"A Conservative Capitalist Offers: Eleven Lessons and a Bonus Lesson for Raising America's Youth Born and Yet To Be Born"
By Dick Berkowitz - Non Expert
I wrote this booklet because I believe a strong country must rest on a solid family unit.Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation."
I hope this booklet will provide a guide to alter this trend.
Please Buy My Booklet - Half The Proceeds Go To "The Wounded Warrior Project!"
You can now order a .pdf version from www.brokerberko.com/book that you can download and read on your computer, or even print out if you want.
The booklet only costs $5.99.
Also feel free to forward this to anyone on your own e mail list and encourage others to order a copy.
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Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
http://www.morningstartv.com/oak-initiative/marxism-america
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Daniel Pipes is speaking Oct 10, at the JEA at 7:30PM. You are welcome to come. Pipes is the publisher of The Middle East Forum, a Philadelphia-based think tank, which works to define and promote American interests in the Middle East and protect the Constitutional order from Middle Eastern threats.
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Obama and his corrupt Justice Department are running roughshod over the Constitution and the press and media do not see to care so neither do voters. When they awake from their torpor it will be too late to reverse the many negative effects. (See 1 below.)
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This from a dear friend and educator: " I just returned from almost three weeks in China, all work related. I
was in Shanghai, Nainjing and Beijing. Great experience working with a very different culture. I have come to realize Chinese kids are just like U.S. kids, some motivated, some not but they are more respectful of their parents although with the single child policy, mothers in particular are more lenient and intimidated by their sons in particular although that holds true for many of the girls also."
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Ted Nugent hails forth. (See 2 below.)
Prelutsky and the Zombies. (See 2a below.)
Then comes David Horowitz. (See 2b below.)
---
This about says it all: "President Obama goes to a primary school to talk to
the kids. After his talk he offers question time.
One little boy puts up his hand, and Obama asks him
his name.
"Walter," responds the little boy.
"And what is your question, Walter?"
"I have four questions:
First, why did the USA bomb Libya without the support
of the Congress?
Second, why do you keep saying you fixed the economy
when it's actually gotten worse?
Third, why did you say that Jeremiah Wright was your
mentor, then said that you knew nothing about his
preaching and beliefs?
Fourth, why are we lending money to Brazil to drill
for oil, but America is not allowed to drill for oil?"
Just then, the bell rings for recess. Obama informs
the kiddies that they will continue after recess.
When they resume, Obama says, "OK, where were we? Oh,
that's right: question time. Who has a question?"
Another little boy puts up his hand. Obama points him
out and asks him his name.
"Steve," he responds.
"And what is your question, Steve?"
“Actually, I have two questions:
First, why did the recess bell ring 20 minutes early?
Second, what the hell happened to Walter?"
This about says it all: "President Obama goes to a primary school to talk to
the kids. After his talk he offers question time.
One little boy puts up his hand, and Obama asks him
his name.
"Walter," responds the little boy.
"And what is your question, Walter?"
"I have four questions:
First, why did the USA bomb Libya without the support
of the Congress?
Second, why do you keep saying you fixed the economy
when it's actually gotten worse?
Third, why did you say that Jeremiah Wright was your
mentor, then said that you knew nothing about his
preaching and beliefs?
Fourth, why are we lending money to Brazil to drill
for oil, but America is not allowed to drill for oil?"
Just then, the bell rings for recess. Obama informs
the kiddies that they will continue after recess.
When they resume, Obama says, "OK, where were we? Oh,
that's right: question time. Who has a question?"
Another little boy puts up his hand. Obama points him
out and asks him his name.
"Steve," he responds.
"And what is your question, Steve?"
“Actually, I have two questions:
First, why did the recess bell ring 20 minutes early?
Second, what the hell happened to Walter?"
---
Neville Obama. (See 3 below.)
"There's a great scholar of the Middle East, Prof. Bernard Lewis, who put it
best. He said that for the Ayatollahs of Iran, mutually assured destruction
is not a deterrent, it's an inducement."
