We still have a choice.
We can either continue drifting left and lose our nation or reject the nonsense we have allowed, suffer the pain of getting the Capitalist engine back on track and save our Republic.
This is what the next 14 months is all about.
We can either buy the garbage of the Schumer's, Frank's, Pelosi's, Durbin's and their misguided ilk who are walking around zombie-like and, while at it, re-elect Obama, our Socialist Saviour, or go with a candidate who may not be everything to everyone but one with whom we can at least start the rebuilding and restoration process.
With the kind of deficits we have accumulated, the road ahead will be painful and difficult but if we return to common sense policies, have the tenacity to cast off the excessive and restrictive burdens we allowed to be placed on our backs by progressive lunacy and embrace old fashioned American ingenuity, we stand a chance - a slim chance but a chance.
To do this, we need to overhaul our tax system, restore tough curriculum and standards in our schools and colleges and commit ourselves to returning to the societal model that made us a great nation and peoples. That means rejecting PC'ism, soft headed thinking and disregard Nay saying messages from the media spewed by those who have contempt for our nation.
Basically we must reverse the entire course we have followed for well over 40 years.
This from a friend and fellow memo reader: "Paul Ryan used this Reagan quote in his speech this week.... Where has this belief gone? Have the Open Society 'Sorosists', the OWS anarchists, the corrupted academicians all finally succeeded in convincing the majority that America is the enemy?
"Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes – one rich, one poor – both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?”
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Though several weeks old it is still worth reading because it reminds us of the type of human animals we are dealing with no matter how benign Obama seeks to portray them. (See 1 below.)
Paul Ryan to the rescue. Noonan sees him as the real thinker in the crowd of political pygmies and Obama is there leading the pack. (See 1a below.)
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Frazier is right, there is much we do not know about Obama but we know enough to know he needs to be thrown out of office. His style of leadership is divisive, his philosophy of change is dangerous. Need I say more. Need we know more? (See 2 below.)
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Iran's threat will not go away. Maybe Iran needs to go away! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)The Shalit Defining Moment
By Victor Davis Hanson
NRO’s The Corner
The Palestinians have just shown the entire world their collective values — and the result is creepy beyond belief. Every once in a while a single incident crystallizes almost everything — all the cry-of-the-heart moral equivalence, all the special pleading, all the revisionism, all the national-liberationist cant. The crude and coerced Egyptian interview of Gilad Shalit says it all. He looked emaciated and short of breath, like the old film clips of those who had just emerged from Dachau; his Egyptian inquisitor, the repulsive Shahira Amin (lately a heartthrob of the Western media, who drew praise in the past from Secretary Clinton), preened like some sort of Lady Haw-Haw reading a script from Goebbels’s Ministry of Propaganda — with a masked Hamas thug in the background, rounding out the cast, perfectly playing the part of a cowardly killer from the SS Einsatzgruppen.
As if a chorus on cue, the released killers immediately boasted that they would murder again. Then, there was the vow to kidnap more soldiers, the anger that the 1,000-to-1 ratio of exchange was not enough, the usual anti-Semitic Hitlerian communiqués boasting of “victory” over the “apes and pigs,” and the mass deification on the West Bank of freed mass killers who looked far better than did Shalit. So all that raises a question in this supposed morally equivalent conflict: Why in the world are we giving one cent in foreign aid to Palestinian groups of any sort? The entire sordid spectacle of the Shalit interview was one of the more repulsive video moments in memory — right up there with the Palestinian street’s cheering on news of 3,000 Americans murdered on 9/11. No other supposedly aggrieved clique has such a talent in moments of its jubilation and exultation for reminding the world why so many can find it so utterly repellent.
On a final practical note: Be careful for what you wish. Now the Palestinian community will at long last have their bombers in their midst and must live with the retaliatory consequences when their heroes go back to what they habitually do.
1a)The Divider vs. the Thinker While Obama readies an ugly campaign, Paul Ryan gives a serious account of what ails America.
By PEGGY NOONAN
People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue: The things that divide us are not new, yet there's a sense now that the glue that held us together for more than two centuries has thinned and cracked with age. That it was allowed to thin and crack, that the modern era wore it out.
