Latest News from D.C.

Well there has been a whole lot of shaken goin on in D.C.

It has been said that this is due to the founding fathers rolling over in their graves.

The Magic Green Hat!

The Magic Green Hat

The other day I needed to go to the emergency room.
Not wanting to sit there for 4 hours, I put on my MAGIC GREEN HAT.
When I went into the E.R., I noticed that 3/4 of the people got up and left.

I guess they decided that they weren’t that sick after all.
Cut at least 3 hours off my waiting time.

Here’s the hat.

It also works at DMV. It saved me 5 hours.

At the Laundromat, three minutes after entering, I had my choice of any machine, most still running.

But..don’t try it at McDonald’s. The whole crew got up and left and l never got my order!

Best quote of the Year!

Best quote of the year
Apparently some clear thinking individual in the Czech Republic was quoted in the London Telegraph as saying:
"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man as their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.
Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is after all, merely a fool.

It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those that made him their president.”

Amazing that someone in eastern Europe can see what most Americans are blind to.

The End of America?

The End of America?

The tale of three presidents: the Playboy, the Cowboy, and the Wonder Boy

Dr. Michael Youssef – Guest
Columnist – 3/2/2011 10:20:00 AM
Most social scientists would agree that world events do not happen in a vacuum. Political forces,
whether they are accidental or deliberate, in succession or a single action,
give rise to political and social movements.

After the fall of the
Shah of Iran, Islamic expansionists began looking for ways and means by which
to accomplish their religious dreams. Empowered by “divine mandate”
and fueled with lots of oil, they believed the world must be dominated by Islam
and the Sharia. Yet, in order to claim victory, they had to overcome their
greatest obstacle: the power of the United States.

A common belief among these extremists was that American power is more
perceived than real, and in the 1990s they began to test their theory. It did
not take long to realize that President Bill Clinton’s “interests”
would distract him from acts of international terrorism. To the extremists, he
was simply a 60′s generation man who clearly wanted “love, not war.”
Thus, a series of tests began. Embassies in Lebanon, Kenya, and Tanzania were
bombed. The response of the “Playboy President” confirmed their
suspicions. Clinton issued many verbal threats but nothing happened.

Then the tests became more daring. The bombing of the USS Cole was designed
to reveal the vulnerability of the U.S. military. The response from the White
House was from the same chapter, same verse — “the perpetrators of these
heinous acts must be brought to justice.” And again, nothing happened. But
what was really telling to these Jihadists was that, if Clinton’s plan to
deflect the scandal of Monica Lewinski meant throwing a million-dollar bomb on
a ten-dollar tent in Afghanistan and bombing an aspirin factory in the Sudan,
they were free and clear to plan, plot, and scheme for bigger things.

Make no mistake about it: all of the long-term planning and maneuvering that
led to September 11, 2001, was going on during the Playboy President’s watch.
But these Islamists misread the domestic focus of the incoming “Cowboy
President” as weakness. All in all, the final exam took place on the
Cowboy President’s watch. Did they really know that he would respond with such
force in Afghanistan? I highly doubt it. They had become accustomed to verbal
threats without action. They assumed that the Texas governor promoting
education and a couple of other issues would not be willing to decimate their
centers of power. As they say “Give the devil his due,” he disrupted
their hornets’ nest and kept America safe for the remainder of his presidency.

All the while, the Islamic groups pressed their wealthy Muslim brothers to use
their investments in the West for Jihadi purposes. They pressed them to
strategically use their billions of dollars invested in Europe and Britain with
strings attached. What were these strings? Demand from European governments for
more mosques, more acceptance of Sharia law, more Islamic districts, more
visible Islamic symbols (including Islamic banking principles and openness to
immigrants from Islamic countries). Clearly, this strategy worked — and now
the Muslim expansionists smelled the air of success for the first time.

When our Cowboy President hit Afghanistan, many Muslim countries objected, but
not as strongly as when Bush’s neo-conservative team naïvely thought that they
could remove Saddam Hussein from Iraq and create an “Exhibit A” of
Islamic democracy. Bush and his team totally miscalculated the complication of
that place. They also failed to understand the very deep desire of the Shiites
in Iraq to unite with their brethren in Iran. They did not realize that
democracy and Islam cannot coexist. Islamic theocracy and Western democracy are
natural enemies. Allah rules through his prophet and his successors. The people
do not empower their political leaders as in a Western democracy.

Bush’s team also failed to understand that the Butcher of Bagdad was holding
the balance of power between the Shiites’ desire for domination and the Sunni
Muslims’ revulsion toward the Shiite’s design. They also wrongly believed that
pro-Western authoritarian regimes such as Hosni Mubarak’s of Egypt could
survive being lectured to publicly by American officials. Of course I am
referring to the speech given by Condoleezza Rice at Cairo University in 2005.

Finally, Bush’s neo-con team did not understand that there is an Islamic
principle which calls for an agreement with your enemy until you get the upper
hand — then you renege on your agreement. And that is why the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt welcomed the Cowboy President calling for democracy,
knowing full well that, like Hamas, Hezbollah, and even Iran in 1978, once they
are elected to power, they will discard democracy like a used paper napkin.

