Voter Fraud

Its no secret that after this mid-term election, Obama will do executive amnesty for illegals, assuring the Democrats a majority for the forseeable future and turning the U.S. into a one-party country.  That is unless American politicians, especially Republicans, get their heads out of their asses and do something aobut it.  Voter ID should have been one of the issues in the forefront of political discourse. But no, the issue will get lip service from now until Tuesday, then be put to rest until the next election.  Here are some articles about voter fraud in the current election. Keep in mind these are states with early voting.

Massive Non-Citizen Voting Uncovered in Maryland

Posted By Bryan Preston On October 29, 2014 @ 11:45 pm In Election Fraud,News,Politics |

An election integrity watchdog group is suing the state of Maryland, alleging that it has discovered massive and ongoing fraudulent voting by non-U.S. citizens in one county. But because of the way that the non-citizens are able to cast votes in elections, the fraud is likely happening in every single county and subdivision across the state. The group believes that the illegal voting has been happening for years.

The group, Virginia Voters Alliance, says that it compared how voters in Frederick County filled out jury duty statements compared with their voting records. The group’s investigation found that thousands of people in Frederick County who stated that they are not U.S. citizens on jury duty forms went on to cast votes in elections. Either they failed to tell the truth when they were summoned for jury duty, or they cast illegal votes. Both are crimes. The same group previously found that about 40,000 people are registered to vote in both Virginia and Maryland.

It is a federal crime to cast votes if you are not legally eligible to vote. Non-citizens, whether in the country legally or not, are prohibited from voting in most local and all state and federal elections. Yet the VVA investigation found that hundreds of non-citizens have been voting in Frederick County, Maryland. One in seven Maryland residents are non-U.S. citizens.

“The lawsuit is the equivalent of the lookout spotting the iceberg ahead of the Titanic,” state Del. Pat McDonough told the Tatler. He added that the group’s investigation found a voter fraud “smoking gun.”

Maryland state law makes it easier for non-citizens, both those present legally and those in the country against the law, to vote. Maryland issues drivers licenses to legal and illegal aliens. Driver’s licenses in turn make it easier under the Motor Voter law to register to vote. Maryland also offers copious taxpayer-funded social programs to non-citizens in the state.

The group filed suit in Baltimore’s U.S. District Court on Friday. They are suing the Frederick County Board of Elections and the Maryland State Board of Elections.

Del. Pat McDonough (R-Baltimore and Harford Counties) detailed the alleged fraud in a Maryland press conference today. He is calling for a special state prosecutor because the fraud may be taking place statewide, with significant impact on Maryland elections. Maryland currently holds 10 electoral votes in presidential elections. McDonough is also proposing legislation including voter ID to close the loopholes that he says non-citizens are using to cast votes.
In a statement, Del. McDonough says:

There are frequent allegations in America and Maryland about the existence of voter fraud. In the case I am presenting today, there is documentation and a track record. The numbers and facts from the records in Frederick County are the tip of the iceberg. When these numbers are multiplied by including the other subdivisions in Maryland, the potential number is alarming and could change the outcome of a close statewide election.

Even more dangerous is the probability of many local elections that are decided by a few votes could be affected. All 188 members of the Maryland General Assembly are standing for re-election as well as many local office holders.

The important election that we have coming up demands that citizens’ votes are not diluted or cancelled by non-citizens who are not legally permitted to vote. The sanctity of the ballot box, because of the flawed system we are pointing out, has already been violated in previous elections.
The purpose of the lawsuit is to mandate those responsible for the administration of the election process will remove the non-citizens from the final voting count.

The purpose of the investigation by the special prosecutor is to penetrate more deeply statewide and determine why this fraud or any other related violation was allowed to occur.

The purpose of the legislation is to plug the massive loophole in current law which permitted these fraudulent practices to take place.

Maryland is a Democratic stronghold especially around its larger cities, but the governor’s race there is tightening as Republican Larry Hogan gains ground. Illegal votes could tip the balance if the legal vote is close enough on election day. “What if Hogan loses by 500 votes or 1000 votes?” McDonough asked.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is expected to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016. Del. McDonough noted that the fraud uncovered by VVA occurred on O’Malley’s watch.
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NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.com             

October 30, 2014 10:00 AM

Non-Citizens Are Voting

James O’Keefe documents the problem in North Carolina, where the Senate race is close.

By John Fund

Could non-citizen voting be a problem in next week’s elections, and perhaps even swing some very close elections?

A new study by two Old Dominion University professors, based on survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, indicated that 6.4 percent of all non-citizens voted illegally in the 2008 presidential election, and 2.2 percent in the 2010 midterms. Given that 80 percent of non-citizens lean Democratic, they cite Al Franken ’s 312-vote win in the 2008 Minnesota U.S. Senate race as one likely tipped by non-citizen voting. As a senator, Franken cast the 60th vote needed to make Obamacare law.

North Carolina features one of the closest Senate races in the country this year, between Democratic incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican Thom Tillis. So what guerrilla filmmaker James O’Keefe, the man who has uncovered voter irregularities in states ranging from Colorado to New Hampshire, has learned in North Carolina is disturbing. This month, North Carolina officials found at least 145 illegal aliens, still in the country thanks to the Obama administration’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, registered to vote. Hundreds of other non-citizens may be on the rolls.

A voter-registration card is routinely issued without any identification check, and undocumented workers can use it for many purposes, including obtaining a driver’s license and qualifying for a job. And if a non-citizen has a voter-registration card, there are plenty of campaign operatives who will encourage him or her to vote illegally.

O’Keefe had a Brazilian-born immigrant investigator pose as someone who wanted to vote but was not a citizen. Greg Amick, the campaign manager for the Democrat running for sheriff in Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), was only too happy to help.

Greg Amick: Here’s a couple of things you can do. You do not have to have your driver’s license, but do you have any sort of identification?
Project Veritas investigator: But I do have my driver’s license.
Amick: Oh, you do. Show ’em that and you’re good.
PV: But the only problem, you know, I don’t want to vote if I’m not legal. I think that’s going to be a problem. I’m not sure.
Amick: It won’t be, it shouldn’t be an issue at all.
PV: No?
Amick: As long as you are registered to vote, you’ll be fine.

But North Carolina officials shouldn’t be “fine” with Amick, who appears to be afoul of a state law making it a felony “for any person, knowing that a person is not a citizen of the United States, to instruct or coerce that person to register to vote or to vote.”

The anything-goes attitude towards non-citizen voting crosses party lines. A campaign worker for the Republican running against Amick’s candidate for sheriff even called her boss before telling the O’Keefe investigator that it was for fine for non-citizens to vote: “Welcome aboard.”

Martin Kelly, whose son is running as a Democrat for superior-court judge in Mecklenburg, was blasé when asked whether non-citizens could vote. Kelly: “If you registered . . . [shrugs shoulders]. All they can do is say no. They can’t do anything else.”

Hans von Spakovsky, my co-author on a book we wrote on voter fraud in 2012, was in Charlotte on Monday for an NPR town hall on voting issues. “The local audience seemed skeptical that anyone in their state would be willing to commit fraud despite prior incidents,” he told me. “The O’Keefe video shows just how naïve they were.”

It’s no wonder that the two Old Dominion professors concluded that non-citizen votes may have been responsible for Obama’s 2008 victory in North Carolina. “Obama won the state by 14,177 votes, so a turnout by 5.1 percent of North Carolina’s adult non-citizens would have provided this victory margin.”

The authors’ paper is consistent with other credible reports of non-citizen voting. For example, Colorado’s Republican secretary of state, Scott Gessler, unveiled a study in 2011 showing that almost 5,000 illegal aliens cast votes in the U.S. Senate election in that state in 2010.

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period in one of the 94 current U.S. district courts were non-citizens.

In 2012, a local NBC station in Fort Myers, Fla., found that at least 100 individuals in one county had been excused from jury duty because they were not citizens but were registered to vote. Hinako Dennett, who is not a citizen, told the station that she voted “every year.”

A 1996 congressional race in California may have been stolen by non-citizen voting. Democrat Loretta Sanchez won by only 979 votes, and an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight turned up 624 invalid ballots cast by non-citizens who were on federal immigration records, along with 124 improper absentee ballots. The committee found “circumstantial” evidence of 196 additional non-citizen votes that it did not include in its tally. Its investigation could not determine the number of illegal-alien votes that might have been cast: “If there is a significant number of ‘documented aliens’ in INS records and on the Orange County voter registration rolls, how many illegal or undocumented aliens may be registered to vote in Orange County?”

