Tag: government

90% of New Yorkers defy the state’s new gun registration law

3:32 pm

Rebellion: A report in New York strongly suggests that more than 90% of the population is refusing to register their weapons as required by the new gun control law rammed through the legislature after the Sandy Hook massacre.

The article also notes that sheriffs and the rank-in-file have no intention of enforcing the registration part of the law either.

This story illustrates why it is essential we take great care in the laws we pass. If we write bad laws, we not only oppress innocent law-abiding citizens, we foster contempt for the law, which in the end can cause the collapse of civilized society and even more oppression.

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Airbus Safran demands full ownership of Ariane 6

5:15 pm

The competition heats up: One of the heads of Airbus Safran that is offering to build Europe’s next rocket, Ariane 6, has said that they must have full control of the rocket and project or they won’t do it.

“We are now a few weeks from the submission of a bid, and of course at this stage everyone defends his camp,” Lahoud said. “It is said that industry needs to make a financial contribution. We have said it’s possible we will contribute, but on condition that [development] not be conducted under the former system.

“We want responsibility for the design, the production, the commercialization and operations to be in the hands of industry, and not in a sort of mixed-economy creation that borrows more from the United Nations than from what our competitors do. Under these circumstances, and only under these circumstances, will there be a business case that allows us to invest, and to defend before our boards of directors the fact that corporate cash needs to be spent.”

In other words, they will not build something that will be under the complex bureaucratic control of the many-headed European Space Agency. Under that framework, they don’t think they can compete, so why bother?

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Destroy a building rather than let a charter school use it

11:52 am

A Michigan school district, strapped for cash, preferred demolishing an empty school building rather than sell it to a private charter school for several million.

The district eventually backed down to public pressure and made the sale, but this story is very instructive. You have to watch the video report at the link to find out who really led the opposition to this sale, and why. I wonder if you can guess.

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The fascist state of the modern American university.

10:50 am

Link here. The opening paragraphs should chill your bones;

“I can’t have you participate in class anymore.”

I was on my way out of class when my social welfare and policy professor casually called me over to tell me this. The friendliness of her tone did not match her words, and I attempted a shocked, confused apology. It was my first semester at the Hunter College School of Social Work, and I was as yet unfamiliar with the consistent, underlying threat that characterized much of the school’s policy and atmosphere. This professor was simply more open and direct than most.

I asked if I had said or done anything inappropriate or disrespectful, and she was quick to assure me that it was not my behavior that was the problem. No: It was my opinions. Or, as she put it, “I have to give over this information as is.”

I spent the rest of that semester mostly quiet, frustrated, and missing my undergraduate days, when my professors encouraged intellectual diversity and give-and-take. I attempted to take my case to a higher-up at school, an extremely nice, fair professor who insisted that it was in my own best interest not to rock the boat. I was doing well in his class, and I believed him when he told me he wanted me to continue doing well. He explained to me that people who were viewed as too conservative had had problems graduating in the past, and he didn’t want that to happen to me. I thought he was joking .  .  . until I realized he wasn’t.

Read it all. It cites numerous examples in academia where students with dissenting views are threatened with punishment and even expulsion if they dared express those views.

It will also raise the question: Why does anyone send anyone to these schools anymore? The last thing the students are getting is an education.

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NASA to use giant SLS rocket to launch cubesats

9:50 am

The giant SLS rocket that NASA is building for billions will be used to launch eleven tiny 30 pound cubesats into deep space.

With room for 11 small shoebox-sized CubeSats on the first test flight of NASA’s behemoth Space Launch System, agency officials have turned to scientists, industry and students to fill the slots in time for launch in 2018. NASA has selected three CubeSats developed by internal government teams for flight on the SLS demonstration launch, and officials announced last week two more top candidates that could be manifested on the mission.

These will be the first cubesats ever sent beyond Earth orbit. Using SLS to get them into space, however, is very incongruous, since the very concept of cubesats is small and cheap, while SLS is everything but.

