Editor’s thought of the day

So let me get this straight. When a policeman pulls over a car with possible illegal aliens in it, he cannot ask certain questions because liberals say it’s racism. But liberals want gun owners to be registered, fingerprinted, and data-based up and down, as well as having our names and addresses printed in the paper.

Who is preferred and who is treated as the non-citizen?

Far left academics pushing “junk science” at military colleges to indoctrinate students

And junk science it is. This “study” (see below) is filled with very bogus cliché in the book. This “study” , like all too many writings from radicalized academics, is filled with opinion presented as fact, including but not limited too: small government activists are racists, leftists are “future oriented” modern and “progressive” while conservatives are backwards and “in the past”.

The “study” also paints traditional Americans as THE domestic terror threat, but the FBI has listed far left groups such as ALF, ELF and other left-wing groups as the most active and deadly domestic terror groups and have for many years.

The left is future oriented? As if centralized government control of society and the economy is somehow a new concept? On the contrary that idea is as old as the idea of government itself. The vast majority of man throughout history has lived under such rule.

The idea that rights come from God and cannot be usurped by government, government should be limited by rules and separation of powers, and where the minority is protected from the whims of the majority by law are new concepts and the United States was the first country in the history of the world to be founded upon those ideas; so if anything it is American conservatism that is modern, and those who favor a leviathan state, whatever the spin used to sell it, the dinosaur form of government.

The “study” also says that the left values separation of powers. Anyone skilled in politics is already laughing at this one. It is the Democratic Leader in the Senate who is asking President Obama to violate separation of powers by legislating via executive order and unilaterally raise the debt ceiling illegally. It is the left that ignores the limits placed in Article I, Section 8, as well as the 9th and 10th Amendments as well as the 5th Amendment clause about not taking property without just compensation and that is just for starters.

This is far from the first time an “academic study” ended up being nothing more than a vehicle for politically motivated slander. The IU School of Journalism published this study comparing Bill O’Reilly to the Nazi’s using laughable “fast and loose” terms and tactics. These attacks from radicalized academia are used to justify the kind of hate that we saw when far left groups attacked a charity that helps rape victims for the terrible crime of letting Bill O’Reilly raise money for them.

Rowan Scarborough at The Washington Times:

The report issued this week by the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., is titled “Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right.”

The center — part of the institution where men and women are molded into Army officers — posted the report Tuesday. It lumps limited government activists with three movements it identifies as “a racist/white supremacy movement, an anti-federalist movement and a fundamentalist movement.”

The West Point center typically focuses reports on al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists attempting to gain power in Asia, the Middle East and Africa through violence.

But its latest study turns inward and paints a broad brush of people it considers “far right.”

It says anti-federalists “espouse strong convictions regarding the federal government, believing it to be corrupt and tyrannical, with a natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civil and constitutional rights. Finally, they support civil activism, individual freedoms, and self government. Extremists in the anti-federalist movement direct most their violence against the federal government and its proxies in law enforcement.”

The report also draws a link between the mainstream conservative movement and the violent “far right,” and describes liberals as “future oriented” and conservatives as living in the past.

“While liberal worldviews are future- or progressive -oriented, conservative perspectives are more past-oriented, and in general, are interested in preserving the status quo.” the report says. “The far right represents a more extreme version of conservatism, as its political vision is usually justified by the aspiration to restore or preserve values and practices that are part of the idealized historical heritage of the nation or ethnic community.”

The report adds: “While far-right groups’ ideology is designed to exclude minorities and foreigners, the liberal-democratic system is designed to emphasize civil rights, minority rights and the balance of power.”

The report says there were 350 “attacks initiated by far-right groups/individuals” in 2011.

Details about what makes an attack a “far right” action are not clear in the report, which was written by Arie Perliger, who directs the center’s terrorism studies and teaches social sciences at West Point.

A Republican congressional staffer who served in the military told The Washington Times: “If [the Defense Department] is looking for places to cut spending, this junk study is ground zero.

