America Wants Cartoon

Fight brewing over Social Security benefits for illegal immigrants

A new clash over retirement benefits has come to a head following President Obama’s decision to unilaterally protect up to 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation.
The White House now acknowledges that many of the illegal immigrants spared from deportation under Obama’s sweeping executive action will become eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits once they reach retirement age.
The conservative backlash has been swift and will certainly extend into a GOP Congress’ deliberations in 2015 over how to limit the reach of the president’s immigration blueprint.
A central argument in Obama’s defense of the most extensive overhaul to the immigration system in decades was that those given reprieves from deportation would not qualify for Obamacare benefits. The president reminded critics that Dream Act-eligible immigrants previously granted deportation deferrals could not enroll in federal health exchanges.

Resignation of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson unlikely to halt protests

Bailey Comment: "Cutting off the Welfare Checks, Free Housing, Free Food, Free everything would stop all these protesters! It's hard to attend a riot when your having to work for a living!"

City officials in Ferguson, Mo. were due Sunday to address the resignation of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed teenager Michael Brown in a confrontation in August that fueled protests in the St. Louis suburb and around the nation.
Stephanie Karr, Ferguson city attorney, told the Associated Press that city officials planned to make a statement regarding Wilson's resignation. Karr earlier this week said Wilson had been on paid leave pending the outcome of an internal police investigation.
Wilson's resignation was announced Saturday by one of his attorneys, Neil Bruntrager, who said his client's decision was effective immediately.
"I have been told that my continued employment may put the residents and police officers of the City of Ferguson at risk, which is a circumstance that I cannot allow,” Wilson said in his resignation letter released late Saturday.
“It was my hope to continue in police work, but the safety of other police officers and the community are of paramount importance to me. It is my hope that my resignation will allow the community to heal,” the letter read.
Meanwhile, Brown's parents planned to attend services at the church where their son's funeral was held, with the Rev. Al Sharpton scheduled to preach. 
"We were not after Wilson's job," Sharpton wrote in a statement. "We were after Michael Brown's justice."
On Saturday night, more than 100 protesters gathered near police headquarters, where they were outnumbers by officers, following the news. At least one person was arrested after a brief standoff with officers, while others wearing white masks sat in a nearby street blocking traffic. Another protester burned an American flag. By midnight, only about two dozen protesters remained.
But many seemed unfazed by the resignation. Several merely shrugged their shoulders when asked what they thought, while Rick Campbell flatly said he didn't care about the resignation, noting: "I've been protesting out here since August."
A grand jury spent more than three months reviewing evidence in the case before declining in November to issue charges against Wilson. He told jurors that he feared for his life when Brown hit him and reached for his gun.
The U.S. Justice Department is still conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting and a separate probe of police department practices.
After the shooting, Wilson spent months in hiding and made no public statements. He broke his silence after the grand jury decision, telling ABC News that he could not have done anything differently in the encounter with Brown.
Wilson said he has a clean conscience because "I know I did my job right." Brown's shooting was the first time he fired his gun on the job, he said.
Asked whether the encounter would have unfolded the same way if Brown had been white, Wilson said yes.
 Away from the protests Saturday night, resident Victoria Rutherford said she believed Wilson should have not only resigned, but been convicted of a crime.
"I'm upset. I have a 16-year-old son. It could've been him. I feel that he was absolutely in the wrong," she said.
Another resident, Reed Voorhees, said he hoped Wilson could find similar work "someplace where he would enjoy life, and move on with his life."
In the days after the shooting, tense and sometimes violent protests popped up in and around Ferguson, a predominantly black community patrolled by a mostly white police force. Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon called in the National Guard to help.
Then on Monday night -- when prosecutors announced that a grand jury declined to indict Wilson -- the St. Louis suburb of 20,000 residents was ravaged by looting and violence.
At least a dozen commercial buildings were destroyed in Ferguson and neighboring Dellwood, mostly along West Florissant Avenue, not far from where Brown was killed. By Tuesday, Nixon had sent more than 2,200 National Guard members to the Ferguson area to support local law enforcement.
Demonstrations, which also have been held other U.S. cities, are expected to continue, though a sense of normalcy -- or at least a new normal -- has begun to settle on the city.
Police earlier Saturday reopened several blocks of West Florissant that had been barricaded off since Tuesday. Although most store windows were still boarded up, many have been decorated or spray-painted with messages saying the stores are open and welcoming shoppers.
Some business owners spent an unseasonably warm day Saturday tidying up, hoping customers soon would return.
Tracy Ballard, 44, brought her 7-year-old daughter to a store on West Florissant to buy candy and soda, before a trip to the beautician up the street.
"I feel sad for the business owners," Ballard said. "It's really sad it had to come from this. We just wanted justice. If we'd have had justice, none of this would have happened."

