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Politics

ashton_carter

File photo: Ashton Carter seen on July 20, 2012. (Photo: REUTERS)

President Obama has named former Pentagon official Ashton Carter to be his next Defense Secretary, White House officials confirmed Friday. The president’s choice of Carter, 60, who was deputy Defense secretary from October 2011 to December 2013, was already widely rumored. However, it was not confirmed by the White House until Friday.

They said Obama would formerly announce the decision to nominate Carter to replace Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during a Friday morning press conference.

If confirmed by the Senate, Carter would be Obama’s fourth person to head up the Pentagon in Obama’s six-year administration. The new pick comes under two weeks after Chuck Hagel resigned amid White House pressure to take the fall for policy failures, which they saw as a clear cause for Democrats’ midterm defeats. Hagel served less than two years on the job.

Carter has extensive experience in the national security arena. Carter’s former role was essentially that of chief operating officer. Before he served as deputy defense secretary, he was the Pentagon’s technology and weapons-buying chief for more than two years.

During the Clinton administration, Carter was assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, though he holds no education background in security studies. Prior, he was director of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School.

Carter has bachelor’s degrees in physics and medieval history from Yale University and earned his doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

In security studies, Carter champions the concept he and former Defense Secretary William Perry argued for in the 1990s. They called it “preventive defense,” an eclectic child of defensive realism a basic premise that in the aftermath of the Cold War the U.S. could avoid major war and emerging security threats by using defense diplomacy – forging and strengthening security partnerships with China, Russia and others.

Carter, unlike past defense secretaries, may have a world view and opinion of U.S. defense priorities that fit better with the Obama agenda, save for the fact he argues for better nurturing relationships. However, the general idea that the U.S. needs to strengthen defense alliances and partnerships in Asia and the Pacific has been a key component of the Obama agenda, it is just that Obama is bad at relationships.

The platform also includes paying more attention to cyber-defense and countering the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

In remarks in July 2013 at the Aspen Security Forum, Carter argued that the country was ready to close the book on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that we need to care more about future threats, including cyber attacks. That was one month before Obama announced the recommencing of a bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

Carter’s point was that the Pentagon had entered an era of transition that requires fresh thinking, but also that the U.S. needs to spend fresh money on that thinking. He called on Congress to reverse the budget-cutting law known as sequestration.

“First of all, we need to get back to some issues that we’ve taken our eye off a little bit over the last decade,” he said, adding, “We need to reinvest and get back in the game.”

President Barack Obama has nominated former Pentagon

Politics

obama_immigration_executive_order

President Obama, left, issued an executive order on immigration following the 2014 midterm elections.

House Republicans voted on a bill Thursday declaring President Obama’s executive action on immigration “null and void and without legal effect.” However, the vote was largely a symbolic step before a potential budget stand-off next week.

The House voted 219-197 for the bill sponsored by Florida Republican Rep. Ted Yoho, as part of a three-step plan by House GOP leaders to address Obama’s unconstitutional immigration actions and approve a new spending bill to avert a partial government shutdown.

The people’s chamber will vote next week on a bill funding most of the government through fiscal 2015, as well as the Department of Homeland Security through early next year. However, because President Obama said he will veto a bill that funds the government but not his executive decree, the threat of a government shutdown is possible.

While many lawmakers want to fight this fight ahead of the Dec. 11 deadline, which is when current government funding expires, some Republicans worry Yoho’s legislation was not passed at the proper time and certainly has zero chance of passing the Senate.

“I’m not happy,” said South Carolina Republican Rep. Mick Mulvaney. However, he said he is concerned that if Republicans don’t fight the immigration policy now, it could send the wrong signal ahead of the new Congress.

At a press conference earlier Thursday, Boehner urged his rank-and-file to be patient, making the case for delaying the immigration fight until next year.

“Come January, we’ll have a Republican House and Republican Senate, and we’ll be in a stronger position to take actions,” he said.

Boehner said the current plan is “the most practical way to fight the president’s action.”

House Republicans voted on a bill Thursday

Polls

2014 midterm elections

(Photo: Shutterstock)

Republicans now have a party advantage over Democrats among American registered voters post-midterm elections, according to a new survey from Gallup. Americans’ political allegiances have shifted toward Republicans from the 43 – 39 percent deficit they faced prior to the elections, to a slight 42 – 41 percent edge over Democrats.