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Indiana pizza parlor to reopen despite violent threats

9:07 am

The owners of the pizza parlor in Indiana whose owners have said they will not cater a homosexual wedding have announced that they are about to reopen.

The article quotes both the father and daughter extensively about this controversy. Read it. It will once again reveal who the real bigots are in this story, and it is not these people.

One detail from the story is very interesting. The owners plan to donate some of the money raised for them to the Washington florist who is under attack for the same reasons.

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Governor orders one week shut down of Thirty Meter Telescope project

8:46 am

Bowing to the demands of about two dozen protesters, the governor of Hawaii has ordered a one week halt in the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea.

You can read statements from the governor, the protesters, and the telescope’s project manager here. Make sure especially you read the statement by the telescope manager, as it outlines in great detail the negotiations over the past seven years between the telescope and the local community. This project was not forced upon them. They discussed it and agreed to it. As the statement notes,

Following an appeal of the permit and further contested case proceedings, the TMT project has proceeded in full compliance with the law. The TMT site was selected with great care and respect. There are no archaeological shrines or burial sites within TMT’s project site. Comprehensive research by expert hydrologists confirm there is no threat to the aquifer.

This is the same story we’ve seen for the past half century with every telescope that has been built in territories where the local native population has some say in construction. Years of negotiation are ignored just as construction is about to begin by a small number of protesters demanding a halt. The protesters always claim a combination of religious and environmental concerns. In every case, these so-called passionate demands somehow vanish after they are promised some additional cash.

It would a terrible tragedy for Hawaii, and the human race, if this $1.4 billion telescope ends up getting canceled because of the complaints of a handful of people who to my mind are behaving like extortionists. It will also be unfortunate if the government bows to this extortion and rewards them for this behavior.

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Congress moves to require NOAA to use private weather satellites

4:31 pm

The competition heats up: The House Science Committee has approved a bill that would require NOAA to begin using private satellites to gather weather data.

NOAA officials, most recently at a Feb. 12 hearing of the House Science environment subcommittee, have long said the agency is open to buying space-based weather data from aspiring commercial providers, so long as the companies can certify their data are up to NOAA standards. Currently this is impossible because NOAA has published no standards.

That would change if the Weather Research and Forecast Innovation Act of 2015 (H.R. 1561) becomes law. The measure sets a legal timetable for NOAA to publish the standards and competitively select at least one provider to sell the agency data to determine whether it can be easily folded into the National Weather Service’s forecasting models.

Watch what they do, not what they say. NOAA might claim it would use private providers, but without providing those standards it has given itself an easy way to reject everyone, which is exactly what they have done for years. This bill would force the issue.

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Another global warming advocate demands the arrest of skeptics

10:32 am

Fascist: Continuing in what is becoming a pattern for the left, another global warming advocate has called for the arrest of anyone who dares question the existence of human-caused global warming.

You can read his entire rant here. This quote is especially telling:

Those denialists should face jail. They should face fines. They should face lawsuits from the classes of people whose lives and livelihoods are most threatened by denialist tactics.

Let’s make a clear distinction here: I’m not talking about the man on the street who thinks Rush Limbaugh is right, and climate change is a socialist United Nations conspiracy foisted by a Muslim U.S. president on an unwitting public to erode its civil liberties.

You all know that man. That man is an idiot. He is too stupid to do anything other than choke the earth’s atmosphere a little more with his Mr. Pibb burps and his F-150’s gassy exhaust. Few of us believers in climate change can do much more—or less—than he can.

This is why, at this time especially, I refuse to cede any further power to government and its allies. A significant percentage of our population is in favor of using that power to oppress their opponents. Give them any more power and they will do it.

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Obama lets stand Iran’s goal of destroying Israel

5:03 pm

Whose side is Obama on? During an NPR interview, President Obama said that it would be a “fundamental misjudgment” to require that Iran recognize the Jewish state of Israel as part of the nuclear deal.

