California: Meet your Destiny, Outlook Grim

Posted on May 6, 2015May 6, 2015 by Denise Simon

Finally, someone here has fully summarized the water and infrastructure, the farming and enterprise issues in the ‘now’ and immediate future. Survival matrix forecast…GRIM. The ‘green’ thing and the Delta smelt fish….are a protected agenda over humans thriving. Bring on the 3 minute showers, the dead lawns, cars that need washing and big fines for violations….$10,000? the Golden State is brown and broke. The Big Idea: California Is So Over by: Joel Kotkin

California’s drought and how it’s handled show just what kind of place the Golden State is becoming: feudal, super-affluent and with an impoverished interior.

California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work. As the mounting panic surrounding the drought suggests, the Golden State, once renowned for meeting human and geographic challenges, is losing its ability to cope with crises. As a result, the great American land of opportunity is devolving into something that resembles feudalism, a society dominated by rich and poor, with little opportunity for upward mobility for the state’s middle- and working classes. The water situation reflects this breakdown in the starkest way. Everyone who follows California knew it was inevitable we would suffer a long-term drought. Most of the state—including the Bay Area as well as greater Los Angeles—is semi-arid, and could barely support more than a tiny fraction of its current population. California’s response to aridity has always been primarily an engineering one that followed the old Roman model of siphoning water from the high country to service cities and farms. But since the 1970s, California’s water system has become the prisoner of politics and posturing. The great aqueducts connecting the population centers with the great Sierra snowpack are all products of an earlier era—the Los Angeles aqueduct (1913), Hetch-Hetchy (1923), the Central Valley Project (1937), and the California Aqueduct (1974). The primary opposition to expansion has been the green left, which rejects water storage projects as irrelevant. Yet at the same time greens and their allies in academia and the mainstream press are those most likely to see the current drought as part of a climate change-induced reduction in snowpack. That many scientists disagree with this assessment is almost beside the point. Whether climate change will make things better or worse is certainly an important concern, but California was going to have problems meeting its water needs under any circumstances. Not Meeting the Challenges. It’s not like we haven’t been around this particular block before. In the 1860s, a severe drought all but destroyed LA’s once-flourishing cattle industry. This drought was followed by torrential rains that caused their own havoc. The state has suffered three major droughts since I have lived here—in the mid ’70s, the mid ’80s and again today—but long ago (even before I got there) some real whoppers occurred, including dry periods that lasted upwards of 200 years. This, like the threat of earthquakes, is part of the price we pay to live in this most beautiful and usually temperate of states. The real issue is how to meet this challenge, and here the response has been slow and lacking in vision. Not all of this is to be blamed on the greens, who dominate the state politically. California agriculture, for example, was among the last in the nation to agree to monitoring of groundwater. Farmers have also been slow to adjust their crops toward less water-dependent varieties; they continue to plant alfalfa, cotton, and other crops that may be better grown in more water-rich areas. Many cities, too, have been slow to meet the challenge. Some long resisted metering of water use. Other places have been slow to encourage drought-resistant landscaping, which is already pretty de rigeur in more aridity-conscious desert cities like Tucson. This process may take time, but it is already showing value in places like Los Angeles where water agencies provide incentives. But ultimately the responsibility for California’s future lies with our political leadership, who need to develop the kind of typically bold approaches past generations have embraced. One step would be building new storage capacity, which Governor Jerry Brown, after opposing it for years, has begun to admit is necessary. Desalinization, widely used in the even more arid Middle East, notably Israel, has been blocked by environmental interests but could tap a virtually unlimited supply of the wet stuff, and lies close to the state’s most densely populated areas. Essentially the state could build enough desalinization facilities, and the energy plants to run them, for less money than Brown wants to spend on his high-speed choo-choo to nowhere. This piece of infrastructure is so irrelevant to the state’s needs that even many progressives, such as Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum, consider it a “ridiculous” waste of money. And there needs to be, at least for the short term, an end to dumping water into San Francisco Bay for the purpose of restoring a long-gone salmon run, or to the Delta, in order to save a bait-fish, the Delta smelt, which may already be close to extinct. This dumping of water has continued even as the state has faced a potentially crippling water shortage; nothing is too good for our fish, or to salve the hyper-heated consciousness of the environmental illuminati. The Political Equation The biggest reason California has been so slow, and uncharacteristically feckless, in meeting this existential challenge lies with psychology and ends with political power. The generation that built the sinews of modern California—most notably the late Governor Pat Brown Sr., the current governor’s father—sprang from the old progressive spirit which saw in infrastructure development a chance not only to create new wealth, but also provide opportunity to working- and middle-class Californians. Indeed, if you look at California’s greatest achievements as a society, the Pat Brown legacy stands at the core. The California Aqueduct turned vast stretches of the Central Valley into one of the most productive farming regions in the world. The freeway system, now in often shocking disrepair, allowed for the construction of mass suburbia that offered millions a quality of life never experienced by previous