Updated Nov 27th: Former CIA chief: Obama didn't hit ISIS oil fields to save the environment

Washington Examiner  "The former CIA director under President Obama revealed this week that the White House held off on bombing Islamic State-controlled oil fields and tankers because the administration feared that the subsequent oil spills would harm the environment.

"Former director Mike Morell's comment came during an interview Tuesday evening with PBS' Charlie Rose.

" 'We didn't go after oil wells, actually hitting oil wells that ISIS controls, because we didn't want to do environmental damage, and we didn't want to destroy that infrastructure," Morell said.

"He added that the Obama administration was also afraid that damaging oil infrastructure would ultimately hurt the Syrian people." . . .

"These are not serious people"   . . . "Contrast that to reports from over a year ago explaining how ISIS funds itself by smuggling oil to other hostile actors:

“With the important exception of some state-sponsored terrorist organizations, ISIL is probably the best-funded terrorist organization we have confronted,” Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David Cohen said on Thursday in a speech to a Washington,D.C., think tank. At a subsequent briefing at the White House, Cohen declined to provide an estimate of the group’s net worth today.

From mid-June until President Barack Obama unleashed airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against it, the Islamist organization scored $1 million per day from smuggled oil, Cohen said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He declined to say how much the airstrikes, which began on Sept. 23, have sliced into the group’s oil revenue.

The oil operation, which has drawn the most scrutiny, relies on long-standing smuggling networks operating in oil-rich parts of Iraq now under IS control. IS extracts the petroleum and sells it to smugglers, some of whom use “relatively sizeable tankers” to get it onto the black market." . . ."

Protecting the desert has to supersede protecting the civilized world from savages because -who knows? - we may want to make a national park out of that part of the world. It could be a monument against US aggression.  TD

The inspiring story of how Thanksgiving began

Silvio Canto, Jr.  "As much as possible, I try to learn something new about US history.   It's a combination of natural interest and the reality that I wasn't born here.   In other words, there are a lot of stories that I didn't hear about when I was a kid.   For example, I did not heart the one about Washington's cherry tree!

"A few weeks ago, I learned about Sarah Josepha Hale, the lady who wrote to President Lincoln to make our current Thanksgiving Day a reality.   Let's  recall the story:" . . .

 Read the full article

Insignificant Thanksgiving thought

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Politics and What Remains of the English Language

Victor Davis Hanson

"Here is a list of a few trendy words, overused, politicized, and empty of meaning, that now plague popular communications."

Read the list here.

. . . "This tiny vocabulary sampling reflects another recent epidemic of victimhood, as the English language is further squeezed and massaged to create reality from fantasy.

"First, over a half-century of institutionalized equal opportunity has not led to an equality of result. Particular self-identified groups feel collectively that they are less well off than others and are bewildered that this is still possible, since they can point to no law or custom that precludes their opportunity by race, class, or gender. Therefore, inventing a vocabulary of grievances is far more effective in gaining concessions than self-criticism and self-reliance are in winning parity.

"Second, in an affluent, leisured and postmodern society of $300 Jordan-label sneakers that sell out in hours, big-screen televisions at Walmart that become prizes for warring consumers on Black Friday, and over 50% of the population exempt from income taxes, it is becoming harder to define, in the material sense, oppression-driven victimhood. In such a world, even multi-billionaire Oprah has difficulty finding discrimination and so becomes reduced to whining about a perceived snub in a Swiss boutique that sells six-figure purses. Language is pressed into service to create victims where there are few, but where many are sorely needed, psychologically -- and on the chance such a prized status might lead to a profitable trajectory otherwise impossible by passé notions of work and achievement."

ABC Pushes Polyamory

MRC Culture

Marriage ‘equality’ for same-sex couples? That’s so yesterday.

"ABC’s Nightline hyped a polyamorous, “trailblazing triad” on Thursday evening, highlighting the threesome’s “unusual modern family.”

"The segment began with a shot of the throuple in bed together with their two children, who share a father but were each born to one of his “wives.”

“ 'This triad wants to make it clear that they are not polygamists,” ABC’s Abbie Boudreau eagerly explained, and that they are all sexual partners with each other. This arrangement began when Melinda Phoenix decided she wanted to add a man to her “marriage” to Dani, a woman.

"Two lesbians decided they desired a masculine man. He impregnated both of the women and their children were born five weeks apart." . . . 

ABC's 'Nightline' Spins Polygamy as 'Normal'
What is most disturbing about this report was the portrayal of polygamy as just a normal way of life and the implications such a view has. The story was reported by ABC News correspondent Cecilia Vega who claimed that "the residents of Centennial Park say they want to show just how average, how normal their lives are," and that the idea of polygamy is "a fundamentalist version of a modern family." 

Obama: Syrian refugees are like pilgrims on the Mayflower. Ann Coulter sees things differently.

The Hill

. . . “I hope that you and your family have a wonderful Thanksgiving, surrounded by loved ones and full of joy and gratitude,” he said. “And together, may we all play our own small part in the American story, and write a next chapter that future generations can be thankful for.”

"The House passed a measure earlier this month making it more difficult for Syrian refugees fleeing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to enter the country.

"Republicans have cast doubt on whether refugees can be properly vetted to ensure that they are not terrorists.

"At least one assailant in the Nov. 13 Paris terrorist attack, in which 130 people were killed, is suspected of entering France posed as a migrant."

And if you like your ISIS renter, you can keep him. Period

Ann Coulter has much to say about this as you may expect
"Americans keep being hectored to take "refugees" from terrorist-producing countries because to do otherwise would be "a betrayal of our values," as President Obama said on Monday. 
"The rise of Donald Trump reminds us of the popularity of another, long-forgotten American value: protecting Americans. 
"Contrary to Obama's laughable reference to "the universal values" that "all of humanity" share, most of the world does not share our values, at all. They barely seem to share our DNA. As indignantly explained by the lawyer representing two Iraqis accused of child rape in Nebraska, America's views about women and children "put us in the minority position in the world." 
"Pederasty, child brides, honor killings, clitorectomies, stonings, wife beatings -- when will America grow up and join the 21st century? (A lot sooner if Marco Rubio has his way!) 
"The New York Times boasts about how amazingly painstaking the "vetting" of Syrian refugees will be, but I notice the main point the paper keeps stressing is how long it will take. Twenty-four months! 
" 'Waiting" is not "vetting." What is 24 months to people who can hold a grudge for a thousand years? . . ."