And now we come to the current reign of the “Wonder Boy” President.
This young man who has no tangible achievements that have not been handed to
him, swept into power with a teleprompter and a desire to be liked. Wanting to
be adored by the masses is a very dangerous characteristic in any leader, let
alone the leader of the free world. Such leadership often waits to see which
way the wind is blowing and then jumps on the bandwagon. That would explain the
seemingly conflicting statements that came from the Obama administration during
the recent Egyptian youth uprising.

But let’s step back
for a moment. During Obama’s 2008 campaign, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, in a
speech in France, tried to open a window into Obama’s soul, exposing his
“lukewarm-ness” toward Israel and his love for Islamic
revolutionaries. As soon as these comments leaked into American media, the
Obama campaign operatives clobbered Rev. Jackson, making it clear that he
“has nothing to do with us or our campaign.” This was immediately
followed by a hastily arranged visit to Israel by candidate Obama which was
never repeated as president, despite the fact that he went to the region at
least four times.

To make things worse, Muslim expansionists not only took comfort from President
Obama’s 2009 speech in Turkey during which he declared that America is no
longer a Christian country, but also from his Cairo speech in which he gave all
the possible signals that if the Islamic revolutionaries would rise up, he
would hold hands with them and sing “Kumbaya.”

This unmistakable signal to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was followed by
both well-publicized and secret meetings between the American ambassador in
Cairo and the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. There can be no doubt: the
Muslim Brotherhood is a radical, global-dominating, Sharia-implementing,
Jihad-oriented, Israel-hating group. I think if I were Hosni Mubarak, I would
have known right after Obama’s speech in Cairo, and all of the signals that he
gave to the Muslim Brotherhood, that my goose was cooked.

The tragedy is that each of these three presidents contributed to the rise of Islamic
expansionism and to the total failure of Diplomacy 101. That all-important work
of diplomacy should have taken place behind the scenes, in back rooms,
forcefully but quietly.

In many ways, when history is written we will discover that the Playboy set the
stage, the Cowboy danced on it, and the Wonder Boy brought it all down

 

 

This Dog Will Haunt

Recently, an old friend who’s been a vegetarian for more than 15 years shocked us with a story: Last weekend, she ate bacon. Several strips. Straight out of the frying pan where her boyfriend was cooking it.
This wasn’t the first time she’d encountered it sizzling there, in all its glistening glory. But for some reason, this time it overpowered her. She was guilty yet gleeful when she told us that she’d allowed bacon back into her life.
But she’s not alone. We’ve heard this story before from many people. It seems that bacon has a way of awakening carnivorous desires within even some of the preachiest of vegetarians. And we set out to find out why.
Our story was familiar to Johan Lundstrom. He’s a scientist who runs a lab at the Monell Chemical Senses Center. He studies how the brain processes sensory information, like smell, for a living. He also told us he had an ex-girlfriend who became an ex-vegetarian once she tasted bacon.
Because bacon is one- to two-thirds fat and also has lots of protein, it speaks to our evolutionary quest for calories, Lundstrom says. And since 90 percent of what we taste is really odor, bacon’s aggressive smell delivers a powerful hit to our sense of how good it will taste.
“There’s an intimate connection between odor and emotion, and odor and memory,” Lundstrom says. “When you pair that with the social atmosphere of weekend breakfast and hunger, bacon is in the perfect position to take advantage of how the brain is wired.”

Sexual Explioitation of Children during Super Bowl

Dallas Texas.
Everybody is gearing up for the Super Bowl and along with that state of being the scumbag’s of the earth will be out scouring the streets for easy prey for the lusts of men. Young boys and girls are being snatched off streets, schools, malls, anyplace they can be lured into and abducted.

This is apparently the norm for huge events where supply and demand are the order of the day. The Texas Attorney General’s office “says Texas is second only to california when it comes to trafficking.” At the 2009 Super bowl in Tampa, 24 children were trafficked to Tampa for sex work. In the past, prostitution crackdowns have sometimes doubly victimized trafficked girls, imprisoning them instead of finding them help.

What a sick world we live in, please pray against this horrendous crime and the traffickers. please pray for the victims and their families.

Obama and Holder taking on Arizona’s SB1070

The person in this video is a professor (Ph.D.) at Yavapai College (pronounced yeah-va-pie) in Prescott, Arizona. He puts a different spin on what Obama is doing to help Arizona and he repeats the important parts and speaks slow enough to allow you to follow what he’s saying; must be why he’s rated highly by his students – 3.8 on a 4.0 scale.
This may be the best video produced on the illegal alien problems that are being experienced.

Too Bad No is listening!

The Stealthy Spread of Socialism in the U.S.

January 01, 2011
The Stealthy Spread of Socialism in the U.S.   
By K.E. Campbell
The biggest challenge facing Republicans in the 112th Congress is not Barack Obama. It is not Harry Reid and the Democrat-controlled Senate. It isn’t high unemployment, repealing ObamaCare, the threat of Islamism and shariah in America, the deficit, or the looming insolvency of several (mostly blue) states. These, broadly speaking, are symptoms. The disease is socialism or, at the very least, a pervasive socialistic mindset.

