Obama: I am the law

By Gene Healy

December 6, 2012 

“The president is not going to negotiate with himself,” White House spokesman Dan Pfeiffer insisted last week. As Tom Friedman, the New York Times’ Maestro of Mixed Metaphors, might put it, it’s hardball time, the clock is ticking, and the GOP had better come to the table before we go over the fiscal cliff.
The good news for the Republicans is that President Obama is probably overinterpreting his “mandate.” The bad news is, as Obama has shown over the last four years, he’s willing to work his will unilaterally and has nearly unprecedented powers to do so. Never mind “negotiating with himself”; increasingly, this president won’t even negotiate with Congress.
“We can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job,” Obama announced late last year. By “do its job” he actually meant “agree with the president and pass laws authorizing him to act.” He let loose with a flurry of executive orders — special breaks for debt-addled students and homeowners, and unilateral revision of immigration laws and welfare work requirements — all via royal dispensation.
As part of that offensive, in January, Obama invoked the Constitution’s recess appointments clause to fill several top federal posts, including three members of the National Labor Relations Board. On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit heard oral arguments in the first of several pending cases challenging that move.
The Constitution gives the president the power “to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate” by granting temporary commissions. But that clause was an “auxiliary method of appointment,” Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 67, designed for a situation where, say, the secretary of war drops dead during one of the six-to-nine-month hiatuses common in early Congresses. It was never meant to allow the president to routinely bypass the Senate, ramming through top executive appointments whenever the gavel drops for a momentary recess.
Obama isn’t the first president to abuse the clause to appoint nominees that the Senate wouldn’t confirm. He is, however, the first to invoke the power when the Senate was — according to its own rules — actually in session. The White House called the “pro forma” sessions adopted by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid “a procedural trick” aimed at unjustly stifling his ability to bypass Senate confirmation.
Forty-two Senate Republicans have signed an amicus brief in another challenge to Obama’s recess appointments pending before the D.C. Circuit. The author of the brief is Miguel Estrada, who earlier withdrew his nomination for a federal judgeship when Senate Democrats delayed his confirmation for two years.
If the president has the power to decide when the Senate is “really” open for business, Estrada points out, he could do the same “whenever the chamber does not swiftly rubber-stamp his nominees.” He could declare “the Senate ‘unavailable’ to approve appointments because it is preoccupied with other business” or paralyzed by “partisan divisions.” He could thereby fill any federal office he chose for up to two years at a time without the inconvenience of the Senate’s constitutional consent. The power the president imagines, Estrada writes, would “severely undermine the separation of powers.”
Ignoring those considerations, at the time, the Washington Post editorial board called Obama’s gambit “a justifiable power grab.” In a similar vein, last month, the New Republic ran a piece helpfully (and brazenly) titled “Eight Ways Obama Can Jam Through His Agenda Without Congress.” (Recess appointments are on the list.)
The liberal press is apparently uninterested in the rule of law and the separation of powers. Let’s hope those principles have better defenders in Congress and the courts.
Examiner Columnist Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of “The Cult of the Presidency.”

Benghazi bungle an attempt to advance Islam?

by Taylor Rose
December 7th, 2012

Analyst says impromptu Obama decision twisted terror attack details

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration may be trying to use the al-Qaida terror attacks on U.S. operations in Benghazi, Libya, to advance a growing global movement to protect Islam from criticism, according to one expert.
The issue is the “defamation of religions” resolution pending at the United Nations.  It was introduced by Islamic nations and coalitions to criminalize any negative reference to Islam or Muslims.
Clare Lopez, a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East, national defense, WMD, and counterterrorism, said that after the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, the Obama administration made an impromptu decision to advance the Islamic agenda item it already had endorsed.
“The Obama administration, and especially the Department of State led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are coordinating closely with the [Organization of the Islamic Conference] to achieve implementation of U.N. Human Rights Commission Resolution 16/18, which despite some cosmetic wording changes, remains the vehicle through which the OIC is determined to work toward the criminalization of the criticism of Islam in U.S. law,” she said.
She also has specific areas of expertise in Iraq and Iran, having spent 20 years with the CIA. Now a private consultant, she is vice president of The Intelligence Summit and is professor at the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies.
Her comments came at an Endowment for Middle East Truth panel discussion recently  concerning the OIC’s repeated demand to punish those who criticize Islam in U.N. member nations. The OIC is a coalition of 57 Islamic states, including the Palestinian Authority.
After almost a decade of negotiations between the OIC and Western powers, the U.N. resolution no longer has specific references to blasphemy and Islam. It now has more generic language, with hate-speech style references.
The original Obama narrative on the Benghazi attack, quickly proven to be false, was that the violence was caused by a spontaneous crowd protesting an anti-Islam YouTube video called “Innocence of Muslims.”
Lopez said the Obama administration’s “stubborn adherence to the false narrative of the YouTube film, ‘Innocence of Muslims,’ for so long after the 11 September 2012 attack on the Benghazi mission is inexplicable except in the context of a globally coordinated campaign through the OIC and U.S. Muslim Brotherhood affiliates to advance the anti-free speech agenda of U.N. Resolution 16/18.”
Lopez said the administration’s aim not only is to support the passage of U.N. Resolution 16/18 but to attempt to move Middle East policy in a direction that favors jihadist states.
“Official U. S. policy now is to assist al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood and other jihadists to overthrow what have been termed ‘unfaithful Arab/Muslim rulers’ who failed to enforce Islamic law (shariah) … and to replace them with jihadist Muslim Brotherhood leadership that has pledged its commitment to re-establishment of the Caliphate and strict implementation of Shariah,” she said.
Lopez said the change in policy is a consequence of infiltration of Islamist operatives in the United States government.
“It is likely that such drastic and detrimental changes to U.S. national security strategy can be attributed at least in part to the extensive infiltration of MB operatives as advisers and appointees within the Obama administration and throughout cabinet departments … and on down even to local law enforcement levels,” she said.
She said the OIC “is determined to work towards the criminalization of the criticism of Islam in U.S. law.”
While she said the First Amendment is posing a stumbling block, she believes the OIC and Obama will expand on existing law that possesses broad language allowing for various interpretations.
“One of the tactics they appear to be considering is seeking to expand upon already-existing U.S. law that prohibits ‘imminent incitement to violence’ to impose a so-called ‘test of consequences’ on speech by American citizens,” she said.
She elaborates on the strategy by clarifying that “while currently the law stipulates that the actual content of the speech must include an explicit incitement to violence, the ‘test of consequences’ would instead assign a post ipso facto charge of guilt against someone who neither spoke nor intended ‘imminent violence’ and perhaps spoke only truth – but whose speech was interpreted at some time and place in the world by someone as ‘offensive’ and who then used that entirely subjective feeling of ‘offense’ as an excuse to go out and commit violence.”
WND reported several months ago when a representative of Obama’s Department of Justice repeatedly refused to answer a question from a member of Congress about the agency’s dedication to freedom of speech.
During a hearing by the House Constitution subcommittee, headed by Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., Tom Perez of the DOJ’s civil rights office was asked: “Will you tell us here today simply that this administration’s Department of Justice will never entertain or advance a proposal that criminalizes speech against any religion.”
Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice has called the U.N. defamation resolution “nothing more than an effort to achieve special protections for Islam – a move to stifle religious speech.”
The Human Rights First organization contends the idea violates fundamental freedom of expression.
Tad Stahnke of Human Rights First said the concept is “unfortunate for both individuals at risk whose rights will surely be violated under the guise of prohibiting ‘defamation of religions,’ as well as for the standards of international norms on freedom of expression.”
Carl Moeller, chief of Open Doors USA, told WND in an interview that the resolution “is a battle for our basic freedoms.”
“This is Orwellian in its deviousness,” he said. “To use language like the anti-defamation of a religion. It sounds like doublespeak worthy of Orwell’s ’1984′ because of what it really does.”
He said Muslim nations would use it as an endorsement of their attacks on Christians for statements as simple as their belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, which Muslims consider an affront.
See Franks’ questions:
A key supporter of the criminalization effort is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erodgan, who advocates punishment for those who insult religions or prophets.

