The recommendations for what Americans should and shouldn't be eating ... created unprecedented controversy in 2015 when the federally appointed panel of nutritionists that helps draft them considered environmental concerns in recommending that people should eat less meat. The USDA and HHS relented to industry outrage and promised the environment would not be considered, but congressional leaders wanted to be sure, adding language to the year-end $1.1 trillion spending bill requiring the agencies to conduct a 'comprehensive review' of the guidelines and the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee within 30 days. Groups in the meat industry were relieved to see that lean meats had ultimately been left in the description of a healthy diet."
That's not to say the meat industry was given a free pass. "The guidelines note that there is strong evidence to support that eating less meat, including processed meats, reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease," The Hill adds. Nevertheless, Americans can keep chomping away at modest proportions of red meat with the government's blessing. But for how long? Writing in The Wall Street Journal in November, Julie Kelly and Jeff Stier discerned how the meat-cancer link was conveniently well-timed and may have been a clever ploy ahead of the Paris climate talks. And it's possible now that those talks are over and considered successful by most environmentalists that USDA and HHS have a little leverage to back off the pedal for a time. But rest assured, the proposals will be back. After all, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposes no less than a 25% reduction in global meat consumption, and maybe up to 75%, arguing that fewer livestock means less methane emissions escaping into the atmosphere — rather ironic considering livestock is nature. The war on meat is a coordinated effort that won't be easily overcome. On the bright side, the dietary guidelines also put a positive light on caffeine. Which is great news. We'll need all the coffee we can get to expose behind-the-scenes fraud like this. -The Patriot Post http://patriotpost.us/digests/39912
Forty percent of those surveyed in a Wall Street Journal / NBC News poll in mid-December said that terrorism and national security should be the government’s top priority; 60 percent cited one or the other in their top two concerns, up from just 39 percent eight months earlier. Some 25 percent said that they worried that they or their family would be a victim of a terror attack; 60 percent disapproved of President Barack nObama’s handling of the Islamic State, as opposed to 55 percent a year ago. Of even greater concern for Democrats in the coming elections, 70 percent said that the country was “on the wrong track.”
nObama belatedly got the message. He adopted more bellicose language in place of his earlier dismissive references to the Islamic State as the “JV team,” a threat that had been “contained.” America, nObama said, was intensifying the fight against terrorists who were on the “wrong side of history.” Seeking to calm fears and reverse antagonism toward him and his policies, nObama addressed Americans twice within a week, first from the Oval Office and then from the Pentagon. “You’re next,” he warned ISIS’s leaders in language reminiscent of his predecessor, George W. “bring it on” Bush.
Though his message toughened, nObama has doubled down on a four-prong strategy to degrade and defeat ISIS that some critics call inadequate and others warn is doomed to fail. Belatedly stepping up air strikes to a total of 9,000 has not prevented the would-be caliphate from deepening its roots in nine countries or from staging or inspiring a growing number of lethal attacks at home or abroad. While French president François Hollande told his traumatized citizens after the Paris attacks that France was “at war” with radical Islam, nObama continues to resist identifying the religious identity and motivations of America’s extremist enemy and seems deeply uncomfortable with his role as its wartime president. Though nObama has killed Osama bin Laden and decimated al-Qaida’s core leadership and infrastructure, expanded the drone war, and helped reclaim 40 percent of the land that ISIS seized in Iraq in last year’s blitzkrieg through Iraq and Syria, “the image of a risk-averse president is tough to shake,” says Aaron David Miller, a former government official now at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.
Nor have soothing statistics from scholars and officials sympathetic to nObama’s approach reassured Americans that the ship of state is in steady hands. Writing in Politico, Daniel Benjamin and Steve Simon, former national security officials, noted that since 9/11, only 45 Americans have been killed on American soil by jihadist violence. (Before the San Bernardino slaughter, they also called American anxiety about a Paris-style attack here “unwarranted.”)
But comparative body counts miss the point. The fact that more people die slipping in bathtubs than in terror attacks does not allay concern about the nation’s vulnerability. All forms of violence are not equal. And terrorism is destabilizing because its goal, in fact, is to terrorize.
Republican presidential candidates, by contrast, have lost little time trying to capitalize on America’s anxiety. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee compared San Bernardino with Pearl Harbor. New Jersey governor Chris Christie said that America was in the “midst of the next world war.” In response to his demand that the U.S. ban the entry of all Muslims, Donald Trump saw his poll ratings surge. Exaggerating the jihadi threat may be politically advantageous, but antagonizing the Arab nations needed to fight ISIS in Syria and the largely integrated American-Muslim community, whose support is needed to help identify, isolate, and delegitimize extremists in their ranks, makes terror harder to combat.
Questions about the administration’s ability to prevent terror strikes at home have also eroded public trust in nObama. While most American employers routinely check prospective employees’ postings on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, government officials cannot routinely review direct and private messages sent through such social media. Tashfeen Malik, the female half of the San Bernardino terrorist couple, sent direct, nonpublic messages hostile to the U.S. through Facebook and a dating website before moving from Pakistan to the U.S. with a K-1, or “fiancée,” entry visa, but the government needs special authorization to access such communications. Fox News reported that Malik passed at least three background checks before being granted the visa, despite having given a false address on her visa application.
