Daily Archives: October 25, 2013

10/25/13

Bill O’Reilly on Socialism and a Shocking New Book

By: Sara Noble
The Independent Sentinel

Cartoon via Conservative Daily News

Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points earlier this week struck hard on a shocking and alarming truth. Socialist and Communist ideals are replacing the American tradition of self-reliance, freedom, and perseverance.

He used the words socialism and communism to describe the purpose of Obamacare and the entitlement/welfare society which is growing exponentially in this country.

People need to look at what is happening in our country and if they don’t start caring, they might not like the society their children and grandchildren will be forced to live in. A pervasive and unrelenting statist force is permeating our government at all levels – town, city, state and federal.

There is a new book about the socialist and communist influences in our government which I would like to see everyone read. It’s called The Enemies Within by Trevor Loudon. The information in the book is both shocking and undeniable, undeniable because it is very well-researched. To give you a glimpse into the book, I will share some of the reasons for the dramatic transformation of California as detailed in the book.

The state has gone extremely far-left with LA County being most definitively so. How did it happen?

I think this book gives a clear vision of the insidious and deceptive undercurrent that runs counter to American values and which consumed LA in less than two decades. The book names names and provides dates and records. As I said, the facts in the book are undeniable.

In 1998, the Democratic Socialists of America came up with PLAN, the Progressive Los Angeles Network, which was a socialist program to take political control of America’s second largest city.

Two Socialist leaders, Steve Tarzynski and Harold Meyerson came up with an A-list of future leaders who conformed to their ideology of socialism and communism. Tarzynski had chosen the ‘cream of Los Angeles’ socialist ‘progressive’ activists, academics and elected officials. Most were members or supporters of DSA (Democratic Socialists of America).

One of those chosen was California Assembly Speaker, Antonio Villaraigosa. More about him in a moment.

Within two year-and-a-half years, nine task forces were ready to establish the city’s policies in housing, economic development, transportation, land use, community development, the urban environment, health policy and participation in the democratic process, democratic being code for socialist.

LA has become the laboratory for the new democracy and will determine the destiny of the new wave of immigrants who will force social economic equity on the fabric of society.

PLAN campaigned hard for Antonio Villaraigosa as Mayor of LA with the help of the Communist Party and compliant unions. They fell short at first but won several ‘progressive’ allies to the City Council.

PLAN sought help from Progressives outside LA and ‘modified’ the image of their very radical mayoral choice, Villaraigosa. He won.

Villaraigosa had been a union organizer and head of the ACLU. He was a past supporter of MEChA, a radical Chicano separatist group with a ‘strong Marxist-Leninist underpinning and a veteran of the Venceremos Brigade sojourn in Cuba.’ He was trained by Bert Corona, a Communist Party member and the father of the ‘immigrant’s rights’ movement.

While artificially appearing moderate, he has consolidated power for the Southern California left. A key part of his agenda has been making LA into an illegal immigrant haven. Having been through LA, I’d say it’s closer to being a hell hole of crime and poverty than a haven.

Villaraigosa has filled city departments with like-minded radicals who are setting policy. The LA County Commission on Human Relations is headed by Robin Toma, a former supporter of the ‘ultra militant Communist Workers Party . He has used his position to further far-left causes such as forcing’PC’ restrictions on the LAPD.

The head of the LA Alliance for a New Economy is Roxana Tynan, whose former boss, Madeline Janis forced private developers to provide ‘living wage jobs’ and ‘affordable housing.’ Janis was able to keep the non-union Walmart from opening up in an LA suburb.

PLAN leader Maria Elena Durazo heads the LA County Federation of Labor, a powerful position. She is associated with the Democratic Socialists of America and the Communist Party and has changed California forever with the help of Big Labor and Get Out the Vote efforts among the LA Latino population.

LA and Southern California are now an impregnable Democratic Party stronghold controlled by the furthest left members of the Party.

There is much more in the book. It gives an incisive look into the inner workings of the Progressive movement infiltrating city-after city in the United States. It also talks about the Progressives in Congress who are now dictating US policy.

I think that if you read The Enemies Within, you might find it a valuable reference for understanding what is happening to America. We can only stop these forces if people are informed and we need to stop them if we hope to remain free.

Click this link for information and purchase of The Enemies Within

We live in a dangerous world and the dangers are no less within our own government.

When someone like Bill O’Reilly, who is an Independent and not ideologically-driven, talks about socialism and its relation to Obamacare, it is time to listen. Are Americans so apathetic that they will let this happen or, worse, refuse to even see what is going on around them?

Think of the arrogance of these people who work for us and who are now disdainfully dictating to us. We have an HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who said today that she doesn’t work for the people who want her fired, but she arrogantly ignores the fact that she works for us.

She has used ridiculous excuses for not testifying and might deign to appear next Wednesday before a Senate committee. She is too busy to explain to the American people why she spent $1 billion dollars to set up a website that doesn’t work. Her incompetence is stunning. She managed the website without even seeing to it that the most obvious routines such as testing the site were carried out until the last moment and, even then, the site was not beta tested.

She lied to Sanjay Gupta in a recent interview, saying the president didn’t know about the severity of the situation. There is no scenario under which this is possible – none.

