Via Gateway Pundit
Greta Van Susteren
The White House Welcomes An ARMY Deserter As Hero
Watch Bowe Bergdahl’s unit team leader tell Jake Tapper that Bowe actively sought out the Taliban, HERE.
Just when you think that Obama and his admin couldn’t do anything so egregious as it has already has… Obama and Co. go and do something so jaw dropping that you would think it is fiction. Really. For those that are not aware of the story, lets start with Twitchy catching us up:
An American soldier, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held prisoner in Afghanistan since 2009, has been released from captivity after successful negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban:
Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces by the Taliban Saturday evening, local time, in an area of eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border. Officials said the exchange was not violent and the 28-year-old Bergdahl was in good condition and able to walk.
The announcement of Sgt. Bergdahl’s release was made earlier today (click to enlarge):
We traded five senior [again, senior] Taliban prisoners for a single soldier. Before we get to who the five Taliban prisoners were we should ask who the soldier is and how he was captured. CNN did a great job in telling the story at the top, likewise, Larry Elder catches us up with a Military Times article where he quotes from some of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s compatriots who served HONORABLY next to this deserter:
John Lilyea, over at This Ain’t Hell, smartly comments on the situation:
Since Bergdahl was “captured” or whatever happened, I took the position that we should all shut up about the speculation of the circumstances involving his capture. I heard rumors early in the news of his capture, but I always figured that if he had value to whoever who was holding him, he’d be kept alive – and no matter what he did, he probably didn’t deserve to be beheaded for it.
But, that’s all changed now that he’s in US hands and no longer in danger. I’ve been reading all of the reports on the internet from folks who claimed to serve with Bergdahl and I’ve read the lists of names of troops who lost their lives searching for him. But, I’m in the business of doubting everything I read that is related to the military on the internet. So, I’ll wait for the trial and/or the inquiry. You know there will have to be a 15-6 investigation (for an Article 32 hearing – a military grand jury).
I suspect that Bergdahl is a stank-ass hippie who accidentally joined the Army and decided to smell some Afghan flowers one night. I have no doubts that he thought that the Taliban or Haqqani Network would welcome him open arms, you know because of his inherent stank-ass hippie naivete. I have no doubts that he tried to escape from them at some point because, he escaped from the Army when things weren’t what he thought they’d be.
I also think that Shinseki resigned, along with Jay Carney yesterday because they knew the news would be swallowed up by the news that Bergdahl was released – I’m sure the news on tomorrow’s Sunday shows will be about the release of Bergdahl and how the President pulled off this great victory, and it will all be an attempt to cover up the scandals which are legion. By Monday, there will be no scandal about the VA – because Shinseki resigned and because “Bergdahl!”
The Daily Surge also weighs in on the issue:
He had been acting strange, telling people in his unit he wanted to “walk the earth,” and kept a journal writing about how he was meant for better things. No one thought anything about it. He was considered a little “out there”.
He detailed his disillusionment in an email to his parents three days before he went missing. “I am sorry for everything here,” he wrote, “these people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them they are nothing and they are stupid.”
In another email he wrote, ” I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools,” he concluded, ” I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”
Later he took some water, a compass and a knife, left his weapon, and departed. Later that day, a drone and four fighter jets began to search for him.
Weeks of searching turned into months. The military pushed his parents and fellow soldiers to sign non-disclosure agreements. The US government knew full well that he had deserted.
There is no way to know what he told the Taliban. The truth is we lost good men trying to find him. PFC Matthew Michael Martinek, Staff Sgt. Kurt Robert Curtiss, SSG Clayton Bowen,PFC Morris Walker, SSG Michael Murphrey, 2LT Darryn Andrews were all KIA from his unit.
Sgt. Bergdahl should be tried under UCMJ for being a deserter and judged for what he did. Bergdahl is not a hero, he is not a soldier. He failed his brothers. Now sons and daughters are growing up without fathers who died because of him and he will have to face the truth someday.
