PrairiePundit

Guardian: World Bank and UN carbon offset scheme 'complicit' in genocidal land grabs - NGOs Plight of Kenya's indigenous Sengwer shows carbon offsets are empowering corporate recolonisation of the South The carbon phobic global warmers are doing great injury to poor people in Africa in the name of saving the planet.  These people would be clearly better off if the government and the globo warmers would leave them alone.  They would be healthier still if there was a coal fired electricity available so that they did not have to cook and heat their home burning wood and animal dung in smoke filled rooms.  For them the green movement is a killer.

Fox News: CDC confirms first case of Ebola in US The patient recently arrived in Dallas from Liberia where Ebola has been an epidemic.  The CDC is still trying to determine how many people the patient came in contact with before he was isolated.

Daily Caller: Obama Has Spent More Time Playing Golf Than In Intel Briefings This is not a knock on golf, but it is a knock on his attention to the most important aspects of his job.

Mark Jones: ... Data from gubernatorial elections since 1990 underscore the uneven electoral playing field on which Davis is competing against Abbott. While copious amounts of ink and bytes have been devoted to the Texas GOP’s “Hispanic problem,” less attention has been paid to Texas Democrats’ more consequential “Anglo problem.” Since 1990, no Democrat in Texas has come close to winning a majority of the Anglo vote — a problem for the party given that among Texans who vote in gubernatorial races, Anglos still outnumber Hispanics by more than 3-to-1. And while Democratic gubernatorial candidates have performed better among women than men over the past 20 years, no Democrat has won a majority of the female vote since 1994. ... That explains why Democrats keep losing and why their minority strategy just is not working for them.  At its core their problem is that voters are rejecting liberalism and the Democrat party has gotten more liberal as Anglo voters deserted them.

AP/Times of Israel: Turkish truck driver Ozgur Simsek was sleeping off a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) fuel run to the Qayara power station in Iraq, he said, when he heard banging on his vehicle’s door. “IS took over last night,” the power plant’s foreman shouted, referring to the Islamic State group. “Empty your trucks and run!” Simsek rushed to unload his tanker’s fuel, he said, but it was too late. A battered pickup bearing the black-and-white logo of the Islamic State group rolled across the tarmac. Qayara’s security guards, who only moments before had been joking around with the truckers, turned on the men, donning black masks and brandishing weapons — taking all 32 Turkish men hostage. For many foreigners, being caught by the group’s fanatical fighters has meant months of uncertainty, torture and, in some cases, a gruesome death. For Simsek and his colleagues, captivity would last just over three weeks. Their trucks were confiscated, but no one was harmed and no ransom was paid, a

Washington Post: U.S. and Britain combine to launch the largest day yet for airstrikes in Iraq and Syria While there are more strikes they are still not a concentrated effort.  The strikes were at severl locations in Iraq and Syria.   There were 24 strieks which still seems like too few to set back the enemy.  ISIL is still defeating Iraqi forces who they come in contact with.

Bloomberg: Carbon Taxes Don't Kill Jobs They also slow down the economy.  We should not let the carbon phobia of the left be an excuse for higher taxes.

Breitbart: A new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report reveals that President Barack Obama has attended only 42.1% of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the 2,079 days of his presidency through September 29, 2014. The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in his second. The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic State’s (ISIS) rapid rise squarely at the feet of his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. ... This supports the arguments of critics who say he has been ignoring the intelligence on ISIL and terrorist operations within Syria and Iraq.  It demonstrates a slovenly approach to national security by a President who does not seem interested in this aspect of his job.  I would not be surprised if h

RCP: Obama:  Obama: "Islam Is A Religion That Preaches Peace" "Islam Is A Religion That Preaches Peace" It is also one where many followers preach violence and terrorism with a philosophy of covert or die.  It seems clear that a substantial number of Muslims do not believe their's is a religion of peace.

Benny Avni: ... “Once Iran produces an atomic bomb, all the smiles, all the charms, will vanish,” Bibi warned. Both the Islamic Republic and the Islamic State plan to defeat democracies and replace them with an Islamic order, he noted, even comparing them to Nazis, who “believed in a master race,” just as “the militant Islamists believe in a master faith.” The only disagreement, he said, is which Islamists will be “the master of the master faith.” Some, he said, “are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shiites.” And “they even kill each other in the battle for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology.” That ideology: “Convert, or die.” And Iran is in the thick of it, Netanyahu said, using his signature up-to-the-minute Americanisms: “To say that Iran doesn’t practice terrorism is like [saying] that Derek Jeter never played shortstop for the New York Yankees.” ... This was a very good speech.  Whether it will make liberals like Obama see the truth is another matter.

