12/19/14

PALUMBO’S EXPANDED COALITION NEWS SEGMENT TOMORROW

LIVE! From high atop the Magnified View in downtown San Diego.

Don’t miss President Palumbo’s expanded coalition news you can use segment tomorrow, Saturday, December 20th, 2014. Episode featuring guest US Army Brigadier General Ernie Audino starts at 4 PM Pacific.

Listen live or access archives at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/voicesofglobalfreedom/2014/12/21/isis-crisis-brigadier-general-ret-ernie-audino-voices-of-global-freedom-radio.

We have launched national syndication of the show with http://www.thesparkradionetwork.com and their partner K98 Talk.com radio.

Please promote to friends. Call in with questions and concerns: (646) 652-4667.

We thank you for what you do and moreover, the way you do it.

Merry Christmas – Happy Hanukah!

Yoda, Backpack and the Magnified View Team

12/19/14

WE’RE NUMBER TWO!

Hat Tip: BB

12/19/14

Cuban-Americans voice disgust over deal

Hat Tip: BB

A Dictator’s Best Friend

Pic Of The Day: Obama Sniffs Cuban Cigar Hours After Lifting Embargo…

Obama Apologizes to Castro

Rush Limbaugh Mocks Obama’s Idea that Propping up the Castros will Further Human Rights – Audio 12/18/14

12/19/14

The Council Has Spoken! Watcher’s Council Results – 12/19/14

The Watcher’s Council

The People’s Cube

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

“I don’t believe it is possible to transcend race in this country. Race is a factor in this society. The legacy of Jim Crow and slavery has not gone away. It is not an accident that African-Americans experience high crime rates, are poor and have less wealth. It is a direct result of our racial history.” – Barack Obama

“Barack Obama is like the old joke about boats. The two best days of owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it.” – Howie Carr

“None of what Barack Obama is doing or wants to do to this country is anything the rest of the world hasn’t seen before and already failed at.” – Rush Limbaugh

This week’s winning essay, Nice Deb’s – Sheriff Clark: After Obama, We’re Going To Need A “Period Of Reconstruction To Put The Country Back Together,” Is her astute take on an interview with Sheriff David Clark of Milwaukee concerning race relations under President Obama. Here’s a slice:

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clark joined Megyn Kelly, Thursday night to discuss a new Fox poll that shows that 62% of voters believe race relations have gotten worse since Barack Obama became president.

Kelly asked the the clear-eyed, straight talking sheriff, “are they right?”

“Of course they’re right,” Clark answered without hesitation. “He built that…..remember that statement, ‘you didn’t build that’? Well, he built this racial divide, it was a wound that had been healing for a number of years – number of decades – and he reopened it with his divisive politics.”

He continued, “Obama has benefited from the divide and conquer strategy – it secured two successive electoral victories for the White House but it’s been very destructive for America.” He went on to ask a devastating question, “Who would have thought that after the election of first black president in the history of United States, that we would need a period of reconstruction to try to put this country back together?”

Clark claimed that instead of taking a neutral tone, Obama has habitually fanned the flames.

Megyn gave Clark an opportunity to give Obama a pass and put most of the blame on people with whom he surrounds himself, but Clark was having none of it.

“It’s a cabal of people,” he acknowledged. “But he’s at the top. When the president speaks, people listen and he has to choose his words carefully.”

Megyn, playing devils advocate, noted that Obama often acknowledges the sacrifices made by police.

Clark countered by saying that Obama likes to “throw a few bones out there” for law enforcement with “a wink and a nod” to the racial agitators. “People know what he’s doing,” the Sheriff declared.

Surprise: The Koch Brothers are Not Conservatives

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham acted surprised that David Koch would give an interview to Barbara Walters and talk about his radical “libertarian” views. Koch appeared in Walters’ ABC special program on “The 10 Most Fascinating People Of 2014.” The interview was featured in various stories highlighting Koch’s personal views as a “social liberal.” He’s for abortion and homosexual rights. But that’s not all. He’s also a major supporter of the Cato Institute, which recently featured NSA defector Edward Snowden at its “Surveillance Conference.”

