WASH POST: OBAMA'S DEFENSE CUTS ARE HURTING THE ECONOMY

WASHINGTON POST FRONT PAGE:

A steep slowdown in defense spending tied to the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is undercutting the country’s economic recovery, new government data released Friday revealed. 

The report showed gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent during the first three months of the year — significantly slower than most economists had expected. The culprit? A surprising 11.5 percent annualized drop-off in military spending. 

The decline comes on the heels of an even bigger plunge in defense spending at the end of last year that brought economic growth to a standstill. Taken together, the two quarters represent the steepest declines in military outlays since the Korean War, according to JPMorgan Chase economist Michael Feroli.

SOME LEFTIES - (EVEN THE ONES WHO HATE AUSTERITY) - WON'T CARE IF THE ECONOMY IS DRAGGED DOWN IF IT'S BECAUSE OUR DEFENSE SPENDING IS CUT BECAUSE THEY ARE SO INTO THE WHOLE POSTMODERN BS THAT "AMERICA IS A BULLY THAT OVERSPENDS ON THE MILITARY" THAT THEY WOULD RATHER AMERICA WAS WEAKER MILITARILY THAN STRONGER BOTH MILITARILY AND ECONOMICALLY..

IF THEY REALLY WANTED THE ECONOMY TO GROW FASTER, AND IF THEY REALLY SAW AMERICAN MILITARY MIGHT AS A FORCE FOR PEACE, THEN THEY WOULDN'T SUPPORT DEFENSE SPENDING CUTS.

NEW HONEST LOGO FOR MSNBC

BECAUSE THEY WERE SORRY THAT THR MARATHON ATTACKERS TURNED OUT TO BE MUSLIM AND ANGRY THEY WERE TEA PARTIERS:

OBAMA, GUNS AND ABORTION

AND ANOTHER THING:

OBAMA AFFORD'S MORE RIGHTS TO TERRORISTS THAN HE DOES TO BABIES IN THE WOMB.

BRILLIANT CHART DEPICTING THE EVOLUTION OF LEFTISM

MUST SEE TV: LIBERAL PC IS GETTING US KILLED

VIA FOXM:

UN: IRAQ SPIRALING OUT OF CONTROL AND INTO ISLAMIST CIVIL WAR

SINCE OBAMA'S RETREAT, IRAQ IS SPIRALING OUT OF CONTROL: 190 KILLED IN LAST 4 DAYS.

• OBAMA THREW AWAY OUR HARD-EARNED VICTORY.

• SOON IRAQ WILL EITHER RESEMBLE SYRIA OR IRAN

I WOULD SAY OBAMA HAS BEEN INCOMPETENT EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THE EFFECT OF HIS POLICIES HAS BEEN A CONSISTENT NET GAIN FOR THE ISLAMISTS.

THAT INDICATES TO ME THAT IT IS BY DESIGN.

HOTD: White House: We're Diligently Endeavoring To Defintively Determine if Syria Use Chemical Weapons, Thereby Politically Embarrassing Us* *We Have the Same Team Trying to Find Out What Happened In Benghazi** **And Also Fast & Furious —Ace

White House: We're Diligently Endeavoring To Defintively Determine if Syria Use Chemical Weapons, Thereby Politically Embarrassing Us**We Have the Same Team Trying to Find Out What Happened In Benghazi****And Also Fast & Furious—Ace

WILL GLOBAL JIHAD AND ISLAMIST TERROR GO AWAY IF WE CHANGE OUR FOREIGN POLICY AND TREAT MUSLIMS BETTER?

I POSTED THIS 3 YEARS AGO - IT'S STILL TRUE:

• PEOPLE WOKE UP ON 9/11/01. 

• BUT NOW MANY HAVE FORGOTTEN - OR HAVE WISHFULLY DELUDED THEMSELVES INTO BELIEVING THAT IT WILL JUST GO AWAY IF WE CHANGE OUR FOREIGN POLICY AND JUST TREAT MUSLIMS A LITTLE BETTER. 

