Current Events - August 15, 2013

America’s mysteriously unchanging national debt: $16,699,396,000,000

Hmmmm:

Even as the Treasury was running up the $98-billion deficit it reported in the July Monthly Treasury Statement, every one of the 22 Daily Treasury Statements published for July said the Treasury had closed out the previous business day with exactly $16,699,396,000,000 in debt.  The Daily Treasury Statement for Aug. 12, released Tuesday afternoon, says the debt remained stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 during the first 12 days of this month, too. On May 17, the first day the Treasury reported that the debt had hit exactly $16,699,396,000,000–and was thus just $25 million below the legal limit — Treasury Secretary Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner saying he was beginning to implement what he called “the standard set of extraordinary measures” to prevent the Treasury from exceeding the legal limit on the federal debt. Since Lew sent that letter–announcing that he would use “extraordinary measures”– the debt has remained stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000 for 87 straight days.

“Extraordinary measures,” indeed.  In a recent speech, President Obama touted the falling deficit, which is projected to drop to “only” $759 billion this year.  President Bush’s average annual deficit was $250 billion.  Obama blew past the six trillion dollar debt milepost months ago.  Candidate Obama excoriated Bush for his “unpatriotic” additions to the national debt back in 2008; in less than five years, President Obama has matched Bush’s total over two full terms — and surpassed it by $2 trillion.  As soon as Sec. Lew’s manipulation expires, we’ll hit the $17 trillion mark overall.  Reminder: America’s true national debt is closer to $90 trillion than it is to the official number

http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/08/15/americas-mysteriously-unchanging-national-debt-16699396000000/

CNN Never Mentions 'Obama' in Article on Joblessness

The headline at CNN Money was, "Why America's Youth Aren't Finding Jobs." If you expected an analysis of how and why President Barack Obama's policies hurt the job market for the young, think again. Believe it or not, CNN wrote a piece, supposedly explaining the tight job market, without using the following words: Obama, Obama administration, taxes, regulations, "stimulus" program or, of course, ObamaCare. 

Stunning. 

Apparently, CNN believes the country has been on autopilot for the last five years, with policy decisions by the White House having no effect, for good or for ill. Since CNN will not, let's examine the major economic decisions by this administration and their impact on the job market. 

"Stimulus": The Obama administration spent nearly $1 trillion on "economic stimulus" that would "save or create" 3.5 million jobs. Did it? "The inability to measure Mr. Obama's jobs formula is part of its attraction," wrote William McGurn in The Wall Street Journal. "Never mind that no one -- not the Labor Department, not the Treasury, not the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- actually measures 'jobs saved.'" 

But some things can be measured. To keep pace with the number of new people entering the job market, the economy must produce 150,000 new jobs every month. In July, the economy produced 162,000 jobs. To date, in the four years since the end of the recession, Obama's economy has produced 4,657,000 jobs -- an average of just 97,020 per month. The percentage of civilians 16 years and older working or actively looking for work recently reached a 34-year low. Down from 65.7 when President Barack Obama took office, it is 63.4 today. Would-be workers are simply giving up, frustrated, no longer looking. 

Team Obama said that without stimulus, unemployment, which was then 7 percent, could reach as high as 8 percent. Well, Congress did pass stimulus -- and unemployment rose to 10.2 percent in the first year of Obama's presidency. 

Tax hikes: In addition to increasing the top marginal income tax rate from 35 to 39.6 percent on the so-called rich, new or increased taxes have been imposed on Medicare -- a 0.9 percent rate increase on wages and a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income for those earning $200,000 or more. 

Current and upcoming ObamaCare-related taxes include the so-called "Cadillac" excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans; tax penalties for not purchasing insurance; additional taxes and fees on medical device manufacturers, drug companies and health insurers; a 10 percent tax on indoor tanning services; a 50 percent reduction in allowable flexible spending account (FSA) contributions; and an increase in the threshold required to deduct medical expenses as an itemized deduction. 

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a report two months ago attributing the "drag" on the economy to new tax hikes. "Surprisingly," said the report, "despite all the attention federal spending cuts and sequestration have received, our calculations suggest they are not the main contributors to this projected drag. The excess fiscal drag on the horizon comes almost entirely from rising taxes." 

New regulations: The Obama administration has imposed numerous burdensome and job-killing regulations. According to The Wall Street Journal: "Pages in the Code of Federal Regulations hit an all-time high of 174,545 in 2012. ... The cost of federal rules exceeded $1.8 trillion, roughly equal to the GDP of Canada. These costs are embedded in nearly everything Americans buy ... at $14,768 per household, meaning that red tape is now the second largest item in the typical family budget after housing. 

"Last year, 4,062 regulations were at various stages of implementation inside the Beltway. The government completed work on 1,172, an increase of 16 percent over the 1,010 that the feds imposed in 2011, which was a 40 percent increase over 722 in 2010. ... The Obama administration did not break the all-time record of 81,405 pages it set in 2010. But the 78,961 pages it churned out in 2012 mean that the President has posted three of the four greatest paperwork years on record." 

ObamaCare: Seventy-four percent of small-business owners say they have or intend to reduce hours, or fire people, or simply not hire as a result of ObamaCare. But, according to Investor's Business Daily, ObamaCare also gives incentives to employees to accept fewer hours: "Some 2.3 million workers might have their hours cut due to ObamaCare's employer mandates, even if there's no negative impact on total hours worked, a recent study from the University of California at Berkeley Labor Center estimated. The other part of the equation involves more government benefits for those facing shorter hours. This will come starting in 2014 from ObamaCare health subsidies. Households working less may also get additional benefits, such as food stamps." 

CNN's head-in-the-sand piece on youthful joblessness serves as the latest example of the pro-Obama media's failure, blindness and unwillingness to see and state the obvious. By historical standards, this recovery stinks. To understand why requires a repudiation of the very foundation of leftism. Leftists believe that enlightened government bureaucrats -- meaning themselves -- possess both the power to redistribute wealth from the undeserving to the deserving and the wisdom to know the difference. 

http://townhall.com/columnists/larryelder/2013/08/15/cnn-never-mentions-obama-in-article-on-joblessness-n1664621

The Wannabe-Emperor Plans to Bypass Congress, Constitution. . . Again

For being a former lecturer on Constitutional Law, the President seems to have a fairly precarious understanding of the separation of powers. Of course, this is assuming he concerns himself with the Constitution outside of political considerations. After his move to unilaterally delay aspects of Obamacare, and his extensive use of executive orders, the President is now considering adopting the powers of Congress in financial affairs. The wannabe-Emperor-Obama has decided that his executive branch alone (one of three total branches of government) might be able to increase taxes on all cell phone customers and use the money to build a “whole new educational ecosystem.”

The objectively odd use of the word “ecosystem” aside, the President’s plan would increase taxes on cell phone users, and allocate the revenue to building a high speed internet based educational tool for “99 percent” of school districts. (The 1 percent always get the shaft when it comes to government handouts. . . Unless it’s green energy subsidies.) The best part? Obama is quoted in the Washington Post as saying “We can do this without Congress.”

Right. Because that whole “separation of powers” concept was just a design flaw in our foundational document. . . Not the intent. 

According to the Post:

“The effort would cost billions of dollars, and Obama wants to pay for it by raising fees for mobile-phone users. Doing that relies on the Federal Communications Commission [FCC], an independent agency that has the power to approve or reject the plan.”

The educational system would be authorized as an effort to equip school districts throughout the nation with high speed internet connections for online text books, learning plans, and tests. I guess the NSA wasn’t learning enough about our children through Facebook and common-core. 

The Post went on to say that “White House senior advisers have described the little-known proposal, announced earlier this summer under the name ConnectEd, as one of the biggest potential achievements of Obama’s second term.” And while it’s nice to know that the President is looking for a legacy other than Martha’s Vineyard’s Most Avid Golfer, he’s quickly earning the legacy of the Empirical President. Isn’t it also worth noting, parenthetically, that all of his attempts to achieve a “legacy” have revolved around raising somebody’s taxes?

The plan itself should be seen as objectionable to small-government Republicans, educational Libertarians, and – well – cell phone users. And since most of America has a cell phone (thanks OBAMAPHONE), it’s safe to assume that had this issue been brought up in last year’s election, it may have very well been a political looser. 

Obama’s administration, however, seems to have a penchant for adding impropriety to an already objectionable idea. Not long ago the President said, in passing, that “the problem is, I’m not Emperor.” I’m starting to believe his off-the-cuff statement reflected his true concerns. (He must hate it when the teleprompter goes out.) The Constitution, the deliberative body known collectively as Congress, and on occasion even the courts, are viewed by this President as an obstacle to utopia. . . Not the institutions that have provided America with centuries of prosperity and freedom. 

The question, for any remaining Obama supporter, is simple: Would the left in this country be comfortable, content, or amicable if a Republican President employed the same disregard for Constitutional process? The answer is obvious. And, to the Washington Post and DC Democrats, it is also irrelevant. 

http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/michaelschaus/2013/08/15/the-wannabeemperorpresident-plans-to-snub-congress---again-n1664809/page/full

 Obama Moves to Raise Taxes on Cell-Phone Users — Without Congress

As we now know from the New York Times, the president hopes to

seize any opportunity I can find to work with Congress to strengthen the middle class, improve their prospects, improve their security. But where Congress is unwilling to act, I will take whatever administrative steps that I can in order to do right by the American people.

The latest such idea is unilaterally to levy a federal fee (traditionally known in America as a “tax”) on mobile phone users in order to pay for “high-speed Internet access in schools that would allow students to use digital notebooks and teachers to customize lessons like never before.” As the Standard Examiner notes, the program, named “ConnectEd,”

is a case study in how Obama is trying to accomplish a second-term legacy despite Republican opposition in Congress.

“It’s got a lot of the characteristics of big-vision policy that you really don’t get through legislation anymore,” said Rob Nabors, White House deputy chief of staff, who is coordinating executive actions.

Dilate on this phrase for a moment: “Big-vision policy that you really don’t get through legislation anymore.” Rob Nabors probably doesn’t know how right he is. Typically in America, when presidents cannot get the legislation they want through the peculiarly named “legislative” branch, that legislation remains unpassed. But, as George Will observed this morning in masterly fashion, this is apparently of little consequence to a man whose “increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power” rest upon the novel conceit that the structure of the republic retains its integrity only if its institutions agree to do what the incumbent president considers imperative. 

The “ConnectEd” proposal does worry the White House a little – although not on the grounds of anything as dull as conscience:

White House officials were also concerned about the perception that they would try to unduly influence the FCC.