David Koch’s foreign policy views are very far to the left as well—a fact that many conservatives may not realize.

We have heard it from the left so many times that Koch is an extreme “conservative” or right-winger that we have taken this claim for granted. It is definitely not the case. He’s sinking a lot of money into Republican and some conservative groups, but that doesn’t make him a conservative. In fact, as the Walters special showed, he doesn’t accept the conservative label. However, he does emphasize his free market views on economic and fiscal issues.

I am trying to get some comment from David Koch about Cato’s embrace of Snowden. The Koch brothers have an extensive public relations apparatus that includes the major Koch spokesman, Philip Ellender, a registered Democrat in Louisiana who serves as the President and COO of the Government & Public Affairs department of Koch Companies Public Sector. I have asked Robert A. Tappan, Director of External Relations for Koch Companies Public Sector, to provide an explanation of the Koch Brothers support for Cato and Snowden.

David and Charles Koch were two “shareholders” in the Cato Institute, and were involved in a lawsuit that resulted in John Allison (the former CEO of BB&T) replacing Ed Crane, who retired as Cato’s CEO. According to a press release, “For Charles Koch and David Koch, the agreement helps ensure that Cato will be a principled organization that is effective in advancing a free society.”

What this means in terms of Cato’s embrace of Snowden is a matter of discussion. Snowden is a captive of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is definitely not a free society but is a place where Koch Industries does business. (Koch Industries also does business in Communist China.) Do the Kochs approve of Cato’s embrace of Snowden? David Koch, who served as the Executive Vice President of Koch Industries, Inc., continues to serve on Cato’s board. Cato’s 2013 annual report lists the Charles Koch Foundation as a financial backer.

As we have reported in the past, the Cato Institute published a three-page interview with Snowden mouthpiece Glenn Greenwald in the July/August 2014 issue of the Cato Policy Report. Cato called Greenwald’s NSA disclosures “explosive,” which is true in the sense that the communications intelligence agencies of free countries like the U.S. and Israel have been hobbled by the publicity given to the stolen documents he received and publicized. National security experts also say Snowden’s disclosures facilitated Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of ISIS.

Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute’s board of directors, has written that if a deal is worked out, Snowden could return to the U.S. and “be held accountable for other actions, not yet disclosed, that amount to espionage—traditionally defined as transmitting national defense information with intent or reason to believe that it will be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation.”

In view of these comments, not knowing the full extent of the damage he has done, why would Cato give Snowden a platform? His video appearance at the Cato Surveillance Conference had to have been arranged with the help of the Russian security agents who guard Snowden and regulate access to him. Why would Cato participate in such an arrangement?

David Koch also serves on the board of the Reason Foundation, which sponsors Reason magazine. It, too, is pro-Snowden, having published such articles as, “Thank You, Edward Snowden.” The author called Snowden a “whistleblower,” which is a falsehood.

Martin Edwin Andersen, the first national security whistleblower to be given the “Public Servant Award” by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, strongly disputes the idea that Snowden is a whistleblower. He calls Snowden a national security leaker who engaged in theft, fled the country to escape justice, and is now “in the protective embraces of Olympic Russian police-state champion Vladimir Putin.”

By the way, Cato also supports Obama’s policy of appeasing the Castro regime in Cuba. It ran an article when Chuck Hagel was nominated as Obama’s Secretary of Defense, saying the former senator was correct in calling the idea “goofy” that the Havana regime constitutes a terrorist threat to the United States. Cato said nothing about the American terrorists who fled to Cuba and are being protected by the Castro regime. One, Joanne Chesimard, is a convicted cop-killer. The other major American terrorist in Cuba, William Morales, was a bomb-maker for the FALN, which killed four Americans in the 1975 Fraunces Tavern bombing in New York City.

Obama’s scheme to normalize relations with Cuba does not include the return of these terrorists to face justice in the U.S.

Hagel has since left the administration, but the Koch-funded Cato Institute is still around, exercising its influence on Washington policy makers. Cato hailed the release of the Senate Democrats’ so-called “torture report,” calling it “long overdue.”

