http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/benghazigate_the_cover-up_continues.html From the start, almost everything that we were originally and “officially” told by the Obama Administration about the Benghazigate “event” was false (i.e., a lie) or misleading or inadequate. And now that the sole suspect held in the attack has been released, the cover-up is gaining momentum. The report produced by State’s Accountability Review […]
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/uproar_in_georgia_over_us_ambassadors_pro-palestinian_maneuvering.html
The Republic of Georgia is in an uproar. Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili has issued a statement about the explosive revelations I broke in an American Thinker in December: that the U.S. ambassador to Georgia, Richard Norland, whispered in his ear to vote in favor of the U.N. resolution declaring a “Palestinian” state, which is diametrically opposed to official U.S. policy.
But why should anyone be surprised? People actually seem taken aback by the nomination of the virulently Jew-hating Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, when actually everything in Obama’s foreign policy points to this very tendency. If Obama had appointed John Bolton, or anyone else pro-Israel, that would have been a shock. But the kapos are wringing their hands over Hagel? Really? Obama’s anti-Israel stance has been fiercely consistent, as I exposed in my 2009 true-life political thriller, The Post-American Presidency.
The revelations about Ivanishvili and Norland that I reported were based on statements made by Gabriel M. Mirilashvili, a noted Georgian businessman and owner of a corporation. Just before the November 29 United Nations vote granting non-member-state observer status to “Palestine,” Mirilashvili, who is the vice president of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, as well as head of the World Congress of Georgian Jews, had a meeting with Ivanishvili. Mirilashvili stated that when he had urged Ivanishvili to oppose the Palestinian statehood resolution, Ivanishvili told him that Norland had recommended that Georgia vote in favor of the resolution.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/01/08/Opposition-Leader-Obama-Administration-Downplayed-Brotherhood-Warnings
The Obama administration chose to listen to voices suggesting that Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was moderate rather than those who warned it would resort to violence if it came to power, cables obtained by the Investigative Project on Terrorism show.
The cables make four things clear about the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the Egyptian revolution and how the Obama administration failed to address it:
The White House ignored the warnings, then was silent in the wake of intimidation and violence by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Despite broken promises, the White House refuses to cut funds to Morsi’s government.
Religious minorities and women are marginalized by the new constitution, while being threatened by government leaders.
Resentment from pro-democracy groups is growing as White House inaction leads to the rise of an Islamic state.
A look at recent headlines involving Egypt’s new Islamist-dominated government makes clear the radical, threatening path its leaders are charting, and that those who urged caution in dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood were prophetic. Criticism of President Mohamed Morsi in the media and among opposition groups leads to criminal investigations. Even a comedian is being targeted.
The Muslim Brotherhood, to which Morsi remains closely tied, routinely threatens Israel and issues anti-Semitic statements.
Meanwhile, Islamists rammed through a new constitution which sparked international concern for women’s and minority rights. Some analysts say the Brotherhood’s actions have pushed Egypt closer to civil war.
WH Ignored Warnings, Silent in Wake of Intimidation and Violence by Muslim Brotherhood
The reaction from Washington has been muted at best.
The Obama administration repeatedly ignored and downplayed advance warnings that the Muslim Brotherhood would resort to violent and undemocratic tactics if it came to power, Egyptian opposition leader Michael Meunier tells the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT).
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/
“Stalin famously told his mother that he was the new Czar, transmuting collectivist revolution into the egotistical authoritarianism of one man. Obama has managed the same trick, merging revolutionary politics with his own brand until there is no longer a difference between the man and his revolution. FDR only promised happy days, but Obama has become the actual incarnation of hope, which may explain why there is no longer any hope to go around.”
Ever since FDR made it his campaign song in 1932 while running for office during the Great Depression, the unofficial anthem of the Democratic Party has been that Tin Pan Alley classic, “Happy Days are Here Again.” But no matter how often the old Victor spun, it would not be until well after Roosevelt’s death that happy days would be here again.
Like Hope and Change, Happy Days are Here Again was a blandly optimistic and non-specific promise that good times were coming. Someday the happy days would arrive, an appropriate enough sentiment for a song whose pivotal moment came in the movie “Chasing Rainbows” where it was sung to reassure a cuckolded husband who is threatening to kill himself. And in an even more appropriate bit of symbolism, the actual movie footage of that moment is as lost as the happy times.
