Quotes of the day

Sen. John McCain, whose endorsement of President Barack Obama’s plan to launch military strikes against Syria provided the president a key Republican backer, faced vocal opponents of military action during a town hall in Arizona Thursday…

“We didn’t send you to make war for us. We sent you to stop the war,” one man said to applause…

“This is what I think of Congress,” [another man] told McCain. “They are a bunch of marshmallows. That’s what they are. That’s what they’ve become. Why are you not listening to the people and staying out of Syria? It’s not our fight.”

***

Federal lawmakers who plan to vote in favor of a U.S. military strike against Syria “might as well start cleaning out” their office, U.S. Rep. Justin Amash said Thursday.

Amash, R-Cascade Township, tweeted that the “unprecedented level of public opposition” to military intervention in the country should beg for dissenting votes…

The sophomore lawmaker, whose mother was born in Syria, estimated 95 percent of those who turned out at meetings throughout his district were opposed to intervention.

***

Paul’s friends say the role of leading this bloc is a natural one for the Republican freshman. They also believe that the Syria question gives him an opportunity to dismantle his critics’ caricature of his libertarian views. His team is eager to cast Paul as an heir to Ronald Reagan, who, they argue, was frequently reluctant to involve the U.S. military in foreign civil wars. “It’s about reclaiming the party from hawks and putting us back in the mode of Reagan,” says a Paul source. “As we do that, we want to help him, so we’re pushing back really hard against the isolationism chatter. That’s not what he’s about; he’s about non-intervention and the national interest.”…

Moving ahead, Paul’s aides say the senator will spend more of his time working the inside angle against intervention. In the House, he’s working closely with Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Justin Amash of Michigan to lobby Republicans to oppose. In the Senate, he hopes to have Rubio, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee of Utah, among others, at his side. On the outside, several tea-party groups and conservative powers, such as Heritage Action, share Paul’s position, but Paul believes his time is best spent working the phones and, when appropriate, speaking with the press. “The outside stuff is organic and not being directed by us,” says the Paul adviser. “We didn’t have to organize it; it’s happening on its own.”

Paul’s staff sees the House vote in July on Amash’s amendment to restrict the National Security Agency’s surveillance capabilities as a precedent for the kind of coalition Paul is trying to build. On that vote, liberal doves joined with Paul-aligned Republicans to nearly pass the legislation. Paul feels that if he and Amash can get that band back together, they have a shot at beating Boehner in the House and then forcing Obama’s hand. Maybe they can even get close to doing something similar in the Senate. It won’t be easy, but this is Paul’s moment, and he’s trying to make the most of it.

***

“What you have occurring is the first real policy engagement between a resurgent realist foreign policy worldview lead by Sen. Paul, versus the interventionist McCain and Graham wing which has been dominant in the party since 9/11,” said one Paul ally familiar with the senator’s thinking. “The debate on foreign policy and the appropriate use of U.S. military power was going to be happening at some point, but it is now happening in a case that creates an excellent opportunity for Sen. Paul.”…

If the measure fails in the House, Paul is likely to get a big piece of the credit/blame — particularly since House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) have come out in support of the resolution.

“Success for Sen. Paul on this will be demonstrating there are a larger number of Republicans, both elected and policy experts, who agree with his assessment of the situation as it relates to our national interests, the strategic objectives, and the potential consequences,” said the Paul source.

***

Other voices in the party are growing louder in their opposition. Sarah Palin, who defended the war in Iraq as McCain’s running mate in 2008, posted a Facebook message on Syria that declared Americans should just let “Allah sort it out.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, has questions about the motives of the Syrian opposition fighting against the government there. He said the airstrikes against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would turn the U.S. military into “al Qaeda’s Air Force.”…

Nowhere is that tension more obvious than with Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican and another potential 2016 presidential candidate, who seems torn between McCain and Paul on the issue.

***

Rubio made clear that he did not support any U.S. military action in Syria. “We’re not talking about American troops on the ground,” he said. “We’re not talking about U.S. air power, we’re not talking about sending American soldiers or even American trainers into Syria. We’re talking about providing ammunition. That’s all we’re talking about doing.”

Rubio’s office also pointed to a long list of statements going back to 2011 in which Rubio advocated a variety of measures against Syria — mostly sanctions against the Assad regime — but not any sort of U.S. military action. “I describe Rubio’s foreign policy as being somewhere in between Rand Paul and John McCain,” said one aide Wednesday. “He’s not an isolationist, but he’s very cautious about engaging militarily overseas.” Rubio’s committee vote on Wednesday against the Obama intervention resolution, the aide said, is entirely consistent with Rubio’s long-held positions.

