It’s raining Hellfire missiles.

(LWJ) — US Predators struck today in Pakistan’s Taliban-controlled tribal agency of South Waziristan, killing three “militants.”

The unmanned, CIA-operated Predators or Reapers fired a pair of missiles at a vehicle parked in a compound in the village of Baghar in the Angor Adda area of South Waziristan, according to AFP. Three “militants” were reported to have been killed in the attack.

The exact target of the strike is unknown. No senior Taliban or al Qaeda operatives were reported killed in today’s strike.

Today’s strike takes place as the US and Pakistan are waging a war of words over the latter’s support of the Haqqani Network, the al Qaeda-linked Taliban subgroup that is based in Miramshah in North Waziristan. Several US officials, including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, have accused Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, of directly supporting Haqqani Network attacks inside Afghanistan. Most recently, the US said that the ISI aided the Haqqani Network in attacking the US Embassy and ISAF headquarters in Kabul.

Cough . . . cough . . . bullshit . . .cough . . . cough.

SANTA MONICA — Department of Energy officials and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have slammed as absurd reports from conservative blogs that inflated the connection between Pelosi’s brother-in-law and a Nevada solar power project that received a $737 million federal government loan guarantee this week. . . .

Ronald Pelosi joined Pacific Corporate Group in April, roughly three years after it had invested in SolarReserve, a company official confirmed Thursday. The official said Ronald Pelosi doesn’t stand to profit or lose from the firm’s stake in SolarReserve because he doesn’t have an interest in the fund that made that investment.

The Pacific Corporate Group official said Thursday that no one from the firm had contacted the White House in connection with the application.

“This is an absurd suggestion,” Department of Energy press secretary Damien LaVera said of any connection between Ronald Pelosi and the loan guarantee announcement. “Many months of rigorous technical, financial and legal due diligence was done by nonpolitical career employees to scrutinize every aspect of this transaction — over a period of years.

Nancy Pelosi, at an event Thursday in San Francisco to drum up support for President Obama’s jobs plan, told The Chronicle that she was not familiar with the solar firm, its federal loan application or any association her brother-in-law had with the firm.

Ronald Pelosi is “a great guy,” she said, adding that she was sorry he had been “dragged into this.”

What a maroon.

(MSNBC) — Speaking to a New Hampshire Town Hall audience of more than 250 yesterday, Mitt Romneyaddressed perceptions that he is a flip-flopper by quoting from a political leader he often cites on the trail, Winston Churchill.

“In the private sector, if you don’t change your view when the facts change, well you’ll get fired for being stubborn and stupid.” Romney said. “Winston Chuchill said, ‘When the facts change, I change too, Madam’”

The problem? That quote was not uttered by Britain’s great wartime leader, but instead is credited to John Maynard Keynes, the British economist whose economic studies gave rise to so-called Keynesian economic theory, which calls for government intervention in economies to balance market forces, and who is loathed by many conservatives.

The full quote, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” is most often attributed to Keynes offering a defense of why he often changed his positions in the constantly-evolving world of macroeconomics.

Yes, billion.

(CNBC) — The U.S. Department of Energy said it plans to push ahead with as much as $5.3 billion in potential additional alternative energy loans by Friday, despite Republican complaints the money is going out too quickly to untested firms.

That comes against a backdrop of increasing political controversy over the ill-fated loan recipient Solyndra, the company whose bankruptcy has prompted questions of who inside the Obama Administration knew of the company’s weak financial position and why they continued to pour taxpayer money into it.

The DOE has made seven conditional commitments for additional funding by the time the loan guarantee legally expires on Sept. 30. So far, it has made 23 loans totaling $11.2 billion, said a spokesman.

“We are committed to ensuring that every deal closed before Sept. 30 is fully vetted and will not close any deal that has not received full due diligence by September 30,” said Damien LaVera, a department spokesman.

“We are not rushing to complete deals, we are using the full amount of time Congress allocated for the program so we can ensure that we fully complete all due diligence and make informed decisions based on the most recent data.”

No details yet.

WASHINGTON — AP source: US believes al-Awlaki was killed in strike by US jets, drones on his convoy.