The Mighty Moms of Walter Reed: Caring for children wounded in war

As Americans give thanks, there is one group of women they especially need to remember over the holidays: the Mighty Moms of Walter Reed. They pick up the pieces when their children return from war.
The stories of ten mothers and their children are featured in a new book, Unbreakable Bonds,The Mighty Moms and Wounded Warriors of Walter Reed.
Some of these mothers have spent up to four years living with their child at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland while they recover from multiple amputations and traumatic brain injuries.
The stories they tell of the challenges they face as caregivers to our nation's wounded warriors are searing, inspiring and uplifting. Fox News interviewed half a dozen of these mothers to learn what they’ve been through and the "band of mothers" that they have formed as a result.
Stacy Fidler's son Mark stepped on a mine while wearing a belt of grenades in Afghanistan. He and his mom have been at Walter Reed since October 2011.
Fidler said she finds support in the group of mothers. “We share the good things and the bad things,” she said. “We clap when they take their first steps and get sad when they get sent back to the ICU.”
Fidler, like many of the mothers, spends almost all her time at the hospital caring for her son. “Eventually you just end up living in a hospital room. It's your home. You end up moving in, sleeping there, eating there, everything with your kid.”
One theme common among the Mighty Moms is that almost all of them had to leave their jobs and dedicate themselves to caretaking full time.
“Eventually I did lose my job in the end,” said Lynn Braden-Reed.“It's been hard. I have a 10-year-old daughter and five other children.”
Her son, Christian, described in the book as a “strapping U.S. Marine,” stepped on a pressure-plated improvised explosive device in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in December 2011. The blast, Braden-Reed said, “blew him up in the air, and blew one half of his body off with it.”
Christian has since returned to his home in Tennessee and has begun a nonprofit called Gunslinger Outfitters, which takes other wounded vets on guided hunting and fishing trips.
Julie Keys and her son Adam are the longest residents at Walter Reed, staying in Building 62, where the most severely injured rehabilitate.
Adam was injured in July, 2010 when his unit was hit by a roadside bomb, killing his best friend and three others. “Adam was the sole survivor of that blast,” Keys said. Lost were fellow soldiers Sgt. Chase Stanley, Spc. Matthew Johnston, Sgt. Zachary Fisher and Spc. Jesse Reed.
Although Adam had all his limbs after the blast, doctors had to amputate three of them after he suffered a severe infection. In all, he had to endure 140 surgeries.
“He's a fighter and he's my personal miracle,” Keys said. The other moms helped her though. “I thought, I can do this.
“Six months, a year. I've now been there four years and four months.” And when she wasn’t with Adam, she was with the Mighty Moms. “We've sat out front and had the best of times laughing and carrying on and then some nights, we're out there and we're all crying.”
Tammy Karcher’s son, Jeffrey Shonk, was shot by his roommate, an attack that proved as confusing and upsetting as it was physically debilitating. The surgery, Karcher said, was intense.
“They removed his skull - the left side of his skull at 6:05 in the morning, the same time he was born,” Karcher tearfully explained.
“They told me he may never walk or talk again. And he's walking and talking and he can drive. I have a grandson that I never thought I'd have.”
Karcher also had to resign from her job -- as did Lyn Braden Reed, Valence Scott, Carolee Ryan and Soibhan Fuller-McConnell.
Ryan’s son, Thomas McRae, lost both his legs above the knee and his left arm. He also suffered brain trauma and was blinded in one eye.
