Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Current Events - June 18, 2013

Congressman calls for investigation into Obama’s secretly-planned meeting with Albanian socialist

California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is calling for a “full investigation” into President Obama’s meeting with Albanian Socialist leader Edi Rama at a San Francisco fundraiser last year.

As The Daily Caller first reported, Albanian Socialist leaders secretly arranged the meeting by compelling an Albanian resident of New Jersey to donate $10,000 to the Obama campaign in order to get a picture with the president and Rama.

Rohrabacher believes that Albanian Socialist leaders may have engaged in a “conspiracy to circumvent U.S. election laws” by compelling the donation.

Rohrabacher, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee responsible for overseeing Europe, Eurasia, and emerging threats, sent letters this week to Attorney General Eric Holder and Federal Election Commission chairperson Ellen Weintraub requesting a “full investigation” into the matter.

“Edi Rama, the Socialist party candidate for prime minister of Albania, has been heavily promoting a photo of himself with President Barack Obama in the hope it will help him win the June 23 elections. The issue is that the photo may have been arranged with the help of a large campaign contribution allegedly made by an Albanian resident of New Jersey,” Rohrabacher wrote to Holder.

Albanian politician Dritan Prifti, who was then a member of the Socialist Party, arranged for Rama to attend the $40,000-a-head San Francisco fundraiser with Obama on the night of Oct. 8, 2012, an Albanian national told The Daily Caller.

The source, who insisted on anonymity, told TheDC that Prifti compelled a New Jersey-based small limousine company owner named Bilal Shehu to donate $70,000 to the Obama Victory Fund 2012 just days before the fundraiser, and to bring Rama as his personal guest.

Part of this contribution was intended as a $10,000 payment to the Obama campaign for the photograph. Foreign nationals like Prifti and Rama are legally prohibited from directly donating to U.S. political campaigns.

Prifti has since admitted to setting up Rama’s meeting with Obama.

Shehu, who was earning the equivalent of between $5,000 and $8,000 per year as a customs agent in Albania before emmigrating to the United States in 2009, had never before donated to an American political campaign.

“Has there been a conspiracy to circumvent U.S. election laws in this case? Where did the money come from to buy the tickets to the fundraiser? How did [Shehu] get from New Jersey to California to attend the event? What was a prominent foreign politician doing at a fundraising event from which he should have been barred by law. I would request that a full investigation into this issue be made immediately,” Rohrabacher wrote.
...This Irish kickoff to a month of excursions is yet another Michelle Obama special, where the G-8 Summit global affairs discussions double as a 'Wait! Why not milk this baby for all it's worth' opportunity to get some vacay time out of the deal. 

Think back to Obama's March 2011 trip to Brazil.  That's when all hell was breaking loose in Libya, and presidential business morphed into a family sightseeing tour of Rio De Janiero.  Remember when it was rumored that Mrs. Obama closed down a section of Madison Avenue in New York City to spend $50,000 at British lingerie shop Agent Provocateur? Well now, citing security considerations, inside sources are playing down the prospect that Mrs. Obama is going on a sightseeing-and-shopping spree in Dublin.

One thing's for sure: Michelle certainly did ratchet up the lavishness level on this outing. A total of 30 rooms were booked for the first lady and her entourage in the five-star, 265-room Shelbourne Hotel. The Shelbourne Hotel has been all spiffed up and the "Guardians of the Peace of Ireland," also known as gardai, are assisting the Secret Service detail and are gardai-ing the hotel.

Always mindful of the nation's budgetary crisis, Michelle chose the highest of high-end accommodations for the ancestry/heritage part of the tour. In Ireland, Mrs. Obama will stay in the sumptuous €2,500-a-night Princess Grace Suite.  The Princess Grace Suite is where Grace Kelly lodged whenever she and Prince Rainier of Monaco vacationed in Ireland.

