Those who are regular readers of Political Arena are not surprised by this as this writer has penned over a dozen articles on this very subject.
The piece below is certainly written with a partisan attitude, but in this case the facts justify the arguments within the article. Multiple analysis from the New York Times, Dr. Thomas Sowell, The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and many others have come to this same conclusion as the evidence is simply overwhelming.
A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left’s race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act–enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.
The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.
Again, let’s review:
-President Bush went to Congress repeatedly for years warning them that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to destroy the economy (17 times in 2008 alone). Democrats continuously ignored him, shut down his proposals along party lines and continued raiding the institutions for campaign contributions on their way down.
-John McCain also co-sponsored urgently critical reforms that would have prevented the housing market collapse, but Democrats shut that down as well, along party lines, and even openly ridiculed anyone who suggested reforms were necessary…to protect their taxpayer-funded campaign contributions as the economy raced uncontrollably toward the cliff.
-No one was making bad loans to unqualified people until Democrats came along and threatened to drag banks into court and have them fined and branded as racists if they didn’t go along with the left’s Affirmative Action lending policies…all while federally insuring their losses. Even the New York Times warned in the late 1990s that Democrats continuing to force banks into lowering their standards would lead to this exact catastrophe.
-Obama himself is even on the record personally helping sue one lender (Citibank) into lowering its lending standards to include people from extremely poor and unstable areas, which even one of the left’s favorite blatantly partisan “fact-checkers,” Snopes, admits (while pretending to ‘set the record straight’).
-Even The New York Times admitted that there is “little evidence” of any connection between the “Republican” deregulation measures Obama blames, like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (signed into law by a Democrat), and the collapse of the housing market.
[Political Arena Editor’s Note: The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed almost unanimously]
If the official inflation rate is next to zero, how come prices are going up so much?
Sarah Palin was blasted by reporters and the Wall Street Journal in 2010 for pointing this out and explaining how food and fuel prices would soon skyrocket.
As this very writer explained in 2010. under Clinton the Consumer Price Index was changed so that government would never have to face the “misery index” and a proper measure of inflation again. They removed “Food & Fuel” from the index, you know, because nobody ever buys that stuff anyways, and they weighted the formula towards housing….. that’s right folks, housing.
When the economy turns south or hits a bump new housing starts talk and housing prices fall, thus showing negative inflation. So when the economy is in trouble and inflation is going up, the government reads it as zero inflation. If we still measured inflation like we used to it would be about 9.3% every year for three years. Of course, every shopper knows this as they see the prices for themselves.
A year later, investment guru Jim Rodgers weighed in, confirming the wisdom of Sarah Palin and this very writer:
U.S. government inflation data is “a sham” and is causing the Federal Reserve to vastly understate price pressures in the economy, influential U.S. investor Jim Rogers said on Tuesday.
The U.S. central bank uses inflation data that relies too heavily on housing prices, Rogers told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit, and he criticized the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program.
“Everybody in this room knows prices are going up for everything,” Rogers told the Reuters Summit.
Price hikes for a particular item here or there don’t qualify as inflation. If one thing gets more expensive but something else gets cheaper, that’s what economists call a relative price change. Inflation is a simultaneous increase in prices across the board. Some measures of inflation, such as the GDP Deflator, track price changes that affect businesses as well as those that affect consumers. But the Consumer Price Index is supposed to focus on inflation at the consumer level. And the CPI has recorded minimal increases over the past four years. Since the recession ended, the 12-month change in consumer prices has averaged 2% and has never been as high as 4%.
There are lots of other ways to gauge inflation, however, that give very different signals. Gold was $930 an ounce when the recession ended, and today it’s $1,583. So if you believe in the gold standard, prices have increased 70% in four years – or an annualized rate of 14.2%. Of course, many economists dismiss the gold price as an archaic indicator. So it may be more meaningful to look at price increases over a broad range of commodities. The Reuters CRB Commodity Index, which tracks the prices of coffee, cocoa, copper, and cotton, as well as energy, is up 38% over four years, or 8.6% at a compound annual rate.
