Obama Apologizes For America Again, Ushers in the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition”. Shades of the Chicago Climate Exchange?

GW-Summit-600-LIWell, Petulant President Pantywaist has apologized to other countries  on behalf of America…again.

And…just like every time before…no level-headed American asked him to.

The Times of India reports that

President Barack Obama told world leaders who gathered northeast of Paris on Monday for a climate conference that the United States is at least partly to blame for the life-threatening damage that environmental change has wrought, and he urged world leaders to join him in fixing the problem.

“I’ve come here personally, as the leader of the world’s largest economy and the second-largest emitter,” Obama said, “to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it.”

In a speech interrupted by repeated beeps warning that he had exceeded his time limit, Obama said in Le Bourget that the climate conference represented an important turning point in world history because the leaders attending the meeting now recognize the urgency of the problem.

“No nation — large or small, wealthy or poor — is immune,” he said.

The greatest threat to reaching a binding climate accord may be a loose coalition of developing nations, led by India, who argue that they should not be asked to limit their economic growth as a way of fixing a problem that was largely created by the others, and Obama conceded that point.

“We know the truth that many nations have contributed little to climate change but will be the first to feel its most destructive effects,” he said.

He promised money to help the poorest nations transition to economies that depend less on burning fossil fuels, but he said a delay was not acceptable.

“For I believe, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late,” Obama said. “And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us.”

Obama also repeated an argument, lampooned by some Republicans, that the climate conference was a fitting response to the terrorist attacks that cost the lives of 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13.

“What greater rejection of those who would tear down our world than marshaling our best efforts to save it,” he said.

About 150 world leaders were expected to gather at the opening of the talks in a heavily guarded convention center as a show of encouragement and support for efforts to forge a historic agreement to jointly curb greenhouse-gas emissions, in an effort to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

Obama has staked much of his legacy on ensuring success here, spending much of the past year courting the leaders of China, India and other major emitters in hopes they would finally agree to slow their rapidly rising use of coal and other carbon-intensive fuels.

President Francois Hollande of France greeted Obama just eight hours after the two paid a surprise late-night visit to the Bataclan, the concert hall where dozens of people were killed on Nov. 13, as part of a coordinated series of attacks in and around Paris.

At the brief visit last night, Obama, Hollande and Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, each laid a white rose before standing in silence in front of the building for several minutes.

Shortly after his arrival, Obama met with President Xi Jinping of China in a meeting of the leaders of the world’s two largest carbon-polluting countries.

Citing climate change as “a huge challenge,” Xi said it was “very important for China and the United States to be firmly committed to the right direction of building a new model of major country relations,” including by “partnering with each other to help the climate conference deliver its expected targets.”

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of business and philanthropy leaders led by the Microsoft founder Bill Gates who have a combined total of $350 billion in private wealth, have pledged to invest in moving clean-energy technologies from laboratories to the marketplace.

About this “Breakthrough Energy Coalition”…

The Business Insider reports that

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and a roster of other high-profile tech figures are launching a new organisation designed to invest in renewable energy technologies. 

It is called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, and says its aim is to create “a network of private capital committed to building a structure that will allow informed decisions to help accelerate the change to the advanced energy future our planet needs.”

Announced ahead of a major UN climate change conference in Paris this week, the coalition’s members say that enough isn’t being done from established organisations to drive forward research and investment into clean energy.

Writing on Facebook late Sunday night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “solving the clean energy problem is an essential part of building a better world … yet progress towards a sustainable energy system is too slow, and the current system doesn’t encourage the kind of innovation that will get us there faster.”

Likewise, the Coalition’s website says that “the existing system of basic research, clean energy investment, regulatory frameworks, and subsidies fails to sufficiently mobilize investment in truly transformative energy solutions for the future. We can’t wait for the system to change through normal cycles.”

In short: Established investors are moving much too slowly towards the renewable energy, and it’s too important to wait for that to sort itself out naturally.