The suite is described as not only allowing "guests remarkable views of the city centre park, but surrounds them with opulent amenities befitting royalty." The bill for the Hollywood-style digs translates into $3,927 American greenbacks per night. 

A bit of trivia:  Alois Hitler, Adolf Hitler's brother, worked in the Shelbourne Hotel in the 1900's, and in 1922, the Irish Constitution was drafted in room 112, which is now known as the Constitution Room. Also of note is that prior to Michelle Obama arriving at the hotel, a frightened little girl who died in 1846 named Mary Masters had already frightened people by haunting the establishment.

Which brings us to Michelle's on-stage comments at a special performance of Riverdance, which merrily took place in the Gaiety Theatre. 

It was there that Mrs. Obama, accompanied by Taoiseach Enda Kenny's wife Fionnuala O'Kelly, addressed 1,000 schoolchildren bussed in from Barack O'Bama's familial home.  President Michael D. Higgins's wife Sabina was also there, but unlike America's first lady, Sabina chose to remain silent. Better Ireland's first lady say nothing than slip and mutter, within earshot of Michelle, "Imeacht gan teacht ort," which means "May you leave without returning."

Nonetheless, Michelle did tell the Gaiety audience "It's good to be home," which was more than a little bizarre. 

Then, just like a few months back in Chicago when Michelle Obama said she was Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old schoolgirl killed by gun violence, and Hadiya Pendleton was her, Mrs. Obama, who is still very much alive, reached down in a spirit of kinship toward the children of Ireland. Speaking to an audience staring up at Mrs. Obama in wide-eyed wonder, the first lady said, "We are you. We are just like you."Yeah, right!  Sorry, but at $4K a night, the only similarity between the smitten Moneygall schoolchildren and shameless über-vacationer Michelle the Money Gal - is nothing at all.

The New American Enemies List

The vast majority of the annual shooting homicides are committed by inner-city and minority youths below the age of 30. Handguns are involved in 80% of all murders. Rifles and shotguns account for less than 10% of homicides.

No matter; the National Rifle Association is now blamed for generic gun violence, especially the mass shootings at schools, even though usually no one knows of any proposed gun law — barring outright confiscation of previously purchased firearms, bullets, and clips — that would have prevented the shooters at Sandy Hook and Columbine. Gun merchants are blamed by the president while in Mexico for selling lethal semi-automatic weapons to drug cartels. But so far, the only identifiable purveyor of illegal weaponry is the president’s own attorney general, whose subordinates in the Fast and Furious operation sold hundreds of guns illegally to Mexican drug lords.

Suggestions to encourage greater incarceration of the mentally unstable, to jawbone Hollywood about its profitable (and gratuitous) gun violence, to regulate extremely violent — and extremely well-selling — video games usually fall on deaf liberal ears. In short, the stereotyped camouflaged, weekend gun enthusiast is not the problem that leads to Columbine, or the nearly 532 murders last year in Chicago. But because we can’t or won’t address the causes of the latter, we go after the former. He is not the unhinged sort that shoots a Gabby Giffords or innocents in an Aurora, Colorado, theater; but somehow is the supposed red-neck yokel that a journalist like ABC’s Brian Ross assumes does.

If the Department of Homeland Security, as is rumored, really did wish to stockpile hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition, then why did it begin such repository buying right in the middle of a hysterical national debate about limiting access to various rifles and semi-automatic weapons? Was it not to create a climate of fear and panic buying that has emptied America’s shelves of the most popular types of ammunition? If the homicide rate in Philadelphia and Chicago is any indication, murderers still have plenty of access to bullets. Those who want to target practice or shoot a varmint on their property do not.