Chris Faulkner: University of Maryland researchers recently warned that hydraulic fracturing — the process of shaking oil and gas free from shale deposits far belowground — could endanger the health of nearby residents by exposing them to air and water pollution. This would certainly be cause for alarm — if true. But it’s not. The study doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. And its baseless claims could threaten a drilling technique that has actually lessened the harmful health impacts of the energy industry by reducing our reliance on coal. The U of M researchers largely relied on data from another flawed study from the Colorado School of Public Health. The Colorado study — which blamed fracking for high levels of local carcinogenic benzene — relied on air samples at well sites located within a mile of a major interstate. Vehicle exhaust is the largest source of benzene, but the Colorado researchers didn’t even control for those pollutants. The Colorado data also incorporates a false assumpt

Business Insider: The Islamic State group is allegedly closing in on Baghdad, according to a report from a vicar at Iraq's only Anglican church who says the jihadists formerly known as ISIS are roughly one mile away from the Iraqi capital. Airstrikes against ISIS targets were supposed to stop the group from taking Baghdad. “The Islamic State are now less than 2km (1.2 miles) away from entering Baghdad. They said it could never happen and now it almost has,” Canon Andrew White of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East , a British-based charity that supports Iraq’s only Anglican church in Baghdad, said on his Facebook page early Monday morning. “Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well, you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very, very little.” ...  The Iraqi boots on the ground are still not effective even with little room to retreat and the known dire consequences of being captured.  We will need a much mor

It is too bad the news shows don't show this kind of grilling.

New Haven Register: State Rep. Christina “Tita” Ayala, D-Bridgeport, was arrested Friday on 19 voting fraud charges. Ayala, 31, is accused of voting in local and state elections in districts she did not live, the Chief State’s Attorney’s Office said in a press release. The arrest warrant affidavit also alleges Ayala provided fabricated evidence to state Election Enforcement Commission investigators that showed she lived at an address in a district where she voted while actually living outside the district, according to the release. ... Ayala allegedly voted in various Bridgeport Democratic Town Committee elections, a municipal primary election and a state primary election between 2009 and 2012 in districts inconsistent with the location of her residence, according to the release. She is also accused of voting in the Bridgeport state general election in 2012 in a district where she didn’t live. According to the Connecticut Post, Ayala’s mother, Santa, was also investigated by

Byron York: ... Instead, there are reports the president is considering nominating Thomas Perez, who served a very controversial tenure as head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights division before becoming Labor Secretary in 2013. Perez had a reputation for zealotry at the Justice Department. He turned anti-discrimination suits into payoffs for favored civil-rights groups. He meddled in legal cases for the purpose of protecting his treasured and controversial "disparate impact" theory of discrimination from being tested in court. He even investigated whether Amazon Kindle e-readers violated the Americans With Disabilities Act because they were not, in 2010, "fully accessible" to the blind. There's no doubt Perez alienated Republicans during his time at the Justice Department. In 2009, when he was confirmed 72-22 for the Civil Rights post, 17 Republicans voted for him. In 2013, when he left Justice to head the Labor Department, his confirmation vot

Daily Mail: Rick Perry insists Muslim beheading in Oklahoma was 'terrorism,' not 'workplace violence' Texas governor said it's a mistake to classify a beheading murder as a workplace crime since the alleged perpetrator was a radical Muslim who shouted Islamist slogans as he wielded his blade. Just down the road from the crime scene a man was arrested on terrorism charges for threatening to behead a coworker.   Not charging this guy with terrorism on top of first degree murder just makes no sense.

