Maybe I am nuts but I believe there is something wrong with this picture? You decide.
The last thing logic would suggest is we need bigger and more expanded take over by government of the private sector. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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If Obama wins the charm award does anyone ask how far does that carry you if his policies have helped you remain unemployed, in the bread line or even at the grocery store?
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When will this president begin to address substantive issues? Probably not during this campaign because his bought and paid for lap dogs in the media and press are unlikely to disturb voters by asking anything substantive. Am I off base to make this statement or pose this question?
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Sent by a dear friend, fellow memo reader, highly decorated Marine and, in my book, a true patriot.
And if that ain't enough, his wife is a feisty beauty.. (See 2 below.)
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Israel and the nuclear option? As Obama seeks the decline of America's power, thereby creating dangerous vacuums, will these circumstances create unusual events forcing Israel's hand? We are fast approaching that time. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Splinters in Her Crotch ...
1a) "Issues" or America?
There are some very serious issues at stake in this year's election -- so many that some people may not be able to see the forest for the trees. Individual issues are the trees, but the forest is the future of America as we have known it.
The America that has flourished for more than two centuries is being quietly but steadily dismantled by the Obama administration, during the process of dealing with particular issues.
For example, the merits or demerits of President Obama's recent executive order, suspending legal liability for young people who are here illegally, presumably as a result of being brought here as children by their parents, can be debated pro and con. But such a debate overlooks the much more fundamental undermining of the whole American system of Constitutional government.
The separation of powers into legislative, executive and judicial branches of government is at the heart of the Constitution of the United States -- and the Constitution is at the heart of freedom for Americans.
No President of the United States is authorized to repeal parts of legislation passed by Congress. He may veto the whole legislation, but then Congress can override his veto if they have enough votes. Nevertheless, every President takes an oath to faithfully execute the laws that have been passed and sustained -- not just the ones he happens to agree with.
If laws passed by the elected representatives of the people can be simply over-ruled unilaterally by whoever is in the White House, then we are no longer a free people, choosing what laws we want to live under.
When a President can ignore the plain language of duly passed laws, and substitute his own executive orders, then we no longer have "a government of laws, and not of men" but a President ruling by decree, like the dictator in some banana republic.
When we confine our debates to the merits or demerits of particular executive orders, we are tacitly accepting arbitrary rule. The Constitution of the United States cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution. But, if we allow ourselves to get bogged down in the details of particular policies imposed by executive orders, and vote solely on that basis, then we have failed to protect the Constitution -- and ourselves.
Whatever the merits or demerits of the No Child Left Behind Act, it is the law until Congress either repeals it or amends it. But for Barack Obama to unilaterally waive whatever provisions he doesn't like in that law undermines the fundamental nature of American government.
President Obama has likewise unilaterally repealed the legal requirement that welfare recipients must work, by simply redefining "work" to include other things like going to classes on weight control. If we think the bipartisan welfare reform legislation from the Clinton administration should be repealed or amended, that is something for the legislative branch of government to consider.
There have been many wise warnings that freedom is seldom lost all at once. It is usually eroded away, bit by bit, until it is all gone. You may not notice a gradual erosion while it is going on, but you may eventually be shocked to discover one day that it is all gone, that we have been reduced from citizens to subjects, and the Constitution has become just a meaningless bunch of paper.
ObamaCare imposes huge costs on some institutions, while the President's arbitrary waivers exempt other institutions from having to pay those same costs. That is hardly the "equal protection of the laws," promised by the 14th Amendment.
John Stuart Mill explained the dangers in that kind of government long ago: "A government with all this mass of favours to give or to withhold, however free in name, wields a power of bribery scarcely surpassed by an avowed autocracy, rendering it master of the elections in almost any circumstances but those of rare and extraordinary public excitement."
