This and That...

[Warph]

Egyptian Court Sentences Muslim Brotherhood Chief Mohammed Badie To Death

(John Kerry expresses his outrage in 3... 2... 1 ... that's one way to take care of any dirty politicians...)

Via Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/11476156/Egypt-condemns-to-death-Muslim-Brotherhood-chief-Mohammed-Badie-and-13-others.html

An Egyptian court on Monday condemned to death Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie and 13 other senior members of the banned movement.

The 14 members of the Brotherhood, which was declared a "terrorist organisation" in 2013, were found guilty of "plotting attacks aimed at sowing chaos" across the country, state news agency MENA reported.

The court found Badie and his co-defendants, who include the Brotherhood's former spokesman Mahmud Ghazlan, had set up an "operations room" to prepare attacks against the state in the weeks after the army ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi in July 2013.

But lawyer Ahmad Helmi branded the verdicts as "farcical", in a telephone interview with AFP.

A total of 51 suspects, including the 14 sentenced to death on Monday, are being tried in the case, 31 of whom are behind bars.

[Warph]

Mitt Romney to Fight Evander Holyfield in Charity Bout

by David Stout @david_m_stout
http://time.com/3747168/mitt-romney-evander-holyfield-boxing/
      
Forget about Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather, the real fight of the century is scheduled for May 15 when Mitt Romney enters the ring to battle Evander Holyfield in Salt Lake City.

Yes, you read that right. Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, and Holyfield, the five-time heavyweight titleholder who smacked around the likes of Mike Tyson and George Foreman, are going to lace up gloves and duke it out in a charity exhibition.

However, Romney has no delusions about actually winning this contest.

"It will either be a very short fight, or I will be knocked unconscious," Romney told the Salt Lake City Tribune. "It won't be much of a fight. We'll both suit up and get in the ring and spar around a little bit."

A portion of the proceeds will help support Charity Vision, which provides doctors and facilities in poverty-stricken areas with equipment and resources to carry out eye operations.

[Warph]

Netanyahu's Future, And Israel's, On Line Today In Israeli Election

(Let's cross our fingers and send the prayers out in his direction.
As he goes, so may go Israel, and everyone, including Obuma, is trying to do him in...)

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political survival was on the line Tuesday in a hard-fought parliamentary election pitting his nationalist and security-first ideology against his challengers' focus on the plight of the country's struggling middle class.

Opinion polls showed a tight race heading into Tuesday's vote, with Netanyahu's opponents, led by Isaac Herzog of the centrist Zionist Union, showing a slight lead. The last available poll was published Friday, when a significant number of voters were still undecided.

In a dramatic last-ditch effort to appeal to his right-wing base, Netanyahu reiterated his pledge Tuesday to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and took a swipe at Israel's own Arab minority.

"Right wing rule is in danger. Arab voters are going to the polls in droves. Left wing organizations are bringing them in buses," Netanyahu said in a video statement posted on his Facebook page.

He called on supporters to vote for him to "narrow the gap" between his party and the Zionist Union. "With your help, and with the help of God, we will build a nationalist government that will protect the state of Israel," he said.

[Warph]

Best News Of The Day!!!

*** IT'S OFFICIAL:
NETANYAHU WINS!... ***

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was poised to earn a third consecutive term Wednesday after his conservative Likud party earned the most votes in parliamentary elections.

Netanyahu and his main opponent, Isaac Herzog, must now compete to form a workable government that holds a majority in Israel's 120-member Knesset, though the incumbent is in a slightly better position to do so after Tuesday's vote.

According to official results reported in Israeli media early Wednesday, Likud had won 29 seats, five more than its main competitor, Herzog's centrist Zionist Union. No other party had more than 14 seats, but the 61-seat requirement to form a government means that each smaller parties has a role to play in selecting Israel's next leader. Analysts were keeping a particularly close eye on Kulanu, another centrist party run by former Netanyahu government minister Moshe Kahlon that was projected to earn 10 seats in the latest figures. 

