11/6/12

Not by the color.

11/6/12

Unemployment Blues

Election Day is almost over with the sun going down and the polls closing; the opportunity to count and tally the votes to see which candidates will take the reigns of office. There’s an air of trepidation and concern for our future. Will the war on American industry continue as the EPA ties the hands of oil and coal tighter to the point of breaking or is there a change in the works, a change which might turn things around enough to open up jobs for those anxiously looking for work?

I was watching an old movie, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which reminded me of the desperate measures so many have taken to keep their heads above water (no pun intended for the misery caused by flooding in and around the New York area caused by the hurricane).

Johnny Nolan, an immigrant with a beautiful Irish Tenor voice made less than a meager living singing at weddings and such; but for the most part was out of work, leaving his family to scrape to make ends meet. His wife scrubbed floors and did all manner of odd jobs; even so they were paupers with little to be cheerful about. One evening Nolan came home to find the family had moved to the cheapest apartment available, the previous owner was unable to take an old piano which he sat down and played an old Scottish tune, Annie Laurie; realizing his inability to work steady had taken a terrible toll on his family.

Maxwelton braes are bonnie, where early fa’s the dew
Where me and Annie Laurie made up the promise true
Made up the promise true, and ne’er forget will I
And for bonnie Annie Laurie I’d lay doun my head and die…

How many folks across America have these dark thoughts, watching time flicker by and hoping beyond hope to find gainful employment in our faltering economy? Being unemployed leaves a hole in your soul, an emptiness which gnaws at you and never goes away.

The current administration boasts we have an economy in recovery mode, only 7.9% unemployment as if telling folks who’ve been out of work for an extended period will find something to be happy about. The facts show otherwise; the real unemployment numbers are closer to 25%; but expecting the Obama administration to be honest about anything; well, let’s hope today’s election brings about a change in administrations too.

When Obama took office he promised that if he didn’t turn the economy around in four years he expected to be a one term president. I’m holding my breath waiting for the results of today’s election, a chance to sing something other than America’s dirge, the Unemployment Blues.

This article has been cross-posted to The Moral Liberal, a publication whose banner reads, “Defending The Judeo-Christian Ethic, Limited Government & The American Constitution.”

11/6/12

Today America Wins or Dies (Simpson)

By: James Simpson
Gulag Bound

Excerpt from examiner.com

Today America Wins or Dies

We have all felt it. The slow decline. The inevitable disappointment. It seems like we can’t win anymore.

Why? Because we are not allowed to. It is not politically correct. The president himself said that he was “worried about using the term ‘victory’” in Afghanistan. We shouldn’t be thinking of the war on terror in terms of victory. What then? There is no middle ground – you win or you lose. So subconsciously we prepare our minds for defeat. And that mindset sees catastrophic expression on the battlefield, where unarmed Americans are shot by their Afghan “allies;” where pointless patrols cause pointless deaths.

Everywhere we hear this refrain. And everywhere we see it with our eyes, most egregiously recently in Benghazi, Libya. It should have never even started, because we had no business being there in the first place. Once it did however… (continues)

11/6/12

Shameful Media Coverage of Benghazi Scandal and Cover-up

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election on November 6th, the most outrageous media malpractice of the election has been coverage of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya on September 11th that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, including two former Navy SEALs. From the outset, Obama and other people speaking for the administration claimed that the attack was the result of a spontaneous demonstration sparked by anger from an anti-Islamic video made in the U.S. But that was just the beginning.

That argument was made repeatedly. UN Ambassador Susan Rice went on five talk shows the following Sunday morning claiming that their best intelligence at that point was that it was sparked by the video, rather than a planned terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11. President Obama, speaking before the UN General Assembly on September 25th, cited the videotape six times.

As the story unfolded, we were reminded that there had been a series of attacks in April and June of this year in Benghazi by so-called “militants” carried out on the U.N., the Red Cross, the U.S. consulate, and the British consulate. There had been requests for additional security by Ambassador Stevens and others who worked there, but they were denied. The evidence shows that President Obama and his national security team were able to watch part of the attack in real time, but failed to call in back-up support.

Within two hours of being notified that there was an attack under way at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, the White House received an email from the State Department stating that a specific terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda had taken credit for the attack.

Fox News, and in particular Jennifer Griffin and Catherine Herridge have led the way in reporting on the story. The evidence, including classified documents leaked to Fox News, and reported on October 31st, showed that the U.S. Mission in Benghazi had “convened an ‘emergency meeting’ less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a ‘coordinated attack,’ according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.” Calls for additional security went unheeded. Yet the administration had continued to argue that the attack came without warning.

The rest of the media largely stayed away from the story, deflecting it on numerous talk shows by changing the subject, and rarely, if at all, treating it as an Obama administration scandal. Brian Williams spent two days with Obama for a long feature story on NBC’s Rock Center on October 25th, asked him one softball question about Benghazi, which Obama answered with his standard delay-until-after-the-election answer, with no follow-up.

