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"Not going to take it anymore!!!"
Ah, but we will because we are apathetic, unconcerned and naive.
===As November 4, approaches Democrats find those who generally vote for them listless.
When Democrats running for office do not want their albatross president near them it is little wonder why party faithfuls are not jazzed.
The turn on message being delivered is 'do not believe the polls which indicate we are gonig down in flames.'(See 1 below.)
You can now vote early. I was unable to print a sample ballot.
If you are a legitimate and qualified voter you should exercise your right and vote. If you choose not to then you have no reason to complain when you lose that right through increased fraud and voting by those who are illegal.
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When a child misbehaves the remedy is some form of suitable and swift punishment.
When Hamas and various Arab and Muslim radical Jihadists and terror groups 'misbehave' the world rewards them with unfulfilled promises of largesse.
Haiti should be a lesson that their Arab and Muslim brothers make a big display of support but rarely come through. Only the American Tax Payer is a reliable patron and supporter because American politicians know only one thing - spend money regardless of the merit in the mistaken belief you can buy lasting friends
There is an old joke about Israel during the tough early stages of its founding which goes as follows: One Knesset member suggested Israel declare war on America, Israel would lose and America would take care of them.
Another Knesset member said, with our luck we would probably win." (See 2 below.)
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In a previous memo I expressed my market thoughts and noted they were probably worthless because I can't see 'round a corner any better than many others.
I also specifically discussed the energy and metal/mineral sectors.
Boone Pickens knows more about energy than I ever will so I am posting his comments and the election in Brazil could go against the incompetent and corrupt incumbent has lit a mild flame under some mineral resource stocks which I noted could be bottoming. (See 3 below.)
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When radical Liberals were not vilifying GW they contiue to turn their guns on DickCheney. Cheney is tough, smart and conservative but he has been right more times than wrong and he sure is right on this on.
He has served admirably in a variety of capacities and when he was V.P he had one of the best staffs . (See 4 below.)
Meanwhile, Obama has turned lying into an art form. (See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1) Dems: Don’t trust the polls
Democrats who do not want their party faithful to lose hope — particularly in a midterm election that will be largely decided on voter turnout — are taking aim at the pollsters, arguing that they are underestimating the party’s chances in November.
At the center of the storm, just as he was in 2012, is Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com.
Two years ago, Silver took heat from Republicans like MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough for writing that Obama had a 73.6 percent chance of winning the White House.
This year, Democrats have been upset with Silver’s predictions that Republicans are likely to retake the Senate. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) mocked Silver at a fundraising luncheon in Seattle that was also addressed by Vice President Biden, according to a White House pool report on Thursday.
More generally, Democratic strategist Brent Budowsky, a columnist for The Hill, recently wrote that, “There are so many razor-thin Senate races that confident predictions of which party holds Senate control are, to paraphrase a line from Jack Nicholson in ‘Chinatown’, wind from a duck’s derriere.”
“Polling has become politicized like everything else in the current environment,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a Boston University professor who specializes in political communication. “The press has become more politicized, the reporting itself has become more politicized and so it is to be expected that polling is politicized.”
Even President Clinton has suggested that the pollsters are getting it wrong, both in terms of the likely results and the assumptions that their projections are based upon.
Speaking in his native Arkansas on Tuesday, Clinton noted that the polls were not encouraging for Democrats but added that those findings were based on projections that young people would not turn out in large numbers.
The politicization of the polls was well underway in 2012, when Silver was lauded on the left.
One popular internet meme at the time showed an image of Silver in the style of Shepard Fairey’s famous 2008 “Hope” poster of President Obama, except adorned with the word “Math.”
Meanwhile, on the right, conservative activist Dean Chambers founded a website called “UnskewedPolls.com” which he claimed produced projections untainted by political bias.
Come Election Day, Silver was proven right. His model, then hosted at The New York Times, correctly projected the outcome of the presidential election in every state. The right-leaning skeptics were left with egg on their collective face.
Democrats will be hoping they don’t suffer the same fate this time around.