According to a February 2010 Gallup poll, “61% of liberals say their image of socialism is positive” and “53% of Democrats have a positive image of socialism.” Overall, 36% of Americans view socialism favorably.

Winston Churchill aptly described socialism as “a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” As economist Thomas Sowell put it, “Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”

A U.S. Senator, Bernie Sanders, is an avowed socialist. Many more stealth socialist and similarly minded legislators walk the halls of our Capitol (like Rep. Maxine Waters, who threatened to “socialize” the oil industry, Chavez-style). In the White House, the condition is as bad or worse. Most socialists take a more secretive tack than Sen. Sanders and MSNBC anchor Lawrence O’Donnell, the latter of whom recently declared on the air, “I am a socialist.” Newsweek alleged “we are all socialists now.”

Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, Friedrich von Hayek and other notables have warned about “creeping socialism” and its undesirable outcomes. Recall that Reagan said, prophetically, “one of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine…” Why and how this failed political theory and its variants, including Marxism, are metastasizing in this country have been and continue to be well documented.

Despite its apparent prevalence and increasing “popularity,” the word socialism has a negative connotation to a majority of Americans — for good reason. Upton Sinclair, author, socialist and Communist dupe, once wrote: “The American people will take socialism, but they won’t take the label.” Modern-day socialists and their fellow travelers in the Democrat party know this, as does their dear leader. Stanley Kurtz, in his new book Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, wrote

At every turn, Obama has disguised his socialist past, sometimes through grievous sins of omission, sometimes through opaque and misleading pseudo-confessions, and at other times through outright lies.

In Alinskyite fashion, most American socialists mask their true ideology by using populist-sounding rhetoric (political euphemisms) while incrementally imposing their radical anti-American agenda without identifying it as socialist. As Sun Tzu taught, all war is based on deception.

In politics, language is key and he who controls the language controls — or at least better influences — the debate. Constitutional conservatives, by nature, don’t typically seek “control” and, in this realm, they’ve too easily ceded ground. Socialist forces are winning the word war. And it’s imperative that they do, considering the poisonous snake oil they’re trying to sell to the electorate. As George Orwell, a socialist, wrote:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible…Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness…Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”

Populist-sounding rhetoric. Political speech. Euphemisms. Phraseology. Deception. Manipulation. I’d add propaganda and agitprop. This is how the socialist infection is spreading. A steady dosage of disinfectant is needed to combat it. The battle for the hearts and minds of Americans is on.

Barack Obama is already gearing up for the 2012 election, with a report last week that his campaign will be headquartered in Chicago. Don’t be surprised if he sticks with the theme of “change,” which at first glance makes no sense coming from an incumbent. But it makes perfect sense when one realizes the change he champions was never simply from Bush to himself or from a Republican to a Democrat. No, President Obama seeks fundamental change — transformation — from core American principles, like free enterprise, self-reliance, sovereignty and liberty, toward socialism “in the name of economic fairness.”

So “change” in this context is a euphemism, though many know exactly what it means. Many other euphemisms for socialism (including its various strains) are being deployed to varying degrees.Watch and listen for these words and ones like them. Republicans and non-socialist Democrats mustn’t be duped. They must be vigilant and identify and quash socialist incursions, disguised or not.

Additionally, a prolonged offensive is overdue to counter the socialist scourge. At every opportunity, our elected conservative representatives should use their public positions to make a clear and convincing case for liberty, limited constitutional government, personal responsibility and, as David Limbaugh wrote, “the wonders of America’s free-market system, which has produced unprecedented prosperity for Americans and contributed to the advancement of civilization throughout the world.” It’s not a difficult case to make, given that history and the facts are on our side.

Obama’s Newest Theme Song!

This is a little late… but so right on. I applied this to Obama and his landslde in 2012.

Military Tribute To Our Fallen Warriors

Military Tribute To Our Fallen Warriors

Marxism in America” by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) W.G. Boykin

Please wake up America!

Shocking CBN Report on the Islamization of Paris

Click here to see the result of liberal policy that has brought France into the Muslim fold.

http://downloads.cbn.com/cbnnewsplayer/cbnPlayer.swf?aid=17933

If You Are Not a Leftist, Why Are You Voting Democrat?

If You Are Not a Leftist, Why Are You Voting Democrat?

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

By Dennis Prager

All Americans, including conservatives, understand why any leftist would vote Democrat this year. The Democratic Party is now America’s version of a European Social Democratic or even Green Party. In domestic policy, there is no significant difference between the American and European parties.

So there is no question as to why those on the left would vote Democrat. There is, however, a legitimate question regarding non-leftist Americans — why would any of them vote for a Democrat this year?

The Democratic president and Democratic Party have expanded the American government to an unprecedented extent. Moreover, they have done so in unprecedented ways: Never before has such extensive society-changing legislation been passed without a single vote of the other political party; and unprecedentedly vast powers have been given to “czars” and their new federal agencies — with no congressional oversight. Add to this a level of national debt that is unsustainable — but meets the left’s great aim of redistributing wealth — and you have the most left-wing government in American history.

Why then would any of the vast majority of Americans who are not leftists vote Democratic this year?

The answer lies in emotion. For many non-leftist Democrats, it is emotionally impossible to vote Republican.