An accurate assessment of the magnitude of non-citizen voting is difficult. There is no systematic check of voter-registration rolls by states to find non-citizens, and the relevant federal agencies refuse — in direct violation of federal law — to cooperate with those few state election officials who attempt to verify citizenship status.

In declining to cooperate with a request by Maryland for information on the citizenship status of registered voters, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service mistakenly declared that the agency could not release that data because “it is important to safeguard the confidentiality of each legal immigrant.” One result of this policy: In 2004, a guilty verdict in a murder trial in Maryland was jeopardized because a non-citizen was discovered on the jury, which had been drawn from local voter rolls. Maryland’s frustrated elections administrator complained, “There is no way of checking. . . . We have no access to any information about who is in the United States, legally or otherwise.”

Some states have tried to take action. Kansas and Arizona have put in place new commonsense proof-of-citizenship requirements for registration to prevent illegal voting. But activist groups such as the League of Women Voters and Common Cause routinely challenge such measures in the courts.

To demand compliance with our laws — all of our laws — requires no more of an alien than we demand of any citizen. It is a violation of both state and federal law for immigrants who are not citizens to vote. The violations effectively disenfranchise legitimate voters by diluting their votes. We can show respect for the rights of those within our borders and at the same time prevent people from violating our voting laws either through willful intent or because they were led astray by others.
— John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for NRO and co-author, with Hans von Spakovsky, of Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk.

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http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/29/la-raza-promotes-washington-post-guide-on-where-people-can-vote-without-an-id/

La Raza Promotes Washington Post Guide On Where People Can Vote Without An ID
Posted By Patrick Howley On 10:02 AM 10/29/2014 In | No Comments

The pro-amnesty Hispanic activist organization the National Council of La Raza helpfully promoted a Washington Post article explaining which states people can vote in without having to use a photo ID.

“Voter ID laws are at-issue across the country, with newly Republican-controlled legislatures having passed them in numerous states after the 2010 election,” explained The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake. “Most states still request some form of ID, but don’t require it. Another 20 states don’t require identification. In case you’re wondering where your state is at in all of this, a helpful (sic) graphic from the Post’s graphics team.”

So who ended up using the Post’s helpful graphic? The country’s foremost pro-amnesty Hispanic immigrant organization.

The Chicago chapter of Asian Americans Advancing Justice tweeted Blake’s article with the message, “Reminder — #Illinois does NOT require #voterID to cast a ballot,” along with the pro-Democrat hashtag #TurnOutForWhat. The tweet was helpfully retweeted by the National Council of La Raza.

CDC, Ebola, and Ebama

Why does the CDC get so much respect? The CDC director, Dr. Tom Frieden, has been talking out of both sides of his mouth during the current Ebola crisis. This used to be an organization that, unlike other government agencies, was generally immune to partisan politics and was well-respected as a public health entity by the citizenry. Now, under Frieden's leadership, my respect for the organization has deteriorated and I don't trust them anymore.  Ebama has screwed this up too.  The CDD tells me that Ebola can only be contracted when you come in contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. And by the say, they are only contagious when they are showing symptoms.  I call bullshit on both assertions.  The science behind Ebola is incomplete and suspect, in my opinion, and I believe an overabundance of caution is warranted.

Yet the Ebama administration will not take common sense steps, like preventing flights from West Africa to enter the country.  Potential Ebola carriers like that idiot woman in New England and the infected doctor that wandered around New York City should be forcibly quarantined. They are just selfish pricks who think they're better than everyone else.  If we are going to quarrantine U.S. soldiers returning from West Africa, then we should quarantine civilians as well.

http://nypost.com/2014/10/29/cdc-admits-droplets-from-a-sneeze-could-spread-ebola/

CDC admits droplets from a sneeze could spread Ebola

By Bob Fredericks

Ebola is a lot easier to catch than health officials have admitted — and can be contracted by contact with a doorknob contaminated by a sneeze from an infected person an hour or more before, experts told The Post Tuesday.

“If you are sniffling and sneezing, you produce microorganisms that can get on stuff in a room. If people touch them, they could be” infected, said Dr. Meryl Nass, of the Institute for Public Accuracy in Washington, DC.

Nass pointed to a poster the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention quietly released on its Web site saying the deadly virus can be spread through “droplets.”

“Droplet spread happens when germs traveling inside droplets that are coughed or sneezed from a sick person enter the eyes, nose or mouth of another person,” the poster states.

Nass slammed the contradiction.

“The CDC said it doesn’t spread at all by air, then Friday they came out with this poster,” she said. “They admit that these particles or droplets may land on objects such as doorknobs and that Ebola can be transmitted that way.”

Dr. Rossi Hassad, a professor of epidemiology at Mercy College, said droplets could remain active for up to a day.

“A shorter duration for dry surfaces like a table or doorknob, and longer durations in a moist, damp environment,” Hassad said.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

Executive Amnesty

Sessions: 'The World Has Turned Upside Down'

Daniel Halper

October 30, 2014 1:17 PM

Senator Jeff Sessions will soon release this statement in response to a report in the Wall Street Journal that details President Obama's plans to unilaterally implement amnesty.

"The Wall Street Journal confirmed today that the President is planning to issue a massive unilateral executive amnesty after the election.
"In its report, the WSJ certifies that this executive amnesty would provide work permits for illegal immigrants—taking jobs directly from struggling Americans.
"Based on the USCIS contract bid and statements from USCIS employees, we know this executive immigration order is likely to be broader in scope than anyone has imagined.
"Earlier this week, President Obama’s former head of Homeland Security revealed that she overrode resistance from administration lawyers and law enforcement agents in implementing the President’s earlier unlawful amnesty and work authorization program for illegal immigrants 30 and under. This was an open admission by one of the most senior people in government of violating one’s oath of office in order to accomplish a nakedly political aim.
"The President is assuming for himself the sole and absolute power to decide who can enter, work, live, and claim benefits in the United States. He has exempted virtually every group in the world from America’s immigration laws: people who enter before a certain age, people related to people who enter before a certain age, adults traveling with minors, minors traveling with adults, illegal immigrants who are not convicted of serious crimes, illegal workers who are convicted of serious crimes but not enough serious crimes, almost anyone who shows up the border and demands asylum, the millions who overstay their visas, and, as was recently exposed, illegal immigrants with serious criminal histories. The list continues to grow.
"A nation creates borders and laws to protect its own citizens. What about their needs?
"The President is systemically stripping away the immigration protections to which every single American worker and their family is entitled. He doesn’t care how this impacts Americans’ jobs, wages, schools, tax bills, hospitals, police departments, or communities.
"But it gets worse still. The WSJ reports that the President is ‘expected to benefit businesses that use large numbers of legal immigrants, such as technology companies.’ Those changes include measures to massively expand the number of foreign workers for IT companies—measures aggressively lobbied for by IT giants like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Yet we have more than 11 million Americans with STEM degrees who don’t have jobs in these fields. Rutgers professor Hal Salzman documented that two-thirds of all new IT jobs are being filled by foreign workers. From 2000 through today, a period of record legal immigration, all net gains in employment among the working-age have gone entirely to immigrant workers.
"And now, in order to help open borders billionaires, President Obama is going to deny millions of Americans their shot at entering the middle class and a better life.
"The world has turned upside down. Instead of serving the interests of the American people, the policies of President Obama and every Senate Democrat serve the needs of special interests and global CEOs who fail to understand the duty a nation owes to its own people. But the citizens of this country still hold the power, and through their voice, they can turn the country right-side again."

Obama's Deadly Ebola Failure-Rush Limbaugh Transcript

Obama's Deadly Ebola Failure
October 15, 2014

Windows Media

 

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I was just telling the staff here, ladies and gentlemen, I have never felt happier, I've never felt better about being a hermit, about being a recluse. Man, oh man, I thought rampant incompetence was taking place, but even I had no idea how bad it is. No, I don't think it's peaked yet. Sadly, I do not.

Greetings. It's Rush Limbaugh. These the EIB Network. We're happy to have you here. It's a thrill and delight to be with you. It always is. The telephone number, if you want to be on the program, is 1-800-282-2882. And the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com. '
Now, there's a lot to do every day, and I can open the program the same way every day by telling you I can't get it all in even if I try for three hours. This may be one of those days. I mean, we're literally loaded. I've got four or five things here that all would qualify as being the top story that I would lead with. Ebola has to be it.
 
BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You probably have heard by now the second medical worker at the Dallas hospital has tested positive for Ebola. And, ladies and gentlemen, the newest Ebola patient flew Frontier Airlines the day before her diagnosis. Not Air Africa. Not Air Liberia not Air Nigeria. Not Air Sierra Leone, but Frontier Airlines.

"The second Dallas health care worker who contracted the Ebola virus was on a flight the day before her symptoms," according to the wizards at the Centers for Disease Control. It was Frontier Airlines, flight 1143, Cleveland to Dallas. The CDC is asking all 132 passengers who were on the flight to call the CDC phone number. Those 132 passengers will be monitored for symptoms and interviewed about the flight.

According to the crew, the healthcare worker showed no symptoms. Wait a minute. Wait just a minute! The director of the CDC says that if somebody doesn't show symptoms, you can't get it. Obama said it's not coming here. And even if it does, we are perfectly equipped to handle it. We're not. And it has. It was brought here. We brought it here.

What are we dealing with here? What is the point of all this? The whole story of this outbreak hinges on a few things that the government and the Drive-Bys have tried very, very hard to hammer into truth. One of those things is in the unlikely event anyone gets it, we've got protocols in place to isolate and handle this. No, apparently we don't. And it's only contagious if you show symptoms.
The second healthcare worker who tested positive for Ebola last night flew by air October 13th, the day before she reported symptoms, said the CDC. Frontier Airlines Flight 1143, Cleveland to Dallas. The CDC is asking all 132 passengers who were on the flight to call them. Passengers will be monitored for symptoms and interviewed about the flight. According to the flight crew -- I guess if you like your flight crew you can keep your flight crew -- according to the crew, the healthcare worker showed no Ebola symptoms during Flight 1143.

Well, now, look, the CDC said you can't catch this if you aren't showing any symptoms. So why do they want to talk to the other passengers? If you can't get the disease from somebody who has got the virus but isn't showing symptoms, if they have to be showing symptoms, and she wasn't while on the Frontier flight, then why do they want to talk to the other passengers? And how about the people in the security line with her or at the restaurant in the airport, wherever she was, or outside with the skycaps. Or in the ladies' room. I'm sorry, folks, I didn't know. I assumed.

A friend of mine today sent me a note about this, said, "Yeah, second victim, got on a commercial flight." I wrote back and said, "What's commercial?" Just teasing. Her cab driver, whatever, everyone she came into contact with. How did she get there? It can't happen. We were told it can't happen. Now, I don't know how many people believe these people. That's another thing. I mean, you see the CDC guy on TV. This is a dangerous thing. People have an implicit trust in government. Doesn't matter who is running it. And these people are just -- I mean, this is glaring incompetence.

We've got people who have no business being in the positions they're in, from Obama on down. No business whatsoever. Frieden has no business being there. He has no business being the Centers for Disease Control director. Has no clue. It's patently obvious. There were basically three things that the government and the media tried to hammer into us to believe as the truth. In the unlikely event anybody gets it we've got protocols in place to isolate and handle it. Well, the nurses have blown that out of the water. The nurses involved in all these hospitals have blown everything the CDC director has said out of the water.

They said it's only contagious if you show symptoms. Hello, passenger, Frontier Airlines, and it can only be passed through bodily fluids, not through the air. Then why do they want to talk to these hundred passengers? Did they all touch her? The entire credibility of the US government requires all of these things to be true. They assured us that these things were all true.

This CDC director continues to say some of the most nonsensical things about containing this disease in Africa, while at the same time saying that we can't. In the same sentence, he will say we've got to contain it in Africa, but any effort to contain it in Africa, it's unfair and it's biased or whatever the hell his cockamamie brain tells him it is. It's just confusing as it can be. The entire credibility of the US government requires all three of these things to be true and none of them are.
You don't need the flight from Africa. Now you've gotta ban flights to Dallas, apparently. If you read between the lines on this second medical worker at the Dallas hospital tested positive for Ebola, if you read between the lines it looks like they're suggesting that this person must have failed to follow a different protocol from what the first nurse is supposed to have failed to follow, which is pretty amazing since we still don't know what protocol Nurse Pham failed to follow. But they dumped on her, if you remember. They blamed her for not following protocol, and we don't know what protocol the second nurse violated here.

And I've just received word -- this is big -- Obama has cancelled a fund raiser. Those never get cancelled. Not even Benghazi cancelled a fundraiser. Nothing cancels fundraisers. But Obama has cancelled a fundraising trip to hold a meeting on Ebola. The optics must really be bad here, folks, because it's all about the optics. It's all about the buzz and the PR. It's all about the election. And now the media, "Will Obama canceling his fundraising trip hurt him in the election?" That will be the media take on this.

On top of all that, folks, we're now being told by the nurse's union in Dallas, there were no CDC protocols for the nurses to follow when Thomas Duncan showed up in the ER. Now stop and think of that for just a second. The Ebola outbreak in Africa began in the early spring, March or April. It's not a secret. It isn't a mystery. And as we got into the summer, it really started claiming lives in great numbers. It was well known how bad this outbreak was. It was well known that there wasn't a cure. It was well known that the death rate was being expressed by experts, if there are any anymore, as between 50 and 90 percent.

We were told we got protocols in place. We have the situation handled. Everything okay. And now the nurses union in Dallas says that there weren't any protocols from the CDC for the nurses to follow in the ER when Thomas Duncan showed up. They had to wing it. And winging it involved wrapping medical tape around their necks four or five times, to keep their skin from being exposed to Duncan's bodily fluids because of the gaps in their protective clothing.

See, they're not wearing hazmat gear. You'll see in the media that the nurses are wearing full gear, whatever. It's not. It's gowns, it's gloves, and it's masks and shields. But they're not airtight. Besides that, people in full hazmat gear did contract the disease in Africa. Now, on top of all of that, can you imagine the nurses wrapping medical tape around their necks four or five times, on their own, they just decided to. There weren't any protocols, they're saying.

On top of that, the nurses union is also claiming that Mr. Duncan sat in the ER for hours like everybody else who goes to the ER sits there for hours. The nurses union claims that Thomas Duncan sat in the ER for hours. That was a long time before he was put in isolation. And they say that he probably had contact with at least seven other patients while he was sitting in the ER waiting room waiting to be dealt with. And on top of that -- we keep piling things on here -- the nurses who treated Mr. Duncan went on to treat other patients. There was no isolation. There was no quarantine.
I remember praising these health workers and everybody was complaining and whining and moaning, I said, "Folks, we've got to trust they know what they're doing. They're treating these patients. They know full well." They were not given protocols. The nurses who treated Duncan went on to treat other patients, and we were assured by the CDC for weeks that every hospital in the nation was prepared to handle Ebola cases and they weren't.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now I want to go through three things here again. First, I want to draw a contrast with you. The whole story of this outbreak, the entire story of this Ebola outbreak hinges on three things we've been told by the government and their sycophant slavish supporters in the media, as true.
One, in the unlikely event that anybody gets it we have protocols in place to isolate and handle it.
Two, it's only contagious if you show symptoms.

And three, it can only be passed through bodily fluids, not through the air.

All of that is wrong. All of that has been demonstrated to be not just wrong, dangerously wrong, incompetently dangerously wrong. And now I want to take you back, remember Hurricane Katrina and remember the cacophony of whining and moaning and accusations the left was making against Bush for botching the recovery effort in Katrina and leaving people alone to die?
Where is anything like that? There isn't. They're all circling the wagons around Obama. They're circling the wagons around themselves and pretty soon we're gonna get a fall guy, probably Frieden, to take the hit for all of this. That will probably be the outgrowth of the meeting that Obama is having.

But I want to ask you a question: Ask yourself which is harder, organizing a relief effort to transport across an entire continent, everything from soup to nuts to tens of thousands of people, to bottled water, to food, to temporary housing, coordinating that effort down to New Orleans to handle the homeless, the jobless, the destitute. Or, stopping Liberians from flying into the country. Which of those two is harder? All we had to do was keep flights from Africa from landing in the United States. That's all they had to do. And they wouldn't do it.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The flight crew, ladies and gentlemen, on Frontier Airlines 1143 Cleveland to Dallas said that the health care worker showed no Ebola symptoms. How do they know? Look at what we believe. They say, "No, they didn't see any symptoms," and we go, "Oh, okay! The flight crew didn't see any symptoms." People just throw things out, and you've gotta catch yourself, folks, because it's easy to believe

You want to believe these things. I'm not saying the flight crew has ulterior motives. I just don't know what expertise they've got. All these efforts to reassure people are fine, I understand not wanting to cause a panic, but for crying out loud, if there was ever a case for the mayor for Realville, this is it. How does the flight crew know the patient had no symptoms?