---
Pat Caddell, a pollster with integrity. (See 4 below.)
---
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Morning Jolt
By Jim Geraghty
Our Score So Far: Justice Department 1, First Amendment 0.
This is one of those moments where you don’t really recognize your country anymore. The California man behind a crudely produced anti-Islamic video posted to YouTube that has inflamed parts of the Middle East was arrested for violating terms of his probation, authorities said Thursday. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was convicted in 2010 for federal check and sentenced to 21 months in prison.
Under terms of his probation, he was not allowed to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. Nakoula was arrested after federal probation officials determined he violated the terms of his supervised release, said Thomas Mrozek U.S. Attorney’s spokesman in Los Angeles. Totally coincidental, right?
Allahpundit: “No word yet on what the violation was, but I assume it must be far more serious than using an alias or a computer. Given the insanity of the past two weeks, replete with the White House nudging Google to pull the video off of YouTube and the State Department running ads on Pakistani TV to apologize for a movie they had nothing to do with, I can’t quite believe the DOJ would risk the perception that they’re punishing this guy for a thoughtcrime unless something serious was involved.
There has to be a real crime underlying this. Right?” Exurban Jon: “It'll be neat when Obama starts locking up reporters who insult Islam, right MSM?” Two Obama Voters Who Aren’t . . . Completely Representative of His Base Two Obama voters to contemplate: First, the cheerful “Obama phone” user, incapable of speaking in anything besides an indignant, gravelly shriek . . . And then the fierce Romney critic who thinks our ambassador in Libya “probably had it coming.” Alexa Shrugged accurately depicted my incoherent mix of disbelief, shock, rage, and incredulousness that there are Americans who think like this, and whose vote counts as much as yours and mine. Four More Years of This?
Does anyone have any reason to think the next four years under Obama would be significantly different from the past two to four years? (I say two to four since he’ll probably be dealing with Speaker Boehner and not Speaker Pelosi.
So a second term of Obama would probably look and feel more like 2011–2012 than 2009–2010.) Think we’ll see anything different in how the president approaches the economy? We never generated much of a real recovery from the 2008 crash, and look at where we are, four years later:
I’ve frequently written about research from the Fed which finds that since 1947, when two-quarter annualized real GDP growth falls below 2%, recession follows within a year 48% of the time. And when year-over-year real GDP growth falls below 2%, recession follows within a year 70% of the time… Growth the past two quarters has averaged about 1.6%. Not only does this mean the economy is growing more slowly than last year’s 1.8%, it is also slow enough to signal about a 50% chance of a recession within a year. And the third quarter also looks weak.
The anemic, three-year-old U.S. recovery is already running out of steam. And if it does, it may be several more years before we see unemployment below 8%. Except if Obama’s reelected, there’s a chance he may strong-arm depressed Republicans in Congress into acquiescing on tax increases. So imagine the already gloomy economic outlook, with tax increases dolloped on top of that. Think we’ll see anything different in our approach to Iran?
I’m glad Obama realizes that on his approach to Iran in his first year, he was wrong and his Republican critics were right. I just don’t know how much his approach has changed, considering the periodic snubs, brush-offs, and other antagonism toward Israel’s concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. We know we’ll see . . . “more flexibility” in our dealings with Putin. We’re going to be “more flexible” in negotiations with a leader characterized as cruel, paranoid, and “venomously anti-Western.” Can’t wait, huh?
Obama went to the United Nations, made a pretty good defense of the First Amendment and how the best response to offensive speech is more speech, not attempts to ban it . . . and the leaders of the Muslim world pretty much ignored him. Remember, Obama is on record as saying that he thinks Republicans will be more willing to compromise after his reelection: “Given how stark the choices are, I do think that should I be fortunate enough to have another four years, the American people will have made a decision. And hopefully, that will impact how Republicans think about these problems . . . My expectation is that there will be some popping of the blister after this election, because it will have been such a stark choice.” And you thought he was naïve about the Middle East!