Reuters/Guardian: Argentina is in contempt of court, a US judge ruled on Monday, the latest step in a years-old case brought by US hedge funds over defaulted debt . US judge Thomas Griesa in New York held off on any decision on fines or sanctions against the South American country, which in July fell into its second sovereign default in 12 years and has long been at odds with Griesa’s decisions and adopted a law aimed at evading them. “The problem is that the republic of Argentina has been and is now taking steps in an attempt to evade critical parts” of the order, Griesa said during a hearing in his lower Manhattan courtroom. Argentina defaulted in 2002 and missed a bond coupon payment in late July after Griesa ruled it could not be made unless the country also paid more than $1.3vb to a group of US funds that rejected previous bond restructurings and are demanding full repayment. Argentina said earlier on Monday that a contempt order from Griesa would violate international law. Arg

Washington Times: U.S. policy leaders, including President Obama, were repeatedly warned by the U.S. intelligence community over the last year that the Islamic State movement was gaining significant strength and would pose a major threat to regional stability if left unchecked by Iraq ’s struggling military. The warnings, some in private and others in public testimony, conflict with Mr. Obama’s nationally televised proclamation Sunday night that US intelligence had underestimated both the Islamic State’s strength and the ability and will of Iraqis to combat it, according to US intelligence officials familiar with the briefings. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers specifically challenged Mr. Obama on Monday, telling The Washington Times that the failure to combat the Islamic State was a policy failure and not an intelligence failure as the president claimed. “For over a year, U.S. intelligence agencies specifically warned that ISIL was taking advantage of the situat

Obama acts as if al Qaeda and the terrorist are taking advantage of chaos , but in fact much of that chaos was of their making and they created it so they could take advantage of it.  Chaos has been their strategy from the beginning of their rise.  It is how they helped the Taliban come to power in Afghanistan and it was what Zawahiri was trying to pull off in Iraq when al Qaeda in Iraq was fighting US forces and they were trying to create a sectarian civil war to exploit.  Obama's failure to understand the enemy has created the current problems in Iraq and Syria.

Getting rid of a statue of a despot is a good thing.  Lenin was responsible for great misery and the deaths of thousands.

Jim Geraghty notes: ... The   story of the chickens suggests the Braleys are neighbors from hell: This spring, Pauline Hampton’s chickens roamed onto Bruce and Carolyn Braley’s vacation property on tranquil Holiday Lake. Hampton said she did not know this until she walked over one day to offer Carolyn a dozen fresh eggs. To which she said her neighbor replied, “We aren’t going to accept your eggs — and we have filed a formal complaint against you.” ... Messing with your neighbor's chickens is political suicide in Iowa. Ernst also turned his attack on the Koch brothers back on him and his association with extreme environmentalist.

Walter Russell Mead: How American Fracking Could Cause a Russian Recession Between the bounty from fracking holding down the price of oil and the Saudis willingness to keep production in line with demand the Russians are very likely to have a recession even if they produce more oil when they can't sell it to the Europeans.  The same thing happened to them in the 1980's when the Saudis responded to Russian aggression in Afghanistan by increasing production and driving down the price.  That led to the collapse of the Soviet Union as they tried to respond to the pressure put on them by the Reagan defense build up at the same time their oil revenues declined.

Rowan Scarborough: U.S. military limits warplanes used for Islamic State bombings The military has not really built up the planes available to attack ISIL.   They should be sending several squadrons of A-10's to the theater for uses against the enemy fighters.  We are currently attacking only about five targets a day.

NY Times: Fumbled Bid for Governor Imperils Ohio Democrats Democrats had hoped a rousing fight in 2014 would energize the party’s grass roots and carry into the next presidential contest. Instead, they are facing a shutout in statewide races. This is good news for Ohio.  Defeating Democrats can strengthen their economy and help create jobs in the energy sector.  If Ohio mimics Texas in its swing to the right, that is good news for America.  Kasich has done a good job of managing the state's finances although he did lose one round to the union thugs.

NY Times: House Hopefuls in G.O.P. Seek Rightward Shift Cooper Neill for The Texas Tribune A House candidate, John Ratcliffe, in Paris, Tex., in May, said he foresees taking “more conservative approaches” if elected. In districts where generally mild-mannered Republicans are exiting, their likely replacements may increase division in an already polarized Congress. I blame Obama.  He has both demonstrated the failure of liberalism and has shown an intransigence in dealing with both moderates and conservatives.  Republicans have a chance to gain seats in Congress and hopefully the new guys will be more conservative in issues like spending and national security.  I think they will also be more conservative on immigration reform.

Red States: Americans forced out of US military; illegal aliens allowed to enlist This administration has been doing this in the private sector for years, but is now doing with our national security.  It tells you something about their priorities.