Here was the exchange:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Mr. President, since we’ve been airborne, a person or persons of interest picked up in Tunisia in connection with Benghazi. The question becomes: Have you been happy with the intelligence, especially in our post 9-11 world? The assessment of your intelligence community, as we stand here, is that it still was a spontaneous terrorist attack and were you happy with what you were able to learn as this unfolded? It went on for several hours.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, as I’ve said, Brian, we’re going to do a full investigation. Obviously, when four Americans are killed, you know, you have to do some soul searching in terms of making sure that all our systems are where they need to be. And that’s what we are going to find out. But what I’m confident about is that we will be able to figure out who perpetrated this act, that we’ll be able to bring them to justice and we are confident that we’ve got the cooperation of the Libyan government. We’re going to continue to make sure that we figure out what intelligence was coming in when, how was it gathered, how was it analyzed? And my expectation is that as a consequence, we’re going to be able to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.

Sec. of Defense Leon Panetta explained why no troops were sent in to attempt to save or rescue Ambassador Stevens and the others: “The basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place,” he said. “And as a result of not having that kind of information…[we] felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”

But as Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady, U.S. Army (ret.) wrote in WorldNetDaily, “On its face, that is a remarkable, indeed incomprehensible, change from America’s doctrine in past wars. By that standard, there would have been no Normandy or Inchon. In fact, I can’t think of a war we fought in which we didn’t go into harm’s way without real-time information or to save lives—something the president refused to do in Benghazi.”

Brady, a retired general who has received the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration one can receive, continued his critique: “To fully understand the doctrinal change, one has to understand President Obama. He has a dearth of understanding of our military and military matters. We hear he is uncomfortable in the presence of ranking military and seldom meets with them. He is not a person who can make decisions, and he takes an extraordinary amount of time to do so…He cowers from crisis decisions. He is a politician who thinks only in terms of votes and his image…I believe he is risk-averse—fearful of risk—and that is the basis of the Obama-Panetta doctrine.”

As William McGurn, chief editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal wrote, “Libya was supposed to be the Obama success story, showing how this president achieves our goals abroad without committing American troops or treasure. However ridiculous it might have been to blame the whole thing on a YouTube video, politically the tactic was far preferable to admitting that the president who boasts about getting us out of war in Iraq and Afghanistan might have a whole new one brewing in Libya.”

The Washington Post finally editorialized on November 2nd that Benghazi “increasingly looks like a major security failure.” They argued that “sooner or later the administration must answer questions” about it and “the policies that led to it.” The Post even cited Fox News’ reporting.

The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial that the Obama administration had tried to avoid accountability by offering “evasive, inconsistent and conflicting accounts about one of the most serious American overseas defeats in recent years.” The editorial continued: “Unresolved questions about Benghazi loom over this election because the White House has failed to resolve them.”

Claudia Rosett, writing for Pajamas Media, pointed out the conflicts in the timeline put out by the State Department versus that of the CIA. The administration has been caught in significant lies and contradictions, and has managed to kick the full consequences of their actions, and inactions, down the road, past the election.

CBS withheld a snippet of their September 12th interview with Obama that could have cleared up the question that became famous in the presidential debate moderated by Candy Crowley as to whether or not he considered the attack to be a planned, terrorist attack, or a spontaneous attack resulting from the video. That day, during the CBS interview, the same day he had used the term “act of terror” in his Rose Garden comments, he refused to identify it that way. But for some reason, CBS chose to hold that back until less than two days before the election.

What should have been a full blown scandal before the election was largely swept under the rug by the mainstream media, certainly up until the last week or two before the election. And even then, its coverage was limited and tepid. Obama certainly owes a debt of gratitude to his media allies who covered for him the best they knew how.

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and can be contacted at [email protected].

11/6/12

The Infiltration of the U.S. Government

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

At the recent “Pumpkin Papers Irregulars” dinner in Washington, D.C., author and commentator M. Stanton Evans joked about his “Law of Inadequate Paranoia,” which says, “No matter how bad you think something is, when you look into it, it is always worse.” The comment generated nervous laughter among a crowd of people concerned about America’s internal security weaknesses and foreign threats. Evans talked about the problem of “literally hundreds of communists and Soviet agents in the U.S. government” during and after the World War II period that he documents in his new book, Stalin’s Secret Agents: The Subversion of Roosevelt’s Government, co-authored with Herbert Romerstein.

Some of the more influential communists were Alger Hiss, a top State Department official and founder of the United Nations; Lauchlin Currie, an Administrative Assistant to Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and Harry Dexter White, a Treasury Department official.

As members of Congress and a few members of the press attempt to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi, Libya, when four Americans were left virtually undefended and killed in a terrorist attack, this book provides important new details in a story of treason that goes back over 50 years and whose death toll can be seen in literally tens of millions of human corpses. This is the death toll of communism.

The new threat, radical global Islam, has been sanitized by the Obama Administration, which wants the American people to believe that we should actually offer financial aid and assistance to Islamist regimes in the Middle East, such as the one Obama helped bring to power in Egypt. Some prominent Republicans were supporters of this misguided policy and refuse to face up to how they were confused and misled about the “Arab Spring.”