Efforts to appoint “Watergate committee” for Benghazi gaining steam in House

By: Hope Hodge
December 6th, 2012

As hearings on the Benghazi murders continue on Capitol Hill, House Republicans are hopeful they have the support to establish a select committee–the kind used to probe the Watergate and Iran Contra scandals–to get to the bottom of what happened.
Republican Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) fought late last month to set up a special select committee in the Senate. But efforts to create the committee fizzled as Senate colleagues, including Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell (Nev.), called the effort unnecessary and duplicative of ongoing efforts.
But Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said the effort he’s leading in the House has legs, with 14 co-sponsors on a just-introduced resolution and new research from the Heritage Foundation that backs up calls for a select committee on Benghazi.
“This isn’t going to be an attempt,” Wolf said. “We’re really working to do this.”
A new Heritage web posting published on Wednesday argues that precedent supports the creation of such a committee, noting that Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair, while massive political scandals, were bloodless while Benghazi was not.
The committees were also employed to elicit information following the 1941 Pearl Harbor attacks and the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“As (Graham) acknowledged last month, the risk of stove-piping emerges as conflicting accounts muddle the investigatory process,” writes author Morgan Lorraine Roach. “Because the Benghazi attack covers multiple congressional committee jurisdictions, the establishment of a joint select committee presents an opportunity for a proactive and coordinated approach by Congress.”
Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson has also written in support of a select committee as the best way to get complete information in the Benghazi investigation.
The committee would include the chairmen and ranking members in each of the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, Judiciary, Armed Services and Oversight and Government Reform committees, as well as five Republicans and two Democrats appointed by respective party leadership, according to Wolf’s proposal.
“The response over in the House has been very very positive,” Wolf said. “No committee loses jurisdiction. You need a one-stop place; you have to know what everyone is doing.”
Wolf said the creation of a special committee would also involve the public to a greater extent, mandating open and unclassified hearings on the events of Sept. 11, 2012.
Wolf said he is hopeful of getting the simple majority needed to pass his resolution before the end of the year, but a likely roadblock will come in the form of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who has expressed reluctance to go along with the proposal, saying he thinks the existing investigations are sufficient.
Less likely still is acceptance of a proposal by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate agency heads who responded to the Benghazi attacks. Though Gohmert brought forward that proposition on the strength of a 100,000 signature petition compiled by conservative PAC Special Operations Speaks, the effort has gotten little attention, even from fellow Republicans.
“What we want is we need information,” Wolf said. “We’re not looking to put anyone in jail.”
Wolf said he planned to continue circulating “Dear Colleague” letters in the House to build additional support for his special-committee resolution.

Stanley Cohen’s New Client: Vandalist and Jihad Apologist Mona Eltahawy

By John Perazzo

December 7, 2012

At 12:42 PM on Tuesday, September 25, the internationally known journalist Mona Eltahawy, a New York City-based Egyptian American who identifies herself as a “proud liberal Muslim,” posted the following message on Twitter: “Meetings done; pink spray paint time. #ProudSavage #FuckHate.” She then promptly armed herself with a can of pink spray paint and headed to a New York City subway station to deface a poster that she claimed bore a message offensive to Muslims. Produced by Pamela Geller’s and Robert Spencer’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, that poster read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” While Eltahawy was busy spray painting over those words, freelance journalist and pro-freedom blogger Pamela Hall tried unsuccessfully to stop her. During the confrontation, Eltahawy also spray-painted Ms. Hall and ruined the latter’s reading glasses, camera, and clothing. She was arrested at the scene, and Hall pressed charges.

Geller, for her part, made it clear that her ad was directed very specifically at jihadis, not Muslims generally. “There is no Islam in my ad,” she pointed out. “There is no Muslim in my ad. This is a city [New York] that was attacked by jihad on 9/11, not only on 9/11/2001 but [also] ’93…. This is not against Muslims. I don’t believe that all Muslims sanction jihad…. It’s very clear. There’s no ambiguity in my ad. It’s jihad.” In an age where politically correct, mealy-mouthed euphemism typically dominates public discourse, it is indeed refreshing to hear someone, like Geller, speak her mind so forthrightly and unapologetically. When reporters later asked Geller whether she ought to have worded her ad more gently, so as not to run the risk of offending Muslims, she replied: “I will not sacrifice my freedom [of speech] so as not to offend savages”—i.e., jihadis.

Nothing ambiguous there. But alas, Mona Eltahawy couldn’t deal with a plain talker. So instead, she caricatured Geller’s ad as an attack on all Muslims, while depicting her own act of vandalism as a courageous deed on behalf of freedom of expression. A highly significant sidebar to Eltahawy’s actions is the fact that in 2005 she was honored as a “Muslim Leader of Tomorrow” by the American Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), the group that famously led an effort to construct a massive mosque/Islamic Center near Ground Zero in downtown Manhattan. ASMA’s co-founders, you might recall, were Feisal Abdul Rauf (who said that “United States policies were an accessory to the crime” of 9/11) and Faiz Khan (a 9/11 conspiracy-theorist who rejected the notion that jihadis played a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center).

Notably, Eltahawy has not always been a defender of jihad. During the Egyptian revolution of 2011 she was in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where demonstrators sexually assaulted her and broke bones in both of her arms, prompting the woman to characterize her attackers as “beasts.” (This, presumably, was a less offensive term than “savages,” Robert Spencer notes sardonically.) And in June 2012 Eltahawy wrote an article in Foreign Policy magazine criticizing such widespread Islamic practices as wife beating, honor killings, and genital mutilation—an article for which she was harshly condemned as a “hater” by Islamists and media leftists. Robert Spencer theorizes that Eltahawy’s recent defacement of the anti-jihad poster in New York may have been motivated by a sort of Stockholm Syndrome, a psychological phenomenon that causes victims to express empathy, and even support, for their abusers. “I think that she went to vandalize our ad because she was tired of being shunned and criticized by her friends,” says Spencer, “… so she had to prove that she was on the right side again, and that she was on the anti-freedom, pro-jihad side of things. And so, this was how she did it.”
When Eltahawy appeared in court last week to face charges of “criminal mischief” and “making graffiti,” she was offered a plea deal but instead, citing her “free speech right,” chose to go to trial. “I actually look forward to standing trial,” she said, “because I acted out of principle and I’m proud of what I did and I will spray-paint that ad again in a second.” In reaction to Eltahawy’s pronouncement, Pamela Geller stated: “’Yes, attacking people and destroying property is ‘right.’ That’s rich. In attacking my free speech rights, she is carrying water for those who advocate a new genocide of the Jews and celebrate the murders of innocent civilians.” When Eltahawy’s attorney, Stanley Cohen, suggested that Pamela Hall, the blogger who tried to stop Eltahawy’s vandalism, was seeking restitution for the cost of her “Gucci sunglasses,” Geller again set the record straight:

Mona Eltahawy attacked Pamela Hall, destroyed her glasses [that she sees out of, not 'Gucci sunglasses,' as Cohen claimed in a disgusting attempt to paint Hall as some kind of dilettante] and her camera equipment that she works with, and now postures herself as a hero instead of the big ugly bully that she is.