“Shouldn’t the Combating Terrorism Center be combating radical Islam around the globe instead of perpetuating the left’s myth that right-wingers are terrorists?” the staffer said. “The $64,000 dollar question is when will the Combating Terrorism Center publish their study on real left-wing terrorists like the Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front, and the Weather Underground?”

Mark Levin with Megyn Kelly: Obama thinks the Constitution is just another statute to play with (video)

Megyn Kelly and Mark Levin are both lawyers. Mark Levin is a former justice department staffer for the Reagan Administration and has argued in front of the Supreme Court multiple times. Levin is also the author of the best selling book on the Supreme Court in history.

“Anti-Gun” group finds that prominent anti-gunners are armed…. (video)

Our friends at Project Veritas have hit another home run with this report. They invented a group called “Citizens Against Senseless Violence” and went to the homes of known “gun owner hating” journalists to ask them to put a sign in their front yard to proclaim the property as a “gun free zone”.

No problem right? After all if it is really about guns and crime and safety than they should have no problems getting the signs up, but in each and every case, said anti-gunner had an armed security guard, an armed policeman, was armed themselves, or otherwise was simply unwilling to post the sign in their yard.

Of course gun control has nothing to do with crime and has everything to do with politics.

UPDATE – Greg Gutfeld on armed “anti-gun” journalists: More guns = dumber writing (video) – LINK

Judge Pirro Blasts “Journal-News” for outing legal gun owners. Editors in hiding… (video)

Ironic that the editors of the local newspaper who say that all guns are bad, have now gone into hiding, aren’t answering questions, and have hired armed guards to protect themselves.

UPDATE “Anti-Gun” group finds that prominent anti-gunners are armed (video) – LINK

UPDATE II Greg Gutfeld on armed “anti-gun” journalists: More guns = dumber writing (video) – LINK

This is what modern journalism has devolved to, and as far as we know, not a single “journalist” has resigned from the paper in the name of journalistic ethics.

The list is already being used by criminals to target homes on the list. Lawsuits will likely be filed. The Journal-news will try to hide behind the First Amendment, but that might not be successful as demonstrating that the Journal-News acted maliciously will be pretty easy in light of the editorial board’s members already previous public comments. Women who are armed to protect themselves from stalkers as well as some celebs have been endangered by this list.

In synergy with the Journal-News, bloggers such as Christopher Fountain have posted the address’ of Journal-News’ editors along with an interactive map of where they live.

Notre Dame Prof: Silent Minority Aids America’s Destruction

And she is right. With the leadership of the GOP seeming to be all over the place, and an RNC that isn’t leading a rhetorical, philosophical, or policy battle; traditionalists, conservatives and those simply wanting some fiscal and regulatory sanity feel like people without a party, and for some they feel like aliens on their own country, but in reality such people are the majority.

[Note: The staff of Political Arena resides in South Bend, Indiana, the home of the University of Notre Dame, although we have no affiliation with the university.]

Ryan Lovelace at The College Fix:

When Laura Hollis, a Notre Dame University business and law professor, looks at America’s path forward, she cannot help but see a dead end.

“Many people say to me, ‘If it gets worse than this, I’m not sure we can survive it,’ and I’m inclined to agree with them,” Hollis said in an interview with The College Fix. “It’s never been as bad as it is now.”

Hollis, who in addition to her professorship is a popular conservative columnist and political commentator, is the author of a post-election column titled “Post Mortem” that went viral across America. It was reposted on many websites, spread like wildfire across social media sites, and emailed far and wide, landing in mom-and-pop inboxes across the nation.

In fact, just as recently as Dec. 28, the popular left-leaning political blog Daily Kos posted an “open letter to Laura Hollis” denouncing her piece.

This ongoing whirlwind of a world wide web debate was prompted by Hollis’ Nov. 8 column, which analyzed the state of the union the day after President Barack Obama was re-elected.

It argued, among other things, that: conservatives are outnumbered; they’re losing the culture war; too many Americans are immature, seeking only self-gratification; and the so-called Republican War on Women played a role in the election outcome.