The Evans-Romerstein book deals largely with FDR’s appeasement of the Soviet Union during and after World War II, which led to the rapid expansion of the Soviet empire. It is a reminder of how the U.S Government can be easily infiltrated and its foreign policy manipulated. One reads this excellent book and wonders whether it could all be happening again. It is not paranoia to consider whether history is repeating itself before our eyes in the Middle East as enemies are accommodated and allies betrayed.

Their book not only adds important new details of the treason carried out by State Department official Alger Hiss and other high-level Soviet agents in the U.S. Government, but exposes the peculiar mindset that characterized President Franklin Roosevelt’s post-World War II deliberations.

In an extraordinary revelation, Evans and Romerstein quote from a document, which they republish in their book, that Roosevelt told Stalin that he intended, at an upcoming summit, to offer Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud “the six million Jews in the United States” as a concession. This “astounding comment,” they note, was “edited out of the official record” but survives in the minutes preserved at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, and in the papers of Roosevelt’s Secretary of State, Edward R. Stettinius, Jr.

The authors suggest that the comment was deleted from the official record for various reasons, including that the remark would undermine FDR’s liberal reputation or “might be construed as evidence of anti-Semitism” on Roosevelt’s part. Another explanation is that FDR was suffering from a mental disorder that caused him to blurt out impulsive statements.

At the time of the Yalta conference, which defined post-World War II Europe and betrayed Eastern European nations to Soviet control, FDR was known to be gravely ill. Stettinius was new to the job, however, and FDR acted as his own secretary of state. One of FDR’s missions was “to get Stalin to agree with the Rooseveltian vision of a peaceable kingdom to come via the United Nations,” a vehicle whose pieces were put in place by the Soviet spy Alger Hiss, the first acting secretary general of the U.N., and which today continues to serve as a check on American power by America’s enemies and adversaries. Flawed from the start, the world organization has functioned as a Communist front and an impediment to freedom and progress in the world. Today, it is also a front for Arab-Muslim interests operating through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which wants to outlaw criticism of Islam.

Yalta gave rise to the Soviet empire, the betrayal of Free China, and “half a century of Cold War struggle,” Evans and Romerstein note. The rest is history: millions would die in the Soviet Union, China, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and Communist regimes would take power in Africa and Latin America.

On top of what Evans and Romerstein report in their new book about the advance of our enemies, Robert Buchar’s new film, The Collapse of Communism: The Untold Story, argues that the Soviets engineered their own “collapse,” under pressure from the West, in order to fool us into thinking that their ideology and global intentions were dead. We celebrated a victory when the enemy had simply changed its appearance and approach, in order to fight another day and way. Buchar’s film reminds us that the fingerprints of the Soviet Union are all over the Arab/Muslim terrorist groups of today.

With President Barack Obama, a student of Communist Party operative Frank Marshall Davis, we have gotten a taste of what the Marxists have intended for us all along. It is a subject that many Republicans and conservative news operations don’t want to talk about. But the evidence of Obama’s involvement in a Communist network that stretches from Hawaii to Chicago and around the world is undeniable.

While there is much more to report from the authoritative Evans-Romerstein book, one is struck by the evidence of the official cover-ups that are still underway. Evans and Romerstein not only document how FDR’s controversial comment about American Jews was deleted from the record, they point out that the official State Department compilation of the Yalta papers “omitted or obscured” other essential facts about what had transpired. Evans and Romerstein are two experts on communism who deserve enormous credit for uncovering the facts about the internal subversion which has crippled our nation.

At the “Pumpkin Papers Irregulars” dinner in Washington, D.C., Evans noted that the significance of Hiss was not just in his theft of classified information and its turnover to Soviet intelligence operatives such as Whittaker Chambers, but as an agent of influence. Chambers, of course, would defect from the communist cause and expose all of this, ultimately providing absolute proof of Hiss’s treason in the form of the “pumpkin papers” that he had hidden at his Westminster, Maryland farm. These papers, hidden in a hollowed-out pumpkin, were microfilmed documents that Hiss had stolen from the State Department and given to Chambers.

Hiss “was a major influence on policy, and he was a very effective one,” Evans noted. The media, however, have depicted Hiss as a mere “note-taker” who worked in the background of policy discussions.

In contrast to the official State Department record of what happened at Yalta, Evans gained access to the Stettinius papers at the University of Virginia which demonstrate the significant role played by Hiss. In addition to finding the reference to FDR offering to give King Saud America’s six million Jews, Evans found several references to Hiss’s role at Yalta, including in helping to shape U.S. policy on China. The papers include notes referring to Stettinius telling historian Walter Johnson on various occasions to consult Hiss about important background and information regarding policy matters.

Evans reminded his audience of the fact that Hiss would have escaped prosecution had it not been for Chambers hiding and then producing the “pumpkin papers.” This evidence was used to indict Hiss for perjury for denying he was a Soviet spy.

A major cover-up had been going on regarding the involvement of Hiss and other communist agents in Soviet espionage activity. Indeed, Evans, in his remarks and his book, notes that President Harry Truman’s Justice Department convened a grand jury in 1947 to hear communist defector Elizabeth Bentley’s charges of subversion involving some 40 communists and Soviet agents working in the U.S. Government or “global organizations.” The grand jury did not hand down a single indictment, primarily because federal prosecutors refused to call Chambers as a back-up witness.