generations. At the same time the development of energy resources—California still boasts the nation’s third-largest oil production—helped create a huge industrial base that included aerospace, semiconductors, and a host of specialized industries, from logistics to garment manufacturing. In contrast, Jerry Brown has waged a kind of Oedipal struggle against his father’s legacy. Like many Californians, he recoiled against the sometimes haphazard and even ugly form of development that plowed through much of the state. Cutting off water is arguably the most effective way to stop all development, and promote Brown’s stated goal of eliminating suburban “sprawl.” It is typical that his first target for cutbacks this year has been the “lawns” of the middle–class suburbanite, a species for which he has shown little interest or tolerance. But it’s not just water that exemplifies the current “era of limits” psychology. Energy development has always been in green crosshairs and their harassment has all but succeeded in helping drive much of the oil and gas industry, including corporate headquarters, out of the state. Not building roads—arguably to be replaced by trains—has not exactly reduced traffic but given California the honor of having eight of the top 20 cities nationally with poor roads; the percentage of Los Angeles-area residents who take transit has, if anything, declined slightly since train-building began. All we are left with are impossible freeways, crumbling streets, and ever more difficulty doing anything that requires traveling. The Road to Feudalism These policies have had numerous impacts, like weakening California’s industrial sector, which cannot afford energy prices that can be twice as high as in competing states. Some of those who might have worked in the factories, warehouses, and farms of California now help swell the numbers of the welfare recipients, who remarkably make up one-third of the nation’s total. As recently as the 1970s and ’80s, the percentage of people living in poverty in California was below the national average; California today, based on cost of living, has the highest poverty rate in the country. Of course, the rich and entitled, particularly in Silicon Valley have achieved unprecedented riches, but those middle-class Californians once served by Pat have largely been abandoned by his son. California, long a relative beacon of equality and opportunity, now has the fourth-highest rate of inequality in the country. For those who, like me, bought their first home over 30 years ago, high housing prices, exacerbated by regulation, are a personal piggybank. But it’s doubtful either of my daughters will ever be able to buy a house here. What about “green jobs”? California leads in total number of green jobs, simply by dint of size, but on a per-capita basis, a recent Brookings study notes, California is about average. In wind energy, in fact, California is not even in first place; that honor goes to, of all places, Texas, which boasts twice California’s level of production. Today even  The New York Times has described Governor Jerry Brown’s promise about creating a half-million green jobs as something of a “pipe dream.” Even surviving solar firms, busy in part to meet the state’s strict renewable mandates, acknowledge that they won’t be doing much of the manufacturing here, anyway. The Cost of Narcissism Ultimately this is a story of a state that has gotten tired, having lost its “animal spirits” for the policy equivalent of a vegan diet. Increasingly it’s all about how the elites in the state—who cluster along the expensive coastal areas—feel about themselves. Even Brown knows that his environmental agenda will do little, or nothing, to combat climate change, given the already minimal impact of the state on carbon emissions compared to escalating fossil fuel use in China, India and elsewhere. But the cosmopolitan former Jesuit gives more priority to his spiritual service to Gaia than the needs of his non-affluent constituents. But progressive narcissism is, as some conservatives assert, not the main problem. California greens are, to be sure, active, articulate, well-organized, and well-financed. What they lack is an effective counterpoint from the business class, who would be expected to challenge some of their policies. But the business leadership often seems to be more concerned with how to adjust the status quo to serve privileged large businesses, including some in agriculture, than boosting the overall economy. The greens, and their public-sector allies, can dominate not because they are so effective as that their potential opposition is weak, intimidated, and self-obsessed. What we are witnessing the breakdown of a once-expansive, open society into one dominated by a small group of plutocrats, largely in Silicon Valley, with an “amen” crew among the low-information donors of Hollywood, the public unions, the green lobby, and wealthy real estate developers favored by Brown’s pro-density policies. This coalition backs Brown and helps maintain the state’s essentially one-party system. No one is more adamant about reducing people’s carbon footprint than the jet set of Silicon Valley or the state’s planning elite, even if they choose not to live in a manner that they instruct all others. This fundamentally hypocritical regime remains in place because it works—for the powerful and well-placed. Less understandable is why many Hispanic politicians, such as Assembly Speaker Kevin de Leon, also prioritize “climate change” as his leading issue, without thinking much about how these policies might worsen the massive poverty in his de-industrializing L.A. district—until you realize that de Leon is bankrolled by Tom Steyer and others from the green uberclass. So, in the end, we are producing a California that is the polar opposite of Pat Brown’s creation. True, it has some virtues: greener, cleaner, and more “progressive” on social issues. But it’s also becoming increasingly feudal, defined by a super-affluent coastal class and an increasingly impoverished interior. As water prices rise, and farms and lawns are abandoned, there’s little thought about how to create a better future for the bulk of Californians. Like medieval peasants, millions of Californians have been force to submit to the theology of our elected high priest and his acolytes, leaving behind any aspirations that the Golden State can work for them too.

