Now: US Closes Embassy in Yemen – Suspends ALL OPERATIONS



The US Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen has now suspended all operations and closed its doors.

ALL CONSULAR SERVICES AT EMBASSY SANAA ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Updated February 8, 2015

Due to the security situation in Yemen, U.S. Embassy Sanaa has suspended all consular services until further notice. Please check this website frequently for updates.

NOTICE TO ALL U.S. CITIZENS RESIDING IN OR TRAVELING TO YEMEN:

Embassy Sanaa has suspended consular operations in Yemen. If you are a U.S. citizen residing in or traveling to Yemen, the Embassy may be unable to provide assistance or services to you, even if an emergency situation arises. If you must travel to or remain in Yemen, please register with the State Department’s online Smart Traveler Enrollment Program as soon as possible. This will allow Embassy Sanaa to communicate travel alerts and Emergency Messages to you, should the need arise.


http://yemen.usembassy.gov/service.html

https://twitter.com/HuffingtonPost/status/565237551045570562

Translation: Cruz birtherism is a waste of carbon footprint...

I know I was right.
If you don't click, you are not a bait.
I like kisses, fake or not, so thank you.

The big question is: How can we progressively change the mind of all those conservative bigots regarding our muslim american brothers? We know that will take years. We need to find a faster solution...

Surprise: Obama Administration Still Stonewalling on IRS Scandal



The Inspector General's office charged with looking into the IRS targeting scandal has denied Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed by The Hill pertaining to more than 500 correspondences between their office (known as TIGTA) and various Obama officials and IRS scandal players.  Correspondent Bob Cusack reports on the latest stonewall:


The Obama administration is refusing to publicly release more than 500 documents on the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups. Twenty months after the IRS scandal broke, there are still many unanswered questions about who was spearheading the agency’s scrutiny of conservative-leaning organizations. The Hill sought access to government documents that might provide a glimpse of the decision-making through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Hill asked for 2013 emails and other correspondence between the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The request specifically sought emails from former IRS official Lois Lerner and Treasury officials, including Secretary Jack Lew, while the inspector general was working on its explosive May 2013 report that the IRS used “inappropriate criteria” to review the political activities of tax-exempt groups. TIGTA opted not to release any of the 512 documents covered by the request, citing various exemptions in the law. The Hill recently appealed the FOIA decision, but TIGTA denied the appeal. TIGTA also declined to comment for this article.


So in addition to the IRS "losing" and "accidentally" destroying certain communications attached to this scandal, the IG's office is also blocking access to documents that do exist.


http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2015/02/10/surprise-obama-administration-still-stonewalling-on-irs-scandal-n1955503?utm_source=BreakingOnTownhallWidget_4&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=BreakingOnTownhall

Fake is the opposite of actual. I knew no actual "hahahah" happened when it was typed. It is better for the soul to say what we feel...

  (I am actually smiling)

American Children In One American School District Must Now Observe A Muslim Holiday In Which Muslims Behead An Animal




WATERBURY, Conn. (WTNH) — Starting next fall, all schools in the Waterbury School District will be honoring two of the Muslim religion’s most holy days by not scheduling tests, field trips or major school events on those days.

It started with more than 300 signatures on a petition and has come full circle. Thursday night, the Waterbury Board of Education voted to honor two Muslim holy days. Fahd Syed says he is happy because his children won’t have to choose between education and religion.

“Growing up in Waterbury myself and going to school here, I missed a trip because of the holiday,” said Syed. “I had to choose my faith and I didn’t go to the trip. That was in the third grade at Washington Elementary.”

http://wtnh.com/2015/02/05/waterbury-schools-to-respect-muslim-holidays/

http://shoebat.com/2015/02/09/american-children-one-american-school-district-must-now-observe-muslim-holiday-muslims-behead-animal/

President Barack Obama will soon give Congress his proposal for a new authorization for the use of military force against Islamic State fighters, and it will place strict limits on the types of U.S. ground forces that can be deployed.

Almost six months after the president began using force against the Islamic State advance in Iraq and then in Syria, the White House is ready to ask Congress for formal permission to continue the effort. Until now, the administration has maintained it has enough authority to wage war through the 2001 AUMF on al-Qaeda, the 2003 AUMF regarding Iraq and Article II of the Constitution. But under pressure from Capitol Hill, the White House has now completed the text of a new authorization and could send it to lawmakers as early as Wednesday. Aides warned that the White House may tweak the final details before releasing the document publicly.

In advance of the release, top White House and State Department officials have been briefing lawmakers and Congressional staffers about their proposed legislation. Two senior Congressional aides relayed the details to me.

