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'President Number Four/Fore,' unlike Clinton and/or GW, has no particular affinity for Israel and/or its current leadership. That said, 'PNF/F' needs Jewish votes and, more particularly, their money, though I will never understand why they would give him a dime.
That said, he cannot back down vis a vis a legitimate challenge from Iran though, being the 'tough limp' that he is he will, no doubt, go out of his way to avoid a confrontation.
Is there an October surprise in the offing? You decide and time will tell. (See 2 below.)
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'President Number Four/Fore's' campaign theme is 'I help the middle class while Republicans are destroying it.' This resonates with brain dead voters because it causes anger and resentment, raises one's passion all the while based on a specious argument. In fact, like former Sen. McCarthy's big lie, which was mostly an accusation created out of thin air, 'President Number Four/Fore' is employing the same divisive tactic. He is accusing others of what he is doing himself with his out sized spending, over regulation of businesses costing entrepreneurs and middle class billions. His own presidency is crushing the middle class.
Specifically in my own case, I have been advising several (less than 15) former brokerage clients and charging a nominal fee for portfolio advice. Now I must register, keep records already provided them by their broker and follow a host of other silly rules like keeping records of e mails etc. that are beyond my capability, because of Dodd-Frank being implemented April one. My solution is to offer my advice free and, to date, every client has accepted my proposal.
Dodd Frank is a bureaucratic over-reaction to catching some former crooks as a result of the regulatory establishment failing to act in a timely manner. Government solutions, as generally always the case, are after the fact and involve casting a large net which kills minnows and allows crooks to continue swimming in their usual manner until apprehended. Government programs stifle initiatives and honesty in pursuit of misguided theory. And yet we find those who legislate, and their staff, have been abusing their status as insider traders all along. What hypocrisy we tolerate.
'President Number Four/Fore' is a fraud but knows if he turns the argument away from his own failures and aims at others he has a chance of winning. This is what his campaign is all about. It is the Ayers- Alinsky, 'divide and conquer' strategy. Challenge me and I will assert you are racially motivated. Now deal with the mud I claim you have thrown and which I actually threw on your own shirt.
Meanwhile, the Republican nomination process is ugly but democratic and has resulted in the various candidates turning their guns, lamentably, on each other. Thus, they are inadvertently helping Obama escape the wrath he deserves for his failed leadership.
Whomever ultimately becomes the Republican nominee he will be damaged goods. He will have to run a campaign that will force 'brain dead' voters to focus on boring telling facts and this is not easy. As the economy shows modest signs of improvement 'President Number Four/Fore' will argue his past blunders are working and the brain dead must stay the course or 'curse' and forego changing horses in mid stream. Meanwhile, as I have so often pointed out, 'PNF/F' has caused us to lose influence in the Middle East, added crushing debt burdens to our already broken fiscal back, acted out side the Constitution and now is about to decimate the military and that is just part of the indictment.
I have never embraced the argument 'Obama is The Manchurian Candidate.' I have only pointed out 'hell is paved with good intentions' and his actions are having the same effect.
Let me just pose this simple question. As you know, the news and media dregs dug up all kind of alleged dirt on Herman Cain. They had to reach back years to do so and went to all lengths to interview the accusers.
Yet, we know nothing comparable about 'President Number Four/Fore.' We do not know who his college roommates were, whom he dated, have no history of his academic record, his case notes in The Harvard Review. (I made law review and had my own case note cited by a judge), never interviewed any of his classmates and/or professors. I have yet to mention the allegedly 'doctored' birth certificate etc.
Is it not strange the press and media dolts are willing to discredit a conservative black candidate yet our biased media gave a pass to a black socialist candidate? Please explain if you can?
Wake up America! Vote for 'PNF/F' at your peril! (See 3 below.)
Watch this video about the next generation. The generation that has bought 'President Number Four/Fores' garbage and then ask yourself does this Republic have a chance of surviving?
This is really a disturbing story, and these students vote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxHfYNTrnic&feature=youtu.be
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Time for more humor:
A drunk woman, stark naked, jumped into a taxi in New York City. The taxi driver, who happened to be an old Jewish man, opened his eyes wide and stared at the woman. He made no attempt to start the cab.
She said to him, "What's wrong with you honey? Haven't you ever seen a naked woman before?"
The old man said "Lady, I'm not staring at you, I am telling you, det vould not be proper vair I come from".
She said, "Well, if you're not staring at my boobs sweetie, what are you doing then?"
He said, "Vell, I am looking and I'm looking, and I am tinking to myself, vair in da hell is dis lady keeping de money to pay for dis ride?"
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Then more serious stuff. (See 4 below.)
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More Palestinian myth stuff. (See 5 below.)
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Elliot Abrams offers useful insights into the Middle east picture vis a vis Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Iran. A very worthwhile listen. The Current Situation in the Middle East: An Interview with Elliott Abrams
The past year saw unprecedented turmoil and change in the Middle East. To review the events in the region and assess where Egypt, Syria and Iran now stand, Near East Reportinterviewed Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and former deputy national security advisor.READ MORE (CLICK FOR LINK)
FOR A FURTHER UPDATE ON THE MIDDLE EAST COME HEAR Maj. Elliot Chodoff, January 26th at 7:30PM at AA Synagogue, 9 Lee Boulevard.
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Rationale for buying gold again according to Soros. This is one time I agree with him. I see no way to avoid the Fed's further destruction of the dollar's value. Particularly is this so because Obama intends to incur another trillion in deficit spending if not more. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama is a fraud
By Don Sorchych
Here we are in much anticipated 2012. The focus of the year will be on November elections. It is not an exaggeration to say reelection of Barack Obama will be the end of the United States of America. And who can we thank?
Let’s start with the media. You will notice ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC are all way left. They will not in any case televise anything which is remotely negative about Obama, but have a field day reporting negatives about Republicans. FOX is right of center but tells us they are fair and balanced. Even if they were rabidly right wing, they wouldn’t balance the huge amount of left wing, Democrat and Obama propaganda.
During the 2008 election there were low hanging stories about Obama but the long list was ignored. Criticisms were immediately bashed as racist. His 20 years spent listening to racist Reverend Wright’s rants were ignored. So were his probably ghost written books, which told about his hatred for whites, including his own white mother and grandmother.
Television and print media have never asked Obama why he was spending millions to cover up his past. They only damned “Birthers” and anyone who wondered about his relationship with Wright, Bill Ayers and many other undesirable America haters.
As Rush Limbaugh said, what do community organizers do? They sit around and wonder where to agitate next. And that is the only job Obama had.
How can anyone ignore his socialist policies and appointments? Check the background of his “czars.” They are typically misfits and would likely only be employed as Democrat appointees or at universities, most of whom love to get professors who are lefties. Obama appointed 44 czars and only 33 were voted on by congress.
He has been loudly outspoken (depending of the audience) about Islam and has stated he would support Islam if they needed him. The current issue of Fast and Furious shows his prejudice. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, is incompetent but protected by his racist boss. Obama has been quick to tongue lash any white person who has disagreed with a Black.
This election shouldn’t be, but is, about race. For those who call you a racist you might point out that over 90 percent of blacks voted for Obama. That is in your face racism. Blacks often call Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and other Black conservatives like them Uncle Toms. I would vote for them in a heart beat because they are bright, knowledgeable and conservative.
Republicans will choose their candidate for the presidency. After that they hopefully understand they MUST vote for that choice and against Obama. The country is at stake. I held my nose and voted for H.W. Bush and George Bush only because they were the better of two bad choices. At least they did their best to protect the first and second amendments.
Isn’t it a wonder Republicans are fighting so hard to be anointed when they are all better qualified than Obama?
But what concerns me more is how Obama can be president when his father was not a citizen of the United States of America. He was not a natural born citizen and that should be enough to disqualify Obama.
Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger saying he might seek a constitutional modification so he could be president?
It is true that “natural born citizen” is not clear and a Supreme Court ruling is needed but very difficult to get because of their view of standing, at least in their eyes.
If Obama was born in what became Kenya, would he be disqualified? Apparently he thinks so since he spent millions to protect the document, and then after huge publicity by Donald Trump he sent out a bogus birth certificate.
The issue of qualifications for president and vice president need serious national debate, but even conservatives like Sean Hannity drool over the future prospects of Mario Rubio even though he was born to two native Cubans who were naturalized after his birth.
I think Rubio is great but the constitution is more important than any candidate, no matter how well qualified.
1a)Contempt for Congress
Obama makes recess appointments when there's no recess.
Remember those terrible days of the Imperial Presidency, when George W. Bush made several "recess appointments" to overcome Senate opposition? Well, Czar George II never did attempt what President Obama did yesterday in making recess appointments when Congress isn't even on recess.