Kahlon, whose campaign focused almost entirely on bread-and-butter economic issues, refused to take sides.

"I am loyal to my way," he told his supporters, saying he would work to form a government committed to social justice.

Regardless of the final outcome, Likud had significantly outperformed all the polls in the run-up to the election, all of which had predicted a second-place finish for the party behind the Zionist Union. Netanyahu claimed victory early Wednesday in a speech to cheering supporters at Likud party headquarters in Tel Aviv.

"Against all the odds we obtained a great victory for the Likud," Netanyahu told the gathering. "Now we must form a strong and stable government that will ensure Israel's security and welfare," he added, in comments aimed at Kahlon.

He said he had already been in touch with all other nationalist parties in hopes of quickly forming a coalition.

Netanyahu focused his campaign on security issues, while his opponents instead pledged to address the country's high cost of living and accused the leader of being out of touch with everyday people. Herzog also promised to repair tattered ties with the U.S. and to revive peace efforts with the Palestinians.

At a rally of his supporters, Herzog vowed to do his utmost to form a government and said he too had reached out to potential coalition partners. In a nod to Kahlon, he said he was committed to forming a "real social reconciliation government" committed to lowering the country's cost of living and reducing gaps between rich and poor.

However, Herzog's effort to build a coalition is complicated by the possibility of having to rely  on support from a new Arab alliance that was projected to capture 14 seats. But Arab parties have never sat in an Israeli coalition before.

Stav Shaffir, a leader of the Zionist Union, called the results a "clear vote of no confidence in Netanyahu."

She said the Zionist Union would wait for the official results before declaring victory or defeat, but claimed Netanyahu's opponents "have a majority."

Netanyahu has ruled out a "unity" government with the Zionist Union that would give him a broad coalition, and Herzog has also been cool to the idea.

President Reuven Rivlin will now spend the next few days consulting with the various parties, whose leaders will all offer recommendations for who should be prime minister. Based on those consultations, he will ask either Netanyahu or Herzog to begin the process of forming a coalition.

The final weeks of the campaign had become a referendum on Netanyahu, a towering figure in Israeli politics who has spent more time as Prime Minister than anyone except the country's primary founder, David Ben-Gurion.

Netanyahu, who already has a testy relationship with President Barack Obama, took a sharp turn to the right in the final days of the campaign, staking out a series of hard-line positions that will put him at odds with the international community.

In his most dramatic policy reversal, he said he now opposes the creation of a Palestinian state — a key policy goal of the White House and the international community. He also promised to expand construction in Jewish areas of east Jerusalem, the section of the city claimed by the Palestinians as their capital.

Netanyahu infuriated the White House early this month when he delivered a speech to the U.S. Congress criticizing an emerging nuclear deal with Iran. The speech was arranged with Republican leaders and not coordinated with the White House ahead of time.

In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama was confident strong U.S.-Israeli ties would endure far beyond the election regardless of the victor.

The Palestinians, fed up after years of deadlock with Netanyahu, are now likely to press ahead with their attempts to bring war crimes charges against Israel in the International Criminal Court.

"What Netanyahu is doing and stating are war crimes and if the international community wants peace it should make Netanyahu accountable for his acts," said Palestinian official Saeb Erekat. He said the Palestinian leadership will meet Thursday to discuss its next steps.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Warph]

Video: Black Panther Group Calls For Killing Of Police, "Only Good Pig Is Pig Who's Dead", "Oink, Oink, Bang, Bang" Video: Black Panther Group Calls For Killing Of Police, "Only Good Pig Is Pig Who's Dead", "Oink, Oink, Bang, Bang"

VIDEO: 

Mar 16, 2015

Black Panthers march downtown Austin, TX during SXSW chanting slogans supporting killing cops. This is the type of propaganda we saw in Ferguson funded by George Soros. "A pig is a pig that's what I said, the only good pig is a pig that's dead". "Oink! Oink! Bang! Bang!". "Marching down the avenue, 20 more pigs and we'll be through".

http://www.infowars.com/george-soros-...

http://www.infowars.com/george-soros-...

http://www.infowars.com/soros-warns-o...

http://www.infowars.com/new-black-pan...

