The Presbyterian Church’s Anti-Israeli Identity

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The Presbyterian Church (USA) symbolically voted in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) against the State of Israel.  The Presbyterian Church’s ideological support of anti Israel sanctions and divestments is so strong former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke publicly supports the Presbyterian Church’s anti Israel and anti Jewish trajectory.

unnamed (9)The Presbytery of New Covenant, 221st General Assembly (2014) voted 310-303 to divest their substantial assets from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett Packard because of their contracts working with the State of Israel.

Even the self hating Jews were excited by this Presbyterian Church decision on Israeli divestment. JTA February 14, 2014 reports,  ‘Near its conclusion, the church’s new statement quotes the advocacy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Sydney Levy, saying, “We are in opposition to the settlements and occupation, and in favor of a true and just peace.” The JVP staffer is the only Jewish person quoted in the church’s statement.”

The Dualistic Hypocritical Identity Of The Presbyterian Church

The Presbyterian Church attacks Israel with divestment and sanctions while demanding Israel build relationships with the Islamic terrorist group Hamas.  The Presbyterians are afraid to call out Hamas for its violence against Israel because they fear the Hamas crosshairs pointing in their direction.

The 2014 Presbyterian Covenant states, “Call for all presbyteries and congregations within the Presbyterian Church(USA) to include interfaith dialogue and relationship-building as part of their own engagement in working for a just peace.”

The Presbyterian Church demonizes the State of Israel but issues no demands on the Palestinians to stop for their ongoing rocket and terrorist attacks against Israel, while calling for a “Just Peace”.  Demanding a ‘just peace’ without acknowledging the Palestinians numerous declarations calling for the destruction of Israel is simply the height of hypocrisy.

Hamas Defines A Just Peace

The Hamas Charter in its second paragraph states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it” (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).”  The Presbyterian Church must demand Hamas remove this one paragraph in their Charter as the starting point for any interfaith dialogue and relationship building in search of a Just Peace.

Sorry to tell you this, but when the Palestinians, in the name of Islam, call for the total annihilation of every man, woman, and child in the State of Israel, there can be no expectation of peace. Unless of course the definition of peace is the annihilation of Israel.

Conclusion

Hamas is honest in saying their definition of a ‘Just Peace’ is when Israel is obliterated by Islam and driven into the sea.

Hamas is telling the world exactly where they stand and the Presbyterian Church is not listening. The Presbyterian Church has aligned itself with forces who believe the only roadblock to Peace in the Middle East is Israel.

Lenar Whitney: Global Warming is a Hoax

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Conservative for Congress Lenar Whitney denounces “Global Warming” as a myth, designed to give more power to the executive branch, while increasing taxes in a progressive’s dream to regulate every aspect of American life ­ from our light bulbs to our thermostat.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/0BzItCPk5j4[/youtube]

 

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Bergdahl has not yet been asked why he left Afghan base: U.S. Army

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With all the allegations that he deserted and voluntarily sought out the Taliban, and the claims that he converted to Islam and was aiding in the Taliban’s jihad, this would seem to be an important question. But of course, Army officials don’t want to upset the poor lamb.

“Bergdahl has not yet been asked why he left Afghan base: U.S. Army,” Reuters, June 25, 2014 (thanks to Kenneth):

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has made no admission of wrongdoing since being released by the Taliban last month, officials said on Wednesday, adding that he has yet to be asked the tough question of why he left base before his 2009 capture.

Army officials said the two-star general investigating Bergdahl’s disappearance in Afghanistan will seek to bring up that subject with the soldier sometime after his outpatient treatment in Texas is finished in about two weeks and before the expected completion of the Army’s probe in mid-August.

In the meantime, Bergdahl seems to be in a state of limbo, with much of his back pay frozen in a military account. He hasn’t been read his rights yet, although conversations that could be used against him have focused on what happened during his time in captivity, as opposed to anything prior, officials said.

Asked about reports that Bergdahl may have colluded with the Taliban, an Army official told reporters on condition of anonymity: “I have no knowledge of that particular speculation or of anything that has come out of the briefings to support that.”

Whatever Bergdahl might say about his disappearance would have vast implications for him, including potential military punishment but also practical matters such as back pay.

Officials caution on Wednesday that his duty status as a “missing/captured” soldier, which entitles him to back pay and special benefits, could be lost if any misconduct is determined.

“There is some pay that is being held right now, pending the outcome of the investigation,” a second Army official said at a briefing with Pentagon reporters, acknowledging that the funds were in “contention now because of his duty status.”…

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Keeping error and bias out of the classroom: Parents are entitled to an accurate account of the content of textbooks

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The school year is slowly winding down, but the controversy over public school educational materials is just heating up, potentially to an unprecedented level. While headlines grab our attention every few weeks with stories of biased textbooks and handouts, an opportunity is coming to examine the content of textbooks before they reach the desks of millions of students.

unnamedThis month, the Texas State Board of Education will share the titles of approximately 50 new social studies textbooks and 100 pieces of additional educational material under consideration for adoption in 2015. In six months, the board’s will finalize approvals. This will determine the purchase of textbooks for the 5 million Texas public school students and influence the textbook decisions in school districts around the country. The Texas textbook market is large enough that publishing companies will change nationally marketed books to conform to the board’s decisions, and estimates suggest that at least a majority of U.S. school districts base textbook decisions on Texas.

