Acorn hat with community organizer nut still attached.
And from acorns grow big spending. Sent to me by fellow memo reader. (See 1 below.)
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Unemployment figures suggests several things:
a) The administration is probably under counting for political reasons.
b) Hard to see where upward push for economy comes from with unemployment continuing at high level.
c) Persistently high unemployment figures have a psychological impact on those employed .
Thus, could restrain overall spending.
d) Most important of all, as long as Obama maintains negative policies which cripple and confuse the private sector unemployment will remain high. If the government would get out of the way and let the private sector perform the economy would improve over time.
That also applies to education. Government is the problem, in large part, seldom the solution. (See 2, 2a, 2b and 2c below.)
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Obama warns Assad. That's a switch.(See 3 below)
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China and Warren Buffet both appreciate Israeli technology. (See 4 below)
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Unmasking Keith Ellison. Obama's soul mate? Don't expect the New York Times to do the heavy lifting. (See 5 below.)
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Dueling fatwas. (See 6 below.)
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Lloyd Marcus, who is black, backs Tea Party thinking and explains why.
Marcus is no Uncle Tom. He understands the crippling effect of dependency. (See 7 below.)
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From the shores of Tripoli to the streets of Boston and into Barney's backyard. Go Marines! (See 8 below.)
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Jerry Brown and his staff think 'whoring' it up will get them votes. In California it might because feminists are prone to take slurs laying down.
Progressive liberals seem more like neanderthals. (See 9 below.)
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Miss me yet? More are begining to. (See 10 below.)
And it's your stupid policies, stupid! (See 10a below.)
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Dick
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1) 1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare for illegal aliens each year by state governments.
Verify at: http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=iic_immigrationissuecenters7fd8
2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.HTML
$2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.HTML
4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and secondary school education for children here illegally and they cannot speak a word of English!
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt..0.HTML
5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor babies.
Verify at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML
6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/ TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML <" target=_blank" target=_blankhttp://transcripts.cnn.com/+TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML>;
7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.CNN.com/TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML
<" target=_blank" target=_blankhttp://transcripts/..cnn.com/TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML>;; <" target=_blank" target=_blankhttp://transcripts/..cnn.com/TRANscriptS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML>>;
8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
Verify at: http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.HTML
9. $200 Billion dollars a year in suppressed American wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSC RI PTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML <" target=_blank" target=_blankhttp://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSC+RI+PTS/0604/01/ldt.01.HTML>;
10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal aliens. In particular, their children are going to make a huge additional crime problem in the US
.
Verify at: http://transcripts.cnn..com/TRANscriptS/0606/12/ldt..01.HTML
<;Â " target=_blank;Â " target=_blankhttp://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANscriptS/0606/12/ldt..01.HTML>;Â ;
11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens
from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the US from the Southern border.
Verify at: Homeland Security Report:
12. The National policy Institute estimated that the total cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230 billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion annually over a five year period.
Verify at: http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute..org/PDF/deportation.PDF
13. In 2006, illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in remittances to their countries of origin.
Verify at: http://www/. <" target=_blank" target=_blankhttp://www/..rense.com/general75/niht.htm>; rense.com/general75/niht.htm
<;Â " target=_blank;Â " target=_blankhttp://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm>;Â ;
14.The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One million sex crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The United States .
Verify at: http: // www.drdsk.com/articleshtml
<; " target=_blank; " target=_blankhttp://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml>; <; " target=_blank; " target=_blankhttp://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml>; >; %20w.drdsk.com/articleshtml <" target=_blank" target=_blankhttp://20w.drdsk.com/articleshtml>;
The total cost is a whopping
$ 338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR AND IF YOU'RE LIKE ME, HAVING TROUBLE UNDERSTANDING THIS AMOUNT OF MONEY; IT IS $338,300,000,000.00 WHICH WOULD BE ENOUGH TO STIMULATE THE ECONOMY FOR THE CITIZENS OF THIS COUNTRY.
Are we THAT stupid? YES, FOR LETTING THOSE IN THE U.S. CONGRESS GET AWAY WITH LETTING THIS HAPPEN YEAR AFTER YEAR.
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2)Every Month, They're Lying
By Jeffrey Folks
Figures for the last significant jobs report before the November election are a major embarrassment for the administration. On October 8, the labor department reported a decline of 95,000 workers, a figure much worse than economists had estimated. This decline in jobs is inescapable proof of the failure of the President's economic policies.
As if the September employment numbers were it not bad enough, the figures for August were revised downward by 57,000. And on top of this, the preliminary annual revision of employment showed a further drop of 366,000 jobs. With all of these downward revisions, one has to wonder whom to trust. How far will the September numbers be revised downward in the days just after the November election? How much further will the annual figures be revised downward when the final report is issued in February 2011?
The dismal figures just reported are far from being a one-month or six-month anomaly.
For 14 straight months now the unemployment rate has been above 9.5%. Those are 14 months in which Obama's fiscal policies have had an opportunity to turn things around. In fact those 14 months followed directly upon the President's $878 billion stimulus package, which the President promised would keep unemployment below 8%. And yet, since Obama's inauguration the unemployment rate has risen by 26%, and most economists project that the rate of unemployment will continue to rise well into 2011.
Moreover, the Labor Department numbers are not telling the whole story. According to Paul Godek, an economist with Compass Lexecon, employment relative to historic job growth is 10% below trendline, an all-time low on this important measure of growth. Compare today's figures with those of 1960, when employment was 6% above trendline, or in 1999 when they were even higher, thanks to the welfare reforms and spending discipline of a Republican Congress. With job growth at 10% below trendline, employment figures are not going to improve anytime soon.
The only "silver lining," as the President might say, is that the September unemployment rate did not budge. It held steady at 9.6%, but even a cursory examination of the Labor Department report reveals that this was because an ever larger number of workers have simply given up hope. These discouraged workers are not included in the headline unemployment number, but they are represented in U6, a figure that reflects unemployment and underemployment and that now stands at 17.1%, up .4% in just one month. What this figure reveals, in other words, is that a growing number of workers are so demoralized that they've stopped looking for work entirely.
That fact is even more frightening than the top-line unemployment figure of 9.6%. It tells us that millions of workers have given up on this economy. Millions of workers, who might otherwise be proud and valued contributors to the nation's economy, are simply sitting at home, skipping mortgage payments and relying on food stamps and other forms of government aid just to get by. The President likes to pretend that big business has failed these workers. He likes to lay the blame on banks that supposedly are refusing to make loans to small businesses. He blames the insurance companies, mortgage brokers, oil companies, hedge funds, and just about every other part of the private sector. What he refuses to do is to look at the effect of his own policies.
Does Obama really expect American energy companies to be out there hiring hundreds of thousands of workers when the President himself has placed the entire Gulf of Mexico under a deep-water drilling ban? Does the President believe that health insurance companies will be expanding their operations when Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is out there bashing them for rate increases and demanding that they operate at a loss? Does he think that the financial reform bill recently put into effect is going to increase the number of jobs in the financial sector when it specifically strips the major banks of some of their most lucrative profit opportunities?
Month after month now, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported weak job numbers -- numbers that U.S. News & World Report has now begun to call "bogus." And yet even as the job market has weakened, the President has pressed ahead with his destructive program of regulation, nationalization, and increased taxation. His top economic advisers, Larry Summers and Christina Romer among them, have begun to abandon the sinking ship. Presumably none of them really want to take the fall for an economy that has gone nowhere but down in two years and that shows no sign of a strong recovery.
Soon it will be Mr. Obama, sitting alone in the Oval Office, dreaming up more schemes for regulation and taxation. Looking out the window across the White House lawn, it might appear that little has changed. But tens of millions of Americans are now without work, a fact that the President apparently fails to recognize. He presses on with environmental regulation, restrictions on business and industry, and huge tax increases on small businesses and on investors. The First Lady flies off on extravagant resort vacations, with her retinue of sixty, while the President spends week after week golfing or exercising his tongue before friendly college audiences.
Meanwhile over 17% of Americans are unemployed or underemployed, and that figure increases every month. What is the President going to do about it? Raising taxes on "the rich," as he plans to do in January, will only make matters worse. Higher taxes on capital gains and dividends will simply drain capital from the private sector. Death taxes will force tens of thousands of small businesses to close up shop. A continuation of high corporate tax rates, the second-highest among developing nations, will only keep American businesses at a disadvantage to foreign competitors. Increased regulation on the part of the EPA, the FTC, the FCC, the Justice Department, and other government agencies simply puts more pressure on American companies. And the president's solution to these problems of taxation and regulation? More taxation and more regulation.
For American workers, the disheartening September employment jobs report and those that preceded it are more than enough reason to vote the Democrats out in November. But even if Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress, we will still have a very irresponsible president in the White House. Are his ruinous economic policies a justification for impeachment? That is a question that the American public needs to start asking itself.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture and politics.
2a)Obama's Takedown of Industrial America
By Fred N. Sauer
Obama's industrial policy is designed to make America non-competitive in the world economy, destroy millions of jobs, and devastate our manufacturing and industrial capacities. No one will want to invest here, and fewer and fewer U.S. companies will be exporting goods "Made in America." And we have a fierce competitor called China.
How far down this road we already are can be seen in the following data:
During this ten-year period, total exports from the United States to China totaled $424 billion, while exports from China to the United States totaled $2.163 trillion, resulting in a U.S. net trade deficit with China of $1.793 trillion. A symbol of China's takeover of manufacturing is Wal-Mart, one of the largest U.S. importers of Chinese-made goods.
... US based Wal-Mart was responsible for $27 billion dollars in U.S. imports from China in 2006 and 11% of the growth of the total U.S. trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs in this period.
