After Gen. David Petraeus resigned as CIA Director over an extramarital affair on Friday, many are curious about the woman Petraeus cheated on his wife of 37 years for.
Though Petraeus didn’t cite the woman by name, various sources and media outlets have identified his biographer, Paula Broadwell, as the woman in question.
TheBlaze reported yesterday on what was known about her at the time, including how she and Petraeus met and how their relationship appeared to evolve on the surface.
Now, Business Insider reminds that in Michael D. Shear’s profile of Broadwell for The New York Times, he said she was “a model for a machine gun manufacturer.”
(Photo: KRISS/YouTube)
“It turns out that the company is called KRISS, a manufacturer of .45-caliber machine guns,” Business Insider writes. “We did a bit more digging and stumbled on a promotional video for KRISS which features Broadwell in her role as, according to her website, ‘female model / demonstrator.’”
Broadwell also gives commentary throughout the video, highlighting the importance of accurate, lightweight weaponry.
Check out the video, via Business Insider, below (Broadwell first appears around 1:36)
President Obama’s position as a senator on issues like partial-birth abortion– where a live baby is pulled partially out of the birthing canal, only to have its skull punctured with a sharp object– is known to many voters. Though he voted “present” a remarkable number of times, he voted three times against the Born Alive Act in Illinois, which says that babies who survive late-term abortions are entitled to all the rights and protections any other infant would receive.
Now, LifeNews has uncovered a fundraising letter signed by Michelle Obama in 2004 — just one year after President Bush signed a bill banning partial-birth abortion — calling partial-birth abortion a “legitimate medical procedure.”
We have all been concerned lately with the rise of conservatism in this country, especially as it relates to women. You’ve read the alarming news about the Justice Department’s request for hospitals to turn over the private medical records of dozens of patients. This cynical ploy is designed to intimidate a group of physicians and force them to drop their lawsuit seeking to have the so-called partial birth abortion ban ruled unconstitutional.
The fact remains, with no provision to protect the health of the mother, this ban on a legitimate medical procedure is clearly unconstitutional and must be overturned. [Emphasis added]
Here is a screen shot of the beginning of the letter:
(Photo via LifeNews)
Michelle Obama has come under fire for the letter before– particularly when her husband was running for president in 2008– but the letter was primarily spoken of, not circulated in its entirety.
“I’d like to ask Michelle how in the world she could in good conscience raise money from fear-mongering about this barbaric abortion procedure,” pro-life advocate Jill Stanek said at the time.
When then-candidate Obama issued a warning to keep family out of the public eye, Stanek added: “So it’s fine to kill late-term babies, but we can’t risk hurting Michelle’s feelings about it…”
Since arriving in the White House, the Obamas have remained strong pro-choice advocates, but are far less vocal about late-term abortions. When asked about their previous stance, Obama representatives have said the legislation interfered with the mother’s original right to choose.
If anything, the Obama campaign has turned such issues on their heels. Their longstanding support for abortion makes them protectors of “women’s rights,” and those who disagree, or ask women to pay for their own birth control, are accused of waging a “war on women.”
(TheBlaze/AP) — A Taliban gunman walked up to a bus taking children home from school in Pakistan’s volatile Swat Valley Tuesday, shooting and wounding a 14-year-old activist known for championing the education of girls and publicizing atrocities committed by the Taliban, officials said.
The attack in the city of Mingora targeted 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai, who is widely respected for her work to promote the schooling of girls– something that the Taliban strongly opposes. She was nominated last year for the International Children’s Peace Prize.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, calling Malala’s work “a new chapter of obscenity” that must be “finished.”
The bus was about to leave the school when a bearded man approached and asked which one of the girls was Malala, the town’s police chief town explained. Another girl pointed to Malala, but the activist denied it was her so the gunmen apparently shot both of the girls.
Malala Yousufzai is moved to a helicopter to be taken to Peshawar for treatment in Mingora, Swat Valley, Pakistan on Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012. (Photo: AP)
Malala was shot twice– once in the head and once in the neck– but her wounds were not life-threatening, said Tariq Mohammad, a doctor at the main hospital in Mingora. The second girl shot was in stable condition, the doctor said. Pakistani television showed pictures of Malala being taken by helicopter to a military hospital in the frontier city of Peshawar.
