Crony Appointments at Homeland Security
Unqualified stooges arrive just in time for a renewed illegal-alien-amnesty push. By Michelle Malkin
Alejandro Mayorkas (left) and Jeh Johnson
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Dirty Harry Reid sabotaged the filibuster, and now the Democrats are running wild in Washington. Mark my words: We all will pay a price. Thanks to Reid’s crony-coddling rule change, unqualified stooges will manage the Obama Department of Homeland Security. It’s a bundler’s world, and we’re just living in it. God help us.
On Monday night, Senate Democrats voted 57–37 to end debate on the nomination of Jeh Johnson to head DHS. That’s three votes short of the traditional 60-vote filibuster threshold that Reid nuked last month. Johnson went on to win his appointment by a 78–16 margin. The White House performed its Snoopy happy dance soon after, with President Obama declaring Johnson “a strong leader with a deep understanding of the threats we face and a proven ability to work across agencies and complex organizations to keep America secure.”
DHS employs 240,000 people and boasts a $40 billion budget. Johnson, unlike his most recent predecessors, has never actually held an executive position governing a state or managing a complex organization. Let me summarize his relevant experience in border security, port security, airport security, or immigration enforcement: Zero. Zip. Nada.
News coverage instead stresses that Johnson is the “first African-American” to hold the No. 1 position at DHS. Because, you know, diversity will keep us safe. Here’s more you should know about Johnson: He’s a lifelong beneficiary of the government/law-firm revolving door, dating back to the Clinton years. In a recent interview with a legal website, Johnson cheerfully bragged that his initial “foray into national security was a fluke, really. The Clinton White House recruited me to be general counsel of the Air Force. I had no idea what the job was about, had never been in the military, and had never set foot in the Pentagon.”
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Yep, a “fluke.” That’s a public-confidence booster, huh?Johnson counts among the “big breaks” in his life a fateful meeting with Obama in 2006. He went on to shovel gobs of money into Obama’s campaigns and Democratic coffers. In 2008, this top campaign-finance bundler served on the Team Obama transition team. Next, Johnson found himself — like the feather floating in Forrest Gump — appointed to the position of general counsel at the Defense Department. He was “involved” in ending the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and reportedly “oversaw” the use of unmanned-drone strikes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
White House aides claim that Johnson is a “respected national-security leader.” But respected by whom (other than Democratic fundraisers) the administration will not say.
Perhaps we might comfort ourselves if the No. 2 in charge at DHS had strong qualifications and a record on national security to compensate for Johnson’s deficiencies. Sorry. As I reported last week, Dirty Harry Reid exploited the nuked filibuster threshold to ram through Alejandro Mayorkas’s nomination as deputy DHS secretary. Mayorkas remains under investigation for a partisan cash-for-foreign-investor-visas scandal by the DHS inspector general’s office, which itself remains under investigation for fraud and ethics violations that endanger national security. His appointment is expected to sail through the full Senate on Wednesday.
At DHS, adjudicators remain under pressure to rubber-stamp visa applications. Open-borders ideologues continue to push for administrative-amnesty programs behind closed doors and in circumvention of congressional oversight. Three years after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, his colleagues are under siege inside and outside their agency. And whistleblowers are an endangered species.
The elevation of Obama’s stooge donors to the two highest civilian homeland-security posts in the country comes as both vote-seeking Democrats and big-business Republicans prepare for another illegal-alien-amnesty push next year.
As Dan Stein of the immigration-enforcement group FAIR noted this week: “There is no mistaking the signals the president has sent to the American people. . . . President Obama has called on the House to pass ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform yet nominated an individual to head DHS who has zero immigration experience. Thus, it is clear the president wants the amnesty portion of such a bill but has little or no intention of prioritizing any enforcement measures that might be contained in it.”
The inmates are running the asylum. Homeland-security threats and ciphers are running the Homeland Security Department. God help us all.
Unqualified stooges arrive just in time for a renewed illegal-alien-amnesty push. By Michelle Malkin
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Alejandro Mayorkas (left) and Jeh Johnson
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Michelle Malkin
Dirty Harry Reid sabotaged the filibuster, and now the Democrats are running wild in Washington. Mark my words: We all will pay a price. Thanks to Reid’s crony-coddling rule change, unqualified stooges will manage the Obama Department of Homeland Security. It’s a bundler’s world, and we’re just living in it. God help us.
