'Lessons' From this Election Season So Far

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Just past the midway point: It’s been 132 days (or about 4 months and two weeks) since the first primaries of the midterm season — March 4 in Texas — and there are 113 days to go until Election Day (about three months and three weeks). Just past the midway point, what have we learned from this midterm season? A few things:

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3. The Democratic firewalls of Alaska and Arkansas: If you were to ask before this election season started which Democrats winning or losing could tell us what happens on election night — whether Republicans take back the Senate or not — most observers would have said to watch places like Louisiana and North Carolina. While it’s still true that Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan’s fates in those states, respectively, will tell us a lot about what happens on election night, few would have said the red-state Democratic Marks — Begich and Pryor — might be the plugs in the dams for Democrats. Begich and Pryor have looked surprisingly strong in states that at the presidential level have gone heavily Republican. If they win, it makes Republicans’ path to a majority much more difficult. Republicans acknowledge they are doing well so far, but most expect — because of those national trends and President Barack Obama’s struggling approval ratings — for that to change. Whether that trajectory does change may, in fact, hold the key to the election. Watch the polls after this summer…

Quote of the day: “I’ll be a thorn in his [posterior].” — Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat from Alaska, being edited by The Washington Post for language after telling the paper that part of his strategy for winning re-election is to separate, or perhaps attach himself, to President Obama.

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Don’t Be Fooled, Germany’s Outrage at U.S. Spying Is Just for Show

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Photo Credit: ADAM BERRY—AFP / Getty Images

Photo Credit: ADAM BERRY—AFP / Getty Images

It’s unlikely Germany didn’t know what the U.S. was up to, and kicking out a local CIA chief is largely political theatrics for a German citizenry still fuming over last year’s revelations of extensive NSA surveillance, says former CIA lawyer John Rizzo.

After serving more than three decades as a lawyer at the CIA, I retired from the Agency nearly five years ago. Since then, I’ve been like everyone else in the outside world—all I know about what the CIA is reportedly up to comes from the media. For someone who had been privy to the most sensitive national security secrets for so long, I’ve found my new existence at once liberating and frustrating. I no longer have to help manage the messy controversies in which the CIA seems to be constantly embroiled, but I also wonder whether all the spy “flaps” I read about now in the newspapers really tell the true, or at least the complete, story.

So it is with the latest crisis du jour, the German government’s announcement that it was expelling the alleged local CIA station chief in the wake of the Agency’s “recruitment” of maybe one or two Germans working inside the government in Berlin. Germany’s official reaction has been outrage and hurt – how could the U.S. do such a sneaky, underhanded thing like spying on one of its closest allies? Critics in both countries publicly fret that a crucial bilateral relationship may have suffered lasting harm. But amid all the ensuing sturm und drang, when I read the press accounts, my experience tells me that there’s more going on here than the headlines indicate.

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Planned Parenthood Coaches 15-Year-Old Girl to Hide Porn From Her Parents

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Photo Credit: LifeNews

Photo Credit: LifeNews

A new investigative video produced by Live Action shows a Planned Parenthood staffer coaching a 15-year-old girl on how to view pornography, visit sex shops, and experiment with torture and bondage sex without parental knowledge.

Episode Two of Live Action’s video series, SEXED, details how a counselor in Colorado’s Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains encouraged a teenager to subject herself to or inflict sexual pain on her boyfriend. The investigation is the latest in a series of exposes under covering the abortion giant’s dangerous sex education for kids.

SEXED: Episode Two reveals how a Planned Parenthood counselor tells a teenager that “sexual exploration is normal” for minors. The counselor encourages the minor to visit adult sex shops, which is illegal under municipal law, and watch pornography to obtain ideas on how to experiment with BDSM with her boyfriend.

Planned Parenthood: “You can do it [watch porn] together… some people like to do that together and act that out.”

Teen: “If I were to look that up on my computer, um, could my parents see that?

Read more from this story HERE.

Special-Ops Chief Didn't Know of Benghazi Facility

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command in Africa, conceded in congressional testimony that prior to the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, he was not aware of the existence of the U.S. special mission in Benghazi or the nearby CIA annex.

