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Obama in Berlin: Climate change is the “global threat of our time” by Erika Johnsen Germany might be looking to scale way back on their own overly optimistic long-term and government subsidized renewable-energy plans as electricity prices are skyrocketing around the country, but that didn’t stop President Obama from advocating more of the same during his speech in Berlin today, accompanied by all of the usual grandiose platitudes. Via The Hill: “Peace with justice means refusing to condemn our children to a harsher, less hospitable planet,” he said in a speech at Berlin’s Brandenberg Gate. “The effort to slow climate change requires bold action.” Obama touted his first-term work on green energy and boosting auto efficiency rules, but added: “We know we have to do more – and we will do more.” … “With a global middle class consuming more energy every day, this must now be an effort of all nations, not just some. For the grim alternative affects all nations – more severe storms, more famine and floods, new waves of refugees, coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise. This is the future we must avert,” Obama said. “This is the global threat of our time. And for the sake of future generations, our generation must move toward a global compact to confront a changing climate before it is too late. That is our job. That is our task. We have to get to work,” he said, according to a White House transcript. And the White House is planning to do more, especially via executive and regulatory fiat. I mentioned last week that the Obama administration has been hinting to ardent climate-change activists and Democratic base supporters that they have big plans they’re going to reveal next month, and a White House spokesperson gave a few more not-unexpected indications about the type of rules and regs they have in the pipeline, reports National Journal: “If there’s one thing I learned in the four and a half years in the White House, it’s not to get in front of the big guy, but it is worth mentioning the Clean Air Act,” Heather Zichal, deputy assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said at a forum hosted by The New Republic. “This is a tool whether it’s the car rule or the mercury rule, we know that we can implement it with success.” This is the first time a White House official has said on the record that Obama’s forthcoming strategy, first reported by Bloomberg last week, will include some component of the Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse-gas rules. Exactly what that means is still unclear. Zichal declined to offer details, including whether the July package would contain a proposal for existing power plants that account for 40 percent of the greenhouse-gas emissions in the country. EPA last year issued a draft rule for new power plants, whose impact on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is significantly limited compared with the rules for existing plants. … The other two components of the strategy are tightening energy-efficiency standards of appliances and speeding up development of renewable energy on public lands. “None of them require new legislation and none of them require new funding,” she said of the three-part plan. Oh good, still more zealous rules and regulations with major implications for the entire energy sector handed down from on high — just what our economy needs! http://hotair.com/ar...at-of-our-time/ Mush from the wimp ..........NY Post Barack Obama bombs in Berlin: a weak, underwhelming address from a floundering president http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100222637/barack-obama-bombs-in-berlin-a-weak-underwhelming-address-from-a-floundering-president/

Obama’s increasingly muddled Syria policy By Richard Cohen, I have written so many columns about the Syrian civil war they are like rings on a tree stump — a way of gauging Barack Obama’s steadfast inaction and what the cost has been. In one of my first columns about that war, I called on the administration to arm the rebels and impose a no-fly zone, grounding Bashar al-Assad’s attack helicopters and his airplanes. At that point — March 27, 2012 — the war had taken the lives of 10,000 Syrians. The figure is now at least 92,000. The war claims about 10,000 lives a month. It has pushed more than 1.5 million refugees over Syria’s various borders. It has destabilized the Middle East. It has sucked in jihadists from all over the region. It has become increasingly sectarian in nature and extended Iranian influence. Hezbollah, an Iranian client, has entered the fray, pouring over the border from Lebanon. Poison gas (sarin) has apparently been used by government forces. The larger this crisis gets, the smaller Obama appears. He has shrunk into insignificance. {snip} Obama’s approach to this crisis is stunningly chaotic. First he did next to nothing as the war got out of hand. Now he’s supplying what amounts to Daisy air rifles to the outgunned rebels. He draws the line at using U.S. ground troops — rejecting a demand that has never been made — and if he issues oaths to human decency and laments the huge loss of life, it must be over dinner with the kids. I look — so far in vain — for his policy, for his principles or even for his concern, but what I get is a steely determination to do nothing. There are two tragedies here — one in Syria and one in the West Wing. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-obamas-increasingly-muddled-syria-policy/2013/06/17/6be2a17e-d77b-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html?hpid=z2

No, no, no, Don't go blaming us refugees from 14 months ago, for this current round of lightweights. .

