The jihadi group Jabhat al-Nusra announced on July 28 that it had severed all ties to al Qaeda and established a new movement in Syria: Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, or “the Front for the Conquest of the Levant.” The unprecedented move was formally sanctioned by al Qaeda’s senior leadership and comes as the group has also revealed its leader’s identity for the first time.
In a video statement televised simultaneously on pro-opposition Orient News and on Al Jazeera, Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani — whose real name was separately revealed to be Ahmed Hussein al-Shara — presented the split as one driven by a desire “to form a unified body” of Islamist forces and to bring together the disparate factions of Syria’s revolution to best ensure the credible defense of Islam from attack. Continuing a long-held theme, Jolani introduced Jabhat Fateh al-Sham as a movement that would exist to “protect” and to “serve,” rather than to rule or oppress. He also said that the international community’s increasing attention to the group, due to its al Qaeda links, was a reason for “the complete cancellation of all operations under the name of Jabhat al-Nusra.”
Nobody should be confused by this maneuver: Jabhat al-Nusra, which is also known as the Nusra Front, remains as potentially dangerous, and as radical, as ever. In severing its ties to al Qaeda, the organization is more clearly than ever demonstrating its long-game approach to Syria, in which it seeks to embed within revolutionary dynamics and encourage Islamist unity to outsmart its enemies, both near and far. In this sense, the Nusra Front (and now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham) differ markedly from the Islamic State, which has consistently acted alone and in outright competition with other Islamist armed factions. Instead of unity, the Islamic State explicitly seeks division.
Ultimately, while this may be a change in name and formal affiliation, Jolani’s group will remain largely the same. Therefore, this is by no means a loss to al Qaeda. In fact, it is merely the latest reflection of a new and far more potentially effective method of jihad focused on collective, gradualist, and flexible action. Its goal is to achieve recurring tactical gains that one day will amount to a substantial strategic victory: the establishment of an Islamic emirate with sufficient popular acceptance or support. (Read more from “The Nusra Front Is Dead and Stronger Than Ever Before” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/PFLP-group-1969.jpg16392422Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-30 00:31:512016-07-30 00:31:51The Nusra Front Is Dead and Stronger Than Ever Before
North Korea’s top diplomat for U.S. affairs told The Associated Press on Thursday that Washington “crossed the red line” and effectively declared war by putting leader Kim Jong Un on its list of sanctioned individuals, and said a vicious showdown could erupt if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned next month.
Han Song Ryol, director-general of the U.S. affairs department at the North’s Foreign Ministry, said in an interview that recent U.S. actions have put the situation on the Korean Peninsula on a war footing.
The United States and South Korea regularly conduct joint military exercises south of the Demilitarized Zone, and Pyongyang typically responds to them with tough talk and threats of retaliation. (Read more from “N. Korea: US Has Crossed Red Line, Relations on War Footing” HERE)
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Debra Messing is apologizing for her social media outburst.
The outspoken Democrat, 47, came under fire Thursday after she urged Gwen Stefani to take Blake Shelton to task for his comments about Donald Trump.
Shelton, 40, didn’t exactly endorse the Republican nominee when he told Billboard, “Whether you love him or hate him, he says what he thinks, and he has proven that you don’t always have to be so afraid. A lot of people are pulling for him, no matter how much Hollywood fights it.”
Messing had a knee-jerk reaction to the remarks, tweeting to Stefani (before later deleting it), “Omg. How? @gwenstefani please talk to your man to not vote for the person who will STRIP you of your rights.”
Stefani never responded, but Shelton stood up for himself in a series of tweets of his own. “Hey before this gets going like it always does… I haven’t [endorsed] ANYBODY for president,” he wrote. “And I [I’m] not going to. I don’t do that s–t. My comment about ‘wish there was another option but there’s not’ is across the board … period. Now go dig up another story.” (Read more from “Actress Debra Messing Goes After Singer Blake Shelton’s Donald Trump Remarks” HERE)
A minimum wage seems to be a compassionate law requiring employers to pay low-income workers a wage necessary to meet a reasonable standard of living.