The president’s AUMF for the fight against Islamic State would restrict the use of ground troops through a prohibition on “enduring offensive ground operations," but provide several exemptions. First, all existing ground troops, including the 3,000 U.S. military personnel now on the ground in Iraq, would be explicitly excluded from the restrictions. After that, the president would be allowed to deploy new military personnel in several specific roles: advisers, special operations forces, Joint Terminal Attack Controllers to assist U.S. air strikes and Combat Search and Rescue personnel.

Under the president’s proposal, the 2002 AUMF that was passed to authorize the Iraq war would be repealed, but the 2001 AUMF that allows the U.S. to fight against al-Qaeda and its associated groups would remain in place.

The new statute would authorize military action against Islamic State and its associated forces, which are defined in the text as organizations fighting alongside the jihadists and engaged in active hostilities. This means the president would be free to attack groups such as the al-Nusra Front or Iraqi Baathist elements who have partnered with the Islamic terrorists in Syria or Iraq. There are no geographic limitations, so the administration would be free to expand the war to other countries.

The president’s proposed AUMF would sunset in three years and would not give the president the unilateral authority to extend the authorization. That means the next president would have to come back to Congress for a new authorization in 2018, if the fight against Islamic State fighters lasts that long.

The White House’s AUMF largely tracks a version introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Democrat Robert Menendez last December, with small tweaks to clarify the definition of Islamic State and its associated groups, and to remove the geographic limits. The president's limits on ground troops are more constricting than what some Republicans had asked for.

The president has crafted the bill so it can engender bipartisan support on Capitol Hill while still preserving an enormous amount of flexibility on the battlefield without micromanagement from Congress, one senior Republican Senate aide said. More Republicans are likely to support an AUMF now that the president has requested it formally, the aide added, warning that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and other hawks will still object to the ground-force limitations.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been resisting a vote on the floor on an AUMF, but now that the president has made his move we can expect floor action in late February or early March, following hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Some Republicans remain skeptical of the president’s actual enthusiasm for an AUMF, as the current ambiguity gives Obama a lot of flexibility in carrying out the war. They will now wait to see if the administration remains active on the issue after the legislation is introduced.

“The president has to deliver Democrat votes on this and he has to show a commitment,” the senior Republican Senate aide said. “He’s actually got to prosecute the fight to get this thing passed. If he doesn’t demonstrate that he actually wants this, you might see Republicans walk.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. In recent days, White House officials have acknowledged that the release of the president’s AUMF proposal is just the beginning of the effort.

“There will be a very robust debate,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week. “Things that aren’t that serious have a hard time getting through the United States Congress these days. So when we’re talking about something as weighty as an authorization to use military force, I would anticipate that it will require substantial effort.”

The last time President Obama asked for an authorization to use military force, it was to strike the Assad regime in response to its use of chemical weapons. Yet it was obvious that the administration wasn’t wholly committed to actually prosecuting that war. He nixed the attacks before Congress weighed in.

This time around, Obama is already engaged in the fight against Islamic State and his team genuinely wants Congressional buy-in. Clearing up the legal ambiguity of the war will be helpful. But it won’t solve the more important conflict between the White House and lawmakers over the scale and effectiveness of the mission.


http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-02-10/obama-s-islamic-state-war-authorization-limits-u-s-ground-forces

You do not want to play their game. Just say those words, play the music and leave for a few minutes. Any music will do as long as you do not talk to them. You want a robot to talk to another robot. They don't care anyway and you'll reverse a stressful useless phone call into an opportunity for relaxation with soothing music...

'Coexist' artist brutally beaten by French Muslims...









It seems like something one would be hard pressed to disagree with: the word “coexist,” written on a wall using a Muslim crescent as the letter “C,” a Star of David as the letter “X,” and a Christian cross as a “T.”

But in Paris, this particular iteration of the popular inscription—here, created by the street artist Combo, who also pasted a life-size photo of himself next to it—didn’t go down well with everybody. Le Monde reports that four young people asked the artist to remove it last weekend, and beat him up severely when he refused to do so.

Combo ended up with a dislocated shoulder and many bruises.

