Warning: Our Government Is a Threat to Public Safety
By Michelle MalkinForget gun control. America needs government control. Have you noticed the common thread among several mass killings and homeland security incidents lately?
Time and again, it's the control freaks in Washington who have fallen down on their jobs, allowing crazies, creeps and criminals to roam free and wreak havoc while ignoring rampant red flags. Let's review:
Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis: Despite gun-grabbing Democrats' best efforts to blame a nonexistent "AR-15" for this week's horrific Navy Yard massacre, the truth is seeping out about shooter Aaron Alexis. The 34-year-old Navy veteran had been treated since August by the Veterans Administration for a host of mental problems that plagued him for up to a decade.
Officials say Alexis was paranoid, had a sleep disorder, suffered from schizophrenia and was "hearing voices." He told Newport, R.I., police after an altercation just last month that he believed a "microwave machine" was sending vibrations through a wall into his body. Friends say he was a heavy drinker and violent video game addict. A ticking time bomb, he had racked up a string of misconduct incidents during his military stint ranging from absenteeism to insubordination to disorderly conduct. He was arrested in Seattle in 2004 and in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2010 for separate anger-fueled shootings that terrorized neighbors and innocent bystanders.
Yet somehow Alexis passed several military background checks, gained high-level security clearance and had access to multiple military installations. The civilian contractor who employed Alexis blasted the feds on Tuesday for failing to fully disclose his history. "Anything that suggests criminal problems or mental health issues, that would be a flag," Thomas Hoshko of The Experts told The Washington Post. "We would not have hired him." And 12 innocent people might still be alive today.
Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan: The red flag-ignoring government seems to have become an affirmative action employer for rage-filled madmen. Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan, sentenced to death last month, had warned his military superiors well in advance of the massacre that he was prone to violence. Citing convicted Army fragger Hasan Akbar and others, Hasan emphasized that he was not alone among Muslim soldiers who believed they "should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly."
The feds buried concerns about Hasan and instead kept him employed to prevent accusations of discrimination. They did not want to be "crucified," according to one Army investigator. Twelve innocent men and women, plus one unborn baby, died as a consequence of the government's malign neglect and feckless indulgence of political correctness.
TSA nutball Nna Alpha Onuoha: Then there's the TSA. Last week, a former TSA agent was arrested on the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks for calling in threats to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) and warning that there would be a "baptism of fire" on 9/11/13. Investigators found a raft of handwritten nutball notes by disgruntled TSA screener 29-year-old Nna Alpha Onuoha tacked up in his closet. Onuoha also operated a bizarro website titled Satanhasfallen.org, which featured "end of the world" essays. He was the same TSA agent who made headlines earlier this summer after harassing a 15-year-old girl at LAX over her modest apparel.
How did this young, single male from Nigeria of limited means get into the country in the first place, let alone end up at the TSA? I've heard from countless veterans and former police officers over the years who were rejected from TSA positions for being "overqualified." Yet somehow Onuoha moved to the front of the TSA employment line.
How many more? The agency's lax background checks and politically correct hiring practices are notorious. In July, the Government Accountability Office reported a 26-percent rise in employee misconduct violations over the past three years, ranging from theft to chronic sleeping on the job to ignoring basic screening protocols. Discipline is inconsistent to nonexistent. Last year, GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee documented 50 galling examples of TSA employees arrested for crimes ranging from child pornography, drugs, rape and prostitution to bribery, conspiracy, assault and murder.
Two years ago, another GAO report revealed that TSA's counterterrorism specialists had failed to detect 16 separate jihad operatives who moved through target airports "on at least 23 different occasions." Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has released nearly 3,000 illegal alien sex offenders from detention. And rank-and-file ICE agents blew the whistle this summer on the Obama administration's release of untold numbers of violent criminals who were designated as amnesty-eligible "DREAMers."
The motto of our homeland security overlords is "not on our watch." But like so much else attached to our post-9/11 national security bureaucracy, that motto has become a punchline. With the feds and military leaders looking the other way or closing their eyes altogether to menaces within their ranks, there is no watch. It's a Code Red alert for government incompetence.
http://townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/2013/09/18/warning-our-government-is-a-threat-to-public-safety-n1702899/page/full
Obama Goes to War
The President finds an enemy he's willing to bomb—Republicans.
President Obama likes to invoke his predecessors in the Oval Office, as all Presidents do, but in one sense he is unlike the others: Presidents traditionally try to reach a rough domestic consensus if they are faced with going to war abroad. Mr. Obama wants to smooth everything over abroad so he can get back to his favorite pursuit of declaring war at home.At least that's how it's gone the last week, as Mr. Obama all but wrapped up that ghastly business in Syria and turned his attention to the real enemy—Republicans. Backed by the good offices of Vladimir Putin and the assurances of Bashar Assad, United Nations inspectors will now remove Syria's chemical weapons from the battlefield. Congress doesn't even have to vote on it, and the American people can forget the recent unpleasantness. Peace in our time.
Which means it's now safe for Mr. Obama to begin the war he really wants to fight. The President spoke Monday afternoon at the White House in remarks pegged to the fifth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial panic of 2008. But the financial crisis was merely an excuse for Mr. Obama's real purpose, which was to demand unconditional surrender from his domestic opposition.
Mr. Obama assailed Republicans for an "ideological agenda" that he called "the height of irresponsibility." Among other crimes against humanity, he said the GOP refuses to abandon the budget restraint of the sequester spending cuts or to greet the Affordable Care Act with flowers and sweets.
"Are they really willing to hurt people just to score political points? I hope not," Mr. Obama said, transparently suggesting that they do want to hurt people. At least he didn't accuse them of using chemical weapons, but when it comes to stopping atrocities like opposition to his domestic agenda, let him be clear: He doesn't do pinpricks.
Mr. Obama did at least once or twice suggest he's willing to compromise, sort of. He said he'll call off his domestic strikes if Republicans agree to a framework for political and fiscal disarmament, including another tax increase on top of the one extracted as recently as January.
"As far as the budget goes," the President warned, "it's time for responsible Republicans who share these goals—and there are a number of folks out there who I think are decent folks, I've got some disagreements with them on some issues, but I think genuinely want to see the economy grow and want what's best for the American people—it's time for those Republicans to step up and they've got to decide what they want to prioritize."
With malice for all, and charity toward none. Perhaps to honor Lincoln's memory, Mr. Obama will suspend habeas corpus for those indecent folks who genuinely want what's worst for Americans.
There really has never been anything like this in the White House, at least not in the modern era. Ronald Reagan compromised on budget issues with a Democratic majority rather than trigger a debt limit crisis. George H.W. Bush signed onto a tax increase in 1990 in part so he could get Democratic support for the brewing Gulf War. Bill Clinton struck a budget deal and worked with Republicans on foreign policy. And facing a new Democratic majority in 2007, George W. Bush signed onto a fiscal "stimulus" and rotten energy bill well before the financial crisis compelled bipartisan votes.
Mr. Obama declares that he won't even deign to negotiate over an extension of the debt limit, which expires within a month or two. And he carpet-bombs Republicans only two weeks after House Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor took a political risk and declared they'd vote for the President's Syrian war resolution against the views of most of their own Members.
The evidence suggests that Mr. Obama wants a showdown with Congress that ends with a government shutdown or a dance with default. He can then mount an offensive against Republicans that will rally his base, which soured on his Syrian plans and vetoed Larry Summers for the Federal Reserve. With his domestic agenda dead on Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama may also figure that stigmatizing Republicans over a shutdown-default crisis is the only way that Democrats can retake the House in 2014.
The question is how well all of this will play with a war-weary public. Mr. Obama is no longer the fresh young idealist President, and Americans are beginning to figure out his methods. Like Assad and Mr. Putin, they may conclude that he's no longer a President whose words they can take seriously.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324665604579081144245072978.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Yes, people were dying in a gunfight across town, but Obama had a speech to give
Barack Obama has never been accused of possessing the most refined sense of appropriate, especially when it comes to what normal people regard as tragedies.Fifty-three weeks ago when four Americans were murdered by terrorists in Benghazi, Obama appeared after a good night's sleep, bemoaned the loss, vowed to deliver justice to the killers (still unfulfilled), then flew off for fundraising parties in Las Vegas. Hey, they're still dead anyway, and there was big campaign money waiting.
When a 133-foot-tall wall of tsunami water rolled 10 miles inland to kill 16,000 in Japan two years ago, Obama expressed his sorrow, then went golfing. When bad weather canceled his trip to the funeral of Poland's president, Obama paid his respects by golfing.
As the Gulf coast economy struggled back from the nation's worst environmental disaster ever, Obama urged all Americans to vacation there. Then, he took his family to the New England coast.
So, it should not be surprising that as heavily-armed SWAT teams combed the Washington Navy Yard Monday for at least one deranged killer, Obama took the occasion to proceed with one of his harshest partisan speeches in months.
Aides maintain it never crossed Obama's mind to cancel the political speech as a gesture to the violent deaths of a dozen federal employees across town and their about-to-be-grieving families and co-workers. It's not like coming weeks of budget and debt limit arguments will lack for Obama opportunities to utter the same repetitive talking points with his fading rhetorical skills.
Although it did occur to someone in his White House to cancel Monday' evening's Latin music festivities.
Last week too Obama acted strangely. When John Kerry's chemical weapons gaffe created an opening for a savvy Russian power move to bolster its Syrian pal Assad, developments rendered pointless Obama's scheduled war address to the nation. What did he do? He went ahead anyway and looked silly announcing he wasn't going ahead with what he had called everybody together to hear.
Allegedly the Tuesday afternoon event was to mark the fifth anniversary of the nation's financial crisis, not something normally celebrated. Do you remember fondly those glory days when the nation's entire financial system teetered on the brink and it was all Bush's fault?
Although, come to think of it, gas prices and the unemployment rate were a whole lot better back then than after nearly five years of Obama fixes.
Those poor people props standing behind Obama throughout his 3,800 words, including familiar bogus claims such as "Our deficits are going down faster than any time since before I was born." It's always about him, isn't it?