Eager to pick a fight with Congress as part of his re-election campaign, Mr. Obama did the Constitutional equivalent of sticking a thumb in its eye and hitting below the belt. He installed Richard Cordray as the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and named three new members to the National Labor Relations Board. He did so even though the Senate was in pro forma session after the new Congress convened this week.
A President has the power to make a recess appointment, and we've supported Mr. Obama's right to do so. The Constitutional catch is that Congress must be in recess.
Mary Kissel on the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The last clause of Section 5 of Article 1 of the Constitution says that "Neither House" of Congress can adjourn for more than three days "without the Consent of the other" house. In this case, the House of Representatives had not formally consented to Senate adjournment. It's true the House did this to block the President from making recess appointments, but it is following the Constitution in doing so. Let's hear Mr. Obama's legal justification.
Democrats had used a similar process to try to thwart Mr. Bush's recess appointments late in his term when they controlled both the House and the Senate. Prodded by West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd, who has since died, Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the Senate in pro forma session. Some advisers urged Mr. Bush to ignore the Senate and make recess appointments anyway, but he declined. Now Mr. Reid is supporting Mr. Obama's decision to make an end run around a Senate practice that he pioneered.
Some lawyers we respect argue that a pro forma session isn't a real Congressional session, and that's certainly worth debating. But that isn't the view that Mr. Reid or then-Senator Obama took in 2007-08, and it would certainly be an extension of Presidential power for the chief executive to be able to tell Congress that he can decide when Congress is really sitting and when it isn't. In any event, that still wouldn't explain the violation of the language in Section 5 above.
These appointments are brazen enough that they have the smell of a deliberate, and politically motivated, provocation. Recall the stories over the New Year's weekend, clearly planted by the White House, that Mr. Obama planned to make a campaign against Congress the core of his re-election drive. One way to do that is to run roughshod over the Senate's advice and consent power and dare the Members to stop him.
Mr. Cordray's appointment also plays into Mr. Obama's plan to run against bankers and other plutocrats. The President justified his appointment yesterday by saying that Senate Republicans had blocked Mr. Cordray's nomination "because they don't agree with the law setting up the consumer watchdog."
Yet he knows that Senate Republicans haven't called for the dissolution of the consumer financial bureau, or personally attacked Mr. Cordray, as Democrats like to claim. Republicans have said they'd be happy to confirm him if Mr. Obama agrees to reforms of the bureau that would make it more accountable to elected officials and subject to Congressional appropriations. As it stands, the bureau is part of the Federal Reserve but Mr. Cordray sets his own budget and doesn't report to the Fed Chairman. His rule-makings also don't need to worry about such inconvenient details as bank safety and soundness.
The bureau has been up and running since July and is already pushing the boundaries of its examination powers. With Mr. Cordray on board, he says the bureau can now begin to issue rules, including oversight of nonbank institutions and the ability to define what constitutes an "abusive" act or practice, an invention of the Dodd-Frank financial reform that will surely lead to mischief.
As Ohio Attorney General, Mr. Cordray was tight with the tort bar and launched a barrage of national lawsuits worthy of Eliot Spitzer. His new job might be a nice populist springboard for running for Ohio Governor, should he choose to do so. Look for Mr. Cordray to announce new and controversial rules or enforcement actions, oh, say, around Labor Day.
As for Mr. Obama's three NLRB appointees, he only notified Congress of his intent to nominate them on December 15. The Senate hasn't had time to hold a single confirmation hearing. The nominees, two Democrats and one Republican, will give the labor board a quorum that it wouldn't have had with the December 31 expiration of the term of previous recess-appointee Craig Becker.
Under this Administration, the supposedly nonpartisan NLRB has become a partisan arm of Big Labor, and that will probably continue this election year. Appointee Sharon Block is the Labor Department's Congressional liaison and former aide to Ted Kennedy. Richard Griffin is general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Remember a year ago when Mr. Obama was talking about "regulatory relief" and moving toward the political center? He even sent us an op-ed.
Congress can't do much immediately to stop these appointments, but it ought to think creatively about how to fight back using its other powers—especially the power of the purse. However, private parties will have standing to sue if they are affected by one of Mr. Cordray's rule-makings, and that's when the courts may get a say on Mr. Obama's contempt for Congress.
1b)Morning Bell: Obama’s Tyrannical Abuse of Power
Posted By Mike Brownfield
President Barack Obama delivered a speech yesterday that will reverberate throughout history. No, its lasting impact will not come because of its soaring rhetoric. Instead, it will make its mark because it was at that moment on a Wednesday afternoon in Cleveland, Ohio that the President announced his plans to act in total and utter disregard of the U.S. Constitution [2] with his illegal appointment of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
It’s an astonishingly reckless exercise of executive authority that Heritage’s Todd Gaziano described [3] as a “tyrannical abuse of power.” Never before in the 100-plus years of precedent on the recess appointment power has a President taken such an action while the Senate was still in session. Yet notwithstanding that fact, President Obama yesterday decided that he would be the first.
Here’s why the President finds himself so far outside of constitutional bounds. Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution [2], the President has the power to fill vacancies that may happen during Senate recesses, as Gaziano writes [3]. In this case, President Obama was seeking to fill the vacancy in the CFPB, a new agency that has come under significant criticism [4] given its unparalleled powers [5] to issue expansive regulations with virtually no accountability. Republicans in the Senate, to date, have refused to confirm the President’s nominees to head up the CFPB, vowing to block Senate approval until reforms are made [6] to the agency. So President Obama has decided to act without their approval by attempting to make a recess appointment. The trouble is that Congress is not in a recess because the House of Representatives never consented, as required under the Constitution, Article I, section 5. That means that the President simply does not have the power to make this appointment. Gaziano explains [3] the implications of the President’s actions:
[The recess appointment] power has been interpreted by scores of attorneys general and their designees in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel for over 100 years to require an official, legal Senate recess of at least 10-25 days of duration. (There are a few outlier opinions, never sanctioned by the courts, that suggest a recess of six to seven days might be enough–but never less than that.)
The President’s purported recess appointment of Cordray would render the Senate’s advice and consent role to normal appointments almost meaningless. It is a grave constitutional wrong that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already denounced. But it fits a pattern of extra-constitutional abuse by the White House that seems more interested in energizing a liberal base than safeguarding the office of the presidency.
Why take such action? The President says it’s because he can’t wait for Congress to act on behalf of the American people. The truth is that the President is hell bent on ramming through his agenda, and he is entirely unwilling to compromise with the duly elected representatives who sit in the House and Senate. By circumventing the Senate and appointing Cordray, the President can ensure that his big-government regulatory agenda is enacted without the reforms that Congress is demanding. Unfortunately, the Cordray appointment is not the only example of the President’s wanton, unilateral actions.
Apart from Cordray, the President also plans to make three appointments [7] to the National Labor Relations Board without Senate approval, which will fundamentally alter the makeup of the board and enable the President to realize his Big Labor agenda. That means an unrestrained push to unionize businesses at all costs and punish companies that seek to grow in non-union states (as was attempted in the Boeing case) — even if it means harming both workers and the economy. And in the case of environmental regulations, immigration law, No Child Left Behind, the auto bailout [8], the selective enforcement of voting rights laws, and the regulation of the Internet (among others), the Obama Administration has in fact enacted its agenda via legislative fiat time and time again.
In an interview last month with 60 Minutes, [9] the President gave warning of his intentions to preside over an imperial presidency for the next year. “What I’m not gonna do is wait for Congress,” he said. “So wherever we have an opportunity and I have the executive authority to go ahead and get some things done, we’re just gonna go ahead and do ‘em.” The President now, though, seems to have made a significant course correction. With these latest illegal, unconstitutional appointments, the President has jumped at an opportunity to act regardless of the fact that he has no executive authority to do it. And under his feet is a trampled Constitution and 100 years of precedent for which he has no use. It’s time for Congress and the American people to take a stand against President Obama’s abuse of power.
Having totally failed at his efforts to create jobs for the 13.3 million unemployed Americans or otherwise significantly alleviate the unemployment rate, the White House now says it’s on track to create 180,000 “work opportunities.” [10] Translation: mentoring and unpaid internships.
There is even more carnage in Iraq following President Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the country. At least 27 people were killed on Thursday [11] when truck bombs bearing the “hallmark of Sunni militants linked to Al Qaeda” exploded in Baghdad.
The President is headed to the Pentagon today to unveil a significantly reduced military [12] and the largest defense budget cut since the end of the Cold War, despite America’s continued obligations abroad and the ongoing threat of terrorism.
Deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, and other defendants may face the death penalty [13] for the ordering of the killing of protesters during the Arab Spring uprisings last February.