[Warph]

Teachers Union Leader Randi Weingarten Had Hillary Clinton's Secret Email Address

(In the interest of National Security the Teachers Union
needed immediate access to the Secretary of State... )

Via Washington Examiner

Union leader Randi Weingarten stated on Twitter that she had been aware of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's secret, private email address prior to the New York Times story that first revealed it.

Weingarten, a prominent liberal leader and president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of Teachers, made the assertion after joining in a Twitter exchange late Friday between CNBC's John Harwood and Jeb Bush spokesman Tim Miller over whether Bush's use of private email was similar to Clinton's. Weingarten chimed in stating "-and how was it secret? Point abt Bush is he and others do the same-."

Miller responded, asking, "also if not secret – did you know about the private email before the NYT story?" Weingarten replied "yes" but did not elaborate.

Although she didn't explicitly say so, the context would suggest Weingarten was saying that she had exchanged messages on Clinton's private address. It is not clear what Weingarten meant with her claim that the address was not secret, although she could have meant that it was not officially classified.

Weingarten is major figure in Democratic politics. The Center for Responsive Politics lists AFT as a "heavy hitter" in political spending, reporting that it doled out $19.5 million in the 2014 election alone — the majority of it, $13 million, going to its tax-exempt political committee, AFT Solidarity. It also spent about $3 million in lobbying fees in 2013-2014. AFT is also a top donor to the Clinton Foundation, listed on its website as giving between $1 million and 5 million in 2014.

She is also a Hillary Clinton donor, having given $3,250 to the former secretary of state's Senate and presidential campaigns, and $1,000 to Ready for Hillary, the political action committee created by Clinton's allies to boost her expected presidential bid.

[Warph]

"NOW WE HAVE A CALIPHATE" --
Dick Cheney Obliterates the Foreign Policy Disaster That is Barack Insane Obuma

By James Rosen 
More To This Story, Its A Doozy: http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-dick-cheney

In an interview featured in Playboy Magazine (I only read it for the compelling stories), Dick Cheney unleashes a fusillade of nuclear truth-bombs on Barack Insane Obuma, who is... without question.... the worst president in American history.  Some highlights:

ON SQUANDERING A VICTORY IN IRAQ

...Where do you start? I think with respect to the situation in Iraq, his precipitous withdrawal and refusal to leave any stay-behind forces, to negotiate a Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqis, was a huge mistake; we are paying a price for it now. He's having to go back in now, and the guy who campaigned on the basis of bring the boys home and get out of Iraq is now redeploying forces to Iraq...

ON DEGRADING THE MILITARY CAPABILITY OF THE UNITED STATES

...I don't think he ever bought into the notion that we're at war, in terms of a war on terrorism; I think he always wanted to treat it as a law-enforcement problem. I think he's done enormous damage to the military. I think what's happened to the military in terms of morale, in terms of financing, budget and so forth is just devastating. The way Obama is functioning now, he's crippling the capacity of future presidents to deal with future crises. It takes a long time to build up that military force. And I am absolutely convinced there will be a future president—two or three times down the road, perhaps—who will be faced with a major crisis and will not have the military capability he needs to deal with it. We are limiting the options of future presidents because of what is happening to the defense budget today...

ON THE DESPONDENCY OF OUR ALLIES

...I came to town in 1968, and I have never seen people I have known in some cases for a quarter of a century—foreign leaders, especially in the Middle East—who are so terribly frustrated, angry, frightened. "Whatever happened to the United States?" There's a conviction they can't count on us, that our word doesn't mean anything...