“She was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her idol,” Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told Reuters. “She was young, but she was promoting Western culture…”
In the past, the Taliban has threatened Malala and her family for her activism. When she was only 11 years old, she began writing a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC’s Urdu service about life under Taliban occupation. After the Taliban were ejected from the Swat Valley in the summer of 2009, she began speaking out publicly about the militant group and the need for girls’ education.
Malala Yousufzai is moved to a helicopter to be taken to Peshawar for treatment in Mingora, Pakistan, Tuesday, Oct. 9, 2012. (Photo: AP)
While chairing a session of a children’s assembly supported by UNICEF in the valley last year, the then-13-year-old championed a greater role for young people.
“Girl members play an active role,” she said, according to an article on the U.N. organization’s website. “We have highlighted important issues concerning children, especially promoting girls’ education in Swat.”
The attack displayed the viciousness of Islamic militants in the Swat Valley, where the military conducted a major operation in 2009 to clear out insurgents. The scenic valley– nicknamed the Switzerland of Pakistan– was once a popular tourist destination for Pakistanis, but the Taliban’s near-total takeover of the area in 2008 transformed it practically overnight.
Part of a wave of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters expanding their reach from safe havens near the Afghan border, militants forced men to grow beards, restricted women from going to the bazaar, whipped women they considered immoral and beheaded opponents.
During the roughly two years of their rule, Taliban in the region destroyed nearly 200 schools. Most were girls’ institutions, though some prominent boys’ schools were struck as well.
While the Pakistani military managed to flush out the insurgents during the military operation, their Taliban’s top leadership escaped, leaving many of the valley’s residents on edge.
Kamila Hayat, a senior official of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, praised Malala for standing up to the militants and sending a message across the world that Pakistani girls had the courage to fight for their rights. But she also worried that Tuesday’s shooting would prevent other parents from letting their children speak out against the Taliban.
“This is an attack to silence courage through a bullet,” Hayat said. “These are the forces who want to take us to the dark ages.”
—
Associated Press writer Abdul Sattar in Quetta and Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.
A Royal Caribbean cruise ship is seen near Falmouth, Jamaica in March, 2012. (AP File Photo)
The most common complaints by business-owners against the current administration tend to revolve around the economic uncertainty and increased regulation that have made it next to impossible to plan for the future.
Stephanie Gallagher, the president of World City America Inc., is lending her voice to the fray after the Obama administration reportedly moved to prevent American cruise liners from being eligible to get the long-term financing under Title XI that makes building something as massive as a cruise ship possible.
As Royal Caribbean acquires its third Oasis-class ship from Finland, Gallagher writes that World City America has invested over a decade and $60 million in designing a “superior product” that would be built in America, by Americans, and paying taxes to the U.S. government.
“Having demonstrated that our plan would be economically sound, would not cost the taxpayers anything, would not increase the debt but would improve the deficit, the only way to push us off the cliff was to enact policy that preempted the nation’s ship financing program from being used to build cruise ships. That’s what the Obama Administration did,” Gallagher claims.
(AP File Photo)
Gallagher’s main point of contention is that the cruise industry is overwhelmingly funded by American dollars, but the companies typically build the vessels out of the country, hire international employees, and pay far fewer taxes than a wholly American company would.
Gallagher thinks the change is the result of politics and special interests, and while she notes that both parties are susceptible to such incentives, Gallagher ultimately holds the current administration responsible.
Gallagher’s letter continues:
“…we do blame the Obama Administration for throwing down the gauntlet…for precluding America’s long-delayed entry into this booming US-driven market; for shutting the door on what we have proven is possible and viable if the government applied the Title XI regulations as intended – not as a subsidy for special interests, but as a job-creating, economy-boosting and tax revenue-generating program and policy.”
“Why, Mr. Obama, would you choose this, of all times, to lock out American shipbuilders, hotel construction companies, hundreds of US suppliers in all fifty states, and thousands of long-term self-sustaining new jobs for our dwindling Merchant Marine and US hospitality workers?”
“Why…when there are twenty-three million Americans out of work, would you decide to announce a policy that America and Americans can’t participate in this booming US-driven market that has grown steadily at 7% or more every year, recession or no recession, for decades?” [Emphasis added]
“All is fair in love and war,” Gallagher accepts in conclusion, adding: “but don’t tell the American people that you wake up every day thinking of ways to give the American workers a fair shot in the global economy. Don‘t claim to ’walk the walk.’”
