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Flashback: Senator Obama Rips Bush for Being Unprepared for Avian Flu Epidemic

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Photo Credit: Pete SouzaA nice catch from our friends at Grabien, who got it from Ace [update] and who had to go all the way back to 2005 to find this nugget and the contemporaneous coverage at the NYT. At the time, the US prepared for a predicted epidemic of the avian flu, also known as H5N1, of global proportions. The virus had been identified for 18 years by that time, but by the end of 2004 had only resulted in 36 deaths and 50 known cases over the prior two years, according to WHO data. In 2005, the number of cases would jump to 98 and deaths to 43, and the prevention of a pandemic became a high priority. At that time, then-Senator Barack Obama scolded the Bush administration on the Senate floor, and quarterbacked a protest letter from his fellow Democrats over the slow response and lack of preparedness by the White House:

This lack of planning is compounded by the fact that we still don’t have a FDA approved vaccine against avian flu, and the one drug that many countries are relying on—Tamiflu—may be less effective than experts had thought. The manufacturer is also struggling to meet the demand, and it could take up to 2 years for it to make enough for the U.S. stockpile, presuming this Administration finally puts in an order for the drug. …

The failure to prepare for emergencies can have devastating consequences. We learned that lesson the hard way after Hurricane Katrina. This nation must not be caught off-guard when faced with the prospect of an avian flu pandemic. The consequences are too high.

The flyways for migratory birds are well-established. We know that avian flu will likely hit the United States in a matter of time. With the regular flu season coming up shortly, conditions will be favorable for reassortment of the avian flu virus with the annual flu virus. Such reassortment could lead to a mutated virus that could be transmitted efficiently between humans, which is the last condition needed for pandemic flu.

The question is will we be ready when that happens? Let’s make sure that answer is yes. I urge my colleagues in the Senate and the House to push this Administration to take the action needed to prevent a catastrophe that we have not seen during our lifetimes.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Want to Stop ISIS? Secure the Border

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Photo Credit: ISIS videoBy Shawn Moran.

A 25-year-old European male walks north, crossing a painted yellow line just outside an American Port of Entry. He heads towards the inspections area, careful to avoid the canine teams patrolling the pre-inspection areas. He picks a lane at random. He is carrying a larger than average backpack and is sweating, not from the weight, but from the fear that he will be stopped before carrying out his mission. This man is an ISIS jihadist. His mission is to attack America. His actions unleash a wave of terror, destruction and death, but that is just the beginning.

While first responders and Border Patrol Agents tend to the wounded and close the Port of Entry, other terrorist cells take advantage of tragedy. Several miles to the west of attack, a black Ford Suburban winds its way along deserted road, stopping near the north end of now unguarded border fence. Surveillance tapes will later show a group of six men crossing the primary border fence, scaling the secondary fence, and quickly crossing the border. Overwhelmed, understaffed and responding to a national crisis, no dispatcher or Border Patrol agent spots the illegal entry or the vehicle that drives them away. The evidence will later show the vehicle turning north, obeying all traffic laws and disappearing into American society. Otherwise occupied, understaffed Border Patrol agents will be unable to respond as more ISIS terrorist cells begin operations on American soil.

Unfortunately, this scenario is a real possibility today, because our borders are vulnerable and unsecured. But we can’t address the growing crisis through token measures or actions that provide no security. We need real solutions.

The solution is to focus on three simple strategies: (1) enforce our immigration laws; (2) support our Border Patrol Agents with additional training; and (3) give the proper number of hours for agents to effectively patrol and secure the border.

As threats from ISIS increase, the trends on the border are heading in the wrong direction. Even as encounters with illegal aliens increase, there is a decreased presence of agents and a lack of support from Washington for their efforts.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: AP / Pablo Martinez MonsivaisNetanyahu to Obama: Hope Iran Won’t Get Nuclear Deal It Wants from You

By Patrick Goodenough.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu praised President Obama Wednesday for leading the effort against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but described the Iranian nuclear issue as “even more critical” and voiced the hope that negotiations with Iran would not leave it on the threshold of nuclear weapons capability.

“Israel fully supports your effort and your leadership to defeat ISIS,” Netanyahu told the president in the Oval Office during a media appearance before bilateral talks. “We think everybody should support this.”

“And even more critical is our shared goal of preventing Iran from becoming a military nuclear power,” he continued. “As you know, Mr. President, Iran seeks a deal that would lift the tough sanctions that you’ve worked so hard to put in place, and leave it as a threshold nuclear power. I fervently hope that under your leadership that would not happen.”

Read more from this story HERE.

'Khorasan Group' is New Name Coined by Obama for Old Foe

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Photo Credit: FrontPageMagThe Obama administration is being accused of coining a new name for an old nemesis by dubbing an Al Qaeda offshoot “The Khorasan Group.”