Losey was commander of SOCAFRICA during the attack. His position put him in charge of helping U.S. diplomatic facilities in Africa build an operational security plan and strengthen regional security. His unit is supposed to work closely with U.S. Embassy country teams.

His shock testimony of being unaware of the U.S. facilities in Benghazi was largely unreported and was included in a recently unclassified version of his March 14 statements to several security subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The staggering detail raises the question of what was transpiring at the fated annex and nearby U.S. special mission and why key members of the Defense Department, including those responsible for responding to emergency situations, were not aware of it.

Losey was asked whether or not he was aware of the CIA annex in Benghazi before the attack.

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Obama’s ‘Congress Has Blocked Every Single Serious Idea’ Earns 3 Pinocchios From Washington Post

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Photo CRedit: IJ Review

Photo CRedit: IJ Review

During Barack Obama’s weekly address last Saturday, he once again trotted out one of his favorite mantras:

“So far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.”

The question is, is it true? I mean, it has to be, right? After all, he’s said it before. A lot. For example, on June 27 during a speech in Minneapolis:

“So, let me just be clear I want you to think about this, so far this year the Republicans in Congress have blocked or voted down every single serious idea to strengthen the middle class.”

Then again on July 1:

“So far this year, Republicans in Congress have blocked or voted down every serious idea to strengthen the middle class.”

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America: No Longer 1 Nation, 1 People

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Photo Credit: Serfs UP ! Roger Sayles

Photo Credit: Serfs UP ! Roger Sayles

Speaking to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Albuquerque in 2001, George W. Bush declared that, as Mexico was a friend and neighbor, “It’s so important for us to tear down our barriers and walls that might separate Mexico from the United States.”

Bush succeeded. And during his tenure, millions from Mexico exploited his magnanimity to violate our laws, trample upon our sovereignty, walk into our country and remain here.

In 2007, supported by John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Teddy Kennedy and Barack Obama, Bush backed amnesty for the 12 million people who had entered America illegally.

The nation thundered no. And Congress sustained the nation.

The latest mass border crossing by scores of thousands of tots, teenagers and toughs from Central America has killed amnesty in 2014, and probably for the duration of the Obama presidency.

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Deficit To Soon Skyrocket To Historic World War II Heights

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

Photo Credit: REUTERS / Jonathan Ernst

The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) latest report says that although the federal deficit this year is the lowest of the Obama era, in the near future, it is expected to skyrocket to World War II heights.

The years between 2009 and 2012 saw the largest recorded federal government deficits since 1946, based on percentage of the economy. And although the White House also reported that the deficit this year is the lowest of the Obama administration, there is little reason for celebration.

Currently, the amount of federal debt is exactly 74 percent of the economy, and if measures aren’t taken to reign in the deficits, the CBO projects that by 2039 the U.S. will see a debt to GDP ratio of 106 percent. According to the CBO, the rate of debt growth is expanding at an undeniably unsustainable rate.

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GCHQ's Dark Arts: Leaked Documents Reveal Online Manipulation, Facebook, YouTube Snooping

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Photo Credit: GCHQ via CNET

Photo Credit: GCHQ via CNET

GCHQ has developed a toolkit of software programs used to manipulate online traffic, infiltrate users’ computers and spread select messages across social media sites including Facebook and YouTube.

The UK spy agency’s dark arts were revealed in documents first published by The Intercept, and each piece of software is described in a wiki document written up by GCHQ’s Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG). The document, which reads like a software inventory, calls the tools part of the agency’s “weaponised capability.”

Some of the most interesting capabilities of the tools on the list include the ability to seed the web with false information — such as tweaking the results of online polls — inflating pageview counts, censoring video content deemed “extremist” and the use of psychological manipulation on targets — something similar to a research project conducted with Facebook’s approval, which resulted in heavy criticism and outrage levied at the social media site.

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Barack Obama and a Farewell to Trust

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Photo Credit: Gulf News

Photo Credit: Gulf News

What did the president know and when did he know it? Such was demanded of Richard Nixon, who resigned 40 years ago. In no sense can US President Barack Obama be morally compared with the man who brought the US Watergate.

Obama is neither a crook nor a liar. But Obama shares one problem that can cripple what remains of his presidency — most people no longer trust him. The sentiment spans foreign allies as well as domestic critics. When trust goes, respect is seldom far behind.