It is highly significant that Eltahawy’s defense counsel is Stanley Cohen, a longtime Hamas defender who prides himself on representing only those clients whose politics he agrees with. “If I don’t support the politics of political clients,” he says, “I don’t take the case.” Thus do we note, with keen interest, that Cohen’s client list includes such luminaries as the al Qaeda-affiliated Texas Imam Moataz Al-Hallak; the Oregon-based Imam and terror suspect Imam Kariye; the Global Relief Foundation co-founder and 9/11 co-conspirator Hazem Ragab; the bin Laden-connected terrorist Wadih el-Hage, who was convicted of conspiracy in the deadly 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa; and Hamas operatives Abdelhaleem Ashqar and Ismail Elbarasse.

In the mid-1990s Cohen also helped Hamas senior political leader Moussa Mohammed Abu Marzook—who co-founded the terrorist Islamic Association for Palestine and Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development—avoid extradition from the U.S. to Israel, which wanted to try him for the role he and his organization had played in a number of bombings. Articulating his high regard for Marzook, Cohen has referred to him as “my dear friend.”

Also in the 1990s, Cohen—a proud admirer of Lenin—teamed with fellow Communist attorneys William Kunstler, Lynne Stewart, and Ramsey Clark to defend Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Group leader who was prosecuted for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. “Most of my clients [are] involved with struggle, many of them armed struggle,” Cohen boasts.

Yet another “struggler” whom Cohen would very much have liked to help was none other than the late al Qaeda kingpin himself. “If Osama bin Laden arrived in the United States today and asked me to represent him, sure I’d represent him,” Cohen told the Village Voice in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. On September 22, 2001, Cohen said: “I don’t think this was an Osama bin Laden job at all. But I think for a lot of reasons the government would prefer it be Osama bin Laden. Because then there’s an identifiable bogeyman.” Speculating that “the government is going to use this [9/11] as a pretense … to go after those people who have stood up to Israeli interests and the pro-Israel lobby in this country,” Cohen added that he was “absolutely” certain that “this operation was assisted by ex-CIA, ex-Mossad [Israeli intelligence agency] officers.”

It is not at all surprising that Cohen would implicate Israel, which he has long depicted as a “terrorist state.” In fact, in July 2002 Cohen filed a federal lawsuit demanding that the U.S. government stop giving financial support to Israel’s “program of killing, torture, terror and outright theft” targeting the Palestinians. The suit named President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, various Israeli military officials, and a number of American arms manufacturers—accusing them all of “genocide” and “war crimes.” Claiming that “what Israel does is far more morally repugnant than what Hamas does,” Cohen affirms the Palestinians’ “right” and “obligation” to “resist occupation … by any means necessary.”

Cohen is so confident in the valor of his cause, that he beams with pride when recounting such fond memories as when he once “had lunch with the alleged mastermind of the Achille Lauro ship hijacking,” a 1985 incident where Palestinian terrorists stormed a cruise ship and threw an elderly, wheelchair-bound American Jew overboard to his death; when he “spent a day with [Yasser] Arafat in Ramallah on the West Bank” and was treated “like a head of state” by the most prolific Jew killer since Adolf Hitler; and when he was given a number of audiences with the late Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas “spiritual leader” whose favorite pastime was to order the slaughter of civilian Jews. Years later, in fact, Cohen proudly displayed, in his office, a picture of himself seated alongside this same Ahmed Yassin.

In the final analysis, it would appear that Stanley Cohen and Mona Eltahawy—a pair of jihad defenders—personify the proverbial match made in heaven.

Obama and Morsi: Separated at Birth

by Daniel Greenfield
December 6, 2012

In Cairo, Morsi scribbles his decrees and in Washington DC, Obama scribbles his. There is an ocean between the two men, but there is a good deal that they have in common. Both are ideologues who piggybacked on public outrage over the national impact of international economic declines to climb to power and pursue their true agendas.
Without worries about the price of bread, the odds are good that Mubarak would be sitting in his old place and Morsi would be looking over the latest economic reports from the Brotherhood’s business networks and front groups. And without a sharp decline in American living standards, Mubarak would be receiving phone calls from President McCain urging him to democratize Egypt, while Obama would be rallying the troops at the latest SEIU event for taking back Congress.
Times of crisis are political hunting grounds for extremist groups whose ideologies would otherwise be unpalatable. Angry people are more willing to accept the previously unacceptable to shake up the system and punish those that they blame for their economic situation. They are in the long run, only punishing themselves, but the long run rarely wins elections. The short run however is the all-time ballot box winner.
But the problem with running on the old Bolshy platform of “Land, Bread and Peace” is that the people eventually expect you to deliver at least two of three. And ideologues are not interested in empowering people. They will hand out subsidized freebies to their supporters to win elections, but they won’t empower them economically and peace is never on the table with folks who believe utopia is just a hundred years of war away.
There is a point midway between the cheering for hope and change, and the complete consolidation of power in the hands of a tyrannical system when the tyrant is vulnerable. That window is the one that opens when the people begin realizing that there is no land, bread or peace on the horizon. Their eyes haven’t opened, but their patience has run out.
Morsi has tried to cut the duration of the window as narrowly as possibly by moving quickly to consolidate his power, but that brought on a second crisis and a wave of popular protests. Triggering those protests prematurely may have been his plan, but that plan may have also backfired. The only way to tell will be retroactively.
Obama’s ObamaCare power grab was generally held to be premature, but even though the majority continues to oppose it, the man behind the program survived an election thanks to a hurricane and plenty of voter fraud. Morsi may similarly be able to survive his own power grab. An Islamist is, if nothing else, absolutely immune from the sort of human emotions that animate normal leaders.
The advantage of being an ideologue is that you simply do not care what infidels think and anyone who is not a member of your mental club is an infidel. Transnationalists, whether of the leftist or Islamist flavor, are men who live without a country. Their country is an imaginary global utopia, the infinite Reich of dreams, the Caliphate of their conspiracies and the World Revolution that can never be.
That disregard is what allows men like Obama and Morsi to survive the widespread hatred and contempt of a country, to sneeringly dismiss it, and get on with the program of taking it over. Bush and Mubarak could be hurt by how their own countrymen saw them. But Obama is not an American and Morsi is not an Egyptian. Obama is a Progressive and Morsi is an Islamist. Their approach to anyone outside that circle is limited to distinguishing between potential converts and useful idiots.
America in the 1950s briefly woke up to the fact that any measure had to be taken to keep the Reds away from power… or there would be no America left. Egyptians understood this about the Muslim Brotherhood all along and took many of those measures, until we forced Egypt to dismantle its defenses, as we dismantled our own. Obama and Morsi are the consequences of that unilateral disarmament.