No matter how often the Democratic Party cheats on the American people, it can always break out a new rendition of “Happy Days are Here Again” to win them back. And even if the happy days never seem to actually arrive, the promise of “So long sad times” and “Howdy gay times” where “your troubles and cares are gone” is always a winner.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/from-the-river-to-the-sea Khaled Meshaal, the head of Hamas, the terror group that infests the Gaza Strip and junior partner of the Muslim Brotherhood, spewed a fraudulent and hateful mantra when he visited Gaza last month. He said, “Palestine is ours from the river to the sea.” But not so. Not so. The Land of Israel stretches […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/placing-the-blame-for-mass-murders-where-it-belongs?f=puball
The recent tragic, senseless murder spree in Newtown, CT has, once again, understandably, given rise to an outcry for solutions to gun violence. Unfortunately, it has also given a platform for the anti gun crowd to trot out their usual battery of ill conceived, non factual hyperbole they use to promote their agenda. This anti second amendment witch hunt, as usual, makes no constructive inroads towards solving the problem. It merely gives some liberal politicians and others, an opportunity to be a “hero” to some. When will we stop wasting time, money and, more importantly, human lives and talk about some of the real root causes of these too oft repeated killing sprees? It’s time to start connecting the dots instead of tilting at windmills.
There are two issues which have a direct causal bearing on these mass killings and yet have not been accorded the attention they deserve. Instead, the attention has been focused on other more politically correct but factually inaccurate causes. This failure to properly address the issues has been not only unfortunate but resulted in more unnecessary deaths.
1. First Issue The change in the law which allowed mentally disturbed people who need to be under the care and 24 hr supervision of medical staff. They and are now allowed out in society where they have the responsibility to take their medication or not.
Deinstitutionalization played a substantial role in the dramatic increase in violent crime rates in America in the 1970s and 1980s. People who might have been hospitalized in 1950 or 1960 when they first exhibited evidence of serious mental illness today remain at large until they commit a serious felony. The criminal justice system then usually sends these mentally ill offenders to prison, not a mental hospital.
Note; a 2011 study by the University of California at Berkley found that states with a higher civil commitment laws rate have a third less suicides.
A 2000 New York Times study of 100 rampage murderers found that 47 were mentally ill. In the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law (2008), Jason C. Matejkowski and his co-authors reported that 16% of state prisoners who had perpetrated murders were mentally ill.
In the mid-1960s, many of the killings would have been prevented because the severely mentally ill would have been confined and cared for in a state institution. But today, while government at most every level has bloated over the past half-century, mental-health treatment has been decimated. According to a study released in July by the Treatment Advocacy Center, the number of state hospital beds in America per capita has plummeted to 1850 levels, or 14.1 beds per 100,000 people. Moreover, a 2011 paper by Steven P. Segal at the University of California, Berkeley, “Civil Commitment Law, Mental Health Services, and U.S. Homicide Rates,” found that a third of the state-to-state variation in homicide rates was attributable to the strength or weakness of involuntary civil-commitment laws.
It’s important to keep in mind that the vast majority of people with mental illness do not commit crimes or engage in violence. But the popular refrain that there’s no link between mental illness and violence is simply wrong. David Kopel’s editorial in WSJ December 18, 2012
“We need to look at this relatively new phenomenon where young people in our country are motivated to take revenge for whatever demon is inside them, whatever voice is talking to them, to do something really awful at a major level like what happened…The 10 percent [of mentally ill people] who are prone to violence usually have a very serious mental illness like Jared, where voices are telling them to do things and they just lose control of themselves and a lot of times they will commit a violent act…but with treatment, most of that could be avoided…” U.S. Representative Ron Barber was shot by Jared Lee Loughner in January 2011.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/becoming-a-great-leader-advice-from-a-zero I suppose it is a law of political economy that when a burgeoning and omnivorous government reaches a certain stage of growth, its champions and beneficiaries and sinecured, career bureaucrats inaugurate self-congratulatory and appreciation organizations that “reward” bureaucrats and “public servants” for their work. These organizations are great for bringing the “recognized” together for […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/fascism-in-america It is often argued by critics of the Obama administration that it is socialistic, i.e. expanding governmental authority over the means of producing and distributing goods. Alas, there is something to be said for this point of view. As I see it, however, a more accurate way to describe the Obama government is corporatism […]
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/01/08/Book-Review-High-Noon-for-America-The-Coming-Showdown
PLEASE ALSO READ: RUTH KING: INTERVIEW AND REVIEW OF HIGH NOON FOR AMERICA-THE COMING SHOWDOWN
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-review-of-high-noon-for-america-the-coming-showdown-by-jamie-glazov
With Obama now heading into his second term and clearly intent on giving the Middle East away to Islamists and allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to infiltrate his own administration, a new book has arrived to diagnose this dire situation and offer potential remedies that Americans can apply.
Dr. Jamie Glazov’s High Noon For America: The Coming Showdown dissects how and why this administration is severely undermining American national interests and leaving us vulnerable to penetration and attack. In so doing, High Noon is an extremely relevant read, since it underscores exactly what is flawed with Obama’s foreign policy and what policies must be adopted for America to regain its security.
It is not often that one comes across a book like High Noon, consisting solely of symposia. And it is rarer still to find a work of this kind that contains so many absorbing, profound and thought-provoking ones. But Dr. Glazov, who serves as the editor of David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com, has accomplished this feat in this, his latest tome. In High Noon, there are 28 symposia, divided into eight sections. They cover topics ranging from the war in the Middle East and Islamic radicalism to the former Soviet Union and its current incarnation, the question of America’s decline, and even a discussion on faith. Soon after opening the book, the reader perceives that it is permeated with an undercurrent and concern for freedom, both for societies and individuals. And like a philosopher-journalist, Glazov guides these profound discussions with a sure touch as the symposia’s moderator, skilfully handling an immense mass of detail.