ON OBAMA'S "RED LINE" IN SYRIA

That's a classic example, where Obama got everybody ready to do something about Syria and then at the last minute pulled the plug. I had a prominent Mideast leader talk to me when I was there last spring. First time I'd ever heard him say this; he's always been very self-confident and very much in command. He said, "You assume there is no political price to be paid for those of us over here who support the United States—wrong assumption. It is sometimes a real question of leadership these days whether or not it's smart, politically, for us, with our people, to be friendly to the United States." General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new president of Egypt, has been to Moscow; he hasn't been to the United States. It's not because he loves Russians; it's because the political price he would have to pay domestically, inside Egypt, to come to the United States and be seen with Barack Obama would be very damaging for him. Our friends no longer trust us, and our adversaries no longer fear us. We've created a huge vacuum in that part of the world, and ISIS has moved in big-time. Now we have a caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

ON THE RISE OF ISLAMONAZI TERRORISM

We have had a massive spread in the number of Al Qaeda–type organizations. The RAND study that came out last summer said that between 2010 and 2013 there had been a 58 percent increase worldwide in the number of Al Qaeda–type organizations. We used to worry, at 9/11, just about Afghanistan; now it stretches from Mali and Nigeria in West Africa, across North Africa, through the Middle East, all around into Indonesia, where you'll find potential sanctuaries and safe harbors for Salafi Islamists, the terrorists, the Al Qaeda types. It's a very dangerous situation. I think the threat is growing steadily, and I think our capacity to deal with it is rapidly diminishing.

ON JIMMY CARTER'S SIGH OF RELIEF

I look at Barack Obama and I see the worst president in my lifetime, without question—and that's saying something. I used to have significant criticism of Jimmy Carter, but compared to Barack Obama and the damage he is doing to the nation—it's a tragedy, a real tragedy, and we are going to pay a hell of a price just trying to dig out from under his presidency.

*Digging their own political
graves*

[Warph]

Ted Cruz Befuddles MSNBC Hack on Congressional Role in Foreign Policy Using... History, Facts

(For some reason, Ted Cruz decided to appear on MSNBC's The Morning Shmoe [Mark Levin's name for the lowest-rated news program on the lowest-rated network], where the combined IQ of the hosts... the science is settled... is roughly the square root of that of a goldfish.  Which makes Ted Cruz schooling Mika Brzezinski akin to teaching calculus to a Maine lobster...)

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Well, okay, do you know exactly what the deal is to call it a bad deal? Do you have all the information? I don't think you do.

TED CRUZ: We don't. We have some that the administration has leaked. And oddly enough the administration leaks more details about the deal to the media than they actually inform Congress. But I can point out the idea you're suggesting, if I'm understanding you'll right, that Congress shouldn't be interfering in what the president is doing, from the beginning of our country, Congress has done so.

In 1987 Congress passed the Boland Amendment restricting the funding of the Contras in Nicaragua. Now Ronald Reagan at the time was trying to stop communists in Nicaragua. Now my guess is you probably would have been very supportive of the Boland Amendment which was literally ripping the carpet out from underneath what President Reagan was trying to do in Nicaragua.

Let's go even further back. Woodrow Wilson, at the end of World War I, negotiated the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I. Went back to Congress, the Senate rejected it. Now on your view, I guess, you know, the New York Daily News would run a story on the front page putting the pictures of all the senators and calling them traitors.

[Warph]

Two Warnings

Mar 17, 2015
by Thomas Sowell

http://rightwingnews.com/column-2/two-warnings/

When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on March 3rd, it was the third time he had done so. The only other person to address a joint session of Congress three times was the legendary British prime minister Winston Churchill.

The parallels between the two leaders do not end there. Both warned the world of mortal dangers that others ignored, in hopes that those dangers would go away. In the years leading up to World War II, Churchill tried to warn the British, and the democratic nations in general, of what a monstrous threat Hitler was.

Despite Churchill's legendary status today, he was not merely ignored but ridiculed at the time, when he was repeatedly warning in vain. Knowing that his warnings provoked only mocking laughter in some quarters, even among some members of his own party, he said on March 14, 1938 in the House of Commons, "Laugh but listen."