Perhaps the most telling indicator – albeit a slightly facetious one – is the Big Mac index, popularized by the Economist magazine. McDonalds hamburgers are available in many countries and their prices reflect the cost of food, fuel, commercial real estate, and basic labor. The price of a Big Mac, therefore, can be used to compare the economies of different countries – or serve as a bellwether of inflation in a single country. Since the recession ended, the cost of a Big Mac in the U.S. has risen from an average of $3.57 to $4.37, or 5.2% a year.
So why haven’t these more rapid increases shown up in the Consumer Price Index? One reason is that the index itself has been modified in a variety of ways over the past 35 years.Fluctuations in home prices have been smoothed out, for example. And the index has been adjusted periodically to reflect changes in what people buy, particularly if they shift from more expensive items to cheaper ones. Such revisions to the CPI have tended to reduce the official inflation rate, on balance. Various estimates of what the annual rate would have been over the past four years if earlier methods of calculation had been continued come up with numbers in the 5%-to-10% range.
Several conclusions can be drawn from all this. First, there is no absolute and objective gauge of inflation. Any particular measure is simply one way of making the calculation, based on a host of assumptions. Second, a number of the costs that middle-class households face are going up considerably faster than the CPI.
Our pal Dana Loesch however does get it. She goes over several of the points we made in our Why Republicans Lost analysis. The message Dana delivers in this video is a total home run.
One thing is certain, this RNC is a disaster that is divorced from the rank and file voters. If there are wins in the party’s future it will be in spite of them.
Senator McCain said that members of his own party that are concerned about “Drone Strike” policy are “wacko birds” while insisting that no innocent Americans are going to be killed with drones.
The problem is that innocent Americans have already been killed, namely the 16 year old AMERICAN son of a terror suspect. The Obama Administration flippantly said “the kid chose the wrong father” when critiqued. President Obama asserted that he has the power to lock up Americans indefinitely or even kill us, his administration has even made cracks about the “kill list“.
Senator Rand Paul “I will speak until I can speak no more”
When questioned about some of these extra constitutional powers they said, “trust us” because they would give people on such target lists “administrative due process” which is something that the Obama Administration made up out of this air and essentially means that even when it comes to Americans not engaged in combat, but are merely viewed as a terror threat, the Administration can act as judge, jury and executioner.
Keep in mind that all of what we just told you are facts that are not in dispute.
This made some civil libertarians in both parties nervous for good cause. So members of the House and Senate started asking questions about how the Administration sees the limits of this power and in every case the Obama Administration would use lawyerly rhetorical slight of hand to avoid answering simple questions about the limits of such a policy.
Over and over Senators such as Rand Paul would ask simple questions, so would Senator Ted Cruz, only to get the run around. After weeks of rhetorical gymnastics and Senator Rand Paul’s epic filibuster the Obama Administration, suffering public humiliation on the issue, finally answered a straight question with a straight answer.
Why can we not just “trust them”?
Keep in mind that the Obama Administration willingly and knowingly sent guns to Mexican Drug Cartels in an effort to blame the subsequent loss of life (hundreds killed including an American border agent) with those guns on American gun owners and use the subsequent bloodshed as an excuse to attack the 2nd Amendment. The administration was outed by their own federal agents.
This is the same President and his administration that have been caught in lie after lie after lie in their cover up of the four Americans murdered in Benghazi. President Obama still refuses to let Congress have any access to the survivors of the attack.
While Rand Paul was having his epic filibuster on the Senate floor with the help of Republican Sens. Mike Lee (Ut.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), John Cornyn (Tex.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.). Sens.Ted Cruz (Tex.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Tim Scott (S.C.) made their first speaking appearances on the Senate floor. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also voiced their support.
Senator Mark Kirk, made his first appearance on the Senate floor after having a stroke, he did not speak but he brought Rand Paul an apple and a thermos full of of tea (the same refreshment that Jimmy Stewart used in his famous film about a Senate filibuster).