Proof the Feds are Extorting

Posted on May 5, 2015May 5, 2015 by Denise Simon

A new Federal Emergency Management Agency policy requiring states to address climate change before they can become eligible for grant funding is drawing fire from congressional Republicans.

The regulations, part of a FEMA State Mitigation Plan Review Guide issued last month, are not set to take effect until next March. But lawmakers are demanding an explanation for the rules now.

In a letter to FEMA Administrator W. Craig Fugate, the lawmakers said they’re concerned that the agency’s decision will create unnecessary red tape in the disaster preparedness process.

“As you know, disaster mitigation grants are awarded to state and local governments after a presidential major disaster declaration,” they wrote. “These funds are crucial in helping disaster-stricken communities prepare for future emergencies.”

The letter was signed by Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), David Vitter (R-La.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.).

In the revised guide, the agency said mitigation planning regulation requires consideration of the probability of future hazards and events to reduce risks and potential dangers.

“Past occurrences are important to a factual basis of hazard risk, however, the challenges posed by climate change, such as more intense storms, frequent heavy precipitation, heat waves, drought, extreme flooding and higher sea levels, could significantly alter the types and magnitudes of hazards impacting states in the future,” FEMA said in its guide.

But in their letter, the senators said climate change is still being debated, citing “gaps in the scientific understanding around climate change.”

The letter goes on to ask FEMA to explain which statutory authority the agency relied on to require states to consider climate change, whether or not the agency still agrees with its 2012 statement that hurricanes follow a cycle of increased and decreased activity over decades and how much it will cost states to comply with the new requirement.

In a January White House blog post about a new flood standard for federal investments, Fugate and then-presidential adviser John Podesta (who has since joined the Hillary Clinton camp) recognized the effects of climate change.
“Effects of climate change will make extreme weather events more frequent and more severe,” they wrote. “And the climate is changing — earlier this month, NASA and NOAA announced that 2014 was the hottest year on record globally, meaning that 14 of the 15 hottest years in recorded history have happened this century.”

FEMA’s new requirements will take effect March 6, 2016.

Then there is ObamaCare or lack thereof:

ObamaCare extortion? Why Fla. Gov. Rick Scott is suing the Obama administration

Governor Rick Scott joins us. Governor, thanks for going On the Record tonight and we want to hear more about why you are suing the administration.

RICK SCOTT, FLORIDA GOVERNOR: Kimberly, it’s outrageous. The federal government started a program in our state in 2006. It’s called the low income pool. It’s for low income families. Now, what they are saying is they are not going to keep that program going unless the state expands ObamaCare. So this first off is horrible.

GUILFOYLE: It sounds like extortion.

SCOTT: Absolutely. It’s – first off, you think about the families at our state that are relying on this. Second, Justice Roberts said, The NFIB versus Sebelius, that it’s not lawful for the federal government, for the Obama administration, to use coercion tactics, basically held a gun to our head, if we don’t expand ObamaCare. They say they can’t do that. So – and by the way they are not cutting our federal taxes in doing this. They did not say, “Oh, we will cut your federal taxes because we are going to cut out your program.” So our taxpayers are still paying for the federal government.

GUILFOYLE: Right.

SCOTT: But they are going to cut out a program and try to hold a gun to our head.