Their complaints have already elicited some mockery from the right. Earlier this week, Jim Geraghty of the conservative National Review sarcastically tweeted, “I really found Nate Silver’s analysis insightful and helpful, until the Koch brothers got to him.”
In fact, most liberals are not arguing that Silver or other analysts are ideologically biased. Some assert, instead, that the polling is simply not all that grim from a Democratic perspective.
“States that the Democrats have to win, like New Hampshire and Michigan, the most recent polls have shown real movement toward the Democrats,” said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane. “Iowa and Colorado are going to be fought for in the trenches. Then you have North Carolina which, based on the public data, is in a pretty decent place.”
In his column for The Hill, Budowsky argued that too many polls surveyed only landline-users, under-counting young voters who are both Democratic-leaning and more likely to only have a cellphone.
Another Hill columnist, Democratic pollster Mark Mellman said that there was a rash of “over-interpretation” of the data.
“When HuffPost Pollster says Republicans have a 51 percent chance of taking control of the Senate after this election, or fivethirtyeight.com says it has a 59 percent probability, many people interpret that as meaning, ‘Republicans are going to take control of the Senate,’” Mellman wrote. “But that is not at all what these forecasts say.”
The Senate forecasts themselves range over a very wide spectrum, even though they all favor the GOP to a greater or lesser degree.
As of Friday, the Washington Post’s “Election Lab” gave Republicans a 95 percent chance of taking control of the Senate, while Princeton University’s “Princeton Election Consortium” gave Democrats a 49 percent chance of holding on. Between those two extremes the New York Times blog “The Upshot” suggested the chances of a GOP takeover were at 66 percent.
Such projections are now given more attention than ever before.
“Pollsters and polling have sort of elbowed their way to the table in terms of coverage,” Berkovitz said. “Pollsters have become high profile: they are showing up on cable TV all the time.”
This phenomenon, in turn, has led to greatly increased media coverage of the differences between polling analyses. In recent days, a public spat played out between Silver and the Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang, which in turn elicited headlines such as TheDailyBeast’s “Why is Nate Silver so afraid of Sam Wang?”
Wang played down the dispute in an email to The Hill — and emphasized that this year’s Senate elections are inherently tough to predict.
“Small differences [between pollsters and polling analysts] get magnified when the question is so closely divided,” Wang wrote. “Senate control in 2014 is the closest electoral question to come up since poll aggregation got big. The last question to be so suspenseful was the 2004 presidential race, Kerry v. Bush.”
Behind all the partisan commentary is a much older issue: the capacity of polling to affect turnout.
Political professionals hope for poll results that energize their backers rather than producing either despair or complacency.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising email early Friday afternoon with the subject-line, “New poll proven WRONG.” The poll in question, from Rasmussen Reports, showed Democrats up two points in the race for Congress.
Lehane said that his ideal situation in any race would be one where his candidate had the lead — but not by too much.
“The perfect election is one in which your internals show you up 10 points but the public polls have you up five,” adding with a laugh, “that’s the perfect election that I have yet to experience.”
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2) Donors Pledge $5.4 Billion for Gaza
"We're in a very dangerous period and I think it's more threatening than the period before 9/11," Cheney said. "I think 9/11 will turn out to be not nearly as bad as the next mass casualty attack against the United States — which, if and when it comes, will be with something far deadlier than [with] airline tickets and box cutters."
Cheney also defended the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration on terrorist suspects. He also stood behind the controversial surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, mentioning that congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle privately signed off on the programs.
Since August, Cheney has been vocal about the need for the United States to strongly face down the Islamic State (ISIS), warning that failure to do so would result in an attack far worse than September 11th.
He also spent time last month on Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers on the crisis, and has been critical of President Barack Obama for not taking the group seriously as early as he should have, and refusing to take good military advicefor his strategy in Iraq and Syria.
4a)
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A destroyed neighborhood in Gaza City. European Pressphoto Agency
GAZA CITY—Palestinians received $5.4 billion in pledges at a donor conference meant to raise funds to rebuild the Gaza Strip after its latest conflict with Israel, as Qatar, which is close to the enclave’s rulers, offered the most.
