RWC Unfiltered 12-12-11
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- Gingrich Zooms: Obama Looms
- Big Troubles For F-35
- UK Rejects “Robin Hood Tax” Scheme
- Teddy Obama? Really?
- Obama’s Astonishing Perfidy: Confirms Saudi Indictment
- Obama Resists Appeaser Label
- RINO Label Sticking to Scott Brown
- Egyptian Military Supporting Muslim Brotherhood Takeover
- Iran Exhibits Undamaged Top Secret U/ S. Drone: Enigma Grows
- Libs Line-Up Anti-Newt Forces
- As Socialism Fails In Europe It Surges in U, S.
Put a life-size cardboard cutout of Pamela Anderson from her Baywatch days and stand it next to a life-size cardboard cutout of Joe Biden. |
When your liberal friend asks you, “What’s up with this?” tell him you keep them to remind you of the difference between a real boob and just a boob. |
Newt Gingrich has sprinted ahead of the Republican presidential candidate field leading in Iowa, South Carolina and Florida by double digits.
Although attacked during Saturday’s GOP debate Newt held his own and did himself no harm. Polls by midweek will likely show Gingrich’s lead inceased.
When confronted about his comment about Palestine being an invented country, He said that in Palestinian schools trestbooks, paid for by U. S. AID money ask, “If you had 13 Jews and 9 are killed how many Jews do you have left?”
Sunday Ron Paul was asked on Meet the Press is he would rule out a third party run and he would not do so.
Obama takes harder line in his class warfare theme under a red banner of income inequality.
John Drew, a contemporary of Obama’s at Occidental College three decades ago, says that he himself was a Marxist at the time - and part of Obama’s inner circle. Obama, Grew says, was an “ardent” “Marxist-Leninist” who “was in 100 percent, total agreement with [his] Marxist professors.”
In fact, Drew states that while he was a more nuanced Marxist who tried to convince Obama that old-style communist revolution was unrealistic in the West, the future President would have none of it and considered Drew a “reactionary.”
That explains why Obama supports the Occupy Wall Street revolutionaries.
The already heavily compromised Joint Strike Fighter faces an additional slowdown amid an assessment that the fifth-generation fighter-jet contains numerous cracks.
The head of the JSF program asserted that the F-35 was found to have contained numerous potential cracks in the fuselage. Program head Vice Adm. David Venlet said this would further slow down production of the fifth-generation warplane, the prime contractor of which has been Lockheed Martin.
“The analyzed hot spots that have arisen in the last 12 months or so in the program have surprised us at the amount of change and at the cost,” Venlet said.
In an interview on Dec. 1 with AOL Defense, Venlet disclosed new flaws in the already delayed JSF program. He said the cracks and so-called hot spots must be repaired to ensure operations throughout the 8,000 flight hours planned for the F-35.
“I believe it’s wise to sort of temper production for a while here until we get some of these heavy years of learning under our belt and get that managed right,” Venlet said.
The latest defects in the JSF were reported as the United States seeks to market the aircraft to the Middle East, particularly Gulf Cooperation Council states. Turkey has been the only Middle East partner of JSF while Israel was the only foreign country to order the plane, expected to be delivered in 2017.
But Venlet suggested that JSF was far from the serial production stage - even for its prime customer, the U.S. military, which plans to order 2,443 planes. He said detecting and identifying the cracks on the JSF fuselage could take a long time. So far, only 18 percent of the JSF tests have been completed.
“You always find some hot spots and cracks and you have to go make fixes,” Venlet said. “That’s normal. This airplane was maybe thought to be a little bit better, wouldn’t have so much discovery. Well, no. It’s more like standard fighters.”
Lockheed Martin has been lobbying to ramp up production of JSF in an effort to maintain the per unit cost. But Venlet said numerous components and systems were already deemed as requiring redesign and replacement in a process that could add up to $5 million to the cost of the aircraft, now estimated at more than $110 million.
“Slowing down the test program would be probably the most damaging thing anybody could do to the program,” Venlet said. “The test program must proceed as fast as possible.”
The Obama administration ended production of the F-22 steath fighter, and will not export it but will export the F-35 that already has a questionable heritage. So-much-so that very few are interested,
Palestinian sources said Hamas has decided to reduce its presence in Damascus to a skeleton staff amid the revolt against President Bashar Assad. Hamas has nearly emptied its facilities in Damascus, and is sending hundreds of operatives to Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon and Sudan.
Americans are clearly worse off than they were just since this past spring, according to a new Federal Reserve report released last Thursday.
The average U.S. household lost $21,261 of net worth over the summer months, according to the latest quarterly report by the Fed, which was released Thursday
Congress is an exception in as much as members all gained in net worth whle other Americans lost ground. In somepart that was due to membes of Congress being exempt from insider trading laws that would send others to prison.
The Occupy clowns are now squatting in foreclosed houses claiming they’re entitled. The OWS bunch has cost taxpayers $13 million in 18 cities so far.
