Archive for the ‘International’ Category

First milk, butter, coffee and cornmeal ran short. Now Venezuela is running out of the most basic of necessities – toilet paper.

Blaming political opponents for the shortfall, as it does for other shortages, the government says it will import 50m rolls to boost supplies.

That was little comfort to consumers struggling to find toilet paper on Wednesday.

Read more by Guardian.co.uk

Imagine going to the doctor with the flu and paying $30 for the visit and $10 for the medicine with no further medical bill. Now imagine going to the doctor and finding out you have cancer. You have enough money in the bank to deal with such a medical emergency and whatever you can’t cover, the federal government will pick up. All citizens of the country in these scenarios have the same deal and the government only spends 4 percent of GDP on health care. Sound impossible? Welcome to Singapore.

Touting arguably the best health care system in the world and a per capita income higher than America, Singapore is the answer economists have no doubt been shouting at their televisions during every health care debate the last eight years.  The Singapore health care system presents an ideal blend of left and right ideas on health care and still manages to be more free-market than U.S. health care has been since prior to the “New Deal.”  Due to the creation of Medicare in 1965, the federal government has been spending more each year on health care; which has brought us to a current rate of 17 percent of GDP on health care.

Read more by Breeanne Howe at FreedomWorks

The families of Navy SEALs killed in an August 2011 shoot-down of a helicopter in Afghanistan spoke at a press conference Thursday morning, citing a number of grievances, including an allegation that the Pentagon invited a Muslim cleric who “disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen.”

In addition to blasting the Obama administration for the mission and for an official investigation they deemed a cover-up, the families complained that “military brass, while prohibiting any mention of a Judeo-Christian God, invited a Muslim cleric to the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes who disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen by damning them as infidels to Allah.”

Read more by Jessica Chasmar at The Washington Times

–SNIP– In this case, the event is the dramatic change over the past two weeks in the “mainstream” media’s coverage of President Obama.

From reporters to opinion writers, from newspapers to television, after a mere four and a half years of economic fecklessness, foreign policy failure, unseemly narcissism, and a Nobel Prize for deeds to be named later, prominent liberal-leaning pundits and organizations may have finally realized that reality, if not journalistic ethics, demands a more clear-eyed look at the president they have been so deeply invested in.

Or maybe they’ve just noticed that their fawning and sycophancy has meant declining circulation and viewership.

Read more by Ross Kaminsky at The American Spectator

Who looks foolish now?

When United States Senator Ron Johnson elicited the “what difference at this point does it make,” from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he was lambasted and belittled by liberals in the media. They claimed Johnson was “smacked down,” “agonizingly ignorant,” “schooled,” and dabbling in “conspiracy theories.”

But as a series of Benghazi whistleblowers prepare to testify in Congress, the American public is expected to hear a number of new bombshells that detail lies, politics, a cover-up, and cowardice that reach the highest levels of power.

Read more by Colin Roth at RightWisconsin.com

Federal agent John Dodson says what he was asked to do was beyond belief.

He was intentionally letting guns go to Mexico?

“Yes ma’am,” Dodson told CBS News. “The agency was.”

An Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms senior agent assigned to the Phoenix office in 2010, Dodson’s job is to stop gun trafficking across the border. Instead, he says he was ordered to sit by and watch it happen.

Investigators call the tactic letting guns “walk.” In this case, walking into the hands of criminals who would use them in Mexico and the United States.

Read more by Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News

So when Pres. Obama says guns in Mexico come from the US, he’s correct!

Why is the American media misinforming the American people about the worsening US-China trade deficit? The graph below shows the actual trade deficit, with a 12 month moving average:

Read more by Howard Richman at IdealTaxes.com

Before we get too far away from the Marathon bombing, it needs to be acknowledged that this was yet another incident in which the average American proved crucial.

It wasn’t overweight and aging police Tac squads, lumbering around in their armor through a shut-down city, clumped together as perfect targets for an IED, crowded four to a doorway as they spoke to residents, with no sign of lookouts or adequate cover. The Boston PD was lucky they were not up against trained terrorists. A couple of Quds or Hezb’allah operatives and the casualty list would have been much higher. The department’s methods need to be thoroughly overhauled.

Read more by J.R. Dunn at American Thinker

What are we being asked to give up?

Admit that you were transfixed by surveillance video of Boston’s brother bombers. It was quintessential “Gotcha!” for the noblest of causes.

Testament to technology trumping wrongdoing, it gave cause for relief. Knock on wood, too, that the cops could track the cell phone left in the Mercedes SUV hijacked by one bomber. And those Google Maps aerial shots of the boat were pretty neat, right?

The same technology, of course, can catch your everyday non-terrorist running a red light, parking illegally at a Dunkin’ Donuts or smooching with someone not your spouse.

Cameras follow us like gum stuck to a shoe. But while official Washington is fixated on law enforcement efficiency in the wake of Boston, you might wonder about the precautions taken by those protecting us. That’s especially true given the rise of facial recognition, zoom technology, biometrics and the overall ability to track us from one camera to another, right across town.