The CIA and FBI knew of the suspicious activity of the Boston bombers, of Major Hasan, and of Anwar al-Awlaki. And they did nothing to preempt their violence. The FBI is said to be carefully avoiding monitoring mosques, although all of the above terrorists were known by many fellow Muslim worshipers to be either disturbed or extremist or both. In contrast, the NSA monitors, we are told, nearly everyone’s communications rather than focusing on Middle Eastern male Muslims, even though Middle Eastern male Muslims have been involved in the vast majority of post-9/11 terrorist plots. The NSA is the electronic version of the TSA, which feels it is noble and liberal to stop an octogenarian in a wheel chair for special frisking as proper compensation for every focused look at a West Bank resident or Pakistani visitor on his way into the United States.

The words “Tea Party” and “patriot” in a non-profit’s name would more likely earn a negative appraisal from the IRS than would “Islam” or “Muslim.” One wonders how Lois Lerner’s IRS division would treat a hypothetical “Sarah Palin Foundation” versus “The Dr. Zawahiri Charity.”

The IRS is not worried at all about 47% of the nation who pay no federal income taxes. The vast majority of those whom it focuses on are instead the 10% who pay over 70% of all taxes. These are the would-be proverbial “fat cats” who did not build their own businesses. They are reluctant to spread their wealth. They certainly did not know either when to stop making money or when the age of profit altogether had passed. Sometime around 2009 success was deemed failure, and failure success — at least if we collate the president fat-cat rhetoric with the vast expansion in the disability, food-stamp, and unemployment-insurance rolls.

Note that the IRS is not interested in leaking to Democrat senators or former administration official rumors about George Soros’s income or the details of the tax returns of Warren Buffett, Steven Spielberg, or Bill Gates. Instead, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate bragged that he knew (falsely as it turned out) that Mitt Romney paid no income taxes. And former high administration official Austan Goolsbee claimed (also falsely as it turned out) that he too knew that the Koch brothers were shorting the IRS.

Note that only liberal groups like ProPublica leak information about the confidential donor lists of conservative activists, apparently given their familiar arrangement with the IRS. So far IRS chiefs are not looking at prominent Democrat politicians for tax violations, although for a time — cf. Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, Hilda Solis — that might have been a fruitful profile for inquiry. (One encouraging side note: if you are a suspect white, mature, well-off, conservative, heterosexual, Christian male, you can still obtain exemption from federal suspicion by loudly announcing that you also are enthralled by Barack Obama.)

We know who was not an administration suspect in the killing of four Americans in Benghazi — hard-core, al Qaeda-related Islamic terrorists. Instead a  supposedly right-wing unhinged video-maker was the object of vitriol from the secretary of state, the UN ambassador, and the president of the United States. He currently sits in jail. The known perpetrators of the murders walk free.  In contrast, Lisa Jackson, the former EPA director, just got a fat inside job from Apple, despite creating not just a fictitious name (e.g., “Richard Windsor”) to avoid scrutiny when she communicated official business, but also an entirely made-up alter ego: “Richard Windsor” became an ideal employee lauded by the unethical EPA for his supposedly “ethical behavior.”

We also know who in the media is not a target. Not the CBS or ABC News presidents who have siblings working in the White House. Not ABC’s Good Morning America, given that one of its stalwarts is married to Press Secretary Jay Carney. Instead, there are two sorts of suspicious reporters that are considered hostile to the administration and worthy of having their communications monitored. One group are those journalists who leak information that the administration wished to preempt and leak first or who refuse to only leak favorable classified information — the bin Laden trove, the cyber war against Iran, the drone targeting protocol — that makes the president look as if he were a competent commander in chief.
The other target, of course, is Fox News, whose staff, in a variety of ways and on a number of occasions, the Obama administration has previously attacked as in some way illegitimate.

Again, who fits these profiles that our current, vastly expanding big government does not like? If you are an operator of a coal plant that creates needed energy at a profit, then beware that the EPA is after you. If you are a shady insider who wants tens of millions of government dollars to subsidize a money-losing wind and solar plant, you hit the jackpot. Ditto the suspect people who build guitars, loan money to Chrysler, or wish to locate a jet airliner plant in South Carolina. Profits create suspicion; failures earn subsidies.