Dick Cheney Weighs In
Stephen Hayes over at the Weekly Standard interviewed many of Bergdahl’s mates, and ALL of them he talked to consider him a traitor. In fact, in an Interview on the Hugh Heweitt Show about the below excerpted article said that he doesn’t know of anyone from Bergdahl’s unit who disagrees with the position that he is a traitor:
In an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, National Security Adviser Susan Rice claimed that Bergdahl “wasn’t simply a hostage, he was an American prisoner of war, taken on the battlefield.” She added: “He served the United States with honor and distinction.”
“That’s not true,” says Specialist Cody Full, who served in the same platoon as Bergdahl, and whose tweets over the weekend as @CodyFNfootball offered an early firsthand account of Bergdahl’s departure.
“He was not a hero. What he did was not honorable. He knowingly deserted and put thousands of people in danger because he did. We swore to an oath and we upheld ours. He did not.”
“He walked off—and ‘walked off’ is a nice way to put it,” says Specialist Josh Cornelison, the medic in Bergdahl’s platoon.
“He was accounted for late that afternoon. He very specifically planned to walk out in the middle of the night.” “He was a deserter,” says Specialist Full. “There’s no question in the minds of anyone in our platoon.”
[….]
“You don’t mail all your personal belongings home, especially your computer. It’s not like you can go to a sports bar — there’s no sports bars over there,” says Specialist Full. “You just wouldn’t give up your computer if you weren’t planning to leave. He knowingly deserted and he put countless fellow Americans in danger — not just his platoon mates.”
[….]
One uncomfortable question that has vexed those involved in the Bergdahl case: Was Bergdahl merely a deserter or was he, possibly, a Taliban collaborator?
Okay. This gets us caught up with who Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is, and how his actions have made him the bane of HONORABLE military men and women all across our nation. This next part has me wagging my head in disbelief. Walid Shoebat enlightens us on the matter. Obama had a Rose Garden press conference about the release that included Bowe Bergdahl’s father, Robert Bergdahl, giving an Arab prayer:
People are making an issue of the smile from Obama. They have valid points. It could also be a nervous reaction as Obama is flipping-out in his head about the disaster he knows is coming because of this call to arms in Arabic. Yes, call to arms. Shoebat:
…While the Obama administration is proudly touting how it was able to free an American soldier who was captured by the Taliban, what no one picked is the fact that Obama SMILED as soon as he heard the most famous war cry of Islam, “bismillah al-rahman al-rahim,” Arabic for “in the name of Allah the most gracious, the most merciful.”
[….]
The “basmallah” is the Islamic expression for victory and only indicates that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s father is a Muslim. Think that the man is acting as “Muslim” for a stealth operation to rescue his son who is already in good hands in Germany?
And what is with the long beard and trimmed mustache?
No this is not a bum, biker, or a Santa Clause fan. When one gives the basmallah, trims his mustache and elongates his beard, its the first sign of a convert to Islam, j
[….]EVIDENCE THAT BERGDAHL CONVERTED TO JIHADI ISLAM 
We were first hit with news from Brietbart that the Taliban said that Robert Bowe Bergdahl’s son, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, converted to Islam, changed his name to Abdullah, and even trained the Taliban in bomb making techniques.
And like father like son, the young Bergdahl, also trims his mustache and extends his beard, as [this picture to the right shows]:
[….]
But is it the speech with the Basmallah, the beard and the trimmed mustache, the testimonies from his colleagues on his desertion, that confirm our suspicion that these men are Jihadi converts? Hardly.
What no one in the media captured was Robert Bowe Bergdahl’s favorites on his Youtube account. It reveals a dark mind, a collector of a litany of ‘terrorist favorites’, videos from training on how to become Muslim Jihadist to urging American troops to desert and even favorite speeches by confirmed terrorists like Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki, condemning America as a terrorist state:
WTF!?
