Friday, April 26, 2013

Russian Calls Out Barack Obama As A Communist


obama-crazy-face-marxist
Barack Obama is called a pure Communist by the Russian Press and many in Russia are making that statement. Maybe that is why the Boston Bombers could get away with what they did. It seems that Russia knew that the older brother was one to watch and they informed our intelligence community of it, yet the FBI once again failed because they “did not want to inflame people with Jihad connections or ideology!” Obama has declared that the United States will not “attack” those who hate the United States and instead, Obama wants to try to appease the situation in the terrorists’ favor. One individual, a man named Xavier Lerma, who wrote many articles about Obama and what he has done, along with calling the people of the United States stupid and ignorant for putting him in office has openly called Obama a Communist! His article, “Obama’s Soviet Mistake,” discusses why what Obama is doing now has been done before in Russia and it failed.
Mr. Lerma stated:
“Putin in 2009 outlined his strategy for economic success. Alas, poor Obama did the opposite but nevertheless was re-elected. Bye, bye Miss American Pie. The Communists have won in America with Obama but failed miserably in Russia with Zyuganov who only received 17% of the vote. Vladimir Putin was re-elected as President keeping the NWO order out of Russia while America continues to repeat the Soviet mistake.”
This was in the first paragraph of his article where he made the statement about President Obama, “Well, any normal individual understands that as true but liberalism is a psychosis . O’bomber even keeps the war going along the Mexican border with projects like “fast and furious” and there is still no sign of ending it. He is a Communist without question promoting the Communist Manifesto without calling it so. How shrewd he is in America. His cult of personality mesmerizes those who cannot go beyond their ignorance. They will continue to follow him like those fools who still praise Lenin and Stalin in Russia. Obama’s fools and Stalin’s fools share the same drink of illusion.”
How many times have the Obama Supporters been called the “Kool Aid Kids?” Yet,Obama still gets his way by making taxes on purchases of anything on the internet. There is no doubt that new internet sales tax legislation will simply be another tax that will be used by Obama to do as he wishes to do! Yep, the United Socialists States of America has tasted the drink of illusion and they will dance in the fire should Obama tell them to do so!
Lerma continued:
“Russia lost its’ civil war with the Reds and millions suffered torture and death for almost 75 years under the tyranny of the United Soviet Socialist Republic. Russians survived with a new and stronger faith in God and ever growing Christian Church. The question is how long will the once “Land of the Free” remain the United Socialist States of America? Their suffering has only begun. Bye bye Miss American Pie! You know the song you hippies. Sing it! Don’t you remember? The 1971 hit song by American song writer Don McLean:
“And, as I watched him on the stage my hands were clenched in fists of rage.
No angel born in Hell could break that Satan’s spell
And, as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw…
Satan laughing with delight the day the music died
He was singing, bye bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry
Them good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey and rye, singing…
This’ll be the day that I die.
How long will America suffer and to what depths?”
We must wonder just how long will people be dragged along with Obama over the cliff of failure? Obama has lied so much that he has to go back to video to make sure he keeps the lie going. Here we get a small insight into what the Russian people are told about Obama and the United States! Could this be why Obama has not had a very good relation with Russia, because Putin does not like Obama and considers him a fool? In another article by Mr. Lerma he discusses the current gun control measures that Obama has finally pushed while he had the very idea early when he was a Senator, Obama kept it silent until he was re-elected so he could continue on his agenda to destroy the United States. The worst part of this is that if a Russian man can see this, why have no reporters in the United States seen this? It just does not make sense unless they have a part in the forced failure of the United States.
Mr. Lerma wrote about President Obama, the NRA and many other ideas that reporters in the United States just seem to not see in his article:
“The NRA is right, Obama is an “Elitist Hypocrite” but he is actually worse than that. He is a liar and a murderer causing chaos in America and the world. Obama’s sins multiply more than Dorian Gray’s but people still think he looks good. Looking good is all that matters in America, right? The list goes on: he raised taxes on everyone when he said he would not; killing innocent people with drones; executive privilege in “Fast and Furious“; the so called “Arab Spring“; promoting abortions; lying to Russia and pointing missiles at us; paying off his communist buddies to hire Russians to protest against Putin; no effort to lower the US debt by even one penny, etc.. Yet, most people still love him in the US. Those against him stand firm. Obama and those who own him cannot force Americans to give up their guns now, but he will eventually.”
Why is it that the so-called reporters within the United States cannot see what people outside the United States can see? Come on people wake up and inform those who do not know!

Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/04/russian-calls-out-barack-obama-as-a-communist/#ixzz2Rd7ekowF
When did the banning of patriotism become the new fad? Over the last several months I have read series of articles through news sources such as CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press regarding students being punished for showing their patriotism.
A little boy was told that he could not wear a baseball cap for a school event decorated to reflect the Army, where his father was currently serving, because representing the military was condoning the use of guns. Then there was the three students who wore t-shirts with the American flag to school and were remove from class for inappropriate attire because it was Cinco de Mayo. Most recently a school in Massachusetts denied student the right and privilege of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance on a voluntary basis because it might offend someone delicate sensibilities or their religious beliefs.
Why is it that we are allowing the authorities in our children’s lives to tell them it’s wrong to express a love of their country? When I was in school saying the Pledge of Allegiance was expected and respected. We were taught in kindergarten the words and the meaning behind them and why it was important to show support for your country. We were taught to honor members of the military because it was at their hands that our freedom was maintained. So, why has it become politically incorrect for our children to be taught those same lessons?
Our Constitution is what made it possible for American born citizens to live free and for people not of this country to become part of this country. When did American born citizens become the minority? Why is there so much concern over everyone else’s sensibilities and egos that we have suddenly disregarded our own interests?
My son is in the Army and I am proud of him every day because stands up for what he believes in and for a country he has faith in. My father was in the Navy in his younger days doing for the same reasons my son joined the Army. My husband is a veteran of the Navy and was a participant in the first Gulf War; he signed on to military service the day he graduated high school. All of these men were taught from a young age the lessons of our freedom and the reasons for being a patriot.
The saddest story to hear is the one from son who was asked by small child, about 6 or 7 years old, why he was wearing a uniform. My son talked with this child for a few minutes explaining why he wore a uniform and further explaining what the Army was.  I cannot remember a time when I was not aware of the men and women who keep our shores safe. It is a sorry state of affairs when a child is ignorant of the people that keep this nation strong.
The fact that our children are being denied information is depressing enough, but being denied the right to voice a belief once they have gained the information is barbaric. How long as a society are we going to bend to the will and whimsy of those not native born? When are we going to say we have had enough and will no longer sit idly by as our patriotism is forced into the dark corners of secrecy? When are we going to stand up and say “no more?”
In my family, now and for generations to come, our children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and any other child welcomed into our home will always be provided with answers to questions and knowledge of home and country. They will be further equipped with the ability to stand behind their convictions and support just causes.