“America is on a horrific bender; has been for some time now,” Hollis wrote. “The warning signs of our fiscal profligacy and culture of lack of personal responsibility are everywhere – too many to mention. We need only look at other countries which have gone the route we are walking now to see what is in store. … I see the country I love headed toward its own ‘rock bottom,’ and I cannot seem to reach those who are taking it there.”

In an interview this week with The College Fix, Hollis said feedback she’s received from that piece has led her to believe millions of Americans feel as if they have no voice. But the answer, she argued, is not to cower in the corner and give up.

“Speak up,” Hollis said. “Because being polite does not mean being silent.”

First and foremost, the culture war must to be addressed, she said. It’s time to stop worrying about stepping on people’s toes or hurting people’s feelings, she said.

Some Republican and conservative commentators argued after the election the solution to regain the White House, Congress and the country is to become more moderate, acquiesce to the social norms promulgated by the Left.

Bad idea, Hollis said.

“We have to decide we need to change the tone and tenor of culture in the country,” Hollis said. “In order to change the culture, you have to be a part of the culture.”

Take, for example, the alleged War on Women. During the presidential campaign, women’s rights discussions served as a façade for something more sinister, she said. What appeared to be a discourse about access to birth control was really about expanding abortion services and physician-assisted suicide, Hollis said.

“I’m pro-better choice—all choices are not equal,” Hollis said. “If my father is suffering from advanced dementia, I don’t have the right to smother him with a pillow.”

Hollis said advances in science have provided new and startling information about life from conception through natural death that every American should learn. This is one example of the kinds of things that could help turn the culture war tide in conservatives’ favor.

Hollis said “the left” has become politically adept at demonizing people, but it is important for all Americans to understand everyone wants to make things better, she said.

While Hollis’ first point in her “Post-Mortem” work declared Americans who champion free enterprise are outnumbered by those who want free stuff, she said that did not mean throw in the towel.

“No matter where you are, that can be ground-zero for changing things,” Hollis said.

Bill Clinton is Father of the Year? Why the left infiltrates non-profits.

As we lectured about Why Republicans Lost in the last election, conservatives need to engage the culture war to reinforce the ideals the country was founded upon. There are so many “low information voters” who vote on the basis of who looks the best on TV, who tells the best joke or “who looks cooler” that giving up on the culture war is to never win another election again. The left will do anything to make traditionalists and conservatives look like jerks while portraying leftists with the morals of an ally cat such as Bill Clinton and John Edwards as the paragons of virtue.

For those of you who look at the title and have a knee jerk reaction “this is just conspiracy stuff” we assure you that we are the farthest thing from the Alex Jones types. With that said we would remind readers that people are prosecuted in court for conspiracy to do all sorts of illegal things every day, and in the case of white collar corruption working together with politicians the conspiracies to avoid paying taxes or enrich donors with taxpayer dollars are elaborate and often go on for years before being discovered.

Former KGB Agent Yuri Bezmenov participated in a documentary on how the Soviets targeted Hollywood, non-profits and education to undermine American culture. Civil rights groups such as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Alliance Defense Fund are inundated with cases of universities and public schools that have progressive secular leftists administrators who actively seek out to persecute and fire or remove from school teachers and students who refuse to tote the far left ideological line. This very writer survived multiple attempts at persecution when attending Indiana University.

If you have even the slightest doubt as to just how big this problem is we encourage you to follow this link on our Academic Misconduct category and look through at least a couple of pages listing just a few of these incidents to get the idea of what you have been missing.

Here is a link to the editor’s old college blog with eight short videos documenting how the campus administrations actively conspired to grossly violate the civil rights of both students and teachers. In the video below at the Missouri State University a far left teacher ordered a Christian student to have a homosexual experience and write about it –  and the persecution didn’t stop there – the academic department and the university administration actively persecuted her and dug in their heals defending their action until it went to federal court.

So what does all this have to do with the Father of the Year?

Bill Clinton was chosen by the Fathers Day Council to be the Father of the Year. Hmm what would poor Monica Lewinsky’s father think about that, or Juanita Broaddricks, or Elizabeth ward Gracen’s, Dolly Kyle Browning’s, Paul Jones’s, Kathleen Willey’s, and the rest of the fathers of the women Bill Clinton abused, assaulted and sexually harassed?

