What Sowell and South Carolinians are saying is when you are in a dog fight go with the meanest 'nut cutter!' Appears South Carolinians have decided to throw a Hail Mary! (See 1 below.)
But then other views. (See 1a and 1b below.)
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If it is Romney, Kyle-Ann Shiver writes, brace yourself for a shameful Mormon attack. (See 2 below.)
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When I turned 65 I threw a birthday party for myself on the Santa Fe Campus of St John's College( I was then serving on their board of Governors and Advisors.) St John's is the Great Books School and, in keeping with the Socratic approach to education, I planned a discussion weekend with the topic: "What Is The Meaning of Being a Good Citizen." We interspersed our discussions with wonderful dinners held in unique settings and enjoyed good fellowship. The friends attending came from every political spectrum.
Tonight my president is going to bash me because I played by the rules, got an education, took risks and enjoyed a reasonably successful career. While doing so, I also saved and accumulated some retirement funds because our capitalistic System afforded me that opportunity. Now I am reaping some of the benefits of these 'selfish' efforts and my president wants me to feel guilty. He does not seem to care about what I did with my earnings, whether I gave of both myself and to charitable causes. He does not seem to care that I participated in raising five wonderful kids, helped them get as much education as they wished and now they are productive citizens as are their own offspring.
'PNF/F' wants desperately to win re-election at any cost and thus, believes attacking me and other similar Americans is the way to do so. He believes government should be the arbiter of how successful we should become and, in the process, the nation will be better off because this will elevate those on the bottom.
This is a message he hopes will sell and will appeal to those who feel cheated by the system. It is a message for making our society dependent upon Uncle Sam because Uncle Sam not only knows best but is also smart enough to choose the best methods of leveling the field. It is also an appeal to the baser instincts of my fellow citizens.
It is a slick but equally sick message. It is not about the America of opportunity I grew up in but is about a new and changed America where government levels the playing field while the skill set of the players remains the same. It is the America of President Solyndra.
'PNF/F's' message is designed to peak the anger of those left behind in the hope they will vote for that illusive free lunch because disparities should not be left to the system to self adjust as it always has, when it swings too far in one direction or the other. Yet, will President Solyndra mention that our Capitalistic System created more wealth for more people than any other and has done so without restraining upward mobility?
I submit, the duty of good citizens is to be as productive as their God given talents permit, play by the rules, inform themselves of the issues and to participate. Beyond that, they have every right to expect government will stand ready to protect them, lend help during periods of national emergencies and then mostly get out of the way.
This is neither the goal nor the desire of this president and this is why he remains the most dangerous president in recent history and does not deserve to be re-elected.
A friend has analogized SOTU with golf.(See 3 below.)
32 months of mythical accomplishments? You decide. (See 3a below.)
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President Solyndra shoves it to the Catholics. Why? Because they were naive enough to believe he was their friend when it came to birth control matters. Oh well - say three hail Mary's and keep the faith!(See 4 below.)
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The Arab Spring has sprung a leak and, in the process, hosed President Solyndra and our State Department. One more defeat on the ledger of failed accomplishments. (See 5 below.)
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Roubini still sees dark clouds on the economic horizon. (See 6 below.)
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Miscalculations that can lead to very dire consequences. (See 7 below.)
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I hear a lot of grousing and complaining about the fact that good candidates for public office are seldom willing to run. In his op ed piece today, my friend, Bret Stephens (See 1b below) made that point about several Republicans who succumbed to their wives and chose not to enter the presidential race.
Meg Heap is running for District Attorney and I am hosting a meeting for her on Tuesday, March 13 at 5PM at The Plantation Club at The Landings in the Ball Room.
Mark your calendars and come hear Meg tell why she is the best suited attorney to help fight crime and other problems in Savannah.
If you care about what happens to Savannah citizens, as a result of crime, and other legal issues facing our city then show up damn it!!!!!
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Dick
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1)South Carolina Message
Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich's private life, which brought a devastating response from the former Speaker of the House -- and a standing ovation from the audience.
Apparently the television audience felt the same way, judging by the huge turnaround in the support for Gingrich. The stunning victory in South Carolina brought Newt's candidacy back to life.
But the message from South Carolina was about more than a reaction to how Gingrich dealt with a cheap shot question from the media. Nor was it simply the Republican voters' response to Newt's mastery as a debater.
The more fundamental message is that the Republican primary voters do not want Mitt Romney, even if the Republican establishment does -- and it is just a question of which particular conservative alternative the voters prefer.
The successive boomlets for Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain showed the Republican voter's constant search for somebody -- anybody -- as an alternative to Romney. The splintering of the conservative vote among numerous conservative candidates allowed Romney to be the "front-runner," but he never ran far enough in front to get a majority.
Mitt Romney's supposed "electability" -- his acceptability to moderates and independents -- has been his biggest selling point. Moreover, he is just the kind of candidate that the Republican establishment has preferred for years: a nice, bland, moderate who offends nobody.
This is the kind of candidate that is supposed to be the key to victory, no matter how many such candidates have gone down to defeat. If the bland and inoffensive moderate was in fact the key to victory, Dewey would have won a landslide victory over Truman in 1948, and John McCain would have beaten Barack Obama in 2008.
Whomever the Republicans choose as their candidate is going to have to run against both Barack Obama and the pro-Obama media. Newt Gingrich has shown that he can do that. Romney? Not so much. Mitt Romney's fumbling when trying to answer the simple question of whether he would or would not release his income tax records is the kind of indecisiveness that is not going to cut it in a nationally televised debate with President Obama.