The situation was so twisted, Evans noted, that the Truman White House and Justice Department were considering indicting Chambers, because he had not previous testified completely accurately about the Communist espionage apparatus in government that he had been a part of. Such an indictment would have continued the cover-up of “massive Communist infiltration of the government,” Evans notes in his book, and would have protected Hiss and his network of collaborators.

The situation only changed when the House Committee on Un-American Activities opened hearings on the case and Rep. Richard Nixon met with Chambers and persuaded him to produce the additional documents of Hiss’s guilt. The left “never forgave” Nixon for taking Chambers’ side in the Hiss-Chambers struggle, Evans adds.

This means, in the current context, that the major media will demonize and try to destroy any member of the U.S. House of Representatives who moves forward aggressively and quickly in regard to President Obama’s Watergate—what is being called “Benghazi-gate”—and attempts to get to the bottom of the treachery before the cover-up intensifies. What remains to be seen is whether what happened in Benghazi was just one element of a policy that is designed to promote the interests of radical Islam throughout the Middle East.

The problem for the House is that it lacks what Rep. Nixon had—a congressional committee exclusively devoted to internal security problems or “un-American activities.” All of the internal security committees were abolished by the congressional liberals in the 1970s. This makes the job of exposing treason and its cover-up much more difficult. It is a problem, however, that can be easily rectified by the new House.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected].

11/6/12

The Moment

Tammy Bruce: We Made It! Happy Election Day!

11/6/12

Is Pakistan’s Paranoia Pushing it Into a Nuclear War with India?

By: Felix Imonti for Oilprice.com

The possibility of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India grows every day. If the Pakistanis do not bring under control the terrorist groups in the country and resolve the conflicts with India, it is not a matter of if it will happen, but when.

There have been few achievements to celebrate in the sixty-five year history of Pakistan and that has made the success of the nuclear program central to the national identity. This is especially true for the military that receives a quarter of the budget and is the only strong national institution.

Development of the weapons started in January of 1972 by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, when he was the Minister for Fuel, Power and Natural Resources. The decision to go nuclear came after a disastrous military defeat in 1971 by India. Bangladesh with Indian assistance separated from Pakistan.

Without its eastern territory, Pakistan was facing an enemy six times larger. The only way to deal with such a threat was to acquire an equalizer. Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Ali Bogra stated in 1954, “When there is more equality of military strength, then I am sure that there will be a greater chance of settlement.” His words expressed what is an ongoing national preoccupation with military parity with the far more powerful India.

India joined the nuclear club in 1974. Pakistan followed in 1998 and became the only Moslem nuclear power with what became known as the “Islamic Bomb;” and that made it a leader in the Islamic world community.

The Pakistan high command believed that the U.S. does not want a Moslem country to possess nuclear weapons and will at some time in the future attempt to seize or destroy its arsenal. Since September of 2001, much of the American military action has been directed towards Moslem states. As the sole nuclear Islamic country, that convinces the Pakistanis that they too will be targeted.

Washington worries that Pakistan with a number of terrorist organizations supported by the Inter-Service Intelligence is the one place where terrorists would be the most likely to acquire a nuclear weapon or nuclear materials. A high ranking official of the Inter Service Intelligence told the Atlantic for a December 2011 article on the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, “You must trust us that we have maximum and impenetrable security. No one with ill intent can get near our strategic assets.”

Since April 2012, The Strategic Plans Division that is charged with protecting the nuclear arsenal of an estimated ninety to one hundred and ten strategic warheads has been adding an additional eight thousand specially trained troops to protect the storage facilities from an American attempt to seize or destroy the nuclear weapons. A retired high level Pakistani officer confided that he and many of his colleagues believe that the U.S. will move against nuclear facilities shortly after the American combat role ends in Afghanistan. He and his colleagues expect the United States to abandon Pakistan as it did in 1989 when the Soviet Union was driven out of Afghanistan.

The raid by U.S. special operation forces into Abbottabad in May of 2011 to kill Osama Bin Laden has been taken as a warning signal by chief of army staff General Ashfaq Kayani what to expect. Senator John Kerry was sent to Pakistan shortly after the raid to explain the American position. He did not reduce the general’s anxieties when he declined to provide a written guarantee that the U.S. would not attack the Pakistani nuclear storage facilities.

The positioning in the region of units under the United States Joint Special Operations Command is a factor that is feeding the Pakistani paranoia. The task of JOSC is to keep out of the hands of terrorists nuclear materials that were abandoned when the Soviet Union left the Central Asian states. Included in what is seen as a high risk region is Pakistan that is on the list of failed or failing states.

Satellite photos and other sources estimate that there are fifteen locations where weapons or nuclear materials are likely to be kept. Six of these have been attacked by terrorists, although no weapons or materials have been taken.

The generals are probably telling the truth when they say that the weapons are safe in the military facilities. What they are not saying is that their effort to evade detection by the Americans has created other serious flaws in the security.

