I too am just passing these along. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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What has always separated America from its adversaries is the fact that our society is based upon the rule of law.
Professor Skeel addresses and updates the status of this principle. (See 2 below.)
Subject: America is not ..........
There is no spam, cookies or virus involved in this YouTube 3-minute piece. It is the opening segment of a new TV show entitled “The Newsroom”, I believe.
The language is raw at times, the acting is good, and the content, I gather, is accurate. It has had over 3,000,000 hits, and if true, carries a big wallop.
You decide.
Yesterday I watched an interview with Meygn Kelly of some TV/political personalities. The subject was whether this presidential campaign was the dirtiest ever.
Only one of the interviewees was an attractive young black lady. She defended Obama citing the fact that he was being attacked because he was the first black president and that the Limbaugh's of the world wanted to do everything they could to make sure he was not re-elected. She had nothing to say about his record of achievements? and /or failures? blah blah blah.
It was a typical knee jerk re-action from a black person who truly believes our nation cannot get past color when viewing a person's record and accomplishments.
I am sure I have a few prejudiced bones in my body. They are not necessarily directed at any one class or group. However, as I have pointed out for over four years, Obama is not only incompetent but is also an uninspiring leader. His policies have proven wrong, his dreams are not those of most Americans and certainly not mine. By any unbiased measurement the man presides over a failed administration and when and if black voters become more objective they will advance not only their own cause but also this nation to whom, in more recent times, they owe a great deal. This is something Michelle Obama may choke on if she had to admit but that too is a fact.
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More bias ? (See 3 below.)
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Sowell reviews 2016. (See 4 below.)
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If the selection of host interviewers for the various debates is any indication of objectivity and/or an even playing field - then forget it.
Some questions that will not be asked of Obama as he continues to be shielded by his media lap dogs.
It will be evenings of name, rank and serial number - but America is the captive! (See 5 below.)
According to Kim Obama is all about silence. However, should he be re-elected the consequences of his silence are known and would be deafening in their meaning for our nation. (See 5a below.)
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As Iran accelerates its nuclear development, Tony Cordesman's markers are discussed by Krauthammer. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1) I am merely passing this on as received.
Written by a female Obama supporter who voted for him for president.
Legitimate Question
This election has me very worried. So many things to consider. I voted for Obama. McCain was a Washington insider and we don't need any more of them. I have changed my mind three times, since then. I watch all the news channels, jumping from one to another. I must say this drives my husband crazy. But, I feel if you view CNN, and Fox News, you might get some middle ground to work with. I started thinking "where does all the money come from for President Obama"? I have four daughters who went to College, and we were middle class, and money was tight. We (including my girls) worked hard and there were lots of student loans. I started looking into Obama's history for my own peace of mind.
Around 1979 Obama started college at Occidental in California . He is very open about his two years at Occidental, he tried all kinds of drugs and was wasting his time but, even though he had a brilliant mind, did not apply himself to his studies. "Barry" (that was the name he used all his life) during this time had two roommates, Muhammad Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, both from Pakistan . During the summer of 1981, after his second year in college, he made a "round the world" trip. Stopping to see his mother in Indonesia , next Hyderabad in India , three weeks in Karachi , Pakistan where he stayed with his roommate's family, then off to Africa to visit his father's family.
My question - Where did he get the money for this trip? Neither I, nor any one of my children would have had money for a trip like this when they were in college. When he came back he started school at Columbia University in New York . It is at this time he wants everyone to call him Barack - not Barry. Do you know what the tuition is at Columbia ? It's not cheap to say the least.
My girls asked me; where did he get money for tuition? Student Loans?
Maybe it's none of my business?
Maybe it's none of my business?
After Columbia , he went to Chicago to work as a Community Organizer for $12,000. a year. Why Chicago ? Why not New York ? He was already living in New York . By "chance" he met Antoin "Tony" Rezko, born in Aleppo Syria , and a real estate developer in Chicago . Rezko has been convicted of fraud and bribery several times in the past and in 2011. Rezko, was named "Entrepreneur of the Decade" by the Arab-American Business and Professional Association". About two years later, Obama entered Harvard Law School . Do you have any idea what tuition is for Harvard Law School ? Where did he get the money for Law School ? More student loans? His family has no money that's for sure.