Recently, Texas changed its internal textbook-review system, largely in response to a brouhaha last summer when two citizens — a nutritionist and a chemical engineer — questioned one science textbook’s lessons on evolution. In an attempt to pre-empt such controversies in the future, the Texas State Board of Education requested applications from doctorate holders and educators to spend one week in Austin this summer training as reviewers and then vetting all of the proposed textbooks.

The reviewers are forbidden from speaking about the task. The public does not know the criteria for review, including the detail in which the texts will be examined, whether the texts will be examined for accuracy, and whether biased information will be identified.

unnamed (1)The one-week limitation alone raises significant questions about the intensity and seriousness of these reviews. In my experience, scholars can spend up to 60 hours reviewing a textbook, researching questionable facts and writing analysis. Many social studies textbooks run well over 500 pages long, and the more comprehensive books can exceed 1,000 pages. Moreover, no single historian is sufficiently knowledgeable to scrutinize the breadth of a world history curriculum.

Some textbooks are great. In such books, the facts are almost all accurate, The material is presented objectively, questions and exercises promote responsible critical thinking, and the content is fitting for the target student. They are also generally commendable contributions to our educational systems.

Other textbooks, however, are replete with errors and sometimes biases. For one recent review of an American government textbook, we compiled a 57-page report identifying and explaining 192 individual points of factual inaccuracies, inconsistencies and provable biases. Common Core undoubtedly contributes to the problem of inaccurate textbooks by bringing a slew of new material to the market, but this problem, in fact, has a long history in America’s schools.

The inclusion of inaccurate and biased information in textbooks dates at least to the 1800s and a prohibitionist named Mary Hanchett Hunt. As an influential part of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, Hunt successfully altered American education to indoctrinate students with an irrational fear of alcohol. Her textbooks corrupted the education of almost every American child at the time with propaganda and falsehoods that went so far as to claim scientific proof that just one drop of alcohol could cause insanity and that alcohol can turn blood into water.

unnamed (2)This false education played a major role in public support for Prohibition, one of America’s worst policy failures. School boards of Hunt’s day complied with her demands that such lies be taught as “scientific facts” because it was the easiest path. It took an independent group of scientists and physicians, known as the Committee of 50, to finally refute and discredit her textbooks with real scientific evidence. Only thorough, in-depth analysis finally stopped the dishonest and politically motivated education.

This month, the public saw a middle-school assignment presenting Holocaust-denial propaganda as legitimate, and two months ago, we saw a textbook explaining the Second Amendment as “the right to certain weapons, providing that they register them.” However, it is vital that we inform ourselves with more than headlines. Parents, taxpayers and citizens must have access to detailed information about the accuracy, objectivity and content responsibility of these books. Now in Texas, and in the many school districts nationwide affected by the Texas State Board of Education’s decisions, parents and citizens do have the opportunity to find out what these textbooks are teaching before they come home in their children’s backpacks.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Washington Times.

Gun Crimes Plummet Even as Gun Sales Rise

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A majority of Americans say they think gun crime has increased over the past 20 years, even though it has actually fallen dramatically, a recent Pew Research Center survey shows.

Sources: DOJ, ATF AFMER & USITC, Pew Research Center, National Safety Council, Gallup

For more information visit: http://nssf.org/infographics

gun-crimes-plummet-even-as-gun-sales-rise_5203f959cd014

Ted Cruz: “We Need To Repeal Every Word of Common Core”

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If you are a public figure, and are wanting to throw some red meat out into to the crowd of Conservative Republicans you happen to be speaking in front of, then bring up Common Core, and let the political feeding frenzy begin.

More and more top tier conservative politicos and legislators are piling on the anti-Common Core education standards movement, including Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Last weekend in Miami, Florida, Ted Cruz told Miami-Dade Republicans at the annual Lincoln Day dinner what need to be done with Common Core.

“We need to repeal every word of Common Core.”-Sen. Ted Cruz

Yup, Cruz received a standing ovation.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/F1j-PIMgOPU[/youtube]

 

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The Shark Tank.

Homegrown jihadis arrested in Texas

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Once again, the “religion of peace” demonstrates its true colors — and please don’t give me the line of a few individuals perverting Islam. A few days ago, two Muslim men in Texas were arrested on jihad terror charges.

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Michael Wolfe & Rahatul Khan

As reported by ABCnews.com, the two men were separately charged with terror-related offenses after federal agents said they planned to travel halfway around the world to engage in violent jihad. One of the men, a Bangladesh-born U.S. citizen named Rahatul Ashikim Khan, allegedly wanted to join al-Shabab, a Somalia-based terror group linked to al-Qaida. For the other, Michael Todd Wolfe from Houston, learning to fight in Syria was allegedly the goal.

Anyone who doesn’t believe we have a problem with homegrown jihadis in America is delusional.

According to charging documents, Wolfe’s wife met an undercover FBI agent in August 2013 and told the agent she and her husband wanted to “perform a violent form of jihad” outside of the United States. She said Wolfe “just wants to hop into Syria. He’s just ready to die for his deen [religion]. He’s ready to die for someone, for something,” court documents say.