The first phase and a stated aim for Germany and France for finding a solution to the euro debt crisis has failed. The reason could surprise you.
France and Germany wanted all 27 European Union (EU) member states to adhere to changes in the EU’s treaty concerning budgetary rules but the UK has blocked the proposed treaty. The British Prime Minster, David Cameron said that the UK could not accept the new treaty without certain safeguards.
The French Prime Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, said that the 17 member states of the eurozone will work together to agree a separate pact instead. The agreement will mean closer integration and will involve binding agreements on tax and spending and automatic sanctions for nations that don’t adhere to the new rules. Discussions on the details of the new proposals will resume today.
An agreement was put in place to cap the eurozone’s bailout fund at €500 billion.
The failure to get Britain to agree and sign up to a new treaty does not come as a major surprise as Mr Cameron is facing intense pressure from his own Conservative Party not to cede any more powers to Europe.
It seems that any possibility of the UK agreeing to the new proposals fell down over the UK insisting that it would opt out of any financial transactions tax or Tobin Tax the so-called Robin Hood tax taking ffriom the rish and giving to the poor. It is a tax on every financial transaction an FTT. Sweden introduced a transactions tax in 1984. But the promised revenues did not materialise after trading volumes fell. Lower market volumes also meant a reduction in income from the existing capital gains tax. As the bond market contracted, the cost of Swedish government borrowing rose. Reduced trading also made markets more volatile, not less. The Swedes abolished their FTT in 1991 and markets returned to normal.
Hungary has also rejected the proposed new treaty with Sweden and the Czech Republic undecided. The other six members of the EU, who are not part of the 17 countries in the eurozone agreed to the new accord.
At the end of a long session, Mr Cameron emerged and told reporters that: “We want everyone to sort out their problems because we all need that growth.”
“But at the end of the day I made my judgment that it was not in Britain’s interests. I effectively wielded the veto.”
The result of the talks means that the new rules on spending and budgets will not be backed by an EU treaty but by individual treaties between governments. This will mean that not every decision needs to be ratified by 17 different member states, which should make the process easier and quicker to set up but it may not be as comprehensive.
It is expected that the new deal should be agreed by March.
Obama’s and his socialist comrades are pushing a global tax to pay for a “Green Climate Fund.” Negotiators at the United Nations Climate Change Conference are pressuring members to support the scheme, which would tax all foreign currency transactions. The U. N. loves the idea since it would be the redistribution agent. Those proponents call the tax “modest.”
According to the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), every time you travel aboard, you’ll have to pay a climate tax. Even worse, every time we import goods and export jobs we will be hit with a global warming tax. The proposed $100 billion per year “Green Climate Fund” is designed to “level the playing field” and turn America into a third world country.
Obama has been reborn as a populist. At a major speech last week in Kansas, Obama outlined the themes of his 2012 re-election campaign. He is a champion of the middle class, which he claims is under siege. Their enemies are big business, corporations and the rich. He chose Osawatomie as the site of his address. It was there in 1910 that President Theodore Roosevelt unveiled his New Nationalism. Mr. Obama directly linked himself to Teddy Roosevelt. In his view, like Roosevelt, he is battling entrenched special interests. Like Roosevelt, he is calling for shared sacrifice on behalf of social justice. And like Roosevelt, he is a populist reformer who seeks to rein in corporate plutocracy.
There is only one problem with the White House’s narrative: It’s completely false. Mr. Obama is not a defender of the middle class but has been its mortal enemy. His policies have impoverished working - and middle-class Americans.
His massive stimulus failed to restore economic recovery. It dispensed hundreds of billions to cronies and political constituencies - public-sector unions, government bureaucracies and the green lobby. His trillion-dollar deficits and skyrocketing debt have mortgaged the future of our children. Our $15 trillion national debt threatens to bankrupt the country, ensuring years of austerity, painful budget cuts and crippling taxes. Obamacare suffocates businesses, stifles job creation and adds another unsustainable entitlement. It is creeping socialized medicine, which is wrecking the world’s finest health care system.
In addition, his administration’s anti-business regulations - discouraging offshore oil drilling, sanctioning Boeing for building a big plant in South Carolina, onerous labor and environmental mandates - and virulent class warfare have undermined economic growth. His cynical decision to delay the Keystone XL pipeline has cost more than 20,000 jobs. The private sector - the engine of prosperity and upward mobility - has been savaged by bureaucratic sadism. If Mr. Obama truly cared for working Americans, he would end his experiment in European-style socialism.
Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, rightly said that debauching the currency was one of “the surest means to destroy capitalism.” Nothing destroys middle-class savings and consumer purchasing power better than inflation. It is the silent thief. Mr. Obama’s spending-and-borrowing orgy has led to the massive printing of money. The Federal Reserve, under his direct encouragement, has systematically reduced the value of the dollar. The result is growing inflation and the steady erosion of America’s standard of living. For Mr. Obama to claim he is a populist - a tribune of the 99 percent against the hated 1 percent - is akin to Madonna declaring she is the defender of chastity.