Here's another way to put that: During my first four years in office I created the nation's first four trillion-dollar annual deficits, ballooning the national debt to nearly $17 trillion, and now those annual deficits aren't quite that big anymore.
But we still need to hike the debt limit this fall and no GOP funny business about matching spending cuts.
Obama's still complaining about the sequester cuts that originated with his staff. His political posturing was that Republicans need to stop political posturing.
And while Obama negotiates with Russia and, ultimately, Syria's dictator over poison gas, he said he would never negotiate with the GOP over raising the domestic debt limit.
At one point the country's chief executive, who professes a desire to work with Republicans, actually said of them, "There are a number of folks out there who I think are decent folks." Others who disagree with Obama are -- what? -- indecent? Racist?
Clearly, this president, who -- remember? -- was going to bring us all together, wants fights over the budget and debt limit because he thinks such staged conflicts could help his party in next year's midterm elections. Not very presidential, looking out for the country first. But, hey, he's from Chicago.
The good news about Obama's tasteless talking during the deadly Navy Yard confrontation is that basically no one saw or heard it, save for hardy souls on C-SPAN. (Scroll down for its full video of Obama's remarks.)
The TV networks cut away to the police news conference at the scene of so many fatalities. And the buzz across the country was not about a sad Democrat's fabricated fable over millions of new jobs. Don't worry. That won't stop him. He'll be back for more.
Obama, Spiked for His Own Good?
President Obama barely noticed, but there was a horrific mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday. In what has become a signature of this administration, a tone-deaf Obama pressed ahead with his plans to attack the tea party Republicans at an event marking five years since the financial crisis erupted.After some perfunctory remarks of condolence, Obama commenced with what the Associated Press described as a "blistering warning to congressional Republicans."
"I cannot remember a time when one faction of one party promises economic chaos if it can't get 100 percent of what it wants," reported AP's Jim Kuehnenn. This was straight out of the Obama playbook. He was referring to those who want to defund the Obamacare monstrosity. Their plan would fund (SET ITAL) everything (END ITAL) in the government, except Obamacare.
And that is "economic chaos," says this "reporter."
This dispatch made no mention of the attack's timing next to a mass shooting. It was noticed on Fox News. White House Correspondent Ed Henry reported on the timing for "Special Report with Bret Baier" and offered this Obama clip: "Are some of these folks really so beholden to one extreme wing of their party that they're willing to tank the entire economy just because they can't get their way on this issue?"
Henry noted Obama even managed some trash talk about Obamacare and defeating Romney:
"It was an issue in last year's election and the candidate who called for repeal lost." Henry added: "Asked today about the tone of those remarks in the middle of an active manhunt, spokesman Jay Carney said the White House did not consider calling off the speech, and he said it was appropriate to keep the pressure on Republicans over the looming budget crisis."
It was tasteless, inappropriate and diminishing of the presidency. ABC, CBS and NBC skipped over Obama's refusal to let breaking news of a gun massacre deter conservative-bashing remarks. These were the same networks that went absolutely bonkers when Romney made what they saw as inappropriate political comments on the heels of the Benghazi attacks.
Other outlets were also staying in sync with the White House. On the "PBS NewsHour," there was no conservative-bashing Obama clip, but government-subsidized anchor Judy Woodruff was clucking at former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson about the negotiating plans of "prominent members of your party" and whether the debt-ceiling vote was an "appropriate tool" to launch a debate on limiting government spending.
On "All Things Considered," NPR's Ari Shapiro offered one of his normal press-release stories on the economic event, complete with six Obama sound bites and no mention of the Navy Yard shooting. At the end, GOP economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin offered a bit of criticism: "It really was a bare-knuckles political speech. It wasn't an economic speech, and it certainly wasn't the opening of a negotiation."
In the morning papers? The Washington Post reported the Nationals cancelled their evening baseball game, but offered nothing on Obama's "blistering warning" in the midst of the attack coverage. The Wall Street Journal had nothing. The New York Times story by Jackie Calmes and Michael Shear (placed at the bottom of page A-16) just recounted Obama's attacks without any mention of the Navy Yard. The story began: "President Obama on Monday seized on the fifth anniversary of the 2008 financial collapse to warn that House Republicans would reverse the gains made," and cause "economic chaos," and so on.
On MSNBC on Tuesday morning, Joe Scarborough called out his own network and the rest of the media. If President Bush had done this on the day of a mass shooting? "Mika would be killing George W., everybody here on this network would be killing George W., everybody at the New York Times would be killing George W. Every journalist in Washington, D.C. would be killing George W. It's unbelievable."
The Politico website was milder, with the headline "In tragedy's wake, President Obama finds tone a challenge." But Jonathan Allen and Jennifer Epstein expressed surprise that "he asked whether the GOP was willing 'to hurt people just to score political points,' even as victims were still being treated for actual wounds sustained in Monday's attack. Obama even knocked Washington -- the city under siege as he spoke -- for failing to find 'common purpose.'"
Politico reported the White House did get the message. Mrs. Obama predicted earlier in the day that the president would "shake his groove thing" at a Latin music event in the East Room on Monday night (for later airing on PBS), but that was postponed -- "out of respect for the victims and their families," the White House website announced.
How thoughtful.
http://townhall.com/columnists/brentbozell/2013/09/18/obama-spiked-for-his-own-good-n1702909/page/full
Obama and criminal background checks
President Obama wants the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to restrict employers' use of criminal
background checks in hiring decisions. In the wake of the massacre of
the innocents at the Washington Naval Yards does he feel differently
now?
As Scott Thurm wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month:
In practice, the EEOC has been on a rampage to pressure companies to abandon such background checks. They are used by 87 % of employers to screen workers.
The agency has so overstepped its bounds -- and the law -- that their efforts to compel obedience to their dictates has been derailed by federal judges. But as more of them are nominated by Barack Obama, expect such fidelity to the law to suffer).
In the case of a Texas-based company, Freeman Company, Judge Titus wrote a stinging criticism of the efforts by the EEOC:
Would any journalist care to ask Jay Carney if the President feels abashed now since Aaron Alexis, the killer at the Washington Naval Yards had "brushes with the law" that included acts of violence? After all, Barack Obama rarely puts himself at risk by holding press conferences. Apparently, he cannot handle the heat but he has a staff to take the hit (ask Susan Rice) for him. He is also heartless when it comes to the deaths of people in the military (recall his blasé approach towards announcing the Ft. Hood massacre -- I mean workplace violence incident -- and his partisan attack on Republicans right after the Washington Naval Yard attack).
Aaron Alexis gained access and carried weapons into the location because he possessed a valid military identification card he received when he was hired by the defense contractor operating at the Naval Yard .
Now his employer, The Experts, has declared the company would have never hired him had they known of his criminal background. That was a mistake on the company's part-facilitated by the military careless approval of a security clearance to Alexis.
Imagine the problems that will arise if Obama is successful in twisting the EEOC's role in the direction he wants.
But the point remains: if Obama pressures companies to end the practice of using criminal background checks how many more crimes, including murder, will follow on behalf of Obama's affirmative action agenda?
How many innocent people will pay the price for his obsession?
As Scott Thurm wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month:
Civil-rights activists and the EEOC say the checks can be discriminatory because blacks are convicted of crimes at higher rates than whites. Last year, the EEOC issued guidelines that don't prohibit the use of criminal checks, but urge employers to consider the crime, its relation to an applicant's potential job, and how much time has passed since the conviction.
The guidelines also recommend that employers review each case individually, and allow applicants to show why they should be hired despite a conviction.
In practice, the EEOC has been on a rampage to pressure companies to abandon such background checks. They are used by 87 % of employers to screen workers.
The agency has so overstepped its bounds -- and the law -- that their efforts to compel obedience to their dictates has been derailed by federal judges. But as more of them are nominated by Barack Obama, expect such fidelity to the law to suffer).
In the case of a Texas-based company, Freeman Company, Judge Titus wrote a stinging criticism of the efforts by the EEOC:
In his opinion, Judge Titus harshly criticized an outside statistician hired by the EEOC to evaluate Freeman's hiring practices, citing "a plethora of errors and analytical fallacies" that made the conclusions "completely unreliable." The statistician "cherry-picked" data and examined the wrong time period when reviewing Freeman's records, the judge said.The defeat has not stopped the EEOC, as it has brought cases against companies such as Dollar General and a unit of BMW, the German auto company. Why spend taxpayer money to engage in blatant social engineering?
Would any journalist care to ask Jay Carney if the President feels abashed now since Aaron Alexis, the killer at the Washington Naval Yards had "brushes with the law" that included acts of violence? After all, Barack Obama rarely puts himself at risk by holding press conferences. Apparently, he cannot handle the heat but he has a staff to take the hit (ask Susan Rice) for him. He is also heartless when it comes to the deaths of people in the military (recall his blasé approach towards announcing the Ft. Hood massacre -- I mean workplace violence incident -- and his partisan attack on Republicans right after the Washington Naval Yard attack).
Aaron Alexis gained access and carried weapons into the location because he possessed a valid military identification card he received when he was hired by the defense contractor operating at the Naval Yard .
Now his employer, The Experts, has declared the company would have never hired him had they known of his criminal background. That was a mistake on the company's part-facilitated by the military careless approval of a security clearance to Alexis.
Imagine the problems that will arise if Obama is successful in twisting the EEOC's role in the direction he wants.
But the point remains: if Obama pressures companies to end the practice of using criminal background checks how many more crimes, including murder, will follow on behalf of Obama's affirmative action agenda?
How many innocent people will pay the price for his obsession?
IRS targeted groups for “anti-Obama rhetoric”?
Did the IRS take it upon itself to enforce lèse-majesté — or did the White House demand it? USA Today uncovered internal IRS documents from 2011 that show targeting of groups for “anti-Obama rhetoric” and “emotional” statements by non-profits:Newly uncovered IRS documents show the agency flagged political groups based on the content of their literature, raising concerns specifically about ”anti-Obama rhetoric,” inflammatory language and “emotional” statements made by non-profits seeking tax-exempt status.