But how has China accumulated such a large trade surplus with the U.S.? To answer this vital question, it's critical to understand the currency exchange market's impact on trade. Suppose you want to buy something from China. You need to first buy some of their currency, called the yuan. Now, suppose thousands of people want to buy goods from China. So a whole lot of people start to exchange dollars for yuan in order buy Chinese goods. The same thing happens here: if you and all your neighbors try to buy the same currency, its price increases. If you are on the other side of this, such as a Chinese citizen holding his or her currency in the yuan, and you want to exchange the yuan for dollars, then you will be able to get more dollars for your yuan as it increases in value. This increase in the value of the yuan makes American goods priced in dollars cheaper for the Chinese to purchase.
As we are increasingly surrounded and overwhelmed by the "Made in China" label, we have come to understand that China's principal economic advantage is "cheap labor."
And it is also clear that they are using this cheap labor to acquire world-class manufacturing and industrial production facilities to help export more and more of this "cheap labor." Thus, they create a virtuous cycle that continues as long as their labor remains cheap.
Here is some data on the long-term growth or decline of manufacturing as a percentage of gross domestic product of the two nations:
This data shows that Chinese manufacturing increased as a percentage of GDP from 37% to 41%, while the United States manufacturing sector decreased as a percentage of GDP from 24% to 13%.
Normally, economic forces of trade surpluses and deficits tend to cause a self-correction of either condition. With respect to America, the more we buy from China, the more their currency increases in value, and therefore, the higher and higher go the prices in dollars of what you want to buy in China. Eventually it goes so high that you no longer want to buy it there. Maybe it becomes so high that it is cheaper just to buy goods that are "Made in America."
If you are in China and the yuan keeps increasing in value compared to the U.S. dollar, then the price of American goods becomes cheaper, and it's more likely that someone from China will buy goods imported from America.
All the long-term data we have presented suggests that the self-correcting mechanism is not working as it should, or maybe not at all. What is the reason behind the failure of the system to correct itself?
Here is how China attacks our manufacturing economy and destroys jobs, if they are not already destroyed by the Democratic Party's industrial policies. The Chinese government never allows the increasing value of the yuan to reach the hands of its labor forces and/or the consumers of their economy. Thus, wages don't go up, purchasing power doesn't go up, and the Chinese consumer doesn't get an increase in spendable income.
To prevent all this from happening, the Chinese government strips off the appreciated value of the yuan and retains control over it. The most important technique they use is currency sterilization.
But surging capital inflows can also be something of a double-edged sword, inflicting rather less welcome and destabilizing side-effects, including a tendency for the local currency to gain in value, undermining the competitiveness of export industries and potentially giving rise to inflation.
To ease the threat of currency appreciation of inflation, central banks often attempt what is known as the "sterilization" of capital flows. In a successful sterilization operation, the domestic component of the monetary base (bank reserves plus currency) is reduced to offset the reserve inflow, at least temporarily. The classical form of sterilization, however, has been through the use of open market operations -- that is, selling Treasury bills and other instruments to reduce the domestic component of monetary base.
With comparatively little expansion of the Chinese domestic economy because of the appreciation of the yuan not being passed through very far as increased wages, prices tend not to rise as much as they otherwise would have if the appreciation had reached the Chinese consumers. And likewise, because prices tend not to go up, Americans continue to see cheap "Made in China" goods and continue to purchase them to the detriment of "Made in America" goods.
The Chinese permanently suppress the cost of labor in the export sectors of their economy to achieve a permanent cost advantage in pricing their export goods.
This scheme produces another very considerable side-effect. The Chinese use the appreciated value of the yuan that is stripped off from consumers to buy United States Government Treasury Securities. By doing this, China has become America's largest foreign creditor. They are buying our rapidly increasing government debt with the surplus value of yuan which results from all our purchases of Chinese exports.
Yes, China's policy of artificially suppressing the cost of Chinese labor helps China destroy the manufacturing sector and manufacturing jobs in America and subsidizes China's acquisition of U.S. Treasury Securities -- approximately $800 billion's worth.
This is like having a double-barreled gun at your head. If the Chinese ever get unhappy about holding all these Treasury Securities and start to dump them on the open market, they could make interest rates soar in America. This would impose a terrible burden on our economy and result in even more job losses.
So the suffering American economy and its workers are facing four grave threats simultaneously.
First, U.S. industrial policies by the radical Democrats have imposed terrible burdens on the U.S. economy that are making it more and more inefficient through high non-competitive labor costs, carbon regulation, artificially high energy costs, and numerous government mandates.
Here is a summary of recent aspects of our industrial policy as proffered by the ruling Democratic Party:
●Huge and ineffective stimulus expenditures
●A 3.0-trillion-dollar increase in our national debt in two years
●Unemployment at 9.6%
●A job-killing moratorium on drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska
●Adoption of a tax on energy use called Cap and Trade
●The EPA aggressively regulating emissions resulting from the combustion of carbon fuels
●The EPA working to regulate fluids used in the production of abundant shale-sourced natural gas
●Elimination of the secret ballot (card check) in proposed unionization to increase union power and high-cost labor in our economy
●Imposition of costly health mandates on small businesses
●Increasing domestic taxes on business earnings made and taxed in foreign countries
This list is sufficiently comprehensive for anyone to get the picture, especially if he or she is in business.
Second, industrial policies by the Chinese government to permanently suppress their labor costs to subsidize the growth of their manufacturing sector have resulted in an ongoing disadvantage for the American manufacturing sector.
Third, the fiscal policies of the radical Democrats have resulted in massive deficit spending which has increased the U.S. national debt to over $13 trillion from over $10 trillion in just two years. And there is the certainty of more deficit spending to come as long as they control government. They haven't even passed a budget for the current fiscal year. All of this spending will eventually put tremendous upward pressure on interest rates. You only have to review the economic history of the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s, when rates on U.S. Treasury Securities peaked at over 15%. Rates anywhere near this zone will crush the economy because of the much greater proportion of government debt to GDP that exists today as opposed to the earlier period.
Finally, policies of the Chinese government that transfer the appreciation of the yuan into purchases of more U.S. government debt gives them the capability to hold America hostage to any and all of their policies.
We were the world's greatest economy when the only thing we bought from the Chinese was "firecrackers." Why are we doing this?
There is no free trade in manufactured goods unless there is free trade in the corresponding currencies of the trading partners. Without free trade in the yuan, the Chinese are effectively imposing a huge tariff on the American economy and its workers by artificially suppressing the prices of Chinese exports to America. And the radical Democratic government doubles this burden by crushing the economy with mandated costs and inefficiencies.
Are we going to let both of them get by with it? If the Chinese don't freely float their currency, we need to impose a currency equalization tax to offset their subsidized low export prices.
Fred N. Sauer is an American patriot, St. Louis resident, and businessman whose blog can be found at www.americasculturalstudies.com.
2b)Our Growth Deficit
Jobs: The report showing another 95,000 jobs lost in September is, of course, bad news. If recent private and government forecasts are to be believed, things won't get better anytime soon.
The glass-half-half-full crowd will note that much of September's job loss was seasonal, that state and local governments let teachers and other workers go, but a lot of them will likely be rehired once new budgets get hashed out. The last of the census layoffs also took a toll.
Moreover, some 65,000 new jobs were created in the private sector — a sign that, on net, businesses are in fact hiring. Indeed, private-sector hiring has continued for nine months. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate, at 9.6%, didn't change.
Fair enough. But there are problems with that sunny logic. The main one is that private businesses have to do more than just hire; they have to add enough workers to take up the added slack from people entering the labor force.
Specifically, we need at least 1.3 million jobs a year — or 109,000 a month — to keep the unemployment rate from rising further. The score so far: nearly 8 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007, more than 3 million since Obama took office in January 2009, and 350,000 since the "recovery" began that June.
Can we turn it around? Not with policies that lean to massive spending by the government, the printing of trillions of dollars by the Fed and the issuance of more Treasury debt than we can ever pay.
What's needed is more growth. To return to "normal," the economy must expand at a 3%-plus rate for five years or more. Right now, according to new forecasts, the chances of that aren't good:
• The CBO, using unusually strong language on Friday, called the recovery "anemic" and said the economy will likely grow just 2% over the next year, with unemployment remaining above 9%.
• The International Monetary Fund forecast "slow" U.S. growth of just 2.3% next year, down from its previous 3% estimate, with continued high unemployment.
• Goldman Sachs offered two scenarios for next year in the U.S.: "fairly bad" or "very bad," with another recession possible.
This isn't a real recovery. It's what economists call a "growth recession" — where the economy is growing, but not fast enough to bring down the unemployment rate.
This has serious consequences. GDP hit an annual real rate of $13.2 trillion in the second quarter, as unemployment remained around 9.6%. If unemployment had been 5% instead of 9.6%, CBO reckons GDP would have been $889 billion higher. That's about $2,867 in added output for every person in America.
In short, we have a growth deficit, with almost 8 million jobs missing and a GDP nearly $1 trillion in the hole.
Government meddling — marked by a money-losing $700 billion TARP plan, a failed $862 billion "stimulus," a job-killing health care overhaul, a burdensome and unneeded reform of the financial system, and the largest tax hike in U.S. history looming on Jan. 1 — is the cause of this growth deficit.
Hopefully (and this is what a rising stock market seems to be saying), a new Congress with less of a bias against business and free enterprise can begin to undo the damage and restore the growth that's been lost.
2c)The Politics of Foreclosure: Washington's latest obstacle to a housing market recovery
Talk about a financial scandal. A consumer borrows money to buy a house, doesn't make the mortgage payments, and then loses the house in foreclosure—only to learn that the wrong guy at the bank signed the foreclosure paperwork. Can you imagine? The affidavit was supposed to be signed by the nameless, faceless employee in the back office who reviewed the file, not the other nameless, faceless employee who sits in the front.
The result is the same, but politicians understand the pain that results when the anonymous paper pusher who kicks you out of your home is not the anonymous paper pusher who is supposed to kick you out of your home. Welcome to Washington's financial crisis of the week.
In the 23 states that require judicial foreclosures, lenders seeking to seize property from a delinquent borrower must file a summary judgment motion in court. Typically, this document must be signed in the presence of a notary by a "witness" who has reviewed the relevant documents and confirmed that the borrower is in default and the lender owns the mortgage.