Gingrich is not just a guy who is fast and feisty on his feet. He has a depth of understanding of what issues are crucial, experience in how to deal with them and -- almost equally important -- experience in how to shoot down the petty, irrelevant and "gotcha" distractions of the media.
Does Gingrich have negative qualities? More than most. Wild statements, alienation of colleagues, reckless gambits. His use of the rhetoric of the left in attacking Bain Capital was a recent faux pas, though one that he quickly backed away from.
But if we are serious -- and there has seldom, if ever, been a time in the history of this nation when it was more necessary to be serious -- then we cannot simply add up talking points for or against a candidate. What matters is how that candidate stands on issues that can make or break the future of this country.
Polls show the public as a whole with more negative attitudes toward Gingrich than toward Romney. But negative opinions, like other opinions, are not set in stone.
If the election campaign changes the opinions of a significant minority of the anti-Gingrich voters -- when the alternative is Obama -- it will not matter how much the remainder may hate Newt.
Is this a gamble? The painful reality is that everyone in this year's field of Republican candidates is a gamble. And re-electing Barack Obama is an even bigger gamble.
Whichever candidate the Republican voters finally choose from this year's field, they are bound to have reservations, if not fears. Gingrich's worst could be worse than Romney's worst, both as a candidate and as a president. But Gingrich's best is much better than Romney's best.
Sometimes caution can be carried to the point where it is dangerous. When the Super Bowl is on the line, you don't go with the quarterback who is least likely to throw an interception. You go with the one most likely to throw a touchdown pass.
1a)Newt Gingrich Is Shameless
When the Democrats surfaced George W. Bush's 1976 DUI the week before the 2000 presidential election, it nearly tipped the election. A week before the revelation, Bush was comfortably ahead in the polls.
It was obvious, reading about Bush as he struggled through the last weekend of the campaign and failed to come up with a riposte, that Bush was ashamed. Who wouldn't be? It nearly cost him the election.
Not Newt Gingrich. When an embarrassing interview about his infidelities showed up on the mainstream media two days before the South Carolina presidential primary, Newt made the mainstream media the issue. And the audience at the Thursday televised debate loved him for it. Adultery? Schmadultery. What's despicable is the mainstream media, said Newt. And by the way, when are they going to stop covering for Barack Obama?
Newt Gingrich is shameless.
Is shamelessness the #1 skill you need to be a successful elected politician? Certainly Bill Clinton had it. Al Gore had it -- remember the Big Kiss at the 2000 Democratic National Convention? The convention delegates went wild. President Obama certainly has it. He can refer to Bill Ayers as just a friend in the neighborhood -- the guy who sat on foundation boards with him and maybe ghost-wrote his memoir. And he can brazenly rewrite American history in Osawatomie, Kansas without a blink of an eye.
Mitt Romney, obviously, is not shameless. He's embarrassed about his Bain Capital years, his taxes, and his wealth, and it shows.
You would think that voters would prefer leaders who showed an ounce of decency, and who actually seemed ashamed of their peccadilloes, but we obviously don't. Presumably that's because political leaders are, in fact, still tribal chieftains. A leader's job is to lead the tribe and defeat its enemies. We can worry about internal troubles later. A tribal chieftain with hesitancies and regrets is about as much use as an Italian cruise-ship captain. Anyway, tribal chieftains have always had lots of wives; it comes with the territory.
The hit on Newt Gingrich is that he has "baggage" and that he speaks before he thinks.
On the other hand, Gingrich has been fearlessly taking it to the Democrats since the mid-1980s, when he started making inflammatory speeches on the empty House floor. Democrats got so annoyed that they changed the camera rules to show the empty benches that Newt was speaking to, and they taught the mainstream media to call Gingrich a "bombthrower." Newt took the hint, and in 1994 bombed the Democrats out of the House leadership after 40 years in the majority. You'd think you'd been carpet-bombed too if that had happened to you.
There's a bigger issue here. What if the parties are changing their positions on shame? For decades the Democrats have been the naughty party and Republicans the uptight party; Democrats were for drugs in San Francisco, Republicans for cocktails at the country club. But things change. It used to be that the Republican Party was a Northern party and the Democrats the Southern party. Now the opposite is true. Used to be that Republicans balanced budgets and Democrats ran deficits. Not anymore, not since Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. It used to be that liberals told us to let it all hang out. Now they want us to get permission for sex in writing.
Used to be that Democrats were shameless about everything and Republicans were embarrassed about everything. Suppose that is about to change? Here's Tim Stanley reporting from a party of religious conservatives in South Carolina:
"No, Newt's infidelities do not concern me," said one Southern gentleman. "On the contrary, I take heart that someone older and fatter than me can still have an affair."
This comes from a party that used to say, of Bill Clinton, that a man who cheats on his wife will cheat in the rest of his life. Next thing we know, social x-rays in Manhattan will preface their confidential luncheon put-downs with "bless her heart."
If Newt goes on to win the nomination and the presidency, liberals will only have themselves to blame. If liberals hadn't clamped down on free speech by making it a thoughtcrime to think badly of blacks, women, gays, native Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, abortionists -- anyone except greedy bankers, corporate CEOs, millionaires, and billionaires -- Republican voters wouldn't have built up this pent-up anger, this overpowering urge to give a standing ovation to anyone, anytime, who lands a haymaker on the mainstream media.
I tell you. It's not your father's Republican Party anymore. Things are getting to be shameless around here.