I mention all this because our friend Jonah has put the magnifying glass to a remarkably un-discussed aspect of the 2012 election. Despite four years of results that only his most loyal defenders would call satisfactory, Obama is largely the same guy he was when he walked into the job on January 20, 2009. He doesn’t think he’s made any major mistakes of substance or policy. He thinks his lone problem is insufficient storytelling. Jonah observes: In the 2008 primaries, Obama and Hillary Clinton had an intense argument over the nature of the presidency. Clinton argued that real change came when skillful politicians moved the machinery of Washington toward progressive ends.
The president was a “chief executive officer” who is “able to manage and run the bureaucracy,” she explained. No, no, replied Obama. The presidency “involves having a vision for where the country needs to go . . . and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change.” So, after four years on the job, Obama has learned that he was right all along!
How humble. Except that’s not the story of Obama’s presidency. Contrary to popular myth, Obama has not rallied public opinion to his side on a single major domestic issue. The idea that health-care reform was an “outsider-driven” affair is especially otherworldly. Unpopular from the get-go, it passed with ugly horse trades and legislative bribes that helped spur an outsider movement to defeat it, i.e., the Tea Parties.
His claim that he was too busy “getting the policy right” to tell the people a story is doubly creepy in its lack of self-awareness. All the reporting about Obama’s first term suggests that he outsourced the heavy lifting on the stimulus, “Obamacare,” and Wall Street reform to the Democratic leadership while he indulged his logorrheic platitudinousness.
According to Bob Woodward’s new book, even Nancy Pelosi hit mute on the speakerphone (which she’s denied) during one of Obama’s perorations, and she and Harry Reid went on with their meeting. In his first year, Obama barely stopped talking to the American people, who unfortunately didn’t always have a mute button handy. According to CBS’s Mark Knoller, Obama gave 411 speeches or statements (52 addresses solely on health-care reform), 42 news conferences, 158 interviews, 23 town-hall meetings, and 28 fundraisers.
And what did Obama learn from all of this? Nothing, nothing at all. If second-term Obama is going to be different in any way, it’s that he’s probably going to be even more pleased with himself, even less inclined to do interviews where he might get hard questions, even more ubiquitous on our television in pop-culture venues (The View, cooking shows, late-night comedy shows, Entertainment Tonight, sports commentary, interviews with radio hosts like “The Pimp With the Limp” and so on).
After all, reelection will be the ultimate vindication. He offered up results that his critics declared to be a buffet table of failure . . . and a majority of Americans said, “More, please.” Punch Sequestration Quicker and Harder, Mitt! Here’s Romney’s message in Northern Virginia yesterday: Mitt Romney on Thursday cast the president as a weak commander-in-chief who is willing to compromise the country’s military strength even though the world remains a dangerous place. At a “Veterans for Romney” event in northern Virginia, the Republican presidential nominee offered assurances that he would avert military spending cuts and protect services for veterans. Mr. Romney continued to blame Barack Obama for deep cuts to defense that are scheduled to take effect next year.
The planned spending reductions, known as sequestration, are the result of a bipartisan deal that was supported by many Republicans in Congress. Mr. Romney, though, told the veterans in Springfield that “the White House proposed this sequestration, kind of a gun-to-your-head opportunity.” In case you doubt that point . . .
The Wall Street Journal reports that on page 326, Woodward describes how sequestration was pitched by Obama budget director Jack Lew and legislative affairs chief Rob Nabors, and initially was not well received by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who said, "Get the hell out of here. . . . That's insane. The White House surely will come up with a plan that will save the day. And you come to me with sequestration?"
The book reports that the White House won Reid over on the matter after hearing that "they would design it so that half the threatened cuts would be from the Defense Department," with far less coming from entitlements. Romney’s remarks strike me as the right notion, but perhaps one not quite perfectly expressed.
