1) Los Zetas drug cartel seizes 2 U.S. ranches in Texas
In what could be deemed an act of war against the sovereign borders of the United States, Mexican drug cartels have seized control of at least two American ranches inside the U.S. territory near Laredo, Texas.
Two sources inside the Laredo Police Department confirmed the incident is unfolding and they would continue to coordinate with U.S. Border Patrol today. “We consider this an act of war,” said one police officer on the ground near the scene. There is a news blackout of this incident at this time and the sources inside Laredo PD spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Word broke late last night that Laredo police have requested help from the federal government regarding the incursion by the Los Zetas. It appears that the ranch owners have escaped without incident but their ranches remain in the hands of the blood thirsty cartels.
Laredo Border Patrol is conducting aerial surveillance over the ranches to determine the best way to regain control of the U.S. ranches, according to the Laredo Police department.
2) Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright
It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists. The tough questioning from the ABC anchors left many of them outraged. “George [Stephanopoulos],” fumed Richard Kim of the Nation, is “being a disgusting little rat snake.”
Others went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
…“Part of me doesn’t like this s@#t either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”
Ackerman went on:
…And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.
…But it was Ackerman who had the last word. “Kevin, I’m not saying OBAMA should do this. I’m saying WE should do this.”
2a) JournoList ‘Sick Puppies’ Planned Attacks on Sarah Palin
The most insidious form of media bias is deciding what to cover and, more importantly, what not to cover. The revelations uncovered by The Daily Caller in regard to Journolist have been damning on that front. The latest involve Sarah Palin and while anyone with a speck of honesty already realized that the media has been out to marginalize her from the very beginning, Journolist members took it to an even more egregious level. I know. I didn’t think that was possible either, but apparently it is.
…Worse, the goal of the framing of the narrative was to marginalize and diminish a woman by using her womanhood itself against her for political means. In fact, one member, Daniel Levy of the Century Foundation, referred to the list as Obama’s “non-official campaign” and admitted he believed it was their job to discredit Palin:
This seems to me like an occasion when the non-official campaign has a big role to play in defining Palin, shaping the terms of the conversation and saying things that the official [Obama] campaign shouldn’t say – very hard-hitting stuff, including some of the things that people have been noting here – scare people about having this woefully inexperienced, no foreign policy/national security/right-wing christia wing-nut a heartbeat away …
…Sarah Palin, with customary courage and straight-talk openness, spoke out about the media to the Daily Caller:
“With the shackles off, I relish my freedom to call it like I see it, while starving the media beast that was devouring the false reports about me, my staff and my loved ones,” she said….
“…The lamestream media is no longer a cornerstone of democracy in America. They need help. They need to regain their credibility and some respect. There are some pretty sick puppies in the industry today. They really need help,” Palin said.
Sick puppies, indeed, as further evidenced by an earlier revelation regarding the more than disturbing desire of a JournoList member to watch Rush Limbaugh die in agony, while she “laughed loudly like a maniac.”
2b) Limbaugh responds to JournoList death wish report
So I asked Limbaugh: What do you make of the fact that people in positions of influence on the Left don’t just want to see you fail, don’t just want to see you marginalized, but would actually like to witness you dying a painful death?
“Not having wished anyone dead, nor having fantasized about watching someone die, I cannot possibly relate to this,” Limbaugh responded.
I can only surmise. I think most people on the left live in a world where merit is irrelevant. Theirs is a world in which connections, networking, kissing ass and obedient sameness are rewarded. I am the antithesis of all that. I am a legitimate, achieved and accomplished Number One and I’ve made it on my own and without them and without having followed their proscriptions. I think they are also jealous that I just sold my NY condo for a 125 percent profit while their homes are worthlessly underwater.
Funny thing….a number of my friends sent me the Daily Caller piece and the most shocking thing to them in the story was the advocacy of having government shut down Fox News. That the left wants me dead was not a big deal to them because it was nothing new to them. I think that’s hilarious. And about that: how about the LAW professor who thinks the FCC can pull Fox’s license? Fox does not have a license. The FCC does not grant Fox its right to exist. And this guy teaches law (emphasis mine).