Moreover, Roosevelt was a real opponent of industrial capitalism’s excesses. He was a trust-buster, breaking up numerous monopolies. He brought the powerful railroad conglomerates to heel. He was a genuine populist. Mr. Obama, however, demonizes corporations and millionaires and billionaires, attacking them rhetorically in order to galvanize his liberal base. Yet he is in bed with them politically. He has bailed out Wall Street, the big banks, major insurance companies and the financial sector.
In fact, the Dodd-Frank law enshrines the pernicious principle of “too big to fail” - guaranteeing that the federal government will prop up major banks and financial institutions with taxpayer funds. Mr. Obama’s crony corporatism is embodied in two words: Timothy Geithner. The treasury secretary has protected his former friends at Goldman Sachs as well as perpetuate bailouts. Contrary to myth, some of Mr. Obama’s biggest supporters and fundraisers come from Wall Street. He attacks them in speeches, but he loves taking their money. He is a classic liberal hypocrite.
Ironically, there is some truth to Mr. Obama paying homage to Roosevelt. TR was many things - a beloved president, an exponent of American nationalism, a gifted man and a brilliant orator. He invented the concept of the presidential bully pulpit. But for conservatives there was also a dark side. Roosevelt created the regulatory state, for which he has been deified by liberal historians. He praised government intervention in the economy. He helped to found modern progressivism.
TR sought to empower labor unions, raise taxes on the rich and erect a centralized bureaucracy. He put forth the basic blueprint of liberalism: a society based on big government, big labor and big business. He despised the old constitutional republic; TR believed it to be an antiquated relic of the past, irrelevant in the new era of industrialism and empire.
He was also an imperialist who believed in nation-building and the warfare state. Finally, he was an ardent advocate for eugenics, arguing that “inferior races” - Eastern and Southern Europeans, blacks and Asians - were destined to be “absorbed” by Northern European, Anglo-Saxon civilization. Eventually, liberals such as Margaret Sanger would champion widespread contraception and abortion in the 1920s. She hoped to diminish the growing number of “undesirable races.” It was population control through racial genocide - a policy continued by liberals to this day. TR was part of this ugly movement; he fostered and unleashed many of its destructive impulses. He was the harbinger of liberal fascism - otherwise known as national socialism.
Mr. Obama is a direct ideological descendant of TR. His push toward social democracy, his appetite for imperial meddling abroad and fervent defense of abortion, contraception and homosexual rights represent the culmination of progressivism. TR was its founding father. Mr. Obama is its destructive grandson. The middle class does not need this kind of help.
VP Joe Biden contends he has not decided to run or not for President in 2016. The gaff plagued bumbling VP’s disapprovals exceed even Obama’s miserable ratings.
Obama declared in ringing tones Wednesday, Nov. 30, “We don’t compromise when it comes to Israel’s security.” Three days later, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in a lecture to the Brookings Institute outlined America’s demands of Israel: To abstain from attacking Iran and rely on the US; to negotiate with the Palestinians; to reach out to Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and to pursue only goals shared with the US - demands almost synonymous with the Israeli opposition’s platform.
The content and tone of the defense secretary’s lecture were clearly designed to rebut Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s comments Thursday, Dec. 1, that as a sovereign state, Israel is bound to determine its own security needs and the ultimate responsibility for its national security rests with the government in Jerusalem and the Israeli Defense Forces - no one else.
Two Months ago Saudi Arabia accused Obama of just such perfidy.
Babel (BAB-uhl, BAY-buhl) noun: 1. A confused mixture of noises or voices.
2. A scene of noise or confusion. ETYMOLOGY:From Hebrew Babhel (Babylon). In the Old Testament (Genesis 11:4-9), people united in an attempt to build a city with a tower that reached the heavens. This displeased god who halted the project by confounding people’s speech so they wouldn’t understand one another. Earliest documented use: before 1382.
Obama who never wore so much as a Cub Scout uniform pushed back against Republicans’ criticism of his Rodney King-like foreign policy, saying they should ask Osama bin Laden “whether I engage in appeasement.” That’s disingenusous since early reports, later denied, of the bin Laden operation, said that Obama dithered and delayed but was overriden.
At a forum Thursday former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney echoed remarks by several Republican candidates running for their party’s presidential nomination, saying that Obama adopted “a course of appeasement” that has weakened the U.S. military and caused the U.S. to shirk commitments to allies. A sentiment repeated in private by Israel, Japan, Taiwan, Poland, the Czechs and many others.
Obama responded during a question-and-answer session with reporters in the White House briefing room, citing action by U.S. forces under his orders to kill bin Laden and other al- Qaeda leaders.
“Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement, or whoever’s left out there,” Obama said. “Ask them about that.”
