PrairiePundit

Rubio pretty well nailed what Russia would be doing in the coming days.  While the Obama was caught by surprise by the Russian action, that probably comes from a President who ignores his intelligence briefings.  Rubio should rerun this video in an ad.

Fuel Fix: New federal fracking regulations were blocked by a U.S. judge in Wyoming who said the government’s Bureau of Land Management lacks the authority to control hydraulic fracturing. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl puts on hold the most closely-watched effort by the Obama administration to ensure that fracking doesn’t contaminate water supplies. While the rules apply only on federal lands, they are designed to spur states to toughen their safety protections as well. Skavdahl had issued a provisional order putting the regulations on hold on June 23, the day before they were scheduled to take effect. His decision comes in a pair of lawsuits, one pursued by the states of Wyoming, North Dakota, Colorado and Utah, and another by the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Western Energy Alliance. They argued that the regulations duplicated state rules and increased costs of extracting resources from oil-rich shale formations in the U.S. ... Th evidence ...

Fox News: BREAKING NEWS:  Russia begins air strikes against Syrian opposition, demands US warplanes keep out Reuters/AP RUSSIAN WARPLANES LAUNCH airstrikes against Syrian opposition fighters near the northern city of Homs, a senior military official tells Fox News, a day after Russia moved four more Su-34 jets, similar to the ones shown, to a nearby airbase. The US is already demonstrating how limited air operations are in dealing with ISIL and al Qaeda.  To be effective the operational tempo must be much higher than it currently is in Syria, and to be decisive, they must include ground and mechanized units in combined operations with aircraft.   The Obama administration has been unwilling to commit forces to such an operation and it is not clear that Russia is even in a  position to do combined arms operations and the Syrian army had been reduced to the point where it is not combat effective for such operations. The US may need to bring F-22's in to give a...

Walter Williams: War is nasty, brutal and costly. In our latest wars, many of the casualties suffered by American troops are a direct result of their having to obey rules of engagement created by politicians who have never set foot on -- or even seen -- a battlefield. Today's battlefield commanders must be alert to the media and do-gooders who are all too ready to demonize troops involved in a battle that produces noncombatant deaths, so-called collateral damage. According to a Western Journalism article by Leigh H Bravo, "Insanity: The Rules of Engagement" (http://tinyurl.com/p59nlqs), our troops fighting in Afghanistan cannot do night or surprise searches. Also, villagers must be warned prior to searches. Troops may not fire at the enemy unless fired upon. U.S. forces cannot engage the enemy if civilians are present. And only women can search women. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney said: "We handcuffed our troops in combat needlessly. This was very h...

Bill Tucker, Forbes: One of the first things we learn in science class is that elements occupy three states; solid, liquid, gas. Materials can transform between states, but it typically takes great energy to create that transformation. So, when I learned about an energy company which had developed a proprietary process that combines hydrogen-rich material with a polymer to create a solid form of hydrogen it caught my attention. Best of all, for the hydrogen to be released from that polymer is only needs to be heated to 100ºF. It is plastic energy. Oh, and those pellets can be recycled to be reused again. The company taking hydrogen plastic is Cella Energy . Cella is a hydrogen fuel cell company offering something very different in the market, a unique way of delivering fuel to hydrogen generators: pellets. Pellets you can hold safely in your hand but more importantly, transport safely. There are plenty of skeptics surrounding the promise of this technology, but Cella is hardly so...

Washington Post: Carly Fiorina emerges as the right’s new champion on abortion issues Fact checkers say her Planned Parenthood comments in the recent Republican presidential debate were wrong, but they have strengthened the political outsider’s candidacy. The Washington Post fact checkers who questioned her accurate statement that she started as a secretary and went on to become a CEO were laughably misleading in their own analysis of her career.  Their claims about her statements on the Planned Parenthood commerce in abortion by products were more nit picky than substantive.  The substance of her accusation about the use of using living fetuses to harvest the brains was correct whether the video showed the gory details or not.  The Fact Checkers are looking more and more like another vehicle for attacking Republicans they don't like.  They are the oens losing credibility in the process.