Christopher Chantrill is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. See his usgovernmentspending.com and also usgovernmentdebt.us. At americanmanifesto.org he is blogging and writing An American Manifesto: Life After Liberalism
1b)The GOP Deserves to Lose
Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn't because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it. If this election is as important as they all say it is, they had a duty to step up. Abraham Lincoln did not shy from the contest of 1860 because of Mary Todd. If Mr. Obama wins in November—or, rather, when he does—the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.
What should readers who despair of a second Obama term make of all this? Hope ObamaCare is repealed by the High Court, the Iranian bomb is repealed by the Israeli Air Force, and the Senate switches hands, giving America a healthy spell of Hippocratic government.
All perfectly plausible. And the U.S. will surely survive four more years. Who knows? By then maybe Republicans will have figured out that if they don't want to lose, they shouldn't run with losers.
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2)Brace Yourself for the Anti-Mormon Slime Machine
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
If Mitt Romney manages to win the GOP nomination, then we need to hope he is far better-prepared to handle the liberals' anti-Mormon slime machine than he was prepared to handle intra-party jabs at his Bain record, his tax returns, and his flip-flopping.
I would be quite dishonest if I said that I wasn't worried about what the liberals and their lackeys in the press will do to defame the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in their win-at-any-cost zeal to re-elect Barack Obama. Mitt Romney's religious faith is likely to be mocked, sensationalized, disparaged, and dragged through the media gutters. It could even be uglier than the fanning of racial tensions and demonization of the wealthy, also projects pushed by the Obama machine.
If that were not bad enough, moderate, not-particularly-religious voters in the general election may well be susceptible to the filth. That prospect is looming like the big, fat, completely unacknowledged elephant in the nomination room. Republicans seem to believe that if they don't talk about it, then neither will the Democrats.
That's just more than a little naïve, in my opinion.
Here's a clue for the GOP ostrich-class. When Barack Obama and his surrogates slyly played the race card against the wife of the "First Black President" to jujitsu the Clinton machine, your country-club blinders should have hit the dustbin with sentient ferocity.
And just because the GOP establishment ruled Jeremiah Wright and his un-Christian black liberation theology out of bounds, they may be now thinking Barack Obama's super PACs wouldn't dare -- would not dare -- to use Mitt's Mormonism to attack him.
What an adorable fantasy that is. Almost too cute for words.
And far too naïve for shrewd Republican primary voters to indulge.
The only way to beat off an attack you know is coming is to prepare for the worst, while hoping for the best. I've seen no sign, so far, that Mitt Romney has adequately prepared for any of the easily predictable attacks against him, which is a glaring deficit in his managerial competence credentials.
So, how might the liberal slime machine work to instill fear of the first LDS president among the fence-sitting moderate and not-particularly-religious independent voters?
Well, here's one clue from Slate in 2006. Jacob Weisberg, then chief editor at Slate (a Washington Post company), wasn't the least bit reticent in this piece, titled "A Mormon president? No way." While acknowledging that some might call him a "religious bigot," Weisberg nevertheless came out blasting -- not against Mormonism's "cult" status among mainline Christians, but against "the founding whoppers of Mormonism."
The LDS church holds that Joseph Smith, directed by the angel Moroni, unearthed a book of golden plates buried in a hillside in Western New York in 1827. The plates were inscribed in "reformed" Egyptian hieroglyphics - a nonexistent version of the ancient language that had yet to be decoded. [Snip] Smith was able to dictate his "translation" of the Book of Mormon first by looking through diamond-encrusted decoder glasses and then by burying his face in a hat with a brown rock at the bottom of it. He was an obvious con man. Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don't want him running the country.
Weisberg's was a withering attack, aimed not at righteousness, but at the non-religious twin jugulars of reason and intelligence.
Christopher Hitchens, outright foe of all religions, saved some of his most virulent intellectual attacks for Islam and the Latter-Day Saints:
If the followers of the prophet Muhammad hoped to put an end to any future "revelations" after the immaculate conception of the Koran, they reckoned without the founder of what is now one of the world's fastest-growing faiths. And they did not foresee (how could they, mammals as they were?) that the prophet of this ridiculous cult would model himself on theirs.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- hereafter known as the Mormons -- was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that "I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad" and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, "Either the Al-Koran or the sword." He was too ignorant to know that if you use the word al you do not need another definite article, but then he did resemble Muhammad in being able only to make a borrowing out of other people's bibles.
Hitchens, like Weisberg, questioned not the "cult" label applied to Mormonism among mainline Christians, but rather the intelligence of any reasonable adult who would put his faith in a putatively proven charlatan. Hitchens reminded his readers that shortly before Mormon "prophet" Joseph Smith "discovered" the Book of Mormon on the golden tablets, which only he could translate, he was convicted of "being a disorderly person and an imposter." In an 1826 Bainbridge, New York courtroom, "prophet" Smith had admitted that he had "defrauded" people and that he possessed dark or "necromantic" powers.
And as Weisberg cannily noted in 2006, whether Moses and/or Jesus might also have been religious charlatans, there is certainly not now any easily obtained historical record to this effect. Religions thousands of years old require faith, to be sure, but the Latter-Day Saints' less than two centuries in existence, and with historical evidence of their prophet's sketchy police record so abundant, requires squelching one's reason to put faith in it.
Other Mormons now serve in American government, unmolested by fervent attacks on their intelligence and beliefs. But Mitt Romney, seeking the mantle of first LDS president, who, if elected, will unseat the first black president, will have no such genteel protection.
