This Week On The Gathering Storm

Listen to The Gathering Storm Radio Show, hosted by WC and Always On Watch, for 30 minutes beginning at 3:00 PM EDT.

Our scheduled guest this week is Mr. Ducky. We will be discussing film.

The call-in number is 646-915-9870. Callers welcome!

Prices In Venezuela

From the March 23, 2015 edition of Time Magazine:

The government controls prices for imported essentials such as food and medicine, and the following examples show the result:

Bag of dry dog food = $316

iPhone 5 = $14,127

Jar of instant coffee = $190

So much for lifting up the oppressed worker class!

Furthermore, the rate of inflation in Venezuela is 68%, and the rate of exchange is 6.3 bolivares to $1. The minimum wage at that rate is approximately $890/month.

Recent video posted by the BBC:

Please read THIS ARTICLE. Worth your time.

Beware of all who promise any version of an earthly utopia.  It is the Road to Serfdom.

Midweek Political Satire

(Note: Active discussion ongoing at the blog post just below this one)

Idea?
Spew Alert!

The Bergdahl Trade

Excerpt from Georgia family wants Berghdahl held accountable:

...Soldiers from Georgia, from the National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade, risked their lives searching for Bergdahl when they thought he was an unwilling captive of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Master Sgt. Mark Allen of Loganville was among them; he risked his life during the search and he will never be the same.

He cannot speak for himself now. He is paralyzed and needs constant care because he was shot in the head by an enemy sniper in Afghanistan.

Allen was wounded while he and his fellow Georgia National Guard soldiers were trying to find and rescue Bergdahl soon after he disappeared in 2009....

Read the rest and watch the video HERE.

A little less than a year ago, Marie Harf, Deputy Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, dismissed with a brushing back of her hair, a smirk, and the words “I don’t think that that’s the case” the possibility that Bowe Bergdahl's platoon members had important information regarding Bowe Bergdahl:


As of last week, Bowe Bergdahl has been charged with "desertion with intent to shirk important or hazardous duty" and, more seriously, "misbehavior before the enemy, endangering the safety of a command, unit or place."  Apparently, the circumstances of Bergdahl's abandoning his post have been known — to some extent, anyway — since 2010.

Did Barack Hussein Obama know of those circumstances? Can't imagine that he did not!  Nevertheless, he bypassed Congress and released five Taliban commanders in a trade for Bowe Bergdahl:

The May 31, 2014, dog-and-pony show at the White House — aka "optics":

And there is also the matter of this Tweet, posted by Bowe Bergdahl's father and later deleted:

Also see Twitter Never Forgets: These 8 Public Figures Are Probably Regretting Cheering Bergdahl’s Release.

The Earth's "Second Moon"

(For politics, please scroll down)

From Smithsonian.com (March 3, 2015):


Excerpt from the article:

Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

A link to get this thread started: Cornell dean says ISIS welcome on campus in undercover video.

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

The State Of Education Today

One of the key reasons for teacher burnout:

A History Lesson

From my dear friend Mustang (details about Mustang, well qualified to make the following statements):

The Sources Of ISIS-Supporting Tweets

The United States is Number 4 on the list. Click directly on the graphic below to enlarge it:

Note the following:

Negotiating With Iran

The Ayatollah Khameini's response to President Obama's Nowruz greeting:


Some reading on the topic: Iranians chant ‘Death to America’, leaders say will ‘Raise Banner Of Islam Over White House'.

Obama is looking for unicorns to come over the rise. What is coming over the rise, however, is not unicorns.

Break From Politics

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds and a fascinating lesson about our lexicon:

Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

A link to get this thread started: Millionaire Rapper Says She “Hates Everything About” America, But Won’t Leave Because “Y’all Motherf*ckers Still Owe Me Reparations!"

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

Cracks In The Facade

Journalist, bestselling author, and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen makes the point that many Islamic terrorists do not come from wealthy backgrounds (hat tip to Infidel Bloggers Alliance):



ISIS, which Obama designated as "JV" not so long ago, is present here in the United States (hat tip):

The ISIS Child Executioner

From France?

Isis child executioner: Toulouse schoolchildren in shock after recognising classmate

'Ryan' dropped out of French elementary school last year

Schoolchildren in southern France are in shock after seeing a former classmate executing a hostage in a video released by the Islamic State (Isis).

The Islamist group posted online gruesome propaganda video showing a boy in military fatigues shooting an Israeli-Arab teenager in the head. The boy had been accused of working for Israel's spy agency Mossad.