Smelling a rat I pulled up the list of who has won this Father of the Year award, for which they issue several per year, and you guessed it, for the most part it is a who’s who of leftist luminaries and members of Democrat presidential administrations.

The list includes, in 2007 Senator John Edwards, who as the time was fathering a love child with his mistress while his sweet wife Elizabeth was dying of cancer.

Other far left luminaries include NBC’s activist leftist Sunday morning talk host David Gregory, ABC’s version of the same in George Stephanopoulos, far left former Congressman Ron Klein, former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill after he wrote a largely discredited Bush bashing book, Mark Shriver of the Kennedy clan, Hulk Hogan (who just made a sex tape with his best friend’s wife – way to go Dad! But I am sure he made a big donation). CNN’s Larry King, Mayor Bloomberg, Frank Rich (friend of Bill Clinton and the largest tax cheat in history who was pardoned by Clinton), Wolf Blitzer, Bobby Kennedy, NBC’s Brian Williams, former Democrat Senator Chuck Robb (who was having an affair with Tai Collins) and… well I think you are starting to get the picture.

The last two conservatives to get on of these awards were Donald Trump in 2005 (who was working for NBC and wasn’t politically active before Obama)  and General Norman Schwarzkopf in 1991 who had just won the Gulf War and wasn’t politically active until the following year.

The last conservative political figures who were handed the award who weren’t otherwise mega-celebs outside of politics were conservative political writer Fred Barnes in 1994 (they had to pick someone because of the Republican revolution in 94) and Dan Quayle in 1989.

CAIR Leaders Defend Egypt’s Murderous Muslim Brotherhood President…

CAIR is the Council for American Islamic Relations. CAIR employees work as consultants with the US Government in both the Bush and Obama Administrations and and the government has even referred to them as an unindicted co-conspiritor in raising funds in America to give to terror groups.

Of course the Muslim Brotherhood is bent on destroying Israel, has been using armored vehicles against Christians and publicly crucifying political opponents, but other than that they are perfectly normal….

They are also in the process of taking over Libya, Syria and Jordan, with Obama and NATO giving them military support. Al-Qaeda, you know, those guys who hit is on 9/11, are a sub-group of the Muslim Brotherhood. Obama is giving them tanks and F-16′s too.

Investigative Project:

While Egyptians take to the streets to oppose what they claim is a nascent tyranny, Morsi and his Islamist government can count on support from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). For example, CAIR-Los Angeles boss Hussam Ayloush praised Morsi for assuming more power in order to prevent “corrupt judges” from the “undermining and undoing of every democratic step.”

In a Facebook post, Ayloush blamed Egypt’s internal strife on the secular opposition: “Much of the Egyptian opposition seem to be more interested in opposing Morsi and the MB than actually helping Egypt become a stable and institutional democracy,”

CAIR-New York’s Cyrus McGoldrick disparaged criticism of Morsi as “a last stand by old pro-West/Mubarak/Israel crowd to keep power in judiciary.”

CAIR-San Francisco chief Zahra Billoo dismissed American concerns that the Islamist-backed draft constitution wouldn’t protect human rights. “Why do we care about what the Egyptian Constitution says about indefinite detention, when it is being practiced by the U.S. government?” she wrote in a Twitter post Monday.

Obama Admin Approves Unprecedented Unlawful Govt Surveillance of U.S. Citizens

It has already been reported that the Obama Administration abuse of the Patriot Act is off the charts. Now this. Where are all of the Democrat civil libertarians now?

Judicial Watch:

Illustrating just how close big brother is watching, the Obama Justice Department has secretly granted the government broad new powers to gather and keep personal information about ordinary U.S. citizens not suspected of any crimes.

It’s an unprecedented move by any administration that’s outraged even the powerful leftist civil rights groups that usually support the president. The public was kept in the dark as the controversial measure was quietly enacted by Attorney General Eric Holder earlier this year without input or discussion from legislators under the auspice of fighting terrorism.