The doctrines and founding stories of any religion can be mocked, of course. But the LDS, whose doctrines are unfamiliar to most gentiles (as the LDS refer to non-Mormon people) is especially vulnerable. Those asking Mormon questions won't need to rely on Baptist or Catholic theologians or upon the definition of a "cult" to give them ample fodder. They can merely go to Wikipedia and ask about the Mormon belief in "exaltation" and "eternal progression":
In Mormonism, the goal of each adherent is to achieve "exaltation" via the atonement of Jesus, as a result of which they inherit all the attributes of God the Father, including godhood. Mormons believe that these people will become gods and goddesses in the afterlife, and will have "all power, glory, dominion, and knowledge".[5] Moreover, Mormons teach that exalted people will live with their earthly families and also "have spirit children".[6] Their cosmic posterity will continue to grow forever.
According to the belief, exaltation is available only to those who have earned the highest "degree" of the Celestial Kingdom.[7] As prerequisites for this "greatest gift of God",[8] adherents believe that either in this life or the afterlife, they must become "perfect", they must participate in all the required ceremonies, and their exaltation must be "sealed upon them" by the Holy Ghost via the Second Anointing. One of the key qualifications for exaltation is being united in a celestial marriage to an opposite-sex partner via the ordinance of sealing,[9][10] either in person or by proxy after they have died. In the 19th century, some leaders of the LDS Church taught that participation in plural marriage was also a requirement of exaltation.[11] The LDS Church abandoned the practice over a century ago and teaches that only a single celestial marriage is required for exaltation.[12] However, this practice is still taught by Mormon fundamentalists.
Once American voters are cognizant of Mitt Romney's belief that his earthly perfection and Mormon tithes are necessary for his "exaltation" to godhood, they may see his life of abstinence and good works through a different lens. And believing those lenses will be rose-colored seems quite gullible or ignorant, or both.
Of course, the worst attacks on Mormonism will be based not on cosmology or theology, but upon the more earthly concerns about the Latter-Day Saints' history.
Until 1979, the Mormons were an unapologetic racist organization, which denied any level of priesthood to any man of African descent, regardless of his skin color. Again, citing Wikipedia, from the Book of Mormon, referring to descendents of "Laminites" (African tribes):
And [God] had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God; I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities." (2 Nephi 5:21)
Citing new "revelation," the Mormon hierarchy removed the African ban to its priesthood in 1979. Just as the Mormons had abandoned polygamy to gain statehood for Utah, they abandoned the belief in the "curse" of dark skin and African lineage.
Unfortunately, when Mitt Romney attempts to gain the mantle of first Mormon president by unseating the first black president, this racist history will become a centerpiece of the electoral battle.
Polygamy may be old and outdated Mormon doctrine, but how many average female voters will be willing to ignore it altogether? On the night of the Iowa caucuses, the Lifetime Movie Network played its Brigham Young polygamy extravaganza movie, The Nineteenth Wife. The movie features a modern woman battling polygamy still within a fundamentalist Mormon sect. Republicans should expect this issue to be repeated ad nauseam during the general election if Romney is the nominee.
While social conservatives make common cause with Mormons on a score of issues, social liberals (even fiscal conservatives allied with Republicans) will have a heyday with the Mormons' history of homophobia. Lest anyone has forgotten the vitriol of California's Proposition 8 fight, the liberals' anti-Mormon slime machine will no doubt provide ample reminders. Members of the LDS church put millions into the passage of Proposition 8, while its leaders invoked on-the-ground volunteer assistance. As reported by the LA Times in 2008:
Proposition 8 opponents estimate that members of the Mormon Church gave more than $20 million to the effort to pass the measure, though that is difficult to confirm because records of campaign donations do not include religious affiliation.
On the issues related to racism, feminism, and homophobia, Obama will have no worries about voter turnout if Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee. The liberal shock troops will come out in droves perhaps even surpassing those of 2008 to stop the first Mormon president from unseating the first black president.
While Mitt Romney is trying to explain the particulars of high finance and private equity firms, he will also be required to deal with the liberals' anti-Mormon slime machine. And Republicans can only hope that he is better-prepared on this front than he has been on others.
Kyle-Anne Shiver is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and PJ Media.
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3) I am a member of golf's 99%.I play golf, but have not yet made it to the professional level!
I have played the game for over 30 years, but have not really put in the practice time and study to be the best.I also probably do not have the skills to really get there either.
However, I feel I should be paid by the successful professionals for trying. It isn't fair those players who have worked harder, have studied the game, have better equipment are stronger and more skilled should make all that money.
Oh sure, they have their charities they give millions of dollars to, but I am sure they write all that off on their tax returns to reduce paying their fair share. Is that fair?
They should pay for my golf, buy me new equipment and pay me some of their winnings. The whole system should be changed to accommodate people like me!!
Let's occupy a golf course and demand that those who are better at what they do pay for us who aren't as good. Whining should get us something, like media attention and sympathy from progressive liberals!
3a)Barack Obama's 32 Month Report Card
by Rich Carroll
Mr. Hope and Change wants to create a nation humbled; humiliated, casting-aside capitalism and individual freedoms for one where we the people are government controlled. This would be a system that genuflects mediocrity, steals personal aspiration and opportunity, and punishes those who strive to succeed.
A gallon of regular gasoline the day Obama was inaugurated was $1.79 on average in the U.S. Today that price is $3.59, a 100.6% increase. The number of food stamp recipients has risen since Obama took office from 31,983,716 to 43,200,878, a 35.1% jump. Long term unemployment soared 146.2% during the same 32 month period from 2,600,000 to 6,400,000. Staggering hope and change isn't it?