In 2005, Obama purchased a new home in Kenwood District of Chicago for $1.65 million (less than asking price). With ALL those Student Loans - Where did he get the money for this property? On the same day Rezko's wife, Rita, purchased the adjoining empty lot for full price. The London Times reported that Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born Billionaire loaned Rezko $3.5 million three weeks before Obama's new home was purchased. Obama met Nadhmi Auchi many times with Rezko.
Now, we have Obama running for President. Valerie Jarrett, was Michele Obama's boss. She is now Obama's chief advisor and he does not make any major decisions without talking to her first. Where was Jarrett born? Ready for this? Shiraz , Iran ! Am I going nuts or is there a pattern here?
On May 10, 2008, The Times reported, Robert Malley advisor to Obama was "sacked" after the press found out he was having regular contacts with "Hamas", which controls Gaza and is connected with Iran . This past week, buried in the back part of the papers, Iraqi newspapers reported that during Obama's visit to Iraq , he asked their leaders to do nothing about the war until after he is elected, and he will "Take care of things". What the heck does that mean?
Oh, and by the way, remember the college roommates that were born in Pakistan ? They are in charge of all those "small" Internet campaign contributions for Obama. Where is that money coming from? The poor and middle class in this country? Or could it be from the Middle East ?
And the final bit of news. On September 7, 2009, The Washington Times posted a verbal slip that was made on "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. Obama on talking about his religion said, "My Muslim faith". When questioned, "he made a mistake". Some mistake huh?
All of the above information I got on line. If you would like to check it - Wikipedia, encyclopedia, Barack Obama; Tony Rezko; Valerie Jarrett: Daily Times - Obama visited Pakistan in 1981; The Washington Times - September 7, 2008; The Times May 10, 2008.
Now the BIG question - If I found out all this information on my own, Why haven't all of our "intelligent" members of the press been reporting this? Is this a Kettle of Fish??
As Arsenio Hall would say.----"HUMMMMMMM! Does something stink or is it my imagination?" Are not these are legitimate questions for our president?
Rachelle Derrough
Provider - M.D., RS - PHYSICIANS FOR WOMEN
CoxHealth
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1a)BEST SUMMATION OF BARACK AND MICHELLE EVER
Mychal Massie is a respected writer and talk show host in Los Angeles.
The other evening on my twitter, a person asked me why I didn't like the Obama's? Specifically I was asked: "I have to ask, why do you hate the Obama's? It seems personal, not policy related. You even dissed (disrespect) their Christmas family picture."
The truth is I do not like the Obamas, what they represent, their ideology, and I certainly do not like his policies and legislation. I've made no secret of my contempt for the Obamas. As I responded to the person who asked me the aforementioned question, I don't like them because they are committed to the fundamental change of my/our country into what can only be regarded as a Communist state.
I don't hate them per definition, but I condemn them because they are the worst kind of racialists, they are elitist Leninists with contempt for traditional America. They display disrespect for the sanctity of the office he holds, and for those who are willing to admit same, Michelle Obama's raw contempt for white America is transpicuous.
I don't like them because they comport themselves as emperor and empress. I expect, no I demand respect, for the Office of President and a love of our country and her citizenry from the leader entrusted with the governance of same. President and Mrs. Reagan displayed an unparalleled love for the country and her people. The Reagan's made Americans feel good about themselves and about what we could accomplish. His arrogance by appointing 32 leftist czars and constantly bypassing congress is impeachable. Eric Holder is probably the MOST incompetent and arrogant DOJ head to ever hold the job. Could you envision President Reagan instructing his Justice Department to act like jack-booted thugs?
Presidents are politicians and all politicians are known and pretty much expected to manipulate the truth, if not outright lie, but even using that low standard, the Obama's have taken lies, dishonesty, deceit, mendacity, subterfuge and obfuscation to new depths. They are verbally abusive to the citizenry, and they display an animus for civility.
I do not like them, because they both display bigotry overtly, as in the case of Harvard Professor Louis Gates, when he accused the Cambridge Police of acting stupidly, and her code speak pursuant to now being able to be proud of America. I view that statement and that mindset as an insult to those who died to provide a country where a Kenyan, his illegal alien relatives, and his alleged progeny, could come and not only live freely, but rise to the highest, most powerful, position in the world. Michelle Obama is free to hate and disparage whites because Americans of every description paid with their blood to ensure her right to do same.
I have a saying, that "the only reason a person hides things, is because they have something to hide." No president in history has spent over a million dollars to keep his records and his past sealed.