Jay Carney said that no one could have known. NO ONE COULD HAVE KNOWN?!? Any fool could have known.

President Obama aligns with these forces undermining our Constitution and our freedoms in favor of pushing Big Government into every facet of our lives.

He is a statist who is committed to his ideology of redistribution, reparations, and economic and environmental justice. He is a globalist who is blurring the lines of our sovereignty for what he perceives to be the world’s rights to our wealth.

His views are extreme and he is incapable of adjusting to reality in a pragmatic way.

It is impossible to know what is in Mr. Obama’s heart but socialism is what he knows.

President Obama is the son and grandson of Communists. He was mentored by Communist and pedophile, Franklin Marshall Davis who was hand-selected by Barack’s grandfather to guide him.

In college, Mr. Obama hung out with the Chicanos, Marxist Professors, structural feminists…

From Dreams From My Father:

‘To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night,in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints. We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.’

He spent 20-years in a Christian-Marxist Church listening to Rev. Wright rail against whites, Jews, and other real or imagined enemies.

Mr. Obama worked with Bill Ayers for three years and it was Bill Ayers who gave him his start in politics.

Mr. Obama is devoted to redistribution of our wealth in every sector of our economy. Redistribution is clearly Marxist.

Mr. Obama is a friend to our foreign enemies and an enemy to our friends. He supports a terrorist organization – The Muslim Brotherhood.

He is spying on citizens and foreigners without restraint. The rules and boundaries which existed prior have been erased. He releases vital national security secrets like Stuxnet when it will glorify his image.

He is spending so freely that we will easily owe 22 trillion within the next decade, possibly a lot sooner. Student homelessness is record-breaking, violent crime is up 15%, we have two Army brigades left to defend us should we be attacked, Americans are accumulating debt faster than savings, we have spent $3.7 trillion on welfare in five years, and there is no end in sight.

No one is attempting to curb the spending.

Mr. Obama is no friend of Capitalism and small business. His recent behavior with JP Morgan Chase is a good example. JP Morgan agreed to take over the failing WaMu and Bear Stearns during the 2008 economic downturn as long as they did not have to pay the consequences of the crimes committed by their new acquisitions. They were promised by Mr. Obama that the government would not punish them for their kind deed.

Mr. Obama went back on his word, coincidentally, right after JP Morgan’s CEO, Jamie Dimon criticized him.

The Obama Administration recently demanded that JPM pay $13 billion, mostly for the sins of the two lenders. JPM has said publicly that 80% of the losses accrued from the loans that are the subject of this settlement were from Bear and WaMu.

It is government theft of the shareholders’ money, pure and simple, and it’s not the kind of thing that should take place in a Capitalist nation.

This is not what our nation was founded on and it is not a good place for us to go, or one day we will find that we have no rights or property of our own and we are wards of the State.

10/25/13

Raiders of the Lost Archive

From: Fern Sidman

Don’t return the rescued written treasures of Iraqi Jews to Baghdad.
(Originally published in The Jerusalem Post)

By: Sara Y Aharon

In 2003, a team of 16 American soldiers in Baghdad stumbled upon a lost treasure trove of thousands of documents belonging to Iraq’s Jewish community.

These rare materials, thought to have been stored originally in synagogues and private Jewish homes, were sitting in a moldy, flooded basement of the muhkabarat, Saddam Hussein’s feared secret police.

The collection, now referred to as the “Iraqi Jewish archive,” contains “2,700 Jewish books and tens of thousands of documents in Hebrew, Arabic, Judeo-Arabic and English, dating from 1540 to the 1970s,” including a 1568 Bible and several Torah scrolls, according to the National Archives in Washington.

After the initial 2003 discovery in Iraq, conservation teams from the National Archives determined that Baghdad did not have the appropriate facilities for preserving the documents, including temperature controls.

The Iraqi government thus permitted the Americans to take the collection to the US for conservation work, but only on condition of the archive’s eventual return to Baghdad.

The current scheduled date of departure to Iraq is June 2014, less than one year away.

The notion of permanently sending these thousands of Jewish items to Iraq is absurd. Violence still abounds in Iraq; there would be no proper accessibility to or preservation measures for the archive.

I wonder if there are even interested audiences in Iraq or proper frameworks for contextualization, considering that fewer than a dozen Jews live in Iraq today, and Iraqis visiting the collection almost surely have never met a Jewish person before.

The Iraqi Jewish archive’s discovery resonates personally; my grandfather was born and raised in a Jewish family in Baghdad. His family, along with the rest of Baghdad’s Jewish community, was allowed to emigrate in the early 1950s in an Israeli airlift only if they renounced their citizenships and their property assets.

Thankfully my grandfather was still able to complete his studies at the American University of Beirut’s medical school; he became a pediatrician.

But my grandfather’s passport, upon leaving Iraq, said that he was “stateless.” Meaning Iraq’s Jewish community of 100,000-plus was essentially robbed of its major possessions and its nationality. They left their country of origin belonging to nowhere.

This remarkable recovery of Baghdad’s Jewish archive is not the first time such a dramatic unearthing of Jewish materials in the Middle East and Central Asia has occurred. The most well known example is the Cairo Geniza, a collection of thousands of documentary fragments, many from the medieval period, found in that city’s Ben Ezra Synagogue.