Washington Examiner: One of only two Navy SEAL training bases was the recipient of a phone threat ostensibly from the ISIS global Islamic Jihad terrorist network. As reported by the right-of-center Breitbart.com news portal on Sept. 28, 2014, a rather terse call was received at the San Diego SEAL training base late last week, but Navy officials were quick to discount the call as simply a "non-credible" prank. However, be it a prank or otherwise, the news report brings to light that the highly trained and equally lethal Navy special operators are expressly forbidden by the same Navy they serve from carrying personally owned firearms while aboard any given naval installation, even if the sailor in question should have a civilian Concealed Carry Permit/License (CCP/CCL). The Fox News affiliate in San Diego KSWB reported of a threatening call to the Naval Amphibious Base Coronado with the short and rather cryptic message of only "ISIS is on the ground." With a Navy

Eli Lake: On ‘60 Minutes,’ the president faulted his spies for failing to predict the rise of ISIS. There’s one problem with that statement: The intelligence analysts did warn about the group. Nearly eight months ago, some of President Obama’s senior intelligence officials were already warning that ISIS was on the move. In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq. But in an interview that aired Sunday evening, the president told 60 Minutes that the rise of the group now proclaiming itself a caliphate in territory between Syria and Iraq caught the U.S. intelligence community off guard. Obama specifically blamed James Clapper, the current director of national intelligence: “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said. Reached by The Daily Beast after O

State Impact/NPR: Economists made a surprising discovery when they measured the economic impact of oil & gas drilling in Texas. For the past four years, Thomsas Tunstall and a team of economists at University of Texas-San Antonio have been measuring the economic impact of surging oil & gas drilling in the rock formation called the Eagle Ford in South Texas. “Clearly the formation production has legs,” Tunstall told News 88.7. And those legs are running faster than expected. Way faster. The economists had predicted just last year that they expected the total economic impact to South Texas to be $89 billion in 2022. Instead, they now estimate that the impact has already reached almost that amount: $87 billion. What’s making the difference? Primarily all the jobs from drilling and running pipelines. “But also because of lots of new manufacturing activity. And a lot of that is being driven by the low cost of natural gas,” said Tunstall. ... In just the first few years of prod

Washington Post: Obama: U.S. underestimated rise of Islamists At least he is no longer denying the obvious. The US would not be in this predicament if he had listened to George Bush who did not underestimate the dangers of leaving Iraq without keeping a residual force.

NY Times: Police Crack Down on Protests in Hong Kong The police used tear gas and pepper spray as they tried to clear away pro-democracy demonstrators on Sunday near the city’s government offices. The thought of having people select their own leaders must be pretty scary for the Chinese government.  The refusal to permit people to select their own leaders will make it harder for the Chicoms to persuade the Chinese on Taiwan to join them.

BBC: Al-Nusra threat over air strikes This seems like a good reason to keep hitting them.

Christopher Booker: ... As one speaker after another overran their allotted four minutes, even The Guardian could not hide the fact that no one had anything new or interesting to say. “The most powerful speech” apparently came from Leonardo DiCaprio, which recalled a claim made more than 20 years ago by that other Hollywood star, Robert Redford, when he said, on global warming, that it was “time to stop researching and to start acting”. This prompted Richard Lindzen, the physicist and climate-change sceptic, to observe wryly that it seemed “a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make”. ... Most notably absent among the 120 “heads of government” present were those from China and India, two of the biggest CO₂ emitters in the world. And, of course, this conveyed precisely why Mr Ban’s shindig was as much an empty charade as that far greater fiasco in Copenhagen in 2009, when it became evident that there will never be a global treaty, because the world’s fastest-developing nations, such

Des Moines Register: The ground under Bruce Braley has shifted. The Democratic U.S. Senate candidate is 6 points behind his GOP rival, Joni Ernst, according to The Des Moines Register's new Iowa Poll of likely voters. Ernst leads 44 percent to 38 percent in a race that has for months been considered deadlocked. She leads nearly 4-1 with rural voters, and is up double digits with independents. "Very interesting, and good news not just for Ernst but also for the GOP's chances of taking the U.S. Senate," said national political prognosticator Larry Sabato of "Sabato's Crystal Ball." Just seven months ago, political analysts considered Braley almost a shoo-in for a seat held for 30 years by liberal Democrat Tom Harkin. Still, the 6-point deficit isn't insurmountable with 37 days left until the Nov. 4 election, political analysts say. Twelve percent of likely voters remain undecided. Some of the vulnerabilities for Braley, a lawyer and eight-year congre

Bob McManus: Unions would rather have empty hotels than jobs These people are killing jobs for New Yorkers and raising the cost of living for everyone.  The story shows how liberalism wed with unions creates a moribund economy and a high cost of living with fewer jobs.