The Kochs’ support for this group may prove to be more surprising than the “news” to some conservatives that David Koch is a liberal on social issues. The Koch Brothers are very liberal on foreign policy, too. We previously commented on a Charles Koch Institute forum featuring a foreign policy talking head who has no problem with Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.

So why are the Kochs sinking money into Republican-oriented and even some conservative groups? It’s time for traditional conservatives to examine what appears to be a Koch plan to move the Republican Party to the left on social and foreign policy issues.

12/19/14

Interview with an Interrogator: Megyn Kelly Gets the Scoop

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Fox News’ Megyn Kelly got a big interview this week following the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogations in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on America on September 11, 2001. It was compelling TV, and journalism. Dr. James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist, contracted with the CIA to help develop a program to interrogate CIA detainees while America, and those tasked to protect this country, prepared for a second wave of attacks.

Mitchell had spoken with the British newspaper, The Guardian, back in April, after an executive summary of the Senate Intelligence report had been leaked to McClatchy News. At the time, as reported by The Guardian, Mitchell “mounted a full-throated defense of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policies and attacked ‘partisan Democrats’ for ‘throwing me under the bus’ and ‘rewriting history.’” Now he clearly feels even more free to speak out.

Mitchell was never interviewed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) committee. In fact, none of the CIA people involved in the interrogations, nor the directors or deputy directors, were interviewed. In other words, the purpose of this report was not to actually get to the truth of what happened. It was an attempt, for various political and PR reasons, to accuse and indict the Bush administration and the CIA for allegedly using torture on the detainees.

Mitchell revealed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) didn’t break, or provide information that eventually led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, because of waterboarding, but rather because of other EITs (Enhanced Interrogation Techniques). The technique that did work on KSM, according to the American Enterprise Institute’s Marc Thiessen, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, was sleep deprivation. But Mitchell revealed something that KSM did tell him: “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told me personally, ‘Your country will turn on you, the liberal media will turn on you, the people will grow tired of this, they will turn on you, and when they do, you are going to be abandoned.’”

What comes through in Megyn Kelly’s interview is a thoughtful, patriotic American who was moved by the image of Americans leaping out of World Trade Center buildings, and by the courage of those on Flight 93 who helped bring the plane down, rather than allow it to successfully strike the third of three targets of the “decapitation” that Mitchell said was their goal. The terrorists hit our financial center in New York, they hit the Pentagon—the headquarters of the U.S. military—and the third plane was intended to crash into the Capitol building in Washington, DC.

America is divided over this, but a recent Washington Post – ABC poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly think that “the CIA treatment of suspected terrorists” was justified, by a margin of 59% to 31%. Clearly a significant majority believe the CIA was trying to protect this country at that time, and aren’t too worried about the few cases of excess—even death—that occurred. They don’t see it as a “stain” on our country. In fact, many view the stain as this one-sided report that cherry-picked information and revealed selective portions of emails, contradicted by other portions not revealed in the report—if that’s what they needed to make their case. Many believe that the release of this report has given aid and comfort to America’s enemies, and put American lives at increased risk.

It turns out that KSM was right about the “liberal media,” but it seems that a significant majority of the American people are quite okay with what was done to these terrorists—and other detainees—and don’t believe it damaged us as a country. Many of those in the liberal media—such as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, Jane Mayer of the New Yorker (who actually interviewed Dr. Mitchell back in 2005), and Erin Burnett of CNN—freely call what happened “torture.” To them, it’s not an opinion, it’s a fact.

Kudos to Megyn Kelly for getting the interview, which aired in two parts on Monday and Tuesday nights this week. I urge you to watch for yourself, and to also read this column, “The Feinstein Report is Going to Cost Us,” by Andrew McCarthy. He was the lawyer who successfully prosecuted the Blind Sheikh, the man responsible for the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. McCarthy has a lot of interesting things to say about the report, such as this: “As I have frequently argued here over the years, there is a world of difference between what is couched in political rhetoric as ‘torture,’ a conversation stopper that the Left cavalierly applies to every instance of prisoner abuse, and the federal crime of torture, which has a strict legal definition and is a difficult offense to prove, precisely to ensure that torture is not trivialized.”

You can watch Kelly’s interview with Dr. Mitchell here.