Carter, Editorial, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Israel, Jihad, Libya, Obama

My Concerns About the Operation in Libya & Egypt

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback March 2011 (LINK– LINK). Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

I have had this column in my head for over a month, but I resisted posting it because I was using history as a guide along with my knowledge of the Middle East and the Obama Administration to make a trajectory. I had little evidence to go on but my instincts were strong. I ended up being correct and it was a valuable lesson in trusting onesself as a columnist and a person who does hi homework.

While I support the idea of the international community stopping a mad dictator from orchestrating a mass slaughter of his own people when able, we have only seen uprisings in Arab countries where the governments are not associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. There is no freedom in Gaza or in Lebanon since Hezbollah took over and yet there are no democracy, peace and love protests. This did not look spontaneous to me.

On the English web sites of the Muslim Brotherhood they spoke of “peace, love, democracy, and social justice”, while watchdogs reported that on the Arabic web sites, sub groups were saying to get ready to deal with the Christians, infidels and Jews.

The Muslim Brotherhood is making moves to take power in Egypt and the elite media is keeping that pretty hushed in spite of the fact that it was in the NYT. If the Muslim Brotherhood does take over Egypt and Libya, it would mean that the United States under the Obama Administration helped them to do it.

Prof. Niall Ferguson spoke of this very concern on MSNBC – be sure to watch the ENTIRE video:

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist whose family was close to the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood agrees – LINK

Now we have learned that the rebel commander in Libya fought against the United States in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda is fighting alongside the rebels – LINK. Imagine a Muslim Brotherhood with al-Qaeda that have oil revenue at their disposal.

We have been fooled before. Jimmy Carter actively helped the Mullah’s in Iran take over the country and they too spoke of “peace, love, democracy and social justice”. When they took over the killings, rapes, stonings and suppression of freedoms began. The United States pressured Lebanon to show the Islamists tolerance. As their numbers grew by immigration and they used our Western tolerance as a weapon against them. Then the violence began. Now Hezbollah has taken over the country and freedom in Lebanon is fast coming to an end. They did so using the exact same tactics the Mullah’s used in Iran and the same tactics that Islamists are using in European countries now.

Traditional conservatives like myself have said that we believed that Obama would be the second administration of Jimmy Carter, it seems that we were even more correct than we feared. If the Muslim Brotherhood and its splinter groups like al-Qaeda manage to take over Egypt and Libya with our assistance this could prove to be the biggest disaster since we helped the Iranian regime come to power in 1979.

Why didn’t I say this so directly before? I have been concerned since I noticed the almost simultaneous rumblings of uprisings starting in mid to late January only happening in countries with governments opposed by the Muslim Brotherhood and its associated factions. Other than my noticing that particular coincidence I had no strong evidence to go on to bring to you here at IUSB Vision. I was not confident enough to make a declaration based on my gut feelings and the tiny craps of information I had.

Even after I saw that Prof. Ferguson and Walid Shoebat suspected as I did, at the time it was still a prediction, a suspicion of what they believed might come. After the chaos was over, the largest organized force in these countries is the Muslim Brotherhood. Now the evidence is coming in and it seems we have a real problem.

So lets examine the path we are going down.

Remember when the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) said that the Muslim Brotherhood was a secular organization? – LINK. The DNI was mocked my many including Niall Ferguson for this preposterous testimony. It is like he swallowed the propaganda on the Brotherhood’s English web site and regurgitated it as gospel.

Then Obama came out and said that the Muslim Brotherhood should be a part of the new Egyptian Government.

LA Times:

The Obama administration said for the first time that it supports a role for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamist organization, in a reformed Egyptian government.

The organization must reject violence and recognize democratic goals if the U.S. is to be comfortable with it taking part in the government, the White House said. But by even setting conditions for the involvement of such nonsecular groups, the administration took a surprise step in the midst of the crisis that has enveloped Egypt for the last week.

/facepalm Iran II here we come…

So Thursday, after the train has left the station, here comes the New York Times to play catch up:

CAIRO — In post-revolutionary Egypt, where hope and confusion collide in the daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group once banned by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political force — at least not at the moment.

As the best organized and most extensive opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a military that vilified it.

“There is evidence the Brotherhood struck some kind of a deal with the military early on,” said Elijah Zarwan, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group. “It makes sense if you are the military — you want stability and people off the street. The Brotherhood is one address where you can go to get 100,000 people off the street.”

There is a battle consuming Egypt about the direction of its revolution, and the military council that is now running the country is sending contradictory signals. On Wednesday, the council endorsed a plan to outlaw demonstrations and sit-ins. [Yup real democratic – Iran & Lebanon here we come – Editor] Then, a few hours later, the public prosecutor announced that the former interior minister and other security officials would be charged in the killings of hundreds during the protests.

Egyptians are searching for signs of clarity in such declarations, hoping to discern the direction of a state led by a secretive military council brought to power by a revolution based on demands for democracy, rule of law and an end to corruption.

“We are all worried,” said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting the opinions of the secular minority. “The young people have no control of the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone.”

Suckers.

Fool me once shame on you (Iran). Fool me twice shame on me (Lebanon). Fool me three times and you’re a far left Democrat (Egypt). Fool me four times and you’re a progressive secular leftist who writes for the Washington Post. That’s right folks, even after all we have seen, the far left in the media are still fooled (or shall I say duplicitous). The Washington Post had a piece today saying that we should do the same in Syria – LINK. I see talking heads on the news say that we are supporting lawful democratic governments to take over. What nonsense. The ties between the radical left and Islamists are no secret, especially on campus.

On a side note, Joe Biden once said that if President Bush took us to war without consulting Congress he would move to impeach him. Of course the Senate cannot impeach, another gaffe the elite media ignored, but now his administration has done just that in Libya.

UPDATE I – Let us be very clear just who it is that we are likely helping to take over a country. This LINK will take you to a video of members of a different islamic sect being stoned and brutally murdered by a large group of Indonesian Islamists shouting Allah Akbar. This was done under police supervision according to the up-loader. I have the video cloned in case it is removed. The video is horrible and is not for the timid. Consider yourself warned.

UPDATE II – Amnesty International:

EGYPTIAN WOMEN PROTESTERS FORCED TO TAKE ‘VIRGINITY TESTS’

23 March 2011

Amnesty International has today called on the Egyptian authorities to investigate serious allegations of torture, including forced ‘virginity tests’, inflicted by the army on women protesters arrested in Tahrir Square earlier this month.

After army officers violently cleared the square of protesters on 9 March, at least 18 women were held in military detention. Amnesty International has been told by women protesters that they were beaten, given electric shocks, subjected to strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers, then forced to submit to ‘virginity checks’ and threatened with prostitution charges.

‘Virginity tests’ are a form of torture when they are forced or coerced.

“Forcing women to have ‘virginity tests’ is utterly unacceptable. Its purpose is to degrade women because they are women,” said Amnesty International. “All members of the medical profession must refuse to take part in such so-called ‘tests’.”

20-year-old Salwa Hosseini told Amnesty International that after she was arrested and taken to a military prison in Heikstep, she was made, with the other women, to take off all her clothes to be searched by a female prison guard, in a room with two open doors and a window. During the strip search, Salwa Hosseini said male soldiers were looking into the room and taking pictures of the naked women.

The women were then subjected to ‘virginity tests’ in a different room by a man in a white coat. They were threatened that “those not found to be virgins” would be charged with prostitution.

According to information received by Amnesty International, one woman who said she was a virgin but whose test supposedly proved otherwise was beaten and given electric shocks.

“Women and girls must be able to express their views on the future of Egypt and protest against the government without being detained, tortured, or subjected to profoundly degrading and discriminatory treatment,” said Amnesty International.

“The army officers tried to further humiliate the women by allowing men to watch and photograph what was happening, with the implicit threat that the women could be at further risk of harm if the photographs were made public.”

Journalist Rasha Azeb was also detained in Tahrir Square and told Amnesty International that she was handcuffed, beaten and insulted.

Following their arrest, the 18 women were initially taken to a Cairo Museum annex where they were reportedly handcuffed, beaten with sticks and hoses, given electric shocks in the chest and legs, and called “prostitutes”.

Rasha Azeb could see and hear the other detained women being tortured by being given electric shocks throughout their detention at the museum. She was released several hours later with four other men who were also journalists, but 17 other women were transferred to the military prison in Heikstep

Libya, Lies, Obama

Arab League criticizes allied airstrikes on Libya, AFTER asking UN and the West to impose a no fly zone.

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

A new fly zone doesn’t just mean making sure nothing flies, it also means taking out all air defenses so those imposing the no fly zone are at the smallest risk.

AP:

CAIRO (AP) — The head of the Arab League has criticized international strikes on Libya, saying they caused civilian deaths.

The Arab League’s support for a no-fly zone last week helped overcome reluctance in the West for action in Libya. The U.N. authorized not only a no-fly zone but also “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.

Amr Moussa says the military operations have gone beyond what the Arab League backed.

Moussa has told reporters Sunday that “what happened differs from the no-fly zone objectives.” He says “what we want is civilians’ protection not shelling more civilians.”

U.S. and European strikes overnight targeted mainly air defenses, the U.S. military said. Libya says 48 people were killed, including civilians.

Enforce a no fly zone and take out certain armored elements, do all of that without scratching the paint. OK Arab league, how about we pull out and YOU show us how it’s done.

They are doing this to please radicalized elements of the Arab street who were angered by their governments asking for help.