And what the two of them have shared has been proved to be lies. He lied about when and how they met, he lied about his mother's death and problems with insurance, Michelle lied to a crowd pursuant to nearly $500,000 bank stocks they inherited from his family. He has lied about his father's military service, about the civil rights movement, ad nausea. He lied to the world about the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address. He berated and publicly insulted a sitting Congressman. He has surrounded himself with the most rabidly, radical, socialist academicians today. He opposed rulings that protected women and children that even Planned Parenthood did not seek to support. He is openly hostile to business and aggressively hostile to Israel. His wife treats being the First Lady as her personal American Express Black Card (arguably the most prestigious credit card in the world). I condemn them because, as people are suffering, losing their homes, their jobs, their retirements, he and his family are arrogantly showing off their life of entitlement - as he goes about creating and fomenting class warfare.
I don't like them, and I neither apologize nor retreat from my public condemnation of them and of his policies. We should condemn them for the disrespect they show our people, for his willful and unconstitutional actions pursuant to obeying the Constitutional parameters he is bound by, and his willful disregard for Congressional authority.
Dislike for them has nothing to do with the color of their skin; it has everything to do with their behavior, attitudes, and policies. And I have open scorn for their constantly playing the race card.
It is my intention to do all within my ability to ensure their reign is one term. I could go on, but let me conclude with this. I condemn in the strongest possible terms the media for refusing to investigate them, as they did President Bush and President Clinton, and for refusing to label them for what they truly are. There is no scenario known to man, whereby a white president and his wife could ignore laws, flaunt their position, and lord over the people, as these two are permitted out of fear for their color.
As I wrote in a syndicated column titled, "Nero In The White House" - "Never in my life, inside or outside of politics, have I witnessed such dishonesty in a political leader. He is the most mendacious political figure I have ever witnessed. Even by the low standards of his presidential predecessors, his narcissistic, contumacious arrogance is unequalled. Using Obama as the bar, Nero would have to be elevated to sainthood... Many in America wanted to be proud when the first person of color was elected president, but instead, they have been witness to a congenital liar, a woman who has been ashamed of America her entire life, failed policies, intimidation, and a commonality hitherto not witnessed in political leaders. He and his wife view their life at our expense as an entitlement - while America's people go homeless, hungry and unemployed."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)A Nation Adrift From the Rule of Law
We are losing sight of the basic principles that made us great in the 20th century.
By DAVID SKEEL
No one doubts that the coming election will be the most important referendum on the size and nature of government in a generation. But another issue is nearly as important and has gotten far less attention: our crumbling commitment to the rule of law.
The notion that we are governed by rules that are transparent and enacted through the legislative process—not by the whims of our leaders—is at the heart of that commitment. If legislators exceed their authority under the Constitution, or if otherwise legitimate laws are misused, courts must step in to prevent or remedy the potential harm.
During the 2008 financial crisis, the government repeatedly violated these principles. When regulators bailed out Bear Stearns by engineering its sale to J.P. Morgan Chase, they flagrantly disregarded basic corporate law by "locking up" the transaction so that no other bidder could intervene.
When the government bailed out AIG six months later, the Federal Reserve funded the bailout by invoking extraordinary loan powers for what was clearly an acquisition rather than a loan. (The government acquired nearly 80% of AIG's stock.)
Two months later, the Treasury Department used money from the $700-billion Troubled Asset Relief Program fund to bail out the car companies. This was dubious. Under the statute, the funds were to be used for financial institutions. But the real violation came a few months later, when the government used a sham bankruptcy sale to transfer Chrysler to Fiat while almost certainly stiffing Chrysler's senior creditors.
According to two leading legal scholars, Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule, rule-of-law violations are inevitable during a crisis. The executive branch takes all necessary steps, even if that means violating the law, until the crisis has passed. The argument is powerful, and its advocates are correct that presidents and other executive-branch officials often push the envelope during a crisis.
Yet pushing the envelope isn't the same thing as flouting the law. Even in a crisis, jettisoning legal constraints can have enormously destructive consequences. Investors are likely to flee, for instance, precisely when continued confidence in the markets is essential.
Though one might excuse departures from the rule of law at the height of a crisis, one would expect to see a prompt reversion to rule-of-law principles immediately thereafter. The most famous 20th-century illustration was the Supreme Court's invalidation, in the 1952 case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, of President Harry Truman's attempt to take over the steel industry during the Korean War.
By far the most disturbing element of recent trends is that precisely the opposite seems to be taking place. The commitment of government officials to the rule of law has continued to crumble—even after the crisis has subsided.