The assurance that the weapons are safe from attackers collapses once a warhead leave the guarded facilities. Weapons are being moved frequently in lightly defended ordinary vehicles along public highways to prevent Indian and American spy satellites or snooping drones from tracking the movements. There is little doubt that various extremist organizations have penetrated the military and are aware of the schedules and routes, but ISI acts as if it has enough control over the terrorists to prevent an ambush.

The larger strategic nuclear warheads are often transported disassembled. Recently, though, Pakistan has adopted tactical nuclear weapons with smaller warheads that are easier to moved assembled.

In April, ISI released photos of the Nasr, a new sixty kilometer range missile that appears to be capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. Because of the short range of the weapon, it will have to be positioned close to the frontier. That places the missile in a more vulnerable position for a terrorist group to seize while being transported along public highways or in isolated locations.

At the time that Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons, military strategists rejected tactical nuclear weapons because they would provoke the Indians to escalate to strategic weapons in response. That opinion has changed. The addition of a fourth nuclear reactor at Khushab that produces plutonium to be used in tactical weapons says that the inventory will be expanded.

Estimates of the amount of enriched uranium and plutonium in their inventory in 2011 places the potential number of weapons that can be produced at between 160 and 240.

They are developing as well two cruise missiles, two short range shoot and scoot type missiles and two ballistic missiles that will all require different types of warheads and different amounts of materials. They have the fourth largest and fastest growing inventory of warheads of the nine nuclear classified countries. What has never been made clear is when they will feel that they have enough warheads to give them a sense of security.

The military consumes so much of the national budget that the country has been forced to curtail other developments. No other source of revenue is available that will enable the Pakistanis to compete with the Indian military that has a budget three times greater than theirs and a growing diversified economy to support its expansion.

The high command has concluded that the only equalizer for the weaker of the competitors is the tactical nuclear weapon. What makes this a very high risk strategy is the Pakistani first-strike policy.

India nearly retaliated against Pakistan after the 2008 Mumbai attack. That was before Pakistan had begun deploying tactical nuclear weapons. India would have been able to use its superior forces to crush Pakistani defenses.

Should there be another deadly attack by a Pakistan based terrorist organization, especially if it involves a stolen nuclear warhead, the Indians will not hesitate to retaliate. This time, the Indian army will encounter nuclear weapons in the field. Then, Delhi that has no tactical nuclear weapons will have to decide if a strategic response is to be used. The survival of South Asia and far beyond will be depending on that decision.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Asia/Is-Pakistans-Paranoia-Pushing-it-Into-a-Nuclear-War-with-India.html

By: Felix Imonti for Oilprice.com

11/6/12

November 6, 2012: Election Day

Arlene from Israel

Sharing some significant articles today — relevant for this day and thereafter…

“I Didn’t Leave the Democrats, They Left Me,” writes Sheldon Adelson (with my emphasis added).
“When members of the Democratic Party booed the inclusion of God and Jerusalem in their party platform this year, I thought of my parents.

“They would have been astounded.

“The immigrant family in which I grew up was, in the matter of politics, typical of the Jews of Boston in the 1930s and ’40s. Of the two major parties, the Democrats were in those days the more supportive of Jewish causes.

“…Like most Jews around the country, being Democrat was part of our identity, as much a feature of our collective personality as our religion.

“So why did I leave the party?

“My critics nowadays like to claim it’s because I got wealthy or because I didn’t want to pay taxes or because of some other conservative caricature. No, the truth is the Democratic Party has changed in ways that no longer fit with someone of my upbringing.

“One obvious example is the party’s new attitude toward Israel. A sobering Gallup poll from last March asked: “Are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” Barely 53% of Democrats chose Israel, the sole liberal democracy in the region. By contrast, an overwhelming 78% of Republicans sympathized with Israel.

“Nowhere was this change in Democratic sympathies more evident than in the chilling reaction on the floor of the Democratic convention in September when the question of Israel’s capital came up for a vote. Anyone who witnessed the delegates’ angry screaming and fist-shaking could see that far more is going on in the Democratic Party than mere opposition to citing Jerusalem in their platform. There is now a visceral anti-Israel movement among rank-and-file Democrats, a disturbing development that my parents’ generation would not have ignored.

“Another troubling change is that Democrats seem to have moved away from the immigrant values of my old neighborhood—in particular, individual charity and neighborliness. After studying tax data from the IRS, the nonpartisan Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that states that vote Republican are now far more generous to charities than those voting Democratic. In 2008, the seven least-generous states all voted for President Obama. My father, who kept a charity box for the poor in our house, would have frowned on this fact about modern Democrats…

“Although I don’t agree with every Republican position—I’m liberal on several social issues—there is enough common cause with the party for me to know I’ve made the right choice.

“It’s the choice that, I believe, my old immigrant Jewish neighbors would have made. They would not have let a few disagreements with Republicans void the importance of siding with the political party that better supports liberal democracies like Israel, the party that better exemplifies the spirit of charity, and the party with economic policies that would certainly be better for those Americans now looking for work.

