Every Military Option in Syria Sucks

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Photo Credit: foreign policyUsing lethal force to strike high-value targets inside Syria would require hundreds of U.S. aircraft, ships and submarines, while establishing a no-fly zone would cost as much as a billion dollars per month over the course of a year, according to a new analysis of military options there by the nation’s top military officer. Another option, in which the U.S. attempts to control Syria’s chemical weapons stock, would first require thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces, wrote Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Marty Dempsey. Oh, and well over a billion dollars per month.

Under pressure to publicly provide his views on military intervention in Syria, Dempsey told Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin what most people already knew: there are few good options. But for the first time, Dempsey provided an analysis of each option and its cost, providing new fodder for thinking about a conflict that has waged for more than two years, killed nearly 100,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

Dempsey outlined five options, including training, advising and assisting the opposition; conducting limited stand-off strikes; establishing a no-fly zone; creating a buffer zone to protect certain areas inside Syria; and finally, controlling Syria’s chemical weapons. Any of those options would likely “further the narrow military objective of helping the opposition and placing more pressure on the regime,” Dempsey wrote. But any or all of them could slip the U.S. into another new war. “We have learned from the past 10 years, however, that it is not enough to simply alter the balance of military power without careful consideration of what is necessary in order to preserve a functioning state,” Dempsey wrote Levin in the memo, a copy of which was released publicly late Monday. “We must anticipate and be prepared for the unintended consequences of our action.”

As requested after a heated exchange in the Senate on Thursday over U.S. policy in Syria, Dempsey dutifully gave the pros and cons for each option. But in what amounts to the most candid analysis of the Pentagon’s thinking on Syria to date, Dempsey couched each as highly risky. Establishing a no-fly zone, for example, comes with inherent risk: “Risks include the loss of U.S. aircraft, which would require us to insert personnel recovery forces,” Dempsey wrote. “It may also fail to reduce the violence or shift the momentum because the regime relies overwhelmingly on surface fires – mortars, artillery and missiles.” Conducting limited strikes on high-value targets inside Syria could have a “significant degradation of regime capabilities” and would increase the likelihood of individuals deserting the regime. On the other hand, he wrote, “there is a risk that the regime could withstand limited strikes by dispersing its assets.” Retaliatory attacks and collateral damage from the U.S. strikes could create large and sometimes unforeseen problems, despite the best planning.

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: The New Power Triangle

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Barack Obama, to hear his advisers tell it, has finally found The One he has been looking for: John McCain.

“We have been looking literally for years for someone we can cut deals with, and finally someone has stepped up,” a White House official said. West Wing aides say they now talk with McCain roughly every other day.

McCain, to hear fellow Republicans tell it, has finally found The Two he has needed to make such conversations worth the bother: Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat who can actually get things done in the Senate, and Denis McDonough, a White House chief of staff who actually cares what senators say and think and do.

While Obama and party leaders clash endlessly and hopelessly, these three men are showing it is possible to put aside political and personal grievances to get consequential stuff done, even in Washington’s currently twisted state.

They would never say it this way, but more often than not, they do it by going around those party leaders — their bosses — who seem stuck in fights they will never be able to end.

Read more from this story HERE.

Eight Charged in Cigarette Tax Scam

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Photo Credit: KTVAEight Anchorage residents are accused of scamming the Municipality of Anchorage out of more than $1.3 million in tax revenue.

Prosecutors say the defendants are owners and operators of retail stores who collectively purchased cigarettes from two wholesale distributors in Anchorage and lied about where they were going to resell the products in order to avoid paying MOA taxes.

Court documents reveal the scheme took place from 2009 until October 2012.

Wholesale distributors rely on merchant customers to be honest about where they plan on reselling cigarettes. Federal prosecutors say the defendants told the wholesalers in Anchorage that the cigarettes were destined for retail stores in Kenai and Sterling, where there are no taxes on tobacco products.

Read more from this story HERE.

Which Nations Hate The U.S.? Often Those Receiving U.S. Aid

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Photo Credit: Gianluigi Guercia/AFP/Getty ImagesTo figure out which countries dislike the U.S., one quick way is to simply look at which ones are getting the largest dollops of U.S. aid.

This wasn’t the focus of a recent survey by the Pew Research Center. But it did emerge when Pew spoke to people in 39 countries about the U.S. and China, asking respondents if they had a favorable view of these two countries.

