PK'S NOTE: I'm COMPLETELY not a fan of McCain but this is spot on.
McCain Ridicules White House 'Apology' for Failing to Notify Congress on Prisoner Swap
By Charlie SpieringSen. John McCain (R-AZ) ridiculed the White House's apology to Congress for not informing them about the decision to trade five Taliban enemy combatants in exchange for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
“Well that’s wonderful, then everything’s OK,” McCain said sarcastically to reporters. “Everything’s ok now that they apologized, I don’t see the why we need to pursue it further.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein indicated to reporters on Tuesday that she received a call from Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken apologizing for failing to inform Congress about the deal.
McCain went on to criticize president Obama for his foreign policy, including his 2008 promise not to engage in negotiations with terrorists.
“President Obama has said so many things over the years, that I no longer pay attention,” McCain added.
McCain admitted that even when he was running against Obama in 2008, he never thought Obama’s record on foreign policy would be as bad as it is now.
“No. I never did,” he said shortly.
‘Wow!’ And so it begins: White House smears vets, claims ‘swift boating’ of Bergdahl
....Did the White House really say that?
It can’t be true, can it? Well, according to Chuck Todd it is.
Hi @chucktodd, did the White House literally use the term "swift boat" to describe Bergdahl's platoon's reaction? Please confirm.
Unreal. Putting the lives of our brave troops at risk by releasing five Taliban leaders wasn’t enough, apparently. Now the White House has to smear those who put their lives on the line for this country.@CuffyMeh I didn't make it up
Despicable White House. You have sunk to a new low.
But, hey. Smear. Smear like the wind. It’s the Chicago way.
Chuck Todd: White House Aides Accuse Vets of 'Swift Boating Bergdahl'
By John NolteOn Wednesday's "Today Show," NBC's senior White House correspondent Chuck Todd reported that "a few [White House] aides describe it to me as ‘we didn’t know that they were going to Swift Boat Bergdahl.’"
In a later tweet, Todd didn't dispute that the White House used the derogatory term "swift boat" to "describe Bergdahl's platoon reaction."
With Democrats, the term "swift boat" or "swift boating" is used as a pejorative to attack political opponents as liars. Democrats want the public to believe that John Kerry was "swift boated" unfairly during his 2004 presidential run when a number of the men he served with in Vietnam came forward to claim that Kerry had wildly exaggerated his war exploits.
They called themselves "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," hence the term "swift boating."
Kerry never proved his wartime claims and still refuses to release his full military record.
According to Todd, a frustrated White House that was expecting joyous news-cycles out of the Bergdahl release is apparently attempting to smear veterans who served with Sergeant Bergdahl as liars.
This, despite the fact that all the objective documentation we've seen so far (including a military investigation) backs the claim that Bergdahl abandoned his post and was not "taken in battle" or "served honorably" as National Security Advisers Susan Rice falsely claimed Sunday on ABC's This Week.
What "swift boating" really means to Democrats is the use of facts against their phony narratives.
It seems likely that the White House is hoping to convince media figures like Todd to attack the credibility of these Veterans and make them the story, as opposed to the Administration's imploding narrative.
The Story You Haven't Yet Heard About Bowe Bergdahl's Desertion
By Michelle MalkinIn addition to Andrews, Casillas, Fairbairn and Martinek, PFC Morriss Walker and Staff Sergeants Clayton Bowen, Kurt Curtiss and Michael Murphrey died as a result of Bergdahl's abandonment. That's eight dead American soldiers (not six, as the rest of the media have reported) betrayed by selfish Bergdahl and reckless President Obama.
My source did not mince words: "The fact that our government negotiated with terrorists and our enemy is incomprehensible. The fact that they exchanged five war criminals for a traitor is sickening. The worst part for those of us that suffered through that time is that PFC Bergdahl is being hailed as some kind of hero. He was automatically promoted to Specialist and Sergeant, ranks he does not deserve and did not earn. I have no doubt he will receive back pay for these past five years, a substantial sum. There will be book deals, and his family are celebrities. I am glad he is safe, and happy for his family, but he should return home to face a court martial."