This guy, who deserted his post, who has a whacked Islamic father, is who our men in the military died for!? We lost these HEROES…
- PFC Matthew Michael Martinek, Died September 11, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 20, of DeKalb, Ill.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Sept. 11 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, of wounds sustained in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Sept. 4 when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised-explosive device followed by a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire.
- Staff Sgt. Kurt Robert Curtiss, Died August 26, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 27, of Murray, Utah; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Aug. 26 in Sar Howzeh, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was shot while his unit was supporting Afghan security forces during an enemy attack.
- SSG Clayton Bowen, Died August 18, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 29, of San Antonio; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Aug. 18 in Dila, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Also killed was Pfc. Morris L. Walker.
- PFC Morris Walker, Died August 18, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 23, of Chapel Hill, N.C.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Aug. 18 in Dila, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Also killed was Staff Sgt. Clayton P. Bowen.
- SSG Michael Murphrey, Died September 6, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 25, of Snyder, Texas; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Sept. 6 in FOB Sharana, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. were ALL KIA FROM OUR UNIT WHO DIED LOOKING FOR Bergdahl.
- Many others from various units were wounded or killed while actively looking for Bergdahl.
…for THAT guy!? And Obama has a Rose Garden victory lap where a guy spouts an Islamic prayer?! I say again,
WTF!?
And, since when did the Taliban become anything but terrorists? Libertarian Republican reminds us of something:
From the NYTimes 2007, “Obama: Man of the World”:
- Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Something Shoebat also notes in his post:
Obama has never declared the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and has no real testimony of converting to Christianity, as his pastor Jeremiah Wright stated:
- I made it easy for him to come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ is and not feel that he was turning his back on his Islamic friends and his Islamic traditions and his understanding of Islam From the Obama Admins love of the Muslim Brotherhood, to this… please tell me how this helps American security and moral? Now the Taliban are official “enemy combatants?”
The next step in this saga, then, is to ask the question about who we are trading that are non-terrorists and what the consequences of such actions may be. The Daily Beast has identified them a bit:
According to a 2008 Pentagon dossier on Guantanamo Bay inmates, all five men released were considered to be a high risk to launch attacks against the United States and its allies if they were liberated. The exchange shows that the Obama administration was willing to pay a steep price, indeed, for Bergdahl’s freedom. The administration says they will be transferred to Qatar, which played a key role in the negotiations.
In the initial statements released about the deal, the White House declined to name the detainees who would be leaving the Cuba based prison Obama has been trying to close since his first day in office.
A senior U.S. defense official confirmed Saturday that the prisoners to be released include Mullah Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Khairullah Khairkhwa and Mohammed Nabi Omari.
[….]
“They are undoubtedly among the most dangerous Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo,” said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior editor at the Long War Journal who keeps a close watch on developments concerning the detainees left at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Fazl, for example, was the Taliban’s former deputy defense minister and is wanted by the United Nations for his role in massacres targeting Afghan’s Shi’ite Muslim population.
According to the 2008 Pentagon’s dossier on Fazl disclosed by Wikileaks (PDF), Noori also was a senior Taliban military figure and, according to his Pentagon dossier, was asked personally in 1995 by Osama bin Laden (PDF) to participate in an offensive against northern alliance warlord Rashid Dostum.
Wasiq, a former deputy minister of intelligence, at one point tried to cooperate with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and asked for a GPS system as well as a special radio to communicate with the U.S. military after the U.S. invasion in 2001. His dossier (PDF) says that he was a crucial liaison between the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist groups while he was deputy intelligence minister. But the 2008 report also said he was holding out information he had on other top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders during interrogations.
Khairkhwa, a former Taliban governor of Herat, was considered by the Pentagon’s 2008 dossier to be a likely heroin trafficker (PDF). That dossier also says he likely participated in meetings with Iranian officials after 9-11 to help plot attacks on U.S. forces following the invasion.