Egypt, Elite Media, Libya, Lies, Obama

Video: A liberal on the difference between Libya and Iraq…

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

“So Obama is killing civilians in a preemptive, unfunded, undeclared war for oil promoted by the dictators of the Arab League and the UN in support of some unidentified rebels he has never met with, and you are fine with that?”

Hypocrisy on display –

Egypt, Elite Media, Foreign Policy, Jihad, Libya, Niall Ferguson, Obama

Prof. Niall Ferguson Blasts Obama and MSNBC on Egypt

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

Niall Ferguson is the kind of academic that one ideally thinks of when it comes to a first rate academic. He is a Senior Fellow at Harvard, Oxford and Stanford.

Niall Ferguson is brilliant and his credentials are second to none. He has no regard for sacred cows or political correctness. This makes sense because an academic should first be a truth teller who makes every effort to avoid putting on rose colored glasses.

Ferguson plays no favorites. He is happy to write for Newsweek, be a regular on MSNBC, and then feels perfectly comfortable telling accurate history and making analysis for Glenn Beck. No matter who Prof. Furguson is in front of he pulls no punches and tells things as they are to the best of his ability. This is exactly the kind of ethical courage and fortitude that every academic should strive for.

One quality that many good academics have is that they go out of their way to correct ignorance no matter who is spewing it. I understand Ferguson’s frustration with the Obama Administration and the State Department who sit back and get their analysis on Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood completely wrong. Prof. Ferguson cops a bit of an attitude when it comes to this because anyone who just does a few hours of history homework could tell Mika (or Obama) what Ferguson explains here.

The State Department is on the campus of George Washington University. If one studies far left academia and its myopic culture, one soon understands the State Department.

Prof. Ferguson took Mika to school when she challenged Ferguson saying that she thought Egypt was a success for the President. This is a great example of how far removed the elite media is from reality.

This is a must see video.

Ironically, what Prof. Ferguson says about what the Middle East thinks about the naivety of this administration mirrors what Donald Trump says that hid Chinese government contacts are telling him.

UPDATE – Walid Shoebat agrees with Prof Ferguson – LINK.

Prof. Ferguson has little tolerance for spin and nonsense. I am going to start reading his books.

Culture War, Egypt, Libya, Obama

Dershowitz: Far left’s hate of Israel aided Arab dictators.

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

Alan M. Dershowitz:

Now the hard left is finally talking about torture and other undemocratic abuses in Egypt and Jordan, as well as the despotism of virtually all Arab regimes. Do you recall any campus protests against Egypt or Mubarak? Do you recall any calls for divestment and boycotts against Arab dictators? No, because there weren’t any. The hard left was too busy condemning the Middle East’s only democracy, Israel. Radical leftists and campus demonstrators, by giving a pass to the worst forms of tyranny, encouraged their perpetuation. Now, finally, they are jumping on the bandwagon of condemnation, though still not with the fury that they reserve for the one nation in the Middle East that has complete free speech, gender equality, gay rights, an open and critical press, an independent judiciary and fair and open elections.

The double standard is alive and well on the hard left, and its victims include the citizens of Arab regimes who suffer under the heal of authoritarian dictators. Even more important they include victims of genocides, such as those perpetrated in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia—victims who did not prick the consciences of the hard left because the perpetrators were Arabs or Communists, rather than Americans or Israelis.

The same must be said for the United Nations, which rewarded Arab despots by according them places of honor on human rights bodies that devoted all of their energies to demonizing Israel. In a recent op ed, Amnon Rubenstein, the conscious of Israel, has pointed out that the UN Human Rights Commission, to which both Egypt and Tunisia were elected, has gone out of its way to compliment both regimes. Egypt was praised for steps it has “taken in recent years as regard to human rights….” Tunisia was lauded for constructing “a legal and constitutional framework for the promotion and protection of human rights.” Israel, on the other hand, was repeatedly condemned for violating the human rights not only of Palestinians, but of its own citizens as well.

Nor do I recall Bishop Tutu urging the Cape Town Opera to boycott Egypt, Tunisia or Jordan as he urged them to boycott Israel. I do recall Jimmy Carter, who has falsely accused Israel of Apartheid, embracing some of the Arab’s worlds worst tyrants and murderers. Many who claim the mantle of human rights ignore or even embrace the worst human rights violators and direct their wrath only against the Jewish nation.

The anti-American and anti-Israel hard left is a topsy-turvy world where the worst are declared the best and the best are condemned as the worst. This topsy-turvy view has become a staple of higher education, particularly among Middle East study programs in many colleges and universities. Among many on the hard left, where the only human rights issue of concern seems to be Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, the views of convicted terrorists Marwan Barghouti are preached as gospel. This is what Barghouti, who is serving a life sentence for planning terror attacks against civilians, but who remains among the most popular Palestinian leaders, recently said about Israel: “The worst and most abominable enemy known to humanity and modern history.” It is this skewed view of modern history that runs rampant through the hard left and that gives exculpatory immunity to Arab and Muslim tyrants.

There is only one acceptable standard of international human rights: the worst must come first. Under that universal standard, any person or organization claiming the mantle of human rights must prioritize its resources. It must list human rights violators in order of the severity of the abuses and the ability of its citizens to complain about those abuses. It must then go after the worst offenders first and foremost, leaving right-left politics out of the mix. This standard must be applied by individuals, such as Bishop Tutu, by organizations, such as the United Nations, by the media and by everyone who loves human rights. Until that standard is universally applied, despotism will continue, interrupted only occasionally by revolutions such as those taking place in Tunisia and Egypt.

The irony, of course, is that in the most repressive regimes, such as Iran, revolution is well nigh impossible. Revolution is far more likely to occur is moderately despotic regimes, such as Tunisia and Egypt, where at least some basic liberties were preserved. It is the citizens of the most despotic regimes that need the most help from human rights activists. But don’t count on it because too many so-called “human rights” leaders and organizations misuse the concept of “human rights” to serve narrow political, diplomatic or ideological agendas. Unless we restore human rights to its proper role as a neutral and universal standard of human conduct, the kind of tyranny and despotism that stimulated the current protests will continue.

Carter, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Libya

Carter Vouches for Muslim Brotherhood….

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

They are in with Hezbollah and Hamas and help control Gaza, but oh no they love freedom and secular Democracy…

…and you can fool some of the people all of the time. This is coming from the president that said the same thing about the Iranian Mullah’s when he helped them come to power in Iran.

[Note: As is so often the case, when a video is damning to a leftist YouTube sees to it that the video is removed. Conservative bloggers and commentators are harassed by YouTube which is why so many conservatives are posting video at DailyMotion and other similar services.]

Egypt, Foreign Policy, Libya, Obama

Marxist Left allies with Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Middle East.

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback February 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

Bloggers who speak both Arabic and English are saying that in English the Muslim Brotherhood is talking peace, love, democracy, can’t we all just get along; in Arabic they are saying prepare for violence and to unite against Israel, Arab Christians, and the West.

The left appears to have been fooled again, as this is exactly what happened in the run up to the Mullah’s taking power in Iran. The Mullah’s completely hoodwinked the Carter Administration. We know now from recent unsealing of documents from the National Archives that the Carter Administration actually helped the Mullah’s come to power. The result has been incredible levels of death and suffering.

Democrat Strategist Kirsten Powers gives her perspective at The Daily Beast (Daily Beast normally is not very reliable but once in a while they have something solid and this was). Powers has family in Egypt so her perspective has street cred and she makes it clear that the left has been fooled [again]:

I spent much of yesterday interviewing American experts on the region—including two Brookings [Brookings is a left-wing think tank – Editor] Institution scholars who are experts on the Muslim Brotherhood—and was reassured over and over that the organization has reformed and does not seek to establish a fundamentalist state. One claimed that Brotherhood officials have said they view Copts as equal citizens.

My relative laughed at this. He says when Brotherhood members have been asked about how they would treat Christians they are vague. When asked about whether they would nationalize the banks, they are vague. Even one of the Brookings scholars told me that the Brotherhood would probably segregate the sexes. This is far from a secular group.

They are vague because they are using Iran as a model. They are vague because they are using a Taqiyyah strategy. They are vague because if they had been more forward up front the United States, Israel and Mubarak’s police would have eliminated much of the Muslim Brotherhood’s leadership in advance. It seems clear now that the killings of Christians and the burning of churches in Egypt was a precursor to see if they could get away with violence without fear of retaliation guided by government sponsored intelligence.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the overseer and grand daddy of all terror organizations.

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO terrorist whose family as been among the leadership of the Muslim brotherhood spoke out:

RIA Novosti (Russia) Reports that the Muslim Brotherhood has stated that it will end the Israeli Peace Treaty if it takes power. apparently they are getting confident enough to start putting off the false pretenses:

Egypt’s banned Muslim Brotherhood movement has unveiled its plans to scrap a peace treaty with Israel if it comes to power, a deputy leader said in an interview with NHK TV.

Rashad al-Bayoumi said the peace treaty with Israel will be abolished after a provisional government is formed by the movement and other Egypt’s opposition parties.

“After President Mubarak steps down and a provisional government is formed, there is a need to dissolve the peace treaty with Israel,” al-Bayoumi said.

Egypt was the first Arab country to officially recognize Israel and sign a peace agreement with the Israeli government in 1979. It is also a major mediator of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So much for peace, love and can’t we all just get along…

It seems to be official. Obama is siding with the Muslim Brotherhood. The continued parallels between Obama and Carter still manage to amaze me even though it shouldn’t.