The Cairo Geniza was removed to England en masse by scholar Solomon Schechter in the 1890s.

“Geniza” refers to a hidden repository where Jewish communities stored written materials, from religious texts to private commercial and social papers such as handwritten letters and legal contracts.

And just within the past few years, scholars were stunned by discoveries of Jewish documents in Afghanistan dating from 1,000 years ago. This Afghanistan Geniza, rumored to number about 200 documents, was already dispersed to antiquities dealers around the world by the time the press heard about the trove.

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem is trying to acquire the Afghan Geniza items, and as of this past January, it had successfully purchased 29 documents from antiquities dealers.

Discoveries of these magnitudes typically lead to questions regarding possession.

Who rightfully owns a cultural heritage? Baghdad argues that the Jewish archive belongs to Iraq as a collection stored in the country. From that perspective, the Americans, if they keep the collection, are the raiders, rather than the saviors, of this lost archive.

However, for Iraqi Jews – the owners of the archive’s materials, as well as the descendants of its original owners – the Iraqi government is the true raider, the party that stole their citizenship, their property assets and their written treasures.

The American government should not set a precedent where Jewish artifacts recovered from the Middle East and Central Asia are sent back to war-torn countries, particularly with the current turmoil following the Arab Spring. If we suddenly heard about centuries- old Jewish documents found in Aleppo, and they were brought to America for conservation, would the US seriously entertain the idea of returning those precious materials to Syria? The Iraqi Jewish archive’s manuscripts, documents and holy books, some from five centuries ago and some from just 50 years ago, belonged to real people. Jewish people.

They and their relatives may still be alive to claim them.

The National Archives is now displaying 24 of the Iraqi Jewish artifacts in its new exhibit, “Discovery and Recovery: Preserving Iraqi Jewish Heritage,” which opened earlier this month and runs through January 5, 2014.

For those who cannot visit, the National Archives explains that “a special website to launch this fall will make these historic materials freely available to all online as they are digitized and catalogued.”

Ostensibly the digitization project is also supposed to offer consolation to those angry and upset about the Jewish archive’s planned removal to Iraq.

I’m deeply grateful to and wholeheartedly thank the National Archives for saving the Iraqi Jewish archive.

It’s not enough, however, to digitize the collection. A noble and essential goal, to be sure, but frankly it’s insufficient when these hundreds of- years-old documents already reside safely in the US.

What if this archive holds my great-grandfather’s journal? What if those are my great-great-grandmother’s letters that were rescued from ruin? Why won’t I ever be able to feel and touch their own works? The entire collection must remain permanently in the United States or Israel. A Jewish institution would be the most fitting, but not strictly necessary. If the Iraqi Jewish materials can stay together in the National Archives, for instance, I’d be thrilled.

I write this op-ed as a concerned American woman with Ashkenazi and Sephardic heritage from Jewish communities around the world. Our family escaped the pogroms in Russia-Poland at the turn of the century, and they survived the 1941 pogrom in Baghdad, called the Farhud, against its Jews.

I write this op-ed for my grandfather.

I write this op-ed as a researcher of modern Jewish history who understands firsthand the extreme difficulties of finding new primary source materials from the Middle East and Central Asia, let alone translating them.

The crucial goal is not to send this Jewish archive to live in Iraq, where there’s no security or open access for all scholars, researchers and global citizens. I write this oped as a descendant of a once vibrant community effectively expelled from Iraq, the country that still wants to keep Jewish belongings, if not Jewish citizens.

The writer is the author of From Kabul to Queens: The Jews of Afghanistan and Their Move to the United States (Decalogue Books and the American Sephardi Federation).

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Raiders-of-the-lost-archive-329540

10/25/13

Progressives on the Right Declare War on the Tea Party

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Cross-Posted at Right Wing News

Looks like Karl Rove and his hamster brigade are on the march, threatening to “beat the snot” out of the Tea Party in the upcoming primaries. We’ll just see about that son.

Evidently, the wealthy Progressive elitists on the Right figure they can use money as a weapon and simply ‘out spend’ the Tea Party into oblivion. Instead of the old maxim that they will ‘breed us out,’ they are sticking to ‘spend us out.’ Someone should tell those boys that money can’t buy you love and their flagrant attempt at buying votes and elections will not be well-received by Americans.

The RINOs must be scared to death to launch a full head-on attack against a faction of their own party. Could it be the Marxist dinosaurs sense extinction bearing down on their fat heads? I think so. After the Tea Party winning resoundingly in 2010 and Tea Party warriors such as Sarah Palin, Allen West, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee started having political pull, the RINOs figured that the insurrection by the uppity Constitutionalists simply wouldn’t do. They needed to be put in their respective places, shut up and toe the party line. The Progressives on the Right want Revenge and it is a dish best served cold:

This will not be a coordinated operation. It will be messy, ugly, and prone to backfiring. And if the comeback succeeds, it will be in fits and starts, most likely culminating in the selection of a presidential nominee in 2016.