The White House could be on course to make a premature, dangerously naive move in agreeing to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office in Qatar. Read more about it on The Foundry. [14]
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org
[1] Image: http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/Obama-podium-pointing.jpg
[2] U.S. Constitution: http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/the-constitution-of-the-us
[3] described: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/04/a-tyrannical-abuse-of-power-obama-attempts-to-appoint-cordray-to-cfpb/
[4] significant criticism: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/06/consumers-need-protection-from-consumer-protection-bureau/
[5] unparalleled powers: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/06/02/new-evidence-reveals-vast-powers-of-consumer-finance-bureau
[6] until reforms are made: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/09/gop_senators_tell_richard_cord.html
[7] make three appointments: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/4/obama-unprecedented-recess-appointment/
[8] auto bailout: http://blog.heritage.org../2011/07/06/is-general-motors-headed-back-to-square-one/
[9] interview last month with 60 Minutes,: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57341032/president-obama-the-economy-the-congress-the-future/?pageNum=2&tag=contentMain;contentBody
[10] it’s on track to create 180,000 “work opportunities.”: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/202429-obama-to-unveil-summer-jobs-initiative
[11] At least 27 people were killed on Thursday: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-iraq-bombings-20120106,0,880838.story
[12] unveil a significantly reduced military: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/obama-to-unveil-austere-pentagon-strategy/2012/01/04/gIQAMRBRbP_story.html?hpid=z1
[13] may face the death penalty: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/05/us-egypt-mubarak-idUSTRE8040VS20120105
[14] Read more about it on The Foundry.: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/04/taliban-prisoner-release-a-premature-dangerously-naive-move/
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2)Saudis, Gulf states on war alert for early US-Iran clash
The armies of Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states stood ready Thursday Jan. 5, for Washington to stand up to Iranian threats and send an aircraft carrier or several warships through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. Riyadh has been leaning hard on the Obama administration not to let Tehran get away with its warning to react with "full force" if the USS Stennis aircraft carrier tried to reenter the Gulf or Iran's pretensions to control the traffic transiting the world's most important oil route.
Wednesday night, the Iranian parliament began drafting a bill prohibiting foreign warships from entering the Gulf without Tehran's permission.
Washington sources report Saudi Arabia has warned the Obama administration that Iranian leaders mean what they say; their leaders are bent on provoking a military clash with the United States at a time and place of their choosing, rather than leaving the initiative to Washington. To this end, Iranian officials are ratcheting up their belligerence day after day.
Notwithstanding their military inferiority, the Iranians believe they can snatch a measure of success from a military confrontation, just as the Lebanese Hizballah did in the 2006 war against Israel. In any case, they expect any clash to be limited – at least at first. The two sides will begin by feeling for the opposite side's weaknesses while endeavoring to hold the line against a full-blown war.
America's failure to rise to Iran's challenge will confirm its rulers in the conviction that the US is a paper tiger and encourage them to press their advantage for new gains.
The assessment of British military experts Thursday, Jan. 5, was that the question now is: Who will blink first? Will the US follow through on the Pentagon's assertion that the deployment of US military assets in the Persian Gulf will continue as it has for decades? Or will Iran act on its warnings and block those waters to the entry of American warships?
President Barack Obama can't afford to cave in to Iran, especially while campaigning for reelection in Nov. 2012; Tehran, for its part, has made too many threats to easily back down.
The entire region is now on tenterhooks for the next move, with US, Iranian and Gulf armies on the highest war alert. American and Iranian war planners both accept that their advantage lies in surprising the enemy – without, however, catapulting the Persian Gulf into a full-dress war.
US Navy publications as of Wednesday, Jan. 4 showed a sign of the times: One ran a series of photos of F-18 Super Hornet fighter-bombers standing on the runways of the USS Stennis aircraft carrier ready for takeoff at any moment. Another depicted for the first time ever row upon row of huge bombs in the carrier's hold to show the Iranians what they are taking on.
In the view of the fact the US has deployed only one large aircraft carrier in the region does not signify any reluctance on Washington's part to preserve the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. There is no longer a need to rush more carriers to a flashpoint in these strategic waters. The US maintains five huge air bases in the Gulf region – two, the Ali Al Salem and Ahmed Al Jaber bases, in Kuwait; the Al Dhafra base in the UAE; and the largest air bases outside the US – Al Adid in Qatar and the Thumrait in Oman.
The concentration of aircraft carriers at any given location is no longer treated as the marker of an imminent US military operation.
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3)Obama: The Mask is Off
By Steve McCann
The mask is fully off. Barack Obama is the most corrupt, power-mad president in this nation's illustrious history. By his actions in bypassing Congress and making appointments that should be subject to Senate approval while the Senate is still in session and innumerable extra-constitutional actions since he became president, he is following in the footsteps of the despots who dominated the 20th century.
In late September of 2008, it became clear to me that Barack Obama would be elected president. Based on his background, education, motivation, and indoctrination, I saw a man who could single-handedly destroy the country and someone with no respect for the history, the Constitution, or the people of the United States. The specter of a megalomaniac who was a stranger to the truth and would or say or do anything to achieve or retain power overcame me. In Barack Obama and his fellow travelers, I saw what I feared the most since I came to this country: a person and a political mindset that would, if allowed, spell the end of the noblest experiment in the history of mankind.
It was at that point that I wrote my first article for American Thinker in an attempt to warn the people of America that the result of the 2008 election would be critical to the nation's survival. This was the first column I had written since my college days over 40+ years before, and I am eternally grateful to AT for publishing it and giving me a forum to speak to the American people.
I had to survive a war that was precipitated by those who were initially elected by the people in a democratic fashion. Yet once in power, they began to systematically usurp and overthrow the rule of law. Their lust for power led them to shred any written constitution or traditions as they systematically imposed new regulations, laws, and executive orders geared primarily to centralize authority in the government as individual rights and liberties were extinguished. In due course, they and their cronies became the government, as the people were powerless to stop them.
The people of Germany, the most advanced society in continental Europe, or Italy in the first four years of the 1930s, would have found it incredible to imagine what became of those countries by 1945. They would not think it even remotely possible.
The history of the United States and its traditions of liberty and individual freedom should be a bulwark against the successful emergence of people like Obama and his cronies. Yet why are the media, or the opposition party, or the members of Congress or the judiciary not shouting from the highest hilltop and taking action to stop these power-grabs? Has this country enjoyed peace and prosperity so long that everyone is jaded and preoccupied with him- or herself, or in a self-induced stupor either ignoring what's happening or saying that these unconstitutional steps are minor? Is it because Obama happens to have black skin and everyone is too intimidated by political correctness to speak? Or is it as it was in Germany, Italy, and Russia among many -- a belief that the worst could never happen here?
I have seen and experienced the worst that man can offer, I am not intimidated, and I will say without reservation that Barack Obama and his cronies have the same mindset in their tactical approach, philosophy, and lust for power that was extant in Benito Mussolini and the Fascists in the early days of their regime. If the apologists for those in power in Washington want to vilify me for that comparison, so be it.
To the American people, it is far beyond time to wake up to who this man in the White House is and what his ambitions are. As for the Republicans in the Congress or running for office, the task is upon your shoulders to stop Barack Obama in his tracks before he goes any farther. It is time to do your sworn duty to preserve and protect the country. And for the Democrats who are so blinded by party loyalty that they would sell their country for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver, the long-term difficulties and potential downfall of the greatest nation on earth will be your legacy.
2a) How Obama Lost His Postmodern Groove
By Jack Cash
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1)Obama is a fraud
By Don Sorchych
Here we are in much anticipated 2012. The focus of the year will be on November elections. It is not an exaggeration to say reelection of Barack Obama will be the end of the United States of America. And who can we thank?
Let’s start with the media. You will notice ABC, CBS, NBC, and MSNBC are all way left. They will not in any case televise anything which is remotely negative about Obama, but have a field day reporting negatives about Republicans. FOX is right of center but tells us they are fair and balanced. Even if they were rabidly right wing, they wouldn’t balance the huge amount of left wing, Democrat and Obama propaganda.
During the 2008 election there were low hanging stories about Obama but the long list was ignored. Criticisms were immediately bashed as racist. His 20 years spent listening to racist Reverend Wright’s rants were ignored. So were his probably ghost written books, which told about his hatred for whites, including his own white mother and grandmother.
Television and print media have never asked Obama why he was spending millions to cover up his past. They only damned “Birthers” and anyone who wondered about his relationship with Wright, Bill Ayers and many other undesirable America haters.
As Rush Limbaugh said, what do community organizers do? They sit around and wonder where to agitate next. And that is the only job Obama had.
How can anyone ignore his socialist policies and appointments? Check the background of his “czars.” They are typically misfits and would likely only be employed as Democrat appointees or at universities, most of whom love to get professors who are lefties. Obama appointed 44 czars and only 33 were voted on by congress.
He has been loudly outspoken (depending of the audience) about Islam and has stated he would support Islam if they needed him. The current issue of Fast and Furious shows his prejudice. His Attorney General, Eric Holder, is incompetent but protected by his racist boss. Obama has been quick to tongue lash any white person who has disagreed with a Black.