Well, still thy beating hearts. I’m sure that nobody would worry that an FCC full of Obama appointees might be unduly influenced by the president of the United States.

“Using the FCC as a way to get around Congress to spend money that Congress doesn’t have the political will to spend – I think that’s very scary,” said Harold Furchtgott-Roth, a Republican former FCC commissioner. “Constitutionally, it’s Congress that decides how federal funds should be spent.”

The former FCC commissioner is right: It is traditionally Congress that gets to decide these questions. But why should we let little things such as the rule of law and the purity of the social compact get in the way when there are grand and necessary plans to execute for the children?

This is pretty simple: federal taxation falls not “mostly,” not “preferably,” not “traditionally,” not “hopefully,” but solely under Congress’s jurisidiction. This does not change if Congress is marked by “stagnation and dysfunction and an inability to act.” If this “fee” is imposed without having gone through Congress, Americans will be subjected to taxation that has not been approved by their representatives. That the president is putting pressure on the FCC because he can’t get what he wants through Congress is wholly inappropriate, and it cannot be simultaneously written off as a minor change by an independent body and lauded by “White House senior advisers” as “one of the biggest potential achievements of Obama’s second term.” 

It is of absolutely no consequence whatsoever that Obama is apparently racked with “frustration that countries such as South Korea [have] embraced technology in the classroom so much better than the United States [has].” He is simply not allowed to address that issue without Congress. That the president and his allies are evidently sitting around the White House trying to work out how they can get around the constitutional system of the United States should be worrying to each and every one of us. The only thing more worrying is that it is apparently not.

 http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/355896/obama-moves-raise-taxes-cell-phone-users-without-congress-charles-c-w-cooke

Obama Pushes Cell Phone Rate Hike, without Congress
... By circumventing Congress, the president would also avoid hearings, debate, and give and take — what we used to call the legislative process. Now it’s just the government and its functionaries blackmailing the citizenry.

Cell phone users already pay for another massive Obama social program, the so-called Obamaphones. That free cell phone program, which began as a modest program in the Reagan era to help poor and rural families get telephones, exploded from 2009 to 2012 — there were one million of them in use in swing state Ohio in 2012. There is little if any oversight to prevent fraud.

This new program, called ConnectEd, will be added on top of the Obamaphone bill.

In the case of ConnectEd, White House officials worried that Obama could be accused of raising taxes on all Americans who use phone or Internet service, amid a broader debate in which Republicans are saying he is trying to raise taxes on the middle class. The cost for the initiative is estimated at $4 billion to $6 billion, and the administration said it could work out to about $12 in fees for every cellphone user over three years.

A senior administration official said that if the idea had come up during the presidential campaign, it probably would have been abandoned because of the political risk. Democrats faced withering critiques in the 1990s for advocating gas taxes to fund roads and bridges, and then-Vice President Al Gore was put on the defensive over the “Gore tax,” the 1996 law that gave the FCC the power to charge such fees....

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/08/14/obama-pushes-cell-phone-rate-hike-without-congress

Obama skirts Congress, funds pre-K through Obamacare

With congressional Republicans refusing to finance an expensive universal preschool proposal, President Obama is seeking an alternate funding source: Obamacare.

Universal pre-K is one of Obama’s favorite “big ideas” — and one he has mentioned repeatedly in the past few months. But his proposal to bulk up federal and state pre-K programs by raising tobacco taxes is unlikely to pass the Republican House of Representatives.

Instead, Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan have turned to discretionary funding allocations in Race to The Top, a federal education grant to the states, and even Obamacare.

A provision of Obama’s health-care law, the Affordable Care Act, sets aside money for both state and federal authorities to fund school readiness programs for at-risk youth, according to Politico.

And the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge — a $500 million pile of money for state education projects — could be used to for preschool programs.

The Education and Health and Human Services Departments have also doled out $89 million to six states for early childhood education programs.

“It’s a smart strategy with limited resources,” said Lisa Guernsey, director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation, in a statement.

But many experts who have studied the issue of universal preschool say there are good reasons not to fund it. Several analysts have found that kids who went to preschool are no better off than their peers by the time they enter the fifth grade.

An oft-cited study that did associate positive results with universal pre-K, on the other hand, examined a limited pool of students, and shouldn’t be held up as the definitive answer on the issue.

“Given the kind of programs the president is likely to fund and what the real results are likely to be, I think it’s a heck of lot less convincing,” said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, in an interview with The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Though funding universal pre-K via tax increases won’t fly with Republican in Congress, it’s easier for Republican governors to simply say yes to federal grant money to establish the programs.

But if they do, they will find themselves having to raise the funds for preschool programs themselves after the grants run out, said Hess.

“It’s not like the president has any plan to actually pay for this,” he said. “He’s going to stick states with the bill.”

But even if Obama never gets his way on universal pre-K, the fact that the policy sounds appealing makes it an easy sound bite, said Hess.

“It’s political theater at this point,” he said.

Obama recently added a preschool specialist to his education team. Dr. Libby Doggett, former director of the Pew Home Visiting Campaign, is joining the Education Department as deputy assistant secretary for early education later this month.

 http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/14/obama-skirts-congress-funds-pre-k-through-obamacare/#ixzz2c2znvWDM

Obama’s unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon’s

By George Will
President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.

Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”

He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. . . . It looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”

Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority. 

Obama’s explanation began with an irrelevancy. He consulted with businesses before disregarding his constitutional duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That duty does not lapse when a president decides Washington’s “political environment” is not “normal.”

When was it “normal”? The 1850s? The 1950s? Washington has been the nation’s capital for 213 years; Obama has been here less than nine. Even if he understood “normal” political environments here, the Constitution is not suspended when a president decides the “environment” is abnormal. 

Neither does the Constitution confer on presidents the power to rewrite laws if they decide the change is a “tweak” not involving the law’s “essence.” Anyway, the employer mandate is essential to the ACA.

Twenty-three days before his news conference, the House voted 264 to 161, with 35 Democrats in the majority, for the rule of law — for, that is, the Authority for Mandate Delay Act. It would have done lawfully what Obama did by ukase. He threatened to veto this use of legislation to alter a law. The White House called it “unnecessary,” presumably because he has an uncircumscribed “executive authority” to alter laws.

In a 1977 interview with Richard Nixon, David Frost asked: “Would you say that there are certain situations . . . where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation . . . and do something illegal?”

Nixon: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Frost: “By definition.”

Nixon: “Exactly, exactly.”

Nixon’s claim, although constitutionally grotesque, was less so than the claim implicit in Obama’s actions regarding the ACA. Nixon’s claim was confined to matters of national security or (he said to Frost) “a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude.” Obama’s audacity is more spacious; it encompasses a right to disregard any portion of any law pertaining to any subject at any time when the political “environment” is difficult. 

Obama should be embarrassed that, by ignoring the legal requirement concerning the employer mandate, he has validated critics who say the ACA cannot be implemented as written. What does not embarrass him is his complicity in effectively rewriting the ACA for the financial advantage of self-dealing members of Congress and their staffs. 

The ACA says members of Congress (annual salaries: $174,000) and their staffs (thousands making more than $100,000) must participate in the law’s insurance exchanges. It does not say that when this change goes into effect, the current federal subsidy for this affluent cohort — up to 75 percent of the premium’s cost, perhaps $10,000 for families — should be unchanged. 

When Congress awakened to what it enacted, it panicked: This could cause a flight of talent, making Congress less wonderful. So Obama directed the Office of Personnel Management, which has no power to do this, to authorize for the political class special subsidies unavailable for less privileged and less affluent citizens. 

If the president does it, it’s legal? “Exactly, exactly.” 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-obamas-unconstitutional-steps-worse-than-nixons/2013/08/14/e0bd6cb2-044a-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html

A Constitutional Cure For What Ails Us

 When I studied the U.S. Constitution in school, I learned that for a bill to become law it first had to be introduced in either the House or the Senate. Today, a cynic might say for a bill to become law a member of Congress must first be introduced to a lobbyist.

Much of government's dysfunction, cost and overreach can be traced to the abandonment of the constitutional boundaries the Founders put in place for the purpose of controlling the lust for power.

In his new book The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, Mark R. Levin asserts the U.S. government isn't performing up to standards established by the Founders because, like a flooding river, politicians have breached their constitutional limits.

Levin, who graduated with honors and a law degree from Temple University and who hosts a popular syndicated radio talk show, believes "The nation has entered an age of post-constitutional tyranny" resulting in this attitude by our leaders: "The public is not to be informed but indoctrinated, manipulated and misled."

Before this is dismissed as the ranting of a far-right extremist, consider the case Levin builds: The executive branch has assumed for itself "broad lawmaking power," creating departments and agencies that contravene the doctrine known as separation of powers; Congress creates monstrosities like Obamacare that have no constitutional origin, spending the country into record debt and making America dependent on foreign governments, especially China; the judiciary consists of men and women who are "no more virtuous than the rest of us and in some cases less so, as they suffer from the usual human imperfections and frailties." And yet they make decisions in the name of the Constitution that cannot be defended according to the words of the Founders, who believed the judiciary should be the least powerful and consequential branch of government. In Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton wrote that the judiciary branch would be the weakest of the three because it had "no influence over either the sword or the purse. ... It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment."

Who can credibly disagree with Levin when he writes: "What was to be a relatively innocuous federal government, operating from a defined enumeration of specific grants of power, has become an ever-present and unaccountable force. It is the nation's largest creditor, debtor, lender, employer, consumer, contractor, grantor, property owner, tenant, insurer, health-care provider and pension guarantor."

To return America to its constitutional boundaries, Levin proposes a series of "liberty amendments" to the Constitution, beginning with one limiting the terms of congressmen so they might avoid the bipartisan virus that infects even some who believe in limited government, mutating them into power-hungry influence seekers with little regard for the public good.

Another amendment would establish term limits for Supreme Court justices. "The point is," argues Levin, "that the Framers clearly intended to create intrinsic limitations on the ability of any one branch or level of government to have unanswered authority over the other."

Another amendment would establish spending limits for the government. Another would grant states the authority to check Congress.

Levin admits these amendments are unlikely to win congressional approval because in Washington power is not willingly relinquished. That's why he proposes the states bypass Congress, as the Framers provided, and pass these amendments themselves. As Levin notes, "Article V (of the Constitution) expressly grants state legislatures significant authority to rebalance the constitutional structure for the purpose of restoring our founding principles should the federal government shed its limitations, abandon its original purpose and grow too powerful, as many delegates in Philadelphia and the state conventions had worried it might."

