'He was our hero': 4 Marines killed in Tennessee terror attack ID'd

One was a 19-year-old from Georgia, who served as a lance corporal artillery cannoneer. Another was a 40-year-old from Massachusetts, who survived two tours in Iraq and earned a Purple Heart.
A day after a gunman opened fire on military personnel in Chattanooga, Tenn. -- killing four Marines -- profiles of the men who served their country only to die on its soil began to emerge.
Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, from Springfield, Mass. and a Marine since 1997, was one of those killed Thursday by Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, a Kuwaiti-born Chattanooga resident who opened fire on two military facilities in Chattanooga before being shot dead by police near the scene.

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The three other Marines killed were identified Friday as Lance Cpl. Skip "Squire" Wells, of Marietta, Ga., Sgt. Carson Holmquist, of Grantsburg Wisc., and Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, of Chattanooga.
Sullivan served in India Battery, 3rd Battalion, 12th Marines and fought in the 2005 Battle of Abu Ghraib, where he earned a Combat Action medal and Purple Heart.
The Facebook page of a Springfield bar and restaurant owned by one of Sullivan's two siblings posted a message paying tribute to Sullivan.

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US Marine Lance Cpl. Skip Wells, in his military portrait, and with his mother, Cathy Wells, in a photo taken last week at Disney World, where Skip was honored as a service member of the day. (Courtesy: Cathy Wells)

"He was our hero and he will never be forgotten," it read. "Please keep his family & friends in your thoughts and prayers. Thank you Tommy for protecting us."
Sullivan's friend, Josh Parnell, of Chicago, told Oak Lawn Patch, "There's no Marine you would want that was better in combat than him."
On Friday, friends posted tributes to Holmquist on his Facebook page, which was plastered with photos of the American flag.

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Carson Holmquist was one of the four Marines killed Thursday.

"You will be missed bud," wrote one friend.
Just last week, Wells and his mother traveled to Disney World where he was honored as a service member of the day. Cathy Wells told Fox News her son died for the love of his country.
Abdulazeez attacked a military recruitment center in Chattanooga, spraying the strip mall facility with gunfire from his silver Mustang before driving, with police in pursuit, to a Naval training facility seven miles away, where he killed the unarmed Marines.
Three other people —  a Navy sailor, a Marine Corps recruiter and a police officer — were wounded in Thursday's attack. Sources told Fox News early Friday that the sailor, who is in serious condition, underwent surgery and made it through the night much to the relief of doctors. The police officer was shot in the ankle. The recruiter was wounded in the leg and has been released from the hospital.
The remains of the Marines are en route to Dover, Delaware, a Marine Corps spokesman said Friday afternoon.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker ordered U.S. and Massachusetts flags to be flown at half-staff at all state buildings and military installations across the state in honor of Sullivan and the other victims of the attack.

Jenner Cartoon

Chattanooga shooting proves it's time to arm our Armed Forces

It turns out that at least one of the two military facilities attacked in Chattanooga, Tennessee -- was a gun-free zone.
If you looked closely crime scene photographs - you can see the sign -- plastered on the front of a bullet- riddled window.
Click here to follow Todd on Facebook for conservative conversation.
Four Marines were slaughtered -- a fifth wounded -- along with a Chattanooga police officer.
Authorities say the gunman, identified as 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, was killed in a shoot-out.
Abdulazeez is reportedly a Kuwaiti-native who attended high school in the Chattanooga area. The Times Free-Press posted his graduation photo – that included the phrase; “My name causes national security alerts. What does yours do?”
The FBI says it’s too soon to speculate on the suspect’s motive – but I think we’ve all got a pretty clear understanding of what went down.
As many as 50 shots were fired -- and all the survivors could do was barricade themselves inside.
The brave men and women who staff these military recruiting stations are sitting ducks. Soft targets - is the terminology they use.
The same thing happened at the Fort Hood massacre.
In response to the shooting Homeland Security ordered enhanced security measures at federal buildings. Since they can’t carry weapons what are they going to do? How are they going to defend themselves against the next Muhammad Abdulazeez -- lock the doors, pull the shades?
It's time to arm the Armed Forces. Now, I’m sure the experts will say there’s some sort of logical reason why military personnel should not have access to firearms – but I’m not convinced. Brave Marines gunned down in a Southern city -- and that is something we cannot abide. Our elected leaders must give them at least a fighting chance.
It makes absolutely no sense that Marines and Airmen and Sailors and Soldiers who defend our nation are unable to defend themselves – on American soil.