This election shouldn’t be, but is, about race. For those who call you a racist you might point out that over 90 percent of blacks voted for Obama. That is in your face racism. Blacks often call Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams and other Black conservatives like them Uncle Toms. I would vote for them in a heart beat because they are bright, knowledgeable and conservative.
Republicans will choose their candidate for the presidency. After that they hopefully understand they MUST vote for that choice and against Obama. The country is at stake. I held my nose and voted for H.W. Bush and George Bush only because they were the better of two bad choices. At least they did their best to protect the first and second amendments.
Isn’t it a wonder Republicans are fighting so hard to be anointed when they are all better qualified than Obama?
But what concerns me more is how Obama can be president when his father was not a citizen of the United States of America. He was not a natural born citizen and that should be enough to disqualify Obama.
Remember Arnold Schwarzenegger saying he might seek a constitutional modification so he could be president?
It is true that “natural born citizen” is not clear and a Supreme Court ruling is needed but very difficult to get because of their view of standing, at least in their eyes.
If Obama was born in what became Kenya, would he be disqualified? Apparently he thinks so since he spent millions to protect the document, and then after huge publicity by Donald Trump he sent out a bogus birth certificate.
The issue of qualifications for president and vice president need serious national debate, but even conservatives like Sean Hannity drool over the future prospects of Mario Rubio even though he was born to two native Cubans who were naturalized after his birth.
I think Rubio is great but the constitution is more important than any candidate, no matter how well qualified.
1a)Contempt for Congress
Obama makes recess appointments when there's no recess.
Remember those terrible days of the Imperial Presidency, when George W. Bush made several "recess appointments" to overcome Senate opposition? Well, Czar George II never did attempt what President Obama did yesterday in making recess appointments when Congress isn't even on recess.
Eager to pick a fight with Congress as part of his re-election campaign, Mr. Obama did the Constitutional equivalent of sticking a thumb in its eye and hitting below the belt. He installed Richard Cordray as the first chief of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and named three new members to the National Labor Relations Board. He did so even though the Senate was in pro forma session after the new Congress convened this week.
A President has the power to make a recess appointment, and we've supported Mr. Obama's right to do so. The Constitutional catch is that Congress must be in recess.
Mary Kissel on the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The last clause of Section 5 of Article 1 of the Constitution says that "Neither House" of Congress can adjourn for more than three days "without the Consent of the other" house. In this case, the House of Representatives had not formally consented to Senate adjournment. It's true the House did this to block the President from making recess appointments, but it is following the Constitution in doing so. Let's hear Mr. Obama's legal justification.
Democrats had used a similar process to try to thwart Mr. Bush's recess appointments late in his term when they controlled both the House and the Senate. Prodded by West Virginia's Robert C. Byrd, who has since died, Majority Leader Harry Reid kept the Senate in pro forma session. Some advisers urged Mr. Bush to ignore the Senate and make recess appointments anyway, but he declined. Now Mr. Reid is supporting Mr. Obama's decision to make an end run around a Senate practice that he pioneered.
Some lawyers we respect argue that a pro forma session isn't a real Congressional session, and that's certainly worth debating. But that isn't the view that Mr. Reid or then-Senator Obama took in 2007-08, and it would certainly be an extension of Presidential power for the chief executive to be able to tell Congress that he can decide when Congress is really sitting and when it isn't. In any event, that still wouldn't explain the violation of the language in Section 5 above.
These appointments are brazen enough that they have the smell of a deliberate, and politically motivated, provocation. Recall the stories over the New Year's weekend, clearly planted by the White House, that Mr. Obama planned to make a campaign against Congress the core of his re-election drive. One way to do that is to run roughshod over the Senate's advice and consent power and dare the Members to stop him.
Mr. Cordray's appointment also plays into Mr. Obama's plan to run against bankers and other plutocrats. The President justified his appointment yesterday by saying that Senate Republicans had blocked Mr. Cordray's nomination "because they don't agree with the law setting up the consumer watchdog."
Yet he knows that Senate Republicans haven't called for the dissolution of the consumer financial bureau, or personally attacked Mr. Cordray, as Democrats like to claim. Republicans have said they'd be happy to confirm him if Mr. Obama agrees to reforms of the bureau that would make it more accountable to elected officials and subject to Congressional appropriations. As it stands, the bureau is part of the Federal Reserve but Mr. Cordray sets his own budget and doesn't report to the Fed Chairman. His rule-makings also don't need to worry about such inconvenient details as bank safety and soundness.
The bureau has been up and running since July and is already pushing the boundaries of its examination powers. With Mr. Cordray on board, he says the bureau can now begin to issue rules, including oversight of nonbank institutions and the ability to define what constitutes an "abusive" act or practice, an invention of the Dodd-Frank financial reform that will surely lead to mischief.
As Ohio Attorney General, Mr. Cordray was tight with the tort bar and launched a barrage of national lawsuits worthy of Eliot Spitzer. His new job might be a nice populist springboard for running for Ohio Governor, should he choose to do so. Look for Mr. Cordray to announce new and controversial rules or enforcement actions, oh, say, around Labor Day.
As for Mr. Obama's three NLRB appointees, he only notified Congress of his intent to nominate them on December 15. The Senate hasn't had time to hold a single confirmation hearing. The nominees, two Democrats and one Republican, will give the labor board a quorum that it wouldn't have had with the December 31 expiration of the term of previous recess-appointee Craig Becker.
Under this Administration, the supposedly nonpartisan NLRB has become a partisan arm of Big Labor, and that will probably continue this election year. Appointee Sharon Block is the Labor Department's Congressional liaison and former aide to Ted Kennedy. Richard Griffin is general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers.
Remember a year ago when Mr. Obama was talking about "regulatory relief" and moving toward the political center? He even sent us an op-ed.
Congress can't do much immediately to stop these appointments, but it ought to think creatively about how to fight back using its other powers—especially the power of the purse. However, private parties will have standing to sue if they are affected by one of Mr. Cordray's rule-makings, and that's when the courts may get a say on Mr. Obama's contempt for Congress.
1b)Morning Bell: Obama’s Tyrannical Abuse of Power
Posted By Mike Brownfield
President Barack Obama delivered a speech yesterday that will reverberate throughout history. No, its lasting impact will not come because of its soaring rhetoric. Instead, it will make its mark because it was at that moment on a Wednesday afternoon in Cleveland, Ohio that the President announced his plans to act in total and utter disregard of the U.S. Constitution [2] with his illegal appointment of Richard Cordray to serve as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
It’s an astonishingly reckless exercise of executive authority that Heritage’s Todd Gaziano described [3] as a “tyrannical abuse of power.” Never before in the 100-plus years of precedent on the recess appointment power has a President taken such an action while the Senate was still in session. Yet notwithstanding that fact, President Obama yesterday decided that he would be the first.
Here’s why the President finds himself so far outside of constitutional bounds. Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution [2], the President has the power to fill vacancies that may happen during Senate recesses, as Gaziano writes [3]. In this case, President Obama was seeking to fill the vacancy in the CFPB, a new agency that has come under significant criticism [4] given its unparalleled powers [5] to issue expansive regulations with virtually no accountability. Republicans in the Senate, to date, have refused to confirm the President’s nominees to head up the CFPB, vowing to block Senate approval until reforms are made [6] to the agency. So President Obama has decided to act without their approval by attempting to make a recess appointment. The trouble is that Congress is not in a recess because the House of Representatives never consented, as required under the Constitution, Article I, section 5. That means that the President simply does not have the power to make this appointment. Gaziano explains [3] the implications of the President’s actions:
[The recess appointment] power has been interpreted by scores of attorneys general and their designees in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel for over 100 years to require an official, legal Senate recess of at least 10-25 days of duration. (There are a few outlier opinions, never sanctioned by the courts, that suggest a recess of six to seven days might be enough–but never less than that.)
The President’s purported recess appointment of Cordray would render the Senate’s advice and consent role to normal appointments almost meaningless. It is a grave constitutional wrong that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has already denounced. But it fits a pattern of extra-constitutional abuse by the White House that seems more interested in energizing a liberal base than safeguarding the office of the presidency.
Why take such action? The President says it’s because he can’t wait for Congress to act on behalf of the American people. The truth is that the President is hell bent on ramming through his agenda, and he is entirely unwilling to compromise with the duly elected representatives who sit in the House and Senate. By circumventing the Senate and appointing Cordray, the President can ensure that his big-government regulatory agenda is enacted without the reforms that Congress is demanding. Unfortunately, the Cordray appointment is not the only example of the President’s wanton, unilateral actions.