From the House Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.) Justin Amash (Mich.), Ron DeSantis (Fla.), Doug LaMalfa (Calif.), Garland “Andy” Barr (Ky.), Trey Radel (Fla.), Michael Burgess (Tex.), Jim Bridenstine (Okla.), Raul R. Labrador (Idaho), Keith Rothfus (Pa.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Steve Daines (Mont.), Bill Huizenga (Mich.), Richard Hudson (N.C.) and David Schweikert (Ariz.) all came over to the Senate floor to show their support.
While Senator Rand Paul was engaging in his epic filibuster to fight for your rights under the Constitution, John McCain was having dinner with President Obama. The problem is not that Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Justin Amash are “wacko birds”, the problem is that John McCain doesn’t get Barack Obama.
In 2006, Canada’s National Debt was 50% of their GDP. In 2006, America’s National Debt was 50% of their GDP. Since the elections in Canada of Stephen Harper and the Conservative Government the Canadian National Debt stands at less than 30% of the Canadian GDP. Since the midterms of 2006 [when Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took power in Congress] in America the National debt now stands at over 100% of the American GDP.
1) Only in America could the rich people – who pay 86% of all income taxes –
be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who don’t pay any
income taxes at all.
2) Only in America could people claim that the government still
discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, a
black Attorney General, and roughly 18% of the federal work force is black
while only 12% of the population is black
3) Only in America could they have had the two people most responsible for
our tax code, Timothy Geithner, the head of the Treasury Department and
Charles Rangel who once ran the Ways and Means Committee, BOTH turn out to
be tax cheats who are in favor of higher taxes.
4) Only in America can they have terrorists kill people in the name of Allah
and have the media primarily react by fretting that Muslims might be harmed
by the backlash.
5) Only in America would they make people who want to legally become
American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of
thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who
sneaks into the country illegally just ‘magically’ become American citizens.
6) Only in America could the people who believe in balancing the budget and
sticking by the country’s Constitution be thought of as “extremists.”
7) Only in America could you need to present a driver’s license to cash a
check or buy alcohol, but not to vote.
8) Only in America could people demand the government investigate whether
oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas went up when
the return on equity invested in a major U.S. oil company (Marathon Oil) is
less than half of a company making tennis shoes (Nike).
9) Only in America could the government collect more tax dollars from the
people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars
more than it has per year – for total spending of $7-Million PER MINUTE, and
complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.
10) Only in America could politicians talk about the greed of the rich at a
$35,000.00 a plate campaign fund-raising event.
11) Only in America can a man with no background, no qualifications and no
experience … and a complete failure at his job … be reelected.
John Bolton having a serious discussion on the John Batchelor Show.
“Postponing the inevitable confrontation only makes the confrontation more difficult. You can keep kicking the can down the road, but you are not making the si8tuation better”
Senator Lindsey Graham is a strange fellow. At times he is capable of inspiring moments of clarity where he really does “get it” and at other times he is not on Planet Earth. This is one of the better moments. This is also an example of why Eric Holder is the most radical and incompetent Attorney General in the nation’s history.
Dennis Prager, on why the left doesn’t just disagree with, but truly hates Sarah Palin even though she has done nothing wrong and hasn’t harmed anyone.
“For out of such an ungoverned populace one is usually chosen as a leader, someone bold and unscrupulous who curries favor with the people by giving them other men’s property. To such a man the protection of public office is given, and continually renewed. He emerges as a tyrant over the very people who raised him to power.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero, in De Republica
The Founders warned of just this very type of leader in the Federalist Papers; as did Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America.
Here is famed Hollywood Screen writer Andrew Klavan explaining de Tocqueville warning:
“If gun laws in fact worked, the sponsors of this type of legislation should have no difficulty drawing upon long lists of examples of crime rates reduced by such legislation. That they cannot do so after a century and a half of trying that they must sweep under the rug the southern attempts at gun control in the 1870-1910 period, the northeastern attempts in the 1920-1939 period, and the attempts at both Federal and State levels in 1965-1976 – establishes the repeated, complete, and inevitable failure of gun laws to control crime.”
–Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah)
Quoted from “The Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Report of the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1982, p. vii.”
Part of engaging the culture, is bringing culture to the young. Most people under age 35 might have no idea that this lovely Judy Garland was a household name known all over the world. After you hear her sing you will not doubt why.