Even if she wasn't exhibiting symptoms, then what does that make of what Frieden told us, the CDC director? "Well you can't get this disease if the patient isn't showing symptoms. It's not transferable. It's not contagious." Really? Well the flight crew says she wasn't showing symptoms. What do they know? What does the flight crew know that the CDC director does not know? And they probably do know more!

This guy is just a typical, touchy-feely lib that wants to be judged on his intentions, like they all do. He wants to be judged on his intentions his big heart and how much he cares and so forth, as if that gets things done. These people on the left believe just saying something accomplishes something. Proclaiming something makes it so. Giving a speech changes the world, lowers the sea levels or what have you.

I'll tell you what makes people think that is just pure arrogance. Arrogance and conceit.

The idea that they're better, the idea that they're smarter, the idea that they care more, the idea that their intentions are more honorable and so forth, and the idea that their political opponents are racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes? All of that stuff is relevant here. The Democrat Party unfairly benefits from an image of all of this compassion and all of this caring and all these good intentions, and they haven't earned it.

What they've earned is distrust. Mistrust. What they've earned is the realization that they're not competent. We don't have the best and brightest and the smartest in these key positions, and not just here. It's true in the judiciary, it's true at all these government bureaucracies, and every day the news is filled with evidence of this. Let's go back to the nurses union claiming that Mr. Duncan sat in the ER for hours.

How many have been to the ER? I've been to the ER. I haven't ever really gone but I've had to take people. But I don't know why they call it "emergency." Nobody's acting like there's any emergency an any ER room that I've been to, and I'm not being critical of medical people here. I'm just making an observation. Nobody is in a hurry unless somebody comes in who is not breathing.
If somebody comes in on a stretcher, bam! They do something. Walk in there and you have a genuine emergency, and it's get in line and wait like a doctor's office. That's the point. You get in line. You sit and you wait with a whole lot of other people doing the same thing. Except when Duncan went in there, we had an Ebola patient sitting around and he was exhibiting symptoms.
But who knew?

Nobody was told.

The nurses didn't even know. The nurses weren't given the protocols. After they treated him the first time, they sent him home. They didn't know what they were dealing with. Now, we can be critical and say, "Were they not paying attention to the news?" But these people, these places are very regimented. Protocols. Policies. The manual. The book. That's how you do things. Step outside of that and you get reprimanded.

Take matters into your own hands?

"Ah, ah, ah, ah!" The protocol supersedes, dominates everything. And in a situation where you've got fear of violating protocol, you're going to adhere to the protocol. In this case, it was a protocol that didn't exist and it wasn't applicable. It was a long time before Duncan was put in isolation. He probably had contact with at least seven other patients and who knows how many other people in the ER.

On top of that, the nurses who treated Duncan went on to treat other patients. Bear in mind during all of this that we were assured by the CDC for weeks that every hospital in the country was prepared to handle the Ebola cases. Obama told us. The CDC director told us. Flight crews may as well have told us. Now, I still maintain, like I just said, contrasting Katrina.

Remember that? Here you had a nationwide mobilization effort to get people, supplies, repairs, temporary electricity. Any number of things needed to be done in New Orleans after Katrina went through. It was a nationwide mobilization effort, and remember how the left -- and I'm sorry, folks, it is political. I don't care.

The sooner everybody realizes this and stops chewing my face off because, it would be better off. This is all political. The motivation for the people in charge here is politics, politics, politics. First, second, third. Because it always, always, always is. The substance of whatever they're dealing with is way down on the list. The politics, the ramifications. The opportunity that politics presents.
"Never let a crisis go to waste," as Rahm Emanuel said. Here it is. I still maintain that it would have been much easier to just ban flights from Africa than what Bush had to deal with during Katrina. Yet these same people, they're praising themselves for being so smart, doing the right thing, having so much compassion and care and love for their fellow man and so forth.
They just couldn't wait to hammer Bush and browbeat everybody else that they wanted to accuse of totally botching Katrina, and they were throwing charges of racism around. Bush didn't care because there were black people in New Orleans, and he especially didn't care because more black people leaving New Orleans and going to Houston would be better for the Republicans because that would mean fewer blacks voting in Louisiana.

That's the way they were thinking. That's what they were charging. Those were the accusations they were leveling at Bush. All the while the Bush administration was leading a nationwide mobilizing effort to get supplies, repairs, assistance into New Orleans. They'd told them to get out of the city. Meanwhile, School Bus Nagin is over there blameless. That governor, Kathleen Blanco? She was blameless.

Those two were the culprits in this for not being prepared. Want to talk about not prepared? How about all the school buses. I don't want to focus on Katrina. But my focus is the same people leveling all these baseless, centrist, mean-spirited, extreme political charges at Bush and his regime with administration Katrina. How hard would it have been to ban airplanes from landing in this country from Africa?

That's all they had to do, folks!

That is the first failure in their precious protocol was not closing our airports to people from Ebola countries, and we know why. "That would have been really mean, because we couldn't turn our backs on Liberia, especially because of slavery! Yes, because we had slavery! Liberia was set up so people who had been slaves could escape the horrors of this country and set up in their own paradise in Liberia, and we can never turn our backs on them."

That's why we didn't shut down flights from Ebola countries in Africa. So far we have at least two more people who are at risk of dying because we refused to take that single precaution, and we refused to take that single precaution all because it wouldn't look nice and it wouldn't seem fair. You see, it's just not fair that they have Ebola in Africa and we don't. That's not fair.

No, I'm not saying that they define fairness as us then getting Ebola. No, no, no. Don't misunderstand. I'm saying their preoccupation with diversity, equality and fairness and all this other stuff, leads them to not taking correct protective measures for the United States of America. Pure and simple. Whatever happened to that old argument? What if a Republican had come out and said: "If stopping flights from west Africa might just save one child..."?

Remember the Democrats used to say that? Remember there was a presidential debate in '96, Bob Dole and Clinton? It was Dole, right? He was the nominee. Right. Dole actually mounted a very substantive charge at Clinton based on his catting around, his immorality, lying under oath and all that sort of stuff. Clinton's reply was to smile and to say (impression): "No attack, especially on me, ever fed a hungry child."

The audience and media started crying. "Oh my God, he's so good!" Well, what if somebody had stood up and said, "If stopping flights from Africa might save just one child..."? I don't know. The Centers for Disease Control? If you didn't know, if you just landed here from Mars you might want to call them the Centers for Disease Redistribution. Because that's what's happening: CDR.

CNN is currently gob smacked (meaning they're incredulous) at the news that the latest Ebola victim was allowed to fly to Cleveland the day before he or she was diagnosed. They just don't understand this. CDC is now asking anyone on that flight Frontier 1143 to get a hold of them immediately. But we don't need to close the airports. No, no, no, no! You can't get it from somebody not showing symptoms.

Then why do they want to talk to them? Why do they want to screen them? Here's part of a CDC statement: "The health care worker exhibited no signs or symptoms of illness while on Flight 1143 according to the crew." Did the crew take her temperature? Did the crew feel her forehead?
Why would they have noticed her out of 132 passengers? There were 132 people on that plane. How did the crew know to focus on this patient if she wasn't showing symptoms? (interruption) TSA protocols, really? You mean focus on Grammy? Is that what it is? Here's more from the CDC statement:

"The health care worker exhibited no signs or symptoms of illness while on Flight 1143, according to the crew." I got nothing against the crew, but what did they do? Did they just eyeball it and say, "Hey, she looks perfectly healthy to me"? Do they have one of those laser guns that you zap somebody with that supposedly can tell their temperature? Did they do that?
Have to take another timeout, my friends. Be patient. Courage.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay. Let's go to the phones, because if I don't, it's going to be a while. I just have to discipline myself here to get to the phones get something in here. It's only the polite thing to do. We invite them to call and they've been patiently waiting here.
We'll start in a town named after me, no doubt, Rushville Ohio. This is Sam. It's great to have you, Sam.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. We were here before you.
RUSH: Well, that's just the way it is then.
CALLER: Just the way it is. My question is, in the infinite wisdom of the CDC, why did they not tell these people that worked in that hospital not to travel until they know for sure?
RUSH: Great question. Just add that one to the list.
CALLER: Yes, sir.
RUSH: These are the kind of things we thought they were going to be doing. Monitoring all of these people. This is a nurse in there who treated Duncan, was involved, we thought they were going to be monitoring. For crying out loud, we quarantined the NBC medical person, Nancy Snyderman, because she violated the voluntary quarantine to go to some leftist soup Nazi place and get a bowl of soup. So we found her, we quarantined her. By the way, the media is all hipped up about that.
It might be time, in addition to phone calls, to do some sound bites. Let's start with number four, Mike Rawlings, he is the mayor of Dallas. This was from this morning at Texas Presbyterian Hospital during a press conference.