On Monday night, Senate Democrats voted 57–37 to end debate on the nomination of Jeh Johnson to head DHS. That’s three votes short of the traditional 60-vote filibuster threshold that Reid nuked last month. Johnson went on to win his appointment by a 78–16 margin. The White House performed its Snoopy happy dance soon after, with President Obama declaring Johnson “a strong leader with a deep understanding of the threats we face and a proven ability to work across agencies and complex organizations to keep America secure.”
DHS employs 240,000 people and boasts a $40 billion budget. Johnson, unlike his most recent predecessors, has never actually held an executive position governing a state or managing a complex organization. Let me summarize his relevant experience in border security, port security, airport security, or immigration enforcement: Zero. Zip. Nada.
News coverage instead stresses that Johnson is the “first African-American” to hold the No. 1 position at DHS. Because, you know, diversity will keep us safe. Here’s more you should know about Johnson: He’s a lifelong beneficiary of the government/law-firm revolving door, dating back to the Clinton years. In a recent interview with a legal website, Johnson cheerfully bragged that his initial “foray into national security was a fluke, really. The Clinton White House recruited me to be general counsel of the Air Force. I had no idea what the job was about, had never been in the military, and had never set foot in the Pentagon.”
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White House aides claim that Johnson is a “respected national-security leader.” But respected by whom (other than Democratic fundraisers) the administration will not say.
Perhaps we might comfort ourselves if the No. 2 in charge at DHS had strong qualifications and a record on national security to compensate for Johnson’s deficiencies. Sorry. As I reported last week, Dirty Harry Reid exploited the nuked filibuster threshold to ram through Alejandro Mayorkas’s nomination as deputy DHS secretary. Mayorkas remains under investigation for a partisan cash-for-foreign-investor-visas scandal by the DHS inspector general’s office, which itself remains under investigation for fraud and ethics violations that endanger national security. His appointment is expected to sail through the full Senate on Wednesday.
At DHS, adjudicators remain under pressure to rubber-stamp visa applications. Open-borders ideologues continue to push for administrative-amnesty programs behind closed doors and in circumvention of congressional oversight. Three years after the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, his colleagues are under siege inside and outside their agency. And whistleblowers are an endangered species.
The elevation of Obama’s stooge donors to the two highest civilian homeland-security posts in the country comes as both vote-seeking Democrats and big-business Republicans prepare for another illegal-alien-amnesty push next year.
As Dan Stein of the immigration-enforcement group FAIR noted this week: “There is no mistaking the signals the president has sent to the American people. . . . President Obama has called on the House to pass ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform yet nominated an individual to head DHS who has zero immigration experience. Thus, it is clear the president wants the amnesty portion of such a bill but has little or no intention of prioritizing any enforcement measures that might be contained in it.”
The inmates are running the asylum. Homeland-security threats and ciphers are running the Homeland Security Department. God help us all.
[ Amazing how many nasty racists there are on the left. Where is Jesse and Al on this one? ]
[h=1]SNBC's Harris-Perry apologizes for mocking Romney over black grandchild[/h]
By Howard Kurtz
Published December 31, 2013FoxNews.com
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At left is a family photo released by Mitt Romney; at right is MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry.
MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry apologized this morning amid a growing media storm over the way she and her guests made fun of Mitt Romney's adopted grandchild -- who happens to be black.
On her weekend show, the African-American host and her panelists started laughing almost immediately in the segment, in a way that made me cringe.
The object of their derision, cloaked as it was in pointed humor? A Romney family photo, with the grandchild perched on Romney's knee.
Hysterical, huh?
Yes, Harris-Perry kept cooing about how the baby was cute. The real target, for her and the guests, was Mitt.
As in, isn't it funny that this white Mormon with a white family would find among his clan a black baby.
Maybe it was supposed to be okay because the host is African-American. But I think the segment took a horribly wrong turn.
Harris-Perry apologized on Twitter, shortly after a demand by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus that she do so for her "disgusting" comments.
"I apologize to all families built on loving transracial adoptions who feel I degraded their lives or choices," she wrote.
"As black child born into large white Mormon family I feel familiarity w/ Romney family pic & never meant to suggest otherwise.