So should we have a minimum wage? And if so, what should it be?
The current minimum wage is $7.25, which merely acts as a floor price since most states have their own, higher minimum wages. The 2016 Democrat and Republican presidential nominees both support some sort of minimum wage. Hillary Clinton has advocated for a federal minimum wage of $12 per hour, while Donald Trump has been vague. In some instances, he has called on raising the minimum wage to $10, but in other cases, emphasizes that such policy should be left to the states.
A minimum wage is merely a price. That price is the cost of an hour of labor, a cost your employer must pay. This price can be viewed the same way as any other cost, such as an iPhone, computer, or new pair of shoes.
Like anything, price will be dictated by supply and demand. While you might pay $700 for the new iPhone, it is unlikely that you would pay $5,000 for the same phone. That’s the problem with minimum wage. The more something costs, the fewer people there are who will want to purchase that item (work). So when it comes to a minimum wage, the question becomes: at what cost will an employer decide not to “purchase” (i.e. hire) a new employee.
You may think then that an employer will only offer the lowest price (wages). But that’s certainly not true, either. In fact, if an employer has a high demand for workers in a certain industry, wages will rise. Conversely, when there is an abundance of workers, but too few jobs in another industry, then the wages will tend to fall.
The problem with minimum wages is that they act as a price control by setting a minimum price an employer can pay to hire a worker (hence, “minimum” wage).
This policy actually leads to more unemployment.
When minimum wage laws require a business to pay more than it can afford or is willing to pay, more people are out of work, and fewer businesses are willing to hire.
Even liberal California Governor Jerry Brown, who helped pass a $15 minimum wage, admits that minimum wages are economically harmful. In his own budget he wrote, “such an increase [in the minimum wage] would require deeper cuts to the budget and exacerbate the recession by raising businesses’ costs, resulting in more job losses.” Those are his words, not mine!
Liberals believe that those who oppose minimum wage laws are simply advocating for business. Yet, minimum wage laws are actually antithetical to the freedoms and rights of the workers!
Consider this. Minimum wage laws forbid workers – producers of goods or services – from working for less than what the government requires, or the minimum wage. That means that if the minimum wage was increased to $15, as California has proposed or Bernie Sanders wants nationally, you would be breaking the law if you were willing to be employed in the economy for less than $15 hour – or $31,000 a year.
Yes, that means it would be illegal for a worker to support themselves in a career that pays anything less, even $14 per hour. As I wrote in a previous post, this notion was perfectly summarized by the late economist Henry Hazlitt, when he wrote that limiting employment opportunities, “deprive[s] the man of the independence and self-respect that come from self-support.”
Minimum wages don’t hurt businesses nearly as much as they hurt the very people liberals want to support. Instead of allowing all people to engage in productivity, liberals want to make it illegal to do so unless you get paid a certain level of income. Most individuals would be willing to take a job that pays $14 an hour ($29,000 a year) rather than be unemployed. But unemployment is essentially what the law requires unless you get that extra $1 per hour.
Harvard economist Greg Mankiw ran the statistics on minimum wage and found that it most often impacts teenagers and low-income households. His analysis concluded that a 10 percent rise in the in minimum wage reduces teenage employment by one and three percent. Based on a $15 minimum wage, that would amount to more than 171,000 teenage jobs.
He also concludes that few adult workers have to worry about making minimum wage. His study shows that more than half of all minimum wage workers in the U.S. are under 25 years old – and about a quarter were between 16 and 19 years of age. Most important, only about 3 percent of those over the age of 25 years earn the minimum wage.
The minimum wage doesn’t work, and more often than not, leads to increased unemployment.
Really, it’s quite insane. (For more from the author of “Minimum Wage Laws Don’t Work. Here’s Why” please click HERE)
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s speech Thursday night “an insulting collection of clichés and recycled rhetoric … delivered from a fantasy universe, not the reality we live in today.”