3) Shirley Sherrod: view the short video, then read on below:
See: http://www.hannity.com/videos/?uri=channels/400391/979641
3a) More on this…Sherrod case shows power of conservative media
NEW YORK – A conservative blog posts 2 minutes, 38 seconds of video clips of a black federal agriculture official saying she didn't do everything she could to help a white farmer. The blogger labels it racism. Calls grow for the Obama administration to remove her. No one at the Agriculture Department or the White House checks further. The official is forced to resign.
Monday ends, but not the story.
A complete, 43-minute version of the video surfaces the next day, Tuesday, and casts a much different light on Shirley Sherrod's comments: They were part of an NAACP speech about how she overcame her racial prejudice to help the farmer, not about prejudice that stopped her from helping him.
Now, the administration is criticized for wronging her by rushing to judgment.
I heard that Sherrod’s speech was really about racial reconciliation. But it seems to me, that it is the left who is always calling attention to a person’s race. It is irrelevant whether the person who had applied for assistance was black or white. Why even mention it? Further, she talks about her “white” applicant getting help, “from his own kind”. What the heck? Who talks like that except those who are inordinately obsessed with race? I know she said she was explaining how she recovered from racism, but if she is still calling attention to the differences between the races, she has not.
See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100722/ap_on_re_us/us_sherrod_conservative_media
4) Obama's Poll Numbers Down, Imaginary Racism Up
…One of the videos shows an obvious liberal plant announcing, "I'm a proud racist!" Apparently this was their best shot, because they had to work this video into the montage twice, amid utterly innocuous posters, for example, saying, "God bless Glenn Beck." So I guess they didn't have anything better.
Here's the part Soros' people didn't show you: In the fuller video shown on the Glenn Beck show, the Tea Partiers surrounded the (liberal plant) racist, jeering at him, telling him he's not one of them and to go home. In a spectacularly evil fraud, all that was edited out.
Just hours later on MSNBC, Chris Matthews was loudly proclaiming that he would believe the Tea Partiers weren't racist when he sees "just one of those Tea Party people pull down one of those racist signs at the next Tea Party rally. I'm going to just wait. Reach over, grab the sign and tear it out of the guy's hands. Then I will believe you."
Well, here it was. The (liberal plant) racist was driven from the Tea Party by the Tea Partiers. But you won't see that. Like USDA official Shirley Sherrod's apparently racist comments excerpted this week from what was, in fact, a commendable speech about racial reconciliation, the alleged Tea Party racism was, literally, "taken out of context."
See: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38190
4a) Mary Frances Berry’s comments on Tea Party Racism
Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.
See: http://www.politico.com/arena/perm/Mary_Frances_Berry_91E3D9D5-C40D-440C-9D48-1C50CBC60C87.html
5) Glenn Beck: Does Presidential Assassination Program Exist?
A story came out a little while ago that, quite honestly, I can't believe I missed, but someone sent it to me. It's about the "presidential assassination program," where "American citizens are targeted for killings far away from any battlefield, based exclusively on unchecked accusations by the executive branch that they're involved in terrorism."
There are allegedly "dozens of Americans" on this hit list who "pose a threat" to the United States. National Security Adviser John Brennan said this:
JOHN BRENNAN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: There are, in my mind, dozens of U.S. persons who are in different parts of the world that are very concerning to us.
So, we just shoot them on the spot and don't worry about their Miranda rights as American citizens? Now if it were on the battlefield — fine, I get it. But away from the battlefield?
