I’ve always found it interesting when the calendar changes to the day after Labor Day and the country gets serious. The rest of the world doesn’t know from this holiday and I’m sure there’s a great deal of literature on how the calendar affects world affairs. Thus, here we are.
The world continues to be on fire. ISIS, Syria, Israel, Palestine, West Africa, and English towns that breed terrorists are mainstays of the 24-hour news cycle. The president is excoriated for suggesting that we are at a loss over what to do about increasing threats overseas. Texas is on alert for possible infiltration across the Mexican border. But don’t worry about that too much because Chris Christie was just in Mexico and I’m sure he’ll scare off the militants. Of course, he hasn’t a clue about foreign policy, but at least he didn’t pull a Romney on his first foreign trip.
On the domestic political front, the big issue is that Congress is going to meet for a few days, adjourn, and go home to run for those all-important safe seats that 96% of the members occupy. Excepting, of course, those few Senate seats that are up for grabs. It’s interesting to note that except for 2010, a big exception, I know, the Republican moon-bayers have been unable to defeat Obama and the Democrats and scare the country into giving the conservatives the control they will never, ever have. Yes, the House has been able to wreak havoc on the country and, by the by, their own party, but they have not been successful at implementing their agenda. They’ve only stymied the Democrats but for the 2009-2011 Congressional session.
Oh, and that ACA law thing? It’s working fairly well. You know, millions of people now have health insurance, doctors are able to give elderly people more care, poor people can get Medicaid, except in states that don’t take free money but say they are fiscally responsible. But no worries on that because those states that deny the money are actually paying so that the states that did take free Medicaid money can cover their populations. I live in one of those states. My governor wants to be president. Scared yet?
But if the Senate goes to the GOP, then both houses of Congress will vote to repeal the ACA, right? Well, possibly, but right now the GOP isn’t taking the Senate. And chances are good that they won’t. You heard it here third.
Libertarian Republican Senator Rand Paul is in the news again, not because he said something and then decided he didn’t say it – that was last month’s news when he said that he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act, despite many recordings of him saying that he opposed the act. Sidenote – Those recordings do exist!
No, today, Rand Paul is in the news again because he has apparently forgotten the most basic principle of being a Libertarian – minding your own darn business even when it comes to foreign policies.
And Paul has often stated just that – that America should indeed mind our own business and not be the police of the world, that we should let the other nations take care of their own issues. But today in an op-ed, Rand Paul is now demanding military action to take care of ISIS.
“The military means to achieve these goals include airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria,” the Kentucky Republican and likely 2016 presidential hopeful wrote in an op-ed in TIME. “Such airstrikes are the best way to suppress ISIS’s operational strength and allow allies such as the Kurds to regain a military advantage.”
Paul’s hawkish turn comes after months of hedging and skeptical comments regarding U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria. Yet Paul boasted on Thursday that as president he would have committed to a grand plan to eliminate ISIS earlier and more effectively than President Obama.
“If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS,” Paul said. “I would have called Congress back into session—even during recess.”
Another Sidenote: Rand Paul is not only trying to be president in 2016, he is also trying to unseat Mitt Romney as the official Flip-Flopper-In-Chief!
NBC news is reporting that three senior members of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) – including an aide to its leader – were killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq, a senior Iraqi security official told NBC News Thursday. The strike on the ISIS stronghold of Mosul killed Abu Hajar Al-Sufi, an aide to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as well as an explosives operative and the military leader of nearby Tel Afar, the source said on condition of anonymity. Al Arabiya cited the Iraqi Defense Ministry saying Baghdadi’s aide had been killed.
Pentagon Spokesman Col. Steve Warren could not confirm the deaths and said ISIS leaders had not been targeted. But he added that if ISIS leaders were embedded “inside troop formations they are likely to be killed.” The U.S. has been carrying out airstrikes across the country’s north after the brutal terror group gained ground in a murderous sweep in June. The U.S. and the West have stepped up their rhetoric against the group after what Obama’s opponents said was a slow start in articulating a solution to the crisis.