"Therefore, while I meant no offense, I want to immediately apologize to the Romney family for hurting them."
During the segment, as Harris-Perry showed the Romney family photo, one of the panelists, Pia Glenn, sang: "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just isn't the same."
Harris-Perry chimed in that "my goal is that in 2040, the biggest thing of the year will be the marriage between Kieran Romney and North West. Can you imagine Mitt Romney and Kanye West as in-laws?"
Then came comedian Dean Obeidallah, chortling that the photo "really sums up the diversity of the Republican Party, the RNC. At the convention they find the one black person."
So the baby became a convenient symbol for ripping the GOP, with the added bonus of having Romney as a last name. A pleasant time was had by all.
Forgive me, but isn't adoption a good thing? Is interracial adoption something to be mocked? If the racial aspect had to be addressed, doesn't the adoption show an open-mindedness on the part of the Romney family?
Harris-Perry is not just some cable yakker; she's a Ph.D. and a political science professor at Tulane, fiercely liberal and generally civil. But she is not above making pointed racial arguments.
Earlier this month, for instance, Harris-Perry said of the term ObamaCare: "The word was conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man."
I'm not an MSNBC-basher, and the network deserves credit for hiring a number of African-American hosts, several of them women. But MSNBC has had some big-time tone problems lately, what with Martin Bashir and Alec Baldwin getting the boot. This episode isn't in the same category.
But it came off as condescending and insensitive.
The other panelists backpedaled before Harris-Perry weighed in on Tuesday. On Twitter, as Mediaite reports, Obeidallah wrote: "I apologize to the baby if the baby was offended by my joke mocking GOP's lack or (sic) racial diversity."
He offered a more full-throated regrets in a statement to CNN:
"Occasionally my jokes have been known to 'cross the line' and I can assure you that in the future some of my jokes will do that again. My joke on MHP was not intended in any way to mock the Romney family or the baby they adopted. Rather it was a joke about the lack of racial diversity that we see at the Republican National Convention. I apologize to the Romney family and especially the baby if any of them were offended by that joke."
Glenn, for her part, tweeted her defiance: "Yes, I sang the song. There are many children in the pic & only 1 black child. I don't see that as mocking or attacking the baby."
Then she doubled down: "If I point out the 1 black person & you translate that as an attack ON HIM, who's racist? I don't personally see anything wrong with being black."
She eventually realized the tone-deaf nature of her comments:
"Adoptive parents giving a child of ANY ethnicity a loving home,I apologize.I absolutely did not intend to harm you but it seems that I have."
At least she finally got there.
[h=1]SNBC's Harris-Perry apologizes for mocking Romney over black grandchild[/h]
By Howard Kurtz
Published December 31, 2013FoxNews.com
Facebook846 Twitter321 LinkedIn1
At left is a family photo released by Mitt Romney; at right is MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry.MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry apologized this morning amid a growing media storm over the way she and her guests made fun of Mitt Romney's adopted grandchild -- who happens to be black.
On her weekend show, the African-American host and her panelists started laughing almost immediately in the segment, in a way that made me cringe.
The object of their derision, cloaked as it was in pointed humor? A Romney family photo, with the grandchild perched on Romney's knee.
Hysterical, huh?
Yes, Harris-Perry kept cooing about how the baby was cute. The real target, for her and the guests, was Mitt.
As in, isn't it funny that this white Mormon with a white family would find among his clan a black baby.
Maybe it was supposed to be okay because the host is African-American. But I think the segment took a horribly wrong turn.
Harris-Perry apologized on Twitter, shortly after a demand by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus that she do so for her "disgusting" comments.
"I apologize to all families built on loving transracial adoptions who feel I degraded their lives or choices," she wrote.
"As black child born into large white Mormon family I feel familiarity w/ Romney family pic & never meant to suggest otherwise.
"Therefore, while I meant no offense, I want to immediately apologize to the Romney family for hurting them."
During the segment, as Harris-Perry showed the Romney family photo, one of the panelists, Pia Glenn, sang: "One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just isn't the same."
Harris-Perry chimed in that "my goal is that in 2040, the biggest thing of the year will be the marriage between Kieran Romney and North West. Can you imagine Mitt Romney and Kanye West as in-laws?"