Extreme Islam’s Infiltration of America

Extreme Islamic rally in Michigan.
Extreme Islamic rally in Michigan.
Extreme Islam’s Infiltration of America
Preface: Before venturing further into this article please be aware that some of the information may be offensive to some sensibilities. My personal view point on religion and belief systems is that each individual is entitled to their own as long as they do not inflict their beliefs onto others who may believe differently. Please keep in mind that those of the same religion may not be of the same faith.
I recently came across a blog (www.answeringmuslims.com) hosted by a gentleman named David Wood who is making an effort to enlighten the American public about Islamic infiltration. After reading several of his opinions and viewing some of his video footage I believe that there should be some concern.
America was founded by individuals who united in order to provide a safe environment for people with distinct thoughts and beliefs to practice those theories and actions without persecution or condemnation. Our founders developed laws and guidelines that formed the basis of freedom and individual rights for the citizens of this country. They further enabled the growth and possibility for change within our borders. Knowing this and seeing what is being allowed to happen on American soil is frightening.
Issues of immigration aside, the United States has seen a tremendous expansion of Muslim populations in recent years. While I believe that the majority are peaceful and productive there are some who are extreme and fanatical. Unfortunately, the minority are the ones seeking to destroy from within. There is one U.S. city that has become a major player in the Islamic world and has provided proof to extremist factions that Americans are willing to overlook the danger until it is too late. Dearborn, Michigan now posses a greater number of foreign born Muslims than any other nationality including native born Americans; this has resulted in American laws and policies being disregarded in favor of Sharia laws.
When did it become mandatory that another country’s laws overshadowed American laws on American soil? As citizens of the United States we are entitled and granted by constitution inalienable rights that cannot and should not be compromised by policies defined outside our borders, but somehow we are losing our footing to those who believe that their way of life is the only way of life.
I am the first person to give anyone the benefit of the doubt and trust that they are decent and kind, regrettably my experience has taught me that people can also be sheep. An individual is intelligent and compassionate, a group that has become a collective mind is destructive and easily mislead. Muslims that draw on the less desirable portions of the Quran blindly without thought to the consequences cling together to justify their actions while establishing themselves in greater numbers throughout susceptible cities in the United States. By allowing this to happen under the guise of freedom of religion we are allowing the United States to be transformed into a Muslim country that will result in the policing of thoughts, speech, lifestyles, religion, sexuality, and countless other venues that we, as Americans, take for granted; a country where punishment will be quick and biased and often undeserving.
Extreme Islamic hope for the future.
Extreme Islamic hope for the future.
Source: World Muslim Congress
The presence of Muslims in the United States is not something new and recent. There have been Muslims in U.S. soil since the early 1920s with the first mosque being built in 1924. For decades there have been descendants of the original immigrant Muslims that have been both citizens and peaceful; they have been productive and have contributed to the diversity of America. These long lived families have not tried to change their neighbors or communities, but instead have been proud Americans and have acted accordingly. Through the years others like them have come to this country looking for something more than the restrictions issued by their originating countries; to these people, Bravo! However, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The opposite side of decades of peaceful cohabitation with Muslims is being destroyed by members of the same religion with fanatical views and unforgiving beliefs.
Police forces and political figures that reside in extreme Muslim communities are bowing to the will of Sharia law and pushing aside the laws and liberties of non-Muslims. They are choosing to overlook the rights of the people they swore to protect. By taking these actions, they are also telling Islamic communities that we will give way to their mandates without question and without fight.
The current weakness and dissension among ranks in our present government open the door wider allowing for the possibility of takeover while members of our government look the other way in denial pretending that if they deny it long enough it will go away. We, as a country, allowed people to cross our borders without restriction. We did not enforce our own laws and allowed interpretation of the laws to be skewed to suit the agenda. Now we have to deal with the consequences of turning the other cheek.
We cannot allow the corruption of Islam to infiltrate any further. Our history books have been changed to accommodate Muslim sensibilities. We a forbidden to present an opinion that opposes Islam at Muslim events. We are not allowed to question the Muslim religion without being seen as biased. We are commanded to ignore what we know to be right and true in favor of extreme Islamic demands. We are ordered to be quite and accepting of the insensitivity of Muslim actions.
Where will the final line be drawn? When will we state that the invasion stops here and goes no further? When will stand up and say “No More”? When will it be too late? Is it too late already?

More from Charlotte

The Banning of Patriotism
When did the banning of patriotism become the new fad? Over the last several months I have read series of articles through news sources such as CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press regarding students

Judge Marianne Bowler Who Mirandized Boston Bomber Has Ties To Muslim Countries

Gateway Pundit
Creeping Sharia?
Ties-to-Muslim-Countries
FrontPageMag has the following to report:
Judge Bowler has some interesting international connections. She is a member of the Member of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Apparently in that capacity, she visited and spoke on legal issues at a number of Muslim countries, becoming the first female judge to speak in Kuwait, appearing also in Egypt and in the United Arab Emirates.
Oddly enough, aside from a visit to the US embassy in Belgrade, those are the only international appearances that she lists and they all take place in Muslim countries.
While Islamic infiltration of our political system is well known, the infiltration of our legal system is less well known, but operates within similar parameters with foreign contacts being made. There is no way of knowing how much Bowler has been influenced by her connections with the legal and political systems of the Muslim world, but it is telling that her international judicial relations appear to begin and end with the Muslim world.
Read more here.