We’ve already chronicled the egregious reporting over at CNN by Sara Sidner when it comes to what’s going on in Gaza. We can now add two more correspondents working for ABC and NBC respectively.
First, ABC’s Alex Marquardt tells George Stephanopolous that Palestinians believe they are firing rockets into civilian neighborhoods because they are “simply… defending themselves” and that “true peace cannot come along until Israel stops targeting people here in the Gaza Strip.”
The Grand Mufti worked with Hitler to exact the “final solution” and try to kill every Jew..and that was before 1946.
So even when there was no land involved radicalized islamists were trying to genocide the Jews.
Most of the old “Palestine Mandate” that was drawn after WWI is in Jordan. So why is it that they never ask Jordan to give up some land…as they have plenty? Why is it that Southern Assyrians and Jordanians suddenly became “Palestinians” in 1946? Jews were living in that area as well so I guess this also makes them Palestinians by that standard. So how do you occupy yourself?
“Palestinians” were Jordanian citizens until 1988.
Maybe because it isn’t about was never about land, it is about killing Jews. As professed proudly by this Muslim girl:
On Tuesday afternoon, nearly 1500 Chicagoans gathered outside of the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago for a rally to show solidarity and support with Israel. The rally was quiet and peaceful, however, it did draw hostile opposition from anti-Israel protesters, who organized a counter protest across the street.
Aaron Cohen, Vice President of Communications for the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago told Breitbart News, “Their (Hamas) vision of what the outcome should be, is to eliminate the state of Israel… Until both sides say we want to live in peace together and Hamas has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, this is what we are going to see.”
Cohen’s claim seemed to be proven correct, when I asked a Palestinian-activist student what the solution to the conflict is at the counter protest. She told me, “it’s our land, we are going to get it back sooner or later.” After pressing further as to whether or not she meant only Gaza or the entire state of Israel, she continued, “It’s Palestine, they just call it Israel, so yeah, the whole map.”
This is what happens when people get caught up in the hype and the rhetoric and do not take their citizenship seriously enough to do the homework and find out who this man is as the record painted a good picture.
Those of us who did the homework, including yours truly, in 2008 said that this man is Carter 2.0.
People like to believe in the veracity of their own perceptions; literally they want to believe what they believe is in fact true. That has always been a fact of life, and this writer isn’t going to change it. However, what has changed is that our culture and society no longer reinforces practices, ideas and daily rituals that helped to keep that particular problem in check, making Americans better critical thinkers, and gave Americans a special collective wisdom.
Years ago Professor Christopher Lasch penned an article in Harpers titled “The Lost Art of Argument” where he lamented the so called “objective journalism” (which is anything but) model (from Walter Lippmann) as a tool for elites to set agendas and control the conversation on main street. The power of the elite media narrative is difficult to overstate, as it is much like group think. Everyone wants to be included and accepted, and if you stand out against such group narratives some will resent it. Most people do not realize just how easily they are persuaded by manufactured group narratives. Allow me to demonstrate with a few examples of popular group think narratives that many people still believe.
“Gravitas”. For those who are politically aware, and were so before the 2000 election, the word gravitas conjures up an image of former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Why? Dr. Thomas Sowell explained it well:
RUSH LIMBAUGH has been having some fun lately, playing back recordings of politicians and media people, who have been repeating the word “gravitas” like parrots, day after day. Before Dick Cheney was announced as Governor George W. Bush’s choice for vice presidential candidate, practically nobody used the word. Now everybody and his brother seems to be using it.
The political spin is that Governor Bush lacks “gravitas” — weight — and that Dick Cheney was picked in an effort to supply what the governor lacks.
In other words, the fact that Bush picked somebody solid for his running mate has been turned into something negative by the spinmeisters. The fact that media liberals echo the very same word, again and again, shows their partisan loyalties — and their lack of originality.
How many people believe that “former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is ignorant”?