Americans who care about the health and future of their country have the power through the states to force the federal government to abide by its founding document. Mark Levin's book is a serious work that can serve as an action plan for curing what ails us.

What's needed is less focus on Washington and more on state capitals where legislators are more likely to be responsive to the demands of "we the people."

http://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2013/08/15/a-constitutional-cure-for-what-ails-us-n1664487/page/full

Why Elections Matter: A Tale of Two States

While “A Tale of Two Cities” focused on London and Paris, if Charles Dickens were writing political novels in the present day, he might choose to examine Wisconsin and Minnesota as “A Tale of Two States.” The historical election results of 2010 have had an undeniable contrasting impact in these two states that both the mainstream media and political prognosticators are beginning to grasp.

In the 2010 midterm elections, Republicans realized unparalleled success, particularly in the Great Lakes states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin where Republican gubernatorial candidates were elected along with Republican majorities in legislative chambers. The result was a number of strong, swing state partnerships that ushered in a conservative response to the decidedly liberal policies pursued by their predecessors and from leaders in Washington, D.C.

However, just next door to Wisconsin, Republicans in Minnesota recaptured both chambers of the state house but fell just short in a contentious, three-way race for the governor’s mansion. This resulted in divided government until the courts drew a new legislative redistricting map unfairly favoring the Democrats. 
Following the issuance of the court’s map and prior to the 2012 elections, the Pioneer Press conducted an analysis that concluded, “If voters follow traditional partisan voting patterns in the November election, DFLers would pick up one additional state Senate seat … the analysis showed DFLers could regain control of the House.” On Election Day 2012 Democrats took sweeping control of both chambers, returning government to liberal Democrats – and liberal Democratic policies. 

During this same period, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the strong Republican majorities in both legislative chambers were implementing fiscally conservative policies. The stark contrast between those reforms and big-government liberal policies passed in neighboring Minnesota since 2010 was the topic of a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, which noted, “Politically speaking, Wisconsin and Minnesota are practically twins. They have voted the same way in the last seven presidential contests. They gave President Obama almost identical victory margins last fall. They share a common border, a common heritage, and the highest election turnouts in America. Yet based on how they are being governed, you would think they were two different planets.”

Whether intentional or not, the Journal Sentinel is aptly making the point that elections have significant consequences.

In Minnesota, a combination of divided and liberal governance has resulted in major tax hikes and expanded union rights. In Wisconsin, four years of conservative governance has led to the largest income tax rate cuts for taxpayers in over a decade, the marginalization of public sector unions and their stranglehold on the state budget and the expansion of school choice and voucher programs.

Minnesota is suffering the consequences of liberal, economically-hostile, anti-business policies while Wisconsin is reaping the benefits of the tough choices made and reforms implemented by Governor Walker and Wisconsin’s legislative leadership. 

Since 2010, Minnesota has suffered embarrassing credit downgrades by three of the country’s largest credit ratings agencies, has increased taxes by more than $2 billion and has seen its rankings in CNBC’s America’s Top States for Business index drop nine places since 2009.

Wisconsin’s 6.8 percent unemployment rate is down 2.4 points since January 2010. A full 94 percent of Wisconsin job creators believe the state is headed in the right direction as opposed to 10 percent in 2010, according to Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the state has climbed four spots in CNBC’s ranking system.

The Minnesota-Wisconsin story is not over, but the key differences highlighted by the Journal-Sentinel between the two similar, neighboring states once again demonstrates that elections have consequences. And the early but clear success of the bold, fiscally conservative reforms implemented by Governor Walker and the Wisconsin legislative leadership once again demonstrates that free markets and personal freedoms continue to benefit society more than calls for bigger government and more regulation. From our perspective, someday the diverging paths taken by Minnesota and Wisconsin after the 2010 election will make a fascinating political science case study proving the importance of electing Republican representatives to office and demonstrating the effectiveness of commonsense, fiscally-conservative Republican policies.

http://townhall.com/columnists/chrisjankowski/2013/08/15/why-elections-matter-a-tale-of-two-states-n1665150/page/full

More Fast and Furious guns surface at crimes in Mexico

Three more weapons from Fast and Furious have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico, CBS News has learned, as the toll from the controversial federal operation grows.

According to Justice Department tracing documents obtained by CBS News, all three guns are WASR-10 762-caliber Romanian rifles. Two were purchased by Fast and Furious suspect Uriel Patino in May and July of 2010. Sean Steward, who was convicted on gun charges in July 2012, purchased a third. The rifles were traced yesterday to the Lone Wolf gun shop in Glendale, Ariz.

During Fast and Furious and similar operations, federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) encouraged the Lone Wolf and other gun stores to sell massive amounts of weapons to questionable purchasers who allegedly trafficked them Mexican drug cartels.

Patino is said to have purchased 700 guns while under ATF's watch. Ever since, a steady stream of the guns have been recovered at crime scenes in Mexico and the U.S. But the Justice Department has refused repeated requests from Congress and CBS News to provide a full accounting. An estimated 1,400 guns are still on the street or unaccounted for.

Last November, a Fast and Furious weapon was found at a shootout between a Mexican drug cartel and soldiers where a beauty queen was killed. Two weapons used in the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico on Feb. 15, 2011 also came from suspects who were under ATF watch but not arrested at the time. And two Fast and Furious AK-47 type rifles were recovered from the murder scene of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010; he'd been shot by illegal immigrants who were smuggling drugs.

ATF special agent John Dodson blew the whistle on his agency's gunwalking in an interview with CBS News in 2011.

The government first denied any guns had been allowed to "walk" into criminal hands. Later, the Justice Department acknowledged using the strategy, claiming it was intended to see where the weapons ended up in hopes of capturing a major cartel leader. But the agency ordered an immediate halt to the practice calling it highly improper.

The Justice Department's refusal to turn over certain Fast and Furious documents led to a bipartisan vote in the House of Representatives in June 2012 to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress. Then, the Obama administration used executive privilege for the first time, to withhold requested documents from Congress. The Republican-led House Oversight Committee is suing for release of the material.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57598487/more-fast-and-furious-guns-surface-at-crimes-in-mexico/

Holder and FBI admit lying about data released before election last year

In their efforts to promote the re-election of Barack Obama, our nation's premier law enforcement agencies presented false data to the American public about a "crackdown" on mortgage fraud.  Fox News reports:

The Justice Department and FBI have quietly acknowledged they grossly overstated the scope of a mortgage fraud crackdown, which the administration heralded with much fanfare a few weeks before last year's presidential election. 
According to a memo circulated by the FBI and a correction posted online by the Justice Department, the number of defendants, the number of victims and the size of the losses are, in reality, a fraction of what officials claimed last October. 
Attorney General Eric Holder and other law enforcement officials claimed in early October that the initiative charged 530 criminal defendants on behalf of 73,000 victims who suffered over $1 billion in losses. The so-called Distressed Homeowner Initiative, which targeted fraud schemes against distressed homeowners, was highlighted in a press release and press conference at the time. 
Holder, talking to the cameras on Oct. 9, called it "a groundbreaking, year-long mortgage fraud enforcement effort." 
The real numbers, it turns out, were far smaller. The feds now admit that the number of criminal defendants charged was more like 107, not 530. The number of victims was 17,185 -- still a large number, but roughtly one fourth the size of the original headcount. And the losses totaled $95 million -- not $1 billion, as originally claimed. 

The mortgage meltdown of 2008, which served (and continues to serve) as a bludgeon for Democrats to blame George W. Bush, Republicans, and free markets for all the economic misery stands as one of the great, deceptive propaganda triumphs of American history. The low and medium information voting public does not know that banks were bludgeoned by regulators into giving mortgages to people who could not afford them. And now we have the admission that they were served up false information to make it appear as though Obama and the DoJ were doing something to improve things.

Obama should be known as the Potemkin President because there is so  much fraud involved in his self-presentation to the public.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/08/holder_and_fbi_admit_lying_about_data_released_before_election_last_year.html#ixzz2c3Ldpjpe

PK'S NOTES: The Washington Post, late to the party, but they're coming.

Obama golfs, Kerry lectures, Egyptians die in droves

Put it this way: President Obama’s Egypt policy is about as effective as his Syria policy. And for the first time Wednesday, with the number of dead and injured mounting, one could almost envision Egypt’s descent into out-and-out civil war.

Obama was briefed, said nothing and went back to golf. Secretary of State John Kerry took a break from his fruitless obsession with the nonexistent “peace process” to condemn the violence, but took no questions and had no policy announcement. This, in a nutshell, is the White House’s approach to the Middle East — the absence of any policy and a lot of empty words.

Sam Tadros, a Egyptian expert at the Hudson Institute who is also affiliated with the Hoover Institution, is not optimistic. Late Wednesday he remarked to me on the military’s assault on its opponents: “In a sense this was inevitable. You don’t ask the people to give you a mandate and then sit by idly. The timing was only delayed because of Ramadan and the Eid celebrations.” Unlike the administration, he is looking ahead — and doesn’t like what he discerns. “The question no one seems to be asking is where the MB [Muslim Brotherhood] is supposed to go after they end the protests,” he said. “They certainly won’t be going home. Instead of one protest you will have smaller ones throughout the country.” The victims will include non-Muslims as is so often the case in the Arab world. He told me, “Christians will of course take most of the damage. Already there are reports of many churches attacked. This will continue.”

The question now is what can be done and what role the United States should play. Tadros is blunt: “As to outside powers, I am afraid it is too late now. This is a zero-sum game and one side has to win.”

If the Egyptian military is, as most contend, far more effective than Bashar al-Assad’s troops and makes quick work of former government officials and their supporters, the Muslim Brotherhood problem hardly goes away. Not without justification they will likely conclude democracy is a dead end and will resort to other means to assert their vision for Egypt. The military will have succeeded only in driving MB members to return to violence and terrorism instead of ballots and government ministries.

In a sense, then, Obama might as well play golf. He’s dropped the ball on Egypt and the entire region, leaving the United States with few options and the Egyptian people to a bloody future in the short run and a repressive authoritarian junta in the longer run. This is a policy failure of the highest order.

Isolationists on the right and left argue that the United States has no interest in places like Egypt. But without U.S. leadership, what follows in places such as Egypt and Syria is a humanitarian and geopolitical nightmare that doesn’t stay within one country’s borders. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah must be gleeful to see the United States so weakened and insignificant.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/08/15/obama-golfs-kerry-lectures-egyptians-die-in-droves/

Out of ideas, Obama's team throws more words at Egypt's deadly violence

Major powers like the United States have many ways to attempt to influence the actions of other countries -- money, of course, humanitarian and military aid, personal and official contacts, sanctions, the media. None guarantee success.