What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings; a gratitude that left us with a sense that we should comport ourselves in a way unlike the other nations of the world, that more was expected of us, and not unjustly—
"To whom much is given much is expected"; a general understanding that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations—liberty, equality—and not mere grunting tribal wants. We were from Europe but would not be European: No formal class structure here, no limits, from the time you touched ground all roads would lead forward. You would be treated not as your father was but as you deserved. That's from "The Killer Angels," a historical novel about the Civil War fought to right a wrong the Founders didn't right. We did in time, and at great cost. What a country.
But there is a broad fear out there that we are coming apart, or rather living through the moment we'll look back on as the beginning of the Great Coming Apart. Economic crisis, cultural stresses: "Half the country isn't speaking to the other half," a moderate Democrat said the other day. She was referring to liberals of her acquaintance who know little of the South and who don't wish to know of it, who write it off as apart from them, maybe beneath them.
To add to the unease, in New York at least, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance. If you are a New Yorker, chances are pretty high you hate what the great investment firms did the past 15 years or so to upend the economy. Yet you feel on some level like you have to be protective of them, because Wall Street pays the bills of the City of New York. Wall Street tax receipts and Wall Street business—restaurants, stores—keep the city afloat. So you want them up and operating and vital, you don't want them to leave—that would only make things worse for people in trouble, people just getting by, and young people starting out. You know you have to preserve them just when you'd most like to deck them.
***
Where is the president in all this? He doesn't seem to be as worried about his country's continuance as his own. He's out campaigning and talking of our problems, but he seems oddly oblivious to or detached from America's deeper fears. And so he feels free to exploit divisions. It's all the rich versus the rest, and there are a lot more of the latter.
Twenty twelve won't be "as sexy" as 2008, he said this week. It will be all brute force. Which will only add to the feeling of unease.
Occupy Wall Street makes an economic critique that echoes the president's, though more bluntly: the rich are bad, down with the elites. It's all ad hoc, more poetry slam than platform. Too bad it's not serious in its substance.
There's a lot to rebel against, to want to throw off. If they want to make a serious economic and political critique, they should make the one Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner make in "Reckless Endangerment": that real elites in Washington rigged the system for themselves and their friends, became rich and powerful, caused the great cratering, and then "slipped quietly from the scene."
It is a blow-by-blow recounting of how politicians—Democrats and Republicans—passed the laws that encouraged the banks to make the loans that would never be repaid, and that would result in your lost job. Specifically it is the story of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurers, and how their politically connected CEOs, especially Fannie's Franklin Raines and James Johnson, took actions that tanked the American economy and walked away rich. It began in the early 1990s, in the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration, with the help of an entrenched Congress that wanted only two things: to receive campaign contributions and to be re-elected.
The story is a scandal, and the book should be the bible of Occupy Wall Street. But they seem as incapable of seeing government as part of the problem as Republicans seem of seeing business as part of the problem.
Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions, often providing the intellectual and philosophical rationale behind them. Conservatives naturally like him—they agree with him—but liberals and journalists inclined to disagree with him take him seriously and treat him with respect.
This week he spoke on "The American Idea" at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. He scored the president as too small for the moment, as "petty" in his arguments and avoidant of the decisions entailed in leadership. At times like this, he said, "the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns." Politicians divide in order to "evade responsibility for their failures" and to advance their interests.
The president, he said, has made a shift in his appeal to the electorate. "Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy and resentment."
But Republicans, in their desire to defend free economic activity, shouldn't be snookered by unthinking fealty to big business. They should never defend—they should actively oppose—the kind of economic activity that has contributed so heavily to the crisis. Here Mr. Ryan slammed "corporate welfare and crony capitalism."
"Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?" Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically connected solar energy firms like Solyndra? "Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?"
Rather than raise taxes on individuals, we should "lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive." The "true sources of inequity in this country," he continued, are "corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless." The real class warfare that threatens us is "a class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society."
If more Republicans thought—and spoke—like this, the party would flourish. People would be less fearful for the future. And Mr. Obama wouldn't be seeing his numbers go up
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2)Who is Barack Obama?
By Mondo Frazier
There are so many things the public does not know about the man who sits in the White House. Who is Barack Obama? In my search to find out the answers I embarked on a journey that has lasted three years and counting -- and nearly made my head explode.
