Poll: The Number One Problem In Politics Is…

Independent Journal Review  "Despite Sen. Harry Reid’s near-daily speeches about the “un-American” Koch brothers and the vast amount of money they give to the Republican Party – all while the Democrats take billions from other interest groups – Americans are still not convinced that campaign donations are the number one problem in politics right now.

"That designation goes to media bias, according to 48% of the 1,000 likely voters polled for a Rasmussen Report. Big campaign contributions earned the #2 spot, with 44% of those polled.
Among people who identify as Tea Party members, media bias is an even bigger problem – 77% say it’s the number one issue.

"I wonder how the Administration will spin this poll? President Obama says the media is stacked against him, but I’m fairly sure that the voters polled are not talking about right-wing media, but instead the misnamed “mainstream media;” NBC, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and The New York Times spring to mind."

Obama’s illegal, and highly questionable, Afghanistan prisoner exchange

Human Events

"The first thing to know about President Obama’s exchange of five extremely dangerous prisoners from Guantanamo Bay for captive Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl is also the least important fact in the lawless reign of Barack Obama: it was blatantly illegal.  So blatant, in fact, that even the Obama White House cheerfully admits it was a violation of the law, without even bothering to offer a little spin or legal static. From the Washington Post:

Lawmakers were not notified of the Guantanamo detainees’ transfer until after it occurred.

The law requires the defense secretary to notify relevant congressional committees at least 30 days before making any transfers of prisoners, to explain the reason and to provide assurances that those released would not be in a position to reengage in activities that could threaten the United States or its interests.

...
 ..."If said Republicans actually proposed to do something about it, every story currently killing Democrats in the polls would be swept from the front pages at a stroke.  ”REPUBLICANS SEEK TO IMPEACH PRESIDENT FOR DEAL THAT BROUGHT AMERICAN SOLDIER HOME AFTER FIVE YEARS IN CAPTIVITY.”

"A White House official gave the New York Post a taste of how badly they want to see that headline, responding to questions about the strange circumstances of Sgt. Bergdahl’s capture by snarling, “Frankly, we don’t give a s**t why he left [his post].  He’s an American soldier.  We want to bring him home.”  They’re salivating at the thought of their political opponents giving this incompetent, self-absorbed Administration a chance to act like it’s packed with two-fisted super-patriots."

If we are nice to these men, they will be nice to us

Hillary Clinton’s New ‘Hard Choices’ Book: 7 Ways Obama Failed to Lead During the Bin Laden Raid

Related story here: 5 Times the Obama Admin Leaked Crucial National Security Information

The political insider

 

"With her memoir, Hard Choices set to be released in the coming weeks, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her publishing company have provided an excerpt in which she claims President Obama’s actions during the Bin Laden raid were “as crisp and courageous a display of leadership” that she had ever seen.

"Here are 7 reasons that Obama’s leadership during the raid was neither crisp or courageous."
Full article here...

I found this reason particularly galling:

3) Obama Leaked the Identity of Seal Team 6 Leader For Bin Laden Movie

..."That revelation subsequently led to a retaliatory target being placed on the SEAL team’s backs.

"Just a few months after bin Laden was killed, a military helicopter carrying 17 members of SEAL Team 6 was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing those team members and 21 other people."

The Veterans Administration; known also as "single-payer healthcare"

http://terrellaftermath.com/

By Doug Hochberg, Douglas Holtz-Eakin   "New AAF insight- Veterans Health Administration: A Preview of Single-Payer Health Care: “In recent years, many health-reform advocates have cited the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) as an example of how a single-payer, government-run health care system would work…The VHA is a model of what a government-run, single-payer system would be like. It would provide worse access to health care and dishonest performance figures, while costing more than other health care systems.' ”

The issue cannot be money:

 

Bergdahl: connecting the dots

Legal Insurrection

 

... "Bowe Bergdahl would detail his disillusionment with the Afghanistan campaign in an e-mail to his parents three days before he went missing.

“ 'I am sorry for everything here,” he wrote. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid.”

"Bergdahl also complained about fellow soldiers. The battalion commander was a “conceited old fool,” he said, and the only “decent” sergeants, planning to leave the platoon “as soon as they can,” told the privates — Bergdahl then among them — “to do the same.”

“ 'I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools,” he concluded. “I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”

"Bob Bergdahl responded in an e-mail: “OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!”

"One night, after finishing a guard-duty shift Bowe Bergdahl asked his team leader whether there would be a problem if he left camp with his rifle and night-vision goggles — to which the team leader replied “yes.”

"Bergdahl then returned to his bunker, picked up a knife, water, his diary and a camera, and left camp, according to Rolling Stone.

"The next morning, he was reported missing…

Obama Replenishes the Taliban . . . or ‘How Wars End in the 21st Century’

"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."

George Orwell, Polemic, May 1946, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"
English essayist, novelist, & satirist (1903 - 1950)  

Andrew C. McCarthy  "President Obama finally completed the prisoner swap he has been pleading with the Taliban for years to accept. While the president draws down American forces in Afghanistan and hamstrings our remaining troops with unconscionable combat rules of engagement that make both offensive operations and self-defense extremely difficult, the Taliban get back five of their most experienced, most virulently anti-American commanders.