Climate Depot: NOAA: 1695 Low Max Records Broken or Tied From Sept 11 to Sept 20. One record broken by 25F There is a map at the link showing the location of the record lows.  California, which is ruining its economy to fight global warming, was one of the few states had no record lows.

Stars and Stripes: Months after staving off a trip to the boneyard, the embattled A-10 Thunderbolt II is headed to the Middle East where it could be used to fight Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria. An Indiana Air National Guard unit that flies the Cold War-era gunships, known as Warthogs, is planning to deploy about 300 airmen and an unknown number of its aircraft to the U.S. Central Command region early next month, says a Sept. 17 news release from the unit. The 122nd Fighter Wing, located at Fort Wayne Air National Guard Base, Ind., has 21 aircraft, though it’s uncertain how many will be deploying, a spokesman said Thursday. The Air National Guard release doesn’t mention where the group is headed or for what purpose. The Air Force wants to retire the A-10, an attack aircraft intended for close air support, to pay for its new — and costly — multipurpose F-35 stealth fighters. Retiring the decades-old fleet of about 300 A-10s would potentially save about $4.2 billion over five year

Washington Post: Obama’s swift leap from no strategy to a full battle plan For a president sometimes criticized for a reluctance to act, the speed of his latest decision to launch a massive air assault against Islamic State was stunning. He was losing the war and US voters so he had little choice in moving against ISIL.  ISIL's conquest demonstrated that his previous policy of withdrawal was an abject failure that was creating the genocide President Bush warned about.   The polls showed his approval of foreign policy was in the tank which suggest the move was as much political as it was military.

NY Times: Digital War Takes Shape on Websites Over ISIS A government team’s striking video and other postings are being disseminated through Twitter and Facebook to counter ISIS’s skillful online campaigns. I have my doubts about the effectiveness of the counter propaganda videos.  We should be doing more to discover who is looking at the enemy propaganda in order to determine whether they should be investigated for material support of terrorist.  Alternatively, we should also be doing more to actively shut down enemy websites.  We should be engaged in cyber attacks against the enemy propaganda arm.  We should treat these sites and the people who watch it like we treat child pornography.

NY Times: For Many New Medicaid Enrollees, Care Is Hard to Find, Report Says A federal report says state standards for access to health care are rarely enforced and that Medicaid patients may wait for months or travel long distances to see a doctor. Before Obamacare the Medicaid doctors were already overwhelmed with patients and the new law only added to the line and created a greater need to ration for the poor.  It is not the state's standards that are the problem it is the expanded eligibility.  The reimbursement rate is so low that many doctors will not see Medicaid patients.  The rate is low because states are already having difficulty paying for those who were currently using the system.

Reuters: Al Qaeda-linked militants in Yemen say fire rocket toward U.S. embassy The attacks are said to be in retaliation for drone strikes although the only people injured in the attacks where Yemeni guards.  Yemen was described by Obama as an example of the success of his anti terror strategy.  Since then the embassy has removed personnel because of a threat from Shia rebels.

Washington Post: Airstrikes hit Islamic State forces in battle for key Syria border city Kurdish leaders, who said they were out-matched by Islamist militants, asked for the coalition airstrikes. We will be in a better position to help them fight on the Islamic State when the A-10's finally get on station and turn their Gatling  guns loose on their ground forces.  We need to support the Kurds who have been one of the few effective forces in dealing with ISIL.

NY Times: President’s Drive for Carbon Pricing Fails to Win at Home The U.S. is missing from a World Bank declaration calling on all nations to force industries to pay for carbon emissions. What state leads the nation in poverty?  California has the most people who are disadvantaged and it has the highest energy prices in the country.  These carbon taxes  are bad for the poor and are immoral imposition on the economy.  They are a bad idea meant to address the anti energy left's carbon phobias.