Let's refresh our memories on what this administration said they believed:
• There's no terrorism, just "man-caused disasters"
• Won't use the term ''enemy combatant''
• Changed the War on Terror to "overseas contingency operation"
• Brennan proclaimed that "jihadists" aren't the enemy:
…I want to stop here for a second, because I guarantee you the lowlifes at George Soros' blogs like Media Matters have put down their "World of Warcraft 3" controllers and have rushed back to call me all kinds of names. We are so polarized now that it's an automatic reaction: If Glenn Beck brings it up it's a lie! But, I mentioned that someone sent me this story, which I hadn't seen originally. The quotes we used a moment ago were from the far left-site Salon.com and the segment I watched was from the ever-conservative MSNBC (emphasis mine):
GLENN GREENWALD, SALON: Look at the controversies that were created during the Bush administration, when the president got caught spying on American citizens without warrant or trying to detain them without due process. Here you're talking about something far more extreme. You're talking about targeting American citizens for murder, for assassination, based merely on the allegation that they're involved in terrorism. No evidence, no charges, no trial — nothing.
DYLAN RATIGAN, MSNBC: His actions create a massive cognitive dissonance that actually allows him to get away with more than George W. Bush could when it comes to encroachments on civil liberties, facilitating theft from the American people or potentially calling you or me a terrorist and trying to have us killed.
GREENWALD: Well, I know that that's the fact...
I don't think I would have looked into this story if it had been reported on some GOP blog. But these guys are so in the bag for Obama, it bears investigating.
Assassinating American citizens without due process? What happened to Miranda rights? Even the ACLU expressed: "profound concern about recent reports indicating that you have authorized a program that contemplates the killing of suspected terrorists — including U.S. citizens — located far away from zones of actual armed conflict. If accurately described, this program violates international law and, at least insofar as it affects U.S. citizens, it is also unconstitutional."
See: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/43208/
6) Why the ObamaCare Tax Penalty Is Unconstitutional
The federal power to tax is not unlimited, as the Supreme Court recognized when it struck down the first national income tax.
The Justice Department announced last week that it would defend the new federal health-insurance mandate as an exercise of Congress's "power to lay and collect taxes," even though Barack Obama had insisted before the bill's passage that it was "absolutely not a tax increase." The truth is the mandate is not a tax—and if it were it would be unconstitutional.
A tax is when the government takes money from individuals, puts it in the Treasury, and plans to spend it. With the health-insurance mandate, the government is not taking money from private individuals; rather, it is commanding them to give their money to another private entity, not to the Treasury. If individuals don't obey the mandate, they pay a penalty to the Treasury. But penalties aren't taxes. The mandate is legally separate from the penalty.
Even if the Justice Department were to get the mandate considered a tax, it would be an unconstitutional one. Unlike states, the federal government has limited jurisdiction. Under the 10th Amendment, the federal government has only those powers enumerated by the Constitution, and all other powers are reserved to the people or the states. Every federal action must be authorized by a constitutional provision. If there is no such provision, then the action is unconstitutional. No provision of the Constitution authorizes the federal government to command people to buy insurance.
…But the Constitution is only as good as the Supreme Court interpreting it. The Senate's imminent vote on Elena Kagan's nomination is a poignant reminder that we need a court that faithfully upholds the Constitution. Such a court would strike down ObamaCare.
7) White House predicts record $1.47 trillion deficit
WASHINGTON – New estimates from the White House on Friday predict the budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this year. The government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends.
That's actually a little better than the administration predicted in February.
The new estimates paint a grim unemployment picture as the economy experiences a relatively jobless recovery. The unemployment rate, presently averaging 9.5 percent, would average 9 percent next year under the new estimates.
“Jobless recovery”? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100723/ap_on_bi_ge/us_budget_deficit
8) The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon
Fiscal Policy: Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something's done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.
Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.
But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.
Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn't the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it's not just the rich who will pay.
The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.
But the damage doesn't stop there.
The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.
…Economic Substance Doctrine. ATR reports that "The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks 'economic substance (emphasis mine).'"
What the heck does “lacks economic substance” mean? That sounds like, “we disallow this deduction just because we want to!”
9) Stimulating Unemployment
If you can't create any jobs, pay people not to work.