Over several months, another undercover FBI agent met with Wolfe, and they discussed Wolfe’s plans for going overseas, according to the court documents. On Jan. 22, both undercover FBI agents met with Wolfe and his wife, and Wolfe “indicated that he had learned that al-Qaida in Syria was training brothers from other countries (foreign fighters) and then sending those fighters back from Syria to their home countries to conduct terror attacks,” the FBI says in court documents.

This is the larger concern about ISIS and its Islamic caliphate — just yesterday the head of the FBI acknowledged that some 100 Americans could be part of the ISIS army. What is even more egregious is this: the couple was planning to use some of their estimated $5,000 tax refund to pay for their travel, prosecutors say.

Khan became a U.S. citizen in 2002 and is a full-time student at University of Texas-Austin (a very liberal school), which is now on summer recess. According to charging documents in his case, in early 2011, Khan began communicating with an informant in an online chat room, which he used “as a platform to spot and assess potential recruits for committing violent jihad overseas.”

Khan introduced the informant to an unidentified co-conspirator, possibly in Florida — and we know an American from Florida detonated himself in a suicide bomb attack in Syria recently — who then attempted to recruit the informant to travel to Somalia to engage in jihad there, prosecutors say in court documents. The co-conspirator then introduced the informant to another person, also likely in Florida, who discussed how Khan could get to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabab.

In June 2011, Khan told the informant that his brain “starts bleeding” when he sees weak “Bengalis” who have “no love for jihad” and “no love to shed blood,” authorities allege.

The arrests come a month after the Justice Department asked a special prosecutor in its National Security Division to help lead U.S. efforts aimed at stemming the flow of American fighters to the civil war in Syria.

This is the jihadist version of “coexist” and I believe somehow it is different from the bumper sticker slogan on those Prius cars. The time for political correctness is gone — when tolerance becomes a one-way street it leads to cultural suicide. It also allows the enemy to walk amongst us, masquerading as a religion and affording themselves benefits in order to kill us.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on AllenBWest.com.

James Madison: The Indispensable Founder

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“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. … If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one. …

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. … The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general.

Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. … There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

– James Madison

When people are asked to name the Founding Fathers of the nation, they usually reel off Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, the first, second and third Presidents in addition to their earlier role in guiding the Revolution to success.

Occasionally, someone who, like myself, loves history will add Madison, the fourth President, but Lynne Cheney’s new biography of Madison rightly identifies him as the man most responsible “for creating the United States of America in the form we know it today.” It was Madison who guided the process by which the Founders arrived at the Constitution, contributing the fundamental principles it incorporated and writing the Bill of Rights, amendments that ensured its ratification by the original states.

Cover - James MadisonCheney’s biography, “James Madison: A Life Considered” ($36.00, Viking) benefits not only from her scholarship, but from her facility with the written word, making it a continual pleasure to read for a book of 563 pages, including its notes, bibliography, and index. If you were to set aside the summer to read just one book, this would be the one I would recommend.

If Cheney’s name rings a bell, it is because she is the wife of former Vice President Dick Cheney, but she is also a Ph.D. who has been studying Madison since 1987 when she was a member of the Commission on the Bicentennial of the Constitution. These days she is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The Cheney’s reside in Wilson, Wyoming. She is making the rounds of radio and television shows to promote her book and, most notably, interviewers tend to ignore her book in order to pry an opinion out of her about current events and politics. One gets the feeling that most did not read her book.

Those short in stature and, compared to the other Founders, quite young, all who came to know him swiftly developed a profound respect for his intellect and his knowledge of how governments were structured with some succeeding while others failed. When Madison spoke, they listened. There were in those days “factions” (which today we call political parties) that opposed his and the other Founder’s views.

“Jefferson,” wrote Cheney, “would later say that it was a wonder that Madison accomplished so much as he had, given that he faced ‘the endless quibbles, chicaneries, perversions, vexations, and delays of lawyers and demi-lawyers’” and Madison himself was often struck “by the way that ‘important bills prepared at leisure by skillful hands’ were treated to ‘crudeness and tedious discussion’, and he had seen legislative tricks of the most blatant sort.” So the politics of Madison’s time was not unlike much of today’s.

After the Constitution was written to replace the failed Articles of Confederation it needed to be vigorously defended. America benefited greatly from the fact that its population was highly literate and it was the Federalist papers, a series of essays mostly written by Madison was the way its principles and protections were explained to the public. Chaney notes that the Federalist essay that would eventually become most famous was the first one Madison wrote.

“In Federalist 10, published November 22,1787, he set forth the failures of ‘our governments’ (rather than ‘our states’ where, after all, the Constitution would be ratified), noting the instability and injustices that had caused good citizens across the country to increasingly distrust those governments and feel ‘alarm for private rights.’”

These alarms are reflected in our times by concerns that the President is bypassing Congress to govern by executive orders, is failing to enforce laws with which he disagrees, and that we have a Department of Justice and an IRS that cannot be trusted to apply laws fairly, acting against groups and individuals with whom they disagree such as the Tea Party movement and other conservative organizations. A rogue agency such as the Environmental Protection Agency is so out of control that Congress must at some point exert powerful restraints on it.

