Boots on the Ground 01-09-14

Global warming expedition emits forest worth of carbon

Climate scientists and tourists on a botched expedition to study global warming will have to plant an entire forest to offset their carbon footprint.
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition is finally safe and sound after being stuck in ice around the south pole for more than a week. The expedition was rescued by Chinese and Australian crews, who got the 52 climate scientists and tourists off the ship by helicopter. They were transported to the Aurora Australis, an Australian ice breaker.
The voyage and rescue emitted lots of carbon dioxide through the burning of fossil fuel — which climate scientists on the expedition believe is the main driver of global warming — so the expedition has promised to plant about 800 kauri trees in New Zealand to offset its contribution to global warming, reports APNZ.

Hawaiian Neighbors Tell Michelle Obama to GO HOME

Michelle Obama’s twice-extended vacation in Hawaii is beginning to anger area residents who feel her presence is a burden.

The first lady recently decided to stay in Hawaii this week to celebrate her 50^th birthday with Oprah Winfrey at the media mogul’s 12-bedroom mansion on Maui.


But Oprah’s neighbors aren’t excited about Michelle’s visit. The burdensome security checkpoints along neighboring roads are keeping customers away from local small business and many business owners are complaining they can’t even stock their shelves because supply trucks are barred from traveling on roads near Oprah’s mansion.

The owners of two local businesses, Goble’s Flower Farm and Grandma’s Maui Coffee, told reporters that sales are significantly lower this week and employees can’t even get to the establishments because of the road blocks.

Local residents complained they weren’t even notified in advance about the road closures.

Needless to say, neighbors are telling Michelle Obama to leave Hawaii and GO HOME.

Has Michelle overstayed her welcome? Tell us!

RELATED:

Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Michelle to Hang with Oprah in Hawaii

Michelle Obama Departs for Hawaii Early with Price-Tag of More than $63,000

Aliens already walk among us  

and are refusing to share their technology until we change our warring and polluting ways, claims former Canadian defense minister.

• Former Canadian defense minister Paul Hellyer, 90, declared on Russian TV on Saturday that there are 80 different species of aliens
• He said aliens have 'been visiting our planet for thousands of years' and are rather unimpressed with how we live
• Hellyer described several types of aliens including 'Tall Whites' who are working with the U.S. air force in Nevada
• He claims that 'a couple of their ladies dressed as nuns go into Las Vegas to shop and they weren’t detected'
• Hellyer first went public with his belief in aliens on earth in 2005 and he is the first high ranking politician to publicly state that aliens are real.

Teen Arrested In Plot To Castrate Arpaio

Maricopa County, Ariz. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has grown accustomed to criticism, vitriol, and even threats during his career as one of the nation’s most recognizable lawmen. One of the latest attacks, however, was not only utterly bizarre, but serious enough to land one Canadian teen in jail.

Arpaio, one of the guests slated to speak at next month’s Western Conservative Conference, has received multiple threats from the unidentified individual in the past. In fact, just prior to the latest incident, he was confined to a psychiatric hospital in Alberta.

According to reports, the teen sent an email to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office in which he said he “will never stop until [he is] put away for good.”

The correspondence continued with a very direct physical threat.

“I hate you so much that I will travel to Arizona and chop off your b***s off [sic] with a meat cleaver and turn you into a woman,” he reportedly wrote.

The teen’s threatening behavior began about six months ago, reports indicate; and he alluded to murdering Arpaio and his family at least three times prior to the latest incident.

UK Judge Grants Leniency to Muslim Beheaders, Cites 'Cultural factors'

"We think some weight should be given to cultural factors," said Lord Drummond Young.

Is it any wonder that I was banned from the UK? The once-great Britain is self-immolating before our very eyes. Note to Judge Drummond: there are no "cultural" considerations when considering beheading.

"Murderers Fazli Rahim and Saima Gul have jail terms cut," BBC, January 7, 2014 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

A married couple who almost decapitated a man in front of a 12-year-old girl have had their minimum sentences reduced by appeal judges.

Fazli Rahim, 42, and 31-year-old Saima Gul were jailed for life and told to serve at least 23 years for murdering Mohammed Noor in Glasgow in May 2012.
At the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, Lord Drummond Young ruled that the sentences were too severe.

