Meanwhile, under the mistletoe , Uncle Joe does the traditional
Biden Holiday Grab-Ass with a member of the media.....
Desmond Tutu denounced Reagans' policy on South Africa as: "Immoral, evil, and totally un-Christian...an abomination, an unmitigated disaster. You are either in favor of evil or you are in favor of good. You are either on the side of the oppressed or on the side of the oppressor. You can't be neutral."
Good point, Mr Archbishop. Because on the welfare of Castro's regime you, sir, are hardly neutral, enthusiastically lending your name to the Stalinist regime's most important propaganda campaign, urging the release of convicted KGB-trained spies and terrorists.
The media's recent orgy of vituperation and snark against president Reagan's policy on South Africa finally got a much-needed corrective from Reagan's communication's director of the time Pat Buchanan. To wit:
According to President Ronald Reagan in 1986: "Apartheid is an affront to human rights and human dignity. Normal and friendly relations cannot exist between the United States and South Africa until it becomes a dead policy."...but and a BIG BUT:
"Reagan, whose first duty was the defense of his nation in the Cold War with the Soviet empire, saw not only the moral issue but the strategic imperative.
In 1986, there were 40,000 Cuban troops in Angola, where South Africa was a fighting ally and backer of anti-Communist Jonas Savimbi.
In Zimbabwe, Robert "Comrade Bob" Mugabe, having butchered thousands of Ndebele of rival Joshua Nkomo, was communizing his country. Southwest Africa and Mozambique hung in the balance.
Reagan was determined to block Moscow's drive to the Cape of Good Hope. And in that struggle State President P. W. Botha was an ally.
In view of Political Correctness, however, Mandela's ANC apparently did more to promote worldwide freedom than the U.S. military!Read More
"A bipartisan Senate duo says they want to crack down on what they call the government’s “lavish” spending on oil paintings of congressmen, the costs of which can top $50,000 each.
Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., said in a Thursday press release they are introducing a bill that would only allow $20,000 of taxpayer funds to be spent on each portrait, and would only cover paintings of lawmakers in the line of succession to the presidency."
Hillary Clinton Sits for Secretary Of State Portrait in 2010 |
“At a time when vital services and programs are facing cuts, we need to be looking at every way we can stop excessive spending practices in Washington,” Shaheen said.
Coburn says their bill is a way to rein in excess spending in Washington, and ensure taxpayers are not paying for unnecessary projects.
“Hardworking taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for lavish official portraits, especially when government officials spend more on paintings of themselves than some Americans make in a year,” Coburn said.
ABC News reported earlier this year that the Obama administration spent nearly $400,000 on paintings of officials in just a two-year- period, and the Washington Post reported in 2008 each portrait can sometimes cost over $40,000. The bill would allow other funds to be spent on the portraits after the taxpayer funds were exhausted."
"MapLight analysis of campaign contributions from political action committees (PACs) and individuals from the top 20 intelligence services contractors working with the Department of Defense, ranked by total value of contracts received, to members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Data source: Federal Election Commission from January 1, 2005 - October 4, 2013. Department of Defense intelligence services contracts source: USASpending (contract totals as of September 26, 2013)
* In total, members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have received $3.7 million from top intelligence services contractors since January 1, 2005.
* Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from Maryland -- home of NSA headquarters -- led the committees in money received from top intelligence contractors. Representative C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger, D-Md., is the largest recipient, having received $363,600 since January 1, 2005. Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., is the second largest recipient, having received $210,150.
* Republican members of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have received $1.86 million since January 1, 2005, while Democrat members have received $1.82 million over the same time period.
* Members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have received $2.2 million since January 1, 2005 from top intelligence services contractors, while members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence have received $1.5 million.
* Lockheed Martin has given $798,910 to members the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence since January 1, 2005, more than any of the other top 20 intelligence service contractors. Northrop Grumman has given $753,101, the second highest amount, and Honeywell has given $714,913, the third highest amount."Chart of the TOP 20 INTELLIGENCE SERVICES CONTRACTORS CONTRIBUTIONS TO CONGRESSIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEES at the LINK
The Unknown Interpreter |
For years, conservatives have warned of voter fraud and pushed for stricter voter identification laws. Democrats hate these efforts since cheaters, convicted felons and the deceased tend to support liberal candidates. Instead of admitting their Dig Up The Vote strategy, the Democratic Party offers a nuanced argument against voter ID advocates: “YOU'RE RACIST!!!” It’s time to turn the tables.