Overall, the U.S. fared better than China. Worldwide, 63 percent said they had a positive view of the U.S., compared with only 50 percent who said the same of China.

This general trend was true in every region except in the Middle East. There, animosity toward the U.S. runs high, and the countries getting the most American assistance also tended to be some of the most antagonistic toward the U.S.

— In Egypt, which gets $1.5 billion a year from the U.S., only 16 percent had a positive view of the U.S. We should note the Pew survey was taken this past spring, before the recent upheaval in Egypt that has unleashed a wave of anti-American invective that may well have pushed that approval rating even lower.

Read more from this story HERE.

Is Common Core Failing the Test? (+video)

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Photo Credit: Ethan BlochPresident Barack Obama’s goal of holding all students across the U.S. to the same high academic standards may be on the verge of unraveling as states take a hard look at the more rigorous tests under development — and balk.

Backed by $360 million in federal grants, some 40-plus states have spent the past three years working with testing companies to develop math and language arts exams tied to the academic standards known as Common Core. They’re minimizing the dreary fill-in-the-bubble multiple choice in favor of more challenging tasks. Kids as young as third grade, for instance, will be asked to write essays synthesizing information from multiple nonfiction texts and to explain their reasoning on math problems.

Yet now that the new tests are almost ready, state officials are complaining that they’re too long and too costly and require too much computer technology. They’re also beginning to push back against the exams as an unwanted federal intrusion on local policy, echoing a groundswell of opposition from tea party critics of Common Core.

Georgia dropped out of the testing collaboration on Monday, saying it would create its own exams instead. Pennsylvania, Alabama, Oklahoma and Utah have already withdrawn. There are strong indications that Florida and Indiana will be next. Other populous states are also teetering. The Michigan Legislature has effectively nixed the new tests by blocking spending on them, though the ban may be revisited next fall. New York is officially undecided but it’s already spending heavily on alternatives. Texas and Virginia never signed on in the first place.

Read more from this story HERE.

OFA Embraces Tea Party Blueprint for August Push

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Photo Credit: APIf Organizing for Action’s plans come together, 2013 will be its turn to make trouble for members of Congress back home in their districts.

Four years after the tea party surprised Democrats at town halls that led to the Republican wave of 2010, the political action group formed out of the remains of President Barack Obama’s campaign laid out its plans Monday for Action August, a month of activity meant to break congressional opposition to the White House agenda.

OFA’s preparing a range of under-the-national-radar tactics in conjunction with heading for town halls. Rallies, distribution of fliers and district office demonstrations will be aimed at drawing the same sort of local attention that tea party groups managed four years ago, hoping to spook members of Congress worried about the 2014 midterms.

But with Obama off to a sometimes disappointing and dispiriting start to his second term, the question is one the president himself asked volunteers Monday night: “Are you still fired up?”

The crowd cheered “Yes!” but they’ll need more than that.

Read more from this story HERE.

Anthony Weiner Kept Sexting After Resignation (+video)

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Photo Credit: APBy Mike Zapler and Katie Glueck

Joined by his wife at a dramatic news conference Tuesday, New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner acknowledged that he continued to have illicit relationships with women online even after he resigned his seat in Congress two years ago over the same behavior.

“Some of these things happened before my resignation, some of them happened after,” Weiner said.

It was an astonishing admission: After an episode that wrecked his political career, nearly destroyed his marriage, and made him an object of international mockery, Weiner couldn’t stop himself from going back for more. Until now a leading contender for mayor, Weiner intends to seek forgiveness from New Yorkers, again.

Asked when he stopped exchanging raunchy messages with other women, Weiner pointed to “sometime last summer” though he said he couldn’t “say exactly when.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Christopher SadowskWeiner admits to XXX online chats with woman for 6 months after resigning from Congress because of sext scandal; won’t drop out of race

By Carl Campanile. Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner admitted today he had another extended, raunchy online sexual relationship with a young woman — just months after resigning in disgrace from Congress in a sexting scandal.

But he won’t be dropping out of the race. And his wife, Huma Abedin, is standing by him.

In a hasty scheduled joint press conference Abedin, Weiner said he will forge ahead with the campaign despite the latest sex scandal.

Weiner insisted that Huma knew all the details of the new revelations and insisted it’s “behind” them.

Abedin, sometimes looking uncomfortable and stiff, stood by her husband. Read more from this story HERE.