Syed Farook, by contrast, her Internet husband and jihadi partner in crime, was a homegrown fanatic. The danger of homegrown militants has been known to law enforcement and homeland security officials since 2007, when New York Police Department intelligence analysts Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt warned of the trend, in a controversial report. Many of the FBI’s 900 active investigations of potential jihadi violence—at least one in every state—are said to focus on such extremists. But President nObama has downplayed the homegrown threat, fearful of alienating Muslim-Americans.
Anxiety about terrorism has prompted policy shifts and demands for the reexamination of an appropriate balance between tolerance, protecting privacy, and preventing terror. Even before the San Bernardino attack, the Republican-led Congress seemed determined to oppose nObama’s stated desire to accept some 10,000 Syrian refugees in a year. Though none of the Syrians admitted to the U.S. as refugees has engaged in terrorism on American soil—nor have any but two of the more than 130,000 Iraqi refugees admitted since 2007—American resistance to their entry has grown. Even in liberal New York, 52 percent of registered voters in a December poll said that they oppose allowing Syrian refugees into the country.
America’s decision to restrict the bulk collection of domestic telephone data, a program run by the National Security Agency, may also be reconsidered in the wake of the terror attacks. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has urged Congress to revisit the new metadata collection law, which authorizes but does not require the nation’s telephone companies—as opposed to the NSA—to store telephone metadata and orders the NSA to destroy all such call information more than 18 months old. The old program, Rubio has said, helped prevent terror attacks.
Former CIA director General Michael V. Hayden, who also once headed the NSA, has welcomed such a review, arguing that the NSA collection program was not abused and helped thwart terror. The elimination of such programs was “self-destructive,” he said in an interview. Another tendency worries him: the potential for panic in the event of a future terrorist attack. Both underreacting and overreacting to such assaults are likely to result in bad policy, endangering security and civil liberties. Americans have too easily permitted themselves to be terrorized by terror, Hayden believes. Echoing terrorism analysts Benjamin and Simon, he worries that Americans sometimes lack what they call the “societal resilience” essential for the fight against such violence. Resilience, as Israel has shown, denies jihadis the victory they seek. Time may tell if Americans sufficiently possess it.
Comments
Samuel
Thanks for your stands on importation of Syrian or any refugees for that matter to be totallly vetted. This pres has and had been given notice by what he is doing but looks the other way. He is doing what he thinks is best for this country and yet, he is totally lost in his own world.
URGENT! URGENT!!!
FOLLOWING THE NEWS OF THE MULTIPLE ISIS RELATED ATTACKS over the past 24 hours, I wrote the following letter directly in the on-line Contact box to Governor of Hawaii, David IGE, who has declared he will accept Syrian Refugees, Period!
Dear Governor IGE:
I was deeply distressed to see that you are NOT going to BLOCK the importation of SYRIAN Refugees which our Muslim World President is determined to flood this nation and state with. Unless you are totally blind and deaf, you know by now that Obama has CLEARLY and OPENLY declared his allegiance to "The Caliphate" and to Sharia Law.
Now, with the news this day following the news from Paris, Syrian Refugees with ties to ISIS doing multiple attacks in several countries and one of the largest total death tolls from those attacks, I DEMAND that you, Governor Ige, OBEY the SWORN OBLIGATION you undertook when you became Governor to DEFEND the state of Hawaii and its people from danger or attack — I have not read the exact wording of the Hawaii required Oath, but in Florida in 1966, when I ran for office, even the Candidates' Oath required the vow to Enforce, Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States against ALL enemies, Both foreign and Domestic.
I doubt there is anyone who cares more about the plight of the REAL Refugees from Syria, than I do. My life has been dedicated from my teen years and I am now 78-1/2 years old to helping people in need.
But the infiltration of those groups by ISIS Terrorists and other Muslim Brotherhood Terrorists and Muslim Jihadist Terrorists, has now been abundantly and tragically demonstrated in the recent TERRORIST attacks by these TROjAN HORSES among the REAL Refugees. Therefore, if you are to fulfill YOUR SWORN OBLIGATION to the People of Hawaii, you MUST REJECT Syrian Refugees unless they have been THOROUGHLY CHECKED for TERRORIST Ties of any group.
IF YOU PERSIST IN ALLOWING UN-VETTED REFUGEES ADMISSION, YOU, GOVERNOR DAVID IGE WILL DESERVE TO BE AMONG THOSE VICTIMIZED IN THEIR ATTACKS OR ELSE TO BE IMPEACHED FOR FAILURE TO DEFEND YOUR STATE FROM SUCH AN ATTACK!.
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If YOUR Governor has not yet been among the 23 I have heard of that have ordered a block on importation of un-vetted refugees, you do so IMMEDIATELY!