But one thing guarantees failure: Hedging, Waffling, Whatever you want to call a foggy policy. And that is exactly what President Obama and his team have followed regarding Egypt and beyond. And now -- and for perhaps years to come -- the United States is paying the price for his Amateur Hour.

It's yet another facet of the Obama Doctrine of Failure in the Middle East. Iran--Levy international sanctions to cripple the economy to force abandonment of its nuclear weapons development. That didn't work, so maybe more will.

Libya--Bomb the bejesus out of the dictator's army to help the rebels topple him, which worked great. A mob murdered him, saved a trial. But what filled the vacuum? Chaos as militias war, generating another potential lawless homeland, a mini-Afghanistan, for al Qaeda & Co. to flourish.

Syria--This time international sanctions will surely work to oust Bashir al-Assad. Except not. He has Russian help. Should we help the rebels? Which ones? OK, we'll send weapons, even though it's too late.

Then comes Egypt--The crown jewel of American diplomatic ineptitude, the site of Obama's grandiose 2009 address to the Muslim world promising a new beginning.

Late to sense the Arab Spring, Obama stuck with dictator President Hosni Mubarak until he was clearly a goner, alienating the rising freedom forces. Late to support the new revolution, he's all for the new constitution and elections. Which put in place the Muslim Brotherhood.

Late to spot its governing ineptitude and anti-democratic moves, for whatever ignorant or sinister reason Obama is silent about the Brotherhood's obvious moves to smother democracy now that it's in power. Remember, folks, this is the group that assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981 for signing the Camp David peace accord with Israel.

On his African trip last month and late to grasp the army's ultimatum to the government to be more inclusive, Obama publicly telephones to support the embattled Brotherhood president hours before he's ousted by the army, again alienating scores of millions of Egyptian democrats demonstrating for the military to rescue the country.

Meanwhile, thousands of Brotherhood supporters had cordoned off parts of Cairo and elsewhere in recent weeks. The army decided the government could not govern only parts of the country and the Brotherhood wasn't sincere about negotiating.

So, it moved on Wednesday in force to take over Brotherhood areas. Conflicting reports said at least 500 died, police and protesters. "It was necessary to take a firm stand," said Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi.
Both Obama and Biden are taking this week off. And Kerry's leaving too. So, it was left to a deputy press secretary to explain the U.S. attitude: "The United States strongly condemns the use of violence against protesters in Egypt."

Strangely, no mention of Brotherhood violence, including the sacking and burning of government buildings and numerous Coptic Christian churches.

Secy. of State John Kerry, in a hastily-arranged media appearance just as his boss was playing another round of golf on Martha's Vineyard, added his voice. He deplored the violence, of course, and warned that more of it will only lead to more instability and a longer path to reconciliation.

But while reciting the usual diplomatic yada-yada about both sides respecting the rights of others, Kerry announced no changes in U.S. policy. The administration has refrained from calling the military's ouster of the Brotherhood a "coup" because that would, by law, trigger an automatic suspension of this country's $1.3 billion in aid per year.

Truth is, outside of canceling upcoming military exercises with Egypt, that's about the only U.S. leverage left. and it's dwindling, as billions more in aid flood into Egypt from conservative Gulf regimes eager to stem the tide of radical Islamists.

Kerry gave an inadvertent admission of the limits of U.S. influence Wednesday. Instead of substantive actions, he was reduced to describing the many telephone calls he had made to Egypt and elsewhere. To no effect obviously, as the fighting raged all day.

Two years ago when Libyan rebels seized the capital of Tripoli, Obama interrupted his island vacation to make a TV statement, which gave him a large share of ownership of what became this Libyan mess including the Benghazi attack. 

His absence was notable Wednesday. Maybe he'll change his mind today. The White House only released a photo of Obama talking with security adviser Susan Rice over a lovely floral arrangement, presumably not about quarterback Tom Brady's knee injury.

 http://news.investors.com/politics-andrew-malcolm/081513-667608-obama-golfs-kerry-deplores-egyptian-violence.htm#ixzz2c354fgRO

Obama Policies Turning Egypt Against U.S.

Pro-military Egyptians want to shift to Russian alliance

The Obama administration support for Muslim Brotherhood Islamists in Egypt is driving the powerful military there against the United States and toward Moscow, according to U.S. officials and reports from the region. 

The pro-Muslim Brotherhood stance is undermining decades of U.S. policy toward the Middle East state and prompting concerns that the United States is about to “lose” Egypt as a strategic partner, said officials familiar with intelligence reports.

Disclosure of the concern over the administration’s policy failure in Egypt comes as a security crackdown on pro-Muslim Brotherhood supporters in Cairo resulted in scores killed.

“The Obama administration’s blatant Islamist support is risking the decades-long security arrangement with Egypt,” one U.S. official told the Washington Free Beacon.

“The Egyptians are so upset they might very well give up our support,” the official added, noting the military regime is currently leaning toward seeking backing from Russia, and possibly China in the future.

The United States has provided Egypt with more than $49 billion in both military and economic assistance since 1979. Cairo was viewed as a key strategic partner in the region.

However, the 2011 ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, a long-time U.S. ally, as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring movement began a shift in U.S. policy. At that time, the Obama administration began covertly backing the Muslim Brotherhood, an anti-democratic Islamist group.

The policy shift was a marked change from past policy. During the 1970s, the United States successfully diverted Egypt’s alignment with Soviet Union under Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser by developing close ties to Nasser’s successor, Anwar Sadat, and later Mubarak.

“The administration, through a combination of ignorance, incompetence and support for the Islamists is reversing the strategy gains we made in Egypt,” the official said.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf rejected assertions that the United States is supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. “We’ve been clear that we don’t support any one party or one group in Egypt, period,” Harf said.

“The future of the Egyptian government is up to the people of Egypt themselves to decide,” she said. “The notion that we are supporting one side over another in Egypt is a total falsehood. We will continue working with all parties and all groups—including the interim government—to help facilitate a move towards an inclusive, democratic process.”

According to the officials, the failed policy toward Egypt is bipartisan. The recent visit to Egypt by Republican Sens. John McCain  (Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.) was widely viewed by Egyptian civilian and military leaders as tacit support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Graham and McCain said their visit was to support democracy in Egypt, but they criticized the military coup.

McCain was among the first lawmakers to call for a cutoff of support to the interim Egyptian government after the ouster of Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that is seeking to impose Sharia law as a guiding ideology.

On Sunday, McCain said on “Fox News Sunday” that he was concerned about the outbreak of violence and he criticized the administration for refusing to call the military takeover a coup d’état. “The fact is that it was a coup, and now they have jailed the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and the previous government, and that is not the way to bring about reconciliation,” McCain said.

Morsi, who was democratically elected, was thrown out of office by the military on June 30 following large-scale demonstrations by pro-democracy and anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo. Other Brotherhood leaders also were arrested and placed under house arrest.

In response, Islamists have been staging large-scale protests in the streets of Cairo since then, culminating in the crackdown by security forces. News reports put the death toll as of Wednesday afternoon at 278, with more than a thousand injured by gunfire and tear gas.

Secretary of State John Kerry in a statement Wednesday condemned the violence in Egypt. “The United States strongly supports the Egyptian people’s hope for a prompt and sustainable transition to an inclusive, tolerant, civilian-led democracy,” he said.

U.S. officials said there are signs Egypt’s military is taking steps to expand control over the political system.
Current Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is being touted by government controlled news media as a patriotic, Nasser-like figure who should run for president.

According to the officials, since the June 30 military takeover, pro-military groups and backers of the new regime are promoting anti-American policies in news outlets.

The campaign, which appears to have high-level Egyptian military support, also calls for shifting Egypt’s alliance from the United States to Russia. Numerous photos promoting the theme have appeared at rallies and on social media in the past month and half. The campaign also has included an effort to expel U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson, who the pro-militarists say was a backer of the Muslim Brotherhood.

A military source was quoted in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Youm al-Sabi as saying Patterson was responsible for the killing of Muslim Brotherhood protesters at Rab’a al Adawiya following a reported meeting between her and senior Muslim Brotherhood officials. The reported plot was discussed at a hotel that called for a plan to foment violence that would justify military intervention and sanctions against Egypt.

On Twitter, a pro-military politician, Mustafa Bakri, criticized President Barack Obama for delaying the sale of four F-16 jets to Egypt and called the president “an ally” of the Brotherhood.

In tandem with the anti-U.S. campaign, pro-military news outlets have been promoting a shift in policy toward Russia. The Al Watan newspaper on July 29 quoted several Egyptian foreign affairs experts as urging the government to replace the United States with Russia as a key ally, based on the failure of the U.S. government to support the military takeover.

A pro-military online forum called the “Arabic Military” on July 29 quoted “diplomatic sources” as saying Putin would soon visit Egypt in the aftermath of calls for a reevaluation of U.S.-Egypt ties.

Russia is known to be seeking a foothold in the Middle East following the turmoil in Syria that prompted a Russian pullout of from the port of Tartus. Russia also is setting up a new naval headquarters in the Mediterranean.

Other pro-military Facebook pages have criticized Obama and praised Putin. One site called “Egypt will Not Fall” praised Putin as “great Caesar and leader” who is offering to sell Egypt 55 MiG fighter jets to replace the U.S. F-16s.

http://freebeacon.com/obama-policies-turning-egypt-against-u-s/

Obama cancels joint exercises with Egypt’s military, but not aid

“The United States strongly condemns the steps that have been taken by Egypt’s interim government,” Barack Obama announced in a statement from his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard — but that’s about all the United States does.  Obama announced that the US would cancel its joint exercises with Egypt’s army in September, but said nothing about the continuing US aid after the coup:

 President Barack Obama has scrapped joint U.S.-Egypt military exercises scheduled for next month, saying American cooperation with the Egyptian government cannot continue when civilians are being killed in the streets. He directed his national security team to see what additional steps the U.S. might take going forward.

National Journal’s Brian Resnick is hardly impressed, noting that the White House reaction since the July 3 coup has been “more rhetorical than action-oriented”:

The president offers tough talk and a small, and perhaps symbolic, action to condemn yesterday’s bloodshed in the streets of Cairo—keeping strategic aid in place while canceling a long-standing military exercise with Egypt.

