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Today: 76 articles and 205 comments as of 11:13.
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Gunmen Seize Yemen President's Chief of Staff
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 6: Politix
11 22:11 Bill Clinton [12] 
16 22:58 Hupineger Glomomp7489 [9] 
11 21:11 Lionel Thoth9784 [16] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
7 21:10 DarthVader [13]
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Page 2: WoT Background
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2 22:59 Anguper Hupomosing9418 [9]
6 21:55 Bill Clinton [14]
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4 17:11 Barbara [10]
3 10:04 Raj [7]
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Page 3: Non-WoT
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12 23:32 Sheater Thud2458 [12]
2 12:49 regular joe [4]
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1 07:22 Mike Kozlowski [5]
2 08:14 Procopius2k [4]
4 15:18 Hupineger Glomomp7489 [4]
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8 12:30 g(r)omgoru [4]
2 11:47 Frank G [8]
15 22:46 Hupineger Glomomp7489 [11]
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9 22:13 Bill Clinton [11]
Page 4: Opinion
9 15:56 Elmerert Hupens2660 [7]
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Europe
Networks Ignore John Kerry's Embarrassing James Taylor Stunt in Paris
[NEWSBUSTERS.ORG] On Friday, while all three network morning shows covered Secretary of State John F. I was in Vietnam, you know Kerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a lucky hat, conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
arriving in Gay Paree to offer U.S. condolences following the recent terrorist attacks, none of the broadcasts mentioned one of the most embarrassing moments in American diplomatic history that occurred during the visit Kerry bringing musician James Taylor to a presser to sing "You've Got A Friend" to the French people.
The MSM fights for their friends; sometimes that means not showing you the news instead of showing you the news. Sometimes it means showing the news only to those whom they know in advance will approve, and withholding it from the rest of us...
The bizarre attempt at international damage control following the B.O. regime's failure to have a single top U.S. official attend a anti-terror march in Gay Paree on Sunday played out while the NBC, ABC, and CBS morning shows were on the air. NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell reported the musical incident on Twitter at 8:01 a.m. ET. Later on her 12 p.m. ET MSNBC show, Mitchell referred to the moment as "a somewhat awkward musical make-good."

The morning shows each gave only seconds to Kerry's Gay Paree trip, focusing on him laying wreaths at the sites of the attacks but avoiding his appearance with Taylor.

Only CBS This Morning actually noted that the visit was designed to fix a major misstep by the White House, as co-host Gayle King explained: "[Kerry] arrived in Gay Paree days after the U.S. was blasted for not sending a top official to Sunday's giant unity rally."
Posted by: Fred || 01/18/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [9 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Shamelessly sophomoric. Repugnant behavior, even for Kerry. I thought he might start slow dancing with himself at any moment. Kerry's 'out of arse' apology tour, requires apology.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/18/2015 3:40 Comments || Top||

#2  ...Oh, lawsey, lawsey, lawsey....

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 01/18/2015 7:15 Comments || Top||

#3  "The MSM fights for their friends; sometimes that means not showing you the news instead of showing you the news. Sometimes it means showing the news only to those whom they know in advance will approve, and withholding it from the rest of us..."

Is this not NPR's corporate manifesto and mission statement?

Or, put another way, "All the news that's fit to make the center and right look bad and the left look good".
Posted by: no mo uro || 01/18/2015 8:23 Comments || Top||

#4  "I would normally have insouciance over a James Taylor performance, but this is happening in Paris flown in by the Secretary of State, a way to a appease the French over the snub of last week. It seems like an Onion story but it actually is real. And it was preceded by a hug offered by the Secretary of State to Francois Hollande that Hollande was not quite prepared for," Krauthammer said.

"A British newspaper has already called it Le Hug. It's now immortal,"
Posted by: BrerRabbit || 01/18/2015 8:37 Comments || Top||

#5  Not exactly a rendition of "We will fight them on the beaches".
Posted by: AuburnTom || 01/18/2015 9:43 Comments || Top||

#6  Hell, its barely a fraction of we will rock you.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 01/18/2015 11:55 Comments || Top||

#7  Look at the bright side- at least the SecState didn't try to be "hip" and bring someone like Lonnie Rashid "Common" Lynn, Jr...
Posted by: Pappy || 01/18/2015 12:40 Comments || Top||


#9  I still wonder when James Taylor converted to Islam. That HAD to be the reason he was selected.
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 01/18/2015 14:22 Comments || Top||

#10  Brutally Frank, wins the calliope.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/18/2015 14:50 Comments || Top||

#11  Suitable for framing...