GUILFOYLE: All right. So when are you going to file this lawsuit?

SCOTT: We’re working with our attorney general, Pam Bondi. We have a great attorney general in our state.

GUILFOYLE: Yes. That’s my friend.

SCOTT: We’ll work with them to make sure – yes. She is a good friends of yours. And we’re working with her to do this in the right manner. But we’re going –I’m going to stand up for every citizen in our state. One, the citizens that have a program that they are relying on, those that can’t afford their own health care, that’s one. Then two, the rest of our citizens that are saying, “You know, we are paying our federal taxes and we are not going to let the federal government tell us how to run our state.” That’s outrageous. It’s not what the Supreme Court allows. And so we’re going to stand up for all 20 million people in our state.

GUILFOYLE: Well, I think, you know, with Pam Bondi filing this and you on top of it, this is really a compelling issue. There are serious constitutional implications as a former prosecutor myself. It seems that you are on some serious strong ground with the president, with the comments from the chief justice that this should not be allowed and it should be precedent setting for other states if they are compelled in this way, forced against their will to expand and feed the behemoth that has become ObamaCare.

SCOTT: Absolutely. But don’t they care about the low income families that they have already created a program for in our state?

GUILFOYLE: Sure.

SCOTT: And doesn’t everybody now understand that this is an administration that’s going to use coercion tactic and when it’s appropriate they’ll cut back funding if you don’t do another program they want.

GUILFOYLE: Right. The penalty. Yes.

(Crosstalk)

SCOTT: That’s not the way the federal government is supposed to work. Absolutely. It’s not the way we expect our federal government. We’re supposed to be able to run our state.

GUILFOYLE: Well, it’s a shakedown to the states. If you don’t do what we say….

SCOTT: Absolutely.

GUILFOYLE: . …because we’re gig bigger than you, and we’re going to bully you and we’re going to force you and penalize you and it’s really just hurting the lower income families by doing this.

SCOTT: Absolutely. One, they don’t care about the low income families because they are willing to walk away from a program. And then, two, they are using bully — this is a Sopranos. They are using bullying tactics to attack our state. It’s wrong. It’s outrageous just that they’re doing this.

GUILFOYLE: Well — but you’re standing up for all Floridians. So I think that’s fantastic. And you know, this is so important we get the message out there and that we learn about these issues because it’s going to be facing the other states as well. Governor, such a pleasure. Thank you for coming on here tonight.

SCOTT: Nice talking to you, Kimberly.

GUILFOYLE: All right.

SCOTT: Have a great evening.

Clinton Machinery has Sand in the Gears

Posted on May 5, 2015May 5, 2015 by Denise Simon

The book hits the shelves today.

Then my buddy Charles Ortel has been digging deep for the last several weeks on the Clintons and ‘inurement’. Charles declares that the Foundations are actually to flawed to fix. The legal team and the inner circle of those employed by the Clinton Foundation(s) have stated there were mistakes and they are ‘re-filing tax returns. (do you get to do that?)

Per the Internal Revenue Service:

A section 501(c)(3) organization must not be organized or operated for the benefit of private interests, such as the creator or the creator’s family, shareholders of the organization, other designated individuals, or persons controlled directly or indirectly by such private interests. No part of the net earnings of a section 501(c)(3) organization may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. A private shareholder or individual is a person having a personal and private interest in the activities of the organization.

Judicial Watch Lawsuit Exposes ‘Clinton Cash Machine’

Judicial Watch’s independent work recently resulted in extensive coverage of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s corruption of the State Department.

A Judicial Watch lawsuit was central to the ongoing scandal involving the Clintons and the money they raised while Hillary was secretary of state.

Last year, Judicial Watch forced the disclosure of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to $48 million for the Clinton Foundation and other Clinton-connected entities during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state. Previously disclosed documents in this lawsuit, for example, raise questions about funds Clinton accepted from entities linked to Saudi Arabia, China, and Iran, among others. The story on these documents that got the ball rolling can found be here. The headline says it all: “State Department approved 215 Bill Clinton speeches, controversial consulting deal, worth $48m; Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff copied on all decisions.”

Dedicated investigating, legal work, and journalism (Judicial Watch’s Micah Morrison in partnership with The Washington Examiner) produced the key documents that led to much more investigating by others. Notably, Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer used Judicial Watch-produced documents to help with his headline-making book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. This book helped feed major media interest in the story that Judicial Watch has been highlighting since 2008.