Suspected Jihadi Operative: Judge Who Rushed To End Interrogation Of Boston Bomber Without DOJ Knowledge Has Strange And Disturbing Ties To Muslim Countries



Apr 26, 2013 5 Comments Jake Hammer Watching this video after reading the article below it will be one of the most disturbing experiences you’ve ever had.


Excerpted from FRONT PAGE MAG
As FOX News reported and Robert Spencer noted, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev stopped talking once he was prematurely read his Miranda rights. That helps the authorities establish the lone wolf narrative. Whatever else we might have learned from him is probably lost.
Once Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was read his rights on Monday, he immediately stopped talking, according to four officials of both political parties who were briefed on the interrogation but insisted on anonymity because the briefing was private.
After roughly 16 hours of questioning, investigators were surprised when a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s office entered the hospital room and read Tsarnaev his rights, the four officials and one law enforcement official said. Investigators had planned to keep questioning him.

And
District Court Judge Marianne Bowler arrived at the hospital where he is being treated to preside over his initial hearing Monday, when she read him his Miranda rights.

But Fox News’ sources say there was confusion about Bowler’s timing, with some voicing concerns that investigators were not given enough time to question Dzhokhar under the “public safety exception” invoked by the Justice Department.
Two officials with knowledge of the FBI briefing on Capitol Hill said the FBI was against stopping the investigators’ questioning and was stunned that the judge, Justice Department prosecutors and public defenders showed up, feeling valuable intelligence may have been sacrificed as a result.
Judge Bowler has some interesting international connections. She is a member of the Member of the International Judicial Relations Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Apparently in that capacity, she visited and spoke on legal issues at a number of Muslim countries, becoming the first female judge to speak in Kuwait, appearing also in Egypt and in the United Arab Emirates. Oddly enough, aside from a visit to the US embassy in Belgrade, those are the only international appearances that she lists and they all take place in Muslim countries.

While Islamic infiltration of our political system is well known, the infiltration of our legal system is less well known, but operates within similar parameters with foreign contacts being made. There is no way of knowing how much Bowler has been influenced by her connections with the legal and political systems of the Muslim world, but it is telling that her international judicial relations appear to begin and end with the Muslim world.

Ex-officers raising money for Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez with strong anti-Obama rhetoric.

04/26/2013 6:01 PM
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A group of former Navy SEALs and intelligence officers is asking for donations for one of their former colleagues, Republican Senate candidate Gabriel E. Gomez, saying his victory in the special election would deliver “a devastating blow to Barack Obama’s agenda.”
The fundraising letter from the group, the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund, bashes Obama for his “sheer arrogance” and “radically liberal agenda.”
“This is no game,” writes Ryan K. Zinke, the group’s chairman, in a letter that asks donors to give up to $5,000 to Gomez’s campaign. “We are fighting for the very survival of the nation you and I love.”
Gomez, a former Navy SEAL, was a spokesman for the conservative group during the 2012 presidential election, when it accused Obama of exploiting the killing of Osama bin Laden and endangering troops for political purpose.
But the group’s fiercely anti-Obama rhetoric stands in sharp contrast to the letter Gomez sent to Governor Deval Patrick in January, asking the Democratic governor to appoint him interim senator.
In that letter, Gomez said he supported Obama in 2008 and pledged to support the president’s positions on gun control and immigration in the Senate. Gomez also argued that, instead of delivering a blow to Obama’s agenda, his service in the Senate “would be good for the Democrats as well, since it is in everyone’s interest to have the two parties at the negotiating table.”
Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @mlevenson.

MA. Governor Deval Patrick Refuses to Release Welfare Records on Boston Terrorist ~> Cites Right to Privacy ~> Full Report


Hey Deval, welfare is funded by the taxpayers; we have a right to this information. 

Boston Herald:
The Patrick administration clamped down the lid yesterday on Herald requests for details of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s government benefits, citing the dead terror mastermind’s right to privacy.
Across the board, state agencies flatly refused to provide information about the taxpayer-funded lifestyle for the 26-year-old man and his brother and accused accomplice Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19.
On EBT card status or spending, state welfare spokesman Alec Loftus would only say Tamerlan Tsarnaev, his wife and 3-year-old daughter received benefits that ended in 2012. He declined further comment.
On unemployment compensation, labor department spokesman Kevin Franck refused to say whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev ever collected, saying it was “confidential and not a matter of public record.”
On Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s college aid, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth spokesman Robert Connolly said, “It is our position — and I believe the accepted position in higher education — that student records including academic records and financial records (including financial aid) cannot under federal law be released without a student’s consent.”