Geez, every time you think that this administration could not get more incompetent............. ADMIN CONSIDERS RESETTLING THOUSANDS OF SYRIAN REFUGEES IN AMERICA... The Obama administration is considering resettling thousands of refugees who left Syria during the country's ongoing civil war to multiple towns and cities across the United States, the L.A. Times reports. A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families. The State Department is "ready to consider the idea," an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the usual procedure. The United States usually accepts about half the refugees that the U.N. agency proposes for resettlement. California has historically taken the largest share, but Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia are also popular destinations. .

Flood of migrants coming to Europe makes mockery of £4billion deal to send refugees home http://dailym.ai/1SlKCFN Brussels suspect pictured with ISIS in Syria but was STILL able to sneak back into Europe http://dailym.ai/1S2z65i Migrant who punched and spat at mother deported... but only to Denmark http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/04/01/migrant-crisis-live-wire-rolling-coverage-europes-migrant-crisis-2/ … Norway won't take any more refugees from EU http://bit.ly/23oHRvE Heat sensors installed on Öresund bridge to stop asylum seekers walking to Sweden http://www.thelocal.se/20160408/heat-sensors-to-stop-deadly-asylum-treks-to-sweden … .

South Tyrol under pressure as Austria turns back migrants http://www.thelocal.at/20160518/south-tyrol-under-pressure-as-austria-returns-migrants … Road closed after police car torched in Paris protests. Follow here: http://www.thelocal.fr/20160518/police-car-torched-in-paris-at-anti-cop-hatred-protest … Crimes By Migrant Gangs Skyrocketing http://bit.ly/1sxxPLH Migrants Burn Down Lampedusa Refugee Welcome Center http://bit.ly/1XlKkoB

Bye, Refugees: Sweden Plans to Deport 60,000-80,000 Refugees the Next Couple Years http://buff.ly/1Sn34ll #tcot Migrants lying about their age is newest scandal growing amid Europe's asylum crisis http://dailym.ai/1KK8cJT 40% of Germans demand Merkel's resignation over #refugee policy, says @focusonline poll http://dw.com/p/1HldG

Not that I give two figs for Basky's attempt to refocus the thread, but you do have to laugh at his continuing parroting of the "GOP had no health plan" lie...... and (once again) no...I will not link to something, it has been provided for you (and ignored by you) many times in the past few years. You are in Gator territory with that falsehood. Obama's #SOTU guests: gay rights activist, Mexican immigrant, Syrian refugee http://yhoo.it/1l0wCId Don't forget the "empty chair" Yahoo !!!..........lol .

Quite true sir, but not an especially difficult prediction. So ..............bring on the circus. If Mr. Obama wants to go with the empty seat stunt, the GOP should too. In fact , with a strong Republican majority, they can have many, many symbolic empty seats GOP, leave all your seats empty for: - Kate Steinle - Brian Terry - The Syrian CHRISTIAN refugees - Benghazi victims - Victims of Planned Parenthood .

No need to read past Baskin's (per usual) giveaway line.......................lol More from The Hill: Mkay … so what will that entail, exactly? Tweeters are already guessing: @samsteinhp will he speak from the golf course ? @samsteinhp whole thing in iambic pentameter. @samsteinhp like, with hand puppets ? ALSO: http://www.dailywire.com/news/2481/obamas-state-union-guests-syrian-refugee-gay-ben-shapiro

Angela #Merkel will push Turkey to control migrant flow at Berlin talks on Friday #refugees http://www.thelocal.de/20160122/merkel-pushes-turkey-to-stem-flow-of-migrants … Nordic asylum numbers drop after borders tightened http://bit.ly/1RCPxao Police union warns: we're close to exhaustion keeping up #Austria border controls http://www.thelocal.de/20160122/police-cant-keep-up-border-controls-union …