What is remarkable about Madison’s time was the fact that he, Jefferson is lifelong friend, and Adams, all lived long lives unlike the bulk of the population. Madison would devote his life to the creation of our extraordinary government and, throughout the early presidencies including his own, to ensuring the existence of the new nation, challenged as it was by Great Britain, first during the Revolution and then in the War of 1812.

On his last day as President, Madison vetoed an improvements bill, “arguing as he had since the days of The Federalist that the general government did not have general powers. It had specified powers, and recognizing its limits was essential to ‘the permanent success of the Constitution.’”

Chaney wrote that Madison understood that “if the limits the Constitution imposed on government were unrecognized, ‘the parchment had better be thrown into the fire at once.”, but Madison was all about protecting the Constitution and the new nation. For that he is owed the gratitude of all the generations that have followed him.

It is now our responsibility to protect it because freedom and liberty always have domestic and foreign enemies

© Alan Caruba, 2014

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The Obama Presidency Implodes

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The first time I heard the term “military advisors” it was being used by John F. Kennedy and they were being sent to South Vietnam. A strong anti-communist, in 1961 Kennedy approved financing an increase in the size of the South Vietnamese army from 150,000 to 170,000 along with sending a thousand U.S. military advisors to help train them. We all know how the Vietnam War ended.

Earlier, the North Korean attack on the South had ended in a stalemate. Technically a state of war still exists. Since 1953, the U.S. has maintained a military force in South Korea. In the wake of World War II, we still have a military presence in Europe and Japan to aid in their defense.

Obama’s announcement that 300 military advisors are being sent to Iraq is too little, too late.

As of this writing Americans are witnessing what happened when Obama withdrew from Iraq and are anticipating the same result when we withdraw from Afghanistan. Yes, we were and are war-weary, but we do not like what we’re seeing in Iraq and the President’s foreign policy failures are compounding by the day.

We are weary, too, after six and a half years of the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama. It has taken this long for all the predictions regarding his lack of experience and competence to come true.

The polls taken during the past week provide evidence of this. Gallup’s job approval poll of June 9-15 showed that 42% of “national adults” approved. Over at Rasmussen Reports, Obama’s job approval on June 21 was 48%. Asked by Rasmussen if the nation is headed in the right direction or not, 67% of likely voters said it was not. Reacting to the immigration invasion crisis a Gallup found that 69% thought he was doing a poor job.

Depending on events, polls rise and fall, but the numbers indicate a growing loss of confidence in Obama’s decisions and actions to date. I suspect that what they do not show is a growing sense of the man as utterly untrustworthy and increasingly distant from the demands of the office.

We are witnessing the implosion of the Obama presidency.

All presidencies have a scandal or two, usually relatively minor in the grand scheme of national management. Watergate was considered minor initially and took two years to materialize into the scandal that forced Nixon to resign. Obama, however, has generated directly and indirectly enough scandals for their combined weight to begin being noticed even by those who pay little attention to Washington, D.C.

The worst of the latests has been the revelation of how the Internal Revenue Service was politicized to attack organizations that were deemed to be affiliated with the Tea Party movement and patriotic objectives. The “loss” of Lois Lerner’s emails and others smells of the destruction of evidence Congress has demanded. The one element of the government that virtually all Americans interact with is the IRS.

Other scandals like Solyndra, representing the waste of billions on wind and solar companies, many of which went bankrupt after receiving all manner of grants and loans, did not registered in a similar fashion. The wiretapping of Associated Press reporters’ phone calls likewise did not evoke widespread concern. The failure of the “stimulus” that spent billions without producing an uptick in the economy was seen as just another way the government wastes our money. Even “Fast and Furious” in which thousands of weapons were purchased and transferred to Mexican drug cartels did not evoke more than a short expression of dismay.

Benghazi, however, in which a U.S. ambassador died along with three others, remains an unresolved scandal as much for the lies about a video as its cause as for the tragedy of the abandonment of those killed. The release of five leaders of the Taliban from Guantanamo without letting Congress know has piled on the previous scandals to a point where serious concerns about both Obama’s judgment have arisen.

What remains now is a combination of the President’s increasing use of Executive Orders to create as much mischief as possible along with the perception that he simply does not care what Americans in general and Congress in particular thinks about what he is doing. There is talk in the House of bringing a legal suit against the President regarding his heavy use of Executive Orders to bypass Congress while initiating policies that require congressional inclusion and oversight.

Those of us who pay close attention to what the President is doing know that the ultimate aim of his actions in office has been to harm the nation in a variety of ways from reducing our military to pre-World War Two levels to destroying a large element of the nation’s electrical energy supply by forcing coal-fired plants out of business.

Ultimately, the implosion of the Obama presidency has been the realization that he has put the nation at risk of the world’s bad actors by causing America’s global leadership position to erode. Americans have been accustomed to being a leading military and economic power since the end of World War Two and he has been undermining that in every way possible.

Voter payback is likely to see a major shift of political power in Congress away from the Democratic Party in the forthcoming midterm elections and would enable Republicans to slow or stop further damage to the nation. Failing that, the fate of the nation will be a great risk.