Details were uncovered by a mainstream newspaper that pieced together how the attorney general helped counterterrorism officials who wanted to create a government dragnet by sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens, even those not suspected of any crimes. Some top officials opposed the idea of this unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to the story, but Holder signed the changes into effect anyways.

The measure grants the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) the power to store dossiers on ordinary citizens, including flight records, casino-employee lists, those hosting foreign exchange students and other personal data for up to five years. There need not be any suspicion that the person presents any sort of danger or has committed any crimes. The idea is to study for “suspicious patterns of behavior.”

Under the changes the NCTC can also give foreign governments information on American civilians so that they can conduct analysis of their own on our citizens. One former senior Obama White House official calls it “breathtaking” in its scope. A top Homeland Security official who fought the changes says “this is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public.”

Though little is known about the NCTC, it does appear to serve a purpose by keeping a database, known as Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), of more than 500,000 people suspected of terrorist activities or having terrorist ties. Under the new rules the government has the green light to gather and store anything it wants on any U.S. citizen, including everything from in health records to financial forms.

This seems to be in direct conflict with a law passed by Congress in the mid 70s specifically to prevent federal agents from rummaging through government files indiscriminately. The measure prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren’t “compatible” with the reason the data were originally collected.

New York Times bureau chief: Muslim Brotherhood is ‘moderate, regular old political force’

Of course the Muslim Brotherhood is bent on destroying Israel, has been using armored vehicles against Christians and publicly crucifying political opponents, but other than that they are perfectly normal….

They are also in the process of taking over Libya, Syria and Jordan, with Obama and NATO giving them military support. Al-Qaeda, you know, those guys who hit is on 9/11, are a sub-group of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Obama is giving them tanks and F-16’s too (but wants to take your guns)

What would the elite media reaction be if Bush had been doing this?

The Daily Caller:

The New York Times Cairo bureau chief David K. Kirkpatrick insists that the Muslim Brotherhood is a “moderate, regular old political force,” despite Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s recent power grab and the Islamist organization’s radical views.

Kirkpatrick called into Hugh Hewitt’s radio show Wednesday from Egypt as the Brotherhood’s supporters battled opponents who feared a return to dictatorship on the streets of Cairo. When asked by Hewitt whether the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi, a former top ideological enforcer in the movement, were consolidating power in Egypt to pursue an undemocratic Islamist agenda, Kirkpatrick said he thought such criticism was “misplaced.”

“The Brotherhood, they’re politicians,” he said.

“They are not violent by nature, and they have over the last couple of decades evolved more and more into a moderate — conservative but religious, but moderate — regular old political force. I find that a lot of the liberal fears of the Brotherhood are somewhat outside. That said, you know, you don’t know what their ultimate vision of what the good life looks like. But in the short term, I think they just want to win elections.”

Founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, the Brotherhood’s slogan is the not-so-moderate “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”

Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Egypt, told The Daily Caller that Kirkpatrick’s assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood as moderate was simply a regurgitation of Muslim Brotherhood propaganda.

Troops ordered to keep silent about widespread Islamic pedophilia

mullah pedophile
Mullah pedophile kissing boy

Some great journalism Via Timothy Whiteman at Examiner.com:

“Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”

As recently covered by Examiner.com, the U.S. Army has floated a draft of a new training manual to be utilized for troops in the Afghanistan Theater of Operation.

According to the proposed manual, the reason behind many of the allied Afghan troops/police officers attacking and killing American and British personnel is due to ignorance on our part;

“Many of the confrontations occur because of [coalition] ignorance of, or lack of empathy for, Muslim and/or Afghan cultural norms, resulting in a violent reaction from the [Afghan security force] member.”

Listed among the “taboo” subjects of conversation include;

As reported by yesterday by WND.com, the linkage of pedophilia and/or homosexuality directly to the Islamic belief system has prompted founder of the terrorism watchdog group Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer to state;

“By mentioning pedophilia and women’s rights and saying that soldiers should not mention such things they are tacitly admitting that those things are indeed part of Islam.”

Following the well documented example of the founder of Islam, pedophilia is an accepted practice since its inception.