Scott Brown has disappointed conservatives who indict him as a fence sitting RINO and they are abandoning him. Obama Democrat Elizabeth Warren has opened up a 7 percentage point lead over the Republican Senate incumbent Scott Brown in the race for his U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts, a new poll reveals although some say it’s biased being conducted by the uber leftist U Mass.
Scott has apparently failed to win over Bay state voters voters - while alienating many core conservative voters who helped elect him in 2010.
Warren, a prominent consumer activist and former official in President Barack Obama’s administration, received 49 percent of the vote in the University of Massachusetts at Lowell/Boston Herald survey released late on Wednesday, while Scott trailed with 42 percent.
The poll is the first to show Warren with a lead over Brown. The previous UMass survey in late September had Brown just slightly ahead, 41 percent to 38 percent.
Absurdly porn star Pamela Anderson played the role of the virgin mary in a Canadian TV portrayal of the Christmas Story showing her holding a black newborn as Jesus.
The Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad has reported a sharp growth in membership and weapons in 2011.
Jihad said it has trained more than 8,000 fighters for a war with Israel. The Iranian-sponsored militia was also said to have amassed some 5,000 missiles and rockets, which included the largest long-range arsenal in the Gaza Strip.
Islamic Jihad militants take part in the funeral of their comrades in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Oct. 30. /Reuters/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
“We have at least 8,000 fighters who are fully equipped,” Jihad spokesman Abu Jihad said.
[On Dec. 7, the Israel Air Force attacked two Jihad rocket cells in the northern Gaza Strip. Jihad reported the death of one of its rocket squad members.]
In November, Jihad provided the first specific claims on the militia’s military strength. Abu Jihad, in meetings with Western news agencies, acknowledged Teheran’s help to the Palestinian movement, deemed terrorist by the European Union and the United States.
Jon Corzine figures Obama will pardon him regardless of what he is convicted off including stealing a billion dollars.
A former U.S. diplomat has asserted that Egypt’s military was financing the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamic opposition allies in an effort to maintain quiet in the country. Former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, Marc Ginsberg, said the military’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces was secretly funding security and logistics support for the Brotherhood and the Salafists.
A woman walks under an electoral banner for the Al-Nour (Egypt’s largest Salafi political party) in Cairo on Nov. 27. /Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
“The assistance takes the form of ‘walk-around’ money, clothing and food giveaways secretly funneled to the coffers of the Brotherhood’s front party,” Ginsberg said in an analysis titled “Unholy Alliance: Egypt’s Military and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
The Brotherhood, through its Freedom and Justice Party, has claimed winning nearly 40 percent of the parliamentary vote. The Salafist parties, inspired by Al Qaida, have won another 25 percent in an election contested by secular parties.
The SCAF is betting that its considerable support for Islamists will translate into long-term loyalty among Egypt’s post-revolutionary conscripts as an insurance policy against potential efforts to interfere with the military’s jealously-guarded prerogatives,” the analysis said.
Ginsberg, whose assertion echoed that of Egypt’s secular opposition, said the military assistance helped the Islamists buy votes. He cited military financing for such Salafist parties as Al Nour, Al Asalah, Al Fadilah and Al Islah.
“The military leadership has not only channeled financial support to the Islamists,” the analysis said. “It has also secretly collaborated with Salafists who have attacked Copts throughout Egypt in a show of support for more punitive discriminatory acts against Egypt’s Coptic minority to curry further favor with Salafists.”
The military has denied helping the Islamist parties but acknowledged that they would dominate parliament. On Dec. 7, SCAF warned that parliament,regardless of its Composition, would not be allowed to revise vital Egyptian interests, including the constitution.
“Do you think that the Egyptians elected someone to threaten his interest and economy and security and relations with international community?” SCAF member Gen. Mukhtar Mulla asked during a briefing for Western journalists. “Of course not. In such unstable conditions, the parliament is not representing all the Egyptians.”
Ginsberg, who quoted a “reliable European military intelligence source,”said the military support of the Brotherhood and Salafists began in April. He said the military regime established bank accounts to finance hundreds of Islamist groups throughout Egypt.
“The military is determined to prevent secularists from gaining a parliamentary majority which would likely impair its insatiable appetite for controlling Egypt’s national budget and its own extensive business operations,” the analysis said. “It is determined to prevent a civilian government from interfering with its cherished prerogatives.”
Military support to the Islamists is said to have reached several million dollars. Ginsberg said Saudi Arabia also pumped money to candidates.
The United States has praised Egypt for holding parliamentary elections. At least one district in Cairo has been ordered to return to the polls amid allegations of fraud.
Jimmy Carter Was First President Born in a Hospital.
Iran exhibited the top-secret US stealth drone RQ-170 Sentinel captured on Sunday, Dec. 4. Its almost perfect condition confirmed Tehran’s claim that the UAV was downed by a cyber attack, meaning it was not shot down but brought in undamaged by an electronic warfare ambush.
This is a major debacle for the stealth technology the US uses in its warplanes and the drone technology developed by the US and Israel.