Breitbart: Suhaib Webb, an Imam with ties to former Al Qaeda mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki, had also previously been the leader of the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City, which had been attended by Alton Nolen -- the man who on Thursday beheaded a former coworker after recently converting to Islam, Breitbart News has learned. Webb now serves as Imam of the sister organization of the mosque attended by Boston Marathon bombers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Imam Suhaib Webb has a history of ties to radicalism. FBI surveillance documents found that he was a known confidant of Al Qaeda mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki. Just two days before the September 11, 2001 attacks on America, Webb spoke at a fundraiser with Awlaki with hopes to raise funds for Atlanta-based H. Rap Brown, a man that shot and killed two police officers. The FBI documents also found that “Webb and Awlaki may be associated with the Muslim American Society,” which is a group described by the Investigative Project on Te

NY Post: Dempsey: 15,000 ground troops needed to destroy ISIS If ISIS attempts to hold its territorial gains it will need to mass its forces to try to repel ground troops arrayed against it.  That will give US air power an opportunity to destroy them.  Without the ground troops ISIS will disburse its forces an intimidate the people in the area it controls.

Mediate: Jon Karl Grills Earnest: How Can WH Keep Claiming al-Qaeda Was Decimated? The explanation given looks like more spin instead of an honest acknowledgment that they overstated their operations against the terror group.  There are more terrorist now then there were before Obama came into office and many of them are affiliated with al Qaeda and its offshoots like ISIL.

Fox News: US launching complex operation to train, arm Syrian rebels amid airstrikes Most of these people would rather fight Assad than ISIL.  At this stage I would give them a less than 25 percent shot at success.

Sharyl Attkisson raises questions about the documents that were withheld abnd the judges order that DOJ must present a list of withheld documents.

Bill Gertz: Members of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are fleeing Syria for safer positions in Iraq, as rival Syrian al Qaeda forces also began moving their forces to avoid U.S. bombing attacks, according to U.S. officials and reports from the region. Additionally, post-strike intelligence indicates both terror groups are trying to hide their locations and are avoiding electronic communications to avoid being attacked in the ongoing U.S.-led missile and aerial bombing campaign. The movement and concealment efforts by both groups began after Monday’s opening bombing campaign of 47 cruise missile and aerial attacks have continued with strikes on ISIL-held oil facilities in Syria. ... The new iPhone 6 is likely to become the phone of choice for ISIL and al Qaeda as they seek to avoid communication devices that allows the NSA to locate them.   They will have difficulty massing their forces which will make it harder for them to attack certain areas.  Will all the all

NY Times: Colorado’s Perceived Left Turn Puts Governor in Tight Race Matthew Staver for The New York Times Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, right, after a rally in Brush, in the state’s northeast. Gov. John W. Hickenlooper and his opponent, Bob Beauprez, are trying to appeal to urban and rural voters who are split ideologically. His anti gun legislation that chased off businesses has hurt him.  Liberals in Colorado have been trying to rule against the will of the people and it has caught up with them. Cory Gardner is also looking strong in running against Udall who has been a dependable vote for Harry Reid and Obama.  The Democrats may be hoping the stoners and dopers will bail them out.

NY Times: Signaling Post-Snowden Era, iPhone 6 Blocks N.S.A. Intelligence agencies say the move, in which the new iPhone creates a unique code that scrambles information, is the first of new technologies designed to defeat court orders to turn over information. Android devices are expected to follow the trend.  They will be facilitating the terrorist who will now switch to these phones for their communications.   Currently they have had to go silent of use messengers.  That is already happening with ISIL.  The new IPhone should be very popular with the head choppers.

Fuel Fix: Lawmakers fear voters won’t approve of easing export ban Some Republican congressional leaders and lawmakers from oil states have been reluctant to say much on the topic of easing the federal ban on oil exports. It is the right thing to do even if the price increases some.  It would give the US a strategic advantage over some of the despots of the world like Russia and Venezuela.  Russia would lose the ability to blackmail Europe while pursuing its aggression and Venezuela would find it more difficult to subsidize the evils of socialism in Latin America.

Christian Science Monitor: Why China stays out of Islamic State fight, for now China is the top oil investor in Iraq, and Islamic State leaders say they have Chinese recruits. But Beijing is reluctant to get involved due to limited military capability in the Middle East and mistrust of US intentions. They get more oil from the region than the US, yet they are unwilling to go after the Islamic religious bigots.