I feel like Romney doesn’t “connect the dots” enough, and I wish he could almost lay it out with bullet points. Last summer, with our gargantuan debt approaching its legal limit, the debt ceiling, Congress and the president needed to reach a deal. Because this president wouldn’t budge upon his desire to raise taxes, the only compromise that could be reached was this “sequestration” nonsense.
Sequestration is a terrible patchwork of a compromise, because it cuts defense so deeply it endangers the country, and what’s worse is that it was deliberately designed to be a terrible compromise, because the theory would be that it was so bad, it would force Congress and the president to get serious and come up with a better deal. Yet here we are, nearly a year and a half later, and there’s no better deal on the table. Obama’s been too busy golfing, going to fundraisers, and hanging around the couch with the ladies of The View, apparently.
Sequestration could go away anytime this president got serious about cutting spending. It can also go away anytime a president-elect gets serious about cutting spending, too. Obama always says we can’t balance the budget by just cutting spending — but we’ve never even tried that option. Let’s see how much of the deficit we can cut by getting rid of redundant and ineffective programs. Once we have a smaller deficit, once we feel we’ve really cut out the spending we don’t need, then we can reexamine the tax code!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)NUGENT: Mitt Romney was right about the 47 percent
Americans should be told over and over that less government is best government and that the president’s plan is to continue to shovel slop down the throat of Fedzilla, thereby making it even more unresponsive, more bloated, more expensive, less effective and more controlling.
Americans should be reminded that the free market, opportunity and hard work are what have made America strong and prosperous, and that voting for Democrats is analogous to driving a nail into your knee and then complaining that it hurts to walk.
Read more: NUGENT: Mitt Romney was right about the 47 percent - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/27/mitt-romney-was-right-about-the-47-percent/?page=2#ixzz27tkiwd7H
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Neville Obama. (See 3 below.)
"There's a great scholar of the Middle East, Prof. Bernard Lewis, who put it
best. He said that for the Ayatollahs of Iran, mutually assured destruction
is not a deterrent, it's an inducement."
---
Pat Caddell, a pollster with integrity. (See 4 below.)
---
Dick
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1) Morning Jolt
By Jim Geraghty
Our Score So Far: Justice Department 1, First Amendment 0.
This is one of those moments where you don’t really recognize your country anymore. The California man behind a crudely produced anti-Islamic video posted to YouTube that has inflamed parts of the Middle East was arrested for violating terms of his probation, authorities said Thursday. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was convicted in 2010 for federal check and sentenced to 21 months in prison.
Under terms of his probation, he was not allowed to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. Nakoula was arrested after federal probation officials determined he violated the terms of his supervised release, said Thomas Mrozek U.S. Attorney’s spokesman in Los Angeles. Totally coincidental, right?
Allahpundit: “No word yet on what the violation was, but I assume it must be far more serious than using an alias or a computer. Given the insanity of the past two weeks, replete with the White House nudging Google to pull the video off of YouTube and the State Department running ads on Pakistani TV to apologize for a movie they had nothing to do with, I can’t quite believe the DOJ would risk the perception that they’re punishing this guy for a thoughtcrime unless something serious was involved.
There has to be a real crime underlying this. Right?” Exurban Jon: “It'll be neat when Obama starts locking up reporters who insult Islam, right MSM?” Two Obama Voters Who Aren’t . . . Completely Representative of His Base Two Obama voters to contemplate: First, the cheerful “Obama phone” user, incapable of speaking in anything besides an indignant, gravelly shriek . . . And then the fierce Romney critic who thinks our ambassador in Libya “probably had it coming.” Alexa Shrugged accurately depicted my incoherent mix of disbelief, shock, rage, and incredulousness that there are Americans who think like this, and whose vote counts as much as yours and mine. Four More Years of This?
Does anyone have any reason to think the next four years under Obama would be significantly different from the past two to four years? (I say two to four since he’ll probably be dealing with Speaker Boehner and not Speaker Pelosi.