NY Times: Temporary Visas to Import Talent Help Copycats Take Jobs Abroad Ben Solomon for The New York Times A Toys "R" Us store in Totowa, N.J. The retailer replaced 67 employees with workers in India.  The Indian workers were trained by the American workers Toys "R" Us eventually laid off. A federal program intended to bring in workers with special skills is being used by some American companies to hire and train other foreign workers. This has also been happening in the tech industry and in public utility companies.  It is part of the mix in the Obama administration's mishandling of the immigration issue.  Foreign workers, whether in the US legally or illegally seem to be favored by this administration.  They tend to see these people as future Democrat voters. Note these are not jobs Americans will not do.  They are not jobs that Americans lack tgeh skills to do.

Matthew Clark: A brand new widely touted USA Today/Suffolk University Poll claims that 65% of Americans support federal taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood’s abortion and murdered baby parts selling business. Or so the mainstream media would have you believe. The Planned Parenthood propaganda machine in conjunction with the abortion industry’s most ardent leftist supporters in the mainstream media are out in full force today as Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, is called to account before Congress. Delay, deflect, and deceive remains the mantra to keep the focus off of Planned Parenthood’s multi-million dollar abortion and baby organ harvesting business. Based on the mainstream media echo chamber, one would be led to believe that the vast majority of America wants their tax dollars to subsidize and supplement an organization that performed nearly 330,000 abortions each and every year and has recently been exposed selling the body parts of those murdered babies...

Rubin Center: The concept of repentance (tawba in Arabic) is key for the Islamic State (IS) whenever it takes over a new area and aims to consolidate control. Whoever undergoes repentance under IS successfully is issued a repentance ID document that stipulates the person has abandoned his/her apostasy and is to be treated like the rest of the Muslim populace under IS rule (Specimen 3V). The repentance process has two main applications. First, it is used to subdue people who had been affliated with rival forces primarily through the quid pro quo principle of sparing one’s life in exchange for surrendering all weapons to IS. This generally includes members of Syrian rebel groups, Sunni conscripts to the Syrian army, and members of the Iraqi army and police. For a sample case, see Specimen 1B in the archive of IS admin documents  with the case of the Albukamal area in Syria. At times, IS has faced agitation against its rule from those who had repented, such as in the Fallujah area,...

strieff: I’m more than happy to bid a fond adieu to Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) N/A%, but let’s be serious. The real problem is Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 54%. McConnell is afraid of Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) 13% and he apparently equates surrendering to Reid with bipartisanship and with governing. Boehner’s failures were legion but, if we are to be fair to the man, at some point he had to start thinking that bruising legislative battles really weren’t worth the candle if Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) 54% was going to fold without a fight. ... The rest of the Senate leadership is going along with this mess and trying to freeze out any Senator who objects to the surrender to common sense.  They are especially angry with Ted Cruz for exposing their game of show votes meant to appease voters angry about their lack of a backbone in fights with the Democrats and Obama.  They keep funding the evils of liberalism under the misguided belief that people would rather see that than see them ...

Steven Greenhut: ... But as this series will show, California’s drought is largely a man-made crisis. It is caused by a series of policies—some from the past, many ongoing—which has prioritized environmental demands above the basic provision of water resources to the public. More than half of the state’s water resources simply flow out the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Even now, in the Sierra foothills, state officials empty reservoirs to protect “unimpeded” river flows to benefit small numbers of non-endangered hatchery fish. The California Coastal Commission, the powerful agency with control of development along the shoreline, is holding up a privately planned desalination plant over concerns about its impact on plankton. The environment-friendly commission want to force the developers to build a pumping system that destroys the economics of the plant. Meanwhile, slow-growth activists see opportunity in the drought. Their goal is to stop new developments despite Ca...