RAWLINGS: While Dallas is anxious about this and with this news this morning the anxiety level goes up a level, we are not fearful. And I'm pleased and proud of the citizens that I talk to day in and day out, knowing that there's hope if we take care and do what is right in these details. It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better.

RUSH: Well, we have some reassuring news from the mayor of Dallas. I thought you would want to hear that. It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better. Well, yeah, Ebola does run out of victims at some point. Here's Daniel Varga. Dr. Daniel Varga, Texas Health Resources Chief Clinical Officer at the same press conference, Texas Presbyterian Hospital this morning.

VARGA: I want to thank the mayor, the judge, the CDC, state health officials and the Dallas County Health Department for their continued partnership as we manage this unprecedented crisis. As others have said this morning, today's development, while concerning and unfortunate, is continued evidence that our monitoring program is working. We're a hospital that may have done some things different with the benefit of what we know today, but makes no mistake, no one wants to get this right more than our hospital.

RUSH: So they're working on it. And they're doing what they can do. And they're doing what they have to do. They're dealing with public reaction to all this the best they can. But everybody's doing this on the fly. That's the takeaway here, folks. Dr. Frieden of the CDC was going on and on about how precious the protocols are, and we've got them in place. Yes, our protocols are being followed and we've got our manual here and protocol here, protocol there, all the protocols. Everybody's winging it, is what's happening.

If there are protocols, nobody can find them to follow them. If there are protocols, nobody knows what they are. And they could be changing. Yes, they are changing. Frieden even said they're going to change the protocols, yesterday.

The BBC has decided to ban guests from Ebola countries. "The BBC will ban guests from its buildings if they have Ebola symptoms as staff admitted they fear they will catch it. Star broadcaster Fiona Bruce, 50, has revealed that staff including make-up artists are fearful because they have physical contact with guests from high risk countries.

The newsreader said their fears are 'not unreasonable' and admitted she would refuse to report from an Ebola-stricken region."

The news schmooze, notwithstanding, the hell with the news. I'm not going there to report and we're not letting any Ebola people into our building. The BBC. The Beeb, a bunch of leftists.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The White House has announced Obama is going to have a statement, a statement at 3:30 this afternoon after his meeting on Ebola. He's cancelled a fundraising trip, which is a major cancellation for Obama to cancel a fundraiser. He didn't cancel a fundraising trip for Benghazi! He got on a plane for Vegas (after telling everybody not to go there).

He got on a plane for Vegas and another fundraiser, and that's all he's been doing lately. But he's cancelled a fundraising trip to have an Ebola meeting. The Ebola meeting is happening right now and there's going to be a statement he's going to make after that meeting at 3:30, which means 4:00 because he's always late, and at 4:00 (4:07, actually) is Game 4 of the Orioles-Royals American League Championship Series.

I got a note from sometime host of this show Douglas Urbanski. He said, "You're absolutely right. 'Never let a crisis go to waste,' is applicable here. But there's a part two. Don't forget part two." He's dead on right about this. "It was Rahm Emanuel who famously said, 'Never let a crisis go to waste,' meaning, 'Whatever crisis we're going to politicize the damn thing and use it to our advantage!'
"But he also said -- this is part two -- the reason you never let a crisis go to waste is because you get to do things you otherwise would not be able to do, and that is the real key to never letting a crisis go to waste, and we've got a crisis. We've got people who like to utilize crises for political purposes because they get to do things they otherwise would not be able to do. Just a little heads-up."
Also some breaking news: One of the Dallas health worker Ebola patients will be transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta for treatment. Emory is one of those four hospitals with a real isolation unit. There are only four in the country, and they have a grand total of 11 beds. Did you know that? We've got four hospitals with real isolation units -- and in those four hospitals, a grand total of 11 beds.

Now, Mr. Duncan wasn't taken there. Thomas Duncan wasn't taken to Emory. No, no! Thomas Duncan, they left him in Dallas. (interruption) "Why?" Well, that's for others to answer, Mr. Snerdley, and I'm sure the Reverend Jackson will at some point. Don't you? Aren't you? Aren't you fairly certain that the Reverend Jackson will have an answer to why is this worker being taken to Emory but Thomas Duncan was not? (interruption)
No, it has nothing to do with having a better health plan. Nobody has a better health plan.

END TRANSCRIPT

Gay Marriage

The Supreme Court has decided not to hear any gay marriage cases. What bugs me is that gay marriage has been legalized by judicial activism that has over-ridden the will of the people in the states that have chosen not to legalize it. While perusing a message board where the issue was being discussed, and recognizing that readers here do not have the context of that conversation, a poster with the handle "Nightwatch" had the best comment I've seen in a while:

This whole mess illustrates why I am a conservative and not a libertarian with an utter lack of moral integrity.

This is a War on Religion in utter disregard and contempt of the US Constitution, and a complete trampling of the rule of law. 

How this was and is being done should concern even those in favor of same-sex depravity; by the wholesale disregard of the legislative process and over-ride of voter amendments to state constitutions by activist judges inventing new legal theories without any basis in our Constitution. No where in our founding documents is "marriage" listed. Anything not listed in the Constitution as a federal responsibility is reserved to the states and the people - and the Feds just overrode both the states and the people. 

Color me thoroughly disgusted with the Courts, our Feds, and our libertine libertarians who have betrayed our Constitution with some pretty inventive mental gymnastics followed by utterly unconvincing declarations of having won the argument. You all sound like (spit) liberals.

Boom!  I agree completely.

My problem with the gay community is their activism. It wasn't good enough for them to have state-recogniged Civil Unions, with all the accompanying legal rights, tax benefits, etc.  No, they had to take it one step further and attack the institution of marriage.  That's where I get pissed.

How did our world become a place where .5% to, at most, 1.8% of the population got so much political clout?  It doesn't make sense.

Article on the Global Warming Hoax

New York Magazine: How to Psychologically Fool Conservatives Into Accepting Global Warming

By P.J. Gladnick | October 2, 2014 | 10:53 AM EDT

New York magazine poses the problem of how to fool conservatives into buying the global warming beliefs. The answer provided by writer Jesse Singal is to psychologically manipulate them via long term "framing interventions."

If you think the tone of the article is dripping with condescension toward the "conservative yahoos" you would be right. One failed attempt at such obvious manipulation is to call it "climate change" instead of global warming since there has been no global warming for about the past 14 years. Of course, Singal himself has proved that he is not up to psychological manipulation speed since lately they have been calling it "climate disruption" since it was pointed out that climate always changes. Here is the author noting how conservatives were notably absent from the recent Peoples Climate March which was chock full of signs attacking capitalism and promoting socialism:

Last week’s People's Climate March drew 400,000 people onto the streets of Manhattan and a great deal of international attention to a subject of dire urgency. But some were skeptical about the event’s overall significance. “The march slogan was, ‘to change everything, we need everyone,’ which is telling, because it won’t change everything, because it didn’t include everyone,” wrote David Roberts of Grist. “Specifically, it won’t change American politics because it didn’t include conservatives.” True enough.
If there weren’t such a stark divide between American conservatives and almost everyone else on the question of the existence and importance of climate change — a divide that can approach 40 points on some polling questions — the political situation would be very different. So if any progress on climate change is going to be made through the American political system — apart from executive orders by Democratic presidents — it is going to have to somehow involve convincing a lot of conservatives that yes, climate change is a threat to civilization.
How do you do that? The answer has more to do with psychology than politics.