American citizens living in poverty have risen 9.5% from 39,800,000 to 43,600,000, and the number of unemployed has jumped almost 25% from 11,616,000 to 14,485,000 as of August 31, 2011. The number of unemployed blacks has risen from 12.6% at the end of George Bush's term to 15.8% today, a 25.4% increase, and finally, our national debt is up 34.4% from 10.627 trillion to 14,278 trillion.
Keep these figures in mind as we recount the number of firsts for this presidency:
First President to refuse to show a valid birth certificate.
First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner.
First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the United States.
First President to violate the War Powers Act.
First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
First President to defy a Federal Judges court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.
First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party.
First President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs and later admit there was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs.
First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat.
First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees.
First President to terminate Americas ability to put a man in space.
First President to encourage racial discrimination and intimidation at polling places.
First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.
First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly speak-out on the reasons for their rate increases.
First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state they are allowed to locate a factory.
First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN).
First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.
First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.
First President to appoint 45 Czars to replace elected officials in his office.
First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office.
First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.
First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it.
First President to coddle American enemies while alienating Americas allies.
First President to publicly bow to Americas enemies while refusing to salute the U.S. Flag.
First President to go on multiple global apology tours.
First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends, paid for by the taxpayer.
First President to refuse to wear the U.S. Flag lapel pin.
First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife.
First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000.00 a year at taxpayer expense.
First President to repeat the Holy Qur'an tells us, and openly admit the early morning call of the Azan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.
Remember that 32 months of Obama in the White House we the people have accumulated national debt at a rate more than 27 times as fast as during the rest of our nation's entire history, as the Obama's plan their next extravagant vacation to the Indonesian Island nation of Bali.
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4)Obama Offends the Catholic Left
A contraceptive mandate provokes an unnecessary war.
By WILLIAM MCGURN
When Barack Obama secured his party's nomination for president in 2008, one group of Democrats had special reason to cheer.
These were Democrats who were reliably liberal on policy but horrified by the party's sometimes knee-jerk animosity to faith. The low point may have been the 1992 Democratic convention. There the liberal but pro-life governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Sr., was humiliated when he was denied a speaking slot while a pro-choice Republican activist from his home state was allowed.
With Mr. Obama, all this looked to be in the past. In 2006, the Illinois senator delivered a speech declaring that "secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square." He followed up by appearing at fund-raisers for the anti-abortion Bob Casey Jr. during Mr. Casey's successful run for Sen. Rick Santorum's senate seat.
Sen. Casey went on to co-chair Mr. Obama's National Catholic Advisory Council. Sixteen years after the snub to his dad, he was given a prime-time speaking slot at the 2008 Democratic convention. And Mr. Obama would go on to capture a majority of the Catholic vote.
Now, suddenly, we have headlines about the president's "war on the Catholic Church." Mostly they stem from a Health and Human Services mandate that forces every employer to provide employees with health coverage that not only covers birth control and sterilization, but makes them free. Predictably, the move has drawn fire from the Catholic bishops.
An HHS mandate requires employers to provide health coverage that covers birth control.
Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover. In a post for the left-leaning National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters minces few words. Under the headline "J'ACCUSE," he rightly takes the president to the woodshed for the politics of the decision, for the substance, and for how "shamefully" it treats "those Catholics who went out on a limb" for him.
The message Mr. Obama is sending, says Mr. Winters, is "that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our Church has built over the years to be Catholic in ways that are important to us."
Mr. Winters is not alone. The liberal Cardinal Roger Mahony, archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, blogged that he "cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience"—and he urged people to fight it. Another liberal favorite, Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., has raised the specter of "civil disobedience" and vowed that he will drop coverage for diocesan workers rather than comply. They are joined in their expressions of discontent by the leaders of Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities, which alone employs 70,000 people.
In the run-up to the ruling, the president of Notre Dame, the Rev. John Jenkins, suggested a modest compromise by which the president could have avoided most of this strife. That would have been by allowing the traditional exemption for religious organizations. That's the same understanding two of the president's own appointees to the Supreme Court just reaffirmed in a 9-0 ruling that recognized a faith-based school's First Amendment right to choose its own ministers without government interference, regardless of antidiscrimination law.
A few years ago Father Jenkins took enormous grief when he invited President Obama to speak at a Notre Dame commencement; now Father Jenkins finds himself publicly disapproving of an "unnecessary government intervention" that puts many organizations such as his in an "untenable position."
Here's just part of what he means by "untenable": Were Notre Dame to drop coverage for its 5,229 employees, the HHS penalty alone would amount to $10 million each year.
The irony, of course, is that the ruling is being imposed by a Catholic Health and Human Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, working in an administration with a Catholic vice president, Joe Biden. A few years back the voluble Mr. Biden famously threatened to "shove my rosary beads" down the throat of those who dared suggest that his party's positions on social issues put it at odds with people of faith. Does he now mean to include Mr. Winters, Cardinal Mahony and Father Jenkins?
Catholic liberals appreciate that this HHS decision is more than a return to the hostility that sent so many Catholic Democrats fleeing to the Republican Party these past few decades. They understand that if left to stand, this ruling threatens the religious institutions closest to their hearts—those serving Americans in need, such as hospitals, soup kitchens and immigrant services.
Conservatives may enjoy the problems this creates for Mr. Obama this election year. Still, for those who care about issues such as life and marriage and religious liberty that so roil our body politic, we ought to wish Catholic progressives well in their intra-liberal fight. For we shall never arrive at the consensus we hope for if we allow our politics to be divided between a party of faith and a party of animosity to faith.