The internal 2011 documents, obtained by USA TODAY, list 162 groups by name, with comments by Internal Revenue Service lawyers in Washington raising issues about their political, lobbying and advocacy activities. In 21 cases, those activities were characterized as “propaganda.”The 2011 date has one interesting parallel. Two years ago (almost to the day), the White House rolled out its own version of a lèse-majesté intimidation mechanism — “Attack Watch.” That didn’t last long in the sunlight, after widespread criticism and derision forced the White House to shelve it, although the Obama campaign tried to bring it back in February 2012 as the “Truth Team.”
So, did the IRS just feel inspired by Attack Watch, or did the White House just transfer the effort? The date on the IRS document is November 16, 2011, well after Attack Watch became more or less moribund in the public eye.
Supposedly, the IRS was concerned about “propaganda” in its attempt to enforce 501(c)(4) status, but the actual tax law doesn’t mention “propaganda” as a barrier to tax-exempt status:
“The political motivations of this are so patently obvious, but then to have a document that spells it out like this is very damaging to the IRS,” said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the ACLJ. “I hope the FBI has seen these documents.”
The IRS categorized the groups as engaging in several advocacy-related activities that could have barred them from tax-exempt status, such as lobbying and “propaganda.”
But the word “propaganda” doesn’t appear in section 501(c)(4), which governs the social welfare status that most Tea Party groups were applying for, said John Colombo, a law professor at the University of Illinois. Instead, it appears in section 501(c)(3), which governs public charities.
“There would be no reason I would think to flag them if it’s for a 501(c)(4) status,” Colombo said. “That’s very odd to me.”The IRS targeted 162 groups in this effort, of which only 11 were liberal groups, according to USA Today. Jeff Dunetz predicts that Democrats in Congress will claim that this demonstrates even-handedness by the IRS, but don’t be fooled:
Liberals will be happy to learn that out of the 162 groups mentioned on the 2011 documents at least 11 of them are progressive organizations, giving them the ability to say, “See they weren’t targeting conservative groups.” …
What the report doesn’t show is which of these groups eventually were approved and the difference in waiting times between the conservative and progressive organizations. Either way the ratio of conservative/progressive organizations targeted indicate that there was something rotten going on in the IRS offices in DC.When the IRS starts targeting political dissent for scrutiny, they have stopped being a revenue collector and have become instead a political enforcer. That’s dangerous for all Americans, and Congress needs to demand and enforce immediate reform in the IRS. They also need to find out who ordered the targeting, regardless of how high up it goes.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/18/irs-targeted-groups-for-anti-obama-rhetoric/
Walgreens to dump employee coverage for 160,000
Remember “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan”? For 160,000 employees of Walgreens, that’s now old and busted. The new hotness will be receiving a flat-rate bonus to spend in private exchanges in order to get out from under the costs of health insurance as ObamaCare rolls out:Walgreen Co. (WAG), the biggest U.S. drugstore chain, will move its workers into a private health insurance exchange to buy company-subsidized coverage, the latest sign of how the debate over Obamacare is accelerating a historic shift in corporate health-care coverage.
Walgreen’s decision affects about 160,000 current employees and follows similar action this year by Sears Holdings Corp. (SHLD) and Darden Restaurants Inc. (DRI) As an alternative to administering a traditional health plan, all three will send their employees to an exchange run byAon Plc. (AON) Fourteen more companies will join in 2014 when 600,000 people will participate, Aon said.
The insurance options offered by the private exchange are similar to those in the Affordable Care Act’s public exchanges, though workers will get their subsidies from their companies instead of the government, said Ken Sperling of Aon. While the private effort isn’t directly linked to Obamacare, the debate over the law has spurred a new look at cost-cutting by businesses, municipalities and consumers.The problem for employees, though, is that a flat subsidy for spending in private exchanges just transfers the burden of rising costs from the employer to the employee. If employers like Walgreens expected ObamaCare to actually control costs, they wouldn’t be dumping employee coverage. CBS This Morning’s Jill Schlesinger calls this “a big deal,” and points out that this gets Walgreens and other corporate employers off the hook for compliance costs:
“I can’t see how this is going to be good for the employee in the future,” Schlesinger adds, given the CBO projection yesterday of health-care cost escalation over the next twenty years.
By the way, this move comes just two months after Walgreens agreed to partner with HHS on promoting ObamaCare — which was supposed to drive that cost curve downward:
The nation’s largest drugstore chain is partnering with Blue Cross Blue Shield to promote ObamaCare before the new insurance exchanges open on Oct. 1.
Walgreens and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA) launched a website Wednesday and promised to distribute brochures about ObamaCare at Walgreens stores around the country.This must be part of that “great for thee, bad for we” promotion technique, huh?
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/09/18/video-walgreens-to-dump-employee-coverage-for-160000-due-to-obamacare-costs/
PK'S NOTE: Nixon and both Bushes were Progressives as well
Make Trade, Not War
By John StosselWhat's up with so many Democrats wanting missile strikes on Syria, while Republicans balk? I'm told Republicans are the war party.
Is this just hypocrisy? Politicians change their position on military intervention when their own party controls the White House?
Historian Thaddeus Russell says it's not. He says it's always been "progressive" Democrats who led America into war: Woodrow Wilson in World War I, FDR in World War II, Truman in the Korean War, Kennedy and Johnson in Vietnam and Bill Clinton in Somalia and Kosovo.
Russell says the progressives like "nation-building" because it fits their view that government can reform the world "not just in the ghettos, but outside our borders. Anywhere we find the oppressed, we must go out and save them."
Of course there are the neoconservatives, such as William Kristol, who were pro-war under both Bush and Obama.
"The so-called neocons who drove us to war in Iraq actually all began in the Democratic Party. They all began as progressives," says Russell. "They supported intervention in Iraq to remake Iraq in our image, and they support intervention in Syria to do the same."
Both neocons and progressives call those of us who oppose most intervention overseas "isolationist."
A Wall Street Journal column complained about "the isolationist worm eating its way through the Republican Party apple." On the left, Secretary of State John Kerry declared, "This is not the time for armchair isolationism."
I resent the smear.
"Isolationist" suggests that anyone who objects to killing people in foreign countries (mostly people who have never attacked us) wants to "isolate" America, withdraw from the world.
Before World War II, American?isolationists did fight to prevent refugees who were escaping Hitler from coming to America. Isolationists also opposed trade and immigration. That's nuts. We libertarians who are skeptical about war today are nothing like that.
I want to be engaged with the world without us being in charge of it. Let us trade with people of every nation. It's said that when goods cross borders, armies don't. History backs that up. A report funded by several governments found that the level of armed conflict in Muslim countries is lower today than two decades ago, and trade is the reason. You're less likely to bomb the people with whom you engage in commerce.
Preferring trade to government action may not sound "progressive" to progressives, but it's not a surrender to evil or a withdrawal from global affairs. As we trade goods, we also export our ideas and our culture.
I don't claim that this will end all conflict, but it is harder for radicals to make you hate people who sell you things, inspire you to change your hairstyle or make movies that make you laugh.
When the Soviet Union fell, conservatives said it happened because of Ronald Reagan's military buildup. OK, that played a part. But so did American music.
In 1988, Bruce Springsteen held a concert in East Berlin, and even there, behind the Iron Curtain, 160,000 people came to hear him perform. And they knew the words to "Born in the USA" and sang along. Springsteen stopped his performance and told the crowd he hoped one day all the barriers would be torn down. One year later, the Berlin Wall did come down.
I don't claim that America's culture, consumer goods or Bruce Springsteen was entirely responsible for that, but the obvious comparison between Soviet repression and America's vibrancy did play a part. Eventually, people in the Soviet bloc wanted what we had.
These cultural and economic influences work, and they are less likely to create new enemies and bankrupt America than bombing and invading.
So let tourism flow. Let our music alarm mullahs. Let neocons donate books to the Middle East filled with ideas dictators hate. Let our cell phones expose isolated people to the wonders of the free world.
There are times when we have to go to war, but real progress means making those times as rare as possible.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2013/09/18/make-trade-not-war-n1702626/page/full
More Evidence of Rampant Fraud in Lifeline Free Phone Program
Investigators working for Scripps Media have interviewed a former employee for a provider of free phone service, sometimes known as Obamaphones, who admits to forging signatures on applications.A two-part video report by Scripps was further confirmed by National Review Online in a story published Monday. In the following story, former TerraCom, Inc. employee Reggie Strode describes how he, and other TerraCom employees, would routinely sign forms on behalf of new customers. Strode earned $3 for each new sign-up while TerraCom earned $9 a month per individual
Scripps also found evidence that TerraCom was signing up customers using abandoned homes as an address. You can see the second clip here at NRO.
Fraud has been an ongoing concern for the lifeline program. One survey found that 9 percent of those receiving phones were not eligible for the program, which is paid for by a special charge on cell phone bills. However a significant percentage of recipients choose not to respond to questions about their eligibility making it possible the actual abuse of the program is much greater.
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/09/17/More-Evidence-of-Rampant-Fraud-in-Lifeline-Free-Phone-Program
'Obama Express' Grocery Store Caught in Food Stamp Trafficking
After Obama's election in 2009 a small grocery store/convenience store in Florida changed its name to the Obama Express. Several other stores across the country did the same thing. One of those was a location in Baltimore, Maryland. Now, in 2013, the Maryland outlet is under investigation, accused of illegally trafficking in food stamps.On September 17, WBAL reported that nine retailers in Baltimore County had been arrested for illegally redeeming food stamps for cash and kicking back a portion to food stamp recipients. The retailers did not sell them any merchandise or food.
One of those indicted was one Abdullah Aljaradi who allegedly obtained $2 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cash from Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards.