“Our traditional cooperation cannot continue as usual as civilians are being killed in the streets, rights are being rolled back,” the president said in a statement while on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. But don’t mistake these words for the president completely cutting off ties with the region. He made no mention of the contested $1.3 billion that the U.S. sends in aid to the Egyptian government, which includes things like jet fighters. Instead, the president announced he will cancel a joint military exercise between the U.S. and Egypt called “Bright Star,” a regular tradition stemming from the 1978 Camp David Accords. …

Last month, when mass protest forces then-Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi out of office, the president said “I now call on the Egyptian military to move quickly and responsibly to return full authority back to a democratically elected civilian government as soon as possible through an inclusive and transparent process, and to avoid any arbitrary arrests of President Morsi and his supporters.”

Clearly automatic rifle fire and tear gas were not what the president had in mind when he said “move quickly and responsibly.”

Actually, the editors at the Washington Post complain that Obama’s message wasn’t clear on that point at all.  Continuing aid, they argue, sent a laissez-faire message to General Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, and that Obama bears at least indirect responsibility for the massacre that followed:

Because of those decisions, the Obama administration is complicit in the new and horrifyingly bloody crackdown launched Wednesday by the de facto regime against tens of thousands of protesters who had camped out in two Cairo squares. At least 278 people were reported killed, including many women and children. Chaos erupted around Egypt as angry mobs stormed Christian churches, which went largely unprotected by security forces. The military imposed a state of emergency, essentially returning Egypt to the autocratic status quo that existed before the 2011 revolution.

The Obama administration duly protested the latest crackdown, just as it previously urged the miltary [sic] not to use force against the demonstrations and to release Mr. Morsi and other political prisoners. The military’s disregard for these appeals was logical and predictable: Washington had already demonstrated that its warnings were not credible. Indeed, even as police were still gunning down unarmed civilians in the streets of Cairo Wednesday, a White House spokesman was reiterating to reporters the administration’s determination not to make a judgement about whether the terms of the anti-coup legislation had been met. …

It is difficult to imagine how the assault on the Brotherhood, which won multiple elections and is still supported by millions of Egyptians, can be followed by a credible transition to democracy. More likely, it will lead Egypt toward still greater violence. It may be that outside powers cannot now change this tragic course of events. But if the United States wishes to have some chance to influence a country that has been its close ally for four decades, it must immediately change its policy toward the armed forces. That means the complete suspension of all aid and cooperation, coupled with the message that relations will resume when — and if — the generals end their campaign of repression and take tangible steps to restore democracy.

Canceling the joint military exercise looks like just about the least the US can do — and almost the least significant way in which to announce it, too.  Obama didn’t even bother to get in front of a camera to emphasize the point, or allow questions from the press, which at least John Kerry did at a State Department briefing yesterday.  Given the scale of the deaths yesterday in Cairo, this hardly looks like a robust rebuke; it seems more like an expression of impotence.

CNBC’s broadcast of the audio-only statement had an unfortunate interruption in the beginning, which in context of the vapid handling of the crisis in Egypt over the last two years is unsettlingly relevant:

“Are you disabled?” Seems so.  But meanwhile, back to important priorities:

President Obama played his fourth round of golf in five days on Thursday after breaking from his vacation to condemn the violence in Egypt.

After wrapping up his public address — in which he announced the cancelation of joint military exercises with Egypt next month — Obama departed for the Mink Meadows Golf Club in Vineyard Haven.

Beats talking with reporters on foreign policy, I guess.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/08/15/obama-cancels-joint-exercises-with-egypts-military-but-not-aid/

Egypt erupts as security forces attack Morsi supporters

BEFORE THE July 3 coup in Egypt, the Obama administration privately warned the armed forces against ousting the government of Mohamed Morsi, pointing to U.S. legislation that requires the cutoff of aid to any country where the army plays a “decisive role” in removing an elected government. Yet when the generals ignored the U.S. warnings, the White House responded by electing to disregard the law itself. After a prolonged and embarrassing delay, the State Department announced that it had chosen not to determine whether a coup had taken place, and Secretary of State John F. Kerry declared that Egypt’s military was “restoring democracy.”

Because of those decisions, the Obama administration is complicit in the new and horrifyingly bloody crackdown launched Wednesday by the de facto regime against tens of thousands of protesters who had camped out in two Cairo squares. At least 278 people were reported killed, including many women and children. Chaos erupted around Egypt as angry mobs stormed Christian churches, which went largely unprotected by security forces. The military imposed a state of emergency, essentially returning Egypt to the autocratic status quo that existed before the 2011 revolution.

The Obama administration duly protested the latest crackdown, just as it previously urged the miltary not to use force against the demonstrations and to release Mr. Morsi and other political prisoners. The military’s disregard for these appeals was logical and predictable: Washington had already demonstrated that its warnings were not credible. Indeed, even as police were still gunning down unarmed civilians in the streets of Cairo Wednesday, a White House spokesman was reiterating to reporters the administration’s determination not to make a judgement about whether the terms of the anti-coup legislation had been met.
This refusal to take a firm stand against massive violations of human rights is as self-defeating for the United States as it is unconscionable. Continued U.S. support for the Egyptian military is helping to push the country toward a new dictatorship rather than a restored democracy. Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, the coup leader, increasingly is styling himself as a national savior in the mode of such former dictators asGamal Abdel Nasser; Wednesday’s bloody assault represents his crushing of civilian moderates in the interim cabinet who had called for compromise with Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Appropriately, their leader, Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, resigned.
It is difficult to imagine how the assault on the Brotherhood, which won multiple elections and is still supported by millions of Egyptians, can be followed by a credible transition to democracy. More likely, it will lead Egypt toward still greater violence. It may be that outside powers cannot now change this tragic course of events. But if the United States wishes to have some chance to influence a country that has been its close ally for four decades, it must immediately change its policy toward the armed forces. That means the complete suspension of all aid and cooperation, coupled with the message that relations will resume when — and if — the generals end their campaign of repression and take tangible steps to restore democracy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/egypt-erupts-as-security-forces-attack-morsi-supporters/2013/08/14/f230a080-04fa-11e3-9259-e2aafe5a5f84_story.html

China Attacks U.S. Constitution

More signs emerged from China this month that Beijing is reverting to more hardline communist policies and rejecting calls for democracy under its new leader President Xi Jinping.

The People’s Daily, official newspaper of the Communist Party of China, published a front-page commentary Aug. 6 attacking U.S. constitutional governance.

The commentary stated that U.S. constitutional democracy is “more in name than in reality,” and that there is “no such thing as democracy and freedom under U.S. constitutional governance.”

The commentary comes as the Chinese continue to debate political reform in online forums.

The Communist Party-ruled government appears to be moving away from democratic political reform under Xi, a doctrinaire communist “princeling” and son of Communist revolutionary, Xi Zhongxun.

Xi’s doctoral degree is in “scientific socialism,” the euphemism for Marxism-Leninism. Xi also has taken a more pro-military stance than his predecessors. The military remains a bastion of communist ideology.

The People’s Daily commentary appears to contradict statements by Chinese leaders on the rule of law. Xi said recently that “no one should be allowed to be above the constitution,” according to the South China Morning Post. The Hong Kong newspaper first reported the anti-democracy commentary.

The People’s Daily said efforts to promote constitutional rule in China are being carried out by groups linked to U.S. intelligence agencies that are seeking to overturn socialism.

The commentary was published as Chinese leaders are meeting this month at the summer retreat Beidaihe to discuss the political agenda for the party.

A State Department spokesman had no comment on the anti-democracy article.

http://freebeacon.com/china-attacks-u-s-constitution/

SEIU Official in 2009: Immigration Reform Will Lead to Millions New Progressive Voters

SEIU Secretary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina said in 2009 that amnesty for illegal aliens would lead to a future “governing coalition” of progressive “voters.” Medina made the argument that illegal aliens comprised a future progressive voting bloc at a leftist Campaign for America’s Future event.

“Now as you know, the negative tone of the immigration debate has created an intense interest in the Latino and immigrant community,” he said at the 2009 event in a video that has resurfaced on YouTube. “We in the last election had the largest turnout of Latino voters in our history. And everything tells us these voters fully intend on becoming engaged into elections in the future."

"They have tasted what it is like to participate and win and they are not going to go away because their involvement is basically because they feel they are being taken advantage of, they are being singled out and they are being scapegoated," Medina declared. "When they voted in November, they voted overwhelmingly for progressive candidates. Barack Obama got two out of every three voters that showed up.”

Medina argued that the “progressive community” needed to act like they cared about illegal immigrants to win over the potential future voters.

“So I think there’s two things, very quickly, that matter for the progressive community,” Medina said. “Number one: if we are to expect this electorate to win, the progressive community needs to solidly be on the side of immigrants. Let us solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future."

"Let me tell you, when you are in the middle of a fight for your life, you will remember who was there with you, and immigrants count on progressives to be able to do that," he explained. "Number two, we reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million on the path to citizenship and eventually voters."

"Can you imagine if we have even the same ratio [as Obama got] two out of three, if we had 8 million new voters that care about our issues and would be voting, we would create a governing coalition for the long-term, not just for an election cycle,” Medina stated.

This week, Medina admitted in an interview with Breitbart News’ Lee Stranahan that the SEIU includes illegal alien members.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/08/15/SEIU-official-in-2009-Illegal-aliens-future-governing-coalition-of-progressive-voters

Clowning the Os

Who has not heard about the "iniquitous", white (and therefore guilty -- like Zimmerman, who of course is not white, but never mind) rodeo clown who donned an Obama mask?
Who has not gotten wind of the Ruling Aristocrat Oprah Winfrey's manufacture of a "racist victimization incident" with a Swiss sales clerk?

In consideration of the content of many conservative articles and comments on the subjects, I am going to be so bold as to suggest that many conservatives still do not want to come to grips with the true function of racial discourse in this country. 

As a consequence, many conservative responses are as naïve as they are myopic.

Protestations of the form "look at the Bush masks; look all the Bush hate; the sales clerk wasn't a racist after all and Oprah should apologize" are fruitless, and will continue to be fruitless until matters are set right.

Matters are not going to be set right until Americans take fully on board the brute fact that the "dialogue" on race in this country is, quite literally, psychotic.

That this is so is easily seen by reflection that, for example, the racial "dialogue" we've been hectored about for several decades is in reality no "dialogue" at all; it is a monologue imposed by the powerful in order to decimate the values and individuality of the powerless.

When reality itself is completely contradicted by the description of it and the description is resolutely adhered to anyway, what you have is -- psychosis.

In the current historical moment, the psychosis is quite functional: it serves to facilitate "progress" toward full blown Marxo-Fascism. 

Why was the rodeo clown branded a racist? Why did the MSM fail to question the veracity of Oprah's confabulation? Why was Zimmerman tried?