The poll represents a net shift of 5 percentage points in party allegiance in favor of the GOP.

“The 2014 midterms were an unqualified success for the Republican Party,” said Gallup analyst Jeffrey M. Jones. “And that success has caused Americans to view the Republican Party more favorably than the Democratic Party, as well as to say congressional Republicans should have more influence than President Barack Obama over the direction the nation takes in the next year. Americans are also now more likely to align themselves politically with the Republican Party than the Democratic Party.”

While the shift if relatively modest from a historical perspective — the post-Republican Revolution shift in 1994 was 16 points — the Democrats’ problems are exacerbated by their declining image.

According to a Nov. 6-9 Gallup poll, which was conducted after the Republicans wave swept away Democrats up and down the ballot across the country, a record-low 36 percent of Americans said they have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party, down 6 percentage points from their pre-election levels, while the GOP actually inched up 2 points to 42 percent.

It was the first time in three years that the Republican Party was seen more favorably than the Democratic Party in Gallup tracking. However, what Republicans do with their new-found advantage on allegiance and popularity will largely determine how long it lasts.

“It is not clear how long these good feelings toward the GOP will last,” Jones added. “That could be influenced by what Republicans do with their enhanced power.”

The pre-election results are based on Gallup Daily tracking interviews with 17,259 U.S. adults, conducted between Oct. 1 and Nov. 4, while post-election interviews are based on 12,671 interviews conducted Nov. 5-30.

Republicans now have a party advantage over

World

us_troops_iraq_82nd_airborne

In this Aug. 27, 2012 photo provided by the U.S. Army, U.S. soldiers from the 4th Brigade, 82nd Airborne arrive to turn in their vehicles and equipment as part of the drawdown at the Kandahar Air Field south of Kabul, Afghanistan. (Photo: AP)

Approximately 250 hardened paratroopers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division will deploy to Iraq at the end of the month, PPD confirmed Thursday. The order from the White House, which was first reported by the Army Times and announced by the administration on November 7, has garnered little attention from media outlets.

According to the White House, the troop role in Operation Inherent Resolve will only be to serve in “a non-combat role to train, advise and assist Iraqi Security Forces, including Kurdish forces.”

The soldiers from 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, will begin deploying in late December.

However, despite what the White House says, the Pentagon told PPD they will be deployed for nine months to Central Command and “will have the responsibility to conduct security operations.”

“The 1st Battalion, 505th PIR is a well-led and highly trained unit with extremely talented and adaptable paratroopers,” said Col. Curtis Buzzard, the brigade commander, in a statement. “I know they are ready for any contingency and am confident they will accomplish the mission.”

The recent increase of soldiers ordered by the Obama administration are separate from the 1,500-troop increase authorized on Nov. 7 by President Obama. Prior, the U.S. had 1400 U.S. troops in the now-failing state, which was left to the president in stable condition following the deeply unpopular, yet effective surge. The Nov. 7 increase more than doubled that figure, and now more conventional — yet, light and effective forces — are also joining the fight.

Contrary to the “no boots on the ground” narrative from the White House and their friendly news organizations, the 1st Infantry Division took command in Iraq on Oct. 31.

The announcement marks another admission by the White House — whether that admission is in policy or rhetoric is irrelevant — that they didn’t heed the warnings of their own generals and Pentagon officials, including former CIA head and Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta.

In repeated appearances, Panetta has given no grey area on whether he believed the president chose politics over national security by withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq, and laid waste to the oft-heard claim that the Iraqis didn’t want a troop presence.

“We had leverage. We could, for instance, have threatened to withdraw reconstruction aid to Iraq if al-Maliki would not support some sort of continued U.S. military presence,” Panetta also explained in his recently released memoir. “Flournoy argued our case, and those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.”

Now, the Obama administration, headed up by an anti-war president, is forced to re-wage a war he made a political career out of condemning. Pentagon officials made clear that this is a move to expand the typical combat theater understood by them up until now. U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, says it will use these troops to establish two expeditionary units and assist operations centers in locations outside Baghdad and Erbil.