So a second term of Obama would probably look and feel more like 2011–2012 than 2009–2010.) Think we’ll see anything different in how the president approaches the economy? We never generated much of a real recovery from the 2008 crash, and look at where we are, four years later:
I’ve frequently written about research from the Fed which finds that since 1947, when two-quarter annualized real GDP growth falls below 2%, recession follows within a year 48% of the time. And when year-over-year real GDP growth falls below 2%, recession follows within a year 70% of the time… Growth the past two quarters has averaged about 1.6%. Not only does this mean the economy is growing more slowly than last year’s 1.8%, it is also slow enough to signal about a 50% chance of a recession within a year. And the third quarter also looks weak.
The anemic, three-year-old U.S. recovery is already running out of steam. And if it does, it may be several more years before we see unemployment below 8%. Except if Obama’s reelected, there’s a chance he may strong-arm depressed Republicans in Congress into acquiescing on tax increases. So imagine the already gloomy economic outlook, with tax increases dolloped on top of that. Think we’ll see anything different in our approach to Iran?
I’m glad Obama realizes that on his approach to Iran in his first year, he was wrong and his Republican critics were right. I just don’t know how much his approach has changed, considering the periodic snubs, brush-offs, and other antagonism toward Israel’s concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. We know we’ll see . . . “more flexibility” in our dealings with Putin. We’re going to be “more flexible” in negotiations with a leader characterized as cruel, paranoid, and “venomously anti-Western.” Can’t wait, huh?
Obama went to the United Nations, made a pretty good defense of the First Amendment and how the best response to offensive speech is more speech, not attempts to ban it . . . and the leaders of the Muslim world pretty much ignored him. Remember, Obama is on record as saying that he thinks Republicans will be more willing to compromise after his reelection: “Given how stark the choices are, I do think that should I be fortunate enough to have another four years, the American people will have made a decision. And hopefully, that will impact how Republicans think about these problems . . . My expectation is that there will be some popping of the blister after this election, because it will have been such a stark choice.” And you thought he was naïve about the Middle East!
I mention all this because our friend Jonah has put the magnifying glass to a remarkably un-discussed aspect of the 2012 election. Despite four years of results that only his most loyal defenders would call satisfactory, Obama is largely the same guy he was when he walked into the job on January 20, 2009. He doesn’t think he’s made any major mistakes of substance or policy. He thinks his lone problem is insufficient storytelling. Jonah observes: In the 2008 primaries, Obama and Hillary Clinton had an intense argument over the nature of the presidency. Clinton argued that real change came when skillful politicians moved the machinery of Washington toward progressive ends.
The president was a “chief executive officer” who is “able to manage and run the bureaucracy,” she explained. No, no, replied Obama. The presidency “involves having a vision for where the country needs to go . . . and then being able to mobilize and inspire the American people to get behind that agenda for change.” So, after four years on the job, Obama has learned that he was right all along!
How humble. Except that’s not the story of Obama’s presidency. Contrary to popular myth, Obama has not rallied public opinion to his side on a single major domestic issue. The idea that health-care reform was an “outsider-driven” affair is especially otherworldly. Unpopular from the get-go, it passed with ugly horse trades and legislative bribes that helped spur an outsider movement to defeat it, i.e., the Tea Parties.
His claim that he was too busy “getting the policy right” to tell the people a story is doubly creepy in its lack of self-awareness. All the reporting about Obama’s first term suggests that he outsourced the heavy lifting on the stimulus, “Obamacare,” and Wall Street reform to the Democratic leadership while he indulged his logorrheic platitudinousness.
According to Bob Woodward’s new book, even Nancy Pelosi hit mute on the speakerphone (which she’s denied) during one of Obama’s perorations, and she and Harry Reid went on with their meeting. In his first year, Obama barely stopped talking to the American people, who unfortunately didn’t always have a mute button handy. According to CBS’s Mark Knoller, Obama gave 411 speeches or statements (52 addresses solely on health-care reform), 42 news conferences, 158 interviews, 23 town-hall meetings, and 28 fundraisers.