In Florida, a food-stamp recruiter deals with wrenching choices

By , Published: April 23

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A good recruiter needs to be liked, so Dillie Nerios filled gift bags with dog toys for the dog people and cat food for the cat people. She packed crates of cookies, croissants, vegetables and fresh fruit. She curled her hair and painted her nails fluorescent pink. “A happy, it’s-all-good look,” she said, checking her reflection in the rearview mirror. Then she drove along the Florida coast to sign people up for food stamps.
Her destination on a recent morning was a 55-and-over community in central Florida, where single-wide trailers surround a parched golf course. On the drive, Nerios, 56, reviewed techniques she had learned for connecting with some of Florida’s most desperate senior citizens during two years on the job. Touch a shoulder. Hold eye contact. Listen for as long as it takes. “Some seniors haven’t had anyone to talk to in some time,” one of the state-issued training manuals reads. “Make each person feel like the only one who matters.”
In fact, it is Nerios’s job to enroll at least 150 seniors for food stamps each month, a quota she usually exceeds. Alleviate hunger, lessen poverty: These are the primary goals of her work. But the job also has a second and more controversial purpose for cash-strapped Florida, where increasing food-stamp enrollment has become a means of economic growth, bringing almost $6 billion each year into the state. The money helps to sustain communities, grocery stores and food producers. It also adds to rising federal entitlement spending and the U.S. debt.
Nerios prefers to think of her job in more simple terms: “Help is available,” she tells hundreds of seniors each week. “You deserve it. So, yes or no?”
In Florida and everywhere else, the answer in 2013 is almost always yes. A record 47 million Americans now rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps, available for people with annual incomes below about $15,000. The program grew during the economic collapse because 10 million more Americans dropped into poverty. It has continued to expand four years into the recovery because state governments and their partner organizations have become active promoters, creating official “SNAP outreach plans” and hiring hundreds of recruiters like Nerios.



