Obama will not attend Scalia funeral

"No doubt this petty man gets petty satisfaction from insulting a far, far better man than he."

Rick Moran
"The funeral for Justice Antonin Scalia will be held Saturday.  Official Washington will pause and take stock of the life of a great man and a great jurist.

"Well, most of official Washington.  President Barack Obama has discovered he has something more important to do and will not attend.  Instead, he will be at the Supreme Court on Friday to "pay his respects" – a typical empty gesture from a man who apparently can't resist delivering one last snub to a justice who opposed him at every turn."

The common thread through the funerals of those individuals he attended is that in death, they could do the president some partisan political good.  Scalia was useless to him politically, so Obama felt no need to honor him by attending his memorial service."

The petulant juvenile is catching some backlash  . . . "If Obama does not attend, the president also potentially risks angering Republicans whom he will need to help confirm his eventual nominee to succeed Scalia.

"Los Angeles Times opinion writer Michael McGough raised this possibility in calling the decision a “dumb political move.' ” . . .

LA Times Opinion  "It’s also is a dumb political move. By attending the funeral Obama would have underscored the importance of nonpartisanship when it comes to the court. That could only have helped him make the case that the Republican-controlled Senate has a duty to give fair consideration to the person he nominates to succeed Scalia.

""Unless the Scalia family let it be known that it didn’t wish Obama to attend — which seems inconceivable — the president’s decision makes no sense." . . .

"Wow: WH Doesn’t Rule Out Obama Might Golf Instead Of Going To Scalia Funeral…"

New Bernie Sanders ice cream: $3.99 a carton, with tax $200 million

Tax hiker dines with tax dodger

Andrew Malcolm "Most weekday nights we post on Twitter some late-night jokes before broadcast. Occasionally, we collect them and others here. See you on my Twitter page."

""Conan: The Obamas complained recently that the White House wi-fi is weak. That’s why as of this morning, the Obama family moved into a Starbucks.
"Meyers: During a recent Democratic town hall Hillary Clinton told voters, “I never thought I’d be standing on a stage here asking for people to vote for me for president.” Because she thought she’d already be done being President by now.
"Fallon: After Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primary by more than 20 points. Bernie said he’s always liked New Hampshire, especially because he was around when it was still Old Hampshire.
"Meyers: Sanders beat Clinton in New Hampshire in every voter demographic. Including older white voters, younger white voters and, well, that’s all they have there.
"Meyers: Bernie Sanders yesterday interrupted his own speech to rush to the aid of a man who fainted in the audience. Luckily, Bernie was able to shout him back to consciousness.ARE YOU OKAY? WAKE UP, THE MIDDLE CLASS IS DISAPPEARING!

Russian TV Trashed Michelle Obama Last Night

New documentary series seeks to expose 'American corruption' and targets Obamas

Villa Obama in Spain, named after the American First Lady.

Mikhail Klikushin  "The title of the film—Emperor Obama—says it all, but the trailer, lasting more than 10 minutes, was shown anyway.

"The first victim of attack was the American first lady.

“ 'The information on our clients is strictly confidential,” says the Villa Padierna hotel manager to a young and beautiful female reporter. “But I can confirm that Michelle Obama really stayed in our hotel. She was our most famous guest. Since then, we named one of our villas after her. Villa Obama has three floors, two bedrooms, one swimming pool and a big living room—here is Villa Obama.' ” . . .

“The 44th American president goes on vacation twice a year—in the summer and during Christmas. Over the seven years of his presidency, American taxpayers spent between $10 million and $74 million a year on vacations for the first American family. To understand how such unbelievable expenses accumulate, the cost for only the plane and the bodyguards when Mr. Obama flew his family to Hawaii, in 2014, was $5,316,000.”

“ 'Did you hear what happened in Flint, Mich.?” An American analyst steps into the video, “where the whole town was poisoned? Kids, pregnant women…How much money did he spend on his vacations, you say? $74 million? But he gave Flint only $5 million— $5 million to the poisoned people…as much as the launch of two military drones!”

"At this point, the cover of the book by Michelle Malkin, Culture of Corruption, is shown to viewers—providing an idea as to the development of the story awaiting Russian TV viewers on Wednesday night."  Culture of Corruption by Michelle Malkin.(Photo: Wikimedia)

Trump 2000 – Saddam has WMD and we may need to take him out

Legal Insurrection

. . . "Yet, Trump’s positions on whether Iraq had WMD and whether further military action was needed were on record.