In the video the child, aged 11 or 12, is flanked by a bearded man, who is believed to be his stepfather.

Students at Nicolas Vauquelin de Toulouse college, Toulouse, reportedly recognised the killer as a former classmate who left France last year.

"Concerning the formal identification of this person, I cannot tell you anything," schools inspector Jacques Caillaut told AFP. "Children from the Vauquelin College have recognised one of their (former) classmates, but we must remain cautious."

The child, said to be called "Ryan" was in his final year of primary school education at École Élémentaire Publique Vergers in Toulouse, until 11 March 2014, when he was reported absent by the school.

"He was a child like all others, he was integrated, played in the local football club and attended birthday parties," his former teachers told Libération newspaper....

Read the rest HERE.

How long can the West deny that we have a significant problem with Muslims living in and "assimilated into" the West?

Reminder About Fighting Demons

In the words of Friedrich Nietzche:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

The Remarkable Helen Keller (Weekend Blog Post)

(This blog post will remain here until Monday. For politics, please scroll down to the Open Thread just below)

Please take a few moments to watch Helen Keller With Famous People:


"Autumn" by Helen Keller:

Friday Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

Happy Birthday, Amber!

Three years old today:

Spring 2014

Hillary's Supporters And Obama's Birth Certificate

Think of this blog post as a Throwback Thursday post. I am not "a birther."

From the Telegraph (dated April 27, 2011): "Birther row began with Hillary Clinton: The lie that Barack Obama was not born in the US has been fuelled by fringe Republicans — but supporters of Hillary Clinton, now Mr Obama’s Secretary of State, are largely to blame for starting it" by Jon Swaine.

Entire article, in case you don't have a subscription to the Telegraph (emphasis mine):

For Discussion (With Addendum)

A bit of wry humor:

Addendum: Please see Silverfiddle's post today at Western Hero. Worth your time.

We Are All Criminals!

(hat tip to Silverfiddle of Western Hero for the link below)

Excerpt from this source:

• Obstruction of Justice

Hypothetical: You are the parent of a teenage son. You discover illegal drugs hidden in his bedroom. Instead of contacting the police, you decide to destroy the narcotics and punish his transgressions on your own. Unbeknownst to you, the police had launched an investigation just days before. Because you have destroyed evidence in an ongoing investigation, you have just committed an arguable federal felony:

Real-life example: Philip Russell, a lawyer from Greenwich, Connecticut, was indicted in 2007 for obstruction of justice. A church had contacted this well-respected attorney when it found images of child pornography on an employee’s computer. Russell knew that child porn is illegal even to possess (“contraband”) and that holding, rather than destroying it, arguably would be criminal. He decided to destroy the images in the best interest of his client. He didn’t know that the government had launched an investigation of the church employee just days before. For this, he was charged with obstruction of justice, and eventually pleaded to a lesser crime in an agreement with prosecutors. With this same logic, prosecutors could indict parents that choose to destroy—rather than report to officials—narcotics that they find in the possession of their son or daughter.

Closer to home for those of us who frequent the blogosphere:

• Wire Fraud

Hypothetical: You decide, as a prank, to create a fake username on the popular social-networking site, Facebook. Your digital identity is that of a famous athlete. You tell your friends they are inferior to your other-wordly skills. You have just committed an arguable federal felony. Federal Wire Fraud provisions have proven so elastic that this seemingly innocuous conduct could be defined as a federal crime.

Real-life example: The so-called “Myspace suicide” made headlines in 2009, when Missouri mother Lori Drew allegedly impersonated a teenage boy to taunt her neighbor, a young woman. After the young woman’s suicide, the case became a cause célèbre for those looking to criminalize “cyber bullying”—a decidedly modern phenomenon by which Internet users taunt and annoy, perhaps belittle, others. In the federal prosecution of Ms. Drew, prosecutors charged that she violated the Myspace terms of use, and thus had violated the aforementioned Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Though the judge dismissed this charge this time, he did so only after a jury conviction, and there’s little reason to think a similar case could be brought on the equally elastic federal wire fraud provisions. And, even if that fails, Congress is currently considering a federal law that would specifically outlaw “cyber bullying,” or the transmission of “any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means.” As Harvey Silverglate pointed out when he testified against the bill in September 2009, the vaguely-worded law, if passed, would threaten the expression of almost every blogger, journalist, and publisher who uses the internet.