Obama and Morsi are not individuals, they are the representatives of political movements that have spent the better part of a century clambering to power. Their brushes with the law have made them cunning and their rise to power after so long have fed their sense of historical destiny. To them these are more than momentary political triumphs, but the culmination of history. They do not see ballot boxes, but the inevitable march of progress and prophecy that must be fulfilled by any means necessary.
It is not surprising that Obama and Morsi have gotten along so well with one another. Their interests do not precisely align, but they can appreciate a colleague working in the same field of revolution. But the mutual friendship may prove to be more harmful to Morsi than to Obama.
While American patriots denounce Obama for his support for Morsi, until Morsi goes the way of Iran and begins seizing American hostages, most Americans will simply not care. Egyptians, on the other hand, like most of the region, have the usual Anti-American instincts and the same Gaza ceasefire that won Morsi a blank check from Obama to do as he wished domestically also convinced many Egyptians that Morsi was Obama’s poodle.
Morsi however also has the same ace in the deck as Obama. Class warfare. Islamists reliably draw their support from the poor. The Muslim Brotherhood’s background was linked to feudal landholders, but it has successfully reinvented itself as the party of the rural fellaheen. The flow of the rural poor into Turkey’s major cities allowed the Islamist AKP to take over Turkey. And Morsi is not proposing a referendum because he expects to lose.
The 21st Century has been surprisingly good to Islamists and leftists. The fall of the Soviet Union opened a power vacuum that the Islamists filled and allowed the left to sell its agenda in a world where the gulag was no longer a relevant term. Of the two groups the leftists have a shorter future, at least in areas that fall under Islamist control, but their Islamist alliances have also given them a new lease on life.
The leftists have taught class warfare to the Islamists and the Islamists have revived the left’s critiques of foreign policy as imperialism by providing them with a global identity group that fills the hole left behind by the end of the Cold War. It is not surprising then to see Obama and Morsi working so well together… or following the same path.
Americans weren’t ready for a reversal after four years. Will Egyptians be ready to cast down Morsi after a much shorter period?

Rich lefties and their taxes

by Larry Elder

6th December, 2012

Ah, the hypocrisy of tax-hikers who do everything they can to avoid the taxes they wish to impose on others.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.: He tried to avoid $500K in his home state’s sales and excise taxes by docking his newly purchased $7 million 76-foot yacht in Rhode Island.
Massachusetts lowered its state income tax in 2001. Given the presumably large number of rich people who pine to pay more taxes, the state allowed tax filers to check a box and voluntarily pay the old, higher rate. In a liberal state of over 3 million tax filers, how many volunteered to pay the higher rate in 2004? A tiny fraction of 1 percent – 930 taxpayers.
Among those who refused to pay the higher rate? Sen. Kerry and Rep. Barney Frank. In Frank’s case, he refused to pay the higher rate because, he says, “I don’t trust the legislative leadership and Gov. (Mitt) Romney to make the right decisions.” Instead, Frank said, “I’ll donate the money myself.”
John Edwards, former senator and Democratic presidential candidate: His wife, Elizabeth, once called him a person of “character” because Edwards voted against his own economic “interests” by voting for higher taxes. Well, OK, but like billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who urges higher taxes, Edwards is less than keen on paying them. As a lawyer winning major jury awards, John set up a subchapter S corporation to pay himself through dividends – and thus avoid $600K in Medicare payroll taxes.
Kennedy patriarch Joe Kennedy: The late Ted Kennedy and his family shield their money through a series of complicated family trusts first begun by father Joe Kennedy. The trusts transfer wealth from generation to generation while avoiding estate taxes.

The late Ohio Democratic Sen. Howard Metzenbaum: A liberal’s liberal, Metzenbaum enjoyed a lifetime rating from Americans for Democratic Action of 95 (100 being perfect) and a zero from the American Conservative Union. He never met a tax hike he did not like. He moved to Florida when he retired from the Senate. Why Florida? No state estate or personal income taxes.
“Civil rights” leader and MSNB-Hee Haw host Al Sharpton: Though he supports increasing taxes on the rich, Sharpton, it seems, fails to do his part as a member of the 1 percent. As of last year, according to the New York Post, Sharpton owed $3.5 million in state and federal income taxes. His nonprofit, the National Action Network, as of 2011 owes nearly $900K in unpaid federal payroll taxes.
What do these individual instances of hypocrisy say about whether taxes should be increased on the so-called rich?

First, contrary to Buffett’s assertion, people absolutely make decisions and change behavior in response to taxes. Compare the economies of Texas and California, two border states with similar immigrant populations. Texas is a no-income-tax, right-to-work, business-friendly state with substantially less regulation than the Obama-like high-tax (especially on the “the rich” and on business), forced unionism, heavily regulated state of California. Texas also has one of the lowest per-capita spending rates, while California has one of the highest.

The result? According to Investor’s Business Daily, state gross domestic product growth in Texas was 3.3 percent in 2011 and 5.2 percent in 2010, while California was 2 percent in 2011 and 1.7 percent in 2010. Texas has created more than twice as many new jobs as California and has a below-the-national-average jobless rate of 6.8 percent. California’s unemployment rate is 10.2 percent.
From 2008 to 2011, Texans’ median hourly wages rose 8 percent, while Californians’ rose 5.7 percent. And per-capita personal income during those years rose 1.3 percent in Texas, while falling almost 1 percent in California. California’s poverty rate is 23.5 percent, to Texas’ 16.5 percent, and Texas spends less on education, while its students outperform their California counterparts.

Second, because people change behavior in response to taxes, raising them can result in getting less revenue. John Kennedy said, “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low – and the soundest way to raise revenues in the long run is to cut rates now.”
The Congressional Budget Office just issued a report on what would happen to the economy if Congress fails to retain the Bush-era tax rates. Keeping the Bush-era rates for all but the rich, the CBO says, adds 1.25 percentage points to GDP. Retaining tax rates for all, including the rich, however, adds 1.5 percent to the economy. In other words, raising taxes on the rich lowers economic output. Does a quarter of a percentage matter? The CBO says it will “only” reduce job growth by about 200,000 jobs – although other reputable studies put the number at 700,000 jobs.
Taxes matter.

[ed. It is absolutely amazing to me how leftist politicians around the world have managed to sell the "everyman worker" schtick while being so ridiculously wealthy all while promising to tax everyone else to oblivion...]

Obama, Military Leaders Lied About Osama’s Death Date

Wagging The Dog (media, citizens) Operation Confirmed

By CPT Pamela Barnett, USA Retired* (Author Obama Never Vetted:The Unlawful President) Copyright 2012

Obama lied to every American and the rest of the world about the date of the alleged Osama Bin Laden killing, according to recently released Department of Defense emails.  (Email redactions by DOD) According to a live speech (White House link and alternate link) given to the country late night on May 1, 2011, Obama stated “Today at my direction the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound (where Osama allegedly was) in Abbottabad, Pakistan.  A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability.  No Americans were harmed.  They took care to avoid civilian casualties.   After a fire fight they killed Osama Bin Laden and took custody of his body.”

The emails in my possession received directly from the Department of Defense as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request  for Osama Bin Laden’s killing and burial related documents, reveal that the mission to allegedly “kill Osama” occurred April 28, 2011 or earlier, not May 1, 2011, as Obama claimed.