Perhaps some of you who are reading this very piece continue to buy into this false narrative. Just so you realize how much you have been effected I will pose the following: did you know that in her infamous interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson ABC had edited out portions of her substantive answers to make her look ignorant? Did you know that ABC did this again in her interview with Barbara Walters. Remember when Charlie Gibson asked her a question about the Bush Doctrine that “Palin got all wrong”? Well, depending on what political historian you talk to there are five or six Bush Doctrines of which Governor Palin and Charlie Gibson each described one accurately. Atlantic Monthly, a left-wing political magazine, went back and did an exhausting review of her time as governor and concluded that she did a great job and pointed out how she was an innovative and competent executive. Odds are that people who buy into the false narrative that Palin is ignorant don’t know any of this.
“Republicans want to gut Social Security.”
The truth is that Reagan (Republican) saved the program with key reforms without decreasing benefits. It was President Clinton (Democrat) who increased the tax on Social Security benefits on the middle class which amounted to a benefit cut. It was George W. Bush (Republican) who tried to get at least a part of Social Security put into individual growth accounts so that Congress couldn’t spend your money (Democrats in Congress stopped him), and it was President Obama (Democrat) who has kept up a Social Security payroll contribution cut that is blowing an even bigger whole in the program. Odds are that people who bought into this narrative didn’t know any of that.
“Republicans want to get rid of Medicare.”
I regularly encounter uninformed voters who buy into this particular false narrative. It was Democrats, with Obamacare, who gutted $716 billion (over 10 years) from an already in trouble Medicare program without a single Republican vote. It was Republicans who added the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit (Part-D) which is not only popular, but gives seniors a choice of plans. This was accomplished at 40% under budget because the program was designed so well. One current Republican idea is to redesign the other parts of Medicare to work in a way that is similar to Medicare Part-D, so that it too can be more efficient and save money to help rescue the program. Democrats say no. Odds are that people who bought into this narrative didn’t know any of that (gee I am getting repetitive).
“Democrats want to tax the rich.”
This is perhaps the biggest false narrative of all. The Democratic Party leadership has never been interested in taxing the very rich. They have been “taxing the rich” for 50 years. Is it just a coincidence that they just happened to keep missing the target? President Obama gave the speech at Google, which paid 2.4% federal tax on 3.1 billion in income. In that speech he trashed the Chamber of Commerce for fighting against raising the tax on most small businesses which actually employ people from 35.5% to 39.9% . In the 2008 elections President Obama railed against Wall Street, but not only did he take more money from Wall Street and “the big banks” and such, but as if to add insult, their executives became the who’s who of those running his administration (LINK – LINK). Keep in mind that CNN once said Obama attacks private equity at 6am and is fundraising with private equity at 6pm. Wall Street and the big banks made more under three years of Obama than they did under eight years of Bush. His Treasury Secretary says that taxes on small businesses must rise so that government doesn’t shrink, and Obama’s new health care taxes target you, not just the rich. All of the stimulus and spending and so forth all in the name of the poor sounded nice, but look who got rich. Odds are that people who buy into this narrative know none of this (really there is a point to this).
Such false narratives are not merely myths that people fall into, they become emotionally invested in them, to the point where some people will say anything to support them:
MORE – Watch people lie about the political debate they never saw – VIDEO
False narratives rely on three crutches:
1 – The first is the selective promotion of key facts, combined with the suppression and/or omission of key fundamental truths. The use of a key fact that is partially true, when inserted into the false narrative, creates clear disconnects from the fundamental truths of the situation or event.
Politicians are masters of this. The second Obama/Romney debate is a classic example. In the debate section on the brutal slaughter of Americans at our consulate in Libya, the administration knowingly put out a false narrative that our people were killed by a flash mob upset by a video on YouTube. The White House created this deception because it was caught in a “Mission Accomplished” moment from having created a false narrative which stated that because Usama bin Laden was out of the picture, Al-Qaeda was beaten (The truth is that Al-Qaeda’s umbrella organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, has been actively helped by this Administration) . When caught, the White House tried to rewrite history, and focused on a key assertion–that Obama used the word terror in one speech describing the attack, as if that somehow dismantles two weeks of willing deception.
2 – Delivery of the few selected facts delivered with an attitude (an emotional trigger) that creates the false narrative.