Read the entire essay, which has several embedded hot links, HERE.

The ever-burgeoning Nanny State and lawyerocracy are making all of us criminals!

The Ugly Reality — And Not Only In The UK

Found at Musings of a Durotrigan:

Tales From The Classroom

("Tales from the Classroom" is a feature posted occasionally here at this blog.  All tales are true and present matters about which I have personal knowledge.  Note: for politics, please scroll down to other posts)

From fifth through ninth grades, I attended classes in the building pictured below the fold.

No wonder that I grew up loving history!  I attended school in a house filled with history.  Too bad that the walls couldn't talk to tell us what they had witnessed!

Sadly the building was torn down to make way for ugly modern buildings.

Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

Measuring Snowfall

(For politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds yesterday when the D.C. area got slammed by another winter event:

"Transparent" Hillary Clinton

Hat tip to Bunkerville for the first video below:




Since then, a few, ahem, details about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails have emerged. Read this link at Infidel Bloggers Alliance: "UPDATED --- About Hillary's Private Email Server Built to Erase Messages (But Not For Security) ... Yeah, You Guessed It, It's Owned By a Muslim Company."

Obama And The Term Islamic Terrorism

Recently I stumbled across the New York Post article entitled "Obama was as clueless about 9/11 as he is about ISIS" (February 28, 2015).

The essay points out that, in 2004, Obama added a new preface to his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father.

Excerpt from the above article (emphases mine):

Ebola Outcomes

Ebola virus

Please take time to read "Free of Ebola but not fear: Nurse Nina Pham to file lawsuit against Texas Presbyterian Hospital, worries about continued health woes," a lengthy article in Dallas Morning News article (February 28, 2015).

Nurse Nina Pham is twenty-six years old.

The article concludes as follows (emphases mine):

Preparations (Video Added)

(For politics, please scroll down a bit)

This long, long winter has kept the AOW household in homesteader mode all too often.

Our "fleet" lined up on the driveway at the back of our lot and the drawbridge up, the rugs down on the wheelchair ramp:

Our driveway down the block, at the back of our property.  No garage here!

When I peel off those throw rugs, there is a clean, dry surface.  Then, down goes the drawbridge to the street.

We're expecting snow again this week.

On the other hand, some enjoy snow sports:

Musical Interlude

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

Valsay para Cello y Guitarra:

About guitarrist Paola Requena.

Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

Over A Year To Go

The fundamental transformation of America

Just three of the consequences of twice electing to the Oval Office Barack Hussein Obama.

1.  The Affordable Care Act

2.  The Dream Act.

3.  Net Neutrality.

Commenters, feel free to add to the list.

Again!

(Two posts today.  Please scroll down)

Snowing here in the D.C. area — once again, more than the weathermen forecast!

This is the Year of the Snow Dragon (with thanks to FreeThinke for emailing me the image below):

SNOW DRAGON

Allah's Identity

Please take a few moments to watch Allah NOT same as the God of Jesus, Moses, Abraham:


IQ al-Rassooli is a our guest this week on The Gathering Storm Radio Show.

The Contentious Online World

One of my favorite sections of the Washington Post is "John Kelly's Washington."

From John Kelly's recent essay "Why do nasty online comments get us so riled up? It’s literally in our DNA":

...Saber-toothed tigers are rather thin on the ground anymore, so we don’t need that reflex that enables us to instantly aim our pointy stick at an approaching threat or muster the quick burst of energy required to help us run to safety.

And yet that response is still there, buried deep in the recesses of our brains. But about the only time I feel those hormones surging through my body is when I’m about to send an ill-considered e-mail message or Twitter post. Someone trolling us on social media is as close as any of us get to the stress of a predator bearing down on us on the veld....

What effect does all this contentious have on those of us who spend so much time in the online world? John Kelly states the following:

At first, I thought that my analogy — Twitter flames are today’s saber-toothed tigers — might be a little far-fetched. Then I talked to Johannes Eichstaedt, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. A thought-provoking paper he co-wrote was just published in the journal Psychological Science. By crunching data, Johannes and his collaborators were able to show that areas of the United States that express high levels of negative language on Twitter — tweets filled with expletives and hate — correlate with areas of the country that have high levels of heart disease.

This doesn’t mean that Twitter trolls are dying of stress-induced heart attacks, rather that everyone who lives in a hotbed of negative emotion is affected by the overall angry vibe.