------------------------------------------------------------------------5)America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
By Caroline B. Glick
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The US's rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence
An examination of the depth and breadth of America's losses
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A year ago this week, on January 25, 2011, the ground began to crumble under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's feet. One year later, Mubarak and his sons are in prison, and standing trial. This week, the final vote tally from Egypt's parliamentary elections was published. The Islamist parties have won 72 percent of the seats in the lower house.
The photogenic, Western-looking youth from Tahrir Square the Western media were thrilled to dub the Facebook revolutionaries were disgraced at the polls and exposed as an insignificant social and political force.
As for the military junta, it has made its peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. The generals and the jihadists are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. According to details of the agreement that have made their way to the media, the generals will remain the West's go-to guys for foreign affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood (and its fellow jihadists in the Salafist al-Nour party) will control Egypt's internal affairs.
This is bad news for women and for non-Muslims. Egypt's Coptic Christians have been under continuous attack by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters since Mubarak was deposed. Their churches, homes and businesses have been burned, looted and destroyed. Their wives and daughters have been raped. The military massacred them when they dared to protest their persecution.
As for women, their main claim to fame since Mubarak's overthrow has been their sexual victimization at the hands of soldiers who stripped female protesters and performed "virginity tests" on them. Out of nearly five hundred seats in parliament, only 10 will be filled by women.
The Western media are centering their attention on what the next Egyptian constitution will look like and whether it will guarantee rights for women and minorities. What they fail to recognize is that the Islamic fundamentalists now in charge of Egypt don't need a constitution to implement their tyranny. All they require is what they already have - a public awareness of their political power and their partnership with the military.
The same literalist approach that has prevented Western observers from reading the writing on the walls in terms of the Islamists' domestic empowerment has blinded them to the impact of Egypt's political transformation on the country's foreign policy posture. US officials forcefully proclaim that they will not abide by an Egyptian move to formally abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. What they fail to recognize is that whether or not the treaty is formally abrogated is irrelevant. The situation on the ground in which the new regime allows Sinai to be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel, and as a highway for weapons and terror personnel to flow freely into Gaza, are clear signs that the peace with Israel is already dead - treaty or no treaty.
EGYPT'S TRANSFORMATION is not an isolated event. The disgraced former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in the US this week. Yemen is supposed to elect his successor next month. The deteriorating security situation in that strategically vital land which borders the Arabian and Red Seas has decreased the likelihood that the election will take place as planned.
Yemen is falling apart at the seams. Al-Qaida forces have been advancing in the south. Last spring they took over Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. In recent weeks they captured Radda, a city 160 km. south of the capital of Sana.
Radda's capture underscored American fears that the political upheaval in Yemen will provide al- Qaida with a foothold near shipping routes through the Red Sea and so enable the group to spread its influence to neighboring Saudi Arabia.
Al-Qaida forces were also prominent in the NATO-backed Libyan opposition forces that with NATO's help overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in October. Although the situation on the ground is far from clear, it appears that radical Islamic political forces are intimidating their way into power in post-Gaddafi Libya.
Take for instance last weekend's riots in Benghazi. On Saturday protesters laid siege to the National Transitional Council offices in the city while Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the NTC, hid inside. In an attempt to quell the protesters' anger, Jalil fired six secular members of the NTC. He then appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gaddafi regime.
In Bahrain, the Iranian-supported Shi'ite majority continues to mount political protests against the Sunni monarchy. Security forces killed two young Shi'ite protesters over the past week and a half, and opened fired at Shi'ites who sought to hold a protest march after attending the funeral of one of them.
As supporters of Bahrain's Shi'ites have maintained since the unrest spread to the kingdom last year, Bahrain's Shi'ites are not Iranian proxies. But then, until the US pulled its troops out of Iraq last month, neither were Iraq's Shi'ites. What happened immediately after the US pullout is another story completely.
Extolling Iraq's swift deterioration into an Iranian satrapy, last Wednesday, Brig.-Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps Jerusalem Brigade, bragged, "In reality, in south Lebanon and Iraq, the people are under the effect of the Islamic Republic's way of practice and thinking."
While Suleimani probably exaggerated the situation, there is no doubt that Iran's increased influence in Iraq is being felt around the region. Iraq has come to the aid of Iran's Syrian client Bashar Assad who is now embroiled in a civil war. The rise of Iran in Iraq holds dire implications for the Hashemite regime in Jordan which is currently hanging on by a thread, challenged from within and without by the rising force of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Much has been written since the fall of Mubarak about the impact on Israel of the misnamed Arab Spring. Events like September's mob assault on Israel's embassy in Cairo and the murderous cross-border attack on motorists traveling on the road to Eilat by terrorists operating out of Sinai give force to the assessment that Israel is more imperiled than ever by the revolutionary events engulfing the region.
But the truth is that while on balance Israel's regional posture has taken a hit, particularly from the overthrow of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt, Israel is not the primary loser in the so-called Arab Spring.
Israel never had many assets in the Arab world to begin with. The Western-aligned autocracies were not Israel's allies. To the extent the likes of Mubarak and others have cooperated with Israel on various issues over the years, their cooperation was due not to any sense of comity with Jewish state. They worked with Israel because they believed it served their interests to do so. And at the same time Mubarak reined in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas because they threatened him, he waged political war against Israel on every international stage and allowed anti-Semitic poison to be broadcast daily on his regime-controlled television stations.
