Immigration Issue Sets President Obama Up For Failure!

        OK.  So now the Republicans are kicking into high gear about the immigration crisis at the Mexican/U.S. border.  Once again, they are setting their president up for failure.  They have cranked up their machine and they have caused a whirlwind of press, sound bites and debate about the current immigration issue at our border. They have repeatedly called for  their president to act, and have gone as far as criticizing President Obama for not going to the border to see the crisis for himself.  In an obvious, political maneuver they turned his decision to stay away from the border into "his Katrina moment."  Mark my words; watch during the coming days, Fox news will continue to report about President Obama's absence from the border.  It will be subtle one-liners and small shots, but they will keep his decision to avoid the border in front of us for as long as they can.  This is what they do and its not just the Republicans.  Both sides take great satisfaction in first; calling for action, then criticizing whatever action is announced, and then when the opposition try's to put those plans into motion, they will do whatever they can to disrupt and obstruct , said plans.
        They get a lot of mileage out of this obstructionism.  Think about the constant and relentless debate, interviews, headlines and of course the best grandstand of all.  The Senate Hearings.  Keep watching; there will be some form of a hearing or committee meeting to discuss how this immigration issue is being handled.  Does it surprise us that during a time like this, how many of our senators, and their staffs become Monday morning experts about immigration law?  These our men and women who will tell us that they don't even read bills and legislation they vote on, but now they all know everything there is to know about immigration.  Some of these "experts" didn't even know where Mexico was two weeks ago, and now they stand with the talking heads every day and try to break it down for the common man.  It's amazing. While they are telling us how much they know, they are also telling us, how much their President doesn't know.  I don't know about you, but I am pretty much fed up with all of them.  Frankly; I would prefer that they talk to each other, and stay off the airwaves.  It doesn't help, that this is the worst congress we've had in the last 100 years. 
     According to Fox News, President Obama has asked for 3.7 billion dollars to fix the immigration and border crisis.  The Fox report indicated that Texas Republican Representative and Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Mike McCaul stated; "Our view as House Republicans is that we're not going to write a blank check."  Really?  OK, Mr. Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, what is your plan?  Surely the Republicans have a plan.  After all, they have been making noise about immigration reform for a decade.  Mr. McCaul what should we do, and how much will it cost?  It's easy to oppose a plan, it's much harder to create one.  Where is your bill?  Is it winding its way through the committee process?  You've been the Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee for over 18 months, surely you have some idea about how to fix the current problem.
        The Texas Governor, Rick Perry met last week with our President, and he has stated that he will not comply with President Obama's request to convince the Texas congressional delegation to agree to his request for the emergency funds.  "He doesn't need this amount of money", Perry told Fox News. OK, so now Rick Perry is also an expert on this matter.  What is his plan?  The Fox report did indicate that Perry has called for sending National Guardsmen to the boarder until more U.S. Border Patrol agents are trained and ready for action.  Perry told Fox; "This will allow the Border Patrol Agents to get back to what it does", said Perry. Responding to reports of agents now spending much of their time doing paperwork and accepting arriving families at the border, instead of performing Law-enforcement duties." Oh.  So that's the fix?  That's the inexpensive answer to all of our border problems?  Quit being ridiculous Mr. Perry.  We need a lot more answers to this problem than just more "Law-enforcement duties".    This problem has been growing and getting worse since April and your answer is; we need more policemen?  The call for more law enforcement, and the refusal to provide much needed financial support to address this problem are a means to an end.  This "end" has nothing to do with fixing the immigration issue here.  The "end" is about throwing up road blocks and hurdles, which our President will have to jump over, if he hopes to make any headway with this crisis.  I smell another Executive Order on the horizon. 