His gradual recovery is one of the more inspirational stories to come out of Walter Reed.McRae was described in the book as “poised, confident, self-deprecating and often funny.”
Ryan was faced with caring not just for Tom, but also for his young daughter, Aidan, who was essentially raised at Walter Reed. “It has brought me and Tom closer together. I feel like we have a second chance. It's brought our family very close,” she said.
Valence Scott had to care for her son after he suffered a devastating traumatic brain injury. He would soon get divorced, leaving his mother as his sole caretaker. Authors Dava Guerin and Kevin Ferris summed up Scott’s dedication to her son this way:
“Even under normal circumstances, moms take care of their young like fierce lionesses. But, when those children are catastrophically injured during war, there is no stopping their roaring maternal instincts.”
The most difficult story of the Mighty Moms is that of Siobhan Fuller-McConnell and her son Derek McConnell. Derek stepped on an IED in while on patrol in Afghanistan. After recovering from horrific wounds, the loss of two legs, and infections, he died suddenly from medical complications from his treatment after being released from Walter Reed.
He had planned to marry his fiancé, Krystina, after they won a contest to have their wedding paid for by a New Jersey jeweler.
Fuller-McConnell described his recovery period: “We would sit in his room and sing… and tell him that we weren't going to stop singing until he opened his eyes and looked at us. And he finally opened his eyes and looked right at us and gave us a little smile. He was strong, he was doing really, really good until March 18, 2013.”
Before Derek died, he recorded a YouTube message for his mom after he moved from his bed to his wheelchair for the first time.
“My mother hasn't seen the video yet, so you guys are going to get a sneak-peak before she even sees it. I still love her so much and I'm so thankful for everything she's done,” he said in the video.
Every mother has a story to tell.
Paulette Mason got a call at 10:30 one night from an Air Force base in Afghanistan informing her that her daughter had been in a serious car accident. Staff Sergeant Stefanie Mason suffered a traumatic brain injury when her up-armor SUV lost control and her head crashed into the bullet-proof windshield. She also suffered a badly broken leg, a broken jaw and a degenerated disc in her back.
“All I can remember is Stephanie saying, Mom I need you, and that was, I was helpless. She was 8,000 miles away,” Mason said, adding her heart was broken.
Mason moved into Walter Reed with her daughter during her recovery and became a fierce advocate for her daughter and others recovering there. She is described in the book as someone who encouraged others to speak up when they thought something needed to be said to the medical staff.
“I don’t think some of the military was that used to working with strong women, women who were mothers,” Mason is quoted as saying. “Because we would ask questions.Instead of saying, ‘Yes,’ we’d ask, ‘Why? How come? What are you doing?’ And they didn’t like that, so they had trouble with us.”
Stephanie has recovered well. Despite the original diagnosis that she may never run again, she has since run the Army Ten-Miler, logging a time just 20 seconds slower than the day she ran it before suffering her injuries. Her mother played a huge role in her recovery.
Mason said she wants to organize a group for Silver Star mothers -- mothers of the wounded -- so they can be coached on how to overcome the challenges ahead and take advantage of the nonprofit assistance that’s available.
As Fidler put it, these women in the book are not the only Mighty Moms to be thinking about. “It's not just about us ten moms. It's about all the moms who are going through what we went through.There's hundreds of Mighty Moms out there.”

Why did this teacher's union ban Coca-Cola?