An official told PPD that this and other president orders to escalate operations are expected by those in the Pentagon, as advisors have made clear to the White House for weeks that the mission cannot be accomplished without an increased troop presence.

Officials said they will establish “several sites” in addition to the outposts by the two cities across Iraq to accommodate the training of 12 brigades, including nine Iraqi army and three Kurdish Peshmerga brigades. The operations are slated to be in northern, western and southern Iraq, officials have said.

The Obama administration is quietly re-waging the

Opinion, Video

 

In a new TruthRevolt video, Ben Shapiro exposes the false witness testimony in the St. Louis County Police Investigative Report that gave rise to the hands up, don’t shoot lie in the shooting of Michael Brown.

President Obama stated, himself, that the black community in Ferguson did not make up the story of the racist cop murdering a teenager with his hands up. However, the facts, which include forensics and witness testimony that didn’t collapse when confronted, show they did in fact make up such a story.

Further, witness testimony that supported Officer Darren Wilson’s version of events offered an explanation for why the pro-Brown witnesses lied.

“You have to understand the mentality of some of these young guys,” witness #14, an African-American witness told investigators. “They have nothing to do. When they can latch on to something, they embellish it because they want something to do. The majority of them do not work, all they do is sit around and get high all day.”

Witness #14 said within minutes a crowd appeared and began to “embellish when the stepfather showed up.”

The stepfather, Louis Head, is currently under investigation for inciting the riots. He was caught on video screaming ”burn this b**** down” after the grand jury, which included 3 black jurors, refused to indict. The comments were made just moments before the looting and rioting began.

The Brown family attorneys, Daryl Parks and Benjamin Crump, have repeatedly stated that at least 16 witnesses had seen Michael Brown with his hands up in the universal sign of surrender, even after the grand jury evidence was released. However, save for Dorian Johnson and one other witness, the witnesses later admitted to investigators that they were simply repeating the lie they had heard or were told to lie by unknown persons. Johnson, of course, was with Brown moments before the shooting took place when the two committed a strong-arm robbery at a convenience store.

“This is evil,” Shapiro said. “A community conspiring to put an innocent man in jail because of his race.”

Officer Darren Wilson was forced to resign last weekend, and his career in law enforcement is ruined.

Ben Shapiro exposes the false witness testimony

Economy

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell less than expected last week, pointing to a cooling labor market. The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 297,000 for the week ended Nov. 29.

However, the decline still nearly reversed the prior week’s increase, which pushed claims above 300,000 for the first time since early September. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims falling to 295,000 last week.

The four-week rolling average of new jobless claims, which is considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, still increased by 4,750 to 299,0000. It has held below 300,000 for 12 straight weeks, indicating labor market strength.

A Labor Department analyst said there were no special factors influencing last week’s claims data, but the data have no impact on November’s employment report due to be released on Friday. The report falls outside the survey period.

Nonfarm payrolls are expected to have increased by 230,000 last month after rising by 214,000 in October, according to a Reuters survey of economists. If true, then it would mark the 10th consecutive month of payroll gains above 200,000, though the majority of jobs created on in low-paying — and even part-time dominated — industries.

The private sector payroll processor ADP reported this week that 208,000 jobs were created in November, which missed economists’ expectations of a significantly bigger gain of 221,000 jobs added for the month.

The unemployment rate is forecast steady at a six-year low of 5.8 percent.

The claims report showed the number of people still receiving benefits after an initial week of aid increased by 39,000 to 2.36 million in the week ended Nov. 22.

Labor Department said the number of first-time

Politics, Video

A recently published video showing Democrat Mayor of Opelousas Don Cravins Sr. endorsing mass Louisiana voter fraud on November 3, 2014, is more trouble for Mary Landrieu. Cravins’ son is none other than Sen. Landrieu’s chief of staff.

“If you early voted, go vote again tomorrow. One more time’s not going to hurt,” Cravins said. “Tomorrow we’re gonna elect Earl Taylor as the D.A. so he won’t prosecute you if you vote twice.”

Cravin’s remarks were met with laughter and cheers from the crowd, and one woman’s voice can be heard in the video responding that she would vote twice. Sadly, Taylor won a fourth term on Nov. 4.