Since Israel's stake in the Arab power game has always been limited, its losses as a consequence of the fall of anti-Israel secular dictatorships and their replacement by anti-Israel Islamist regimes have been marginal. The US, on the other hand, has seen its interests massively harmed. Indeed, the US is the greatest loser of the pan-Arab revolutions.
TO UNDERSTAND the depth and breadth of America's losses, consider that on January 25, 2011, most Arab states were US allies to a greater or lesser degree. Mubarak was a strategic ally. Saleh was willing to collaborate with the US in combating al- Qaida and other jihadist forces in his country.
Gaddafi was a neutered former enemy who had posed no threat to the US since 2004. Iraq was a protectorate. Jordan and Morocco were stable US clients.
One year later, the elements of the US's alliance structure have either been destroyed or seriously weakened. US allies like Saudi Arabia, which have yet to be seriously threatened by the revolutionary violence, no longer trust the US. As the recently revealed nuclear cooperation between the Saudis and the Chinese makes clear, the Saudis are looking to other global powers to replace the US as their superpower protector.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect to the US's spectacular loss of influence and power in the Arab world is that most of its strategic collapse has been due to its own actions. In Egypt and Libya the US intervened prominently to bring down a US ally and a dictator who constituted no threat to its interests. Indeed, it went to war to bring Gaddafi down.
Moreover, the US acted to bring about their fall at the same time it knew that they would be replaced by forces inimical to American national security interests. In Egypt, it was clear that the Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the strongest political force in the country. In Libya, it was clear at the outset of the NATO campaign against Gaddafi that al-Qaida was prominently represented in the antiregime coalition. And just as the Islamists won the Egyptian election, shortly after Gaddafi was overthrown, al-Qaida forces raised their flag over Benghazi's courthouse.
US actions from Yemen to Bahrain and beyond have followed a similar pattern.
In sharp contrast to his active interventionism against US-allied regimes, President Barack Obama has prominently refused to intervene in Syria, where the fate of a US foe hangs in the balance.
Obama has sat back as Turkey has fashioned a Syrian opposition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League has intervened in a manner that increases the prospect that Syria will descend into chaos in the event that the Assad regime is overthrown.
Obama continues to speak grandly about his vision for the Middle East and his dedication to America's regional allies. And his supporters in the media continue to applaud his great success in foreign policy. But outside of their echo chamber, he and the country he leads are looked upon with increasing contempt and disgust throughout the Arab world.
Obama's behavior since last January 25 has made clear to US friend and foe alike that under Obama, the US is more likely to attack you if you display weakness towards it than if you adopt a confrontational posture against it. As Assad survives to kill another day; as Iran expands its spheres of influence and gallops towards the nuclear bomb; as al- Qaida and its allies rise from the Gulf of Aden to the Suez Canal; and as Mubarak continues to be wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher, the US's rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)Roubini: Still a 50-50 Chance for Global Economic Meltdown
By Forrest Jones
There's a 50 percent chance of a Chinese hard landing, a U.S. double-dip recession and a European economic meltdown, a perfect storm of events that would likely erupt in 2013, says New York University economist Nouriel Roubini.
Roubini, who accurately called the timing and severity of the U.S. housing collapse and global recession years before they happened, has warned of the triple whammy in the past, telling The Globe and Mail this time around the chances are still "significant" even as the U.S. shows signs of improvement today.
Governments around the world have taken stop-gap measures to plug holes in their debt-ridden economies without making fundamental reforms needed for lasting recovery.
When asked the likelihood of a perfect storm, Roubini says "close to 50 percent, unless the world changes its economic policies. But it's a 2013 or 14 or 15 story, not 2012. Because all the players for now are kicking the can down the road."
Global economies, European ones especially, need austerity measures to help pay down their debt burdens, but austerity measures without growth make recessions worse.
"Without economic growth, the debt is not sustainable. It becomes a vicious circle. Markets force you into austerity, which makes the recession worse, which deepens the fiscal deficit, requiring more austerity," Roubini says.
"So Europe today needs policies and strategies to restore growth. Pure austerity alone will be severely recessionary and eventually will produce a depression."
The World Bank has warned that the European debt crisis could throw the world back into a recession and has lowered its 2012 growth forecast to 2.5 percent from 3.6 percent.
"An escalation of the crisis would spare no one," says Andrew Burns, manager of global macroeconomics at the World bank, according to The Guardian.
"Developed and developing country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008-09. The importance of contingency planning cannot be stressed enough. It is clear that whatever probability is attached to this downside scenario, it has increased since June last year."
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)Roubini: Still a 50-50 Chance for Global Economic Meltdown
By Forrest Jones
There's a 50 percent chance of a Chinese hard landing, a U.S. double-dip recession and a European economic meltdown, a perfect storm of events that would likely erupt in 2013, says New York University economist Nouriel Roubini.
Roubini, who accurately called the timing and severity of the U.S. housing collapse and global recession years before they happened, has warned of the triple whammy in the past, telling The Globe and Mail this time around the chances are still "significant" even as the U.S. shows signs of improvement today.
Governments around the world have taken stop-gap measures to plug holes in their debt-ridden economies without making fundamental reforms needed for lasting recovery.
When asked the likelihood of a perfect storm, Roubini says "close to 50 percent, unless the world changes its economic policies. But it's a 2013 or 14 or 15 story, not 2012. Because all the players for now are kicking the can down the road."
Global economies, European ones especially, need austerity measures to help pay down their debt burdens, but austerity measures without growth make recessions worse.