The Palestinian Authority, assisted by Norway, pitched the rebuilding effort as not only a chance to repair the damage from the conflict, but also to encourage development in Gaza—a step seen as crucial to lowering tensions between Israel and Hamas and other militants there.
The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, also agreed to take control of Gaza, which has been run independently for the past 7 years by Hamas after the Islamists ousted the authority in 2007.
“Gaza remains a tinderbox,” said United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, speaking to donors. “Yet we must not lose sight of the root causes of the recent hostilities,” which he blamed on blockades on Gaza by neighboring Israel and Egypt as they try to isolate Hamas.
Qatar, long a supporter of Islamists throughout the region, including Hamas in Gaza, led the contributors with a $1 billion pledge. Other big Arab contributors included Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, with each pledging $200 million, and Saudi Arabia, which had promised $500 million before the conference began. The U.S. agreed to donate $212 million to Gaza.Israel has faulted Hamas militant activity for the hostilities, including cross-border tunnels and rocket fire.
The total exceeded the $4 billion estimate the Palestinians had said was needed to recover from a 50-day summer conflict between Hamas and Israel which left manyneighborhoods in Gaza destroyed, along with much of the territory’s infrastructure.
Ahead of the conference, hosted in Cairo with Norway’s help, other Gulf states and the U.S. had seen donations as a chance to “remove Qatar and the political factions within Hamas that are tied to Doha,” from control of postwar Gaza, said Theodore Karasik, head of research at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai.
Secretary of State Kerry, left, meets with Palestinian President Abbas in Cairo on Sunday. Associated Press
But the large Qatari contribution, larger than that of the three largest other donors combined, reduces that possibility. Before the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas began on July 8, Qatar was already Gaza’s largest foreign benefactor.
In the past year, Qatar began building apartment blocks, setting up a clinic for amputees and refurbishing roads, including two arteries that run north to south the length of the strip.
About half of a $407 million injection made in April 2013 has already been spent, according to Ahmed Abu Rass, a Gaza-based Palestinian who is in charge of the Qatari projects.
Qatar has already pledged to give $1,000 each to families in Gaza who lost houses in the Israeli offensive, and has been bankrolling the salaries of Hamas government employees in the territory.
Israel and Egypt, which control the border crossings into Gaza, haven’t yet indicated whether they would allow in future aid from Qatar. Egypt, however, has allowed shipments of construction goods for Qatari projects through its Rafah border crossing with Gaza for more than a year.
A Palestinian woman stands amid the rubble of her home, which was destroyed during the 50-day conflict between Hamas militants and Israel, in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Sunday. Zuma Press
Ziad Abu Amr, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy prime minister, said Qatar “wants to be there” in Gaza. But he acknowledged that the reconstruction would have to take place under a modified political setup that excludes Hamas because Western donors including the U.S., the U.K. and the European Union can’t legally give money directly to Hamas, which they deem a terrorist group.
Qatar’s close ties to Hamas and other Islamists—including the main al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Nusra Front—has caused friction with its Gulf neighbors since the onset of the Arab Spring three years ago. Qatar’s regional profile has grown through its backing of Islamist movements during this period.
The election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi as Egypt’s first post-revolution president in June 2012 seemed to open doors for greater Qatari involvement in Gaza, given Egypt’s control of the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only outlet to a country other than Israel.
Against that backdrop, former Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani visited Gaza in October 2012, and pledged $407 million later that year.
Since then, however, the political winds have changed, and most of Qatar’s projects remain unfinished. Mr. Morsi was deposed in the summer of 2013 in a military coup, and his replacement, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, has outlawed the Brotherhood and cut off formal ties with Hamas. Gulf countries have stood behind Mr. Sisi and ostracized Qatar.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, talks with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh as they gather for a group photo with other Gaza donor conference attendees in Cairo on Sunday. Reuters
Meanwhile, Israel contends that some of the building materials intended for past Qatari-sponsored building projects in Gaza were used to build tunnels into Israel intended for militant attacks, complicating reconstruction plans.