Consider the litigation that led to the recent $25 billion National Mortgage Settlement, which was brought by the state attorneys general and quarterbacked by the Obama administration. The plaintiffs alleged that five of the nation's largest banks used "robo-signers"—law firms that filed large numbers of foreclosure documents without bothering to check the details—and added unnecessary fees such as overpriced insurance during the real-estate bubble.
These actions deserved to be punished, but the settlement had almost nothing to do with the allegations. A large majority of the settlement will go to mortgage relief for homeowners who weren't affected by the robo-practices, or to provide a bailout to the states. Both steps are illegitimate uses of the judicial process.
Or consider the Dodd-Frank Act's new resolution rules. They require the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to liquidate the troubled financial institutions it takes over.
The liquidation requirement is a bad idea, but its purpose is clear. When California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer proposed the requirement, she insisted that the rules would only be used to shut down the institution. All "financial companies put into receivership . . . shall be liquidated," she insisted in May 2010. "No company is going to be kept afloat."
Yet as the FDIC has made plans for implementing the resolution rules, it has simply ignored the requirement, announcing that it will use the new rules to reorganize institutions and keep them going.
A sad irony of these developments is that rule-of-law values have been one of America's greatest contributions to world-wide economic development in recent decades. When the economist Hernando de Soto tried in the 1990s to determine why economic growth is so limited in much of the world, he concluded that respect for basic property rights is essential.
America, where this commitment gradually emerged in the 19th century, was Exhibit A in Mr. de Soto's story. In the years after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, American markets served as a model of the importance of privatization and protection of property rights as the nations of Eastern Europe charted a new economic future. Now we increasingly are the ones that need to learn these lessons.
Rule-of-law matters cannot be separated entirely from questions about the size and role of government. The more government grows, the harder it is to preserve rule-of-law virtues like transparency and clear rules of the game. But the rule of law is nevertheless a distinct and extraordinarily important concern, and it deserves separate consideration as the presidential campaign begins in earnest.
Each candidate should be asked: Do you believe that the rule of law was abused during the recent crisis, and what would you do to protect it in the future?
Mr. Skeel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is author of "The New Financial Deal: Understanding the Dodd-Frank Act and Its (Unintended) Consequences" (Wiley, 2011).
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3)Israel slams S Africa over 'unacceptable' tags move
The Israeli foreign ministry dismissed as "unacceptable" a decision by the South African cabinet on Wednesday approving the placing of Occupied Palestinian Territory labels on imported goods from Jewish settlements.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said in a statement that the move constitutes "a blatant discrimination based on national and political distinction."
"What is totally unacceptable is the use of tools which, by essence, discriminate and single out, fostering a general boycott," he added.
He said Israel will summon Thursday the South African ambassador in the Jewish state.
Palmor said South Africa's move was without precedent, adding that "this kind of discrimination has not been imposed - and rightly so - in any other case of national, territorial or ethnic conflict."
"Such exclusion and discrimination bring to mind ideas of racist nature which the government of South Africa, more than any other, should have wholly rejected."
Earlier on Wednesday, the South African cabinet directed its trade minister to issue a notice requiring that products are marked so that buyers knew their origin is not Israel, government spokesman Jimmy Manyi told a press briefing.
"This is in line with South Africa's stance that recognises the 1948 borders delineated by the United Nations and does not recognise occupied territories beyond these borders as being part of the state of Israel," he said.
The plan has already met protests in South Africa and local Jewish leaders said Wednesday the community was outraged over what they called "discriminatory, divisive" measures.
"At bottom, they are believed to be motivated not by technical trade concerns but by political bias against the state of Israel. All attempts to discuss these concerns, however, have come to nothing," the South African Jewish Board of Deputies said in a statement.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Thomas Sowell: 2016: A powerful movie
Years, and sometimes decades, pass between my visits to movie theaters. But I drove 30 miles to see the movie "2016," based on Dinesh D'Souza's best-selling book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Where I live is so politically correct that such a movie would not even be mentioned, much less shown.
Every seat in the theater was filled, even though there had been an earlier showing that day, and more showings were scheduled for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I had to sit on a staircase in the balcony, but it was worth it.
The audience was riveted. You could barely hear a sound from them, or detect a movement, and certainly not smell popcorn. Yet the movie had no bombast, no violence, no sex and no spectacular visual effects.