The state of the lost UAV refutes the US military contention that the Sentinel’s systems malfunctioned. If this had happened, it would have crashed and either been wrecked or damaged. The condition of the RQ-170 intact obliges the US and Israel to make major changes in plans for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
The Obama administration’s decision after internal debate not to send US commando or air units into Iran to retrieve or destroy the secret RQ-170 stealth drone which fell into Iranian hands has strengthened the hands of the Israeli faction which argues the case for striking Iran’s nuclear installations without waiting for the Americans to make their move.
Senior Israeli diplomatic and security officials who followed the discussion in Washington concluded that, by failing to act, the administration has left Iran not only with the secrets of the Sentinel’s stealth coating, its sensors and cameras, but also with the data stored in its computer cells on targets marked out by the US and/or Israeli for attack.
Military sources say that this knowledge compels the US and Israel to revise their plans of attack for aborting the Iranian nuclear program.
Like every clandestine weapons system, the RQ-170 had a self-destruct mechanism to prevent its secrets spilling out to the enemy in the event of a crash or capture. This did not happen. Tehran was able to claim the spy drone was only slightly damaged when they downed it.
The NATO spokesman claimed control was lost of the US UAV and it went missing, a common occurrence for these unmanned aircraft.
The enigmas surrounding its capture continue to pile up. How did Iran know the drone had entered its airspace? How was it caused to land? Most of all, why did the craft’s self-destruct mechanism which is programmed to activate automatically fail to work? And if it malfunctioned, why was it not activated by remote control?
Thursday, Dec. 8, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal reported that from Sunday, Dec. 4, when Tehran announced the stealth drone’s capture, the Obama administration weighed sending special commando forces into Iran from bases in Afghanistan to bring the downed aircraft back to Afghanistan or blow it up to destroy the almost intact secret systems - either by a sneak operation or by an air strike.
Iranian officials said the drone was detected near the Iranian town of Kashmar, 200 kilometers from the Afghan border and presumably moved to a military or air base inside the country. The NYT disclosed that the special force would have used “allied agents inside Iran” to hunt down the missing aircraft, the first time Washington has admitted to support from “allied agents” operating covertly in Iran.
In the end, the paper quoted a US official as explaining that the attack option was ruled out “because of the potential it could become a larger incident.” If an assault team entered the country, the US “could be accused of an act of war” by Tehran.
The Obama administration’s internal discussion on how to handle the loss of the high-value reconnaissance drone was followed tensely in Jerusalem. The decision it took against mounting a mission to recover or destroy the top-secret Sentinel was perceived in Israel as symptomatic of a wider decision to call off the covert war America has been conducting for some months against Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb - at least until the damage caused by RQ-170 incident is fully assessed.
A senior Israeli security official had this to say: “Everything that’s happened around the RQ-170 shows that when it comes to Iran and its nuclear program, the Obama administration and Israel have different objectives. On this issue, each country needs to go its own way.”
J. Edgar Hoover fired agents for sweaty handshakes
Democrats say they have dirt on Newt Gingrich, but he appears ready to speak out on the dirt he has on them.
In a reference to his new book, Gingrich has accurately described the socialist infiltration of America:
“The Left has thoroughly infiltrated nearly every cultural commanding height of our civilization. That is, they hold power, influence and control of academia, the elite news media, Hollywood, union leaders, trial lawyers, the courts, the Congress, and the bureaucracy at all levels of government. They are radically redefining our very culture by deciding what is news, what is entertainment, what our children learn in school, and what kind of government we should have.”
Frank Luntz: The Occupy movement is “having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”
Confirmation of Gingrich’s statement, which came in an article about his book, To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine, has come from an unlikely source - John Nichols, a writer for The Nation magazine. Speaking to the recent Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) conference, Nichols said that the progressive movement is on the move, citing Big Labor’s organizing efforts in several states, and indicated that the 2012 elections will continue this process of revolutionary change.
Yahoo News noted that pollster Frank Luntz is advising Republicans on how to respond to the coverage generated by the Occupy Wall Street movement and that he is “frightened to death” because “they’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”
Luntz is referring to the sympathetic coverage of the movement, standing in sharp contrast to min stream media’s demonization of the Tea Party.
Luntz is telling Republican politicians not to even talk about capitalism being a superior economic and political system. “I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral.”
Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers wrote in the book he ghost wrote for Obama that “White Greed Keeps People in Need.”
This state of affairs requires a media that will tell the truth about how socialists, who are increasingly out of the closet these days and supported by billionaire George Soros, are distorting America’s founding and transforming the United States into something it was never intended to be. It is the struggle that will decide the future of America.
The Gingrich book, To Save America, addresses the subversive role being played by George Soros and other rich liberal billionaires such as Herb and Marion Sandler, who have funded such left-wing media operations as ProPublica. This is the group that just announced a “cooperative newsgathering and reporting arrangement” with NBC owned television stations around the U.S. ProPublica’s “partners” already include such outlets as ABC News, The Baltimore Sun, The Boston Globe, CBS News, CNN, The Huffington Post and public broadcasting’s Frontline.