Mini-Update – Left-wing Brookings Institute: “Don’t fear Muslim Brotherhood“. Wow, either these people are the worlds biggest dupes, or the growing antisemitism of the academic left is so pronounced that it has gone just this far.

Arutz Sheva (2):

For the first time, a U.S. government supports granting a government role to an extremist Islamic organization: the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

On Monday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Egypt’s new government will have to include a “whole host of important non-secular actors.” Most prominent among these is clearly the Muslim Brotherhood – which has made Islamic world domination one of its ultimate goals. It also opposes Egypt’s 30-year-old peace treaty with Israel.

Gibbs said the Muslim Brotherhood must reject violence and recognize democratic goals for the U.S. to be comfortable with it assuming a role in the new government. This caveat does not significantly alter the new American approach, which is very different than that of the previous Administration, in which George W. Bush pushed Mubarak for democratic reforms but never publicly accepted a role for Islamists.

Today, new White House chief of staff William Daley moderated the position very slightly, saying the U.S. hopes for a “strong, stable and secular Egyptian government.” Noting that the strengthening of the Muslim Brotherhood is “some people’s expectation [and] some people’s fear,” Daley acknowledged that the situation in Egypt is largely out of American control.

Obama’s new position, while not totally surprising, is worrisome to many. “The White House appears to be leaving Hosni Mubarak, an ally for three decades and lynchpin of Mideast stability, twisting slowly in the wind,” writes David Horowitz of the Freedom Center. “And worse, it appears to be open to allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to play a key role in a ‘reformed’ Egyptian government, as long as the organization renounces violence and supports democracy. If the Obama White House really believes this is possible, it is even more hopelessly incompetent than we imagined!”

American Thinker has a good summation of what is going on. We are witnessing the collapse of the Middle East:

If Egypt should fall, it will mark the beginning of the end for what little remaining stability there is in the Middle East. Jordan is facing similar unrest, as are Algeria and Yemen. Lebanon and Tunisia fell in January. It is highly unlikely that these events are unrelated. A combination of leftist and Islamist forces provoked the protests, and we are likely looking at a ring of radical Islamic states rising up to surround Israel. Once their power is solidified, perhaps in a year or two, they will combine forces to attack Israel. If Israel falls, the United States will stand alone in a sea of virulent enemies and impotent allies.

So whom does Obama support, Mubarak or his enemies?

Obama wasted no time in telling us. He supports Mubarak’s opponents, and he probably has been all along. The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that the Obama administration favors a role for the Muslim Brotherhood in a new Egyptian government.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the oldest extremist Muslim organization, is behind practically every Muslim terrorist organization ever formed. And while they may have publicly renounced violence as the LA Times article claims, internal documents tell a completely different story.

And if that weren’t bad enough, Obama’s latest comment to Egypt’s leader is that “an orderly transition … must begin now.”

Must begin. Now.

Simply stunning.

Juxtapose Obama’s statements toward our allies with his reaction to the genuine uprising that occurred last year in Iran. Tunisia: “Reform or be overthrown.” Egypt: “an orderly transition … must begin now.” Iran: “It is not productive … to be seen as meddling.” Meanwhile, candidate Obama claimed that the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezb’allah have “legitimate claims,” and we all remember his mindless counterterrorism czar, John Brennan, reaching out to “moderate” Hezb’allah members last spring. Hezb’allah moderates?

The seeming inconsistency is astonishing. Unfortunately, there is a consistency. Obama uniformly sides with our enemies but rarely, if ever, with our friends and allies. His administration is packed with far-left radicals and vicious anti-Semites. And therein lies the rub, because what we are witnessing in reality is this president’s un-American, anti-American, treasonous ideology in full play.

Perhaps this is the real reason for Bill Ayers’s, Bernardine Dohrn’s, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin’s and Evans’s trips to Egypt in 2009. Following those trips, these same people made multiple visits to the White House.

Obama’s breathlessly arrogant answer? Not the same Ayers, Dohrn, Benjamin, and Evans. Sure.

A few years back, I cited a quote by Lynn Stewart, the National Lawyers Guild attorney jailed for helping blind sheikh Omar Adel Raman foment terror from his New York jail cell. One might think that atheistic radical leftists would be foursquare against a political movement that tramples women’s rights, murders homosexuals, and enforces strict theocratic mandates. No such luck, Stewart said:

They [radical Islamic movements] are basically forces of national liberation. And I think that we, as persons who are committed to the liberation of oppressed people, should fasten on the need for self-determination. … My own sense is that, were the Islamists to be empowered, there would be movements within their own countries … to liberate.

” … movements within their own countries … to liberate.” Given recent developments, Stewart’s statement was prescient. But I think it had a special meaning. Because when movement leftists like Stewart talk about “liberation,” they are really talking about communism.

It has been my longstanding assertion that Muslim terrorism is simply a false flag operation, managed in the background by our main enemies, Russia and Red China. Almost since the beginning, Muslim terrorist organizations have been supported and nurtured by the Soviet Union or its Middle Eastern surrogates.

Yasser Arafat’s PLO is a prime example. Created by the KGB, the PLO was always about providing a Soviet counterweight to Israel in the Middle East. They were uninterested in the Palestinian cause, and they said so! Alexander Litvinenko, the KGB defector poisoned by Polonium 210 in what was assumed to be a KGB hit, claimed in his book, Allegations, that al-Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was a Soviet agent. And while today Hezb’allah is the de facto ruler of Lebanon, the real power is Ba’athist Syria.

David Horowitz wrote of the alliance between leftists and Muslim terrorists in his seminal book: Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left. He describes in detail how the left and Muslim radicals work together to achieve their mutual ends: the destruction of America.

It is incomprehensible that President Obama does not recognize the strategic significance of what is happening, and if he does, then his support of Egypt’s sham “democracy movement” is a naked betrayal of our Middle Eastern allies and, by extension, our own country.

Unfortunately, his view is shared by some Republicans who are so in love with the idea of “democracy” that it doesn’t matter to them that the “democrats” in this case include fanatic mass murderers. At best, it can be seen only as incredibly myopic and ignorant to support Mubarak’s enemies. People make the same mistake Carter did with Iran and Nicaragua: they commit the logical error of assuming that just because a country’s current leadership is flawed and “undemocratic,” that automatically means that someone else would do better. Newsflash: they can do worse, and almost without exception, they do, because people who take power by street riot have no interest in “democracy.”

If their street revolutions are successful, these Middle Eastern countries will rapidly degenerate into radical Muslim thugocracies allied with our communist enemies. Israel will be the first target, and with Obama’s radically anti-Israel orientation, the Israelis will stand alone. We will be next. One wonders if Obama will then stand to defend the country he swore to, or if he will be out in the streets with his fellow radical leftists burning American flags.

Egypt, Energy Policy, Libya

Egypt and U.S. Economy: Why should the Commonwealth care?

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

[Flashback February 15, 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]

By Lisa Marie Cashman:

From Tahrir Square (know as “Liberation Square”) in modern Cairo, Egypt to Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts – the epicenter for important Middle East foreign policy at Harvard University, recent geopolitical events in the Middle East have weighed heavily on the minds of politicians, scholars and human rights activists. Uprisings from a young, educated and social media savvy generation helped fuel the transition from a dictatorship led by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to a transition government backed by the Egyptian military to hopefully usher in a viable democratic election and due rule of law process. One would hope. So, why is the state of affairs for Egypt important to folks in Massachusetts as well as across the nation? In the day-to-day activities or our lives, including trudging through the highest unemployment rates in nearly 20 years and the instability of foreign oil dependency, why should we be concerned with what happens in the land of King Tut?

According to leading environmental economist at Cardno ENTRIX, John M. Urbankchuk, globalization of economics sits at the core of our nation’s discussions and decision-making process with respect to U.S. exports. “Egypt is important for a number of reasons not the least of which is the Suez Canal,” says Urbanchuk. In as much as it is unclear whether the current new administration in Egypt will flourish or flounder, a potential shift toward a fundamental Islamic government would more than likely alter the relations and create tensions between the U.S. and Egypt and our most critical ally, Israel. Urbanchuk notes with this potential geopolitical change, factors affecting access to trade through the Suez Canal would increase time of delivery of goods and cost for the EU and the U.S. should cargo need to transit around the Horn of Africa.

Since 1869, the Suez Canal –owned and operated by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) of the Arab Republic of Egypt–has made off-shore trading extremely manageable and profitable for all involved. International treaty has long afforded the passage to be used by all to create a direct route from the Middle East to Asia and has been used for both war and peaceful purposes. The commodities “food chain” feeds directly through this short cut to allow U.S. exports to flow expeditiously from the Arabian Sea through the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The United States and Egypt have long been tied to the hip economically as well as politically. Good foreign relations between the two has been the mainstay which has kept the flow of oil production steady and the protection of one of our greatest allies, Israel. Urbanchuk further emphasizes the important inter-relationship pointing out in FY 2010 alone, Egypt ranked as our 12th largest market at nearly $1.6 billion. “They are our 4th largest market for corn, 6th largest for wheat, and 7th for soybeans,” calculates Urbanchuk. The question one needs to ask is what would happen if suddenly our trade were hampered by the escalation of extreme resistance by fundamentalist groups seeking to drive Western political influence and oil interests out of the Middle East?