Recently GMAC Mortgage, whose parent Ally Financial is majority-owned by the U.S. government, suspended foreclosures in those 23 states after acknowledging that in some cases notaries may not have been present and the signers may have relied upon others to review the documents instead of doing it themselves. Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase then halted their own foreclosures in those 23 states to ensure they are following the letter of the law, and yesterday BofA announced its moratorium is now nationwide.
We're not aware of a single case so far of a substantive error. Out of tens of thousands of potentially affected borrowers, we're still waiting for the first victim claiming that he was current on his mortgage when the bank seized the home. Even if such victims exist, the proper policy is to make them whole, not to let 100,000 other people keep homes for which they haven't paid.
In their zeal to find and prosecute the great bank defendant, state Attorneys General aren't waiting to see if anyone within their borders was actually harmed. In a civil suit, Ohio's Attorney General Richard Cordray has even charged an Ally employee with fraud for signing the documents without reading them. In a Journal interview, Mr. Cordray compared the employee to Nazis at Nuremberg who claimed they were just following orders.
As far as we know, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn't compared any bank employees to Nazis, but this week she demanded an investigation by the Department of Justice. The next day Attorney General Eric Holder announced that his Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force is examining the issue. But even if one believes this is more than a technicality, the issue is whether the banks violated state laws, not federal ones.
On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid jumped into the fray by demanding a halt to all foreclosures in Nevada, though Nevada is not one of the 23 states affected and therefore presents not even a theoretical violation of the law. The same day, Representative Edolphus Towns (D., N.Y.) demanded a national foreclosure moratorium, which Mr. Reid then endorsed on Friday. Even normally sober Republican Senator Richard Shelby has called for a federal probe of bank regulators.
Yes, the same crew (Mr. Shelby excepted) that ran roughshod over its own transparency rules—not to mention the established customs of the House and Senate—to restructure American medicine is now appalled that some paperwork at private businesses may have been incorrectly processed. To be clear, bank employees appear guilty of sloppy work, and problems in the back office should be corrected, but freezing activity in a $2.8 trillion financial market is the last thing this economy needs and is in no way proportional to the problems reported so far.
Now President Obama is refusing to sign a previously noncontroversial measure to have states recognize notarized documents from other states. Among other things, the bill would have streamlined the process of moving people out of homes they can't afford and therefore would have helped to allow housing markets to clear and begin to heal. Allowing supply to meet demand in housing must not be one of the "progressive agendas" that Mr. Obama recently told Rolling Stone he is committed to advancing.
If evidence emerges of policies or actions that wrongly threw people out of their homes, by all means investigate and prosecute violations of law. But allowing people to live in homes without paying for them is not cost-free. That cost will be borne directly by investors in mortgage-backed securities and mortgage servicing companies, and ultimately by American taxpayers, who now stand behind 90% of new mortgages, thanks to guarantees by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration.
The bigger damage here is to the housing market, which desperately needs to find a bottom by clearing excess inventory and working through foreclosures as rapidly as possible. The moratoriums further politicize the housing market and further delay a housing recovery. In an economy and a financial system engulfed in Washington-created uncertainty, the political class has decided to create still more.
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3)Obama ultimatum makes Assad responsible for any Hizballah violence in Lebanon
Early Friday, Oct. 8, senior US diplomat Frederic Hof landed in Damascus with a strong ultimatum from US President Barack Obama warning Syrian President Bashar Assad that he would be held personally responsible for military action Hizballah may pursue in Beirut or any other part of Lebanon; there would be consequences for the Syrian ruler's standing in Washington and that of his country.
After delivering the message, Obama's emissary was told to remain in Damascus and keep close tabs on the situation over the coming days. Fred Hof is the deputy of US Special Middle East envoy George Mitchell with excellent connections in top Syrian circles. By keeping him in Damascus, Obama makes sure his personal emissary sits on Assad's back and sends him fast updates on any developments in Syria and Lebanon.
The Syrian ruler will be tested next week, when his great ally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spends two days in Lebanon on a visit that has aroused feverish tensions in the country and around the region.
President Obama had four objects in mind when he posted his exceptionally tough ultimatum:
1. The Syrian and Iranian presidents have been leaning hard on Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah to strike as soon as Ahmadinejad is gone to grab Lebanon's centers of power and burn the ground from under Saad Hariri's government.
2. This action carries the high risk of civil war or Israeli military intervention, both of which the Obama administration is intent on averting.
3. When US diplomats asked Arab League foreign ministers gathered in Sirte, Libya, Friday not to slam the door on direct Israel-Palestinian talks, they were informed by the Saudi and Egyptian ministers that this issue was inextricably bound up with the crisis in Lebanon. If Washington agreed to step in firmly to preserve the stability of the Hariri administration, they would see to it that the US is given time to overcome the impasse on the Israeli-Palestinian track over Israeli construction on the West Bank and Jerusalem.
And indeed, the Sirte meeting, while endorsing Mahmoud Abbas' position, gave Washington a month's grace for another push to bring the parties together.
4. The Damascus mission assigned to Hof and the threat it carries of direct American steps against the Assad regime, is unprecedentedly harsh in terms of Washington diplomacy vis-à-vis any Arab government.
Diplomatic sources note that it is also a challenge.
It indicates that Obama is willing to respect the Syrian ruler's responsibility for Lebanon provided he respects the policy limits Washington has laid down for that country. This challenge would require him to break ranks with the Iranian president and Hizballah's leader and pull out of the trilateral plans they have drawn up for undermining the Hariri government. By doing so, Assad would prove that his influence over Nasrallah outweighs that of Iran.
The coming week will show if the US president's ultimatum has hit the mark and Lebanon and the region are saved from impending outbreaks of violence. He did not spell out the nature of the consequences to Assad for disobedience.
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4) Israeli chutzpah a hot commodity in China
By Tal Reshef
Israeli innovation, forward thinking and lack of discipline may just be what Chinese are missing on way to becoming world's biggest economy. Meanwhile, they are being hindered by their own culture of modesty, hierarchy and intolerance to criticism
Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer's recent visit to China was highlighted by an unexpected surprise. The city of Shenzhen, which he visited, declared it regards Israel as a country with which it would like to explore technological cooperation, after initiating a seminar calling Chinese companies to invest in Israel. Not even the United States or South Korea were singled out in this way.
Shenzhen is not alone. The hi-tech fair held in Tianjin this year showcased the Israeli flag, which is the only foreign flag to appear in the event's website.
Israel and China collaborate in virtually every field known to man apart from agriculture, from scientific research to financial prioritization. Chinese mega companies acquire knowledge in Israel and have been known to buy Israeli technological companies.
Why? What is it about Israel that fascinates the Chinese?
China is quickly approaching the longed-for status of being a leading world power. Its purchasing power is enormous, its foreign currency reserves are unmatched. Put together with an overwhelming capability for production it is a country some expect to surpass the US in economic power within a decade.
The Chinese economy heads know that the country's great economic power relies on mass production, which is made possible due to organizational skills, governmental support and cheap labor. But these are not enough to make a leading world power, which also needs to show top technological abilities.
That is why China is putting effort into developing biotech and hi-tech industries by setting up knowledge centers, training hundreds of thousands of engineers and funding technological projects. The one element missing in this grand scheme is innovation. Why?
Culture of modesty, hierarchy
In a word – modesty. The Chinese people are too modest and that inhibits them from engaging in effective team work without having their egos be in the way. Modesty also prevents the Chinese worker from standing up to others in the work place, coming up with new ideas, initiating, solving problems alone and eventually leading innovation.
A study held in China this year shows that the main attributes lacking in the Chinese worker are interpersonal communication skills, problem solving and decision making. The two last ones are critical in terms of development and innovation and prevent the worker from expressing new lines of thought, leaving the task solely to the senior executive. One person, however cannot be the sole source of ideas and innovation.
The Chinese culture is a culture of modesty and respect for the elder. It does not encourage forwardness and boldness, but the complete opposite. It holds hierarchy in high regard and shuns criticism. This causes a situation where all responsibility is placed on the higher ranks which leads to conservatism, lack of imagination and original thinking.
That is where Israel comes into the picture.
Hotbed for innovation
In 1988, during my bachelor degree studies I handed in a paper about Taoism in which I basically disagreed with everything my professor said during the course of the semester. I ended up getting an A+. This is what my professor wrote to me: "I disagree with your conclusions but I appreciate the way you formed them and the daring way in which you approached the project."
Such a response could never have happened in a Chinese university and illustrates what Israel has that China lacks. Israel, with its low level of discipline and high measure of individuality and ego, is a perfect hotbed for innovation and is one of two world centers of innovation, together with California.
It is no surprise that the Pillcam capsule or the ICQ software were developed in Israel, alongside many innovations in the field of electronic warfare, communications and medicine. Israel is a culture of informality and out-of-the-box thinking. In some cases it's an advantage and in others a disadvantage.
That is why the Chinese are so fascinated with Israel and why the city of Shenzhen is so interested in pursuing technological collaborations with Israel.
Being a source of innovation for what will soon become the leading economy in the world is much more than a goldmine. China will give the Israeli economy one of its biggest opportunities.
Tal Reshef is an advisor and lecturer for business and culture and trains employees and executives for relocation.
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5)Keith Ellison's Stealth Jihad
by Denis MacEoin
"Who is Keith Ellison?" There are no simple answers. Throughout a checkered career, this liberal American politician has adopted many guises and presented different messages. He is an African-American who has moved from the fringe to the center of politics. He is a Democrat with a predictably liberal voting record, yet he consorts with groups and individuals that represent a threat to democracy and America. He is a convert to Islam but challenges Islamic orthodoxy on numerous issues legislatively. He identifies strongly with his faith, yet the details of his conversion and his current sentiments as a Muslim are obscure. He considers himself a friend of Israel[1] but, at other times, has appeared on the same platforms with speakers vocal in their opposition to the Jewish state and their support for terrorist groups that have murdered its citizens.