***

On the other hand, let’s imagine that things play out differently. Let’s imagine the political winds shift, as they often do (think about how bad Hillary’s vote for Iraq looked a couple years later). What if Republicans return to a more traditional (at least, in modern terms) position on foreign affairs, and suddenly they crave a strong Commander in Chief who puts dictators in line?

If that happens, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — who is already perfectly-cast to play the role of a strong executive who puts other countries back in line — will remind voters that his opponents allowed a dictator to use chemical weapons – and didn’t do anything about it…

If the establishment hawks and the neocons circle the wagons around Christie — if he is able to “own” that brand and have it all to himself — one imagines that would translate into a lot of money and support for Christie. It’s one way he could emerge as the lone establishment candidate. Christie would love that, inasmuch as we could see a repeat of 2008 and 2012, where conservatives split the vote and allowed an establishment candidate to win the nomination.

***

“Right now, the easy Republican vote looks like the vote against Obama,” said Michael Goldfarb, a neoconservative lobbyist and writer. “Ten days from now, a vote against Obama could look like a vote for Assad, especially if Republicans succeed in blocking U.S. action, and Assad goes on to prevail, having used chemical weapons, with Iran at his side.”

Mr. Goldfarb’s message to Congressional Republicans is this: “Voting to let an Iranian proxy keep killing his own people with weapons of mass destruction may be as risky as it sounds.”…

“Isolationist tendencies don’t do well in American politics over the long run,” Mr. Senor said.

***

This was once a great land that asked not what oppressed people could do for themselves; it asked, instead, what we could do for them. Today, every urge to rescue others, to intervene on the side of the murdered underdogs, is met by many in this country with accusations of imperialism. Our loss of righteous strength—strength that was once this country’s greatest asset—is now celebrated by many Americans, including those who write for this publication: in tones that are akin to ululation, David Stockman, who once worked for the Reagan White House, celebrates the end of America’s “Imperium,” of the “American warfare state.” As someone who has elected to live in this country by moral choice, I say to Stockman (in echo of Kipling): … what should they know of America who only America know?

How did we come to this state? I refer not only to the Stockmans (who, mercifully, are of no political consequence), but also to Rep. Rand Paul, who will not do the right thing by innocent Syrians because he wishes to cut Barack Obama not an inch of slack. Rand Paul is a hideous isolationist. I happen to be rereading The Bonfire of the Vanities, and early in the book a bond trader called Rawlie Thorpe tells Sherman McCoy, the novel’s central character, “If you want to live in New York, you’ve got to insulate, insulate, insulate”—meaning, insulate yourself from anyone who might cause you discomfort, inconvenience, a moment’s moral reckoning. “If you could go breezing down the FDR Drive in a taxi, then why file into the trenches of the urban wars?” Rand Paul, meet Rawlie Thorpe.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/05/quotes-of-the-day-1487/

Jobs report: 169,000 jobs added, 7.3% jobless rate: Decline of unemployment rate driven by 312k dropping out of labor force. Not good at all.

The August jobs report from BLS offers yet another installment on the four-year stagnation period after the Great Recession.  The US economy added 169,000 jobs, just above the 150,000 needed to keep pace with population growth.  The U-3 jobless rate edged downward to 7.3%, but that’s because the labor force participation rate hit another 35-year low:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 169,000 in August, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in retail
trade and health care but declined in information.

Both the number of unemployed persons, at 11.3 million, and the unemployment rate, at 7.3 percent, changed little in August. The jobless rate is down from 8.1 percent a year ago. (See table A-1.)

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.1 percent), adult women (6.3 percent), teenagers (22.7 percent), whites (6.4 percent), blacks (13.0 percent), and Hispanics (9.3 percent) showed little change in August. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.1 percent (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.)

In August, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was about unchanged at 4.3 million. These individuals accounted for 37.9 percent of the unemployed. Over the past 12 months,
the number of long-term unemployed has declined by 733,000. (See table A-12.)

The civilian labor force participation rate edged down to 63.2 percent in August. The employment-population ratio, at 58.6 percent, was essentially unchanged. (See table A-1.)