In the 2007, a final report to the Secretary of Energy, entitled, “Hard Truths: Facing the Hard Truths About Energy,” the National Petroleum Council’s special advisory committee to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) outlines the importance of everyday life factors that depend on the Middle Eastern and other offshore production of energy. By 2030, the Council projects energy demands will be up by 50-60 percent due to a growing population and desire for improved living. Not only is the United States the largest player in the global energy game, but one of the largest importers of gas and coal and the third largest consumer of oil. Equally interdependent is our foreign relations with the Middle East and other emerging world governments including India, Russia and China. As the global market demands expand, the U.S. must not only continue to lead engagement in timely foreign policy to keep open markets, free trade and rule of law embedded in negotiations, but lead by example.

Currently, the Obama Administration seems to have a policy disconnect. On the one hand, in his S.O.T.U. speech, Obama calls for sweeping reforms for energy efficiency and research to end dependency on fossil fuels…which is optimistic at best according to experts in the field. Experts believe the approach toward less foreign dependency of energy in a stepped manner, will not upset the delicate global inter-dependency energy plays. However, at the current status, much is at stake in the geopolitical landscape including the need to tie-in decision making among Cabinet and U.S. government departments interdependent on intelligence that will strengthen energy security and viability. In addition, how the new nascent democracies tie into the concept of free trade will be a debate worth watching as more countries join the World Trade Organization (WTO) to formulate and further shape global trade policy. Acceptance or non-acceptance of free market enterprise may ultimately lead to driving costs of access and production upwards.

To the average U.S. consumer concentrating on getting the kids off to school and putting food on the table, this may seem daunting. All one has to do is just remember the oil crisis during the Carter Administration and the lines at the gas stations across the country and it all makes sense. Fueled by the ousting of the Shah and the assumption of a new fundamentalist government lead by a cleric and former prisoner, Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, America experienced unstable oil prices, high unemployment and a V-8 moment when it came to increasing dependency on foreign oil sources. Should the recent chain of events in Egypt parallel that of Iran whereby this new democratic transition government is eventually squeezed out by cleric intervention after one year in office, a déjà vu in the theatre of Middle Eastern oil production could come into play.

There is much to do domestically with a crushing recession still gripping our nation, yet the United States still must keep its big toe in the cursory depths of the canals and straits which keep us interdependent to a global energy market.

In seeking ways to diversify our energy supply, America still must play the “honest broker” role in the world to help new leaders understand the importance of open trade and free markets. As more suppliers enter the market and use these commodities for political gain, our purse strings will surely incur repeated fluctuations. Will we decide the cost of freedom from foreign oil dependency overtime far outweighs the U.S. becoming isolationist and no longer number one in the world market as the Obama Administration would like us to believe? America must lead by example, or our economy will undoubtedly fall prey to an international trade rollercoaster.

Lisa-Marie is the principal for The Cashman Group specializing in Crisis, Strategic and Political Communications. She is an elected member of her Republican Town Committee since 1999 and political strategist to several congressional and state campaigns.

2012 Primary

Entire Republican Debate 10-11-2011

October 12, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Be sure to catch our live blog and commentarty of the debate HERE.

2012 Primary

Live Blog of Debate 10-11-2011

October 11, 2011 Chuck Norton 2 Comments

You can watch the entire debate HERE and follow it along with our live blog below.

UPDATE – Newt Gingrich in action:

It will start here.

Hello all of my friends welcome to the show. Please forgive spelling errors as I will go back and fix them after.

Being a Bloomberg/Washington Post debate I expect several stupid/gotcha questions. I also expect questions that contain false premises. Do not trust the Washington Post fact checkers. But who knows maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. I hope Charlie Rose plays it straight.

One minute answers generate sound bites, they do not allow for answers that have much real substance. The one minute format helps the journalists to create conflict and drama and news. It does not serve the country well to have a debate with such short answers.

Herman Cain is asked how to stop the paralysis in Washington – Cain talks 999 and balancing the budget very soon. If you do that too soon you risk “Hooverizing” the economy. It will be a shock. It is better to do it in 4-7 years.

Rick Perry – ask the same question essentially – Perry goes energy independence, Declaration of Energy Independence.

Mitt Romney says that he would be prepared to be a leader. I fear Mitt does not have the spine to lead. In the last debate he was saying that one could not be too against illegal immigration, but just before the last election he was on Meet the Press talking amnesty – that isn’t leading Mitt.

Rick Perry uses the word “intimidation” in reference to the Obama Administration on energy policy, Dodd Frank – etc etc. I like that Rick uses the hard word to describe this administration.

Michelle Bachmann is asked the jail question when it comes to Wall Street Execs. Bachmann is telling it like it is on how the government forced the private sector to meet rules that caused this problem. The Pinhead journalist tried to pin the “deregulation” lie and Michelle wouldn’t have it. Her answer is a home run and is spot on. I am an expert on this issue all and if anyone doubts what she just said please ask me to explain in the comments section and I will give you as much evidence as you need.

Newt goes after Geithner and Bernanke and backs Michelle up on Dodd and Frank. Look at the journalists trying to excuse how it was the govt who caused this problem – their bias is showing and they are getting perturbed and Newt is like “hold the phone” and gives them a lecture. A good Newt moment.

My internet just paused me for 30 seconds but I got most of the Ron Paul answer about how the bailouts were misused. He makes a valid point.

Rick Santorum talks about creating a good business environment, energy and manufacturing. Low tax – smart regulatory environment.

John Huntsman backs up Rick Santorum’s manufacturing answer, focuses on freedom of the marketplace to innovate. Says that DC is the gas capital of the world. “We are losing our ability to maintain a competitive marketplace today” . Good answer albeit obvious.

Newt is asked the end of life question on medicare – Newt does some name dropping of some doctor to increase his credibility and then creates an example to answer his question. Newt makes a very smart appeal to Palin backers, but then again Newt has backed Palin’s view on ObamaCare from minute one (and I know because I covered it).

Bachmann goes after Obama for refusing to put a plan on the table to fix medicare. Bachman goes after ObamaCare’s “Health Care Advisory Board” very thoughtfully.

John Huntsman goes right back to manufacturing and tax reform to create a good environment to make new production jobs. Huntsman hits a home run with his statement on a professional governing class and how people’s privacy and their family is exposed (and trashed) if they even consider running for office. Huntsman is saying that we have a ruling elite in much the same way that Rush Limbaugh has talked about for years. Huntsman than talks about the smart parts of the Simpson/Bowles deficit commission which actually came up with some great ideas on how to increase government revenue by lowering tax rates and simplifying the tax code.

The problem with Herman Cain 999 plan is that it gives government a national sales tax on top of some other larger taxes now and that can be dangerous if the Democrats take power again.

A reporter is trying to lecture Mitt Romney on credit and what is a hypothetical question…. Mitt was right to treat her as a chirping bird. Is there anything worse than a young, half-educated reporter with a case of hubris? WATCH THIS – notice how Mit is on both sides of the bailouts issue. This is a problem with Mitt is that he uses so much language that is full of escape hatches and it is hard to nail him down on a policy issue and Charlie Rose sees it.

Mitt name dropped Greg Mankiw (economist). Seriously – most economists are a joke and I know as I have debated some noted ones, but Mankiw is the real deal.

Cain is correct about the bailouts and how they were implemented to increase the power of the federal govt and pick winners and losers. That money should have been used to buy toxic assets as we did in the previous savings and loan crisis and it worked out.

Ron Paul is correct about Keynesian economics, he is right that the conservative economists predicted the bubble (In fact Dr. Hayek won the Nobel Price for his work on Market Bubbles) , and he is right about “Moral Hazard”.

OK BREAK TIME – This format makes it look like the GOP has real answers. I am glad that they are not being so rigid about the 60 second answers. This is turning out to be a better debate for the country than I was expecting.

A quick spell check and fix and we will continue after the commercial break.

So they are pulling “Reagan in compromise” video. The difference is that the Democrats in Reagan’s day were LBJ/JFK Democrats and the Democrat leadership of today are Alinsky radicals. They got no where with Perry and now they are pushing Romney on “compromise with Democrats” – Washington thinks that “compromise” means that Republicans cave and do what Democrats want – never forget that. How come “Compromise” cannot mean that Democrats come and do what Republicans want?

The “super committee” is a joke and it will be demagogued and is useless and Newt is explaining why. This is a youtube moment.

Bachmann: We spend 40% more than we take in every day. We must cut spending because it is impossible to tax enough to pay for the current levels of spending.

Now Charlie Rose is setting the table up to get the people there to go after Herman Cain with that video. Cain production drives the economy, confidence encourages growth, the 999 plan can be plainly changed with one rate. The reporter saying that people will spend more for bread and beer is just wrong. When you consider all of the inflation that is caused by so many hidden taxes that will be removed under 999 the 999 plan does work out and things will not cost more, in fact they will likely cost less. Cain is right on that point.

Bachmann points out that the 999 plan exposes people to a new tax and that Democrats could later convert that to a value added tax which would be a disaster – and she is correct as that is the Achilles heel of Cain’s 999 plan. Bachman says “turn 9 9 9 up side down” – wow.

Huntsman is right about the trade war scenario with China, we need to pressure China but we need to fix our environment at the same time.

Romney: American leaders have been played like a fiddle by the Chinese – that is VERY true. This is an area that Mitt Romney understands very well. I just hope he will follow through if he becomes president.

Perry – we need to be focused on how we will get America working again. I like Perry’s common sense approach. We need a governing philosophy, not a magic missile policy.

Santorum warns about the pitfalls of 999 if/when Democrats take power and how they will abuse it. Repeal ObamaCare “Business owner says that he will hire no one till he understands how ObamaCare will hurt him”

Romney says that ObamaCare has to be replaced with something.