U.S. representative Keith Ellison places his hand on an English translation of the Qur'an once owned by Thomas Jefferson. His wife Kim (center) holds the book as he is sworn in as the first Muslim member of Congress by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (left) on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C., January 4, 2007.
For many, he holds out hope of increasing Muslim influence in the U.S. government. At present, he is only one of two Muslims serving in Congress, the other being André Carson. He has strongly encouraged his fellow Muslims to engage in politics saying,
Getting engaged, getting involved, running for office, helping people run for office, organizing your community—these are the things that are going to make a change come about. We have to build the kind of country that we want with the help of some people who are like-minded. We cannot leave that responsibility to anybody else.[2]
Others, however, worry that he has too great a sympathy for Islamist radicals, of being at best naïve in his associations, and at worst a fifth columnist, someone whose status within the House of Representatives provides cover for anti-American discourse and, possibly, anti-American actions.
He is forty-six and a relative newcomer to Congress with the potential to be reelected to office for some time to come. In due course, more Muslims will stand for state and federal office, which will almost certainly lead to the creation of a minority caucus in which Keith Ellison will be a senior member. It is time to look more closely at Congressman Ellison and his history.
The Nation of Islam
Ellison was born in 1963 into a Catholic family in Detroit. Almost nothing is known of his childhood and teenage years. He studied economics at Wayne State University and in 1982, in his sophomore year, converted to Islam. He has been extremely reluctant to reveal more than a glimpse of the motivations behind his conversion: In a December 2006 interview (about one month after his election to Congress), Ellison said,
I have been a Muslim since age 19, and I am 43 now. Of course my faith strengthens me and guides me. How I came to it is a deeply personal matter, and I'm not ready to talk about it now.[3]
However, in a more recent interview with Al-Jazeera's Riz Khan, he was more forthcoming:
I can't claim that I was the most observant Catholic at the time [of my conversion]. I had begun to really look around and ask myself about the social circumstances of the country, issues of justice, issues of change. When I looked at my spiritual life, and I looked at what might inform social change, justice in society … I found Islam.[4]
As testimonies about conversion to Islam go, this is somewhat atypical as it is rare for converts to have mulled over wide political and social issues before conversion.[5] The spiritual dimension of Ellison's conversion receives just a passing mention. Nothing seems to be known about what mosque he attended, what books he studied, whether he went to Islamic classes or conferences or engaged in any of the religious activities in which young converts usually involve themselves.
What is known is that, for several years, he associated with or belonged to the Nation of Islam (NOI). Ellison himself denies that he was ever a member of the NOI,[6] then as now under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, an anti-white, anti-Semitic, anti-establishment demagogue.[7] In a letter sent in May during the 2006 congressional campaign to the Minnesota Jewish Community Relations Council, Ellison claimed that his association with the NOI had lasted for only eighteen months about the time of the Million Man March in 1995.[8] However, there are problems with this assertion.
On the death of NOI founder Elijah Muhammad, his son Warith Deen Muhammad inherited the movement only to transform it soon after into a new group based on authentic Sunni Islamic principles (later, the American Society of Muslims). Louis Farrakhan remained with Warith Deen Muhammad's organization for a few years, only to break away in order to reestablish the original Nation of Islam in 1978. The NOI was widely condemned within the orthodox Muslim community, which considered Farrakhan's organization to be so far from doctrinal truth, it could not even be regarded as Islamic.[9] While NOI converts have often later moved into normative Islam, there seems to be no evidence of Muslim converts moving the other way; Ellison may be trying to conceal the truth behind both his conversion and the length of his tenure with the controversial NOI.
Despite these disclaimers, Ellison's open support for the NOI for over a decade is a matter of public record. After earning his economics degree in 1987, Ellison moved to Minneapolis and enrolled at the University of Minnesota Law School. While there, he wrote several columns under the pseudonym Keith E. Hakim, in which he spoke respectfully of Farrakhan and defended the NOI's national spokesman and Farrakhan's right-hand man, Khalid Abdul Muhammad, notorious for his anti-white, anti-Jewish, and anti-gay opinions.[10] Elsewhere, Ellison used other pseudonyms, including Keith X Ellison[11] and Keith Ellison Muhammad.[12]
Ellison's involvement with the NOI resurfaced in 1995. He helped to organize the Minnesota contingent of Farrakhan's Million Man March and appeared onstage alongside Khalid Abdul Muhammad, who, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune proclaimed, "If words were swords, the chests of Jews, gays and whites would be pierced." Muhammad was already infamous by the time of the march; indeed, by the 1970s and 1980s, his hate speech and Holocaust denials were well known and continued into the 1990s.[13] Just two years before the rally in a 1993 Kean College, New Jersey speech, Muhammad had described Jews as "hook-nosed, bagel-eatin', lox-eatin' impostors,"[14] a speech that elicited a 1994 resolution of censure from both houses of the U.S. Congress.[15] In his 2006 letter to the Minnesota Jewish Community Relations Council, Ellison wrote that he "did not adequately scrutinize the positions and statements of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and Khalid Muhammed [sic]."[16] As both men were nationally infamous, it is hard to lend credence to Ellison's seeming ignorance.
In fact, Ellison had defended Farrakhan in 1995. Writing as Keith X Ellison, he published a column for Insight News, in which he condemned a Star Tribune editorial cartoon lampooning NOI's leader as a role model for blacks because of his anti-Semitism. Ellison wrote:
Minister Farrakhan is a role model for black youth; however, he is not an anti-Semite. He is a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world. Despite some of the most relentless negative propaganda anyone has ever faced, most Black people regard him as a role model for youth and increasingly, a central voice for our collective aspirations.[17]
Despite this spirited defense, Farrakhan's statements before and after this column belie the claim.[18]
In 1997, two years after the Million Man March, Ellison continued to defend the NOI while displaying further tolerance for hate speech. In October of that year, Joanne Jackson, executive director of the Minnesota Initiative Against Racism (MIAR), created an uproar by saying to a group meeting held in Temple Israel Synagogue that she considered Jews "the most racist white people I know."[19] At a subsequent MIAR board meeting, according to the Star Tribune, Ellison defended Jackson on behalf of the Nation of Islam, stating, "We stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to [Ms. Jackson], and by her right to express her views without sanction."[20]
His Record in Congress
A year later in 1998, Ellison ran for the Democratic-Farmers-Labor Party nomination for state representative, going by the name Keith Ellison-Muhammad. In this, his first outing, he was unsuccessful, but in 2002, having dropped Muhammad from his name, he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives and reelected in 2004. As a state representative, he showed signs of a more balanced attitude, something that was later to emerge more clearly when he became a national representative. For example, in 2004, he led an ethics complaint against State Rep. Arlon Lindner after Lindner made remarks in the state congress, saying homosexuals had not died in the Holocaust.[21] Ellison was backed by sixty other members of the Minnesota State House and by U.S. Senator Norm Coleman.[22] In the end, the vote on the motion of censure failed in a 2-2 draw in the Minnesota House Ethics Committee.[23] Lindner was eventually denied the Republican nomination in the 2004 elections; for his efforts, Ellison picked up support from the local Jewish publication, American Jewish World.[24]
In 2006, Ellison ran for the U.S. Congress and won with 56 percent of the vote in Minnesota's fifth congressional district.[25] His election was controversial, sparking some extreme reactions to the fact that he was a Muslim[26] and asked to be sworn into office on a Qur'an.[27]
Ellison's record in Congress has been in line with broad Democratic and liberal policy, and he has made no attempt to use his position to advance projects with an overtly Islamic or Islamist bent. Sometimes, in fact, he has done quite the opposite. For example, on March 21, 2008, on the eve of the summer Olympics to be held in Beijing that year, he issued a statement criticizing both the Chinese and Sudanese governments over their policies in Tibet and Darfur[28]; many a Muslim would not have openly condemned a Muslim country such as Sudan in this way. Ellison has praised religious freedom in the United States, saying, "Religious tolerance has a much longer pedigree in America than some of the intolerance we've seen lately."[29] This perspective would run counter to the viewpoint, embodied in much Muslim jurisprudence, in which restrictions on nonbelievers are a doctrinal and legal requirement.[30]
Ellison defies Islamic norms in other ways. He is pro-choice, not just for the first trimester, but beyond. Most Muslim jurists do not permit abortion after four months; some not at all.[31] He supports emergency contraception for those serving in the armed forces while most Muslim scholars permit contraception only in limited circumstances and not for what may be deemed a licentious purpose.[32] He permits interest on credit cards; Islam forbids the taking of interest under any circumstances. He opposes job discrimination based on sexual orientation despite the fact that homosexuals are discriminated against by Islamic law in an extreme way and approves of same-sex marriage, something unthinkable in Islam. He has called for the enforcement of laws on anti-gay hate crimes while Islamic law demands the execution of homosexuals.[33] He opposes the death penalty, which is a regular punishment under Shari'a law and supports the regulation but not the banning of online gambling: In Islamic law, all forms of gambling, even insurance, are prohibited. He has also voted to support federal funding for homeland security, which some elements in the Muslim community denounce as a thinly-veiled assault on the umma (Islamic nation).[34]
On a personal level, when in Minneapolis, Ellison attends the Masjid an-Nur mosque,[35] whose imam, Makram El-Amin, he has known since 1996.[36] El-Amin has a reputation as an advocate of interracial harmony and, in particular, interfaith relations. In addition, Ellison has publicly denounced the architect of Muslim extremism, Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), calling him one of several theorists "responsible for what we would regard today as violent extremism with what I call a Muslim veneer."[37] All in all, Ellison could be viewed as a garden variety liberal politician, someone whose youthful associations have been jettisoned in favor of a more sober but still progressive approach to American governance and efforts to achieve social justice.