Israel meanwhile is required to make deals, give up land, restrict its military strengths, and do nothing when attacked. Iran, the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Hezbollah, and a host of other Islamic terrorist organizations can have the goal of killing all the Jews so that we can make nice with them.

Madness. It is all madness, and it is the same kind of naive madness that put us into a bloody world war in the 1930s that killed millions.

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$10 billion wasted on military projects

10:56 am

Government marches on! In the past decade the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency has wasted $10 billion on defense projects that were either impractical and impossible.

I can’t provide any single quote about the absurd stupidity of these projects because the article is filled with so many. Read it all and weep. However, here is one quote which indicates who we should blame:

President George W. Bush, in 2002, ordered an urgent effort to field a homeland missile defense system within two years. In their rush to make that deadline, Missile Defense Agency officials latched onto exotic, unproven concepts without doing a rigorous analysis of their cost and feasibility. Members of Congress whose states and districts benefited from the spending tenaciously defended the programs, even after their deficiencies became evident.

You are probably thinking the fault lies with Bush and Congress for proposing foolish programs and then funding them even after they were revealed to be obviously foolish, because they provided pork for congressional districts. You are wrong. Though Congress and Bush certainly share the guilt, the really guilty party is the American public, which has been voting in favor of pork for decades.

We get the government we deserve. Until we stop electing candidates (from either party) who promise pork, we will continue to get pork, and waste, and a society that is steadily going bankrupt.

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Colorado: Discrimination by gays good! Discrimination by Christians bad!

10:00 am

The state religion rules! In Colorado, the same civil rights office that punished a bakery for refusing to participate in a homosexual wedding ruled this week that a gay bakery can refuse to bake cakes with anti-homosexual messages on them.

This is more proof that the discrimination claims of the pro-homosexual movement are a lie, that the real goal is to persecute religious Christians.

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Kansas Republicans forbid welfare recipients from buying luxury items

9:53 am

We’re here to help you! In order to prevent welfare recipients in Kansas from using their welfare checks improperly, state Republicans have placed a $25 per day limit on benefits, and forbid the use of that money to buy anything in liquor stores, or from fortune tellers, swimming pools and cruise ships.

This is why you don’t depend on government, or ask them for help, or give them any power over you. As soon as you do, they stick their hands into your business and tell you how to live your life. It might be stupid for a poor welfare recipient to buy a ticket on a cruise ship, but damn it, it’s their life, they should be free to live it as they wish.

There is one benefit of this policy however. It might convince some recipients who can to get off welfare and go to work.

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Americans rally to support persecuted Christians

10:27 pm

In less than two days, an independent fund was set up and raised almost $850,000 for the owners of the Christian pizza parlor in Indiana that was forced to close because of death threats from the left wing community.

Friends of the Washington state florist whose entire life savings might be confiscated by the state for refusing to participate in a homosexual wedding have also now created another site to raise money to help her. They have already raised over $50,000.

Both funds are important for many reasons, the most important of which is each fund makes it clear that Christians of good conscience are not alone, that they can stand for their beliefs and not be abandoned and destroyed. There are thousands of people who will rally to help you.

Let me add, as a Jew, this thought on this first night of Passover. Each year on Passover, Jews gather for their Passover Seder to retell the story of their enslavement in Egypt and their escape to freedom. In doing so, you are supposed to imagine yourself as a slave who is freed. As the Haggadah, the book that outlines the Seder ceremony, states, “In every single generation, each individual is obligated to think of himself as one of those who came out of Egypt.”

The Jewish faith also emphasizes that we must thank God each time for bringing us to freedom. I say that God only helps those who help themselves. It appears that in America today, in the 21st century, we are obliged to do the same again.

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The establishment of a state religion called progressive liberalism

4:51 pm

The battle over forcing businesses to participate in same-sex marriages is actually an attempt by the left to establish a state religion called progressive liberalism.