Presidents typically invite Americans to appear at Rose Garden press conferences to trumpet their policy successes, but yesterday we saw what may have been a first. President Obama introduced three Americans—an auto worker, a fitness center employee and a woman in real estate—who've been out of work so long they underscore the failure of his economic program. Where are his spinmeisters when he really needs them?
Sure, Mr. Obama's ostensible purpose was to lobby Congress for the eighth extension of jobless benefits since the recession began, to a record 99 weeks, or nearly two years. And he whacked Senate Republicans for blocking the extension, though Republicans are merely asking that the extension be offset by cuts in other federal spending.
But Mr. Obama was nonetheless obliged to concede that, 18 months after his $862 billion stimulus, there are still five job seekers for every job opening and that 2.5 million Americans will soon run out of unemployment benefits. What happens when the 99 weeks of benefits run out? Will the President demand that they be extended to three years, or four?
…The one possibility the President and Congressional Democrats won't entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation (emphasis mine). Since February 2009, the jobless rate has climbed to 9.5% from 8.1%, and private industry has shed two million jobs. The overall economy has been expanding for at least a year, but employers still don't seem confident enough to add new workers. The economists who sold us the stimulus say it's a mystery. But maybe employers are afraid to hire because they don't know what costs government will impose on them next (emphasis mine).
See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703720504575377381727739058.html
10) Beware The Dems' Lame-Duck Agenda
Barack Obama's considerable political capital, earned on Election Day 2008, is spent. Well spent, mind you, on the enactment of a highly ideological agenda of ObamaCare, financial reform and a near trillion-dollar stimulus that will significantly transform the country.
But spent nonetheless. There's nothing left with which to complete his social-democratic ambitions. This would have to await the renewed mandate that would come with a second inaugural.
That's why, as I suggested last week, nothing of major legislative consequence is likely to occur for the next 2 1/2 years. Except, as columnist Irwin Stelzer points out, for one constitutional loophole: a lame-duck Congress called back into session between the elections this November and the swearing-in of the 112th Congress next January.
Leading Democrats are already considering this as a way to achieve even more liberal measures that many of their members dare not even talk about, let alone enact, on the eve of an election in which they face a widespread popular backlash to the already enacted elements of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda.
…They could then vote for anything — including measures they today shun as the midterms approach and their seats are threatened — because they would have nothing to lose. They would be unemployed. And playing along with Obama might even brighten the prospects for, say, an ambassadorship to a sunny Caribbean isle.
As John Fund reports in the Wall Street Journal, Sens. Jay Rockefeller, Kent Conrad and Tom Harkin are already looking forward to what they might get passed in a lame-duck session.
11) The Rangel Standard
A public ethics trial will be instructive.
The House ethics committee announced on Thursday that it would bring charges against Charlie Rangel, and the Manhattan Democrat responded by telling reporters that "I look forward to airing this thing." Don't we all.
The ethics committee has been investigating Mr. Rangel since 2008 and its formal charges will remain sealed until a public hearing next week. However, the committee is not lost for choices:
Allegations include Mr. Rangel's failure to report assets and income totaling at least a half-million dollars that, when he "amended" his reporting last year, doubled his net worth; his use of four rent-stabilized apartments in New York's tony Lenox Terrace complex, including one that he used as a campaign office; concealing taxable rental income from his Dominican Republic beachfront villa at the Punta Cana Yacht Club; and using his official Congressional letterhead to solicit donations for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York.
Mr. Rangel has portrayed these charges as it-could-happen-to-anyone accounting errors, and he has vigorously denied any wrongdoing while declining to provide details until the ethics committee completed its inquiry. Still, in March he surrendered his gavel as Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, not as the result of these accusations or any other pang of conscience, but because a separate investigation concluded that his participation in several corporate-sponsored Caribbean junkets violated House regulations. At the time, his work in raising taxes to pay for ObamaCare was nearly complete.