Rising Anti-Semitism in Germany: Ominous Indicator Amid Mass Migration, Anti-Semitism Reaches Historic Levels in Germany Danish Minister: ‘Denmark’s Immigration Policy Is Decided In Denmark, Not In Brussels’ http://bit.ly/1WwXGMV As Norway Begins Organised Deportations, Migrants Go AWOL To Avoid Being Sent To Russia http://bit.ly/1nafQrz Was #Austria's open door policy during #refugee crisis a mistake? http://thelocal.at/20160118/austrian-leaders-rethink-open-door-policy-for-refugees …

Actually, the number of immigrants wrongly granted citizenship is double what was reported yesterday But don't worry................they'll "screen' the new refugees

The Democrats’ Self-Serving Distractions by Kevin D Williamson It is time for another round of Pin the Tail on Anybody but the Donkey. After the massacre at a gay club in Orlando, Fla., by an American Muslim of Afghan origin affiliated with the Islamic State, the editors of the New York Times argued that the fundamental problem was “hate” exemplified by . . . opponents of same-sex marriage. That was an interesting line of argument. Omar Mateen was not found with a natural-law treatise in his back pocket, and he wasn’t fresh from a Princeton seminar with Robert George. He never suggested that the Supreme Court had taken too broad a view of the 14th Amendment in Obergefell v. Hodges. He was a Muslim fanatic whose heroes throw homosexuals off of tall buildings and crucify Christians. The morning after that massacre, the New York Daily News reported the enormity under the headline: “Thanks, NRA!” Mateen was a friend of the Islamic State, not a member of the National Rifle Association. He was a member of the same political party as Barack Obama, not a crusading Second Amendment activist of the right. He’d thrice been interviewed by the FBI for suspected ties to terrorism, but the FBI saw nothing actionable. Afterward, there was a great deal of talk about forbidding firearms purchases by people on terrorism “watch lists,” which would be a violation of due process and in any case beside the point: Mateen was on no such list. But it was somehow a black eye for the NRA, which had nothing to do with any of it. When Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, President Clinton (weird thing, Millennials: Her husband used to be president! He was a lot of fun, but that’s a long story!) made an embarrassing and shameful effort to pin the crime on Rush Limbaugh, whom he blamed for cultivating what everybody called, for five minutes, a “climate of hate.” That phrase was revived for a minute when another sad lunatic in Arizona, who was obsessed with an implausible “infinite currency” conspiracy and the idea that NASA had been faking spaceflights — i.e., a fruitcake — shot Gabby Giffords. That one was Sarah Palin’s fault, you’ll recall: Palin’s graphic-design team had put crosshairs on the districts of Democrats “targeted” for electoral challenge. The president himself weighed in on the need for more civility. Everybody was all about civility for about two nanoseconds, and then it was time to blame the NRA for the Giffords shooting. Black Lives Matter has attracted some truly reprehensible people, and it will, in the end, almost certainly end up being a net loss for the economic and political well-being of black Americans. But it is not based on a fiction. Not entirely. We can argue (and should argue) over the data regarding black Americans’ interactions with the police, but there really isn’t any arguing that a significant share of America’s radically bifurcated black population is in a pretty grim position vis-a-vis municipal services, of which the police are one high-profile example among many. Given the state of education, housing programs, economic development, and simple services such as trash-collection in many black communities, it doesn’t exactly beggar belief to consider that African-Americans may be in many cases poorly served by the police, too. Pardon me for noticing, though: Who, exactly, is in charge of these cities and city agencies about which African-Americans do have many legitimate complaints? Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago: Not exactly famous enclaves of conservative Republican political dominance. Because Dallas is in Texas, people sometimes forget that it is a city like any other American city, and Democrat-dominated. In Dallas, as in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit, that Democrat domination is due in great part to a black Democratic voting bloc. Eventually, someone is going to figure out that the black progressives protesting municipal arrangements in places such as Baltimore are protesting the municipal arrangements created by black progressives working for the interests of the Democratic party. Dallas’s racial politics aren’t as one-sided as Detroit’s, and neither are its party politics; it is Democratic, but not as lopsidedly Democratic as, say, Philadelphia. It even has had a Republican mayor (the office is technically nonpartisan) within living memory. No doubt somebody in Dallas already is trying to figure out a way to blame that mayor for the murder of those five police officers. America’s cities are mostly a mess. America’s cities are mostly run by Democrats. With a few exceptions (San Diego and Indianapolis, and, until recently, New York) Republicans haven’t had much of a chance, politically, in the large cities. What we’ve had since the middle 1960s was a grand experiment: What would progressives do if given political hegemony, with essentially no meaningful opposition, in America’s cities? The protesters in Dallas know. The ones in Baltimore know even better. Barack Obama came into office promising an era of racial healing, and instead we’re back to something like the 1960s on a more modest (so far) scale: race riots and snipers. This isn’t the sunny uplands of history — it’s Newark. Which is why Democrats would prefer to talk about the NRA, or the specter of “right-wing terrorism,” or anything else other than the reality on the ground. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437647/democratic-party-urban-poverty-distract-blame-gop