And what did Obama learn from all of this? Nothing, nothing at all. If second-term Obama is going to be different in any way, it’s that he’s probably going to be even more pleased with himself, even less inclined to do interviews where he might get hard questions, even more ubiquitous on our television in pop-culture venues (The View, cooking shows, late-night comedy shows, Entertainment Tonight, sports commentary, interviews with radio hosts like “The Pimp With the Limp” and so on).
After all, reelection will be the ultimate vindication. He offered up results that his critics declared to be a buffet table of failure . . . and a majority of Americans said, “More, please.” Punch Sequestration Quicker and Harder, Mitt! Here’s Romney’s message in Northern Virginia yesterday: Mitt Romney on Thursday cast the president as a weak commander-in-chief who is willing to compromise the country’s military strength even though the world remains a dangerous place. At a “Veterans for Romney” event in northern Virginia, the Republican presidential nominee offered assurances that he would avert military spending cuts and protect services for veterans. Mr. Romney continued to blame Barack Obama for deep cuts to defense that are scheduled to take effect next year.
The planned spending reductions, known as sequestration, are the result of a bipartisan deal that was supported by many Republicans in Congress. Mr. Romney, though, told the veterans in Springfield that “the White House proposed this sequestration, kind of a gun-to-your-head opportunity.” In case you doubt that point . . .
The Wall Street Journal reports that on page 326, Woodward describes how sequestration was pitched by Obama budget director Jack Lew and legislative affairs chief Rob Nabors, and initially was not well received by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) who said, "Get the hell out of here. . . . That's insane. The White House surely will come up with a plan that will save the day. And you come to me with sequestration?"
The book reports that the White House won Reid over on the matter after hearing that "they would design it so that half the threatened cuts would be from the Defense Department," with far less coming from entitlements. Romney’s remarks strike me as the right notion, but perhaps one not quite perfectly expressed.
I feel like Romney doesn’t “connect the dots” enough, and I wish he could almost lay it out with bullet points. Last summer, with our gargantuan debt approaching its legal limit, the debt ceiling, Congress and the president needed to reach a deal. Because this president wouldn’t budge upon his desire to raise taxes, the only compromise that could be reached was this “sequestration” nonsense.
Sequestration is a terrible patchwork of a compromise, because it cuts defense so deeply it endangers the country, and what’s worse is that it was deliberately designed to be a terrible compromise, because the theory would be that it was so bad, it would force Congress and the president to get serious and come up with a better deal. Yet here we are, nearly a year and a half later, and there’s no better deal on the table. Obama’s been too busy golfing, going to fundraisers, and hanging around the couch with the ladies of The View, apparently.
Sequestration could go away anytime this president got serious about cutting spending. It can also go away anytime a president-elect gets serious about cutting spending, too. Obama always says we can’t balance the budget by just cutting spending — but we’ve never even tried that option. Let’s see how much of the deficit we can cut by getting rid of redundant and ineffective programs. Once we have a smaller deficit, once we feel we’ve really cut out the spending we don’t need, then we can reexamine the tax code!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)NUGENT: Mitt Romney was right about the 47 percent
Americans are too dependent on Fedzilla
Mitt Romney hit the bull’s-eye with his comments regarding the 47 percent of Americans who do not have any skin in the game as it pertains to paying federal income tax. Facts are facts.
Mr. Romney is not backing down. Good. The truth is the truth and it’s long past time someone said it.
As I’ve written before, for at least the past 50 years the Democratic Party has intentionally engineered a class of political “victims” who have been bamboozled into being dependent on the federal government for their subsistence, including food, housing and now health care. They get this without paying any federal income taxes, and that’s wrong. Something for nothing is always a scam. This is how you buy votes, plain and simple.
Alternatively, the majority of federal income taxes are paid by the top wage earners, the very group of individuals the Democrats and President Obama constantly demonize and want to punish by raising their taxes even higher.
