Bill Ayers believes President Obama gets a “failing grade” for his presidency, and should be tried for “war crimes,” along with all living presidents who have engaged in acts of “terrorism” abroad.
Sitting down for an episode of RealClearPolitics’ “Morning Commute,” Ayers told host Charlie Stone that, on policy, Obama receives a “failing grade” along with the “F-minuses” he’s given previous presidents like George W. Bush and Richard Nixon…
“Do you think Barack Obama should be put on trial for war crimes?” Stone asked.
“Absolutely,” the activist answered. “Every president in this century should be on trial for war crimes. Every one of them goes into an office dripping with blood.”
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama’s alleged contacts with Ayers became a source of controversy, with the Republican ticket focusing a great deal on Ayers’ past association with the violent Weather Underground organization during the Vietnam War.
President Obama has had difficulty finding his footing and has been late to the game in defending federal intelligence surveillance programs as a valuable weapon for thwarting terrorist plots, national security analysts say.
When Mr. Obama appeared on TV with PBS interviewer Charlie Rose Monday night, it was his first high-profile comment on the secret phone and Internet surveillance since the story broke on June 5, nearly two weeks earlier. And even then, the president’s remarks were seen even by supporters of the programs as muddled.
For example, the president told Mr. Rose that the surveillance programs run by the National Security Agency (NSA) were “transparent” because they are overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. But the court itself is secret, with the public barred from learning any details of its operation, its location, or the orders issued by its judges.
“The Charlie Rose show was a good tactical choice in terms of setting, but the case made so far doesn’t seem to be persuading folks,” said Peter Singer, a national security specialist at the left-leaning Brookings Institution. “What he is battling is not just a facts-based argument but a lost-trust issue that is far harder to turn around.”
As Mr. Obama himself said on the show, “This debate has gotten cloudy very quickly.”
By Bob Unruh. A state senator from Louisiana who recently announced his departure from the Democratic Party to become a Republican says the party of President Obama is one of “overseers.”
State Sen. Elbert Guillory released a video Sunday explaining his reason for leaving the Democrats, citing their opposition to civil rights, their attitudes toward people and their desire for “control.”
He said the black community, which he invited to join him in the move, should quit exchanging self-reliance for the “allegiance of overseers” through government programs that are intended not to help people, but to control them.
He said in his video message that Democrats push a social justice and welfare aid strategy to manage citizens, not help them from poverty.
“In recent history, the Democratic Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow, it has been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement, with one simple creed – that slavery is a violation of the rights of man,” he said. Read more from this story HERE.
Sen. Guillory went on to say:
“But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness, free from Government dependence, and free from Government control. Because to be truly free, is to be reliant on no one, other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas are at the core of Republican party … My brothers and sisters of the American community, please join me in abandoning the Government plantation and the party of disappointment.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-19 02:36:472013-06-19 02:36:47Black Legislator Switches to GOP, Calls on African-Americans to Abandon Plantation, the Party of “Overseers” (+video)
Vice President Joseph R. Biden said Tuesday the fight for congressional action on gun legislation is far from over while outlining unilateral steps the Obama administration has taken to combat gun violence in the wake of the Connecticut school shootings in December.
The address was simultaneously a summary of what President Obama has been able to do through executive actions since the shootings in Newtown, Conn., and a rallying cry to remind voters and lawmakers that neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Obama is going to let the issue fade from public memory.
“The most important message to take from here today is the president and I are a team,” Mr. Biden said. “We have not given up. Our friends in the House and Senate, they have not given up.”
Mr. Biden said because of a “perverted” rule requiring 60 votes to herd off potential filibusters in the Senate, the 41 Republicans and four Democrats who opposed the administration’s gun control bill were able to block it even though it had the support of 51 Democrats and four Republicans.
“I know for a fact some of them wonder about, now, whether that was a prudent vote,” said Mr. Biden, who described the shooting deaths of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School as “the straw that broke the camel’s back” in the gun debate.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-19 02:33:502013-06-19 02:33:50Biden: Obama Won’t Give Up on Gun Control
By John Nolte. A Pew poll released Monday shows that our politically divided country is fairly unified on one big issue. A huge majority of 70% oppose President Obama’s announced plan to arm the rebels in Syria currently waging a war to unseat that country’s sitting president, Bashar Assad. Only 20% favor the plan.