Among the other “Investors” in this new “coalition” are the Puppetmaster himself, George Soros and fellow “Billionaire Philanthropist” Tom Steyer.

Which is interesting, because Breitbart.com’s Steve Milloy reported back on August 17th that

U.S. Securities and Exchange Act filings indicate that Soros has purchased an initial 1 million shares of Peabody Energy and 553,200 shares of Arch Coal, the two largest publicly traded U.S. coal companies. As pointed out last week, both companies have been driven perilously close to bankruptcy by the combination of President Obama’s “war on coal” and inexpensive natural gas brought on by the hydrofracturing revolution.

Under the hypothesis that not even socialists would leave trillions of dollars worth of a perfectly safe and clean energy source in the ground for the sake of the imaginary “climate crisis,” I posited that once the existing coal industry ownership was wiped out by President Obama’s regulatory onslaught, a new politically correct ownership would rehabilitate the fuel by contributing to Democrats.

Enter George Soros, a hardball investor and philanthropist to myriad left-wing causes, including the activist and “clean energy” rent-seeking movements that have helped take down the coal industry. In 2009, for example, Soros announced he would spend $1 billion in “clean energy” technology and create a San Francisco-based advocacy organization called the Climate Policy Initiative.

Less than a year ago the Soros’ Climate Policy Initiative issued a major report concluding that the world could save $1.8 trillion over the next two decades by transitioning away from coal. The report referred to coal reserves as “stranded assets” that were losing value as they were no longer needed.

What a difference a few months makes, especially when those months have seen coal company stocks fall to fire sale prices. So far the size of Soros’ coal investment seems so far relatively small (Peabody has 248 million shares of stock outstanding), but the reports available only cover up to the quarter ending on June 30.

It’s possible that Soros is only looking for a “dead cat bounce” from his Peabody and Arch Coal investments, but the companies together have provable coal reserves of about 11 billion tons, worth hundreds of billions of dollars. I doubt the shrewd Soros is looking to make just a few million dollars on these investments.

Soros isn’t the only leftist shark in the water.

There’s billionaire hedge fund operator Tom Steyer who committed to spend $100 million in 2014 to elect anti-coal, climate alarmist-friendly politicians. Though he failed miserably, he has re-upped for the same program in 2016. Yet Steyer’s dirty secret is that, despite his protestations of concern about the climate, he’s made a fortune from coal production in Indonesia over the past 15 years. It’s easy to imagine some Steyer-steered investment vehicle rescuing sinking coal companies under the guise of turning coal into “clean energy” business. Though the current coal industry trial and failed miserably to do re-brand itself as “clean,” with the right politics and the right payoffs, Steyer no doubt could pull off that trick.

Boys and girls, as the late, great Yogi Berra used to say, this may very well be

Deja vu…all over again.

The Chicago Climate Exchange was North America’s only voluntary, legally binding greenhouse gas reduction and trading system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.

It all began with the Joyce Foundation.  This foundation started as the financial back-up plan of a widow whose family had made millions in the lumber industry.

After her death, it was run by philanthropic people who increasingly dedicated their giving to Liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes.  It has grown over the years until it is now bigger than the TIDES Foundation and actually funds it.

The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the capitol outlay to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it traded was, believe it or not, air.

Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002 . What a coincidence, that, as president, pushing cap-and-trade was one of his highest priorities, huh?

Back on 6/29/09, canadafreepress.com reported that

If we follow the time line on where Obama was during the funding of the Chicago Climate Exchange, he was still a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law, with his law license becoming inactive a year later in 2002.

It may be interesting to note that the Chicago Climate Exchange in spite of its hype, is a veritable rat’s nest of cronyism. The largest shareholder in the Exchange is Goldman Sachs. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its honorary chairman, The Joyce Foundation, which funded the Exchange also funded money for John Ayers’ Chicago School Initiatives. John is the brother of William Ayers.

What a flap when it was discovered that the senator from Chicago had nursed on Saul Alinsky’s milk, had his political career launched at a coffee party held by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and sat for 20 years, uncomplaining in front of the “God-dam-America pulpit of resentment-challenged Jeremiah Wright.