Read more by James Warren at NY Daily News

We now have had a number of terrorist attacks on the homeland — though the administration often refers to them in ridiculous euphemisms like “workplace violence” — and the behavior of the administration, including our lavishly funded FBI and Homeland Security Administration, and our richly rewarded media stars remains so predictable I’ve decided to spare you the time it takes to unravel the unending lies and poppycock we are regularly fed about these horrors, lies, and blundering that only increase our danger.

This week’s bombing of civilians at the Boston Marathon in which three people, including an 8-year-old child, perished upon being torn to bits and 250 were wounded, some most grievously, followed the template set by the other Islamist incidents on Obama’s watch. The media stumbles over itself trying not to see why we were attacked while glorifying terrorists, showing them in the most innocent-looking youthful pictures they can find, interviewing irrelevant credulous neighbors and chums and blaming innocents (us) for the acts of terror. The federal government in large part, starting with the White House, is no better. HSA Secretary Napolitano urges us, “see something, say something” but the major media and all the president’s men (and women) seem to operate under a different order, “See, hear, and speak nothing of the Islamist evil that threatens us.”

Read more by Clarice Feldman at AmericanThinker.com

In a surprise move, the CPUSA (Communist Party USA) has announced a lawsuit against the Democratic Party and its leadership for the alleged theft of intellectual property. The plaintiffs claim that the entire so-called “new” Democratic agenda is, in fact, the product of a decades-long, painstaking campaign by CPUSA theorists, agitators, and underground subversive cells - which makes it the intellectual property of the Communist Party USA, protected by American copyright laws.

“They stole our entire platform, rebranded it ‘progressive’, and claimed it as their own,” declared a CPUSA spokesperson at a press conference in San Francisco. “And we communists say, not so fast! Not in this country anyway, where we still have property rights and the rule of law, thank God! Actually, let me rephrase that…”

The Communist Party representative explained that government ownership of the auto and financial industries, redistribution of wealth, and free rationed healthcare have always been among the glorious CPUSA objectives: “We held on to these goals through all the difficult years of factional infighting, purges, denunciations, and heroic espionage on behalf of the Soviet intelligence services.

“This may seem like a foreign idea to you, but we sacrificed everything for it - our friends, our neighbors, and our nation. We suffered from all kinds of ulcers and split personality disorders by blindly following Stalin’s directives. We risked our chances of promotion within US government agencies by dutifully advancing Soviet foreign policy. And for what? So that some spoiled Democrats could ride on our backs to power while throwing us crumbs in the form of minor cabinet appointments?

“It’s just like taking someone else’s hard-earned income and redistributing it! … Never mind, bad example… It’s like infiltrating a respectable organization and taking over its management while engaging in subversive propaganda and the rewriting of history… Whoops, bad example again… It’s like being devoid of moral standards and rejecting all the norms and values of Judeo-Christian civilization… No, that was totally inappropriate. Scratch that…

Read more of this (humor) at  http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5149

One month after April Fools, sort of.  Happy Socialist Labor Day!

by Red Square, thepeoplescube.com

Days after they were badly hurt in a car accident, Jacinto Cruz and Jose Rodriguez-Saldana lay unconscious in an Iowa hospital while the American health care system weighed what to do with the two immigrants from Mexico.

The men had health insurance from jobs at one of the nation’s largest pork producers. But neither had legal permission to live in the U.S., nor was it clear whether their insurance would pay for the long-term rehabilitation they needed.

So Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines took matters into its own hands: After consulting with the patients’ families, it quietly loaded the two comatose men onto a private jet that flew them back to Mexico, effectively deporting them without consulting any court or federal agency.

When the men awoke, they were more than 1,800 miles away in a hospital in Veracruz, on the Mexican Gulf Coast.

Read more by DAVID PITT at Associated Press

America is facing a jihadist enemy. It is an enemy that has proven it can inflict more civilian casualties on the United States than any other foreign enemy in almost 200 years.

Just last week this enemy killed 3 innocent people, wounded more than 100 and paralyzed a major American city.

Yet, our obsession with political correctness, with a strong desire not to offend our enemies makes our self-defense immeasurably more difficult.

Read more by Jay Sekulow at FoxNews.com

Are you fed up with the antiseptic slogan, “If you see something, say something?”

The authorities expect us to report suspicious backpacks, but stay silent as the tomb about the nature of the men who put them there.

We’re instructed to speak up about a bloodied man’s movement under a boat tarp, but to shut up about the ideological movement that drove him to commit his carnage.

Well, as it happens, I’ve seen quite a lot of things over the last few years that I’d like to say something about — enough things to break a heart and to kill a country.

And after the Boston Massacre committed by two immigrant jihadis, I’m going to say them.

Read more by Stella Paul at American Thinker

Putting Americans in concentration camps?

Anyone remember what happened today, (February 19) 71 years ago?

Probably not.

On February 19th, 1942 FDR willfully and intentionally violated The Constitution, an act for which he should have been impeached.

I am speaking of the Japanese internment — the rounding up of over 100,000 people who were frog-marched into Concentration Camps on American soil.

Far more than half were American Citizens with a full and complete set of alleged Constitutional Rights.

We, America, did this.

Read more by Karl Denninger from Market-Ticker at GunsSaveLife.com