(ABC News) — The American-born radical cleric al-Qaeda Anwar al-Awlaki, a major jihadist figure who U.S. officials say inspired several terror plots against the U.S., was killed overnight in Yemen, U.S. and Yemeni officials told ABC News.

A senior U.S. official told ABC News the U.S. had been tracking al-Awlaki for some time and had just been waiting for the perfect moment to strike. A Yemeni official said al-Awlaki was killed along with an unknown number of al Qaeda confederates, possibly in an airstrike.

“They were waiting for the right opportunity to get him away from any civilians,” a senior administration official told ABC News.

Sanaa, Yemen (CNN) — American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who preached terror as the public face of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has been killed in Yemen, the nation’s Defense Ministry said Friday.

The United States regards al-Awlaki, who was believed to be hiding in Yemen, as a terrorist and the biggest threat to its homeland security. Western intelligence officials believe al-Awlaki is a senior leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), one of the most active al Qaeda affiliates.

Al-Awlaki was killed about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the Yemeni town of Khashef, east of the capital city of Sanaa, Mohammed Basha, a Yemen Embassy spokesman in Washington, told CNN. Basha said the operation was launched at about 9:55 a.m. local time, though he did not say what type of operation was conducted or how al-Awlaki was killed.

A senior U.S. administration official confirmed al-Awlaki is dead, though no details surrounding the operation that led to the cleric’s death were released. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to CNN. The official was not authorized to release the information.

Update 9:30 a.am. EST: Many of you may remember Samir Khan aka Inshallahshaheed, who fled the U.S. to avoid arrest and joined al-Awlaki in Yemen. He’s the man behind “Inspire” magazine.

(more…)

Obamanomics FAIL of the day.

New York (CNNMoney) — Three years after a financial crisis pushed the country deep into recession, an overwhelming number of Americans — 90% — say that economic conditions remain poor.

The number, reported Friday in a new CNN/ORC International Poll, is the highest of Barack Obama’s presidency and a significant increase from the 81% who said conditions were poor in June.

The persistent pessimism indicates that Americans are feeling a level of hardship in line with the official statistics. Unemployment stands at 9.1%, economic growth is barely above stall speed, and the housing market remains tied in knots.

Beyond parody.

(Salon) — It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was “considering” indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Q aeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki’s father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were “state secrets” and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki’s inclusion on President Obama’s hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that “it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing.”

After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from murdering his own citizens to help the U.S. murder its. The U.S. thus transformed someone who was, at best, a marginal figure into a martyr, and again showed its true face to the world. The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced.

What’s most striking about this is not that the U.S. Government has seized and exercised exactly the power the Fifth Amendment was designed to bar (“No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law”), and did so in a way that almost certainly violates core First Amendment protections (questions that will now never be decided in a court of law). What’s most amazing is that its citizens will not merely refrain from objecting, but will stand and cheer the U.S. Government’s new power to assassinate their fellow citizens, far from any battlefield, literally without a shred of due process from the U.S. Government. Many will celebrate the strong, decisive, Tough President’s ability to eradicate the life of Anwar al-Awlaki — including many who just so righteously condemned those Republican audience members as so terribly barbaric and crass for cheering Governor Perry’s execution of scores of serial murderers and rapists — criminals who were at least given a trial and appeals and the other trappings of due process before being killed.

From an authoritarian perspective, that’s the genius of America’s political culture. It not only finds way to obliterate the most basic individual liberties designed to safeguard citizens from consummate abuses of power (such as extinguishing the lives of citizens without due process). It actually gets its citizens to stand up and clap and even celebrate the destruction of those safeguards.

Because what’s a lefty protests without some skull cracking?

NEW YORK, Sept. 30 (UPI) — The union representing New York City transit workers has come out in support of Occupy Wall Street protesters demanding U.S. social and economic policy changes.

The protesters, who argue U.S. social and economic policies unfairly favor the rich, secured the backing Thursday of the largest and most influential branch of the Transport Workers Union of America.