Doctor says George HW Bush's recovery from neck injury could take 3-4 months

PORTLAND, Maine –  The fractured neck bone suffered by former President George H.W. Bush when he fell at his summer home will be allowed to heal on its own, a recovery that could take three to four months, officials said.
Bush, at 91 the oldest living former president, did not suffer any neurological impairment when he took a spill at his home in Kennebunkport on Wednesday. He remained hospitalized in fair condition on Thursday.
Bush spokesman Jim McGrath said the 41st president never lost consciousness and was being fitted with a brace to immobilize his neck. He fractured his C2 vertebra, the second one below the skull, but it didn't impinge on his spine and didn't lead to any neurological deficits, McGrath said.
Bush is being treated at Maine Medical Center, the state's largest medical facility, where a children's hospital is named for his wife. His family declined to say how he fell.
Dr. William D'Angelo, a neurosurgeon who is treating Bush, said the former president was lucky the fracture wasn't more serious.
"He's in great spirits," D'Angelo said outside the hospital. "He's with family. As his wife said, it takes a lot more than this to knock his spirits down. He was shot down over the Pacific in World War II. She said this is a small bump in the road."
A hospital spokesman said it was premature to speculate about when Bush will be released, but McGrath suggested it won't be a lengthy stay.
D'Angelo said the injury is common among seniors who fall and can be painful. He said a patient in his 90s would generally take three or four months to heal.
"It's a significant injury, but right now the president is in excellent shape, and we anticipate he'll make a full recovery," the doctor said.
He said Bush was "doing great" and "he's up and talking and out of bed."
A White House spokesman said President Barack Obama called Bush on Thursday morning to wish him a speedy recovery.
Bush, who has a form of Parkinson's disease and uses a motorized scooter or a wheelchair for mobility, has suffered other recent health setbacks. He was hospitalized in Houston in December for about a week for shortness of breath. He spent Christmas 2012 in intensive care at the same Houston hospital for a bronchitis-related cough and other issues.
The Republican served two terms as Ronald Reagan's vice president before being elected president in 1988. He served one term, highlighted by the success of the 1991 Gulf War in Kuwait, and then lost to Democrat Bill Clinton amid voters' concerns about the economy.
Bush was a naval aviator in World War II, and his torpedo plane was shot down over the Pacific. He also served as ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China and CIA director.
He is the father of Republican former President George W. Bush. Another Bush son, Republican former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, is running for president in 2016.
During the winter, Bush and his wife, Barbara Bush, live in Houston.

Clinton's campaign claims to be small donor driven; facts show otherwise

Sneaky Looking?

In an email to supporters, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and founder of the pro-Clinton Center for American Progress, warned Republicans were out-fundraising the former secretary of state.
Podesta also declared the campaign to be under “a ferocious onslaught of dark money” from Republicans, but that Hillary is funded by grassroots Americans who’ve “chipped in $1, $5, or $10.” An examination of the facts shows something different.
The email, under the subject line: “A ferocious onslaught of dark money,” says, “Republicans are out-raising us 4 to 1. If we win the Democratic nomination for president and this pace keeps up, we are in for a ferocious onslaught of dark money, regardless of who the nominee is on the other side.” But what does that “4 to 1” margin mean?
The Clinton campaign took in $46.7 million in its first quarter of existence, no small sum. Even NBC News called it a “Huge Fundraising Haul.” The next highest total for a campaign was another Democrat, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders raised $15 million. Senator Marco Rubio came in third with $12 million. So where does the “4 to 1” come from? Turns out it’s creative math.
The Clinton campaign combined the totals each of the current top-tier Republican campaign raised, $53 million, with the money raised by Super PACs associated with them, $203 million, for a total of $256 million for the GOP. Clinton’s Super PACs raised $24.3 million. If you add that to her total, as she does with the GOP, her total is $71 million. That’s roughly 3 to 1, not 4 to 1, but it’s still a false number.
The Clinton camp combines all the money raised by GOP candidates, but ignores the money raised by Sanders.
If you add in the money Sanders raised, the Democrats’ total increases to $86 million, closer to 2.5 to one. But Clinton’s team created a false equivalence – one against all. Clinton’s campaign, by itself, has raised more than the top 4 GOP candidates combined – $46 million to $43 million.
The Clinton email also attempts to give the impression of a grassroots movement. It reads, in part:

We’re running a different kind of race. More than 250,000 people have chipped in $1, $5, or $10 because they care enough about this election to have a financial stake in it.