The documentary itself was fascinating, as Dinesh D'Souza presented the story of Barack Obama's life and view of the world, in a very conversational sort of way, illustrating it with visits to people and places around the world that played a role in the way Obama's ideas and beliefs evolved.
It was refreshing to see how addressing adults as adults could be effective, in an age when so many parts of the media address the public as if they were children who need a constant whirlwind of sounds and movements to keep them interested.
Dinesh D'Souza's own perspective, as someone born in India who came to America and became an American, provided a special insight into the way people from the Third World often perceive or misperceive the United States and the Western world.
That Third World perspective is Obama's perspective, D'Souza demonstrates in this documentary, as in his book – and it is a perspective that is very foreign to that of most Americans, which may be why some believe that Obama was born elsewhere.
D'Souza is convinced that the president was born in Hawaii, as he claims, but argues that not only Obama's time living in Indonesia and his emotionally charged visits to his father's home in Africa, have had a deep and impassioned effect on his thinking.
The story of Barack Obama, however, is not just the story of how one man came to be the way he is. It is a much larger story about how millions of Americans came to vote for, and some to idolize, a man whose fundamental beliefs and values are so different from their own.
For every person who sees Obama as somehow foreign there are many others who see him as a mainstream American political figure – and an inspiring one.
This D'Souza attributes to Barack Obama's great talents in rhetoric, and his ability to project an image that resonates with most Americans, however much that image may differ from, or even flatly contradict, the reality of Obama's own ideological view of the world.
What is that ideological view?
The Third World, or anti-colonial, view is that the rich nations have gotten rich by taking wealth from the poor nations. It is part of a much larger vision, in which the rich in general have gotten rich by taking from the poor, whether in their own country or elsewhere.
Whatever its factual weaknesses, it is an emotionally powerful vision, to which many people have dedicated their lives, and for which some have even risked their lives. Some of these people appear in this documentary movie, as they have appeared throughout the formative phases of Barack Obama's life.
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is just the most visible and vocal of a long line of such people who played crucial roles in Obama's evolution. When Jeremiah Wright thundered about how "white folks' greed runs a world in need," he captured the essence of the Third World or anti-colonial vision.
But many of the other mentors, allies, family and friends of Barack Obama over the years were of the same mindset, as this documentary demonstrates.
More important, the movie "2016" demonstrates how so many of Obama's actions as President of the United States, which D'Souza had predicted on the basis of his study of Obama's background, are perfectly consistent with that ideology, however inconsistent it is with the rhetoric that gained him the highest office in the land.
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5)Debate Questions Obama Won't Be Asked
By Daren Jonescu
If you could submit just one question to be asked of President Obama during a televised presidential debate, what would it be? Once you have formulated your best idea, ask yourself this: do you think any of this year's line-up of debate hosts and moderators would ever actually ask your question, as you framed it? Your answer, I am sure, is almost as self-evident as is the importance of your imaginary debate question. The questions that matter most are precisely the ones that will not be asked, and for that very reason.
For all the analysis that has been, and will be, devoted to explaining why so many Americans -- and not only knee-jerk liberals, but also a lot of self-described moderates and conservatives -- fail to see the primal menace in Barack Obama's presidency, one simple fact probably explains it all: most people pay no attention to such "analysis" and instead get all their political information from mainstream sources (from 60 Minutes to The Daily Show to the morning coffee klatch programs) that will never broach the issues that seem most vital to those who actually think.
To clarify, when I say "think," I mean it in the strict sense of using one's rational faculty to seek understanding -- i.e., to dig through the rough rock pile of transient "facts" and words in search of the firm ground of principle and purpose that lies beneath. That difficult work is what leads people to a knowledge of ultimate causes, or at least to formulating trenchant questions that might take us to a more fundamental layer of the rock pile.
A simple example will suffice. Obama is excessively fond of the word "fairness." Anyone reading this article is likely to have thought carefully and often through the seemingly obvious question of what Obama means by "fairness," and what he is, by implication, damning as "unfair." Most of Obama's listeners, however, simply follow him along on his dreamy trip to socialism through the sweet smoke of moral abstraction. After all, who doesn't want to do what is "fair"?
By never asking Obama pointed questions about his notion of fairness, but instead always allowing him to frame and lead the conversation as he wishes, his friends and enablers in the mainstream media and Washington establishment effectively hide the underlying issues from their audience.