Europe facing fresh wave of refugees as Assad-Russian bombings drive civilians to Turkey http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/642172/Syria-fighting-north-Aleppo-fresh-wave-refugees-Europe …

Full speech: Trump goes nuclear on Hillary FTA: It’ll take you 40 minutes to watch it but the transcript will cost you only five. The big themes are predictable — she’s a globalist and an interventionist with terrible judgment who’s used government to enrich herself and her cronies while working Americans struggled — but some of the individual lines are lightning strikes. Numero uno: Populists on both sides will nod along to that one. That’s one of six uses of the word “rigged,” in fact, in the span of about eight sentences towards the beginning. In case it’s the least bit unclear to Berniebros that he wants their votes, Trump also name-checked Sanders (a.k.a. “Crazy Bernie”) multiple times. Another keeper: So she has, and he supports that case at length. Team Trump’s angle on Hillary’s corruption is smart in that they’re not content here simply to argue that she’s crooked. What Trump tries to do in the speech is draw a contrast between Clinton’s fortunes, political and financial, increasing over the past 20 years while the working class’s fortunes declined over the same period. Quote: “he has betrayed the American worker on trade at every single stage of her career.” The culprit, of course, is globalism, economic and military. Too much outsourcing, says Trump, and too many dumb, badly managed incursions into Middle Eastern politics. (He also claims that he was against the Iraq war from the very beginning, which isn’t true but Trump’s never going to let go of that useful lie.) And the populist centerpiece: That might not be a winning message if Americans decide they don’t trust him with nuclear weapons but it’ll give Ohio and Pennsylvania something to think about. Two curiosities from the speech, though. One: It was surprisingly light on Clinton personal scandals. I didn’t expect Trump to make that a major theme but he did a good job sidelining Bill a few months ago by hammering him on the sexual assault allegations made against him in the past. His overarching point here is that the Clintons look after themselves no matter what it means for “the little guy” suffering. Bill harassing women and Hillary covering up for him fits right into that. One of the reasons Trump’s temporary Muslim ban is popular on the right, I think, is because it flatters the suspicion that truly “peaceful” Muslims are much less common than the U.S. government would have you believe. The number of actual jihadis may be small but the number of deeply illiberal Muslims who recoil from pluralist western values isn’t. Trump seems to be drawing an Obama-esque distinction here between the tiny minority of extremists and everyone else — although he does say a few sentences later about his refugee policy, “I only want to admit people who share our values and love our people.” What percentage of peaceful Muslims does that include? Presumably not zero, in which case is he rethinking his ban? More at the link:

Why So Few Syrian Christian Refugees? For the Same Reason You Can’t Find Orphans in Haitian Orphanages By Johnathan Witt It seems bewildering that President Obama insists on opening the floodgates to Syrian Muslim immigrants even after the Paris terrorist attacks. It gets stranger. Ten percent of Syria is Christian, but on Obama’s watch, only about 2.5% of recent Syrian refugees have been Christian, and this even though — unlike their Muslim compatriots — Syrian Christians have nowhere in the Middle East they can go to be wholly free of persecution. So why the stacked deck? No, Barack Hussein Obama is not secretly bowing toward Mecca five times a day on an Oval Office rug. There are almost no Christian refugees from Syria for the same reason there are almost no orphans in Haitian orphanages. {snip} Many Americans would happily have us take in some nice Syrians who have nowhere in the Middle East to turn, who are hunted, plundered, raped, sold and sometimes murdered. And since we have limited capacity in a world of more than 7 billion people, it makes sense to focus on those who have nowhere safe in the Middle East to turn. Yes, Sunni and Shiite Muslims persecute each other in the Middle East, but each group has Sunni or Shiite enclaves they can retreat to in the region. The Christians, meanwhile, aren’t even safe in the refugee camps. So dangerous are the camps for Syrian Christians that they mostly avoid them. And the UN does its refugee head-counting in the refugee camps. If the Christians aren’t there to be counted, desperate as they are, then they don’t end up on the asylum lists the U.S. State Department uses for vetting potential refugees. So, why doesn’t the White House take steps to find and include persecuted Syrian Christian in numbers at least proportionate to their slice of the Syrian population? Maybe the Obama administration just doesn’t care, but even if they cared a little, doing something serious about it would risk annoying the Muslim leaders of the Muslim-dominated countries in the Middle East. As bad off as the Muslim refugees are, they aren’t without politically well-connected advocates in the Middle East. Many Muslim powerbrokers are happy to see Europe and America seeded with Muslim immigrants, and would surely condemn any U.S. action that appeared to prefer Christian over Muslim refugees, even if the effort were completely justified. By and large, they support Muslim immigration to the West and have little interest in seeing Christian refugees filling up any spaces that might have been filled by Muslim refugees. The deck, in other words, is heavily stacked against the Christian refugees. The White House has been utterly feckless before the Muslim power structure in the Middle East that is doing the stacking, and has tried to sell that fecklessness to the American people as a bold stand for a religion-blind treatment of potential refugees —religion tests are un-American! It’s a smokescreen. more at the link: https://stream.org/why-so-few-syrian-christian-refugees/ Christian Syrian Refugees -- United States Won't Admit Non-Muslims ... www.nationalreview.com/. Is This the End of Christianity in the Middle East? - The New York Times www.nytimes.com The other side: Syria's Christian Refugees: Four Wrong Assumptions - The New York ...kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/.

Police: Just Ten Per Cent Of Migrants Entering Germany Have Identity Checked http://bit.ly/1UXglRn Belgium Arrests Five in Paris Attacks Probe: Prosecutors http://bit.ly/22kStvO Large Number Of Refugees To Germany May Not Be Able To Find Work: Bundesbank http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/12/21/large-number-of-refugees-to-germany-may-not-be-able-to-find-work-bundesbank/ … More than 1 million migrants have crossed into Europe this year, migration organization says. http://bsun.md/1J36LKY French border guards 'colluding' with gangs smuggling migrants into Britain ...... http://bit.ly/1UXbJuq