In statements released on Twitter and Facebook, Trump lambasted the speech and said it proved Clinton was not fit to be president.
Hillary's refusal to mention Radical Islam, as she pushes a 550% increase in refugees, is more proof that she is unfit to lead the country.
In a statement released on Facebook, Trump said the speech showed Clinton’s disconnect from the American people.
“She spent the evening talking down to the American people she’s looked down on her whole life,” the statement said, adding that Clinton’s “globalist agenda denies American citizens the protections to which they are all entitled.”
“Her radical amnesty plan will take jobs, resources and benefits from the most vulnerable citizens of the United States and give them to the citizens of other countries. Her refusal to even say the words ‘Radical Islam,’ or to mention her disaster in Libya, or her corrupt email scheme, all show how little she cares about the safety of the American people,” the statement said.
The statement said that although Clinton talked about unity, her proposals would not achieve it.
“Excluded from Hillary Clinton’s America are the suffering people living in our inner cities, or the victims of open borders and drug cartels, or the people who’ve lost their jobs because of the Clintons’ trade deals, or any hardworking person who doesn’t have enough money to get a seat at Hillary Clinton’s table,” the statement said. (For more from the author of “Trump: DNC Speech Beamed Down From Clinton’s ‘Fantasy Universe'” please click HERE)
Recently unearthed documents reveal that the FBI knew the IRS was unfairly targeting groups because of their conservative politics two years before Congress even heard about the agency’s misconduct.
The revelation has already added fodder to the conservative case to impeach the current IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
Almost 300 pages of documents released Thursday and obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act confirm that the IRS subjected conservative groups to increased scrutiny beginning in 2011.
Even though the FBI uncovered the scandal in 2011, the documents show, the Department of Justice chose not to act.
In interviews with FBI agents, IRS officials said that a Cincinnati branch of their agency targeted conservative groups.
“Cincinnati was categorizing cases based on name and ideology, not just activity,” Nancy Marks, a senior official at the IRS, told the FBI. That was in the summer of 2011. The public wouldn’t learn of the scandal until May 2013.
The scandal first erupted at an American Bar Association event when IRS official Lois Lerner answered a planted question about the tax agency’s handling of applications for nonprofit status. She apologized for the inappropriate scrutiny some groups experienced, adding that the conduct “was incorrect, insensitive, and inappropriate.”
The documents expose former IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller as the author who actually wrote Lerner’s response word for word.
After multiple congressional hearings, a vote to censure Lerner, and her eventual retirement, the Department of Justice announced the administration would not level criminal charges against the tax official.
“We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motive,” the Justice Department wrote members of Congress in an October 2015 letter.
That the administration sat on the information for two years before deciding not to prosecute is “par for the course and, frankly, the stench is overwhelming” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan.
The documents underscore the need to impeach Koskinen, members of the House Freedom Caucus say, even though the tax chief wasn’t with the IRS at the time. The group argues that he impeded a subsequent congressional investigation into the scandal and they want a political pound of flesh.
“At the end of the day we have to be able to strike at least one blow on behalf of accountability,” Huelskamp told The Daily Signal.
The administration won’t deal with the situation, said House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. The episode, he told The Daily Signal, shows that “there are two sets of rules in this country—one for ‘we, the people’ and another for the politically connected.”
To can Koskinen, members of the Freedom Caucus have filed a parliamentary measure known as a privileged resolution to force a floor vote on impeachment.
Rep. John Fleming, R-La., who introduced the motion along with Huelskamp, says the new documents establish a more troubling problem.
“While this provides further confirmation that the IRS was acting to suppress the voices of certain conservative groups, it now raises questions about whether the FBI has been compromised or politicized,” Fleming told The Daily Signal.
That’s “simply outrageous,” says Heritage Foundation legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky, who has watched the scandal unfold since 2013. “No one at the IRS has been punished over this, no one has been prosecuted,” he notes. “Nothing has been done to ensure that this won’t happen again.”