Abdullah Aljaradi, age 51, of Baltimore; Second Obama Express and D&M Deli and Grocery, 901 Harlem Avenue, Suite A and B, respectively. From October 2010 through July 2013, Aljaradi allegedly obtained more than $2 million in payments for food sales that never occurred.The office of the US Attorney, District of Maryland, has further information on the charges:
The indictments allege that the defendants exchanged EBT benefits for cash, in violation of the food stamp program rules. The indictments allege that the defendants typically paid half the value of the EBT benefits in cash. To avoid detection, the defendants often debited the funds from the card in multiple transactions over a period of hours or days. As a result of unlawful cash transactions, the defendants obtained more than $6,898,000 in EBT deposits for transactions in which the stores did not provide food.If convicted, the nine retailers could get 20 years each in jail.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/17/Obama-Express-Grocery-Store-Caught-in-Food-Stamp-Trafficking
What John Adams Foretold Has Come True
John Adams, in 1787, said:Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. ... but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, ... in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would ... sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. ... anarchy and tyranny commence.
The entire Adams passage is well worth the time it takes to read and understand it. I want to examine (in no particular order) some of Adams's thoughts and see how he foretold, over 200 years ago, the situation in which we live today.
1. "[T]axes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others[.]" Let's begin with an easy one -- taxation. According to Dr. Walter E. Williams, "[r]oughly 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax." Of the approximately 53 percent who do pay income tax, the following table illustrates Adams' point, that "taxes are laid heavy on the rich."
Income
|
Percent Taxes Paid
|
| Top 1% |
36.73%
|
| Top 5% |
58.66%
|
| Top 10% |
70.47%
|
| Top 25% |
87.30%
|
| Top 50% |
97.75%
|
| Bottom 50% |
2.25%
|
Source: National Taxpayers Union
Remember, the above chart applies only to income tax payers, omitting those who don't pay income tax at all but still vote. To try to justify this gross tax inequity, Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama introduced the concept of "fairness" -- that the rich should pay their fair share of taxes. But (and there's always a "but" when Obama is involved) the "rich" pay much more than their fair share when it comes to income tax. Those "non-rich" (let's say the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers) paid, in 2009 (the most recent year for which data is available), 2.25 percent of all income taxes paid.
2. "[B]ut the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees[.]" Obama, in July 2012, said, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Obama implied that business owners' success came from the government due to government-funded infrastructure and projects. Obama continually takes all credit away from business owners and gives it to the government.
To further support Adams, look at what Obama did in 2012. An article in Human Events lists ten things Obama has said about enterprise in an attempt to exploit class warfare. Among them were demonizing businesses, attacking capitalism, and promoting the Occupy Wall Street movement.
3. "[I]n sharing it equally ..." Candidate Obama, in October 2008, said to Joe Wurzelbacher, "... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." Obama's plan, then and now, was/is to redistribute wealth (private property) according to his definitions. His plan is to "take from those it deems rich, and give to those it deems poor." Or, as Karl Marx said in 1875, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." We all know how well Marx's idea worked/continue to work out.
Obama's latest effort to "spread the wealth around"? He wants the government to define what is "reasonable" for retirement, and to tax all above that amount. Americans currently have about $17.5 trillion in savings, about $4.4 trillion of it in IRAs. Obama believes that income tax deductions for retirement savings are lost government revenues. His 2013 budget estimated that retirement tax deductions taken will be, in the next five years, $429 billion in "lost" tax revenue. There is not another pool of wealth able to finance the annual deficit that Obama insists on running
What's next? Confiscation! "The Obama administration is reportedly moving on plans to nationalize private 401k and IRA retirement accounts, and replace them with government sponsored annuities (aka Treasury bonds that the Treasury currently can't sell to anyone but the Fed)." Obama has begun a plan to nationalize (aka confiscate) private pensions and to eliminate private retirement accounts, including IRAs and 401k plans.
Think it can't happen here? Think again! In a recent hearing sponsored by the Treasury and Labor Departments, Rebecca Davis, a representative of the very liberal Pension Rights Center, said that "... the government needs to get involved because 401k plans and IRAs are unfair to poor people. She demanded the Obama administration set up a 'government-sponsored program administered by the PBGC [the government's Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation].' She proclaimed that even 'private annuities are problematic.'" There's that "unfair" argument again.
And there's precedent for confiscation. Poland, in an attempt to delay an impending government debt crisis, "confiscated half of their nation's private pension funds without compensation" and shifted them into ZUS, Poland's state pension vehicle. As Louis Scatigna says, "[b]y shifting some assets from the private funds into ZUS, the government can book those assets on the state balance sheet to offset public debt, giving it more scope to borrow and spend." Sound familiar?
In an interview broadcast Sunday, September 15, 2013, Obama, referring to his powers to fight income inequality, said, "I think the president can stop it." He then went on to blame Republicans for blocking his efforts to spread the wealth around, saying, "There's no serious economist out there that would suggest that if you took the Republican agenda ... that that would reverse some of these trends of inequality." Obama made his remarks in response to a report that says that more than 20 percent of income went to the top 1 percent of income earners. But not one word could I find where he addressed work or capital risk inequality.
4. "Debts would be abolished first[.]" Obama has proposed that billions of dollars in student loans be forgiven over the next ten years. On August 23, 2013, in Scranton, PA, Obama said, "Just because someone borrowed a bunch of money doesn't mean they have to pay it back." He actually said that! All $900 billion in federal student loans will be "forgiven" on November 1, 2013, according to Obama's plan. Student loan debt is provided by the federal government, and the revenue loss will add significantly to the deficit.
In an article entitled "Want Economic Growth? Forgive and Restructure Debt for American Working Families," Steve Clemmons says, "It's private debt that matters most" when it comes to predicting economic crises. Clemmons concludes the article with "... finding a way to restructure and write down [aka forgive] debt held by financiers and banks is the fastest and most effective way to bolster healthy economic growth." So, in the name of economic growth, debt should be forgiven, but nowhere in his article could I find Clemmons's discussion of the consequences of debt forgiveness. Predicting an economic crisis is one thing; the results from avoidance is another.
5. "... equal division of every thing be demanded ..." Does the term 'socialist' apply to Obama? To answer that question, we turn to Kyle Smith's New York Post article, which says "... Obama finally let slip that he is a socialist." Smith cites a New York Times article that says Obama wants to "Go Bulworth." "Obama himself, the Times explained, has been 'longingly' telling his inner circle that what he'd really like to do is what Sen. Jay Bulworth, played [ironically] by Warren Beatty in his 1998 movie 'Bulworth,' did: to go public as an unabashed, angry and admitted socialist." As Smith says, "[i]n confessing his dreams of 'going Bulworth,' Obama confirmed that what he thinks and what he says out loud are two different things."
It's true that John Adams, our second president, was a great thinker. All we have to do is examine what he said and wrote. It's too bad that today's public education is so dumbed down that most graduates can't even read, much less understand, what he left us. And it's too bad that Adams's thoughts are not spread by the MSM so that those who cannot read can at least hear what he said.
History will again repeat itself. We private property owners have become targets.
PK'S NOTE: I am not against video/computer games whatsoever -- I used to manage a video game store. The content of this game in particular I think is indicative of the downfall of our culture and values. Yes, the game has the notification of being only for mature users but speaking from experience that is NEVER looked at or abided by by parents. The younger generation in particular are vulnerable to the -- let's say it -- evil of this game because they have little or no positive channel of influence otherwise (lack of good parenting, bad schools, no spiritual teaching, celebrity worship, no reading, being smart is ridiculed) and in fact it is reinforced in movies, music, and television. Am I saying ban these games? No. I'm saying some people don't have emotional and intellectual maturity -- intentionally -- to separate the game from what is required to be a part of basic humanity.
Grand Theft Auto as a Reflection on the State of the Nation
The article in the NY Daily News about the release of Grand Theft Auto V, a video game expected to make one billion dollars in the first month, began with these words: “The game of crime pays — even in the wake of another gun massacre.”It continues, “The latest installment of the ultraviolent video game franchise Grand Theft Auto will generate $1 billion in sales in one month, analysts predict — despite Monday’s massacre at the Washington Navy Yard that killed 12 people.”
These are staggering numbers: How many products of any kind – let alone a $60 video game – make that kind of money? And what, exactly, are people getting for their bucks?
Writing with concern from England, James Delingpole reports:
“Yesterday, in the process of robbing a bank, I beat up an elderly security guard before shooting dead perhaps 15 policemen, exulting in their murders with the flip dismissal: ‘Shouldn’t have been a cop.’
“After that, I stole a succession of fast cars, evading my pursuers by driving on the wrong side of the road, mowing down passers-by and killing more police by ramming straight into them.
“Then I went home for a change of clothes, a nap, a beer and a joint before getting into my stolen vehicle to wreak more mayhem, pausing briefly to enjoy the services of a prostitute.”
But this is only the beginning (and note that there’s no mention of the flood of profanity that fills the dialogues):
“Had I kept going with this spree of orgiastic destruction and drug-fuelled violence, I would have got the chance to use much heavier weaponry, take stronger drugs, and not only murder people but torture them by pulling out their teeth with pliers, waterboarding them with flammable liquid, kneecapping them with a monkey wrench and making them scream with electric shocks.”
And remember that many kids will play this “game” by the hour, totally giving themselves to it as they enter into its depraved world, one in which “the worse you behave, the greater your rewards,” one which “even a gushing five-star review in The Guardian had to admit, is ‘troubling’, and makes the experience of playing something so ‘misanthropic’ and ‘unremittingly violent’ a guilty pleasure,” one which “normalises extreme violence and cruelty, so the longer you play, the more you not only become inured to it, but start to find yourself gripped — and even sickly amused — by the action unfolding before your eyes.”
Delingpole hopes that, “As a middle-aged parent, I like to think I’m mature enough to be able to appreciate the game’s cartoonish, ugly, misogynistic, ultraviolent, pornographic worldview with a certain wry detachment.
“But whether the game’s teenage target market is so readily capable of making such distinctions, I’m not nearly so sure.”
His skepticism is justified, regardless of whether researchers have come to definitive conclusions about the effect of these games on those who play them. Common sense would tell you that games like Grand Theft Auto V cannot possibly contribute positively to our society – to morality, to compassion, to civility, to honor, to discipline, to respect for authority, respect for women, and respect for one’s neighbor.
At best, these über-violent games will desensitize those who play them and produce hardness of heart; at worst they will contribute to acts of cruelty, sadism, violence and perhaps drug and alcohol abuse as well.