The headlines tell the whole story:

From the New York Times: Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company
From Reuters: Exclusive: Clinton charities will refile tax returns, audit for other errors
From the Washington Post: For Clintons, speech income shows how their wealth is intertwined with charity
From ABC News: Bill Clinton Cashed In When Hillary Became Secretary of State

Now, in the midst of this cavalcade of reporting on Clinton corruption, Judicial Watch has disclosed yet more documents in its Clinton accountability lawsuit.

The organization has recently highlighted 126 more pages of documents from the State Department related to Hillary Clinton’s conflicts of interest during her time as secretary of state. These documents were forced out of the State Department thanks to a federal court order in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department back in May 2013.

Incredibly, the State Department has also turned over almost 1,000 records to the Clinton Foundation, beginning in January 2014, for review prior to public release.

The Obama State Department allowed Hillary Clinton to remove and destroy government email records, and now it has been made clear that the State Department has been improperly giving government documents to the Clinton operation – documents that should have been turned over to Judicial Watch and the American public years ago.

The latest group of documents again raises the specter of foreign potentates compromising American foreign policy by giving cash to the Clinton machine. One new document shows that State Department officials had concerns in January 2011 about Bill Clinton’s activities related to Saudi Arabia. An email chain, begun on January 25, 2011, includes several members of the State Department’s Legal Advisor Office, and the subject line “Clinton Foundation Request – Saudi entities.” The discussion is almost entirely redacted in the three-page email chain. This is Obama transparency at its best. If nothing else, Bill and Hillary have a friend in the Obama administration in helping cover their tracks. The timing of the email suggests it was about the Saudi government and that the event netted the Clintons $300,000.

We already have the documents about this lucrative event. The Clinton Foundation told the State Department he would participate in the 2011 Global Competiveness Forum, a five-day event in Riyadh. The event was co-sponsored by the Dabbagh Group Holding Co., which “comprises 28 autonomous companies, operating in diversified businesses in 30 countries. Mohammed Husnee Jazeel currently serves as Dabbagh Group’s CFO.” The Clinton Foundation described the event as:

[A]n annual meeting of global business leaders, international political leaders and selected academics and journalists. It was founded in 2006 by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and is held under the patronage of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz.

Established in 2000, the SAGIA encourages investment in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and provides licensing and support services to investors.

The “ticketed event” targeted “the Saudi Arabian business community.”

Also discussed is a Clinton Foundation request regarding an undisclosed country in Asia in August 2010: “Spoke to Jim [James H Thessin], on this and he plans to speak to the EAP [East Asian & Pacific Affairs] PDAS [Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary] and get his views.”

A June 2010 message chain addressed to then-Deputy Chief of Mission in Tanzania Larry E. Andre and others is labeled “URGENT RE: Clinton Foundation Issue, ” and states: “Former POTUS Clinton is on the ground in Tanzania… we need guidance fairly urgently to still be relevant.”

Also in the documents is a fully redacted June 2011 exchange between longtime Clinton associates Cheryl Mills and Doug Band.

Band assisted in creating the Clinton Global Initiative and is a founding partner and president of Teneo. Also previously disclosed, documents show that the State Department approved a consulting arrangement between Bill Clinton and Band. The Clintons ended the deal after only eight months, as criticism mounted over Teneo’s ties to the failed investment firm, MF Global.

Mills defended Bill Clinton during his 1999 impeachment trial. She also was on the Clinton Foundation’s board prior to joining Mrs. Clinton at the State Department. Mills reportedly negotiated the “ethics agreement” on behalf of the Clintons and the Foundation that required the Clintons to submit to rigorous conflict-of-interest checks. Despite this, and in apparent violation of Obama administration ethics rules, the documents Judicial Watch forced out show Mills was involved in ethics reviews as chief of staff for Mrs. Clinton at the State Department.

There’s another interesting tidbit that speaks to Clinton cover-up tactics with which Americans are all too familiar. There’s a January 2013 email from Clinton Foundation Scheduler Margaret Steenburg to State Department attorneys saying a list of speech hosts for conflict-of-interest review was provided to them. The list, however, is conspicuously absent from the FOIA production documents.

The State Department just disclosed that it turned over 128 records to the Clinton Foundation for review under Exemption 4 of FOIA. Exemption 4 allows the withholding of commercial information about third parties that could cause them competitive harm. More than 1,000 records have been turned over to the Clinton Foundation under this unusual review process, resulting in more delay.