The FBI and IRS did not respond to multiple requests for comment by phone and email from The Daily Signal. (For more from the author of “Justice Department Knew of IRS Scandal 2 Years Before Congress but Did Nothing” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/310860384_1a2c882e1f_b.jpg7681024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-28 23:21:012016-07-28 23:22:02Justice Department Knew of IRS Scandal 2 Years Before Congress but Did Nothing
Hillary Clinton is in trouble because she is an emotionless robot who the American people don’t like or trust.
Yet the many scandals and the fact that the out-of-touch Clintons act like American royalty are not the primary reasons why she may lose this fall. She might lose this fall because Democrats have made a huge miscalculation on the Second Amendment.
Last night, speaker after speaker at the Democratic National Convention called for more gun control.
Former NASA Astronaut, Captain Mark Kelly, argued “Hillary knows that we save lives by doing more to keep guns out of the wrong hands.” Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn. (F, 8%) bellowed, “Outrage that the gun lobby fights to keep open glaring loopholes that 90 percent of Americans want closed. Outrage that a suspected terrorist can walk into a store and walk out with a military-style, semi-automatic rifle.” Former Philadelphia and D.C. Chief of Police Charles Ramsey said “Hillary Clinton is the strong leader to protect our cops and communities from gun violence.”
It was heartbreaking to see victims of gun violence, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, paraded out to discuss their personal tragedies. These emotional speeches invoke sorrow and passion from all of us, and they should. But anyone wishing to have an intellectual discussion about gun laws has to look at the underlying rhetoric pushing stricter gun laws. After the curtain is pulled back and the speeches are over, the Left’s ongoing effort to chip away at the Second Amendment is exposed in plain sight.
Last night exposed three myths that Democrats are trying to sell the public about gun control.
Myth 1: Gun Control is Good Politics
This couldn’t be further from the truth – gun control is bad politics.
The New York Times reports that “After Years of Setbacks, Democrats Again See Gun Control as a Winning Issue, July 27, 2016.
After treating gun control as political poison for two decades, Democrats led by Hillary Clinton are again vigorously championing new gun restrictions as a central element of their campaigns.
The Times cited what happened the last time Democrats ventured down this path.
It is a pronounced shift. Stung by the loss of the House in 1994 after they enacted an assault rifle ban, and wary of the proven influence of the National Rifle Association, many Democrats have shied away from gun control proposals for fear of provoking an electoral backlash with little to show for it. Democrats couldn’t race away from a discussion of gun laws fast enough.
Fast forward to Al Gore’s run for the presidency in 2000. A piece published by the New Republic on January 29, 2001, told a story that sounds remarkably familiar to the situation we see today. “If you were a gun-control supporter last spring, life was sweet. Al Gore and Bill Bradley were climbing over each other trying to prove their devotion to the issue.”
Then after the election …
Yet talk to Democratic politicians about gun control these days and what’s palpable is the silence. Not long after the election, The Washington Post reported that “several lawmakers suggested that party leaders may be better off playing down their support for gun-control legislation,” a sentiment echoed two days later in The New York Times. Conservative Democrats like Marion Berry of Arkansas confide that “[Dick] Gephardt has said [the leadership] is not going to whip us on [gun control] anymore.” And even a reliable liberal like Barney Frank advises that there’s not “going to be a major push on this [issue].”
America has not changed that much on gun issues.
Myth 2: Polling Indicates that Voters want Gun Control
Polling may indicate that Americans in general support gun control, but that is not necessarily true of Americans who vote, and that number masks the fact that pro-Second Amendment voters bring passion and activism that is missed in polling data.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll recently indicated that 51% of Americans support a ban on so-called assault weapons, and 48% oppose. When asked if people support the idea of individuals being able to carry guns for self-defense, the numbers were 54% support and 42% oppose. The poll numbers are overwhelming, the American people support individuals on the FBI watch list from being banned from getting guns, yet the Bill of Right forbids this.