Nothing Good About Hate

"Moms With Guns founder shares Obama pic on Facebook, adds ‘where is an assassin when you need one"  A recent post from the founder of Moms With Guns has led me to wonder why this type of FaceBook post is even conceivable.  Ok; I get it!  1st amendment, 2nd amendment, blah blah blah.  Founder and leader of the organization  Moms With Guns, Kathy Perkins found her self in a bit of trouble this week, when her hatful post was removed from Facebook.  (According to RAWSTORY.com)
        The cycle of hate continues and here is a good example.  What makes someone hate this man, to the point of threatening him with assassination?  Was this simply a case of a tongue-in-cheek comment?  Was it an innocent FaceBook quip?  I'm not so sure.  This woman runs an organization that's all about guns.  When you mix tongue-in-cheek with bullet-in-chamber comments, and those comments are directed toward the leader of our nation, it's going to be taken seriously.  I am offended that someone who clearly comes from this kind of a place of hatred and ignorance would threaten my president. 
        While I hope Ms. Perkins comes to experience the wrath of our Secret Service, FBI and Legal system, I am still left with the question of the bigger picture. When did this become OK?  When did we stop respecting the office of our President?  I don't agree with everything our President does, but like most Americans, I don't joke about killing the man.
        I think that we have somehow lost our way.  In our country, we have gone from talking about our problems to spewing hatred, buying into misinformation, and working ourselves up into a shark-like fanatical frenzy.  What has changed?  Why do we do this now and thirty years ago this would have been almost unheard of.  In my opinion it has a lot to do with the twenty-four hour news cycle.
        Everyday we watch as CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and HLN come on the air, and attempt to fill the airwaves with content.  They tell us the news, the weather, and sports information, and this fills about 20% of their airtime.  So if you're a news director how do you fill the other 80% of your available time?  You begin by finding a news-worthy source to come on the air and voice opinions.  Now who might that be?  These opinions have to be interesting, well articulated and presented by someone in a position of authority or who has knowledge about the subject.  Who do you book to come on your show?  You reach out to the one group of people, who are ready to talk about anything, anytime, anywhere.  These people do not need a lot of preparation.  They can and will come on your airwaves with short notice, ready to spew facts and information and it doesn't even matter if the statistics, and facts they will talk about are based in truth.  They can and will pontificate about anything.  You call any politician in America and if you are CNN, Fox. MSN or HLN you've get your time slot filled, and it's all you care about.  As the News Director you wont check the facts they will talk about.  Why should you? The politician wont take the time or wont have the time to check their own facts, they've got to get to the studio.  As long as this politician sticks to their parties talking points, anything else they say will be spontaneous and improvisational.  Let the cycle of hate begin!  The 24 hour news cycle has propagated the 24 hour hate cycle.  There is a direct correlation between the hate cycle and this news cycle that we set our watches by.  Read the Fox & Friends headline that went along with their post.  Interesting that a news organization can stir the hate with such a simple headline attached to the photos. 
         It is this hate cycle which led Ms. Perkins to make her tongue-in-cheek, bullet-in-chamber comment.  It is this ill-conceived, ignorant statement (and the responses to it) that shines a light on the symptom of hate.  Ms. Perkins may well end up in court, and she will probably spend a few long hours in a dark room with a bright light in her face, but the real hate has little to do with this woman.  She is simply a puppet and a reaction to the 24 hour news cycle. We are in a frenzy of division and hatred and there doesn't seem to be a light up ahead. 

Backlogged immigration courts face new deluge!

Are we really surprised?  Are we?  This is not a new issue.  We have been hearing about immigration, immigration reform, immigration issues and immigration legislation for well over a decade.  Why do you think that now it has escalated to a higher level?   It's simple.  The parents are fighting, so now is the best time.  Our do-nothing congress couldn't find a roll of toilet paper in a pulp mill so now is the perfect time. Until or unless we get serious about our problems and issues, the world will continue to move on without us.  This is a symptom, but it is not the problem.  Do you really think people would just walk across the borders of some other country's.  I am not making a statement here about whether or not immigration is a good or bad thing for our country.  What I am trying to espouse is this:  If our laws don't allow for foreign citizens to simply walk across our borders, and if we don't want to accept bus loads of children, who will burden our systems, (Immigration, health care, law enforcement and more) then we need to quit blaming each other and do something about it.  Instead of making this about politics, sound bites, and 5th grade posturing, our congress and our president need to go to work and solve these types of issues.  Put troops on the borders, this is an invasion and we need to start acting like it.  I have no problem with people who want to live and thrive in our country.  But we have laws and regulations which are in place for a reason, and they are not being followed.   Let's tell our lawmakers to go to work!  That's what we're paying them for.