A good example of this comes from a piece I read in the Washington Post some years ago. The article stated there had been documented misuses of the Patriot Act in order to wrongly access the private information of innocent citizens, and the Attorney General refused to state whether he would press criminal charges. This sounds quite ominous doesn’t it? Thirteen paragraphs later we learn that the error rate had been about 1.5%, comprised of honest mistakes, and all were caught by the internal Justice Department Inspector General whose job it is to find and correct errors. Consider the entirety of the pertinent facts, remove the emotionally charged delivery, and the message is quite different from the headline, would you not agree? Most newspaper editors know that the majority of readers never get passed the fifth paragraph in a newspaper piece. This type of deception is known as attitude change propaganda. Attitude change propaganda is not produced by accident.[Note – today reported abuses of the Patriot Act are higher. We are aware of this, so please do not blow up our inbox – Editor]
3 – Repetition. Joseph Goebbels said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie”.
This is why truth itself can become an enemy to some, and why those telling the truth are often disregarded, maligned and ridiculed. Once again we can look to the Washington Post for an example. Remember the Valerie Plame story? Remember when the White House outed a CIA Agent because her husband, Joe Wilson, had written a letter saying that President Bush made false claims in a speech? Well there was one problem; this entire story was based on a small stack of lies, and virtually none of the narrative that was repeated over and over in the Washington Post and the elite media was true, and the Post well knew it. This very writer wrote a 40 page article on the Washington Posts’ coverage of this story. Day after day, on page one, the Post repeated Joe Wilson’s lies and perpetuated the false narrative, while at times even on the very same day on the editorial page or buried in the paper, they would tell the truth about what was going on and explain how the evidence clearly showed that Wilson lied about nearly every aspect of his story.
I have been pretty tough on the left in this article because deception and propaganda is fully endorsed by many leftist/progressive thinkers such as Mao, Walter Lippmann, Joseph Goebbels, nearly all writers from the Frankfurt School, and Saul Alinsky. The progressive leadership in this country uses lies as a tool for calculated aggression.
This is not to say that the American right is free of the problems of false narratives, group think, and ideological boxes either.
There are/were many in the State Department, elite media and some in the Republican Party who have totally bought into the propaganda from the Muslim Brotherhood–that they want peace, free elections, and so forth–when anyone who studies their history going back to WWII knows very well what their agenda is. Bill Kristol from the Weekly Standard, as well as some on the famed internet Republican Security Council, fell for the “Arab Spring” false narrative. How quickly we forget history. The Mullah’s in Iran spoke to the Carter Administration about freedom, democracy and social justice; look at what they did as soon as they got into power. The same goes for what happened in Lebanon, and then Gaza when they had elections. Now look at the disaster that is Egypt and Libya, and yet some Republicans continue to say we should help Syrian rebels with arms, which would essentially be handing Syria as well to the Muslim Brotherhood/Al-Qaeda.
Republicans would love to see a genuine democratic, pro-western revolution in the Muslim world as we had in Eastern Europe, but today many forget that it took years of cooperation between Reagan, Thatcher, and the Vatican to cultivate pro-western forces and influences in secret right under the communist’s nose. We were ready to come in with monetary, logistical and other support when those forces made a major push. We knew very well who it was we were supporting, and we had an overall strategic concept in mind. Many Republicans jumped on the Arab Spring bandwagon because they bought the pie in the sky narrative from the State Department and they really wanted to believe it. Why? Because the false narrative targeted the freedom loving sensitivities of most Republicans perfectly. In short, they selected tidbits of truth, omitted others, and made a false reality that fit ever so perfectly into an ideological box.
Some so called “neo-cons” (by their critics) of the GOP may like to shape reality into something neat and tidy, but they aren’t the only ones. Many Ron Paul supporters are just as guilty of this. They argue that the U.S. should adopt some form of neo-isolationism. While it is clear that for the sake of finances we need to have a foreign policy that is less flamboyant, trade still needs to be protected with a serious Navy; the diplomatic credibility of the United States must still be backed up with military capability. If you want to see an economic collapse like the world has never witnessed, park the US Navy at home and it won’t take long. Many Ron Paul supporters say that “neo-cons” are “chicken-hawks” who have never served in the armed forces, and who would never send their sons to die “in some Middle East hell hole” (their words not mine). While it is true that some who may be labled as neo-cons have never served, the truth is that many who agree with at least some of that policy have served and have family who are serving.