Here is more from Fox News:
Abdul Haq Wasiq
Thought to be in his early 40s, Wasiq served as the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence and “had direct access to Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin leadership,” according to an internal memo that assessed risk at Guantanamo. He reportedly used his office to support Al Qaeda “and to assist Taliban personnel elude capture.” He also reportedly arranged for Al Qaeda personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff. Wasiq belongs to the Khogyani Tribe and began his religious training under his father, Muhammad Saleem, who died in 1981.Three years later, he went to study Islam at Warah, a school located on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border near the Khyber Pass. When the Taliban assumed control in Afghanistan, a number of Islamic students, including Wasiq, went to Kabul. Wasiq has been accused by Human Rights Watch of mass killings and torture. According to a report by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, Wasiq “arranged for Al Qaeda personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff in intelligence methods.”
Mullah Norullah Noori
As a senior Taliban military commander, Noori has been described in government reports as a military mastermind of sorts who engaged in hostilities “against U.S. and Coalition forces in Zabul Province.” Noori, who is estimated to be around 46 or 47 years old, has developed close ties to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and other senior Taliban officials, according to a JTF-GTMO report. Noori, who was named as the Taliban governor for the Balkh and Lagman provinces, is wanted by the United Nations for war crimes including the murder and torture of thousands of Shiite Muslims. Noori has been able to remain a “significant figure” to Taliban supporters and sympathizers. According to government records, which are based on conversations with Noori, he grew up in Shajoy where he learned to read and write at a mosque in his village. His father was the imam at the mosque. As a boy, he worked as a farmer on his father’s land. In March 1999, he traveled to Kabul where he met with Mullah Yunis, the commander of the Taliban security base, and expressed interest in joining the Taliban. After the Taliban front lines fell in November 2001, Noori traveled to Konduz where he was trained and worked with Omar. Noori has been implicated in the murder of thousands of Shiites in northern Afghanistan. When asked about the killings, Noori “did not express any regret and stated they did what they needed to do in their struggle to establish their ‘ideal state.’”
Mullah Mohammad Fazi
As the Taliban’s former deputy defense minister, Fazi was held at Guantanamo after being identified as an enemy combatant by the United States. Fazi is an admitted senior commander who served as chief of staff of the Taliban Army and as a commander of its 22nd Division. He’s also wanted by the United Nations on war crimes for the murder of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan. According to documents, Fazi “wielded considerable influence throughout the northern region of Afghanistan and his influence continued after his capture.” The Taliban has used Fazi’s capture as a recruiting tool. “If released, detainee would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties” with other terrorist groups, the Guantanamo report says.
Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa
Khairkhwa is the former governor of the Herat province and has close ties with Usama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. According to the Joint Task Force Guantanamo file, Khairkhwa “represented the Taliban during meetings with Iranian officials seeking to support hostilities against US and coalition forces.” Khairkhwa and his deputies are suspected of being associated with an extremist military training camp run by the Al Qaeda commander Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006. U.S. authorities have also accused Khairkhwa of becoming a powerful opium trafficker.
Mohammad Nabi Omari
As a senior Taliban leader, Nabi Omari has held multiple leadership roles in various terror-related groups. Pre-9/11, Nabi, who is estimated to be in his mid-40s, worked border security for the Taliban – a position that gave him “access to senior Taliban commander and leader of the Haqqani Network, Jalaluddin Haqqani,” according to the JTF-GTMO report. Born in the Khowst Province of Afghanistan, Nabi Omari and his family were forced to resettle as refugees though In Miram Shah, Pakistan after the Soviet Union’s occupation in Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, Nabi Omari returned to Afghanistan where he fought with the mujahideen against the Soviets. During the early 1990s, he ping-ponged between Taliban-related positions and others, including a stint as a used car salesman. In August 2002, Nabi reportedly helped two al Qaeda operatives smuggle missiles in Pakistan. The weapons were smuggled in pieces and the plan was to reassemble the missiles once all of the pieces had been brought across. Nabi was caught in September 2002 and eventually moved to Guantanamo.
