Graham not Lindsey jumping ship

Will Franklin Graham Lead an Evangelical Exodus From the GOP?

Can't blame him.

ENOUGH



Since Republicans took over Congress I can't name one notable accomplishment. In fact you would think the Democrats were in charge! 

In this last spending bill their only retort was...where do we sign. 

Remember the uproar, the videos, regarding PP? It just went up in smoke. I mean Christ...you got to stand for something.

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Franklin Graham announced this week he was leaving the Republican Party as a result of the inclusion of Planned Parenthood funding in the spending bill that sailed through Congress last week. While he's the first to formally bail, he might not be the last.

Billy Graham's son is over the GOP.

(click)

WOW...Barry's got them trained better than a procession of elephants at Barnum and Bailey's.  

Franklin Graham, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, posted on Facebook yesterday that he plans to leave the Republican Party. His growing frustration highlights growing (and sometimes paradoxical) anger that pro-life and evangelical Christian leaders have for Republican Party leadership.

Graham took to Facebook to rip Republicans in the wake of a spending bill the House passed last week that maintains federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

"Seeing and hearing Planned Parenthood talk nonchalantly about selling baby parts from aborted fetuses with utter disregard for human life is reminiscent of Joseph Mengele and the Nazi concentration camps!" Graham wrote, referring to videos that showed Planned Parenthood officials discussing their fetal tissue donation program. "That should've been all that was needed to turn off the faucet for their funding.

"This is an example of why I have resigned from the Republican Party and declared myself Independent," he continued. "I have no hope in the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or Tea Party to do what is best for America."

On one hand, comments like this aren't particularly out-of-character for Graham. On Nov. 6, he told CNN that he wasn't particularly enamored of the GOP.

"I don't have any faith in any of the political parties," he said. "The only hope that we have is for God to intervene and I want the church to stand up and to vote."

And he made a similar, politically agnostic comment in May, as The Christian Post reported.

That said, yesterday's comment raised eyebrows because it's a commitment to officially break with the Republican Party. And evangelical leaders say he's channeling a sentiment that's increasingly widespread in their community.

After the House voted to pass the omnibus spending bill that kept federal dollars in place for Planned Parenthood, many conservative Christians—evangelical and Catholic—were furious.

Robert Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, said the uproar isn't surprising.

"This Planned Parenthood sponsorship in this bill further confirms what many evangelical Christians believe about the Republican Party establishment, and that is, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the Republican establishment and the Democratic establishment," he said.

"This is an example of why I have resigned from the Republican Party and declared myself Independent," said Graham.

"And I believe that disenchantment that many evangelical Christians have explains the rise of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump," he added.

Jeffress said this disenchantment has been growing for more than a decade, especially since George W. Bush's 2004 presidential campaign. During that race, Bush pushed for a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage as part of a strategy to get evangelical Christians to the polls. It worked, and he got re-elected thanks to their strong showing. But in his second term, the president and his team abandoned their promise to try to write a gay-marriage ban into the Constitution. And that left many evangelicals feeling used and betrayed.

Brent Bozell, a prominent conservative activist who founded the Media Research Center, said Graham's split from the Republican Party is especially devastating because of his role as a faith leader, rather than a political one. Graham isn't known for his politicking; rather, evangelicals know and respect him for his disaster relief work—in particular, for the Operation Christmas Child shoebox-donation program that figures prominently in how hundreds of churches celebrate Christmas. 

"He's not taking a political position," said Bozell. "He's taking a moral position, which is far more serious in the evangelical world."

That means Graham's excoriation of party leaders carries special significance.

"When they're funding the murder of children, this is where the evangelicals say, enough is enough," Bozell said.

Ed Martin, the president of Eagle Forum—a conservative activism organization that Phyllis Schlafly started—called the inclusion of Planned Parenthood in the spending bill "an extraordinary betrayal."

"When Franklin Graham and others say, 'Hey, don't put all your hope in a party because that's not the ultimate hope and should not be the focus of this earthly realm,' we recognize that," he said. "So there's a tension that you want to further the values informing your heart and life through politics, through policy. But you also want to say, don't make a political party a false god. Any false god will fail you. There's only one true God."

But there's an irony in this conservative frustration with the Republican Party over abortion: That's because 2015 brought tons of wins for the pro-life movement. Republican state legislatures passed dozens of restrictions on the procedure, and Mother Jones reported that abortion clinics "are closing down at a rate of 1.5 every single week." And the Centers for Disease Control also found that the country's abortion rate reached a record low this year.