From Rush Limbaugh to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, critics are dubious of the corporate-sounding name rooted in an old term that describes an area on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and are charging that it may have been introduced last month as a way to avoid invoking the name Al Qaeda, the terror group President Obama once claimed had been “decimated.”

Middle East experts were long familiar with the term “Khorasan,” but its use as part of a terrorist organization’s formal name does not appear in recent online searches prior to Sept. 13, when The Associated Press characterized the militants as a “cadre of veteran Al Qaeda fighters” from Afghanistan and Pakistan who traveled to Syria to connect with the Al Qaeda affiliate there, the Nusra Front.

Ten days later, in a Sept. 23 article, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Aron Lund also questioned the term’s legitimacy, saying the term “gained currency only” within the past two weeks.

“The sudden flurry of revelations about the ‘Khorasan Group’ in the past two weeks smacks of strategic leaks and political spin,” Lund wrote. “Even if the information provided is entirely correct, which it may well be, the timing can hardly be coincidental — within two weeks of the first press reports, attacks had started against [Khorasan Group leader Muhsin] Fadhli and his allies in Syria.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Stands Aloof from America's Four Foreign Policy Traditions

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Photo Credit: LifeNews President Obama’s speech at the United Nations last week was “an important turning point in American foreign policy — and in his presidency.” That’s the verdict of Brookings Institution scholar and former Clinton White House aide William Galston, a Democrat who has not been an unqualified admirer of this Democratic president’s foreign policy.

Whether Obama’s decision to launch air strikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Khorasan terrorists is a turning point, it was at least a move in the direction of a tradition in American foreign policy that has been conspicuously lacking in his administration.

That tradition was christened by Walter Russell Mead in his 2001 book Special Providence as the Jacksonian Impulse, one of four that have together shaped American foreign policy since the founding of the republic. The others, named after American leaders, are the Hamiltonian, Wilsonian and Jeffersonian traditions.

Jacksonians, like their namesake Andrew Jackson, are generally not much interested in foreign policy. But when Americans are attacked, the respond with righteous fury and a determination to utterly destroy the enemy.

Franklin Roosevelt invoked that tradition when in his Pearl Harbor speech he said, in a line that drew not just applause but whoops and hollers, “The American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Reporter 'Creeped Out' by Obama Aide

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Photo Credit: TownHallBy Ky Sisson.

The White House was recently accused of changing press pool reports and pressuring journalists to modify their stories. And now, another journalist has been told what to do by an Obama aide.

Read more on the White House’s paranoid control over the press.

Meg Kissinger, a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for 35 years, was covering Michelle Obama’s campaign visit for Wisconsin gubernatorial Democratic candidate, Mary Burke. She was told by aides for the first lady that she could not talk to people in the crowd.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Daily Signal Reporter Forbidden to Speak to Crowd at Michelle Obama Event

By Kate Scanlon.

Meg Kissinger, a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, covered first lady Michelle Obama’s Milwaukee campaign stop Monday for Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke. But, Kissinger says, she was barred from speaking to members of the crowd.

Kissinger, a veteran of covering political events, said of the request that she’s “never seen anything like it in 35 years as a reporter.”

At the event, Kissinger noticed that members of the media were “cordoned off” from the crowd at the event.

Read more from this story HERE.

WATCH: Obama 'The Country Is Better Off, People Just Don’t Feel It'

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Photo Credit: White HousePresident Obama firmly believes the United States is better off now than when he took office, even though the American people cannot “feel” it.

During an interview with 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft, Obama said, “the country is definitely better off than when I came into office.”

“When I came into office, our economy was in crisis,” Obama said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama: U.S. Underestimated Rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria (+video)

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Photo Credit: REUTERS / Larry DowningBy CBS Interactive Inc.

President Obama acknowledged that the U.S. underestimated the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also called ISIL) and overestimated the ability of the Iraqi military to fend off the militant group in an interview that will air Sunday on 60 Minutes.

The president was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft about comments from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has said the U.S. not only underestimated ISIS, it also overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi military to fight the extremist group.

“That’s true,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s absolutely true.”

“Jim Clappper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said, blaming the instability of the Syrian civil war for giving extremists space to thrive.

The comments were among the president’s most candid to date about the rapid rise of the terrorist group that has ransacked much of Syria and Iraq in recent months.

Read more from this story HERE.

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European ISIS fighters: Are there really 3,000 jihadis? (+video)

By David Clark Scott.

How big is the homegrown ISIS threat?

The European Union’s Anti-Terrorism Chief Gilles de Kerchove told the BBC Friday that the number of Islamic State fighters from Europe is “probably above 3.000, which is unprecedented.”