See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703294904575385051601020166.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
12) BP Negotiates with Libya: The Hal Lindsey Report
Apparently, BP wanted the right to drill for oil in Libya. Libya's dictator, Muammar Gadaffi, set a condition: release the Lockerbie bomber. At the time, this Libyan man was serving a life sentence for planting the bomb that blew Pan Am flight 103 out of the night sky and onto the village of Lockerbie, Scotland. He killed 270 people, including 190 Americans.
Did BP say, "No," and walk away from the negotiation? Not hardly. Instead, the company cajoled (or threatened?) then-Prime Minister Tony Blair into going along with the idea. So Blair apparently worked out a deal with Gadaffi. Then the UK got a team of Scottish doctors to certify that the Lockerbie bomber, Abdelbaset Ali al Megrahi, had prostate cancer and was only good for another three months. So, on the flimsy excuse of "compassion," (which, by the way, al Megrahi didn't show for the 270 families he devastated), Scotland released the bomber to return to Libya to die.
Which he promptly didn't do. In fact, the doctors now admit that maybe they missed the diagnosis. Hmmm. Al Megrahi will be living the hero's life of relative luxury in Libya for the next 10 to 20 years. I wonder if BP actually got the rights to drill. Even if they did, the company probably won't survive long enough to actually enjoy the fruits of their disgusting shenanigans in the Libyan desert.
This whole "government doing the bidding of the corporation" thing really gets peoples' ire up. And it should. However, I'm still waiting for the press to fully explore the 20 year 'relationship' Barack Obama has had with BP (he's the greatest beneficiary of their prodigious political contributions) as lustily as they explored George W. Bush's 'relationship' with Enron or Dick Cheney's 'relationship' with Halliburton (emphasis mine). Then there's the fact that quite of a few of the President's appointments in the former Minerals Management Service spent their years between the Clinton and Obama administrations working for -- you guessed it -- BP.
At one time, BP stood for British Petroleum, but in 2001, the company changed its name to simply BP. Its advertising tagline is: "Beyond Petroleum." Maybe it should be: "Buying Politicians."
See: http://www.hallindsey.com/the-hal-lindsey-report-7232010/
13) Pat Condell: No Mosque at Ground Zero
See: http://www.livingscoop.com/watch.php?v=NjM1#
14) PLO Flag to Fly in Washington D.C.
The United States State Department has announced to the Palestinian Authority/Palestinian Liberation Organization Mission representative in the United States that its status will be upgraded from a 'bureau' to that of a "general delegation' and that this change will allow the office in which the representation is situated to fly the PLO, now also the Palestine Authority, flag at its entrance.
The upgrading, besides allowing the flag to be flown, also grants certan privileges to the delegation staff, such as diplomatic immunity, although it is not equal to embassy status.
The PLO's chief representative in the United States, Maen Areikat, said that this step makes the PLO's status in the United States equivalent to its status in Canada and many western European countries.
Israeli Radio reported that sources in Prime Minister Netanyahu's office said that the Prime Minister knew of the planned step and did not object to it. Diplomatic sources in Jerusalem claimed that the step was taken to strengthen Abu Maazen and try to get him to agree to direct talks with Israel. However, they expressed disappointment that the White House did not make ceasing the PA's anti Israel incitement a condition for the status upgrade (emphasis mine).
UNBELIEVABLE!
See: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/138752
15) Top Secret America, comment by Hal Lindsey
The Washington Post recently did an 'expose' of the tremendous growth of the intelligence community and counterterrorism organizations since 9/11. They called the series, "Top Secret America." The Post estimates that more than 850,000 people in America today hold top-secret security clearances. They say that there are 1,200 government agencies and 1,900 private companies working on counterterrorism, intelligence, and homeland security in more than 10,000 locations inside the United States. If this is true, and I've no doubt that it is, it indicates something very disturbing to me. It means that we live in such a state of fear -- fear of terrorism, fear of poverty, fear of offense -- that we have become willing to trade our freedom for some mystical form of security.
See: http://www.hallindsey.com/the-hal-lindsey-report-7232010/
And: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
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