    

In one of the emails with a date time of April 29, 2011, 4:58 AM,  Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Samuel Perez asks an unidentified email sender (Redacted) regarding the “burial”: “Do I need any special religious/ceremonial preparations?”  Email strings that were released concerning the alleged burial of Osama go back to April 28.  This means that “Osama” (or possibly someone else) was killed April 28, 2011 or earlier.

 Early Morning Email From RDML Samuel Perez Asking About Burial April 29

 

Email From Rear Admiral Kurt Tidd Morning Of April 28 to RDML Perez Regarding BurialWith Daily Update (27 APR 2011) Subject Header

Obama continued to lie to the American people two other times in his speech that Osama was killed that day – May 1, 2011.

At 6.13 minutes, Obama stated “Tonight I called President Zardari and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations,” stated Obama.

At  8.37 “Today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country,” stated Obama.
So why did Obama lie about the date that Osama was killed?  Was it timed to further control the media by giving them a new, sexier story than a 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing the next morning in Pasadena, CA, that confirmed that Obama’s real, unforged Constitutional credentials had/have NEVER been vetted by any court or anyone in any State or Federal government agency?  The court eventually ruled that no one had standing after the 2008 election, except possibly a candidate; and Ambassador Allen Keyes was not running for President again, so the case was dismissed.  This video is very important in understanding how the federal courts continue to fraudulently weasel out of hearing Obama ineligibility cases and how the federal courts have taken away our right to petition the federal court regarding unconstitutional issues.

For the first time, the major news networks were going to cover an actual court hearing on Obama’s ineligibility and fraud crimes the very next morning.  Obama and his operatives saw this coming and wanted to further keep the American people and the media in the dark regarding his ineligibility, forged documents, and use of a Connecticut social security number never assigned to him.  (See related story Was “Osama Killing” Obama Wagging The Dog?)

Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Samuel Perez and other high level military and other government officials let the lie on Osama’s alleged day of death stand.  What else is being lied about by Obama and military officials regarding the alleged death of Osama Bin Laden?
On a boat of over 6,000 sailors, only a handful of witnesses?  Where were all of the on-duty sailors?
Did those unnamed men in leadership even look in the body bag?  Anything or anyone could have been in the bag.



Also, the Department of Defense, in their Freedom of Information Act response, stated that the USS Carl Vinson (the carrier in which Osama’s body was allegedly dumped) had no documentary evidence of Osama’s burial.  However, in the released emails RDML Charles M. Gaouette stated: “The paucity of documentary evidence in our possession is a reflection of the emphasis placed upon operational security during the execution of this phase of the operation.”

Paucity means a small amount.  So the military leadership in coordination with Obama’s DOD stated that there is no documentary evidence (a lie), even though RDML Gaouette had said there was a “paucity” of evidence.

Email Where RDML Gaouette Stated That Documentary Evidence of    “Osama’s Burial” Existed

Was Rear Admiral (lower half) Charles Gaouette relieved from command because he did not like that the U.S. military and Obama were lying to the American people? Was the admiral being set up by the Obama administration for not wanting to keep the Osama lie quiet? From mynorthwest.com.
Navy Admiral kicked off his ship, sent back to Bremerton. Why?

A man who climbed the Navy’s ranks over a long career has been unceremoniously removed as commander of the USS Stennis Carrier Strike Group and sent back to the homeport in Bremerton.
A U.S. Navy spokesperson is not giving an explanation for the change, other than to say that questions had arisen about Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette’s “leadership judgment.” …….
……..NBC News interviewed Neal Zerbe, a retired Navy Captain, who says, “The particular commander being relieved, and you know translating that to just moving him back to a continental U.S. base while the investigation continues, is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”
If you plan on going to see the new Osama killing movie Zero Dark Thirty this weekend, citizens of this country and the world should consider taking the movie more as a work of fiction to prop up Obama than a work of non-fiction.  The Obama administration’s lies continue.

*Use of military rank is NOT  an endorsement by the Department of Defense or Department of the Army.

Top 12 Reasons I Voted For A Democrat and How To Be A Good Liberal.

TOP 12 REASONS I VOTED FOR A DEMOCRAT

1. I voted for a Democrat because I believe oil companies’ profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn’t.

2. I voted for a Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

3. I  voted for a Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.

4. I voted for a Democrat because I’m way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers, rapists, thugs, and thieves.

5. I voted for a Democrat because I believe that people who can’t tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will disappear in ten years because of Global Warming if I don’t start driving a Prius or a Chevy Volt.

6. I voted for a Democrat because I’m not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

7. I voted for a Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

8. I voted for a Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.

9. I voted for a Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution regularly to suit some fringe folks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

10. I voted for a Democrat because I think that it’s better to pay billions to people who hate us for their oil, but not drill for our own because it might upset some useless endangered beetle, gopher, or fish.

11. I voted for a Democrat because while we live in the greatest, most wonderful country in the world, I was promised “HOPE AND CHANGE.”

12. I voted for a Democrat because my head is so firmly buried in the sand that it’s unlikely t
that I’ll ever have another point of view.


 ----


How to be a good Liberal – A guide for the rest of us

Virtually anyone can be a Liberal. Simply quit thinking and vote that way. However, to be a Top Notch Liberal, there are some prerequisites. Compare below and see how you rate:

1. You must believe the AIDS virus is spread by a lack of federal funding.

2. You must believe the same teacher who cannot teach 4th graders to read is somehow qualified to teach those same kids about sex.

3. You must believe that guns, in the hands of law-abiding Americans, are more of a threat than U.S. Nuclear weapons technology in the hands of Chinese Communists.

4. You must believe there was no art before Federal funding.

5. You must believe global temperatures are less affected by cyclical, documented changes in the earth's climate, and more affected by yuppies driving SUVs.

6. You must believe gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.

7. You must be against capital punishment but support abortion on demand.

8. You must believe businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.

9. You must believe hunters don't care about nature, but loony activists from Seattle do.

10. You must believe self-esteem is more important than actually doing something to earn it.

11. You must believe the military, not corrupt politicians, start wars where military personnel, not corrupt politicians, die.

12. You must believe the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution, while the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.

13. You must believe taxes are too low, but ATM fees are too high.

14. You must believe Margaret Sanger and Gloria Steinem are more important to American history than Thomas Jefferson, General Robert E. Lee, or Thomas Edison.

15. You must believe standardized tests are racist, but racial quotas and set-asides aren't.

16. You must believe Michelle Obama is really a lady.

17. You must believe the only reason socialism hasn't worked anywhere it's been tried is because the right people haven't been in charge.

18. You must believe conservatives telling the truth belong in jail, but a liar and sex offender belongs in the White House.

19. You must believe homosexual parades displaying drag, transvestites and bestiality should be institutionally protected and manger scenes at Christmas should be illegal.

20. You must believe "HOPE AND CHANGE" has really worked

21. You must believe that if given 4 more years America will survive

22. You must believe illegal Democratic Party funding by the Iranian Islamists is somehow in the best interest of the United States , and legal contributions by American businesses are not.

23. You must believe that a crime is committed only if the perpetrator is caught.

24. You must believe that you can get out of debt by spending your self into oblivion and making horrendous business investments.