The CAIR Connection
But things are not as simple as they look, and Ellison may not be quite the reformed public official that he appears to be. Not long after sending the 2006 letter to the Minnesota Jewish Community Relations Council, Ellison received major funds to help finance his imminent election campaign from several Muslim organizations and individuals, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).[38] The donated money included thousands of dollars raised by Nihad Awad, CAIR's executive director (a man with a history of support for movements including Hamas).[39]
Founded in 1994, CAIR is ostensibly an advocate for religious pluralism and civil liberties, especially as applied to America's Muslim community. Its public image is that of a liberal, human rights-based group that seeks to bridge American Muslims and the secular democracy of the United States.[40] The council's many critics have argued, however, that it is a front for the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas. CAIR had close links to the Holy Land Foundation,[41] an Islamic charity that channeled millions of dollars to Hamas and which was found guilty in 2008 on charges including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, providing material support to a foreign terrorist, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. In 2008, the FBI cut off contacts with CAIR over concerns that the organization had its roots in a Hamas-support network.[42] Ellison has continued to defend the group, but even before the FBI severed relations with CAIR, it had achieved such a level of notoriety that Ellison could not pretend to be unaware of problems with the organization.
CAIR's two founders, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, were formerly officers of the Islamic Association of Palestine, an organization intimately linked to the senior echelons of Hamas.[43] Awad has repeatedly shown support for Hamas and its military actions against Israel, has acted as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee, and has often defended Islamist organizations, including the Holy Land Foundation, against U.S. attempts to investigate and, where possible, indict them.[44] Ahmad is perhaps best known for a statement made before a crowd of Californian Muslims in 1998 and reported in the San Ramon Valley Herald: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth."[45] Although the statement has been denied by Ahmed and CAIR over the years, Daniel Pipes has provided much evidence as to its veracity.[46] Ahmad has also served as president of the Islamic Association of Palestine, a fund-raising organization for Hamas.[47] Another donor and CAIR national board chairman, Parvez Ahmed, has also supported Hamas and Hezbollah.[48]
Thus, any connections Ellison might have to CAIR are, at best, unwise for a politician seeking to improve the nation's understanding of Islam and at worst an indication of his true sentiments. On October 14, 2006, shortly before the national congressional elections, Ellison appeared as the keynote speaker at a closed-door meeting of CAIR in Pembroke Pines, Florida.[49] While attending CAIR-Tampa's sixth annual banquet in 2008, Ellison called on listeners to a local Tampa radio station to support Sami al-Arian. Arian, a former professor at University of South Florida, confessed two years earlier to conspiring to supply goods and services to Palestinian Islamic Jihad,[50] a terrorist organization responsible for numerous suicide attacks on Israel.
In 2009, after the FBI cut off contact with CAIR, Ellison spoke at no fewer than three fundraising dinners for the organization and gave videotaped statements at others and has also appeared with CAIR officials at meetings on healthcare reform and Eid festival celebrations.[51] In October 2009, he rebuked four House of Representatives Republican members who called for an investigation of CAIR for infiltration of government committees.[52] Although the congressmen were focused on the question of CAIR's role, Ellison cast the inquiry as a modern-day witch hunt, declaring: "The idea that we should investigate Muslim interns as spies is a blow to the very principle of religious freedom that our Founding Fathers cherished so dearly."[53] Soon afterwards, he attended a CAIR fundraising event in Washington and called for CAIR supporters to apply for jobs in the incoming Obama administration.[54]
Associations with Other Islamist Groups
Muslim American Society: Ellison's connections to other groups such as the Muslim American Society (MAS) reinforce questions about where he stands. MAS was founded in 1993 following an arrangement reached between Muslim Brotherhood leaders in America and Egypt. MAS is, in fact, the Brotherhood's American chapter.[55] That the Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) represents a significant threat to Western civilization is made clear from this excerpt from a 1991 briefing captured by the FBI:
The process of settlement [of Islam in the United States] is a "Civilization-Jihadist" process with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that all their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" their miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all religions. … It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes.[56]
In December 2002, for example, MAS used its website to denigrate non-Muslims, speaking of "the degenerate moral condition of the Jews and Christians" and declaring: "If you gain a victory over the men of [the] Jews, kill them," and "May Allah destroy the Jews."[57] It also issued statements endorsing terrorism and praising Hamas.[58] According to an extensive dossier prepared by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, MAS has links to Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Its websites have praised Muslim Brotherhood ideologue and godfather of modern Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, and provided links to several extremist and terrorist organizations. Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation and the public face of the society, has claimed that the United States is engaged in a war against Islam and has defended a long list of terrorism-linked organizations and individuals. The MAS magazine, The American Muslim, often contains references to suicide bombings as "martyrdom operations" and to terrorists as "freedom fighters" while condemning U.S. antiterrorism actions. At MAS conferences, extremist speakers address their audiences while Islamist and jihadi literature is on sale.[59]
It is, then, disturbing to see that one year after his first election to Congress, Ellison was the keynote speaker at MAS-Minnesota's fourth annual convention in May 2007.[60] The following spring, Ellison was again the keynote speaker at the MAS-Minnesota convention, appearing alongside Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted coconspirator of the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.[61]
Islamic Society of North America: Ellison also enjoys a relationship with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization that has been linked by several agencies to support for terrorism. In December 2003, U.S. senators Charles Grassley and Max Baucus of the Senate Committee on Finance formally identified ISNA as one of twenty-five American Muslim organizations in a probe into groups that might "finance terrorism and perpetuate violence."[62] More recently, in July 2008, Federal prosecutors in Dallas filed documents showing a link between ISNA and Hamas.[63] In an account of the 2008 conference, Dave Gaubatz, coauthor of Muslim Mafia, writes:
In 2008, ISNA had several booths with anti-American slogans on shirts, along with pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israel garments … It was easy to find DVDs, books, manuals, and pamphlets calling America a terrorist organization and for the destruction of our country and Israel. It was very easy to find material calling for killing innocent men, women, and children in American [sic] who did not believe in an Islamic Ummah (Nation) worldwide and under Sharia law. … If you wanted Muslim Brotherhood material, this was the location to obtain the intelligence you desired.[64]
Despite these troubling connections, Ellison has spoken at ISNA's 2007, 2008, and 2009 conventions, events estimated to be the largest annual Muslim gatherings in the Western hemisphere.[65] In 2008, Ellison spoke on "mobilizing the Muslim political machine."[66]
Muslim Public Affairs Council: Ellison also spoke in December 2006 to the sixth annual convention of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC),[67] a seemingly moderate body that seeks to conceal its strong anti-Semitic,[68] pro-Hamas, and pro-Hezbollah views.[69] Again, he addressed a town hall forum during MPAC's "Activate '08 Election Campaign," at one of the Council's "Rock the Muslim Vote" events.[70]
North American Imams Federation: He also addressed the North American Imams Federation (NAIF) at their November 19, 2006 conference in Minneapolis.[71] Many of NAIF's imams, in charge of mosques across the United States, are trained through an institution called the American Open University (AOU), a distance-learning medium for Muslims wishing to train as clergy. The AOU is a radical school that emphasizes the paramount role of Shari'a law in an American context. Its chairman Jaafar Sheikh Idris regards democracy as "the antithesis of Islam," arguing that human beings have no right to make their own laws. "No one," he claims, "can be a Muslim who makes or freely accepts or believes that anyone has the right to make or accept legislation that is contrary to the divine law."[72] He also declared that no Muslim elected to Congress can swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution and remain a Muslim "for in order to pledge loyalty to the constitution, a Muslim would have to abandon part of his belief and embrace the belief of secularism—which is practically another religion."[73] That Keith Ellison supports an institution linked to someone who holds views in such deep conflict with normative American values is deeply troubling.
Conclusion
Once, in an interview with CNN's Glenn Beck, Ellison said, "There's no one who is more patriotic than I am. And so, you know, I don't need to prove my patriotic stripes."[74] Judged by his legislative record, he is well within the mainstream of American life. But he has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution despite the fact that he fundraises for groups whose leadership would replace that Constitution with the laws of Islam.
Does Ellison simply display poor choice in his associates as he did when younger? Or should his motives be questioned at a higher level? Are there no moderate Muslim groups he can speak to or support? Why does he return again and again to address and support Islamist organizations, some with ties to terrorism?
What politician, careful of the press and the generality of his constituents, does not trouble himself or his staff to check out the bona fides of a group he may be speaking to, all the more so if that group already has a less than savory reputation? Ellison's constituents, the American public, and his fellow congressmen, deserve answers to the many questions his curious bipolarity raises. The mixed messages he gives may be an expression of deep-seated contradictions. Few politicians hold self-contradictory views for long and often abandon those they recognize to be potential irritants to voters. Ellison's worrisome affiliations have drawn little criticism from the mainstream media. It is possible that this reluctance to expose comes from a combination of a dislike to criticize Muslims and an ignorance of what links to CAIR, MAS, and other bodies and individuals really imply.
It is also not at all improbable that Ellison is aware of and makes use of the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya, the principle that it is permissible for a Muslim to lie in order to protect Islam and its reputation from harm, or to do so as part of waging jihad with nonbelievers. From CAIR to ISNA to MPAC, Muslim groups in the United States claim to be victims of discrimination or outright persecution at the hands of state agencies or individuals. They have mastered the art of being, in a British phrase, "economical with the truth." Keith Ellison may well be among them.
Denis MacEoin is editor of The Middle East Quarterly.
[1] Natasha Mosgovaya, "Head to Head/Rep. Keith Ellison, Do You Think the US Could Live with an Iranian Bomb?" Ha'aretz (Tel Aviv), May 24, 2010.
[2] "Ellison Inspires Voters at 1st 'Rock the Muslim Vote' Townhall Forum," Muslim Public Affairs Council, Sept. 24, 2008.
[3] Alan Tuttle, "Congressman-Elect Keith Ellison: An Interview with the First Muslim Congressman," The Philadelphia Jewish Voice, Jan. 2007.
[4] "Riz Khan's One on One—Keith Ellison," Al-Jazeera TV (Doha), Feb. 20, 2010.