If Obama gets reelected, he knows that he need no longer worry about what the voters think about anything he does. Never having to face them again, he can take his arbitrary rule by decree as far as he wants. He may be challenged in the courts but, if he gets just one more Supreme Court appointment, he can pick someone who will rubber stamp anything he does and give him a 5 to 4 majority.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)When the Music Stopped
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(For those who are unaware: At all military base theaters, the National Anthem is played before the movie begins.)
This is written from a Chaplain in Iraq:
I recently attended a showing of 'Superman 3' here at LSA Anaconda. We have a large auditorium that we use for movies as well as memorial services and other large gatherings.
As is the custom at all military bases, we stood to attention when The National Anthem began before the main feature. All was going well until three-quarters of the way through The National Anthem, the music stopped.
Now, what would happen if this occurred with 1,000 18-to-22-year-olds back in the States? I imagine that there would be hoots, catcalls, laughter, a few rude comments, and everyone would sit down and yell for the movie to begin. Of course, that is, only if they had stood for The National Anthem in the first place.
Here in Iraq 1,000 soldiers continued to stand at attention, eyes fixed forward. The music started again, and the soldiers continued to quietly stand at attention. Again, though, at the same point, the music stopped. What would you expect 1,000 soldiers standing at attention to do? Frankly, I expected some laughter, and everyone would eventually sit down and wait for the movie to start.
No! You could have heard a pin drop while every soldier continued to stand at attention.
Suddenly, there was a lone voice from the front of the auditorium. Then a dozen voices, and soon the room was filled with the voices of a thousand soldiers, finishing where the recording left off, "And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say, does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave."
It was the most inspiring moment I have had in Iraq, and I wanted you to know what kind of U.S. Soldiers are serving you! Remember them as they fight for us!Pass this along as a reminder to others to be ever in prayer for all our soldiers serving us here at home and abroad. Many have already paid the ultimate price.
Written by Chaplain Jim Higgins, LSA Anaconda is at the Ballad Airport in Iraq , north of Baghdad .
Please share only if you are so inclined. God Bless America and all of our troops serving throughout the world.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------You may verifyh at: http://freedomisknowledge.com/troop/fromachaplaininiraq.htmlBob Staples
3)Israel's Nuclear Warning Shot Option
By James Lewis
When the United States terminated World War II by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviets did two things: they invaded Sakhalin Island to grab the most territory before peace was declared, and they rushed development of their own nukes (based on plans stolen from the Manhattan Project by Klaus Fuchs and other Communist spies). The long stand-off of the Cold War started with a series of warning explosions by Stalin's USSR and American atmospheric explosions. Those warning shots stopped World War III and turned it into the Cold War. They kept the peace -- not a perfect peace, but infinitely better than nuclear war.
When in the early 1970s India and Pakistan were in a secret race for nuclear weapons (the CIA as usual suspecting nothing), they exchanged nuclear warning shots. In India, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi -- irony of ironies -- ordered a nuclear test in 1974. India's secret nuclear program was called Smiling Buddha, which throws a whole new light on Buddhism.
In 1998 India conducted another test, and Pakistan immediately exploded five bombs. Naturally, the BBC was "shocked, shocked," though the West had done nothing effective to stop nuclear proliferation. Pakistan was aided by China and Libya, and probably financed by the Saudis, who like the idea of an off-the-shelf bomb they can import any time to protect against Iranian aggression. In any case, Pakistan and India both have nukes, and they are not at war. Pakistan closes its eyes to cross-border terrorism against India on a regular basis, as Muslim nations generally do. India is heavily involved in Afghanistan, in splitting Bangladesh from current Pakistan, and in various nefarious deeds against Pakistan the Indians keep well-hidden.
This week, four high-tech Indian warships visited the Israeli port city of Haifa. Why? We don't know. But don't doubt that the forthcoming conflict with Iran and possibly Egypt was discussed; possibly technology secrets were exchanged, and cooperative war plans were explored. Of course, you could do that on the internet, so the four Indian warships were also a signal to the world. Just like Vladimir Putin's visit to Israel a few months ago (when Obama has conspicuously avoided a visit) was also meant to be a signal to the world.
