PrairiePundit

Washington Times: Pentagon working on battlefield ‘hibernation’ treatment for wounded This looks like a potential life saver during that period of time between when the wound is incurred and when they can get to a field hospital.

NY Times: U.S. Adds Air Power, but ISIS Presents an Elusive Target The United States is shifting aircraft from Afghanistan to the Middle East, but the Islamic State, a hybrid between a conventional army and a terrorist network, has been difficult to target. The current jets probably fly too high and too fast to spot the kind of movement that would give away enemy movements.  When the A-10's are back in Iraq it should help a lot and  their canons maybe a better weapon than bombs in destroying enemy mechanized movements.   More drones would also probably help although they tend to have a soda straw view of the battle space. Before the bombing campaign started ISIL forces used to openly move with long columns of Toyota pickup trucks flying their black flag.  They would have been easy targets but the announcement of the bombing campaign before the planes were in a position to take advantage of it let the enemy change his MO.

BBC: Geo-engineering: Climate fixes 'could harm billions' But they are going to do it if it kills us all.

SNL: According to a former Mexican government official, the refusal of the state-run PEMEX Gas y Petroquímica to invest in natural gas drilling will make the country dependent on gas imports from the U.S. for a considerable time. Speaking at a Hart Energy conference in Houston, H. Javier Estrada Estrada, former director of energy planning for the country's secretary of energy, said Mexico is struggling to remain a net energy exporter. The biggest problem, he said, is a continued lack of natural gas production. "I think it's key to the development of Mexico," Estrada said of increased domestic gas production. "The problem is that you have two Mexicos: One is exporting oil, and the other is importing natural gas." The opportunity to expand gas production, Estrada said, is clear — but PEMEX has shown a lack of interest in investing the time and effort in developing a resource with lesser returns than oil. ... Mexico probably has plenty of gas in the portion ...

Katie Pavlich: Speaking during an event in Chicago last night, President Obama was interrupted by hecklers who yelled at him about illegal immigration. Obama responded by telling them a month ago their concerns would have been justified, but now they're invalid because of his executive action to "change the law" on the issue. "You're absolutely right that there have been significant numbers of deportations. That's true. But what you are not paying attention to is the fact that I just took an action to change the law," Obama said. The White House has repeatedly argued President Obama isn't changing the law, but is instead simply using his executive authority to change prosecutorial discretion and therefore the action is constitutional, legal and valid. ... This is what is called in the law an admission against interest.  Watch for him to try to repeal his own statement next.

Wall Street Journal Editorial: ... Ever the politico, Mr. Schumer put the problem to Democrats in terms crass enough for them to understand—“only a third of the uninsured are even registered to vote,” he said, and only “about 5% of the electorate” benefits from the entitlement. “To aim a huge change in mandate at such a small percentage of the electorate made no political sense.” Mr. Schumer is still missing the crucial point. ObamaCare is not merely a disaster for big government but a disaster of big government. The law is unpopular because its mandates, taxes and central planning are harming the economy and the insurance and medical care of average Americans. ... He now sees the damage it has done to the Democrats to push this control freak program that a majority of people see no benefit from.   Will he and the 31 remaining Democrats in teh Senate who voted for the mess finally turn on Obama's defense of this bad law?  Probably not until they lose another election.

Byron York: A new Quinnipiac poll shows broad public dissatisfaction with President Obama and his legacy achievements. Just 39 percent of those surveyed approve of Obama's performance in office, while 54 percent disapprove. Just 40 percent approve of the Affordable Care Act, while 54 percent disapprove. And just 45 percent approve of the president's recent executive action on immigration, while 48 percent disapprove. There is a theme running through the numbers, and it is that unilateral action, whether by the president himself (immigration), or by a single political party (Obamacare), alienates a significant part of the electorate, including independents, and makes it hard for a leader to win the support of a majority of the American people. The survey, of 1,623 registered voters, contains other revealing numbers. As far as Obama's approval is concerned, there is more evidence of a continuing Democratic gender gap problem: just 32 percent of men approve of Obama's p...

Philip Klein: New York Times makes the case for fully repealing Obamacare ... Much of the editorial was misguided, but to the extent that it did raise legitimate points about the consequences of repealing certain measures in isolation, that only reaffirmed the case for fully repealing the law. ... They make the case that the bad parts are critical to the survival of this bad law.  It has also become toxic for Democrats and the longer it survives the longer they are going to keep losing elections.

More ABC US news | ABC World News This ABC News video is the first public interview with the officer at the center of the controversy in Ferguson Missouri.  He says he thought Michael Brown was going to kill him.

John Podhoretz: ... This has happened several times in our history. As the late sociologist Eric Monkkonen wrote in his seminal 2001 study, “Murder in New York City,” Americans have often responded to an era of relative calm by deciding that the authorities have been too restrictive and cruel — resulting in a subsequent period in which greater laxity led to higher rates of crime. Americans today have either never known or have forgotten that that for decades, it was the working theory of police departments that their job was to respond to crimes after they occurred rather than to prevent crime from happening in the first place. Police departments racked with corruption scandals (like the ones in New York investigated by the Knapp Commission in the 1970s) actually thought it best to keep cops at a bit of a distance from the citizenry, because their interactions were bound to be controversial. By the early 1990s, Americans (especially those in cities, and especially the poorest among u...