Just two years later, with Hitler's planes bombing London, night after night, the laughter was gone. Many at the time thought that Britain itself would soon be gone as well, like other European nations that succumbed to the Nazi blitzkrieg in weeks (like France) or days (like Holland).

How did things get to such a desperate situation, with Britain alone continuing the fight, and struggling to survive, against the massive Nazi war machine that now controlled much of the material resources on the continent of Europe?

Things got that desperate by following policies strikingly similar to the policies being followed by the Western democracies today, including some of the very same notions and catchwords being used today.

Just recently, a State Department official in the Obama administration said that Americans have remained safe in a nuclear age, not because of our own nuclear arsenal but because "we created an intricate and essential system of treaties, laws and agreements."

If "treaties, laws and agreements" produced peace, there would never have been a Second World War. The years leading up to that monumental catastrophe were filled with international treaties and arms control agreements.

The Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War, imposed strong restrictions on Germany's military forces — on paper. The Washington Naval Agreements of 1922 imposed restrictions on all the major naval powers of the world — on paper. The Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 created an international renunciation of war — on paper.

The Munich agreement of 1938 produced a paper with Hitler's signature on it that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain waved to the cheering crowds when he returned to England, and said that it meant "Peace for our time." Less than a year later, World War II began.

Winston Churchill never bought any of this. He understood that military deterrence was what preserved peace. With England playing a leadership role in Europe, "England's hour of weakness is Europe's hour of danger," he said in the House of Commons in 1931.

Today, with the Obama administration "leading from behind" — in practice, not leading at all — we see in Ukraine and the Middle East what that produces.

As for disarmament, Churchill said in 1932, "Alone among the nations we have disarmed while others have rearmed."

Today, the United States has that dubious and reckless distinction. Our pacifists, like those in England during the 1930s, argue that we should disarm to "induce parallel" behavior by others. In England between the two World Wars, the rhetoric was that they should disarm "as an example to others."

Whether others would follow that example was just as dubious then as it is today. While Russia and China increased the share of their national output that went to military spending in 2014, the United States reduced its share. Churchill deplored the "inexhaustible gullibility" of disarmament advocates in 1932. That gullibility is still not exhausted in 2015.

"Not one of the lessons of the past has been learned, not one of them has been applied, and the situation is incomparably more dangerous," Churchill said in 1934. And every one of those words is more urgently true today, in a nuclear age.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.

[Warph]

The 1960's and 1970's counterculture is alive and well within the
minds of aging hippies, and they are still dying like flies from drug overdoses

From The Wall St. Journal:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/aging-baby-boomers-bring-drug-habits-into-middle-age-1426469057

Older adults are abusing drugs, getting arrested for drug offenses and dying from drug overdoses at increasingly higher rates. These surges have come as the 76 million baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, reach late middle age. Facing the pains and losses connected to aging, boomers, who as youths used drugs at the highest rates of any generation, are once again—or still—turning to drugs.

The trend has U.S. health officials worried. The sharp increase in overdose deaths among older adults in particular is "very concerning," said Wilson Compton, deputy director for the federal government's National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The rate of death by accidental drug overdose for people aged 45 through 64 increased 11-fold between 1990, when no baby boomers were in the age group, and 2010, when the age group was filled with baby boomers, according to an analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mortality data. That multiple of increase was greater than for any other age group in that time span.

The surge has pushed the accidental overdose rate for these late middle age adults higher than that of 25- to 44-year-olds for the first time. More than 12,000 boomers died of accidental drug overdoses in 2013, the most recent data available. That is more than the number that died that year from either car accidents or influenza and pneumonia, according to the CDC.

"Generally, we thought of older individuals of not having a risk for drug abuse and drug addiction," Dr. Compton said. "As the baby boomers have aged and brought their habits with them into middle age, and now into older adult groups, we are seeing marked increases in overdose deaths."

Why some people stay in a time warp like that is a mystery, but whenever I see an aging hippie who hasn't changed their clothing or hair style in 40 years, I wonder how it is that they became so paralyzed in their thinking and habits.