Local 100 President John Samuelsen said the branch’s 38,000 city transit workers and 26,000 retirees share the protesters’ view that while the richest New Yorkers get tax breaks, lower-income residents are struggling financially and forced to foot the bill for what they characterize as Wall Street’s excesses.

“They see the injustice in that and are highlighting the injustice by protesting, and we’re supporting that effort,” Samuelsen was quoted in the New York Daily News as saying.

The SEIU along with the teachers unions will also be involved.

. . . Some of the biggest players in organized labor are actively involved in planning for Wednesday’s demonstration, either directly or through coalitions that they are a part of. The United Federation of Teachers, 32BJ SEIU, 1199 SEIU, Workers United and Transport Workers Union Local 100 are all expected to participate. The Working Families Party is helping to organize the protest and MoveOn.org is expected to mobilize its extensive online regional networks to drum up support for the effort.

“We’re getting involved because the crisis was caused by the excesses of Wall Street and the consequences have fallen hardest on workers,” a spokesman for TWU Local 100 said.

Says the guy responsible for bringing America to its knees.

“This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades.”

HT: NRO

Actually, the judge said he would extend the application process, but only for Sgt. Dakota Meyer who then declined saying he wouldn’t do it unless it was extended for all applicants, not just him. An amazing person to say the least, the judge . . . not so much.

NEW YORK (AP) — A former Marine who was awarded the Medal of Honor bowed out of his quest Tuesday to join the New York City Fire Department after a federal judge denied his request to extend the application deadline for all aspiring firefighters — not just him.

The judge had been willing to grant a 24-hour application extension for Sgt. Dakota Meyer, who saved the lives of 36 people during an ambush in Afghanistan two years ago. Meyer missed the FDNY’s application deadline because he was busy with official Medal of Honor commitments and ceremonies, said Keith Sullivan, his attorney.

But when the city offered to reopen the application process to the public, Brooklyn Judge Nicholas Garaufis refused, saying a brief extension would create a risk of “adverse impact” on minority groups who are under-represented in the ranks of the FDNY. Instead, the judge agreed to grant Meyer a one-day exception because he is “one exceptional individual.”

That didn’t seem fair to Meyer, who charged five times in a Humvee into heavy gunfire in the darkness of an Afghanistan valley to rescue comrades under attack from Taliban insurgents.

“Dakota refuses to compromise his values,” Sullivan said Tuesday. “He said he would like to thank the city of New York and the people who have shown him so much support, but he couldn’t in good conscience take a one-person exception. He will apply for the exam when it’s given again in four years.”

The judge said the city’s offer to advertise the extension on multiple city websites would not be enough to reach black and Hispanic communities. The decision came amid nearly two years of heightened scrutiny of the FDNY’s hiring practices in federal court.

Garaufis, who has presided over the proceedings, ruled last year that the city’s firefighter entrance exam discriminated against minorities. He has closely monitored the FDNY in recent months as it reforms hiring practices by ramping up minority outreach efforts.

The man behind The Dark Knight Returns, 300, Sin City, etc., said he wanted to “really piss people off” with Holy Terror and judging by this hyperventilating review by Wired, I’d say he hit his mark and then some.

Frank Miller doesn’t do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he’s created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it’s fitting that now he’s produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time.

Holy Terror, Miller’s long, long, long-awaited statement on 9/11 and counterterrorism, hit comic book stores Wednesday. Longtime Miller watchers have viewed it with apprehension, hoping that his dark views about the source of that national trauma wouldn’t turn the comic into a vulgar, one-dimensional revenge fantasy. They were wrong. It’s even worse than that.

Miller’s Holy Terror is a screed against Islam, completely uninterested in any nuance or empathy toward 1.2 billion people he conflates with a few murderous conspiracy theorists. It’s no accident that it’s being released ten years after 9/11. This comic would be unthinkable during the unity that the U.S. felt after the attack.

Holy Terror, the inaugural offering from Legendary Comics, starts out with the Fixer, an ersatz Batman, enjoying a tryst with an ersatz Catwoman when they’re interrupted by a nail bomb. The culprit: a “humanities major” named Amina, an Islamist version of the psychopathic Rorschach from Watchmen, who sneers that the “haughty” skyline of Empire City is like “sharpened sticks aimed at the eyes of God.”