"Without economic growth, the debt is not sustainable. It becomes a vicious circle. Markets force you into austerity, which makes the recession worse, which deepens the fiscal deficit, requiring more austerity," Roubini says.
"So Europe today needs policies and strategies to restore growth. Pure austerity alone will be severely recessionary and eventually will produce a depression."
The World Bank has warned that the European debt crisis could throw the world back into a recession and has lowered its 2012 growth forecast to 2.5 percent from 3.6 percent.
"An escalation of the crisis would spare no one," says Andrew Burns, manager of global macroeconomics at the World bank, according to The Guardian.
"Developed and developing country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008-09. The importance of contingency planning cannot be stressed enough. It is clear that whatever probability is attached to this downside scenario, it has increased since June last year."
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7)How Iran Could Trigger Accidental Armageddon:
ByJeffrey Goldberg
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Samuel Ciszuk, an oil consultant at KBC Energy Economics, talks about the agreement by European Union duplomats to place an embargo on the import of Iranian oil with a phase-in period to July 1. He speaks with Mark Barton on Bloomberg Television's "The Pulse." (Source: Bloomberg)
One of the arguments often made in favor of bombing Iran to cripple its nuclear program is this: The mullahs in Tehran are madmen who believe it is their consecrated duty to destroy the perfidious Zionist entity (which is to say, Israel) and so are building nuclear weapons to launch at Tel Aviv at the first favorable moment.
It’s beyond a doubt that the Iranian regime would like to bring about the destruction of Israel. However, the mullahs are also cynics and men determined, more than anything, to maintain their hold on absolute power.
Which is why it’s unlikely that they would immediately use their new weapons against Israel. An outright attack on Israel - - a country possessing as many as 200 nuclear weapons and sophisticated delivery systems -- would lead to the obliteration of Tehran, the deaths of millions, and the destruction of Iran’s military and industrial capabilities.
The mullahs know this. But here’s the problem: It may not matter. The threat of a deliberate nuclear attack pales in comparison with the chance that a nuclear-armed Iran could accidentally trigger a cataclysmic exchange with Israel.
Warp-Speed Escalation
The experts who study this depressing issue seem to agree that aMiddle East in which Iran has four or five nuclear weapons would be dangerously unstable and prone to warp-speed escalation.
Here’s one possible scenario for the not-so-distant future: Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, launches a cross-border attack into Israel, or kills a sizable number of Israeli civilians with conventional rockets. Israel responds by invading southern Lebanon, and promises, as it has in the past, to destroy Hezbollah. Iran, coming to the defense of its proxy, warns Israel to cease hostilities, and leaves open the question of what it will do if Israel refuses to heed its demand.
Dennis Ross, who until recently served as President Barack Obama’s Iran point man on the National Security Council, notes Hezbollah’s political importance to Tehran. “The only place to which the Iranian government successfully exported the revolution is to Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Ross told me. “If it looks as if the Israelis are going to destroy Hezbollah, you can see Iran threatening Israel, and they begin to change the readiness of their forces. This could set in motion a chain of events that would be like ‘Guns of August’ on steroids.”
Imagine that Israel detects a mobilization of Iran’s rocket force or the sudden movement of mobile missile launchers. Does Israel assume the Iranians are bluffing, or that they are not? And would Israel have time to figure this out? Or imagine the opposite: Might Iran, which will have no second-strike capability for many years -- that is, no reserve of nuclear weapons to respond with in an exchange -- feel compelled to attack Israel first, knowing that it has no second chance?
Bruce Blair, the co-founder of the nuclear disarmament group Global Zero and an expert on nuclear strategy, told me that in a sudden crisis Iran and Israel might each abandon traditional peacetime safeguards, making an accidental exchange more likely.
“A confrontation that brings the two nuclear-armed states to a boiling point would likely lead them to raise the launch- readiness of their forces -- mating warheads to delivery vehicles and preparing to fire on short notice,” he said. “Missiles put on hair-trigger alert also obviously increase the danger of their launch and release on false warning of attack -- false indications that the other side has initiated an attack.”
Then comes the problem of misinterpreted data, Blair said. “Intelligence failures in the midst of a nuclear crisis could readily lead to a false impression that the other side has decided to attack, and induce the other side to launch a preemptive strike.”
‘Cognitive Bias’
Blair notes that in a crisis it isn’t irrational to expect an attack, and this expectation makes it more likely that a leader will read the worst into incomplete intelligence. “This predisposition is a cognitive bias that increases the danger that one side will jump the gun on the basis of incorrect information,” he said.
Ross told me that Iran’s relative proximity to Israel and the total absence of ties between the two countries -- the thought of Iran agreeing to maintain a hot line with a country whose existence it doesn’t recognize is far-fetched -- make the situation even more hazardous. “This is not the Cold War,” he said. “In this situation we don’t have any communications channels. Iran and Israel have zero communications. And even in the Cold War we nearly had a nuclear war. We were much closer than we realized.”
The answer to this predicament is to deny Iran nuclear weapons, but not through an attack on its nuclear facilities, at least not now. “The liabilities of preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program vastly outweigh the benefits,” Blair said. “But certainly Iran’s program must be stopped before it reaches fruition with a nuclear weapons delivery capability.”
Ross argues that the Obama administration’s approach -- the imposition of steadily more debilitating sanctions -- may yet work. There’s a chance, albeit slim, that he may be right: New sanctions are just beginning to bite and, combined with an intensified cyberwar and sabotage efforts, they might prove costly enough to deter Tehran.
But opponents of military action make a mistake in arguing that a nuclear Iran is a containable problem. It is not.
(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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