It is important to note that Madison was making this case [in arguing for the first amendment in the Bill of Rights] not in the context of arguing for permitting the free exercise of religion but rather in the context of arguing against the establishment of any religion by law. His point was that no one ought to be compelled to affirm as true a religious tenet he took to be false and that no one should be compelled to participate in a religious rite that violated his own understanding of his religious obligations. [emphasis mine]

The author goes on to point out how the effort by the left to require businesses to participate in same-sex weddings is exactly the same as what Madison feared, the creation and imposition of a state religion, except in this case the state religion calls itself secular and has few if any links with God.

Read it all. When I read it my mind went “Bingo! He has hit the nail right on the head.”

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ESA and Airbus Safran in budget dispute over Ariane 6

4:02 pm

The competition heats up: The deal between ESA and Airbus Safran to build Europe’s next generation rocket, Ariane 6, to compete with SpaceX for the launch market is now threatened because Europe wants the company to pay more for development than the company expected.

[ESA launch director Gaele] Winters acknowledged that Airbus Safran Launchers has not agreed with ESA’s assessment that industry’s share of the development cost is around 400 million euros. “They told us they have not signed off on the 400 million [euros], and this is correct,” Winters said. “It is an assumption we made, which we will look at next during the full Program Implementation review scheduled for mid-2016. Industry is prepared to invest in the program, and one important condition is that we need to be sure they have a fair rate of return on their investment.”

Winters said ESA is sensitive to the fact that additional costs borne by industry will find their way into the Ariane 6 pricing structure, which would undermine the vehicle’s competitiveness on the international commercial market.

If Airbus Safran wants to own the rocket, they must be willing to pay for some of its development, as have SpaceX and the other new American commercial space companies. This is the price for having the right to make money from the rocket outside of its European government customers. It seems, however, that Airbus Safran is balking at that reality. They are used to having everything covered by ESA, and are now unhappy they might have to lay out some bucks themselves.

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Liberals are the New McCarthyites—and they’re proud of it

11:16 am

Link here.

Some of the hallmarks of the original McCarthyism are popping up in today’s variant. Media companies were pressured in the 1950s not to hire people suspected of Communist ties. Today, pressure is being applied to isolate or sideline scholars who disagree with climate-change policies. In the 1950s, people accused of heretical views were sometimes unfairly attacked or threatened. Today, people who oppose gay marriage sometimes see their jobs or businesses put at risk. Ask Brendan Eich, who was forced to step down last year as CEO of Mozilla for making a six-year-old donation to a measure opposing same-sex marriage. Or the owners of the Indiana pizza parlor who had to close their doors after threats mounted when they said they would serve any customers in their restaurant but wouldn’t cater a gay wedding.

Read it all. It has become increasingly obvious in recent years that the left is no longer interested in civil debate. Disagree with them, and their answer is to try to destroy you.

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Judge demands that IRS hand over list of targeted conservative groups

9:47 am

A federal judge this week ordered the IRS to reveal its list of almost 300 tea party groups it targeted for harassment in 2012.

A federal judge ordered the IRS this week to turn over the list of 298 groups it targeted for intrusive scrutiny as the agency defends against a potential class-action lawsuit by tea party groups who claim their constitutional rights were violated. The IRS had argued it shouldn’t have to release the names because doing do would violate privacy laws, but Judge Susan J. Dlott, who sits in the Southern District of Ohio, rejected that claim and ordered the tax agency to turn over any lists or spreadsheets detailing the groups that were targeted and when they filed their applications.

From the article, it is very clear that the Obama administration and the IRS has been stonewalling this scandal and that it also appears to be succeeding in that stonewalling. The reason? Our so-called independent mainstream press is working for the Democratic Party, and has been helping the IRS build that stonewall. By not following up aggressively on these stories, they have allowed the story to die politically.

Then again, the 2014 elections suggest the issue has not died with the educated public that votes during mid-terms. It is the uneducated public that votes during presidential elections from whom the leftwing press has tried to bury the scandal. We will find out if they have succeeded come 2016.

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It’s National Hate Week!

4:31 pm

Link here.

Today, we’re all hating on Indiana. Who will be the left’s Emmanuel Goldstein next week?