When broken down by party, 74% of Independents, 71% of Republicans, and 66% of Democrats are in opposition to the president. The main concern of those polled is the fear that the new boss will be an awful lot like the old boss.
Lessons learned from Egypt, perhaps?
A Gallup poll also released Monday backs up Pew, but the numbers aren’t quite as bad for the president. 54% disapprove of Obama’s decision, with only 37% approving.
Obama fares a little better among those following the situation in Syria closely, but he is still upside down seven points, with only 44% approving and a majority of 51% disapproving. Read more from this story HERE.
Syrian-Rebel Teens Sing at Al Qaeda Camp: ‘We Destroyed America With a Civilian Airplane’
By Terence P. Jeffrey. An al Qaeda video posted online in late May and translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows masked Muslim teenage boys undergoing military training and indoctrination at an al Qaeda camp inside Syria.
The video shows the teenagers shooting handguns at a large photo of Syrian leader Bashar al-Asad. It also shows them stating that their leader is Abu Bakr al Baghdadi (the head of al Qaeda in Iraq), and then singing joyfully of their desire to overthrow both Asad and his sister Bushra, of the valor of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and of al Qaeda’s success in blowing up the World Trade Center towers.
“We destroyed America with a civilian airplane,” the young Syrian rebels sing. “The World Trade Center was turned into rubble. The World Trade Center was turned into rubble. Read more from this story HERE.
[Editor’s note: our apologies, but the embedded viewer in this article is not compatible with all browsers]
And here is another video from a Syrian rebel group:
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-18 01:11:102013-06-18 01:11:10Ruling Class Continues to Ignore America: 70% of US Oppose Arming Syrian Rebels (+video)
When President Ronald Reagan recommended in 1987 that Congress should reopen a small sliver of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska to oil and gas exploration, it started an epic battle between those who believe more U.S. energy supplies make us more energetic and those who argue that we should not use or produce any more oil. Now, in an unexpected but bold move, Alaska Governor Sean Parnell has proposed that the Department of Interior join with the State of Alaska to fund a new, updated assessment of just how much oil and gas might exist under ANWR’s frozen tundra. It is a deal Obama should take, as it could settle once and for all the issue by providing ANWR’s owners — the American public – the information they need to make a decision.
Over almost 30 years, numerous bills to open ANWR have passed either the House or the Senate, and in one case, both bodies passed the bill, only to have it be vetoed by President Clinton. President Obama has stood firmly on the side of the anti-energy environmentalists against opening ANWR – the same ones who forced him to keep studying the Keystone XL pipeline to death – and therefore no one has expected any bill that might pass the House to be given a vote in the Senate, where Majority Leader Harry Reid decides what gets on the Senate calendar after getting his marching orders from President Obama. Part of the argument over ANWR has been over how much oil and gas might exist there.
Over those same 30 years, the information President Reagan based his decision on has gotten older and less relevant, given today’s technology for finding and producing oil. In 1984 and 1985, when the winter government seismic assessment program took place, technology was limited to 2 dimensional images (2D) with very little clarity and interpretative value. The government’s estimate of 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil at well below today’s prices, would be worth $1 trillion or more to our economy at today’s oil prices. But the government also estimated that the total oil in ANWR was between 16 and 42 billion barrels. Any of these numbers place ANWR in the highest class of oil reserves in the world. But the story could get much, much better.
In the thirty years since those estimates, the technology in the oil and gas business has gotten spectacularly better. Computers were very limited then, but today, the likelihood of oil and gas is found using 3 dimensional (3D) and even 4 dimensional (4D) analysis which shows what might have happened to hydrocarbons underground over time. When combined with new drilling as well as interpretive computing and materials technologies which would make NASA jealous, these amazing breakthroughs are remaking the United States and North America into the energy supergiant of the world. Governor Parnell’s proposal simply asks the president to join Alaska in the search for more information for the public about what they own, using the best technologies in the world in the dead of winter on some of the most forbidding territory in the world. An area, by the way, where the indigenous Inupiat Eskimo people overwhelming support efforts to find oil and gas in their traditional lands.