“Hopefully we’ll go into eight to 10 races and beat the snot out of them,” said former Rep. Steve LaTourette of Ohio, whose new political group, Defending Main Street, aims to raise $8 million to fend off tea-party challenges against more mainstream Republican incumbents. “We’re going to be very aggressive and we’re going to get in their faces.”

(…)”This is a battle we have to fight,” said GOP consultant John Feehery, who has advised top Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. “We can’t just lie down and let this happen.”

He’s right about that, this is a battle we have to fight and it should have been fought long ago. The Progressives within the Republican Party needed to be kicked out. Time to clean house and return to the Constitutional principles that made this country great. A political earthquake is coming on both sides of the aisle and a shakeup in 2014 and 2016 will be jarring to say the least. As Obamacare bites, more and more Americans are going to realize just how much they have been screwed and boy, are they going to be pissed. Pissed enough to vote the Marxist bastards out, I would wager. They’ll be lucky if it only goes that far. People get testy when they are hungry and suffer under the boot of a tyrant.

So, Republican strategists, donors and party wonks are busily conspiring to run attack ads against Tea Party candidates for Congress. These same hacks want open primaries vs. state conventions and are taking on conservative groups such as FreedomWorks, The Heritage Foundation, the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Club for Growth and every Tea Party and 912 Project out there. What we have here now officially is one party — the Progressive Party vs. everyone else. The other party that is being borne out of this is the Tea Party which will replace the Republican Party from within. The patriots are itching for a coup that wrests control of the Party of Lincoln back into the hands of Constitutionalists from every walk of life. The Tea Party is mainstream – it is America. And as these RINOs spend their money and run their ads, they should remember one thing… Americans love a good fight and every evil occupation deserves a good resistance. I say tea all around.

Karl Rove has become a monster:

Another group targeting the Tea Party will be Karl Rove’s Conservative Victory Project, an arm of the Crossroads super PAC. They plan to vet GOP primary candidates with the goal of sending the most viable conservative to the general election.

He is the George Soros of the Right and needs to go away — seriously. He fancies himself the head of a Progressive Right mafia. But his deal is one we can totally refuse. Americans don’t like what they see in big business and big money trying to manipulate the masses into slavery. They are not falling for Amnesty for All or for the bigger is better government push by a bunch of political slum lords. Oh, but the Republican powers-that-be fear Ted Cruz:

Because efforts to roll the tea party typically provoke activists to roar back stronger than ever, the old guard is stumped in some instances. Ideally, the establishment would figure out a way to channel the movement’s passion into electoral victories in 2014 and 2016. But how do you control Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican ringleader of the shutdown, who may not count enough friends on Capitol Hill to rename a post office but whose real power comes from outside Washington?

That last sentence is music to my ears and Cruz’s real power does indeed lie with ordinary Americans. And that power will rise and restore America once again.

Either the Republicans will turn and get their act together or they will be the Whigs (they pretty much already are). Progressives on the Right who are declaring war on the Tea Party should think twice. Are they willing to lose it all? Constitutionalists are willing to fight and die for their freedom. Are you ready for a fight?

South Carolina Tea Party Coalition: The Tea Party movement may only be a few years old, but the beginning of the movement is often misunderstood and misreported. While the tea party is often portrayed as being purely an anti-Obama movement, the truth is that the Republican Party has always been as much a target as President Obama and his administration.

10/25/13

“We’re here to kill Americans”: Witness on Benghazi attack

CBS News:

We’re hearing for the first time from a security officer who witnessed the terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last year.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack on the mission and a nearby annex. In an interview for “60 Minutes,” correspondent Lara Logan spoke with a British citizen, who had been hired to train the Libyan guards at the U.S. mission. He calls himself Morgan Jones, a pseudonym to protect his safety.

Jones says he was annoyed that the State Department wouldn’t allow his guards to carry guns. As the attack began on Sept. 11, one of the guards called Jones, who was living nearby.

“I could hear gunshots, and I — and he said, ‘There’s — there’s men coming into the mission,’” Jones said. “His voice, he was — he was scared. You could tell he was really scared, and he was running. You could tell he was running.”

Read more at Tammy Bruce…

10/25/13

The Thinning of the Military Herd? Officers Purged

By: Susan Knowles
Gulag Bound

United_States_Department_of_Defense_Seal

Why are top military officials being discharged at such a rapid rate by President Obama? Is it a “thinning of the herd?” Nine top ranking military officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps have been recently dismissed or fired by the Obama Administration. They are all career military men with some similarities between them. Are their dismissals common practice or is something else going on?

The list of those terminated is as follows:

  • Gen. Carter Hamm, Army
  • Rear Adm. Charles Gaouette, Navy
  • Maj. Gen. Ralph Baker, Army
  • Brigadier Gen. Bryan Roberts, Army
  • Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant, Marine Corps
  • Maj. Gen. Charles M.M. Gurganus, Marine Corps
  • Lt. Gen. David Holmes Huntoon Jr, Army
  • Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, Navy
  • Major Gen. Michael Carey, Air Force

Michael Carey and Tim Giardina were both commanders of United States nuclear arsenals and were dismissed within 48 hours of each other. An internal email sites Carey’s dismissal as due to an inspector general probe of his behavior while on a “temporary duty assignment.” No other details were given except that the allegations didn’t have to do with recent failed inspections under Major General Carey’s units.