Then there are the clingers, whom the president long ago blasted as religious zealots and gun-toting xenophobes. These are the sorts whom the attorney general calls “cowards”  (not “my people”) — the “enemies” whom the president advises Latino activists to “punish” at the polls, the sorts that the president apologizes for abroad as guilty of sundry sorts of past class, race, and gender oppression.

In contrast, who is not so worried about government surveillance or audit? The New Black Panthers who turned up at a polling station in Philadelphia to intimidate voters; the “farmers” who, according to the New York Times, filed bogus claims to cash in on the government’s ill-advised and poorly administered Pigford settlement; the Secret Service agents who routinely visited prostitutes while on duty protecting high government officials abroad; and the assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who used her office to enhance her private consulting business.

Americans wonder whom would the immigration services more likely wish to deport: the German Romeike family that was “guilty” of homeschooling their children; Obama’s aunt Zeituni, who lied about her immigration status to illegally obtain state and federal subsidies; or Onyango Obama, who likewise is here illegally (for 21 years) and was recently charged with ramming a police car while driving intoxicated? Is the U.S. so short of DUI offenders and frauds that we must deport homeschoolers to make room for them?
There is currently a climate of fear growing throughout the United States. Millions of Americans are terrified of the IRS, the Department of Justice, the EPA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and even perhaps the FBI, CIA, and State Department.

Why?

These government agencies have never been bigger, more powerful, and more ideologically driven. Citizens fear them for understandable reasons: those who do nothing wrong, whether in filing tax forms or trying to buy a rifle, are considered suspect and deserving to be the target of either federal scrutiny or presidential slurs.  But those who do a great deal of wrong, either by illegally entering the country, disrupting polling, trafficking in weapons in Mexico, eavesdropping on American citizens, pulling tax information for partisan purposes, subverting a government agency, or lying to the public about government activity, seem exempt from punishment — and, more chillingly, sense that they are so exempt.

Ask who now is sitting in prison — a shyster video-maker who had nothing to do with the deaths of four Americans, or their five known terrorist killers lounging about in North Africa? Apparently, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, like EPA director Lisa Jackson, was guilty of creating a fake persona. Like Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, he had a lien on his business. Like former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, he had some unpaid taxes. Like Tamerlan Tsarnaev, he had been visited by government investigators. Like Attorney General Eric Holder and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, he lied to federal authorities — although they were not quite as high as those in the U.S. Congress. And unlike all of the above, he was therefore jailed.

Of all the legacies of Barack Obama, the most pernicious will be the creation of a rogue government that has cut off and terrified half the population — and for no other reason than that they seem to represent things that Mr. Obama simply does not seem to understand.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-new-american-enemies-list/?singlepage=true 

Rubio’s Folly, Cont. 

It is painful to watch Marco Rubio’s maneuverings on immigration. He is refusing to say whether he will vote “yes” on his own Gang of Eight bill after spending months drafting, defending, and helping shepherd it to the floor. He has supposedly discovered that the enforcement provisions are inadequate, although he has done countless interviews touting that the bill contains the “toughest immigration-enforcement measures in the history of United States” (which is what his website still says). At the same time, Rubio declares the bill 95–96 percent perfect.

This is all very confusing, but perhaps we can help the senator get his story straight: He should vote against the bill. It is an amnesty-first, enforcement-maybe program drawn up mainly to reflect the priorities of 11 million citizens of other countries rather than the concerns of more than 300 million citizens of the United States. 

Most of the so-called security triggers in the bill are paper tigers. The requirement that those applying for amnesty have clean criminal records in fact allows for two misdemeanor convictions and, like most of the triggers, can be waived by the Department of Homeland Security. Senator John Cornyn of Texas has sought to have those with drunk-driving convictions excluded, but he is meeting resistance — Senator John McCain called the Cornyn amendment, which modestly strengthens other security provisions as well, a “poison pill.” The bill as written excludes only those with three or more drunk-driving convictions — “habitual” drunk drivers.