According to the Nichols book, The “S” Word, America’s socialist legacy included founding father Thomas Paine. The “S” stands for socialism, “an American tradition,” Nichols claims. And this, he said, is America’s future.
But not so fast. Professor Harvey J. Kaye, the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, wrote the book Thomas Paine: Firebrand of the Revolution, which is popular with the so-called “progressives.” He says that while Paine had some radical ideas about poverty and government assistance, “He was not a socialist; he did not contest the right of the propertied to their property.”
Indeed, in his Rights of Man, Paine recognized the inalienable rights to property, liberty, security, and resistance to oppression. Private property, which communists want to abolish, was the cornerstone of the American system. America’s founding was a repudiation of socialist ideas.
While Nichols is wrong about the socialism of Tom Paine, his point about the march of socialism in the U.S. is not something that can be so easily dismissed. Nichols’ book, as well as another controversial book, Lincoln’s Marxists, describes the determined activities of socialists in America in the 1800s. They have always looked for an opening to advance their un-American ideas on American soil. Over the last three years, Obama has been their vehicle in the White House.
The problem for Nichols is that, despite his own openness about wanting to be part of Obama’s socialist transformation of America, the effort has used deceptive practices and tactics and associates with sworn enemies of the United States. Nichols says he owes a debt to his late friend, Howard Zinn, a “historian” who concealed his involvement in the Moscow-funded Communist Party until his FBI file confirmed his secret life. The revelations have not caused “progressives” like Nichols to have any second thoughts about their admiration for Zinn.
The socialist-communist alliance, which backed Obama from the start of his political career in Chicago, has been making strides. “Polls tell us that democratic socialism is more popular today that at any time in recent American history,” Nichols says. He cites polls that 20-25 percent of Americans view socialism positively, with the number at 43 percent among those ages 18-29. The polls also find that Americans are increasingly critical of the capitalist system that made America the envy and target of the rest of the world.
For his part, John Nichols gives credit in his book to the support given to him by MSNBC, Al-Jazeera, Wisconsin Public Radio, and MSNBC host Chris Hayes, among others.
If the liberal media will not tell the truth, and if the conservative media do not have the ability to make the case for capitalism and freedom, politicians such as Newt Gingrich may have to do so in the context of a presidential campaign. His challenge will be to survive the personal attacks from the machine that he attacks.
The irony of Eurosocialisms collapse as Soros and Obama push its rise in America shouldn’t go unnoticed.
George Washington grew marijuana for its hemp to make rope. At least that’s what he said.
On Tuesday, President Obama went to a small town in Kansas to lay out his basic campaign theme for the coming election: A commitment to “fairness.” In Obama’s America, we all are dependent on the government, closely regulated, heavily taxed…and poor. He boldly proclaims that “rugged individualism” doesn’t work and neither do tax cuts.
Instead, government management of the economy, heavy subsidies, and universal welfare is the key to economic health.
But in Obama’s obsessive focus on income redistribution, he ignores the basic question of wealth and job creation. Where will the money he wants to tax come from? Who will generate the well paid jobs he wants to pass around? What entrepreneur will take a risk or invent a product or service or pioneer a new business when he cannot be sure of keeping what he earns?
To Obama, “fairness” is defined as meaning we all move up or down together and nobody gets more than his “fair” share. Fair? Determined by who? By the government! By politicians seeking votes. In his world, it is through political action, not economic initiative, that people assure their upward mobility.
But, as Margaret Thatcher said “sooner or later you run out of other people’s money.” And there is no wealth to redistribute, no money to allocate “fairly.” In Obama’s America, there are no incentives for creating jobs. So there will be no jobs. There is no reason to take risks. So nobody will take risks. There is no capacity for individual initiative. So there won’t be any.
Never has Obama laid out as completely his disastrous vision for America. He has now articulated his socialist vision for our country. It won’t work. It is a recipe for national decay and dependency.
Nor will it work politically. In a recent Rasmussen Poll, voters agreed by 3:1 that they had more to fear from overreaching politicians than from greedy businessmen. A politics based on envy and class division just won’t fly in the United States. Obama’s got the wrong country.
Dick Morris
I just finished Glenn Beck’s book” On Being George Washington” a reverential work it is a small book worth reading and especially so in times like these.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voiced deep concern on Saturday over a wave of anti-democratic legislation in Israel and in particular a bill proposing to limit donations to human rights organizations. Clinton also criticized the growing exclusion of women from Israel’s public life.
In a closed session at the Saban Forum attended both by Israeli and American decision-makers Clinton addressed the issue of discrimination against Israeli women.
She expressed concern for Israel’s social climate in the wake of limitations on female public singing and gender segregation on public transport.
Among the Israeli representatives taking part in the forum were Minister Dan Meridor, Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.