• THAT WON'T WORK ANY BETTER NOW THAN WHAT WE WERE DOING BEFORE 9/11/01. 

• APPEASEMENT AND ACCOMMODATION WON'T END JIHAD IN PHILIPPINES, THAILAND, PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN, IRAN, IRAQ, JORDAN, TURKEY, EGYPT, MOROCCO, YEMEN, SAUDI ARABIA, SOMALIA, SUDAN, EUROPE, RUSSIA, CHECHNYA, OSSETIA, DAGESTAN, CHINA, INDIA, KASHMIR - OR BALI. 

• OR ANYWHERE ELSE. 

• IF YOU WANT PEACE, THEN YOU HAVE TWO CHOICES: SURRENDER OR FIGHT. 

• SURRENDER CAN COME IN MANY SHAPES AND AT DIFFERENT PACES, BUT IT ULTIMATELY MEANS LIVING UNDER TOTALITARIAN TYRANNY. 

• VICTORY WILL COST MORE IN LIVES AND TREASURE, BUT IT'S THE ONLY WAY WE AND OUR DESCENDANTS CAN REMAIN FREE. 

• THE CHOICE IS OURS.

APPEASING THE ENEMY IS A FORM OF SURRENDER.

TREATING THE ENEMY LIKE A CRIMINAL - INSTEAD OF AN ENEMY COMBATANT - IS APPEASEMENT.

OBAMA HAS BEEN APPEASING THE ENEMY.

THE ENEMY HAS STEADILY GROWN IN POWER AND INFLUENCE - NOW HOLDING EGYPT AND GAINING IN SYRIA, AFGHANISTAN, IRAQ AND ELSEWHERE.

AND THERE HAVE BEEN 7 ATTACKS HERE IN THE HOMELAND.

IF OBAMA CONTINUES THIS APPROACH, EVERYTHING IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.

SIGH...

WOMEN OF THE WALL WIN A LEGAL BATTLE

Something that could help alter the status of the Western Wall back to how it usually was when they first began in 1988:

A court handed the Women of the Wall a significant legal victory in a decision released Thursday, ruling that the state cannot arrest the women for their activities at the holy site.

If not reversed by a higher court, the decision could mark a shift in the status quo at the Western Wall and a turning point in the liberal group’s fight to pray there as it wishes.

The decision, written by Judge Moshe Sobel of the Jerusalem District Court, was a defeat for the state prosecutor and the police, who arrested five of the women on April 11 and charged them with disturbing the peace.

A lower court judge ruled later the same day that there was no legal basis for the arrests and freed all five. Police appealed Wednesday to the Jerusalem District Court in an attempt to overturn the ruling, but instead Sobel upheld it — a decision that could force a revision of policy at the Western Wall.

[...] Sobel ruled that the police’s fear that the women’s actions could spark disturbances by others did not mean they could be arrested.

“The fear of creating such disturbances, without a claim that any of the defendants used any kind of violence, physical or verbal, does not constitute a reasonable basis for the fear that the defendants are those who threaten public security or the security of any person in the Western Wall plaza,” he wrote.

What's the prosecutor and police's problem anyway? Do they really have such a low opinion of free speech that they just have to go through with this? There's much worse things they could be dealing with, like jihadism, and this is what they care about? I may not have a high opinion of Reform Judaism itself based on the political positions. But as I've said before, the prayer customs in themselves are far from the biggest problem with them, and if this continues, it can give a bad image to Orthodox Judaism. The message should be that a public/national symbol like the Western Wall cannot be hogged by just one group, and that also goes for Reform, if it matters.