Then came comedian Dean Obeidallah, chortling that the photo "really sums up the diversity of the Republican Party, the RNC. At the convention they find the one black person."
So the baby became a convenient symbol for ripping the GOP, with the added bonus of having Romney as a last name. A pleasant time was had by all.
Forgive me, but isn't adoption a good thing? Is interracial adoption something to be mocked? If the racial aspect had to be addressed, doesn't the adoption show an open-mindedness on the part of the Romney family?
Harris-Perry is not just some cable yakker; she's a Ph.D. and a political science professor at Tulane, fiercely liberal and generally civil. But she is not above making pointed racial arguments.
Earlier this month, for instance, Harris-Perry said of the term ObamaCare: "The word was conceived by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man."
I'm not an MSNBC-basher, and the network deserves credit for hiring a number of African-American hosts, several of them women. But MSNBC has had some big-time tone problems lately, what with Martin Bashir and Alec Baldwin getting the boot. This episode isn't in the same category.
But it came off as condescending and insensitive.
The other panelists backpedaled before Harris-Perry weighed in on Tuesday. On Twitter, as Mediaite reports, Obeidallah wrote: "I apologize to the baby if the baby was offended by my joke mocking GOP's lack or (sic) racial diversity."
He offered a more full-throated regrets in a statement to CNN:
"Occasionally my jokes have been known to 'cross the line' and I can assure you that in the future some of my jokes will do that again. My joke on MHP was not intended in any way to mock the Romney family or the baby they adopted. Rather it was a joke about the lack of racial diversity that we see at the Republican National Convention. I apologize to the Romney family and especially the baby if any of them were offended by that joke."
Glenn, for her part, tweeted her defiance: "Yes, I sang the song. There are many children in the pic & only 1 black child. I don't see that as mocking or attacking the baby."
Then she doubled down: "If I point out the 1 black person & you translate that as an attack ON HIM, who's racist? I don't personally see anything wrong with being black."
She eventually realized the tone-deaf nature of her comments:
"Adoptive parents giving a child of ANY ethnicity a loving home,I apologize.I absolutely did not intend to harm you but it seems that I have."
At least she finally got there.
[h=1]Complete List Of Everything Michael Bloomberg Has Banned In His 12 Years As NYC Mayor[/h] By Robert Gehl on December 31, 2013 Subscribe to Robert Gehl's Feed
New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be leaving office soon and we wanted to take a moment to look back at his 12 years in office.
*Three terms (extended at his request, mind you) highlighted by things he just hated. Like personal vices. So in honor of the world’s most powerful mayor, and courtesy of gizmodo.com, here’s a complete list of everything banned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg:
* Smoking in commercial establishments like bars and restaurants (2003)
* Smoking in public spaces (2011)
* Cigarette sales to those under 21 (2013)
* Sales of “flavored” tobacco products (2009)
* Smoking e-cigarettes in public spaces (2013)
* Cigarette in-store displays (2013)
* Cars in Times Square (2009)
* Cars from driving in newly created bike lanes (2007-2013)
* Cars causing congestion below 60th Street in Manhattan (2007)
* Speeding on residential “slow zones” (2013)
* Illegal guns (2006-2013)
* Sodium levels in processed foods (2010)
* Trans-fats in restaurants (2006)
* Loud headphones (2013)
* Styrofoam packaging in single-service food items (2013)
* Sodas larger than 16 ounces (2012)
* Collection of yard waste and grass clippings during certain times of year (2003-2013)
* Organic food waste from landfills (2013)
* Commercial music over 45 decibels (2013)
* Chain restaurant menus without calorie counts (2008)
* The posting of signs in “city-owned grassy areas” (2013)
* Non-fuel-efficient cabs (2007)
* New cabs that aren’t Nissan NV200s (2013)
* Greenhouse gas emissions (2007)
* Government buildings that aren’t LEED-certified (2005)
* Non-hurricane-proof buildings in coastal areas (2013)
* Black roofs (2009)
* Construction cranes over 25 years old (2013)
* No. 6 and No. 4 “heavy” heating oils (2011)
* Less than a 2-1 ratio of female and male restrooms in new public buildings (2005)
* Cell phones in schools (2006)
* Two-term limits for city elected officials (2008)
New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg will be leaving office soon and we wanted to take a moment to look back at his 12 years in office.