 I can illustrate this best with a personal example that I often use in speeches to Jewish audiences. 

I was raised both as an Orthodox Jew and a liberal Democrat. In my early 20s, not wanting to practice religious laws solely out of habit or fear, I experimented with religious non-observance.I remember well the one time this yeshiva graduate ate ham. It was emotionally difficult.I also well remember the first time this lifelong Democrat voted Republican. And it, too, was difficult. In fact, it was actually more emotionally difficult to vote Republican than to eat the ham.

 Now, how could that be? How could it possibly have been more emotionally trying for a lifelong Democrat to vote Republican than for a lifelong observant Jew to eat ham? Isn’t religion a far deeper conviction than politics?The question implies the answer.

 Liberalism and leftism are religions. While I felt I would be sinning against God when I tasted ham, I was certain I was sinning against both God and man were I to vote Republican.That is how liberals, not to mention leftists, think: It is a grievous sin to vote Republican (unless the Republican is a liberal). One is abandoning their faith, values, community and very identity.

 But it is more than that. What keeps most non-leftists voting Democrat (and calling themselves liberal) has been the spectacularly effective saturation of virtually all media and all educational institutions with the message that the right is mean spirited and dangerous.

 One of the first books I ever owned — in high school — was titled “Danger on the Right.” Throughout the world, people are fed the message “Danger on the Right” — and virtually never “Danger on the Left,” despite the left’s far bloodier and more totalitarian record.

 The majority of people who vote Democratic do not have left-wing values. Only 20 percent of Americans even consider themselves liberal. But vast numbers of people with views that are not leftist have been effectively brainwashed (one cannot come up with a more accurate word) into fearing the right when the threats to their liberty, as well as to America’s standing in the world, its exceptionalism and its economic future all emanate from the left.

 That is why nearly all Democratic and leftist reactions to conservatives and Republicans are to avoid argument (remember, on the issues the left has few supporters) and smear them as SIXHIRB, my acronym for “Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist, Bigoted.” It is almost impossible to come up with the name of a leading conservative whom the dominant media have not dismissed as one or more of SIXHIRB — and usually as a buffoon as well. This obviously serves the left and the Democratic Party in many ways. But the most important is to keep non-leftists in fear of anyone who opposes the left. In effect, the left says, and has been saying for a hundred years, “You may not agree with us, but our opponents are evil.”

 The Democratic appeal to black voters provides an excellent example. In nearly half a century, the left has done nothing for black America. Leftists have ruined the cities they govern and most of the public schools they control. But they have mastered one thing — the ability to paint their opponents as racist opponents of blacks. So, blacks, many of whom have conservative values — from opposing same-sex marriage to supporting school vouchers — vote almost universally for the left.

 The same holds true of most American Jews. Most live profoundly conservative lives but vote left. Why? Overwhelmingly because they believe there is “Danger on the Right.” It doesn’t matter how anti-Israel the left is and how pro-Israel the right is, or that liberal Time magazine has a mendacious cover story on “Why Israel Doesn’t Care about Peace,” while every major conservative periodical is passionately protective of Israel. For most Jews, voting Republican is a far greater sin, emotionally, morally and socially than eating ham.

 That is why virtually every liberal columnist at The New York Times has described political opposition to Barack Obama as racist. The left cannot win on arguments. It must demonize its opponents. From Stalin calling Trotsky a Fascist to Frank Rich labeling the tea parties as mimicking the Nazis’ Kristallnacht, this has been the favored leftist method of achieving power. And that is why it remains so hard for most Democrats to vote what they believe and vote Republican — a lifetime of demonization has worked.

Afghans Linked to the Taliban Guard U.S. Bases

WASHINGTON — Afghan private security forces with ties to the Taliban, criminal networks and Iranian intelligence have been hired to guard American military bases in Afghanistan, exposing United States soldiers to surprise attack and confounding the fight against insurgents, according to a Senate investigation.

The Pentagon’s oversight of the Afghan guards is virtually nonexistent, allowing local security deals among American military commanders, Western contracting companies and Afghan warlords who are closely connected to the violent insurgency, according to the report by investigators on the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The United States military has almost no independent information on the Afghans guarding the bases, who are employees of Afghan groups hired as subcontractors by Western firms awarded security contracts by the Pentagon. At one large American airbase in western Afghanistan, military personnel did not even know the names of the leaders of the Afghan groups providing base security, the investigators found. So they used the nicknames that the contractor was using — Mr. White and Mr. Pink from “Reservoir Dogs,” the 1992 gangster movie by Quentin Tarantino. Mr. Pink was later determined to be a “known Taliban” figure, they reported.

In another incident, the United States military bombed a house where it was believed that a Taliban leader was holding a meeting, only to discover later that the house was owned by an Afghan security contractor to the American military, who was meeting with his nephew — the Taliban leader.

Some Afghans hired by EOD Technology, which was awarded a United States Army contract to provide security at a training center for Afghan police officers in Adraskan, near Shindand, were also providing information to Iran, the report asserted. The Senate committee said it received intelligence from the Defense Intelligence Agency about Afghans working for EOD, and that the reporting found that some of them “have been involved in activities at odds with U.S. interests in the region.”