That statement prompted a number of sensational headlines – especially in Britain, where the Parliament voted Friday to join the airstrikes against ISIS.

But 3,000 Islamic State fighters is probably an inflated figure. Mr. de Kerchove himself qualifies that total saying 3,000 includes all those who have been to the region, including those who have returned and those who have been killed there.

The European jihadis threat assessment includes the dead? Out of those estimated 3,000, how many of those European ISIS jihadis are still alive?

Read more from this story HERE.

GOP Senator says Obama Favoring Illegals Over Americans for Military Service

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Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce CenetaSen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) on Friday accused President Barack Obama of favoring illegal immigrants over U.S. citizens by allowing them to join the U.S. military, and said the move is a blow to the thousands of Americans who are being forced to leave the military.

“The president is launching a new effort to recruit illegal immigrants and visa overstays for the military at a time when thousands of career military personnel are facing layoffs — meaning that the president’s recruitment program will directly displace American military personnel,” he said. “Military service is a high calling, and a noble career, and is most certainly not a job Americans won’t do.”

USA Today and other papers reported this week that the Defense Department has put out a new rule that will allow some illegal immigrants to join the military. The rules expand a program that let the military bring on immigrants with certain skills, such as fluency in a certain language.

Those reports said the expansion will open up the military to immigrants who qualify under the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama Praises Muslim Cleric Who Backed Fatwa on Killing of U.S. Soldiers

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Photo Credit: APBy Adam Kredo.

President Barack Obama favorably quoted and praised on Wednesday in his speech before the United Nations a controversial Muslim cleric whose organization has reportedly endorsed the terror group Hamas and supported a fatwa condoning the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Obama in his remarks offered praise to controversial cleric Sheikh Abdallah Bin Bayyah and referred to him as a moderate Muslim leader who can help combat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL or ISIS) radical ideology.

However, Bin Bayyah himself has long been engulfed in controversy for many of his views, including the reported backing of a 2004 fatwa that advocated violent resistance against Americans fighting in Iraq.

This is not the first time that the Obama administration has extoled Bin Bayyah, who also has served as the vice president of a Muslim scholars group founded by a radical Muslim Brotherhood leader who has called “for the death of Jews and Americans,” according to Fox News and other reports.

The State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau (CT) was forced to issue multiple apologies earlier this year after the Washington Free Beacon reported on its promotion of Bin Bayyah on Twitter.

Read more from this story HERE.

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OBAMA DEFENDS ISLAM, SMACKS ISRAEL, AMERICAN RACISM AT UN

By Ben Shapiro.

On Wednesday, on the first anniversary of President Barack Obama’s speech to the United Nations in which he called for ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Obama attempted to rally support for his airstrikes against Assad’s terrorist opposition. Taking on issues ranging from Iran to Russia, from Ukraine to Syria, from global warming to Ebola, Obama pledged to utilize American might in service to the United Nations, speaking grandly of the beauty and power of the world’s least effective and most morally bankrupt international institution.

Obama opened with a Dickensian world of Manichean opposites:

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen: we come together at a crossroads between war and peace; between disorder and integration; between fear and hope.

He then offered delegates a choice between paper and plastic.

Actually, he stated that the world has never been better off, praising the increase of member states at the UN and the decrease in poverty (neglecting, of course, that that decrease in poverty is a direct result of the rise of global capitalism), as well as the iPhone. “I often tell young people in the United States that this is the best time in human history to be born, for you are more likely than ever before to be literate, to be healthy, and to be free to pursue your dreams,” Obama said, apparently forgetting the last two decades of human history.

Read more from this story HERE.

Weather Chief: Obama 'Prostituting' Climate Science

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Photo Credit: WNDAs President Obama tries to rally the world to embrace his agenda to curb carbon emissions, Weatherbell Chief Forecaster Joe Bastardi is condemning the “prostituting” of climate science by Obama and others to further what he considers a political agenda.

On Tuesday, Obama addressed the United Nations Climate Summit, saying the world needs to confront the effects of man-made climate change and that no responsible nation can sit on the sidelines while the condition of the earth hangs in the balance for future generations. He also says the U.S. is one of the nations most responsible for the rise of carbon dioxide levels and, in turn, global temperatures.

Bastardi believes this is all a smokescreen.

“This is not about the weather. It’s not about climate. It’s not about science. Those things are being used to further another agenda,” Bastardi said. “And as someone who has loved (weather) all his life, it’s really disheartening to see this going on in my country.”

He believes the real purpose of the climate-change movement was on display in the People’s Climate March, which took aim at Wall Street and big business earlier in the week.

Read more from this story HERE.