At the same time, almost twice as many people left the work force as found new jobs, net:

Decline of unemployment rate driven by 312k dropping out of labor force. Not good at all.

— Neil Irwin (@Neil_Irwin) September 6, 2013

On top of that, previous reports were revised downward:

The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from +188,000 to +172,000, and the change for July was revised from +162,000 to +104,000. With these revisions, employment gains in June and July combined were 74,000 less than previously reported.

Interestingly, U-6 unemployment dropped from 14.0% to 13.7%, its lowest level in five years, but that has to do with the shrinking workforce, too. In order to be counted in U-6, workers have to be at least marginally attached to the labor force.  That’s defined as “ those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months.”

In the Household survey, the figures are even worse for those not in the labor force.  It rose from 89.957 million in July to 90.473 million in August, a new high — and a jump of 516,000, not 312,000.  That’s a half-million people who disappeared out of the labor force in a month.

CNBC notes that this is a miss on expectations, as well as a stagnation result:

Job growth was less than expected in August as the U.S. economy added 169,000 positions, raising questions over whether the Federal Reserve will begin a pullback on its historically easy monetary policy.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also said the unemployment rate dropped to 7.3 percent, due primarily to fewer Americans in the labor force. …

Some of the internals were poor as well.

The labor force participation rate slumped to 63.2 percent, a 2013 low and its worst reading in 35 years.

More than half the jobs added came through estimates the government does each month of the amount of positions gained or lost through new business openings and closures. The so-called birth-death model added 90,000 to the total.

Unemployment for blacks jumped to 13.0 percent from 12.6 percent, while the average duration of unemployment hit a five-month high at 37 weeks.

And job quality was at the low end of the income spectrum, as retail led the way with 44,000.

Is this a bad enough report to have the Fed reverse course and continue its quantitative easing? Ben White thinks not:

This is not a good jobs report but it does not seem nearly bad enough to change Fed plans to begin taper in September.

— Ben White (@morningmoneyben) September 6, 2013

I think this demonstrates that the Fed simply isn’t having an impact any longer.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/06/jobs-report-169000-jobs-added-7-3-jobless-rate/

Good news: Syria strike plans widening: ABC News reported on Thursday that the strike planned by Obama’s national security team is “significantly larger” than most have anticipated.

Well, good news for Senator John McCain, anyway, who’s been agitating for Congress to give Barack Obama a much freer hand for intervention in Syria.  The Jerusalem Post picks up on an ABC News report that the strikes won’t simply be long-range missiles from naval platforms in the Mediterranean, but also bombing sorties over Syria:

Despite statements from both US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry that a US-led strike on Syria would be a “limited and tailored” military attack, ABC News reported on Thursday that the strike planned by Obama’s national security team is “significantly larger” than most have anticipated.

According to ABC News, in additional to a salvo of 200 Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from four Navy destroyers stationed in the eastern Mediterranean, the US is also planning an aerial campaign that is expected to last two days.

This campaign potentially includes an aerial bombardment of missiles and long range bombs from US-based B-2 stealth bombers that carry satellite-guided bombs, B-52 bombers, that can carry air-launched cruise missiles and Qatar-based B-1s that carry long-range, air-to-surface missiles, both ABC News and The New York Timesreported.

“This military strike will do more damage to [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s forces in 48 hours than the Syrian rebels have done in two years,” a national security official told ABC News.

This raises a couple of questions about the “no boots on the ground” promise coming from Obama and John Kerry.  In order to make these kinds of pinpoint-accurate attacks with either bombers or cruise missiles, it’s usually better (although not entirely necessary) to have spotters on the ground lighting up the targets.  That means boots on the ground, even if everything goes perfectly.  What happens if our bombers get shot down over Syria?

The New York Times also reports on mission creep at the White House:

President Obama has directed the Pentagon to develop an expanded list of potential targets in Syria in response to intelligence suggesting that the government of President Bashar al-Assad has been moving troops and equipment used to employ chemical weapons while Congress debates whether to authorize military action.

Mr. Obama, officials said, is now determined to put more emphasis on the “degrade” part of what the administration has said is the goal of a military strike against Syria — to “deter and degrade” Mr. Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons. That means expanding beyond the 50 or so major sites that were part of the original target list developed with French forces before Mr. Obama delayed action on Saturday to seek Congressional approval of his plan.

For the first time, the administration is talking about using American and French aircraft to conduct strikes on specific targets, in addition to ship-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles. There is a renewed push to get other NATO forces involved.