Apart from Cordray, the President also plans to make three appointments [7] to the National Labor Relations Board without Senate approval, which will fundamentally alter the makeup of the board and enable the President to realize his Big Labor agenda. That means an unrestrained push to unionize businesses at all costs and punish companies that seek to grow in non-union states (as was attempted in the Boeing case) — even if it means harming both workers and the economy. And in the case of environmental regulations, immigration law, No Child Left Behind, the auto bailout [8], the selective enforcement of voting rights laws, and the regulation of the Internet (among others), the Obama Administration has in fact enacted its agenda via legislative fiat time and time again.
In an interview last month with 60 Minutes, [9] the President gave warning of his intentions to preside over an imperial presidency for the next year. “What I’m not gonna do is wait for Congress,” he said. “So wherever we have an opportunity and I have the executive authority to go ahead and get some things done, we’re just gonna go ahead and do ‘em.” The President now, though, seems to have made a significant course correction. With these latest illegal, unconstitutional appointments, the President has jumped at an opportunity to act regardless of the fact that he has no executive authority to do it. And under his feet is a trampled Constitution and 100 years of precedent for which he has no use. It’s time for Congress and the American people to take a stand against President Obama’s abuse of power.
Having totally failed at his efforts to create jobs for the 13.3 million unemployed Americans or otherwise significantly alleviate the unemployment rate, the White House now says it’s on track to create 180,000 “work opportunities.” [10] Translation: mentoring and unpaid internships.
There is even more carnage in Iraq following President Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the country. At least 27 people were killed on Thursday [11] when truck bombs bearing the “hallmark of Sunni militants linked to Al Qaeda” exploded in Baghdad.
The President is headed to the Pentagon today to unveil a significantly reduced military [12] and the largest defense budget cut since the end of the Cold War, despite America’s continued obligations abroad and the ongoing threat of terrorism.
Deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, and other defendants may face the death penalty [13] for the ordering of the killing of protesters during the Arab Spring uprisings last February.
The White House could be on course to make a premature, dangerously naive move in agreeing to release high-ranking Taliban officials from Guantanamo Bay in return for the Afghan insurgents’ agreement to open a political office in Qatar. Read more about it on The Foundry. [14]
Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News Blog from The Heritage Foundation: http://blog.heritage.org
[1] Image: http://blog.heritage.org/wp-content/uploads/Obama-podium-pointing.jpg
[2] U.S. Constitution: http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/the-constitution-of-the-us
[3] described: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/04/a-tyrannical-abuse-of-power-obama-attempts-to-appoint-cordray-to-cfpb/
[4] significant criticism: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/12/06/consumers-need-protection-from-consumer-protection-bureau/
[5] unparalleled powers: http://blog.heritage.org/2011/06/02/new-evidence-reveals-vast-powers-of-consumer-finance-bureau
[6] until reforms are made: http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/09/gop_senators_tell_richard_cord.html
[7] make three appointments: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/4/obama-unprecedented-recess-appointment/
[8] auto bailout: http://blog.heritage.org../2011/07/06/is-general-motors-headed-back-to-square-one/
[9] interview last month with 60 Minutes,: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57341032/president-obama-the-economy-the-congress-the-future/?pageNum=2&tag=contentMain;contentBody
[10] it’s on track to create 180,000 “work opportunities.”: http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/202429-obama-to-unveil-summer-jobs-initiative
[11] At least 27 people were killed on Thursday: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-iraq-bombings-20120106,0,880838.story
[12] unveil a significantly reduced military: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/obama-to-unveil-austere-pentagon-strategy/2012/01/04/gIQAMRBRbP_story.html?hpid=z1
[13] may face the death penalty: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/05/us-egypt-mubarak-idUSTRE8040VS20120105
[14] Read more about it on The Foundry.: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/04/taliban-prisoner-release-a-premature-dangerously-naive-move/
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2)Saudis, Gulf states on war alert for early US-Iran clash
The armies of Saudi Arabia and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council states stood ready Thursday Jan. 5, for Washington to stand up to Iranian threats and send an aircraft carrier or several warships through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. Riyadh has been leaning hard on the Obama administration not to let Tehran get away with its warning to react with "full force" if the USS Stennis aircraft carrier tried to reenter the Gulf or Iran's pretensions to control the traffic transiting the world's most important oil route.
Wednesday night, the Iranian parliament began drafting a bill prohibiting foreign warships from entering the Gulf without Tehran's permission.
Washington sources report Saudi Arabia has warned the Obama administration that Iranian leaders mean what they say; their leaders are bent on provoking a military clash with the United States at a time and place of their choosing, rather than leaving the initiative to Washington. To this end, Iranian officials are ratcheting up their belligerence day after day.
Notwithstanding their military inferiority, the Iranians believe they can snatch a measure of success from a military confrontation, just as the Lebanese Hizballah did in the 2006 war against Israel. In any case, they expect any clash to be limited – at least at first. The two sides will begin by feeling for the opposite side's weaknesses while endeavoring to hold the line against a full-blown war.
America's failure to rise to Iran's challenge will confirm its rulers in the conviction that the US is a paper tiger and encourage them to press their advantage for new gains.
The assessment of British military experts Thursday, Jan. 5, was that the question now is: Who will blink first? Will the US follow through on the Pentagon's assertion that the deployment of US military assets in the Persian Gulf will continue as it has for decades? Or will Iran act on its warnings and block those waters to the entry of American warships?
President Barack Obama can't afford to cave in to Iran, especially while campaigning for reelection in Nov. 2012; Tehran, for its part, has made too many threats to easily back down.
The entire region is now on tenterhooks for the next move, with US, Iranian and Gulf armies on the highest war alert. American and Iranian war planners both accept that their advantage lies in surprising the enemy – without, however, catapulting the Persian Gulf into a full-dress war.
US Navy publications as of Wednesday, Jan. 4 showed a sign of the times: One ran a series of photos of F-18 Super Hornet fighter-bombers standing on the runways of the USS Stennis aircraft carrier ready for takeoff at any moment. Another depicted for the first time ever row upon row of huge bombs in the carrier's hold to show the Iranians what they are taking on.
In the view of the fact the US has deployed only one large aircraft carrier in the region does not signify any reluctance on Washington's part to preserve the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf. There is no longer a need to rush more carriers to a flashpoint in these strategic waters. The US maintains five huge air bases in the Gulf region – two, the Ali Al Salem and Ahmed Al Jaber bases, in Kuwait; the Al Dhafra base in the UAE; and the largest air bases outside the US – Al Adid in Qatar and the Thumrait in Oman.
The concentration of aircraft carriers at any given location is no longer treated as the marker of an imminent US military operation.
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3)Obama: The Mask is Off
By Steve McCann
The mask is fully off. Barack Obama is the most corrupt, power-mad president in this nation's illustrious history. By his actions in bypassing Congress and making appointments that should be subject to Senate approval while the Senate is still in session and innumerable extra-constitutional actions since he became president, he is following in the footsteps of the despots who dominated the 20th century.
In late September of 2008, it became clear to me that Barack Obama would be elected president. Based on his background, education, motivation, and indoctrination, I saw a man who could single-handedly destroy the country and someone with no respect for the history, the Constitution, or the people of the United States. The specter of a megalomaniac who was a stranger to the truth and would or say or do anything to achieve or retain power overcame me. In Barack Obama and his fellow travelers, I saw what I feared the most since I came to this country: a person and a political mindset that would, if allowed, spell the end of the noblest experiment in the history of mankind.
It was at that point that I wrote my first article for American Thinker in an attempt to warn the people of America that the result of the 2008 election would be critical to the nation's survival. This was the first column I had written since my college days over 40+ years before, and I am eternally grateful to AT for publishing it and giving me a forum to speak to the American people.
I had to survive a war that was precipitated by those who were initially elected by the people in a democratic fashion. Yet once in power, they began to systematically usurp and overthrow the rule of law. Their lust for power led them to shred any written constitution or traditions as they systematically imposed new regulations, laws, and executive orders geared primarily to centralize authority in the government as individual rights and liberties were extinguished. In due course, they and their cronies became the government, as the people were powerless to stop them.
The people of Germany, the most advanced society in continental Europe, or Italy in the first four years of the 1930s, would have found it incredible to imagine what became of those countries by 1945. They would not think it even remotely possible.
The history of the United States and its traditions of liberty and individual freedom should be a bulwark against the successful emergence of people like Obama and his cronies. Yet why are the media, or the opposition party, or the members of Congress or the judiciary not shouting from the highest hilltop and taking action to stop these power-grabs? Has this country enjoyed peace and prosperity so long that everyone is jaded and preoccupied with him- or herself, or in a self-induced stupor either ignoring what's happening or saying that these unconstitutional steps are minor? Is it because Obama happens to have black skin and everyone is too intimidated by political correctness to speak? Or is it as it was in Germany, Italy, and Russia among many -- a belief that the worst could never happen here?
I have seen and experienced the worst that man can offer, I am not intimidated, and I will say without reservation that Barack Obama and his cronies have the same mindset in their tactical approach, philosophy, and lust for power that was extant in Benito Mussolini and the Fascists in the early days of their regime. If the apologists for those in power in Washington want to vilify me for that comparison, so be it.