Folk were naturally outraged that the empty suit who would go on to become TOTUS was spawned from such anti-American activism.

But the media should have been hollering, “Stop Thief!” instead.

The same Chicago Climate Exchange promoting public rip-off was funded by Obama before he was POTUS.

Even as man-made global warming is being exposed as a money-generating hoax, Obama is working feverishly to push the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme through Congress.

Fortunately for our nation, Obama’s Cap and Trade Bill failed to leave the Senate in July of 2010, leading the Chicago Climate Exchange to close up shop in November of 2010.

However. to this very day, Obama is still relentlessly pursuing “Climate Change”, which the majority of Americans, in poll after poll, have stated is not a National Priority.

And, a group of Investors, among whose number are friends and benefactors of Obama, have formed another group, for the stated purpose of “Duty and Humanity”, in order to, as the Chicago Climate Exchange was going to, “assist in the fight against Climate Change”.

Coincidence?

I think not.

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

The Paris Massacre: Of Isis, Syrian Refugees, and the Future of Our Country

Refugees-NRD-600Nov. 13, 2015 12:23 p.m. ET, the following report was filed by Byron Tau of The Wall Street Journal:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama said that Islamic State’s expansion has been halted and that the terrorist group was no longer growing in strength.

In an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, part of which aired Friday, Mr. Obama made the case that the U.S. strategy against the group—also known as ISIL or ISIS—has always been a long-term proposition.

“We’ve always understood that our goal has to be militarily constraining ISIL’s capabilities, cutting off their supply lines, cutting off their financing,” Mr. Obama told ABC.

He said that the advance of the group has largely been halted—though he acknowledged the leadership of group remains at large.

“I don’t think they’re gaining strength. What is true is from the start our goal has been first to contain—and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq. And in Syria—they’ll come in, they’ll leave—but you don’t see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain,” he said.

Wrong again, Mr. President. Tragically wrong.

Foxnews.com reports that

Eight ISIS terrorists wielding AK-47s and wearing suicide belts carried out coordinated attacks at six sites around Paris Friday night, killing at least 127 people and wounding at least 180 others, France’s president said Saturday.

Speaking after an emergency security meeting to plan his government’s response, Francois Hollande declared three days of national mourning and raised France’s security to its highest level. He described Friday’s attacks, which produced the worst bloodshed in Paris since World War II, as an “act of war.” Hollande said ISIS was “a terrorist army … a jihadist army, against France, against the values that we defend everywhere in the world, against what we are: A free country that means something to the whole planet.”

Hollande also vowed that France “will be merciless toward the barbarians of Islamic State group” and promised his government would “act by all means anywhere, inside or outside the country.” France is already bombing ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition, and has troops fighting extremists in Africa.

Less than an hour after Hollande’s statement, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statement that described Paris as “the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe” and described the attackers as “eight brothers wrapped in explosive belts and armed with machine rifles.”

“Let France and those who walk in its path know that they will remain on the top of the list of targets of the IS,” the statement also read, in part, “and that the smell of death will never leave their noses as long as they lead the convoy of the Crusader campaign.”

French police said early Saturday they believed all of the attackers were dead but they were still searching for possible accomplices. The French prosecutor’s office said seven of the eight assailants died in suicide bombings, the Associated Press reported.

Friday’s attack was the deadliest terror atrocity to befall a Western European city since a series of train bombings in Madrid, Spain killed 191 people on March 11, 2004.

The most horrifying scene took place at the Bataclan concert hall near the center of Paris, where authorities said four attackers sprayed bullets into a crowd watching a performance by the American rock band Eagles of Death Metal. Reuters reported that the latest estimate from a Paris city hall official was that at least 87 people had died at the venue, though earlier reports suggested that as many as 118 concert-goers were killed.

The bloodshed prompted Hollande to declare a state of emergency, order the deployment of 1,500 troops around Paris and announce renewed border checks along frontiers that are normally open under Europe’s free-travel zone.