The wording is a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader into thinking the Clinton campaign is funded by small dollar donors, average Americans simply “chipping in” what they can. But again, math tells a different story.
If each of Clinton’s 250,000 donors “chipped in” all the low dollar amounts listed in the email — $1, $5, $10, for a total of $16 each — that would total $4 million. That leaves $42 million unaccounted for.
The Washington Post reports only 17 percent of Clinton’s haul, or $7 million, came from donations of $200 or less, which leaves $39 million from high dollar donors. Not exactly the grassroots “different kind of campaign” Podesta is telling supporters.
Add further fudging to the numbers, the New York Post reported the Clinton campaign made concerted effort to attract $1 donations from as many people as possible to dilute the high dollar donor numbers.

Chattanooga gunman reportedly blogged about Islam, showed increased signs of devotion

The man authorities say killed four U.S. Marines when he attacked two military sites in Chattanooga, Tenn. was a practicing Muslim who reportedly showed signs of becoming increasingly devout in recent weeks.
Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, was shot and killed by police after he allegedly attacked the Marines at the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center at around 11 a.m. Thursday. Before attacking the military center, police say Abdulazeez sprayed an Armed Forces recruiting center seven miles away with bullets, leaving a police officer with a non-life threatening ankle wound.
“While it would be premature to speculate on the motives of the shooter at this time, we will conduct a thorough investigation of this tragedy and provide updates as they are available," an FBI official told Fox News, hours after the deadly attack. A law enforcement source told Fox News that Abdulazeez was not on the FBI’s radar prior to the shooting.
The Daily Beast reported that Abdulazeez kept a blog that contained just two posts, both published on Monday and both concerning Islam. The first refers to a hypothetical test, designed to, as the writer puts it, "separate the inhabitants of Paradise from the inhabitants of Hellfire."
In the the second post Abdulazeez says his fellow Muslims have a "certain understanding of Islam and keep a tunnel vision of what we think Islam is."
"We ask Allah ... to give us a complete understanding of the message of Islam, and the strength the [sic]live by this knowledge, and to know what role we need to play to establish Islam in the world," he writes. The posts do not make any specific reference to current world events, such as the civil war in Syria or U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State terror group (ISIS).
The New York Times reported that recent family photographs posted on Facebook showed Abdulazeez with a newly grown beard. Dr. Azhar Sheikh, a founding member of the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, told the paper that Abdulazeez had also begun attending Friday prayers regularly over the past two to three months. Sheikh said the suspect's family had attended services in Abdulazeez's younger days, but he had stopped doing so, and Sheikh assumed that he had moved away.
According to the Times, Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait to a family of Jordanians. A federal official told the paper that Abdulazeez had become a naturalized American citizen, though it is not clear when. Abdulazeez grew up in a middle-class suburban subdivision just across the Tennessee River from Chattanooga itself. The Chattanooga Times Free Press, citing county property records, reported that Youssuf Abdulazeez, the family patriarch, had owned the house his son grew up in since 2001. It was not clear whether the family had lived elsewhere in the U.S. before arriving in Chattanooga.
Neighbor Dean McDaniel described Abdulazeez and his sisters to the Times as being polite and well-behaved. He said the girls and their mother wore head scarves in public, while Abdulazeez dressed in jeans, T-shirts and shorts. He added that Youssuf Abdulazeez and his wife spoke in a foreign accent, but their children did not.
Mohammed Abdulazeez graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and was a student intern a few years ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally owned utility that operates power plants and dams across the South.
Hussnain Javid, a 21-year-old senior at the university, said he and Abdulazeez graduated from Chattanooga's Red Bank High School several years apart. Javid said Abdulazeez was on the high school's wrestling team and was a popular student. He added Abdulazeez was "very outgoing" and that he was well known.
Javid said he occasionally saw Abdulazeez at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, but the last time was roughly a year ago.
During his school years, Abdulazeez's faith was most noticeable during his athletic exploits. Ryan Smith, a high school wrestling teammate of Abdulazeez, told the Times Free Press that Abdulazeez would sometimes get in trouble with coaches for fasting during the season, putting him at risk of running afoul of the sport's weight requirements.
Scott Schrader, one of the owners of a Chattanooga gym who trained Abdulazeez in mixed martial arts, told the paper that the then-teenager would stop training every day at 6 p.m. to pray.
"He was honestly one of the funniest guys I'd ever met," said Smith. "I never saw a violent bone in his body, outside of the sport he was doing."
Little is known about what Abdulazeez did after he graduated from college. Smith said he recently saw his former classmate working at cell phone kiosks at two local malls. On April 20 of this year, Abdulazeez was arrested and accused of driving under the influence after failing a sobriety test. Court records showed that he was released on $2,000 bond. Until Thursday, it was his only recorded run-in with the law.
Sheikh told the New York Times that the Chattanooga Islamic Society had canceled its planned Friday celebration of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"We have canceled out of respect and remembrance for our fallen Marines," he said.