To the American people, it is far beyond time to wake up to who this man in the White House is and what his ambitions are. As for the Republicans in the Congress or running for office, the task is upon your shoulders to stop Barack Obama in his tracks before he goes any farther. It is time to do your sworn duty to preserve and protect the country. And for the Democrats who are so blinded by party loyalty that they would sell their country for the proverbial thirty pieces of silver, the long-term difficulties and potential downfall of the greatest nation on earth will be your legacy.
2a) How Obama Lost His Postmodern Groove
By Jack Cash
On December 9, President Barack Obama sat down for a lengthy interview with Steve Croft of 60 Minutes, unaided by speechwriters or teleprompters. In the course of it, not surprisingly, he showed himself to be almost as vain and unreflective as the late dear leader, Kim Jong.
Obama put his own accomplishments above those of any president, with the "possible exceptions" of LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln, and as to personal insights, he could offer up only self-serving bromides like "I'm a persistent son of a gun. I just stay at it."
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4)What a year for science in Israel * The top 10 science stories of 2011
By Abigail Klein Leichman
Those who got to know Obama through his acclaimed 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father had to be at least a little disappointed. For that one brief, shining moment, Obama emerged as an all-out, balls-to-the-wall postmodernist -- self-absorbed perhaps, but as anguished and introspective as a monk.
Although postmodernism is as hard to define as pornography, postmodernists are not hard to spot. As a rule, they reject the possibility of an objective, universal truth and struggle to "construct" more personalized "narratives" to shape their own lives.
"What I was telling them was a lie," Obama says in Dreams of an early attempt to define himself, "something I'd constructed from the scraps of information I'd picked up from my mother." At book's end, after his journey, he had moved beyond a mere "construct of words" and become the complete person he strove to be.
Curiously, Obama showed no signs of a postmodern style before Dreams and, as evidenced in his 60 Minutes interview, none lately. The reason for his postmodern mayfly moment is not hard to discern. Obama's mentor Bill Ayers, a sophisticated student of the narrative art, took over Dreams from his struggling protégé and infused it with his own experiences, his own language, and his own postmodern ethos.
Ayers's memoir, the 2001 Fugitive Days, is laced with repeated reference to what he calls "our constructed reality." Ayers employs the concept literally, figuratively, and often some place in between. "We constructed our lives underground," he writes on one occasion. "We invented words; we constructed culture," he says on another. (For simplicity's sake, I will refer to "Obama" as the author of everything that appears under his name.)
Ayers's memoir and Obama's follow oddly similar rules. Ayers deliberately blurs facts and changes identities and makes no claims at history. "Memory is a delicate dance of desire and faith, a shadow of a shadow, an echo of a sigh. We cheat. We steal. We remember in our favor," writes Ayers.
Obama says much the same. He acknowledges that "the temptation to color events in ways favorable to the writer, the tendency to overestimate the interest one's experiences hold for others, selective lapses of memory." In Dreams, too, some characters are composites. Names have been changed. Events occur out of precise chronology
Obama biographer David Remnick cuts Obama slack for Dreams's "mixture of verifiable fact, recollection, recreation, invention, and artful shaping." What makes the book "exceptional," he observes, is "not that Obama allows himself these freedoms, but, rather, that he cops to them right away."
Not that exceptional. Ayers cops to these freedoms right away, too. He asks of his own memoir, "Is this then the truth?" He answers, "Not exactly. Although it feels entirely honest to me." The reader knows that Ayers -- with some justification -- has much to hide. He senses that Obama does, too, but he is never quite sure why.
As a former merchant seaman, Ayers often thought in terms of charts and maps when plotting his way through life, a "journey, not by a tourist, but by a pilgrim." In Fugitive Days, he yearns for a "mariner's chart of the past" to help navigate, but he knows that he and his colleagues must face every day "as free people with neither road maps nor guarantees." In his book Race Course, Ayers speaks of "the map of my life, already drawn."
In the introduction of Dreams, Obama talks of his intended book as "an intellectual journey that I imagined for myself, complete with maps and restpoints and a strict itinerary." He changed his mind, of course, and settled on "a record of a personal, interior journey -- a boy's search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American."
When Obama leaves Hawaii for college in Los Angeles, he leaves his white kin "at some uncharted border." From this point on, he himself will be responsible for "charting his way through the world." He will eventually find his way to Africa, where white encroachment "had redrawn the map of black life."
In January 2008, Ayers crystallized what he had learned in his career as writer and editor in an essay titled "Narrative Push/Narrative Pull." The lessons that Ayers offers on the art of the narrative seem to have found their way into Dreams unmolested. The Ayers quotations come from this essay unless otherwise specified. Obama quotations come from Dreams.
Ayers:
"The hallmark of writing in the first person is intimacy. ... But in narrative the universal is revealed through the specific, the general through the particular, the essence through the unique, and necessity is revealed through contingency."
Obama:
"And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged ... "
Ayers:
"Narrative begins with something to say -- content precedes form."
Obama:
"I understood that I had spent much of my life trying to rewrite these stories, plugging up holes in the narrative ... "
Ayers (Fugitive Days):
"We were mostly conformist bores, I thought, unadventurous in most things, acting out scripts already written."
Obama:
"I would find myself, at random moments in the day, feeling as if I was living out a preordained script."
Ayers:
"Narrative inquiry can be a useful corrective to all this."
Obama:
"Truth is usually the best corrective."
Ayers:
"The mind works in contradiction, and honesty requires the writer to reveal disputes with herself on the page."
Obama:
"But I suspect that we can't pretend that the contradictions of our situation don't exist. All we can do is choose."
Ayers:
"Narrative writers strive for a personal signature, but must be aware that the struggle for honesty is constant."
Obama:
"I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America."
Ayers:
"But that intimacy can trap a writer into a defensive crouch, into airing grievances or self-justification."
Obama:
"At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap."
Ayers (Fugitive Days)
Forgetting can be confused with remembering -- the fictions we force ourselves to carry replace the facts we are hiding from the world, facts buried within fictions.
Obama
I know how strongly Gramps believed in his fictions, how badly he wanted them to be true, even if he didn't always know how to make them so.
Ayers (Fugitive Days)
"When history is being rewritten in the interest of a smoother, less troublesome tale ... "
Obama
"It corresponds to what I know about my grandfather, his tendency to rewrite his history to conform with the image he wished for himself."
Ayers (Fugitive Days)
"Go further, we said. Push the limits. Cross the borders."
Obama
"I drew a series of circles around myself, with borders that shifted as time passed."
Although I cite no more than two examples for each, Dreams offers many more. There are ten "trap" references alone, and nearly as many for "narrative," "struggle," "fiction," and "journey." With less frequency, the two authors dabble in advanced postmodern slang as well -- the "grooves" into which they have fallen, the "poses" they assume, and even the "stitched together" nature of the lives they or their relatives lead.
Ayers's style has not changed. Obama's has -- and dramatically. From the publication of Dreams in 1995 to the publication in 2006 of The Audacity of Hope, Obama had nothing in print beyond a semi-regular column in the neighborhood newspaper, the Hyde Park Herald. If he wrote a single inspired or imaginative sentence in his many columns, let alone a postmodern reflection, I was unable to find it.
Audacity presented Obama with another opportunity to reflect on his life's journey. He did not take it. The postmodern concepts that shape Dreams -- memories, narratives, fictions, journeys, struggles, charts, maps, traps, scripts, correctives, contradictions -- are either completely absent or used altogether literally.
In Audacity, for instance, Obama writes unremarkably, "It seems as if I can retrieve only the barest fragments of memory from when I was five." In Dreams, he addresses a similar concern but with a postmodern flair: "That's how all the stories went -- compact, apocryphal, told in rapid succession in the course of one evening, then packed away for months, sometimes years, in my family's memory." Ayers did not write Audacity. He accurately dismissed it as "a political hack book." Obama did not write it, either.
To be sure, there is much additional evidence to support Ayers's involvement in Dreams. These include the matching 55 or so nautical words or phrases, the identical educational philosophies, the shared use of the Conrad-like triple parallels, the nearly fetishistic eye and eyebrow metaphors, the three stunning parallel stories, the four matching content errors, the same weary '60s worldview, the borrowed girlfriend in Dreams, the inarguably similar Homeric openings, the dramatically inferior writings of Obama before and after Dreams, the confirmation by Christopher Andersen, and more.
For reasons that escape me, our well-placed friends in conservative literary circles refuse to see what should be obvious to any writer or editor. They refuse to even look. If the Republican candidate comes up a few votes short in November, they will have only themselves to blame.
4)What a year for science in Israel * The top 10 science stories of 2011
By Abigail Klein Leichman
In an impressive year for Israeli science, ISRAEL21c reviews some of its most popular stories of the year, from breakthroughs in cancer, to mind-controlled computing and solar windows.