But why should that matter? Gratuitous violence and pornographic images and misogyny sell, and as the Daily News reports, “In gaming circles, GTA V is being hailed as a masterpiece. Its over-the-top violence didn’t bother gaming website IGN, which gave it a perfect 10, calling it “preposterously enjoyable, breathtaking in scope and bitingly funny.”
Words fail after reading a description like that.
As for the Navy Yard shooter, a report in the UK Mirror stated that,“Crazed Aaron Alexis was treated for mental illness after playing violent video games for up to 18 hours day and night.” And even though he “told psychiatrists he heard voices in his head long before he went on the rampage at a US naval base and slaughtered 12 people before being shot dead himself,” his friends claimed that “the length of time he spent glued to the ‘shoot ‘em up’ games on his computer, including the popular Call of Duty, triggered his dark side that had previously landed him in trouble with the police on gun crimes.”
Unfortunately, at this point, we don’t know what Alexis was suffering from when he went on his deadly rampage and we may never know the connection between his violent behavior and his reported obsession with violent video games.
But this much is clear: Something is fundamentally wrong with a society that finds demented, sick video games like Grand Theft Auto V to be “preposterously enjoyable, breathtaking in scope and bitingly funny,” spending billions of dollars to buy them and wasting countless thousands of hours to play them.
If you or your kids find them fun, I suggest you go cold turkey, spending your time instead reading wholesome, edifying literature or watching morally uplifting programing or learning a craft or a language or an instrument or a sport, or having some wholesome family fun or helping someone in need. (For the spiritually minded, there’s nothing better than reading the Scriptures and prayer.)
Anything but wasting your time and money on this “ Torture and murder with the addictive glamour of Hollywood.”
With good reason, Delingpole writes, “The fact that this is the most popular computer game on the market should make us all shudder, and pray that the violence on the screen doesn’t bleed into Britain’s streets.”
Here in America, our streets are already bleeding. It’s high time we stop being entertained by this flood of blood and gore on our video game screens.
http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2013/09/18/grand-theft-auto-as-a-reflection-on-the-state-of-the-nation-n1703334/page/full
You Won’t Believe What We Found in Another ‘Widely Adopted’ High School Textbook
A South Carolina high school, and possibly many others,
are reportedly using a different history textbook that also contains a
highly questionable interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Additionally, the publisher of a separate controversial advanced placement history textbook,
which acts as a study guide for the advanced placement U.S. history
exam and seems to diminish the Second Amendment, is directly linked to
Common Core standards, TheBlaze has learned.
Second book
It appears that the poor interpretation
of the Second Amendment isn’t limited to the AP history book first
covered by TheBlaze on Monday.
TheBlaze has learned that a high school
in Simpsonville, S.C., is supposedly using another textbook that
includes a disputable definition of the Second Amendment.
“The Second and Third Amendments
— grant citizens the right to bear arms as members of a militia of
citizen-soldiers and prevent the government from housing troops in
private homes in peacetime,” the book’s summary reads. In a separate box
on the same page it paraphrases the amendment as “the right to bear
arms,” not the right to “keep” and bear arms.
According to photos posted on Facebook, the history book is titled, “The Americans,” and is reportedly being used at Hillcrest High School.
The American Textbook Council
(ATC) says “The Americans” textbook is considered to be a “widely
adopted history textbook” in the United States for “general-level
eleventh grade classrooms.”
(Facebook screen shot)
(Facebook screen shot)
When contacted by TheBlaze regarding
the textbook and its content, Hillcrest High Vice Principal Ken Ashworth
said he would have to call “right back.” When we called back hours
later, Ashworth said he would not be able to provide a response.
Common Core
The first book, “United States History: Preparing for the Advanced Placement Examination,”
not only contains a controversial summary of the Second Amendment, but
it also compares the “American mobs” who fought in the Revolutionary War
to the “guerrilla bans that fought in such countries as Cuba in the
1950s and Vietnam in 1960s and points out that the Boston Tea Party was
“far too radical” for some.
Perfection Learning, which bought out
the original publisher of the book, AMSCO, makes no effort to hide its
connection to the controversial Common Core Standards. A quick review of
its website reveals a “Common Core Solutions Center” and more.
(PerfectionLearning.com)
“Founded by two educators in 1926,
Perfection Learning provides high-quality, innovative curriculum
solutions to K-12 schools across the country and internationally. All of
the major programs support the Common Core State Standards,” the site’s
“About Us” page reads.
“Innovative literature programs provide cost-effective solutions for
teaching critical thinking skills and incorporating the new demands of
the Common Core State Standards.”
(PerfectionLearning.com)
Listed under the publisher’s
“specialties” is “Common Core trade book collections.” Multiple attempts
to contact Perfection Learning have been unsuccessful.
As previously reported by TheBlaze,
the history book in question defines the Second Amendment as limited to
state militia. “The people have the right to keep and bear arms in a
state militia,” the summary definition reads.
Readers have submitted tips to
TheBlaze claiming the book is also being used in several additional
schools and districts. In addition to the schools and districts we’ve
previously disclosed (here), the text is reportedly also being utilized at the Jefferson County School District in Clay, Ala., and at West Forsyth High School in Clemmons, N.C., according to parents who reached out to TheBlaze.
Andrew Kraft, social studies program
manager at Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, told TheBlaze that the
district’s official history book is “The Enduring Vision.”
However, he said it appears that the history teacher at West Forsyth
High recommended the AP history book as a supplemental resource, but it
is not required reading.
Kraft would not discuss the district’s view on the definition of the Second Amendment found in the book.
Messages left with the Jefferson County School District in Alabama were not immediately returned.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/09/17/publisher-of-ap-history-book-containing-questionable-second-amendment-summary-has-direct-ties-to-common-core-and-theres-more/
Student Indoctrination
The new college academic year has begun, and unfortunately, so has student indoctrination. Let's look at some of it.William Penn, Michigan State University professor of creative writing, greeted his first day of class with an anti-Republican rant. Campus Reform, a project of the Arlington, Va.-based Leadership Institute, has a video featuring the professor telling his students that Republicans want to prevent "black people" from voting. He added that "this country still is full of closet racists" and described Republicans as "a bunch of dead white people -- or dying white people" (http://tinyurl.com/lve4te7). To a student who had apparently displayed displeasure with those comments, Professor Penn barked, "You can frown if you want." He gesticulated toward the student and added, "You look like you're frowning. Are you frowning?" When the professor's conduct was brought to the attention of campus authorities, MSU spokesman Kent Cassella said, "At MSU it is important the classroom environment is conducive to a free exchange of ideas and is respectful of the opinions of others."
That mealy-mouthed response is typical of university administrators. Professor Penn was using his classroom to proselytize students. That is academic dishonesty and warrants serious disciplinary or dismissal proceedings. But that's not likely. Professor Penn's vision is probably shared by his colleagues, seeing as he was the recipient of MSU's Distinguished Faculty Award in 2003. University of Southern California professor Darry Sragow shares Penn's opinion. Last fall, he went on a rant telling his students that Republicans are "stupid and racist" and "the last vestige of angry old white people" (http://tinyurl.com/185khtk).
UCLA's new academic year saw its undergraduate student government fighting for constitutional rights by unanimously passing a resolution calling for the end of the use of the phrase "illegal immigrant." The resolution states, "The racially derogatory I-word endangers basic human rights including the presumption of innocence and the right to due process guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution." No doubt some UCLA administrators and professors bereft of thinking skills helped them craft the resolution.
The New York Post (8/25/11) carried a story about a student in training to become dorm supervisor at DePauw University in Indiana. She said: "We were told that 'human' was not a suitable identity, but that instead we were first 'black,' 'white,' or 'Asian'; 'male' or 'female'; ... 'heterosexual' or 'queer.' We were forced to act like bigots and spout off stereotypes while being told that that was what we were really thinking deep down." At many universities, part of the freshman orientation includes what's called the "tunnel of oppression." They are taught the evils of "white privilege" and how they are part of a "rape culture."
Sometimes they are forced to discuss their sexual identities with complete strangers. The New York Post story said: "DePauw is no rare case. At least 96 colleges across the country have run similar 'tunnel of oppression' programs in the last few years."
University officials are aware of this kind of academic dishonesty and indoctrination; university trustees are not. For the most part, trustees are yes men for the president. Legislators and charitable foundations that pour billions into colleges are unaware, as well. Most tragically, parents who pay tens of thousands of dollars for tuition and pile up large debt to send their youngsters off to be educated are unaware of the academic rot, as well.
You ask, "Williams, what can be done?" Students should record classroom professorial propaganda and give it wide distribution over the Internet. I've taught for more than 45 years and routinely invited students to record my lectures so they don't have to be stenographers during class. I have no idea of where those recordings have wound up, but if you find them, you'll hear zero proselytization or discussion of my political and personal preferences. To use a classroom to propagate one's personal beliefs is academic dishonesty.
Vladimir Lenin said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." That's the goal of the leftist teaching agenda.
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/09/18/student-indoctrination-n1701375/page/full
Student suspended for 10 days after accidentally carrying pocketknife to school
The kicker? David Schaffner III voluntarily turned himself in to school authorities while at a football game, after he realized he’d kept his pocketknife after hunting. Instead of rewarding him for his honesty or at least mitigating the punishment somewhat, the school gave him the same punishment it would give a student who tried to sneak a weapon into a school event:There is no metal detector, no bag check there, but Schaffner grabbed a security guard.This is another manifestation of the idiotic zero-tolerance policies adopted by schools. On one hand, we have a student who made a mistake and brought it to the school’s attention voluntarily, and on the other hand, we have a hypothetical of a student who maliciously brings a knife to school but gets caught. Even though the two situations are both objectively and subjectively different, the school treats both the same — so that they don’t have to exercise any common sense. It’s an absurdity, and yet another data point demonstrating the decline of adult leadership in public education.
“Intentionally, willfully handed the pocket knife,” he said.