A decade ago, only about half of eligible Americans chose to sign up for food stamps. Now that number is 75 percent.
Rhode Island hosts SNAP-themed bingo games for the elderly. Alabama hands out fliers that read: “Be a patriot. Bring your food stamp money home.” Three states in the Midwest throw food-stamp parties where new recipients sign up en masse.
On the Treasure Coast of Florida, the official outreach plan is mostly just Nerios, who works for a local food bank that is funded in part by the state. She roams four counties of sandbars and barrier islands in her Ford Escape, with an audio Bible in the CD player and a windshield sticker that reads “Faith, Hope and Love.” She distributes hundreds of fliers each week, giving out her personal cellphone number and helping seniors submit SNAP applications on her laptop.
On this particular morning, Nerios pulled into the Spanish Lakes retirement community near Port St. Lucie, Fla., and set up a display table in front of the senior center. She advertised her visit weeks in advance, but she can never predict how many people will come. Some events draw hundreds; others only a dozen. Her hope was to attract a crowd with giveaways of pet toys and hundreds of pounds of food, which she stacked high on the table. “What person in need doesn’t want food that’s immediate and free?” she said.
She watched as a few golf carts and motorized scooters drove toward her on a road lined with palm trees, passing Spanish Lakes signs that read “We Love Living Here!” and “Great Lifestyle!” The first seniors grabbed giveaway boxes and went home to tell their friends, who told more friends, until a line of 40 people had formed at Nerios’s table.
A husband and wife, just done with nine holes of golf, clubs still on their cart.
An 84-year-old woman on her bicycle, teetering away with one hand on the handlebars and a case of applesauce under her other arm.
A Korean War veteran on oxygen who mostly wanted to talk, so Nerios listened: 32 years in the military, a sergeant major, Germany, Iron Curtain, medals and awards. “A hell of a life,” the veteran said. “So if I signed up, what would I tell my wife?”
“Tell her you’re an American and this is your benefit,” Nerios said, pulling him away from the crowd, so he could write the 26th name of the day on her SNAP sign-up sheet.
She distributed food and SNAP brochures for three hours. “Take what you need,” she said, again and again, until the fruit started to sweat and the vegetables wilted in the late-morning heat. Just as she prepared to leave, a car pulled into the senior center and a man with a gray mustache and a tattered T-shirt opened the driver-side door. He had seen the giveaway boxes earlier in the morning but waited to return until the crowd thinned. He had just moved to Spanish Lakes. He had never taken giveaways. He looked at the boxes but stayed near his car.
“Sir, can I help?” Nerios asked. She brought over some food. She gave him her business card and a few brochures about SNAP.
“I don’t want to be another person depending on the government,” he said.
“How about being another person getting the help you deserve?” she said.
***
Did he deserve it, though? Lonnie Briglia, 60, drove back to his Spanish Lakes mobile home with the recruiter’s pamphlets and thought about that. He wasn’t so sure.
Wasn’t it his fault that he had flushed 40 years of savings into a bad investment, buying a fleet of delivery trucks just as the economy crashed? Wasn’t it his fault that he and his wife, Celeste, had missed mortgage payments on the house where they raised five kids, forcing the bank to foreclose in 2012? Wasn’t it his fault the only place they could afford was an abandoned mobile home in Spanish Lakes, bought for the entirety of their savings, $750 in cash?
“We made horrible mistakes,” he said. “We dug the hole. We should dig ourselves out.”
Now he walked into their mobile home and set the SNAP brochures on the kitchen table. They had moved in three months before, and it had taken all of that time for them to make the place livable. They patched holes in the ceiling. They fixed the plumbing and rewired the electricity. They gave away most of their belongings to the kids — “like we died and executed the will,” he said. They decorated the walls of the mobile home with memories of a different life: photos of Lonnie in his old New Jersey police officer uniform, or in Germany for a manufacturing job that paid $25 an hour, or on vacation in their old pop-up camper.
A few weeks after they moved in, some of their 11 grandchildren had come over to visit. One of them, a 9-year-old girl, had looked around the mobile home and then turned to her grandparents on the verge of tears: “Grampy, this place is junky,” she had said. He had smiled and told her that it was okay, because Spanish Lakes had a community pool, and now he could go swimming whenever he liked.
Only later, alone with Celeste, had he said what he really thought: “A damn sky dive. That’s our life. How does anyone fall this far, this fast?”
And now SNAP brochures were next to him on the table — one more step down, he thought, reading over the bold type on the brochure. “Applying is easy.” “Eat right!” “Every $5 in SNAP generates $9.20 for the local economy.”
He sat in a sweltering home with no air conditioning and a refrigerator bought on layaway, which was mostly empty except for the “experienced” vegetables they sometimes bought at a discount grocery store to cook down and freeze for later. He had known a handful of people who depended on the government: former co-workers who exaggerated injuries to get temporary disability; homeless people in the Fort Pierce park where he had taken the kids each week when they were young to hand out homemade peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, even though he suspected some of those homeless were drug addicts who spent their Social Security payments on crack.
“Makers and takers,” Lonnie had told the kids then, explaining that the world divided into two categories. The Briglias were makers.
Now three of those kids worked in law enforcement and two were in management. One of them, the oldest, was on his way to visit Spanish Lakes, driving down at this very moment from Valdosta, Ga., with his wife and two kids. Lonnie placed the SNAP brochures in a drawer and turned on a fan to cool the mobile home.