"In return, thanks to the president’s negotiations with the terrorists, we receive U.S. Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl — who, according to several of his fellow soldiers, walked off his post in 2009 before being captured by the Taliban. (For more on this, see Greg Pollowitz’s post at The Feed.) This was shortly after Sergeant Bergdahl reportedly emailed his parents that “the US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at,” that he was “ashamed to even be an American,” and that “the horror that is America is disgusting.' ”

Mr. Bergdahl and Code Pink support those who did this, right?

War on Birds

Bokbluster  

Quoting below:

The Atlantic reported in late April that a huge solar power plant in the California desert is scorching birds with 800 degree heat.

The Ivanpah  plant uses 300,000 mirrors to focus the sun on a water filled boiler. When birds fly through that beam the effect is the same as when you focused the sun through a magnifying glass to scorch an ant. Oh, you didn’t do that when you were a kid? Well, here’s what happens:

At times birds flew into the solar flux and ignited.

Not only that:

“It appears Ivanpah may act as a ‘mega-trap,’ attracting insects which in turn attract insect-eating birds, which are incapacitated by solar-flux injury, thus attracting predators and creating an entire food chain vulnerable to injury and death,” concluded scientists with the National Fish and Wildlife Forensics Laboratory in a report that investigated 233 bird deathsrepresenting 71 species at three Southern California solar power plants.

War on Birds

Bird immolation’s not your style?  Well, did you know windmills are licensed to behead bald eagles?:

A leading bird conservation organization—American Bird Conservancy (ABC)—has announced its intention to sue the Department of the Interior (DOI), charging DOI with multiple violations of federal law in connection with its December 9, 2013, final regulation that allows wind energy companies and others to obtain 30-year permits to kill eagles without prosecution by the federal government. The previous rule provided for a maximum duration of five years for each permit.

Hardly seems fair if you have malaria due to the ban on DDT in order to save bald eagles.

Bowe Bergdahl; did Obama trade five terrorists for one? (UPDATED)

Watch for Bergdahl at next year's Boston Marathon.

Obama Submits To Taliban Demands, Allows Praise For Allah   

... "At the end of brief event, the soldier’s father, Bob Bergdahl, recited the most frequent phrase in the Koran — “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim” —which means “In the name of Allah, most Gracious, most Compassionate.”

"After Bergdahl finished his statement and his praise for Allah, Obama hugged him.
The Taliban echoed Bergdahl, saying the trade happened “due to the benevolence of Allah Almighty and the sacrifices of the heroic and courageous Mujahidin of the Islamic Emirate.' ”

UPDATE from 2010: Captured US soldier has joined our cause, say Taliban
"A Taliban deputy district commander in Paktika province said the 24-year-old American had converted to Islam in the months after his capture. He said Bergdahl, from Idaho’s Sun Valley, had trained Taliban fighters in bomb-making and ambushing convoys. "
Stockholm syndrome defense will begin in three...two...one...

Troubling Tweets Supporting Taliban From Father Of Bowe Bergdahl, Soldier Released By Taliban  Now we know why Bergdahl was not ritually slaughtered as any other American would have been.
One comment to this post:

He should have offered himself as an exchange for his son.
Sounds like he would be happy over there in that 7th century s--t hole.

Mullah Omar: Release Of My Five Top Commanders “Big Victory”

 

 

 

"Once again, let’s remind everyone what Obama has now loosed upon the world- 5 murderers who threaten the U.S., according to the DOD/JTF. This included two UN war criminals, and a man who provided intelligence to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. In the words of terrorism expert, Thomas Joscelyn, “very very bad” men:" ...   Full article here...
All via Weasel Zippers

Freed U.S. soldier’s father and Taliban praise Allah for prisoner exchange    “ 'In executing this transfer, the President also clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress thirty days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated,” said the statement from California Rep. Buck McKeon, and Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe."

Did U.S. trade five jihadists for one jihadist?   "The Taliban claimed in 2010 that Bergdahl had converted to Islam and was teaching bomb-making to its jihadists. His father is a convert to Islam who has called for the release of the jihadists in Guantanamo and has implied that American troops are killing Afghan children."  Robert Spencer

Mullah Omar Rejoices, Prisoner Swap “Big Victory” for Global Jihad, Obama promises more concessions    "Anyone in the Obama administration that cops out to “we don’t leave anyone behind” as the reason why they traded an AWOL traitor for five GITMO Taliban leaders is lying. The Obama administration abandoned our people in Benghazi — heroes and patriots — when they needed us most."

..."Obama’s reception at West Point was icy for good reason."

Debbie Schlussel asks, "And it [prompts] the question I already raised earlier today: did Bowe Bergdahl convert to Islam? It’s weird that an American would be unable to communicate in English after a few years in Taliban captivity or that American’s father communicates with him in Arabic, NOT the language of the terrorists who held his son for five years, but the language of the religion in the name of which they held him."