Daily Mail: Isis planning 'nuclear holocaust' to wipe hundreds of millions from face of the earth', claims reporter who embedded with extremists German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer, 75, spent ten days living with Isis He has written about his experiences with the terror group in a new book Todenhöfer believes the terrorists want to wipe out everyone in the West They want to impose an Islamic caliphate across the entire globe If Obama really thinks these people can be swayed by a jobs program, he clearly is not reading his intelligence reports.  He seems to be bathed in willful ignorance when it comes to radical Islamist and their religious bigotry.

Telegraph: Jeremy Corbyn embarrassed after it emerges passages of his speech were written in the 1980s Mr Corbyn's first Labour conference speech is undermined as it is revealed that large sections of his address were written in the 1980s and rejected by every Labour leader since Neil Kinnock Well, Joe Biden is not the only one who cribs off of a labor leader from the 1980's.  Corbyn has embraced the failed ideology of socialism.  It is a policy that has failed everywhere it has been tried and in some more recent examples it has failed even more spectacularly despite natural resources as in Venezuela.

Fuel Fix: A pro-industry group is firing back at calls by environmental advocates to restrict drilling on university land in Texas, arguing that oil and gas revenue has provided massive financial support for the University of Texas and Texas A&M. North Texans for Natural Gas, a loose coalition of people who support natural gas development, is circulating a petition urging UT Chancellor William McRaven and Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp to support hydraulic fracturing and the extraction of oil and gas on University Lands, 2.1 million acres in West Texas set aside by the state’s constitution to create an endowment for the state’s two leading university systems. “These funds have allowed the universities to keep tuition affordable and make investments in new facilities,” the petition by North Texans for Natural Gas says. “Now, a liberal environmental group is calling for a de facto end to drilling on lands that benefit both UT and A&M.” Revenue from oil and gas leases helpe...

Naval Technology: The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has successfully tested a towed airborne lift of naval systems (Talons) prototype. Talons is designed to extend maritime vessels' long-distance communications and improve their domain awareness. According to DARPA, this low-cost, fully automated parafoil system can be towed behind boats or ships and also can be deployed by hand from smaller boats, or by mast from larger ships. The system will be capable of carrying intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications payloads of up to 150lb between 500ft and 1,500ft in altitude, which is higher than current ships' masts. ... This is a clever idea.  The only downside I see to it is it might increase the visibility of the ship to an enemy force.   But there would certainly be times when the benefits would outweigh the negatives.

NY Times: Obama Tells U.N. That Weapons Alone Won’t Defeat ISIS President Obama called on world leaders to fight extremism with ideas, jobs and good governance, a strategy he has long advocated, but it did not elicit much enthusiasm. There is substantial evidence that many of these people are well educated and gave up good jobs to join the religious bigots.  What Obama does not seem to comprehend is that the basis for ISIL and al Qaeda is in Islamic religious bigotry which he seems to want to deny even exists.   But, it is pretty easy to spot because of their genocidal attacks on Christians and other religious groups they disapprove of.  Jobs and ideas can't cure religious bigotry.  Governance in the West has not stopped the religious bigots from attacking those with whom they disagree.  What he is demonstrating is old fashion faculty lounge ignorance of warfare and what motivates the enemy. It is clearly going to take a more intelligent approach than...

Thomas Sowell: The 'Affordable Housing' Fraud Sowell explains why the San Francisco Bay area housing prices are ridiculously high compared to the rest of the country.

Rich Lowry: Carly Fiorina is a no-nonsense former business executive who is showing she can play — and throw elbows — with the big boys in the Republican nomination battle. Feminists have noticed, but their admiration is tinged with dread — and it should be. An eloquent, fearless critic of abortion, the latest outsider to climb in the Republican race is a clear and present danger to what feminists hold most dear. Even if she had said nothing else at the CNN debate, Fiorina would have stood out for her gut-punch of a statement about the horror of the guerrilla Planned Parenthood videos capturing the ghoulish organ-harvesting that is an important side business of the organization (the main business, of course, is aborting babies). The novelist Jennifer Weiner told The New York Times for a story about the conflicted feelings of feminists, “It’s so weird — she looks like one of us, but she’s not.” Another feminist writer said, “There’s an excitement and a horror.” The managing editor of ...