In Afghanistan, Taliban Controls Most Territory Since 2001 Some good news from Ramadi in the war on terror… but ominous news on other fronts: In Afghanistan, Taliban Controls Most Territory Since 2001; ISIS Preparing ‘Greatest Religious Cleansing in History’ Remember how Obama likes to go around saying, “we ended two wars”? What he means is, “we ended two wars by losing them.” In Afghanistan, the bad guys are winning:https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-year-of-taliban-gains-shows-that-we-havent-delivered-top-afghan-official-says/2015/12/27/172213e8-9cfb-11e5-9ad2-568d814bbf3b_story.html In private, top Afghan and American officials have begun to voice increasingly grim assessments of the resurgent Taliban threat, most notably in a previously undisclosed transcript of a late October meeting of the Afghan National Security Council. “We have not met the people’s expectations. We haven’t delivered,” Abdullah Abdullah, the country’s chief executive, told the high-level gathering. “Our forces lack discipline. They lack rotation opportunities. We haven’t taken care of our own policemen and soldiers. They continue to absorb enormous casualties.” With control of — or a significant presence in — roughly 30 percent of districts across the nation, according to Western and Afghan officials, the Taliban now holds more territory than in any year since 2001, when the puritanical Islamists were ousted from power after the 9/11 attacks. For now, the top American and Afghan priority is preventing Helmand, largely secured by U.S. Marines and British forces in 2012, from again falling to the insurgency. There’s a good milestone in Iraq . . . Iraq’s army declared victory over Islamic State fighters in a provincial capital west of Baghdad on Sunday, the first major triumph for the U.S.-trained force since it collapsed in the face of an assault by the militants 18 months ago. {snip} But it sounds like ISIS is just getting warmed up . . . http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/ISIS-Threat/The-only-country-ISIS-fears-in-the-Middle-East-is-Israel-438576 A German journalist who spent 10 days with Islamic State says that the radical jihadist group that has captured wide swaths of Syria and Iraq is deterred by only one Middle Eastern country – Israel. In an interview with the British Jewish News, Jurgen Todenhofer recalls his brief time behind enemy lines during which he spoke with ISIS fighters. “The only country ISIS fears is Israel,” Todenhofer, a former member of the German parliament, told Jewish News. “They told me they know the Israeli army is too strong for them.” The writer said that ISIS wants to lure British and American forces into Syria and Iraq, areas where it thinks it has an advantage. Todenhofer said that ISIS was “preparing the largest religious cleansing in history” and that he was “pessimistic” that the threat it poses could be neutralized. He added that the Paris attacks was just the first of “a storm” that is coming to Western cities. “They are not scared of the British and the Americans, they are scared of the Israelis and told me the Israeli army is the real danger. We can’t defeat them with our current strategy. These people [the IDF] can fight a guerrilla war. ” “In Mosul there are 10,000 fighters living among 1.5 million people in 2,000 apartments, not in one place – so it would be difficult [for western soldiers] to fight them. ISIS fighters are ready to die in a war against a western soldiers.” The war may be going badly, but don’t worry, America: President Obama remains determined to win the news cycle: The easiest way to change the perception about something is to change the reality about something. If ISIS keeps losing territory, they’ll be seen as weak and beaten. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner

Actually, No. Hillary Clinton Isn’t Better Than Donald Trump FTA: Now that we have destroyed the most qualified and conservative field of GOP presidential candidates in the history of the nation and decided that an unstable Democrat named Donald will be the Republican standard-bearer, some Republicans are claiming that Hillary Clinton is a better choice. This thinking is no less deranged than the thinking that Donald Trump will not be a disaster, no matter if he wins or loses the election. Hillary Clinton’s sole preparation for and only qualification for any office she has held is the fact that she allegedly had sex with Bill Clinton over a period of years. She is an impulsive and vindictive person. She is monumentally unsuited to any enterprise whatsoever. Let’s just look at her record for a moment: Rose Law Firm. Whitewater. Hillary-care. White House travel office. Illegal use of White House to acquire campaign contributions. Allowing her grifting brothers access to the federal government to enrich themselves. Terrorizing Bill Clinton’s harem of former mistresses to keep them quiet and discredit them. The Clinton Foundation. Her private email system. Benghazi. Any public testimony she has given on any subject. The destruction of US foreign policy and alliances Where Donald Trump’s business career is an uninterrupted series of failures, the exact same critique applies to Hillary Clinton’s record each and every time she was allowed to actually exert personal authority over anything. In fact, Hillary Clinton’s failure as Secretary of State is the direct causation for the rise of ISIS, the civil war in Syria, and the refugee crisis hitting Europe. This is not even a question of choosing a “lesser of two evils.” Trump may be unable to dissociate fact from fiction, Hillary Clinton thinks they are the same thing. Saying that Hillary Clinton is better than Donald Trump is just as stupid as saying that Donald Trump is qualified to be president. He isn’t. She isn’t. Paul Ryan is creating a best, safe non-answer for other Republicans -- Trump has to prove he's worthy of my endorsement -- smart .