Are you listening, Capitol Hill and America? The Bowe Bergdahl mess isn't just a story about one deserter, but two. There's the muddle-headed lowlife who left his post and brothers behind. And there's the corrupt commander in chief who has jeopardized more American soldiers' lives to "rescue" Bergdahl by bowing to the Taliban, while snubbing the surviving heroes and the eight dead American soldiers who lost their lives because of him. This cannot stand.
Barack Obama, Judge of Life or Death
By Ben ShapiroOn Sept. 30, 2011, two American Predator drones based out of a Saudi Arabian CIA facility swept into Yemen and fired Hellfire missiles at a car containing terrorist and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. He was killed. So, too, was terrorist buddy Samir Khan, an American born in Saudi Arabia. President Barack Obama promptly announced the kill: "The death of Awlaki is a major blow to al-Qaida's most active operational affiliate. He took the lead in planning and directing efforts to murder innocent Americans ... and he repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda." Nowhere did Obama mention that either man was an American citizen.
Last Saturday, Obama announced that the United States had traded five Taliban terrorist leaders in exchange for American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. As the days passed, it became clear that Bergdahl was no American hero: he was, in fact, a deserter. He left a note at his base in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009, stating that he hated the military; he emailed his father stating that he hated America. Reports a year later from the U.K. Daily Mail stated that Bergdahl was teaching the Taliban bomb-making and had converted to Islam.
When asked about these problematic issues, Obama immediately signaled that Bergdahl's status as an American was an overriding factor in bartering terrorists for his release. ....The point here is not that Bergdahl should have been droned, or that al-Awlaki shouldn't have been. The point is that the president of the United States now has the apparent authority to determine whether or not someone deserves to live -- indeed, whether he deserves to be hit with a Hellfire missile or whether we should exchange high-level terrorists for him. And no one can stop the president in such decision-making. He is the judge, jury, and either executioner or savior. He is all-powerful.
This should be frightening to anyone with a modicum of common sense. American citizenship is now, apparently, a malleable commodity. Vice President Joe Biden believes that illegal immigrants are citizens. Obama believes that some Americans who join Islamist groups are citizens, while others are not. Who is an American? Whomever the executive branch deems an American. Who isn't? It depends on whether Obama ate his Wheaties or not.
Either American citizenship counts for something, or it does not. Either joining America's enemies strips you of your rights, or it does not. But when the president of the United States can arbitrarily decide whether or not those rights have been stripped, all of our rights have been stripped.
An odd coincidence in the Bergdahl release?
By Jason Kissner....material shows that negotiations for Bergdahl’s release have been underway for years. We also know that on Sunday, May 25 Obama visited Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield for a secretive military consultation.
It was during this secretive visit, which occurred around a week before Bergdahl’s release, that the Kabul CIA station chief was outed.
Of course, Obama’s people say the outing was accidental.
Maybe it was, just like Bergdahl might be just as honorable as the always very honest Susan Rice says he is.
It seems that we might now want to ask whether the outing might have been a part of the price demanded by the Taliban for the deserter’s release.
Clearly, the Taliban consider the exchange an important triumph. Do you think they would have accepted the same 5 terrorists for one deserter deal at any other time before now? Given that they seem to like the deal so much, why wouldn’t they have?
And yet, over a period of several years the deal never materialized.
It didn’t materialize until just after Obama’s Bagram visit and the leak associated with it. All that floundering around for years, and then, of a sudden, such miraculous traction!
Perhaps the Taliban, in full view of an Obama mired in a disastrous VA scandal, were holding out for still more -- like the identity of a CIA station chief -- and got it?
Or maybe it was just a random coincidence.
Obama brings home one POW, abandons another in Mexico
By Wayne Allyn RootMy fellow Americans, we currently have a POW who was chained on all four pressure points. He was chained so tightly that his wrists and ankles bled. He was beaten and kicked by prison guards while helplessly chained. He was starved and denied water. He was neglected by doctors.