All this to say that these guys are really-bad-bad-guys, and that Bergdahl collaborated with the followers of these monsters. Besides becoming living martyrs in the Islamic world, what other deleterious effects does such a release entail for our military men and women? Dennis Prager opines well on the topic, mentioning that even if Bowe Bergdahl had served honorably, the idea that we negotiate with terrorists only increases the danger our military and citizens must deal with already:
This stuff makes you sick to your stomach.
Media Carrying Water for the White House ~ IRS and Benghazi
Maddow: “Did you just call me a cheerleader?”
Rep. Huelskamp: “I don’t know, maybe you have that history. I’m saying—”
Maddow: “No, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold on.”
Rep. Huelskamp: “When you’re a cheerleader for the administration, you’re not being a journalist. When you’re not willing to look at the facts. If it was Bush, you would be jumping and screaming.”
FrontPage Magazine has a story about Judicial Watch — through court order — getting emails that show collusion on the part of the White House… and ultimately, media cover-up. After quoting and email, some FP commentary about Benghazi is worth noting:
…This revelation appears to contradict written testimony given by Morell to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last April, during which he insisted that “there is no truth to the allegations that the CIA or I ‘cooked the books’ with regard to what happened in Benghazi and then tried to cover this up after the fact.” Morell also claimed it was Rice, not the CIA, who linked the video to the attack. “My reaction was two-fold,” he told Committee members, “One was that what she said about the attacks evolving spontaneously from a protest was exactly what the talking points said, and it was exactly what the intelligence community analysts believed. When she talked about the video, my reaction was, that’s not something that the analysts have attributed this attack to.”
Why is all this important? Because the false narrative concocted by the Obama administration deflected blame away from the State Department and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for not protecting the dedicated diplomats she had posted in post-Qhaddafi Libya. This was a highly volatile environment and a burgeoning haven for terrorist groups, something the Obama administration did not want to admit. Morell has since left the CIA and joined a consulting firm founded by former aides to Clinton, front-runner for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president. This is a key issue of public trust that must be addressed. (The Foundry)
Rhodes’ email blows Morell’s allegation out of the water, but a critical question remains unanswered: who did brief Rice in the aforementioned “prep call”?
[….]
Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who believes the newly released emails completely undermine President Obama’s 2012 campaign narrative (i.e. “Al Qaeda is on the run”), also believes a more thorough investigation of Benghazi is warranted. “I think the Republicans have something here that really ought to be looked at,” he said Tuesday. “I just don’t know if there’s gonna be any interest in the mainstream media. They should, because this exposes a cover-up of a cover-up. The fact that it was redacted when the documents were asked for and only revealed by a court order is telling you this is a classic cover-up of a cover-up, and that is a serious offense.”
What Krauthammer is referring to is the reality that Rhodes’ email wasn’t included in the 100 pages of emails released by the administration last May, when Republicans refused to confirm John Brennan as CIA director until the “taking points” memos were released.
Yet Krauthammer’s other point about a lack of mainstream media interest is just as germane. Some of that lack may be driven by the reality that Ben Rhodes’ brother is CBS News President David Rhodes, who was not enamored with former CBS investigative report Sharyl Attkisson’s reporting on the attack, despite the fact that she had been one of the few reporters to follow the story wherever it led. Yesterday in interview with Glenn Beck, Attkisson said she was glad to see “a little more light” shed on that relationship, even as she bemoaned the incestuous relationship between Big Government and Big Media, and the increasing level of intimidation aimed at journalists who refuse to abide that collaboration.