The strikes would be aimed not at the chemical stockpiles themselves — risking a potential catastrophe — but rather the military units that have stored and prepared the chemical weapons and carried the attacks against Syrian rebels, as well as the headquarters overseeing the effort, and the rockets and artillery that have launched the attacks, military officials said Thursday.

This change is apparently intended to win approval from the McCain-led hawks:

Mr. Obama’s instructions come as most members of Congress who are even willing to consider voting in favor of a military response to a chemical attack are insisting on strict limits on the duration and type of the strikes carried out by the United States, while a small number of Republicans are telling the White House that the current plans are not muscular enough to destabilize the Assad government.

Senior officials are aware of the competing imperatives they now confront — that to win even the fight on Capitol Hill, they will have to accept restrictions on the military response, and in order to make the strike meaningful they must expand its scope.

“They are being pulled in two different directions,” a senior foreign official involved in the discussions said Thursday. “The worst outcome would be to come out of this bruising battle with Congress and conduct a military action that made little difference.”

Would it be better to come out of this with another decapitation like we managed in Libya, which leaves a failed state in its wake and radical Islamist terror networks free to operate in its wake?  It’s bad enough that we did that once, and now it looks as though we’re about to do it again, in the laughable service of bolstering our credibility.  How credible does it make the US to create havens for our enemies?

The remarkable aspect of this mission creep is that it’s taking place even before Congress authorizes a supposedly limited action in Syria.  Stephen Carter at Bloomberg warned this morning — before the mission had already started to creep from “deterrence” and “responsibility to protect” to “regime change” — than any authorization Congress grants, no matter how limited, will be seen as a carte blanche by the Obama administration:

The White House draft of a measure granting President Barack Obama the authority to attack Syria, sent to Congress last week, was far too broad. Now some critics are saying that the Senate’s rewritten resolution, approved by the Foreign Relations Committee this week, is too narrow.

Consider me skeptical. The lesson of history is clear: Whatever limiting language Congress adopts, a determined chief executive will read it to justify pretty much whatever he wants it to justify.

Presidents, when they choose, have always found ways to broaden the authority granted them by Congress, especially in matters of war and peace — where, as the political scientist Kenneth R. Mayer details in his book “With the Stroke of a Pen: Executive Orders and Presidential Power,” limiting language rarely limits.

Carter offers a number of historical lessons on this point, but this time, the White House isn’t even waiting for Congress to pass its authorization before engaging in mission creep.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/06/good-news-syria-strike-plans-widening/

US evacuating diplomats from Lebanon as Iran threatens embassy in Baghdad

Physics teaches us that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  That isn’t always true in diplomacy, but it’s usually dangerous to assume it won’t.  Thanks to the beating of war drums over Syria, the US has ordered the evacuation of non-essential diplomatic personnel from yet another country in the Middle East:

The State Department on Friday ordered nonessential U.S. diplomats to leave Lebanon due to security concerns as the Obama administration and Congress debate military strikes on neighboring Syria.

In a new travel warning for Lebanon, the department said it had instructed nonessential staffers to leave Beirut and urged private American citizens to depart Lebanon.

The step had been under consideration since last week when President Barack Obama said he was contemplating military action against the Syrian government for its alleged chemical weapons attack last month that the administration said killed more than 1,400 people near Damascus.

“The potential in Lebanon for a spontaneous upsurge in violence remains,” the department said.

Hezbollah has aligned itself with Bashar al-Assad in Syria and is fighting on the regime’s side.  It’s possible and even probable that American strikes on Syrian military positions will either inadvertently or purposefully target Hezbollah positions.  That would create an opening for Hezbollah in Lebanon to expand the war by attacking American and Western interests in their home country, a step that its patrons in Iran would certainly not hesitate to take.

Speaking of Iran, they’re targeting another American embassy for retaliation, according to messages intercepted by US intel. They may also target US Navay assets near the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf:

The U.S. has intercepted an order from Iran to militants in Iraq to attack the U.S. Embassy and other American interests in Baghdad in the event of a strike on Syria, officials said, amid an expanding array of reprisal threats across the region.

Military officials have been trying to predict the range of possible responses from Syria, Iran and their allies. U.S. officials said they are on alert for Iran’s fleet of small, fast boats in the Persian Gulf, where American warships are positioned. …

The U.S.is also pulling diplomats out of Adana, Turkey and is recommending that U.S. citizens “defer nonessential travel” to southeastern Turkey.