Huntsman just cost himself a TON of votes by saying that the ObamaCare mandate wills tay and parts of it will stay as repealing all of it is “unrealistic”. That needs to go viral folks. I have not trusted Huntsmann since he misrepresented Reagan’s comments at Liberty Island and what he just said about not being able to repeal Obamacare is VERY indicative (I bet he regrets saying that already). Remember that Huntsman worked in the Obama Administration as Ambassador to China.

COMMERCIAL BREAK II

A special hello to my friend Olga Mancuso 🙂

Bachmann goes after Perry on his former Democrat days – He should be prepared for that. Lets see. Rick Perry used Micheal Reagan to defend himself – BRILLIANT – Perry was ready for the Debt question. Wow great answer. texas went from the 6th lowest debt ration to the second lowest.

Cain to Romney – can you explain to use simply what your 59 point economic plan does?? Cain makes a good point, that the Romney plan maybe too cryptic. The problem with cryptic is that it allows “escape hatches” that we discussed earlier. If you are for 59 things what are you really for, you don’t have to say much.

Newt on Obama’s class warfare. Newt is going after Romney on individual points of his 59 point plan and that is again another weakness of it.

Huntsman goes after Mitt for the mediocre performance of Massachusetts in job creation when governor. Mitt had inherited a much worse problem with a worse legislature than Huntsman did. So Huntsman’s question wasn’t exactly fair.

Ron Paul goes after Cain on the Federal Reserve – Cain stays on message very smartly.

Perry goes after ObamneyCare – Perry calls RomneyCare his “signature legislative achievement” – a good backhand indeed. Romney is getting in the weeds of his plan and again this is a weakness of RomneyCare.

Romney asks Bachmann what do you do to get Americans to get back to work “expand on it” – This question is a political calculation. Mitt knows that evangelicals are split between Perry and Bachmann so Mitt is trying to prop her up and divide that vote so the “establishment” can have Romney.

Santorum – question on economic freedom and TARP. Santorum points out that you can’t be both for TARP and be pro business and keeping govt out of the economy because it creates an opening that you can drive a truck through. Rick Goes after Cain on TARP. Rick made a valuable point about government intervention in the economy.

Commercial Break III

Spelling errors fixed and ready to go.

Healthcare – Perry says get the states more money to run state Medicaid programs and let the states do more experiments to see what works and what doesn’t. Why do we need a federal health care bureaucracy and each state have one as well. It is redundant, confusing, creates conflict, and crushes freedom.

Cain is asked about the Federal Reserve and say that the Federal Reserve must have its mission narrowed and that he has the names of two people in the wings to replace The Bernanke.

Ron Paul is right on about how Greenspan ushered in the mortgage bubble.

Small Business owner asked about how to free up credit and get the govt off the back of small business. Romney says that Frank-Dodd is the wrong bill with hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations, and it was written by the wrong people. Frank and Dodd were two of the worst perps in the economic mess.

Bachmann – Dodd-Frank is the job and small bank destruction act. More consolidation (Do a search on this site on the word “Consolidation” and learn something important after this debate is over).

Ron Paul is right about the need to repeal Sarbanes-Oxley. Well said.

Perry – the Federal govt should not be involved in Solyndra or getting involved in the private sector to such a degree.

Rose shows the video of Bush from his ownership society speech:

Speaker Gingrich: Gingrich goes after Obama/Carter on malaise. Newt – China could not compete with us in 100 years if we got our act together in this country – ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!@!

Cain on the protesters – more of what he has said all week.

Romney – he blasts the Obama Jobs bill as stimulus two, the green jobs boondoggle etc etc. In order to create jobs you need to understand how employers think.

Pinhead reporter tosses Perry the “disparity” question and misrepresents the facts. Perry hits it out of the park. “The reason we have so much poverty is because we have a President who is a job killer”

Rick Santorum – collapse of the family has been its own economic disaster and he is spot on about that and any plan needs to address that.

OK Charlie Rose is asking each person to make a closing statement.

Bachmann – the best solutions are the ones that are closest to home. We don’t need big government.

Cain – I was po before I was poor. I know hat that means, we need to work the right problems, with the right priority and have the right people work on them and we need a bold plan.

Newt – We all have a sense of the pain level in the economy and the people want to know how we are going to salve it.

Ron Paul – If you care about people you need to restore liberty in America.

Santorum – when manufacturing left the middle class started to leave as well. We need to produce and have income mobility.

Huntsman – I participated in a family business and had a low unemployment state.

Perry – Son of farmers and a military veteran and governor. I have the CEO experience and work with the private sector to create the jobs and make America, America again.

Romney – We need leadership that believes in America. A strong defense is critical.

Debate over. You are welcome to add your thoughts. I thought that this debate did more for the Republican ticket than any other so far.

Perry need to come on stronger in the next debate if he wants to stay in this. Santrorun and Bachmann are right that Cain does show niavete in some areas and that is a problem. Mitt looked great but I am not a fan of escape hatch language.

UPDATE –

I am watching Bloomberg TV/Washington Post joke of fact-checking. They are using CBO numbers to defend ObamaCare. The CBO uses static analyses which never works and the CBO uses the assumptions that the party in power asks them to make. Even Obama’s own Medicare Actuary said that the CBO analysis was wrong.

Civility, Dirty Tricks, Lies

Talking Points Memo Lies About Tea Party Arrests

October 11, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Many of us have seen this photo which has gone viral on the net:

The far left, which is not happy about this photo for obvious reasons, is touting a piece from “Talking Points Memo” claiming that nine or ten TEA Party protesters were arrested on Capital Hill.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/strange-scene-10-arrested-as-tea-party-watchers-heckle-police.php

Talking Points Memo is a radical left smear site that is designed with a custom WordPress theme complete with ads to make it look “legit”. Even the elite media does not consider TPM to be a reliable source. TPM is associated with writers at the Huffington Post. Readers might remember that this was before most of the Huffington Post staff walked out after Arianna Huffington refused to pay them after she had gotten her multimillion dollar windfall from AOL.

TPM likely edited this piece after the fact to make it look like people at a TEA Party protest were being mass arrested. So how is it that we discovered that TPM knew that those taken into custody were a part of a pro-life group that often gets arrested and not TEA Party participants? Google Cache doesn’t lie:

Well look at that, Google shows that TPM did report that those arrested were a part of a pro-life group at the time. This has been scrubbed from the TPM web site. Anti-abortion protesters somehow got converted to TEA Party members. TPM was not careful to edit the entire piece though as at the bottom of the piece they left this update intact:

Friday update: Evan is running down the story of these arrests, Randall Terry’s group was involved. Also, the man who was on the curb appears to be Norman Weslin, and we dug up some video showing him using similar tactics as he was arrested at a Notre Dame protest when President Obama spoke during graduation.

Randall Terry’s group has made it a point to get themselves arrested for doing “sit ins” for decades. TPM either forgot to scrub this as well or assumed that most readers would not know about Randall Terry’s group. Randall Terry is so famous for getting arrested that most anyone who has taken even a moderate interest in politics knows about his group. Hardly the “storming of offices” and other violent imagery that TPM used.

[Editor’s Note – I took screen shots of all of the pages involved in case our friends at TPM or HuffPo decide that they wish to engage in any further creative editing.]

Remember how we mentioned that TPM was affiliated with people at the Huffington Post? It would seem that they pulled the same trick at Huffington Post, but were more careless:

Notice how they claim Politico.com as a source and even include a quote? But when one follows the link to the Politico.com piece there is no mention of any TEA Party activists being arrested.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. ABC News reports that on the same day nine leftists demanding health care to be nationalized were arrested for “occupying” the office of Senator Joe Lieberman. Through some miracle this escaped reporting at the Huffington Post and at Talking Points Memo, unless Huffington Post would dare consider trying to attribute the arrests of these nine leftists to the TEA Party.

TPM still has videos online attributing the arrests to TEA Party activists.

Econ, Jobs

Progressivism Unrestrained: 9 of the top 10 jobless metro areas are in California.

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

As Governor Rick Perry of Texas has told us, 151 companies left California and moved to Texas in just one year alone.

The recent census data shows us that people are voting with their feet. They are leaving progressive states and moving to “right to work” states.

Via Verum Serum:

Nine of the top 10 metro jobless rates in the nation are California, and seven are in California’s Central Valley:

El Centro, CA – 29.3% (east of San Diego near border with Mexico)
Yuma, AZ – 26.7%
Yuba City, CA – 17.8%
Merced, CA – 16.3%
Stockton, CA – 16.3%
Modesto, CA – 16.2%
Visalia-Porterville, CA – 15.9%
Fresno, CA – 15.7%
Palm Coast, FL – 15.5%
Hanford – Corcoran, CA – 15.0%

Corporatism, Dick Morris, Econ, Obama, Treason

Dick Morris confirms Political Arena’s long term view of Obama economic philosophy

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Political Arena editor Chuck Norton:

I have repeatedly talked about “Consolidation” as Obama’s economic theory. Dick Morris is on Sean Hannity right now saying that Obama wants to have one big union, one big corporation in each industry, along with one big government. He is describing Obama’s merging of Corporatism and Socialism. “The left voted for socialism and got Goldman Sachs” says Morris.

Anyone mind of I just gloat for a moment /wink. I started saying this well over a year ago on my old college blog. We try to always bring you the cutting edge.

Veronique de Rugy: The Alternative Minimum Tax Targets the Productive Middle Class, Not the Rich

Alarmism, Energy Policy

Wind power isn’t all it is cracked up to be.

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

In the winter a little ice can…….