"None of the campaigns bothered to check Trump’s own writings, but Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed did, Trump Wrote Iraq WMDs Were Threat Year Before Bush Took Office (emphasis added):

Donald Trump offered a new reason for why, after exhaustive searches, no one has found proof he opposed the Iraq War before it began: People didn’t write everything he said.

The comments are a stark difference from what The Donald said at a Republican debate in September of last year, when said he could provide 25 stories showing his early opposition to the Iraq War….

A detailed search by BuzzFeed News in September (and other news organization in recent days) did not produce evidence at all Trump opposed the war before the March 2003 start.

. . .
Supporting Donald Trump: If You Can't Beat Liberals, Join Them?
"If conservative pundits like Ann Coulter and Breitbart's John Nolte want to make fools of themselves, so be it.  But as a Christian and by consequence a political conservative, I want no part of the Donald Trump campaign." . . .

Loathing the Republican establishment and all it's done to help liberalism germinate, incubate, and infiltrate our culture is logical.  But supporting a liberal to take over the Republican Party in some bizarrely twisted hope that he will dismantle that establishment and help conservatism is not. 

Sen. Schumer’s dissembling on judicial nominations

Given the track record of this President and the experience of obfuscation at the hearings, with respect to the Supreme Court, at least: I will recommend to my colleagues that we should not confirm a Supreme Court nominee EXCEPT in extraordinary circumstances.

donkeyhotey

Volokh Conspiracy in WaPo  "Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is upset that some Senate Republicans have announced their intention to prevent President Obama from filling a Supreme Court vacancy before the next election. I agree with Schumer that this sort of thing is bad for the judiciary, and I have long argued that all judicial nominees should receive prompt consideration and an up-or-down vote. But that’s not Schumer’s view, and it never has been. He should not pretend otherwise.

"In 2007, 16 months before the election, Schumer delivered a speech at the American Constitution Society in which he declared that Senate Democrats should adopt a presumption against allowing President George W. Bush to fill another seat on the Supreme Court. (Here’s the video.)" . . .

From the text of his speech on the ACS website:

for the rest of this President’s term and if there is another Republican elected with the same selection criteria let me say this:

We should reverse the presumption of confirmation. The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts; or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.

Either Carry a Big Stick—Or Shut Up!

Victor Davis Hanson

. . . ""Such liberal self-moralizing is never termed chauvinistic or culturally arrogant, because its practitioners are so often liberals who want all others to become as liberal as themselves. Nonetheless, many of our current tensions in the world result from our enemies’ dislike of our smug sense of moral superiority.

"Lecturing Egypt to respect a "largely secular” Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral win means that the U.S. is safely distant when one-election/one-time Islamists dismantle the process that brought them to power and seek an Islamic state.

"British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, as a champion of Western rationalism and British fair play, was convinced that he could persuade Adolf Hitler to play by Europe’s post-Versailles Marquess of Queensberry Rules. . . .

"And Hitler’s reaction?

"He not only interpreted Chamberlain’s magnanimity as contemptible weakness to be exploited, but also was goaded on all the more by Chamberlain’s smug scolding.  . . ,"

Clinton email chain exposed CIA asset in Afghanistan

Rick Moran  "An email chain involving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, special envoy to Afghanistan, which was stored on Clinton's unsecured server, contained "Top Secret" information on a CIA asset in Afghanistan, according to an exclusive report by Fox News.

The discussion of a foreign national working with the U.S. government raises security implications – an executive order signed by President Obama said such unauthorized disclosures are “presumed to cause damage to the national security."
The U.S. government official said the Clinton email exchange, which referred to a New York Times report, was among 29 classified emails recently provided to congressional committees with specific clearances to review them. In that batch were 22 “top secret” exchanges deemed too damaging to national security to release. . . .

 . . . "As these revelations keep dribbling out, you can sense the noose tightening around Clinton.  But there is still no indication that Clinton herself is the target of an FBI investigation, although the use of her unsecure server is.  This leaves the question open whether the Obama Justice Department, despite overwhelming evidence of Clinton's guilt, would fail to throw the book at Clinton and charge her with mishandling classified information."

Sheriffs: Beyoncé is ‘inciting bad behavior’ and endangering law enforcement

All on Obama's watch, is this not?