Unfortunately, many in the media are still willing to carry water for the White House. The George Soros-funded Media Matters insists Fox News is “distorting” the use of Ben Rhodes’ memo “to falsely suggest that the administration was lying about the Benghazi attacks for political gain.” Slate’s Dave Weigel claims the email “was largely redundant” and that the talking points blaming the attacks on a video “came from the CIA,” apparently ignoring Morrel’s testimony. Politico Magazine Deputy Editor Blake Hounshell tweeted, ”Can you point me to a credible, authoritative story saying the WH knowingly pushed a false narrative?” demonstrating a willful obliviousness to the efforts undertaken by Attkisson, Karl and Fox’s Catherine Herridge.
That’s water-carrying by commission. There’s also water-carrying by omission. On Tuesday, when this story first broke, CBS This Morning was the only network broadcast to cover it. ABC, CBS and NBC completely omitted the story from their evening broadcasts.
Many left leaning — influential — bloggers on the left sway their larger counterparts to the progressive agenda: 
Progressive Bloggers Are Doing the White House’s Job
When Jay Carney was grilled at length by Jonathan Karl of ABC News over an email outlining administration talking points in the wake of the 2012 Benghazi attack, it was not, by the reckoning of many observers, the White House press secretary’s finest hour. Carney was alternately defensive and dismissive, arguably fueling a bonfire he was trying to tamp down.
But Carney needn’t have worried. He had plenty of backup.
He had The New Republic’s Brian Beutler dismissing Benghazi as “nonsense.” He had Slate’s David Weigel, along with The Washington Post’s Plum Line blog, debunking any claim that the new email was a “smoking gun.” Media Matters for America labeled Benghazi a “hoax.” Salon wrote that the GOP had a “demented Benghazi disease.” Daily Kos featured the headline: “Here’s Why the GOP Is Fired Up About Benghazi—and Here’s Why They’re Wrong.” The Huffington Post offered “Three Reasons Why Reviving Benghazi Is Stupid—for the GOP.”
It’s been a familiar pattern since President Obama took office in 2009: When critics attack, the White House can count on a posse of progressive writers to ride to its rescue. Pick an issue, from the Affordable Care Act to Ukraine to the economy to controversies involving the Internal Revenue Service and Benghazi, and you’ll find the same voices again and again, on the Web and on Twitter, giving the president cover while savaging the opposition. And typically doing it with sharper tongues and tighter arguments than the White House itself.
While the bond between presidential administrations and friendly opinion-shapers goes back as far as the nation itself, no White House has ever enjoyed the luxury that this one has, in which its arguments and talking points can be advanced on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis. No longer must it await the evening news or the morning op-ed page to witness the fruits of its messaging efforts.
[….]
Joan Walsh, an editor-at-large at Salon, brought this tension to a head last year when she slammed Klein for being too critical of the Obamacare rollout and, in essence, giving aid and comfort to the enemy. “On one hand, yes, it’s important for Democrats to acknowledge when government screws up, and to fix it,” Walsh wrote. “On the other hand, when liberals rush conscientiously to do that, they only encourage the completely unbalanced and unhinged coverage of whatever the problem might be.”
Unbalanced. Interesting word for a card-carrying member of the progressive media to use.
Nadal Hasan = “Workplace Violence,” Supporters of Bundy Ranch…
Gay Patriot Slam-Dunks This!
- Nadal Hasan murders 14 people at Fort Hood While screaming “Allahu Akbar!” Not a terrorist.
- American citizens come together and, without firing a shot, protect a Nevada rancher from Federal Agencies who assaulted his family, killed his cattle, and destroyed his equipment. These are the people Democrats consider “domestic terrorists.”
I am reasonably confident King George III considered George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson to be “domestic terrorists,” too.
UPDATE (from Jeff): V makes a great point, one that bears repeating and that GP has before documented with links (e.g., here and here).
Moonbattery makes the great point that:
…In stark contrast stand the righteous upholders of law and order, who repeatedly tasered Bundy’s son, threw his sister to the ground, shot his bulls, chased cattle with helicopters, tore up his fences, pointed sniper rifles at American citizens, trampled a sacred turtle burrow, et cetera.