The uncertain atmosphere in Paris was heightened by the city government’s announcement that many of its public places would be closed Saturday. The city’s official Twitter account posted a message saying “schools, museums, libraries, gyms, swimming pools, [and] public markets” would be among the metropolitan amenities shut down. Disneyland Paris, one of Europe’s most popular attractions, announced that it would be closed Saturday “in light of the recent tragic events in France and in support of our community and the victims of these horrendous attacks.”

The near-simultaneous assaults began at approximately 9:30 p.m. local time Friday (3:30 p.m. EST), when gunfire exploded outside of a restaurant in a trendy area east of the center of Paris known as Little Cambodia. It was the first of a series of attacks on a string of popular cafes, crowded on the unusually balmy Friday night. Paris prosecutor Francois Molins told reporters at least 37 people were killed in those shootings.

“There are lots of dead people,” said a witness believed to have been at the bar of a restaurant that was the scene of one attack. “It’s pretty horrific to be honest. I was at the back of the bar. I couldn’t see anything. I heard gunshots. People dropped to the ground. We put a table over our heads to protect us.”

A few moments later, three suicide bombs targeted locations around the Stade de France, the country’s national stadium in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, where Hollande had joined almost 80,000 soccer fans to watch an international soccer friendly between France and Germany. A police union official told the Associated Press that at least three people were killed as a result of those blasts.

Hollande was rushed from the stadium after the first explosion, as initial reports of the attacks trickled in. However, the match was not stopped and several thousand fans went onto the field after France’s 2-0 win, apparently believing it was the safest place in the midst of the unfolding terror. Supporters were eventually allowed to leave the stadium in small groups, and some were caught on video singing France’s national anthem as they left the venue.

Four attackers then stormed the Bataclan, where concert-goers described a horrifying scene. Witnesses said the attackers toted Kalashnikovs and wore flak jackets as they fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Some survivors claimed the men shouted “Allahu Akbar” or “This is for Syria” as they fired.

…The carnage inside the music venue ended around midnight local time when French police stormed the building. As police closed in, three detonated explosive belts, killing themselves, according to Paris police chief Michel Cadot. Another attacker detonated a suicide bomb on Boulevard Voltaire, near the music hall, the prosecutor’s office said.

A U.S. military and intelligence source told Fox News the coordinated attacks likely required “months of planning,” based on their sheer number, the locations including a site where the president was present and the variety of weapons used.

Asked if any Americans were hurt or killed, a French diplomat told Fox News that given the venues and the numbers involved, the victims “are not going to be all French.” The State Department said it was seeking to establish the whereabouts of 70 U.S. citizens known to be in France, but had not received word that any Americans had been killed in the attacks. 

President Barack Obama, speaking to reporters in Washington, decried an “attack on all humanity,” calling the Paris violence an “outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians.”

“This is an attack not just on Paris, not just on France, but an attack on all of humanity and the values that we share,” Obama said.

A U.S. official briefed by the Justice Department says intelligence officials were not aware of any threats before Friday’s attacks.

Obama also said in his statement that he did not want to “speculate” as to who was responsible for the attacks, even though it is a certainty that there were Intelligence Reports from France, on which he had already been briefed, by the time that he appeared in front of the cameras.

Why did he not identify the attackers as being Radical Islamic Terrorists from ISIS?

Would you want to admit that your Foreign Policy Expertise and Military Acumen, was reminiscent of a child playing with his GI Joe Figures?

Back on September 9th, 2015, townhall.com reported that

The civil war in Syria has created a refugee crisis in the millions, overwhelming a number of European nations that are struggling to cope with the influx. While critics are accusing the U.S. of being slow to respond, this may be a good thing given what James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, had to say on Wednesday about the Islamic State’s ability to infiltrate the crisis.

“As they descend on Europe, one of the obvious issues that we worry about, and in turn as we bring refugees into this country, is exactly what’s their background?” Clapper said at an annual intelligence conference. “We don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees.”