The attack is characteristic of the inter-religious tensions that plague France and have been exacerbated by the Charlie Hebdo tragedy (see 12 Killed at Magazine Previously Attacked for Satirical Cartoons). Combo declined to discuss the identity of his assailants. “It would only add fuel to the fire,” he told the French newspaper.



http://news.artnet.com/art-world/street-artist-combo-brutally-attacked-for-pacifist-tag-post-charlie-hebdo-244569

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHTggTGNHws


Moron, indeed

 

Tell them: "Your call is important to us, please hold..." Then you stick your phone near your speakers and play this. Loud enough so they can't pick up anything else for a few minutes, then you hang up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNuZIZOya78

Mother Jones: America's Largest Health Care Company Tells Supreme Court That Anti-Obamacare Argument Is "Absurd"



If getting rid of Obamacare is such a good idea, why isn't corporate America getting behind King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court case designed to demolish the Affordable Care Act? More than 52 different parties have weighed in with briefs in advance of oral arguments on March 4. Of those, 21 have been filed on behalf of the plaintiffs, who claim millions of Obamacare consumers are receiving illegal health insurance subsidies. The groups filing these briefs include libertarian think tanks, pro-life organizations, Christian legal shops, and some conservative Republican legislators. But not a single business group—not the US Chamber of Commerce, not any of the health industry companies and trade groups that opposed the law when it was being drafted—has presented a brief endorsing this lawsuit.

These outfits are either backing the Obama administration's attempt to defeat the suit or sitting out this case. Briefs in the case help explain why: Obamacare is working. There's no better evidence of this than a brief filed on behalf of the government in King by the Hospital Corporation of America, better known as HCA, the largest health care provider in the country (once run by Obamacare foe Florida Gov. Rick Scott). HCA argues that the legal theory advanced by the plaintiffs is "absurd," but, more importantly, it presents detailed data drawn from its own operations that demonstrate that the health care law is helping patients and the company itself.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/02/hca-king-burwell-supreme-court-obamacare-amicus-brief



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If getting rid of Obamacare is such a good idea, why isn't corporate America getting behind King v. Burwell, the Supreme Court case designed to demolish the Affordable Care Act?



Because: guaranteed bailout and monopoly from 0bamacare... No $$$ loss, either way, for $$$ America's Largest Health Care Company $$$.

I can't believe we have birthers among us, still, after so long ago

The Cruz Birthers
Some question whether the Canada-born freshman senator is eligible for the presidency (hint: he is).

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/343914/cruz-birthers-eliana-johnson


Personally I hope ted cruz will be the saint michael to that 0bamacare...


 

Ajit Pai, the sole Republican Commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), inferred in a Tweet that President Barack Obama’s secret, 332-page “Net Neutrality” document is a scheme for federal micro-managing of the Internet to extract billions in new taxes from consumers and again enforce progressives’ idea of honest, equitable, and balanced content fairness.


FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently acknowledged that the two Democrats on the commission had decided to avoid Congressional input regarding the Internet by adopting President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1934 Communications Act to regulate the Internet with the same federal control as the old AT&T customer monopoly. To make sure that libertarian advocates would remain in the dark, Wheeler “embargoed” release of any of the specifics in the new administrative “policy” that will act as law.

The FCC legislation that was passed eighty-one years ago by the most leftist Congress in American history to ban companies from participating in “unjust or unreasonable discrimination” when providing phone services to customers.

But in 1949, the Democrat-dominated Commission implemented the “Fairness Doctrine” that required holders of media broadcast licenses to present “issues of public importance” in a manner that is “honest, equitable, and balanced” in the “Commission’s view. It would take 39 years before a conservative Congress could overturn a policy that hijacked the mainstream media to kowtow to liberals or face loss of their licenses.

If the Internet economy was a country, it would rank fifth, behind only the U.S., China, Japan, and India. Economic activity on the Internet totals $4.2 trillion, and almost half of the earth’s 7 billion people are already connected to the Web.

Ajit Pai’s description of “President Obama’s 332-page plan to regulate the Internet” sounds Orwellian. He tweeted a picture of himself holding the 332-page plan just below a picture of a smiling Barack Obama with a comment, “I wish the public could see what’s inside.” The implication depicted Obama as George Orwell’s “Big Brother.”

Pai also released a statement: “President Obama’s plan marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet. It gives the FCC the power to micromanage virtually every aspect of how the Internet works,” he said. “The plan explicitly opens the door to billions of dollars in new taxes on broadband… These new taxes will mean higher prices for consumers and more hidden fees that they have to pay.”

Pai had previously observed that he was concerned about the plan would hinder broadband investment, slow network speed and expansion, limit outgrowth to rural areas of the country, and reduce Internet service provider (ISP) competition.

“The plan saddles small, independent businesses and entrepreneurs with heavy-handed regulations that will push them out of the market,” Pai said. “As a result, Americans will have fewer broadband choices. This is no accident. Title II was designed to regulate a monopoly. If we impose that model on a vibrant broadband marketplace, a highly regulated monopoly is what we’ll get.”