Academic Misconduct, Alarmism

Global Warming Conference Delegates Sign Petitions to Ban Water and “Destabilize U.S. Economy”

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Via The Blaze:

I’ve got to hand it to the folks at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. They‘ve come up with a creative new way to expose the scientific ignorance of many of today’s climate change fanatics.

In a Penn & Teller-style prank, CFACT asked attendees of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico, to sign two different petitions. The first asked participants to support the purposeful destabilization of the United States economy:

The first project, entitled “Petition to Set a Global Standard” sought to isolate and punish the United States of America for defying the international community, by refusing to bite, hook, line and sinker on the bait that is the Kyoto Protocol. The petition went so far as to encourage the United Nations to impose tariffs and trade restrictions on the U.S. in a scheme to destabilize the nation’s economy. Specifically, the scheme seeks to lower the U.S. GDP by 6% over a ten year period, unless the U.S. signs a U.N. treaty on global warming.

This would be an extremely radical move by the United Nations. Even so, radical left-wing environmentalists from around the world scrambled eagerly to sign.

And to prove that some people will sign anything that has the right buzz words — think “global effort,“ ”international community,“ and ”planetary” — COP 16 participants were asked to sign in support of a ban on a dangerous chemical compound: water.

The second project was as successful as the first. It was euphemistically entitled “Petition to Ban the Use of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO)” (translation water). It was designed to show that if official U.N. delegates could be duped by college students into banning water, that they could essentially fall for anything, including pseudo-scientific studies which claim to show that global warming is man-caused.

Despite the apparently not-so-obvious reference to H2O, almost every delegate that collegian students approached signed their petition to ban that all too dangerous substance, which contributes to the greenhouse effect, is the major substance in acid rain, and is fatal if inhaled.

The video experiment helps us draw one of two conclusions: a) these people are absolutely clueless, or b) they really do hate water. Either way, who really thinks these people should be considered “experts” when it comes to science?

Culture War, SCOTUS

Justice Scalia on “Originalism”

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Great stuff!

California Lawyer:

Last October marked the 24th anniversary of Justice Antonin Scalia’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Well known for his sharp wit as well as his originalist approach to the Constitution, Justice Scalia consistently asks more questions during oral arguments and makes more comments than any other Supreme Court justice. And according to one study, he also gets the most laughs from those who come to watch these arguments. In September Justice Scalia spoke with UC Hastings law professor Calvin Massey.

Q. How would you characterize the role of the Supreme Court in American society, now that you’ve been a part of it for 24 years?
I think it’s a highly respected institution. It was when I came, and I don’t think I’ve destroyed it. I’ve been impressed that even when we come out with opinions that are highly unpopular or even highly—what should I say—emotion raising, the people accept them, as they should. The one that comes most to mind is the election case of Bush v. Gore. Nobody on the Court liked to wade into that controversy. But there was certainly no way that we could turn down the petition for certiorari. What are you going to say? The case isn’t important enough? And I think that the public ultimately realized that we had to take the case. … I was very, very proud of the way the Court’s reputation survived that, even though there are a lot of people who are probably still mad about it.

You believe in an enduring constitution rather than an evolving constitution. What does that mean to you?
In its most important aspects, the Constitution tells the current society that it cannot do [whatever] it wants to do. It is a decision that the society has made that in order to take certain actions, you need the extraordinary effort that it takes to amend the Constitution. Now if you give to those many provisions of the Constitution that are necessarily broad—such as due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments, equal protection of the laws—if you give them an evolving meaning so that they have whatever meaning the current society thinks they ought to have, they are no limitation on the current society at all. If the cruel and unusual punishments clause simply means that today’s society should not do anything that it considers cruel and unusual, it means nothing except, “To thine own self be true.”

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don’t think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we’ve gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?
Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. … But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that’s fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society. Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn’t. Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws. You don’t need a constitution to keep things up-to-date. All you need is a legislature and a ballot box. You don’t like the death penalty anymore, that’s fine. You want a right to abortion? There’s nothing in the Constitution about that. But that doesn’t mean you cannot prohibit it. Persuade your fellow citizens it’s a good idea and pass a law. That’s what democracy is all about. It’s not about nine superannuated judges who have been there too long, imposing these demands on society.

What do you do when the original meaning of a constitutional provision is either in doubt or is unknown?
I do not pretend that originalism is perfect. There are some questions you have no easy answer to, and you have to take your best shot. … We don’t have the answer to everything, but by God we have an answer to a lot of stuff … especially the most controversial: whether the death penalty is unconstitutional, whether there’s a constitutional right to abortion, to suicide, and I could go on. All the most controversial stuff. … I don’t even have to read the briefs, for Pete’s sake.

Should we ever pay attention to lawyers’ work product when it comes to constitutional decisions in foreign countries?
[Laughs.] Well, it depends. If you’re an originalist, of course not. What can France’s modern attitude toward the French constitution have to say about what the framers of the American Constitution meant? [But] if you’re an evolutionist, the world is your oyster.

You’ve sometimes expressed thoughts about the culture in which we live. For example, in Lee v. Weismanyou wrote that we indeed live in a vulgar age. What do you think accounts for our present civic vulgarity?
Gee, I don’t know. I occasionally watch movies or television shows in which the f-word is used constantly, not by the criminal class but by supposedly elegant, well-educated, well-to-do people. The society I move in doesn’t behave that way. Who imagines this? Maybe here in California. I don’t know, you guys really talk this way?

You more or less grew up in New York. Being a child of Sicilian immigrants, how do you think New York City pizza rates?
I think it is infinitely better than Washington pizza, and infinitely better than Chicago pizza. You know these deep-dish pizzas—it’s not pizza. It’s very good, but … call it tomato pie or something. … I’m a traditionalist, what can I tell you?

Elite Media, Lies, Reagan

Media Research Center: How the Elite Media Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy Reagan’s Legacy

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Via the Media Research Center:

Special Report. “Rewriting Ronald Reagan: How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy”

Below is the Executive Summary for a special report posted today on the MRC’s Web site, “Rewriting Ronald Reagan: How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy,” posted with 103 quotes enhanced by 22 videos clips with accompanying audio.

This week the celebrations begin for the “Reagan Centennial.” This report, compiled by Rich Noyes with video rendering help from Kyle Drennen and fresh quotes text and quotes added by Tim Graham, is a reminder about the disdain, disgust and disrespect the news media displayed toward Ronald Reagan in office and in the years since.

For the Executive Summary online: http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/ExecSumm.aspx

The text below includes links to the seven specific sections:
“Reagan the Man,” “The Reaganomics Recovery,” “Reagan and National Defense,” “Reagan and Race,” “The Reagan Legacy” and “Reagan, Slammed by Celebrities.”

For the PDF sans video clips, but in a great format for printing and with a colorful cover created by the MRC’s Melanie Selmer:
http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/uploads/Reagan2011.pdf

Now the Executive Summary for the January 31 report:

Rewriting Ronald Reagan
How the Media Have Worked to Distort, Dismantle and Destroy His Legacy

As the nation prepares to pay tribute to former President Ronald Reagan on the 100th anniversary of his birth, it is amazing to consider that his success at turning the U.S. away from 1960s-style liberalism was accomplished in the face of a daily wave of news media hostility. The media’s first draft of history was more myth than reality: that Reagan only brought the nation poverty, ignorance, bankruptcy, and a dangerously imbalanced foreign and defense policy.

The Media Research Center has assembled a report documenting the “objective” national media’s most biased takes on President Reagan, his record and his times, including 22 video clips and matching MP3 audio:

I. Reagan the Man: Reporters often agonized over why the American public liked Reagan, that they couldn’t see through the White House spell and see Reagan in the contemptuous light that the media did. Go to: http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Man.aspx

II. The Reaganomics Recovery: Reagan’s policies caused a dramatic economic turn-around from high inflation and unemployment to steady growth, but the good news was obscured by bad news of trade deficits, greedy excesses of the rich, and supposedly booming homelessness. See:
http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Reaganomics.aspx

III. Reagan and National Defense: Ronald Reagan may have won the Cold War, but to the media, the Reagan defense buildup seemed like a plot designed to deny government aid to the poor and hungry, and was somehow the only spending responsible for “bankrupting” the country. Check:
http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Defense.aspx

IV. Reagan and Race: Using their definition of “civil rights” — anything which adds government-mandated advantages for racial minorities is “civil rights” progress — liberal journalists suggested that somehow Ronald Reagan was against liberty for minorities. Go to:
http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Race.aspx

V. The Reagan Legacy: The media painted the Reagan era as a horrific time of low ethics, class warfare on the poor, and crushing government debt. Examples:
http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/ReaganLegacy.aspx

EXTRA: Reagan, Slammed by Celebrities. Ronald Reagan’s long Hollywood career earned him no credit among celebrities, who ridiculed him and even inserted anti-Reagan jokes into everyday entertainment programming. Check:
http://www.mrc.org/specialreports/2011/RewritingReagan/Celebrities.aspx

Culture War, Reagan

One man’s dream changed the world. Are we ready to reclaim that dream?

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Culture War, Unhinged

Leftist Elitism in Action!

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Amity Shlaes, Education, History, School Indoctrination

Amity Shlaes: FDR, The Great Depression and the Record

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

You think you know what happened? Odds are you don’t. Amity Schleas is likely the greatest living economic historian. She is brilliant, funny, and also happens to be just darn adorable. I had a short conversion with her once and she is very pleasant.

You will not regret watching this interview as you will come away far better informed.