The implications of such new information could be staggering. In 1995 – 10 years after the ANWR report — the government estimated that the area around the famous Bakken formation in North Dakota held 151 million barrels of recoverable oil. Their estimate today is that the area holds 7.5 billion barrels, almost 50 times as much! If new information and new technologies had the same effect in ANWR that they have had on the Bakken, that would equate to about 500 billion barrels of oil, worth $50 trillion to our economy over its development.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-17 03:58:362013-06-17 03:58:36Alaska Makes Obama an Offer He Should, But Won’t Take
American spies based in the UK intercepted the top-secret communications of the then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to Britain for the G20 summit in London, leaked documents reveal.
The details of the intercept were set out in a briefing prepared by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s biggest surveillance and eavesdropping organisation, and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
The document, leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and seen by the Guardian, shows the agency believed it might have discovered “a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted”.
The disclosure underlines the importance of the US spy hub at RAF Menwith Hill in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, where hundreds of NSA analysts are based, working alongside liaison officers from GCHQ…
It has often been described as the biggest surveillance and interception facility in the world, and has 33 distinct white “radomes” that house satellite dishes. A US base in all but name, it has British intelligence analysts seconded to work alongside NSA colleagues, though it is unclear how the two agencies obtain and share intelligence – and under whose legal authority they are working under.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-17 03:45:592013-06-17 03:45:59NSA Targeted Russian Premier at London G20 Summit
4. Any time you run out of power, you cannot simply replace the battery with a charged, spare battery because Apple has designed the iPhone without a removable battery.
5. There are far more open source, free programs available on the non-iPhone Android platforms, there are other phones with better displays, and there are many phones now available with better processing power.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-17 01:53:472013-06-17 01:53:47Why Conservatives (and Everyone Else) Should Abandon the iPhone
The White House Friday defended the first family’s upcoming weeklong trip to Africa, which could cost taxpayers up to $100 million, as “great bang for our buck.”
“There will be a great bang for our buck for being in Africa because when you travel to regions like Africa that don’t get a lot of presidential attention, you tend to have very longstanding and long-running impact from the visit,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Obama.
The Obamas’ trip, at a time of “sequestration” budget cuts, will take them to Senegal, Tanzania and South Africa from June 26 to July 3. Citing a confidential planning document, the Washington Post reported that the trip will cost between $60 million to $100 million.
The excursion will involve military cargo planes airlifting 56 support vehicles, including 14 limousines, and three trucks to carry bulletproof glass panels to cover the windows where the first family is set to stay. A Navy aircraft carrier or amphibious ship with a fully staffed medical trauma center will be stationed offshore in case of an emergency.
Fighter jets will fly in shifts to provide around-the-clock protection over the president’s airspace. The trip will reportedly involve hundreds of Secret Service agents.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-16 00:07:372013-06-16 00:07:37White House Defends Potential $100 Million Africa Sequestration Trip as “Great Bang for Our Buck”
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer won a battle with state lawmakers this week, defying most other conservatives in her party to get a key component of President Obama’s Medicaid expansion through the Legislature.
The Arizona Senate voted Thursday to approve the measure 18 to 11. That followed approval earlier this week by the state House of Representatives.
The issue had inflamed passions and divided the Legislature for weeks. Things came to a head Tuesday when Brewer called lawmakers into the Capitol in Phoenix for a surprise special session.
Brewer — a vocal opponent of President Obama’s healthcare reform law — came out in support of Medicaid expansion for her state in January and ended up leading a contingent of moderate Democrats and Republicans who won over the objections of some conservative Republicans.
“By joining me in extending health coverage to hundreds of thousands of Arizonans, legislators of my own party have come under sharp criticism in some quarters. Some have had threats made not just against their political future, but also their personal livelihood,” Brewer said in a prepared statement.