Washington Times: An Islamic State terrorist bluntly told a VICE News journalist that his group is going to strike New York City any day now and that his radicalized “brothers” are mobilizing at this very moment. On the video, Farah Shirdon — also called Abu Usamah Somali — said: “[We] will make some attacks in New York soon,” VICE News reported. “A lot of brothers there are mobilizing right now. … Mobilizing for a brilliant attack, my friend.” Mr. Shirdon is a Canadian citizen who went to Iraq to fight with the Islamic State. In a different video that was released previously, he is seen burning his passport and vowing to wreak havoc on the United States and on Canada, The Blaze reported. Mr. Shirdon also had a message for President Obama: “I hope Barack Obama listens to this message. I swear you infidel, I swear to almighty Allah, we will fight you until the end.” ... This sounds like a demonstration attack in New York as a response to the fight in Iraq and Syria.  It would be

Texas Tribune: Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday called on federal leaders to adopt a comprehensive energy plan that would accelerate natural gas production and allow for its export — and to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. “Now is the time for bold leadership,” Perry said in a 30-minute speech celebrating the Texas "wildcatters" who first struck oil in Spindletop in 1903 and perfected hydraulic fracturing almost a century later. “If the EPA can establish a date certain for compliance with power plant regulations, I’m pretty sure that Congress can set a date certain for one of the single most important actions we can take to protect national security,” Perry told the audience at a summit on climate and energy policy sponsored by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. The governor repeatedly pointed to “aggression” from Russia as a motive for energy independence in the U.S. and U.S. exports of natural gas to European countries. He called on

David Ignatius: The ‘Mein Kampf’ of jihad A 2004 manifesto chillingly foreshadows the Islamic State’s tactics. Many have found passages in the Koran  and other Islamic religious text that suggest the tactics used by the Islamic religious bigots.

NY Times: Holder, a Champion of Civil Rights, Just Like His Hero Mr. Holder, the U.S. Attorney General who announced his resignation Thursday, frequently invoked Robert F. Kennedy and the Kennedy legacy as he made civil rights the centerpiece of his six-year tenure. Holder has been one of the worst Attorney Generals in history.  His department was responsible for the Fast and Furious travesty which he is still trying to cover up.  He has dragged his feet on prosecution of the IRS abuses despite his department's obvious conflict of interest. Good riddance, but with Obama he is likely to put someone in who is just as bad.

NY Times: U.S. Struggles to Strike Foes Without Aiding Assad On the third day of American-led airstrikes in Syria, it was increasingly uncertain whether the United States could avoid affecting the nation’s civil war. Even the people we are supposedly helping are not dependable and are angry with us for not hitting Assad.  Currently we are avoiding hitting Assad because he has the one force in teh war who could present a problem for our air strikes.

Houston Chronicle: A Houston lawyer is alleging the prosecutor handling the indictment against Rick Perry is over-charging taxpayers for his services, breaking the same law the governor stands accused of violating. In a criminal complaint sent Monday to the Travis County district attorney’s office, Houston criminal defense attorney David Rushing says special prosecutor Michael McCrum is abusing his official capacity by billing the county $300 per hour, or more than three times the highest possible rate set by a state law. Travis County’s guidelines for the law, however, make it possible for an attorney in McCrum’s situation to earn less or more per hour if the circumstances are unusual. Perry, who has characterized the case against him as politically motivated, is the first Texas governor to be indicted in nearly a century. “These attempts of character assassinations against our great governor here is bad enough on its own, but when you really analyze it, it’s not just a political g

I really like Joni Ernst and hope she wins.  It will be better for Iowa and the US.

Red States: Combat pay authorized for US advisors in Iraq; combat operations on case-by-case basis. This at least reflects the reality of their situation despite what Obama has been saying about no combat troops boots on the ground.

Fox News: Michigan SEIU branch allowed to keep millions taken from home health care workers This is a travesty.  The Supreme Court has already ruled that they had no right to force the dues payments.