The link between stress and heart disease is well known. “We now think of chronic stress as a chronic upregulation of the sympathetic nervous system,” Johannes said.

When deployed only occasionally and as originally intended, the fight-or-flight response is a good thing. It improves your odds of surviving an attack or lifting a car off a trapped child. But being repeatedly washed by adrenaline and cortisone can damage the arteries.

Twitter, angry e-mails, noxious online comments: These can all raise the blood pressure. Of course, humans have been arguing with one another for millennia. What’s different about the digital age is that now we do it with strangers over the Internet....

So, why do we continue to spend so much time in the online world? As rational creatures, we must know that too much time in the contentious online world is bad for our mental and physical health!

Today is my sixty-third birthday, and I'm going to treat myself to some time away from the contentious online world:

The Pacifist Solution To The Islamic State

WC, Infidel Bloggers Alliance's Midnight Rider, and I discussed this on The Gathering Storm Radio Show on February 20, 2015. Must-watch video!  Even if you don't particularly care for Bill O'Reilly.

SPEW ALERT!

The Indomitable Human Spirit

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

Despite forty-eight years in a nursing home, Paul Smith, who has cerebral palsy, perseveres (hat tip to Farmers Letters):


Learn more about Paul Smith HERE.

Open Thread

So, what's on your mind?

Here is your chance to opine within the parameters listed below:

We welcome civil dialogue at Always on Watch. Comments that include any of the following are subject to deletion:
1. Any use of profanity or abusive language
2. Off topic comments and spam
3. Use of personal invective
Note: comments consisting of blog gossip will be deleted as soon as an administrator of this blog becomes aware of such comments.

A link to get this thread started...New woes for HealthCare.gov: Wrong tax info sent out [nearly 1 million affected].

Right Now

(Scroll down for politics; active thread below)

In reference to the winter blast here:

Record lows today, several inches of snow expected tomorrow.

The Coming FCC Regulations

 As I understand the matter, these regulations will take effect on February 26, 2015. According to Hot Air, these regulations will result in new taxes, a slower Internet, and fewer choices.

 From the above link:

Recommended Reading

See Homeland Security Committee Chairman: Radical Islamist Extremism “Spreading like Wildfire” (dated February 16, 2015).  Belies Obama's statements about Al Qaeda and ISIL being on the run, huh?

Earlier today, before I saw the above article, I said this at Freethinke's blog:

Paris, Then Copenhagen

THE "RANDOM" PATTERN

Paris, France, (January 7, 2015): The offices of Charlie Hebdo, noted for satiric cartoons lampooning Islam, were attacked.  Two days later, an Islamic terrorist attack was perpetrated upon a Jewish deli. Sixteen killed, twenty-two wounded in these attacks.

Copenhagen, Denmark (February 14, 2015): A café hosting "Freedom of Expression and Art Blasphemy," a free-speech seminar, was attacked. At this seminar, cartoonist Lars Vilks was scheduled to speak; he may have been the primary target of the Islamic terrorist, who fired as many as 200 rounds. A few hours later, a Jewish cultural center (a synagogue) was attacked.  See the Daily Mail for more information. The suspect, on a watch list, apparently lived in the Nørrebro District of Copenhagen. The Nørrebro District is poly-cultural; a significant portion of those living there are Arabs, Turks, Pakistanis, Bosnians, Somalians, and Albanians. Two dead, five wounded in these attacks.

Following the attacks in Copenhagen, Infidel Knight, a commenter at Weasel Zippers, made the following comment (lightly edited):

Hey, America!  Take a real close look at what's going on. Europe rolled out the red carpet and encouraged Muslim immigration. Um, we've been doing the same. Vastly accelerated since 2009.  Imagine that!  Our borders are wide open. Good thing Muslims are so law abiding; otherwise, they might cross through. We're actually allowing American citizens who've gone and trained with these rabid animals to come back into America as if they had been on a trip to Disneyland. Where I come from, you go train with the enemy in a time of war,  you are the enemy and a traitor!

Islam's history is utterly irrefutable.  What we see from afar now, soon we'll see and feel here. It's simply unavoidable. Islam was conceived and born for one purpose: conquest and submission. What we face is the ultimate "death match." Either we or they will die, they've decided this. We get no voice or vote in this matter.  Mohammed and Allah have decreed it so.

Infidel Knight then posted the following excellent video — an important reality check:


The 2008 version of the film Fitna:

Islam is the trigger for these "random" attacks upon freedom.