It is easy to be pessimistic and denounce that audience as simply too stupid to reason through these issues on their own. And it is true that they are too passive. However, a passive audience can sometimes be roused from passivity by having matters presented to them in a manner that awakens curiosity, which is to say in a manner that promotes the search for deeper understanding.
This rousing manner is precisely what the mainstreamers carefully avoid in the way they present Obama, his policies, his principles, and his past. Curiosity -- about fairness, about the meaning of community organizing, about William Ayers, about so many things -- is the enemy of Barack Obama, and therefore, it is the avowed enemy of the mainstream media in its presentation of presidential politics. Everything they do, and every pseudo-question they ask, is designed to tamp down the intellectual mud that will keep that obfuscating rock pile firmly in place, and avoid reminding people of the infertile ground beneath.
This is why the debates are bound to be frustrating, as usual, for conservatives -- along with the likelihood that Mitt Romney will be cowed by the media into conceding the usual "Of course my opponent loves America" nonsense that causes apoplexy among those of us concerned for the survival of Western civilization. This frustration, however, is no cause for despondency, but rather a reminder of the need to make this season a continual shadow production, within the sphere of one's personal influence, of the debate that ought to take place, with the questions that ought to be asked.
The fact that we can't ask Obama himself makes little difference. The figurative empty chair to which our questions must be posed has an eloquence of its own. Its silence helps to highlight that scurrying sound of the mainstream media mice among the rocks. If they who hold the microphones were men, they would be asking the hard questions, rather than crawling up Obama's well-creased pant leg in search of an honored position as Big Brother's top-rated propagandist.
So, in the spirit of a respectful but honest debate moderator -- one hoping to promote, rather than stifle, curiosity -- I offer three questions that I would ask Barack Obama, were I permitted to do so.
(1) Mr. President, you speak frequently of "fairness," of doing one's "fair share," and so on. Of course, "fairness" is an abstract concept. Furthermore, it is not a political system. Rather, it expresses the intended result of one political system or other, depending on how one defines "fairness." For example, one might say that the free market promotes fairness, if by fairness we mean that everyone has what he is able to earn by his own effort, with his own talent, and through uncoerced interaction with others. On the other hand, a socialist would define fairness as everyone getting an equal share of the available material wealth, by means of continuously regulated and maintained government redistribution.
So I would like you to explain as clearly as possible what you mean by fairness, and which politico-economic system -- the free market, socialism, or some other system -- is most conducive to your understanding of fairness. In short, is freedom or socialism fairer, in your view, and why?
(2) The American founders, following John Locke and others, were strong defenders of property rights. Specifically, they believed, as Locke explained, that all human beings inviolably own themselves as individual material beings, and hence that the product of their effort and voluntary exchange with others belongs to them, by extension from their initial and natural ownership of their own bodies and minds.
Various federal government programs and regulations you support, such as ObamaCare and many EPA initiatives, fly in the face of this notion of a natural right to property. Do you believe in private property as a right? And if so, on what grounds do you believe that this right can be violated?
(3) We know that your father, whose dreams you famously claim to have inherited, was a prominent Kenyan socialist, and that your mentor in your youth, Frank Marshall Davis, was an avowed communist. We also know that your longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright, has deeply anti-American convictions; that Bill Ayers, who enthusiastically supported your election in 2008, and with whom you have had some kind of personal relationship for many years, has been openly dedicated to the demise of the American political system for his entire adult life; that you have appointed several avowed socialists, communists, admirers of Mao, and celebrators of May Day to significant positions within your administration; and that prior to running for president you frequently described yourself and your interests as "progressive," which is a well-known alternative name for "socialist."
Furthermore, you have spoken frequently of government as an agent of "sharing the prosperity" (see here) and of "fundamentally transforming" America; your wife said your nomination was the first time she was ever proud of America; and you famously boasted in your 2008 victory speech that "change has come to America."
We know, in short, that you were involved in socialist or progressive thinking and causes prior to running for president, and that you have had extensive and seemingly formative associations with socialists and communists who were fundamentally critical of America, from your childhood through to your adult life prior to 2008. The question, Mr. President, is: have you disavowed this thinking and these causes, and if so, when and why did you do so?
These offerings are merely the tip of the iceberg, of course. With the most concealed and protected president of modern times, one could literally go on all day with these questions, each one as vital as the last: about drugs, about Fast and Furious, about whispering promises of post-election accommodation to a Russian president, about his hidden university career and transcripts, and on and on.