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Huma and Anthony: Scenes from a marriage

By Glenn Thrush. New York City Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner unleashed his typical torrent of verbiage on Tuesday — but words couldn’t compete with the excruciating image of his embarrassed wife squirming in the spotlight both have sought.

In the most cringe-worthy moment of a four-month political comeback yarn that has tested Gotham’s gag reflex, Huma Abedin, the dignified wife of a serially disgraced Democrat, nervously defended her husband at a Tuesday press conference.

Her effort came amid new disclosures Weiner had shared an online relationship, and anatomical snapshots, with yet another female admirer.

If the presence of Abedin, an elegant longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton, was intended to buttress the former congressman’s decision to remain in the race, it graphically illustrated the personal toll his quest is taking on his family, and represented the gravest threat yet to Weiner’s fragile repentance-and-redemption narrative. Read more from this story HERE.

And You Thought the NSA was Bad: Obamacare Data Hub a ‘Honey Pot’ for Leftist ID Thieves, Warn Critics (+videos)

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Photo Credit: National Review Obamacare’s Branch of the NSA

By John Fund. President Obama has had a poor record of job creation, but at least one small economic sector is doing well: community organizing.

The Department of Health and Human Services is about to hire an army of “patient navigators” to inform Americans about the subsidized insurance promised by Obamacare and assist them in enrolling. These organizers will be guided by the new Federal Data Hub, which will give them access to reams of personal information compiled by federal agencies ranging from the IRS to the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration. “The federal government is planning to quietly enact what could be the largest consolidation of personal data in the history of the republic,” Paul Howard of the Manhattan Institute and Stephen T. Parente, a University of Minnesota finance professor, wrote in USA Today. No wonder that there are concerns about everything from identity theft to the ability of navigators to use the system to register Obamacare participants to vote.

HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius wasn’t satisfied with the $54 million in public funds allocated for navigators this year, so she tried to raise money from health-industry executives for Enroll America, the liberal nonprofit group leading the PR push for Obamacare. She had to retreat under withering criticism that she was shaking down companies that were dependent on government, a clear conflict of interest.

Because 34 states have declined to set up their own insurance “exchanges,” the job of guiding exchange enrollees in those states has been left to Washington. The identity of the groups who will get the Sebelius grants isn’t yet known, but Politico reports they are likely to include Planned Parenthood, senior-citizen advocacy organizations, and churches. Read more from this story HERE.

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Obamacare data hub a ‘honey pot’ for ID thieves, warn critics

By Paul Bedard. The data hub President Obama’s health care team is creating to exchange personal health and financial information on Obamacare users will be a ripe target for computer hackers and identity thieves, charge critics who claim it hasn’t been tested for security flaws.

“It’s the greatest collection of private identification information ever assembled on Americans that will be put into one place,” said Rep. Patrick Meehan, who chairs a House cybersecurity subcommittee. “It is every bit of sensitive information one would need to know to completely take over the identification of a person,” said the Pennsylvania lawmaker.

The Obamacare data hub, he added, “creates a honey pot and the day that it goes online it is going to be a target for hackers and others and they are unprepared to protect the system.”

At an oversight hearing last week, administration officials said that the hub, still under creation, will be used to verify Obamacare applications. It will share information among federal agencies, like the IRS, and state agencies. A separate system will keep store key information such as income, Social Security numbers, email addresses, and even pregnancy status of Obamacare users.

Officials called on the public and Congress to “trust” that the information will be protected from hackers, but several lawmakers balked. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesMidlands Voices: Stop Obamacare in its tracks

By Ben Sasse. The author has served as chief of staff for the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy and as assistant U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush. Currently president of Midland University, he has been exploring a U.S. Senate candidacy.

Obamacare is a ticking time bomb for Democrats in the 2014 elections. Nobody knows this better than President Barack Obama, which is why over the Fourth of July holiday weekend he unilaterally decided to delay its controversial employer mandate provision until after the midterm elections.

No wonder: The $2,000 per-worker fine is disastrously unpopular. Already, employers are laying off workers and dramatically cutting others’ hours in an effort to skirt the new penalty. The fact that this perfectly predictable development surprises many in Washington only underscores that they didn’t really read this 2,300-page monstrosity before they passed it.

Desperate for any appearance of victory, Republican leaders have decided to match the president’s delay with one of their own: proposing legislation to delay for a year the mandate for individuals. Perhaps useful, perhaps not. Well-meaning people can differ about legislative strategy.