Clinton, a longtime advocate for women’s rights, noted she was shocked at the fact that some Jerusalem buses have assigned separate seating areas for women. “It’s reminiscent of Rosa Parks,” she said, referring to the black American woman who refused to give up her seat to white passengers in the 1950s.
Referring to the decision of some IDF soldiers to leave an event where female soldiers were singing, she said it reminded her of the situation in Iran.
Clinton’s comments drew extensive criticism in Israel. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said in response, “these voices are totally exaggerated. Israel is a living, breathing liberal democracy.” He added, “The issue of the exclusion of women and separation is unacceptable and must be stopped but to claim there is a threat on Israeli democracy is a big stretch.”
Interior Minister Eli Yishai also rejected Clinton’s statements. “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. I assume that whatever will be done here will be within the measure of the law.”
Minister Gilad Erdan proposed that “elected officials around the world examine their domestic problems first.” He nevertheless said he shared the concern over the exclusion of women noting that such measures cause people to hate the Jewish religion. “I hope that government steps will demonstrate our commitment to equality between men and women.”
This year’s Saban Forum has been focusing mainly on issues related to Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Some members of the forum said that Clinton’s statements about Israel stemmed from genuine fear for the country’s future.
Obama says he will stay in Washington DC to ensure Congress continues the tax break. His proposed 17-day Hawaian luxury vacation was to have cost $20,000 a day will now cost somewhat less but his wife and kids will still go.The tax break will be passed with or without him.
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin has accused Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday of inciting unrest in Russia, as he grappled with the prospect of large-scale political protest for the first time in his more than decade-long rule.
In a rare personal accusation, Mr. Putin said Ms. Clinton had sent “a signal” to “some actors in our country” after Sunday’s parliamentary elections, which have been condemned as fraudulent by both international and Russian observers. Anger over the elections prompted a demonstration in which thousands chanted “Putin is a thief” and “Russia without Putin,” a development which has deeply unnerved the Kremlin.
Speaking to political allies as he announced the formation of his presidential campaign, Mr. Putin said hundreds of millions in “foreign money” was being used to influence Russian politics, and that Ms. Clinton herself had spurred protesters to action. The comments seemed to mark an end to the Obama administration’s sputtering effort to “reset” the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.
“I looked at the first reaction of our U.S. partners,” Mr. Putin said. “The first thing that the secretary of state did was say that they were not honest and not fair, but she had not even yet received the material from the observers.”
“She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,” Mr. Putin continued. “They heard the signal, and with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work.”
The remarks also suggested that Mr. Putin was struggling to regain his footing after his party, United Russia, suffered surprisingly big losses in the elections on Sunday. The party’s poor showing was followed by a public outcry - first over the ballot tampering and in recent days over the arrests of hundreds of demonstrators who have taken to the streets in Moscow and other cities to complain.
Deeply wary of the forces of unrest unleashed in the Arab spring, the Russian authorities have moved swiftly in recent days to contain the protests, deploying battalions of riot police and legions of pro-government young people to occupy public squares in Moscow and drown out the opposition.
Government opponents are now mobilizing a huge rally planned for Saturday in Moscow. By Thursday evening, more than 30,000 people had clicked a Facebook page to say they would gather at Revolution Square, just outside the Kremlin. Even a large fraction of that number would make the rally the largest political protest since the fall of the Soviet Union.
“The protest mood is very widespread,” said Sergei A. Markov, a Kremlin-connected political analyst and former United Russia lawmaker. “Especially in Moscow and Petersburg, people are broadly convinced that there was falsification.”
Mr. Markov said the organizers would be hard-pressed to mobilize large crowds in a society that is deeply skeptical of street action. But he also said that the authorities might respond improperly.
“The authorities will attempt to conduct themselves with society as a parent would a child who is crying and demanding some kind of toy,” he said. “In this case, it is not correct to go out and buy the child a toy, but rather distract him with something else.”
Mrs. Clinton has been outspoken in her criticism of the election, issuing several strongly worded statements, beginning on Monday, after a preliminary report was released by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
“The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” Mrs. Clinton said on Monday in Bonn, Germany, while attending a conference on Afghanistan that included Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.
“That means they deserve a free, fair, transparent election and leaders who are accountable to them,” she said.
The observers issued a scathing assessment in which they said their main concerns were deep structural problems, including too little separation between the government and United Russia, Mr. Putin’s party.
Petros Efthymiou, a coordinator of the observer mission, cited “the interference of the state in all levels of political life, the lack of necessary conditions for a fair competition and no independence of the media.”
Obama has pressured the DOD to relabel the Fort Hood murders of 13 soldiers by a radical Muslim Army Doctor “workplace violence” and not terrorism even though he killed while shouting allahu akbar. MSM has not disclosed the pressure and the pentagon has been told to shut up.
Besieged by a barrage of WikiLeaks revelations, the State Department on Tuesday shut down all access to its secret government documents for fear that they could be stolen and posted on the Internet.