While the president considers the best strategy to combat the ISIS threat in Syria, Congress is preparing to give the Commander in Chief any authorization needed for an all out war if necessary.
Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., said in a statement Wednesday he will introduce legislation when Congress reconvenes next week that would authorize the use of military force against ISIS and other terror groups around the world, including al Nusra, Ansar al Sharia, al Shabaab and Boko Haram.
Separately, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday in Virginia that Congress should not leave town in September without considering an authorization to use force against ISIS.
Wolf’s proposal comes one day after Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., announced a similar bill for the Senate as lawmakers from both chambers and both parties expressed anger and frustration over Tuesday’s release of another video showing the beheading of an American journalist by the jihadi insurgents.
“This will ensure there’s no question that the president has the legal authority he needs to use airstrikes in Syria,” Nelson said in a release.
ISIS has released two videos showing the executions of Americans — and threatened more — since U.S. forces interceded last month in northern Iraq, bombing insurgent positions in support of Kurdish fights and Iraqi government forces
Remove the ISIS flag from this picture and leave the baby surrounded by guns and grenades, and what you end up with is still a sickening image that the gun nuts here in America would gladly endorse.
The chilling image is the latest photo believed to have been posted by militants fighting in Syria and Iraq as part of their online propaganda campaign.
It shows the child – who appears to be less than six months old – lying on its back on the black flag now associated with the group terrorising the Middle East.
Where other babies its age might have soft toys scattered around them, the child has been cynically positioned next to a Kalashnikov rifle, a pistol and hand grenades.
If there was anything that brings out the dumb American low brow crowd it’s a crisis involving terrorists and Americans in danger. I will get this out of the way early so some of you don’t stroke out before getting to the end of this column…the beheadings of the journalists in Syria/Iraq are disgusting, awful, horrific, and any other horrible word you can come up with…there ya go!..horrible as well. Of course the reaction to these two grotesque (another word!) videos from the American right wing has been all out hysteria. “Do something Obamaaaaaaa!!!” is what I see from these people on Facebook and Twitter. The right wing pols like dementia ridden John McCain claim Obama is “too cautious” and “not showing leadership skills.” Since this comes from the SAME people who were 110 percent behind George W. Bush I can only say one thing, GO FUCK YOURSELVES. Let’s not forget why there is an ISIS to begin with.
There is an ISIS because of one person and only one person, George W. Bush. This is why instead of dumping ice water on his head it should have been a bucket of Iraqi blood. In a normal country with intelligent people this would be on the news every hour of every day. The story line would be a President who once again has to clean up the mess of his predecessor. He had to do it with the economy, wall street, Bin Laden, Iraq and so on and so forth. Now he has to do it with ISIS.
You see Iraq was a sovereign nation before Bush destroyed it. Perfect? No. But the United States is far far far from perfect. But groups like ISIS didn’t exist and wouldn’t exist if the USA didn’t turn Iraq into something out of a Mad Max film. This is the fault of the guy before Obama,but right on cue the mainstream media starts beating the war drums and questioning Obama’s strategy. Not a word about why we are in the mess to begin with, not a hard question posed to any Republican politician about how wrong they were in the first place and how they are more to blame for this than the President who was against the Iraq invasion. That old case of short term amnesia that the media and American public get when something that Bush did comes back to haunt the country…again.
I’m consistently stunned by how dumb the American public are and how the media just plays into that dumbness. We just had a President who rushed into a quagmire that cost so many lives, foreign and domestic. That cost us billions of dollars that we didn’t have, that caused nation after nation to either hate us or not want to do any kind of militaristic business with us anymore. That is why Obama will now have trouble getting other countries on board with just about anything he wants to do. Bush fucked that up too. They don’t trust us anymore and who can blame them?