Guy Inbar, the spokesman for an Israeli military body that oversees shipments to Gaza, said some of the tunnel-building materials were destined for Palestinian aid agencies and the Qatari projects. Most of it, he said, came through former smuggling routes underneath the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza.
Ahmed Abu Rass, a Gaza-based Palestinian who is in charge of the Qatari projects, disputed that, but said Gaza had received more cement than it needed for its projects because its supplier, a company named Sons of Sinai, sent extra cement in its shipment to boost its profits.
It is unclear how much of this material, if any, wound up with Hamas—an estimate the Israelis didn’t make.
An official at Sons of Sinai, which was granted exclusive rights to export to the Qatari projects under Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, denied that, saying the company simply fulfilled Qatari’s demands.
Uncertainties such as these irk Israel and its Western allies as they contemplate how to rebuild Gaza without enabling Hamas, despite its de facto control of the enclave.
“The balance between the pro- and anti-Hamas assistance might shift, but Hamas cannot be entirely avoided, nor can it be in complete control,” said Nathan Brown, a professor at George Washington University who specializes in Islamist movements.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com and Nicholas Casey atnicholas.casey@wsj.com
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3) T. Boone Pickens: 'Don't Panic; Energy Boom Isn't Over'
Though U.S. crude oil prices dropped to a two-year low Friday and energy stocks are plunging, investors shouldn't give up on the sector, says legendary energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital.
"Let's don't panic here that the energy boom is over and everything's gone to pot, because I don't think for a minute that's what's going to happen," he told CNBC.
November West Texas Intermediate crude futures traded at $85.85 late Friday on the Nymex, down 25 cents from Thursday. Earlier the contract dipped to $83.59, the lowest level since July 3, 2012.
Prices are sagging amid sluggish demand that owes to subpar global economic growth.
"I can see it [Brent crude oil] going under $80. I don't see $70, but I see it under $80," Pickens predicted. "Under $80 you're going to start to see the E&P [exploration & production] companies, they'll start cutting their capex [capital expenditure] and it'll sober everybody up."
Meanwhile, production is booming, especially in the United States. U.S. oil output stands near its highest level since 1986, thanks largely to the shale revolution.
As for a potential slowdown in U.S. production, "oil has been there 300 million years, so it isn't likely slowing down and losing anything. It just slows down, and when the price comes back up, everybody goes back to work again," he explained.
"Energy is cheap in America. We still have the cheapest energy in the world," Pickens added.
"Take advantage of it, play the demand side."
But many market participants say the rout isn't over yet.
"WTI is on track to at least touch $80," Bill O'Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management, told Bloomberg.
"The global economy is slowing and that's going to impact demand. OPEC's gotten a free ride the last few years because of the low level of Libyan production, but they're back now."
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3) T. Boone Pickens: 'Don't Panic; Energy Boom Isn't Over'
Though U.S. crude oil prices dropped to a two-year low Friday and energy stocks are plunging, investors shouldn't give up on the sector, says legendary energy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens, founder of BP Capital.
"Let's don't panic here that the energy boom is over and everything's gone to pot, because I don't think for a minute that's what's going to happen," he told CNBC.
Prices are sagging amid sluggish demand that owes to subpar global economic growth.
"I can see it [Brent crude oil] going under $80. I don't see $70, but I see it under $80," Pickens predicted. "Under $80 you're going to start to see the E&P [exploration & production] companies, they'll start cutting their capex [capital expenditure] and it'll sober everybody up."
As for a potential slowdown in U.S. production, "oil has been there 300 million years, so it isn't likely slowing down and losing anything. It just slows down, and when the price comes back up, everybody goes back to work again," he explained.
"Energy is cheap in America. We still have the cheapest energy in the world," Pickens added.
"Take advantage of it, play the demand side."
But many market participants say the rout isn't over yet.
"WTI is on track to at least touch $80," Bill O'Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management, told Bloomberg.
"The global economy is slowing and that's going to impact demand. OPEC's gotten a free ride the last few years because of the low level of Libyan production, but they're back now."