Washington Times: Killing Islamic State’s leaders useless; ‘deep bench’ replaces the dead Report: U.S. declares ‘stalemate’ in war against militants I have been saying this for sometime.  The war has degenerated into a bloody war of attrition with the US barely keeping up with the ISIL's new recruits.   The problem is that Obama will not consider a more effective strategy so he leaves the military with an ineffective strategy that means a longer and bloodier war.  It also means the enemy is able to plot and implement strikes against eh US homeland and Europe.

Washington Post: Homeland Security ranks dead last in morale – again – but Jeh Johnson’s morale is high Every year, the Department of Homeland Security does its best to put a good face on an ongoing problem. Whether it is border security or inland enforcement, this administration is determined to not allow employees to enforce the law.   No wonder their job satisfaction is nil.  The fact that the head of the agency is feeling good about that tells you what you need to know about him and his leadership.

NY Times: Big Donors Seek Larger Roles in Presidential Campaigns Contributors suggest strategies and expect their views to receive quick attention, occasionally creating headaches for the campaigns. Since Trump is his own "Big Donor" he is not under the same outside pressure to operate his campaign.  He has chosen a very unorthodox approach, which has to this point been working for him.

NY Times: Hillary Clinton Criticizes Failure of Training Syrian Rebels Mrs. Clinton said that the inability of the U.S. military to train Syrian rebels to fight against the Islamic State on the ground had exacerbated the crises in the region. The problem is ted to begin with because there are not enough Syrians willing to fight the regime to make it work.  Most of the military aged men who reject the regime would rather fight European border guards for access to the welfare state than stay and fight Assad.   Obama chose this flawed strategy because he rejected a more effective approach which would have involved direct US confrontation with the Assad regime.  He also waited too long to implement the strategy allowing most of those willing to fight to join the Islamist of al Qaeda and ISIL.

NY Times: Big Donors Seek Larger Roles in Presidential Campaigns Contributors suggest strategies and expect their views to receive quick attention, occasionally creating headaches for the campaigns. Since he is his own major donor, he can pretty much handle his campaign as he sees fit and that has freed him up to challenge the orthodoxy.  So far it has worked for him.

Business Insider: The last 15 years of Saddam Hussein's regime are crucial to understanding ISIS The piece examines how Hussein transformed the his government into a hybrid theocracy that is pretty well mirrored by ISIL.

Federalist: TRUTH BOMB: Obama’s Disastrous Economic “Recovery” In 9 Horrifying Charts   From  The Heritage Foundation .... This really highlights just how badly Obama has mismanaged the government and the economy.  This is the record the Democrats have to defend in 2016.  There is more at the link above.

This is a long speech, but it very powerful in disclosing how Washington has become so dysfunctional under its current leadership.  It gives you an inside look at just how ruthless Democrats are in pursuing their agenda and how supine the Republican leadership is in opposing them.

Noemie Emery: Carly Fiorina is the real Donald Trump. No, she's not a billionaire with bad hair, a loose tongue and an unbridled ego the size of Australia. But she's a non-politician who's never held office, but is unnerved by the decline of American power and wishes to see it reversed. But unlike Trump she may also be able to do something about it, as she a.) knows how to speak English; b.) is able to think and speak in a rational sequence; c.) has spent years learning how the world works and building relationships with the people who run it; and d.) projects actual strength instead of mere schoolyard bluster, and knows how to bring bullies to heel. She proved this with Trump in the second debate, when, as Rich Lowry said, she excised his gonads with surgical elegance, leaving him in a heap on the floor. Unlike Trump, who knows nothing, and Carson, who knows his own discipline but not many others, she is that rare bird, an outsider with an insider's experience of...

Red States: Democrats would rather Defund Food Stamps than Planned Parenthood That is the "choice" they have made by threatening a government shutdown to keep Planned Parenthood funding.

