(Via MediaIte) – The First Lady’s birthday party, which took place Saturday night at the White House, was hotly anticipated by the mainstream press, but was also the subject of criticism from some quarters. Her birthday also raised questions from Fox News’ Ed Henry a few weeks ago, when he wondered if taxpayers would be footing the bill for the First Lady’s extended vacation in Hawaii.

At Wednesday’s daily briefing, Jon Karl picked up that thread, asking Carney “The first lady had her 50th birthday party, and I believe you said the president picks up the cost for that party?”

Most people know al-Qaeda (as a terror entity) has evolved over the past 10+ years.   Recently the Obama administration has doggedly tried to parse and obfuscate around a principle that CORE al-Qaeda has been destroyed.

This claim is essential to framing any success around the Obama administration’s foreign policy and defense effort.     However, the claim is false and the success simply does not exist.

al-Qaeda is NOT on the run.

As a network of affiliated enterprises, with the same ideological goal, it has grown in influence specifically as a direct result of their own evolutionary intentions.

CORE al-Qaeda, or a centralized body from which all decision making stemmed, was never their intent.   al-Qaeda intended for terrorism to be “cellular” or operationally self-sustaining and widespread.    Bin Laden specifically intended the network to be a group of ideologically aligned but unaffiliated franchises all working on a common approach. (more…)

I swear something has changed.   Whoever is usually in charge is now just phoning in the instructions…..    Read this and tell me that POTUS is still trying to keep up the charade:

(MediaIte)  David Remnick’s New Yorker profile of Barack Obama’s fifth year in office, published Sunday morning, includes a lengthy section on foreign policy, during which Remnick asked Obama to square his claim that al Qaeda had been “decimated” with the al Qaeda flag currently flying over Falluja, one of the cities the U.S. struggled to capture from insurgents in the Iraq War.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said, in what Remnick himself termed “an uncharacteristically flip analogy.”  (continue reading)

I’m telling you something snapped within the Obama community over that Christmas vacation because no-way in hades would they have allowed POTUS to be so obviously unpresidential.    This is gob smackingly dismissive and reflecting a complete lack of respect for the audience…. bordering on childish.

Actually, if Obama had a son he probably wouldn’t look like act like a football player…. and his book shelf trophies would be ‘participation’ not achievement.

A football career would be out of bounds for any son of President Obama, who compared the game to smoking in an interview with The New Yorker.

“I would not let my son play pro football,” the First Fan said in a POTUS profile for the magazine’s Jan. 27 issue.   (link)

The New York Times has a lengthy article about the evolution of Obama’s ideology and perspective regarding NSA spying.    However, inside the article there is this admission from White House advisor/campaign director David Plouffe that everyone appears to be overlooking (emphasis mine):

[…]   “When you get the package every morning, it puts steel in your spine,” said David Plouffe, the president’s longtime adviser. “There are people out there every day who are plotting. The notion that we would put down a tool that would protect people here in America is hard to fathom.”

At the same time, aides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, just how far the surveillance had gone. “Things seem to have grown at the N.S.A.,” Mr. Plouffe said, citing specifically the tapping of foreign leaders’ telephones. “I think it was disturbing to most people, and I think he found it disturbing.”

Yet it is hard to express indignation at actions of the government after five years of running it, and some involved in surveillance note that it was Mr. Obama who pushed national security agencies to be aggressive in hunting terrorists.  (read full article)

SUPREME COURT – Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday tore into President Barack Obama’s use of recess appointments to staff government agencies when the Senate is unofficially on recess.

During oral arguments, Scalia shot back at an argument by U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli that the Constitution’s recess appointments clause is ambiguous enough to validate Obama’s temporary appointments.

“It’s been assumed to be ambiguous by self-interested presidents,” Scalia said, to “oohs” and laughs in the court room.

Scalia argued emphatically that the text of the Constitution does not permit presidents to appoint individuals to government agencies during pro forma sessions — when the Senate technically gavels in and out to fulfill a constitutional requirement, but does not conduct any business. He suggested the power ought to be restricted to official recesses. (more…)

…. another significant percentage would love to see the Islamists jailed, like Egypt.

Tunisia fell victim to dictatorial consequences stemming from economic strain as a result of mass migration.   Like Egypt, the Tunisian Islamists (Muslim Brotherhood) promised great prosperity under Sharia.  However, unlike Egypt, the Brotherhood still holds power. 

TUNISIA – “Ben Ali, they fooled us! Come back soon!” is a slogan one could hear on Tuesday, January 7, in the streets of Tunis, Ariana, Mahdia, Sfax and other cities in Tunisia, as the country prepared to mark the three-year anniversary of the uprising that sent former dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali packing.

The protesters were in the street to voice their anger at tax hikes affecting public and agricultural transportation vehicles, but many expressed a nostalgia for the Ben Ali days that seems to be increasingly common.

In the capital, “Vive Ben Ali” can be seen scrawled on walls of buildings, and a Facebook page entitled “Forgive us, Mr. President” has been flooded with messages of affection and tribute. (more…)

WASHINGTON DC – In a brief speech on the House floor about safety nets that touches on all manner of government assistance, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee suggested that the term “welfare” is no longer politically correct, and like all masters of doublespeak, wants Congress to change its name to a “transitional living fund.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) hailed the war on poverty, endorsed government welfare programs, and said the “safety net has to be something for all of us.”

“Maybe the word welfare should be changed to something of, ‘a transitional living fund.’ For that is what it is — for people to be able to live,” she said.  (link)

Washington Post […]  The State Department is expected to tie Qumu’s group to the Benghazi attack when it designates three branches of Ansar al-Sharia, in Darnah, Benghazi and Tunisia, as foreign terrorist organizations in the coming days.  (link)

When (Muslim-Brotherhood-Aligned) Mohammed al-Zawahiri, brother to CORE al-Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, was released from Egyptian prison in March 2011, he began to construct a network between Egypt and Eastern-Libya radical Islamist affiliates.   Part of that structure was contact with a Libyan islamist called Abu Bin Qumu.  As a consequence CORE al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri sent experienced jihadists to help in Libya.

Today the U.S. State Department claims CORE al-Qaeda has no connection to the Benghazi 9/11/12 attack carried out by Ansar al-Sharia.  While simultaneously saying:

“Militiamen under the command of Abu Sufian bin Qumu, the leader of Ansar al-Sharia in the Libyan city of Darnah, participated in the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans”.(link)

Can you see the propaganda ?

(more…)

…”A problem is that many males – especially black males – are navigating the transition from youth to adulthood with the baggage and difficulties from contact with the criminal justice system”….  (link)

Really, that’s what the authors of the study conclude is the “problem“?   Not the part where they are actually engaging in the criminal behavior, but the fact they are caught while doing it.

(Via Huffington Post)  A large number of American men have already been arrested by the time they’re in their early 20s, according to a new report.

The study, published on Monday in the journal Crime & Delinquency, found that nearly half (49 percent) of African-American men and 40 percent of white men have been arrested by the age of 23, “which can hurt their ability to find work, go to school and participate fully in their communities,” according to a press release.

The research was based on an analysis of national survey data from 1997 to 2008 of teenagers and young adults. The arrests included minor crimes like truancy as well as serious violent crimes. It excluded traffic offenses.  (continue reading)

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