© Alan Caruba, 2014

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Report: Southern Leg of Keystone XL Has Been a Job Creator, Generated Economic Growth

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Critics like Tom Steyer’s Next Gen Climate operation wants you to believe that the Keystone XL pipeline will only create a few dozen jobs. However, after looking at the construction of the southern leg of the pipeline, the truth is far different.

A new report finds that construction of the 485-mile Gulf Coast Project, stretching from Cushing, Oklahoma to Nederland, Texas, created thousands of jobs and added billions to local economies.  The Gulf Coast pipeline is the portion of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that was able to be built because it didn’t require a Presidential Permit.  It is helping improve the transportation of oil sands crude to Gulf Coast refiners – the same crude that Keystone XL will carry.

The report, prepared by Southern Methodist University’s Maguire Energy Institute for the Consumer Energy Alliance, found that in Oklahoma and Texas, the project resulted in

  • Over $5.7 billion in new economic activity.
  • Over 42,000 person years of new employment.
  • Over $217 million in additional state and local taxes.

The authors write:

[T]he Gulf Coast Project pipeline contributed substantially to the economic health of most of the counties along the alignment during the 2012-2014 construction period. In the years ahead, recurring expenditures for operations and maintenance of the pipeline will continue to support jobs while generating income and tax revenues for Oklahoma, Texas and the 24 affected counties.

Counties in Oklahoma where the pipeline was construction saw an average per capita income increase of 78%. Three counties—Seminole, Hughes, and Coal—saw over 90% increases. For counties in Texas, the average per capita income increase was 58%.

On a press call, Bud Weinstein, an economics professor at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business and one of the reports’ authors noted that “most of these counties are comparatively low-income, rural counties.” Construction of the Gulf Coast Project has been a “tremendous economic tonic.” For instance, the report finds “pipeline activities averaged 31 percent of personal income” in Oklahoma.

During construction, TransCanada spent about $6 million per month directly in the local community. Here are some examples of local entrepreneurs taking advantage of the business opportunities the pipeline’s construction offered:

For instance, Clifford Bryant, a local entrepreneur in Prague, Oklahoma, reports that construction of the pipeline “doubled our city sales tax receipts.” Clifford bought a mobile RV and trailer park when he heard that TransCanada would be bringing a construction yard to town for its Gulf Coast Pipeline Project.  Previously, only 11 of the 57 spots in the park were occupied.  Once construction began, all 57 were occupied. Clifford notes that a full RV park contributes as much as $8,000 a month in electricity fees alone to the municipal utility.

In the Southeast Texas town of Kountze, Jeremy Kunk’s Ready Ice Company sold approximately 30,000 pounds of ice per week to pipeline construction sites in its area. The ice improved safety by keeping workers cool and hydrated.  Kunk expects that the economic boost supplied by pipeline projects will be long-lasting. “Pipeline construction such as TransCanada’s Gulf Coast Pipeline Project is going to feed our refineries more product and keep us hopping for the next five, 10 years at least.”

Joe Penland is another Texas business owner who benefited from TransCanada’s pipeline construction. Joe owns Quality Mat Company in Southeast Texas. His company partnered with TransCanada to make the Gulf Coast Project safer. With a patented concept, Penland fabricates more than 250,000 mats per year in his facility inside the Beaumont city limits.  He leased the mats to TransCanada during construction of the Gulf Coast Pipeline in Oklahoma and Texas.

Positive benefits would extend to more states if the northern leg of the pipeline, linking Alberta to Nebraska, were approved by the Obama administration. “Similar state and local economic benefits can be anticipated should the United States give the go-ahead for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska,” the authors write.

“I would expect similar impacts” to those found in Oklahoma and Texas if the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline is approved, Weinstein said on the press call.

Follow Sean Hackbarth on Twitter at @seanhackbarth and the U.S. Chamber at @uschamber.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is of sections of pipe sit on the ground in Atoka, Oklahoma. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg.

 

Cutoff All Foreign Aid to Countries Offloading their Poverty on U.S.!

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Stop rewarding banana republics trying to convert us into their image and cutoff all aid. Here are five beginning steps to stopping the flow of illegals into the U.S.:

  1. Stop all aid and deny visas to any country that refuses to accept released criminal illegal aliens back into their country.
  2. Time for troops on the border and to make it a felony to enter the country illegally or overstay a visa.
  3. Pass HR 140 so one parent is required to be citizen for a child to become a U.S. Citizen.
  4. Mandate E-Verify so all workers are legal.
  5. Require proof of citizenship for any welfare, including education!

RELATED ARTICLE: Study: All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants

The Veterans Administration has never been run right

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The massively expensive Veterans Administration (VA) is a perfect example of how the government is not able to efficiently perform private sector functions. The union based operations are and should be an embarrassment for anyone associated with them.

Senator Coburn yesterday released a report showing over 1,000 veterans died over a ten year period waiting for appointments and the VA paid out nearly a billion dollars in malpractice suits. Coburn also stated doctors at the VA hospitals only handle 1/6th the number of patients a private hospital does showing the union mentality is spread throughout the corrupt organization.

images-8There should be calls to disband the terrible government waste, fraud and abuse prevalent at the hospitals but Socialist Bernie Sanders says we need to increase the number of hospitals (another example of insanity by doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result) as if throwing more taxpayer money at a failed system will fix it.