The Senate Armed Services Committee adopted the report by a unanimous vote, although Republican members issued a statement critical of the report for too narrowly focusing on case studies in western Afghanistan.

In response to the Senate report, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates issued a letter saying that the Pentagon recognized the problems and has created new task forces to help overhaul contracting procedures in Afghanistan. “Through the new programs we have implemented, I believe D.O.D. has taken significant steps to benefit our forces on the ground while not providing aid to our enemies,” Mr. Gates wrote.

The latest disclosures follow a series of reports, including articles in The New York Times and testimony before a House committee, describing bribes paid by contractors to the Taliban and other warlords to make sure supply convoys for the American military were provided safe passage.

But the Senate report goes further, spelling out the close relations between some contractors and the forces arrayed against the Kabul government and the Americans, and saying that the proliferation of contractors in the country is sometimes fueling the very insurgency that the military is there to combat. It names a few of the contracting companies, and uses one base as a case study, but calls the problems it identified pervasive.

“We must shut off the spigot of U.S. dollars flowing into the pockets of warlords and power brokers who act contrary to our interests,” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee’s chairman.

“There are truly some outrageous allegations here, and it’s a wake-up call that we have to get a better handle on contractors in Afghanistan and ensure that taxpayer dollars don’t end up in the hands of the enemy,” said Richard Fontaine, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington research group.

There are more than 26,000 private security employees in Afghanistan, and 90 percent of them are working under United States government contracts or subcontracts. Almost all are tied to the militias of local warlords and other powerful Afghan figures outside the control of the American military or the Afghan government, the report found.

The contracting firms are now hiring active-duty members of the Afghan military and security forces, the investigators found, further undermining the efforts by the United States to help Afghanistan build a stronger military that can take on the Taliban insurgency on its own.

The Senate report focuses heavily on security contracting at remote American military bases in western Afghanistan, including the air base in Shindand, near Herat. ArmorGroup, a British-based security firm, was hired by a contractor to the United States Air Force to provide security at Shindand, and then ArmorGroup turned in 2007 to two warlords who had their own militias to do the actual security work. ArmorGroup called them “Mr. White” and “Mr. Pink,” and few Americans knew their real identities, although a leader of an American military team at an adjacent base had recommended Mr. Pink.

“The two warlords and their successors served as manpower providers for ArmorGroup for the next 18 months — a period marked by a series of violent incidents,” the report found.

Fights soon erupted between the forces of Mr. White and Mr. Pink, with Mr. Pink finally killing Mr. White. Mr. Pink then sought refuge with the Taliban. ArmorGroup then turned to Mr. White’s brother, Mr. White II, to run its security force, but also continued to employ Mr. Pink’s men, even though they knew he was now working with the Taliban.

In a raid on Aug., 21, 2008, in Azizabad, Afghanistan, American forces bombed a house where a local Taliban leader, Mullah Sadeq, was suspected of holding a meeting. It was the home of Mr. White II; he was killed in the raid, along with seven other men employed as security guards by ArmorGroup or ArmorGroup Mine Action, an affiliated company with a contract with the United Nations for mine clearing.

The Azizabad raid sparked outrage within Afghanistan. Local villagers, human rights officials and Afghan government officials said that the attack had resulted in more than 90 civilian deaths. The raid had a broad impact on relations between the Afghan government and the American military, and was one of the major incidents that led to a reassessment by President Hamid Karzai of his support for American air raids in the country.

Mr. Karzai visited the village after the attack, and President George W. Bush called Mr. Karzai to express his regret. But the report shows that the bombing raid was entangled in the interplay between contractors and the Taliban, and occurred during a meeting between Mr. White II and the suspect Taliban leader, Mullah Sadeq.

Providing contracts to local militia leaders with ties to the Taliban “gives these warlords an independent funding source,” observed Carl Forsberg, an analyst with the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “And it gives them a feeling of impunity.”

End of all Wars!

No More Wars!

by Mannyr
The end of all wars. Could it be? Recent reports in the New York Times, Ynetnews (Israeli) are claiming that a computer virus has infected computers at Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Awe!
Computer experts have discovered a biblical reference embedded in the code of the computer worm that has pointed to Israel as the origin of the cyber attack.

The code contains the word “myrtus”, which is the Latin biological term for the myrtle tree. The Hebrew word for myrtle, Hadassah, was the birth name of Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia.
In the Bible, The Book of Esther tells how the queen pre-empted an attack on the country’s Jewish population and then persuaded her husband to launch an attack before being attacked themselves.

The implications are enormous, for one, no more bloodshed, no more loss of lives and limbs. Just think a cyber war that can cripple an aggressor nation and render it useless as far as nuclear production. Carried out into long range planning this type of warfare could stymie all the war technology of the more advanced nations.

Who would think that a lowly worm could bring such devastation to despots and warring nations of this world? All this at first blush seems to have the intent to drag Israel into a bad light. It is just a little blatant, yet it does bring reflection as to Israel’s capabilities. They have some of the best minds in the world in regards to computer software engineering.