Yet there are the old Neo-Cons coming back out of the closet whenever there is a place they want to bomb. The moron Americans who need another ‘Shock and Awe’ moment to satisfy their cravings for revenge. A normal, sane person, like the President, views those horrible videos, feels anger and sorrow, maybe a slight inclination for revenge, then thinks…yes thinks about the best possible way to stop the group that committed those atrocities from advancing and doing even more harm. The BEST way, not the quickest or the way that FEELS the best, that satisfies some blood lust or need to just strike back for PR purposes.
So Obama comes out and says that he really isn’t sure of a strategy at this point and of course this becomes a clarion call for every hard-on right winger who wants to blame him and call him indecisive. Because he didn’t stride to the podium like a cowboy with shit in his pants, arms to the side, head cocked out and talking about smoking things out of holes. Whatever that means. There were actually some people who were begging for some tough talk. As though that changes anything!
There is no easy answer. You see there WAS an easy answer, it was not going into Iraq in the first place. It was not duping Americans into believing Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11 or that he had weapons of mass destruction that were going to be used against us in the next ten minutes. That was the easy answer but it’s gone baby gone. Now we are really in a world of shit. Now we have ISIS, the new boogeyman that we want gone from our nightmares.
ISIS is a problem and a threat. Yet not a threat to the USA homeland. They aren’t invading us anytime soon, nor will they ever be able to. They are a bunch of really fucked up bad guys who have no morals. They kill innocent civilians and U.S. journalists and yes it’s just terrible. Add them to the list of terrible things we have in this world now. We certainly don’t need them because the list is already too long to mention.
What we do need is a President that actually thinks before he acts. Even though his options are so limited because of the damage the monkey from Texas did. Yet he will think and he will find a way to try and contain ISIS. Forget about destroying them, ain’t gonna happen. There will be no prolonged war, no large contingent of “boots on the ground” (the new favorite term for newsies who want to sound like they know shit about the military). Not happening. As Obama has told us many times, we could not leave troops in Iraq as the Iraqi government did not want them there and would not give any protections to those troops. They could have been arrested or worse if they did something the government didn’t like. So he did what was promised and gave the Iraqi’s the freedom they wanted and at the same time he protected our troops.
Who knows though, if we never went into Iraq, if we had kept other nations on our side, if we had the money and the backing of the American people, then maybe, just maybe if ISIS or a group like it had somehow popped up, we would be able to do things differently. But that’s neither here nor there now. Because Bush ruined everything, destroyed everything, depleted everything.
So Obama once again has to clean up Bush’s shit.
Luckily we have the right guy in the White House to do it.
The vice president expressed some of the same sentiments shared by many Americans who saw the brutal murders of American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. And in his statements today, Joe Biden promised that we will follow ISIL and bring them to justice, even if it means taking a trip “to the gates of hell.”
Speaking at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Biden said the Islamic State militant group responsible for beheading James Foley and Steven Sotloff won’t intimidate the United States.
“The American people are so much stronger, so much more resolved than any enemy can fully understand,” Biden said. “As a nation, we’re united. And when people harm Americans, we don’t retreat, we don’t forget.”
A videotape showing Sotloff’s murder was broadcast Tuesday, two weeks after the same group released a video showing Foley’s killing. Foley was from New Hampshire and Sotloff attended school there, bringing their killings close to home at the shipyard situated on an island in a river that runs between Maine and New Hampshire.
“We take care of those who are grieving and when that’s finished, they should know we will follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice,” Biden said. “Because hell is where they’ll reside.”
The Secretary of State released a statement regarding ISIS and their second beheading of an American freelance journalist, calling the acts “unfathomable brutality” and an “act of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask.”
Yesterday, the world bore witness again to the unfathomable brutality of ISIL terrorist murderers when we saw Steven Sotloff, an American journalist who left home in Florida to tell the story of brave people in the Middle East, taken from us in an act of medieval savagery by a coward hiding behind a mask.
There are no words strong enough to express the sorrow we feel for his family, particularly his mother, whose heartbreaking video plea spoke to every single parent who has ever worried about a son or daughter who goes to dangerous places to do the work they love.