The Madness of a Lost Society -- Part 1 (video)

How We Can Stop Obama

Exclusive: How We Can Stop Obama.

By Anonymous

December 4, 2012

 

               The vast majority of the public and the press have proclaimed the 2012 Presidential election over and Barack Obama the President-elect.  However, as Lee Corso, the college football analyst on ESPN’s Game Day broadcasts is so fond of saying:

“Not so fast my friend!!”
We have only taken the first step in the actual election process constitutionally mandated to select our next President.  The two steps that follow, I believe, will determine the future course of this nation and, perhaps, the very survival of the Constitutional principles on which it was founded.
On November 6^th,we voted to establish the actual slates of Electors that are to be entrusted with the responsibility of electing the next President.  The next step is for those Electors to gather in the various state capitals on December 17^th to cast their ballots.  Those ballots are then tallied in the states and forwarded to the President of the Senate and to the National Archivist for confirmation of the final tally by both Houses of the Congress on January 7^th.
There are three classes of Electors so charged.  Of the total of 538, the breakdown is as follows:

1. Those designated by popular vote on Democrat slates (332)
2. Those designated by popular vote on “dedicated” Republican slates (72)
3. Those designated by popular vote on “unfettered” Republican slates (134)

Each of these Electors assumes a sacred trust to cast his or her ballot only for a candidate constitutionally eligible to actually hold the office of President and Commander in Chief under Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution.

The key to correcting the current process will be the success of our call to action to the 134 Electors in the third group coming from the 13 states listed below.  As of the year 2000, Electors from those states were deemed “unfettered” (meaning that, by law, they are allowed to cast their ballots for whomever they choose.)  There is precedent for this in that nine times previously, Electors have cast their ballots independently of the popular vote. Theoretically and practically then, each of these 134 hold the potential to cast their ballots for Mr. Obama and are therefore entitled to be assured of the constitutional eligibility of his candidacy.
Why is this important?  Because through that process, all 134 Republican Electors must be deemed to have “Standing” to demand certifiable evidence of Mr. Obama’s qualifications, as specified under Article 2 of the Constitution, to be deemed a “Natural Born Citizen.“
As we know, Mr. Obama fails to attain to that standard by virtue of his own admission that his birth father was a British Subject.
We the People need now to produce a flood of mail to alert each of these 134 Republican Electors that they have the “Standing” and the responsibility to demand that this question be resolved so that they can make an informed decision before they cast their ballots.
These Electors need to immediately notify their respective Governor and Secretary of State that they require this information prior to December 17^th or that they will not be able to properly discharge their Constitutional responsibility.
The following are the “unfettered” states carried by Republican Electors who are not required by law or by pledge to cast ballots for the Republican candidate:

Arizona                       North Dakota
Arkansas                    South Dakota
Georgia                       Tennessee
Indiana                       Texas
Kansas                        Utah
Louisiana                   West Virginia
Missouri
To accomplish this goal of personally notifying all of them, it is suggested that each of us contact the Electors in our home state and at least one other state.  The individual Electors’ mail addresses are available through their respective Secretaries of States’ offices.
Once the Electoral College process is impacted by these requirements, it is likely that the courts will be required to hear the full evidence (or, more realistically, the lack thereof) concerning Mr. Obama’s eligibility.  The likely outcome of his failing to qualify will throw the election into the House of Representatives, where each state delegation is given one vote.
At the present time, majorities in those delegations are held by Republicans in 32 states and by Democrats in 17 states.  Minnesota is a toss-up.  Therefore, the likely result of such a vote in the House will be that a Republican will be declared President.
Finally, as a backstop against the possibility that Mr. Obama’s candidacy somehow survives an Electoral College challenge, there are two more critical steps for us to take at this time:
1. Concurrently with our mail campaign to the Electoral College, it is important that we also contact all Republican Representatives and Senators to inform them that we are counting on them to “object” if and/or when the President of the Senate calls for confirmation of an Electoral College “tally” designating Barack Obama as President-elect.  If as few as one Representative and one Senator stand to request certification of the candidate’s eligibility, the whole process must stop until a full and final determination is made.
2. Also, the 332 Electors representing the states carried by Democrats need to be put on notice that they will be failing to uphold their Constitutional responsibility if they vote for an ineligible and therefore unqualified candidate. There has already been a case filed in New York State (Strunk) asserting that possibility.
The only way for us not to win this fight is for good people to lose courage.  Let’s lock arms, pray, and go to work to revive the Constitutional standards for which so many of our forefathers have fought and died.  The wisdom of the founding document that has prospered and strengthened this nation will once again sustain us if we will take action and hold fast to its terms.  God bless America!!

Fighting the Good Conservative Fight

By Arnold Ahlert

December 3, 2012

 

Ever since the election, introspective Republicans, gloating Democrats and a largely corrupt media have offered innumerable suggestions regarding how the GOP can “reconstitute,” “re-brand” or “re-invent” itself to attract more Americans. The party must become more diverse, more inclusive, more compassionate and/or more modern. Some of these arguments might have merit, but in reality there is only one thing Republicans must fully embrace: genuine conservatism, for two simple reasons. One, anything less makes them Democrat-lite, and voters will invariably prefer the real thing; and two, embracing conservatism is critical for the nation’s survival. That survival depends on conservatives first acknowledging, and then waging all-out war, on three critical fronts. Until that occurs, conservatives are doomed to irrelevancy.

Anyone wondering how a president presiding over the weakest economic recovery ever recorded, a Middle East in flames, and heading an administration embroiled in at least three major scandals (Benghazi, Fast and Furious, and intel security leaks) got re-elected, can begin connecting the dots with this story revealing that Washington, D.C. had the worst high school graduation rate in the country in 2011. Only 59 percent of its students graduated in the normal four years it takes to go from freshman to senior. Harry Reid’s  (D-NV) home state of Nevada comes in at number two with a 62 percent graduation rate. The highest graduation rate was in Iowa, where 88 percent of the students got their sheepskins.

Does anyone still question what the future prospects are for those who haven’t graduated high school? Assuming every single child in the DC schools who graduated has a bright future, where are the more than four-in-ten others likely to end up? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that under-educated individuals, who lack both job qualifications, and critical thinking skills, are virtually certain to end up on one government program or another.

And those are the kids who don’t graduate. In New York City, 75 percent of those who do graduate still need remedial math and English courses before they can do college work. New York is also a state where the “passing” grade was raised to 65 percent from 55 percent. As for history, the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress revealed that a paltry 13 percent of high school seniors were rated “proficient” in their knowledge of American history.

In other words, even those who are considered “officially” educated remain woefully weak in three of the most critical areas necessary to produce thoughtful, potentially independent Americans capable of taking care of themselves. On the other hand, public school students are getting marinated in a variety “social justice” agendas that focus on radical environmentalism, and the “evils” of the capitalist system.

Whose purpose does that serve? The political contributions of the two largest education unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), tell the story. From 1989-2012, the NEA donated $49,769,888 to political campaigns. 64 percent of those donations went to Democrats, 4 percent to Republicans. The AFT donated $38,218,968 to political campaigns. 81 percent went to Democrats, and 0 percent went to Republicans.