Posted by: Blinky Shert3914 || 01/18/2015 16:52 Comments || Top||

#12  Thanks Blinky, backup is everything!
Posted by: Shipman || 01/18/2015 17:04 Comments || Top||

#13  It must have been an amazing ride for any rational person in the room as this plan was finalized.

Only a true politician could walk out of the room without their mouth agape.
Posted by: Hupineger Glomomp7489 || 01/18/2015 21:19 Comments || Top||

#14  The video is not to be believed - they didn't even do a mic check before he started, and someone had to lean in with a hand mic.
Posted by: KBK || 01/18/2015 22:14 Comments || Top||

#15  Viewed throughout the world at as a quaint (although new) statesmanship wrinkle clearly demonstrating the decline of Empire.

Is it possible to catch alcoholic-induced dementia in a manner to an STD?
Posted by: Hupineger Glomomp7489 || 01/18/2015 22:54 Comments || Top||

#16  er, in a manner similar to an STD.
Posted by: Hupineger Glomomp7489 || 01/18/2015 22:58 Comments || Top||


Government
Champ's State of the Union speech to include $320B tax hike proposal
[Wash Times] Escalating his battle with congressional Republicans, President Obama will propose $320 billion in higher taxes in his State of the Union address, mostly by raising the rate on capital gains and closing tax loopholes for wealthier families, senior administration officials said Saturday.

Mr. Obama also will call on lawmakers to impose a new fee on big banks with more than $50 billion in assets to discourage risky financial investments, a holdover from the Wall Street crisis that is sure to appeal to the president’s liberal base.

The money raised would pay for a variety of the president’s domestic-spending proposals for the middle class, including an initiative for the taxpayergovernment to pay all tuition for community-college studentsstaff salaries. A senior administration official said Mr. Obama intends to make a forceful case in his speech that the economy has recovered from the recession, and he wants “to make sure this prosperity is shared by the middle class.”
Champ knows this will go nowhere in the Congress, but it will provide him a petulance booster shot and an opportunity to blame "greedy republicans."

Posted by: Besoeker || 01/18/2015 03:44 || Comments || Link || [12 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Cause it worked so well at the state level and in France. Pathetic regurgitation of class warfare card, over used like the race card. Orthodoxy over reality, works so well in Venezuela these days. Maybe if you proposed, say, a three tier flat tax with the only deduction for (future tax payers) children, maybe you can get the same effect of the 'rich' paying. Where's the graft and political theater in that?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 01/18/2015 10:00 Comments || Top||

#2  ...mostly by raising the rate on capital gains

Which he's done already; this is the Dem. Pavlov reaction to raising taxes.

...and closing tax loopholes for wealthier families.

"Loopholes" = tax laws passed by Congress. He doesn't even have to do that. Just keep the AMT where it is, lower the threshhold for the NIIT and a few other such tweaks, and there you go.

Six years of the deadest economy I can recall since the early '70's, and he's proposing more. Why not just add in ARRA II and just go completely over the top?
Posted by: Raj || 01/18/2015 10:27 Comments || Top||

#3  Ditto Raj. I can remember the day when banks actually COMPETED for your deposits and accounts. No longer, they're getting all the cheap money they need pushed to them by the giverment.

Giverment now owns the banks, the hospitals, the doctors, the trains, Chrysler, GM, and the schools.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/18/2015 11:39 Comments || Top||

#4  The 30 Year U.S. Treasury bond yield hitting 2.35% means no-one's convinced the economy's going anywhere.
Posted by: Bright Pebbles || 01/18/2015 12:07 Comments || Top||

#5  Even if the proposal goes through, every time taxes are raised on the "Wealthy", enough loopholes are put in to keep congress and their holders from paying too much (since they are all wealthy) and the lion's share of the taxes hit the upper middle class and medium-small businesses.