The lawsuit which first exposed the Clinton foreign fundraising racket at the State Department continues to be obstructed by Mrs. Clinton’s political operation. Remember that Mrs. Clinton is obstructing the release of information about the very scandal she is dismissing as “politics.”

With these revelations of State Department concerns about the Clinton machine’s Saudi and Asian dealings, this simple FOIA lawsuit is once again providing the road map for those tracking Hillary Clinton’s abuse of office as secretary of state. In the meantime, the State Department seems to be more concerned about helping Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign than following federal disclosure law.

Finally, the State Department promised to conduct a supplemental search of email records allegedly turned over late last year by Hillary Clinton. The State Department has been silent on obtaining or recovering other emails from Hillary Clinton’s secret accounts or any secret accounts of her top staff, including Cheryl Mills. And it is silent as to when Judicial Watch will get those documents.

Judicial Watch’s litigation continues. As the Clinton campaign distracts, lies and denies, the court process will move forward and more truths about Hillary Clinton’s abuse of office will come to light.

Is Jimmy Carter Still Relevant? Yes, for Iran

Posted on May 2, 2015May 2, 2015 by Denise Simon

Hamas was placed on the U.S. terror list in 1997. Since 2009, Jimmy Carter has been calling for Hamas to be removed. The European Union from Hamas from their terror list in late December of 2014. Does anyone remember the dead U.S. Marines?

Seems that this past March, Obama forced ODNI Chief James Clapper to either fully remove Hamas from the U.S. list of terror organizations or to re-classify them to some other status. Clapper presented an annual report titled the “Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community’. This also includes Hezbollah.

The 2015 report only mentions Hezbollah once, and it’s in passing.

Still, we should note that the 2015 report hardly lets Iran off the hook. The report accuses Iran of:

• “Preserving (the) nuclear weapons option,”

• Remaining “an ongoing threat to US national interests because of its support to the Asad regime in Syria, promulgation of anti-Israeli policies, development of advanced military capabilities, and pursuit of its nuclear program,”

• “Pursuing policies with negative secondary consequences for regional stability and potentially for Iran,”

• And pursuing actions to protect and empower Shia communities that “are fueling growing fears and sectarian responses.”

Administration officials cautioned against over-reading the choices made in Clapper’s written report.

“There is no change in the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment of the threat posed by Iran or Hezbollah,” said Brian P. Hale, the director of public affairs in the office of the director of national intelligence. The report, Hale said, “was written to be an overview of top threats. … There were a lot of topics to consider this year — ISIL, cyber, Ukraine-Russia, etc. Iran was included, too.”

Hale added that Clapper fleshed out the national-security concerns about Iran and Hezbollah during testimony at the Senate hearing. Responding to a question from Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., Clapper cited several entities linked to Iran, including Hezbollah, as methods for Iran to use as “a physical manifestation of their spreading their influence in the region.”

And Nick Rasmussen — director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the principal adviser to Clapper’s office on intelligence operations and counterterrorism analysis — testified on Feb. 12 that “beyond their role in Syria and Iraq, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah remain committed to conducting terrorist activities worldwide, and we are concerned their activities could either endanger or target U.S. and other Western interests.”

Iran is asking and graciously receiving gifts at the hands of the White House and from John Kerry, Secretary of State. The Iran talks over their nuclear program is producing nothing for the West but everything for Iran.

Former US President Jimmy Carter calls post-war situation in the Gaza Strip ‘intolerable’

JERUSALEM – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says eight months after a bloody war in the Gaza Strip that the situation there is “intolerable.”

Carter’s delegation called off a planned visit to Gaza earlier this week, giving no explanation. Speaking Saturday, Carter says he is still determined to work for a Palestinian state. But he lamented that “not one destroyed house has been rebuilt” in Gaza since the war.

Carter, 90, visited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas but was shunned by Israeli leaders who long have considered him hostile to the Jewish state.

Although he brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty during his presidency, Carter outraged many Israelis with his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” He’s also repeatedly reached out to Gaza’s Islamic Hamas leaders, considered terrorists by much of the West.

Jimmy Carter and Abbas Call for Fatah-Hamas Elections

Pro-Hamas ex-president calls for joint Hamas-Fatah elections in Ramallah after canceling Gaza stop, in bid to save floundering ‘unity.’