Admitted by Muslim scholars, Mohammed married his wife Aisha when she was 6-years-old, and consummated the marriage when she was nine.

That Was The 7th Century, This Is Now…

Examiner.com also covered the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, recently authorizing Muslim adult males to marry girls as young as 10.

In a comprehensive (and widely ignored by other major media outlets) news article published by the San Francisco Chronicle from August of 2010 titled “Afghanistan’s dirty little secret,” reporter Joel Brinkley details the widespread cultural and religious acceptance of man-to-boy pedophilia in the Central Asian nation.

As detailed by Brinkley;

“Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy.

Their behavior suggested he was not the boy’s father.

Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to ‘touch and fondle them.’

For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers.

Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover.

Literally it means ‘boy player.’

The men like to boast about it.”

And Women…?

As cited, a favored Afghan expression goes: “Women are for children, boys are for pleasure.”

Fundamentalist Muslim clerics throughout the nation teach the faithful that women are “unclean” and “therefore distasteful.”

One unnamed Afghan was quoted as asking how his wife could become pregnant.

When explained the physical actions required, the man “reacted with disgust” and then asked;

“How could one feel desire to be with a woman, who God has made unclean?”

Foreign holdings of U.S. debt hits $5.48 trillion

While we are raising your taxes and borrowing money from China to study Klingons….

AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Foreign ownership of U.S. Treasury securities rose to a record level in October, a sign that overseas investors remain confident in U.S. debt despite a potential budget crisis.

Total foreign holdings of U.S. Treasurys rose to $5.48 trillion in October, the Treasury Department said Monday. That was up 0.1 percent from September. Still, the increase of $6 billion was the weakest since total holdings fell in December 2011.

China, the largest holder of U.S. government debt, increased its holdings slightly to $1.16 trillion. Japan, the second-largest holder, boosted its holdings by a smaller amount to $1.13 trillion. Brazil, the country with the third-largest holdings, increased its total to $255.2 billion.

Government spends $100,000 studying to see if Jesus died for Klingons (not kidding)

And remember – YOU don’t pay enough in taxes according to Democrats…

Worf is not pleased
Worf is not pleased…

Jaci Greggs:

Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) latest report on spending by the Department of Defense shows, among other things, defense spending used for a lecture series involving fictional alien species.

“Did Jesus Die for Klingons too?” was just one session at a recent workshop funded by the Defense Advances Research Projects Agency:

Further, DARPA paid nearly $100,000 for a strategy planning workshop on the 100 Year Starship project last year included an interesting discussion involving the Klingons, a fictional alien species who were villains and then later allies of humanity in the Star Trek series. The session entitled “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” featured philosophy professor Christian Weidemann of Germany’s Ruhr-University Bochum who pondered the theological conflict to Christianity if intelligent life was found on other planets. (page 17)

At another DoD-funded gathering, the brainstorming sessions covered topics such as how to make deep space travel most efficient, how scientists would go about creating a “warp bubble,” and whether or not humans would need to wear clothing during space travel.

New York Times finally admits Reaganomics worked

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Warner Todd Huston:

After 30 years, The New York Times has admitted that Reaganomics worked.

The inadvertent revelation comes in a November 29th article by Binyamin Appelbaum chronicling the steadily falling tax burden Americans have experienced since the 1980s.

AEI columnist James Pethokoukis notes that the heart of The Times’ article is that in 2010 Americans “paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago.”

Pethokoukis points out that some tax hike advocates think this means that America’s tax burden is too low and time has come for a hike. But Pethokoukis disagrees.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I think the reduction in the tax burden — staring with the Reagan tax cuts — has been a huge competitive advantage for the U.S. We should keep that edge. Check out these numbers. In 1981, France’s per capita GDP was 81% of U.S. per capita GDP, Germany’s 83%, Italy’s 81%, Britain’s 69%.

In 2010, France’s per capita GDP was 73% of U.S. per capita GDP (down 8 points), Germany’s 81% (down 2 points), Italy’s 68% (down 12 points), and Britain’s 76% (up 7 points).

Pethokoukis reminds readers that Europe was closing the gap with U.S. wealth by 1980, but after Reagan’s tax cuts that trend stagnated and in other cases even began to reverse.