Because under Marxo-Fascism, individuals do not matter -- unless, of course, you are a member of the Ruling Class -- which is why, for example, people like Hypocrite Harry Reid feel no pressure to step down and support a minority candidate. 

Thus, from the controlling vantage point of the Rulers, when the rodeo clown woke up on that "fateful" day, he was of course the same being he was when he fell asleep, which is to say either an overt racist, or a latent racist whose racism was, due to either the passage of time or the merest of deviations from Marxist script, invariably going to manifest itself.

With respect to the sales clerk (Adriana N.), she clowned Oprah, as the above linked article shows.

The sales clerk stood her ground and insisted that her engagement with the minority titan was entirely proper. 

The titan lied, and might have destroyed a life, but nonetheless Adriana N. is not going to receive anything approaching a sincere apology from power.

Why not?

Again, power has not seen fit to constitute either the sales clerk or the rodeo clown as individuals.

Because the Establishment view on race relations is psychotic and immune to consequences, it is "free" (in the way psychotic criminals are "free") to substitute fantasy for reality on issues of race.

That is, to the system, the rodeo clown and the sales clerk are mere placeholders; ciphers, or random variables, if you will.

If the first random white is not literally a racist, who cares -- the next one will be, and what's the first going to do about the false allegation? And, once more, what psychotic cares about the "literal" anyway?

Hence, what was in their hearts and minds is, according to Marxo-Fascism, wholly irrelevant, since no matter what resided in those places, there are surely tens of millions of other sets of hearts and minds wherein subsists evil worse than murder.

Surely there are tens of millions of racist white sales clerks and rodeo clowns in the suburbs of America!

The proof of this, of course, is that if these people were not racist, they would not live in the suburbs -- they would live in Detroit, which is, incidentally, where the clown Obama takes his "working" vacations, isn't it?

What was once the radical, collectivist view on race relations -- as exemplified by what looks to have been a terrorist act and a thoroughly hypocritical act committed by the sitting United States Attorney General Eric Holder -- is now the Establishment view, and that therefore what is really in the hearts and minds of people with respect to race is, from a historical point of view, completely irrelevant. 

In the minds of these radicals, all roads are racialized, and all racialized roads must lead to one destination and one destination only: equality of outcome (excepting the 1% Rulers, of course) --which, by the way, is, beyond any dispute whatsoever, a socialist idea.

Thus, trillions of dollars and decades of affirmative action programs related to education, employment, and business have proven not to be enough, and so what is needed now is yet another dose of affirmative action whereby housing outcomes are to be racially engineered by the federal government.

This is of course strongly suggestive of the notion that behind the manufacturing of victims such as Trayvon lies hostility to liberty. 

In sum, it is a brute fact that the collectivist cabals that compose the federal government and subsidiary holdings such as the MSM have determined that conservatives and libertarians are racists no matter what they say or do.

So what are conservatives going to do about it?

If the Marxo-Fascist dictator and his followers do not like certain sales clerks or rodeo clowns of the world, we might ask whether it is because they do not like being clowned, and, similarly, whether it is because they do not like clowns.

It would be decidedly odd if either if these possibilities were true.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/a_functional_psychosis.html#ixzz2c3dB3Lwi

A Swiss Clerk Teaches Us About Racism and Profiteering

Is racism a real problem in the United States, or is it the calculated and fraudulent branding and stigma that strategically attaches to the target of an accusation of racism? That exploitation, ignoring for now the damage it does to its target, has proven to be very profitable to the accusers, whether in pursuit of employment, admissions, benefits, political power or even promoting a movie. Apart from the sympathy that flows to the self-proclaimed "victim", even if reflexively rather than from any merit in the accusation, there is the publicity and the opportunity to decry the affront, which is the victim's new right. There is the priceless platform for the victim to force him or herself on the public, which is not otherwise offered to those living quietly in one of the least racist countries in the world. Where's the publicity or gain in merely living as a person to whom every opportunity is available to achieve unlimited success? 

There is a purposeful malice in this exploitation that is disturbing, especially when the specter of pervasive racism is invoked by those who know the lie they tell. At the pinnacle of our culture, enjoying all the financial and prestigious rewards this free country can convey, they lecture us on how hard their lives are because of their professed belief in our intolerance and meanness.

So in the last several years, and even more so in recent months, the left's message is that we live in the most racist, oppressive country on Earth, at least according to the self-appointed oppressed and their elite spokespersons. And who are these damaged victims of such flagrant oppression, from whom we hear of hardship and discrimination? Why, some of the wealthiest and most privileged among us: the athletes, the movie stars, the entertainers, the celebrities. And yes, the most powerful politicians in the world. Apparently, wealth, privilege, opportunity and power are the new oppression. Who knew? It seems that no one knows oppression like those who have freely achieved vastly more wealth and power than their imagined oppressors.

During the presidency of our "post-racial" president, decades of progress have been consciously erased by those who have sensed an opportunity, led by the daily example of this very same president, to make the accusation of racism pay off, knowing it is a lie. The eradication of past progress is actually welcomed by these destroyers, since endless racial strife means endless exploitation and opportunity for those positioned to profit. If the clock is constantly turned back, every fight must be fought over again, as if nothing has ever changed. Those who did their part in good faith had no idea it was all a game, but they are coming around to the truth.

These heralds of our national sin are the embodiment of unrestrained self-absorption. They lie to us and themselves that by proclaiming their own victimhood, and someone else's imagined bigotry, they are harkening a greater good, with no sense of the irony of the entire exercise. In reality, of course, they are doing untold damage. The vast majority of Americans, who are not racists, have long been forced to listen to what they know are lies told about them, and many are coming to resent it deeply. We are going backward, by design.

We have been recently treated to the rather obscene spectacle of Oprah Winfrey, a black woman who has achieved unlimited acceptance, success, wealth and power in the least racist nation on Earth, lecturing us on the mythical lynching of "millions" of blacks, while promoting a racially themed movie for which she was doubtless paid millions of dollars. How's that for victimhood? For what it's worth, the actual number of persons lynched between 1882 and 1968 has been calculated at less than 5000, and of those, it seems one in four were white. Can you guess the political affiliation of those doing the lynching versus those being lynched? There weren't very many white Republicans in the South, thanks to Mr. Lincoln.

Following closely on the heels of Ms. Winfrey's historical lie, she has more recently found herself in the uncomfortable position of accusing someone of racism who is not accustomed to simply accepting the label, as most white Americans are conditioned to do. Apparently, the rules are different outside the United States, which Ms. Winfrey failed to take into account. Those in Switzerland who are not racist will actually object loudly to being branded for someone else's amusement, or gain, and expose the lie. A Swiss store clerk has done exactly that, implicitly calling out Oprah Winfrey on a lie she thought she could get away with if she kept it vague enough, other than the whiteness of the accused. Now, embarrassed by the exposure, Ms. Winfrey is pretending it was all a misunderstanding, and saying she wished it had not gotten blown out of proportion. It seems that not every white has been taught they owe apologies and repentance when accused of racism by profiteers.

Of course, we are not allowed to similarly speak in our own defense in the United States in matters of race. To examine facts and object to lies when told by racialist opportunists is itself evidence of racism. For Americans, it was otherworldly to see a false race accuser called out publicly. I guess the falsely accused can do that in countries where the politically correct narrative is not rigged to blindly honor the liar, rather than the truth, when the lie is about race. Had a white person in this country done what the Swiss store clerk did, he would have his name and reputation entirely destroyed by the liberal race machine, which exists to ensure that we never speak truthfully about race in the United States.

The left's protection of the president is a further illustration of this reality. He and his lickspittles have made every reaction to his petty politics a "dog whistle" for racism. The attorney general is similarly inclined, consciously serving only 'his people' by disregarding their criminality when it occurs, as historical payback. It is unseemly and repulsive, but that's what makes it so attractive to liberals. They swim in an ever expanding cesspool of offensive behavior, happy to tear down the barriers of morality and ethics that prevented the malcontents before them from destroying the civil society in their time. They relish the knowledge that their gains are inversely proportionate to the preservation of a greater good, without which a moral society will die.

Make no mistake. The exploitation of race for profit and advantage in this country is a key part of the ongoing efforts to kill off the remnants of the old, Constitutional United States. Even Mrs. Clinton understands the advantage of lying to and about blacks. She purportedly objects to voter ID laws because of their supposedly negative impact on blacks, but is never asked about the implications of this view. At the heart of the matter, if we assume that Democrats are sincere, isn't the implication that Democrats believe blacks are so stupid and lazy that they cannot obtain readily available and free forms of identification, which they otherwise need for everything? Why is this obvious premise never challenged by the left? Perhaps it is because there is no disagreement from within the left.

For those blacks who stay silent, not objecting to their perpetual insult for the sake of the benefits they think that Democrats bestow upon them, they are doubly betrayed. After all, the voter ID fight is not even about them. It's about the votes of illegal immigrants, whose presence in growing numbers only ensures that fewer jobs, opportunities and benefits will be available for the loyal blacks who still await the deliverance that Democrats will promise them until they no longer need to. As illegals vote in greater numbers and become the dominant percentage of the Democrat base, blacks will find themselves in the same place that others have when their utility to liberals has exhausted itself.

The left sincerely hopes that we never become as honest and vocal as a Swiss store clerk. To ensure we do not, they will continue to strategically brand their opponents as racists for as long as there are halfwits who sell it, buy it, and apologize for it. 

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/a_swiss_clerk_teaches_us_about_racism_and_profiteering.html#ixzz2c3dToY2Z

Racism Card Looking a Little Dog-Eared

 By Ann Coulter
Do liberals have any arguments for their idiotic ideas besides calling their opponents "racist"?

The two big public policies under attack by the left this week are "stop-and-frisk" policing and voter ID laws. Democrats denounce both policies as racist. I'm beginning to suspect they're getting lazy in their arguments.

Stop-and-frisk was a crucial part of the package of law enforcement measures implemented by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani that saved the city. Under David Dinkins, who preceded Giuliani, murders averaged about 2,000 a year. There were 714 murders in New York the year Giuliani left office. Continuing Giuliani's policing techniques, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's New York had only 419 murders last year.

Just during his first year in office, Giuliani's policies cut the murder rate an astonishing 20 percent. That first year of his administration was responsible for 35 percent of the crime drop nationwide from 1993 to 1995. The New York Times hailed this remarkable achievement with an article headlined, "New York City Crime Falls but Just Why Is a Mystery."

It was mostly black lives that were saved by Giuliani's crime policies. By the end of his administration, the Rev. Calvin Butts, liberal pastor of Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church, was comparing Giuliani to King Josiah of the Bible, who "brought order, peace, the law back to the land." The black minister told The New York Times, "I really think that without Giuliani, we would have been overrun."