Rahim can now apply for parole after 19 years and Gul after 17 years.
The court heard that Gul, from the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, was 16 years old when she and Rahim went through an arranged marriage.
Bigamous marriage
Gul was pregnant when she remained with Rahim's family, while he used false documents to travel to the UK to look for work in 1999.
By the time she joined her husband in 2008, Rahim had fathered four children after a bigamous marriage to a Scottish woman.
Gul was sent to live with Mr Noor and had a child by him.
She later claimed her had raped and abused her and that he beat her with his hands and with wire.

We think the judge attached too much significance to the absence of reaction of the appellants during the trial”

Lord Drummond Young Appeal judge

She went to a police station the day before the murder to complain that Mr Noor had been harassing her.

The court heard that officers escorted her home and told Mr Noor to stay away from her.
On 5 May 2012, Rahim and Gul carried out the brutal attack on Mr Noor at a flat in Glasgow's Pollok area.
The couple's trial at the High Court in Glasgow heard how the murder was witnessed by a 12-year-old girl.
Giving evidence by CCTV link, she described Mr Noor screaming with Gul and Rahim on top of him.
She told how the two attackers sent her to the kitchen for a knife - then ordered her to get a bigger blade.
The girl was also made to bring a hammer which was used to strike Mr Noor on the head.
Rape claim
A jury heard 22 days of evidence and speeches - then rejected Rahim's claim that he was merely a spectator while Gul carried out the fatal hammer and knife attack.
They also rejected Gul's story that Mr Noor had tried to rape her and her husband had intervened.
Sentencing the pair, temporary judge Michael O'Grady QC said he was "extremely sceptical" about the claim that this had led to the fatal confrontation.
During the appeal hearing, however, lawyers for the couple protested that the trial judge had paid too much attention to factors which were irrelevant before deciding his sentence.

AG Eric Holder Involved in Armed Takeover at Columbia University as Student

The Daily Caller has unearthed a story from Eric Holder’s college days (as well as a snazzy photo):

As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed.”

As the story relates, Holder bragged about his involvement in the “rise of black consciousness” protests at Columbia. He also lied about the timing of protests, since he was a Freshman and not a Senior when they occurred. Ahh, the 70s, it was all such a haze of choom and misguided radicalism.
But despite the belief of millions that whenever any Democrat holds radical beliefs in college that he automatically grows up and moves on once he enters the workforce and dons a suit and tie, there simply are no compelling conversion stories or disavowals of radicalism in the Obama administration. Thus, it is legitimate to draw a direct line between current policies and the past radical beliefs and actions of members of this administration.
Attorney General Eric Holder is suspected to be implicated in the biggest political scandal in American history “Fast and Furious,” one that has led to hundreds of Mexican civilian deaths and that of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. Earlier in his career, he once stated bluntly that Americans needed to be “brainwashed” into giving up their guns.
The administration refused to turn over all relevant documents related to the deadly operation, leading Republicans to place Holder in contempt. Several officials implicated in the scandal were recently “thrown under the bus” in an apparent attempt to make the story go away.
Mexican television station Univision, which recently gave President Obama a blistering interview, has produced and aired an eye-opening documentary on the scandal “Fast and Furious.” Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and now his vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan have called for Holder to resign.
Not only did Attorney General Eric Holder dismiss a slam dunk case against the New Black Panthers for voter intimidation, but Eric Holder’s law firm represented suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and pushed for clemency for Puerto Rican FALN terrorists in the Clinton Justice Department.
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'Kerry's plan for Jordan Valley withdrawal is ridiculous' 

Senior Israeli diplomatic officials: U.S. proposals are superficial and not serious, Kerry not in touch with reality • Officials: Talks currently being held without papers passing between the sides, because the Arabs refuse to present written documents.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to arrive in Israel again next Monday, on his twelfth visit to the region, but not all Israeli political leaders are happy to see him return.

In the closed forums in Jerusalem where details of the peace negotiations with the Palestinians are discussed, unprecedentedly harsh criticism of Kerry and his staff has been heard in recent weeks. For example, senior Israeli diplomatic officials have called Kerry's security plan for the Jordan Valley "ridiculous and unable to withstand the test of reality."

Diplomatic officials also said: "Kerry visits here a lot, but he does not display any understanding of what is happening here. The U.S. plans are superficial and not serious. There is no connection between what is said in public about the progress of the negotiations and what is actually happening. It seems that Kerry is just not in touch with reality. He is not an expert, to say the least, on the roots of the conflict, he does not know how to create real solutions and does not even demonstrate proficiency in reading maps that are presented to him."

