Army Chief: Just 2 Brigades Combat-Ready

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Photo Credit: REUTERSArmy Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno revealed this week that just two Army brigades are combat-ready, with budget cuts hampering the military’s ability to train its own troops.

The startling comments were made Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army conference. Odierno and Army Secretary John McHugh both addressed the fallout from the budget cuts, as well as the recent partial government shutdown, and appealed to lawmakers to restore some stability to military funding.

“Functioning like this is just dysfunctional,” Odierno said.

He said that after the sequester kicked in, “we had to stop training basically” in the last six months of the year. He said the recently passed stopgap funding bill has further reduced the Army’s ability to train, and warned that the recurring budget battles in Washington could have serious consequences for America’s fighting force.

“So the worst-case scenario is you ask me deploy thousands of soldiers somewhere, and we have not properly trained them to go, because we simply don’t have the dollars and money,” he said.

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A War That Might Happen

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Photo Credit: National Review Conservatives with long memories had to laugh at the recent New York Times front-page headline: “Fiscal Crisis Sounds the Charge in GOP’s ‘Civil War.’”

That diagnosis largely hangs on the judgment of 1970s New Right direct-mail impresario Richard Viguerie, whose ears have been ringing with the thunder of Fort Sumter for a quarter-century.

Within a week of Ronald Reagan’s 1981 inauguration, Viguerie was denouncing the Gipper as a traitor to the cause. The Associated Press ran a story headlined “Conservatives Angry with Reagan.” Viguerie was the centerpiece: “Almost every conservative I have talked to in the last two months has been disappointed in the initial appointments to the Reagan Cabinet.”

By July of that year, the Washington Post ran a news story, “For Reagan and the New Right, the Honeymoon Is Over,” which included many anti-Reagan barbs. After the 1990 midterms, Viguerie told USA Today, “You just heard the opening shots of a civil war within the Republican Party.”

Then again, just because Viguerie is predicting something doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I’ve always loved the story of the British intelligence officer whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century: “Year after year the worriers and fretters would come to me with awful predictions of the outbreak of war. I denied it each time. I was only wrong twice.”

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Is this the Proper American Muslim Response to Jihad in America?

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Photo Credit: kudusyolu_qudswayOn Friday, October 11, a Muslim convert who calls himself Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum was taken off a terror-bound bus in California and arrested for aiding and abetting the jihadi group al-Qaeda. Another Muslim busted for jihad in America.

This is hardly new or unique. We see these reports daily. Muslims and converts to Islam wage jihad in the cause of Islam. They cite the Quran, chapter and verse. Muslims worldwide continue the 1,400-year-old war to impose Islam across the world — all citing the same Islamic texts and teachings.

There is a problem in Islam.

So what is the response of the Muslim community?

On the same day that Hassan Abu Omar Ghannoum was arrested, the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California issued a statement: “We share the collective concern for the safety of our communities and security of our nation.” However, it went on to say: “We ask that law enforcement officials and members of the media refrain from assuming that the alleged criminal’s wrongful conduct, if any, was a product of his self-proclaimed faith or associations with members of the southern California Muslim community.”

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Report: NSA Spied on 124 Billion Phone Calls in One Month

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The National Security Agency recorded information about more than 124 billion phone calls during a 30-day period earlier this year, including around 3 billion calls from U.S. sources, according to a tally from top-secret documents released by multiple news outlets.

Documents revealing details about the NSA’s Boundless Informant program show that information regarding billions of phone calls and computer communications was collected by the agency from across the world.

Boundless Informant “allows users to select a country on a map and view the meta data volume and select details about the collections against that country,” according to the Guardian, which first reported on the top secret program earlier this year.

Multiple leaked screenshots of the Boundless Informant program show that information on around 124.8 billion phone calls were collected in just 30-days this year, according to documents released by the Guardian and other news sites.

The documents provide a window into the sheer volume of data being collected by the NSA as late as March of this year, according to the Guardian.

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US Gov’t Takes Bank Of America To Court And Wins, Jury Finds Countrywide Liable For Fraud

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Photo Credit: Forbes Thought those mortgage lawsuits against banks were winding down? Think again.

Today a jury found Bank of America liable for defrauding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac when its Countrywide unit sold it bad mortgages.

The jury also found former Countrywide executive, Rebecca Mairone, liable on the one fraud charge facing her, Reuters reports.

The verdict is a win for the US government as this is one of the few cases stemming from the financial crisis that it’s taken to trial.

“In a rush to feed at the trough of easy mortgage money on the eve of the financial crisis, Bank of America purchased Countrywide, thinking it had gobbled up a cash cow. That profit, however, was built on fraud, as the jury unanimously found,” US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

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Police Officer Who Pepper-Sprayed UC Davis Protesters Awarded $38,000 Settlement (+video)

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Photo Credit: Wayne Tilcock, The Davis EnterpriseA former University of California-Davis police officer made famous after being filmed pepper-spraying seated activists during a Nov. 2011 protest has been awarded a $38,059 workers’ compensation settlement, The Guardian reports.

John Pike, a 40-year-old former lieutenant on the university police force, claimed he suffered from depression and anxiety after receiving death threats following the incident.

A judge approved the settlement between Pike and the university on Oct. 16, according to KCRA.

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White House Now Denying Top Democrat’s Claim About ‘I Cannot Even Stand to Look at You’ Obama Moment

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesBy Fred Lucas.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the charge from Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that an unidentified Republican House leader told President Barack Obama, “I cannot even stand to look at you” during government shutdown negotiations is not accurate — but Durbin is standing by his story.