Despite that, the loss in Congress has many conservative Christians reeling. And Graham's comments will fuel that anger.

Graham not Lindsey jumping ship

To my loyal readers...

all three of you

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 

To my loyal readers...

BREAKING: Al Sharpton Gets Some BAD News

On a tip from Ed Kilbane

Speaking of Al and the IRS what do you think the odds are the IRS even has a wage garnishment on Al’s Politics Nation paycheck? 

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Earlier this month, President Barack Obama signed into law a highway bill, H.R. 22, that incidentally wound up barring race-baiter Al Sharpton from stepping foot outside of America.

Specifically, the bill contained within it a tiny little provision that authorized the State Department to revoke the passports of tax-delinquent Americans who owe the IRS more than $50,000.

“If this bill becomes law, it will be imperative for Americans traveling abroad or living abroad to pay attention to IRS notices — assuming they receive them,” David Kautter, a partner at Washington-based accounting firm RSM, explained to The Wall Street Journal a few weeks before the bill’s passage.

Since the bill passed and will officially go into law on Jan. 1, 2016, this means that our good buddy Al Sharpton, who reportedly owes million in taxes to both the federal government and the state of New York, must as of 2016 remain inside the United States at all times (at least until he pays up, which he appears to have no intention of doing).

In fact, while speaking before the National Action Network earlier this year, Sharpton went so far as to try and excuse his bad behavior by citing the most insane of reasons.

“We’re talking about old taxes,” he said. “I think it’s political.”

Right. Because the rest of us can just ignore our back taxes, once a few years have gone by. The IRS probably doesn’t even care after about 18 months.

Regardless, the latest news regarding Sharpton’s future travel plans (or the lack thereof) bodes very badly for him, though one could also argue it bodes badly for all of America, since many of us wish he would fly away somewhere. Anywhere, really.

On the other hand, it’s good news for most of the rest of the world, because the last thing any civilized society needs is Al Sharpton hanging around.

BREAKING: Al Sharpton Gets Some BAD News

Lying About Gitmo

On a tip from Ed Kilbane

Video 187

To top this off he’s suddenly concerned amount the cost of keeping Gitmo open. Wasn’t he the one who gave them all computers and a $750,000 soccer field? This coming from the guy who will double the national debt by the time he leaves office.

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DEC 28, 2015 | By STEPHEN F. HAYES

Credit: Newsroom

Let's begin with the conclusion: Barack Obama is releasing dangerous terrorists against the recommendations of military and intelligence professionals, he's doing so at a time when the threat level from radical Islamists is elevated, and he is lying about it. He is lying about how many jihadists he has released and lying about their backgrounds, all part of his effort to empty the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

We write this knowing the accusation is a strong one and that the word lying will offend the sensibilities of the establishment media. There is an unwritten rule that requires euphemizing lies with gentler descriptions, especially when talking about the president of the United States. There is a veritable thesaurus of verbal politeness one can deploy: deceiving, dissembling, misleading, prevaricating, being duplicitous, evasive, fallacious, mendacious, dishonest, disingenuous, specious, spurious, untruthful.

Not this time. The president is lying.

The facts: Ibrahim al Qosi was a senior al Qaeda operative and a close associate of Osama bin Laden. An 11-page classified assessment of Qosi from U.S. military and intelligence professionals on Joint Task Force Guantánamo was made public by WikiLeaks. From that assessment: "Detainee is an admitted al Qaeda operative and one of Usama bin Laden's (UBL) most trusted associates and veteran bodyguard." And: "Following a 1994 assassination attempt against UBL, UBL chose detainee to be one of approximately ten individuals assigned to his protection detail." And: "Detainee has been very forthright regarding his commitment to UBL and al Qaeda. He explains his commitment to UBL as a religious duty to defend Islam and fulfill his obligation to jihad." The assessment concluded: "Detainee is assessed to be a HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies."

Barack Obama approved Qosi's transfer to Sudan in July 2012.

Earlier this month, Qosi resurfaced as a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, appearing in a propaganda video for the group, which administration and intelligence officials have consistently identified as a direct threat to the United States. He joins a growing list of terrorists once held in American detention facilities and now leading the global jihadist movement and plotting attacks against the United States—a list that includes Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS.

In an interview broadcast December 14, Olivier Knox, chief Washington correspondent for Yahoo News, asked Obama about Qosi and Guantánamo.