More Schleas –

Book TV: After Words with Amity Shlaes:

Culture War, National Security, Obama, Russia, Unhinged

New Documents: The ACLU’s Stalinist Heritage

October 10, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Via the Daily Caller:

Noted author Paul Kengor has unearthed declassified letters and other documents in the Soviet Comintern archives linking early leaders of the ACLU with the Communist Party.

Kengor found a May 23, 1931 letter in the archives signed by ACLU founder Roger Baldwin, written on ACLU stationery, to then American Communist Party Chairman William Z. Foster asking him to help ACLU Chairman Harry Ward with his then-upcoming trip to Stalin’s Russia.

The letter suggests Ward intended to visit the Soviet Union to find “evidence from Soviet Russia” that would undermine the capitalist profit motive.

Baldwin wrote the letter at a time when Stalin was deporting 1.8 million Ukrainian peasants to Siberia under his policy of the forced collectivization of agriculture, which resulted in the deaths of up to 10 million Ukrainians in the two years that followed.

The Ukrainian government considers this to have been an act of genocide.

Foster was a key figure in the early years of the American communist movement who belonged to the ACLU’s National Committee in the 1920s, according to FBI documents. He later wrote a book titled “Toward Soviet America” in 1932 and also testified under oath before Congress that he opposed American democracy.

Another letter on ACLU letterhead Kengor found in the Soviet archives dated Sept. 2, 1932 asks the Communist Party of America for a schedule of Foster’s trips around the country and offers to help keep the police at bay. It also asks for the names and addresses of Communist Party representatives in the cities where Foster was speaking.

Kengor also found a flier from 1933 advertising ACLU board member Corliss Lamont as the headline speaker for “Soviet Union Day,” which its organizers hoped would “answer lies and slanders of enemies of the Soviet Union.”

The documents found their way into the Soviet archives because the Communist Party sent all of its correspondences to the Comintern in Moscow for safekeeping, according to Kengor.

Other documents released in the 1990s by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin show the American Communist Party was under the Moscow’s direct control until 1989.

“These guys were advocating a regime that arguably was the biggest mass murderer in all of human history,” Kengor said. “Where is the moral authority in that?”

Kengor told The Daily Caller he found numerous other documents in the Soviet Comintern archives that also show a close relationship between the Communist Party and the ACLU.

Culture War, Econ, Education, Obama, Walter Williams

Dr. Walter E. Williams: Redistribution of Income

October 9, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Corporatism, Obama

Obama Advisor and GE CEO Jeff Immelt’s Agenda: “Big Government and Big Business”

October 8, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

This is neo-corporatist corruption in its Chicago style glory.

GE, which owned NBC and MSNBC, benefited with its relationship with the Democratic Leadership. GE has also had other ethical problems which are pointed out in the video. Of course noth NBC and MSNBC abandoned serious news reporting long ago and chose a path of highly biased and unfair reporting on one side, to nightly lies and character assassination on the other.

This leads us to another opportunity to remind you all of Norton’s First Law:

Big business loves big government, which is why big business loves domestic taxes and regulation because it keeps the small and medium sized competition out of the competition. It also causes inflation, so ultimately it is you who pays and the poor who are hardest hit. (Big business often gets loopholes written in the laws for themselves such as Nancy Pelosi trying to get a part of the tuna industry exempted from the minimum wage law).

Uncategorized

Cong. Debbie Schultz: We need to continue to deficit spend like crazy so we can compete with China….

October 8, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

This is the new spin, same as the old spin: if we don’t spend like mad and continue to grow government and debt we wont be competitive…

The left puts Cong. Schultz out there because she has a cute and innocent smile and seems harmless so hopefully those big bad Republican meanies won’t blast her outrageous dishonesty and risk looking bad on TV. Do not be fooled. Schultz uses Alinsky style propaganda techniques and lies with the best of them. I have seen her roll out a dozen half-truths in a 15 second statement. You know how the old saying goes that you know a politician is lying because his lips are moving; Debbie Schultz is the poster child of that stereotype. In the video she repeats the lie that repealing ObamaCare will increase the deficit when Obama’s own Medicare Actuary numbers show the opposite. As a last resort she pulls out the “Children with cancer card”. Gimme a break…

By all means Debbie, burden us with outrageous levels of deficit spending which is now 10 times higher than what it was in 2007 because it has to be done for the children. Have you had enough of this nonsense already?

“Forget moral or ethical considerations… The end is what you want, the means is how you get it” – Saul Alinsky

What keeps us from being competitive is the highest corporate tax in the industrialized world (Japan and Canada just cut theirs). What keeps us from being competitive is that a full third of every dollar the government takes in goes to just paying the interest on the debt. What keeps us from being competitive is that our private sector is burdened with supporting a government that costs $4 trillion a year. What keeps us from being competitive is unions that over reach, public sector unions that not only over reach, but have stopped the needed reforms in public education. What keeps us from being competitive is a mountain of regulations, tax laws that no one can follow, taxes on everything that nickel and dime us, fear of bureaucrats that behave arbitrarily and all of the uncertainly these problems have caused.

Clinton, Econ, Editorial, Health Law, Herman Cain

Flashback: Analysis of Herman Cain vs. Bill Clinton on HillaryCare

October 8, 2011 Chuck Norton 1 Comment

Notice how Clinton says that it will work because it means that everyone in the business will have to raise their prices the same so it all works out; no it doesn’t. Clinton is engaging in a false assumption that destroys smaller competition and benefits the biggest players in a market.

Cain is explaining that “big pizza” has a higher base percentage of profit, based on both volume and on economies of scale, that gives them lower costs and higher aggregate profitability compared to smaller competitors. While Godfathers has a profitability of 1.5%, “big pizza” has a profitability that is likely close to 6%.

So what does this mean? If Clinton gets his way “big pizza” will not raise their prices at all, on the contrary they will have a sale and keep that sale on till smaller outfits like GodFathers who are forced to raise prices and reduce service via layoffs can’t compete and shut down. At first the barely profitable stores close, then the better ones. The result is more and more markets where “big pizza” progresses its virtual monopoly in each market. With that competition taken out of the picture “big pizza” can charge whatever it likes and prices go up, and the pressure to keep quality up starts to evaporate.

This is why companies like Philip Morris lobbied Democrats to have tobacco taxes and regulations increased.

This brings us to Norton’s First Law:

Big business loves big government, which is why big business loves domestic taxes and regulation because it keeps the small and medium-sized competition out of the competition. It also causes inflation, so ultimately it is you who pays and the poor who are hardest hit. (Big business often gets loopholes written in the laws for themselves such as Nancy Pelosi trying to get a part of the tuna industry exempted from the minimum wage law).

Econ, Taxes

Baltimore Passes Soda Tax, Pepsi Closes Plant in Baltimore

October 8, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Baltimore Sun:

The Pepsi plant in Baltimore will no longer make soda, and the company plans to lay off 77 people as officials have decided to stop manufacturing operations — a decision they blame in part on a controversial new beverage tax in the city.

The last cans and 2-liter bottles of Pepsi-Cola, Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew and other sodas ran through the production line Monday morning. Executives at Pepsi Beverages Co. told workers in meetings later in the day that production would be halted for good. Pepsi officials said they would work out details regarding the layoffs, including potential severance, with the local Teamsters union.

Kristine Hinck, a company spokeswoman, said, “Given the climate, making a beverage in a city where there is a beverage tax certainly doesn’t help.” – Ya think?

You would have thought that Maryland would have learned its lesson after the state lost massive revenue after it imposed its now infamous “millionaire’s tax”.

I am going to go buy a case of Diet Pepsi today.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Culture War, Jihad, Lies, School Indoctrination

PBS’ Tavis Smiley Tells Ayaan Hirsi Ali that Christians in America Blow Up People Every Day…

October 8, 2011 Chuck Norton 1 Comment

Ayaan Hirsi Ali lives under a death mark. She needs security 24/7 and likely will for the rest of her life. She made a film with Theo van Gogh about the status of women is Islamic countries. Van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight by a militant Islamist. The knife driven through his chest had a note addressed to Ali essentially saying that she was next. Radicalized Muslim communities that function as a state within a state are popping up around Europe and the Western European governments do not have the will to stand up to it.

Ali escaped a life of forced marriage and virtual slavery from her Islamic family. She escaped, got educated, and became a Member of the Dutch Parliament. When it became clear that her security needs could not be met she came to the United States.

She writes about her experiences and how the West should stand up to preserve our freedom and our culture. Reflexively the progressive secular left in the elite media, which has been taught in American Universities that Western Culture is “the oppressor” and that Christianity is evil, often attacks her and throws the most outrageous false premises at her in an effort to embarrass her. They end up just embarrassing themselves. Watch the following exchange between PBS Tavis Smiley and Ali.

[gigya src=”http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/eyeblast.swf?v=XdqGZu2Guz” width=”518″ height=”419″ quality=”high” wmode=”transparent” allowFullScreen=”true” ]

How can anyone be this deranged and foolish? I saw this level of idiocy frequently among the campus left. Smiley and his close fron Cornell Belcher ‘West’ are icons among far left academics. From 2008-2010 162 Muslims have been arrested in the United States for plotting against America. How many Christians have been? It happens every day according to Smiley so how about he produce just 50? Anyone care to take that challenge?

With that said, Smiley’s outrageous statements can be debunked by anyone with access to an internet search engine. Post offices are not blown up every day. In fact, using Google to search only two threats of blowing up post offices in the US appear; one from a homeless man who wanted money and another from a man who was likely mentally disturbed as he false reported about an alleged bomb threat to a post office.