Jimmy Carter on Saturday urged Palestinian Arabs to hold elections to end the rapidly growing fierce enmity between Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA) in Judea and Samaria.

He was speaking at a joint news conference with PA president Mahmoud Abbas in the PA’s governmental seat of Ramallah in Samaria, after cancelling his stop in Gaza where he was supposed to meet top Hamas terrorists such as Ismail Haniyeh.

“We hope that sometime we’ll see elections all over the Palestinian area and east Jerusalem and Gaza and also in the West Bank,” said Carter, a member of the independent Elders Group of global leaders.

His reference to eastern Jerusalem comes despite the fact the area is part of Israel, having been annexed after the Jewish state liberated the eastern part of the ancient Jewish capital during the 1967 Six Day War.

No Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections have been held in over a decade, even though Abbas’s term in office expired in January 2009.

In 2006, a year after Abbas was elected, Hamas overwhelmingly won the most recent PLC elections. A year afterwards, Hamas violently ousted Abbas’s Fatah faction from Gaza and seized control.

Despite the rivals signing a reconciliation agreement a year ago, Hamas is reluctant to hand over power in Gaza to an independent PA unity government the two formed.

As noted Carter had also planned to go to Gaza, but the visit was cancelled at the last moment.

He said it would be “very important” for “full implementation of the agreement reached between Hamas and Fatah.”

Carter was accompanied by Norway’s former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

She said that despite not being able to visit the Hamas terrorist stronghold of Gaza, “we have had a chance to discuss with people who know the issues in Gaza.”

The Elders Group said ahead of the trip by Carter and Brundtland that they were visiting “in a renewed push to promote the two-state solution and to address the root causes of the conflict.”

Ahead of Carter’s three-day visit, both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin said they will refuse to meet him due to his blatant anti-Israel and pro-Hamas stance.

During Operation Protective Edge last summer, a counter-terror operation undertaken after Hamas launched a terror war with thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilian centers and attacks via terror tunnels, Carter urged the US to remove Hamas from its terror list.

He said at the time there is “no justification in the world for what Israel is doing,” castigating the IDF for its defensive efforts while not offering any condemnation of Hamas’s countless terrorist attacks on civilian populations launched from civilian centers.

Hamas is currently rebuilding its capabilities to attack Israel, digging attack tunnels around the clock and developing new rockets, even as Israel ships in massive amounts of building materials being used to reconstruct the tunnels.

Hey Congressman Cummings, Proud of This?

Posted on May 1, 2015May 1, 2015 by Denise Simon

Congressman Elijah Cummings who represents the very district of Baltimore that saw the destruction says he is proud of the protests, actually he said they HAD to protest. His beloved Baltimore was full of militant agitators that damaged buildings, cars and businesses, but yet this civil servant remains proud. He marched in full cadence and in solidarity. But going deeper, just who are those people he stood with and are they haters?

Amid Violence, Factions and Messages Converge in a Weary and Unsettled Baltimore
In part:

A couple of the young men wore bandannas to hide their identity. The young men identified themselves as members of the Crips, Bloods and Black Guerrilla Family street gangs. One of the Crips members, who called himself Charles, wearing a red Chicago Bulls Derrick Rose T-shirt, said the gang members had taken to the street because “there is only so far that you can push people into a corner.”

“We’re frustrated,” he continued, “and that’s why we’re out there in the streets.”

Then he described how he and some Bloods had stood in front of black-owned stores to protect them from looting or vandalism. He said they had made sure no black children, or reporters, were hit by rioters. They pointed them toward Chinese- and Arab-owned stores. Charles said Mr. Gray had brought gangs together.

“I rolled over here on a truck, and I was the only Crip and everybody else was Bloods. And they didn’t do anything to me. We’re together in this.”

Read the full article here.

From the DailyMail: One Bloods member told WBAL: ‘Although our cause is righteous, we cannot control every person, every gang in the city.’

It had emerged on Monday morning, that three of the city’s most violent gangs – Black Guerrilla Family, Crips and Bloods – were apparently forming an alliance to ‘take out’ police officers.

According to Police Commissioner Anthony Batts, the department received intelligence that the rivals held a meeting in which they planned to kill one police officer each.

Black Guerrilla Family breeds some of the city’s most violent convicts. The man who killed two NYPD cops in December last year, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, was believed to have ties to the deadly group.