The Fixer’s response is to go to war — indiscriminately. “We give them what they want, minus the innocent victims,” the Fixer thinks as he opens fire. To bring the point home Miller draws 14 stereotypical Muslim faces around the righteous anti-hero. Naturally, the only way to learn more about the next attack is to torture a surviving terrorist — which Miller illustrates pornographically — even though the Scary Muslim says “pain means nothing to me,” so it’s not like the Fixer is torturing, you know, a human being.

Keep reading…

I feel safer already.

(CBC News) — The United States is looking at building fences along the border with Canada to help keep out terrorists and other criminals, according to a draft report by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency

The report proposes the use of “fencing and other barriers” on the 49th parallel to manage “trouble spots where passage of cross-border violators is difficult to control.”

But a spokesperson for U.S Customs and Border Protection said the government is not considering the fence option “at this time” and instead is looking at the environmental effects of putting more manpower, technology and infrastructure along the border.

The border service is also pondering options including a beefed-up technological presence through increased use of radar, sensors, cameras, drones and vehicle scanners. In addition, it might continue to improve or expand customs facilities at ports of entry.

The agency considered but ruled out the possibility of hiring “significantly more” U.S. Border Patrol agents to increase the rate of inspections, noting staffing has already risen in recent years.

Customs and Border Protection is inviting comment on the options and plans a series of public meetings in Washington and several U.S. border communities next month. It will then decide which ideas to pursue.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano noted last month the challenges of monitoring the vast, sparsely populated northern border region. She stressed manpower, but also a greater reliance on technology.

And why not? It’s only going to cost $1.6 million per job.

(CNS News) – Vice President Joe Biden said Congress should pass the $450-billion American Jobs Act even if the economy were growing at 8 percent and unemployment were as low as 3 percent.

“Look, we should be doing all of this stuff even if we were growing by 8 percent, even if there was a 3 percent unemployment rate in America,” Biden said at an event on Thursday to promote the legislation. “We need better roads, we need better bridges, we need safer streets.”

“We need to be in a position where our kids are in classrooms where there’s enough qualified teachers, where they are in fact in classes where they are safe,” Biden said.

The vice president made his remarks at the headquarters of the Alexandria Police Department in Alexandria, Va., where he also announced that the agency was one of the recipients of a federal grant to fund the hiring of new officers.

He’s also shrieking that “American democracy has been hacked” or something.

(Guardian) — Al Gore has warned that there is now clear proof that climate change is directly responsible for the extreme and devastating floods, storms and droughts that displaced millions of people this year.

Speaking to an audience of business leaders, political leaders including Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond and green energy entrepreneurs in Edinburgh, Gore said the world was at a “fork in the road”.

The former US vice-president and climate campaigner also argued that America has suffered a “breakdown in democratic governance”, because members of Congress are obsessed with appeasing special interests in return for campaign funding, rather than confronting climate change.

The former vice president and climate campaigner said that US democracy had been undermined. “In the language of computer culture, our democracy has been hacked,” he said.

In a near hour-long speech to the Scottish low-carbon investment conference, Gore said the evidence from the floods in Pakistan, China, South Korea and Columbia was so compelling that the case for urgent action by world leaders to combat carbon emissions was now overwhelming, Gore said.

“Observations in the real world make it clear that it’s happening now, it’s real, it’s with us,” he said. Failing to take action meant the world would face a catastrophe.

Get ready for a GOP landslide.

Via RCP:

Q: The Vice President also said it’s totally legitimate that the election will be a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature and the state of the economy. Do you agree it will be a referendum on the President?

MR. CARNEY: I think, again, what he said is that it will be — it’s legitimate, and I think every elected official who’s running for office in 2012 will run on his or her record. And this President and Vice President will run on their record of saving the American economy from a great depression, of reversing the kind of dramatic contraction in the economy and dramatic job loss that we saw, and beginning to build a foundation for the kind of competitive economy that we absolutely must have in the 21st century for us to succeed and for America to continue to be the kind of America that we want it to be.