“The Democratic Party just isn’t what it used to be.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204712904578092670469140316.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Maybe this will provide important perspective for some traditional Democrats who are no longer happy with the party but find it hard to leave the fold.

~~~~~~~~~~

Then we have Barry Rubin explaining, “Why Obama Should be Voted Out of Office Today”? (Emphasis added)

“There are many reasons why I’m thoroughly disgusted with all the phony Obama-loves-Israel or Obama has done a good job on foreign policy nonsense and the foolish things many American Jews and many Americans say about him on this topic. But let me reduce all of these points to one central–and indisputable by anyone who is honest–issue:

“Obama has helped put into power in Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood, the world’s leading anti-American, anti-Semitic movement; has backed its coming to power in Syria (though he backed the equally anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel Bashar al-Asad dictatorship before the revolt); and helped maintain in power another Brotherhood branch, by pressing Israel to reduce sanctions and opposing Israel’s self-defense against it,, in the Gaza Strip. This group openly embraces genocide against Israel and Jews generally.

“He has also backed a Turkish regime that loathes Israel, employs antisemitism, supports Hamas and Hezbollah, and wants to kick U.S. influence out of the region. The leader of that regime is, according to Obama, his hero. The Obama Administration has not lifted a finger to press Turkey toward rebuilding relations with Israel. On the contrary, it has rewarded a Turkish regime that is doing the opposite. Only on the issue of continued aid and intelligence cooperation with Israel has Obama kept up the traditional relationship.

“As a result of Obama’s policies, too, even more extremist Salafist movements have been unleashed. The Muslim Brotherhood is quite tolerant of these terrorist forces and uses them as part of its overall strategy.

“How can one lionize an American president who has given major backing and been an apologist for such a movement?

“…Obama’s policies have placed the lives of Americans and Israelis in jeopardy, as well as the citizens of many other countries, and made war more likely. For the first time in many decades, Israel cannot depend on the U.S. government. Neither can a dozen Arabic-speaking states that have relied on U.S. support. Neither can Middle Eastern pro-democracy advocates, moderates, secularists, women, and Christians. Neither can Americans.

“Something should be done about that. And today is the day to do it.”

http://www.gloria-center.org/2012/11/one-thousand-and-one-articles-later-why-obama-should-be-voted-out-of-office-today/

~~~~~~~~~~

I put out a posting recently refuting Alan Dershowitz’s positions in supporting Obama, which appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Today, to my delight there as a piece, “An open letter to Professor Alan Dershowitz from a former student at Harvard.”

This is by one Anthony Gordon, who writes, “I felt duty bound, and I say this with a heavy heart, to warn the readers of the Post to discount and ignore the weak and baseless arguments that you proffer in your attempt to justify why President Barack Hussein Obama has earned your vote.”

Regrettably, I cannot find a URL for this — I have it in hard copy. Perhaps it is simply not up yet. This piece addresses both the inadvisability of considering Obama worthy of re-election, and the inadvisability of considering opinions as espoused by Dershowitz as necessarily having any merit. The second point transcends the issue of the election.

What is ironic is that in the Internet version of the Post today, Dershowitz advocates for negotiations for a two state solution. Right…

11/6/12

Where we are today, how we got here, and where do we go from here.

By: Nelson Abdullah
Conscience of a Conservative

Four years ago America was struck by a calamity of such great proportions it was like being side-swiped on the expressway by an 18-wheeler. It was the perfect storm that came together and helped elect a virtually unknown, black Democrat to the highest office in the land. The day after election day 2008 Americans were punch drunk. Most of us didn’t know what had hit them. Some of us did. It could be said that the ascent of Barack Hussein Obama was the result of the most perfectly organized publicity campaign in American history. We soon found out that many good white Christians had been convinced that to not vote for a black man would have made them feel like racists. It was obvious where some of his votes came from; because he was black he had picked up more than 95% of the votes from black people. He got a lot of young people to vote for him because he was cool and hip and admitted to doing drugs while in college. And then there were the votes that came from the left-wing fringe crowd, the one’s who find fault with all the goodness in America, the one’s that blame the Republicans for everything. And there was always the union votes and the ‘give me more free stuff’ votes.

The one thing that helped Barack Hussein Obama the most was the indisputable fact that almost all of the news media is controlled by liberals, and they knew exactly who Obama really was. Nobody ever said that liberals were stupid. They may be completely biased but not ignorant. Barack Hussein Obama was the substance of every pipe dream they ever had. And they helped most to project his manufactured image more than anything. They had to because no one of good conscience in America would have voted for a person who espoused so many anti-American ideals.

The liberal news media also had to run interference for Obama to counter the fragmented conservative groups who were beginning to discover the secrets of Obama’s background. First off they needed to ensure that the Republican Party did not put up any strong candidates to run against him. During the course of the Republican primaries one candidate, who was seemingly the least popular, was Sen. John McCain, from Arizona. McCain was the most liberal of all the Republicans, a genuine RINO, a Republican In Name Only. So the news media, almost as if they were following a playbook, decided to give McCain some very much undeserved publicity. The favorable press McCain received boosted his standings in the primaries at the expense of several conservative alternatives. Of course, the news media knew all the unsavory details about John McCain and was simply holding this back to use against him after he won the nomination. Even after McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, and Governor Palin wowed the delegates at the Republican National Convention with her homespun conservative talk about lipstick on a Pitbull, many Republicans still couldn’t stomach John McCain and opted to stay home on election day, just as the liberal news media had counted on. What else could be expected from Republicans who had listened to some of the inane comments from their presidential candidate during the campaign. Speaking as a true politician with no moral compass, McCain went so far as to say he ‘would never say anything bad about a fellow member of the Senate’. After telling an audience that ‘Obama is a good man’ McCain practically suggested it was OK to vote for him.