Likewise, the fines for illegal immigrants contemplated by the Gang of Eight can, under the current bill, be waived by DHS, and the collection of unpaid taxes applies only to levies already assessed by our dear friends at the IRS. The main security provisions of the legislation require only that DHS draw up a plan for security. (That is classic Washington: a plan to have a plan.) The much-vaunted requirement that DHS achieve 90 percent effectiveness for border security requires only self-certification by the DHS; in the unlikely event that DHS does not give itself a passing score, the only result under the law would be the creation of a commission to study the problem. Completing a border fence is left to the discretion of the DHS, which does not support doing so. Likewise, the requirement that the federal government institute a system of controls on those who overstay their visas — which already is a legal requirement and has been since 1996 — is left largely to the discretion of DHS.

All of the concerns above are problematic on their own, but they are rendered especially troublesome by the fact that the legalization of millions of illegal immigrants happens first, immediately and irreversibly. If this bill should be signed into law, the amnesty would go into effect immediately, and the most that any of the so-called triggers would do is delay the process of allowing the formerly illegal immigrants to apply for green cards and citizenship. That is the fundamental flaw of Senator Rubio’s design, and none of his playing Hamlet about the issue is going to change that. The bill is not wrong only in its details, but in its fundamental architecture, including in its guest-worker program and increases in other categories of low-skilled workers.

The Gang of Eight bill does not serve the economic interests of the United States. The fact is that our public schools do an excellent job of producing an abundant supply of unskilled workers with little or no proficiency in English, and the national labor force is not achingly in need of a few million more. And in failing to ensure that the borders and ports of entry are truly and robustly secure, it shortchanges the national-security interests of the country as well. Neither changing green-card rules to accommodate domestic labor-market needs nor physically securing the border requires an amnesty for those illegal immigrants who are already present. Nor does implementing E-Verify and complying with existing law on entry-exit visas. In fact, there is not a single item on the productive-immigration-reform agenda that requires an amnesty for illegals — and, remarkably, nobody in this debate has made much of a serious attempt to explain how or why that amnesty is in the interests of the citizens of the United States.

By more than doubling the number of so-called guest workers admitted each year, the bill would help create a permanent underclass of foreign workers. The 2007 Bush-Kennedy proposal was rejected in part because it would have added 125,000 new guest workers. The Gang of Eight bill would add 1.6 million in the first year, and about 600,000 a year after that: That’s the population of Philadelphia in Year One and the population of Boston each year after. That is a lot of taxation without representation. And that is on top of a 50 percent or more increase in the total level of legal immigration. While life as a member of an American underclass surely would be an attractive alternative for members of the underclasses of many other countries, the creation of a large population of second-class workers is undesirable from the point of view of the American national interest, which should be our guiding force in this matter. 

Beyond its treatment of illegal immigrants, the very large expansion in legal immigration that the bill would establish is problematic as well. While there are some persuasive economic arguments in favor of expanding legal immigration, the United States is a nation with an economy, not an economy with a nation. Our failure to fully assimilate new immigrants over the past several decades is not a reflection of our inability but our unwillingness to do so. That some are arguing for this bill as a necessary political sop to Hispanic voters is indicative of the toxic ethnic politics that we should be working to eliminate — and that radically higher levels of immigration would almost certainly entrench. As with strengthened security measures, proposals to prudently limit the total number of new immigrants have been rejected. 

The Gang of Eight’s play now is clearly to come up with some fig leaf of an amendment on enforcement that won’t affect the fundamentals of the bill, while giving enough Republicans cover to vote for it to get to a supermajority of 70. (And win back the dramatically wavering Rubio — this stagecraft has all the subtlety of the WWE.) Seventy votes is considered the threshold for pressuring the House to act on a “comprehensive reform” with all the same flaws of the Senate version.

