Obama Failing Again, this Time In a City Where ISIS Is Threatening A Fourth Beheading

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Photo Credit: TwitterPresident Obama is scared to intervene in the Syria region where three Westerners have now been beheaded on video by the terrorist organization ISIS — and a fourth, British aid worker Alan Henning, is being threatened.

It is unclear when the videos were produced, or whether Henning is currently alive. But sources close to the Syrian situation confirm the videos’ setting as the mountainous area outside of Raqqa — the capital city of ISIS’ planned “Islamic Caliphate.”

Obama’s only intervention in the region came in the early summer of 2014, with a failed secret Department of Defense rescue mission for James Foley and the other ISIS captives. Approximately 24 Delta Force commandos retreated after gunfire with ISIS. The Obama administration only disclosed this information after the videotaped beheadings started. Defense Department officials were angry that they released the information at all.

When did ISIS take over Raqqa by driving a car bomb into one of their rivals’ hideouts? In mid-August 2013, just as Obama — then with a more than 50 percent approval rating — vacationed at Martha’s Vineyard with a small foreign policy team led by Susan Rice. There the president oversaw about a dozen drone strikes on al-Qaida in Yemen and also closed down U.S. embassies for a week amid terrorist chatter. House investigators also began requesting Benghazi documents from the administration in August 2013.

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Obama to Detail Plans on Ebola Offensive on Tuesday

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / KEVIN LAMARQUEU.S. President Barack Obama is expected to detail on Tuesday a plan to boost his country’s involvement in mitigating the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The plan would involve a greater involvement of the U.S. military in tackling the worst recorded outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the proposal.

The outbreak has now killed upwards of 2,400 people, mostly in Liberia, neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone as poorly resourced West African healthcare systems have been overrun.

The U.S. government has already committed around $100 million to tackle the outbreak by providing protective equipment for healthcare workers, food, water, medical and hygiene equipment.

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46,496,145: Food Stamp Recipients Can Fill Yankee Stadium 925 Times

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Photo Credit: APIn June 2014, there were 46,496,145 recipients of the food stamp program, which is enough to fill the Yankee Stadium 925 times, according to data from the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The Yankee Stadium is equipped to hold 50,291 persons, meaning that the 46,496,145 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients in June 2014 could fill the stadium 925 times. The number of recipients was up 270,999 since the previous month in May 2014 when there were 46,225,146 individuals participating in the program.

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Children of Arizona Gun Instructor Killed by Uzi Offer Prayers for 9-Year-Old Accidental Shooter

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Photo Credit: APThe 9-year-old girl who accidentally killed a gun instructor in Arizona last month when she lost control of an Uzi is being urged to put the incident behind her by her victim’s four young children, Fox 10 Phoenix reported.

The children of Charles Vacca released an emotional video Friday in which they take turns offering the child words of comfort. Vacca was shot once in the head as he was helping the 9-year-old learn how to fire the powerful weapon.

The name of the girl who was from New Jersey, has not been released.

‘Our dad would want you to know that you should move forward with your life, You should not let this define you’

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Anti-Gun Groups No Longer Fighting For Assault Weapons Bans

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Photo Credit: TownHallAlas, gun control groups seem to have moved away from so-called assault weapons bans for reasons pro-Second Amendment groups have espoused for months; they’re ineffective and represent a very small fraction of firearm-related homicides. Shannon Watts of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America now calls such policy initiatives “nonstarters.” Nonetheless, that does not mean that these people have abandoned their support for such bans on certain types of firearms (via ProPublica):

Nearly two years later, Watts works full-time as the head of the group, now named Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, is a significant player in a coalition financed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. But while polls suggest a majority of Americans still support an assault weapons ban, it is no longer one of Watts’ top priorities.

“We’ve very much changed our strategy to focus on public safety measures that will save the most lives,” she told ProPublica.

It’s not just that the ban proved to be what Watts calls a “nonstarter” politically, gaining fewer votes in the Senate post-Sandy Hook than background check legislation. It was also that as Watts spoke to experts and learned more about gun violence in the United States, she realized that pushing for a ban isn’t the best way to prevent gun deaths.

A 2004 Justice Department-funded evaluation found no clear evidence that the decade-long ban saved any lives. The guns categorized as “assault weapons” had only been used in about 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. “Should it be renewed,” the report concluded, “the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

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$2.66T: Tax Revenues for FY14 Hit Record Through August; Gov’t Still Runs $589B Deficit

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Photo Credit: APInflation-adjusted federal tax revenues hit a record $2,663,426,000,000 for the first 11 months of the fiscal year this August, but the federal government still ran a $589,185,000,000 deficit during that time, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement.