And the Russians aren’t just sitting around, either:

Three Russian naval ships were sailing toward Syria in the eastern Mediterranean on Friday and a fourth was on its way, the Interfax news agency reported, citing a source at navy headquarters.

Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov said Thursday that Russia was boosting its naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea, but primarily in order to organize a possible evacuation of Russians from Syria. He did not say how many vessels were being sent.

The prospect of increased Russian naval presence near Syria has stoked fears of a larger international conflict if the United States orders airstrikes over an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack in a suburb of Damascus, the Syrian capital. The U.S. already has numerous war ships in the Mediterranean.

Two Russian amphibious landing vessels and a reconnaissance ship have passed through the Dardanelles strait, according to the report carried by Interfax, a privately owned agency known for its independent contacts within Russia’s armed forces.

The worst possible outcome from the Syrian civil war is its expansion into a regional war that pulls the US and Russia in on opposite sides.  American intervention all but guarantees that outcome.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/06/us-evacuating-diplomats-from-lebanon-as-iran-threatens-embassy-in-baghdad/

Obama ‘science diplomat’ advocated for Eugenics base population control

How Eugenics and Population Control Led to Abortion

Population control, however, involves a public or private program to reduce births within a specific area or group (for example, within China or among African Americans) and/or to increase births elsewhere (for example, within France or among the highly-educated). In other words, those running the program have a specific demographic outcome in mind. While equal-opportunity population programs are theoretically possible, in practice one race or nationality uses population control against another.

Population control may involve any or all of the following: propaganda in favor of smaller families; pressure for legal change such as raising the legal age for marriage or repealing restrictions on contraception and abortion; widespread availability of contraception, sterilization and abortion (often including public subsidy of them); the use of specific target numbers for birth control "acceptors" and for reduction of birth rates; economic penalties for having more than one or two children; and physical coercion to use birth control.

In democratic theory, governments are made for people. Population control stands this principle on its head, so that people are made for the government and are treated mainly as components of the economy. Government tolerates them as long as they are productive; it even "makes investments" in them to improve their productivity. Viewing them as farmers view their cattle or sheep, it watches their breeding carefully and manipulates it in various ways.

http://www.meehanreports.com/how-led.html

The Obama administration has been engaging in “science diplomacy” by sending out its top science adviser to visit foreign dignitaries.

But John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Obama official engaged in this jet-setting, has expressed controversial views about government-imposed population controls.

The Guardian reports that Holdren regularly meets with top scientists from other countries such as Brazil, Russia, China and Japan as a way new way “to reach out to bridge cultural and economic gaps between the United States and the rest of the world.”

Holdren has previously stated that the United States and the rest of the world have too many people, a population bomb that technology can’t defuse.

“Dr. Holdren has a record only surpassed by his longtime collaborator Paul Ehrlich for spreading misinformation and making failed predictions,” Myron Ebell, director of international energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“In addition, Dr. Holdren has advocated a wide array of despicable policies, such as mandatory population control, and was a willing stooge of the Soviet Union as a member for several decades of the Pugwash Conference (and of which he was chairman when it was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995),” Ebell added. “John Holdren is therefore the perfect “science diplomat” for an administration that peddles junk science and supports policies that will make poor people, and especially poor people in poor countries, poorer.  As President Obama’s science diplomat, he can now advocate for global impoverishment on a global stage.”

Testifying before the Senate in 1974, Holdren and fellow scientist and population control advocate Paul Ehrlich argued that the world was moving towards a no-growth economy because of overpopulation and technology would not be able to mitigate the problem.

“We are going to move to a no-growth [economy],” Ehrlich said. “Now, whether we do it intelligently through the Government by planning as rapidly as possible, or whether we move there automatically-by the way, when I look at some of the figures these days, I think we’re moving there much more rapidly than people realize–we’re going to get there, obviously.”

What worries me is that by the time the evidence is absolutely overwhelming, a good deal of the damage may in fact be irreversible,” Holdren said. “It’s the same tendency toward oversimplification which leads people to think that one set of technological solutions will bail us out. As much as we need technology, we need a good many other things. And as you’ve already suggested this morning, one of them is social and institutional changes.”

Holdren and Ehrlich have collaborated in other works that advocate for population control.