What do those signals mean? Obama believes in American decline, and just to make sure, he's making decline happen. The Mediterranean used to be mare nostrum, as the Romans called it -- an American sea, a crucial part of the six decades of Pax Americana that kept Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East at peace and open to world trade. Today the Russians have ten warships in the Eastern Med, and they've built up a port in Syria at Tarsus. With Putin's visit to Israel, the Russians are moving into the power vacuum left by Obama's deliberate neglect.
You see, America did not cause the Cold War, contrary to liberal myth. It kept the peace.
Now that America is withdrawing in Asia, the Med, and maybe more, everybody is scrambling for new alliances. The Iranian nuclear threat is only the most obvious, lethal danger. Egypt will soon have nuclear weapons, financed by Saudi Arabia and imported from Pakistan, China, and/or North Korea. Russia is fishing in troubled waters, trying to construct a new OPEC to include the new shale gas powers, including Israel and Greece (through Cyprus). That way Russian oil and gas can be sold at a monopoly price, and Russia can become the new oil and gas giant, like Saudi Arabia.
When America withdraws its military, peace doesn't break out by some magic. No -- what happens is that all the nations feeling threatened by war start making new alliances. The Middle East is no longer a sphere of American influence, as it has been since the Soviets were beaten back decades ago. It's breaking apart into regional alliances, and nobody knows how the dominos are going to fall. Everybody is scrambling for survival, and for advantages.
Times they are a changin', but not the way Bob Dylan thought. The Beatles were poor prognosticators about the Age of Aquarius. As Pax America has been sabotaged by the left and radical Islam (9/11 being part of all that), all kinds of ambitious nuclear powers are arising.
That Indian naval visit to Haifa signaled a new Cold War (if we're lucky) -- the Cold Jihad War. The conflict between India and Pakistan is part of the Jihad War that started with Mohammed. The conflict between Israel and Iran is a Jihad War. Other jihad wars are bubbling over in southern Russia (Chechnya), in Indonesia and South-East Asia, and in China.
The U.S. and the West are still playing the role of useful idiots, but they know, they know.
It's widely speculated now that Israel will attack Iran with conventional missiles, jet bombers, and electronic weapons very soon.
But there is another option: to explode a nuclear weapon under the Negev Desert, or even, in cooperation with other countries, in India or elsewhere. It's been done before, in cooperation with South Africa.
Pros: Obama's historic appeasement has made a nuclear Iran inevitable. Israel's warning shot would just be recognizing reality.
Pros: A nuclear standoff might preserve a Cold Peace with Iran and Egypt for sixty years, just as it kept the peace for sixty years of the U.S.-USSR Cold War.
Pros: During that time, anti-missile defenses will be perfected. A nuclear warning shot would delay a major war for years, maybe decades.
Cons (being hotly debated in Jerusalem): The BBC and the New York Times would go hysterical.
(Answer: So what else is new?)
Cons: An Israeli nuclear warning shot would justify and maybe accelerate the Iranian and Egyptian (etc., etc.) nuclear efforts.
(Answer: So what else is new?)
Cons: In the worst case, it would revive the European boycott against Israel.
(Answer: Europe is as corrupt as the United Nations. It is a paper tiger, but it's got a big roar. With the crash of the euro, there's no country in Europe that will not trade with Israel. They are in big, big economic trouble.)
On that list of pros and cons, the pros might just have it.
Remember: so far in history, nuclear standoffs have kept the peace for six decades.
Why would the Israelis risk a conventional attack on Iran, with the American cop on the beat playing drunk, if there is a nice, clean, but radical solution?
3a)An Obama Visit to Israel Could Stall Iran Attack
Illustration by Eric Timothy Carlson
It has been a tumultuous couple of weeks in the Iran-Israel War, and it hasn’t even started yet.