Exactly according to progressive plans.
Posted by: DarthVader || 01/18/2015 13:33 Comments || Top||

#6  Remember when the Clinton Administration proposed a tax the rich scheme. Then when the details were known it turned out that a taxable income of $150,000 made you rich and oh by the way, if you have a mortgage, you were expected to pay a tax on the estimated rental value of the home.
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 01/18/2015 14:16 Comments || Top||

#7  First abolish the Dept. of Education and fire the bunny inspectors - no pensions for them either. After that we can talk about taxes.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 01/18/2015 16:25 Comments || Top||

#8 
Posted by: Blinky Shert3914 || 01/18/2015 16:58 Comments || Top||

#9  Raj knows too much, I'd watch him.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/18/2015 17:06 Comments || Top||

#10  Richard Fernandez (Belmont Club) writes about this being President Obama's "Picketty moment" here. A useful way to think about it (Mr. Fernandez properly credits the originator), especially when one remembers that France's Hollande just gave up on his version of the idea.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/18/2015 20:44 Comments || Top||

#11  I don't suppose the Trunks will deliver a standing boo when he proposes this nonsense.

It all sounds fine until he defines what rich is and every time the Dems do it, it includes a lot of the middle class.
Posted by: Bill Clinton || 01/18/2015 22:11 Comments || Top||


Wes Pruden: Why the Hilldebeest won’t run for president
[Wash Times] Hillary can'’t win, and that’'s why she won’'t run. She may not know that yet herself, but a lot of Democrats want her because she’'s all they’'ve got. The Republicans are counting on her to run because they think she’'s the candidate they can beat in what looks from here like it could be a Republican year.
Simple reason why she's even entertaining the run (stay with me here, this is long):

The Clinton Foundation.

Bubba and Hildebeast derive their power from their political machine. First that was in Arkansas, then the White House, but now it's the Foundation. When Bill left office one reason Hilde ran for the Senate (other than her greasy, grasping, groping grab for power) was to ensure that she'd be in a position to do favors. When you do favors you get rewarded for doing favors. She sits in the Senate, builds the Foundation, sets up her 'exploratory committee', and she and Bill are very shortly rolling in the dough. Sweet, sweet gig.

But she has to run for Prez both given her own hard-core personality and the need to maximize the favor machine. So she does and gets whacked by the upstart. That's bad for business some, but she's still Senator and out there doing favors. Bill is running around doing favors. Chelsea is learning the ropes, receiving favors and beginning to do a few of her own. It's a family business. Hilde then becomes Secretary of State -- imagine the favors you can do in that job. She did them. Life was good.

Now she's 'retired'. Bill's ability to do favors lessens with every year he's out of office. So how to keep the favor machine rolling along? Of course Hilde plans to run for Prez again. That keeps the money flowing into the Foundation because people pay to hear what the next president might have to say, and more importantly, people pay big to make sure she remembers that they paid big. Nobody pays $200K to listen to a has-been speechify while clutching a walker. You gotta have current swat to get that kind of money. Keep the campaign 'exploratory' committee open and the right people line up.

You can predict the next step, because it was in the news recently. Chelsea. As in, Chelsea, late of NBC news and other cush gigs that were simply favors called in by Mummy, the Chelsea who is fresh from running the Foundation for a while, that Chelsea now is 'exploring' a run for Congress. It's in her blood and more important, it's good for the family enterprise. People on the inside get it -- the favors will continue to come in and go out even as Granny Witch fully retires.

That's why she's running. It's just business.
Lady Macbeth has the resume that makes her plausible, which a lot of pundits and normal other people confuse with “inevitable.” Everybody recognizes her name. She doesn’'t hear the music but she recognizes the words and knows policy, and likes to talk about it. She’s a woman, and that should help with the ladies. (It might hurt, too).

She has had to carry a lot of Bubba’'s baggage, and people usually pity the wronged wife. Nobody is comfortable as the object of pity, but political widows have often exploited it. Political wives, not so much. Hillary has successfully used it, probably because she has thrown the occasional lamp. People like people who fight back.

She has even carried some of Barack Obama’s baggage, and she’'ll have to work hard to avoid sharing the blame for the president’s bad choices. The map of the world is speckled with them.