Obama reiterated his call to close Guantánamo and repeated his disputed claim that jihadists use Guantánamo as a major recruiting tool.

Then he lied:

"Keep in mind that between myself and the Bush administration hundreds of people have been released and the recidivism rate—we anticipate," Obama said. "We assume that there are going to be—out of four, five, six hundred people that get released—a handful of them are going to be embittered and still engaging in anti-U.S. activities and trying to link up potentially with their old organizations."

A total of 653 detainees have been released. Of those, 196 are confirmed (117) or suspected (79) of returning to jihadist activity. That's not a "handful." It's almost a third. The president knows this. The numbers come from the man he chose as the nation's top intelligence official, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. Military and intelligence officials who study the global jihadist movement tell The Weekly Standard that Clapper's assessment undoubtedly understates the recidivism rate, given the uneven commitment to tracking former jihadists by host countries and the lag times between release and reintegration.

The president continued. And he lied again:

"The bottom line is that the strategic gains we make by closing Guantánamo will outweigh, you know, those low-level individuals who, you know, have been released so far."

There's scant evidence to support the president's assertion about "strategic gains" associated with the closure of Guantánamo. But it's a speculative claim, impossible to disprove. That's not true of his claim that those released from Guantánamo "so far" have been "low-level individuals."

That's demonstrably false.

President Obama himself approved the exchange of the so-called Taliban Five, all senior leaders, for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Not one member of the Taliban Five can be considered "low-level." Indeed, all five were senior Taliban commanders judged "high risks" to the United States and its allies by Joint Task Force Guantánamo. All five worked with al Qaeda prior to the 9/11 attacks. U.S. intelligence officials suspect that one or more of them has already reconnected with jihadist brethren and may be assisting the Taliban's fight. When U.S. intelligence officials asked a foreign intelligence service, likely the Saudis, to rank more than 100 detainees by threat level, Youssef Mohammed al Shihri, transferred in 2007, ranked fourth. Other released detainees fought alongside Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, played senior roles in al Qaeda's financial front groups, and led al Qaeda affiliates. And, of course, the Guantánamo recidivist who prompted the question, Ibrahim al Qosi, was "one of Usama bin Laden's closest associates."

Obama has also downplayed the threats from Guantánamo releasees in other ways. He describes the detainees as "embittered," as if the hatred that inspires them grows from their time in Guantánamo rather than their devotion to a murderous cause. Instead of rejoining the war, the recidivists are merely "trying to link up with their old organizations." Perhaps most bizarre is his description of the process he's using to determine which detainees can be transferred or set free. "The judgment that we're continually making is: Are there individuals who are significantly more dangerous than the people who are already out there who are fighting? What do they add? Do they have special skills? Do they have special knowledge that ends up making a significant threat to the United States?"

Those are the criteria? Detainees can be released if the White House determines that they are no more dangerous than, say, the leaders of ISIS, AQAP, Boko Haram, Jabhat al Nusra, the Haqqani network, the Khorasan group? If this is actually the way the administration evaluates potential releases, it would explain why so many veteran jihadists have been freed. It's a process that prioritizes emptying the facility over the security of the country.

Obama's comments on Guantánamo come in the middle of a concerted White House public relations campaign to convince the American people that the president is redoubling efforts to abate the threat from radical Islam (which the administration persists in calling "violent extremism"). In the space of two weeks, Obama delivered an Oval Office address on ISIS, traveled to the Pentagon for a meeting and photo-op on the military campaign in Iraq and Syria, and paid a visit to the National Counterterrorism Center for a briefing and remarks to reporters. The president didn't announce any significant changes to his strategy. But with his approval on handling terrorism at just 34 percent, the lowest level of his presidency, Obama has been eager to demonstrate he's paying attention to the issue.

It's a political solution to a national security problem. And the entire exercise has been revealed as a fraud by the president's dishonesty on Guantánamo, which conceals a policy that will increase the very threats he'd have us believe he's now taking seriously.

We would think all of this might be newsworthy: The president of the United States is releasing dangerous terrorists, and he's lying about it. And yet none of the country's leading newspapers or broadcast networks has reported Obama's comments. If you get your news exclusively from the New York Times and the Washington Post, or from ABC, CBS, and NBC, you have no idea what the president said about Guantánamo. And you certainly don't know what he said was untrue.

Not a peep from the legion of self-styled fact-checkers, either. PolitiFact scrutinizes seemingly every guttural noise that emanates from Donald Trump but cannot find the time to assess specious claims from the president on the most pressing issue of the day.