Trump Cartoon

I published this in a nice way, as I would vote for the guy to be President!

Just goes to show you that even a conservative cartoonist doesn't want to acknowledge or hear the truth.

GOP govs test ObamaCare compromise: Make Medicaid recipients pay

Republican officials, after battling for years with Washington over ObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion, are testing a middle ground that could reshape the program – by making recipients pay for part of their health care.
Indiana has gone the furthest with this plan, but other states are enacting or debating similar measures. While some worry making low-income recipients pay for part of their Medicaid costs is unfair, the change is notable in that the Obama administration is not fighting it tooth and nail.
“It’s a very fluid scenario,” said Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. “There’s now a handful of states that are engaged in direct negotiations with CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] or are having [a] back-and-forth debate within their house.”
Indiana, led by GOP Gov. Mike Pence, approved the Healthy Indiana Plan in February. In doing so, the state replaced traditional Medicaid and expanded it, as sought under ObamaCare – something a number of Republican-led states have still not done.
The catch: Indiana’s plan requires recipients pay for part of the cost. In order to get insurance, recipients would pay monthly premiums (based on income, ranging from $1 to $27), in addition to various co-payments (anywhere from $4 to $75). If a recipient pays their premiums on time, they can qualify for expanded benefits and have co-pays limited to only non-emergency ER visits.
If it works, it would be a breakthrough for GOP-led states that want to expand Medicaid and cover the uninsured – yet don’t want the program to be an all-expenses-paid entitlement. About 297,000 Indiana residents have enrolled in the program as of July 1. The state says 72 percent are paying their premiums on time.

More on this...

• Truth Serum: Cost of health insurance premiums

Under the traditional Medicaid expansion, the federal government would cover 100 percent of the cost for states, and ratchet that down to 90 percent by 2020.
Indiana’s plan relies solely on its own resources, but Pence says it “will require no new state spending and no new taxes.” The Healthy Indiana Plan will be financed by state cigarette tax revenue and fees collected from hospitals. State figures estimate that the program will cost $1.63 billion.
Four other states also have gotten federal waivers for their own cost-sharing expansions. Arkansas got the ball rolling with its approval in September 2013, followed by Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Indiana, though, went a step further. The state’s plan was unprecedented because it says recipients can lose coverage for not paying premiums.
Alaska, Montana, Utah, and Tennessee are now debating similar shared-cost proposals – borrowing elements from the Indiana plan -- according to Salo. Most, though not all, of these states are led by GOP governors.
“The Healthy Indiana Plan … is aspirational,” Brian Neale, Pence’s health policy director, told Governing.com. “We believe that individuals, if offered the opportunity, will make the right choices.” The plan requires recipients to contribute to a health savings account that tracks medical expenses. Patients get care as long as they make their payments, and can lower their rates by getting various preventive care.
But charging poor patients can be problematic. Studies show that charging premiums and co-pays, and penalizing people for excessive emergency room visits, typically steers poor people away from the doctor’s office.
“People don’t get necessary care,” Judith Solomon, a health analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Governing.com. She said plans like Indiana’s often prevent the poor from actually getting decent treatment.
But the federal government has become more open to alternative plans.
In late January, then-CMS administrator Marilyn Tavenner approved Indiana’s waivers and congratulated the state on its program. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell has said the administration is open to alternatives.
ObamaCare itself calls for Medicaid to be extended to childless adults making up to 138 percent of the poverty line. The Supreme Court, however, ruled the expansion optional for states in 2012. Twenty states remain resistant to any expansions. Indiana originally was in that group, but reversed course with its cost-sharing plan.
Salo said the program represents a deep change in philosophy, bringing a conservative approach to a longstanding entitlement. “What you’re seeing from more conservative states is that they want more consumer engagement in health care … skin in the game,” he said.
Further, Salo said Pence is “a bona-fide conservative red state governor” and it may be “hard for other states to say Medicaid can’t be a conservative thing.”