“That is a huge concern of ours,” he added.

While he added that U.S. authorities, who have so far allowed in fewer than 2,000 of Syria’s some 4 million refugees, have a “pretty aggressive” system for screening the backgrounds of those seeking entry into the United States, Mr. Clapper said he’s not so confident about the capabilities of some European nations.

He made the remarks during a wide ranging question-and-answer session that former ambassador and U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte moderated at Wednesday’s conference sponsored by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance and the Armed Forces Electronics Communication Association.

ISIS militants have already been caught posing as refugees so Clapper’s concern is well founded. But the issue is, of course, much larger than a handful of jihadists crossing into Europe and possibly the United States. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch wrote in a recent article that with hundreds of thousands seeking asylum in European nations, this has stopped being a “refugee crisis” and instead turned into hijrah, which is essentially migration for the cause of Allah, considered a ‘highly meritorious act’ in Islam. It also happens to be Europe’s death knell, he argues. 

Around the same time, Ben Shapiro, writing for Breitbart News, observed that

…Images show a disproportionate number of young males in crowds of refugees. And those images reflect statistical reality: according to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, Mediterranean Sea refugees are overwhelmingly male: just 13 percent are women, and just 15 percent are children. The other 72 percent are men. Compare that population to the refugees in the Middle East from the same conflicts: 49.5 percent male, and 50.5 percent female, with 38.5 percent under the age of 12. Those are wildly different populations.

Then, on September 22nd, 2015, foxnews.com reported that

… (Secretary of State John) Kerry said the United States will take in more refugees worldwide in the next two years, including 10,000 Syrian asylum seekers in 2016.

“We will now go up to 85,000 with at least 10,000 over the next year in Syria specifically. And in the next fiscal year we will target 100,000,” Kerry said.

In the fiscal year ending September 2015, the world’s biggest economy took in 70,000 refugees.

The White House had already announced last week that President Barack Obama had asked for at least 10,000 Syrian refugees to be admitted into the US in the next fiscal year.

Kerry praised Germany’s stance in welcoming a massive influx of asylum seekers as Europe grapples with its biggest migration crisis since World War II.

“Germany has set a remarkable example for its willingness to step up and deal with theses challenges,” Kerry said.

Scary, huh?

In July of 2009, in a stadium located at the University of the Egypt in Cairo, President Barack Hussein Obama, in a speech to the “Muslim World”, apologized to tens of thousands of adherents  to Islam and spoke to them in glowing terms of their “rich cultural heritage” and their “contributions to the growth of United States of America”.

Yeah, our first president, Mohammed Washington, that’s the ticket.

Now, before I go off on one my world famous KJ rants, I want you to understand that I am NOT saying that every Muslim in the world is taking part in a jihad against United States of America.

However, those were not Southern Baptists, who massacred the citizens of Paris, France, last night.

Additionally, the mass murderers known as ISIS, are not Evangelical Christians, no matter how hard desperate Liberals might try to compare us to Radical Muslims.

“Now are you going to accept Jesus Christ as your personal Savior or am I going to have to behead you?” said no Evangelical Christian American, ever.

No, boys and girls, ISIS is a bunch of Muslim Barbarians…period.

For President Barack Hussein Obama to attempt to prosecute the War Against ISIS by remote control, with apparently no military strategy in place at all, is one the silliest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

As has been noted by several military analysts, eventually, Obama is going to have to put a “substantial number” of troops on the ground. That is, additional troops to the troops which he already has on the ground in the role of  “military advisors”.

Obama’s bombing runs have done minimal damage, at best.

The fact of the matter is, you cannot bomb buildings and expect to kill your enemy, when the enemy is a guerrilla force, which  does not stay in any building for any period of time. Just like their Nomadic Barbaric Ancestors, these guerrillas keep moving, regrouping, and attacking.

Obama had hoped that his “Coalition of the Unwilling”, the Middle Eastern Muslim Nations , who reluctantly agreed to support Obama against ISIS, would be willing to be his “boots on the ground” and would lay down their lives for him.