It is interesting to note, however, that Major General Carey, who was a veteran in both of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, was terminated by Lt. General James Kowalski, commander of Air Force Global Strike Command, who is in charge of all Air Force nuclear weapons.

Kowalski indicated that Carey’s conduct did not “exemplify the trust and responsibilities of a commander who is responsible for the nuclear force.” Air Force officials earlier this year told the AP that “twice this year alone, Air Force Officers entrusted with launch keys to nuclear-tipped missiles have been caught leaving open a blast door that is intended to help prevent a terrorist or other intruder from entering their underground command post and potentially compromising secret launch codes.” Could this information be connected in some way to Carey and Giardina? If so, these are serious allegations and may have warranted their dismissals unless the allegations prove to be contrived.

Curiously, Kowalski has been nominated to succeed Vice Admiral Tim Giardina (who was dismissed approximately the same time as Carey). Kowalski awaits confirmation by the Senate. It must also be noted that Kowalski was promoted in January 2011 to Lt. General, after having only served as Major General for less than 2 years. An average tour for a Major General is between 2-4 years.

Carter Hamm, Charles Gauoette, and Ralph Baker were all connected in some way to Benghazi but it is not known if they were released because of that involvement. It has been alleged that General Hamm was dismissed after he complained to a Republican Congressman that he had not received any requests for support the night of the Benghazi attacks.

Greg Sturdevant and Charles Gurganus both had a connection to our troops in Afghanistan. Bryan Roberts was fired for committing adultery (a seldom used provision in the military for dismissal) and David Huntoon was relieved for an “improper relationship.”

Less known is the suspension of two other military officials who were suspended on October 10, 2013, following the termination of the nine high ranking officers. Both of the suspended men are members of the Army’s 143rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command, at Camp Arifan, Kuwait. Brig. General Bryan W. Wampler, the commanding general and Command Sgt. Major Don B. Jordan, the senior enlisted have been suspended without a reason given to the public other than there is no criminal misconduct.

Brig. Gen. Bryan W. Wampler and Command Sgt. Maj. Don B. Jordan

Brig. Gen. Bryan W. Wampler and Command Sgt. Maj. Don B. Jordan

Is it unusual for a president to dismiss high ranking officers? No. George Bush dismissed high ranking officers associated with our presence in Afghanistan. What is unusual is the number of high ranking military officers that have been dismissed under President Obama.

The recent firing of the large number of military officers is perhaps just a continuation of Obama’s dismissal of high ranking officers. You may recall in 2009, that Obama fired General McKiernan, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for embarrassing Obama’s administration by asking for more troops in Afghanistan. General McKiernan was a four star general and the first to be fired during wartime since General Douglas MacArthur.

Gates, Petraeus, McChrystal (Doug Mills / New York Times)

Gates, Petraeus, McChrystal (Doug Mills / New York Times)

General McChrystal replaced McKiernan by Obama and became the new ISAF commander. McChrystal was considered a change from the “old school” ideology of General McKiernan. General McChrystal, in fact, voted for Obama and was in favor of Obama’s COIN strategy of counterinsurgency used in Afghanistan in which a recognized government of a nation acts to stop an insurgency or takeover of its government with military involvement. This strategy proved not to be effective in winning over the Afghans. McChrystal later fell out of grace over a Rolling Stone’s article in which he did not hold Obama in high esteem.

General McChrystal was fired and replaced with General Petraeus in 2010. As you may remember, General Petraeus lasted about a year in that position before he was fired for an alleged affair with a woman, who was his biographer and fellow West Point graduate. It has also been said that his military career was not helped by the fact that the Republicans were interested in him for a possible 2016 presidential candidacy. General Allen replaced General Petraeus and was later fired for similar allegations.

Petraus, Broadwell (AFP/Getty)

Petraus, Broadwell (AFP/Getty)

Earlier this year, General Mattis, who took over General Petraeus’ old position as commander over the United States Central Command, was fired without even a phone call for having a more warlike viewpoint in dealing with Iran than does the Obama administration. His firing may have gone unnoticed in the media or deemed unimportant because it occurred before the more recent firings.

Is Obama merely firing these leaders because they stand in disagreement with his personal and political viewpoints or are there other reasons that may be more onerous, such as, “thinning the herd” to achieve a greater goal?

Some have speculated that Obama may be preparing “his military” for a role that he knows not every military man or woman will follow. It is rumored that there is a “litmus test” that Obama is giving to the U.S. Military Officers that determines whether or not they “Would fire on an American Citizen.” Supposedly, Dr. Garrow, a philanthropist, head of a nonprofit organization to protect female children from being killed in China, and claimed CIA agent, asserts that as a covert CIA agent, he was given this test. However, other indications are that he did not confirm this litmus test. The mysteries surrounding the allegations against President Obama remain unresolved at least for now.

The definition of “thinning of the herd” is “Allowing natural selection to work its course, thus thinning out the population of those that can not survive on their own.”

In this instance, the thinning could involve Obama’s selection and weeding out of those military officers who are not on board with his philosophies and those he knows can not “survive” on their own should they speak out against him.