The move signaled increased concern over how a quarter-million sensitive diplomatic cables could be spirited away, apparently by a 22-year-old private first class who, according to the British Guardian newspaper, saved the data onto a Lady Gaga CD.
Knowledgeable foreign-policy experts found the disclosures to be rather pedestrian. But the scope and breadth of the leaks, as well as the global diplomatic repercussions, sent the State Department reeling.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley said the decision to block access to documents will continue until a fix can be found for what he termed “weaknesses in the system that have become evident because of this leak.”
The scope of the security lapse is in some ways unprecedented. The German Der Spiegel magazine wrote: “Never before in history has a superpower lost control of such vast amounts of such sensitive information — data that can help paint a picture of the foundation upon which U.S. foreign policy is built.
“Never before has the trust America’s partners have in the country been as badly shaken. Now, their own personal views and policy recommendations have been made public — as have America’s true views of them.”
The State Department’s action will cut off access to files classified as “secret.” Ordinarily, some 3 million federal employees have access to them.
If other agencies follow suit, and the restrictions continue for an extended period, national security experts worry it could have profound implications in the war against terror.
For the first time, the leak indicates that the post-9/11 dictum of widespread intelligence sharing may leave the United States correspondingly more vulnerable to espionage and breaches of security.
“The whole post-911 mantra was the need to share, the need to share, the need to share,” says Heritage Foundation foreign-policy expert James Carafano. “All that is going to be great, until some share gives up to an al-Qaida operative all the intel he got from DHS.
“This was going to happen eventually,” he tells Newsmax. “… The need to share is far more important than all the [intelligence] compromises.”
Carafano and other experts tell Newsmax that the concerted effort to distribute intelligence broadly across a large number of security agencies — one of the key recommendations of the 9/11 Commission - inevitably increases security risks.
Mark Lowenthal, the president of the Reston, Va.-based Intelligence & Security Academy, tells Newsmax that it is impossible to share information across silos without security issues.
“The mantra here is share, share, share,” says the former assistant director of central intelligence for analysis and production. “We’ve gone from need to know, to need to share, to responsibility to provide — which is the current metric that was created by [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell, and not rolled back by either [Director of National Intelligence Dennis] Blair or [DNI James] Clapper. So if you want people to share and provide, then this all has to be available.”
While there are physical methods of preventing staff from bringing CDs or thumb drives to their workplace, Lowenthal says that enforcing those restrictions are onerous.
“Clearly they’ve had a breakdown,” says Lowenthal. “Downloading 250,000 documents is no small issue. That’s a lot of downloading, and the fact that nobody caught him is a bit embarrassing.”
But stopping leaks is difficult, when so many people have access to the information, he says.
“If you want to roll it back to where we have strict compartmentalization, you can do that,” says Lowenthal. “Now we’re back in the situation where everyone is in these little silos, and nobody knows what everybody else is doing. This is the problem with the world we live in - those are your choices and they aren’t pretty.”
Lowenthal, like Carafano, would rather err on the side of stopping the next major terrorist attack.
But Michael Scheuer, the former CIA veteran who headed the agency’s secret unit dedicated to tracking down Osama bin Laden, blames a pervasive culture in Washington where people at the very top of the government are allowed to leak with impunity.
He cites the string of books by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, known for disclosing sensitive information provided by high-level officials.
“You know it would be something a lower-level official would get fired for, or reprimanded, or suspended,” he says. “And so we live in a culture at the moment that is very lawless in terms of national defense, at least as far as I’m concerned.”
But in the case of WikiLeaks, Scheuer slams the Obama administration for not cracking down on the illegal possession of stolen materials.
“The president of the United States and the attorney general of the United States took no action to stop it, and it seems to me this is a clear chain of criminal activity that has very little to do with the First Amendment.
“It is trafficking in stolen property,” Scheuer says. “When the president weeps his crocodile tears about this is a bad thing happening, clearly he and his administration maybe didn’t want it to happen, but really had no objection to it happening.”
If a thief gave diamonds or electronic equipment to another party that tried to then sell it, the Justice Department would file criminal charges without hesitation, Scheuer says.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting “an active, criminal investigation” to determine if charges can be filed against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who posted the documents.
But Scheuer believes the administration has done little more than complain, in order to avoid run-ins with the ACLU and the mainstream media.
“Clearly this administration in particular is in the pocket of the ACLU,” Scheuer tells Newsmax. “They have access to the White House, from what I’ve heard from different people, at all times. But generally speaking, I don’t think the Bush administration was much more eager to take on the media and First Amendment issues.”
The worst impact from the WikiLeaks disclosures, he says, is that senior officials will no longer feel free to express their candid opinions.
It will have a “chilling impact on diplomats in the field saying what they think,” Scheuer warns.
George Washington: was the only president elected unanimously. He received all 69 electoral votes. At his inauguration, Washington had only one tooth. At various times he wore dentures made of human teeth, animal teeth, ivory or even lead. Never wood. He is the only president who didn’t live in Washington, D.C. during his presidency.