WaPo

"At first, Sheriff Robert Arnold said he had no explanation for why shots were fired outside his home in Rutherford County, Tenn., on Monday night — except perhaps for an undercurrent of anti-police sentiment in America.“ 'You do make people mad when you do your job; so that’s the only thing I could think of,” Arnold said at a news conference Tuesday, according to edited video of his comments posted by the Daily News Journal."But then another possibility came to mind, and Arnold blamed Beyoncé.“ 'With everything that happened since the Super Bowl… that’s what I’m thinking: Here’s another target on law enforcement,” he said."He went on: “You have Beyoncé’s video and that’s kind of bled over into other things, it seems.”"In a subsequent statement, Arnold said that his remarks “reflect the violence and senseless killing of seven deputies in the U.S. since the show aired. My comments are an observation of the violence that has occurred but in no way is meant to offend anyone.' ” . . .

Requests for TPD officers to work Beyonce concert unfilled

"Beyonce has taken a lot of heat for her new song “Formation,” which critics claim has an anti-cop message. Some Tampa Police officers might agree, if the request to work her upcoming Tampa concert is any indication. No one has agreed to do it." . . .

Do you REALLY want to know what it will be like to "feel the Bern"?

HopeNChange  "Thanks to Bernie Sanders and rampant national ignorance, socialism is enjoying newfound popularity amongst those who can never imagine themselves working hard enough to pay taxes. And according to Bernie and alleged-filmmaker Michael Moore, life in socialist countries is pure paradise!

"But here's an interesting reality check from a (non-political) friend's Facebook post:

"Actual conversation today...

Us: "So how do you like living in Brussels? Her: Well, you know, it's a socialist country so they're always on strike. The last time we flew in we couldn't get home from the airport due to the transportation strike. Us: Why are they striking? Her: For higher wages; with the 40% tax it's hard for people to make a living. A US couple started a coffee shop to create jobs helping women out of the sex trafficking industry, but the government requires all businesses for the first year to hire people released from prison. Yeah, and they're just all very laid back. When we first moved there the movers tried 3 times to get my armoire up the stairs and then just said, 'You'll just have to find some other way, we can't do it.' Customer service is practically non-existent."

"This is the same Brussels, by the way, which just busted another terror cell of radical Islamists several days ago. Apparently socialism makes it easy for people to live comfortably without actually working, leaving more time for hobbies like waging jihad." . . .

More on health care and life in general under socialists here.  The above author/cartoonist's struggle with government bureaucrats made plain to see.

An excerpt:

Now, imagine these kinds of interactions for every aspect of your life - and you've got the Socialist utopia that Hillary, Bernie, and millions of brain-dead millenials are hoping to foist off on our nation. Your every hope, dream, and aspiration would depend on the approval of some anonymous, non-accountable dolt who would see you only as a file. Or would if you weren't eternally at the bottom of a metastasizing stack of "millions of files."

 

Does this not seem to be true?

President Obama Is Skipping Justice Scalia’s Funeral. Well, it's what Obama does

Obama to skip Scalia's funeral

The president and first lady will instead pay their respect to the Justice when he lies in repose at the Supreme Court on Friday.

" President Barack Obama will not attend Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s funeral on Saturday, the White House said, adding that Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden will be at the services.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama instead will go to the Supreme Court on Friday “to pay their respects to Justice Scalia” while the justice lies in repose in the Great Hall, press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday.

"The most recent member of the Supreme Court to die was Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 2005. In that instance, President George W. Bush not only attended the funeral, he also eulogized Rehnquist, who had been nominated to the court by Richard Nixon." . . .

YoungCons

Razor  Obama won't attend the funeral of a Supreme Court justice, but sent 3 reps to one for a convenience store robber. …

"Unreal. 3 representatives for Michael Brown. But the president can’t show up for a Supreme Court Justice?

"This goes way beyond partisanship.

For you, Judge.

"This is an extremely disrespectful ideological play.

"What President Obama has never really understood is that there are some things that are bigger than politics.

"Showing up to Justice Scalia’s funeral is one of those things.

"President Bush had the right idea and this is just another example of the difference in character between the two men."

Scalia's skipped funeral puts him in noble company   . . . "Here are six people whose funerals the Obama administration took less seriously." 
than Brown’s." As of Aug, 2014.