Whether this “thinning out” proves to be merely a natural and approved power of any president or something more dire for the American people will perhaps only be determined when these military officers are given the protection they need to freely speak out about what they believe is occurring. Given the Congressional hands-off approach toward this President that the majority seems to espouse it may be some time, if at all, before we are able to get to the bottom of what is really behind the massive firings.

————-

Note: Susan Knowles is an author, psychotherapist and former practicing attorney. Her latest book, a political fiction, is entitled, “Freedom’s Fight: A Call to Remember” available on Amazon.com. Her website is www.susanknowles.com, where her article may also be found.

References:

http://www.dailypaul.com/302620/list-of-us-military-generals-and-admirals-fired-by-obama
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/23/military-sources-obama-administration-purging-commanders/
http://www.alipac.us/f9/2-more-commanding-military-officials-suspended-following-dismissal-generals-290297/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/23/AR2010062300689.html
http://conservativesagainsttyranny.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/obama-escalates-military-purge-nine-high-ranking-military-officers-fired-by-obama-1st-time-in-us-history/
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/12/two-top-ranking-u-s-military-officials-dismissed-in-the-same-week-and-they-have-something-in-common/
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/10/11/20922413-air-force-general-in-charge-of-nuclear-weapons-removed-for-lack-of-trust-defense-officials
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/12/two-top-ranking-u-s-military-officials-dismissed-in-the-same-week-and-they-have-something-in-common/
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/image/id/92270/headline/Lt.%20Gen.%20James%20M.%20Kowalski/
http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Article/107901/lieutenant-general-james-m-kowalski.aspx
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/obamas-war-on-american-generals/
http://freepatriot.org/2013/10/10/bombshell-cia-agent-claims-obama-killed-breitbart-clancy/

Photos:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/us/politics/24mcchrystal.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://www.armytimes.com/article/20131014/NEWS/310140015/143rd-ESC-command-team-suspended-pending-investigation

10/25/13

As IRS Scandal Heats Up, Media Look the Other Way

By: Bethany Stotts
Accuracy in Media

The American Center for Law and Justice recently filed its second amended complaint against the U.S., the IRS, and a number of IRS officials. But this is another “phony” scandal, so don’t expect to hear about it in the mainstream media.

This is the scandal in which the IRS asked organizations to report donor lists, direct and indirect communication with legislative bodies, Internet passwords and usernames, social media postings, and even the political and charitable activities of family members. “Some of these organizations, even after receiving tax-exempt status, have been subjected to continued monitoring by the IRS based on the same unlawful purposes for which their applications were originally targeted,” states the ACLJ complaint, filed October 18.

Geoffrey Dickens wrote for the Newsbusters’ blog at the end of September that it had been approximately 60 to 90 days since “any aspect of the IRS scandal was mentioned on” the “big three morning and evening shows.” I guess we can’t get expect wall-to-wall media coverage from those sources.

But Lois Lerner’s retirement did get some mention from the media. In the September 23 article, “Lois Lerner still Hill’s favorite piñata,” Politico writer Lauren French noted that “A Democratic congressional aide said the IRS was moving toward terminating Lerner after completing an investigation into her role in the targeting controversy.” The article’s title says it all: Lerner is a punching bag, not a government official who trespassed on free speech rights. Similar excuses have been made about Susan Rice after her Sunday talk show interviews and the ensuing criticism; after all, she’s part of another “phony” scandal the Obama administration would rather have buried. For her part in the Benghazi scandal, Rice got a promotion.

“The IRS found that Lerner, who led the agency’s unit that reviewed requests for tax exemptions, mismanaged her department and was ‘neglectful of duty’ but found no evidence of political bias, the aide said,” according to Politico (emphasis added). This despite the fact that she was using unofficial email accounts on the side, and had a central role in the debacle. (Lerner is named among one of the sundry IRS officials responsible for targeting political speech by the ACLJ lawsuit).

In fact, it seems that Lerner herself knew what type of trouble was brewing for her office and the White House, given their ongoing targeting of Tea Party groups. “On March 2, 2012, Defendant Lerner received an email from IRS Deputy Division Counsel Janine Cook referring to an article in a publication known as the EO Tax Journal about congressional investigations into the IRS’s treatment of tax-exempt applications,” states the ACLJ complaint. “Defendant Lerner responded in part: ‘we’re going to get creamed.’”

Lerner—and her comrades Douglas Shulman, Sarah Hall Ingram, Nikole Flax and Judith Kindell—took to “repeatedly us[ing] nonofficial, unsecure, personal email accounts to conduct official IRS business, including sending tax return information and official classified documents to non-agency email addresses, and that Defendant Lerner alone accumulated more than 1,600 pages of emails and documents related to official IRS business in a nonofficial, unsecure, personal email account, including almost 30 pages of confidential taxpayer information,” cites the complaint.

But the American people are not supposed to get suspicious about the motives of the IRS and the Washington politicians who were—indirectly or directly—pulling its strings.