A note about the political background to all this: This bill is in no small part a reaction to the 2012 election, a product of the media-consultant complex that has convinced Republicans that immigration reform is the key to the Hispanic heart, and that Hispanic votes are the key to winning future presidential elections. 

Republicans probably are too optimistic about their prospects among Hispanic voters. But it is worth noting that the two sides in this immigration debate are being led by Hispanic Republican senators: Marco Rubio for the Gang of Eight, Ted Cruz for the opposition. One of them, needless to say, is making more sense than the other.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/351212

 O’Keefe Sting Catches ‘Obamaphone’ Salesmen on Camera: ‘I Don’t Care What You Do With It’

James O’Keefe is back. His new book Breakthrough chronicling his undercover video takedowns of ACORN, NPR, and local election officials who ignore voter fraud is being published today. He also has a new video out that should embarrass two companies who distribute government-paid-for “Obamaphones” to people who claim they lack cellular service. Company reps are seen handing them out to O’Keefe allies who say they will sell them for drug money, to buy handbags, or to pay their bills. No objection is heard. 

O’Keefe will appear on tonight’s O’Reilly Factor to discuss just how much of a scam the $2.2 billion federal program (paid for by fees tacked on to cell-phone bills) has become. The free phones offered with the program became known as “Obamaphones” last year when a YouTube video was seen by over 8 million people. It showed a woman at a campaign rally declaring she was voting for Obama because he had given her a free phone.

Representative Tim Griffin, an Arkansas Republican, has sponsored legislation to end the Lifeline cell-phone subsidy for the poor. He notes that the biggest beneficiary of the program is Carlos Slim, the Mexican mega-billionaire who owns TracFone, one of the two biggest Obamaphone providers. The free phones also entrench an already prevalent entitlement mentality. All a person has to do to get an Obamaphone and discounted monthly service is to show an income at or below 135 percent of the poverty line, or about $2,610 a month for a family of four. Recipients usually show their eligibility by producing an Electronic Benefits Transfer card that verifies their eligibility for welfare payments.

But that doesn’t mean the folks who check eligibility have any concerns about what will be done with the phones. O’Keefe allies who were sent in as prospective customers to a Stand Up Wireless store in Philadelphia were shocked by the reactions they got from salespeople there

“Once you guys give me this phone, it’s my phone?” one asked an employee “I can, like, sell it and stuff?”

“Whatever you want to do with it,” the worker replied.

“So I’m [going to] get some money for heroin,” the actor responded. 

The employee came back with: “Hey, I don’t judge.”

Another O’Keefe undercover actor asked how much the phone was worth.

“If you’re interested in learning — wanting to know how much the phone’s worth,” a salesperson said, “I recommend you go to any pawn shop. They’ll be more than happy to tell you, okay?”

“Okay,” the actor replied. “So I could get the phone and then sell it?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I don’t care what you do with it.”

Things were no different at a TerraCom Wireless booth elsewhere in Philadelphia. “Unfortunately, there are people on drugs,” a TerraCom rep told an O’Keefe undercover actor. “They get this phone, and they do get $40 . . . you basically do whatever you want with it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

“Well, I’m not on drugs,” the actor replies, “but there is a really awesome pair of shoes at the store that I want.” The TerraCom rep quickly breaks down into uncontrolled laughter.

Representative Griffin says the Obamaphone program needs to be dismantled because it is an opening wedge for the entitlement state. “If you need a cell phone, where does it end?” he asks me. “Do you need an iPad? A computer? A printer?”

We need to hang up on this program.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/351344/okeefe-sting-catches-obamaphone-salesmen-camera-i-dont-care-what-you-do-it-john-fund 

 Krauthammer’s Take: Iranian Moderates ‘A Mirage’

The initial wave of optimism following the election of Hassan Rowhani as president of Iran is just the latest episode in Americans’ “perpetual” search for Iranian moderates, Charles Krauthammer argued Monday evening.  “The answer is always the same,” he explained, “it’s a mirage.”