Washington Examiner: Obama warns: Gay rights supercede Constitutionally-guaranteed religious freedom This is one of the conflicts created by a bad Supreme Court decision on gay marriage which has no basis in the constitution.

Daily Signal: Border Arrests of Children, Families Surge 52% in August These are just the ones who got caught.  The human traffickers are still doing a brisk trade cramming people into stash houses and cramming them into overloaded SUV's to get them to inland stash houses.  This is what happens under Democrat open borders policies.

Noah Rothman: It has been impossible to miss the shift in tone among liberals when criticizing Carly Fiorina. The timbre of their opposition to the surging Republican candidate has evolved from dismissive and aggravated disappointment to disproportionately seething rage. Among liberals, Fiorina has inspired passionate resentment, and it isn’t hard to see why. She has rather deftly infiltrated the left’s comforting and previously impenetrable habitat of fictions, and they vehemently resent the contamination of the fragile artificial environment they have constructed for themselves. For millions of Americans who watched the second GOP presidential debate on CNN, the moment that briefly focused on the revelations exposed by a series of undercover videos featuring unsavory Planned Parenthood executives and practices was the first they’d heard of that metastatic scandal. While Fiorina’s rivals primarily burnished their conservative bona fides on the matter of stripping the abortion pro...

NY Times: Taliban Seize Major Afghan City for First Time Since 2001 Insurgents conquered the provincial capital of Kunduz after besieging it for months. Afghan officials vowed that there would be a counterattack. Other than the political inconvenience of the defeat, I don't think Obama cares that much.  He is committed to  retreat whatever the cost to Afghanistan or Iraq.  But this is a big deal and it should not be minimized anymore than the fall of Mosul and Ramadi.  If he sticks to form, he will not take responsibility for this failure anymore than his failures in Iraq, Syria and Libya.  He seems indifferent to the consequences of his failures.

William F. Shughart II Shale revolution revitalizing U.S. manufacturing ... Energy is the real key to America’s manufacturing boom. A report on the health of the U.S. manufacturing sector, released last year by Boston Consulting Group, projected that natural gas and electricity would account for just 3 percent of manufacturing costs this year. In contrast, natural gas and electricity were projected to account for 7 percent to 13 percent of manufacturing costs in Japan and Europe. The latest data from BCG have revealed that China’s manufacturing cost advantage over the United States – the source of so much hand-wringing over the years – has fallen from 14 percent in 2004 to just 4 percent today. As Chinese wages continue to rise, and Chinese energy prices probably as well, don’t be shocked to see U.S. manufacturers close the remaining gap quickly. ... It is easy to see the renaissance  on the Texas Gulf Coast where both foreign and domestic companies are investing billions ...

Washington Post: Bad blood: John Boehner and his  tormentor Ted Cruz Back in 2013, some Republicans had called Cruz "speaker." House Speaker Boehner had a few other names for him. Republican leaders found it more difficult to say one thing at election time and then cut a deal to fund Democrats after Cruz was elected.  For that reason the Republican leadership in Washington thought he was not a team player.  In fact he was standing up for the team that got him elected .  It is not the job of elected officials to make it easy to betray campaign promises.  Boehner and McConnell look like the leaders of the preemptive surrender caucus.  They need to find a way to thwart Democrat spending on Obamacare, and amnesty if they hope to survive in the majority.

War is Boring: It Wouldn’t Take Much to Wipe Out America’s Air Bases Missiles threaten airfields the Pentagon takes for granted This suggest that bases will need missile defense systems to survive enemy attacks in the future.

NBC News: Donald Trump and Ben Carson are running neck and neck in the national Republican presidential horserace, while Carly Fiorina is now tied for third place with Marco Rubio, according to the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. And on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has lost ground to Bernie Sanders — she leads him by just seven points with Joe Biden in the race, and 15 points without the vice president. That's down from Clinton's 34-point lead over Sanders in July and her whopping 60-point lead in June. In the GOP race, Trump is the first choice of 21 percent of Republican primary voters — followed by Carson at 20 percent and Rubio and Fiorina tied at 11 percent each. ... This is after the media attempted a buzz saw operation on Carson over his accurate description of Islamic Sharia Law and its impact on a potential Muslim candidate for President.  The rise fo Rubio and Fiorina probably reflects their performance in the last debate where many saw them ...