Upon further reflection, I have come up with a possible source of this great discovery. Mother Russia once a queen holding court now sits in the dust so to speak. Yet her sons of war clamor for the dog days of war. Somewhere in Moscow a once empty warehouse hosts teams of computer engineers cranking out vicious code that can awaken on a given date and begin its cyber attack.

After many months of trying to crack this worm called Stuxnet a cross eyed Iranian president receives an e-mail from a cyber security team handpicked by the Ayatollah of Tehran that reads: “From Russia with Love.” Vladimir Putin.

Esther may be long gone but the Israeli’s still read the word, and are still God’s chosen people.

WTO helping China Loot Caterpillar

October 04, 2010
WTO helping China Loot Caterpillar
By Howard Richman & Raymond Richman
Caterpillar is one excellent company. It is building new factories now in Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina, from which it will export products made by American workers all around the world. Its excellent worldwide parts distribution network gives its used equipment a very high resale value. But on September 29 Caterpillar announced it is building its twelfth factory in China — this one to produce mini-excavators.

Why can’t Caterpillar make a profit exporting mini-excavators to China? The answer is simple: China has a 30% tariff on all excavators. In fact it has a similar high tariff on just about every vehicle, be it a Ford car, a GMC truck, a Harley Davidson motorcycle, or a giant mining machine made by Bucyrus International.

When President Obama’s economic adviser Larry Summers was Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, he oversaw China’s entry to the WTO (World Trade Organization), and he let China declare all these vehicles as a “strategic sector” entitled to high protective tariffs. This error, by itself, should have disqualified Summers from ever again holding a responsible position in the United States government.

Summers, like nearly all economists, does not worry about such trivial things as unfair tariffs imposed by our trading partners. In his ivory tower, trade is always assumed to be in balance. Thus, when China puts a tariff on one of its imports, it causes the exchange rate of its currency to go up in value, which hurts the competitiveness of its exports. However, China easily found a way out of the ivory tower assumptions. It simply manipulates currency exchange rates to make its exports attractive and to keep imports expensive, thus perpetuating and increasing its trade surplus.

The Chinese government has long used these tariffs as a lever in order to loot American companies of their technology. First it forces vehicle-making companies to locate their factories in China if they want to sell to the growing Chinese market. Then it forces them to “share” their proprietary technologies with Chinese competitors. Caterpillar already has 11 factories in China. It also has two Chinese competitors – Liugong and Sany – that are producing what one expert describes as “knockoffs” of Caterpillar models, and they are exporting them to the world.

Similarly General Motors Co., as a condition for producing vehicles in China, has to share its technology with China’s SAIC Motor Corporation. At first SAIC just shared production and profits with GM on GM brands produced in China. Now SAIC competes directly with GM by selling its own models in China using GM’s technology. Last year, Bloomberg reported:

SAIC and other Chinese carmakers that work with overseas companies are introducing their own models to boost margins in a country set to become the world’s biggest auto market this year. Foreign automakers typically have no remedy because Chinese law forces them to work with a local partner.

Some progressives are pleased that Chinese technology looting helps redistribute wealth from the rich Americans to the deserving Chinese. But they ignore the effect that this looting will have on future world growth. Recently China told foreign car companies that are already manufacturing in China that they will have to share any electric car technologies that they develop with their Chinese competitors! Just how much will car companies spend on developing more efficient vehicles when they know that they will have to “share” whatever they develop?

China’s self-created trade imbalances have given it a 10% growth rate while its victims’ economies stagnate (exports stimulate growth). China is now using its rapid growth as a lever for demanding that high tech and pharmaceutical companies move their R&D laboratories and patents to China in order to continue selling to China’s growing market.

In Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, looters seize control of the United States economy. They stifle economic growth by forcing creators to give up their inventions to the state. We are seeing just that sort of looting on a worldwide scale right now. China is looting western companies of their technology under cover of WTO rules that let them do it.

But buried deep within the WTO rules is a solution, a rule that lets trade deficit countries impose import duties or limitations in order to bring trade into reasonable balance. We could take the profit out of protective tariffs and currency manipulation simply by imposing a scaled tariff on the goods produced by any country with which trade is chronically out of balance. A scaled tariff is one whose rate goes up when our trade deficit with a country goes up, goes down when our trade deficit goes down, and disappears when trade moves into balance.

Such a tariff would force the currency manipulating countries to open up their markets to our exports or else they would lose their access to our markets. American companies would no longer have to let China loot their technology as the price of admission to China’s markets; they would be able to produce in the United States and still sell to China.

So is the WTO worth saving? On the surface, the answer is “No.” WTO rules permit China to place 30% tariffs on vehicles. WTO rules let China manipulate currency exchange rates in order to keep its trade out of balance. WTO rules let China loot western companies of their technologies.

But there is one special WTO rule that could make the whole system work. It allows a country experiencing trade deficits to impose duties or other limitations on imports in order to bring trade into balance. It’s time that we started to take advantage of it.

Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet — Together

October 04, 2010
Progressives and Communists: Out of the Closet — Together
By Paul Kengor
A close look at the Saturday “One Nation” rally in Washington reveals something quite telling. It was a major gathering of the “progressive” left, highly billed, vigorously promoted. And it happened to include — in fact, it warmly accepted — the endorsement of Communist Party USA.