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4)- Dick Cheney: World More Dangerous Today than Before 9/11
Conflict and instability in the Middle East along with the threat of a nuclear Iran has created a world that is more dangerous than any period before September 11th, said former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Cheney made the comments during an extensive and wide-ranging interview with Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, during which the two also discussed Cheney's time as Secretary of Defense, the Gulf War, the September 11th terrorist attacks, and today's international conflictsCheney also defended the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration on terrorist suspects. He also stood behind the controversial surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, mentioning that congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle privately signed off on the programs.
Since August, Cheney has been vocal about the need for the United States to strongly face down the Islamic State (ISIS), warning that failure to do so would result in an attack far worse than September 11th.
He also spent time last month on Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers on the crisis, and has been critical of President Barack Obama for not taking the group seriously as early as he should have, and refusing to take good military advicefor his strategy in Iraq and Syria.
Obama’s ‘blizzard of lies’
In 1996, the late, great New York Times columnist William Safire published a column, “Blizzard of lies,” in
which he laid out a series of falsehoods by Hillary Rodham Clinton and declared “Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.”
Today, Americans of all political stripes are coming to a similar, sad realization about our president. A recent Fox News poll asked Americans “How often does Barack Obama lie to the country on important matters?” Thirty-seven percent said “most of the time,” 24 percent said “some of the time,” and 20 percent said “only now and then.” Just 15% said “never.”
Think about that: 81 percent of Americans believe that Obama lies to them at least “now and then” on “important matters.”
That is simply stunning.
These Americans are right. The latest evidence came when The Post revealed that on Friday, April 20, 2012, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan came to White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler with a specific, credible allegation of misconduct by a member of the White House advance team in Cartegena, Colombia.
According to The Post, he informed Ruemmler that there was evidence that Jonathan Dach registered a prostitute into his room at the Hilton Cartagena Hotel shortly after midnight on April 4. That is specific. And he told Ruemmler that Secret Service agents on the ground had information suggesting the same. That is credible.
Yet three days later, on Monday, April 24, then-presidential press secretary Jay Carney told the American people from the White House podium: “There have been no specific, credible allegations of misconduct by anyone on the White House advance team.”
Carney’s statement was flat untrue.
Carney further declared that “out of due diligence, the White House counsel’s office has conducted a review of the White House advance team and . . . came to the conclusion that there’s no indication that any member of the White House advance team engaged in any improper conduct or behavior.”
Really? Between Friday and Monday they examined all the evidence, interviewed all the witnesses and confirmed that those allegations were completely untrue? Did that weekend review include the actual copies of the Hilton hotel records, which, The Post reported, showed that a prostitute had registered into Dach’s room at 12:02 a.m. April 4? The records even included a photocopy of a woman’s ID card.
So why did Carney tell the American people there were “no specific, credible allegations” when he knew there were? And why did he say that the White House initiated its own investigation “out of due diligence” when he knew it was in response to evidence brought forward by the Secret Service?
Because there is a culture of deceit in the Obama White House — a serial willingness to say things that are untrue to protect the president.
Think about some of the falsehoods this White House has told the country:
They told Americans that no one at the White House edited the Benghazi talking points to blame the attack on an Internet video — until it came out that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes had urged Susan Rice “to underscore that these protests are rooted in and Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”
The president repeatedly told Americans that no one would lose his or her doctor or health-care plan — until it later emerged that White House policy advisers had urged him to drop the line but “were overruled by political aides.”
Obama told Americans that there was “not even a smidgen” of corruption at the Internal Revenue Service (while the investigation was still underway) — but then it was revealed that there had been a spontaneous combustion of hard drives among IRS officials under investigation.
Add to that White House spokesman Josh Earnest’s false claim that Obama “wasn’t specifically referring to” Islamic State when he called them JV terrorists . . . or Obama’s false assertion that the sequester was “not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed” . . . or his false claim that “7 million Americans . . . have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion.”
The list goes on and on.
One falsehood can be a mistake. Two are troubling. But three, four, five or more in a row? That is a pattern of deceit. Or, in the immortal words of William Safire, a “blizzard of lies.”
Read more from Marc Thiessen’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
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