One such collaboration was an essay entitled “Population and Panaceas: A Technological Perspective” from 1969 that argued “man’s present technology is inadequate to the task of maintaining the world’s burgeoning billions, even under the most optimistic assumptions.”

Holdren and Ehrlich further argue that technological advancements to increase food supplies would would be fruitless until “the population growth rate drastically reduced.”

“No effort to expand the carrying capacity of the Earth can keep pace with unbridled population growth,” they wrote.

Holdren was heavily criticized after being tapped by President Obama in 2009 for being an author in a textbook that floated such ideas as forced abortions, putting sterilants in the drinking water and government-mandated family planning.

One passage of the textbook even argued that such coercive population control methods could even be constitutional.

“Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society,” Holdren and Ehrlich wrote. “Few today consider the situation in the United States serious enough to justify compulsion, however.”

Holdren’s office denied the the doctor supported coercive approaches to controlling the population.

“Dr. Holdren has stated flatly that he does not now support and has never supported compulsory abortions, compulsory sterilization, or other coercive approaches to limiting population growth,” his office said in a statement. “Straining to conclude otherwise from passages treating controversies of the day in a three-author, 30-year-old textbook is a mistake.”

In 1968, the world population was 3.5 billion and food supplies only provided 2,300 calories per person per day in the early 1960s, according to the United Nations. These calories, however, “very unequally distributed” and more than half of the developing world suffered from chronic undernutrition.

Today, the world’s population has more than doubled, but advances in food production technologies have allowed more people to be fed and there are far fewer people in the world suffering from chronic hunger today than in the 1990s.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/04/obama-science-diplomat-advocated-for-population-control/#ixzz2e2ftnFzz

OBAMA SAYS HE’D BE CONSIDERED ‘MAYBE CENTER-RIGHT’ IN PARTS OF EUROPE

You know, I have to say that if I were here in Europe, I’d probably be considered right in the middle, maybe center-left, maybe center-right, depending on the country,” Obama said Wednesday in Stockholm. “In the United States sometimes the — the names I’m called are quite different.”

Obama made the comment during a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Frederik Reinfeldt. He was responding to a Swedish reporter who asked what kind of Swedish ideas Obama had seen that he would like to bring back to the U.S.

Obama said there is much that America can learn from Sweden about green energy.

{ Well Obama did not read this did you?}

As country after country abandons, curtails or reneges on once-generous support for renewable energy, Europe is beginning to realise that its green energy strategy is dying on the vine. Green dreams are giving way to hard economic realities.

http://www.thegwpf.org/benny-peiser-europe-pulls-plug-green-future/

“It is a gorgeous country. What I know about Sweden, I think, offers us some good lessons. Number one, the work you’ve done on energy, I think, is something that the United States can and will learn from, because every country in the world right now has to recognize that if we’re going to continue to grow, improve our standard of living while maintaining a sustainable planet, then we’re going to have to change our patterns of energy use and Sweden, I think, is far ahead of many other countries,” Obama said.

He went on to say that Sweden has a free market but also makes “investments” with government spending.

“Sweden also has been able to have a robust market economy while recognizing that there are some investments in education or infrastructure or research that are important, and there’s no contradiction between making public investments and being a firm believer in free markets, and that’s a debate and a discussion that we often have in the United States,” Obama said.

You know, I have to say that if I were here in Europe, I’d probably be considered right in the middle, maybe center-left, maybe center-right, depending on the country. In the United States sometimes the — the names I’m called are quite different,” he said.

Obama also offered praise for Sweden’s civil politics.

“I do get a sense that the politics in Sweden right now involve both the ruling party and the opposition engaged in a respectful and rational debate that’s based on facts and issues; and, you know, I think that kind of recognition that people can have political differences but we’re all trying to achieve the same goals, that’s something that Swedes should be proud of and should try to maintain,” Obama said.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/04/obama-says-hed-be-considered-maybe-center-right-in-parts-of-europe/

Opponents of Common Core Raise Concern over Student Data Collection

The controversy surrounding federal data collection has spilled over into education, prompting debates over student data collection. NPR reporter Cory Turner spotlighted critics and defenders of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, which seeks standardized curricula across state educational systems.

Opponents charge that central planners have used the initiative to intrude on citizens’ privacy by soliciting information about students’ and parents’ religious views, voting habits, income level, blood type, and health history. Defenders dispute that improper data is being collected or that information being gathered differs from what schools have collected for decades.