Time to put conservatives on the couch to analyze why they don't join the loony left in denouncing capitalism as the cause of global warm... uh, I mean climate change:

In a larger context, social scientists have shown in laboratory settings that there are ways to discuss climate change that nudge conservatives toward recognizing the issue. Research is proceeding along a few different tracks. One of them involves moral foundations theory, a hot idea in political psychology that basically argues that people holding different political beliefs arrive at those beliefs because they have different moral values (even if there’s plenty of overlap). Liberals tend to be more moved by the idea of innocent people being harmed than conservatives, for example, while conservatives are more likely to react to notions of disgust (some of the conservative rhetoric over immigration reflects this difference).

Got that? Conservatives are a bunch of uncaring yahoos so psychology must be used to manipulate them beyond their ignorance. And now we analyze those simpleton conservatives as lab rats:

In a study they published in Psychological Science in 2013, Willer and a colleague, the Stanford social psychologist Matthew Feinberg, tested the effectiveness of framing environmental issues in a way that takes into account conservatives’ moral foundations. After completing a questionnaire that included items about their political beliefs, respondents were asked to read one of three excerpts...
Another promising route that researchers are exploring involves the concept of “system justification.” Put simply, system justification arises from the deep-seated psychological need for humans to feel like the broad systems they are a part of are working correctly.

As a result of the psychological experiments on the conservative lab rats, it was discovered that "framing interventions" are only effective if they are long term:

Willer was realistic in describing the limitations of grafting language from moral foundations theory and system justification onto climate-change messages. “It’s unlikely that such a short, small framing intervention would have a long, sustained effect — that’s very unlikely,” said Willer. “The idea, we hope, is that application of these techniques in a longer-term more committed campaign would be effective and would stick.”

Of course, no input from the white coats on how to use "framing interventions" to cure those liberals, such as author Naomi Klein as well as at least half of the participants at the People's Climate March, of the notion that capitalism is the cause and socialism is the answer for global warming which morphed into climate change now revised to climate disruption.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/pj-gladnick/2014/10/02/new-york-magazine-how-psychologically-fool-conservatives-accepting?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=marketing&utm_term=facebook&utm_content=facebook&utm_campaign=trick-conservatives-globalwarming


UPDATE 2/23/17

February 13, 2017

Report: Government agency refuses to discipline scientists caught cooking the books

By Rick Moran

And Democrats wonder why there are so many skeptics when it comes to conclusions reached by government scientists?

The inspector general for the National Science Foundation issued a report showing that at least 23 scientists applying for taxpayer-funded grants either plagiarized the text or manipulated data but were not barred from receiving grant money in the future.

Washington Free Beacon:

The inspector general for the National Science Foundation identified at least 23 instances of plagiarism in proposals, NSF-funded research, and agency publications in 2015 and 2016. It found at least eight instances of data manipulation and fabrication in those years. NSF officials disregarded recommended sanctions against some of the scientists and academics implicated in those findings. Though many were temporarily barred from receiving additional federal funding, nearly all will be eligible for taxpayer support and official roles in NSF-funded research in the future.
In one investigation that concluded in Nov. 2015, the IG found that an NSF-supported researcher had "knowingly plagiarized text into five NSF proposals."
"These actions were a significant departure from the standards of the research community, and therefore constituted research misconduct," according to a report on the investigation's findings.
The IG recommended to NSF that the agency officially classify the plagiarism as research misconduct, require the researcher to undergo "a course in proper research methods," certify that all research over the subsequent three years was not plagiarized, and bar the researcher from serving as an NSF consultant, advisor, or peer-reviewer.
The NSF accepted most of the recommendations, but it chose not to bar the researcher from working for NSF in an official capacity, as the IG had proposed. The researcher would be free to continue advising, consulting, and peer-reviewing taxpayer-funded research.
In another investigation, which concluded in Aug. 2016, the IG found that a university professor supported by an NSF grant "falsified the status of a total of seven manuscripts in four NSF annual grant reports and four NSF proposals" and "engaged in a total of twelve acts of research misconduct in a continuous pattern spanning several years."
"The professor's fabrication of data and falsification of manuscripts' status were intentional acts, fit a pattern of research misconduct, and were a significant departure from accepted practices," the IG concluded.
The NSF agreed, pursuant to the IG's recommendations, to debar the professor for one year and require a course on proper research methods.
However, "contrary to our recommendations," the IG wrote, the agency did not require the professor to submit certifications of data integrity after that period of debarment and did not ban him from serving as an NSF advisor, peer-reviewer, or consultant going forward.

If any of these scientists had tried to pull a stunt like that when applying for a grant from a private source, he'd be shown the door – permanently.  Frankly, there is no incentive in government to punish cheating, largely because of the cliquish nature of the scientific community that milks the government for research money.  Review panels are made up of scientists who may very well be applying for a grant themselves.  Today's cheater might be tomorrow's judge of who gets grant money.  This lack of desire to discipline cheaters is probably more common than one scientific agency.
Tens of billions of tax dollars are doled out every year in grants to study everything from climate change to nutrition to education – anything federal agencies fund.  There would be billions in savings to be had if adequate oversight were exercised.  Unfortunately, "business as usual" is a government catchphrase and difficult to fight.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/02/report_government_agency_refuses_to_discipline_scientists_caught_cooking_the_books.html

Funny Sign

Tall hos even more fun.

One of Many Reasons Why Obama Sucks

Obama's priority: Not protecting Americans

Posted By Thomas Sowell On 10/06/2014 @ 5:17 pm

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is both a danger in itself and a wake-up call for Americans – about President Obama, about the institutions of this country and, most important, about ourselves.

There was a time when an outbreak of a deadly disease overseas would bring virtually unanimous agreement that our top priority should be to keep it overseas. Yet Barack Obama has refused to bar entry to the United States by people from countries where the Ebola epidemic rages, as Britain has done.

The reason? Refusing to let people with Ebola enter the United States would conflict with the goal of fighting the disease. In other words, the safety of the American people takes second place to the goal of helping people overseas.

As if to emphasize his priorities, President Obama has ordered thousands of American troops to go into Ebola-stricken Liberia, disregarding the dangers to those troops and to other Americans when the troops return.

What does this say about Obama?

At a minimum, it suggests that he takes his conception of himself as a citizen of the world more seriously than he takes his role as president of the United States. At worst, he may consider

Americans’ interests expendable in the grand scheme of things internationally. If so, this would explain a lot of his foreign policy disasters around the world, which seem inexplicable otherwise.
Those critics who have been citing Barack Obama’s foreign policy fiascoes and disasters as evidence that he is incompetent may be overlooking the possibility that he has different priorities than the protection of the American people and America’s interests as a nation.

This is a monstrous possibility. But no one familiar with the history of the 20th century should consider monstrous possibilities as things to dismiss automatically. Nor should anyone who has followed Barack Obama’s behavior over his lifetime, and the values that behavior reveals.

A few critics who, early on, sensed something un-American, if not anti-American, in Barack Obama succumbed to the idea that he was not a native-born citizen. That claim blew up in their faces.
Nor was birthplace crucial anyway. People born overseas have put their lives on the line to defend America, and scientists who escaped from Europe in the 1930s played a major role in creating the nuclear bomb that made the United States a superpower. Conversely, the country’s most notorious traitor – Benedict Arnold – was born on American soil.

Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, that led to President Obama’s foreign-policy disasters around the world – with the crowning disaster of all, a nuclear Iran, looming on the horizon – it cannot be a simple lack of knowledge or experience. Various former members of the Obama administration are telling the same story, of information and advice from knowledgeable and experienced officials being ignored by this vain and headstrong man.

Back in the 18th century, Edmund Burke pointed out that, whatever the institutions of government, most of the outcomes of what it does “must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state.”

What did the American voters know about the prudence and uprightness of this untried man they elected president, as a result of his glib rhetoric and his racial symbolism? It is not just bad luck when a reckless gamble turns out disastrously.

No one knows at this point how big the Ebola danger may turn out to be. But what we do know is that official reassurances about this and other dangers have become worthless.

The erosion of constitutional government over the years has become, under the Obama administration, a deluge of arbitrary edicts and defiant lawlessness protected by a grossly politicized Department of Justice.

It may be time to consider reorganizing the institutions of government, so that high officials who try to reassure the public about medical crises are not officials who serve “at the pleasure of the president.” Nor should the attorney general, whose duty is to enforce the laws, be part of an administration whose law-breakers the Justice Department can protect from prosecution.

