All Kinds of Creepy

Amid the current din over assault weapons and body armor, consider one domestic organization’s fearsome arsenal of military-style equipment.

In the space of eight years, the group amassed a stockpile of pistols, shotguns, and semiautomatic rifles, along with ample supplies of ammunition, liquid explosives, gun scopes, and suppressors. In its cache as well are night-vision goggles, gas cannons, plus armored vests, drones, and surveillance equipment. Between 2006 and 2014, this organization spent nearly $4.8 million to arm itself. Yet its aggressive weapons buildup has drawn almost no public attention. 

Does all this firepower belong to a jihadist terror cell? A right-wing hate group? A vicious urban gang?

None of the above. It is the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, an agency of the US Department of Agriculture, that has built up such a formidable collection of munitions. And far from being an outlier, it is one of dozens of federal agencies that spends lavishly on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/06/25/the-fda-stockpiling-military-weapons-and-not-alone/iGbHhnnkTbsSMnnO23obiI/story.html

What A Tangled Web ...

"For example, at 11:23 p.m. on the night of the attack, Hillary Clinton emailed her daughter, Chelsea, to say, “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Quedalike [sic] group.”

The next morning, she said, “We are working to determine the precise motivations and methods of those who carried out this assault.”

Sound familiar? Of course it does. After the attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando by home-grown terrorists, administration officials made a point of refusing to name the enemy publicly — in this case, ISIS, which had not yet come into existence at the time of Benghazi.

On the day following Orlando, the president himself said we had yet to discern “the precise motivations of the killer,” even though everyone knew by that point he had called 911 to swear his allegiance to ISIS while he was killing people."

"All these misdirections and prevarications have taken their toll.

An unambiguous response to a terrorist attack on an American facility in 2012 would have prevented the creation of the Benghazi committee in the first place.

Due to the Benghazi committee’s efforts to secure the facts of the case, the world came to learn about Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of public email — an irresponsible and reckless act that more than anything else jeopardizes her presidential ambitions."

http://nypost.com/2016/06/28/benghazi-lies-were-just-standard-procedure-under-obama/

They Think We're Stupid and They Can Get Away with Anything. They Seem To Be Right

It is only when — due to their own ineptitude and recklessness — they find their own personal fannies in a pinch that they become truly engaged. And then they become supreme maestros of fantastic coverups designed to skirt (no pun intended, Bubba) their own responsibility and lay waste to anyone and everyone who dares to pursue the truth or question the Clintons or their motives.

Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Tripoli at the time of the organized terrorist attack in Benghazi, watched in horror as the Clinton machine kicked into hyper-speed whitewashing the attack in which four Americans were killed.

“My jaw hit the floor as I watched this,” Hicks told House investigators, describing UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s wall-to-wall appearances on Sunday political shows.

“I have been a professional diplomat for 22 years,” he said. “I have never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as on that day.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/28/hillary-clintons-history-of-lying-is-a-warning-to-/

It still baffles me that they couldn't say "It was a terrorist attack in a dangerous country and we badly misjudged the risk for our State Department personnel there."  They could have said much less than that even and not been dis-honest in the face of their failure to give adequate protection to those folks in Benghazi.

Watching a Train Crash?

Mr. Picciani has also tried to minimize concerns over the mosquito-borne Zika virus, declaring that all the proper preventive measures are in place. That hasn’t stopped athletes like Jason Day, the world’s No. 1 ranked golfer, from announcing that they’re skipping the Olympics because of Zika. In an open letter last month, 150 prominent doctors, bioethicists and scientists from around the world asked for the Olympics to be moved or postponed because of the Zika epidemic.

In Brazil, these concerns are generally greeted with scorn. First, August is the middle of winter here, so the weather will be drier and cooler, meaning fewer mosquitoes. Second — and more important — the virus seems like a relatively minor problem: According to one calculation, in Rio a woman is more than 10 times more likely to be raped than catch Zika. (Men are more likely to be shot to death.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/brazils-olympic-catastrophe.html?_r=1

Energy Numbers, Fascinating

What I am talking about is about taking the strategic steps necessary to making the United States the energy dominant force on the planet within five to 10 years by using our super-abundance of fossil fuel resources.  Thanks to the amazing made-in-America technological breakthroughs of the last decade -- including horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing to get at shale oil and gas reserves -- the U.S. now has at least 150 years of oil and natural gas resources on top of 500 years of coal.

Consider what has happened in less than a decade with oil production.  ‎In 2008 the U.S. produced about 5 million barrels a day. We hit 8.7 million ‎in 2014 and could double that by 2025.

http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/happy-american-energy-independence-day/

We Must Blame Guns, Not Prohibition

The elephant in the room the writer dares not even speak - where'd these people get all this money to pay for guns? Why do they want them? Why do gangs have turf to defend? These are all created by prohibition, just like they were with the prior attempt at prohibition.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-chicago-murders-shootings-july-fourth-orlando-0703-jm-20160701-story.html

Can We Revoke Politicians' 1st Amendment Rights?

The joke is on us, why does anyone listen to anything these windbags say?

Mrs. Clinton referred to the video more than once in her public statements. At 10:08 p.m. on the night of the attack, she issued a public statement on Benghazi: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” She repeated the point the next day at the State Department. 

That’s not what she was saying in private. On the night of the attack, at 6:49 p.m. Washington time, Mrs. Clinton called Libya’s president to say the attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi was planned and that an Islamist terror group had claimed responsibility. A few hours later, she emailed her daughter that “an Al Qaeda-like group” was responsible.

The next afternoon Mrs. Clinton was even more categorical. In a phone call with the Egyptian Prime Minister, she said the Benghazi attack “had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack—not a protest.” She added that the Benghazi attackers were believed affiliated with al Qaeda.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/clintons-benghazi-cover-story-1467155750