Pai’s confrontational comments came after FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler penned an op-ed in Wired Magazine detailing his spin on the core aspects of the Democrat’s desire to lump ISPs under the amended Title II of the 1996 Telecommunications Act — which was used to break-up the AT&T telephone monopoly into four regional Bell companies at the dawn of the digital age.

“Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” Wheeler wrote on Wednesday. “These enforceable, bright-line rules will ban paid prioritization, and the blocking and throttling of lawful content and services.”

Pai responded that the “Courts have twice thrown out the FCC’s attempts at Internet regulation” during the Obama Administration. On January 14, 2014, the D.C. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals struck down most of the FCC’s November 2011 net neutrality rules. The Appellate Court vacated the FCC’s “anti-discrimination” and “anti-blocking” as essentially discriminatory and blocking in an attempt to again give the FCC political appointees the power to dictate what they believe is honest, equitable, and balanced.

Pai said that after a year of debates responding to the courts twice striking down FCC efforts to regulate the Internet, “There’s no reason to think that the third time will be the charm. Even a cursory look at the plan reveals glaring legal flaws that are sure to mire the agency in the muck of litigation for a long, long time.”

Pai promised he would make further comments as he reviews the plan himself in the next two weeks in the run-up to the FCC’s public vote on February 26. He has blamed the two Democrat Commissioners’ for their dismissal of any negotiations with Congressional Republicans in setting the “basic rules” governing Internet access.

As Breitbart has highlighted before, turning the Internet into a “telephone service” would “empower an intrusive public sector that thrives on high taxes, heavy-handed controls and the status quo.”


http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/02/09/republican-fcc-member-warns-net-neutrality-is-not-neutral/

Networks Barely Cover Obama’s Internet Regulations



The government may implement new regulations over the Internet that could cost the economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Despite the potentially large impact of these regulations, the broadcast news networks have barely covered the issue in the almost three months since President Barack Obama announced his support for rules to achieve "net neutrality" and a "free and open Internet."

Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Tom Wheeler said on February 4 that he backed Obama’s plan to reclassify the Internet as a public utility under the government agency’s Title II authority. FCC commissioner Ajit Pai said in a press release on February 6 that the plan "marks a monumental shift toward government control of the Internet." Even a liberal think tank predicted that these regulations could cost American households $156 in new fees.

Despite its importance, the broadcast news networks’ morning and evening shows dedicated only 3 minutes, 38 seconds of coverage to these potential regulations over the Internet since Obama’s announcement November 10, 2014 through February 9, 2015. They almost entirely ignored opposition to the plan. By way of contrast, the networks spent 67 minutes, 49 seconds covering the "Deflategate" scandal during less than one week in January, nearly 19 times more than net neutrality over a period of almost three months.

Phil Kerpen, President of American Commitment, told MRC Business, "There has been almost no coverage of the president strong-arming what is supposed to be an independent agency, or the highly questionable policy he has proposed that would reverse the past two decades of Internet policy and install a heavy-handed regulate-and-tax alternative."

When they did cover the issue, the networks were almost entirely uncritical in their reporting. On November 11, CBS's "This Morning" co-host Gayle King echoed the White House’s talking points, saying that Obama wanted the FCC "to adopt tough rules to protect a free and open internet."

Gayle said that "broadband service providers want to charge higher fees" for Internet access, which could "result in the blocking or slowing down of content for some." Yet, she failed to explain how the president’s proposal would improve this situation or describe the plan’s potential costs.

ABC News only mentioned the proposed regulations once during a segment on "World News" January 20. While previewing the State of the Union address, chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl vaguely referenced that Obama wanted to expand "faster, cheaper Internet access" for the "middle class."

Segments on the other networks also brought up the proposal only in passing. On "Nightly News" December 19, 2014, NBC's senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing highlighted "immigration, climate change and internet regulations" as policies on which Obama was "pushing the limits of his executive authority" and "defying newly empowered Republicans." Jansing did not say how or why Republicans disagreed with the president on any of these policies.

The only instance when the networks actually explained opposition to Obama's plan occurred during a news brief on "Nightly News" November 10, 2014. Anchor Brian Williams said, "Many Republicans said publically today if the president has his way, it would hurt innovation and job growth." Williams did not expand on this statement.

Although the networks avoided airing dissenting opinions, critics have long said that giving the FCC greater control over the Internet could have severe impacts on freedom of speech and the economy. Former FCC commissioner Robert M. McDowell said that "FCC 'oversight of the political process' through more Internet regulations sounds eerily like political speech controls," in an op-ed for The Washington Post on July 14, 2014.