The military blog Blackfive declares, "President Obama Has Some 'Splainin to Do"  "And Barry is going to be explaining this for some time to come.  If I was Jay Carney, I would have quit my job too rather than stand in front of anyone with press credentials and try to explain this as a "victory" for us.  It isn't.  It is a defeat at our own hands.  Barry will likely spend much of his time hiding out from this." 

Colorado baker to stop making wedding cakes after losing discrimination case

CBS News   ... "Jack Phillips owns Masterpiece Cakeshop. In 2012, David Mullins and Charlie Craig went to the shop to order a cake for their upcoming wedding reception. They planned to marry in Massachusetts and have a reception in Colorado.

"Phillips said he doesn't believe in gay marriage and he refused to sell them a cake.

" 'We would close down the bakery before we would complicate our beliefs," Phillips said after the hearing, according to CBS Denver. Phillips also admitted he had refused service to other same-sex couples.

" 'A judge previously ruled a business owner cannot refuse service to a customer on the basis of sexual orientation. Phillips appealed to the commission, but it upheld the decision."

Some say leftists are sick and tired of Obama.

"The straw man has feet of clay".  Don't get your hopes up; it's just that Mr. Obama is not far enough left for the Left

Straw man: A fallacy in which an opponent's argument is overstated or misrepresented in order to be more easily attacked or refuted.

Legal Insurrection
..."Barack Obama’s speeches have always been composed—from the very start of his national campaign, when I first began to follow him—of some combination of these things: platitudes, self-references, outrageous statements (lies, or promises that turn out to be lies), passing the buck to others, criticizing the US, ascribing bad motives to the opposition, and attacking strawmen. Has he ever had any other arrows in his quiver?

"He’s still doing all of this, but even the left seems to be getting a little bit sick of it (does that mean they’ve turned into racists?).

"Oh, I suppose it would still be okay with them if his accomplishments were more obvious. But the biggest one so far, Obamacare, may turn out to be a pyrrhic victory.

"That could all change, of course, if immigration “reform” passes. Ensuring a permanent Democrat majority and making the American people more and more dependent on big government would be the biggest accomplishment of all."

Krauthammer: Emptiness at West Point (Updated)

Charles Krauthammer   "As for Obama’s interventionists, they are grotesquely described as people “who think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak” while Obama courageously refuses to believe that “every problem has a military solution.”
Name one person who does.

“ 'Why is it that everybody is so eager to use military force?” Obama recently and plaintively asked about Ukraine. In reality, nobody is. What actual earthlings are eager for is sending military assistance to Ukraine’s woefully equipped forces."

From the UK: President Barack Obama's national security flops just keep coming ; A strange obsession with setting out his national security agenda is backfiring for President Barack Obama

... "The reception for the speech was dire.

"The Washington Post declared that he had “marshaled a virtual corps of straw men,” in making an argument for an “Obama doctrine” that was at odds with every US president since the Second World War.

"Aside from the very serious real-world consequences, Obama’s foreign policy failure also has serious political consequences."
...
"And his foreign policy doctrine is unprecedented in modern America, somewhat arbitrary, ill-conceived, and utterly lacking in moral clarity. More and more, it appears he has reverse engineered a foreign policy, based primarily on doing the opposite of George W. Bush did, as opposed to overtly crafting a wise and coherent foreign policy strategy going forward."

Life in the land of the free under this oppressive administration

School Car Wash Fundraisers Banned in Virginia County  These people will not leave us alone to live our lives. 

"Charity car washes and car wash fundraisers are now banned on school property there, after the Department of Environmental Services issued new rules for stormwater and water runoff.

"The county pins the blame on the Virginia General Assembly, which approved more stringent water regulations last year."

Obama Is Bypassing Congress Again. This Time It's Going to Cost You.  " Leading the charge, unsurprisingly, is the Environmental Protection Agency, which will release its carbon-dioxide regulations for existing power plants on Monday. The plan will drive up energy prices for American families and businesses without making a dent in global temperatures."


The One Policy That Would ‘Devastate’ Restaurants...   "Puzder listed several government actions that have stymied growth in the restaurant industry: higher taxes, increasing health-care costs, rising fuel prices and an “unnavigable regulatory maze.' ”

5 Reasons Michelle Obama's School Lunch Program Is a Giant Fail  ... " But the goal of this program is not to actually lower childhood obesity. It’s to remove responsibility from parents for parenting. Kids are not fat because of school lunches, which have been available for decades. Kids are fat because of lack of parenting. And the First Lady’s insistence that she can parent in place of actual parents – with our tax dollars – is not just bound to fail but to undermine personal responsibility."

Thomas Sowell; Kangaroo Courts on Campus?  "But those who are whipping up the lynch mob mentality have shown far less interest in stopping rape than in politicizing it. Many of the politically correct crusaders are the same people who have pushed for unisex living arrangements on campus, including unisex bathrooms, and who have put condom machines in dormitories and turned freshman orientation programs into a venue for sexual "liberation" propaganda.

 "They laughed at old-fashioned restrictions designed to reduce sexual dangers among young people on campus. Now that real life experience has shown that these are not laughing matters, the politically correct still want their sexual Utopia, and want scapegoats when they don't get it."