The controversy isn’t likely to diminish, so it’s important for parents, students and voters to know the facts and their implications.

Who Is Collecting the Data?

The Common Core program is sponsored by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers, and promoted by the U.S. Department of Education through Race to the Top grant incentives. States participating in Common Core receive support from the federally-funded Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC).

What Information Is Being Collected?

In response to charges that Common Core calls for collecting personal information, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan denied the initiative called for federal collection of student data. Duncan insisted the federal government wasn’t allowed to do this and wouldn’t do it. But Turner’s investigation found the facts didn’t neatly fit either Duncan’s denial or opponents’ charges.

SBAC does solicit data about students’ sex, age, race, ethnicity, and lunch discount qualifications. However, the data is collected in clusters and stripped of individual information, such as names and Social Security numbers. There was no evidence that the initiative collects individual information about blood types or voting records.

Turner also quoted state educational officials who pointed out that state systems have been collecting information for decades about student attendance, grades and disabilities. However, critics such as Michigan State Representative Tom McMillin remain unpersuaded that such information is not open to abuse.

What Is the Government Doing with the Data?

For states’ rights and local government advocates, one concern is that Common Core’s practices bypass constitutional protections against unwarranted federal search and seizure by outsourcing data collection to states.

States participating in Common Core programs receive funding from the ED Recovery Act under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, through the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund. This empowers the DOE to award $48.6 billion to governors supporting reforms affecting all levels of schooling, from early learning through post-secondary education. These include an Early Learning Challenge program to reshape state pre-school programs.

Common Core thus empowers federal authorities both to collect student data and to determine what will be taught for all ages. To critics, governors’ participation in the program could be seen as surrendering individual and states’ rights to the federal government in return for funding.

Another issue is whether the data collected is really as anonymous as defenders say. Educational data services seek to provide sufficient data for teachers to work with individual students and parents to address not only learning concerns, but also disciplinary issues. If local and state school systems can collect this information, what prevents it from being passed on to federal agencies?

Private Sector Leak Potential?

Another risk is data leaking through the private sector to government or business entities. One partner supporting Common Core is inBloom, a nonprofit seeded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in cooperation with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and state school officials. Together, inBloom and its educational software partner, Compass Learning, offer Common Core participants data collection tools geared toward collecting enough information to provide each student a personalized learning experience, delivered through an online gateway.

Compass Learning’s privacy page acknowledges collecting personal information and while pledging not to share data with third parties indiscriminately, it does admit exceptions, and it disclaims responsibility for how school hosts handle data security. The company’s terms of use page disclaims liability for damages caused by loss of data.

What Protection Does the Public Have?

What protections are in place and what recourse does the public have if privacy leaks occur? Prevention is always the best solution and one alternative is for parents and college students to seek educational solutions that fall outside Common Core’s scope. These include homeschooling, private schools, and online educational opportunities such as those available through CollegeOnline.org and similar services.

Common Core defenders stress that educational data is subject to privacy restrictions, such as those protecting medical information. Given this, the same set of issues that drive the debate over health care privacy are likely to fuel educational controversies as well. While no solution to either issue appears imminent, perhaps a positive outcome of the debate is public awareness that educational data faces the same challenges, and also needs to be addressed.

http://ivn.us/2013/09/04/opponents-of-common-core-raise-concern-over-student-data-collection/

WATCH LIVE: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on Syria

Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel testify at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on a possible military strike in Syria. WATCH LIVE at2:30 p.m. ET on Fox News and FoxNews.com

http://live.foxnews.com/#/2553565088001

McCain opposes Syria strike resolution In its current form,.

Sen. John McCain, President Obama's biggest cheerleader on Capitol Hill for a strike in Syria, said Wednesday that he would not support a Senate panel's draft resolution authorizing the use of force.

"There are a number of people who are unhappy," McCain told reporters on Capitol Hill. Asked if he supported the measure, McCain said, "In its current form, I do not." 

The decision is a setback for the administration's effort to win swift support from Congress for an attack. 

McCain, who has long favored stepped-up U.S. involvement in the Syrian civil war, said he opposes the resolution crafted by fellow Sens. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Bob Corker of Tennessee. The resolution puts a 90-day limit on action and says no American troops can be sent to Syria. 

McCain reportedly wants more than cruise missile strikes and "limited" action; he wants to tilt the direction of the civil war. He has, though, said he doesn't want combat troops on the ground in Syria. 