Western hopes that Ahmadinejad’s successor may be willing to negotiate on Iran’s nuclear program “is a wish, not a reality,” Krauthammer emphasized. “There is not an iota of difference” between Rowhani and Ahmadinejad on the three main issues — “Iran being nuclear, supporting Assad in Syria, and ultimately destroying Israel, our chief ally in the region” – that the United States is concerned about, he concluded.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/351312/krauthammers-take-iranian-moderates-mirage-nro-staff


Krauthammer Slams Obama’s Syrian Policy: Worse Than Doing Nothing

'You're either serious about intervention or you aren't'

Columnist Charles Krauthammer ripped the Obama administration’s Syrian policy on Special Report Monday, saying his weak intervention was worse than doing nothing.

Speaking about Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s tense G8 summit meeting about how to resolve the Syrian conflict despite supporting opposing sides, Krauthammer said “it wasn’t a frosty meeting, it was a useless meeting.”

While Russia has a long-vested interest in having influence over Syria and has shown clear, direct support for Bashar al-Assad, Obama’s tepid aid of small arms to the rebels was “marginal” and unlikely to have any influence over the outcome, Krauthammer said.

“This is a declaration of unseriousness,” he said. “It’s exactly the same as when Obama announced the tripling of troops in Afghanistan and in the next sentence announced that we’re leaving. You’re either serious about intervention or you aren’t, and I am against any intervention where you’re not serious.”

If he wanted to change the course of the war, Krauthammer argued, he needed to be more direct with the American people about the U.S. interests in seeing the Iranian-supported Assad regime defeated. Polls show dwindling support for U.S. intervention in Syria, but Krauthammer said this was because Obama never discusses the situation.

“You make a speech, explain it, and do something serious,” he said. “You bomb the air fields. You don’t have to knock out all of the aircraft equipment as we did in Libya, but if you prevent the aircraft from getting into the air by bombing the air fields, you have done something serious. You flood them with heavy weapons, not just light weapons, or you do nothing. But this, I think, is worse than nothing.”

http://freebeacon.com/krauthammer-slams-obamas-syrian-policy-worse-than-doing-nothing/

‘Free at Last’: La. State Senator Explains Why He Recently Left the ‘Government Plantation’ & Joined GOP in Powerful Video

Louisiana State Sen. Elbert Guillory, formerly a Democrat, recently — and enthusiastically — joined the Republican party.

Weeks after announcing his bold move, Guillory has released a video explaining why he is now with the GOP. The powerful video is titled, “Why I Am a Republican.”

 In the video, Guillory says it is the Republican Party that actually has the best interests of the black community in mind. He argues Democrats relentlessly push an agenda intended to exert control over blacks, not lift them out of poverty.

“You see, in recent history, the Democrat party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people,” Guillory said. “Somehow it has been forgotten that the Republican party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement, with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.”

The former Democrat explained that Frederick Douglass called Republicans the “party of freedom and progress.” He also pointed out that former Republican President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and Republicans in Congress wrote the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

“The Democrats, on the other hand, were the party of Jim Crow,” Guillory added. “It was the Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners.”

He went on: “You see, at the heart of liberalism, is the idea that only a great and powerful big Government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing: control. And they disguise this control as charity.”

Guillory claimed entitlement programs like welfare and food stamps were never designed to “lift black Americans out of poverty,” but rather to control them.

Further, the welfare programs haven’t even helped blacks at all as they are still “as poor as they’ve ever been,” he argued.

But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness, free from Government dependence, and free from Government control. Because to be truly free, is to be reliant on no one, other than the author of our destiny,” Guillory continued, pointing to God. “These are the ideas are at the core of Republican party… My brothers and sisters of the American community, please join me in abandoning the Government plantation and the party of disappointment.”

“So that we may all echo of one Republican leader who famously said, ‘Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last,” he concluded.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/18/la-state-senator-explains-why-he-abandoned-party-of-disappointment-and-joined-gop-in-powerful-video/

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