His son arrived, and they went out to dinner. Lonnie tried to pay with a credit card, but his son wouldn’t let him. Then, before leaving for Valdosta, the son gave his parents an air conditioner, bought for $400. Lonnie started to protest.
“Please,” his son said. “You need it. It’s okay to take a little help.”
***
The offer of more help came early the next morning. Nerios reached Lonnie on his cellphone to check on his interest in SNAP.
“Can I help sign you up?” she asked.
“I’m still not sure,” he said. “We have a lot of frozen vegetables in the freezer.”
“Don’t wait until you’re out,” she said.
She was on her way to another outreach event, but she told Lonnie she had plenty of time to talk. She had always preferred working with what her colleagues called the Silent Generation, even though seniors were historically the least likely to enroll in SNAP. Only about 38 percent of eligible seniors choose to participate in the program, half the rate of the general population. In Florida, that means about 300,000 people over 60 are not getting their benefits, and at least $381 million in available federal money isn’t coming into the state. To help enroll more seniors, the government has published an outreach guide that blends compassion with sales techniques, generating some protests in Congress. The guide teaches recruiters how to “overcome the word ‘no,’ ” suggesting answers for likely hesitations.
Welfare stigma: “You worked hard and the taxes you paid helped create SNAP.”
Embarrassment: “Everyone needs help now and then.”
Sense of failure: “Lots of people, young and old, are having financial difficulties.”
Nerios prefers a subtler touch. “It’s about patience, empathy,” she said. While she makes a middle-class salary and had never been on food stamps herself, she knows the emotional exhaustion that comes at the end of each month, after a few hundred conversations about money that didn’t exist. Nowhere had the SNAP program grown as it has in Florida, where enrollment had risen from 1.45 million people in 2008 to 3.35 million last year. And no place in Florida had been reshaped by the recession quite like the Treasure Coast, where middle-class retirees lost their savings in the housing collapse, forcing them to live on less than they expected for longer than they expected. Sometimes, Nerios believes it is more important to protect a client’s sense of self-worth than to meet her quota.
“I’m not going to push you,” she told Lonnie now. “This is your decision.”
“I have high blood pressure, so it’s true that diet is important to us,” he said, which sounded to her like a man arguing with himself.
“I can meet with you today, or tomorrow, or anytime you’d like,” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to be,” she said. “Please, just think about it.”
***
She hung up the phone and began setting up her giveaway table at another event.
He hung up the phone and drove a few miles down the highway to his wife’s small knitting store. They had stayed married 41 years because they made decisions together. She was an optimist and he was a realist; they leveled each other out. During the failures of the past three years, they had developed a code language that allowed them to acknowledge their misery without really talking about it.
“How you doing?” he asked.
“Just peachy,” she said, which meant to him that in fact she was exhausted, depressed, barely hanging on.
She opened the knitting store three years earlier, but it turned out her only customers were retirees on fixed incomes, seniors with little money to spend who just wanted an air-conditioned place to spend the day. So Celeste started giving them secondhand yarn and inviting customers to knit with her for charity in the shop. Together they had made 176 hats and scarves for poor families in the last year. The store, meanwhile, had barely made its overhead. Lonnie wanted her to close it, but it was the last place where she could pretend her life had turned out as she’d hoped, knitting to classical music at a wooden table in the center of the store.
Now Lonnie joined her at that table and started to tell her about his week: how he had been driving by the community center and seen boxes of food; how he had decided to take some, grabbing tomatoes and onions that looked fresher than anything they’d had in weeks; how a woman had touched his shoulder and offered to help, leaving him with brochures and a business card.
He pulled the card from his pocket and showed it to Celeste. She leaned in to read the small print. “SNAP Outreach,” it read.
“I think we qualify,” Lonnie said.
There was a pause.
“Might be a good idea,” Celeste said.
“It’s hard to accept,” he said.
Another pause.
“We have to take help when we need it,” she said.
Celeste looked down at her knitting, and Lonnie sat with her in the quiet shop and thought about what happened when he opened a barbershop a few years earlier, as another effort of last resort. His dad, an Italian immigrant, had been a barber in New Jersey, and Lonnie decided to try it for himself after a dozen manufacturing job applications went unanswered in 2010. He enrolled in a local beauty school, graduated with a few dozen teenaged girls, took over the lease for a shop in Port St. Lucie and named it Man Cave. He had gone to work with his scissors and his clippers every day, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, standing on the curb and waving a handmade sign to advertise haircuts for $5. He had done a total of 11 cuts in three months. But what tore him up inside had nothing to do with the lonely echo of his feet on the linoleum floor or the empty cash register or the weeks that went by without a single customer. No, what convinced him to close the shop — the memory that stuck with him even now — were the weeks when old friends had come in to get their hair cut twice. He couldn’t stand the idea of being pitied. He hated that his problems had become a burden to anyone else.
He wondered: Sixty years old now, and who was he? A maker? A taker?
“I’m not ready to sign up for this yet,” he said.
“Soon we might have to,” she said.
He tucked Nerios’s business card into his back pocket.
“I know,” he said. “I’m keeping it.”