Daily Caller: Washington Post Rates Totally True Fiorina Statements As False The Post "fact checkers" are campaigning against Republican candidates and are not letting the truth get in teh way of their efforts.

James Robbins: When did America become so spineless? There was a time when the world expected the United States to be a resolute voice for human rights, when American diplomacy sought to prick the conscience of dictators. There was an age when we assumed that role with pride. It gave birth to “ Ich bin ein Berliner ” and “Tear down this wall.” But now the first principle of American foreign policy is: never hurt anybody's feelings. Case in point: Last Thursday Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced a unanimous consent resolution that would rename the street in front of the Chinese embassy inWashington, D.C. “Liu Xiaobo Plaza,” after the noted dissident and Nobel Peace Prizerecipient. He and his wife Liu Xia are currently languishing in a Chinese prison for the crime of promoting political freedom and justice in the communist state. Renaming the plaza would force Chinese diplomats to see Liu Xiaobo’s name on their way to work, and on every piece of mail that crossed their desks. ...

Kimberley Kagan: The positioning of Russian aircraft in Syria gives the Kremlin an ability to shape and control U.S. and Western operations in both Syria and Iraq out of all proportion to the size of the Russian force. It can compel the U.S. to accept a de facto combined coalition with Russia, Syria, Iran, and Lebanese Hezbollah, possibly in support of indiscriminate operations against any and all regime opponents, not just ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra. It may portend the establishment of a permanent Russian air and naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean. Russian forces have prepared and trained to conduct close air support and possibly special operations in Syria, and may begin doing so within days.  Go to the link above for more info.  I think her analysis is spot on.  Obama's strategy of doing as little as possible while the situation in Syria deteriorates left Putin and Iran with an opening they are currently exploiting to prop up their own despot in Syria.

Americans for Tax Reform: In 2013, more than 200,000 people on net fled states with Democrat governors for ones run by Republicans, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by Americans for Tax Reform. "People move away from high tax states to low tax states. Every tax refugee is sending a powerful message to politicians," said ATR President Grover Norquist. "They are voting with their feet. Leaders in Texas and Florida are listening. New York and California are not." ... Top 5 loser states for Democrat governors in 2013: · New York (114,929 people with $5.7 billion in AGI) · Illinois (68,943 people with $3.8 billion in AGI) · California (47,458 people with 3.8 billion in AGI) · Connecticut (14,453 people with $1.8 billion in AGI) · Massachusetts (11,915 people with $1 billion in AGI) Top 5 winner states for Republican governors in 2013: · Texas (152,912 people with $6 billion in AGI) · Florida ...

Bloomberg: Hillary Clinton struggled Sunday with another round of questioning about her e-mail practices as secretary of state, saying she had no input into which of her messages were made public and little control over the controversy. Clinton, whose lead for the Democratic presidential nomination is shrinking in some national polls, said in an interview on NBC’s "Meet the Press" that her attorneys decided without her assistance which e-mails from the private server she used while at the State Department were business-related and would be made public. She expressed frustration the controversy hasn’t abated despite her explanations. “It is like a drip, drip, drip and that’s why I said there’s only so much that I can control,” she said in her second interview on a Sunday news show in two weeks. “I can’t predict to you what the Republicans will come up with, what charges and claims they might make. I have no control over that.” Clinton likened the investigation of her e-mail...