So the president believes, not unreasonably, that he can stack lie upon lie with impunity. Workplace violence. Isolated extremist. One-off attack. Decimated. On the run. Jayvee. Contained. And on it goes.

Three days after Obama's interview with Yahoo, the New York Times published an article on Guantánamo. The top of the article broke news: The administration is planning to accelerate the pace of detainee transfers, with as many as 17 coming before the end of January. The rest of the piece amounted to a long complaint about the lack of media access to the facility and those who run it. And what about Obama's lies?

Not a single word.

Lying About Gitmo

Iran Says New U.S. Visa Rule Violates Nuclear Pact

You can't make this stuff up. This comes on the heels of two missiles launched by Iran in direct violation of the UN resolution. 

Iran missile launch violated UN resolution

Meanwhile Iran hasn't even signed the deal yet!

http://www.newsmax.com/DeroyMurdock/Barack-Obama-Iran-Middle-East/2015/12/17/id/706199/

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Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran in September. In a letter, Mr. Kerry said new visa restrictions would not affect the nuclear agreement. Craig Ruttle/Associated Press 

TEHRAN — A new United States visa restriction that applies to Europeans and others who have visited so-called high-risk countries has led to angry reactions in Iran, where some leaders say the decision is a violation of the nuclear agreement reached in July.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, told state media on Monday that the visa restriction was an “obstacle, placed by some individuals,” that he hoped would soon be resolved. Mr. Zarif referred to a letter sent by Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday, asserting that the restriction would not affect the nuclear agreement.

The letter, obtained and leaked by the National Iranian American Council, an advocacy group based in Washington, hinted that President Obama would use his executive authority to exempt Iran from the visa restriction, which was passed almost unanimously in Congress. Mr. Obama signed it into law on Friday.

The restriction, a security step arising from the recent terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., prohibits visa-free travel to the United States for anyone who has visited or holds citizenship in Syria, Iraq, Sudan and Iran.

Precisely why Iran was included on the list is unclear, since it is a foe of the Islamic State, the militant extremist group accused of organizing or fomenting the attacks.

Iranian politicians, especially hard-liners who harbor great antipathy toward the United States, are saying the measure will be an obstacle to trade after the implementation of the nuclear agreement and the lifting of the first sanctions against Iran, scheduled in late January.

Mr. Kerry is now promising that this will not be an outcome of the visa restrictions. “We will implement them so as not to interfere with legitimate business interests of Iran,” he wrote in the letter.

The restrictions are part of an amendment to the current visa-free arrangement among 38 countries, including members of the European Union and the United States. It will mean that tourists, businesspeople and others from friendly countries in Europe as well as Australia, Japan and South Korea, who have visited Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Iran will soon be forced to apply for a United States visa, instead of traveling freely.

Many of these countries are expected to take countermeasures because the visa-free arrangement is based on reciprocity.

Iranian state radio on Saturday called the amendment the first “American, anti-Iranian measure” since the signing of the nuclear agreement. An influential member of Parliament, Allaedin Boroujerdi, said the move violated the nuclear agreement, which was supposed to ease or end many sanctions.

“The U.S. Congress’s bill is in contradiction to the deal, because they promised us not to impose any restrictions on Iranian nationals,” Mr. Boroujerdi was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency in Iran on Sunday.

Iranians have reacted with shock to the amendment, pointing out that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were not on the list of high-risk countries, though 15 out of 19 participants in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were from Saudi Arabia. The San Bernardino couple who killed 14 people on Dec. 2 had ties to both nations. Others said the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks in November, is an ideological enemy of Iran, and Shiites, the predominant strain of Muslim faith in Iran.

On Monday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi-Ansari, blamed Israeli groups for having pushed to include Iran in the visa measure.

“There is a large opposition to the nuclear deal with Zionist lobbyists spearheading the efforts that have been made for the deal not to come to fruition,” he was quoted as saying by Press TV, an English-language news agency backed by the government. “What was done in the U.S. was on the back of the Zionist lobby pressure that was opposed to the agreement with Iran.”

Some Iranians sought to play down the problem, pointing to Iran’s recent missile tests that angered the United States government but did not appear to endanger the nuclear agreement.

“The United States complains, but that’s it, everybody wants to move forward,” said one analyst who preferred not to be identified because he did not want to jeopardize his job. “This is just an obstacle, that’s it.”

Iran Says New U.S. Visa Rule Violates Nuclear Pact