Should we be able to see correspondence between Obama and terrorists?

Ace of Spades features some tweets by Mike Doran, a former National Security Administration staffer. Doran believes the public has a right to see correspondence between members of the Obama administration and terrorist leaders. Doran knows for a fact that the correspondence exists. He tweets that if he must become a whistleblower he will do that. Read more here.

Compare and Contrast

"More than a dozen suspects have been arrested on suspicion of intentionally lighting fires that have ravaged parts Israel and the West Bank."

The Jerusalem Post reports,

Israeli security forces on Saturday detained a Palestinian suspect who was sighted on security footage igniting a fire in the northwestern Etzion region as hundreds of wildfires ravaged parts of Israel and the West Bank for a fifth-straight day.

The suspect, who was initially seen by a Nature and Parks Authority worker, was handed over to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) for further investigation.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit stated that during the night an IDF force near Dir Kaddis in the Ephraim region captured three suspects in a vehicle. The suspects were found to have two full bottles of fuel, one empty bottle of fuel, a sack with fabric, gloves and lighters.

The IDF spokesperson's unit delivered a messaged stating that "the IDF is continuing specific activity to locate arsonists."

Over the past few days, special efforts have been made by the West Bank forces in coordination with the Shin Bet to locate and arrest suspected arsonists.

Israel stepped up efforts on Saturday to extinguish wildfires that have been scorching large swathes of the country. As of Saturday, more than 10 suspected Palestinian arsonists have been arrested.

While many hotspots have been contained, new conflagrations spread throughout north and central Israel and parts of the West Bank for a fifth straight day Saturday.

Firefighters battled the flames in Israel with support from Palestinian firemen and emergency teams from Greece, Cyprus, Croatia, Italy, Russia and Turkey.

Unseasonably dry weather and easterly winds helped kindle the fires, which erupted on Tuesday and stretched across half the country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has labeled the apparently-intentional ignition of some blazes as "arson-terrorism" carried out by "elements with great hostility toward Israel".

Jpost.com Staff and Reuters contributed to this article.

7,712 terrorist encounters occurred within the United States from July 20, 2015 through July 20, 2016

Brandon Darby reports at Breitbart,

Leaked documents with sensitive FBI data exclusively obtained by Breitbart Texas reveal that and that many of those encounters occurred near the U.S.-Mexico border. The incidents are characterized as “Known or Suspected Terrorist Encounters.” Some of the encounters occurred near the U.S.-Mexico border at ports-of-entry and some occurred in between, indicating that persons known or reasonably suspected of being terrorists attempted to sneak into the U.S. across the border. In all, the encounters occurred in higher numbers in border states.

The leaked FBI data are contained in a fusion center’s educational materials, specifically the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center’s (ACTIC) “Known or Suspected Terrorist (KST) Encounters Briefing” covering from July 20 2015 through July 20 2016. The leaked documents are composed of 10 individual pages, but Breitbart Texas chose to release only nine of them due to page 10 containing contact information for ACTIC.

Page Six shows a pie chart indicating that the majority of encounters in Arizona were with Islamic known or suspected terrorists, both Sunni and Shi’a. Eighty-nine encounters were Sunni, 56 were Shi’a, 70 were “Other International Terrorist Groups or Affiliates,” and only 52 were with “Domestic Terrorism.”

Read more here.

It would be better if people didn't know what is going on

John Kerry in Bangladesh:

“Remember this: No country is immune from terrorism,” he said. “It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on. The fact is we have to stand together, and the United States is standing with Bangladesh in this fight.”

Read more here.

This one goes right to the top of the list of stupid things people have said in 2016.

Terrorists cutting deals with Mexican drug cartels

Breitbart reports,

Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), tells Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM that countries that are known to support radical Islamic terrorism are “cutting deals” with Mexican cartels for access to human smuggling routes into the United States.
Citing photos from the U.S. Border Patrol component of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency on Friday, Gen. Flynn also told Washington Political Editor Matthew Boyle, host of Breitbart News Daily, that there are signs in Arabic posted along human smuggling routes at the section of the border that lies in Texas providing directions for how to sneak into the United States.

Moreover, the former DIA chief said that the Shiite Lebanese narco-terrorist group Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy, is illegally trafficking humans, drugs, and other contraband into the United States.

His comments echo recent warnings from the U.S. military, suggesting that criminal groups in Latin America may be collaborating with Islamic extremist organizations.

Read more here.

h/t David Adams

Are undercover FBI agents flawless in their ability to predict when a potential terrorist is going strike?