Another example of taking reality and manipulating it is the often heard claim from Ron Paul supporters that militant Islamists attack us because of our foreign policy, and the argument that if it wasn’t for “neo-cons” we would not get attacked. When I run into people who say this I ask them, “Militant Islamists attack and kill Hindus in India. What is it about Hindu foreign policy that makes Islamists do this? How about the Buddhists who lived in Afghanistan? In Afghanistan the Islamists ran the Buddhists out and blew up their monasteries and artifacts. What about the Islamists in Southern Thailand who like to kill school teachers who dare to educate little girls? When the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt with the aid of the Obama Administration, what is it that Coptic Christians did to cause the Muslim Brotherhood to attack them with armored vehicles? This is usually about that time where I start getting called all sorts of colorful names. The most experienced Middle-Eastern war correspondent says that those who believe the “its because of our policy” argument are fooling themselves.
We are experiencing a wholesale breakdown of critical thinking in this country and most of the learned academics I know have confided this to me directly. I have noticed this myself in my studies. How did this happen? Professor Lasch was rather fond of the old fashioned “partisan press” that we used to have before the “Lippmann Objective Model”. In those days each town had two or more newspapers, each with its own partisan or philosophical viewpoint. Each day citizens would read them all and discuss the arguments of the day at the local barber shop, soda shop, or even at work. There is no better exercise for creating an informed, thinking electorate. Today we live in an electronic society where people can just push a button and anything that puts them out of their comfort zone vanishes instantly.
American society has become a place where people get beyond offended when told that they are wrong. We have teachers who too often cannot understand the difference between being presented an inconvenient truth that scuttles their narrative and a personal attack. We have people who refuse to take the argument of another seriously, so any truths another may have will not be accepted or even considered. Truth has become the new hate speech.
This must stop.
The sting in any rebuke is the truth – Ben Franklin.
[Editor’s Note – For a short video followup on this story click HERE – you won’t regret it.]
UPDATES – Not only were our guys murdered, they were raped and sodomized. The Obama Administration doesn’t like American mercenary companies so they hired Libyan’s to act as bodyguards. It was those body guards who gave up the locations of our peoples secret safe house. Videos from the White House Press Room and the House Oversight Committee highlights can be seen HERE.
This ad is spot on accurate, and only leaves out a couple of points. Think about this, not only was security not beefed up at our embassies on 9/11, but there are credible, yet disputed reports from forces on the ground that they were not given live ammunition at several of the embassy posts.
OK so let me get this straight. The White House released secret methods while coordinated with Sony Pictures in the making of the film “Zero Dark Thirty” about the killing of Osama bin Laden….and that won’t inflame the Islamic world at all…but a tiny film trailer from a Coptic Christian is the cause of the world’s unrest?
So why lie? Ironically the Obama Administration has put itself into a “Mission Accomplished” moment. They say that “We got bin Laden”, “Al-Qaeda is dead – finished”, after we finished Iraq that was it etc. Well they have overplayed that card so the news of coordinated Al-Qaeda attacks against our embassies on 9/11 when they were in essence ordered to essentially stand down by the refusal to allow extra security and safety measures does not bode well politically.
Remember this Lie? White House: This is not a case of protests directed at the United States … and in the video below not only was the White House lying because now it was out that not only did they know what the truth was with 24 hours, they were warned in advance. In the video they also lie and said that they took appropriate measure to give extra security on 9/11. Now we know those requested measures were denied:
Judge Jeanine Pirro: Obama White House Lied About Embassy Attacks for Two Weeks:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. security officer twice asked his State Department superiors for more security agents for the American mission in Benghazi months before an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, but he got no response.
The officer, Eric Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until about two months before the September attack, said a State Department official, Charlene Lamb, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi “artificially low,” according to a memo summarizing his comments to a congressional committee that was obtained by Reuters.