As usual, when Obama is the subject, Americans can't count on the progressives in the Corporate Mainstream Media (CMM) for much help. So, what's one to do? The foreign press proved helpful. Therefore, gleaned from the foreign press: a few stories which didn't rate any coverage from the U.S. CMM.
In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama went on a mission to Russia with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN). The newly-minted U.S. senator was invited to be part of a Russian fact-finding tour that inspected a nuclear weapons site in Perm, Siberia. The base Lugar and Obama visited was where mobile launch missiles were being destroyed under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program (CTR), which also went by the name of the Nunn-Lugar program.
What happened next -- after the inspections were over -- was at the time reported by several foreign news sources but was never reported in the USA by the CMM. The Russians detained Obama and Lugar for three hours at the airport, demanding to examine both Obama's and Lugar's passports and search their plane. Some sources reported that the Russians accused Barack Obama of being a spy.
But wait -- there's more!
According to an Italian source, the Russians did not accuse Obama of being an American spy; they accused him of being a spy for the British! The report went on to say that the incident ended up involving the White House, the U.S. State Department, and military officials, along with their counterparts in Moscow.
Strangely enough, an official report from Lugar's office about the trip never mentioned the incident. Neither did Barack Obama in 2008 when he was desperate to exhibit some foreign policy chops.
One other oddity: in the fall of 2008, Obama admitted on his Fightthesmears.com site that he had held dual citizenship with both the United States and Great Britain (the site explained that this was due to Barack Obama, Sr. being a foreign national) until 1982. Did the Russians know something about Obama's citizenship in 2005 that ordinary Americans don't know in 2011?
Another story no one has seen fit to ask about: Obama's Most Excellent Pakistani Adventure.
In the summer of 1981, 20-year-old Barack Obama embarked on a two-week trip to Pakistan. At least what little reporting that has been done claimed the length of the trip was two weeks. The only proof that the trip didn't turn into a longer stay is that we (supposedly) have records which show that Barack Obama enrolled at Columbia University later that same summer. Of course, the public hasn't seen those records, but that's what we've been told. Anyone in doubt will be directed to Obama's autobiography, Dreams from My Father.
Obama clearly gave the impression in DFMF that he was this penniless, somewhat confused young man, in search of an identity. Obama makes sure readers don't miss the point by writing that he was forced to wear "thrift store clothing" during this time. Yet he somehow managed to find the cash to finance a two-week trip to Pakistan.
Which he never wrote about. Which in itself is odd: here's a guy who wrote two autobiographies that explored events real, imagined, and totally fictional that supposedly forged the modern-day Barack Obama from humble beginnings. That's according to the Obama NarrativeTM -- which gets most of its facts from Dreams from My Father.
Not only did a poor, nearly destitute Obama manage to afford the trip to Pakistan, but once there he somehow financed two weeks in the Lahore Hilton International. In addition, Obama was introduced to the future prime minister and president of Pakistan -- and went bird-hunting with him. Which the prime minister mentioned in the Pakistani press in 2008. There's so much more, including one question the CMM never asked Obama: who arranged all of this? For a 20-year-old nobody.
Another curious piece to the queer Obama puzzle is the connection -- which hasn't been made in the CMM (attention, Fox News!) -- between illegal foreign contributions to the Obama campaign and subsequent billions in Stimulus money to foreign companies and banks. During and after the 2008 election, accusations of illegal foreign contributions -- which flowed into the Obama campaign when credit card safeguards were disabled on the campaign's website -- were documented in the conservative press and elsewhere.
Who were these mysterious donors, and in what countries did they live? Unfortunately, due to the chicanery of Team Obama, we may never know. Fast-forward to 2009. Obama's multi-billion-dollar Stimulus is rushed through Congress, and billions of dollars in Stimulus money are doled out to foreign companies and banks. Finland, China, Brazil, and India are just a few of the beneficiaries of Americans' hard-earned tax dollars. Might these have been payoffs for those shady, unknown donations?
Bill Clinton was the first president to benefit from a foreign spoils system, but Barack Obama has made Clinton look like an amateur.
One more coincidence in shady fundraising. The lady involved with Obama's fundraising in the Caribbean? None other than Vera Baker, who packed up and hurried left the country after the National Enquirer started exploring a possible tryst between her and Obama in a Washington hotel.