This didn’t happen at the hands of the Taliban. This all happened to an American Marine hero at the hands of our “friend’ and neighbor Mexico. With friends like this, who needs enemies?
....His crime? Bad driving. He drove across the border by mistake.
Why hasn’t Obama demanded his return? Why hasn’t our president publicly embarrassed and pressured Mexico? Why hasn’t he made the return of our Marine hero a national priority?
Our President should be pointing out to Mexico’s President that America treats mass murderers at Gitmo better than our Marine hero has been treated in a Mexican prison.
....It’s time to point out that despite Mexican citizens entering our country illegally, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars in welfare, food stamps, housing allowances, healthcare, education, police and prison costs, free meals at school, and income tax credits.
It’s time to point out that despite Mexican citizens entering our country illegally, we have allowed them to live and work here. Our citizens are kind-hearted enough to oppose deportation of millions of your citizens for fear of breaking up their families. We hire your citizens and provide them with a better life than they ever had in Mexico. They send money home to Mexico that keeps your Mexican economy afloat. That money comes from our citizens and taxpayers.
It’s time to point out that America’s citizens spend billions on vacations in Mexico. That could end tomorrow if the president asked our citizens to cancel all trips to Mexico until our Marine hero is returned.
It’s time to point out that between 2008-2011, the Department of Defense gave $428.7 million worth of equipment to Mexican security forces, including planes, Blackhawk helicopters, and scanners. Last year alone we trained over 3000 Mexican troops.
Ethics Complaint Targets Harry Reid for Abuse of Power
By Josh SiegelTea Party Patriots filed an ethics complaint against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., alleging he has abused his power in a campaign to smear conservative donors.
The complaint, filed Monday with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, alleges Reid has purposely tried to damage the names of Charles and David Koch, prominent conservative donors whom Reid has publicly criticized for running advertisements attacking Democrats. It also cites Reid’s partisan campaign activities, which allegedly violate Senate rules and federal law.
Tea Party Patriots filed a separate complaint against Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., for his alleged role in influencing the Internal Revenue Service to scrutinize conservative nonprofit groups.
“Whitehouse exerted pressure on federal agencies to target tea party non-profits and to criminally prosecute groups such as ours,” the complaint reads.
Whitehouse was the main sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, legislation that would have forced nonprofits who make campaign donations to disclose their donors.
Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing the Tea Party Patriots, says the complaints were timed to coincide with a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting Tuesday, where congressional leaders, including Reid, clashed over a proposed constitutional amendment to curb political spending.
“We are tired of Reid, Democratic senators, and the White House bullying conservatives and conservative donors,” Mitchell said. “They do not respect the First Amendment rights of citizens and we are sick of it, so we are fighting back.”
Speaking at the Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Reid defended the proposed amendment, a plan that Democrats plan to vote on this year.
“I support this constitutional amendment,” Reid said. “Our involvement in government should not be dependent on bank account balances. It’s bad for America. What the nation needs is to bring sanity back to campaigns.”
Upon receiving a complaint, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., will initiate a preliminary inquiry to review the case.
If the committee finds substantial evidence, it can issue a public or private letter of admonition, or initiate an adjudicatory review. It can then recommend the Senate take disciplinary action.
In another, unrelated complaint filed Tuesday with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, the Center for Competitive Politics, another conservative nonprofit, charges nine Democratic senators with “interfering with the administrative proceedings of the IRS.”
Reid blocks GOP bill mitigating EPA’s new carbon emissions rule
By Pete KasperowiczSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Wednesday blocked a Republican attempt to pass legislation aimed at protecting coal mining jobs from the the Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon emissions rule.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R ) has warned the EPA rule will kill jobs in coal mining states like his home state of Kentucky. In response, McConnell has proposed the Coal Country Protection Act, which would require the government to certify that the rule does not hurt jobs, GDP or electricity delivery, and that it doesn’t raise electric power prices, before the rule can take effect.
When McConnell asked the Senate to quickly pass his bill on Wednesday, Reid blocked it.