From the beginning of Barack Hussein Obama’s first campaign and continuing into his second campaign his political rhetoric was never questioned or explained by the media. Almost every word that came out of his mouth had a double meaning. When he promised to ‘fundamentally change America’ no one had any idea what he meant by it. Well, the liberals knew but they weren’t talking, and the conservatives knew but without any channels through which to get out the truth, no one found out. When Obama said in his second campaign that he needed ‘four more years to finish what he started’ many people had no idea what it was that he wanted to finish. This time the conservatives knew a lot more about Obama than four years ago. We knew he had used a ghost writer to finish his autobiography. The same person who had helped launch his career in politics back in Chicago. A man named Bill Ayers who happened to be the co-founder of the pro-Communist terrorist group, the Weather Underground. And as if that was not as incredible as it seemed we then learned from that manufactured biography that Obama had spent 10 years in Hawaii being mentored by a person named Frank. And that Frank turned out to be a card carrying Communist named Frank Marshal Davis. From Hawaii, young Barack Hussein Obama went on to Occidental College, and thus began the mystery of his hidden background that has cost Mr. Obama several million dollars in legal fees to keep secret.

The last four years of the Obama administration has been a war on America that was plotted and executed by a Democrat-controlled Congress two years before the 2008 elections. Almost as if the Democrats had conceived of a long term game plan to turn America upside down, Barack Hussein Obama, then an unknown State Senator from Illinois with no outstanding voting record, was given the opportunity to make a keynote speech at the 2004 Democrat National Convention. Then, after a blistering campaign by the leftist news media to undermine Republican president George W. Bush, the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 mid-term elections and commenced the next stage of their plan, cripple the U.S. economy. Working though the banking committees in the House and Senate, Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Barney Frank, both Democrats, made changes to the rules that governed the way banks would issue mortgages. They now demanded that banks issue mortgages to people who could not afford them. No one in their right mind could ever imagine that forcing banks to lend money to people who couldn’t pay it back was an act of stupidity or negligence. It was a very subtle plan to cause massive home foreclosures and the ripple down effect to bankrupt the banking institutions. Banks cover their loans by grouping them into notes called sub-prime loans and insure them through FANNIE MAY and FREDDIE MACK the Federal National Mortgage agencies. The result was quickly felt and the stock market almost collapsed a year later along with massive unemployment. After Obama was elected he was given a mandate to fix the economy along with a blank check. He borrowed trillions of dollars from China and began to repay the sources of his Democratic backers. Billions were squandered in Green Energy enterprises owned by Obama supporters who had contributed to his campaigns. After accepting the loans from the government these businesses went bankrupt. The auto industry also became a victim of the downfall of the economy and General Motors was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy when Barack Hussein Obama stepped in and took control of the company. After giving GM billions in loans, Obama replaced the Chairman of the Board with one of his cronies, placed two member of the United Auto Workers on the Board of Directors and handed over 1/3 of GM’s stock to the Auto Workers union.

Acting like a kid in a candy store Obama went hog wild grabbing power in the U.S. government. With no authorization from Congress or the Constitution, Obama created three dozen separate departments within his administration run by people he alone appointed and called them Czars. He was following his campaign pledge to ‘fundamentally transform America’ into a Socialist state.

So today is the day every conservative has been waiting for, for the last four years. Time for payback. Time to correct the error made in 2008. Time to take back America. The liberal news media almost had succeeded in a repeat of 2008 by helping decide who the Republican candidate for president would be. Joined by a leftist community of entertainers, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has been the subject of ridicule and bias and insult for the entire presidential campaign. Liberal news commentators have salivated over Barack Hussein Obama’s reelection efforts to the effect that some of them have gone ballistic at the mere mention of Mitt Romney’s name on television.

But an unexpected thing has happened in this 2012 campaign. Due to a remarkable decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, private organizations were allowed to form to raise unlimited amounts of money to spend for and against the candidates and they certainly have. The TEA Party that was so prominent in the 2010 mid-term elections with massive outdoor demonstrations came back with a well organized television campaign and a nationwide bus tour. Several other grass root organizations sprung up and have blistered the television airwaves with a non-stop campaign. As a result, the national polls are showing this race for the presidency almost tied. And the more realistic polls, the one’s that do not give over-sampling to Democrats, are showing Mitt Romney leading by a sizable margin.