As you can see in the photo, the lionized founder of modern South Africa was a big fan of voter identification. Strict ID requirements are the law of the land, helping to minimize voter fraud from Cape Town to Pretoria. Mandela understood that this simple law ensures that every voter of every race can make their voice heard on election day:
"Mandela’s legacy of turning South Africa from a violently discriminatory country to a nation in which open and fair elections take place has earned him a place in world history. The South Africa he left behind has a constitution described by The Economist as “one of the most progressive in the world.” Signed into law by Mandela two years after his historic 1994 election, the document has been praised because it “enshrines a wide range of social and economic rights as well as the more usual civil and political freedoms.”
The Left can honor their hero Mandela by calling for U.S. voter ID requirements be brought up to South African standards. Voter registration in South Africa involves registering to vote on one of a handful of designated days or by making an appointment in advance at a Municipal Elections Office. Online voter registration and voting are not allows. “You have to apply for registration and vote in person with valid ID,” reads the government’s elections website.That constitution allows for and supports a rigorous election integrity process far more stringent than anything GOP lawmakers have proposed ......"
Biden and wife Jill took a short motorcade ride across the street from their residence to the embassy on a cold, drizzly Monday morning. Stopping out front to look at the newly installed statue of Mandela, Biden called him "the most remarkable man I met in my whole career."
Biden recalled traveling all the way to South Africa in 1977 to meet Mandela , but he was unable to because he was in the midst of a 27-year prison sentence.
Susan G. Komen Foundation’s CEO Nancy Brinker - salary $684,000 |
"Dragnet surveillance is a touchy subject these days what with the Snowden leaks and constant new revelations about cell phones being turned into location trackers, listening in on foreign leaders’ phone calls and the vacuuming up of any information sent digitally that’s not encrypted. Given that, I was a little surprised that ODNI was bragging about the launch on Twitter and putting the mission patch for the rocket on prominent display as it looks like it was drawn by a writer for The Simpsons with his tongue firmly in his cheek.
“NROL-39 is represented by the octopus, a versatile, adaptable, and highly intelligent creature. Emblematically, enemies of the United States can be reached no matter where they choose to hide,” says Karen Furgerson, a spokesperson for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). “‘Nothing is beyond our reach’ defines this mission and the value it brings to our nation and the warfighters it supports, who serve valiently all over the globe, protecting our nation.”One would think that all the controversy surrounding the Edward Snowden NSA leaks would give somebody at the Obama administration pause before slapping this monster onto the side of our new spy satellite and live tweeting its launch. But nope. Like something out of a dystopian-future novel, the Obama administration is apparently bragging that no private communications anywhere in the world is beyond their reach.
“I think Joe Biden will go down in history as one of the best vice presidents ever, and he has been with me, at my side, in every tough decision that I’ve made,” Obama told Chris Matthews in an interview Thursday held at American University. “Hillary, I think, will go down in history as one of the finest secretaries of state we’ve ever had, and helped to transition us away from a deep hole that we were in, when I first came into office, around the world, and rebuilt confidence and trust in the United States.” - Barack Obama
"If you have any doubt as to how much of a sports junkie Barack Obama is, check in with the entertainment moguls who attended a private briefing with the president Nov. 26 before his speech at Jeffrey Katzenberg's DreamWorks Animation campus in Glendale.
At the end of the conversation -- which touched on a myriad of topics, from piracy to Iran -- Obama revealed what's at the top of his bucket list post-White House:
"At least I know what I want to do when I retire … host ESPN SportsCenter's Top 10 list," Obama quipped as he turned to Disney's Robert Iger, whose empire includes ESPN."
"Mr. Obama’s problem now is that people think he is smart.
They think, as they look at his health-care vows, that either he didn’t know how bad his program was, what dislocations it would cause, what a disturbance it would be to the vast middle class of America . . .
Or he knew, and deliberately misled everyone.
If they thought he wasn’t very bright, they might give him some leeway on that question. But they think he’s really smart.