This is what’s called “fair” in this bizzarro world. Those who pay nothing can continue to pay nothing, and those who pay all will pay more.
If you truly seek “fair,” then everyone should have some federal income tax skin in the game.
More than likely, the Democrats will fight this proposal, as their political platform is based on taking from one group of people (taxpayers) and giving to another who pay no federal income tax (Democratic supporters).
The Democratic Party exists because it promotes the creation of dependence on Fedzilla. They have intentionally created the real political victims, many of whom have been victimized by the Democrats for decades.
Through the creation of the Nanny State, the Democrats have destroyed lives, families and entire communities, and convinced some Americans that they can’t achieve anything without Fedzilla’s help. They have their own soulless Declaration of Dependence. That’s downright pathetic.
While creating this voting bloc of handcrafted victims, the Democrats have also waged an artful campaign to paint Republicans as a group of arrogant, greedy rich people.
Some Democrats like Vice President Joseph R. Biden take their venom-filled lies about the GOP even a step lower. It was “Say It Ain’t So” Joe who recently stated that electing Republicans would put black people “back in chains.” He’s a race-baiting yarn-spinner. He should be made to wear a dunce hat and stand in the corner for the remainder of the campaign.
Through the years, the GOP response has been anemic — pathetic, actually. They have been unable or unwilling to go on a bold offensive of championing independence, rugged individualism and the free market out of some strange concern about alienating the victims the Democratic Party has created. For too long the GOP went along to get along. That was a bad move rising.
It’s time to hit back.Regardless of income, all Americans should pay some federal income taxes. While the successful will continue to do most of the heavy lifting, every American should have to fork over something to Uncle Sam.
No able-bodied American should get anything for free while doing nothing to earn it. Put a rake, shovel, paint brush or broom in their hands. That will instill some pride back in their lives that the Democrats have worked double-time to make extinct.
Americans should be told over and over that less government is best government and that the president’s plan is to continue to shovel slop down the throat of Fedzilla, thereby making it even more unresponsive, more bloated, more expensive, less effective and more controlling.
Americans should be reminded that the free market, opportunity and hard work are what have made America strong and prosperous, and that voting for Democrats is analogous to driving a nail into your knee and then complaining that it hurts to walk.
Americans should be told over and over again that since Mr. Obama was elected, more than 15 million additional Americans have started receiving food stamps, the price of gas has more than doubled, the national debt has ballooned by $5 trillion, unemployment has remained above 8 percent for the past 43 months, millions of Americans have given up looking for work and Obamacare will cost trillions more. Hammer this home, GOP, and do it in the key battleground states.
What Fedzilla has done to individuals and businesses is not a victimless crime. It’s killing America.
Read more: NUGENT: Mitt Romney was right about the 47 percent - Washington Times http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/27/mitt-romney-was-right-about-the-47-percent/?page=2#ixzz27tkiwd7H
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
2a) The Zombies are Coming
Let’s face it, there is definitely something very spooky about liberals. They’re a lot like those creatures in horror movies, the undead, who are always lurking around looking to turn normal people into vampires or zombies. They’re often looking for human brains, which, God knows they could certainly use, but it’s not for themselves, but to install in the heads of monsters they’ve cobbled together in their basements.
In the movies at least, people can generally avoid running into them so long as they stay out of haunted houses, cemeteries and dark cellars. In real life, it’s much more difficult because they’re everywhere. Turn on your TV and there’s Steny Hoyer, Joe Biden or Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, saying something so stupid, it’s frightening. And if you happened to find yourself in a cemetery at night and bumped into Harry Reid, wouldn’t you assume that he was there to oversee your burial?
Scariest of all is Barack Obama because he’s the one with the power to create the most mischief. But what I don’t get is why people are making such a big thing of a 1998 video in which he announced that he was in favor of the redistribution of wealth. Why go back 14 years? He said the same thing during the current century, in 2008 to be exact, to Joe the Plumber. He also famously said at about the same time that the major failing of the Constitution and the Civil Rights Movement is that neither dealt with the redistribution of wealth.