• Margaret Thatcher. "No senior White House officials were sent to the funeral of our staunchest Cold War ally, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. " . . .
• Chris Kyle. " . . .not only did the White House make no statement, the White House sent nobody to his funeral. " . . .
• Nicholas Oresko, "The Medal of Honor recipient for heroism during World War II died at age 96 last year. President Harry Truman gave him the Medal of Honor after he wiped out two enemy bunkers during the Battle of the Bulge despite being gravely wounded. There was no reported White House attendance at his funeral."
• Lech Kaczynski. The Polish president was killed in a plane crash in 2010. President Obama originally announced he would attend the funeral, but cancelled, then golfed the day of his funeral.
• Aunt Zeituni. . . . " As The New York Times reported, “Mr. Obama helped pay funeral expenses and sent a condolence note, Ms. Onyango’s family members said, but the president did not attend, as he was golfing.”
• James Foley. "Foley’s funeral is not scheduled until October 18. On Sunday, however, his family held a memorial service for the journalist beheaded at the hands of ISIS. "

"President Obama’s delegation to Michael Brown’s funeral sends an important message. That message isn’t lost on the families of the soldiers and cops, teachers and firefighters, citizens who aren’t killed under disputed circumstances, don’t become the subject of riots, and who therefore don’t receive presidential aides at their funerals."

Obama or Biden should have attended Gen. Greene's funeral  But Snopes says no.

. . . "It was reported that “several hundred people attended” the funeral for U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, including Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and other military officers."What struck me is the absence of the president and/​or the vice president, who are yet again living it up on vacation in the trendy Hamptons or Martha’s Vineyard."

Battle for the Seelow Heights; Germany's last stand to keep the Soviets out of Berlin (UPDATED)

HistoryNet: Battle of the Seelow Heights Very good account.

picsearch

Battle of the Seelow Heights  . . . "Close to one million Soviet soldiers of the 1st Belorussian Front (including 78,556 soldiers of the Polish 1st Army), commanded by Marshal Georgi Zhukov, attacked the position known as the "Gates of Berlin". They were opposed by about 110,000 soldiers of the German 9th Army, commanded by General Theodor Busse, as part of the Army Group Vistula." . . .
Photo: Hitler Youth casualties at the Seelow Heights

der-reichsleiter.tumblr.

The battle of the Seelow heights – a battlefield tour

Still wearing their boots and helmets, the Germans who fell fighting Russians at the Gates of Berlin

70 years on, troops sacrificed in Hitler's doomed last stand are unearthed. The Battle of the Seelow Heights was part of the Soviet assault on Berlin and lasted three days in April 1945. Estimates of Russian casualties range from 5,000 to 33,000, with 12,000 Germans killed 

The Association for the Recovery of the Fallen in Eastern Europe

"Defending the German position were 110,000 soldiers of the 9th Army.

"Seelow Heights was where some of the most bitter fighting in the overall battle took place. Fighting began in the early hours of April 16 with a massive bombardment by thousands of artillery weapons.

"On the third day the final line of the Seelow Heights was breached leaving nothing but fractured German divisions between the Red Army and the chancellery in Berlin."

The weapon appears to be a Sturmgewehr 44 , shown below, and here.

"The number of Russian soldiers thought to have died ranges from 5,000 to 33,000, while some 12,000 German troops perished.

"By April 23, the German capital was fully encircled and the Battle of Berlin entered its last stage. Within a fortnight, Adolf Hitler was dead and the war in Europe was effectively over.

"For many of the German soldiers who died in the battle where they fell is where they have remained ever since – buried deep in mud and soil - until now."

. . . "The association's mission statement on its website says: 'We are searching for the nameless dead, who lay without commemorative stones in the mass graves of War or were buried somewhere, as individuals and are considered as missing. 

• " 'We want to restore people to their name, which was taken from them over 60 years ago.
  "'We are not looking for soldiers of the Wehrmacht, not for U.S. GI's, Marines, soldiers of the red army or Polish Military - not for infantry, soldiers, sailors or airmen - not for Good or Bad.
  "'We are looking for people - Sons, Fathers, Brothers.
  "'Fallen soldiers are also victims - victims of a gruesome war, which they had not caused and had not wanted.'
  
  

A tourist's visit

UPDATE: Hitler's War The Eastern Front - ''The Death Trap''
"A terrible account of the last days on the Eastern Front. By this time STuGs made up a very large percentage of available German armour."

While we're on the subject of resisting the forces of socialism, read more of the Tunnel Wall here.