I am still trying to figure out how Obama could have possibly thought that those who think of us as the Great Satan, would lay down their lives for us.

Of course, Obama also thinks that if  Iran promises not to build a nuke, they won’t build it.

This situation, that France is dealing with, and that we may be facing, with a possible Invasion Force, disguised as “Syrian Refugees”, can be traced back to Obama’s premature evacuation of Iraq.

It is no secret that Barack Hussein Obama is a vain and petulant man. It is also no secret that he was a Far Left Radical in his collegiate days and his early political career, only moving to the middle of the political spectrum while he was campaigning for the presidency.

That being said, my Daddy always told me that when you do something, don’t do it halfway. Give it your best effort or don’t do it at all, or else you will come up short. That is what is happening with this war against the Islamic radicals in Iraq.

Obama has never liked the Military Industrial Complex. After all, he is disciple of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky. Additionally, Obama spent his youth going to a Muslim school in Indonesia, where he was surrounded by children of wealthy Muslims, whose parents were part of the establishment in Jakarta.

Because of his political ideology and the time he spent among Jakarta’s Upper Crust, Obama is very naive, or at least, he seems to be, about those Muslims who aren’t as cultured as he and his friends were. In fact, he seems to be quite ignorant about the Muslim practice of taquiyya, in which it is permissible for Muslims to lie to infidels in order to achieve their mission.

Could Obama’s “Coalition of the Unwilling”, consisting of Middle Eastern Muslims, be practicing taquiyya? Could it be that arming the Syrian “Rebels” was a very stupid thing to do? Could these “Syrian Refugees” actually be a Radical Muslim Invasion Force? Could it be that it is time for Obama to quit this halfway waging of War and to go ahead and send in ground troops and take care of business ourselves?

The answer to all of the above questions is…YES.

Especially the last one…For the safety of our nation.

Obama-Shrinks-2Because, with his present halfway effort, Obama is “coming up short”.

Until He Comes,
KJ

The Paris Islamic Terrorist Attack: Can It Happen Here…Again?

AFBrancoObamaISIS922014Now, I made some commitments four years ago. I told you I’d end the war in Iraq — and we did. I said we’d end the war in Afghanistan — we are. I said we’d refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11 — and we have. And today, a new tower rises above the New York skyline, and Al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Usama bin Laden is dead. – United States President Barack Hussein Obama, October 18, 2012

Yesterday, Muslim Terrorism reared up its ugly head once again, this time in Paris, France. We have since found out that the perpetrators of this mass murder were members of al-Qaeda from the country of Yemen.

Upon further review of the incident, it was also noticed that three of the officers arrived on the scene we’re not even carrying firearms, due to the very strict gun control policy of the country of France.

France is a country controlled by Liberal Politically-Correct Government, as is the case presently in the United States of America.

Did their Liberal Policies lead to yesterday’s horrific massacre?

At least one French Political Leader thinks so.

Businessweek.com reports that

France’s Front National leader Marine Le Pen pinned the blame for the killing of 12 people in Paris today on Islamic radicals, as mainstream leaders tried to downplay the religious dimension of the attack.

While President Francois Hollande called for national unity in an attempt to deter the public from demonizing the country’s 5-million strong Muslim community, Le Pen said France has to confront the beliefs of the gunmen who stormed the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo this morning.

“Time’s up for denial and hypocrisy,” Le Pen, who has railed against immigration, said in a video posted on her party’s website today. “The absolute rejection of Islamic fundamentalism must be proclaimed loudly and clearly.”

The lessons voters’ draw from the deadliest attack on French soil since World War II will shape the political debate as the country looks toward the 2017 election. Hollande, the most unpopular president in modern history, is struggling to make up ground on Le Pen, who’s seen her support surge as she blames immigrants for France’s near-record unemployment and deepening inequalities.

