dollars"?  Sure, there is no pandemic, but that's never stopped them before.

 

So What Does This Mean?

The government released the figures for durable goods orders in June.  They were way up with a growth rate of 4.5%, about triple the expected number.  That's great, but the problem is that excluding transportation, the figures were flat instead of the increase which was expected.  So June was a great month for cars while the rest of this portion of the economy was stagnant. 

What does this mean?  It is hard to generalize from one month's figures, but they seem to indicate that the aging fleet of cars across America is pushing people to buy new cars even though the economy is uncertain.  This is raising auto output and the industries that depend on automobile sales.  The rest of the economy is treading water.  The only question is whether rising auto sales will pull the rest of the economy out of its torpor or if the stagnation elsewhere eventually pulls down auto sales.

 

Once Again No Program and Lies, Lies Lies from Obama

In another of his periodic speeches about how he is now going to focus on the economy, president Obama offered nothing new and plenty of the old favorites.

Number one on the list of favorites was Obama's tossing out lies.  Obama was busy assigning the failure to achieve economic growth on congressional Republicans.  Here is how he put it:

“With this endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals, Washington’s taken its eye off the ball, and I am here to say this needs to stop. This needs to stop. This moment does not require short-term thinking. It does not require having the same old stale debates. Our focus has to be on the basic economic issues that matter most to you — the people we represent.”

Just think about what the president of the United States just said.  First, Washington is focused on distractions, political posturing and phony (PHONY!!!) scandals.  It is hard to know where to begin a response, but let's just look at the distractions that keep Washington from focusing on the economy.

First, there is gun control.  This consumed most of the first three months of the year and nothing was accomplished.  Gun control was pushed by Obama and the Obamacrats.  So much for distraction number one.  Second came immigration.  This issue has consumed most of the time since gun control went down to defeat.  Again, this is pushed by Obama and the Obamacrats.  So much for distraction number two.  During the six months, we also had the effective date for sequestration.  This was Obama's idea to begin with, but he falsely tried to claim that the GOP was responsible for it.  Then Republicans in the House moved forward with legislation that would have given the president the ability to shift the tiny sequestration cuts around so as to lessen the impact on the public of any reduction in spending; Obama threatened to veto any such legislation.  Who was posturing there?  Indeed, after coming to a big agreement on taxation levels at the end of December, Obama immediately demanded higher taxes as part of a sequestration deal even though he knew from the beginning that it was dead on arrival in the House.  Again, who was posturing there?  In short, the distractions and the posturing come principally from Obama.

So let's say that Obama is now serious about moving forward to help the economy grow.  What is his program?  Here is how the New York Times, one of Obama's staunchest supporters, describe that program:
      

The president mainly offered revived elements of his largely stalled economic program, like developing new energy, rebuilding manufacturing, spending more on roads, bridges and ports, expanding preschool to every 4-year-old in the country and raising the minimum wage.

 

So the Times says that Obama offered the same old stale ideas that were the subject of those same old stale debates that Obama just finished lamenting.  Obama wants to develop green energy.  Whoopee!  The problem is that Obama's program to develop this energy was a big part of the first stimulus package.  The USA spent nearly 100 billion dollars and all we got were a bunch of solar energy companies that went bankrupt once the government money ran out.  Oh, we also got a large number of friends and supporters of Obama who made millions due to the government money before those companies went under.

 

Obama wants to spend more on roads, bridges and ports.  Let's try this one again.  Which roads, bridges and ports is he talking about?  Don't you think that after five years in office, Obama could manage to have his staff compile a list so that his proposals had price tags, schedules and at least a little bit of reality attached to them?

 

Obama wants to expand preschool to every 4 year old in the country.  This is, as usual, the best illustration that Obama has no clue how to expand the economy.  First of all, preschool does not help the economy.  Oh, there may be a few thousand more teachers, but that will hardly make a dent in the enormous numbers of the unemployed.  But Obama claims that in the long run the kids will be better prepared for the jobs of the future.  In other words, by the year 2030 or so, this universal preschool will just be beginning to help the economy.  The problem with this, however, is that the Department of Education did a study that showed that any advantage given to children by preschool is gone by the time they get to third grade.  In other words, those workers graduating in 2030 will not have one bit better skills because of the preschool.  Of course, we will have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to get nothing.

 

Obama also wants to raise the minimum wage.  That's great.  Not only will companies with low paid workers make them part time to avoid the Obamacare mandates, but now they will also reduce their staff because wages were forced up by the government.  That is a way to lose jobs not to gain them.