What is most striking about the complaint is how it draws a parallel timeline between the actions of Democrats in Congress and President Obama, on the one hand, and the actions of IRS officials on the other. This demonstrates that the IRS did not act in a political vacuum, but rather was under considerable pressure to conform to Congressional desires. “ACLJ chief counsel Jay Sekulow said in a statement that the group’s lawsuit was amended because the ‘intimidation campaign conducted by the IRS is much more politically motivated and coordinated than previously thought,’” reported Newsmax.

“Embattled IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram made 155 visits to the White House [between 2011 and 2013] to meet with a top Obama White House official with whom she exchanged confidential taxpayer information over email,” reported The Daily Caller. “Of Ingram’s 165 White House meetings with White House staff, a staggering 155 of them were hosted by deputy assistant to the president for health policy Jeanne Lambrew, according to a June Watchdog.Org analysis of White House visitor records.”

Clearly, the lines of communication were open between the Obama White House and the IRS.

“In 2010, as the Obama Administration bemoaned the ‘shadowy’ influence of so-called ‘special interest’ groups, the IRS was not unaffected by this political rhetoric,” states the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform September Interim Report. “Evidence available to the Committee shows that the IRS was acutely aware of this public rhetoric and that the initial Tea Party applications were first identified and elevated due to this media attention.”

On October 19, 2010, Lerner said, “So everybody is screaming at us right now: ‘Fix it now before the election. Can’t you see how much these people are spending?’ I won’t know until I look at their 990s next year whether they have done more than their primary activity as political or not. So I can’t do anything right now.” Clearly, she was not unaffected by the political rhetoric at the time.

Were Tea Party, 9/12, Patriot and other organizations subject to “viewpoint discrimination?” Consider this testimony before the House of Representatives: One Cincinnati IRS employee testified that in “normal (c)(4) cases we must develop the concept of social welfare, such as the community newspapers, or the poor, that type. These organizations mostly concentrate on their activities on the limiting government, limiting government role, or reducing government size, or paying less tax.” He thought organizations with these values were different from other social welfare organizations.

In other words, limiting government so that other social groups can grow in the open spaces is not a social welfare concept in this IRS employee’s mind.

“Defendants knew, or reasonably should have known, that their conduct would violate Plaintiffs’ federal constitutional rights,” asserts the ACLJ lawsuit.

Some Democrats may not be taking this scandal seriously, and the news media are certainly giving them a pass. “During her appearance before the House Oversight Committee a week ago, Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.) tried to dismiss the investigation by treating the whole thing as a joke, asking [Sarah Hall] Ingram if she had ‘been consorting with the Devil,’” noted the New York Post editorial board on October 16. “When Ingram answered no, Connolly went on to ask about reports she could fly. ‘Greatly exaggerated, sir,’ she replied.”

“Getting the idea that Democrats in Congress, the White House and the IRS aren’t taking this investigation seriously?” the editorial asks.

“Looks like the joke is on us,” they conclude.

Bethany Stotts is a freelance writer, and former staff writer for Accuracy in Academia. She blogs at http://bethanystotts.wordpress.com/.

10/25/13

The Council Has Spoken!! This Weeks’ Watcher’s Council Results – 10/25/13

The Watcher’s Council

South Carolina Tea Party Coalition: The Tea Party movement may only be a few years old, but the beginning of the movement is often misunderstood and misreported. While the tea party is often portrayed as being purely an anti-Obama movement, the truth is that the Republican Party has always been as much a target as President Obama and his administration.

Once again, the Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.

This week we had a tie in our Council category between Joshuapundit’s The Dirty Secret Behind ObamaCare No One’s Talking About and The Right Planet’s ObamaSoft — The World’s Worst Rollout in History, who applied his knowledge of software engineering to give us a wonderful and well written in-depth look at exactly how big the colossal failure of the ObamaCare rollout was.

In accordance to our by-laws, that means I get to put on my Watcher’s hat and break the tie, and there’s no question – The Right Planet takes the honors this week!

Here’s a slice:

Watching the disastrous rollout of the online healthcare exchanges has really left me shaking my head, and not just for the obvious reasons. The rollout of Obamacare has been described as nothing short of abysmal, leaving some to question why the administration would go ahead with the launch of a busted site. Numerous problems have plagued the debut of the Obamacare healthcare exchanges; and a number of experts are questioning the soundness of the site’s architecture.

But Obamacare supporters are attempting to slough off all the errors associated with the online exchanges as simple “glitches”–to be “expected” with such a revolutionary, comprehensive web-based system.

Well, if there’s something I do know a bit about, it’s software engineering. My background is in client-server development with an emphasis on web applications. Developing distributed applications that must communicate with multiple servers and clients was my field of expertise. I designed relational datebase schemas and ER diagrams; I modeled and mapped the application layers to the data layers using UML and OOD, I wrote the complex SQL queries and stored procedures to access the data layer from application layer; and I dealt with the interface issues and graphical design on the front-end as well. It’s been about five years since I worked for a consulting firm as a software engineer. So forgive me if I may use some “old school” terms in this article. But I’d like to take a deeper look at this whole healthcare software disaster known as healthcare.gov from purely the software engineering perspective.

First, on a bit of a sidenote, I’m surprised by the reliance on a web interface to implement the state healthcare exchanges. Is the assumption that the 30-40 million that are allegedly uninsured and desperately need Obamacare have access to an iPad, laptop or computer? Ironically, in spite of Obamacare (a.k.a Affordable Care Act) and all promises contrary, estimates are there will still be 30 million left uninsured. But I digress.