The Arizona Republican threatened earlier this week to vote against a White House draft resolution unless Obama promised to support Syria's rebels. Following a meeting with Obama at the White House on Monday, McCain seemed to indicate support for a broad plan to respond to the use of chemical weapons, though he stopped short of saying he supported a specific resolution. 

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee could vote on authorizing the use of force as early as Wednesday afternoon, the first in a series of votes as the president's request makes its way through Senate and House committees before coming before the two chambers for a final vote. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/09/04/mccain-opposes-syria-strike-resolution/#ixzz2dw8tEnG5

UNDER GOD’ ATHEIST FAMILY’S PLEDGE BATTLE THAT COULD HAVE NATIONWIDE IMPLICATIONS HEADS TO MASS. SUPREME COURT

It was in early 2012 that TheBlaze first reported about a Massachusetts family’s efforts to have “under God” removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. While the atheist parents ardently pushed the case, a judge ruled in favor of the Acton Boxborough Regional School District, finding that there is nothing unconstitutional about the proclamation.

The case is returning to the courtroom on Wednesday, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments at 9 a.m.

The current battle commenced in February 2012 when an atheist family launched the case to have the words “under God” removed from the pledge. Months later, in June 2012, the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center announced the parents planned to appeal after the Middlesex Superior Court ruled against the family.

Students say the Pledge of Allegiance (AP)

As The Blaze previously reported, the family decided to sue the Acton-Boxborough school system, claiming that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with the words “under God” discriminates against their children. The parents, who wish to remain anonymous, are identified only as John and Jane Doe. They have three children in the district — one in high school and two others in middle school.

In Middlesex Superior Court last year, David Niosie, the family’s lawyer asked that the words be taken out of the pledge.

“No child should go to school every day, from kindergarten to grade 12, to be faced with an exercise that defines patriotism according to religious belief,” Niose said at the time of the initial dismissal. “If conducting a daily classroom exercise that marginalizes one religious group while exalting another does not violate basic principles of equal rights and nondiscrimination, then I don’t know what does.”

While some might dismiss the case as similar topast unsuccessful efforts to remove “under God,”  the family, led by their attorneys, is taking a very different strategic approach. Rather than using the U.S. Constitution as their basis, the plaintiffs are going after the state’s use of “under God,” claiming that it is, instead, a violation of the Massachusetts Constitution.

“This is the first time a legal challenge to government use of ‘under God’ is based on the equal protection rights in a state constitution instead of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment,” the law center said in a statement Tuesday.

Religion News Service’s Kimberly Winston reported that this intentional strategy follows a blueprint that was used by gay rights advocates a decade ago. In 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to issue gay marriage licenses, using equal rights laws to secure a win. Later, other states followed this model. In the case of the pledge, as Winston notes, a win for the atheist family could spark a similar pattern in other localities.

Photo credit: ShutterStock.com

Last year, Noise said that the pledge is “a daily indoctrination.” The recitation essentially, in his view, defines patriotism as a belief in the ideal that a higher power exists. Since state law requires the inclusion of the pledge in schools, the lawyer argues that this is a problematic endorsement that discriminates.

“When we define patriotism with a religious truth claim — that the nation is in fact under a god — we define nonbelievers as less patriotic,” he said following last year’s proceedings.

But the pledge, the Middlesex Superior Court noted, is only optional for students to say. Now, the state’s highest court will have a say in the matter.

“Under God” was added to the pledge by various groups in the late 1940s and early 1950s and was officially adopted by Congress in 1954. Since then, it has sparked controversy among atheist and church-state separation advocacy organizations.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/03/under-god-atheist-familys-pledge-battle-that-could-have-nationwide-implications-heads-to-mass-supreme-court/

OBAMA REFERS TO U.S. ARMED FORCES AS ‘MY MILITARY’; TWITTER USERS GO JUST A TAD BALLISTIC

In case you missed it, President Obama referred to the United States armed forces as “my military” during a statement to the media regarding the Syrian crisis Friday.

“But as I’ve already said,” Obama noted, “I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options.”

And Twitter users went and got themselves into a bit of a twist:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/31/obama-refers-to-u-s-armed-forces-as-my-military-twitter-users-go-just-a-tad-ballistic/

(Credit: Twitter via Twitchy)

(Credit: Twitter via Twitchy)

(Credit: Twitter via Twitchy)