He even voluntarily wrote out and signed a statement, saying:
“I was in the woods behind my house at my tree stand and forgot to take my knife out of my pocket … came to the game and gave it to the security guard.”
With that, the Fox Chapel principal kicked him out of the game and then early Monday morning kicked him out of school for 10 days.
Schaffner says the punishment sends a horrible message.
“To me it sends a message, you should probably lie, ‘cause you’re going to get punished,” he said.
Now the family has to hire a lawyer.
http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2013/09/17/video-student-suspended-for-10-days-after-accidentally-carrying-pocketknife-to-school/
Students Take Field Trip to Mosque, Receive Koran
A Tennessee high school has decided to revise its field trip policy after a group of freshmen were taken to an Islamic mosque where they were given copies of the Koran and while a student who opted out of the trip was given a worksheet that alleged Muslims treated their conquered people better than the United States treated minorities.The students were in an honors world studies class at Hendersonville High School and the field trips to the mosque as well as a Hindu temple were part of a three-week course on world religions.
But some parents objected to the trips and wondered why the school would tour a mosque but not a Christian church or a Jewish synagogue.
“If you can’t go to all five, why are you going to any?” asked parent Mike Conner. “We sent the principal an email and voiced our concerns. She sent back a reply and told us they could not afford to go to all five.”
Daily Roll Call reported the students were taken to the Islamic Center of Nashville.
Children were given punch and cookies at the mosque where they listened to readings from the Koran, Conner said. They were also given copies of the Islamic holy book – which some students took and others declined.
During their visit to the Hindu temple, students engaged in meditation.
“Our kids are being indoctrinated and this is being shoved in their face,” Conner told Fox News. “It tells me they are pushing other religions and they want Christianity to take a back seat. They want our children to be tolerant of everything except Christianity.”
A Sumner County Schools spokesman declined to answer questions about specific religious activities the children may have engaged in, but he did send a statement acknowledging there was concern about the trip.
“Our district has reviewed the practice and decided to eliminate field trips to religious venues from this class, as it does not provide equal representation to all the religions studied in the course unit,” the statement read. “This decision was made due to the fact that equal representation in regards to field trips for all religions studied in the course is not feasible.”
Conner told Fox News his 14-year-old stepdaughter Jessica decided not to attend the trip. So her teachers instructed her to write a paper comparing and contrasting the Christian, Hindu and Islamic faiths. That’s when his daughter noticed something strange.
“There was one page on the sayings of Jesus, two-thirds of a page on the sayings of Gandhi, and five pages on Muhammed,” Conner said.
The section about Islam was titled, “Religious Tolerance in Islam,” according to the worksheets provided to Fox News.
The author wrote that the “Prophet of Islam was prepared to live in peace with the followers of other monotheistic religions, especially Judaism and Christianity.”
The author also disputed claims that Islam is a violent religion or that conquered nations were given a choice – Islam or death.
“There is no denying that Muslims in the Middle East and Asian conquered lands of other peoples but they did not impose their religion over them,” the author wrote.
The author also stated that minorities conquered by the Muslims were treated better than minorities living in the United States.
“If we were to compare the attitude of the Muslim rulers towards the minorities living under their rule during the nineteenth century – with the attitude of the Europeans and the Americans towards their minorities, I dare to say that the record of the Muslims would be better,” the author wrote.
Conner told Fox News his daughter declined to complete what she considered to be an unfair and unbalanced assignment.
“Because of a surplus in information on Muhammed, and a lack of complete and thorough information on Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus Christ, there is not enough true facts to properly complete a comparison and contrasting paper,” Jessica wrote on her paper.
Her parents warned her that she might be punished by her teachers for standing up for her beliefs – and she was. Jessica received a ‘zero’ for the assignment.
Conner and his wife met with school officials who refused to change their daughter’s grade or give her an assignment that was more balanced.
“They told us we were being hostile towards Islam,” Conner said. “It was a very confrontational meeting. Their attitude was, ‘I can’t believe you would question our motives with your children.’”
Conner said he hopes the school board will take action against the teachers.
“Someone needs to be held accountable,” he said. “They are our children – not theirs.”
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/students-take-field-trip-to-mosque-receive-koran.html
How Just A Few Heroes Barely Saved the Internet from Being Hijacked: Beware SOPA 2.0
Two years ago Hollywood, no kidding, masterminded a plot to, in effect, steal the Internet (by criminalizing certain conduct, booby trapping the Web in ways that few non-mega-corporations could cope with). There are signs, as perceptively flagged by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that the perps are back at it. We should care.This two-part column reveals an untold part of the story about how the bad guys were stopped last time. And, if not stopped again, how it could lead to a fundamental loss of civil rights and freedom on the Internet.
The perversely named “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) itself may have been the most brazen attempted act of piracy in all recorded history. Truth in Legislation would have required it to be named the “Ultimate Act of Online Piracy.” Enactment effectively would have pirated the World Wide Web from a common space and converted it into the private preserve of the Big Entertainment Lobby.
The Plot to steal the Internet was foiled. It was foiled by an “Irresistible Force” — public opinion, rallied by a twenty-something Freedom Fighter, Aaron Swartz, now dead. This combined with an Immovable Object, the consciences of a tiny group of legislators. Together they — barely — defeated one of the meanest pieces of legislation in our lifetimes.
The “outside” story — of the late-rallying popular opposition — has been fairly extensively reported. 7,000 (some claimover 100,000) websites, including Wikipedia and other high traffic sites, were persuaded to close shop for a day. Google draped its logo in black. In the view of Harvard Law School professor, author, public intellectual, and co-creator of the Creative Commons Lawrence Lessig, “SOPA was stopped by the most important Internet campaign so far — lead by my (now dead) friend Aaron Swartz, and thousands of others.”
As the New York Times reported “’I think [stopping SOPA] is an important moment in the Capitol,’ said Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and an important opponent of the legislation. ‘Too often, legislation is about competing business interests. This is way beyond that. This is individual citizens rising up.’”
But the “inside” story — four liberty-minded lawmakers who stood up in front of SOPA like the protestor in Tiananmen Square against the column of tanks — has remained, mostly, obscure. This tells that story.
But first. Why should you care? Undaunted by its 2011 failure Hollywood and the Big Record Labels are staging the sequel. This time, the bad guys could win. The Huffington Post recently spotted the perps busy inside the federal (perhaps, more aptly, feral) bureaucracy hollowing out the Constitution: “The [Commerce] department’s Internet Policy Task Force last week proposed making it a felony to stream copyrighted works.”
Give the Internet to Big Business? Hollywood and the Recording Industry appear to have found a compliant handmaiden, Penny Pritzker, the new U.S. Commerce Secretary, to work the inside while they work the outside. Pritzker’s Commerce Department employs, among other things, the risible euphemism of “improving the operation of the notice and takedown system” of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. That’s a system which is working rather beautifully for all concerned, content providers and distributors both. Something’s extremely fishy here.
Secretary Pritzker, a billionaire heiress, recently was bragging about cavorting with the head of the Recording Industry Association of America. It’s not hard to imagine whose side — the rich and famous … or mere citizens like us? — she’s on.
Practical upshot? Among much other potential damage, if Big Hollywood colluding with Big Government succeeds, it changes the very nature of the Web. Quite possibly, for example, “SOPA 2.0? could mean the end of the Drudge Report. Drudge hardly can maintain his Report if an innocent miscall on copyright makes him subject to prosecution, by any United States attorney, for a federal felony.
Would the silencing of Drudge be an unintended consequence? Or might it be intentional? Chairman Darrell Issa has written to Attorney General Holder: “The suggestions that prosecutors did in fact seek to make an example out of Aaron Swartz because Demand Progress exercised its First Amendment rights in publicly supporting him raises new questions about the Department’s handling of the case.”
(Matt? Meet Penny. The new “Big Sis” candidate?)
The hero in challenging Big Hollywood’s Big Piracy Gambit in the U.S. Senate was Ron Wyden. The main heroes in the House, reportedly, were Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), and Jared Polis (D-CO).
As hacktivist Aaron Swartz stated in his keynote speech delivered at F2C: Freedom to Connect 2012, Washington DC, “How we stopped SOPA,” six months before Swartz/s untimely, tragic, death:
“Senator Ron Wyden, the Democrat from Oregon, put a hold on the Bill, giving a speech in which he called in a nuclear bunker buster bomb aimed at the Internet. He announced he would not allow it to pass without changes. As you may know, a single Senator can’t actually stop a bill by themselves. But they can delay it. … He bought us time. A lot of time as it turned out. His delay held all the way to the end of that session of Congress. … There was probably a year or two of delay there. And in retrospect we used that time to lay the groundwork for what came later.”
The reintroduction of this legislation came (in the Senate) as PIPA, and (in the House) as SOPA. “The introduction of the Stop Online Piracy Act and its Senate counterpart was the apotheosis of how Congress should not work,” recalls Seamus Kraft, then an Issa staff member and deeply engaged in the process.
Kraft:
“Imagine the (metaphorically) smoke-filled room, special-interest authored legislation, launched without warning, without seeking input from stakeholders beyond a mere ‘sop for Cerberus’ — or, to Cyberspace: a single hearing on this bill, with five or six bigwigs from the content industry to catch softballs. And one lower level representative from Google … to be bullied.”
“The proposed legislation was seeking to combat intellectual property theft via the internet. The content creators wished to stop downloading of copyrighted content — especially music and movies. That’s a legitimate goal. But the mechanisms proposed for doing it were horrendous, a ‘kill them all, let God sort out the souls of the innocent’ strategy.”
The Web, oddly, still is a novelty to Washington, many of whose officials remain somewhat befuddled by the “interwebs” — that series of tubes — internets and website “numbers” .
Kraft:
“This naivete left Congress vulnerable to special interests pushing a one-sided solution to an ill-defined problem. The relevant committee proceeded without seeking the input of representatives of those who use, or whose business is, the Internet. The most important locked-out constituency was users: you and me.”