"The conduct of the U.S. secretary of state is obsessive. There are those who say that more than wanting to advance peace, he wants to take advantage of the conflict for his political needs. According to this line of thought, Kerry seems to think his path to the White House is via the signing of a Middle East peace agreement."

"Kerry, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro and U.S. Special Envoy Martin Indyk are wandering around the country, meeting ministers, briefing journalists and creating a feeling that a peace agreement is about to be signed."

Bombshell: Senator Pressured Insurance Division To Report Fewer Obamacare Cancellations

It’s amazing what Democrats try to get away with since most major news media is on their side. The latest surprise is a report showing that a Colorado Democratic Senator pressured the insurance division of Colorado to revise the numbers of cancellations due to Obamacare in order to make it appear less damaging.
U.S. Senator for Colorado Mark Udall is considered one of the weaker candidates for 2014, which might explain why he went out of his way to demand Obamacare cancellations were under-reported.
From Complete Colorado:

U.S. Senator Mark Udall’s office worked assiduously to revise press accounts that 249,000 Coloradans received health care cancellation notices. Because the 249,000 figure was produced inside the Colorado Division of Insurance, Udall’s office lobbied that agency to revise the figure, or revise their definition of what qualified as a cancellation.
From an email inside the Colorado Division of Insurance (DOI), Director of External Affairs Jo Donlin bluntly stated to her colleagues:

After explaining this to the Udall campaign and to Governor Hickenlooper, Donlin received a “hostile phone call” from Udall’s deputy chief of staff about the numbers that were damaging to both Obama and to Udall’s re-election campaign.
Add this to all the other scandals of the Obama administration and it makes one wonder how many other attempts were made to keep the truth of the Obamacare debacle away from the public in order to protect vulnerable Democrats like Udall in the 2014 election.

Egyptian AG charges Hillary Clinton for conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood

There's new details emerging about a possible threat to Hillary Clinton's presidential run in 2016. The Egyptian Attorney General, Hisham Barakat, alleges that Clinton collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood.
World Net Daily (WND) reports that Clinton has been named in a criminal complaint with Naglaa Mahmoud, the wife of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, to incite domestic insurrections in Egypt.
The charges say that Clinton and Mahmoud conspired to topple Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. He's the Egyptian general who has been commander in chief of the Egyptian armed forces, and the minister of defense, since Aug. 12, 2012.
Researcher Walid Shoebat reported on his blog that criminal charges have indeed been filed against Clinton and Morsi's wife. Shoebat speaks fluent Arabic and is a former Palestinian Liberation Organization operative. He says the news of the charges were reported in Arabic, by credible sources, which he translated.
WND says, "Shoebat translated the transcript from an Egyptian Mehwar TV channel news video in which television reporter Nasr Qaffas explains on camera details of an interview Turkey’s Anatolia news agency conducted with Naglaa Mahmoud."
The transcripts from the Mehwar TV news video is said to include comments by Naglaa Mahmoud which implicate Huma Abedin, the wife of former Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner. She was also the former Hillary Clinton chief of staff. According to WND, Abedin has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama: “Is it a Lack of Respect for Me? Do They Resent That I Never Served in the Military?”

When the McChrystal plan for Afghanistan leaked to The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, according to the memoir, the president raged to Gates, asking, “Is it a lack of respect for me?… Do they resent that I never served in the military? Do they think because I’m young that I don’t see what they’re doing?”

And then there was Harry “Cowboy Poetry Pork” Reid.

He also wasn’t exactly enamored with the idea that the calls he received from Reid had to do with Air Force objections to wind farms in Nevada, and Reid pushing him to spend DoD money on irritable-bowel-syndrome research. Gates writes, “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

There are also fond memories of Nancy Pelosi.

Gates went to breakfast with then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi days after she said “The president’s strategy in Iraq has failed,” and “The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment and the president’s plan for an endless war in Iraq.” Gates argued with her that President Bush and Gen. David Petraeus had enacted a change of mission and a “sustainable path forward,” but according to him, she did not care.

This led Gates to surmise that, “after all, one wouldn’t want facts and reality—not to mention national interest—to intrude upon partisan politics, would one?”

Later, Pelosi is briefed on the timetable for drawdowns in Iraq, during which she was informed that roughly 50,000 troops would remain in Iraq through 2011. Gates describes that she “alternately looked like she had swallowed an entire lemon and like she was simply going to explode.”

Or it may have just been her latest Botox injections.

While all this is fun and games, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Gates is as much a part of the political circus as any of the men and women he takes shots at.

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