2012 Precedent

“Of all political parties, the Front National stands to gain most from this atrocity,” Jim Shields, head of French studies at Aston University in Birmingham, England, said in an interview. “Public agreement with the FN’s ideas has been rising steadily and this event will play into the party’s anti-immigration, anti-Islam agenda.”

When the Islamist terrorist Mohammed Merah carried out deadly attacks in Toulouse and Montauban in 2012, Le Pen was the presidential candidate who benefited most, Shields said.

The French government is trying to damp fears that the growing influence of Islam is eroding social cohesion. Le Pen led Hollande by as much as 15 percentage points in a September survey of voting intentions by Ifop for Le Figaro newspaper. The Front National topped Hollande’s Socialists and their predecessors, the UMP, in last year’s European elections.

Hollande, who Le Pen has previously attacked for underestimating the terrorist threat, today put the country on its highest alert while appealing to his countrymen to transcend their ethnic and religious divisions.

5 Million Muslims

“We’ll stick together and show that France is a country that knows how to react appropriately, showing firmness and national unity,” the president told reporters in eastern Paris, near the scene of the attack.

France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim community, making up about 7.7 percent of the population, and their numbers have been growing with children and grandchildren of those who arrived from the country’s former colonies in North Africa during the 20th century. Very few Muslims have reached top-level jobs in France, while second-and- third-generation French people of Arab descent say they often face discrimination.

Well, the actions of these Muslim Terrorists yesterday certainly will not help their cause any.

As I have shown in previous blogs, several verses of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, call for violence toward anyone who does not accept Islam as the one true faith. There are many verses within the Quran, which spell out in graphic detail the measures which the believer is supposed to take against non- believers, or infidels.

Just as President Obama’s attempts to negotiate with these barbarians have failed spectacularly so far, it appears that France’s attempts at appeasement have failed as well.

What is important factors that differentiates the United States of America from France is the fact that our citizens still possess the constitutional right to bear arms. Also, our police are still allowed to carry them, as well.

We all know the old saying that goes,

If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.

As the country of France found out yesterday, that goes for Muslim terrorist, as well.

Until He Comes,

KJ

The European Socialist Slide

Americans have watched as Europe has teetered on the brink of economic chaos, reminiscent of a Buddhist monk preparing to set himself on fire.

It appears that the match has been lit.

French socialist Francois Hollande has won a clear victory in the country’s presidential election.

Mr Hollande – who got an estimated 52% of votes in Sunday’s run-off – said the French had chosen “change”.

Admitting defeat, centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wished “good luck” to Mr Hollande.

Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries.

Shortly after polls closed at 20:00 (18:00 GMT), French media published projections based on partial results giving Mr Hollande a lead of almost four points. Turnout was about 80%.

Jubilant Hollande supporters gathered on Place de la Bastille in Paris – a traditional rallying point of the Left – to celebrate.

People drank champagne and chanted: “Sarko, it’s over!”

Mr Hollande – the first socialist to win the French presidency since Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s – gave his victory speech in his stronghold of Tulle in central France.

He said was “proud to have been capable of giving people hope again”.

He said he would push ahead with his pledge to refocus EU fiscal efforts from austerity to “growth”.

“Europe is watching us, austerity can no longer be the only option,” he said.

Mr Hollande has called for a renegotiation of a hard-won European treaty on budget discipline championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy.

Meanwhile, in Greece…

Greece’s former finance minister and Socialist party leader called for a broad coalition government of pro-European parties, ruling out a two-party government with his conservative rivals after his party received a drubbing in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Official projected results showed Evangelos Venizelos’ PASOK party plunging to third place with 13.6 percent and 42 seats in the 300-member parliament. The conservative New Democracy was projected in the lead with 19.18 percent and 109 seats, far below the 151 needed to form a government. The margin of error was 0.5 percentage point.

“A coalition government of the old two-party system would not have sufficient legitimacy or sufficient domestic and international credibility if it would gather a slim majority,” Venizelos said. “A government of national unity with the participation by all the parties that favor a European course, regardless of their positions toward the loan agreements, would have meaning.”