A reporter Wednesday referred to Durbin’s claim on Facebook that a member of Congress told the president to his face that he couldn’t stand to look at him.

Carney, clearly prepared for the question, gave a direct answer.

“I looked into this and spoke with someone who was in that meeting and it did not happen,” Carney said.

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Durbin: House leader told Obama ‘I cannot even stand to look at you’

By Justin Sink.

A top Senate Democrat said that a leading House Republican told President Obama that they could not ‘even stand to look at you’ during negotiations over the government shutdown.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a Facebook post that the alleged confrontation happened during a meeting between Republicans and the president.

“Many Republicans searching for something to say in defense of the disastrous shutdown strategy will say President Obama just doesn’t try hard enough to communicate with Republicans,” Durbin said. “But in a ‘negotiation’ meeting with the president, one GOP House Leader told the president: ‘I cannot even stand to look at you.'”

“What are the chances of an honest conversation with someone who has just said something so disrespectful?” the Illinois Democrat added.

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Nine Generals Fired, Two Military Leaders Suspended

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Photo Credit: Ben Swann Nine commanding Generals have been fired, and two other leaders are on suspension, in a historic military shake up…

“I think they’re using the opportunity of the shrinkage of the military to get rid of people that don’t agree with them or not tow the party line. Remember, as (former White House chief of staff) Rahm Emanuel said, never waste a crisis,” a senior retired general told TheBlaze on the condition of anonymity because he still provide services to the government and fears possible retribution…

Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, an outspoken critic of the Obama administration, said the White House fails to take action or investigate its own, but finds it easy to fire military commanders “who have given their lives for their country.”

“Obama will not purge a civilian or political appointee because they have bought into Obama’s ideology,” Vallely said. “The White House protects their own. That’s why they stalled on the investigation into fast and furious, Benghazi and Obamacare. He’s intentionally weakening and gutting our military, Pentagon and reducing us as a superpower, and anyone in the ranks who disagrees or speaks out is being purged.”

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What Happens to Unborn Babies After Abortion? Pathologists Share the Horrors

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Photo Credit: LifeNews One of the most convenient things about abortion is that it takes care of the perceived “problem” in a permanent way—people walk into the abortion clinic with a child growing inside them, and leave after the child’s forcible eviction. The pro-life movement tries to prevent people from entering the abortion clinic in the first place, and urges people to seek healing if they decide to go through with the abortion after all. So what happens to the babies after they are killed?

Some, we know, are cremated. Others are tossed in the trash, and discovered by pro-lifers like Dr. Monica Miller, who dutifully record their fate and give them the funeral and respect their humanity demands. But what about the other babies—the ones shipped off in containers and sealed buckets to pathology labs? When searching for the answer to that question, I found a series of horrifying testimonies on a Student Doctor Network Forum hosted by St. George’s University. On the discussion board, those who worked with the bodies of aborted babies shared their horror at what they saw.

“Anyone get tripped on these?” one wrote (spelling and grammar errors his), “I’m talking especially the big ones, where you can actually make out facial expressions like they knew they were being hacked the hell up (im serious). I almost went bonkers once over one, that is some scary crap. Am I the only pathologist who freaks when a 0.5 cm eye ball comes rolling out of bag and stares right at you…I know we are thinking this, just no one in pathology is talking about it.”

Another pathologist, identifying himself as “Andy Milonakis,” responded by saying, “Totally trippy man. We get a fair number of fragmented fetuses from abortion procedures and they come in a container with formalin. The fact that they’re all hacked up is disturbing to begin with. Of course, there is the whole eyeball issue which freaks me out as well. Echoing in my mind is the sound effects from the movie Psycho…Reee Reee Reee Reee Reee Reee Reee!”

The original poster continued, describing an absolutely nightmarish scene:

“One incident really freaked me, it was a boy fetus, at least 3+ pounds, around 24+ weeks. It sat decomposing because the rest of the staff was AFRAID of it, Im not joking. Then the chief of staff told me to deal with it because I was the FNG (f-kcin new guy) so I went to work. Pulled out 2 well formed arms and then the torso, headless. The head was at the bottom of the container, when I pulled it, he had this expression of such utter horror it flipped me wayyyy out, my PA saw it and ran, literally left work and went on disability (Im serious here). It was like a headless screaming baby, like it had been born at least for a split second to realize it was screwed and let out one agonal yelp. The story of this reverberated around the department, someone actually accused me of doing what should have been a ME case and threatened to call the medical board! Im not joking, I woke up once shortly after that in a cold sweat with piss running down my leg….not pretty.”

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States Get Sued for Enforcing ‘Gay Rights’

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Photo Credit: WNDLawsuits against Christians – sometimes even churches – have become common when they refuse to support non-Christian events, such as same-sex weddings. But now those defendants have started to fight back, filing lawsuits against state officials who are trying to coerce them to violate their faith.

WND reported in May when a Washington state florist sued Attorney General Bob Ferguson for allegedly trying to violate the state and federal constitutions’ religious freedom provisions.

And this week the Christian Institute in the United Kingdom profiled an Iowa couple suing their state’s Civil Rights Commission for the same reason.

“They have filed their own complaint saying that if the commission forces them to go against their beliefs and host gay weddings this would be a violation of the Iowa Civil Rights Act,” the Institute reports.

At issue is a claim against the Mennonite couple, Dick and Betty Odgaard, who own and operate the Gortz Haus Gallery, an old church building that is used for a variety of private events.

Read more from this story HERE.