I doubt it. TodayAce of Spades looks at the Garland, Texas terror attack and the role played by an undercover agent.

Who is screening the screeners?

Michelle Malkin writes about inside jobs involving airport security screeners and terrorists.

Fighting terrorists

h/t Krista Kafer

Sessions, Cruz demand immigration history of terrorists, Calif. shooters

Paul Bedard reports in the Washington Examiner,

Raising concerns about Muslim immigrants to a new high, Sens. Jeff Sessions and Ted Cruz late Thursday charged that the Obama administration is concealing the immigration history of terrorists and demanded to know the immigration history of the San Bernardino attackers.

The lawmakers, on the warpath against the pending omnibus appropriations because it fully funds President Obama's immigration program, also demanded a full explanation of how it will bring in nearly 200,000 Muslim migrants in one year through the green card program.

Read the Cruz, Sessions letter here.

How about a sign encouraging concealed carry?

Michael D. Brown posts on his Facebook page this sign from Minnesota's Mall of America.

Terrorists are urging fellow Islamists to attack America's malls, and are specifically using images from the Mall of America to promote the idea of attacking. Does the sign above give you confidence that the Mall of America would be a safe place to visit? It doesn't for me. Similar signs were posted here in Colorado at the Aurora theater where an attacker opened fire, killing and injuring many unarmed people.

Speech-making and governing are two different things

When Barack Hussein Obama announced in Springfield, Illinois on February 10, 2007 that he was a candidate for president, he gave a speech. Myra Adams goes back to that speech to read the most salient points of his announced candidacy.

The first was to "build a more perfect union" borrowing a phrase from Springfield's own Abe Lincoln. In fact, according to Gallup, the nation is fifth most polarized now that at any time since 1953.

He also complained about mounting debts. In fact, Adams points out that

it is projected that by the time he leaves office, he will have accumulated debt equal to that of all previous presidents in U.S. history combined.

Adams links to this website to provide a graphic understanding of this debt.

In his speech Obama called for an end to poverty in this generation. In fact, there are five million people in poverty now than when he gave that speech.

When President Obama first stepped into the Oval Office, there were 31,939,110 Americans receiving food stamps. Now that number exceeds 46 million.

In the speech he called for universal health care. In fact,

Americans are stuck with an Obamacare legacy of higher premiums and deductibles for all. His signature program remains highly unpopular among 64 percent of Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

What Obama neglected to mention in his 2007 announcement speech was that universal health care, in any form, comes with a sickening price tag.

Equally sickening were a number of politically charged zingers in his speech that were begging to be countered, such as, Let’s be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil. So here is the rational explanation for his refusing to take action on the Keystone XL pipeline while justifying hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted on Solyndra and other alternative-energy programs benefiting his political cronies.

Then Obama expresses his patriotism, saying, Most of all, let’s be the generation that never forgets what happened on that September day and confront the terrorists with everything we’ve got. Wouldn’t you love for the Pentagon to render a current opinion on that statement?

Obama ends his announcement speech saying, Together, starting today, let us finish the work that needs to be done, and usher in a new birth of freedom on this earth. To that I say, “Kumbaya, Mr. President!” The potential for ushering in a “new birth of freedom on this earth” has never been less attainable, thanks to your avoiding the traditionally strong U.S. presidential leadership role, leaving a world power vacuum in which bad guys and turmoil have flourished.

So, happy eighth anniversary to a speech that started freshman senator Obama on his excellent adventure of over 215 golf outings (including one immediately after he had described as “appalling” the beheading of American journalist James Foley), non-stop fundraising, exotic vacations, and cavorting with celebrities.

His is a journey that will leave our next president with insurmountable problems at home and abroad.

read more here.

The importance of satire to freedom and liberty

Kudos to the Drudge Report for providing us with the cartoon that enraged Islamic terrorists, who planned and carried out the attack in Paris yesterday. Here is the cartoon.

Anybody know how to translate it into English? Every news source in the free world should publish the cartoon.

The French magazine Charlie Hebdo, which was targeted yesterday by Islamist terrorists, sounds similar to our The Onion. Ivan Plis writes that the magazine has a long history of mocking religions.

The magazine also posted a cartoon of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to its Twitter feed earlier today.

The magazine has also been critical of France’s Catholic-aligned political right, often expressed through parodies of Jesus, Mary, the pope and other Catholic figures. Last week’s cover promised “The True Story of Baby Jesus,” based on infancy narratives from outside the Biblical canon. In the cartoon, the holy infant appears in a flash between the legs of his mother, spread apart as if in gynecologist’s stirrups.