Gazans Speak Out: Hamas War Crimes

by Mudar Zahran

September 19, 2014 at 5:00 am

gatestoneinstitute.org

"If Hamas does not like you for any reason all they have to do now is say you are a Mossad agent and kill you."— A., a Fatah member in Gaza.

"Hamas wanted us butchered so it could win the media war against Israel showing our dead children on TV and then get money from Qatar." — T., former Hamas Ministry officer.

"They would fire rockets and then run away quickly, leaving us to face Israeli bombs for what they did." — D., Gazan journalist.

"Hamas imposed a curfew: anyone walking out in the street was shot. That way people had to stay in their homes, even if they were about to get bombed. Hamas held the whole Gazanpopulation as a human shield."— K., graduate student

"The Israeli army allows supplies to come in and Hamas steals them. It seems even the Israelis care for us more than Hamas." — E., first-aid volunteer.

"We are under Hamas occupation, and if you ask most of us, we would rather be under Israeli occupation… We miss the days when we were able to work inside Israel and make good money. We miss the security and calm Israel provided when it was here." — S., graduate of an American university, former Hamas sympathizer.

While the world's media has been blaming Israel for the death ofGazan civilians during Operation Protective Edge, this correspondent decided to speak with Gazans themselves to hear what they had to say.

They spoke of Hamas atrocities and war crimes implicating Hamas in the civilian deaths of its own people.

Although Gazans, fearful of Hamas's revenge against them, were afraid to speak to the media, friends in the West Bank offered introductions to relatives in Gaza. One, a renownedGazan academic, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that as soon as someone talked to a Western journalist, he was immediately questioned by Hamas and accused of "communicating with the Mossad". "Hamas makes sure that the average Gazan will not talk to Western journalists -- or actually any journalists at all," he said, continuing: 

"Hamas does not want the truth about Gaza to come out. Hamas terrorizes and kills us just like Daesh [ISIS] terrorizes kills Iraqis. Hamas is a dictatorship that kills us. The Gazans you see praising Hamas on TV are either Hamas members or too afraid to speak against Hamas. Few foreign [Western] journalists were probably able to report what Gazans think of Hamas."

  

When asked what Gazans did think of Hamas, he said:

"The same as Iraqis thought of Saddam before he was toppled. He still won by 90-something percent in the presidential elections. If Hamas falls today in Gaza, people here will do what Iraqis did to Saddam's statue after he fell. But even though Western journalists may not have been able to speak freely withGazans, they still need a story to send to their editor by the end of the day. So it is just easier and safer for them to stick to the official line." "What was that," I asked: "'Blame Israel'?"

"I don't know about that," he said. "More like, 'Never blame Hamas!'. Hamas was making a 'statement': Opposing Hamas Means Death. Hamas is a dictatorship that kills us."

M., a journalist, confirmed his view. "I do not believe any of the people Hamas killed in the last weeks were Israeli spies," he said. "Hamas has killed many people for criticizing it, and claimed they were traitors working for Israel during the war."

That conversation took place four weeks before Hamas killed 21 alleged "Israeli Mossad agents."

D, a store owner, said:

"There were two major protests against Hamas during the third week of the war. When Hamas fighters opened fire at the protesters in the Bait Hanoun area and the Shijaiya, five were killed instantly. I saw that with my own eyes. Many were injured. A doctor at Shifa hospital told me that 35 were killed at both protests. He went and saw their bodies at the morgue."

  

To verify those reports, I spoke to a second Gazan academic, who holds a PhD. from a Western university, who stated:

"Hamas did kill protesters, no doubt about that. But we could not confirm how many were actually killed. If I have to guess, the number was more than reported. I am confident that not all of the 21 men Hamas killed on August 22 were collaborating with Israel. Hamas killed those men because it was weakened by Israel's attacks and felt endangered. So it went on a 'Salem Witch-Hunt.' They arrested everyone who opposed them and had to make a few examples to scare people from standing againstHamas. Hamas's tactic worked. Now Gazans are afraid to talk against Hamas even in front of their own family members.Gazans are probably afraid to criticize Hamas even in their sleep!"

As already reported by the award-winning journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh, Hamas killed one of its leaders, Ayman Taha, and blamed Israel for it.

Asked about Abu Toameh's report, S., a Gazan political activist said:

"Taha was already in Hamas's jail before Israeli operations started. Hamas imprisoned him and tortured him because he was critical of its radical policies. He had warned Hamas not to cooperate with Qatar and Iran. Eye-witnesses said they saw Hamas militants bring him alive into the yard of Shifa hospital in Gaza and shoot him dead. They kept mutilating his body in front of viewers and little children and left it on the hospital's yard for a few hours before allowing the staff to take it to the morgue."

A., a Fatah member in Gaza, spoke over Skype -- fearful that Hamas was intercepting phone lines:

"Even before the Israeli operation began, Hamas rounded up 400 of our members and other political-opposition figures. I would not be surprised if Hamas kills them all and then claims they were killed in an Israeli bombing. Hamas already beheaded a man known for opposing its views on the 22nd day of the war, then reported on its Facebook page that he was caught sending intelligence information to Israel. If Hamas does not like you for any reason, all they have to do now is claim you are a Mossadagent and kill you."

S. a medical worker, said:

"The Israeli army sends warnings to people [Gazans] to evacuate buildings before an attack. The Israelis either call or send a text message. Sometimes they call several times to make sure everyone has been evacuated. Hamas's strict policy, though, was not to allow us to evacuate. Many people got killed, locked inside their homes by Hamas militants. Hamas's official Al-Quds TV regularly issued warnings to Gazans not to evacuate their homes. Hamas militants would block the exits to the places residents were asked to evacuate. In the Shijaiya area, people received warnings from the Israelis and tried to evacuate the area, but Hamas militants blocked the exits and ordered people to return to their homes. Some of the people had no choice but to run towards the Israelis and ask for protection for their families. Hamas shot some of those people as they were running; the rest were forced to return to their homes and get bombed. This is how the Shijaiya massacre happened. More than 100 people were killed."

Another Gazan journalist, D., said:

"Hamas fired rockets from next to homes. Hamas was running from one home to another. Hamas lied when it claimed it was shooting from non-populated areas. To make things even worse for us, Hamas would fire from the balconies of homes and try to drag the Israelis into door-to-door battles and street-to-street fights -- a death sentence for all the civilians here. They would fire rockets and then run away quickly, leaving us to face Israeli bombs for what they did. They are cowards. If Hamas militants are not afraid of dying, why do they run after they fire rockets from our homes? Why don't they stay and die with us? Are they afraid to die and go to heaven? Isn't that what they claim they wish?"

Hamas boasted that Palestinian civilians were killed while Hamas's terrorists remained alive, hiding in their underground bunkers and tunnels. (Image source: Hamas video screenshot)

K, another graduate student at an Egyptian university who had gone to Gaza to see his family but was unable to leave after the war started, said on July 22:

"When people stopped listening to Hamas orders not to evacuate and began leaving their homes anyway, Hamas imposed a curfew: anyone walking out in the street was shot without being asked any questions. That way Hamas made sure people had to stay in their homes even if they were about to get bombed. God will ask Hamas on judgment day for those killers' blood."

I asked him if Hamas used people as "human shields." He said: "Hamas held the entire Gazan population as a human shield. My answer to you is yes."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the press on September 6 that Hamas had killed 120 Fatah members who broke the curfew.

T., a former Hamas Ministry officer, said: "Hamas fires from civilian areas for a good reason: The Israelis call the civilians and give them ten minutes to evacuate. This gives Hamas time to fire another rocket and run away."

Why, I asked, did Hamas not allow people to evacuate?

"Some people say Hamas wants civilians killed in order to gain global sympathy, but I believe this is not the main reason. I think the reason is that if all the people were allowed to evacuate their homes, they all would have ended up in a certain area in Gaza. If that happened, it would have made the rest of Gaza empty of civilians, and the Israelis would have been able to hit Hamas without worrying about civilians in all those empty areas. Hamas wanted civilians all over the place to confuse the Israelis and make their operations more difficult."