The scary part is this is the service Obama and the other “progressives” (communists if you will) want eventually to force on all of us when Obamacare fails as is inevitable.

RELATED ARTICLE: Honolulu VA Still Worst in Nation–Wait Time 130 days

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo of Senator Coburn is courtesy of the Associated Press.

CNN’S Reliable Sources Not So Reliable

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Since 1984, I’ve been covering the Middle East, terrorism, and the intersection with America’s foreign policy.

Over the course of my career, I have spent countless hours in television studios under glaring lights and in front of cameras, both as a professional news anchor for World News at Middle East Television and as the President of ACT! for America warning Americans about the threat from Jihad.

I’m not “just” a survivor. I went to work to understand the world around me. I am proud of my Lebanese roots, but as a Christian targeted for my faith, and a woman, subjugation was a virtual guarantee. I immigrated to the United States. That’s where freedom is. It’s in our founding documents; it’s in our blood.

I always welcome the opportunity to appear on television to discuss what I consider to be the most important topic facing America today: the threat to our national security posed by Jihadists around the globe.

I was pleased to accept an invitation to appear on CNN’s Reliable Sources, on Sundaymorning to discuss the issue of so-called “Islamophobia.”

Unfortunately, what transpired in the production and editing process at CNN was one of the most egregious examples of biased journalism that I have ever come across.

Some background is in order here.

First of all, the whole issue of “Islamophobia” is a bogus one. The term was created from whole cloth by the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in an effort to suppress free speech and stifle justifiable criticism of Islamic regimes.

Headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the 57-member nation OIC is the largest international organization in the world outside of the United Nations. The OIC is absolutely dominated by its host nation, Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by one of the most barbaric Shariah regimes on the planet.

The term “Islamophobia” first appeared in Western media in the 1980s when it was used to lay proverbial siege to British author and Muslim apostate Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses, which was viewed by many Muslims as insulting the Prophet Muhammed. (Readers may recall that the leader of OIC member nation Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to kill Rushdie.)

Essentially, the OIC works to outlaw any and all criticism of Islamic leaders, customs, legal codes and regimes. The OIC considers virtually any negative portrayal (whether genuine, professed or supposed) of Islam to be “Islamophobia.”

So, the entire Reliable Sources segment was to be framed around a term that is essentially a product of Islamist propaganda. Note that despite the fact that host Brian Stelter parrots OIC propaganda on “Islamophobia” right from the opening of the show, he fraudulently portrays his program as “objective” between the Right and the Left, the Red and the Blue.

As I learned all-too well, Reliable Sources is anything BUT unbiased.

The original taping of the segment was about 30 minutes long, but just over 13 minutes made it on air. The editing was sloppy and disjointed, leaving out important parts of the dialogue.

Brian Stelter started right in by mocking Fox News’ Sean Hannity for his reference to worldwide Jihad. Later he said that the terrorist threat was “not there.” How can Stelterpossibly deny that Jihad is in fact a global threat? Just look at this list of Jihadist terrorist organizations that have launched attacks around the world in just the past month:

• ISIS
• Abu Sayyaf
• Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
• Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
• HAMAS
• Hezbollah
• Boko Haram
• Al Shabaab
• Lashkar e Taiba
• Jemaah Islamiyah
And ironically, CNN itself reported on the arrests just a week ago of two men in Texas on terrorism charges.

My appearance on Reliable Sources was opposite Linda Sarsour of the Arab American Association of New York.

Again, some background is in order here. Sarsour has a lengthy history of denying the threat from terrorism and attacking the NYPD and FBI for their counterterror efforts, just as she did on Reliable Sources on Sunday. Some of her denials can only be categorized in the “crackpot” classification.

For instance, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested for trying to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009 and subsequently convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2012, Sarsour claimed that the plot was not the work of Al Qaeda, but was a CIA plot.

Sarsour has cited the cases of Fahad Hashmi, Aafia Siddiqui and Siraj Matin as proof of US government abuses of Muslim civil rights by the FBI and NYPD. Hashmi pleaded guilty to providing material support for Al Qaeda. Siddiqui was found guilty of the attempted murder of a US Army captain and sentenced to 86 years in prison. Matin pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 30 years for plotting to explode bombs in the New York subway system.

During the part of the segment that actually made it on the air, Sarsour ridiculously equated isolated incidents of violence involving non-Muslims with Jihad. Sarsour even had the gall to cite the Boston Marathon bombings as an example of media “Islamophobia,” ignoring the fact that the perpetrators were in fact Islamic jihadists.

The reality is that the numbers don’t lie. The overwhelming majority of terrorist attacks in the world today are in fact acts of Islamic jihad. That is an inconvenient truth that Ms. Sarsour evidently wants the rest of America to live with. But don’t depend on CNN and its producers to tell the truth about that.

Global Islam: Seeing the Big Picture

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Can’t anyone see the big picture here?

All these hotbeds of terror and conquest is not limited to Iraq, or Syria. Look around, it’s in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Nigeria, Chechnya, India, Indonesia, even Europe and China. It’s everywhere. It has even arrived in the west.

