Coming Soon to a Mall Near You!

President Obama apparently believes by his actions that ISIS and Islamic jihadism is but a minor irritant to the U.S. The FBI Director says ISIS is organizing in all 50 states. Think Paris. Now place your bet.

www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/26/fbi-director-isis-tentacles-reach-into-all-50-u-s-states/

What ISIS Really Wants

President Obama has never understood ISIS because he does not understand religion and religion is what ISIS is all about, albeit a foul and perverted version. The same is true of the Left in general, which is why they can seriously view political opponents to their right as more of a threat than ISIS and other jihadists. 

Leo Hohmann, writing in World Net Daily, cites among other sources a long article in The Atlantic by Graeme Wood about "What ISIS Really Wants."  Hint - it's not jobs:
"Rather than viewing ISIS as an irrational group of lunatics seeking international media attention, Wood opens his Atlantic piece with this chilling statement:

'We can gather that their state rejects peace as a matter of principle; that it hungers for genocide; that its religious views make it constitutionally incapable of certain types of change, even if that change might ensure its survival; and that it considers itself a harbinger of—and headline player in—the imminent end of the world.

'…In fact, much of what the group does looks nonsensical except in light of a sincere, carefully considered commitment to returning civilization to a seventh-century legal environment, and ultimately to bringing about the apocalypse.'  '

In other words, these guys are the rough Arabic equivalent of the Japanese kamikaze pilots of WWII - they see themselves as divinely-appointed to usher in the Apocalypse and the return of the Mahdi, who is their anti-matter opposite of Christ. To think that some community action programs, job vouchers and food stamps are going to bring about a change of heart in these guys is at best naive and definitely extremely dangerous to Western society. These guys are playing a strategic, religiously-motivated game of murder and mayhem and Obama is playing Candyland. It's time to get in the real game. Europe is already beginning to understand this. 

www.wnd.com/2015/02/shock-reaction-to-obamas-poverty-causes-terror-meme/

Thursday Tidbits

• President O think terrorists have "legitimate grievances." Okay, let's start with the two brothers who blew up a bunch of people at the Boston Marathon a few years ago. What were their "legitimate grievances." The President has left the building - no this universe and is speaking to us from some alternate reality. 

• In the meantime, John "Frigging" Kerry, his Secretary of State, says that we should show "violent extremists" (heaven forbid "terrorists" should be used) by:

        “... building alternatives that are credible and visible to the populations where terrorists              seek to thrive” by highlighting “good governance.”

        I have no idea what that means other than it's going to get more people killed while               these "leaders" apparently navel-gaze after ingesting substances now legal in 3                     states.

www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/19/delusional-obama-kerry-plan-to-fight-terror-with-peaceful-communities/

• And how about the LA Times report that "serious diseases" are coming into the U.S. via the hordes of illegal immigrants from Central and South America? What they hey - the more the merrier!

www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2015/02/18/l-a-times-concedes-serious-diseases-come-from-mexico-central-america/

It's getting better every day in every way!

A Victory for the Legal System

"On Wednesday, an Ohio teacher lost her appeal to a 2013 discrimination lawsuit in which she had claimed that her district had failed to provide “reasonable accommodations” for her debilitating fear of children."

Imagine, requiring a teacher of children to teach children! Oh the unfairness of it all! On the other hand, perhaps teaching was not the best career choice.

www.nationalreview.com/article/398557/teacher-fear-kids-loses-discrimination-lawsuit-appeal-katherine-timpf

Police State Amerika

You can't make this stuff up:

"Monday on NewsMax TV’s “America’s Forum,” while discussing his trip to the South Texas border, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said not only are we not deporting illegal immigrants crossing the border, but now because of President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty, they are waiting to get “caught.’

Johnson told the story of illegal immigrant woman sitting at campfires waiting to be picked up by U.S. Border Patrol agents in buses, and complaining that it took to long to get “caught” and driven to the process center.

The woman also demanded the agents bring the buses closer so they didn’t have to walk too far to be apprehended."

We're toast.

I Left My Stomach in San Francisco

No wonder they drink so much Perrier in San Francisco. A $110,000/year city water maintenance worker was caught whizzing in one of the city's drinking water reservoirs and it was not the first time according to co-workers. He got - hold on to your seat - the MAXIMUM 5-day suspension! Wow! Anywhere else they'd fire his rear-end. Think about it the next time you dine out in the City by the Bay. Pellegrino please. 

blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2015/02/09/s-f-water-manager-faces-suspension-for-urinating-in-reservoir/

You Can't Handle the Truth!