U.S. Suspends Hundreds Of Millions In Aid To Pakistani Military

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively.
Coupled with a statement from the top American military officer last week linking Pakistan’s military spy agency to the recent murder of a Pakistani journalist, the halting or withdrawal of military equipment and other aid to Pakistan illustrates the depth of the debate inside the Obama administration over how to change the behavior of one of its key counterterrorism partners. 
Altogether, about $800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than $2 billion in annual American security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected, three senior United States officials said.
This aid includes about $300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border to combat terrorism, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in training assistance and military hardware, according to half a dozen Congressional, Pentagon and other administration officials who were granted anonymity to discuss the politically delicate matter.
Some of the curtailed aid is equipment that the United States wants to send but Pakistan now refuses to accept, like rifles, ammunition, body armor and bomb-disposal gear that were withdrawn or held up after Pakistan ordered more than 100 Army Special Forces trainers to leave the country in recent weeks.
Some is equipment, such as radios, night-vision goggles and helicopter spare parts, which cannot be set up, certified or used for training because Pakistan has denied visas to the American personnel needed to operate the equipment, two senior Pentagon officials said.
And some is assistance like the reimbursements for troop costs, which is being reviewed in light of questions about Pakistan’s commitment to carry out counterterrorism operations. For example, the United States recently provided Pakistan with information about suspected bomb-making factories, only to have the insurgents vanish before Pakistani security forces arrived a few days later.
“When it comes to our military aid,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a Senate committee last month “we are not prepared to continue providing that at the pace we were providing it unless and until we see certain steps taken.”
American officials say they would probably resume equipment deliveries and aid if relations improve and Pakistan pursues terrorists more aggressively. The cutoffs do not affect any immediate deliveries of military sales to Pakistan, like F-16 fighter jets, or nonmilitary aid, the officials said.
Pakistan’s precise military budget is not known, and while the American aid cutoff would probably have a small impact on the overall military budget, it would most directly affect the counterinsurgency campaign. The Pakistani Army spends nearly one-quarter of the nation’s annual expenditures, according to K. Alan Kronstadt of the Congressional Research Service.
While some senior administration officials have concluded that Pakistan will never be the kind of partner the administration hoped for when President Obama entered office, others emphasize that the United States cannot risk a full break in relations or a complete cutoff of aid akin to what happened in the 1990s, when Pakistan was caught developing nuclear weapons.
But many of the recent aid curtailments are clearly intended to force the Pakistani military to make a difficult choice between backing the country that finances much of its operations and equipment, or continuing to provide secret support for the Taliban and other militants fighting American soldiers in Afghanistan.
“We have to continue to emphasize with the Pakistanis that in the end it’s in their interest to be able to go after these targets as well,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters on Friday en route to Afghanistan.
Some American officials say Pakistan has only itself to blame, citing the Pakistani military’s decision to distance itself from American assistance in response to the humiliation suffered from the American commando raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden, as well as rising anger from midlevel Pakistani officers and the Pakistani public that senior military leaders, including Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the powerful army chief of staff, are too accommodating to the Americans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/asia/10intel.html?_r=1

Finally!  It only took a few months but it looks like our government got wise to the nonsense the Pakistani government calls friendship.  We provide millions in aid to a country which is providing funds to; and working with the Taliban.   What did we know and when did we know it?   Isn’t it just possible that we had some clue before we took out Bin Laden that Pakistan was not all they said they were?   