I'm sure it is just a matter of time before Christian terrorists open fire on the magazine. Wait, maybe not. That may be one difference between Christianity and Islam: Christian terrorists confine themselves to blowing up abortion clinics.

One of the cartoonists killed on Wednesday, known professionally as “Charb,” had said that the magazine’s goal was to make “Islam as banal as Catholicism,” so it is acceptable to scrutinize and ridicule it.

Charb (Stéphane Charbonnier) had been under police protection ever since appearing on a “wanted” list in Inspire, the digital magazine of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. He was famously quoted during the 2012 controversy as saying “I would rather die standing than live kneeling.” Besides Charb, three other cartoonists were reportedly killed in Wednesday’s attack.

Maybe a concealed carry permit would have been more effective than police protection?

Most interpretations of Islam prohibit any depiction of Muhammad, and many Muslim-majority countries have laws against “defamation of religion.”

I might add that those laws don't seem to prohibit defamation of Christianity or Judaism, now do they?

The shooters shouted “Allahu akbar” and “The prophet is avenged” while carrying out their attack. Terror analysts also noted that they made a one-finger hand gesture, signifying Islam’s emphasis of God’s oneness, that is often featured in propaganda videos of the Islamic State terror group.

Read more here.

One thing this story makes clear to me is that I should continue to place high value on American sources of satire, such as Manhattan Infidel, Scrappleface, Iowahawk, and The Onion.

Where will jihadists strike next?

Christmas is the busiest time of the year for airlines. Officials in Europe are worried about jihadists returning home from fighting with IS. They are reportedly considering banning all hand luggage or banning all electronics from hand luggage. Donal Macintyre writes:

The latest threat is understood to have been uncovered by American intelligence officers who fear that despite success in taking out key Al Qaeda bomb-makers, the genie is out of the bottle and sleeper cells are currently preparing for a doomsday scenario.

David Drugeon, a 24-year-old Frenchman and one of Al Qaeda's most trusted bomb-makers was killed by a cruise missile strike earlier this month to the west of the Alepo, Syria.

Drugeon, who was part of an Al Qaeda off-shoot called the the Khorasan group, and was said to be targeting US and UK airlines with non-metallic explosive devices, which could be concealed in mobile phones, computers and printer cartridges.

Although now dead his work remains a huge threat as his skill set is likely to have been spread among a number of terror apprentices, including an unidentified Saudi-born bombmaker.

Last night leading terrorism expert Dr Sally Leivesley said the banning of hand luggage and hand held electronic devices is unlikely to be accepted by the airlines despite the risks.

Dr. Leivesley, a former Home Office risk adviser, said that terrorists are now more likely to be "white, blond and blue eyed" who are radicalized in as little as five weeks.

She also claimed that female terrorists were becoming a significant risk, adding: "Crime profiling shows that white, middle class women, who are better than averagely educated, are susceptible to the terrorist narrative.

read more here.

The lucrative business of kidnapping

David Rohde is a journalist who was captured by the Taliban five years ago, and escaped thanks to the help of an Afghan journalist who was captured with him. He writes about what has been a lucrative business:

Last month, a New York Times investigation found that al-Qaeda and its direct affiliates had received at least $125 million in revenue from kidnappings since 2008—primarily from European governments. In the last year alone, they received $66 million.

Read more here.

"From jayvee to juggernaut"

Seth Mandel writes that Obama has

a complete lack of understanding in how individual terrorists operate.

Obama has tended to think of “new” terrorist groups as freshmen starting out at the bottom of the food chain. In fact, not only do they blur lines between groups and switch allegiances, but all terrorist groups benefit from the transnational architecture built over decades by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, and other trailblazers.

Nobody defects to the jayvee team. And it’s been fascinating to watch the Obama administration come to terms with that realization, and adjust its rhetoric accordingly. Every time the administration is confronted with the fact that the global war on terror was not a made-up construct in a fit of warmongering pique but a logical reaction to the fluid, metastasizing threat of global jihadist groups, it struggles to explain its own meaningless distinctions.

The point is not to split hairs. The point is that the administration made a grave and dangerous error in its attitude toward al-Qaeda, claiming the fight could be limited to card-carrying and dues-paying members of that one club. Obama is simply repeating that mistake again with ISIS. Who will be the next jayvee team that turns into a juggernaut? Whoever it is, they will almost certainly take Obama by surprise.

Read more here.

Is he one of us?

Thanks again to Adrienne for posting this video.

Who gets political power?