But if Republicans don’t have a larger plan to actually oppose this unprecedented power grab in a way the American people will understand, then they will have given up the ghost on actually turning back the slew of new job-killing bureaucracies. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesGOP Senator says coalition to block and defund Obamacare is growing, names names

By Becket Adams. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told TheBlaze Monday he has recruited more than a dozen Senate Republicans to help him defund President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law.

Fifteen Republican senators, including Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ted Cruz (Texas), John Cornyn (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.), James Inhofe (Okla.), David Vitter (La.), Roger Wicker (Miss.), John Thune (S.D.), and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), will block a continuing resolution to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30 if it includes funding for Obamacare, Lee said.

“The president has said that he’s not willing and not able to enforce Obamacare as it was written,” Sen. Lee told TheBlaze in a phone interview. “And so he has chosen instead to enforce this law selectively.”

“He has picked out two things that he has said he won’t enforce. One is the employer mandate and the other is the requirement that the government obtain some kind of proof for those who are claiming eligibility for Obamacare exchange subsidies,” he added.

The senator continued, arguing that the president “doesn’t have the power” to selectively enforce and amend laws passed by Congress. Read more from this story HERE.

George Zimmerman Rescues Family of Four After SUV Topples on Florida Highway (+videos)

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Photo Credit: APBy Philip Caulfield. George Zimmerman helped rescue a family from an overturned car after an accident in Florida, four days after he was acquitted of murder, police said.

Zimmerman was one of two men who helped free four family members trapped in an overturned blue Ford Explorer after it crashed on a highway in Sanford around 5:45 p.m. on Wednesday, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said.

Two parents and two children were riding in the truck when it flipped near the intersection of I-4 and Route 46, authorities said.

After spotting the wreck and pulling over, the 29-year-old volunteer watchman grabbed a fire extinguisher from his car and checked for signs of a blaze before freeing the family, Sean Vincent, a spokesman for his legal team, told the Daily News.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APGeorge Zimmerman rescues family from truck crash last week, police say

By Fox News. George Zimmerman, who has not been seen publicly since his acquittal in the murder of Trayvon Martin earlier this month, surfaced last week to rescue an unidentified family trapped in an overturned vehicle on a Florida highway, police said Monday.

Sanford Police Department Capt. Jim McAuliffe told Fox News that Zimmerman, 29, was identified by a crash victim as the man who pulled him from the mangled vehicle.

“George Zimmerman pulled me out,” firefighters were told by the unidentified driver, according to McAuliffe.

The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office said the single-car accident occurred July 17 at approximately 5:45 pm. and involved a blue Ford Explorer SUV that had left the road and rolled over.

The sheriff’s office said there were four occupants inside — two parents and two children. There were no reports of injuries. Read more from this story HERE.

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Rush Limbaugh predicts how the ‘insane’ left will react to Zimmerman rescuing family after car accident

By Jason Howerton. On his radio show Monday, Rush Limbaugh reflected on reports indicating that George Zimmerman emerged out of hiding last week to help rescue a family involved in a car accident. The story is so incompatible with the way Zimmerman has been portrayed in the media that Limbaugh wondered “how long is it going to be before the story gets out that the whole accident was scripted and planned?”

“If it’s not already out there, it’s going to be a running theme,” he said. “I’m telling you, the left is insane…This just can’t be — Zimmerman, a hero? The Zimmerman haters are going to say that this whole thing was staged.”

Listen to the audio via the Daily Rushbo below:

Read more from this story HERE.

Harry Reid: Mitch McConnell ‘Tried to Make Love to the Tea Party and They Didn’t Like It’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: APSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid is enjoying the possibility of a tea party backed challenger to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“He tried to make love to the tea party and they didn’t like it,” Reid quipped about McConnell to at an event hosted by the pro-Obama nonprofit Organizing for Action.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke after Reid, saying that President George Washington warned about political parties who were at war with their own government

Read more from this story HERE.

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Harry Reid says nuclear option still on the table

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that the “nuclear option” is still on the table if Republicans move to block more executive branch nominees.

The procedural move that would end filibusters of President Barack Obama’s nominees with a simple majority “can always come back,” Reid said at an event hosted by the pro-Obama non-profit Organizing for Action.

The Senate reached a last-minute deal last week to avoid the nuclear option. Since the deal, the Senate approved Richard Cordray’s nomination to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Gina McCarthy to serve as EPA administrator; Tom Perez as Labor secretary, among other nominees. Read more from this story HERE.