Louisiana State Senator Elbert Guillory, a black Democrat-turned-Republican, narrates the video and walks viewers through one of his now-common themes. Mr. Guillory, the star of the video released by Black Conservatives Fund, which launched the new website onlyvoteonce.com, has been reaching out to black voters with a simple message.

“You are not Mary’s cause and you are certainly not her charity. You are just a vote – nothing less, nothing more,” Guillory said in a previous ad named the Best Political Ad Of 2014 by PPD. “You are just a means to an end.”

The straightforward, devastating video has been viewed more than 400,000 times on YouTube.

The Cravins are central figures in the Louisiana State Democratic Party elite, whom Guillory says have been reduced to voter fraud because their policies haven’t helped African-Americans, or any Americans. Despite the now public video, Landrieu refused to respond to a request for a comment.

The video comes just a few short days before Landrieu faces the political challenge of her career from Republican Representative Bill Cassidy. The vulnerable Democratic incumbent was forced into a runoff after Cassidy and one other Republican challenger — tea party-backed U.S. Air Force veteran Rob Maness — reduced Landrieu to just 42 percent of the vote.

However, with Cassidy pulling a close 41 percent and Maness earning 14 percent, PPD’s election projection model gives Landrieu just a 19 percent chance of survival. Maness has thrown his full support behind Cassidy and Landrieu earned just 18 percent of the white vote, according to exit polls.

Recent polling shows the race is headed for a blowout, which is likely why the DSCC said just a week after the midterm elections that they would be pulling out of the race.

A recently published video showing Democrat Mayor

Economy

mario-draghi european central bank

ECB President Mario Draghi (seen in photo) resists argument from Sabine Lautenschlaeger, Germany’s appointee to the ECB’s Executive Board, said now was not the time for state bond buying. (Photo: REUTERS)

The European Central Bank announced they would keep the cost of borrowing at record lows after a meeting Thursday, facing two-sided pressure from Washington and Germany.

Both a public and private call from Washington pressured the ECB to hold the rates down, as administration officials and Fed players were concerned further global slowdowns would harm the U.S. economy. With no recovery in sight in at least 18 countries that share the euro, ECB President Mario Draghi will present fresh growth and inflation forecasts from bank staff at his post-meeting news conference at 1330 GMT.

Yet, both of these measures are likely to be downgraded further. Still, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s influential vice chair, Stanley Fischer, said that money-printing would help Europe as it had the United States.

“If the ECB moves in that direction, it will have positive effects,” Fischer, who was Draghi’s academic mentor at university, told a newspaper in Italy.

However, Draghi considerable opposition from an economically stronger-than-average Germany. Last week, Sabine Lautenschlaeger, Germany’s appointee to the ECB’s Executive Board, said it was not the time for a state bond-buying program that would reduce the value of currency, increase inflation risks and inevitably increase the cost of borrowing.

While the ECB could extend their scheme to buy secured debt, including corporate bonds, it is unlikely it will announce any money printing to buy government bonds.

The European Central Bank announced they would

Politics

greg-abbott-sues-obama-immigration

AUSTIN, TX – MARCH 4: Republican candidate for governor, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott speaks to the press after voting in the Texas primary at Western Hills Church of Christ on March 4, 2014 in Austin, Texas. Abbott is planning to make stops in Houston and Dallas for get out-the-vote rallies ahead of the elections. (Photo: Erich Schlegel/Getty Images)

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott fulfilled his promised Wednesday and announced that Texas is leading a 17-state coalition suing the Obama administration over the president’s executive actions on immigration.

The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Texas on Wednesday, names the heads of the top immigration enforcement agencies as defendants. It includes Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Abbott, who won just under half of the Hispanic vote in Texas, said in a news conference in Austin that the “broken” immigration system should be fixed by Congress, not by “presidential fiat.”

He said President Obama’s recently announced executive order — an action taken immediately after his party suffered historic losses during a midterm election when immigration was front-and-center — gave at least 5 million people living illegally in the United States amnesty from deportation and various government benefits. Abbott said Obama’s actions “directly violate the fundamental promise to the American people,” which refers to the violation of the U.S. Constitution that lays at the very heart of the American social contract.