Israel National News isn't helping by calling the WoW "provocation-causing", and I'd be mad as hell if I found them calling any of my relatives who adhered to Conservative Judaism something like that. Though they do mention that:

MK Aliza Lavie (Yesh Atid), who heads the Knesset's Committee for Advancement of Women's Status, reacted to the ruling and said, "All along the way, I said that the court's rulings must be obeyed. The ruling handed down today means that there has been unwarranted cruelty toward the Kotel Women as they prayed, for years."

"Let me make clear – this is not a halakhic issue at all but a legal one, and in view of the new ruling, the Israel Police must refrain from arrests," she claimed.

And any Haredis who resort to obscenities that only translate as saying "I hate you and you're a POS" to anyone who's neither Haredi nor Orthodox aren't helping one bit. Funny how some technically secular sources have agreed that the Haredis be their masters; that's my perception anyway.

INN may want to consider that if they oppose the WoW, they might well be jeopardizing the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount. Some of their past reports on Reform Judaism weren't specific enough, and if they really have a problem with them, make the beefs clearer, for heaven's sake.

Here's another report on the LA Jewish Journal, and on Israel HaYom.

LEFT'S ATTEMPT TO TO SMEAR 2 ECONOMISTS AND THEIR STUDY TYING HUGH DEBT TO LOW GROWTH FAILS

THE 2 ECONOMISTS THEMSELVES STRAIGHTEN THINGS OUT IN A NYTIMES OP-ED:

We did find that episodes of high debt (90 percent or more) were rare, long and costly. There were just 26 cases where the ratio of debt to G.D.P. exceeded 90 percent for five years or more; the average high-debt spell was 23 years. In 23 of the 26 cases, average growth was slower during the high-debt period than in periods of lower debt levels. Indeed, economies grew at an average annual rate of roughly 3.5 percent, when the ratio was under 90 percent, but at only a 2.3 percent rate, on average, at higher relative debt levels.

(In 2012, the ratio of debt to gross domestic product was 106 percent in the United States, 82 percent in Germany and 90 percent in Britain — in Japan, the figure is 238 percent, but Japan is somewhat exceptional because its debt is held almost entirely by domestic residents and it is a creditor to the rest of the world.)
The fact that high-debt episodes last so long suggests that they are not, as some liberal economists contend, simply a matter of downturns in the business cycle.

In “This Time Is Different,” our 2009 history of financial crises over eight centuries, we found that when sovereign debt reached unsustainable levels, so did the cost of borrowing, if it was even possible at all. The current situation confronting Italy and Greece, whose debts date from the early 1990s, long before the 2007-8 global financial crisis, support this view.

The politically charged discussion, especially sharp in the past week or so, has falsely equated our finding of a negative association between debt and growth with an unambiguous call for austerity.
We agree that growth is an elusive goal at times of high debt. We know that cutting spending and raising taxes is tough in a slow-growth economy with persistent unemployment. Austerity seldom works without structural reforms — for example, changes in taxes, regulations and labor market policies — and if poorly designed, can disproportionately hit the poor and middle class. Our consistent advice has been to avoid withdrawing fiscal stimulus too quickly, a position identical to that of most mainstream economists.

In some cases, we have favored more radical proposals, including debt restructuring (a polite term for partial default) of public and private debts. Such restructurings helped deal with the debt buildup during World War I and the Depression. We have long favored write-downs of sovereign debt and senior bank debt in the European periphery (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain) to unlock growth.

In the United States, we support reducing mortgage principal on homes that are underwater (where the mortgage is higher than the value of the home). We have also written about plausible solutions that involve moderately higher inflation and “financial repression” — pushing down inflation-adjusted interest rates, which effectively amounts to a tax on bondholders. This strategy contributed to the significant debt reductions that followed World War II.

In short: many countries around the world have extraordinarily high public debts by historical standards, especially when medical and old-age support programs are taken into account. Resolving these debt burdens usually involves a transfer, often painful, from savers to borrowers. This time is no different, and the latest academic kerfuffle should not divert our attention from that fact.