Washington Post Editorial: The frustrating process in Ferguson The situation underscores the need for police to wear body cameras. I am not sure it would have made a difference.  The people who are protesting are willing to ignore the forensic evidence that clearly disproves the story told by some so called witnesses.  The protesters seem to be blinded by their own prejudices and I doubt that a video would make any difference to them.  Many of them were still making excuses for Michael Brown's strong arm robbery of a convenience store that was caught on video.  These people seem to be tied more to their emotions than to rational thought.

NY Times: After Ferguson Announcement, a Racial Divide Remains Over Views of Justice Although whites and blacks have much more contact than they did decades ago, it appears that in some ways they go home to different worlds. It is hard for many people to comprehend all this outpouring of sympathy for a criminal who resisted apprehension by a police officer.   They seemed wedded to a lie told in the initial description of the event and are not swayed by the forensic and other facts revealed by the investigation. Their suggestion that blacks are being targeted by white cops ignores all the young black men being killed by other young black men.  That is a significantly greater problem for the black community, that I have never seen a demonstration about.  I have also not seen an explanation in the media for this failure to be outraged by the black on black homicide rate.  I also get the impression they are not that interested in protecting their black neigh...

NY Times: After Obama’s Immigration Action, a Blast of Energy for the Tea Party J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press Eric Cantor of Virginia, who lost a Republican primary to a Tea Party rival, in June with Speaker John A. Boehner. Federal spending reductions and the battle against the Affordable Care Act are taking a back seat to immigration, to the point that party members are calling for Sarah Palin to oppose John McCain, who supports immigration overhaul. What liberals and Democrats see as immigration reform reflects a very different problem than what other sees.  Democrats talk about the inconvenience of living in the shadows while many Americans see the problem as how do you stop the illegal migration and get control of the border. They see the problem of "living in the shadows" as one of the illegal's own making by coming here illegally to begin with and they believe that taking them out of the shadows will only encourage more illegal immigration. ...

Dan Spencer: There is another election runoff in Louisiana this cycle. It’s not getting as much coverage as the U.S. Senate race, but it is being watched by powerful special interests. The race pits incumbent Eric Skrmetta against Forest Wright for a seat on the Public Services Commission . Both are Republicans. But only one, Skrmetta, has been a Republican for more than six months . Wright switched parties to run for the PSC in 2014 because his previous attempt in 2012 as a Democrat met with failure. Columnist Jeremy Alford went so far as to call Wright “ one bright spot for the Democrats ” this cycle because his victory “could create a quasi-Democratic majority on the PSC. Yeah, you’re thinking Wright is one of those old school southern Democrats, right? No. He’s very much new school. He’s an advocate for solar power and a vocal supporter of the state’s net metering policy. As we have reported before , net metering is the controversial policy that requires middle- and lower-cl...

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: Oil boom triggering cowboy shortage across Canada A growing economy does more to increase worker pay than the minimum wage.  You can see similar situations in cities like Midland Texas where fast food workers are making substantially more because of the competition for workers with oil drillers. The Obama administration is still blocking offshore energy exploration and drilling in places like ANWR which would boost the US economy and be far more beneficial than messing with the minimum wage.

Bloomberg/Fuel Fix: West Texas Intermediate fell Tuesday to the lowest level in more than four years after nations supplying a third of the world’s oil failed to pledge output cuts before this week’s OPEC meeting. Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Russia said they plan to start quarterly monitoring of oil prices. Tuesday’s talks in Vienna didn’t result in any joint commitment to reduce supplies, said Igor Sechin, who runs Russian state oil producer OAO Rosneft. “Even those four countries are not agreeing to any kind of cut, and the last thing the Saudis want is to be the ones doing all the cutting,” said Tariq Zahir, a New York-based commodity fund manager at Tyche Capital Advisors. “You have to get an above 2-million-barrel cut from OPEC to stabilize the market.” ... "Quarterly monitoring" seems like a strange term given that they check the price on a daily basis.  What they probably is that they will see if there is an agreement on market manipulation on a quarterly ba...

Washington Times: F irms have $3,000 incentive for hiring illegals under Obama amnesty This is another aspect of Obama's war on the working poor who will have to compete for jobs with the illegals.

Bill Gertz: Russia, China, Iran, and Islamists are waging unconventional warfare around the world, and the United States currently lacks a clear strategy to counter the threat, according to a recent report by the Army Special Operations Command. “This challenge is hybrid warfare combining conventional, irregular, and asymmetric means, to include the persistent manipulation of political and ideological conflict,” states the Army white paper, “Countering Unconventional Warfare.” “Foreshadowed by Iranian actions throughout the Middle East, and by Chinese ‘unrestricted warfare’ strategists in the 1990s, hybrid warfare has now reached its most brazen form in Russia’s support for separatist insurgents in Ukraine.” The 48-page white paper , published Sept. 26 by the Fort Bragg, North Carolina command, urges building new, non-kinetic warfare tools into a comprehensive U.S. and allied strategy. The tools should include covert and clandestine special operations commando activities combined wit...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vqdbUU2yqU&feature=youtu.be Her attack on Mitt Romney looks pretty bad when she would have to lead the war against ISIL which became powerful after the Obama retreat she is bragging about.

Washington Examiner: Treasury: 2,500 documents 'potentially' show IRS sharing taxpayer data with White House ... In an email from the Justice Department’s tax office, an official revealed the high number of documents, suggesting that the White House was hip deep in probes of taxpayers, likely including conservatives and Tea Party groups associated with the IRS scandal. ... Is the cover up beginning to unravel.  The IRS has recently admitted to finding 30,000 Lois Lerner emails it previously claimed were lost forever.