If borne out by final results, the outcome is devastating for PASOK, which won a landslide victory in 2009 with more than 43 percent of the vote.

Voters outraged by Greece’s protracted financial crisis and the austerity measures imposed in return for international bailouts punished both main parties, turning to smaller anti-bailout groups instead. The leftist Syriza, which was projected in second place with 16.3 percent and 50 seats, has been strongly opposed to Greece’s bailout agreements.

“For us in PASOK, today is particularly painful,” Venizelos said. “We knew the price would be heavy and we had undertaken for a long time to bear it.”

Things aren’t  so peachy-keen in Germany, either:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition lost power in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, first estimates showed Sunday, after a vote that could presage national elections next year.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) scored 30.6 percent, according to ARD public television, with her junior partners at the national level, the Free Democrats (FDP), winning 8.3 percent – not enough to retain power in the northern state.

However, the opposition – combining the centre-left Social Democrats and ecologist Greens – also failed to gain sufficient support to form a government, with 29.9 percent and 13.6 percent respectively.

This left as a strong possibility a so-called “grand coalition” between the CDU and SPD, which many believe could be the final result of the national elections due in September or October 2013.

The big winners on the night were the Pirates, an upstart party that has shaken up the staid world of German politics with a campaign based on more transparency in the political process and internet freedom.

For the third consecutive regional election, they breached the five-percent mark needed to enter the state parliament, winning 8.2 percent of the vote.

But for the FDP, although they lost more than six percent compared to the last election in 2009, it was a better-than-expected result, given that they are polling nationally at around three percent.

Turnout was low, with around 60 percent of the 2.2 million registered voters casting their ballot, compared to more than two-thirds in 2009.

The socialist Left party failed to clear the five-percent hurdle, scoring around 2.4 percent. A party representing the state’s small Danish minority also fell below the threshold, with 4.5 percent.

The parties will now engage in days of horse-trading before the final make-up of the state parliament is determined.

However, the election will have little impact on the make-up of the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament where Germany’s 16 states are represented, and Merkel’s personal popularity remains high.

Back on April 24th, Robin Wells reported on the effect of what was happening in European Politics on the markets, for guardian.co.uk:

When markets contemplate that it’s likely that another austerity-skeptic, François Hollande, will win the presidency in France, then the pattern becomes impossible to ignore: the “core” eurozone countries are fragmenting. While it would be foolish to make predictions, what is probable is that Germany’s political isolation within the eurozone will deepen, leaving German taxpayers unwilling to continue backstopping the whole system.

Unthinkable as it seems, the logical conclusion is that the eurozone cannot continue to exist, at least in its present form. Markets, which hate unquantifiable uncertainty, are sensing this. We are likely to be in for an extended period of gut-wrenching turbulence.

What are the implications for the US, economically and politically? Direct links between the US and eurozone economies are fairly minor: we don’t export that much to them, they don’t import that much from us, and US banks have had an extended time to cut their exposure to eurozone risk. Yet the collateral damage could still prove significant.

When the stock markets fall, consumer and business confidence falls, leading to cutbacks in spending – bad news for an American economy that is still mired in recession. In addition, crisis in Europe makes for a stronger US dollar, as investors flee to safer abodes. Again, bad for the economy as a stronger dollars hurts US exports.

The reality of the eurozone’s troubles should lend support to President Barack Obama’s campaign against GOP presidential nominee presumptive Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans. It provides a demonstration that austerity is self-defeating, that fiscal stimulus is needed in a deeply depressed economy, that recovery from a financial crisis is a slow and halting process, and that by grasping the nettle immediately, the Obama administration has succeeded in stabilizing its financial sector – while the Europeans have made a hash of it.

Ms. Wells’ thoughts about our economic plight are way off…unless she calls the Obama Administration embracing of European Socialist-style Big Government, spending like there’s no tomorrow, and keeping unemployment at over 8% “stabilizing the financial sector”.

It is imperative that America not follow Europe’s example, this November 6th.