Each month, the Treasury publishes the government’s “total receipts,” including all revenue from individual income taxes, corporate income taxes, social insurance and retirement taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), unemployment insurance taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, customs duties, and “miscellaneous receipts.”

The largest share of the tax revenue so far this year has come from individual income taxes, which totaled $1,233,274,000,000 in the first 11 months of fiscal 2014.

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Hillary Clinton in Iowa Stirs 2016 Speculation

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsHillary Clinton returned to Iowa on Sunday for the first time since her 2008 Democratic presidential primary loss in the state, telling the crowd at the 37th annual Harkin Steak Fry — “I’m back.”

Clinton, the clear Democratic frontrunner should she make a 2016 White House bid, was greeted with loud cheers at the fundraising event. The event was held in honor of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who is retiring from Congress this year.

The former secretary of state told the crowd of several hundred that her immediate focus is helping fellow Democrats in the midterm elections but that she also thinks about “that other thing,” hinting at a 2016 run.

“It’s true, I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “People get excited about presidential campaigns, look I get excited about presidential campaigns, too.”

Missing in her speech were remarks on President Obama’s recent efforts to destroy the Islamic State militant group and on other pressing foreign policy issues.

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School Tells Soldier Escorting Daughter to Leave Because of Offensive Uniform

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Photo Credit: IJ ReviewA Lieutenant Colonel was escorting his daughter to Rochester Adams high school in Michigan, when the man in uniform was rudely informed that he would not be permitted to enter the premises.

The reason that the military officer was given? His uniform ‘might offend people.’

The security personnel hired by the school told the 24-year veteran Lt. Col. Sherwood Baker that if he wanted to take his daughter inside the building, he would have to go home and change clothes.

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US Air Force Confronts Atheists: Must Swear to God or Leave Service

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Photo Credit: AFP / Chris SchneiderThe US Air Force has told a sergeant he will have to leave the military unless he agrees to take an oath with the phrase “so help me God,” officials said Tuesday.

In the latest religious controversy to roil the air force, the atheist airman last month was denied his request to re-enlist because of his refusal to swear to God — and he is now poised to take the military to court, his lawyer said.

“We have not received word from the Air Force regarding our letter. It has not indicated a willingness to settle out of court,” said Monica Miller, an attorney for the American Humanist Association, which has taken up the service member’s case.

With the deadline for re-enlisting expiring in November, the technical sergeant at Creech Air Force base in Nevada — whose name has not been released — will be forced to sue the government in a federal court, Miller told AFP.

In the past, an airman could opt for an alternative phrase and omit the words “so help me God,” but the US Air Force changed its policy in October 2013.

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'DREAMER' Charged with Strangling 5-Year-Old Girl to Death in Texas

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Photo Credit: Dallas County Sheriff’s OfficeBy Dave Gibson.

On Sunday, police in Dallas arrested Angel Sanches, 17, after he reportedly strangled his 5-year-old cousin to death and left her tiny body hanging inside a closet inside an abandoned unit at the Sontera Palms Apartments in Lake Highlands. The victim “was found hanging in a closet by a shirt around her neck,” according to court documents.

The victim, Katherine Gonzalez, was staying with her uncle at the apartment complex, while her parents were at work. The uncle called police when he could not find the girl. Officers searched the complex and soon made the grisly discovery.

A witness, Freddie Washington, saw Sanches lure the little girl into the apartment.

Washington told WFAA:

He kept telling her to ‘Come on, come on,’ like come home or something. I think he waited for me to leave around the corner and then took her into the vacant apartment.

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BUCHANAN: ‘ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION POSES GREATER THREAT THAN ISIS’

By Leo Hohmann.

President Obama’s vow to unilaterally create amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants poses more of a threat to the future of the country than the brutal ISIS radicals marching across Iraq and Syria, according to a leading voice in the conservative movement.

Pat Buchanan, author of numerous books on American politics and a former Republican presidential candidate, said on the Laura Ingraham show Monday that the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq is not as big of a long-term threat as the failure to secure the border and uphold the rule of law on the homefront.

“Look, we better realize the United States itself is in tremendous long-term danger, I think, in the bleeding border along our southern border, and the mass movement of peoples all over the world into this country,” Buchanan said. “The decomposition of the country socially and culturally and politically – all of these things it seems to me are far greater long-term threats to the United States than even those dreadful characters over there in Syria or Iraq beheading people.”

To view it otherwise is to miss a historical tipping point, he said.

“I don’t think that (ISIS) is the threat. I think it’s basically the country breaking up internally and failing as the great nation that it was, and I think there is an awful lot of things that need to be done right here in the United States, and not simply in the economy, to bring us all together and make us one people again, that have nothing to do with what’s going on in Iraq,” Buchanan said.

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