Chad’s Morning Brief: The U.S. Could Be Helping al-Qaeda By Bombing Syria, Napolitano on Immigration, & More
Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of August 28, 2013. Give me your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11am. Remember, you can listen online at KFYO.com or on your iPhone/Android with the radioPup App.
1. Obama Helping al-Qaeda? (link)
If the U.S. bombs Syria, isn't that helping al-Qaeda? According to The Independent, he would be. The rebel groups in Syria are backed by different factions. Many of them are backed by al-Qaeda.
If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa’ida.
Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.
The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.
This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qa’ida – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qa’ida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.
Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa’ida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qa’ida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa’ida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.
There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa’ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa’ida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.
And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.
In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?
Just something to think about.
2. Napolitano Hits Congress on Immigration (link)
Janet Napolitano is very happy that she made up her own rules instead of going by the law.
“We instructed our immigration agents and officers to use their discretion under current law to not pursue low-priority immigration cases, like children brought to the United States illegally by their parents,” she said at a National Press Club speech. “Congress had a chance to give these so-called Dreamers a way to stay in our country through the DREAM Act, but unfortunately, that legislation failed to garner the 60 votes needed for cloture, falling just five votes short, despite strong bipartisan support.”
Napolitano said she used her “prosecutorial discretion” to allow Dreamers to obtain legal status to stay in the country and said more than 80 percent of the 500,000 requests for deferred action have been approved in the program’s first year.
The deferred action program, Napolitano said, “is no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform, which is the only way to fix the longstanding problems with our immigration system.”
Napolitano gave equal weight to the administration’s enforcement and deportation measures as she did to efforts to create paths to legal status for undocumented immigrants.
DHS has “invested historic resources to prevent illegal cross-border activity” that she said has caused illegal border crossings to drop to “near 40-year lows.”
“We also set common-sense immigration enforcement priorities, with a focus on criminals, national security and public safety threats, repeat offenders and egregious immigration violators,” she said. “Last year,
Napolitano also addressed one of her lowest moments as secretary — when she declared “the system worked” after the 2009 Christmas Day bomber managed to board a Detroit-bound plane from Amsterdam with a bomb. She did not mention her much-maligned words responding to the incident.
“From that attempted attack, we learned that relevant information possessed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection needed to be available overseas — at the last point of departure for the U.S. We fixed that,” she said. “We learned that our adversaries were moving to non-metallic devices. We adapted our screening technology and tactics to counter that.
“And we learned that a single vulnerability in any part of the aviation system can make everyone connected to it vulnerable,” she added. “Since we don’t control security in foreign airports, we have to work even more closely with international partners to raise the overall security of the system. We did that.”
3. Starbucks (link)
The CEO of Starbucks says that they will not cut benefits to employees due to Obamacare.
"It's not about the law. It's about responsibility we have to the people who do work and who represent us," Schultz told CNN on Tuesday.
The coffee chain is unique in its policy: Even part-time workers are eligible for insurance. In 2010, benefits cost the company $300 million, more than it paid for coffee.
But Schultz said the benefits will remain a cornerstone of the company's compensation for its 160,000 employees, even though it could be more expensive next year due to Obamacare's "unintended consequences."
"It may end up costing us more... but I don't think that is the primary issue," Schultz said. "Starbucks does not want to leave people behind."
His comments put him in stark contrast with other business owners, who have taken drastic measures to reduce costs next year.
If you are a Starbucks employee I'm sure this is good news. The question is, will Starbucks lay-off anyone? No matter what, be prepared for the price of your latte to go up. Starbucks has to cover the cost somehow.
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These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11am on News/Talk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.
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