American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the United States, passed a resolution last week to ban Coca-Cola from its facilities and events.
The teachers union stated its decision was based on human rights violations, which have been detailed in three books published several years ago.
The questions remain: why now and why is this important to a teachers union?
Because AFT is a labor organization, it will stand in solidarity with other labor organizations that have taken a stance against Coca-Cola, AFT spokesman Michael Heenan told Watchdog.org.
Coca-Cola responded to AFT’s claims in an email to Watchdog.org, saying they were based on “outdated and erroneous allegations that we have repeatedly addressed.”
This may be more about the union resenting the beverage companies’ practice of subcontracting instead of hiring permanent employees, which is cited in the AFT resolution, said Larry Sand, president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network.
“Obviously they (Coca-Cola) were not using unionized workers,” Sand said.
This was probably to avoid having to deal with the costs associated with unionized employees, he added.
Sand is skeptical of the unions’ ability to ban all Coca-Cola products.
“Look at what else Coca-Cola makes: Minute Maid, Nestea,” he said. “They’re going to have to go after all these products.”
When asked about the subcontracting issue in the resolution, AFT communications representatives said they would get back to Watchdog.org, but did not do so before deadline.
Banning products or boycotting stores isn’t outside of the unions’ mode of operation. Earlier this year, AFT decided to boycott Staples, the office supply store chain, because it started selling stamps.
The union claimed Staples selling postage would jeopardize 80,000 postal workers’ jobs.

US flies roughly 85 percent of airstrikes against Islamic State, in complex mix of tactics, politics

The United States is conducting roughly 85 percent of the multi-national air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to the most recent Pentagon report.  
U.S. fighter planes and drones have conducted 819 strikes, compared to 157 from the 10 other countries, states the detailed report obtained last week by FoxNews.com.
The U.S. began the strikes in Iraq on Aug. 8 and was joined roughly five weeks later by Australia, followed by France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. They joined as part of President Obama’s plan to have international support in the effort to stop the militant group’s foray into western Iraq and eastern Syria. Canada was the last to join, on Oct. 7, and the last to launch a strike.
France on Sept. 17 became the first Western county other than the U.S. to launch an air strike, destroying an Islamic State depot.
The U.S. ordered the strikes in Syria on Sept. 23, about 72 hours after five Arab nations -- Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates -- agreed to participate.
The five other countries flying attacks in Iraq have committed at least 30 fighter jets and four support aircraft. Their missions have destroyed Islamic State military equipment such as vehicles and depots. And at least one mission last month targeted a captured oil refinery, a top Australian military official said.
Still, U.S. military officials have release few specifics about the missions including information about the accuracy of the strikes, which has been questioned.
U.S. Central Command did not respond this week to several requests for information about strike accuracy and why the U.S. flies the vast majority of the sorties.
And David Johnson, vice admiral of the Royal Australian Air Force, recently told The Guardian that he wouldn’t discuss enemy casualties or target locations for fear of Islamic State’s “aggressive propaganda campaign.
However, one clear challenge is that pilots -- out of concern for killing civilians -- have only a limited number of targets and reportedly can attack only at night.
Another is that Islamic State, a combination country and army, presents an elusive and unconventional target.
Dakota Wood, a defense expert at the Heritage Foundation and retired Marine Corps special operations officer, said Monday that the decisions about which countries will fly which missions or how many mission involves several logistical and political factors.
“You have to find the right pilot to execute a mission in a given tactical environment, which includes fuel time, moving targets and anti-air defenses,” he said. “This takes a certain amount of skill.”
Wood also said the other countries could have joined in the effort under limited rules of engagement, like Germany did in the war in Afghanistan. He said, for example, that the Arab nations might not be willing to attack vehicles because such a strike would kill a lot of fighters.
Another possibility is that Central Command could be marshaling the majority of sorties to U.S. pilots, Wood said.
Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is among those expressing concern about the challenges of zeroing in on ISIL or ISIS, as Islamic State is also know.
“We need more targeting capability,” he recently told The New York Times.
That the combined 10 other countries have flown fewer attack missions is perhaps no surprise consider the U.S. essentially has the world’s biggest, most powerful military -- including roughly 4,800 attack and fighter planes among more than 13,600 aircraft.
That’s compared to the Royal Bahraini Air Force, which reportedly has less than 50 planes capable of dropping bombs on strategic enemy targets.
A Central Command report Wednesday said pilots conducted 17 more strikes, which bring the total to rough 1,000. But officials did not provide a breakdown on which countries flew the missions.