[5] See, for example, Uriya Shavit and Frederic Wiesenbach, "Muslim Strategies to Convert Western Christians," Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2009, pp. 3-14; "Converts (Reverts) to Islam," Islam Awareness website, accessed June 17, 2010; "Converts to Islam: Stories of New Muslims," accessed June 17, 2010.
[6] The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2006.
[7] "Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam," The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, accessed June 17, 2010.
[8] Scott W. Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman," The Weekly Standard, Oct. 9, 2006.
[9] Michael Young, "The Problem with the Nation of Islam," Islam for Today, Aug. 1, 2001.
[10] Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[11] Keith X Ellison, "Editorial cartoon insulted our intelligence," Insight News (Graphic Services, Inc.), Nov. 6, 1995.
[12] "Keith Ellison-Muhammad will run for house 58B seat," Insight News, 1998; The Washington Post, Sept. 11, 2006.
[13] "Khalid Muhammad's Message," The Nizkor Project, accessed June 18, 2010; Barry Mehler, "African American Racism in the Academic Community," The Review of Education, Fall 1993; "Muslims and Afrocentrics speak out," conference, New York, Dec. 22, 1991; "Transcript of Mohammad's November 9 Speech," Barnard Bulletin, Nov. 23, 1992, p. 12-3, Dec. 7, 1992, pp. 14-6, Dec. 14, 1992, pp. 10-7.
[14] "Kean College Lecture 'Khalid Muhammad,'" The New Jersey Record, accessed June 18, 2010.
[15] Amendment 1368 to Senate bill 1150, U.S. Senate, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., Feb. 2, 1994; H567: House res. 343, U.S. House of Representatives, 103rd Cong., 2nd sess., Feb. 3, 1994.
[16] Gabriel Schoenfeld, "Jews, Muslims, and the Democrats," Commentary Magazine, Jan. 2007; Andrew Walden, "Farrakhan's Candidate," FrontPageMagazine.com, Sept. 19, 2006.
[17] Ellison, "Editorial Cartoon Insulted Our Intelligence."
[18] "Farrakhan in His Own Words: On Jews: On 'Jewish Conspiracies,' On the Holocaust, On Jewish involvement in the slave trade, On Israel, On Dialogue with Jews," Anti-Defamation League, accessed June 18, 2010.
[19] Scott Johnson, "Who Is Keith Ellison? 2" PowerlineBlog, June 5, 2006; idem, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[20] Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[21] News and Features, Minnesota Public Radio, Apr. 24, 2003; "Minn. Kampf-Politics—Minnesota state representative Arlon Lindner," The Advocate, Apr. 15, 2003.
[22] Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Mar. 12, 2003.
[23] News and Features, Minnesota Public Radio, Apr. 24, 2003.
[24] Citypages, Sept. 1, 2006; Johnson, "Louis Farrakhan's First Congressman."
[25] "Official Election Results—Nov. 7, 2006," Minnesota Secretary of State.
[26] WorldNetDaily, Dec. 6, 2006.
[27] USA Today, Dec. 1, 2006.
[28] The Minnesota Post, Mar. 24, 2008.
[29] McClatchy News Service, Mar. 7, 2007; Melissa Rogers, "Representative Ellison and State Department Join Hands on Public Diplomacy," Melissa Rogers, Mar. 7, 2007.
[30] See Yohanan Friedman, Tolerance and Coercion in Islam: Interfaith Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge, 2003).
[31] See, for example, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, "Abortion from an Islamic Perspective,"
Islam Online, Jan. 18, 2004; "Abortion: Forbidden at All Stages?" European Council for Fatwa and Research, Islam Online, Dec. 13, 2004.
[32] "Is Contraception allowed in Islam?" Islam Awareness, accessed June 18, 2010.
[33] "Islam and Homosexuality," Mission Islam, accessed June 18, 2010; Denis MacEoin, "Why Do Muslims Execute Innocent People?" Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2006, pp. 15-25.
[34] For Ellison's views on these and other issues, see "Representative Keith M. Ellison (MN)," Project Vote Smart, accessed June 18, 2010; "Keith Ellison," On the Issues, accessed June 18, 2010.
[35] Reuters, Sept. 18, 2006.
[36] The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2007.
[37] "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Nov. 23, 2009.
[38] Joe Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's Dangerous Liaisons," FrontPage Magazine, May 30, 2007; "Keith Ellison's Muslim Brotherhood Support," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Apr. 22, 2010.
[39] "Apologists or Extremists: Nihad Awad," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed June 18, 2010; Joel Mowbray, "Democrats' Dilemma," The Washington Times, Sept. 24, 2006.
[40] Daniel Pipes, "CAIR: 'Moderate' Friends of Terror," The New York Post, Apr. 22, 2002.
[41] "Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR): Links to Holy Land Foundation," Anti-Defamation League, Mar. 2, 2010.
[42] Mary Jacoby, "FBI Cuts off CAIR over Hamas Questions," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jan. 29, 2009.
[43] Matthew Levitt, Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 149.
[44] "Apologists or Extremists: Nihad Awad," accessed June 18, 2010.
[45] San Ramon Valley Herald, July 4, 1998; Nonie Darwish, Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Rejected the Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror (New York: Sentinel HC, 2006), p. 140.
[46] Daniel Pipes, "CAIR and the San Ramon Valley Herald," DanielPipes.org, Oct. 20, 2003, updated Dec. 11, 2006.
[47] Matthew Epstein, "Saudi Support for Islamic Extremism in the United States," testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, Sept. 10, 2003.
[48] Parvez Ahmed, ISNA 44th Annual Conference in Rosemont, Illinois, Aug. 31 - Sept. 3, 2007, cited in "CAIR's True Colors," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jan. 30, 2009.
[49] Joe Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's Mysterious CAIR Meeting," FrontPage Magazine, Oct. 16, 2006; "Protesting CAIR's Candidates," Little Green Footballs, Oct. 13, 2006.
[50] The Tampa Tribune, Apr. 15, 2006; The St. Petersburg Times, Mar. 6, 2009.
[51] "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[52] Keith Ellison, "Tri-Caucus Welcomes All Interns and Staff," U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., Congressional Record, 111th Congress (2009-10), 1st sess., Oct. 26, 2009; "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[53] Ellison, "Tri-Caucus Welcomes All Interns and Staff"; "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[54] "Rep. Keith Ellison, the Islamists' Man on Capitol Hill."
[55] "Muslim American Society: The Investigative Project on Terrorism Dossier," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed June 18, 2010.
[56] Mohamed Akram, "An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America," May 19, 1991, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, accessed June 18, 2010.
[57] Joe Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's MAS Hate Affair," FrontPage Magazine, May 30, 2008; "Violent and Hateful Statements Published by the Muslim American Society," screenshots from the MAS website, Americans against Hate, accessed June 18, 2010.
[58] Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's MAS Hate Affair"; "Mehdi Bray's Photos," of Ahmed Yassin, the founder of and ex-spiritual leader of Hamas, screenshots from the MAS website, Americans against Hate, Mar. 17, 2009.
[59] "Muslim American Society: The Investigative Project on Terrorism Dossier."
[60] Fox News, Jan. 8, 2009.
[61] Kaufman, "Keith Ellison's MAS Hate Affair"; The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 24, 2003.
[62] "Senators Request Tax Information on Muslim Charities for Probe," Militant Islam Monitor, Feb. 23, 2005.
[63] Fox News, Jan. 17, 2009.
[64] Dave Gaubatz, "The ISNA Conference," The American Thinker, July 2, 2009; "Conspiracy Theories, Terror Support Found In ISNA Convention Literature," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Aug. 27, 2009.
[65] "Congressman Keith Ellison at ISNA 2007," Mujahideen Ryder, Sept. 22, 2007; "Ramadan—A Time for Change," 45th Annual ISNA Convention program, Columbus, Oh., Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2008, p. 11; Liali Albana, "Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness—ISNA 2009," Elan, July 9, 2009.
[66] "Ramadan—A Time for Change," p. 11.
[67] "Keith Ellison addresses MPAC and the Muslim American public," YouTube, posted Feb. 9, 2007.
[68] "Hate Speech Long an MPAC Specialty," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Feb. 10, 2010.
[69] "," The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Mar. 25, 2010.
[70] 2008 MPAC Annual Report, Muslim Public Affairs Council, Washington, D.C., 2008.
[71] M. Zuhdi Jasser, "Congressman Ellison Carries the Islamists' Water," Pundicity, July 19, 2007.
[72] Dr. Ja'far Sheikh Idris, "Shoora and Democracy: A Conceptual Analysis," Islaam.com, accessed June 23, 2010.
[73] Dr. Jaafar [sic] Sheikh Idris, "Separation of Church and State," Jaafaridris.com, accessed June 23, 2010.
[74] CNN, Nov. 14, 2006.
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6)Dueling Fatwas
By Daniel Pipes
http://www.meforum.org/pipes/8942/dueling-fatwas
Reciprocal death sentences raging between Yemen and the United States offer a glimpse of warfare in the internet age.
The censored cartoon of Muhammad (far left) with Jesus, Buddha and Joseph Smith.
The topic opens with South Park, an iconoclastic adult cartoon program on Comedy Central, which in April mocked the prohibition on depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. An obscure website, RevolutionMuslim.com (whose proprietor was subsequently arrested on terrorism-related charges), responded by threatening the show's writers, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Panicked, Comedy Central censored further mention of Muhammad.
Enter Molly Norris, a cartoonist at the Seattle Weekly, who showed solidarity with Parker and Stone by posting a facetious "Everyone Draw Muhammad Day" appeal on Facebook, hoping that a host of caricaturists would "counter Comedy Central's message about feeling afraid." To Norris' surprise, dismay, and confusion, others took her idea seriously, prompting Facebook campaigns for and against her "day" and the Pakistani government temporarily to block Facebook. Norris disowned her initiative, apologized for it, and even befriended the local Council on American-Islamic Relations representative, to little avail.
Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist leader in Yemen, responded in July by issuing a death sentence on Norris, inaccurately but pungently called a fatwa. On consulting with the police, Norris in September not only went underground but "went ghost" and disappeared entirely, including her name and her profession.
Molly Norris, ex-cartoonist.
Awlaki's "fatwa" on Norris, however, is only half the story. The other half concerns a U.S. government "fatwa" on Awlaki.
Awlaki was born in New Mexico in 1971 to well-connected Muslim Yemeni parents. His father, Nasser, studied and worked in the United States until 1978, when the family returned to Yemen. Anwar went to the United States as a student in 1991 and spent the next decade in various degree programs (engineering, education), only to emerge as an Al-Qaeda-style Islamist figure, comparable to Osama bin Laden both in his ideological fanaticism and his operational involvement in terrorism. Arrested in connection with the 9/11 attacks, he was inexplicably released and allowed to move to a remote region of Yemen, beyond government control, where he currently lives.
U.S. law enforcement connects Awlaki to several violent attacks on Americans, including the Ft. Hood shootings, the attempted bombing of a Northwest flight approaching Detroit, and the Times Square bomber. Awlaki's terrorist record earned him a unique distinction: in April, for the first time in the nearly 250-year history of the United States, the government placed him on a "kill list," making him the only U.S. citizen to be condemned to death by his own government without benefit of a legal process. Both the military and the intelligence services are targeting him; as one unnamed official puts it, "he's in everybody's sights."
The poster drawn by Molly Norris.In response, his father initiated in August, with help from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, a lawsuit against the U.S. government that challenges the targeting of Awlaki as illegal.
This extraordinary trading of fatwas prompts several observations.
First, Norris and all Americans currently live under the "Rushdie Rules," which punish whoever disrespects Islam, Muhammad, or the Koran. Make fun of Muhammad and you're on your own. Local and national politicians had nothing to say about her plight. Journalists, usually keen to protect one of their own, went silent. No organization sprung up to raise money for her protection.
Second, the internet stands at the heart of this entire episode. It turned Norris' jokey idea into an international incident, brought news of it to Awlaki in remote Yemen, and allowed him to direct his American operatives. A mere twenty years ago, none of this could have taken place.
Third, the internet and Islamism have together privatized war. At will, an American living in Yemen can disrupt the life of an American in Washington State. The U.S. government has declared war on a citizen.
Fourth, Awlaki is a plain terrorist, sowing death and disruption, whereas the U.S. government's "kill list" is defensive. One is evil, the other is moral.
Fifth, why the inconsistency, whereby the U.S. government permits itself "targeted killings" but denies this tool to Israel?
Finally, Awlaki stands at an unprecedented crossroads of death declarations, with his targeting Norris even as the U.S. government targets him. This is as startling in an Islamic context as it is in an American one. The boundaries of warfare are being stretched in novel, strange, and frightening ways.
Mr. Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
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7)Why I am a black Tea Party patriot opposed to Barack Obama.
By Lloyd Marcus
I've seen lives ruined by the welfare dependency backed by this Democratic president. We need the dignity of self-reliance
Obama was marketed as a "new" kind of politician.
Hogwash! Black America has suffered the devastating consequences of numerous Obamas, mostly whites ones, for many years.
Here is my personal story.
A urine smell permeated the stairwell. In the darkness due to smashed light bulbs, the sound of broken wine bottles underfoot echoed off the concrete walls. I was nine years old. With the elevators out of service half the time due to vandalism, I was forced many times to take the scary trek into the shadow of death up the stairwell to our sixth-floor apartment in the projects of east Baltimore.
This was a far cry from the brand spanking new building we had moved into just two years earlier. I remember our excitement when my parents, three younger siblings and I moved in our apartment. It was a dream come true – moving from our leaky-roofed ghetto into a place where everything, including the appliances, were new.
We were one of the first in the 11-story, all black residents building. While a few people kept their apartments lovely, most seemed committed to destroying the building.
All I kept hearing was that everything was the "white man's fault". Even at the age of nine, I sarcastically thought to myself, "how can we stop these evil white people from sneaking in here at night peeing in the stairwell, leaving broken wine bottles, smashing the light bulbs and attacking people?"
So, my early experience living in the government project taught me that some folks simply have a ghetto mindset. I also witnessed the trap of government welfare. And why were so many around me angry and violent – despite getting free housing, food and healthcare?
It was the late 50s when my dad was one of the first blacks to break the colour barrier into the Baltimore fire department. The sight of him in his crisp blue firefighter's uniform made everyone proud, though none more than me. With dad's new job, the government raised our rent to $72 per month. I remember my dad saying, "Seventy-two dollars! They must be crazy. We're movin'!"
We moved to a suburban black community. I truly believe I would not be who I am today had we stayed in the projects.
Several of my cousins stayed enslaved to the system and the bigotry of low expectations. Because true self-esteem comes from personal achievement, they possessed very little. They lived angry and bitter lives, consumed with serial impregnating, out-of-wedlock births and substance abuse. An outrageously high number died prematurely.
So, when I hear politicians, such as Barack Obama, pandering to the so-called poor of America, it turns my stomach. I've witnessed the deterioration of the human spirit, wasted lives and suffering that happens when government becomes "daddy".
Lloyd Marcus, who is riding with the Tea Party Express, will be blogging the midterms election campaign.
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8)The Marine Who Has Barney Frank Worried In a district where Scott Brown won, Sean Bielat mounts a serious challenge
By JAMES TARANTO
'I don't consider myself a tea party candidate," Sean Bielat tells me over dinner. "I don't know what it means." But an hour later Mr. Bielat, Rep. Barney Frank's Republican challenger, receives a hero's welcome at the Spindle City Tea Party, a gathering of nearly 200 citizen- activists in this economically depressed mill town. As he approaches the stage, they stand, applauding and chanting "Go, Sean, go!"
What he tells them is consistent with this reporter's view of the tea party: "I'm starting to think that people want to take this country back—that people no longer believe that the government has the answers for our betterment, that the government can tell them how they should use their money. People believe that they have the power to create their own opportunity, if only they are given the chance. . . . There is so much wrong in Washington, I almost don't know where to start."
Mr. Bielat holds some views that this crowd would find uncongenial. For one, he favors raising the "cap" on wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax—a glaring exception to his opposition to tax hikes. Another comes up during the tea party event, when a portly man with a white beard asks him: "Will you introduce legislation creating term limits in the federal government?"
The crowd applauds the question, and Mr. Bielat tries to duck it. He points out that the event isn't supposed to be a Q&A and offers to speak with the man one-on-one later. "I think people are interested to know," the man persists, and others shout in assent.
Mr. Bielat relents—and responds with aplomb. "The answer's no. Here's why. I think that there's a real advantage to us bearing the responsibility of ensuring that there's turnover in the Congress. I think there's real advantage for us ensuring that we don't allow congressional staffers, who aren't elected, to have power because they stay there for generations. So I do understand the arguments for term limits. I personally oppose term limits." It's clear that he hasn't convinced everybody, but about half the crowd applauds. Not bad for a 35-year-old first-time candidate.
A native of Rochester, N.Y., Mr. Bielat caught the "political bug" as a teenager, when he did a stint as a House page. After earning a master's in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, he went to work as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. and an executive for iRobot Corp., a defense contractor based in Bedford, Mass. He's also a new father; his wife gave birth to their son, Theodore, over the summer.
Before Harvard, Mr. Bielat served four years as an officer in the Marines. He's still a major in the reserves, but he left active duty in 2002 and hasn't served in combat. I ask if that is a source of regret, and he says yes: "I disagreed with us going into Iraq, but all my Marines were there, all my friends were there. I wanted to be there. Instead I was sitting at Harvard, watching it on TV."
Mr. Bielat's varied résumé is quite a contrast with that of Mr. Frank, who is twice the challenger's age yet has spent more than half his adult life in Congress. "Of his 45 years of work experience, 44 have been either in political office or working for somebody in political office," Mr. Bielat says of the incumbent. "The other one was teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School." (No, Mr. Bielat did not have the congressman as a professor.)
Can he win? In a district that gave 63% of its vote to Barack Obama, Mr. Frank has to be reckoned the heavy favorite. But Mr. Bielat's quest does not look quite as quixotic as it did last October, when he quit his job at iRobot to pursue it.
Then, Massachusetts had the biggest single-party congressional delegation in the country: 12 Democrats and no Republicans. By the time Mr. Bielat made his candidacy official in February, the numbers had improved to 11 to 1 with Scott Brown's election to the Senate the preceding month.
Mr. Brown narrowly outpolled Democrat Martha Coakley in the district, which is politically more diverse than the Massachusetts stereotype. In addition to the ultraliberal Boston suburbs of Brookline and Newton—where Mr. Bielat and Mr. Frank, respectively, live—it includes more conservative outer suburbs and the blue-collar area just east of Rhode Island, beset by unemployment (13.3% in Fall River) and rife with Reagan Democrats.
Mr. Bielat says Mr. Frank "hasn't been tested. His support isn't nearly as strong as people assume, because he hasn't had a real opponent since 1982." Last month Mr. Bielat released an internal poll showing Mr. Frank ahead by only 10 points, 48% to 38%.
Mr. Frank dismissed the survey, but his own actions suggest he is worried. Two weeks ago Bill Clinton traveled to the district to stump for Mr. Frank—a visit that backfired, to hear Mr. Bielat tell it: "The minute I heard that he was bringing Bill Clinton to campaign, I shouted for joy, because it said a lot about the state of this campaign. . . . I don't think Bill Clinton being here won him a whole lot of votes. It got me a lot of money and coverage." Mr. Bielat raised some $400,000 just in the two weeks after the Sept. 14 primary.
Mr. Bielat notes that Mr. Frank has "pretty steadily maintained a 10-to-1 advantage" in funding. But some of that money has helped Mr. Bielat's name recognition. In the car on the way to dinner, we heard Mr. Frank's first radio ad of the campaign, which attacks Mr. Bielat by name for opposing the eponymous Dodd-Frank "financial reform" law. Mr. Bielat laughed and said he's grateful to the incumbent for letting voters know who he is.
Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for OpinionJournal.com.
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9)What Do Dems Have Against Women?
By Kirsten Powers Info
The Jerry Brown campaign's “whore” comment wasn't the first to slur against a Republican woman. And look where the attacks are coming from—progressives and liberal women.
“What about saying that she’s a whore?”
No, I wasn’t eavesdropping on a Duke fraternity meeting. This was the suggestion of an aide to Democrat Jerry Brown on how to deal with his GOP rival for the California governorship, Meg Whitman.
Brown’s response? “Well I’m going to use that.”
Not anymore.
Once a tape of the conversation was leaked, the Brown campaign apologized.
While we, sadly, are all too familiar with the casual misogynistic comment, what perhaps is more surprising is where these slurs lately have been coming from—progressive bastions like the Brown camp, and liberal women.
Last month, liberal talk show host Stephanie Miller laughed uproariously when a female guest on her show said that if she ever met Michelle Malkin, “I would kick [her] right in the nuts,” and warned, “Wear a cup, lady.”
Charming.
Or how about this: “You have to lift their skirts to find out if they are women. You sure can’t find out by how they vote.” This is what Democratic Rep. Janis Baird Sontany of Nashville said earlier this year of her female GOP colleagues.
Or this: “Sarah Palin may be a lady, but she ain't no woman,” as Cinta Wilson wrote during the tsunami of anti-Palin hysteria in 2008. In her Salon piece, Wilson went on to refer to the Alaska governor as a “Christian Stepford wife in a ‘sexy librarian’ costume” and the GOP’s “hardcore pornographic centerfold spread.”
Who needs misogynist men when liberal women will do the job for you, often sounding that shopworn theme that women GOP candidates are somehow inauthentic women?
Palin, of course, has been the target of many such smears. She was derided as, “Bush in a skirt” on Huffington Post, and at The Washington Post, Wendy Doniger blogged of then-VP candidate Palin: “Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.”
Not that liberal men are much better.
Ann Coulter is often referred to as “Mann-coulter” on political blogs in an effort to de-feminize her. And MSNBC’s Keith Olberman once referred to Malkin as a “mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick.”
In a Salon column last month headlined “Forget about the tea party—what about the crumpets?” Gene Lyons wrote that, “The most entertaining aspect of the 2010 election season has been the rise of the right-wing cuties—political celebrities whose main qualification is looking terrific on television. From where I sit, in a comfortable chair in front of the tube, the GOP Cupcake Factor has enlivened an otherwise dreary campaign season.”
You, Sir, are a pig
The “cuties” in question are a former Governor (Palin), a current Congresswoman (Michelle Bachmann) and a current Senatorial candidate (Christine O’Donnell.) Lyons take on O’Donnell was this: “Everybody knows some poor fool who married a woman like that.”
To anyone who believes that a man with the same religious views as O’Donnell would have received the same nonstop vicious mockery, I have one name for you: Mike Huckabee.
Sadly, it seems, that sexist attacks do stick. According to a study, sponsored by Women’s Media Center, the WCF Foundation and Political Parity, and conducted by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, if men use sexist language to attack their female opponent, her support is likely to drop significantly. “Sexism matters,” Siobhan Bennett, the president of the Women's Campaign Forum and a former Democratic congressional candidate told Politico. “It is a prism that massively influences how we see these candidates.”
Yes, sexism matters—as does gender. But whereas you never hear anyone claim that men should vote a particular way because of their gender, feminists have no trouble treating women like pre-schoolers who have to be herded into the right camp, a camp that is apparently preordained at birth. In an interview with Katie Couric last year, Gloria Steinem said that where conservative women stand “is squarely against what most women need and want. If [women] still vote for them, they are voting against themselves, which is quite tragic to me.”
This kind of attitude should be antithetical to feminist thought because it is infantilizing to women.
Politically, I agree very little with any of the conservative women mentioned in this column. But they have the same right as any woman to be treated with respect and dignity. Every time anyone—liberal, conservative, man or a woman—engage in sexist smears, all women lose.
Kirsten Powers is a columnist for The Daily Beast. She is also a political analyst on Fox News and a writer for the New York Post. She served in the Clinton administration from 1993-1998 and has worked in New York state and city politics. Her writing has been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the New York Observer, Salon.com, Elle magazine and American Prospect online.
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10Yes, President Bush, America does miss you
By Nile Gardiner World
A billboard along Interstate 35, in Wyoming, Minnesota, earlier this year, which showed an image of former US President George W. Bush .
Several months ago a huge billboard appeared near Wyoming, Minnesota, with a beaming photo of George W. Bush with the caption “Miss me yet?” The answer to that question is clearly yes, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, which shows the former president staging a remarkable political recovery despite having largely disappeared from public life since leaving office:
By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.
“Democrats may want to think twice about bringing up former President George W. Bush’s name while campaigning this year,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
This has to be one of the most extraordinary political comebacks in decades. And as this week’s Washington Post/ABC News poll showed, nearly 25 percent of Democrats now believe “a return to Bush’s policies would be good,” a staggeringly high figure. As The Post reports:
Obama and the Democrats have argued that if Republicans were to gain control of Congress, they would return to the policies of President George W. Bush. Two-thirds of Democrats share that view and say it would be bad for the country. But almost a quarter of Democrats say a GOP-led Congress would take the country in a new and better direction or say a return to Bush’s policies would be good.
The CNN poll is of course deeply humiliating for the White House, especially coming just three and a half weeks before the November mid-terms. George W. Bush’s resurgence is in large part due to mounting opposition to the Obama’s presidency’s left-wing agenda, but it is also spurred by Obama’s image as an out of touch, aloof and elitist president, divorced from economic and political reality on the ground.
A lot of Americans frankly miss the down-to-earth and significantly warmer leadership style promoted by President Bush, as well as his unfailing sense of optimism and heart-felt pride in America on the world stage. You certainly won’t ever find Bush apologising for his country or extending the hand of friendship to her enemies.
And when Bush’s memoir “Decision Points” is published on November 9th, I’m in no doubt it will storm The New York Times’ bestseller list riding a new wave of nostalgia for his time in office. George W. Bush is back in fashion with a vengeance, in marked contrast to his increasingly unpopular successor in the White House.
Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. He appears frequently on American and British television and radio, including Fox News Channel, CNN, BBC, Sky News, and NPR.
10a)Charles Krauthammer: It's about his policies
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
A president's first midterm election is inevitably a referendum on his two years in office. The bad news for Democrats is that President Obama's "re-elect" number is 38 percent – precisely Bill Clinton's in October 1994, the eve of the wave election that gave Republicans control of the House for the first time in 40 years.
Yet this same poll found that 65 percent view Obama favorably "as a person." The current Democratic crisis is not about the man – his alleged lack of empathy, ability to emote, etc., requiring remediation with backyard, shirt-sleeved shoulder rubbing with the folks – but about the policies.
And the problem with the policies is twofold: ideology and effectiveness. First, Obama, abetted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, tried to take a center-right country to the left. They grossly misread the 2008 election. It was a mandate to fix the economy and restore American confidence. Obama read it as a mandate to change the American social contract, giving it a more European social-democratic stamp, by fundamentally extending the reach and power of government in health care, energy, education, finance and industrial policy.
Obama succeeded with health care. Unfortunately for the Democrats, that and Obama's other signature achievement – the stimulus – were not exactly what the folks were clamoring for. What they wanted was economic recovery.
Here the Democrats failed the simple test of effectiveness. The economy is extraordinarily weak, unemployment is unacceptably high and the only sure consequence of the stimulus is nearly $1 trillion added to the national debt in a single stroke.
And yet, to these albatrosses of ideological overreach and economic ineffectiveness, the Democrats have managed in the last few weeks to add a third indictment: incompetence.
For the first time since modern budgeting was introduced with the Budget Act of 1974, the House failed to even write a budget. This in a year of extraordinary deficits, rising uncertainty and jittery financial markets. Gold is going through the roof. Confidence in the dollar and the American economy is falling – largely because of massive overhanging debt. Yet no budget emerged from Congress to give guidance, let alone reassurance, about future U.S. revenues and spending.
That's not all. Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill. To keep the government going, Congress passed a so-called continuing resolution (CR) before adjourning to campaign. The problem with continuing to spend at the current level is that the last two years have seen a huge 28 percent jump in non-defense discretionary spending. The CR continues this profligacy, aggravating an already serious debt problem.
As if this was not enough, Congress then adjourned without even a vote – nay, without even a Democratic bill – on the expiring Bush tax cuts. This is the ultimate in incompetence. After 20 months of control of the White House and Congress – during which they passed an elaborate, 1,000-page micromanagement of every detail of American health care – the Democrats adjourned without being able to tell the country what its tax rates will be on Jan. 1.
It's not just income taxes. It's capital gains and dividends too. And the estate tax, which will careen insanely from 0 to 55 percent when the ball drops on Times Square on New Year's Eve.
Nor is this harmless incompetence. To do this at a time when $2 trillion of capital is sitting on the sidelines because of rising uncertainty – and there is no greater uncertainty than next year's tax rates – is staggeringly irresponsible.
As if this display of unseriousness – no budget, no appropriations bill, no tax bill – was not enough, some genius on a House Judiciary subcommittee invites parodist Stephen Colbert to testify as an expert witness on immigration. He then pulls off a nervy mockery of the whole proceedings – my favorite was his request to have his colonoscopy inserted in the Congressional Record – while the chairwoman sits there clueless.
A fitting end for the 111th Congress. But not quite. Colbert will return to the scene of the crime on Oct. 30 as the leader of one of two mock rallies on the National Mall. Comedian Jon Stewart leads the other. At a time of near-10 percent unemployment, a difficult and draining war abroad, and widespread disgust with government overreach and incompetence, they will light up the TV screens as the hip face of the new liberalism – just three days before the election.
I suspect the electorate will declare itself not amused.
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