Radical Islam is dedicated to establish world domination.  It is their Allah-given purpose for existence. There is no stopping them, unless we – in the free world – wake up and smell the proverbial roses.

Radical Islam can best be defined as the segment of Islam that participates in Jihad, who support Jihad, who root for Jihad and sympathize with Jihad. Jihad is technically translated to mean: Struggle.  To Jihadists, Jihad is a struggle toward conquest. If the naysayers would simply take the time to do a minimal amount of research, all these facts are out there for the asking. People should pay attention to those in the know, who have studied this problem in depth.

Iraq isn’t just about Shiites and Sunnis. Neither is Syria, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. It is about the long range goal of destroying Israel and then destroying Western democracy.

Experts will tell you that the majority of the world are peace-loving Muslims. That’s true. They will also tell you that the Jihadists, who are a minority, comprise about 20 percent of the world of Islam. That is huge. That minority comprises some 200-plus million people who want to kill us, who want to dominate us, who want to destroy Judaism and Christianity. The peaceful Muslims are irrelevant. They have no say in this war. They are busy working and taking care of families, and will – in the long run – be spared when the entire world becomes an Islamic caliphate.

This is no joke. It is not a supposition. It is a fact. I have avidly studied this issue since 9/12/2001, wrote a book in 2007, and have followed the world of Islam closely learning a deep knowledge of the background, motivations, methods and dangers of the Muslim Brotherhood who are leading this charge. I have also studied the writings of some three dozen intellectuals on this issue (see list), some of whom are from the middle-east, who are former Muslims and a few Muslim reformists.

The Muslim Brotherhood – who was recently driven out of the government of Egypt via uprisings from millions of peace-loving Egyptians – is a global enterprise whose long range purpose is conquest of the west. They have plans in motion that include various methods to achieve this end, both violent and stealth.  The stealth version involves deceit, pretending to be peaceful and loving, while the target nations are infiltrated – slowly but surely. Stealth means: From Within, as they have promised.

“War is Deceit” – The Prophet, Mohammed.

Secret documents recovered by law enforcement investigations in both America and Switzerland, confirms this fact (see links below). The so-called Arab-Spring was a pre-planned operation executed by the Muslim Brotherhood to seize control of important Arab nations, including Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Syria. Egypt overturned the movement by ousting the MB, refusing to accept life under strict Sharia law.

We should not forget, President Obama called for the ouster of Mubarak, our ally, and supported the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood is now rooted in the United States in the form of some thirty sub-organizations, whose purpose is to infiltrate and weaken the U.S. Constitution until it can be nullified. Among those organizations is CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations), the ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) and the MSA (Muslim Students Association)…all of whom have enjoyed successes in gaining influence in U.S. politics, economics and education. Several persons with close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have been employed in influential positions in the Obama administration, including the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department, State Department and the White House itself.

Every major speech regarding Islam or foreign decision that President Obama has made regarding the middle-east has been to the favor of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iraq is important because the worst radicals who have their antennas aimed toward the west, will root in and establish an ideal base from which to launch terror tactics. Israel is under constant attack from HAMAS (a stepchild of the Muslim Brotherhood). HAMAS is now allied with the Palestinian Authority. With ISIS gaining power, Israel will have to be even more alert from those who have sworn to destroy them.

Those of us who are older find this all strangely familiar. The Nazis were small in numbers but huge in power. Like al Qaeda and ISIS, they murdered people in the streets to leave grotesque impressions on the remaining population: Do as we say, or you could be next. The small and powerful numbers eventually overcame the general population. Germans, otherwise good people, became intoxicated with power and turned a blind eye to atrocities.

But the Nazis wore uniforms and were more obvious. They went after other countries with military might. Islamist tactics are different. Islamists infiltrate and kill from within. They are far more sinister than Nazi’s, but just as blood-curdling and fixated on a long range goal.

The peace-loving Muslims, like the Germans, are turning a blind eye, mostly for self-survival…awaiting the day they may become intoxicated with power as the almighty god of Islam triumphs over the evil forces of the United States.

We better start paying attention. That goes for our ignorant (or corrupt) politicians whose only concerns are gaining or remaining in office, marching lock-step with their party-line rather than acknowledging the long range consequences of stupidity.

Segments of our mainstream media are falling into the same trap by ignoring or minimizing the gains being made by radical Islam, including in free western countries. Al Jazerra, the Arab media giant based in the middle-east, has established a propaganda foothold in western media thanks to Al Gore, who chose to sell them his television station when an alternate American choice was available.

Radical Islam is on the march. We should all be united as Americans. Obama’s declaration – more than 30 times in two years – saying al Qaeda has been decimated is laughable. Why does he repeat the same lie, over and over?

This is an issue where Democrat versus Republican does not matter, because if we continue to think this is just another foreign affair, it won’t be long – perhaps a couple generations – that our gay people will be hanging from lamp posts, crippled people will be disappearing, Jews will be extinct, Christians will pay a special tax (or else), women will be immersed in subjugation to men, the press will no longer be free, choosing another religion outside Islam will render the death penalty, blind eyes will not notice nor report the rise in honor killings and the 223 years of freedoms afforded Americans in the Constitution will be gone with the wind, like they never existed.  Out with the Constitution; in with the Quran.