While the American people may marginally favor gun control, time after time, voters have punished gun-grabbing politicians. What’s more, the voters motivated to protect the Second Amendment are far more likely to vote, make calls, knock on doors and work to get pro-gun candidates elected.
Myth 3: Violence in America is Caused by Access to Guns
“Guns don’t kill, people do.” It’s a phrase we’ve all heard before but it’s worth repeating because it’s true. And the truth is, it’s factually untrue to claim that guns are the source of all violence.
During his run for President, following the shooting of two Virginia TV news employees in 2015, Sen. Marco Rubio argued that society has so devalued life and this in itself is a bigger cause of death than the existence of guns. He’s right.
What law in the world could have prevented him (the perpetrator of the Virginia shooting of a TV news crew) from killing them, whether it was with a gun or a knife or a bomb. What has happened to us as a society that we now devalue life to such a level? What has happened in our society that people have become so violent? That’s the fundamental question we need to confront.
I have written about this culture of death in the past, arguing that violence in video games, movies and culture in general, has led to a devaluation of life. Society has devalued life and that devaluation makes it easier for some people to take life away.
The Left would never dare to speak of one potential cause. Movies glorifying mass murder, or video games where a kid can engage in serial murder, have proven to be motivating factors for mass murderers of the past. The Left would argue that these forms of entertainment are protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, yet, a law abiding citizen who wants to own an automatic firearm or an individual who was falsely placed on a government list of prohibited persons, are not protected by those same Bill of Rights.
As history has proven, Americans aren’t ready to throw away any part of the Second Amendment any time soon. Even if she is successful at continues at perpetuating these myths, Hillary Clinton may be going down the path of Al Gore and the many House Democrats who lost jobs over the President Bill Clinton-passed gun ban in the mid-1990s. (For more from the author of “3 Gun Myths That Could Destroy Hillary’s Chances in November” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/8438141858_f56d017892_b.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-28 23:20:492016-07-29 15:07:313 Gun Myths That Could Destroy Hillary’s Chances in November
The family policy experts at the Ruth Institute warn that the Obama administration agenda to push transgenderism on public schools, including demanding that boys be allowed in girls showers and vice versa, forces children to adopt the “ideological agenda” of homosexuality.
The organization has issued a report on the recent “Guidance to Help Schools Ensure the Civil Rights of Transgender Students” released by the departments of Justice and Education.
The guidance requires that public schools and universities allow students to choose their “gender identity” and grant them access to gender-specific facilities.
It would allow a man to shower with girls, for example, if he says he is a woman. Obama’s rules specifically forbid schools from asking for any sort of documentation or evidence . . .
Texas, jointed by eight other states, has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration policy, charging it has “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.” (Read more from “Report: Obama School-Transgender Policy Child Abuse” HERE)
Lanny Davis, trusted Clinton surrogate and advisor, told Washington’s WMAL radio station Thursday that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is not to blame for Libya’s current state of affairs because the U.S. role was under a joint NATO operation.
Davis’s comments may indicate the Clinton campaign intends to blame Libya’s failed state on NATO and President Barack Obama, to absolve her significant role in pushing for the intervention in 2011. Clinton was a strong advocate of military force against NATO in 2011. Sidney Blumenthal, a trusted Clinton confidant and Davis friend, even emailed Clinton in 2011 counseling her, “this is an historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it.”
When WMAL radio hosts asked Davis about Clinton’s complicity in the Obama administration’s withdrawal from Iraq, Davis retorted “that was Obama’s policy.” Davis’s comments may indicate the Clinton campaign intends to drastically play down Clinton’s role in the effects of Obama’s foreign policy, while simultaneously taking credit for the office of Secretary of State.