This young man was a driven and courageous journalist, reporting from places like Syria, Libya, and Egypt. Steven Sotloff’s reporting was as empathetic as his killers are evil. He focused on the stories of average people trapped in war, and documented their day-in and day-out struggle for dignity. Like Martha Gellhorn, he chronicled humanity in the face of inhumanity, and he told the story of enormous generational events as if they were happening to someone you knew from your own life.
For so many who worked so long to bring Steven and the other Americans home safely, this was not how the story should’ve ended. It’s a punch to the gut. The U.S. Government has used every military, diplomatic, and intelligence tool we have, and we always will. Our special operations forces bravely risked a military operation to save these lives, and we’ve reached out diplomatically to everyone and anyone who might be able to help. That effort continues, and our prayers remain – as they always are – with the families of all hostages who remain trapped in Syria today.
Barbarity, sadly, isn’t new to our world. Neither is evil. We’ve taken the fight to it before, and we’re taking the fight to it today. When terrorists anywhere around the world have murdered our citizens, the United States held them accountable, no matter how long it took. And those who have murdered James Foley and Steven Sotloff in Syria should know that the United States will hold them accountable too, no matter how long it takes.
In yet another chilling video, the terrorist group ISIS is seen murdering another American journalist, Stephen Sotloff, in the name of Islam.
In the video, which lasts for just under three minutes, ISIS murders Sotloff and threatens the life of David Haines, a British citizen.
Sotloff, 31, was kidnapped in 2013 while reporting on the bloody civil war in Syria. He had been a freelancer for outlets such as Time magazine and Foreign Policy.
Recently, the New York Times ran a profile of Sotloff. Friends of his told the paper that he was a “selfless,” “loyal” and “caring” person.
Last week, his mother, Shirley, recorded a video intended for ISIS. She pleaded with the group to be “merciful” towards her son.
The video comes weeks after ISIS released a video in which it beheaded another American journalist, James Foley. In that video, the militants threatened to murder Sotloff next if the US bombing of ISIS targets continued.
ISIS is believed to be holding several more journalists in captivity.
At a time of crisis in the Middle East, Congress has gone “AWOL,” Rep. John Larson said Monday.
“Congress has been off for more than six weeks,” the Connecticut Democrat said on MSNBC. “Some have said, and I can’t disagree with them, that we’re AWOL,” Politico reports.
Congress began its recess on Aug. 1 and reconvenes on Sept. 8, but as news of threats in Iraq and Syria mount, Larson said lawmakers “cannot wait till next week” to join the discussions on what should be done in regard to foreign policy.
“We ought to be back there making sure that we’re meeting as a committee of the whole and debating and defining this issue clearly,” Larson said.
Larson’s interview came on the Labor Day holiday, as members of the House and Senate enjoyed their last week of vacation.
“Today is Labor Day, where we celebrate work and we celebrate the efforts of those who labor throughout the year,” Larson said. “Congress is not at work.”
He added, “I agree with the premise that these are issues that have to be debated and the time is now, and Congress has a responsibility and an obligation to the American people.”
French police arrested her at the airport when she tried to get on a plane to Syria. They also arrested a 20-year-old man who reportedly recruiting her and paying for her plane ticket. And according to France’s interior minister, the girl’s family had no idea what she was up to.
The terrorist group ISIS has been rather notorious for recruiting Westerners, and a recent U.S. intelligence estimate says about a dozen Americans have joined the cause. (There’s nothing in the report about this teenage girl, however, that she was going to join ISIS.)
After seeing the brutal killing of American journalist James Foley last week, Shirley Sotloff, mother of another captured American journalist Steven Sotloff, issued a video plea to the leader of the terrorist group asking for her son’s release.
“”Steven is a journalist who traveled to the Middle East to cover the suffering of Muslims at the hands of tyrants. Steven is a loyal and generous son, brother and grandson,” Shirley Sotloff says, adding that her son “is an honorable man and has always tried to help the weak.”
“I ask you to please release my child,” she says, “I plead with you to grant me this.”
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