There are many great points made in the Pethokoukis piece and you need to go read them, but his last one is the funniest—or saddest, depending on your point of view.

4. Another bit: “Economists agree that taxes on business are passed on to investors, reducing profits, and to workers, reducing wages. Upper-income households bear the brunt of these taxes, and corporate tax collections have fallen sharply.” That is right. Taxes matter.

Funny, the NYT never mentioned this widely known economic fact when Mitt Romney was attacked for saying “Corporations are people.”

Hurricane Sandy Relief Bill Packed with Unrelated Spending & Goodies for Politicians

But hey, lets worry about that so called “fiscal cliff” (it should be called taxmageddon)…. and by the way, YOU Need to pay more taxes….

Now if Bush had done this……

New York Post:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s $60.4 billion request for Hurricane Sandy relief has morphed into a huge Christmas stocking of goodies for federal agencies and even the state of Alaska, The Post has learned.

The pork-barrel feast includes more than $8 million to buy cars and equipment for the Homeland Security and Justice departments. It also includes a whopping $150 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to dole out to fisheries in Alaska and $2 million for the Smithsonian Institution to repair museum roofs in DC.

Other big-ticket items in the bill include $207 million for the VA Manhattan Medical Center; $41 million to fix up eight military bases along the storm’s path, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; $4 million for repairs at Kennedy Space Center in Florida; $3.3 million for the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and $1.1 million to repair national cemeteries.

Budget watchdogs have dubbed the 94-page emergency-spending bill “Sandy Scam.”

Matt Mayer of the conservative Heritage Foundation slammed the request as an “enormous Christmas gift worth of stuff.”

“The funding here should be focused on helping the community and the people, not replacing federal assets or federal items,” he said.

73% of new jobs created are government jobs…..

John Nolte is on a roll lately with columns that are just home runs as far as content and quality of analysis. Read this one carefully.

John Nolte:

While the media pants with exhilaration over a dip in the unemployment level that was created by over a half-million people giving up and dropping out of the workforce, a deep-dive into the employment numbers also reveals that it’s mainly government workers benefitting from what meager job growth we are seeing. Over the last five months, 73% of all jobs created were government jobs. Moreover, the unemployment rate for government workers plunged to 3.8% in November — which is considered full employment.

Even though deficits rule the day at every level of government, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, of the 847,000 new jobs created since June, a full 621,000 were government jobs. In November alone, 35,000 new government jobs were created.

In other words, as the labor participation rate plummets to a thirty year low — which means we have fewer taxpayers — we’re not only increasing the number of taxpayer-funded jobs, but the government is using the creation of these jobs to juice the employment numbers in a way that makes it look as though the job situation is actually improving.

Naturally, none of this would be possible without a compliant media working overtime to bring out the pom-poms and cover up what’s really going on.

Let me tell you something, if Obama had an “R” after his name and creating the exact same economic results, the media would make damn sure the public was familiar with what “labor participation rate” means. [Emphasis ours – Political Arena]

American Elite Media Falling for Terrorist Media Manipulation

Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren:

Michael Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

What makes better headlines? Is it numbing figures such as the 8,000 Palestinian rockets fired at Israel since it unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and the 42.5 percent of Israeli children living near the Gaza border who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Or is it high-resolution images of bombed-out buildings in Gaza and emotional stories of bereaved Palestinians? The last, obviously, as demonstrated by much of the media coverage of Israel’s recent operation against Hamas. But that answer raises a more fundamental question: Which stories best serve the terrorists’ interest?

Hamas has a military strategy to paralyze southern Israel with short- and middle-range rockets while launching Iranian-made missiles at Tel Aviv. With our precision air force, top-notch intelligence and committed citizens army, we can defend ourselves against these dangers. We have invested billions of dollars in bomb shelters and early-warning systems and, together with generous U.S. aid, have developed history’s most advanced, multi-layered anti-missile batteries. For all of its bluster, Hamas does not threaten Israel’s existence.