Besides his position as FrontPage editor, which keeps him in constant connection with the critical and ominous issues facing America, as well as Western civilization today, Glazov’s other qualifications make him well-suited for producing a work of such admirably conceived and deeply interesting symposia. He holds a Ph.D in history with specialties in U.S., Russian and Canadian foreign policy. He is also the author of the critically-acclaimed United In Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror, in which he documents the Western Left’s alliance with radical Islam. And lastly, as regards High Noon’s undertone of freedom, as the son of Soviet dissidents who fled to safety to the United States, Glazov possesses an instinctive understanding of this unassailable virtue (in the book’s acknowledgements, Glazov writes poignantly about how the family’s flight to America saw him, at age 5, cut off forever from his beloved grandmother).
As attractive as the topics are, the real strength of this singularly important book, and its chief selling point, lies in the outstanding and independent-thinking intellectuals, many of them experts in their fields, that Glazov has assembled to dissect the important and relevant issues presented. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and Lt. Gen. Ion Pacepa, a top security official in Ceausescu’s Romania before defecting to the United States, Nonie Darwish and Robert Spencer, both acknowledged experts on Islam, and Robert “Bud” McFarlane, Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor, to name only a few, all help make High Noon For America an intellectually stimulating book of high order and a work of substance.
In ‘The Shadow of the KGB’ symposium, for example, Pacepa succinctly describes the political process in Russia after 1991 that led to the appearance of Putin’s KGB regime as “…like democratizing Germany with Gestapo officers at its helm.” Continuing on that theme, David Satter, a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, warns that a KGB-dominated Russian government will not only lead “to an aggressive and unpredictable Russian foreign policy,” it will cause “an intellectual and moral stagnation that makes Russia the scene of possible future horrors.”
http://www.american.com/archive/2013/january/we-are-the-98-percent/
The only way to finance a big European-style state is to have it paid for by massive taxation of everyone, mostly the middle class. Right now, we are avoiding honest debate on this fact.
The central issue of our time is the debate over the size and scope of government. Two unpleasant but undeniable mathematical truths limit the feasible policy choices. The recent sound and fury of the fiscal cliff follies in the end signified nothing because the resolution was in fact just a denial of both truths.
The first truth is that the current tax rates cannot support the promises made to middle-class Americans. The most unaffordable items in fiscal projections are Social Security for everyone and government-sponsored health care for the middle class. You cannot preserve these even with Draconian slashing of military, infrastructure, welfare, education, and other expenditures.
The second truth is that you cannot pay for the Life of Julia, or any vision of a cradle-to-grave welfare state, without massive and increasingly regressive middle-class taxes. The poor don’t have the money to pay for a European-style welfare state, and the rich, rich as they are, don’t have anywhere near enough.
Not only that, it’s easy to tax middle-class assets and transactions — things like payrolls, sales, and real estate — but soaking the rich means taxing investments. Investments are complicated and can be restructured to minimize taxes. Also, investments are the lifeblood of economic growth. Raising significantly more taxes from the rich also requires higher marginal tax rates — and their rates are already quite high. High marginal rates distort the economy and yield less revenue than anticipated because they increase the rewards for legal and illegal tax avoidance.
That’s not to say it’s impossible to get more money from the rich, but it’s tricky and past attempts have typically been less effective than forecast and often counterproductive. Moreover, even under the most optimistic assumptions, taxes on the rich — or taxes on businesses, financial transactions, or anything else aimed at the rich (and often hitting others) — will still not cover a large fraction of the costs of a European-style welfare state. Ask the Europeans — they’ve tried it all and failed.
Even under the most optimistic assumptions, taxes on the rich will still not cover a large fraction of the costs of a European-style welfare state.
To be in our political center today, you have to deny both these truths and pretend that if we sharpen our pencils and make a bunch of wildly optimistic assumptions, we can close a few tax loopholes, cut some waste from spending, and maybe nudge upper-income tax rates up a little, and continue merrily on the same big-and-growing-bigger government path without unfortunate consequences. This is a “balanced approach,” as it ignores both mathematical truths equally, but the denial of clear reality means this approach is doomed to fail.
Surprisingly, many progressive pundits are moving away from their traditional complaint that America’s tax code is too regressive, favoring the rich. They are starting to tell us, albeit only after an election mainly contested on these issues, the truth: to fund the European-style social welfare state which they advocate, we must tax everyone more.
For example, Ezra Klein, blogging for the Washington Post on December 7th, writes, “The need for tax receipts to grow underscores the necessity of finding an efficient way to collect them. Experts say that should include tax reform and new tax sources that take the pressure off the income tax, such as a value added tax or a carbon tax.”