About the same time as the Rev. Butts was comparing Giuliani to King Josiah, Richard Goldstein of The Village Voice claimed he felt less safe in New York under Giuliani. It was the ravings of a madman, like saying winter is warmer than summer. But now, Goldstein's ideas are being delivered from the federal bench by Judge Shira Scheindlin, who recently held New York City's stop-and-frisk policies unconstitutional.


Yes, Democrat Bob Filner can pat down his female employees, but cops can't pat down suspected criminals.

Liberals wail about guns, but how do they imagine police get guns off the street without going to high-crime neighborhoods and stopping young men acting suspiciously? Giuliani's policing policies, including stop-and-frisk, reduced gun homicides in New York by 75 percent within five years.

It is precisely the fear of being caught with a gun that induces young hoodlums not to carry them. The word gets out: Don't carry a gun! It's not worth the risk.

Of course cops don't find many guns anymore! That's because they're doing stop-and-frisk.

By liberals' logic, the government should stop doing meat inspections because it turns up so few cases of contamination these days, anyway. We can also drop the metal detectors at airports. How many people does the TSA actually catch trying to sneak guns onto airplanes?

Have liberals polled the elderly black residents of high-crime neighborhoods on stop-and-frisk? As soon as the word gets out that it's now safe to carry weapons, spray paint, drugs and stolen goods again, criminals will rule the streets and the elderly will, once more, be confined to their homes. As Martin Luther King said, crime is "the nightmare of the slum family."

But liberals don't care about the innocent black victims of crime. They don't care about citizens being prisoners in their own homes -- as long as it's not in their neighborhoods. The important thing is to self-righteously preen about racism.

When a policy that has saved thousands of black lives is attacked as "racist," the word has no meaning. At this rate, liberals will be claiming that peanut butter sandwiches are racist -- except that wouldn't be as crazy.

Voter ID laws don't actually save black lives the way stop-and-frisk policies do, but it's not clear how such laws hurt them. I suppose the argument is that by allowing Democrats to steal elections, they can pass all those laws that improve black lives immeasurably, like promoting trial lawyers, gay marriage, abortion and amnesty for illegals. You know, the Democratic policies that really enhance black lives.

The claim that modern voter ID laws are a racist Republican plot to prevent minorities from voting is complicated by the fact that, in 2011, such a law was enacted by the overwhelmingly Democratic Rhode Island legislature and, in fact, was pushed through by black Democrats.

Despite the pleas of national Democrats who realized their cover was being blown, the state senate's only black member, Democrat Harold Metts, sponsored a voted ID bill. He said he'd heard complaints about voter fraud for years, telling the story of one poll worker who encountered a voter who couldn't spell his own last name.

A black legislator in the House, Anastasia Williams, complained that when she showed up to vote in 2006, she was told she had already voted. Another time, she saw a Hispanic man vote, go to the parking lot and change his clothes, then go back in and vote again.

If white liberals are so concerned about black votes counting, why don't they ever vote for black representatives in their own congressional districts? Black Republicans are always elected from majority white districts: Gary Franks, J.C. Watts, Tim Scott and Allen West.

But black Democrats apparently can get elected to Congress only from specially designated minority districts. How come white liberals won't vote for a black representative? Can't a black person represent Nita Lowey's district?

Democrats do nothing for black Americans except mine them for votes, which they do by telling tall tales about racist Republicans.

http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2013/08/14/racism-card-looking-a-little-dogeared-n1664695/page/full

Hillary's race card

Anyone who doubts that Hillary Clinton is already in fine fighting trim for a presidential run should consider her speech this week to the American Bar Association in San Francisco.

She assailed an alleged “assault on voting rights.” She took aim at the Supreme Court’s recent decision striking down a portion of the Voting Rights Act and excoriated states that have recently tightened their voting laws. She declared that “anyone who says that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in American elections must not be paying attention.”

Madam Secretary hasn’t missed a beat. She knows that the calling card of Democrats in the Barack Obama era is a polarizing politics that seeks to fire up minority voters by stirring fears of fire hoses and police dogs. Its basic vocabulary is imputations of racism; its evidentiary standard is low and dishonest; and its ethic is whatever works — so long as its stirs fear, anger, and resentment.

Get ready for Hope and Change 2.0.

The latest target is the state of North Carolina, which is accused of soiling itself with a new voter ID law, among other changes in its election laws. “The Decline of North Carolina” harrumphs the New York Times.
“North Carolina’s Attack on Voting Rights” says the Daily Beast. The state is supposedly part of a tide of disenfranchisement victimizing minority voters in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling.

 This is ludicrous. North Carolina is simply joining the American mainstream. It is one of at least 30 states to adopt a voter ID law. Such laws enjoy broad public support as a check against fraud and hardly shock the conscience in a country where you need to produce an ID to enter many office buildings and to buy Sudafed. A Washington Post poll last year showed 65 percent of blacks and 64 percent of Latinos supporting voter ID.

It is such a common-sense idea that such foreign redoubts of backwardness and racism as Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada require an ID to vote.

The constitutionality of voter ID isn’t in doubt. The Supreme Court upheld Indiana’s voter ID law in 2008 in a 6-3 decision written by now-retired liberal justice John Paul Stevens. The court ruled that the Indiana statue was “amply justified by the valid interest in protecting ‘the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.”

The evidence suggests that voter ID laws don’t suppress the votes of anyone. Hans A. von Spakovsky, a voting expert at the Heritage Foundation, points out that major, dispassionate studies show no effect on turnout.

Research by the University of Missouri showed a slight increase in turnout in Indiana local elections in 2006 after passage of voter ID. It found that “the only consistent and frequently statistically significant impact of photo ID in Indiana is to increase voter turnout in counties with a greater percentage of Democrats relative to other counties.”

The Universities of Delaware and Nebraska-Lincoln looked at elections around the country from 2000-2006 and determined that “concerns about voter identification laws affecting turnout are much ado about nothing.”

Voter ID, in other words, is a victimless crime. Groups opposed to Georgia’s voter ID law, passed in 2005, sued and struck out at federal district court. As von Spakovsky writes, “the court pointed out that after two years of litigation, none of the plaintiff organizations like the NAACP had been able to produce a single individual or member who did not have a photo ID or could not easily obtain one.”

Critics of the ID laws like to say that fraud is “nonexistent.” This is wrong. There are always cases bubbling up — it was recently revealed that fake signatures got Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on the primary ballot in Indiana in 2008 and Milwaukee County charged 10 people earlier this year with voter fraud in 2012. As the Supreme Court noted in the Indiana case, “flagrant examples of such fraud in other parts of the country have been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected historians and journalists.”

It’s not that fraud is massive or decisive. It nonetheless should be prevented to the extent possible. In a heated debate on Fox News with Charles Krauthammer the other day, Juan Williams said fraud happens about as frequently as people falling off bridges. But most bridges have railings. Voter ID is just such a prophylactic measure.

Hillary and the left will have none of it, though. North Carolina, in particular, is said to have gone so far it has exposed the nasty underlying agenda of voter ID. It is cutting back on early voting, from 17 days to 10 days. There is it is — that must be disenfranchisement! But the state wants to make up for the reduced days with more sites where voters can vote early and greater hours of operation. The goal is to have the same total hours available. (Despite the animadversions of the New York Times, New York doesn’t allow no-excuse early voting — surely because it is so hostile to minorities.)

North Carolina is ending same-day registration. Bingo! North Carolina hates black voters. But the majority of states — again, including New York — don’t allow same-day registration.

You can certainly argue that the North Carolina law is unnecessary or imprudent in some respects, or in even in its entirety. You can’t argue it’s a de facto return to Jim Crow and the era of the poll tax. Democrats mock Republicans as perennially stuck in the 1980s. But they are stuck in the 1950s and the 1960s, and in their demagoguery, disgrace the memory of genuine martyrs at a time when state and local officials in the South really did prevent blacks from voting through the most hideous means.

Perspective and reason are the natural enemies of a politics of hysteria. So Hillary won’t let herself be deterred by them. She is evidently fired up and ready to go.

 http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/hillarys-race-card-95550.html#ixzz2c3hJ5Leq\

The Coming Hillarycult?

The Left may succeed in turning Clinton into a cultural icon in the Obama mold.

Dispiriting as it is to admit for those of us who like our republics modest and our republicans unassuming, we are living through one of those bothersome periods in American history in which cults of personality are all the rage. Cory Booker’s victory on Tuesday evening was as inevitable as will be his coronation in the Senate, followed before long by the breathless and ubiquitous talk of a Booker presidency. Nevertheless, for all his supposed virtues, the celebrity mayor of Newark will have to wait his turn, for the Obamacult has a different understudy, and she is busily readying herself for a seamless takeover. I refer, of course, to Hillary Clinton.

With her complicated past, her high-school principal’s air, and her unsympathetic voice, Hillary is an unlikely cult heroine, but a cult heroine she may well become. The Left has astutely noticed and internalized something that the Right either has not or cannot: Before you can turn someone into a political icon, you must first turn her into a cultural icon. That is to say that Washington follows the voters, and the voters follow Hollywood. This dynamic goes some way to explaining why both the culture warrior Andrew Breitbart and the former actor Ronald Reagan have acquired such committed followings in death whereas successful and efficacious conservative policy experts have not. It was no accident that Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008, described her former boss as “the hardest-working woman in show business,” or that Anna Wintour promised recently that “all of us at Vogue look forward to putting on the cover the first female president of the United States.”

Much of the praise for Clinton is the product of standard political jockeying for position. Harry Reid’s boast that “Hillary Clinton may have a bigger fan than Harry Reid; I just don’t know who it would be” and his obsequious description of Hillary as a “remarkable” secretary of state who “will go down in history books” are smart personal as well as party politics. But, as 2016 approaches, such word-paintings are beginning to shine a little more than is probably healthy in a republic. Hillary Clinton was an average secretary of state, perhaps even good. But she was not “remarkable,” and it is telling that her supposedly stellar achievements are often boiled down to the trivial fact that she traveled more miles than any of her predecessors. (On this questionable metric, one must say, “Move over, John Quincy Adams, you parochial, horse-loving mediocrity.”)

It is worrying how many Americans appear unable to celebrate the rise to power of representatives of historically powerless groups without imparting special — even magical — qualities to them. Barack Obama’s win in 2008 was part of, not distinct from, the American narrative, and yet he seems to have convinced people — or, more accurately, they seem to have convinced themselves — that he came from outside as a Platonic Philosopher King who would be able peacefully to abolish politics. Looking back over the JournoList controversy of 2010, what strikes me most is how shamefully credulous the collective Left was about Obama: Nothing must be allowed to get in the way of “a black politician who unites the country,” Spencer Ackerman fumed naïvely when the Jeremiah Wright scandal broke.