Evidently, the sole function of the media these days is to subject the public to a steady stream of manufactured events: “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot”; nuclear power kills; Lena Dunham’s rape by a college conservative at Oberlin; the “mattress girl” raped at Columbia University; Jon Stewart is funny; a fraternity gang-rape at the University of Virginia; and a law protecting religious freedom will lead to separate water fountains for gays in Indiana.

The whole country has to keep being dragged through these liberal hate campaigns, but as soon as the precipitating event turns out to be a gigantic hoax, the truth is revealed like a bedtime story being read to a child: The ending is whispered and the narrator tiptoes out of the room.

Read it all. It will help you distinguish between real news and modern leftwing propaganda, based on lies, being promoted by our modern mainstream press.

Meanwhile, that pizzeria whose owner said they wouldn’t cater a same-sex wedding, though they’d be glad to sell pizzas to homosexuals, has been forced to close because of death threats, including one threat on twitter from a high school coach who thought it a good idea to get together and burn the place down. She has since been suspended from her job.

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Russian government takes over Vostochny construction

8:38 am

The Russian government has once again increased its supervision of the construction of the Vostochny spaceport, now 120 days behind schedule.

They want to launch the first rocket from the spaceport by December of this year. The story also describes how contractors have been ordered, by Russia’s deputy prime minister himself, to stop leaving delicate new equipment in unprotected environments, as the equipment has been delivered before the buildings they are supposed be stored in have been finished.

Where the equipment will be put is not said. The boss has ordered it, however, so it better happen!

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Three future targets of the same-sex fascists

5:43 pm

Link here. First Shapiro outlines how these gay advocates have been lying to us repeatedly over the decades:

Gay activists and their leftist allies told us decades ago that same-sex marriage wasn’t on the agenda. All homosexuals wanted was the benefits of marriage, but not the title. That, of course, was a lie.

Next, gay activists and their leftist allies told us that same-sex marriage would not threaten anyone; it was simply a matter of equal rights. “How will it affect anyone else if two men choose to get married?” they said. That, of course, was a lie. The same-sex marriage agenda includes with it the desire to force individual religious Americans to accept same-sex marriage. Hence the current attempt to leverage same-sex marriage into legislation forcing religious business owners to participate in activities, like same-sex weddings, that they consider sinful.

So, what’s next on the agenda?

He then outlines their next three targets: the churches, private religious universities, and private religious schools. Read it all. Based on history it is logical that these are the next targets. This quote from the article however especially stood out to me, based on the recent legal effort to punish Christian businesses who refuse to endorse and participate in gay marriages:

Once non-profit status is revoked for churches on the basis of supposed discrimination against homosexuals, those churches become private institutions engaged in commerce. Which means that they are regulated as common businesses under anti-discrimination law. Which means they can be shut down or fined for failure to perform same-sex weddings. The left says this will never happen. Which means we are a few years away from it happening. [emphasis mine]

Anyone who thinks this fascist oppression — to force Christian and Jewish religious institutions to perform same-sex marriages — is not on the agenda is living in a dream world. This movement has already succeeded in redefining discrimination and bigotry as anyone who even hints that they consider gay behavior wrong. They have moved to McCarthyite tactics to destroy such people. Next comes the institutions that disagree with them.

Once again, my disagreement here is not with the gay lifestyle. It isn’t for me, but I have no problem if someone else wishes to live that way. Just don’t force me or anyone else to endorse your choices. Just as you deserve the right to liberty of conscience, so does everyone else.

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Rubio and Bush move to extend NSA snooping of Americans

10:22 am

While Jeb Bush said this week that he strongly supports NSA snooping, Marco Rubio introduced legislation in Congress to permanently extend the program.