The most surprising example is Germany. It was in Berlin in 2008 that then senator Obama had unveiled his global promise — an America that could once again be trusted. Germans no longer believe it. In the wake of the “friendly spying” ring allegations, less than 40 per cent of Germans consider the US a trustworthy partner, according to one survey.

Senior German figures cannot agree whether Obama was unaware of Washington’s double agents, or dissembling. Either way, when Obama spoke to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, the day before the initial revelations, he did not raise it. It was enough to make you want to cry, said Wolfgang Schauble, the Finance Minister. Never before has a close US ally expelled a CIA station chief.

Mistrust is a nebulous concept. In the case of Nixon, people rightly suspected he was crooked. In the case of Obama, it is based on the perception that he is ineffectual. His words are so rarely joined to deeds. The net result is not radically different.

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Hundreds of Cities Fight Back Against 'Invasion'

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

By Leo Hohmann.

A massive protest scheduled for July 18 and 19 across the United States is aimed at stopping the influx of Central American children flooding across the border, and more than a dozen smaller community protests already have played roles in stopping the children from being brought there.

Citizens in Westminster, Maryland; Oracle, Arizona; Vassar, Michigan; Greece, New York, and many other places have blocked the importation of illegal aliens into their communities through public protests, letters and official resolutions from elected leaders.

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Radio host Rush Limbaugh led his show Tuesday with stories about the successful pushback against the illegals going on across America.

“Here’s what you do not know,” he said. “There are towns all over America standing up to this invasion, just like they did in Murrieta, California. You’re not hearing about it, however, and I am here to tell you why you’re not hearing about it. Westminster, Maryland, is a town standing up to it, just like Murrieta, California, did. Oracle, Arizona, is standing up to it.

“In Nebraska they’re gonna stand up to it when they find out. The governor is fit to be tied,” Limbaugh continued. “Upper Michigan, same thing. There are towns all over America standing up to this. There are protests happening, but they’re not being covered.”

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Reid: Southern border is secure

By Alexander Bolton.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday asserted the southern border is secure despite the massive surge of illegal minors from Central America that has overwhelmed federal agencies.

“The border is secure,” he told reporters after the Senate Democrats’ weekly policy lunch. “[Sen.] Martin Heinrich [(D-N.M.)] talked to the caucus today. He’s a border state senator. He said he can say without any equivocation the border is secure.”

Reid said lawmakers need to worry less about border security and focus instead on President Obama’s $3.7 billion request to help process the tens of thousands of children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador who have been apprehended on the border.

Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson warned Congress last week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is due to run out of money by mid-August because of the large number of minors attempting to cross into Texas. He said Customs and Border Protection would run out of funding by mid-September.

He estimated that as many as 90,000 illegal minors would be apprehended by the end of September.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

SESSIONS WARNS ALL OF CONGRESS: OBAMA’S NEW IMMIGRATION STRATEGY ‘THREATENS FOUNDATION OF OUR CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC’

By Matthew Boyle.

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has warned all of his colleagues in Congress that President Barack Obama’s new immigration strategy—his plans to legalize millions of illegal alien adults through executive power—could destroy America as we know it.

“I write to inform you of a development that threatens the foundation of our constitutional Republic,” Sessions, Congress’s top immigration hawk, wrote in a letter that was hand-delivered to all 535 members of Congress on Monday and provided exclusively to Breitbart News.

Sessions cites a recent report from the National Journal, in which reporter Major Garrett detailed how, despite the ongoing crisis at the border, Obama plans to legalize anywhere from five to six million illegal alien adults in much the same way he did for illegal alien minors through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in summer 2012.

“Obama made it clear he would press his executive powers to the limit,” Garrett wrote on July 3, as cited by Sessions. “He gave quiet credence to recommendations from La Raza and other immigration groups that between 5 million to 6 million adult illegal immigrants could be spared deportation under a similar form of deferred adjudication he ordered for the so-called Dreamers in June 2012.”

Sessions cites another paragraph from that National Journal piece as well, in which Garrett reported that President Obama has “now ordered the Homeland Security and Justice departments to find executive authorities that could enlarge that non-prosecutorial umbrella by a factor of 10.”

Read more from this story HERE.