PEOPLE WHO THINK GOVERNMENTS CAN HAVE UNLIMITED DEBT AND THAT CENTRAL BANKS CAN PRINT AN UNLIMITED AMOUNT OF PAPER MONEY ARE NUTS.

IF GOVERNMENTS AND CENTRAL BANKS COULD MAKE ECONOMIES GROW BY PRINTING MONEY, THEN ZIMBABWE AND WEIMAR WOULD BE THE WORLD'S BEST ECONOMIES.

IF PRINTING MONEY COULD REALLY IMPROVE THE ECONOMY, THEN WHY NOT JUST PRINT $300 TRILLION AND TRANSFER $1 MILLION TO EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN?

THE NUTS WHO THINK GOVERNMENT DEBT IS NOT A PROBLEM ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.

WHAT WE NEED IS MORE SUSTAINED ECONOMIC GROWTH.

ANY AND ALL GOVERNMENT POLICIES THAT GET IN THE WAY OF HIGHER GROWTH SHOULD BE REDUCED TO THE LOWEST LEVELS POSSIBLE: TAXES; REGULATIONS; ETC.

AND SINCE WE ALREADY HAVE A DEBT PROBLEM, THE ONLY WAY WE CAN RESPONSIBLY LOWER TAXES IS BY CUTTING GOVERNMENT SPENDING.

EUROPE'S ECONOMY STILL WORSENING..

BAD AND GETTING WORSE.

UN CONSPIRACY THEORIST RICHARD FALK DESECRATES VICTIMS OF BOSTON JIHAD

UN Watch reported that the vile UN member Richard Falk justified the bombings at the Boston Marathon. AWR Hawkins has more:

U.N. Human Rights Council Palestine monitor Richard Falk is arguing that the Boston Marathon bombing was carried out in "retribution" for U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, "American global dominion," and supposed Israeli influence of American foreign policy.

Concerning America, Falk wrote: "The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world... In some respects, the U.S. has been fortunate not to receive worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen."

He also fell back on the tired conspiracy of Israeli influence directing U.S. foreign policy, writing, "As long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment, those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy."

And yet the UN continues to harbor that disgusting man, even if they removed him from their human rights watch council. Some US politicians like Doug Lamborn, Eliot Engel and Trent Franks have already condemned his sick behavior, and said:

These malicious and mendacious claims not only justify these heinous terrorist acts on innocent civilians, but belie the most basic human right--the right to live. They make a mockery of the founding principles of the United Nations and are a deep affront to the American people.

The the problem is that the UN has long been taken over by repulsive creatures of his sort, and render the UN a most unwelcome place to be.

And unfortunately, the Obama administration has not only failed to campaign for Falk's complete removal from the UN payroll, they're unlikely to do so for the rest of the second term either. Anne Bayefsky notes that even after Falk's removal from at least one council:

Richard Falk continued in his role as a UN "expert." He produced a report for the UN Human Rights Council in May 2012 and presented it in June 2012. He wrote another report for the General Assembly in September 2012 and presented it in October 2012. And the Obama administration paid 22% of all his costs.

Tax dollars at work. A campaign is needed to stop the funding the US provides for this corrupt outfit, and to shun their employees working in the US too. If there's a UN office in Boston, there should be a campaign to get it closed down. They will not voluntarily dismiss Falk and others of his sick ilk, so it's up to the public to get the UN out of the US.

LEADING THE WAY: HOLLAND DUMPS MULTICULTURALISM

IF THEY CAN DO THIS, THEN SO CAN THE REST OF THE WEST.

IF WE DON'T, THEN WE WILL GO THE WAY OF BYZANTIUM.

Dubya speaks at the dedication his Presidential Library

TULSA WORLD SEETHING OVER PASSING OF ANTI-SHARIA BILL

The bill to prevent use of sharia in Oklahoma courts has been approved by the governor, and the Tulsa World's editors have reacted most contemptibly about it:

So now Oklahomans can once again rest easy knowing that they will not have any foreign law, especially Shariah law, imposed on them in court.