Nordstrom also argued for more U.S. security in Libya by citing a chronology of over 200 security incidents there from militia gunfights to bomb attacks between June 2011 and July 2012. Forty-eight of the incidents were in Benghazi.
A brief summary of Nordstrom’s October 1 interview with the Republican-controlled House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was contained in a memo prepared by the committee’s minority Democratic staff.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee leaders today sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking why requests for more protection were denied to the U.S. mission in Libya by Washington officials prior to the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. The denials came after repeated attacks and security threats to U.S. personnel.
“Based on information provided to the Committee by individuals with direct knowledge of events in Libya, the attack that claimed the ambassador’s life was the latest in a long line of attacks on Western diplomats and officials in Libya in the months leading up to September 11, 2012. It was clearly never, as Administration officials once insisted, the result of a popular protest,” the committee’s chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and subcommittee chairman, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, write. “In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”
The letter outlines 13 security threats over the six months prior to the attack.
“Put together, these events indicated a clear pattern of security threats that could only be reasonably interpreted to justify increased security for U.S. personnel and facilities in Benghazi,” the chairmen write.
The Committee indicated it intends to convene a hearing in Washington on Wednesday October 10, 2012, on the security failures that preceded the attack.
Aside from our own coverage of Egypt and Libya be sure to see these related stories:
President Obama Skipped His Intel Brief the Day After the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was Murdered by Terrorists – LINK
Cheney: Obama Administration “Involved In A Cover Up” Of Libya Attack – LINK
Editor’s Note – This very writer has written on this subject several times both here and on my former college blog (LINK – LINK). During 2008-09 I was one of the very few who was not surprised in the least to see Obama appoint several arch antisemites such as Samantha Power and Robert Malley. Why was this writer not surprised? Because Obama came from radicalized leftist academia and antisemitism among university leftists is fashion at most large universities. Obama hung out with Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, and Obama’s own mother was an academic who specialized in “critical theory” which is Marxism on steroids. Obama even says in his own book that Marxist academics are who he sought out to associate with.
A new, 18-minute mini-documentary follows the journey of Irina, a 23-year-old liberal, Jewish New Yorker who voted for Obama in 2008. Yet as her connection to Israel has grown, and she has learned more about the President’s policies across the Middle East and towards Israel in particular, Irina has come to realize that “when the chips are down,” the President may not “have Israel’s back” as he says.
The short film features:
Exclusive interviews with leading journalists and politicians in Israel
(Bloomberg, London Times, Jerusalem Post, etc.)
Clips from longtime Democratic supporters including: Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz Former NYC Mayor Ed Koch Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)
Obama 2002 speech: “Rich people are all for non-violence”, unless they are perpetrating it.
We often talk about how President Obama has the mindset of a radicalized leftist university academic’ this video is one more example of many. Where was the media to vet him in 2008?
Jimmy Stewart, a hero in every sense of the word, presents a poem he wrote about his dog. This clip is from his appearance on the Johnny Carson Show in 1981.
Jimmy Stewart appeared in 80 films and won every award possible in the film industry. Stewart was also a career Air Force officer who started out as a private and worked through the ranks to Brigadier General. He was promoted to Major General by President Reagan while in the retired reserves. General Stewart commanded and flew multiple bombing missions over enemy territory during WWII, including bombing runs over Berlin, Bremen, Brunswick, and Frankfurt.
Stewart’s stepson First Lieut. Ronald W. McLean was killed in battle in 1969.
Harry S. Truman said of Stewart, ”If Bess and I had a son, we’d want him to be just like Jimmy Stewart.”
Brigadier General Jimmy Stewart
When asked how he wanted to be remembered he said, “As someone who believed in hard work and love of country, love of family and love of community.”
General Stewart’s service honors include:
Distinguished Service Medal
Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster
Air Medal with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters
Army Commendation Medal
American Defense Service Medal
European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with 3 Service Stars
World War II Victory Medal
Armed Forces Reserve Medal
French Croix de Guerre with Palm
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Dinesh Dsouza takes CNN Anchor to school over Obama documentary “2016”.
“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
Political Arena 