A Belgian public service announcement of a “psychic” reading the minds of ordinary people has gone viral worldwide.
Why? Because the eccentric individual is no ordinary mind reader– he gets his information from Facebook and the web, and is warning against sharing too much private information.
[The video] begins with random people being selected from the streets of Brussels. They are asked if they would like to participate in an upcoming TV program featuring Dave, described as a gifted clairvoyant. Once they agree, they are ushered into a white tent to meet Dave. He hugs them and dances around as he seemingly tries to get a sense of the person’s energy. As people are seated across from him, Dave tells them random facts about them, from the color of the motorcycle they own to their bank account number and even the types and locations of their tattoos. [Emphasis added]
Here are some of Dave’s other “psychic revelations”:
(Photo: YouTube)
(Photo: YouTube)
(Photo: YouTube)
(Photo: YouTube)
Yahoo! continues:
As the unassuming subjects become absorbed in Dave’s trance and the factual information he is providing, the truth behind his magic is revealed. A curtain drops, and behind it is a group of computer hackers dressed in all black searching the Internet for information about each of the individuals. In fact, a large monitor sits in front of the hackers, displaying pictures and personal information about the subjects. Each person seems astonished, first at the curtain dropping and then at the reveal as they realize what has taken place. [Emphasis added]
(Photo: YouTube)
The video was created by a group called the Belgian Financial Sector Federation, according to Yahoo!, and the hackers claim to have only needed the time the individual was in the room to gather all the information.
Uploaded on September 24th, “Amazing Mind Reader Reveals His ‘Gift’” has been viewed nearly 1.5 million times in just two days.
“Be vigilant,” the group warns, “because Internet fraudsters can use information against you.”
Modeling his opening after the president’s line, Allen West says he would have issued a much sterner warning to those who dare attack us. He wrote on his Facebook page:
My statement to the United Nations would have been, “The future does not belong to those who attack our Embassies and Consulates and kill our Ambassadors. The Angel of Death in the form of an American Bald Eagle will visit you and wreak havoc and destruction upon your existence.” [Emphasis added]
On Friday night, Anderson Cooper revealed on his show that CNN used Ambassador Christopher Stevens’ personal journal as a source in its reporting after the deadly attack that killed Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
Discussing when, specifically, the information was used, Cooper said:
On Wednesday of this week, we reported that a source familiar with Ambassador Stevens’ thinking said in the months before his death, Ambassador Stevens talked about being worried about what he called the never-ending security threats in Benghazi.
We also reported that the ambassador specifically mentioned the rise in Islamic extremism, the growing Al Qaeda presence in Libya and said he was on an Al Qaeda hit list. The information for that report, like all of CNN’s reporting, was carefully vetted. Some of that information was found in a personal journal of Ambassador Stevens in his handwriting.
We came upon the journal through our reporting and notified the family. At their request, we returned that journal to them. We reported what we found newsworthy in the ambassador’s writings… [Emphasis added]
Here is video of Cooper’s admission, via Mediaite:
Though Cooper appears to relay the information as nothing more than a side note, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that there is much more to the story.
Not only did CNN fail to mention for days the fact that it apparently used the personal journal of a murdered ambassador as a source, Stevens’ family reportedly asked CNN not to discuss the journal or its contents until they had a chance to review it.
Furthermore, Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, disputesCNN’s assertion that the network contacted the family within hours of finding the journal and readily agreed to return it. Apparently it took several attempts to get CNN to agree to hand over the private information.
State Department spokesman Philippe Reines called CNN’s actions “indefensible.”
Early Saturday morning, CNN published a story with more information on the journal, and how exactly it came into the network’s possession.
The network explains:
Four days after he was killed, CNN found a journal belonging to late U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. The journal was found on the floor of the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded.
CNN notified Stevens‘ family about the journal within hours after it was discovered and at the family’s request provided it to them via a third party.
The journal consists of just seven pages of handwriting in a hard-bound book.
For CNN, the ambassador’s writings served as tips about the situation in Libya, and in Benghazi in particular. CNN took the newsworthy tips and corroborated them with other sources.