Over the past few days, Iranian leaders have promised Israel’s coming destruction about half a dozen times, and have gotten so overheated they’ve begun to mix metaphors: There has been much talk about wiping the cancerous tumor of Zionism from the map, and so on. The Iranians’ language has become sufficiently genocidal that even the secretary general of theUnited Nations, not generally known as a hotbed of Zionist feeling, said he was “dismayed by the remarks threatening Israel’s existence.”
The Israelis -- Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in particular -- have been suggesting to the news media these past two weeks that the time is nearly at hand for a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites. Of course, Barak and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been discussing the existential threat posed by Iran since they came into office. (Netanyahu, in an interview with me three years ago, saidIran was led by a “messianic, apocalyptic cult,” and told me he thought the two great tasks before Obama were fixing the U.S. economy and stopping Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold.)Israel’s leaders are also “dismayed.” But their dismay is prompted by something much deeper than rhetoric. They understand that much of the civilized world is prepared to live with a nuclear Iran, and they harbor seemingly ineradicable fears that U.S. President Barack Obama, and his Western allies, might secretly be willing to do the same.
‘Elevate the Urgency’
Which is partly why the White House seems to be taking the most recent Israeli statements and strategic leaks in stride -- a bit too much in stride, in fact. They seem to be discounting the rhetoric as idle threats. It’s clear to the White House that “the Israelis feel the need to elevate the urgency on the Iranian timeline,” according to a senior administration official who declined to be identified. “They tend to do this from time to time. It’s something we’ve learned to live with.”
There is, naturally, an element of gamesmanship to the Israeli government’s media campaign. But one way to tell that Netanyahu and Barak may actually be intent on striking Iran in the coming weeks is that those Israelis who oppose a unilateral strike appear to be panicking. Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, is the most prominent. The Israeli presidency is mainly a ceremonial post, and Peres crossed the line into overt political interference last week whenhe said that Israel “cannot do it alone.” He went on, “It is clear to us that we have to proceed together with America.”
The Obama administration is adamantly opposed to an Israeli strike this year, and is obviously also opposed to launching its own attack in 2012. Administration officials believe that Netanyahu and Barak should have faith in Obama’s assurances that he’ll stop Iran, and that the U.S. has time before Iran crosses the nuclear threshold. So far, though, the administration has failed to convince the Israelis -- or the Arabs of the Persian Gulf, who also quake in fear of Iran -- that it will take preventive military measures.
I think the president is serious about confronting the threat. I also understand why Israel’s leaders are conditioned to disbelieve him: Jewish history is strewn with examples of promises unfulfilled and outright abandonment.
There is one sure way, though, that Obama can get his message across, and that is to deliver it in Israel, and soon.
Face to Face
Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence (and one of the pilots in the 1981 Israeli raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor), argues that Obama should visit Israel to deliver a face-to-face message that stopping Iran is a vital U.S. national security interest.
A visit to Israel would do more to delay a strike on Iran than any other step the administration could take. The beauty of this idea is that Obama won’t have to say anything new. He’s on record explaining why the idea of containing a nuclear Iran isn’t an option; he’s on record promising to stop Iran by whatever means necessary; and he’s on record explaining why a nuclear-free Iran is in the interests of the U.S.
“If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, this would run completely contrary to my policies of nonproliferation,” he told me in an interview this year.
When I asked him what his position would be if Israel were not in the picture, he answered: “It would still be a profound national-security interest of the United States to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”
These words, delivered in the Oval Office, are powerful. But delivered in Jerusalem, before the Knesset, they would deeply reassure the prime minister and the Israeli public. What could be more effective than the U.S. president explaining to Israelis, in Israel, that their two countries share the same interests?
Yes, Obama is running for re-election, and it is hard to leave Ohio and Florida. But a trip to Israel -- a place he hasn’t visited as president -- would put Iran on notice that Obama is deadly serious about thwarting their plans. Combined with stops in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such a visit would also allay the fears of our Arab allies. Most important, such a visit could prevent war. Which, of course, is a very presidential thing to do.
(Jeffrey Goldberg is a Bloomberg View columnist and a national correspondent for the Atlantic. The opinions expressed are his own.)
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