 

Some day, I hope that Obama gives an honest speech.  Some day, I hope he has an actual plan to grow the economy.  That some day, sadly, is not today.

 

 

 

"Extreme " Voter Suppression in North Carolina

I happened upon an article in The Nation today by Ari Berman under the headline "North Carolina Republicans Push Extreme Voter Suppression Measures!"  Needless to say, I wanted to see what horror the GOP was not foisting onto the unsuspecting public of the Tarheel State.  Here are some of the extreme measures being passed now by the Republicans in the state legislature:

1.  In future elections, early voting on Saturdays will end at 1:00 p.m. rather than continuing in the afternoon.  During the week, the full day will still be available for voting.

Let's stop here and denounce the horror of having early voting close after only half a day on Saturdays.  Are they kidding?  Just how many folks are there who cannot get to the polls on election day or during the weeks prior to the election when early voting is held or on Saturday morning on the weekend before the election?  And if there are some people who absolutely can vote only on Saturday afternoons, they can get absentee ballots by mail and return them by mail.  No one is denied the vote; no votes are suppressed.

2.  Counties will not be able to extend polling by an hour on election day if there are long lines.

Here too there is nothing happening.  Let's be clear:  if there are lines at polling places when closing time comes, every one of the folks in line is still allowed to vote.  That's right, every person who came during voting hours gets to vote.  The only people who cannot vote are the ones who did not bother to come out when voting was scheduled.  This prevents certain counties from extending their hours to help one candidate or another on election day.  So here too, no votes are suppressed.

3.  The new law eliminates provisional voting if someone goes to the wrong polling place.  A person who shows up at the wrong polling place will need to go to the correct one where all the documentation to verify the voters' eligibility to vote is located.  Again, no votes are suppressed.

4.  The new law eliminates straight party voting.  Just imagine, instead of marking one box for Republican or Democrat, the voter will need to mark a separate box for each office.  Whose vote does that suppress?  Nobody's!

5.  The new law purges voter rolls more often.  People who have not voted for five years or who have been convicted of a felony are supposed to be removed from the voting rolls.  Voters who have died are also supposed to be removed.  The new law requires that these removals are done each year.  No votes are suppressed except maybe those voters in cemeteries who frequently vote in alphabetical order.  This stops fraud; it does not suppress votes. 

6.  The new law also shortens early voting.  It is not as if there will only be a day or two of early voting.  There will still be weeks of it.  The counties, however, will no longer have to carry the cost of voting for as many weeks.  Again, people who want to vote early have ample time to do so.  If the loss of the week makes it impossible for someone to vote, they can just vote by absentee ballot by mail.

The truth is that none of these actions suppress voting.  Once again, the left is using the big lie tactic.

Update -- Weiner Is At It Again

Earlier today, I wrote about the allegations at BuzzFeed that New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner was back at sexting with random women who he met on the internet within the last year.  Well now Weiner is admitting that the allegations are, at least in part, true.  Here is the main part of Weiner's statement:

I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out, and today they have. As I have said in the past, these things that I did were wrong and hurtful to my wife and caused us to go through challenges in our marriage that extended past my resignation from Congress. While some things that have been posted today are true and some are not, there is no question that what I did was wrong. This behavior is behind me.

This guy needs help, not votes.  I mean, I can see how he might backslide with his problems, but to run for mayor at that same time?  It's just crazy!  Still, I especially like when he says that the behavior is "behind" him.  I don't think so.

Is Weiner At It Again?

New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner had to resign from Congress when his tweeting of naked pictures of himself and his sexting with various women was exposed.  Now, two years later, Weiner is back in politics and is running for mayor of New York City.  Well, maybe not.  According to the site BuzzFeed, messages to and from Weiner appear to show an ongoing conversation (and an exchange of pictures) between Weiner and an unnamed woman.  BuzzFeed is careful to say that the authenticity of the messages has not been established but that they look much like the ones that preceded Weiner's exit from Congress.  The problem for Weiner and his campaign is that these messages were exchanged less than a year ago.  That would mean that fully a year after Weiner claimed that he would never, NEVER again misbehave again, he was back at it.

I hope that someone will be able to verify if these images are real messages involving Weiner in sexting.  If they are, then he should be shunned by the voters.  If they are not, well, he should still be shunned, but not for that reason.