Musical Interlude

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

I'm longing for spring! We're enduring a brutal cold snap right now — after such a warm day only a week ago (70 degrees then).

Ottorino Respighi's The Birds.


About Respighi and The Birds

Valentine's Day Weekend: A Love Story

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

Please read the story at the link below.

Marriage: Caldwell and his wife spent nearly 56 years together and he has found comfort in his daily routine since she passed away

Link: Strangers shovel snow so that an 82-year-old man can deliver a daisy to the bench dedicated his wife of 56-years

Love: Bud Caldwell, 82, has been taking daisies and a few pennies to a bench in Wisconsin every day for the past two years to honor his late wife

Did he give his wife flowers while she was living? I'd like to think that he did.

Good advice for life — something that Cubed, a blog friend of mine emailed to me the sudden loss of her husband of many years:

"Cherish your beloveds."

How Government Works

Title of the display at Cotton Ginning Days in Dallas, North Carolina (October 11, 2014): Scale Model of the US Government:


From the YouTube blurb:

It is powered by a 1920's vintage hit and miss engine, and doesn't do anything except make noise and lots of lost motions.

Yep. That sums it up exactly.

Midweek Humor

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

One of my Facebook finds:

Islamic Terrorism And Denial

One of my Facebook finds and, sadly for America and the rest of the West, accurate (Click directly on the image to enlarge it):

And one that I found last week at Z's site (Click directly on the image to enlarge it):

Bobby Jindal is a refreshing reality check for the above....Jindal: “The Medieval Christian threat is under control, Mr. President”:

“We will be happy to keep an eye out for runaway Christians, but it would be nice if he would face the reality of the situation today. The Medieval Christian threat is under control Mr. President. Please deal with the Radical Islamic threat today.”

Reminder:

The Inquisition over four centuries killed fewer people than the radical Muslims killed in one day on 9/11

Sunday Humor

(If you must have politics, please scroll down)

How Mr. AOW and I felt for some ten days when we had the flu last month:

What a miserable malady!

To top it all off, one night Mr. AOW rolled out of bed at midnight (not hurt, fire department came right away to get him up off the floor), and a few days later I slipped and fell on the ice. I'm still hobbling around.

Amnesty Bonuses

From the Weekly Standard: ‘Amnesty Bonuses’ in Tax Code: Illegal Immigrants to Receive Earned Income Tax Credit: Could cost ‘more than $24,000 to those who receive deferred action’.

Excerpt below the fold (emphases mine).

Measles Outbreak (With Addendum)

Babies are supposed to stay in the nest!

Five Infants From Palatine Daycare Center Diagnosed With Measles

Fatal Stupidity

Surreal.

Police: Massachusetts girl dies during head lice treatment:

...The little girl’s scalp was covered in mayonnaise and a plastic shopping bag was placed over her head, a common home remedy for head lice. The girl was left unattended and apparently fell asleep, allowing the bag to slip down over her face, suffocating her....

The child was eighteen months old.

The title of this blog post refers to the parent — not the child.

Tales From The Classroom

("Tales from the Classroom" is a feature posted occasionally here at this blog.  All tales are true and present matters about which I have personal knowledge.  Note: If you must have politics, please scroll down to other posts)

Over the Christmas break, each of my British Literature students independently reads a classic work from English Literature. Then the students submit a written book report and present an oral book review to the class.

I strive to assign each student a book that fits that student. Criteria: book that the student has never before read except in a very simplified edition, student's reading level, student's interests, student's personality. This year, I had two misses, both of them students new to the homeschool group I teach. One student really disliked 1984, which he found too negative. The student who read The Picture of Dorian Gray didn't care much for her assigned book, either; she said, "The book gave me nightmares."

This year's list of books read, with the student's grade level in parentheses:

Message From The Queen

From Michael Yon's Facebook page comes this bit of satire:

A MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. (You should look up 'revocation' in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Musical Interlude

Felix Mendelssohn's Venetian Boat Song No. 2 Op. 30 No. 6, a musical selection to dispel this winter's day:

FEATURED QUESTION: Science

(This FEATURED QUESTION stuck here for few days. Please scroll down for other material)

According to this source, the following are the greatest inventions in history: the wheel, money, the television, the Model T Ford, the internet, the modern computer, the steam engine, the telephone, the printing press, and the jet airplane.  Inventions can be defined in several ways, including "labor-saving devices."