Q: So just to put a final point on it, the President is — he’s okay if this election is a referendum on his progress on the economy?

MR. CARNEY: The President fully expects that when people cast their ballots in November of 2012, that they will be making their decisions based on their assessment of his record, what he’s done, what he’s accomplished, and obviously comparing that and what his vision is for the future — which is critical as well — for where he wants to take the country going forward, and comparing that to whoever is the candidate for the Republican Party. So the answer is, yes. It’s more than that, but, yes.

Click here for video…

And indicted on fraud and embezzlement charges.

(Fox News) — If Barack Obama were president of a major U.S. company, he’d be fired by now. That’s what American voters think — by a 52–38 percent margin.

Fifty-six percent of independents think a corporation’s board of directors would have already handed Obama his pink slip. Nearly a quarter of Democrats also believe Obama would be out (23 percent).

In Obama’s real job as president, a Fox News poll released Thursday found that while 43 percent of voters approve of his performance, just over half — 51 percent — disapprove.

Eight in 10 Democrats approve (80 percent) of the job Obama’s doing, while nine in 10 Republicans disapprove (90 percent).

President Obama receives 31 percent approval among independents, which matches a previous record low in August. Over half of independents — 55 percent — disapprove.

The person responsible for keeping the booze away from Tingles before he goes on-air needs to be fired.

“We were all rooting for you, by the way. And a lot of us in this business like John McCain a lot. I like Obama but I still like McCain, he’s still mad at me. Fine. That’s the way it is. . . He ought to be mad at me.”

Via Newsbusters

Unfortunately it’s Nigeria’s Christians who will bear the brunt of the bloodshed.

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AFP) — A purported spokesman for a Nigerian Islamist sect blamed for scores of attacks, including last month’s bombing of UN headquarters, has rejected a proposal to negotiate with the government.

A spokesman for Boko Haram told journalists in a conference call late Tuesday in the northeastern city of Maiduguri, where the sect has carried out most of its attacks, that the group would push ahead with its violent campaign.

“We are not going to enter into any dialogue with the government as the Galtimari committee has recommended,” Abul Qaqa said, referring to a panel appointed by President Goodluck Jonathan that this week urged negotiations.

“We do not recognise the Galtimari committee and, as far as we are concerned, its recommendations are of no effect.”

He added: “We still maintain our cause of ensuring strict implementation of Islamic law in Nigeria and waging war against infidels.”

A man identifying himself by the same name has claimed to speak on behalf of the sect on several occasions, but Boko Haram is believed to have a number of factions and several others have said they are spokesmen as well.

Some two months ago, Jonathan set up a seven-person fact-finding committee headed by ex-diplomat Usman Galtimari to seek ways to end violence in the country’s northeast.

Score one for life.

WICHITA (AP) — A federal judge refused Thursday to block enforcement of a new Kansas law that restricts insurance coverage for abortions.

U.S. District Judge Wesley Brown rejected a request from the American Civil Liberties Union for a temporary injunction while the group challenges the law in court. Brown said the ACLU, which filed its lawsuit in August, failed to back its claim that legislators who passed the law this year primarily intended to create obstacles to obtaining abortions.

The Kansas law took effect July 1. It prohibits insurance companies from offering abortion coverage as part of their general health plans, except when a woman’s life is at risk. Those who want abortion coverage would have to buy supplemental policies, known as riders, covering only abortion.

In his 19-page order, Brown wrote the ACLU’s argument “lacks any evidentiary showing that the law actually has the effect of creating a substantial obstacle to obtaining an abortion.”

Brown, who at age 104 is the nation’s oldest sitting federal judge, followed the recommendation of U.S. Magistrate Judge Kenneth Gale, who had a hearing in the lawsuit earlier this month. Gale concluded the ACLU failed to prove any of its members would be harmed by the law, which is required when seeking a temporary injunction.

The insurance law was among several major anti-abortion initiatives approved by Kansas legislators and signed into law this year by Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican who called upon lawmakers to create “a culture of life” after taking office in January.