I consider the Patriot Act and this particular issue a good “canary-in-the-mine” blood test for determining which candidates for President are really conservative. Bush, Rubio, and also Christie have come out in support of warrantless searches by the NSA of your private electronic communications. All three reveal to me that they are not really conservative by this position. However,

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has called for the end of the NSA’s domestic dragnet surveillance program and has indicated he will try to block reauthorization of those core provisions of the Patriot Act later this year. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, meanwhile, was one of just four Republicans to join with Democrats last year in backing the USA Freedom Act, a bill that would have essentially ended the bulk metadata program. The measure fell two votes short of advancing, failing to overcome a Republican-led filibuster.

This is very good information about these candidates.

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Iran military chief insists it will retain the goal of destroying Israel

9:54 am

Hey, let’s make a deal with these guys! A militia chief in Iran said yesterday that “erasing Israel off the map” is non-negotiable.

In other words, any deal Iran signs will do nothing to change its goal of killing all the Jews in Israel. This at least makes them consistent with other Arab entities we have negotiated with in the past. Neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority have ever eliminated from their ruling documents their sworn goal of wiping Israel off the map, even when deal after deal has demanded that they do so. Why should Iran be any different?

No wonder Obama wants to make a deal with them. Maybe they have like goals!

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New study finds fracking does not contaminate drinking water

8:19 am

The uncertainty of science: A new study, using data from more than 11,000 drinking water wells in northern Pennsylvania, has found no evidence that fracking causes contamination.

The new study of 11,309 drinking water wells in northeastern Pennsylvania concludes that background levels of methane in the water are unrelated to the location of hundreds of oil and gas wells that tap hydraulically fractured, or fracked, rock formations. The finding suggests that fracking operations are not significantly contributing to the leakage of methane from deep rock formations, where oil and gas are extracted, up to the shallower aquifers where well water is drawn.

The result also calls into question prominent studies in 2011 and 2013 that did find a correlation in a nearby part of Pennsylvania. There, wells closer to fracking sites had higher levels of methane. Those studies, however, were based on just 60 and 141 domestic well samples, respectively.

The article outlines in detail the many disagreements and uncertainties of both the old studies and this new one. It also however contains this one key quote about the earlier studies, buried in the text, that illustrates the politics influencing the reporting of the anti-fracking research:

The two papers seemed to show that fracking was leading to increased concentrations of methane in drinking water. Dissolved methane is not toxic, and drinking water often contains significant background levels of the gas from natural sources. [emphasis mine]

The earlier studies were blasted everywhere by the media. They were used to show the harm fracking does, and were the justification for the banning of fracking in New York. Yet, the methane they found was not necessarily caused by fracking, and isn’t even a health concern anyway.

I wonder if the press will give this new report as much coverage. It might not be right, but it sure does indicate that the science is unsettled, and that the risks from fracking are, as usual in these days of doom-saying environmentalism, overblown.

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NASA denies new space station partnership with Russia

9:12 am

NASA officials today denied they were negotiating a partnership with Russia to build a space station replacement for ISS, as suggested yesterday by the head of Russia’s space program.

I am beginning to suspect that the misunderstanding here comes from NASA head Charles Bolden, who is in Russia right now. Knowing Bolden, who is a nice guy who likes to make others happy, he probably said some nice feel-good, kumbaya things to the Russians during conversations with them, things like “We want to keep working together,” and “We will support your plans for your future space station whole-heartedly.” None of this was meant as a commitment, but the Russians might have taken these statements more seriously than Bolden realized.

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Iranian defector claims U.S. negotiating for Iran in nuclear weapon talks

9:43 pm

Whose side is Obama on? A media aide for the Iranian President has defected, noting as he did so that in the negotiations the U.S. team has mostly been taking Iran’s side.

In his television interview, Mr Mottaghi also gave succour to western critics of the proposed nuclear deal, which has seen the White House pursue a more conciliatory line with Tehran than some of America’s European allies in the negotiating team, comprising the five permanent members of the UN security council and Germany. “The US negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal,” he said. [emphasis mine]

Words fail me. Either Obama and Kerry are incredibly naive and incompetent, or they have no loyalty to the U.S. and wish to provide aid and comfort to those who wish to destroy us. In either case the citizens of the U.S. and the rest of the world are in serious trouble.

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