“The rule will not become effective for a long time,” Reid explained, noting that the EPA plans to have the rule take effect in June 2015.
Reid said he would be as “cooperative as I feel appropriate” with Republicans, but said, “at this time, I object.” Reid also held out the idea that Democrats want to use the 120-day comment period to seek their own improvements to the rule, but he wasn’t more specific.
The EPA rule would require electric power plants to trim the carbon emissions by 30 percent in 2030, compared to 2005 levels. The Obama administration is defending the proposed rule as a way to help stop global warming, but Republicans say the rule is a job-killer that will raise electricity prices for middle-class Americans at a time of economic uncertainty.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said the proposal is “nuts.”
McConnell’s bill would require the government to certify that the EPA rule doesn’t hurt employment, GDP or electricity delivery, and doesn’t increase the cost of electric power before the rule can take effect.
Russia’s Gazprom part of secretive natural gas group within UN European unit
By George RussellT he Russian natural gas company Gazprom, which supplies much of Europe’s gas imports, is at the center of a secretive cabal of mostly state-owned natural gas companies that has been operating for two decades under the aegis of the United Nations, according to a first-ever audit of the operation obtained by Fox News.
Even though it is a U.N. entity, the group, known simply as the Gas Centre, runs on a budget funded by its corporate members. Its supervisory Executive Board has never been approved by the U.N. agency of which it is nominally a part, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, or UNECE. The group’s priorities, and its detailed budget, likewise manage to stay below the U.N.’s supervisory radar.
According to the U.N., the Gas Centre’s mandate is purely technical, and related to issues of gas contract methodology, collection of statistical databases, and the promotion and facilitation of foreign investment in the industry.
But in fact its mandate, as gleaned from U.N. documents examined by Fox News, includes the creation and maintenance of a “dialogue” on such issues as “the restructuring and consolidation of the gas sector, facilitation of “the integration of natural gas industries in Europe through greater convergence and harmonization of norms and practices,” and “know-how on legal and regulatory matters [and] gas market liberalization.”
In other words, matters that bear greatly on Europe’s energy future, and on Gazprom’s current and future role -- and influence -- in Europe, which is now in turmoil over Russia’s aggressive actions toward Ukraine, with their implications for the continent’s stability, not to mention energy security.
....If anything, amid the growing turmoil between Russia and Ukraine that has shaken Western Europe’s sense of security and its natural gas markets, the Gas Centre’s inner workings have become even more secretive: its sketchy U.N. website went off-line recently for several weeks, and re-emerged in May mostly behind a screen of members-only passwords. (Along with Gazprom, Ukraine’s biggest natural gas company, Naftogaz, is also a member.)
..... The mandate of the Centre, which has been “extended regularly” according to the Centre spokesman, is embedded within the mandate of yet another UNECE sub-organization, and includes not only discussions of gas industry integration, but “security of natural gas supplies,” “gas pricing principles and practices,” and the exchange of information and experience on “emerging trends and developments in the gas markets and in gas industries, including on investment issues.”
The UNECE entity within which the Gas Centre is embedded also includes in its mandate “enhancing” sustainable energy development in the region, and “creation of a unified gas market.”
....In the case of a company like Gazprom, however, the interests it is most frequently charged with representing are those closely tied to the ambitions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and his aggressive policies toward former Soviet subject-states, nowadays led by Ukraine.
And Putin’s policies are closely tied to Gazprom’s role as Europe’s pre-eminent natural gas supplier -- a huge role that is rapidly growing even further with the active support of UNECE, which favors deeper and broader energy integration between the West and Russia, not only in the provision of natural gas for industrial purposes, but also as a vital transport fuel.
One signal of Gazprom’s importance in Russia’s foreign policy is that its chairman, Viktor Zubkov, served as Putin’s prime minister from 2007-2008, during Putin’s second term as president, and as Putin’s deputy prime minister from 2008-20012, when the Russian autocrat took a constitutionally mandated timeout from the presidency to take Zubkov’s old job.
In other words, when Gazprom talks, people listen -- carefully.
No comments:
Post a Comment