No one was called the N word in front of the Capitol Building. The event was being recorded from many angles by a sea of new media recording devices that captured every moment of the event which demonstrated that nothing of the kind happened. A $100,000 reward for evidence of it happening was offered by Andrew Breitbart with no takers. Of the two Democrat politicians who made the false claim, one back-pedaled and the other is the same politician who compared John McCain to Democrat Governor George Wallace in October 2008.

The only known acts of violence at Tea Party events have been carried out by far left extremists and paid union thugs who showed up to physically attack the participants. All of this has been reported in detail on this site (see the violence category on my old college blog as I have every incident detailed with evidence).

So what do you think? Is Smiley mentally challenged, delusional, as ignorant as the day is long, or just a liar? In any case he has won the coveted title of “Pinhead of the Year”.

“It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it” – Christopher Hitchens writing about how the elite media, in its reflexive defense of Islamic extremism, uses the most outrageously bogus moral equivalences to try to discredit Ayann Hirsi Ali.

Related:

Liberal Talker Alan Colmes: Muslims aren’t the terror problem, white males are…..

Uncategorized

Organizer admits to paying ‘Occupy DC’ protesters [VIDEO]

October 7, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

Follow the link.

http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/06/organizer-admits-to-paying-occupy-dc-protesters-video/

Education, Pay to Play, Unions

Teachers union boss takes in $428,000, then demands ‘shared’ sacrifice

October 7, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

You just gotta love public sector unions. To hear them talk one might think they are all underpaid victims, like missionaries working in the third world…. so sad…./sniff.

The truth is that public sector unions are usually paid more then there private sector counterparts. They also get Cadillac level benefits that they pay little or nothing for and get pensions that are so fat that states have no idea how they can possibly pay them. So far what are the results, snow that doesn’t get cleared in New York, a federal government that spent $2.08 trillion more than it took in and we have little to show for it, and public schools that range from sub-par to unsafe failures. [Even the best American public schoolers do not measure well against other top 30 industrialized nations. So if you think “our public schools are really good” you are deluding yourself – Editor]

Washington Examiner:

American Federation of Teachers president Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten has issued a statement slamming proposed cuts from the congressional deficit commission for not pushing shared sacrifice among the wealthy, but an AFT spokesman has told The Examiner that Weingarten will not be taking a paycut from the total $428,284 she received in salary and benefits during fiscal year 2010.

Weingarten wrote of the proposed budget cuts from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform:

While we’re grateful the commission’s chairmen understood the need to hold education investment sacrosanct, count on a vigorous fight from us over proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicare that would hurt an already-ailing middle class. Shared sacrifice means holding millionaires responsible for their fair share of taxes and ending truly wasteful spending, not sawing off essential lifelines for the middle class, who desperately are trying to keep their heads above water in these precarious economic times. We can help solve the financial future of Social Security and Medicare by investing in putting our people back to work, so they can pay into these programs. Nothing is more important to the future solvency of the country.

Filings from the Department of Labor reveal that the American Federation of Teachers has disbursed $428,284 to Weingarten. Her gross salary is $342,552, but benefits and other disbursements raise that number to almost half a million dollars. She also earned a six-figure salary when she was president of Local 2 in 2009, during which she received $202,319. Neither of these sums, by the way, include her expenses.

*Click to Enlarge

When The Examiner called the AFT to ask whether Weingarten was planning on taking a paycut to demonstrate her belief in shared sacrifice, the spokesman said no. “No, absolutely not. She works 24/7 on behalf of union members and the people we serve. Making sure that people get a great education in public schools in America. She works to the bottom of her soul. You can’t put a price tag on that.”

I joked that, well, there is a price tag on that, and it’s apparently $428,284, but got no response.

The spokesman also asked whether The Examiner was equally critical of Goldman Sachs “who has received taxpayer dollars” (we have been), though it’s a bit odd that a spokesman for a teachers union that lobbies to funnel more taxpayer dollars toward its members would be so critical of Goldman Sachs for taking taxpayer dollars.

The lesson from the teachers union is clear: Shared sacrifice for thee and not for me.

Civility, Education, Elite Media

Lesson for Journalism Students: Leftist Media Attack Fox News for Memo Reminding Reporters to Always be Skeptical

October 7, 2011 Chuck Norton Leave a comment

There are two predominant philosophies of journalism taught in this country. The “Walter Lippmann (so called) ‘objective’ model” and what one of my J-School profs called the “Looking out for the folks” model. The former is usually presented as the preferred model at most universities (especially the Ivy’s)

The Lippmann Objective Model is anything but objective. The Lippmann model says that journalists should associate themselves with an elite technical class of people so that these experts via/with the journalists can give the “proper” information to the public so that they can “vote the right way”.

At first, the Orwellian nature of the Lippmann Model is not so pointedly explained, but as time goes on reporters get it and the coverage of the elite media shows it. [If you doubt me I challenge you to follow this LINK and scroll down to the quote from Dr. Rahe and the excerpt from Lippmann’s book – Editor]

For example, the reporter and/or editor has a point of view he wishes to present. So he opens his rolodex and contacts an “expert” he knows will give him the sound-bite he wants and presents him as just an objective expert who they found at random. Or said reporter will have a man on the street section, but the reporter will call a few people he knows to be on that street, complete with the narrative that the reporter knows will present.

Oh? You think I’m kidding? OK just a few examples:

CNN Debates: Unbiased and Undecided Voters Turn Out to be Democrat Operatives (most of whom had appeared on CNN before)

Of course this is a trick commonly used by PR operatives:

Washington Post: Obama Town Hall Questioners Were Campaign Ringers

Obama’s Photo Op with Cheering Troops Staged

BUSTED: Democrats putting campaign ringers in town halls falsely claiming to be doctors!

Of course the Associated Press knows this goes on, but only appreciates it when leftists do it:

AP praises Obama for using military for public relations. FLASHBACK: AP condemned Bush accusing him of using the military for public relations.

The “looking out for the folks” model is often quoted by Bill O’Reilly, but Bill, as he will tell you, is more of a commentator than a straight news man. The spirit of the kind of journalism O’Reilly did when he was a straight news man is closer to this model. The “looking out for the folks” model certainly resembles more of the ethical ideal in what people expect from journalism and is what “Lippmann Objective Model” media outlets claim to be to their consumers, but not to each other.

Enough with the preliminary goodies and on to the meat.

Washington Examiner:

Oh the horror! Fox bureau chief told reporters to be ‘skeptical’

By Mark Tapscott

You think the most essential purpose of journalism and the reason the Founders included freedom of the press in the First Amendment was to insure independent reporting about government, politicians, and public policy issues, right?

Well, you must be wrong because Fox News Washington Bureau Chief Bill Sammon is getting a raft of garbage from liberal activists masquerading as journalists at Media Matters, some liberal bloggers and a scattering of real journalists who ought to know better.

Why? Politico’s headline captures the controversy perfectly: “Fox editor urged climate skepticism.”

A journalist being skeptical? Who would ever have thought such a thing could be. I don’t know, maybe anybody who has heard this (attributed long ago to a crusty desk editor at the illustrious City News Bureau in Chicago): “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.”

In other words, we journalists are paid to BE SKEPTICAL.

For the record, here’s what Sammon said in a Dec. 8, 2009, memo to his reporting staff shortly after the Climategate global warming email scandal erupted:

“Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data, we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.”

Now I am from out of town and all, but Sammon’s injuction sounds to me exactly like what editors are supposed to tell their charges – report what A claims and what B says about what A claims, but keep your personal views about both A and B out of it.

Note that Sammon includes both those who say the planet has warmed – i.e. global warming advocates – and those who claim the opposite, that the planet has cooled – global warming critics. How much more even-handed – dare I say it, fair and balanced? – can the guy be?

There is also the factual nature of Sammon’s statement that critics question data. Critics DO question the data for a warming planet. He doesn’t demand that his reporters agree with the critics about the data or tell viewers that the critics are right and the global warming advocates are wrong.

Yet, Salon’s headline claims the Fox news executive was “again caught demanding conservative spin.” And the lead that follows makes another false statement, claiming Sammon directed his “anchors and reporters to adopt right-wing spin when discussing the news.”

Are these people so arrogant as to think the rest of us are too stupid to see that Salon totally and completely misrepresented Sammon’s comment?

The back story here, of course, is that Media Matters is doing exactly what billionaire radical liberal financier George Soros paid it $1 million to do, which is to trash Fox News at every opportunity no matter what the facts might be in any given situation.

Watching this campaign unfold, it becomes clear that Fox News drives today’s extremist liberals into the same sort of eye-bulging, irrational, spittle-flying, blind rage that we saw back in the 1950s from the far right whack-jobs in the John Birch Society who claimed Ike was either a fool or a card-carrying commie.

Now, just so everybody reading this knows: Sammon is a former White House reporter for The Examiner. I count him as a friend, a respected colleague and a solid journalist. And Fox News puts me in front of a camera as a talking head once in a while.

So how long you think it will be before Sammon’s critics claim my comments here aren’t credible as a result? The reality is that the left-leaning MSNBC folks sit me down in front of their cameras to bloviate far more frequently than Fox does. Go figure.

So here’s something to ponder when the paid Fox detractors at Media Matters tell you Sammon and I are both former Washington Timesmen and are thus Republican mouthpieces:

I was inducted into the First Amendment Center’s Freedom of Information Hall of Fame a few years ago. I mention this not to boast, but because I was among a bunch of very smart people for whom I have great respect – even though they came predominantly from the liberal side of things.

But I don’t recall seeing anybody from Media Matters among the inductees.

“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X