There is a significant segment of the population that can no longer be reached. There is, however, probably at least as large a segment that merely falls into the category of the passively ignorant. These people must be reached, because the civilizational renewal that is needed is impossible without them. They will not be reached by anything that happens on their televisions. They must have the hard questions, the digging questions, thrust in their way over and over, forcefully but respectfully, until at last, slowly, their long-suppressed curiosity is aroused.
Thinking is, to a large extent, a matter of asking questions and of pursuing answers with enthusiasm, and without fear of the truth one might discover. A thinking population is an anti-leftist population. The job of those who are already thinking is not to bludgeon the late arrivals into submission, but to pique their interest in that which has hitherto been concealed from them -- to teach them, in other words, the joys of thinking for themselves.
Keep asking the empty chair those hard questions. The answers you get will be no less informative than the ones the real Obama -- if there is such a thing -- will give during the actual debates. And your shadow debate just might attract a thoughtful audience of its own. Lord knows Bob Schieffer isn't going to attract one.
5a)Strassel: The Silent Second-Term Agenda
Despite the Democrats' shellacking in 2010, the president moved left. Re-election in November will reinforce his view that he was correct to do so.
President Obama has a reputation for talking, but not necessarily for saying much. He has achieved new levels of vagueness this election season. Beyond repeating that he's in favor of making the "rich" pay for more government "investment," he hasn't offered a single new idea for a second term. This is deliberate.
The core of the Obama strategy is to make Americans worry that whatever Mitt Romney does, it will be worse. That's a harder case for Mr. Obama to make if he is himself proposing change. And so the Obama pitch is that this election is a choice between stability (giving Mr. Obama four more years to let his policies finally work) and upheaval (giving Mr. Romney four years to re-ruin the nation).
The pitch is profoundly dishonest. While the choice between four more years of Obama status quo and Mr. Romney is certainly vivid, it isn't accurate. The real contrast is between Mr. Romney's and Mr. Obama's future plans. And while the president hasn't revealed what those plans are, there is plenty of evidence for what a second term would look like.
Let's dispense with the obvious: An Obama second term will be foremost about higher taxes and greater spending. The president has been clear about the former and will consider victory in November a mandate to raise taxes on higher-income Americans and small businesses—at the least.
Meanwhile, no matter how the coming budget sequester sorts out, nobody should forget why it came into being: It was the result of Mr. Obama's refusal to consider any real changes to Social Security or Medicare. There will be no reason to budge in a second term. Absent reform to these drivers of debt, and given Mr. Obama's ambitions to further "invest" in education, energy and infrastructure, a second term means proposals for even broader and bigger tax hikes—and not just for his favorite targets. Continued and growing deficits are likely as well.
Presidents often use re-election to revive leftover policy objectives. A New Yorker magazine article in June noted: "The President has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term is climate change." Such an unpopular policy focus might seem crazy if Republicans hold the House, but then again Mr. Obama will want an issue where he can press his advantage and blame an obstinate GOP. The president has to date been unconcerned by how his agenda hurts congressional Democrats; he's unlikely to begin caring once he has been re-elected.
Yet since the probable outcome of his approach would be continued gridlock, his real efforts will be devoted to fine-tuning the regulatory apparatus he has designed specifically to go around Congress—as the administration has done the past two years. The Environmental Protection Agency in particular will resurrect rules it delayed implementing before the election (see: costly ozone regulations) and move to take over new areas like natural-gas fracking.
The same goes for other agencies, from the Labor Department to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The National Labor Relations Board will continue to cement union dominance over employers. The Solyndras will continue. What Mr. Obama cannot accomplish via regulation, he will attempt through executive order—much as he did with his recent immigration directive.
Most voters understand that a second Obama term means the continuation of ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulations. But there is also the carte blanche that re-election will give the president to supercharge those laws, which are only now entering key rulemaking periods. The same Obama appointees who have already taken vast liberties with these laws (see: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's ObamaCare slush fund) will be crafting the new regulations. The bureaucrats will also have four more years to put in place key civil servants who can be counted on to keep the rules going even past an Obama administration.
It is likely the Supreme Court will offer up another vacancy, and Mr. Obama might finally have his chance to shift the balance of the court. A slew of appellate-court positions are also in limbo as the campaign proceeds; they would be filled by a second-term Obama.
Just as important are the things Mr. Obama will not do. His record gives no indication he will revive America's leadership in free trade. Nor is he likely to restore America's influence in the international arena. And so we will inch closer to a nuclear-armed Iran and the threats that the regime will pose to international peace and order.