By that time, there will be no turning back.

Here is a partial list of experts, intellectuals and authors to research, provided for your information. They have written numerous books on this topic, worthy of interest by skeptics. I hope some of my doubting friends will take the time and energy to enlighten themselves. Check them out through Google and/or Amazon.com.

LIST OF INTELLECTUALS/EXPERTS ON ISLAM

  • Robert Spencer
  • Nonie Darwish
  • Clare Lopez
  • Richard A. Clarke
  • Pam Geller
  • Harvey Kushner
  • Tarek Fatah
  • Dr. Zuhdi Jasser
  • Ayaan Hirsi Ali
  • Brigitte Gabriel
  • Abdullah al-Araby
  • Daniel Pipes
  • Timothy Aldred
  • Paul Sperry
  • Walid Shoebat
  • Bruce Bower
  • P. David Gaubatz
  • David Horowitz
  • Steven Emerson
  • Ahmed Rashid
  • Gilles Kepel
  • Andrew C. McCarthy

Here are the Muslim Brotherhood documents, as mentioned above. Pay particular attention to page 7 of 18, in the English translation (second half).

This document “The Project” was recovered by the Swiss in 2001:

THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD ‘Project’ – a plan to takeover the West | BARE NAKED ISLAM

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Why Benghazi Matters

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Please watch and listen to a video that will provide you with specific details about the intentional abandonment of four Americans by the Obama administration during the Battle of Benghazi, it is worth every minute:

Now please read the below listed article that provides previously un-revealed details about how a conversation between Obama and Hillary Clinton at 10:00 p.m. EST, on September 11, 2012, during the night 125-150 Al Qaeda linked terrorists, launched a pre- planned and well-coordinated commando operation, to attack the US Mission and the CIA Annex in Benghazi, Libya, and how that conversation sealed the fate of 4 Americans killed in The Battle of Benghazi.

The below listed article prints excepts from a newly published book “Blood Feud” written by Ed Klein that every American should read.  It explains why Obama, coordinating with Hillary Clinton, intentional abandoned Americans being attacked in Benghazi.   A military rescue mission could not be launched, that would have saved the lives of 2 Navy SEALs who were killed 8 hours after the attack was launched, because Obama refused to execute “Cross Border Authority” that was required before the military could launch a rescue mission.

Clinton bristled at Benghazi deception

image003Edward Klein explains what happened the night of the Benghazi attack — and Hillary Clinton’s reaction.

In his new book, “Blood Feud,” journalist Edward Klein gets inside the dysfunctional, jealous relationship between Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack and Michelle Obama. Here, he explains what happened the night of the Benghazi attack.

By 10 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2012, when Hillary Clinton received a call from President Obama, she was one of the most thoroughly briefed officials in Washington on the unfolding disaster in Benghazi, Libya.

She knew that Ambassador Christopher Stevens and a communications operator were dead, and that the attackers had launched a well-coordinated mortar assault on the CIA annex, which would cost the lives of two more Americans.

She had no doubt that a terrorist attack had been launched against America on the anniversary of 9/11. However, when Hillary picked up the phone and heard Obama’s voice, she learned the president had other ideas in mind. With less than two months before Election Day, he was still boasting that he had al Qaeda on the run.

If the truth about Benghazi became known, it would blow that argument out of the water.

“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.”

A protester exults as the US Consulate in Benghazi burns during a protest by an armed group in September 2012 that killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.Photo: Reuters

This adviser continued: “Hillary told Obama, ‘Mr. President, that story isn’t credible. Among other things, it ignores the fact that the attack occurred on 9/11.’ But the president was adamant. He said, ‘Hillary, I need you to put out a State Department release as soon as possible.’”

After her conversation with the president, Hillary called Bill Clinton, who was at his penthouse apartment in the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, and told him what Obama wanted her to do.

“I’m sick about it,” she said, according to the legal adviser, who was filled in on the conversation.

“That story won’t hold up,” Bill said. “I know,” Hillary said. “I told the president that.” “It’s an impossible story,” Bill said. “I can’t believe the president is claiming it wasn’t terrorism. Then again, maybe I can. It looks like Obama isn’t going to allow anyone to say that terrorism has occurred on his watch.”

Hillary’s legal adviser provided further detail: “During their phone call, Bill started playing with various doomsday scenarios, up to and including the idea that Hillary consider resigning as secretary of state over the issue. But both he and Hillary quickly agreed that resigning wasn’t a realistic option.

If her resignation hurt Obama’s chances of winning re-election, her fellow Democrats would never forgive her. Hillary was already thinking of running for president in 2016, and her political future, as well as Obama’s, hung in the balance.”

Obama had put Hillary in a corner, and she and Bill didn’t see a way out. And so, shortly after 10 o’clock on the night of September 11, she released an official statement that blamed the Benghazi attack on an “inflammatory (video) posted on the Internet.”

The Benghazi Deception was in full swing.

“Blood Feud: The Clintons vs. the Obamas” by Edward Klein is out this week from Regnery Publishing.

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