Barack Obama can only hope that ObamaCare covers "extreme stress" -- because whoever on his staff is responsible for keeping track of all of the weird stuff in the president's life is definitely a candidate for burnout.
One final item involves that most elusive of documents: Obama's long-lost long-form birth certificate.
A Chicago-area activist, Sherman Skolnick, writing for a radio show/website (now defunct) by the name of Cloak and Dagger uncorked this headline on his readers. It referred to another story he'd written in 2005 -- three years before anyone in the media coined the term "birther" to tamp down curiosity about our 44th president's past. (All-caps headline in the original story.)
CLOAK'S EXCLUSIVE AUGUST 2005 STORY EXPOSING OBAMA'S KENYAN BIRTHPLACE FORCES OBAMA TO SANITIZE HIS PASSPORT FILE.
Just another day in the life of anyone attempting to pierce the shroud of mystery that surrounds our 44th president. The final result is the publication of The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama.
Mondo Frazier is the editor/founder of the website DBKP - Death By 1000 Papercuts and the author of The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama, published by Threshold Editions/Simon & Schuster.
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3)Amos Gilad: Iran is massive threat that must be dealt with
By Yoav Zitun
In response to Yedioth Ahronoth article claiming Netanyahu, Barak seemingly pushing for military action against Iran, policy and political-military affairs director stresses importance of prioritizing Iran threat
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are extremely concerned by the Iranian threat, and Defense Ministry Director of Policy and Political-Military Affairs Amos Gilad believes the matter must be a top priority.
"You need to know what issues to prioritize. In my opinion – it's the Iranian front," he told students at the Ashkelon College. His statements were made in response to a Yedioth Ahronoth article claiming that Netanyahu and Barak were seemingly pushing for action against Iran.
According to Gilad, Netanyahu "was the first who heard of Iran's forecasted move on the nuclear missile path and he sees it as a massive threat. The defense minister understands the depth of the threat as well."
According to a Nahum Barnea article in Yedioth Ahronoth, published on Friday, the heads of the armed forces – Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz, Mossad Chief Tamir Pardo, Military Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi and Shin Bet Chief Yoram Cohen share the opinion of their predecessors and are opposed to taking action against Iran at this time.
Former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan had previously stated that a strike against Iran was "a foolish idea" and warned against the disastrous consequences that would follow such action – an all out regional war.
Gilad believes that "Israel's main threat is Iran" and warned against complacency: "We have experience with Israel arrogance when it comes to foreign statements. Khamenei said that there was no room for Israel; He said Iran needs to be treated like an empire equal in power to superpowers like the US. That motivation drives Iran to develop ballistic capabilities."
Gilad noted that while in 1999-2000 Iran did not have even one missile that could reach Israel, today Tehran has hundreds of missiles capable of crossing a 1,500 kilometer radius within 10 minutes, as well as missile that can carry nuclear warheads.
"At the moment, there is no immediate nuclear threat, but there is definitely a great deal of motivation and determination for it," he stressed. Until now, he noted, the Iranians were enriching uranium. "Today the status is that they are at the starting point – they have uranium, they have the knowledge but they don't create (missiles) because of media publicity which is not initiated by them."
'Major game changer'
According to Gilad, the attempt to develop secret nuclear sites within Iran failed because the locations were published.
The good news, said Gilad, was that "the whole world is against the Iranians, the sanctions are effective, but it doesn't change Iran's strategic direction or their motivation. Iran is determined to obtain nuclear weapons and that is a major threat to Israel. If they achieve their goal it would be major game changer".
Asked about the time frame of the Iranian threat, Gilad answered: "The balance of power changed the moment the Iranians decide to pursue it." As for the question of whether Israel should attack Iran, Gilad noted that "all options remained open."
Gilad then spoke about the Arab Spring and stressed the strategic importance of the peace treaty with Egypt. "It has a huge significance security wise," he said, adding: "This is the first time where there is a situation in which elections are being held in Egypt in 30 days and we don't know who will rise to power and how it will affect our relations with them."
The policy and political-military affairs director made it clear that the Arab Spring poses many threats to Israel. "The question is what will happen on the day after, in Egypt the results of the first elections are still unclear.
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Friday, October 28, 2011
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