Against every positive, there’'s two or three negatives. Everyone has a list. Many women like her, some women worship her. Most men despise her. She reminds them of their ex-wives. Life is not fair. Men, a wise man said, are assumed to be competent until they prove otherwise; that was Mr. Obama’'s good fortune in 2008, when nobody looked at him closely. Women are thought to be incompetent until they prove otherwise, as many women in politics and business do every day. Getting credit is not easy.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/18/2015 00:00 || Comments || Link || [16 views] Top|| File under:

#1  This is well done, Besoeker
Posted by: newc || 01/18/2015 0:37 Comments || Top||

#2  I fully concur with the moderator's assessment. She's been AWOL on the entire Charlie Hebdo attack as well as many other current issues. She knows where the leaks in the hull are and she's not stepping on any of them.

"Now she's 'retired'. Bill's ability to do favors lessens with every year he's out of office."

A fact of life in the beltway bubble.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/18/2015 2:41 Comments || Top||

#3  The Clintons = government welfare recipients in a very big way
Posted by: JohnQC || 01/18/2015 8:12 Comments || Top||

#4  The Democratic Party nomination will go to whomever the leadership thinks will be able to most convincingly tell welfare recipients, public employees and pensioners, rent-seeking "private" businesses, grant recipients, and subsidy recipients that if elected, not one thin dime of their income stream will be altered in any way, except perhaps to be increased.

If someone comes along and can convince the DNC leaders they will do this better than Hillary can, then that person will be the nominee.

Yes, it really is that simple.
Posted by: no mo uro || 01/18/2015 8:34 Comments || Top||

#5  That's why she's running. It's just business.

Don Vito Corleone lives!
Posted by: Raj || 01/18/2015 10:16 Comments || Top||

#6  If someone comes along and can convince the DNC leaders they will do this better than Hillary can, then that person will be the nominee.

That would be the fake Indian. Lizzie High Cheekbones knows about big wampum!
Posted by: Raj || 01/18/2015 10:17 Comments || Top||

#7  What Beso said.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 01/18/2015 12:23 Comments || Top||

#8  Granny Clinton is worth 0, the Dems are worth 0 and frankly its because people have had enough of Zero.

Posted by: Blinky Shert3914 || 01/18/2015 16:49 Comments || Top||

#9  Agreed with Doc. Here's how a RINO sees it,

If Bill came to the house on a rainy cold night without cash, I'd get him a blanket, a beer, $50 and a place to sleep.

If Hillary came up the steps in any condition I'd give the dawgs the "go" word, align the cats in fighting position and prepare a sharp ripost.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/18/2015 17:13 Comments || Top||

#10  "align the cats in fighting position"

Dang, Ship - you owe me a new monitor! ;-p
Posted by: Barbara || 01/18/2015 17:16 Comments || Top||

#11  The Democratic party is turning left, so it will be Elisabeth "i make smoking signals" Warren.
Posted by: Lionel Thoth9784 || 01/18/2015 21:11 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
46[untagged]
9Islamic State
8Govt of Pakistan
2Salafists
1al-Qaeda in North Africa
1Commies
1Govt of Iran
1Govt of Iraq
1al-Qaeda in Europe
1Govt of Syria
1Hamas
1Houthis
1al-Qaeda in Arabia
1Jund ul-Khalifa
1al-Qaeda

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Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2015-01-18
  Gunmen Seize Yemen President's Chief of Staff
Sat 2015-01-17
  SSP militant hanged for sectarian killing
Fri 2015-01-16
  US drone strike kills seven in South Waziristan
Thu 2015-01-15
  Burqa banned in China's Xinjiang
Wed 2015-01-14
  Convict in US consulate attack case hanged
Tue 2015-01-13
  Police gun down six would-be bombers in Xinjiang
Mon 2015-01-12
  Drone strike kills 8 insurgents in Nangarhar
Sun 2015-01-11
  Nigeria massacre deadliest in history of Boko Haram: Amnesty
Sat 2015-01-10
  Al-Qaida Member In Yemen Says Group Directed Paris Attack
Fri 2015-01-09
  Charlie Hebdo to go forward with next week's issue
Thu 2015-01-08
  French Police Identify 3 Suspects In Attack That Killed 12
Wed 2015-01-07
  Deadly attack on office of French magazine Charlie Hebdo
Tue 2015-01-06
  Surrender treachery: 3 soldiers killed by suicide bomber at KSA-Iraq border
Mon 2015-01-05
  Hafiz Gul Bahadur group targeted in N Waziristan drone strike
Sun 2015-01-04
  Nawaz puts forward legislation to cover military courts


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