Fuel Fix: Royal Dutch Shell on Monday said it was abandoning a $7 billion, seven-year quest for crude under Arctic waters, after an exploratory well failed to find significant amounts of oil and gas. Shell said its exploratory oil well in the Chukchi Sea north of Alaska encountered “indications of oil and gas” but the findings are “not sufficient to warrant further exploration” — a significant blow for the Anglo-Dutch firm that had hoped to find a multibillion barrel crude reservoir in those remote waters. “Shell continues to see important exploration potential in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the U.S.,” said Marvin Odum, director of Shell Upstream Americas. “However, this is a clearly disappointing exploration outcome for this part of the basin.” Shell said in a statement that it would cease further exploration activity off the coast of Alaska “for the foreseeable future.” “This decision reflects both the Burger J well resu...

NBC News: Poll: 72% of GOP Voters Dissatisfied With Boehner, McConnell So what happened when Boehner resigned.  His team started calling the GOP base and those who support it "crazies."  When you resort to that kind of name calling about your own voters it says you are not much of a communicator.  Those Washington who support the voters who elected them were called "false prophets" by Boehner.  What you have is 28 percent or less in the party looking down their noses at the rest, disrespecting them and their own promises to them.

Daily Mail: Fury as Russian ambassador accuses POLAND of starting the Second World War even though country suffered millions of casualties during conflict  Sergei Andreev - the Kremlin's representative in Warsaw - argued that Poland was 'co-responsible' for the devastating conflict, despite arguably being its greatest victim. It is hard to imagine a more historically ignorant statement about the beginning of World War II.   The fact is that Poland was the victim of a conspiracy between two despots, Hitler and Stalin.  They both agreed to partition Poland and that agreement and subsequent conquest is what put the war in motion.  They both engaged in war crimes against the Polish peopel before eventually fighting each other.

Guardian: English-speaking female jihadis have been using social media to try to lure western Muslims to join them with Islamic State in Libya, a new front in the war on terror just 400 miles from Europe’s shores. Three native English-speaking women have been monitored for months by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue , a UK-based thinktank, and are believed to be British. They say they have been living in the wartorn north African country since at least the start of the summer. Using a variety of social media platforms, including Twitter and encrypted messaging apps such as Surespot and Telegram, the three have reached out to their hundreds of followers, and as routes into Syria via its 500-mile border with Turkey have become further restricted they have advertised the journey to Libya as the easiest way of joining Isis’s so-called caliphate. Isis has been in Libya for just over a year and the country is home to its largest forces outside of the Middle East. The group has its head...

NY Times: Iraq Will Share Intelligence on ISIS With Three Countries The Iraqi military said in a statement that the new agreement with Russia, the Syrian government and Iran was necessary because thousands of volunteers who have joined the Islamic State have come from Russia For a country whose intelligence service is yet to have predicted an ISIL offensive, the work is of questionable value.  But this deal may make US intelligence services reluctant to disclose sources and methods that would be shared with the Russians.

John Podhoretz: Pope Francis is just another liberal political pundit His embrace of liberalism and many of its goals shows he is less than infallible.

NY Times: B ill Clinton Blames G.O.P. and Press for Wife’s Email Woes In a CNN interview, President Bill Clinton said of the furor over Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails, “I have never seen so much expended on so little.” This says so much about the Clintons' attitude about their mistakes and cover ups.  It reflects a cavalier  attitude toward the handling of classified information in inappropriate and unlawful ways.  To them stuff that puts others in jail is not biggie when they are doing it.

NY Times: Reacting to Videos, Planned Parenthood Fights to Regain Initiative The women’s reproductive health care provider has countered videos claiming it was “profiteering in baby parts” by gathering information from affiliates, hiring lawyers, crisis managers and video experts, and solidifying support. The lead buys into the euphemism that Planned Parenthood is about "women health" when in fact it appears to be a business based on stopping reproduction and making commerce in the by product of that effort.  If they don't think there is anything wrong with that business model, why do they need all those consultants?  Why not just say, this is what we do and we don't care if you think it is immoral?  After all isn't that what the consultants are going to be asked to sell? Ben Carson handles the "women's health" question:

NY Times: Thousands Enter Syria to Join ISIS Despite Global Effort Nearly 30,000 foreign recruits have poured into Syria to join the civil war, stark evidence that an international effort to enforce antiterrorism laws is not diminishing the ranks of the Islamic State. Other reports indicate that about a thousand new fighters a month join the group, which is about the number of the claimed deaths in the US air campaign against the group.    The current strategy not only fails to staunch the flow of fighters is it leading to a long bloody war because the West refuses to take more effective measures to destroy ISIL.  It has become a war of attrition where the West is providing the fighters and then killing them.