What happens tomorrow? There is always the fear that the Democrats could steal the election away from Mitt Romney. There have been widespread cases of voter fraud reported both with ACORN, absentee ballots and dead people voting – all due to the Democrats opposition to voter I.D. laws. Voting machines have been found to be rigged. The Democrats have made it difficult to impossible for our soldiers in the Armed Forces overseas to participate in the vote. The hurricane disaster in the northeast has caused many people to be unable to vote in the normal way; N.J. said they could vote by email and N.Y. said they could vote in any precinct. And then, Barack Hussein Obama and his chief White House consultant Valerie Jarrett have promised revenge on everyone who opposed him. Should the criminal efforts to reelect Obama fail, he will still have two months to remain in office and it is expected that he will commence a reign of terror against America. And, God forbid, should Obama get reelected, he will get his opportunity to finish the job he started and fundamentally transform America. And in the next four years, the America we know today, will no longer exist. Barack Hussein Obama with change the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court and with a liberal majority in the highest court in the land he will challenge every right that every citizen now enjoys today.

Looking back at the last two years since the TEA Party enabled the Republicans to take back the House of Representatives, it may prove to be a grave mistake that the majority Republicans decided not to target Barack Hussein Obama personally with their investigative sub-committees. Had they did so he would have been so distracted with defending his fraudulent conduct he would have no time to campaign. This mistake was the result of still having too many establishment Republicans in senior positions in the party. Too much of the clubhouse mentality like John McCain who refused to attack a fellow member of the Senate.

What else should we worry about if Obama wins? First off is, plan for a civil war. When Obama successfully challenges the 2nd Amendment and boosts the U.N. gun ban there will be millions of gun owns who won’t take kindly to that knock on the door when they come to disarm you. Plan for shortages in food because interstate commerce is still controlled by the government and it is not to extreme to think that entire communities could become victims of shortages.

And pray more today than ever before so that none of this happens. As St. Augustine said: “Work, as if everything depended on you. Pray, as if everything depended on God.” Conservatives have worked this election to the bone, emptied their savings, and now it is time to pray.

It is now 1 PM EST, we’ve already voted. The rest is up to God.

My name is Nelson Abdullah and I am Oldironsides.

11/6/12

Betting on Romney

By: Citizen Scribe
Pic Hat Tip: Trapper Pettit

The Riviera Theatre is in Chicago, Ill

Question of the day:

Do you think more republicans will vote for Romney this year than voted for McCain in 2008?

Do you think more democrats will vote for Obama than voted for him in 2008?

Do you think more independents will vote for Obama this time? For Romney?

I find the polling data starkly at odds with the external data. Attendance at campaign events is massively different. Perceptible enthusiasm is radically different.

Even if all the same people — exactly the same people — as in 2008 showed up at the poll, what is the likelihood that these same people will cast the same vote they did in 2008?

Yes, I’ve seen the opinions of the grim partisans, I’ve seen the opinions of the pundits whose bread is buttered on the Blue side as well as the Red.

I’ve also heard from any number of people who voted for Obama in 2008 who are having the most acute case of buyer’s remorse I’ve ever seen. Case in point: my wife’s relatives — all of them — voted for Obama. She talked to them on the phone yesterday. Every single one of them a) expressed the sentiment that Obama scares the hell ouf of them, b) is voting for Romney.

So, what are the odds that 100% of last election’s Obama voters are voting for him this time? Going only by people I’ve talked to, and whom my wife has talked to, he’s lost a substantial portion of that vote.

Romney? Well, at minimum I expect him to carry the same states McCain took in 2008, those being the same folks who would vote for an old shoe over Obama. And then there are the states whose economies are directly threatened by an Obama administration. While Romney may not capture all of those, I expect he’ll pick up a couple of those. And then there are those states whose externals — attendance at rallies — shows a startling swing toward Romney, and I expect him to pick up one or two of those.

What I’m hearing from the the Blue pundits is, “Obama, narrow but solid win.” What I’m hearing from the Red pundits is, “Romney, by at least a nose.”

What I find confounding is how both sets of pundits are williing to confer any authority at all on the polls. The average poll sampling skew is Democrat +7, some as high as +11, with the conventional wisdom being that 2010 was a fluke and nothing that happened then will be reflected in today’s turnout.

Seriously?

Speaking now as a data analyst, I have to say there is no effing way the numbers can line up the way the polling data would indicate.

The only wild card is voting fraud. In Philly, the Black Panthers have shown up yet again to intimidate voters, and the head of elections had all the Republican poll watchers ejected, requiring an emergency court order to have them reinstated (after a period of time long enough to stuff the ballot boxes).

What I’m counting on is that the actual turnout will be large enough to outweigh the Democrat vote stacking fraud. Yes, it has come down to that. Republicans have to show up in numbers not only large enough to win, but large enough to win IN SPITE OF THE FRAUD.

Without voter fraud, this is a cake walk for Romney. The only way this can be taken from him is fraud.

Yes, I expect Romney to win. What worries me is that he may not win by a large enough margin to avoid Minnesota-style recounts.

Obama wants “revenge.” Valerie Jarrett is promising “payback.” When someone who *owned* the political process for the first two years and who held the Senate and White House for all four years of this administration still speaks in terms of “revenge” and “payback” you have to realize that the integrity of the process means little to them: as long as they win, anything goes.

In spite of all that, I believe Romney wins.