Davis’s comments portrayed the Libyan intervention as one that NATO, with France in the lead, would pursue regardless of a U.S. role in the operation. Washington committed significant U.S. assets to the operation, and was critical in bringing the fall of Libyan dictator Colonel Gadhafi. A New York Times report from February 2016, examining the U.S. decision-making process in Libya, revealed that Clinton was the key to Obama’s decision to intervene. (Read more from “Is This Hillary’s New Libya Narrative?” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Hillary_Clinton_at_Planned_Parenthood-8.jpg31254687Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-07-28 23:10:252016-07-28 23:10:25Is This Hillary’s New Libya Narrative?
Pro-life sidewalk activists are pushing back against a seven-minute “virtual reality” presentation by Planned Parenthood at this week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
According to The Daily Signal, “In the video, pro-life protesters are heard calling women ‘whores,’ telling them to close their legs, referencing Bible verses, and asking ‘who’s going to stand up for the rights of the child?’”
“We have taken this really brand new technology of virtual reality with the age-old art of storytelling,” Kristen Tilley, an official at Planned Parenthood Action Fund, told The Daily Signal, “to share the experience of what far too many people go through just to access the basic reproductive health care, but really, especially abortion.”
Several pro-life advocates, however, told The Stream that such behavior is atypical of pro-life activists outside abortion clinics across America the country.
Pro-life activist Larry Cirignano insisted that “most people outside abortion mills peacefully pray or hold signs.” And Jonathan Darnel said, “Of course it has to be virtual reality. Real reality would not serve the narrative they are trying to build.”
Language is Important
Some of those the pro-abortion movement refer to as protesters the pro-life movement refers to as sidewalk counselors. From a guidebook written by Judith Fetrow and found at the website for Catholic television network EWTN:
The clinics present us with a tremendous opportunity to reach out to those people who will not come to our churches, and who seldom see God’s love. It was the sinners, those who had little to do with the religious leaders of the time, whom Jesus sought to reach. At the killing centers, one may find the radical left, those involved in the occult, the walking wounded from churches (in some cases), the homeless, the clinic workers, the abortionists, the mothers, the fathers, the AIDS victims, and those who simply need the Lord.
Jesus dined with the publicans and sinners. He said that it was the sick who need a doctor; that situation has not changed. … What better place to show life and peace than a place of death and despair? Just as Jesus reached out to the thief on the cross, we should feel compelled to reach out to the abortion-bound mom …
The top three qualities the guidebook lists as essential for a good sidewalk counselor are empathy, sincerity and unconditional acceptance.
“Bad Apples” Seen in Planned Parenthood Virtual Reality
Cirignano conceded that not every sidewalk counselor or clinic protester lives up to this standard. “Some people get emotional when confronting Planned Parenthood escorts who are taunting them,” he said, and “some people scream to be heard because of barriers placed between the pro-life advocates who are offering alternatives and the Planned Parenthood advocates who are looking for profits.”
Lauren Handy, a sidewalk advocate, post-abortive counselor and full-time activist who regularly holds graphic images of abortion victims, conceded that “there are bad apples in every basket” and that what she saw in the Planned Parenthood virtual reality video “were the bruised and moldy ones.”
“I saw well-meaning people make costly mistakes,” she said. “We are dealing with a situation where someone is about to be killed for profit, and the lack of training/understanding of crisis intervention displayed by those in the video will do more harm than good.”
Like Handy, Cirignano did not downplay those portrayed in the video. However, he said, “They are the exceptions, not the rule.” He said that “the virtual reality we need to show is the Silent Scream or a modern 4-D version from the baby’s perspective of feeling pain.”
Handy said that “demonizing” those pro-life activists who have taken a mean and angry approach in the past “would be a disservice to the movement. We need to reach out to them/offer them training and encouragement to become more effective.”
In her guidebook for sidewalk counselors, Faltrow says that the work is emotionally draining and that burnout is a common danger. But like Handy, she insists it’s all worth it. (For more from the author of “Pro-Lifers: Planned Parenthood’s #DNCinPhilly Scare Video Misrepresents Pro-Life Activists” please click HERE)