Max Boot: Last week brought a reminder of what the United States has lost since Bob Gates and Leon Panetta left the Obama cabinet. Both are straight shooters with a centrist, hardheaded sensibility. Panetta has been making headlines with his criticism of Obama on 60 Minutes for pulling out of Iraq too soon (“I really thought that it was important for us to maintain a presence in Iraq”) and not doing more early on to aid the Syrian opposition (“we pay the price for not doing that in what we see happening with ISIS”). Meanwhile, Gates has been critical of Obama for prohibiting U.S. “boots on the ground” to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria: “The reality is, they’re not gonna be able to be successful against ISIS strictly from the air, or strictly depending on the Iraqi forces, or the Peshmerga, or the Sunni tribes acting on their own,” he told CBS This Morning. “So there will be boots on the ground if there’s to be any hope of success in the strategy. And I think that by contin

Daily Mail: Roughly seven in 10 illegal immigrant families released into U.S. fail to show up for appointments with federal agents  An immigration official revealed that about 70 percent of immigrant families the Obama administration had released into the U.S. never showed up for follow up appointments. It should be considered like a default judgment in court when a party does not show.  Such a requirement would at least get some basic compliance with the law.  It is absurd that there is no consequences for being a scofflaw.

Fox News: Reuters F-22 Raptor impresses in combat debut THE AIR FORCE'S COSTLY AND CONTROVERSIAL new F-22 Raptor made its public debut during bombing runs over Syria earlier this week, and defense experts say they were impressed by the first glimpse of its lethal firepower. The Air Force has a lot riding on the success of the costly plane and the environment was not as challenging as it might have been against an adversary with advanced anti aircraft weapons.  It was still a success story and I am glad to see the military is finally using one of its valuable assets.

Breitbart: On September 23 the Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reported that US led airstrikes killed "at least 400 militants" on the night of the 22nd. The casualty count comes from numbers compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). According to KUNA , the SOHR reported that "another 300 militants of [ISIS], al Nursa Front, and other militant groups were also wounded in the attacks." ... This is a little more than I expected from the strikes, but it is only a start in dealing with an enemy now counted at over 30,000 troops.   We need a relentless attacks to have an impact on their ability to continue their aggression.

Jawa Report: ISIS Murders Iraqi Muslima For Describing Them as Barbaric They can't handle the truth.

Long War Journal: Islamic State overruns Iraqi military base in Anbar The battle took place near Fallujah and it is another example of the failure of Iraq security forces.  Several were captured and I suspect they will be executed if ISIL follows its past practice.

AP: Mexico overcame 75 years of nationalist pride to reform its flagging, state-owned oil industry. But as it prepares to develop rich shale fields along the Gulf Coast, and attract foreign investors, another challenge awaits: taming the brutal drug cartels that rule the region and are stealing billions of dollars' worth of oil from pipelines. Figures released by Petroleos Mexicanos last week show the gangs are becoming more prolific and sophisticated. So far this year, thieves across Mexico have drilled 2,481 illegal taps into state-owned pipelines, up more than one-third from the same period of 2013. Pemex estimates it's lost some 7.5 million barrels worth $1.15 billion. Pemex director Emilio Lozoya called the trend "worrisome." More than a fifth of the illegal taps occurred in Tamaulipas, the Gulf state neighboring Texas that is a cornerstone for Mexico's future oil plans. It has Mexico's largest fields of recoverable shale gas, the natural gas extracted

Karl Rove: The Issues Are Breaking Bad for Democrats ... while the economy remains a top concern, voters are now worried about national security The GOp has a 23 point advantage on national security.  People remember the snarky 2012 campaign run by Obama and the Democrats and most of those bost have been shown to be disastrously wrong. Hugh Hewitt has more on the poling and how it is helping GOP candidates with experience in the war on terror.

Rowan Scarborough: President Obama is playing too nice in the air war against the Islamic State and the Khorasan Group, critics say, pointing to a spared bombing target in Syria as an example. Photos of the aftermath of a U.S.-led airstrike late Monday showed that the Islamic State finance center’s rooftop communications array had been destroyed, but the building itself was left intact. The limited effectiveness of the airstrikes is further diminished by the Iraqi security forces’ decidedly mixed results in combat and inability to reverse most gains of the Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS. Iraqi troops also lack a key skill in a badly needed mission: finding and designating ground targets for U.S. warplanes, making the American air campaign more difficult. “I was mad as hell when I saw the hit on a supposed ISIL building,” said Bart Bechtel, a retired CIA operative. “The right question is: Why not the whole building?” “This, in my humble opinion, was all desig