Or so say the politicians. Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. According to Wall Street on Parade,

"Roberts has written about the lack of attention to the measurement known as U6 – which covers the unemployed, underemployed and those who are not looking but want a job. That figure stood at 11.2 percent in December of last year, exactly double the official unemployment rate known at U3"

Perhaps the U6 track should be the indice used regardless of which political party holds the White House so the American people get a more truthful look at their economy instead of the Wizard of Oz view so frequently trotted out. I suspect a majority of them would reach an intelligent conclusion and therein lies the rationale for the politicians continuing the Oz routine. 
wallstreetonparade.com/2015/02/gallup-ceo-fears-he-might-suddenly-disappear-for-questioning-u-s-jobs-data/

A Critique of Progressivist Thought

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said:

 "We have to pass it, to find out what's in it." A physician upon hearing this called into a radio show and said: "That's the definition of a stool sample."

Someone who clearly understands what we are dealing with!

(Tip o' the hat to George McGreer!)

John Kerry's Mark on History.

It's a tiny one:

"Nobody puts the SoS in Secretary of State quite like John Kerry, who has overseen the rout of American influence and prestige in every corner of the globe, managing the neat trick of making Hillary Clinton look relatively consequential, or at least harmless. Kerry has finally been given the recognition he deserves by foreign policy scholars, who named him the least effective SecState of the past 50 years."

Not surprisingly, Henry Kissinger was ranked #1.

www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/02/05/international-relations-scholars-kerry-least-effective-secretary-of-state-in-half-a-century/

Why Obama Can Equate ISIS with Christians

Jerry Newcombe has a very insightful article today in Townhall about the problem of truth in the post-Christian West. From a political standpoint, and why the President is looking like such a confused and un-American soul every time he makes a foreign policy pronouncement, Newcombe quotes George Weigel, a Catholic intellectual on the problem inherent in discarding the idea of absolute and knowable truth:
  “If the West's high culture keeps playing in the sandbox of postmodern irrationalism---in which there is ‘your truth’ and ‘my truth’ but nothing such as ‘the truth’---the West will be unable to defend itself. Why? Because the West won't be able to give reasons why its commitments to civility, tolerance, human rights and the rule of law are worth defending.”

“A Western world stripped of convictions about the truths that make Western civilization possible cannot make a useful contribution to a genuine dialogue of civilizations, for any such dialogue must be based on a shared understanding that human beings can, however imperfectly, come to know the truth of things.”

This is why Obama and the United States generally is descending to a second-rate world power with nothing really to add to any of the critical foreign policy questions vexing the world. We have forgotten who we are and where we came from. 

townhall.com/columnists/jerrynewcombe/2015/02/06/truth-in-a-postchristian-west-n1953278

Observation Point

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

George Orwell, as quoted by Jerry Newcombe

townhall.com/columnists/jerrynewcombe/2015/02/06/truth-in-a-postchristian-west-n1953278

Biden Has Ukraine's Back

Vice President Joe Biden said in Brussels yesterday that the Ukraine is fighting for its very survival against the Russians. I agree. So we should send them - right, blankets per Biden's boss. Way to have their back guys! 

news.yahoo.com/ukraine-fighting-very-survival-biden-001808908.html

And In the Meantime ...

Our friends the Russkies headlined by none other than Vladimir P was busy strutting his stuff by sending a Russian bomber toward Scotland and the English Channel with a real live nuke on board that could take out the main British sub base that holds the Brit's nuclear deterrent. A little provocative you say, old chap? Not for the Big O, I'd venture.

www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/01/russian-bomber-over-channel-was-carrying-nukes/

Pondering One of Life's Mysteries

Congrats to the Pats and their fans. New England hung in there gamely and didn't quit, eventually coming out on top in the Super Bowl. You've got to wonder about Seattle's last play, though, like why they didn't just take the tried-and-true buggy (otherwise known as Marshawn Lynch) out of the garage for a drive across the last one yard and over the goal line. Oh well. 

It May be The "Dismal Science" but It Can be Useful

Economics is known as the "dismal science" with some reason, it it can be useful, for example when analyzing whether the Republican-inspired cut to unemployment benefits had a salutary effect or was something that Rasputin came up with to torture the populace, as charged by President O and his Merry Band of Progressives. Well what have we here but a study by the government's own Bureau of Economic Analysts wherein they say:

"We find that a 1% drop in benefit duration leads to a statistically significant increase of employment by 0.0161 log points. In levels, 1.8 million additional jobs were created in 2014 due to the benefit cut. Almost 1 million of these jobs were filled by workers from out of the labor force who would not have participated in the labor market had benefit extensions been reauthorized."

Unless the premise is that people actually having to work for a living is a bad thing - which I think is really what Progressives believe but are afraid to say - then this on balance was a good thing. Watch for personnel changes as BEA to assure that the next study of any import follows the Chairman's Little Red Book and the Party line.

finance.townhall.com/columnists/johnransom/2015/02/02/liberals-were-wrong-and-we-were-rightagain-n1951404