The liberal Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) predicted that households could pay an additional $156 in fees to federal, state, and local governments if regulators reclassified the internet as a public utility in a report released December, 2014. Revenue from these fees would total $15 billion per year, according to PPI.

Reclassifying the internet as a public utility to achieve net neutrality might also negatively impact broadband Internet service providers (ISPs). This move "could put as many as 174,000 broadband related jobs at risk by the end of this decade," according to the conservative think tank American Action Forum.

The regulation could reduce investments in ISPs by $45.4 billion by 2019, according to a report by the economic consulting firm Sonecon. The report was co-authored by Sonecon chairman Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, who said he was an economic advisor to every Democratic candidate since President Bill Clinton, including Obama.


In addition to negative impacts of the plan on the economy and society, FCC commissioner Ajit Pai criticized the agency’s lack of transparency. Wheeler circulated the administration’s 332-page plan to members of the commission, but Pai said in his press release that he was "disappointed that the plan will not be released publicly." He argued that the "FCC should be as open and transparent as the Internet itself and post the entire document on its website."

Pai tweeted a picture of the plan on January 6, writing that "I wish the public could see what's inside."

Last year, Pai called out the FCC for undertaking the controversial Critical Information Needs (CIN) study. He warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on February 10, 2014, that through this study, the FCC had "proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country." Although the FCC ultimately killed CIN, Pai drew a parallel with "the FCC’s now-defunct Fairness Doctrine, which began in 1949 and required equal time for contrasting viewpoints on controversial issues."

As they did with the current proposed Internet regulations, the networks ignored the FCC's threat to investigate television and radio newsrooms across the country.

Methodology: MRC Business examined the stories during morning and evening shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC from November 10, 2014, through February 8, 2015 that mentioned “Internet” and “Obama,” “Federal Communications Commission,” or “FCC.” The time spent discussing President Obama’s proposal in the ten resulting stories was 3 minutes, 38 seconds.



http://newsbusters.org/blogs/joseph-rossell/2015/02/09/nets-barely-cover-obamas-internet-regulations


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If you are rich, $156 of more taxes is nothing. If you are poor then...

[tinfoil hat on]
You have to wonder how all those billions of $$$ spent on massive projects like in utah or satellites with a cartoony octopus as an emblem are working against isis. It is embarrassing to imagine the frustration all those paid civil servant hackers have to go through with so much micro management of that war behind their ears...
[tinfoil hat off]

And how would you know that?

 Over the weekend, hacktivist group Anonymous made true on their promise and began their cyber war on ISIS.

The hackers claim in a video posted Friday that they had taken dozens of accounts on Twitter and Facebook, all of which were used as a recruiting platform for ISIS to gain more numbers in their organization.

But before they made the claim, Anonymous prefaced with an explanation of who exactly is fighting against the terrorist organization in what they call “Operation ISIS.”

They explain that the ones fighting the cyber war are “young, or old, gay or straight… from all races, countries, religions, and ethnicity. United as one, divided by zero.”

At the end of the video, Anonymous leaves one of their threats aimed at ISIS, telling them there is no safe place to hide.

“We will hunt you, take down your sites, accounts, emails, and expose you…

From now on, no safe place for you online…

You will be treated like a virus, and we are the cure…

We own the internet…

We are Anonymous; we are Legion; we do not forgive, we do not forget, Expect us.”


http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/hacker-group-anonymous-strikes-first-blow-against-isis#.VNjHGk3GDbA.twitter

Wiltshire force says it has deleted from its system details of four people who bought copies of magazine from a newsagent



A British police force has apologised after an officer told a newsagent to hand over details of customers who purchased copies of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.

Wiltshire police confirmed that one of their officers visited a newsagent in Corsham, Wiltshire, to ask for the names of four customers who ordered the commemorative “survivors’ issue” of the magazine.

The incident came to light when Anne Keat, 77, who bought the special issue from that newsagent, wrote a letter to the Guardian to warn people that wearing badges emblazoned with je suis Charlie may attract police interest.

In the letter, which was published on Monday, Keat wrote: “Your offer of commemorative badges in support of journalistic freedom highlighting je suis Charlie prompts me to suggest a degree of caution following my experience. Tongue in cheek, I asked my helpful newsagents to obtain a copy of the edition of Charlie Hebdo issued after the dreadful massacre in Paris, if indeed a copy was ever available in north Wiltshire.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/09/wiltshire-police-apologise-details-charlie-hebdo-readers


-----------------------------------------------------------
Sounds like it is too late for the UK...