The Internet’s precarious position then was summed up nicely by techdirt.com:
“It’s pretty much assured that VP Joe Biden is in favor of PROTECT IP/E-PARASITE/SOPA. Since the start of this administration, President Obama has delegated most copyright issues to Biden, and Biden’s general view on copyright seems to be ‘whatever makes Hollywood happier must be fantastic.’ How else do you describe his continued support of ever more draconian copyright law, contrary to the evidence suggesting that it only makes things worse? How else do you explain his claim that he got ‘all the stakeholders’ concerning copyright into a summit meeting, when it only involved government officials and the big labels and studios (no consumer advocates, no artists, no technologists, no entrepreneurs, etc.)?”
Kraft:
“Darrell Issa, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is an inventor. He holds the most patents of anyone who ever has served in Congress. He himself owns intellectual property — and benefits from a strong streamlined system. Here, however, the legislative proponents seemed clueless about what the heck the Internet really is.
“Even Rep. Issa did not realize the stakes were so serious until the ‘sop to Cyberspace’ hearing. His reaction was along the lines of You guys — out of the blue — are trying to give all this power — to shut down domains, to hold Google responsible for some joker who uploads some random item — to federal bureaucrats? What is being proposed would change, fundamentally, the architecture of the best thing that has happened to humanity in the past 50 years.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/ralphbenko/2013/09/11/how-just-a-few-heroes-barely-saved-the-internet-from-being-hijacked-beware-sopa-20-n1696861/page/full
Part II: How A Small Band of Heroes like Aaron Swartz and Darrell Issa Saved The Internet, and How Hollywood is trying to Pirate it Again
The second part of this two-part column reveals an untold part of the story about how they were stopped last time. And shows how, if not again stopped, how it could lead to a fundamental loss of civil rights and freedom on the Internet.The offending legislation was barreling down the track, seemingly — even in the eyes of the big Internet companies — unstoppable. According to Seamus Kraft, a former Congressional aide intimately involved with stopping the attempted hijacking:
“Enter Team [Darrell] Issa, just before Thanksgiving 2011. A markup for the legislation had been scheduled for mid-December. We had 3 weeks to interdict a scheme that had been in the works for years. And the schemers had all the money and all the guns.
“Team Issa decided that its only hope was to alert the world — and allow a counterforce to mobilize and tell their government how crippling passing this legislation would be. We went into a whiteboarding session — me and 3 developers — walked into a room and walked out 2 days later, bleary eyed.
“What we had developed, nicknamed Madison, is something that would allow everyone to participate, constructively, in the writing of bills. Basically, we hacked together a way that brings in everyone who had been shut out of the process.”
An upshot of that event, not so incidentally, is OpenGovFoundation.org, underwritten mostly by the Knight Foundation and headed by Kraft, bringing constituent light into the legislative and rulemaking process. For his work Kraft was dubbed one of “the 20 most innovative people in democracy 2012” by Techcrunch.com).
Kraft:
“We used this program during the legislative markup. Bills live or die by their markup. We broadcast a stable video stream of the proceedings … while following line by line. We used it to give other user proposals thumbs up and thumbs down. Everything from a Congressional markup was modeled online. And we used it to identify who was taking what out and who was putting what in … tearing away the shroud of secrecy and injecting accountability.
“Citizens actually could participate and make their voices heard. At last, someone authentically had invited all the stakeholders into the room. Rep. Issa and other champions, notably Chaffetz and Polis, used this mechanism to ask hard questions and access the know how. It was revolutionary.
“Issa and his allies — backed, online, in real time, by real experts — threw everything they had at the proponents during two marathon days of hearings. Issa proposed amendments to this high-handed bill that the proponents just couldn’t even respond to.
“The proponents hadn’t anticipated sustained or sophisticated opposition. Here they were, in front of the whole world, confronting egregious injustices baked into the proposed legislation.
“Issa kept hammering the committee all day Thursday and Friday. By the end of the day Friday, when it was clear that Issa was just warming up, the chairman suspended the markup. Congress recessed for Christmas.”
That recess gave the forces of Freedom for the Internet (and of speech, the press, and assembly), of whom Aaron Swartz was by the most credible accounts the most important leader, time to rally. Big players, like Wikipedia, Reddit, and Google, began to organize for a January 18, 2012 Web uprising. The snowball started by Aaron Swartz over a year before had become an avalanche.
Issa and his allies provided the Freedom Fighters a clean focal point.
Kraft:
“January 18th was chosen because Issa, as chairman, had scheduled a Government Oversight Committee hearing to bring in the experts for that date. With Wikipedia preparing to close shop that day, Google draping its logo in black, and so forth, much of the Internet would be dark … or loudly protesting. But the video stream of the House of Representatives would be live. The combination could have caused the largest “viral video” in history.
“SOPA’s proponents knew that such a campaign could finish them off — forever. They chose a tactical retreat. The bill was formally determined, by leadership and the committee chairman, to be killed a few days before the scheduled hearing.”
The Irresistible Force of the popular will met, and merged with, the Immovable Object of a handful of courageous lawmakers. So ended SOPA.
At least, so ended SOPA 1.0. A sequel, it appears, has been green-lighted by the Motion Picture Association or its constituents. Now creep back those who scheme to take the wild, fertile, and free Internet, throw barbed wire around it, and turn it into a hunting preserve for Hollywood and record companies.
About six months before he died Aaron Swartz recited a truly chilling anecdote. It reveals something about what’s really going on: a desire by those with power to crush liberty.
From a rush transcript published by DemocracyNow.org of Swartz’s keynote address at Freedom to Connect:
“I was at an event, and I was talking, and I got introduced to a U.S. senator, one of the strongest proponents of the original … bill, in fact. And I asked him why, despite being such a progressive, despite giving a speech in favor of civil liberties, why he was supporting a bill that would censor the Internet. And, you know, that typical politician smile he had suddenly faded from his face, and his eyes started burning this fiery red. And he started shouting at me, said, ‘Those people on the Internet, they think they can get away with anything! They think they can just put anything up there, and there’s nothing we can do to stop them! They put up everything! They put up our nuclear missiles, and they just laugh at us! Well, we’re going to show them! There’s got to be laws on the Internet! It’s got to be under control!’
“Now, as far as I know, nobody has ever put up the U.S.’s nuclear missiles on the Internet. I mean, it’s not something I’ve heard about. But that’s sort of the point. He wasn’t having a rational concern, right? It was this irrational fear that things were out of control. Here was this man, a United States Senator, and those people on the Internet, they were just mocking him. They had to be brought under control. Things had to be under control. And I think that was the attitude of Congress. And just as seeing that fire in that Senator’s eyes scared me, I think those hearings scared a lot of people. They saw this wasn’t the attitude of a thoughtful government trying to resolve trade-offs in order to best represent its citizens. This was more like the attitude of a tyrant. And so the citizens fought back.”
Aaron Swartz is dead now, at age 26. He took his own life after having been tyrannized by the United States Department of Justice, hounded by a prosecutor as merciless as Inspector Javert of Les Miserables infamy. Chairman Issa has written to Attorney General Holder: “The suggestions that prosecutors did in fact seek to make an example out of Aaron Swartz because Demand Progress exercised its First Amendment rights in publicly supporting him raises new questions about the Department’s handling of the case.”
One last time — and perhaps with even more potentially powerful ramifications — Darrell Issa’s integrity — the Immovable Object — joins with the Irresistible Force of the spirit of the people’s paladin, Aaron Swartz. Perhaps Swartz’s death will unleash a more explosive force for freedom than Big Government’s agents foresaw. “You can’t win, Vader. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”
Meanwhile, evidence shows Big Hollywood and the Big Record Industry, again conniving with Big Government, to appropriate the Internet: SOPA 2.0. If they succeed … we — hello Sir Tim — might as well change the Web’s name to C2P2: “Concentration Camp Penny Pritzker.” Let Anonymous take note.
Stopping SOPA, thereby keeping our Constitutional rights protected on the Internet, was a near thing. If Issa had not, by pure chance (or Providence), been a member of the relevant committee; if a scheduling conflict had kept him from the hearing; if he had just missed the cue; if he did not chair another committee giving him clout … the Internet might now, effectively, belong to Sony, Time-Warner, Disney et al … protected, for them, by a minefield of embedded felony statutes under the pretext of “property rights.”
Let us hope that the more affluent beneficiaries of freedom of speech, of the press and of assembly — the founders of Google, Paypal, Twitter and Facebook, for example — take note — and honor the memory of Aaron Swartz. These entrepreneurs flourish, as we all flourish, from an equitable balance of property rights and civil liberty.
Let us pray Silicon Valley doesn’t get caught napping again. Next time could be the last time. Much of free speech, in practice, could be relegated from the Web to … taggers.
The Bill of Rights — including freedom of speech, the press, assembly — on the Web as elsewhere — is far too precious to take for granted.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
No to SOPA 2.0.
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/ralphbenko/2013/09/18/part-ii-how-a-small-band-of-heroes-like-aaron-swartz-and-darrell-issa-saved-the-internet-and-how-hollywood-is-trying-to-pirate-it-again-n1702969/page/full
Memo to Hillary Clinton: What a Difference, at This Point, a Year Makes
For a century, progressivism was evil's most successful modern mask. On September 11, 2012, however, the movement's current international figureheads, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, tripped, fell, and in the process, smashed the illusion. The mask is off; the evil is exposed. It is now apparent to anyone who wishes to see that the torch Obama is supposed to pass to Clinton is lighted with hellfire.But if no one does wish to see, then what difference, at this point, does it make? Plenty.
On September 11, 2012, Hillary Clinton was the model American elitist: college thesis on Saul Alinsky; Democrat attack-dog lawyer climbing the party ladder through aggressive ethics violations; advantageous marriage to one of those media-protected political juggernauts-cum-sexual predators who seem almost definitive of the modern Democrats; crowned a U.S. senator without any relevant accomplishments, in a major non-home state seat cherry-picked for her convenience; and with a world class liar's portfolio just to prove she's "tough" and "ready for prime time."
But then, on the evening of September 11, the devil whom leftists keep so carefully hidden in their lamp, to be released only when they need to cash in a wish, escaped its vessel and started messing up the tidy world of controlled perceptions on which progressivism depends.