None of this is hyperbole. Mr. Obama is open about his tax aims, is proud of his spending and has never apologized for his regulatory ambitions. Despite a shellacking in the midterms, he moved left, and a November victory will reinforce his sense that he was correct to do so.
While Democrats will take careful pains in coming convention weeks to avoid outlining the president's intentions, they are sitting in plain sight. The real choice this fall will be between Mitt Romney's reform agenda and a Supersized Obama. No wonder the Democrats are keeping mum.
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6)The Cordesman criteria
By
Either Israel is engaged in the most elaborate ruse since the Trojan horse or it is on the cusp of a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
What’s alarming is not just Iran’s increasing store of enriched uranium or the growing sophistication of its rocketry. It’s also the increasingly menacing annihilationist threats emanating from Iran’s leaders. Israel’s existence is “an insult to all humanity,” saysPresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Anyone who loves freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime.” Explains the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israel is “a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off.”
Everyone wants to avoid military action, surely the Israelis above all. They can expect a massive counterattack from Iran, 50,000 rockets launched from Lebanon, Islamic Jihad firing from Gaza, and worldwide terror against Jewish and Israeli targets, as happened last month in Bulgaria.
Yet Israel will not sit idly by in the face of the most virulent genocidal threats since Nazi Germany. The result then was 6 million murdered Jews. There are 6 million living in Israel today.
Time is short. Last-ditch negotiations in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow have failed abjectly. The Iranians are contemptuously playing with the process. The strategy is delay until they get the bomb.
What to do? The sagest advice comes fromAnthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cordesman is a hardheaded realist — severely critical of the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq war, skeptical of the “war on terror,” dismissive of the strategic importance of Afghanistan, and a believer that “multilateralism and soft power must still be the rule and not the exception.”
He may have found his exception. “There are times when the best way to prevent war is to clearly communicate that it is possible,” he argues. Today, the threat of a U.S. attack is not taken seriously. Not by the region. Not by Iran. Not by the Israelis, who therefore increasingly feel forced to act before Israel’s more limited munitions — far less powerful and effective than those in the U.S. arsenal — can no longer penetrate Iran’s ever-hardening facilities.
Cordesman therefore proposes threefold action.
1. “Clear U.S. red lines.”
It’s time to end the ambiguity about American intentions. Establish real limits on negotiations — to convince Iran that the only alternative to a deal is preemptive strikes and to persuade Israel to stay its hand.
2. “Make it clear to Iran that it has no successful options.”
Either its program must be abandoned in a negotiated deal (see No. 1 above) on generous terms from the West (see No. 3 below), or its facilities will be physically destroyed. Ostentatiously let Iran know about the range and power of our capacities — how deep and extensive a campaign we could conduct, extending beyond just nuclear facilities to military-industrial targets, refineries, power grids and other concentrations of regime power.
3. Give Iran a face-saving way out.
Offer Iran the most generous possible terms — economic, diplomatic and political. End of sanctions, assistance in economic and energy development, trade incentives and a regional security architecture. Even Russian nuclear fuel.
Tellingly, however, Cordesman does not join those who suggest yielding on nuclear enrichment. That’s important because a prominently leaked proposed “compromise” would guarantee Iran’s right to enrich, though not to high levels.
In my view, this would be disastrous. Iran would retain the means to potentially produce fissile material, either clandestinely or in a defiant breakout at a time of its choosing.
Would Iran believe a Cordesman-like ultimatum? Given the record of the Obama administration, maybe not. Some (though not Cordesman) have therefore suggested the further step of requesting congressional authorization for the use of force if Iran does not negotiate denuclearization.
First, that’s the right way to do it. No serious military action should be taken without congressional approval (contra Libya). Second, Iran might actually respond to a threat backed by a strong bipartisan majority of the American people — thus avoiding both war and the other nightmare scenario, a nuclear Iran.
If we simply continue to drift through kabuki negotiations, however, one thing is certain. Either America, Europe, the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis will forever be condemned to live under the threat of nuclear blackmail (even nuclear war) from a regime the State Department identifies as the world’s greatest exporter of terror. Or an imperiled Israel, with its more limited capabilities, will strike Iran — with correspondingly greater probability of failure and of triggering a regional war.
All options are bad. Doing nothing is worse. “The status quo may not prevent some form of war,” concludes Cordesman, “and may even be making it more likely.”
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