So they think he knew. And deliberately misled." - Peggy Noonan/ WSJ
Stepping off his plane in Beijing in his signature aviator sunglasses, Biden was met by a Chinese military honor guard before being whisked to the U.S. Embassy |
(CNN) - Vice President Joe Biden faces a very delicate task this week as he makes a diplomatic visit to East Asia in hopes of turning down the volume on an increasingly noisy territorial tug of war.
The spotlight also provides Biden with an opportunity to remind people why Barack Obama chose him as his running mate and to tout his strong suit as he's mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2016.
"This trip, if nothing else, reinforces the notion of why Joe Biden was put on the ticket in the first place and has emerged as one of the best vice presidents in history," Larry Rasky, a longtime senior political adviser to the Democrat, told CNN. "He was equipped for this job before he got there. He's not going to China for that reason, of course, but it certainly doesn't hurt."
"It's definitely his wheelhouse. He has the relationships, the global credibility. There's no on-the-job training necessary."
BARKSDALE AFB, LA - The Office of the Secretary of Defense confirms that the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) has been asked to prepare a draft plan for closing all 178 commissaries in the United States to be presented possibly as part of the fiscal 2015 budget request.
According to published reports, the Joint Staff asked DeCA to look at cutting its $1.4 billion dollar annual budget by at least a third. According to DeCA Director Joseph Jeu, the agency has already trimmed its budget by $7 million over the last 20 years. To make the additional cuts, DeCA has been asked to draft the proposal that would close all stateside commissaries. According to Pentagon Spokesman Col. Steve Warren, "The Secretary of Defense has made it clear on numerous occasions that all cost-cutting efforts need to be on the table in order for the Department of Defense to meet the spending caps associated with the 2011 Budget Control Act."
At this time, no final decisions have been made on the Department of Defense's fiscal year 2015 budget submission. Therefore, it would be inappropriate to discuss any specific budget decisions." Although that budget request is due in February, it would be at least a year before such cuts could be implemented.There are many ways of bringing the federal budget into line without punishing the military personal and the families that support them in their mission to keep the country save. One way is to freeze and cap all elected federal employee's salaries. (In 1960, JFK earned 125,000 as president, which he refused to accept. Barack Obama receives $400,000 a year plus 50,000 pocket money).
"How do you know when a movement reeks of communism? Easy - it is supported by a major American union.
The Service Employees International Union, filled with some of the most vile, Left-wing thugs around, is one of the major players behind a ridiculous push to kill the only employment millions of Americans can find while raising the price of cheeseburgers to ten bucks.
On Thursday, according to reports, the SEIU and other groups will sponsor or support hundreds of protests in cities around the country aimed at forcing the fast-food industry to increase workers' wages to $15. The New York Times reports:
Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald’s, Wendy’s and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities. The fast-food effort is backed by the Service Employees International Union and is also demanding that restaurants allow workers to unionize without the threat of retaliation.
"As part of its stealth campaign to support this latest push for "wage justice," the Times picked, right on cue, a 23-year-old interviewee with a Hispanic-sounding name to illustrate the travesty of it all..."READ MORE
TPM - David Plouffe, former top adviser to President Obama, said on Sunday that the health care law will improve with age and that it may take years for the law to work at its best.
"It may take until 2017," he said on ABC's "This Week." "It will work really well then."
"I think people's confidence will recover," he said.No, Mr. Plouffe, wine gets better with age, not disastrous government programs. Read a history book lately?
Iranians celebrate anniversary of 1979 takeover of US embassy by burning flags, shouting “Death to America” earlier this month. |
"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth." - Abraham Lincoln
MRC - The “American Dream”of a traditional nuclear family is getting harder and harder to come by, and the New York Times can hardly contain its glee.
The Times’ entire Nov. 26 “Science Times” section was devoted to the “redefined” American family. In her featured articles, NYT reporter Natalie Angier identified traditional family as a thing of the past: “the old-fashioned family plan of stable married parents residing with their children remains a source of considerable power in American – but one that is increasingly seen as out of reach to all but the educated elite.”
What’s taking its place? A lot of things the Times really likes: “Same-sex parents. Cohabiting couples. Voluntary kin. Children with parents in prison. Immigrant Americans. What we thought of as the typical American family is being rapidly redefined.” - Read More