Of course, that has never, ever happened in Oklahoma and isn't about to be in the future, statute or no statute.

What a colossal waste of time and effort. This new law, which will take affect Nov. 1, serves no purpose other than to keep anti-Muslim passions inflamed.

Very pathetic of them, and it completely ignores incidents of sharia being imposed in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas. They cannot bring themselves to thank a concerned politician for wanting to help people whose safety and constitutional rights could be jeopardized by these atrocities, and above all, they clearly want corrupt lawmakers to be able to enact bad foreign laws. In that case, they have no business being journalists.

RELATIVES OF YASER SAID MADE THREATS AGAINST FILMMAKER

Pamela Geller got an email from a filmmaker named Neena Nejad who was filming a documentary about the murders of Amina and Sarah Said in Texas, and later received threats from one of the relatives of the murderous father Yaser Said. But what really outrages is the response by a representative of the Arlington police department:

We went to the police station in a city nearby after we got the call. This was the Arlington Police Department and let me tell you that I wasn't surprised. After we all explained the situation to the officer basically he said that if we chase the bad guy and we get shot then we can't really complaint about it. Yes, he said that and we left amazed by it. He said we could file a report if we wanted but it would be useless and we would put it in the archive right away plus we would have to wait over 3 hours to do it even though nobody else was at the station.

The day after we were shooting in Lewisville and decided to go to the police department. They said that we could file an information report to leave proof of this and that's all we wanted. We didn't want to go after him because that would make him more angry, we just wanted to make sure that if anything happened, we had proof on paper. Sadly, we couldn't file a report because the incident didn't happen in that city and we were told to file this report in our own city which is impossible because we don't live in Texas. So we are now trying to find out how to proceed with the California law so there is proof on paper of what happened in Texas. I have a feeling things will be easier here.

We can only hope so. They should also file a complaint against the officer in charge for blaming the victim and telling why he doesn't deserve his job. Any town that allows people that disgusting to maintain jobs they cannot prove themselves capable of fulfilling is in very serious trouble.

And Texas does seem to have quite a problem with Islamism and dhimmitude that needs to be worked on as soon as possible.

THIS IS WHAT THEY PLAN TO DO TO US ALL ON A CULTURAL LEVEL, TOO

A 12-year-old Christian girl was kidnapped, beaten until she converted to Islam and repeatedly raped for eight months in Lahore, Pakistan (pictured), according to a human rights organisation.

ASSAD TRYING TO GET OBAMA TO SWITCH SIDES

NYTIMES:

As Islamists increasingly fill the ranks of Syrian rebels, President Bashar al-Assad is waging an energized campaign to persuade the United States that it is on the wrong side of the civil war. Some government supporters and officials believe they are already coaxing — or at least frightening — the West into holding back stronger support for the opposition. Most of the prisoners, like Khaled Hamdo Shami, were Syrians, not from other countries. 

Confident they can sell their message, government officials have eased their reluctance to allow foreign reporters into Syria, paraded prisoners they described as extremist fighters and relied unofficially on a Syrian-American businessman to help tap into American fears of groups like Al Qaeda. “We are partners in fighting terrorism,” Syria’s prime minister, Wael Nader al-Halqi, said. Omran al-Zoubi, the information minister, said: “It’s a war for civilization, identity and culture. Syria, if you want, is the last real secular state in the Arab world.”

WE SHOULDN'T SWITCH SIDES; WE SHOULD SUPPORT BOTH SIDES AND SEND BOTH SIDES ARMS UNTIL THEY COMPLETELY ANNIHILATE EACH OTHER.

JIHADIST ARRESTED IN CANADA DISRESPECTS THEIR LAW BECAUSE IT'S NOT "HOLY" BOOK

One of the terrorists arraigned in the case in Quebec has voiced his contempt for Canadian law:

The Montreal-based suspect accused of plotting an al-Qaeda-linked attack on a Via Rail train told a Toronto court Wednesday that he does not recognize the Criminal Code of Canada, saying it is “not a holy book.”

Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, made the comments in a court appearance Wednesday morning, where he is facing five charges including conspiracy to commit murder. Mr. Esseghaier, along with Raed Jaser, 35, of Toronto, are accused of plotting to derail a Via passenger train on a rail line between New York and Toronto.

Mr. Esseghaier, a stocky figure with a thick beard and glasses, was soft-spoken and polite during his appearance, and declined the services of an Arabic translator. He did not appear with a lawyer, and was represented by a duty counsel. [...]

Mr. Esseghaier stood, then calmly said to the court that he does not recognize Canada’s Criminal Code. "First of all, my comment is the following because all of those conclusions was taken out based on Criminal code,” he said. “All of us we know that this Criminal Code is not holy book, it's just written by set of creations and the creations they're not perfect because only the creator is perfect so if we are basing our judgment ... we cannot rely on the conclusions taken out from these judgements."

Open contempt and hostility for the law of the country he lives in, and shows he cares more about the Koran than the laws of his host country. Despicable.

MOTHER OF BOSTON JIHADISTS HAS CRIMINAL RECORD FOR SHOPLIFTING

ABC's Good Morning America reports that the mother of the jihadists in Boston has a local record for stealing:

The mother of accused Boston Marathon bombers has continued to defend her two sons from her home in Dagestan, Russia, but if she attempts to return to the United States to bury her older son, or care for the boy that remains hospitalized, she could face arrest on an outstanding warrant for shoplifting.

The clerk of the Natick District Court confirmed to ABC News that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, failed to appear at a court hearing on October 25, 2012 to resolve charges that she stole $1,600 worth of garments from a nearby Lord & Taylor department store.

She also continues to act as apologist for her two disgusting sons:

In Russia, the boys' mother professed their innocence, saying "What happened is a terrible thing. But I know that my kids have nothing to do with this. I know it. I am mother. You know, I know my kids. I know my kids. Really my kids would never get involved into anything like that." In phone conversations with ABC News, the mother has expressed her desire to travel to the United States. While she has left open that possibility, she has recently suggested only her husband might go.

Why should we take the word of someone who once traveled to the USA only to rip off local stores of their goods? What a disgrace. If there's evidence of their guilt, she can only come to terms with that, and clearly, she's not willing to do so.

Update: in this video, the mother shows some more of her true colors:

Yes, that's right, she said in the conversation:

"If they are going to kill him. I don’t care. My oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care if my youngest son is going to be killed today. I want the world to hear this. And, I don’t care if I am going to get killed too. And I will say Allahu Akbar!"

Via Gateway Pundit and The Jawa Report.

Nihad Awad Equates Islam With Radical Islam

Look, the bombers themselves make it clear their motivation is Islam.

So, it's either Islam proper, or Radical Islam.

Nihad Awad refuses the idea that Radical Islam is "the Primary Driver of Terrorism in the world today", and he asserts that "Islam is a Peaceful Religion".

Heh.

Check mate.

If Islam is a "peaceful religion", then it is "Radical Islam", not regular Islam, which is the driver of terrorism.

You can't have it both ways.

UH-OH: CHINESE BIRD FLU GETTING WORSE!

A new bird flu strain that has killed 22 people in China is "one of the most lethal" of its kind and transmits more easily to humans than another strain that has killed hundreds since 2003, a World Health Organization (WHO) expert said on Wednesday. The H7N9 flu has infected 108 people in China since it was first detected in March, according to the Geneva-based WHO. Although it is not clear exactly how people are being infected, experts say they see no evidence so far of the most worrisome scenario - sustained transmission between people.

THIS COULD BE THE ONE SCIENTISTS HAVE FEARED FOR DECADES...

STAY TUNED...