Expectedly, a bunch of the rally’s endorsers carried the word “progress” or “progressive” in their title, from People’s Organization for Progress to Progressive Democrats of America. More still unhesitatingly describe themselves as progressive, from racial eugenicist Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood to Norman Lear’s heirs at People for the American Way, plus the usual suspects from the “social justice” Religious Left.

And then, too, there was CPUSA.

Why is this so remarkable? It’s remarkable because historically, communist involvement at these rallies has been meticulously concealed, hidden from progressives, with the communists using the progressives as props — as dupes. That the two sides here, on Saturday, happily accepted one another, proudly uniting, shows how far to the left progressives have moved, not to mention their unflagging confidence under the ascendancy of Obama-Pelosi-Reid.

My personal experience on this is very instructive. I’ve chronicled how communists, for a century now, cunningly manipulated progressives, surreptitiously drawing them into their rallies, protests, and petitions, not letting themselves (or their intentions) be known. I have fliers from marches sixty and seventy years ago, with many of the same endorsers that were there on Saturday, but with CPUSA’s name smartly absent, even as CPUSA members canvassed the rally, if not spearheading it.

Back then, the communists’ stunning successes suckering progressives shocked even Moscow. They fooled them right up to the front gates of the White House in the summer of 1940, where the hideous communist front the American Peace Mobilization duped even the New York Times into headlining it as a “clergy group.” They pulled off an extraordinary stunt in Chicago in the summer of 1968, sabotaging the Democratic National Convention. Communists managed to enlist progressives into undermining their own Democratic presidents and parties and platforms.

As an indicator of the success and duration of this manipulation, consider this fact:
When Congress, in December 1961, published its seminal investigation of communist fronts, titled “Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications,” a product of research dating to the founding of the American Communist Party in Chicago in 1919, the most popular index listing started with the word “Progressive.” It was progressive groups that were misled, used, abused, and infiltrated more than any other.

How long has this continued? All the way to the 2008 election.

Consider the group Progressives for Obama, formed during Obama’s presidential bid. It was loaded with and even founded by some hardcore communists from the 1960s. Consider merely two of them: Tom Hayden, one of the group’s four founders, and Mark Rudd, one of the 94 original signers. Hayden and Rudd had been leaders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which subverted the policies and plans of Democratic presidents ranging from Vietnam to the 1968 convention. In 2008, both Hayden and Rudd suddenly reemerged as “Progressives for Obama.”

Rudd’s take on how Obama won the 2008 election is shrewd — and dead on. Understanding that moderates and independents made the difference, Rudd noted the crucial importance of Obama not openly conceding his far-left views. Rudd wrote,

Obama is a very strategic thinker. He knew precisely what it would take to get elected and didn’t blow it. But he also knew that what he said had to basically play to the center to not … scare centrist and cross-over voters away. He made it. … And I agree with this strategy. … Any other strategy invites sure defeat. It would be stupid to do otherwise in this environment.

Basically, what Rudd said is that Obama hoodwinked “centrist” and “cross-over” voters. As Rudd rightly put it, Obama couldn’t be candid about his true intentions in “this environment.” That’s an environment where Americans, in poll after poll, have described themselves as “conservative” over “liberal” by a margin of 2:1, by approximately 40% to 20%, for decades now. Incredibly, those numbers were unchanged even on November 4, 2008, when Obama easily won the election.

Thus, a candidate like Obama can succeed only by pushing his agenda guardedly. He ran as a centrist, not as National Journal’s certified “most liberal senator in 2007.” It worked. As Rudd put it, Obama “didn’t blow it.”

America’s exalted moderates and independents were duped by a nebulous, catch-all-be-all banner of “change.” Now, the progressives are in power, ready to implement the kind of change they had in mind all along.

And now, with Obama having secured victory, the likes of Rudd and Hayden — shocked that the electorate finally voted for their kind of guy — have been less circumspect about their intentions. Rudd urges, “Here’s my mantra: ‘Let’s put this country on our shoulders and get to work.’”

Rudd has rolled up his sleeves, as have his erstwhile comrades.

And that was precisely what spilled into the streets on Saturday, October 2 in the “One Nation” rally, fittingly centralized in Washington. This time, however, the collective was unafraid, buttressed by a confidence that coaxed the communists out of the closet and into the welcoming arms of “progressives.”

Gee, you’d think that after the collapse of the USSR and the Berlin Wall, and after 100 million corpses, progressives would be fleeing communists like the plague.

The election of Obama-Pelosi-Reid in November 2008 — by America’s “independents” and “moderates” — has dawned a new day for the American Left — or, at least perhaps, until November 2010. We shall see.

The Other America Marches on Washington

October 02, 2010
The Other America Marches on Washington
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
Yes, folks, there are two Americas: the authentic America of community builders and the other America, made up of socialist group-thinkers, moochers, and no-accounts, many of them living off government grants or welfare checks.

The tension between these two Americas has been a constant tug-of-war for nearly a hundred years, since our premier socialist-progressive president, Woodrow Wilson, bore the first rotten fruits of liberal fascism on our shores.