This blatantly symbiotic relationship between those entrusted with educating American schoolchildren and the Democrat party has been in place for decades. Of the three critical fronts where conservatives must push back and push back hard, this one is, by far, the most important. No amount of “messaging” about conservative values can overcome a combination of inculcated ignorance and indoctrination. When the bedrock principles of our capitalist, democratic republic can be successfully vilified as a winning electoral strategy, nothing less than an all-out and unapologetic war to reverse the trend becomes necessary. As for compromise, forget it. There is no middle ground between freedom and tyranny, or fiscal solvency and national bankruptcy.

The second front on which conservatives must expend major amounts of resources and energy is the effort to halt, and then reverse, the disintegration of the nuclear family. The New York Times illustrates the current reality: “It used to be called illegitimacy. Now it is the new normal. After steadily rising for five decades, the share of children born to unmarried women has crossed a threshold: more than half of births to American women under 30 occur outside marriage.” Here’s where that “new normal” is leading: “Researchers have consistently found that children born outside marriage face elevated risks of falling into poverty, failing in school or suffering emotional and behavioral problems.”

Columnist Ann Coulter reveals exactly how elevated those risks are. “Children raised by a single mothers commit 72 percent of juvenile murders, 60 percent of rapes, have 70 percent of teenaged births, commit 70 percent of suicides and are 70 percent of high school dropouts,” she writes. “Controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is being raised by a single parent.”

Once again, do these sound like Americans who are likely to be receptive to conservative values regarding morality, ambition or self-reliance–or those who will respond to the siren song of Big Nanny statism, and its cradle-to-grave entitlements? Conservatives saw the Obama campaign’s “Life of Julia” website, illuminating the federal government’s all-encompassing role in the life of an American woman, as amusing or embarrassing.

Unmarried women apparently viewed it as indispensable. Nearly a quarter of the voters in the 2012 election were unmarried women, and 67 percent of them voted for Obama, according to research by the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund. Furthermore, unmarried women comprise almost 40 percent of the black American population, nearly 30 percent of the Latinos, and almost a third of all young voters.

Susan Carroll of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University explains the obvious. ”The Democrats are much more supportive of the social safety net, the programs that help people who need financial assistance, whether it be unemployment insurance, child nutrition programs, Medicaid, the whole infrastructure of the social welfare state that helps people who financially are more in need.” Nothing keeps people “in need” better than the disintegration of marriage and the nuclear family. As long as this trend continues to get worse, so will conservative electoral prospects.

Which brings us to the third front, namely the mainstream media. Perhaps the only thing more daunting than the level of media bias with which conservatives have to contend, is the willingness of so many on the right to accommodate it. Nothing exemplifies this better than the RNC, the Romney campaign and Congressional Republicans sitting still when four leftist debate moderators were chosen for the presidential and vice presidential debates. Their spinelessness was “rewarded” when CNN hack Candy Crowley took the president’s side against Romney on the issue of Benghazi in the second presidential debate.

Unfortunately, such spinelessness is nothing new. The Americans Thinker’s J.R. Dunn explains its origins: ”Image manipulation has been a useful tool for the left ever since liberalism turned transcendental as long ago as the New Deal…Since that time left-wing image manipulation has continued unabated through the Cold War (when conservatives were pilloried as McCarthyists), the Civil Rights Era (racists, naturally enough), the Reagan era, (the ‘decade of greed’), and the Bush era, which introduced ‘neocons,’ a distortion of a very real faction which no leftist could have accurately defined if hung out a window by his heels.” The conservative response? “You can look long and hard to find any sign of effort by the conservative movement to combat or correct these stereotypes, from the day of their first appearance to the moment that you logged onto this site, and you will find nothing,” he writes.

Such stereotypes can only be maintained by a combination of nurturing from the mainstream media, and a Republican willingness to let that nurturing occur unchallenged. Even now, the entire debate regarding the upcoming fiscal cliff is centered around the Republicans refusal to raise taxes on millionaires, which the media labels “obstructionist.” Yet that same label is never attached to Democrats, despite Senate Majority leader Harry Reid taking Social Security off the table, and fellow Democrats shielding other entitlement programs from cuts, and insisting the debt ceiling be raised without conditions.

Barack Obama can claim Republicans want ”dirtier air, dirtier water, less people with health insurance,” and Republican strategist Karl Rove advises his party members to avoid calling Obama a socialist or left-winger, and Mitt Romney to remain “focused on the facts and adopt a respectful tone” toward the president. Yet as I noted in a previous column, the mainstream media was more than willing to keep several inconvenient “facts” under wraps until after the election was over–and Republicans, including Mitt Romney, were more than willing to go along.

It didn’t work. Moreover, it has never worked, and the sooner Republicans and conservatives realize it, the better their chances of winning elections. The best course of action is simple: assume the media is hostile, and be prepared to act accordingly. It is worth remembering that for all his faults, Newt Gingrich galvanized audiences during the Republican presidential debates when he criticized the media moderators, or challenged the premises of their questions. In short, he stood in stark contrast to those Republicans whose lack of forcefulness and commitment to conservative ideals makes them timid by comparison. No election has ever been won by a timid candidate. People sense cowardice, and more often than not, such cowardice trumps good ideas.

As a result of the first two developments mentioned above, Americans have become many things, but one them stands out: a majority of people are ignorant (not stupid), and that ignorance has left them largely disengaged from traditional American culture, customs and history. As such, they gravitate to the political party willing to do their thinking for them, forming one large bloc of Democrats. The other large bloc is comprised of those willing to tell the first bloc how to live their lives. Together they formed the majority that reelected the president. Throw in a mainstream media more than willing to trumpet such an arrangement as “inclusive,” and “broad based,” and, despite all the wishing and hoping from the right, the election was never really in doubt.

Conservatives need to understand that none of this happened overnight. The public schools have been dumbing down education for decades, single motherhood has been on a steady increase since the onset of LBJ’s Great Society of 1960s, and the mainstream media has tilted left ever since the New York Times’ Walter Duranty was singing the praises of Joseph Stalin’s “democratic” revolution back in the early 30s–and winning a Pulitzer Prize for it.

A serious and sustained pushback is long overdue. Conservatives should get on with it, and never lose sight of their ultimate advantage over Democrats: the progressive agenda is unsustainable, absent the eventual imposition of a totalitarian state. The left may yearn for equality. It is up to conservatives to pound home the historical reality that equality has only been achieved when everyone has been made equally miserable–and that even then, such equality necessitates an all-powerful elite to enforce it.

The Sikh soldier who will be the first to guard Buckingham Palace without a bearskin as he'll be wearing a turban instead

By Mark Nicol and Amanda Perthen
2 December 2012

The British Army is embroiled in a damaging row after the first Sikh soldier allowed to wear a turban rather than a bearskin on ceremonial duties suffered abuse from his colleagues.
Guardsman Jatinderpal Singh Bhullar, 25, who joined the Scots guards this year, has been given permission to wear a turban outside Buckingham Palace, breaking hundreds of years of tradition.