Yet again Reid proves himself to be completely out of step with his constituents, whom he denounces rather than even pretending to represent. It doesn’t matter. As a Founding Father of oligarchical collectivism said, “The people who count the votes decide everything.” Guess who counts the votes in Nevada?
Update your Newspeak dictionaries. The word terrorist has now been redefined to mean “anyone who frustrates our rulers.” This is an improvement, because back when it meant “someone who has committed an act of terror,” the term was offensive to our government’s Muslim allies….
Census Bureau Under White House Information Umbrella
On Wednesday, MSNBC’s Al Sharpton scoffed at the latest allegations that the White House is trying to cook the books on ObamaCare numbers by changing the Census questions.
I previously posted on this in a post entitled, “Another Republican Claim Proven Right — Census Bureau.” Much to the Party Line chagrin of not so sharp Sharpton, when a respected centrist wonk like Megan McArdle is cracking open her thesaurus to describe her alarm and disgust over the changes — and thus the baseline — in the Census Bereua’s matrix, you know the fit is hitting the shan! Here is HotAir’s post:
….For several months now, whenever the topic of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act came up, I’ve been saying that it was too soon to tell its ultimate effects. We don’t know how many people have paid for their new insurance policies, or how many of those who bought policies were previously uninsured. For that, I said, we will have to wait for Census Bureau data, which offer the best assessment of the insurance status of the whole population. Other surveys are available, but the samples are smaller, so they’re not as good; the census is the gold standard. Unfortunately, as I invariably noted, these data won’t be available until 2015. I stand corrected: These data won’t be available at all. Ever.
Why? Because as the New York Times reported, the Census Bureau has decided to throw out its 30-year formula (and therefore its baseline) on measuring America’s uninsured population, and replace it with a new methodology. The revised math, according to Census officials, will result in much sunnier-looking results. Independent of the statistical merits of this change, the timing, quite literally, could not be worse. McArdle is aghast:
I’m speechless. Shocked. Stunned. Horrified. Befuddled. Aghast, appalled, thunderstruck, perplexed, baffled, bewildered and dumbfounded. It’s not that I am opposed to the changes: Everyone understands that the census reports probably overstate the true number of the uninsured, because the number they report is supposed to be “people who lacked insurance for the entire previous year,” but people tend to answer with their insurance status right now. But why, dear God, oh, why, would you change it in the one year in the entire history of the republic that it is most important for policy makers, researchers and voters to be able to compare the number of uninsured to those in prior years? The answers would seem to range from “total incompetence on the part of every level of this administration” to something worse.
She affirms that she does mean every level of the administration, citing this passage in the Times piece:
The White House is always looking for evidence to show the benefits of the health law, which is an issue in many of this year’s midterm elections. The Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Council of Economic Advisers requested several of the new questions, and the White House Office of Management and Budget approved the new questionnaire.
This tectonic shift was requested and approved by the White House…
Greta Van Susteren and Mike’s “War on Fox” ~ Unbelievable!
This comes via HotAir… and yes, I agree with Greta, “Mike IS a piece of work.”
Here is Mike showing a “funny” flag, followed by a tweet from Pissed Patriot and others making light of Mike’s imbecility… “bless his heart”
ObamaCare So-Called Success Story Says She Can`t Afford ObamaCare ~ CNN
This comes via Gateway Pundit:
The Weekly Standard reported:
“Jessica Sanford was cited by the president as an Obamacare success story at a health care event he had here at the White House in the Rose Garden on October 21,” says a reporter for CNN from the White House. “That of course being just last month. The 48-year-old single mom from Washington state purchased what she considered to be affordable health care, life-changing event, she said, on the Washington state health exchange. She decided she was so excited about this news, she wanted to write an e-mail to the president to say that this had really changed her life and that she was thankful for the Afforable Care Act. The president included her e-mail in his remarks to people on hand for the event. Here’s a bit of what the president had to say.”