With the election of the first socialist-progressive president in decades, the political tension between the two Americas has reached fever pitch. Independent voters, who were lulled like sheep into the lion’s den by Barack Obama’s conciliatory, I’ll-make-it-all-better rhetoric, have been expressing buyer’s remorse for many long months and now yell “Change it back!” as loudly as they shouted “Yes we can!” less than two short years ago.

Obama lied; hope died. And all over the land, Obama’s Intolerable Acts are causing authentic America to rise to her feet in surly indignation. Americans are putting their hope back in God, where it belongs, and vowing to cut big government back down to its constitutionally mandated size.

Authentic Americans — those patriots with a profound respect for our U.S. Constitution and do-it-yourself ingenuity, the Americans who prefer liberty to nanny-state-provided luxury — held a march on Washington on August 28. The event drew more than 300,000 people. True to their good citizenship, these authentic Americans honored the sacrifices of our forebears in speech and song and afterward left the whole scene immaculate.

This Saturday, October 2, the other America is set to hold its counter-rally, hoping to inspire their like-minded socialist group-thinkers, moochers, and no-accounts to vote a month from now so that they can continue their mad-dog raiding of the producers’ profits and tighten the big-government stranglehold on authentic America.

The other America is calling October 2 the “One Nation Rally.” Now, there’s a real side-buster. They represent the one nation whose every roof and meal are subsidized by the authentic America. They should have held this demand-o-rama on May 1 in solidarity with their fellow socialist travelers around the world.

Who knows how many people will show up, but every far-left community agitating group is on board and is sure to bus in as many warm bodies as they all can find. Knowing the left’s penchant for agitprop, we might expect hundreds of gutter-dwellers dressed up in business attire or lots of white-coated “doctors” or scads of Wiccan witches wearing soccer-mom outfits. Perhaps Barbara Boxer — who thought authentic Americans looked too “well-dressed” to be anything other than “astroturf” protesters — will be on hand to coordinate the left’s agitprop costumes for the day.

The national chairman of the Communist Party USA posted an urgent appeal for warm bodies on Obama’s Organizing for America website:

Which brings me to the One Nation rally on October 2 in our nation’s capital. Here is an opportunity to reestablish, reenergize, and repower the coalition of people’s organization that elected the first African American president in our nation’s history.

Opportunities of this kind are rare. But when they arise, they have to be seized. No stone should be left unturned to bring people and their organizations to Washington. This event’s success will be measured by its size. A huge turnout will change the political atmosphere and send a message to friend and foe.

At least the Communist Party USA is more honest than President Obama. They come right out and tell the people they demand equalizing tyranny with a yes-we-can end to the American dream of liberty and the individual pursuit of happiness. Of course, Barack Obama knew he had to rely on deceiving authentic America to get elected. Now, he needs the CPUSA to get out their rusty hammers and sickles to beat the producers back into line.

Another of my favorite groups on the list of One Nation Rally promoters is Code Pink. Oh, how we’ve all missed those tawdry women of questionable virtue, wearing their pink undies to the halls of congress, running around like screaming banshees demanding an end to “Bush’s War” and trying to close down officer recruitment centers.

While the MSM inundates us with stories about Christine O’Donnell’s momentary dabble with witchcraft on a high school date, the real Wiccans of Code Pink cast their spells on the Marines in the here and now. Circled around their cauldron, donning pink robes with their faces smeared with red paint (symbolizing the blood of their victims), Code Pink wackos staged a spell-casting event right in front of the Marine officer recruiting center in Berkeley a mere two years ago. This was right before they suddenly turned their spells to drumming up support and bundling lots of money for the election of Mr. Hope & Change. Can’t wait to see if they bring their cauldron to the One Nation Rally. Now that would surely be extreme in the extreme.

Of course, even though the One Nation website says there are over four hundred community agitating groups supporting them, the major players here will be the unions. They’ve got the UAW, the AFL/CIO, AFSCME, and the SEIU all lined up, along with a variety of smaller types and “professional” associations.

Now, as many readers will recall, when the SEIU is involved, things are likely to get ugly. There can be biting off of fingers, assault and battery, destruction of private property. Of course, these violent acts are normally aimed at those authentic Americans who just happen to be exercising their own First Amendment rights, but whenever or wherever SEIU thugs show up, it’s a sure bet that they will be uncivil.

Reading the list of One Nation sponsor groups is very enlightening. Their organizations — each and every one — stand for some very exclusive special interest group. Whether it is the transgenders or the Queers for Economic Justice or the dozen or more groups that specify themselves as “black” or “negro” or the public-school teachers’ union or the women who’ve turned pink into an ugly word — you have to have a special interest to join. And you have to have your hand out begging for government money.

No wonder this other America is so hot and bothered by the welcome-mat policy of the Tea Parties. The Tea Parties, with their come-one-come-all politics, threaten the very existence of every special interest group on the left.

These group-thinkers, moochers, and no-accounts of the left know that if the government is tamed back to its constitutionally mandated size and scope, then their free ride is over for good.

And they’ll have to stop their professional rabble-rousing and go out to find real jobs or start real businesses of their own. Growing up is hard to do, and slacker kids of any age will do all they can to avoid it.

Hence this One Nation rally and all the hoopla the state-sponsored media can throw in its direction. What a sham.