The debut of healthcare.gov is one of the worst software rollouts I’ve ever witnessed. The president was forced to hold an emergency press conference in the Rose Garden, playing the part of Salesman-in-Chief. The administration and the liberal media are portraying all the software errors as “glitches.” Well, FYI to the liberal media and the CEO of Obamasoft, we don’t refer to fatal program errors as “glitches,” not in software world.

The preferred description for a so-called software “glitch” is a bug. Almost all software contains bugs of some kind. That’s why updates, patches and new versions of software will always be the norm. People aren’t perfect, nor is technology. Software is “alive.” You can’t just code it once and leave it at that; it must constantly be refactored and improved, since technology constantly changes. The big difference between a bug and an error is, typically, a bug will not cause the application (program) to freeze or crash.

For those who have no clue about the software development process, it might help to start off with a bit off a primer on some technical terms and concepts that will hopefully give a better understanding on the challenges of developing and implementing the healthcare.gov online exchanges.

The term application has an important meaning in software engineering. In a general sense, a software application can be thought of as a computer program. But, in a strictly technical sense, a software application is commonly comprised of numerous computer programs.

There are significant differences between what is called a stand-alone application and a web application. A stand-alone application is a computer program like Microsoft Word that installs directly to your computer’s local hard-drive (HD). A web application resides on a remote computer (server), not the client computer’s local hard-drive, and must be accessed via an internet connection. Typically a web application is accessed via a web browser like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, etc. This is referred to as a client-server architecture–meaning: two separate computer programs communicating with each other.

Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Mark Steyn with Whose Islam? submitted by Joshuapundit… in which Steyn wonders out loud at the West’s strange insistence that terrorism fomented in the name of Islam has nothing to do with Islam. Do read it.

Okay, here are this week’s full results. Only Rhymes With Right was unable to vote this time, but was not subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in… don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!

10/25/13

The Banking Crisis And The Transition To A New World Order

By: Chris Knowles
Aeneas Lavinium

Since studying international relations at master’s degree level I often look at world events through the prism of that education. I try to analyse foreign policy and interpret contemporary events. Of course, actors on the international stage do not advertise their intentions prior to engaging in their grand plans and use ‘smoke and mirrors’ to achieve their goals. Sometimes, my theories may appear ‘far-fetched’ but I am willing to risk criticism by putting them out there for people to mull over.

In recent years I believe the international system has begun a key phase of transition. This transition is not just a turning point in world history, but a fundamental sea change in the way international relations are conducted. The last great sea change took place when the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648. This ushered in the international system of nation states under which we have all lived our lives. That system now seems to be coming to an end. Globalisation actually began around that time, when organisations like the British East India Company began to invest in far flung markets across the world. The nation state system itself was a product of globalisation as the West exported it to places like Africa and the Americas. What is different now is that globalisation has reached its end game which will result in some sort of systemic transformation.

Of course, there is nothing completely inevitable in world history, the international state system might continue in some form. However, changes will inevitably happen and ultimately a new balance will have to be reached in order to create the stability that human society craves beyond all else. Some actors in international relations appear to want to replace the system of nation states with some sort of system based on global governance. Some proponents of this might be motivated by the feeling this is in the best interests of the human race, others may be motived by greed and the desire to amass personal wealth and private power. Who knows!

Nevertheless, the contemporary engines of economics and industry drive us to think in global terms. Globalisation is a reality, though the eventual form a totally globalised world system takes will be determined by all of us who now live on this small planet. Of course some have more power and influence than others but all have a role to play. At the moment, at least in the Western world, the powerful have to consider public opinion. As such they may feel the need to distract us from what they are doing and what their motivations are. They may rely on our credulity to achieve their goals! The form that the new global system will eventually take will result in either greater freedom or greater tyranny. The current generation will decide which – we are on the hinge of history!

This brings me on to this subject that I want to discuss. I have a theory about the banking crisis and the economic chaos that now blights our lives. This theory relates to our current period of transition. It is my own opinion and is based on nothing other than my own feelings and observations. It may seem far-fetched, it may be far-fetched, but here it is anyway. This is the scenario of the banking crisis in the context of a systemic shift in the way international relations are conducted:

Banks use their control of the economic system to create an economic crisis. Banks are bailed out with pretend money that governments borrowed from banks that have no real money. As soon as the money is endorsed by the government, via a government loan, it becomes real money. Governments then have to pay back the loan of pretend money from the banks with real money based on the sale or transfer of tangible state assets. The banks then pay off their debt with more pretend money. Thus wealth is transferred from the state and its people to a global elite. This is how we are being moved from a world run by national governance (democratic), based on the international state system and the rule of law, to a world run on the basis of global governance (oligarchic), based on transnational corporations and law applied on the basis of social position.

Discuss…

10/25/13

Updates to NoisyRoom…

Hi Everyone,

Well, the WordPress upgrade crashed this morning and I am putting up a new template. Will be working on thru the weekend. We ask for patience as there are still bugs etc. going on. Sigh…