The CNN report quotes President Obama as saying, “I recently received a letter from a woman named Jessica Sanford in Washington state. And here’s what she wrote, I am a single mom, no child support, self-employed. and I haven’t had insurance for 15 years because it’s too expensive. I was crying the other day when I signed up, so much stress lifted.”
Again, Bills (taxes) Must Originate in the House, Obamacare Originated in the Senate
Not constitutional, ergo, not law — from a previous post:
c. Since this is a direct tax, via the Court, this has another Constitutional ground to lose on or for Congress to overturn on. That is this:
Article 1, Section 3, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution [Apportionment of Representatives; Direct Taxes]: Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union…
Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution, Paragraph 1 [Bills of Revenue Originate in House]: All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.
d. BECAUSE it is a tax, reconciliation can be used to repeal the law.
Now Breitbart
One of the big Democrat talking points about ObamaCare is to bleat that it’s “constitutional,” blessed by the Supreme Court, and is the “settled law of the land.” They never explain how this is supposed to intimidate the nominally free people of the Republican from changing or repealing it – presumably it is meant to be taken as the first law in history that must be obeyed without question, forever, more powerful and permanent than the Constitution itself
But it’s not true anyway. Andrew McCarthy at National Review reminds us that, contrary to Democrat rhetoric, ObamaCare was not held constitutional by the Supreme Court. Sorry, lefties, but it just wasn’t. The bill as written would have been struck down. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts rewrote the bill on the fly to make it constitutional.
One of the ideas we occasionally hear floated to make the ruling class suffer the full pain of the law they inflicted upon the rest of us is to pass a bill requiring the enforcement of ObamaCare precisely as it was passed, since it has never legally been amended. An orthodontist in Florida teamed up with Judicial Watch to file a lawsuit along these lines recently, with an eye to countering President Obama’s flagrantly illegal rescheduling of the employer mandate. If such a suit was successful, it should logically lead to the Supreme Court striking down ObamaCare, since it was not constitutional as passed by Congress and signed by the President.
But the Affordable Care Act should have died the moment it left the Supreme Court anyway. As McCarthy points out, the Roberts-rewritten law might have been (barely) held constitutional, at the cost of making Obama a shameless liar during all the years he claimed it wasn’t a tax… but that also made the ACA illegal, because it’s a tax bill, and those must originate in the House, while ObamaCare originated in the Senate.
Now the National Review:
…We now know Obamacare was tax legislation. Consequently, it was undeniably a “bill for raising revenue,” for which the Constitution mandates compliance with the Origination Clause (Art. I, Sec. 7). The Clause requires that tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives. Obamacare did not.
[….]
…Obamacare originated in the Senate.
It was introduced in Congress in 2009 by Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who called it the “Senate health care bill” (a description still touted long afterwards on Reid’s website). Employing the chicanery that marked the legislation through and through, the Democrat-controlled Senate turned its 3,000-page mega-proposal into a Senate amendment. The Senate attached its amendment to a nondescript, uncontroversial House bill (the “Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009”) that had unanimously passed (416–0) in the lower chamber.
Thanks to the Supreme Court, it is now undeniable that Obamacare was tax legislation. It was also, by its own proclamation, a bill for raising revenue. Democrats maintained that the Senate proposal would reduce the federal budget deficit by $130 billion. More to the point, the bill contained 17 explicit “Revenue Provisions” — none of which was remotely related to the House bill to which the Senate proposal was attached.
Therefore, Obamacare is revenue-raising tax legislation, originated in the Senate in violation of the Constitution.
Greta Van Susteren Lays Down the `Law` for Martin Attorney Jasmine Rand ~ Social Engineering!?
Via Moonbattery:
Not even the often obtusely centrist Greta Van Susteren had the belly to endure Jasmine Rand, left-wing attorney for Saint Skittle’s newly rich parents. Watch her lay into the self-described “social engineer”