What a year for science in Israel. It was a year for notable breakthroughs in diabetes <http://israel21c.org/health/metacure-treats-diabetes-without-meds> , cancer research, Alzheimer's, and robotic technologies<http://israel21c.org/technology/surgery-border-patrol-israeli-robots-can-do-that> .
It was a year when Israeli scientists developed countless imaginative ways to try to reduce our carbon footprint, making giant strides in environmental innovations, from solar energy, to desalination<http://israel21c.org/environment/drinking-water-for-china-israeli-style> , and alternative fuels, and even the world's first tugboat for airplanes<http://israel21c.org/environment/a-tugboat-for-airplanes-that-saves-money-and-the-environment> .
It was also the year when a computer beat human contestants at a game show <http://israel21c.org/briefs/supercomputer-outwits-jeopardy-champions> , and Israeli scientist, Danny Shechtman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry<http://israel21c.org/technology/israeli-scientist-wins-nobel-prize-in-chemistry> - the fourth Israeli to win the chemistry prize, and the 10th to win a Nobel.
With so much happening during 2011, it's hard to keep track of all the advances. To refresh your memories, we've put together a list of the 10 most popular science stories of the year.
It was a year when Israeli scientists developed countless imaginative ways to try to reduce our carbon footprint, making giant strides in environmental innovations, from solar energy, to desalination<http://israel21c.org/environment/drinking-water-for-china-israeli-style> , and alternative fuels, and even the world's first tugboat for airplanes<http://israel21c.org/environment/a-tugboat-for-airplanes-that-saves-money-and-the-environment> .
It was also the year when a computer beat human contestants at a game show <http://israel21c.org/briefs/supercomputer-outwits-jeopardy-champions> , and Israeli scientist, Danny Shechtman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry<http://israel21c.org/technology/israeli-scientist-wins-nobel-prize-in-chemistry> - the fourth Israeli to win the chemistry prize, and the 10th to win a Nobel.
With so much happening during 2011, it's hard to keep track of all the advances. To refresh your memories, we've put together a list of the 10 most popular science stories of the year.
1. A vaccine that can kill cancer <http://israel21c.org/health/a-vaccine-that-can-kill-cancer>
Vaxil Bio-Therapeutics' ImMucin, a therapeutic vaccine in advanced clinical trials at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, can be tailored to treat not only 90 percent of cancers, but also mega-diseases such as tuberculosis. ImMucin is not a preventative; it activates and enhances the body's natural immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells already present, such as those lingering after cancer surgery. The treatment causes no side effects, and can be taken indefinitely, like vitamins. CEO Julian Levy tells ISRAEL21c that ImMucin could be ready and marketable within six years.
Vaxil Bio-Therapeutics' ImMucin, a therapeutic vaccine in advanced clinical trials at Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem, can be tailored to treat not only 90 percent of cancers, but also mega-diseases such as tuberculosis. ImMucin is not a preventative; it activates and enhances the body's natural immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells already present, such as those lingering after cancer surgery. The treatment causes no side effects, and can be taken indefinitely, like vitamins. CEO Julian Levy tells ISRAEL21c that ImMucin could be ready and marketable within six years.
2. The latest in high-tech security -- a mouse<http://israel21c.org/technology/the-latest-in-high-tech-security-a-mouse>
Israeli startup Bioexplorers has a non-invasive and easy method to detect contraband in purses, luggage and cargo: trained rodents. "Mice have an excellent sense of smell, and they're relatively easy to train," explains CEO Eran Lumbroso. When a person goes through a Bioexplorers system passageway, a fan blows air into a sensor receptor and delivers it into a chamber containing several trained mice. If they sniff drugs or bombs, they move into another chamber and set off an alarm. "The mice rarely make an error, and the entire procedure is far less invasive or intimidating than the alternatives, like using dogs or X-ray machines," says Lumbroso.
Israeli startup Bioexplorers has a non-invasive and easy method to detect contraband in purses, luggage and cargo: trained rodents. "Mice have an excellent sense of smell, and they're relatively easy to train," explains CEO Eran Lumbroso. When a person goes through a Bioexplorers system passageway, a fan blows air into a sensor receptor and delivers it into a chamber containing several trained mice. If they sniff drugs or bombs, they move into another chamber and set off an alarm. "The mice rarely make an error, and the entire procedure is far less invasive or intimidating than the alternatives, like using dogs or X-ray machines," says Lumbroso.
3. Breakthrough device helps Alzheimer's patients regain cognitive skills<http://israel21c.org/health/new-device-helps-alzheimers-patients-regain-cognitive-skills>
NeuroAD, a new electromagnetic stimulation system developed by Yokneam-based Neuronix, appears to change the course of the degenerative Alzheimer's disease and allow patients to regain faded cognitive skills. It is the first medical device in the world to receive approval for treating mild to moderate Alzheimer's. Clinical trials, which are continuing in 2012 in Europe and the United States, show that a few weeks of this non-invasive treatment measurable results in cognitive improvement superior to improvements achieved with Alzheimer's medications.
NeuroAD, a new electromagnetic stimulation system developed by Yokneam-based Neuronix, appears to change the course of the degenerative Alzheimer's disease and allow patients to regain faded cognitive skills. It is the first medical device in the world to receive approval for treating mild to moderate Alzheimer's. Clinical trials, which are continuing in 2012 in Europe and the United States, show that a few weeks of this non-invasive treatment measurable results in cognitive improvement superior to improvements achieved with Alzheimer's medications.
4. A game-changer in breast-cancer detection <http://israel21c.org/health/a-game-changer-in-breast-cancer-detection>
After Israeli electro-optical engineer Boaz Arnon lost his mother, Ruth, to breast cancer in 2004, he set his sights on inventing a more accurate, cost-effective and hands-off screening alternative to mammography. RUTH, the device he innovated and named after his mom, uses a new trademarked platform based on quantitative computer analysis of 3D and infrared signals emitted from cancerous and benign breast tissue. The brief screening procedure involves no physical contact or radiation, and could be available in doctors' offices -- initially as an adjunct to mammography -- in 2012.
After Israeli electro-optical engineer Boaz Arnon lost his mother, Ruth, to breast cancer in 2004, he set his sights on inventing a more accurate, cost-effective and hands-off screening alternative to mammography. RUTH, the device he innovated and named after his mom, uses a new trademarked platform based on quantitative computer analysis of 3D and infrared signals emitted from cancerous and benign breast tissue. The brief screening procedure involves no physical contact or radiation, and could be available in doctors' offices -- initially as an adjunct to mammography -- in 2012.
5. An Alzheimer's vaccine in a nasal spray? <http://israel21c.org/health/an-alzheimers-vaccine-in-a-nasal-spray>
Could Alzheimer's disease be prevented, not just treated? That's the thinking behind a Tel Aviv University-developed nasal two-in-one vaccine that could protect against both Alzheimer's and stroke. The spray appears to repair vascular damage in the brain by rounding up "troops" from the body's own immune system. This breakthrough is of extraordinary interest to American pharmaceutical makers, given that one in eight Americans will develop Alzheimer's at some point, and because Alzheimer's is often associated with increased risk of a potentially fatal stroke due to vascular damage in the brain.
Could Alzheimer's disease be prevented, not just treated? That's the thinking behind a Tel Aviv University-developed nasal two-in-one vaccine that could protect against both Alzheimer's and stroke. The spray appears to repair vascular damage in the brain by rounding up "troops" from the body's own immune system. This breakthrough is of extraordinary interest to American pharmaceutical makers, given that one in eight Americans will develop Alzheimer's at some point, and because Alzheimer's is often associated with increased risk of a potentially fatal stroke due to vascular damage in the brain.
6. A solar window that generates power <http://israel21c.org/environment/solar-window-is-green-game-changer>
Pythagoras Solar unveiled the world's first transparent photovoltaic glass unit (PVGU) designed to be easily integrated into conventional buildings. CEO Gonen Fink tells ISRAEL21c: "There are many companies today doing energy-efficient windows or energy generators using photovoltaics such as skylights, but this ... is the first time somebody has actually combined the advantages in one product." In June, the Pythagoras Solar window won the prestigious GE Ecomagination Challenge <http://challenge.ecomagination.com> , which recognizes the most promising innovations for capturing, managing and using energy in buildings.
Pythagoras Solar unveiled the world's first transparent photovoltaic glass unit (PVGU) designed to be easily integrated into conventional buildings. CEO Gonen Fink tells ISRAEL21c: "There are many companies today doing energy-efficient windows or energy generators using photovoltaics such as skylights, but this ... is the first time somebody has actually combined the advantages in one product." In June, the Pythagoras Solar window won the prestigious GE Ecomagination Challenge <http://challenge.ecomagination.com> , which recognizes the most promising innovations for capturing, managing and using energy in buildings.