But Hamas also has a media strategy. Its purpose is to portray Israel’s unparalleled efforts to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza as indiscriminate firing at women and children, to pervert Israel’s rightful acts of self-defense into war crimes. Its goals are to isolate Israel internationally, to tie its hands from striking back at those trying to kill our citizens and to delegitimize the Jewish State. Hamas knows that it cannot destroy us militarily but believes that it might do so through the media.

One reason is the enlarged images of destruction and civilian casualties in Gaza that dominated the front pages of U.S. publications. During this operation, The Post published multiple front-page photographs of Palestinian suffering. The New York Times even juxtaposed a photograph of the funeral of Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari, who was responsible for the slaughter of dozens of innocent Israelis, with that of a pregnant Israeli mother murdered by Hamas. Other photos, supplied by the terrorists and picked up by the press, identified children killed by Syrian forces or even by Hamas itself as victims of Israeli strikes.

In reporting Palestinian deaths, media routinely failed to note that roughly half were terrorists and that such a ratio is exceedingly low by modern military standards — much lower, for example, than the NATO campaign in the Balkans. Media also emphasize the disparity between the number of Palestinian and Israeli deaths, as though Israel should be penalized for investing billions of dollars in civil-defense and early-warning systems and Hamas exonerated for investing in bombs rather than bomb shelters.

Read the rest HERE.

George Zimmerman Sues NBC News: Edited 911 Tape to Make Him Look Racist

NBC did this and there is little doubt that it absolutely was malicious.

John Nolte:

Though it might feel like a hundred years ago, it was only last April when the media joined Barack Obama’s cynical crusade to gin up his base in Florida through the artificial inflaming of racial tensions. And there was no question NBC News was the worst of these co-conspirators after the network was busted editing a 9-1-1 call to make Trayvon Martin’s suspected shooter, George Zimmerman, look like a racist. Today, Zimmerman filed suit against the Peacock Network.

Zimmerman accuses NBC of creating a “false and defamatory misimpression using the oldest form of yellow journalism: manipulating Zimmerman’s own words, splicing together disparate parts of the recording to create the illusion of statements that Zimmerman never actually made.”

He’s suing for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress, demanding unspecified damages.

I’m no lawyer, but there’s absolutely no question here that NBC News is at least morally liable for one of the most despicable acts of defamation I’ve ever come across. Here’s the maliciously edited version of the 9-1-1 tape NBC’s storied “Today Show” broadcast before the entire world:

ZIMMERMAN:  This guy looks like he’s up to no good … he looks black.

Here’s how the call really went:

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

OFFICER: Okay, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

All of this, of course, falls on the man in charge of NBC News since 2005, Steve Capus, who apparently encourages this kind of behavior, at the very least, by allowing it to occur again and again without there being any kind of consequence. Because something else Zimmerman might have on his side is the fact that NBC has been caught a handful of times using the exact same kind of malicious edits to aid and abet the left, specifically Barack Obama.

In 2009, NBC’s Contessa Brewer edited video “so that that MSNBC viewers wouldn’t know that the man carrying firearms to a Tea Party was a black man. This allowed Brewer to then host a segment about how racist the Tea Party is towards President Obama and how this racism might just lead to the unthinkable–the assassination of our President.

In 2011, NBC’s Ed Schultz edited Texas Governor and GOP presidential candidate, Rick Perry, to look racist.

Back in June, Andrea Mitchell was caught editing up a gaffe for Mitt Romney.

Youth Unemployment Highest Since WWII

Ben Shapiro:

Barack Obama has made quite a hubbub over the course of his presidency about education for young students, and jobs for young workers. Unfortunately, it seems he’s failed on both counts. According to a recent study produced by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Children Now, there are now 6.5 million “disconnected” young people in America – “disconnected” being defined as neither in school nor employed, and “young people” being defined as 16-24 years of age. Young people now have the lowest employment rate since World War II.

In California alone, there are nearly a million young people who are “disconnected”: 850,000. Since 2000, that number has jumped a staggering 35 percent. Meanwhile, California’s overall employment rate for people aged 16-19 clocks in at just 18 percent; its high school graduation rate is a paltry 76 percent.

“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