The decision by Army bosses has proved controversial with Bhullar's fellow soldiers. The Army's Sikh chaplian has told The Mail on Sunday that Bhullar has endured taunts about his turban and his refusal to cut his hair and his beard.
Bhullar is based at Wellington Barracks in Birdcage Walk. The base is used by soldiers from the Scots Guards' F Compan, who at present are responsible for public duties and guarding the Queen.
According to military sources, Bhullar, who is from Birmingha, is expected to parade for the first time next week. When he marches with his colleagues he will become the first guardsman not wear a bearskin.
Traditionalists in the Scots Guard say the allowances made for Bhullar will make the whole company look ridiculous to tourists and onlookers. The regiment traces its origins back to 1642 and its soldiers have worn bearskins on parade since 1832.
The Mail on Sunday was initially approached by serving non-commissioned officers based at Wellington Barracks, who were angry that the MoD had compromised centuries of history for the sake of one soldier.
The argument presented by Bhullar's colleagues was backed by senior members of the Scots Guards' regimental association. Unlike serving personnel, these retired officers are allowed to speak publicly.

Tradition: Scots Guardsmen have worn bearskins since 1832

David Cuthill, chairman of the Dundee branch, said today: 'It should be regiment first and religion second. A guardsman is not a guardsman if he's not wearing his bearskin.
'Hundreds of years of tradition should be protected. I appreciate his predicament, but if all the other guardsmen are in bearskins and he is in a turban, it is going to look ridiculous.'
As a devout Sikh, it is mandatory for Bhullar to wear a turban. It is intended to protect his hair, when he never cuts, and to keep it clean.
For centuries, Skihs have worn turbans in battle and fought as part of the British Army - including Bhullar's grandfather, who served in the Second World War. Bhullar's father has spoken of his pride and condemned the bullies.
Surinder Bhullar, 47, from Slough, Berkshire, said: 'He deserves respect and he will stay strong. That includes wearing his turban instead of a bearskin, no matter what other soldiers say. He is observing his religion.'
Bhullar was a bricklayer before joining the Army. His first choice was The Parachute Regiment and in and online video he declared his ambition to be the first Sikh Para.
But he dropped out of airborne training and joined the Scots Guards. He passed out last month. Bhullar has confided in chaplain Mandeep Kaur. She said: 'He had problems telling (his colleagues) why he has to wear the turban and why it means so much to him.
'It was ignorance and verbals but he did not call it bullying.
'He was determined to come through everything to explain his religion, the significance of the turban and why it is more important to him than a bearskin.
'He is one of only 20 to 25 British-born Sikhs in the British Army.'
A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: 'The Army takes great pride in its diversity. Discussions are underway between this unit, the Sikh community and the MoD. The individual will have the full support of the Army and his colleagues.'

[ed. I have great respect and admiration for the Sikhs and also the Nepalese Gurkhas who have fought valiantly in the British Army for centures, however I firmly believe tradition needs to be upheld. There is nothing stopping Guardsman Bhullar from wearing his turban like English cricketer Monty Panesar (pictured below) but with a bearskin over the top. Guardsman Bhuller knew what the uniform was when he joined up.

Monty Panesar

%$&! the Fiscal Cliff (video)

A Rational Study of Radical Islam (video)

Eligibility challenge returns to haunt Florida

by Bob Unrah
2nd November, 2012

A lawsuit challenging Barack Obama’s presence on the 2012 presidential election ballot because of questions over his constitutional eligibility that was thrown out by a judge who earlier determined it wasn’t timely has returned to haunt election officials in the state with a request that the Obama victory results be quashed.
“Defendant Barack Hussein Obama is a direct threat to the safety and security of the United States, and its Constitution, which plaintiff must protect and defend by oath,” according to the complaint, which was delivered to Secretary of State Ken Detzner today.
The case earlier this year was dismissed by Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, who said Obama’s eligibility could not be challenged at that time because under Florida election law, technically, Obama hadn’t been nominated to the position.
As WND reported, Michael Voeltz, who identifies himself as “a registered member of the Democratic Party, voter and taxpayer in Broward County,” had challenged Obama’s eligibility, arguing that the “natural born citizen” clause was rightly understood in historical context to mean a child not only born in the U.S., but born to two American-citizen parents, so as not to have divided loyalties. Obama, however, readily admits to being born a dual citizen because of his father’s British citizenship.
In his decision then, Lewis noted that the United States Supreme Court has concluded that “every person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, becomes at once a citizen of the United States.”
However, attorney Larry Klayman, who is representing Voeltz, said, “The judge equated being a ‘citizen’ with a ‘natural born citizen’ and cited no authority to conclude the two terms are the same. He quotes other state’s cases, where judges reached that conclusion, but that’s not precedent for him. What other courts said in lower cases means nothing to him.”
Klayman also had been concerned that the judge determined the burden of proof that Obama is ineligible fell on Voeltz – but then refused to authorize discovery in the case which could have confirmed that eligibility status.
“How can you say we have the burden of proof, then not allow discovery?” Klayman asked. “He says we have burden, but doesn’t allow us to meet it.”
And he said Voeltz has standing to bring the case, under Florida law.
Is Obama constitutionally eligible to serve? Here’s WND’s complete archive of news reports on the issue
The original case sought to exclude Obama from the 2012 ballot. Klayman and Voeltz claimed that Obama is not a natural born citizen as required by Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, because he was born a British subject.
The case cited the evidence produced by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s special investigative unit, which has asserted that the birth documentation from Hawaii that Obama claimed was “proof positive” of his Hawaiian birth is not real.
And Florida law provides that anyone qualified to vote in an election may challenge a candidate based on ‘ineligibility of the successful candidate for the nomination or office in dispute.”
Now the new complaint explains the challenge to Obama’s eligibility is “within the proper time frame and venue established by the ‘contest of election’ statutes of Florida.”
“Plaintiff asserts that Defendant Barack Hussein Obama is not a natural born citizen of the United States because he was born a British subject of a British subject father, Barack Obama Sr., who was married to the mother of Barack H. Obama at the time…,” it explains.
“Barack Obama Sr., a citizen of the British colony of Kenya, and his children, were subject to the operation of the British Nationality Act of 1948. By the operation of Part 1 Section 1 of that Act, Barack Hussein Obama became a British subject, upon birth to a British subject father. It is not known whether he has lost that birth allegiance to the British crown.”
And, according to the complaint, the natural born citizen clause specifically was inserted to address the possibility of foreign influence at the highest levels of the U.S. government, in the White House.
“Law of Nations defines the term of art ‘natural born citizen’ as one born in the country [to] parents who are that country’s citizens.
“Plaintiff Michael C. Voeltz has standing, as a Florida voter, and taxpayer, to challenge the ‘nomination or election of any person to office’ based on the winning candidates’ eligibility for the office sought. … The state of Florida has chosen, by popular election, the electors for Defendant Barack Hussein Obama to be president … Plaintiff has fulfilled all aspects of the Florida election statutes for this challenge of eligibility, as to timing, venue, and indispensable parties.”
The case notes that the complaint is being filed before the Florida electors meet to cast their vote in the Electoral College, a procedure that affirms the popular vote choice made Nov. 6.
The case asks the Florida Elections Canvassing Commission to decertify the Florida General Election upon a “judicial determination of the ineligibility of Barack Hussein Obama to serve as president … and to certify the electors for Mitt Romney as the winner.”
Klayman has argued that since Obama, by his own admission, was not born to two citizen parents, he is not a “natural born citizen” and, therefore, is ineligible to be a candidate on the state’s election ballot.
Florida’s election statutes provide broad protections for voters to ensure that the integrity of the election system is beyond reproach. One of the laws allows voters to challenge the nomination of a candidate who is not eligible for the office he is seeking.