*Three terms (extended at his request, mind you) highlighted by things he just hated. Like personal vices. So in honor of the world’s most powerful mayor, and courtesy of gizmodo.com, here’s a complete list of everything banned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg:
* Smoking in commercial establishments like bars and restaurants (2003)
* Smoking in public spaces (2011)
* Cigarette sales to those under 21 (2013)
* Sales of “flavored” tobacco products (2009)
* Smoking e-cigarettes in public spaces (2013)
* Cigarette in-store displays (2013)
* Cars in Times Square (2009)
* Cars from driving in newly created bike lanes (2007-2013)
* Cars causing congestion below 60th Street in Manhattan (2007)
* Speeding on residential “slow zones” (2013)
* Illegal guns (2006-2013)
* Sodium levels in processed foods (2010)
* Trans-fats in restaurants (2006)
* Loud headphones (2013)
* Styrofoam packaging in single-service food items (2013)
* Sodas larger than 16 ounces (2012)
* Collection of yard waste and grass clippings during certain times of year (2003-2013)
* Organic food waste from landfills (2013)
* Commercial music over 45 decibels (2013)
* Chain restaurant menus without calorie counts (2008)
* The posting of signs in “city-owned grassy areas” (2013)
* Non-fuel-efficient cabs (2007)
* New cabs that aren’t Nissan NV200s (2013)
* Greenhouse gas emissions (2007)
* Government buildings that aren’t LEED-certified (2005)
* Non-hurricane-proof buildings in coastal areas (2013)
* Black roofs (2009)
* Construction cranes over 25 years old (2013)
* No. 6 and No. 4 “heavy” heating oils (2011)
* Less than a 2-1 ratio of female and male restrooms in new public buildings (2005)
* Cell phones in schools (2006)
* Two-term limits for city elected officials (2008)
Daily News Briefing: As 2014 begins, more Americans lack health insurance than before ObamaCare passed
Daily News Briefing: As 2014 begins, more Americans lack health insurance than before ObamaCare passed
I did not know that!
[ Apparently he doesn't know his brother as well as the rest of us do... ]
Obama’s Half-Brother ‘Floored’ About President’s Lying About Meeting Him By Andrew Johnson
January 2, 2014 4:57 PM
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Mark Obama Ndesandjo said he was surprised to hear his half-brother President Barack Obama say they had only recently met for the first time.
“I was floored by it — I don’t know why he said it,” Ndesandjo said to Laura Ingraham, adding that he had met the president several times over the years and still isn’t sure what his motivation was for making the claim. “I think he was being president and was not being my brother,” Ndesandjo said.
From their first meeting, which took place in the 1980s in Kenya, where he lived as an American ex-pat, Ndesandjo said both he and the president had different views: Ndesandjo was trying to distance himself from his father and his father’s name, while Obama was looking to further embrace his father’s roots.
When Ingraham pointed out that Obama doesn’t spend very much time with his extended family and seems to prefer the company of celebrities such as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Ndesandjo said she “had a point.” Ndesandjo, who has a book coming out in February, said ultimately that he isn’t very political and tends to focus on “the art side.”
http://nationalreview.com/corner/36...idents-lying-about-meeting-him-andrew-johnson
Obama’s Half-Brother ‘Floored’ About President’s Lying About Meeting Him By Andrew Johnson
January 2, 2014 4:57 PM
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Mark Obama Ndesandjo said he was surprised to hear his half-brother President Barack Obama say they had only recently met for the first time.
“I was floored by it — I don’t know why he said it,” Ndesandjo said to Laura Ingraham, adding that he had met the president several times over the years and still isn’t sure what his motivation was for making the claim. “I think he was being president and was not being my brother,” Ndesandjo said.
From their first meeting, which took place in the 1980s in Kenya, where he lived as an American ex-pat, Ndesandjo said both he and the president had different views: Ndesandjo was trying to distance himself from his father and his father’s name, while Obama was looking to further embrace his father’s roots.
When Ingraham pointed out that Obama doesn’t spend very much time with his extended family and seems to prefer the company of celebrities such as Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Ndesandjo said she “had a point.” Ndesandjo, who has a book coming out in February, said ultimately that he isn’t very political and tends to focus on “the art side.”
http://nationalreview.com/corner/36...idents-lying-about-meeting-him-andrew-johnson