7. Coming soon: a vaccine against cancer <http://israel21c.org/health/coming-soon-a-vaccine-against-cancer>
Israeli biomed start-up Vacciguard is introducing a technology for developing vaccines against cancer and a wide range of diseases that currently have no effective treatments, such as meningitis type B, three types of West Nile virus and cytomegalovirus (CMV), which infects between 50 percent and 80% of adults in the United States, and 40% worldwide. CEO Dr. Anat Eitan points out that more than 15 million people die each year from infectious diseases -- and not only in developing countries. Vacciguard is based on the research of world-renowned Weizmann Institute of Science immunologist Prof. Irun Cohen.
Israeli biomed start-up Vacciguard is introducing a technology for developing vaccines against cancer and a wide range of diseases that currently have no effective treatments, such as meningitis type B, three types of West Nile virus and cytomegalovirus (CMV), which infects between 50 percent and 80% of adults in the United States, and 40% worldwide. CEO Dr. Anat Eitan points out that more than 15 million people die each year from infectious diseases -- and not only in developing countries. Vacciguard is based on the research of world-renowned Weizmann Institute of Science immunologist Prof. Irun Cohen.
8. A bionic retina for the visually impaired <http://israel21c.org/health/nano-retina-develops-bionic-retina-for-visually-impaired>
Inserted into the eye in a 30-minute procedure, the Bio-Retina implant, about the size of a grain of rice, turns into an artificial retina that melds to the neurons in the eye. It is activated by special eyeglasses that transform incoming light into an electrical impulse that stimulates the neurons to send images to the brain. The results are almost immediate. While Israeli start-up Nano Retina is not the first in the field to develop such a technology, its implant offers a tenfold improvement in vision compared to the two solutions on the market today. It's now at the end of the R&D stage, which is good news for the thousands of people who go blind every year.
Inserted into the eye in a 30-minute procedure, the Bio-Retina implant, about the size of a grain of rice, turns into an artificial retina that melds to the neurons in the eye. It is activated by special eyeglasses that transform incoming light into an electrical impulse that stimulates the neurons to send images to the brain. The results are almost immediate. While Israeli start-up Nano Retina is not the first in the field to develop such a technology, its implant offers a tenfold improvement in vision compared to the two solutions on the market today. It's now at the end of the R&D stage, which is good news for the thousands of people who go blind every year.
9. Mind-controlled computing for the disabled<http://israel21c.org/technology/mind-controlled-computing-for-the-disabled>
Hoping to give more dignity and communications possibilities to the disabled, a trio of students from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev developed Mini-Desktop, a graphical user interface (GUI) program that connects brain waves to a computer via Emotiv, a headset that can record and analyze brainwave EEGs. Though years away from commercialization, this advance would enable the physically challenged to use their thoughts to send emails, surf the Web, turn on media players and communicate with their computer and the outside world. It also has potential for noisy environments or situations where two hands are just not enough.
Hoping to give more dignity and communications possibilities to the disabled, a trio of students from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev developed Mini-Desktop, a graphical user interface (GUI) program that connects brain waves to a computer via Emotiv, a headset that can record and analyze brainwave EEGs. Though years away from commercialization, this advance would enable the physically challenged to use their thoughts to send emails, surf the Web, turn on media players and communicate with their computer and the outside world. It also has potential for noisy environments or situations where two hands are just not enough.
10. Solar energy that floats on water <http://israel21c.org/environment/solar-energy-that-floats-on-water>
Generating energy from the sun would be more practical if not for two huge drawbacks: The expense of the silicon material that converts light to electricity, and the large tracts of land needed for solar farms. By solving both problems with solar energy grids that can float on water, Solaris Synergy captured first place in the Israel National Cleantech Open IDEAS Competition in November 2010. Constructed of lightweight plastic and fiberglass, a grid of connected modules can float on any fresh-, salt- or wastewater surface. This solar-on-water platform doubles as a breathable reservoir cover that reduces evaporation and eliminates algae.
Generating energy from the sun would be more practical if not for two huge drawbacks: The expense of the silicon material that converts light to electricity, and the large tracts of land needed for solar farms. By solving both problems with solar energy grids that can float on water, Solaris Synergy captured first place in the Israel National Cleantech Open IDEAS Competition in November 2010. Constructed of lightweight plastic and fiberglass, a grid of connected modules can float on any fresh-, salt- or wastewater surface. This solar-on-water platform doubles as a breathable reservoir cover that reduces evaporation and eliminates algae.
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Reversal of Fortune: Soros Said to Buy Gold Again Late Last YearFriday, 06 Jan 2012 11:15 AM  Legendary financier George Soros returned to buying gold in late 2011 after selling it earlier, and is due to reap the benefits later this year when Fed policies will likely weaken the dollar and send the precious metal climbing, Emerging Money reports. In the first quarter of 2011, Soros Fund Management sold almost all its shares in the SPDR Gold Trust and the iShares Gold Trust exchange-traded funds, Bloomberg reports, citing SEC data. Gold later fell in 2011 as the dollar resumed its safe-haven status on sentiment that the U.S. economy was set to improve and somewhat decouple itself from Europe's woes. But the U.S. economy might not improve enough to make Federal Reserve officials fully comfortable, as the European situation could take a turn to the worse and threaten still-fragile economic output at home and keep unemployment rates elevated.
Should that occur, the dollar would weaken and gold would soar anew later this year, making Soros' move back into gold profitable. "Even though gold closed the year at a six-month low, Soros and other gold bulls such as Steve Cohen of SAC Capital will be rewarded if Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke launches into a third round of quantitative easing," Emerging Money reports. "When this happens, all dollar-denominated commodities, including oil, United States Oil ( USO), and silver, iShares Silver Trust ( SLV) will rise with gold, just as happened with the last quantitative easing campaign in 2010." The Fed has already launched two rounds of quantitative easing, known widely as QE1 and QE2, with the aim of lowering unemployment rates and steering the economy away from what it saw were deflationary threats. QE1 saw the Fed buy $1.7 trillion in assets from banks, mainly mortgage-backed securities, while QE2 saw the U.S. central bank snap up $600 billion in Treasury securities from banks. Unemployment rates, which came in at 8.5 percent in December, still remain above pre-recession levels and inflation rates low despite higher prices at the pump and in the grocery store. When setting benchmark borrowing rates, the Fed tends to focus on core inflation figures, which are stripped of volatile food and energy prices because such items swing up and down not due to fundamental changes in demand. A CNNMoney Survey shows that despite improving economic indicators, the economy is still weaker than what Federal Reserve officials like and therefore, QE3 could be on the way. About 75 percent of investment experts surveyed say QE3 may be coming in 2012 due to damage the European debt crisis is set to inflict on the U.S. economy. "Despite an improving tone to recent U.S. economic reports, we are concerned that global developments may weigh more heavily on the U.S. growth outlook as 2012 unfolds," says Dan Pierce, portfolio manager at State Street Global Advisors, according to CNNMoney. Some gold bulls, including Jim Rogers, have pointed out that rising food and energy prices are the result of QE1 and QE2, as a big chunk of all the liquidity that stems from the Fed's loose policies tends to end up in commodities markets. "Anybody who buys, who goes shopping knows that prices are going up. Buy food, education, insurance, just about everything that we buy, prices are going higher and the government tells us there's no inflation," Rogers told Moneynews/Newsmax.TV recently. The U.S. consumer price index was unchanged in November from October and up 3.4 percent on year. "Some independent measures say it's over 6 percent already ... it's going to go much higher because they keep printing money, and as long as they keep printing money, it's going to get worse. So prepare yourself for much higher inflation," Rogers adds. And higher inflation means higher gold prices. "Although investors are currently not focused on an inflationary environment, longer term we believe with the amount of stimulus injected globally and higher inflation expectations will continue to support investment demand in gold," says Tanya Jakusconek, an analyst for the unit of Canada's Scotiabank Group, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Scotia Capital expects it to hit $1,750 an ounce. The metal peaked at around $1,900 an ounce in September but has since fallen and is currently trading around $1,620 an ounce. Early in 2011, Soros sold his positions in gold exchange-traded funds SPDR Gold Trust and the iShares Gold Trust on concerns the metal had become an asset bubble, according to Bloomberg. Other high-profile investors shorted gold as well, including hedge fund managers John Paulson, Paul Touradji and Eric Mindich, according to Bloomberg. Other experts agree that while gold corrected at the end of 2011, it's not out. "Gold became very overbought," says Charles Morris, who oversees about US$2.2-billion of assets at HSBC Global Asset Management in London and cut his bullion holdings to 6 percent at the end of November from 15 percent six months ago, according to Bloomberg. "It will at least consolidate following this almighty rally. When the new bull market arrives, maybe a year or so away from now, then gold will once again prove to be a leading asset." |
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