From the moment the urgent pleas for help began pouring in from Benghazi, Hillary Clinton's impregnable world of privilege and "inevitability" began to look all too -- well, "human" would be the wrong word -- let's say all too untidy. The decisions made that night by the secretary of state and her historic skid-greaser (first black president, to be followed by first woman) -- the actions deliberately not taken, the phone calls made and not made -- exposed every illusion, dwarfed all previous lies, and sent the erstwhile attack dog scurrying into the corner.
In the wake of that fateful evening, Clinton's carefully fabricated world was destroyed. The "vast right-wing conspiracy" she famously concocted as a rhetorical fig leaf for the historic first pubescent president was suddenly eclipsed for all time by a real conspiracy in which she herself was a central player. Better yet, her real conspiracy entangled her in a twist of fate so perfect that it might provide a sixth proof of the existence of God to add to St. Thomas' five.
Allow me to explain.
During her 2008 campaign, Clinton told a story of having to run for cover under sniper fire upon arriving in Bosnia. Imagine her surprise -- how dumb are these people? -- when CBS News video of the event surfaced, showing her arriving safely and being greeted by a girl carrying a letter. Far be it for me to claim with certainty that a girl with an envelope could not be misremembered as a man with a rifle -- don't we all sometimes confuse last year's Thanksgiving dinner with a sniper attack? -- but that is not how Clinton herself explained her little senior moment:
You know I have written about this and described it in many different settings and I did misspeak the other day. This has been a very long campaign. Occasionally, I am a human being like everybody else.
In other words, you all tell lies to gain personal advantage, so why shouldn't Hillary be allowed to get away with one "occasionally"? Of course, she also said in that same response that this was the "first time in twelve years" that she had misrepresented her Bosnian adventure, which was another one of those "occasional" lies, as she had in fact been telling that sniper story repeatedly during her campaign. Oh well -- what difference, at that point, did it make?
In September 2012, at the memorial service for the Benghazi victims, Clinton told Charles Woods, father of Tyrone, that the administration would "arrest and prosecute" the maker of a YouTube video about Mohammad that she knew had nothing to do with Woods's death. In other words, she went to the memorial for a man whose death she might have helped to prevent -- Woods died more than seven hours after Clinton and Obama committed to doing nothing about the attack at the consulate and the secret CIA annex -- looked the man's father in the eye, and brazenly lied about the cause of his death.
In 2008, she invented facts about her involvement in glamorous violence and was exposed by a video. Now, she invents a video story to protect herself from culpability regarding real, murderous violence and is exposed by the facts. In the 2008 case, her exposure merely showed her to be a pathetic liar. In the 2012 reversal, she was exposed as something much more insidious and dangerous: a woman without conscience, compunction, or even the decency to avoid smearing a man's funeral with her verbal dung. The reversal is almost Sophoclean in its perfection. There is, apparently, a just God -- and He enjoys mocking fatuous liars.
In the months following the fateful, inhuman decisions of a year ago, Hillary Clinton, the archetypal Washington establishment woman (hardened leftist pretending to be pragmatic moderate), stonewalled the media and Congress for months, allowing stand-ins to speak in her stead for no apparent reason, citing official scheduling conflicts with the fall hearings, and then exploiting a concussion allegedly serious enough to restrict her to light duties at home for weeks to avoid answering Congress's questions before having examined the Independent Advisory Review Board's report on Benghazi.
When she did at last decide to grace Congress with her presence, she "acknowledged" -- i.e., admitted in the face of phone records evidence -- to having called the CIA's David Petraeus before speaking with the president during the attack, in order to make sure their respective departments were "closely latched up together" -- that is, to make sure they were committed to the same story. And, of course, it was at this hearing, in answer to questions concerning what she knew about the real motives behind the Benghazi attack, and when she knew it, that she delivered the famous line that ought to be her epitaph: "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Progressives try to dig their dear leaderette out of this one by objecting that she did not mean "What difference does it make that four Americans died?" That objection is correct. That is not what she meant. What she meant, and what she clearly said, taken in context, was that it no longer mattered what she knew and when she knew it. She was declaring that she had successfully run out the clock, thereby indirectly conceding the facts but claiming a statute of limitations on their relevance.
The truths she tacitly granted with that declaration: that she knew from the outset that Benghazi was not about a video; she knew about CIA arms-dealing; she knew this had been a planned attack by a well-armed group, probably with inside information; and she knew that she and President Obama had deliberately chosen to abandon Americans to their fate and move directly into cover-up mode. She knew, further, that this cover-up, in which she would necessarily have been a key insider, involved the scripted and repeated condemnation of an "offensive" YouTube video, followed by a careful campaign of hiding from the single most immediate and obvious question surrounding the prolonged attack: what were you doing -- what were you thinking -- while your representatives were dying?
It was in answer to questions specifically touching upon her knowledge of all those things that she erupted, "What difference, at this point, does it make?" What difference does it make, in other words, whether the administration's story resembled the truth? With that exasperated reply, Hillary Clinton -- the model progressive elitist, and the likely standard-bearer of world progressivism's next stage of devolution -- revealed, above all else, that the devilish genie of leftist scheming had completely escaped her control. The question, and the tone in which she delivered it, was less an answer to Senator Ron Johnson, who was asking the questions, than a plea to that genie to get back in the lamp before causing any further disarray.
The Obama administration's Middle East policy has unraveled through recent events in Libya, Egypt, and now Syria, to reveal itself as effectively an effort to destabilize "secular" rule in favor of popular Islamic uprisings, while supporting, legitimizing, and defending the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests in the region. When questions were raised by Michele Bachmann and a few other brave congressmen concerning MB influence in the U.S. government, the voices (particularly Republican voices) that rose to ridicule those congressmen most vociferously were the same ones now screaming their support for "action" on behalf of the (partly al-Qaeda) rebels in Syria, the same ones demanding that the MB be included as an equal player in Egypt's democratic process and questioning the legitimacy of President Morsi's ouster. And who were the brave congressmen's attackers leaping to defend? Huma Abedin, who, of course, just happens to be Hillary Clinton's protégé.
A year ago, Hillary Clinton was perfectly positioned to be the next U.S. president: a radical leftist who could nevertheless be presented as a moderate shift in the aftermath of Obama; a compulsive liar in the name of her own careerism who always seemed to escape condemnation on the grounds that her lies were somehow evidence of her "humanity"; the tough woman who could be trusted to answer that 3AM phone call; and the best Democrat friend of the leading Republican progressives.
Now the mythology, twisted as it was, has been undone. Through her Benghazi performance, Clinton's name will be forever bound up with the Obama presidency's biggest scandal; her most recent battery of lies has been exposed as treacherous, conscienceless, and utterly self-interested; as many have noted, she has demonstrated all too perfectly what her answer to that 3AM phone call will be, at least when she regards her own political advantage as inconsistent with the concerns or lives of those calling for help; and her "moderate Republican" defenders are daily revealing themselves as toadying fellow travelers of the progressive elite, and useful idiots of radical Islam.
The jig is up on Hillary Clinton, and the ruling establishment to whose throne she had become the heir apparent, as of September 10, 2012. But I know what you are thinking: if the media continues to cover for that establishment, and the majority of the U.S. population continues to ignore all the facts available to them, then what difference, at this point, does it make?
I actually agree with that objection, and expect that the truth will make very little difference in electoral practice in the short run. If Hillary Clinton wishes to be president (sarcasm), she will likely become president. (Lord knows that the Republican establishment won't try to stop her.) But the events of the post-Benghazi era have changed the historical game. The progressives are out in the open now; they see that they are exposed, even if most people are choosing not to look.
Their motives have not changed: power-lust, snobbish presumption, and that conscienceless desire for personal advantage and security at the expense of the well-being, even the lives, of other people that has only one correct name, the one Socrates assigned it more than 2,400 years ago -- the tyrannical soul. The difference is that now the pretenses have vanished. We cannot pretend, and more importantly they cannot pretend, that they are trying, however misguidedly, to help people, to improve society, or to foster equality. The genie is permanently loose, the big lie of American progressivism forever exposed. These people represent nothing but evil, self-promotion, and death. They don't care about lives not their own. They regard themselves as a species above, and are therefore impervious to guilt and shame where human suffering is concerned. Truth has been their plaything, to be revealed or concealed as they judged useful to their advancement.
They will continue to mouth the words of progressive manipulation, as will their bootlickers in the media. But those words can no longer sustain the aura of doublethink and self-justification. American progressives are people who, like Clinton and Obama, were forced to make a choice this year, a choice between admitting they have lost the narrative and simply carrying on with acknowledged lies. A choice between admitting to themselves that their actions have become unmoored from any semblance of human decency and doubling down on a life lived according to sociopathic principles. A choice between defending their petty self-interest at all costs and confessing their undeniable culpability. They chose evil.
America's progressives have lost the tether of well-controlled lies and public perceptions that anchored their decisions in cool calculation. The underlying truth has not changed, but its uncontrolled release is irradiating the progressive psyche. There is a very big difference between believing that your corrupt deeds are concealed and knowing they are fully visible to anyone who bothers to look. Suddenly, keeping up appearances is no longer enough; distracting people from looking at what is no longer hidden becomes the overwhelming goal.
The progressives have entered a nightmare world of their own making, in which the respectable veneer -- the well-creased pant leg -- has given way to a relentless series of distractions aimed at preventing everyone from hearing that pounding American heart beneath the floorboards. Calculated corruption is giving way to madness. (Serendipitously, my friend William Meisler reminded me of this Greek maxim just this morning: "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.")
In practice, this means that their tactics will become more aggressive, and even less restrained. Benghazi and its aftermath are just a hint of what is to come. It will henceforth be "go for broke" time, all the time. The scandals, authoritarian lurches, manufactured crises, and open breaches of faith with their oaths and their nation will become ever more intense and brazen. And there will be no joy in this unraveling for constitutionalists, who will be not onlookers, but victims.
The smooth, soporific drift into the abyss is officially over for America. From here on out, the ride gets very, very rough -- that is what happens when progressivism's wheels come off. Hold on.
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