Another article on the disparity. The United States Bars Christian, Not Muslim, Refugees From Syriaby Elliott Abrams The title of this blog post–The United States Bars Christian, Not Muslim, Refugees From Syria–will strike many readers as ridiculous. But the numbers tell a different story: The United States has accepted 10,801 Syrian refugees, of whom 56 are Christian. Not 56 percent; 56 total, out of 10,801. That is to say, one half of one percent. The BBC says that ten percent of all Syrians are Christian, which would mean 2.2 million Christians. It is quite obvious, and President Obama and Secretary Kerry have acknowledged it, that Middle Eastern Christians are an especially persecuted group. So how is it that one half of one percent of the Syrian refugees we’ve admitted are Christian, or 56, instead of about 1,000 out of 10,801–or far more, given that they certainly meet the legal definition? The definition: someone who “is located outside of the United States; Is of special humanitarian concern to the United States; Demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.” Somewhere between a half million and a million Syrian Christians have fled Syria, and the United States has accepted 56. Why? “This is de facto discrimination and a gross injustice,” Nina Shea, who is director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, told Fox News. Fox notes another theory: that the United States takes refugee referrals from the UN refugee camps in Jordan and there are no Christians there. more at the link: http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2016/09/09/the-united-states-bars-christian-not-muslim-refugees-from-syria/

Also...................this a NYTimes article from September 2015.........its been discussed in other threads last year and specifically here http://forums.twobillsdrive.com/topic/186176-is-sargeant-1st-class-martland-a-hero/?hl=afghan

Wow, that makes .... sense. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/03/23/poland-wont-take-refugees-after-brussels-attacks.html … Poland won't take refugees after Brussels attacks

Bergdahl Rose Garden Ceremony Was an Insult to Flacks By Tim Cavanaugh The Obama administration’s now-defunct effort to turn the release of Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl into a cheerable moment was more than just a failure of ethics. It was a failure of communication, and an outrage to the honorable profession of image management and crisis public relations. Put aside for a moment the very clear disrespect to both active and former service members implicit in trying to manufacture a feel-good narrative out of Bergdahl’s release by the Haqqani terror network in exchange for five high-value Taliban prisoners. {snip} The conventional wisdom now is that the Bergdahl story was at first viewed as a triumph, until questions began to emerge. This is not exactly true. National Security Adviser Susan Rice was already on the defensive by Sunday morning, when she made her infamous claim that Bergdahl had served with “honor and distinction.” The Rose Garden ceremony was creepy at its heart. Had it not been creepy, there was still a roughly 100 percent probability that people would pay attention to the story. The shilly-shallying and crabbed vocabulary coming out of the executive branch this workweek (State Department spokesman Marie Harf uncorked “fact pattern” Tuesday) indicate something worse than garden-variety presidential dishonesty. They indicate incompetence. It is a cardinal rule of image management that you never roll out a story you may have to walk back. In this respect, strict and well-supported factual accuracy is even more important to a flack than it is to a journalist. A reporter who gets something wrong can generally make post-facto corrections without much fuss. But if you’re trying to make a client look good (or just less-bad), even minor inaccuracies are poisonous. In this case, the weaknesses in the official story would have been clear to one of Kim Jong-un’s staffers. How much contempt must the president have for the voters if he can’t come out and say: Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has been freed in exchange for the release of five Guantanamo detainees. We thank the royal family of Qatar for helping negotiate the exchange. Sergeant Bergdahl, the last POW of the Afghan war, remains on active status and is being well treated? What was served by the Rose Garden show?....................................... What was the teachable moment? . .

Per the New York Times today: FTA; "Even if they were keeping it a secret — the peace talks — and pretending that the trade was just a trade, we could be fine with that,” the Afghan security official said. “But what has happened is worse than nothing: We are made to look weaker, and the Taliban is stronger.” The officials said the Afghan government would have gladly agreed to keep the five men in Kabul, where they would have stayed in guesthouses run by the National Directorate of Security, ensuring that they were both protected and kept from returning to the insurgency. The officials cited cases of former Taliban leaders who live in Kabul under similar arrangements. Their expenses are paid for by Afghanistan’s National Security Council, which gets funds from the C.I.A. “We would have used them to try to lever another approach to peace,” the former official said. “Could you imagine what it would have done to Taliban morale to see the five come to Kabul and have to live under the Afghan government?” “What does this say to every Afghan that has spent their entire adult lives fighting violent extremism?” said the former official, who is pro-American. “What does this say to all the Afghans that have already died or that will die next year? “We find Obama’s language about ‘this is how wars end’ extremely insensitive,” the former official continued. “It ends for Americans. But it’s not ending for Afghans. Their intellectual dishonesty here is astounding,” he said. “If all you want to do is leave, then just say it. We all know it.”