Undefeated’ trailer hits the Web with premiere coming soon

Conservative filmmaker Steve Bannon released the trailer for his upcoming documentary of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Bannon previously told The Daily Caller that “The Undefeated” shows Palin is “no Caribou Barbie.”
Beginning with family photos and home videos of Palin, the trailer jumps to conservative media personality Tammy Bruce. “Like a Marine, she runs toward the danger,” Bruce says of Palin. “It wasn’t something that daddy gave her. It wasn’t something the machine prepared the way for.”
The trailer teases viewers with a taste of what’s to come with the final version: showing how Palin dealt with oil executives and corruption within her own party in Alaska during and prior to her time as governor.
Radio talker Mark Levin and publisher Andrew Breitbart appear in the trailer talking about how they could care less about the Washington GOP order.
“She represented a threat to so many establishments,” Breitbart says in the trailer. “To hell with the establishment because the establishment has put us in this position in the first place.” (Die hard organizers wait for Palin to make a move on 2012)
Levin talks about how Palin’s misrepresented in the media and by the establishment GOP. “I don’t give a damn if the phony intelligencia like it or not,” Levin says. “The liberal media don’t matter to me. The Republican establishment don’t matter to me.”
The film hits select theaters next Friday, July 15.


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/07/%e2%80%98the-undefeated%e2%80%99-trailer-hits-the-web-with-premiere-coming-soon-video/#ixzz1RTyY8SLq

I'm confused.  Wasn't she defeated? 

New EPA rules to devastate coal industry

The coal industry is crying foul over new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations which they say will be among the most be costly rules ever imposed by the agency on coal-fueled power plants.
The result, industry insiders say: substantially higher electricity rates and massive job loss.
“The EPA is ignoring the cumulative economic damage new regulations will cause,” said Steve Miller, president and CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). “America’s coal-fueled electric industry has been doing its part for the environment and the economy, but our industry needs adequate time to install clean coal technologies to comply with new regulations. Unfortunately, EPA doesn’t seem to care.”
Thursday the EPA announced that they have finalized additional Clean Air Act provisions, collectively known as “The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule” to ostensibly “reduce air pollution and attain clean air standards,” by requiring coal companies in 27 states to slash emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide by 73 percent and 54 percent, respectively, from 2005 levels by 2014.
According to the EPA, these emissions travel across state lines and contribute to ozone and fine particle pollution.
The rule will replace a similar 2005 standard called the Clean Air Interstate Rule. EPA claims that the new rule will result in a savings of $120 to $280 billion in annual health and environmental benefits as well as save 13,000 to 34,000 lives. (EPA stimulating environmental regulations abroad)
While the EPA’s alleged benefits are lofty, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton cautioned that the new rules will come with a hefty price.
“The goal for these rules should be reasonable regulation that protects public health and the environment while also preserving economic growth. Unfortunately, the unprecedented pace at which the administration is issuing major new rules that impose new costs and regulatory requirements on states, employers, and consumers fails that basic test,” said Upton. “By issuing multiple regulations for the energy and other sectors at such an accelerated rate, EPA has turned regulation from a manageable tool into an unpredictable moving target that makes it difficult for companies to invest and create jobs.”


Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/07/07/new-epa-rules-to-devastate-coal-industry/#ixzz1RTvDsnG8

Oh; I suspect they'll be alright.  Coal and oil baby . . . . . .

Joint Chiefs Chairman: Pakistan 'Sanctioned' Journalist's Killing

WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. military officer says the Pakistani government "sanctioned" the killing of a journalist last month, but said he could not tie the death to the country's powerful intelligence service.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the beating death of Pakistani reporter, Saleem Shahzad, and the reported abuse of other journalists is no way for a government to move ahead. He says it is a way to spiral in the wrong direction.
Shahzad's death was widely blamed on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, but the ISI has denied involvement. His death was followed a few weeks later by the beating of another Pakistani journalist by men wearing police uniforms.
Mullen is the first top U.S. leader to publicly link the killing to Pakistan's government.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/07/mullen-islamabad-sanctioned-journalist-killing_n_892424.html

And we call them our friends!