© The Washington Post Company

FBI informant: Taliban already in U.S.

'They can commit a jihad at any time. They hate America'

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A man who describes himself as an FBI informant and says he worked to infiltrate the world of terror sympathizers has told a Miami television station that members of the Taliban already are in the United States.
It was the Taliban that controlled the largely ungoverned Afghanistan when the U.S. coalition went into that nation to clean out the influences that allowed Osama bin Laden’s agenda to thrive before the 9/11 terror attacks on the U.S.
And the comments from South Floridian David Mahmood Siddiqui come just as the nation is breathing a sigh of relief over the death of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, and the capture of the other.
“I am an informant and all I can tell you is that Talibans are walking freely right here in the soil of America right now, right now,” he told CBS4 in Miami.
The interview was conducted by CBS4 Chief Investigator Michele Gillen.
He told the station that America is at risk of another such attack any time.
“They can commit a jihad at any time, they hate America, you have an enemy living here in American soil, do not know when they will take action to kill innocent Americans,” he said.
Siddiqui reportedly was involved in developing evidence in a Florida alleged terror case. At the conclusion of a 29-day trial, Muslim cleric Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan, the 77-year-old former head of a mosque in Miami, was convicted of supporting terrorism.
The station obtained some of the transcripts of undercover investigatory materials in that case, and at one point, Khan said of the attempted Times Square bombing, “It would have been great had it worked out … such a brave heart.”
In that case, the government claimed Khan sent $50,000 to the Taliban in Pakistan.
“Keep one thing in mind, it may be $50,000, but you can buy an M-16 for 50 bucks in Pakistan. You can buy a belt to blow yourself away for 50 bucks,” the station reported he said.
His work included undercover stints in Miami, Pakistan and other places, he said.
In the Boston attack, a picture already has emerged of two suspects living on taxpayer funded benefits while they plotted to kill innocent people.
The Boston Herald reported Wednesday that dead terrorist suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, his wife and young daughter all collected welfare until 2012.
Tamerlan and his now-imprisoned brother, suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, also received benefits through their parents for an unknown period of time after they came to the U.S. about 10 years ago.
The Dagestan natives arrived in the U.S. a decade ago, and the elder made a return visit to south Asia last year – for a period of about six months.
It remains unclear whether the brothers were part of larger group or jihadist network, and the government may be the one making that more difficult to discover, too.
The biggest controversy in the investigation into the terror attack is the decision by the federal government to read Miranda rights to the surviving suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and choose to try him in criminal court rather than designate him an enemy combatant and put him on trial before a military tribunal.
WND reported Saturday that Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., John McCain, R-Ariz., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., had urged President Obama to hold the surviving brother as a potential enemy combatant, denying him a government-appointed attorney and other legal rights under the “Law of War” so investigators could learn about other possible attacks.
“The suspect, based upon his actions, clearly is a good candidate for enemy combatant status. We do not want this suspect to remain silent,” they agreed.
However, as WND reported two days later, the Justice Department announced Tsarnaev was arraigned in his hospital room on one count of using and conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death.
As WND also reported, the timing was a bit odd, according to Andrew C. McCarthy, the lead U.S. prosecutor in the case against Omar Abdel Rahman and his collaborators in connection with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
“It would have been good to keep him out of the criminal justice system for as long as they could have,” McCarthy told WND.
WND reported earlier that its own sources were documenting the case was linked to Iran, a report that unsettled the Islamist regime there.
It was an April 16 exclusive on WND reported that the Boston bombings were tied to the regime’s Quds Forces and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. The source added that the regime from its operational centers in South Asia is actively recruiting a new wave of terrorists from non-Arabs and from Islam’s Sunni sect to avoid any trace back to Shiite Iran and Hezbollah and to either present an apparent link to al-Qaida or individuals acting on their own.
The April 16 report also reflected WND reports of Dec. 11 and Feb. 28 in which sources within Iran said the Quds Forces were preparing for terrorist attacks within six months in the United States in collaboration with al-Qaida factions and that an operational team was on its way to the U.S.