Personally, I don’t much care who is president, providing that he obeys the Constitution, keeps the country safe from those who would harm us, and — most important — damn well leaves me alone. That Hillary Clinton boasts two X chromosomes is almost certainly the least interesting thing about her. That being said, critics of this position would presumably say that this is a jolly easy thing for a white male to say and that it is undeniable as a matter of fact that there are many voters out there who would be genuinely ecstatic to see a woman occupy the White House.

But there is being pleased and then there is falling prey to embarrassing hyperbole. The putatively conservative Kathleen Parker, writing in the Washington Post on Tuesday, thrust herself firmly into the latter camp with an op-ed that claimed no less than that Clinton “can save the world.” Parker quickly conceded that this was “a trifle hyperbolic” but then went on to fill the rest of the page with statements that made the initial characterization look modest. “We may not live to see salvation,” she gushed emetically, “but one has to start somewhere.”

In language that was distressingly reminiscent of all that “planet began to heal” hokum, Parker contended that “women, if allowed to be fully equal to men, will bring peace to the planet.” Chief among these equal women, Parker contended, would be “Madame President Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton,” whom smarter Americans have been “studying” for “inspiration,” who has “empowered women as never before with just a few words,” and who will bring an end to the endless “invasions, bunker-busting mega-bombs and killer drones,” which “seem not to be having the desired effect.”

Parker’s words will no doubt be music to the ears of the already assembled Clinton cultists. With their poster-like “Ready for Hillary” T-shirts (this “I’m ready” language always strikes me as odd, implying as it does that America needs to prepare the ground for the coming of a candidate who wishes to be its servant) and their subscriptions to the nauseating “Texts from Hillary” website and to Clinton’s own Twitter feed, they are the early adopters of the new, soon-to-be-constitutionally-obsolescent model of Barack Obama — and they just can’t wait.

In recent weeks, Hillary has smartly begun to reciprocate this nascent attempt to turn her into an Internet icon. Her relatively new Twitter account deliberately features a famous picture-turned-meme of her typing on a BlackBerry (the future!) and boasts also a breezy, slightly-too-cute biography that describes the proto-candidate as a “wife, mom, lawyer, women & kids advocate, FLOAR, FLOTUS, US Senator, SecState, author, dog owner, hair icon, pantsuit aficionado, glass ceiling cracker, TBD . . . ” In her first Tweet, Clinton self-awarely thanked two of her biggest Internet boosters for “the inspiration,” and promised rather transparently, “I’ll take it from here.” Subsequent postings were contrived enough to prompt ThinkProgress’s Alyssa Rosenberg to effervesce that “Clinton’s twitter feed makes her look Aware Of All Internet Traditions”!

The process of grafting the Obama pop-culture template onto the less photogenic, more battle-scarred, and, bluntly, much older Hillary Clinton will be tough — and the architects of the New Model Hillary will presumably be aware that there is a genuine risk that, by the time Hillary unleashes her campaign, Americans will have become ready for a little iconoclasm. Nevertheless, many of the ingredients are the same for Clinton as they were for Obama. If she gets the nomination, she will be cast as a proxy candidate for all women, especially those who will be recruited from History and posthumously charged with having “fought” in order to see this moment come to pass. Her opponents will be blithely characterized as “sexists” who are “scared of strong women,” just as Obama’s critics were deemed “racists.” This clash of pieties was briefly problematic back in 2008 when it led some farcically to conclude that we were about to discover whether America was more racist or more sexist and others to brand Hillary and Bill as racists themselves — but there will likely be no such complications this time around.

Hillary Clinton has a long history of spinning straw into gold. The “experience” that she supposedly gained while First Lady largely consisted of her fouling up her husband’s health-care plan and then being called out from the sidelines to lie in front of the cameras; her role as America’s ur-feminist seems to be rather symbolic, as much projected onto her as by her; and her allegedly shining careers as carpetbagging New York senator and then as consolation-prize secretary of state were marked, to put it most charitably, by competence, and the latter was scarred forever by the disaster in Benghazi.

More of a challenge is that Clinton is the very model of a Washington insider; a political poster girl for a baby-boomer generation whose time has come and gone. The key question for America will be whether a new coat of paint, the imprimatur of the Democratic establishment, and the superficial insistence of the Internet Generation that she is special can transmute an almost-70-year-old woman into another timely savior of the downtrodden and dispossessed. It is no overstatement to say that the strength of the republican ideal rests, in some measure at least, on the answer. If ever there was a time for a Silent Cal or a William Howard Taft, it is now. If, conversely, we are destined for another depthless and detached human avatar, the future looks bleak indeed.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355812/coming-hillarycult-charles-c-w-cooke

Muslim History 101

This is what the fight is all about: In the center of Jerusalem is the sacred structure which the Jews label as the Temple Mount, and the Arabs refer to as the Haram al-Sharif (the noble sanctuary) and Al-Aqsa (the farthest Mosque). A mere 35 acres; yet touch it, and the Ummah [the Islamic homeland] will go to war.

So who has the better claim? 

Ignoring the issue of political sovereignty, let us focus solely on which religion has the greater claim to that sacred space.

According to the Quran, at one time all of mankind was Muslim; and all men had apostasized into error.

Surah 42:13 ... He enjoined upon Noah and that which We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what We enjoined upon Abraham and Moses and Jesus

However, mankind corrupted the message of Islam; and so Allah raised up one last messenger. Allah sent Jibreel (Gabriel) to a man named Mohammed to restore the original truth to the Arabs, which they were to bring to the world through jihad.

Quran 66:9 Prophet! Make war on the unbelievers ...

According to Islam, since mankind was originally Muslim, all places of true worship must have originally been a mosque.

This is the reason that Muslim Arabs claim justification in taking the sacred areas of whatever lands they seize, and restoring the buildings to what they perceive as their original service to Allah. The "Temple Area" in Jerusalem became the Al-Aqsa (farthest) Mosque, in the city, now renamed Al Quds. Constantinople's Christian Hagia Sofia was defaced and dedicated to Islam. The Hindu Temple of Rama in Ayohya, India destroyed and rebuilt as the Babri Mosque. [The Hindus finally seized it back in 1992] One can only begin to imagine what may soon happen to Notre Dame in Paris.

Against the myths of Islam, Jewish claims are based on history, first person accounts, archeology, and the Bible. The Jews have an embarrassment of riches from which to make their claim to the Mount.

One could note the Bible, which mentions the temple over a hundred times, and Jerusalem over 800 times; yet never once mentions Allah or Al-Quds. But the Bible was corrupted by the Jews -- according to the Quran -- and ignored as unreliable by Muslims.

Josephus mentions the Temple Mount in his first-century Wars of the Jews, six centuries before Mohammed. Apparently Jospehus was not aware that Moses, Solomon, and Jesus were Muslim, even though he was a contemporary of the Apostles.

Then there is the Arch of Titus in Rome with its frieze of a menorah stolen by the Romans from the Temple in Jerusalem. Don't be fooled by corrupt labeling!
That cannot be a menorah; it must actually be three Islamic crescents.

The 2000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls -- which predate Mohammed by at least seven centuries -- are ignored. How the Muslim scholars deny that is beyond belief; but they do.

Roman coins bearing the words IVDEA CAPTA (Judea captive) commemorating the destruction of Israel from the First Jewish War were struck for 25 years in many denominations.

[A]t least 48 different types are known.

Somehow, Muslims ignore this, and claim the Jews are not native to the area; but are instead Europeans.

Most amazing is how Muslims ignore that Mohammed died four years before the forces of Islam even arrived at the gates of Jerusalem in 636 AD. The city would not capitulate until 637 AD. There were no mosques in Jerusalem during Mohammed's lifetime. So what mosque could Mohammed have even visited during his night journey?

The Muslims ignore all this and rename Jerusalem Al Quds as if it were always Muslim.
They even ignore their own history by the biographer of Mohammed, al-Waqidi, which states that the farthest mosque was in al-Gi'irranah, a village outside Mecca.

"Islamic tradition tells us that al-Aqsa mosque is near Mecca on the Arabian Peninsula. This was unequivocally stated in "Kitab al-Maghazi," a book by the Muslim historian and geographer al-Waqidi," Dr. Kedar writes. "According to al-Waqidi, there were two "masjeds" (places of prayer) in al-Gi'irranah, a village between Mecca and Ta'if - one was "the closer mosque" (al-masjid al-adna) and the other was "the further mosque" (al-masjid al-aqsa,) and Muhammad would pray there when he went out of town." -- The Times of Israel

NOTE: The original paper by Dr. Kedar can be found: (Click Here)

In fact, the Arabic name al Quds, is a corruption of the Hebrew Qadosh. Qadosh is Hebrew for holy. Al Quds simply means, "the Holy Place," but in no way does that holiness derive from Islam. It derives from a corruption of Hebrew.

Finally, there is the insult -- not merely to Jews, but to the heritage of the world -- that was allowed when the Muslims were permitted to use bulldozers to dig out space for the new Al-Marwani mosque, constructed underneath the Al Aqsa (Southern) Mosque in the Temple area known as Solomon's Stables. Solomon's Stables is an archeological treasure which should have been excavated by nothing bigger than a dental pick. The Muslims trucked the debris to a Kidron Valley dump.

The Waqf authorities claim that the Temple Mount was an ancient mosque dating from the time of Adam and Eve ... Jewish Virtual Library

Already volunteers, affiliated with Bar Ilan University, sifting through what the Muslims have dumped as trash have discovered artifacts which prove a Jewish priority to the area. This is sacrilege of the first rank, not merely to the Jewish religion, but to secular history -- and few in the media have ever mentioned this criminal archeological atrocity which shows the utter contempt Muslims hold for the history of others.

Ironically, incompetent engineering of the excavation has weakened the Southern Wall, and endangers the structural integrity of the southern end of the Temple area, which may result in the destruction of the Muslim structures should a major earthquake strike.

Already, the Muslims have blamed the Jews for this.

Muslim claims are not merely false, but outrageous lies. They are easily refuted by anyone who has common sense.

Whatever the political claims on the city, Islam has absolutely no valid religious claim to the Temple Mount at all. Islamic claims are bald-faced lies, and Muslim academics must surely know this.

Why Muslim academics do not speak up could be a subject for another article.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/muslim_history_101.html#ixzz2c3PzvoC9