(READ ALSO: The Real Reason President Obama Signed Immigration Order, Amnesty)

“The ability of the president to dispense with laws was specifically considered and unanimously rejected at the Constitutional Convention,” he said. Abbott specifically cited Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution which codified the president’s oath and promise he “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

He said the lawsuit requests the court to force Obama to acknowledge the clear congressional power to enact laws and a limited presidential power that consists only of enforcing laws, “rather than making them up himself.” Abbott said that — despite how a president may feel about a legitimate law — they cannot “trample” the Constitution every time they disagree with one.

The lawsuit raises three arguments, including one that holds Obama violated the “Take Care Clause” of the U.S. Constitution; that the federal government violated rule-making procedures; and that the order will “exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education.”

The third objection is pivotal to establish that Texas, as well as the other states involved in the lawsuit, do in fact have legal standing to bring the case before the court.

Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott fulfilled his promised

US

eric_garner

Eric Garner, right, was selling non-taxed cigarettes on the streets of New York City when police attempted to affect an arrest.

A Staten Island grand jury declined Wednesday to indict a white New York City police officer in connection with the July 17 death of Eric Garner. The grand jury, which consisted of 15 whites and 8 minorities, concluded there was not enough evidence to indict Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo, a 29-year-old, eight-year veteran of the force who faced charges ranging from murder to a lesser offense such as reckless endangerment.

Jonathan Moore, an attorney for the victim’s family, said he is “astonished by the decision.”

Garner, who was stopped on suspicion of selling loose cigarettes, refused to cooperate with police when he was being placed under arrest. Video captured Pantaleo briefly using what appeared to be an illegal chokehold on Garner, a 43-year-old father of six with a lengthy criminal record. Garner, who had health problems, died as a result of cardiac arrest.

In the video Garner can be heard saying, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

However, while the claim has been made that Garner died of the chokehold because he could not breathe, the cause of death was not respiratory failure or suffocation.

President Obama, speaking at the Tribal Nations Conference in Washington after the grand jury’s decision was announced, said many minority communities across the United States feel that law enforcement is not working with them “in a fair way.”

“We are not going to let up until we see a strengthening of the trust and strengthening of the accountability that exists between our communities and our law enforcement,” the president said.

Obama announced a 3-point plan that includes reforming the process by which police forces are supplies with military-grade weapons and equipment, but not in the way many believed.

“In the end, America is going to be left with little more than a federal law enforcement force, rather than the civilian, localized supposed servant-to-the-people-type departments that currently dot our communities,” Cheryl Chumley, author of Police State USA wrote in response to the president’s plan.

“Obama, meanwhile, has seized upon his executive pen once again to issue an emperor-like order that will require local police forces to undergo federally overseen training as a condition of taking Pentagon 1033 equipment,” she added. “It will also require any police department that uses federally supplied gear to provide reports to federal authorities when that equipment is used for significant missions — say, riot controls — and to feed information into a centralized data system that will track the whereabouts of the military supplies.”

Meanwhile, by mid-afternoon, protests began to bubble up around the city. A Twitter hashtag, #ShutItDown, called on demonstrators to protest Wednesday night’s annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan.

Garner’s family has filed a notice that it plans to sue the city for $75 million on the grounds of wrongful death, pre-death pain and suffering and civil rights violation. However, civil suits are difficult to win when a grand jury cannot even find a preponderance of evidence to support the claim.

The New York Post reported. The Rev. Al Sharpton, who is an adviser to the family, has called for a federal probe.

Unfortunately, as is the case with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Sharpton continues to incite the black community by calling for federal investigations that will never amount to anything. The standard of proof for civil rights charges is far higher than a “preponderance of evidence” needed for a grand jury indictment. The Justice Department must prove that the officer held racial animus toward Garner for the crime to be considered racially motivated.

Still, Officer Pantaleo had been stripped of his gun and badge, as well as placed on desk duty as the case was under investigation. It appears it is likely he will remain on modified duty while the NYPD conducts an internal investigation that could result in administrative charges.

New York City’s Police Commissioner William Bratton was asked Sunday if what happened in Ferguson could happen in New York. He said the NYPD has been preparing for months “in multiple ways,” including community meetings, and added that he was more concerned with outside agitators.

A Staten Island grand jury declined Wednesday

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