Daily Beast: Is Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, once a mild-mannered bus driver , steering the world's 13th largest oil producer straight off a cliff? Within the last few weeks he’s come to the brink of war with not one but two neighboring countries. A dispute last month with Colombia resulted in tens of thousands of refugees scrambling from a border region and caused one local politician to label him “The South American Hitler." Last week saw Maduro accused of plotting to invade Guyana , his neighbor to the east. While experts warn that such risky behavior could destabilize the entire region, Maduro himself accuses Bogotá and Washington of being in league to overthrow him—and also boasts of having spies in the White House. So just what is Maduro hoping to gain from all of this? Hand-picked by the late socialist strongman Hugo Chavez as his replacement in 2013, Maduro has overseen the swift and profound decline of Venezuela—from an oil-rich, leftist powerhouse under...

Reuters: France says Syria's Assad has no role in country's future I think Obama is open to a deal with the despot because he does not want to take more effective means of removing him. Meanwhile, France is taking direct action against ISIL according to this AP/Washington Post report: France says its fighter jets destroyed ISIS training camp in Syria President François Hollande said a training camp in eastern Syria was target. Which raises the question of why hasn't the US been targeting these training camps.  They are stationary targets that should be easy to hit, and it would discourage the foreign fighters flowing into the ISIL army. We have come a long way when a leftist government in France is showing more resolve than the Obama administration.

Mark Levin quotes a Muslim piece which discussing creep sharia.

Brietbart: BOMBSHELL: ‘WASHINGTON POST’ CONFIRMS HILLARY CLINTON STARTED THE BIRTHER MOVEMENT The Post story attempts to actually divert attention from the Clinton campaign duplicity, but the research points directly at them.  

William O'Keefe: The Associated Press has a long history dating back to 1846. It was founded as a cooperative to share the cost of transmitting the news of the Mexican-American War. Today its coverage is global and it is generally regarded as one of the most trusted sources of newsgathering”. It claims a “commitment to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism.” That may explain why it recently went to great lengths to recharacterize the way in which those who do not accept the climate orthodoxy are described. According to a news report, it has updated its Stylebook entry on global warming to term “those who reject mainstream climate science” as climate change doubters. The news report also stated that this Stylebook change came about because “scientists who consider themselves real skeptics complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic.” ... In science, a hypothesis is tested independently to confirm or deny its...

Daily Mail: The duck boat for the 21st century: Lockheed Martin reveals $7m eight-wheel drive amphibious vehicle complete with grenade launchers to carry marines into battle With eight wheel drive and fitted with grenade launchers, the Amphibious Combat Vehicle is designed to carry up to 13 marines into combat. The Mariens have needed a new amphibious vehicle and this one looks cost effective at this point.

Washington Post: Biggest health co-op ordered to close as it nears insolvency Health Republic Insurance of New York, spawned by the Affordable Care Act, is among co-ops adrift in red ink. It is just more evidence of lack of viability of the whole government healthcare scheme.  It is another reason why the law should be repealed before hurts more people. This is despite the structure of the law setup to transfer money to blue states: Is Obamacare Officially A Money Laundering Scheme?

NY Times: Donald Trump Sees in Marco Rubio a New Rival to Taunt, but Gets Plenty of Salvos in Return After training his fire for much of the summer on former Gov. Jeb Bush, Donald J. Trump has found a new favorite Republican rival to taunt: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Rubio has responded by going after Trump's "persona."   He has talked about his thin skin and lack of substance.  When Trump attacked Rubio at the Values Summit Trump was booed.