S., a Gazan businessman, said:

"The cease-fire Hamas agreed to carried the same conditions the Egyptians and the Israelis offered during the second week of the war -- after only 160 Gazans had been killed. Why did Hamas have to wait until 2,200 were killed, and then accept the very same offer? Hamas has blackmailed the world with the killedGazan civilians to make itself look like a freedom fighter against an evil Israel. Hamas showed Gazans that it could not care less for their blood and their children. And why should Hamas care? Its leaders are either in mansions in Qatar or villas in Jordan.Mashaal [Khaled Mashaal, the head of Hamas] is in Qatar, Mohammad Nazzal is in Jordan and Abu Marzouk is in Cairo: why should they want a ceasefire? Everyone here in Gaza is wondering why Hamas rejected so many ceasefires. Hamas knows it will not defeat Israel's army, so why did it continue fighting? The answer is simple: Hamas wanted us butchered so it could win the media war against Israel by showing our dead children on TV and then get money from Qatar."

I asked S. if other Gazans shared his view. He said,

"Gazans are not stupid. We are now telling Hamas: Either you bring victory and liberate Palestine as you claim, or simply leave Gaza and maybe give it back to the Palestinian Authority or even Israel -- or even Egypt! We have had enough of Hamas's hallucinations and promises that never come true."

O., a researcher who lives in Gaza Strip's second largest city, Khan Younis, said:

"Most of us see Hamas as too radical and too stubborn, especially the way it was refusing ceasefires offered from Israel. They even refused a 24-hour ceasefire during the third week of the war. They denied us even 24 hours of quiet to bury the dead. Even some Hamas loyalists here are asking why Hamas refused several ceasefires and made us suffer. Hamas did this on purpose because Hamas is a slave to Qatar. Qatar wants the war to go on because it is a terrorist Islamist country, and Hamas wants more of us dead to appease its masters in Qatar. Let's be realistic, Hamas is in a bad shape now. Israel destroyed most tunnels; that is why Hamas had to join the ceasefire talks in Cairo. Were the Israelis' hits to Hamas not so painful, Hamas would not be negotiating in the first place. At the same time, Hamas is asking Israel for the impossible, like an open seaport and an airport. Israel would never allow that, and Hamas knows this, but Hamas might just be buying time by throwing out these demands. You have to keep in mind that Hamas is not concerned with our conditions as Gazans. After all it is our children who are dying, not the children of Hamas's leaders. Hamas is weak now, and I believe it lost most of its tunnels. Israel's Iron Dome destroyed so many of their rockets before they landed in Israel; that is why Hamas is being ruthless with Gazans. When Hamas locks people inside homes about to be bombed, when it kills people protesting against it and when it executes alleged traitors without even a trail, these are war crimes."

A report by the Washington Institute, released in July, also reports that most Gazans are not happy with Hamas's governance.

"It is true," said A., a teacher. "I do not know a single Gazanwho is pro-Hamas at the moment, except for those on its payroll. Hamas maintains its control here through a military dictatorship, just like North Korea. People will be killed if they protest. EvenGazans living abroad fear to criticize Hamas because Hamas will take revenge on their relatives who are here."

M., a Gazan television producer, stated:

"Of course I am against Israel and I want it out of Gaza and out of the West Bank, but I still believe Hamas is more of a threat to the Palestinian people. Hamas took over Gaza by killing us [Palestinians] and throwing our young men from high buildings. That is what Hamas is about: murder and power. Hamas is also delusional. Its leaders refused the Egyptian cease-fire proposal, they got hit hard by the Israelis, and then when the war stopped, they declared victory. Even the prophet Muhammad, peace beupon him, admitted it when he lost Ohoud war [A war in which pagan Arabs defeated Muhammad's army and in which Muhammad was almost killed]. Hamas lives in its own fantasy world. Hamas wanted the dead bodies to make Israel look ugly. The media has exerted a huge pressure on Israel for every deadGazan. In that sense, Hamas's tactic has worked, and we have seen more Western tolerance of Hamas, especially in Europe. Of course Hamas doesn't care if we all die so long as it achieves its goals. We are not going to accept living under Hamas any longer. Even if there is calm, and the firing stops, we are going to still be under Hamas's mercy, where all basic living standards are considered luxuries. Hamas is just buying time by going to the ceasefire talks. Hamas does not want a ceasefire."

When asked why that was, he said, "Ask Qatar's Sheikh, not me. He is Hamas's god who gives them billions and tells them what to do. May God curse Qatar!"

A first-aid volunteer, E., said that Hamas militants had confiscated 150 truckloads of humanitarian supplies the day before. He said the supplies were donated by charities in the West Bank and that their delivery was facilitated by the IDF. He commented: "This theft angers all of us [Gazans]. The Israeli army allows supplies to come in, and Hamas steals them. It seems even the Israelis care for us more than Hamas."

Another aid worker, A., confirmed that Hamas steals the humanitarian supplies given to Gaza. "They [Hamas] take most of it, sell it to us, and just give us the stuff they do not want."

A Gazan mosque's imam said that the most precious aid item Hamas stole was water. "Gazans are thirsty and Hamas is stealing the water bottles provided to us for free and selling them at 20 Israeli shekels [approximately $5] for the big bottle and 10 Israeli shekels for the small one."

H., who did not want his profession to be mentioned, lost one of his legs in an Israeli raid. I asked him who he thought was responsible for his injury. He stated:

"Hamas was. My father received a text-message from the Israeli army warning him that our area was going to be bombed, and Hamas prevented us from leaving. They said there was a curfew. A curfew, can you believe that? I swear to God, we will take revenge on Hamas. I swear to God I will stand on my other foot and fight against Hamas. Even if Israel leaves them alone, we will not. What had my two-year-old nephew done to be killed under the rubble of our home so Khaled Mashaal [Hamas leader based in Qatar] could be happy? We want change at any cost. I am not claiming the Israelis are innocent, but I know Hamas has fired rockets from every residential spot in Gaza. If that was not hiding behind civilians, then it was stupidity and recklessness. Nobody who is normal, in his right mind, in Gaza supports Hamas. People have lost parents, children and friends, and have nothing more to lose. I believe if given the chance and the weapons, they will stand against Hamas."

K., a Gazan school teacher agreed:

"When Hamas starts caring for our children we will start caring for Hamas. Hamas has one policy, to attack Israel; so Israel attacks back, and gets us killed and Hamas then gets more money from Arabs and Erdogan [Turkey's president]. My son has autism; he cannot handle the sounds of rockets and bombs landing. Why would I support Hamas, which causes this suffering to him? Gazans have had enough of Hamas, any claims that we love Hamas is just propaganda. A recent poll indicates that most of us support Hamas; this is not true, except maybe in the West Bank where they have not yet lived under Hamas rule. I cannot accuse the polling center of fabricating the poll, but my safest explanation for the result is that Gazanspolled are too afraid to give their true opinions of Hamas. Hamas watches everything here. Most Gazans now have to deal with the aftermath of the war. Almost 300,000 Gazans are now homeless and Hamas is not providing them with anything. So why would they or their extended families have any love for Hamas? Would there be any common sense to that? MostGazans are angry at Hamas, and most of us would love to see them replaced by any other force."

Despite all Hamas has done to Gazans, they do not seem to hold much love -- or less hatred -- for Israel.

S., a graduate of an American university and a former Hamas sympathizer, warned:

"Don't get fooled. Gazans are not in love with Israel yet, but they do not want to fight Israel anymore. We do not want to embrace Israel; we just want to live normally without wars. We want to live and work in Israel like we used to. We are under Hamas occupation, and if you ask most of us, we would rather be under Israeli occupation, instead. I would welcome Netanyahu to rule Gaza so long as Hamas leaves, and I think most Gazans feel the same way. We miss the days when we were able to work inside Israel and make good money, we miss the security and calm Israel provided when it was here, but politically speaking, we just think of it as the better of two evils: Israel and Hamas."

M., who lost his 11 year old daughter in an Israeli bombing said: "I will not forgive either Hamas or Israel for losing my daughter. If you ask me if I hate Israelis, my answer would be no, but do I love them? Of course not. There is too much blood between us, but I can only hope someday we both will move on and heal our wounds."

When asked what he would do if he were in Israel's place, being attacked non-stop by Hamas, he responded: "I do not care if both Israel and Gaza burn in hell."

F., a Gazan physician, said:

"I wish Israel never existed, but as it does not seem to be going away, I would rather be working in Israel like I used to before the first Intifada, not fighting it. Hamas sympathizers, apologists and appeasers should be ashamed of themselves for supporting a terrorist organization that has butchered civilians, Israeli and Palestinian. Apparently a group of Israelis is working on bringing Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to trial in the International Criminal Court. But perhaps the world should consider putting all the Hamas leaders on trial for crimes against the Gazan people."