Regarding the revelation of Hillary's hit list, V the K writes,

Democrats always see their domestic political opposition as “enemies,” but foreign terrorists are just “militants” with legitimate grievances and hostile foreign Governments are fellow global citizens to be provided with appeasement and foreign aid; tells you a lot, doesn’t it?

A rational, intelligent population would never let people like this get anywhere near political power; but a rational, intelligent population wouldn’t have given the job to a failed community organizer with a shady background either.

The story of Middle Eastern shepherds updated

Kay Wilson, a British born Israeli, was the victim of a terrorist attack in 2010. She writes,

And it came to pass that in December 2010, two Palestinian shepherds left their little town near Bethlehem and set out to walk ten miles across the Judean Hills. There in the forest, they kept watch by night. The following day, at about the 6th hour (3pm) the shepherds saw two women walking along the Israel National Trail. With great fervour they took out their knives and attacked the women.

While shepherds held the girls that day and pinned them to the ground, their serrated blades glinted in the sun, shining all around. With knives to their throats, the women dare not move.

“Fear not,” said the men – for mighty dread had seized the women’s troubled minds – “we bring you good news that will cause great joy for our people.” What could these glad tidings be? Rape, a robbery, a beating? Anything was better than death the women pondered in their hearts.

And it came to pass that near the seventh hour, the shepherds said, “Behold, let us go forth and kill these Jews like Allah has told us to do.”

The shepherds gagged the women, removed their shoes, and bound their hands. They forced one woman to her knees, covered her head and pushed her neck forward. The woman knelt, and prepared herself to be beheaded. Suddenly she saw a great light – the blade of his knife glinting in the sun. The Jewish woman whispered, “Hear Oh Israel.” The Islamic host cried, “Allah HuAkbar,” and the Christian screamed “Jesus,” the name of a Jew born in David’s town.

Thirteen times the shepherds thrust their knives into the women, breaking bones, tearing flesh, even impaling one to the ground. As the Jew played dead, she watched the Christian friend hacked to death before her very eyes.

The shepherds returned home, glorifying and praising Allah for all that they had seen and spread the word concerning what had they had done. “Today near the town of David, two Jews have been slaughtered,” they declared. They plotted and schemed, boasting to their neighbours, “this will be a sign, they will find two of their own, all meanly wrapped in bloody clothes and in the bushes laid.” And everyone who heard of it, was amazed.

Read more by Kay here.

The candle light service at the new age church

Last night after work I went to a candle light Christmas Eve church service at the Mile High church in Lakewood, Colorado. A fellow employee at work invited me. He has been very kind to me. I had recently apologized to him for making fun of his new age beliefs. I prefer Victor Davis Hanson to Deepak Chopra.

He asked me to meet him in the parking lot of a church just west of where I work. He said that church was a "sin and fear" church on the north side of the road. That church was dark, having already had its candlelight service two hours earlier. I parked my car there under a light, and he drove me into Lakewood, which was about an hour away.

The Mile High church tells its audience members that "you are the ones you have been waiting for!" I audibly winced and almost jolted out of my seat when I heard those words come from the pastor's mouth. I thought I was listening to Barack Obama!

Divine? I know that I am one hundred percent human, and zero percent divine. I am real clear about that. If there is any divine in me, it is the Holy Spirit, not me. I want the Holy Spirit to be able to make me a gift of His grace to others, but I know the difference between divine and human.

Peace on Earth? Not as long as there are jihadists killing Christians and preparing nuclear warheads aimed at Israel. Not as long as there are brutal totalitarian regimes building up their militaries while we scale down ours.

The church was packed to its 1100 seat capacity. The music was fabulous. The cellist was superb, as was her fellow acoustic musician who played several guitars. There was also an organist/piano player who was excellent, and a drummer who was outstanding. There was a large exuberant choir and a smaller children's choir. One of the children had the most beautiful, pure soprano voice, and she sang a breathtaking version of O Holy Night. There were several other soloists who were first rate. My favorite was the black man who led us in singing Joy To The World, which was the most rousing rendition I have ever participated in. Throughout the hour and one-half music and dance was interspersed with the new age message from the various pastors.

I was wishing my three children would have been with me. They have been going to a Catholic Church with Colleen in Santa Fe. They hate it. "Boring" is always how they describe the experience. Colleen loves it, though. The priest is an escapee from North Korea, and she admires him greatly. She also like the reverence and discipline of the service. She believes church is a place where you go to worship God, not be entertained. The kids would have enjoyed Mile High church, though.

One God, one truth. Rejoice and be glad!