This is the same palooka who said that his energy policy would send prices soaring, and whose energy czar said he wished gas prices would go to $10-a-gallon in order to hasten the day when green energy would be our only option.
It just seems to me that going back 14 years in order to nail this putz with his own words is sort of like the other side trying to portray Romney as Al Capone because he bullied some kid in high school. I mean, Obama has not only done his level best to destroy the coal and oil industries in America, thus helping to double gas prices at the pump over the past four years, but his economic policies have drained thousands of dollars from the net worth of the average American, kept the unemployment rate at record highs, and, for good measure, is one of the few people who has ever voted in favor of partial-birth abortions. Talk about your ghouls. This schmuck even gives the Mummy the willies.
Even in the area of foreign policy, Obama can’t help showing off his incompetence. First, he kicked things off by going to Cairo in 2009, apologizing for American exceptionalism, and kissing the behinds of the assembled Arabs and Muslims. Then, when in spite of four years of bowing and scraping, those same people showed their contempt for him by storming our embassy in Libya and murdering four Americans, including our ambassador, he denied it was an act of terrorism. He even made his ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, go on every TV show except Dancing With the Stars, to announce that it was a spontaneous uprising brought about by a video that was seen by fewer people than Catwoman.
For eight days, poor Jay Carney had to tell the White House press corps that there was no possible way to tell that the attack had been planned and carried out by Muslim terrorists. And then, on the ninth day, voila, there was the Press Secretary not only admitting that it was a terrorist attack, but that it was, of all things, “self-evident”!
Even I sympathized with the boyish-looking Carney. He was probably hired in the first place when Robert Gibbs stepped down because, unlike Gibbs, he looked like he could be trusted near a playground filled with kids. However, he has lost his innocence over the past couple of years. Dealing with the Libyan kerfuffle, he had to spin so hard and so fast for Obama that he finally screwed himself into the floor until all that could be seen of him was the top of his head and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
While Obama continues to take bows for giving the order to kill Osama bin Laden, someone should constantly remind him that anyone, including Romney, I and my aunt Sophie, would have given the same order. What none of us would have done, however, was to display such weakness and to send such mixed messages to our enemies in North Africa and the Middle East that a bunch of third world thugs would have reason to believe they could burn down our embassy and slaughter Americans with impunity.
For all his various failings, when Islamic terrorists attacked America on 9/11/01, George Bush went to war. When Islamic terrorists attacked America on 9/11/12, Barack Obama said they weren’t really attacking us and they weren’t even terrorists; they were actually just a bunch of film critics who disliked a certain movie and, instead of giving it a really bad review, decided to go on a killing spree.
I guess we can only hope that these folks never get wind of Mommie Dearest, Heaven’s Gate or Freddy Got Fingered, or it could be the end of life on earth as we’ve known it.
2b)HOROWITZ: Obama still wants to fundamentally transform America
Too radical for four more years
An American compound in Libya is invaded by al Qaeda terrorists and an American ambassador is purportedly tortured before being killed. Muslim mobs attack American embassies in 27 countries chanting,”Death to America.” The White House response? A statement blaming the outrages on a filmmaker in the United States, along with apologies to the Muslim world.
The American economy languishes with millions unemployed in the worst times since the Great Depression. Yet the president spends his first years in the White House focusing on a plan to create a trillion-dollar socialized health care system opposed by a majority of Americans. Then he campaigns for re-election on a platform blaming rich Americans for the economic woes.
What’s going on here?
The answer lies in a famous statement the president made on the eve of his election, when he told a crowd of cheering supporters: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” These are not the words of a traditional, pragmatic-minded American politician. A practical politician attempts to address problems and fix them, not to fundamentally transform an entire nation. Transforming nations is what radicals aspire to do. But Mr. Obama’s actions in the past four years — beginning with putting Obamacare in front of the economic crisis — are nothing if not radical.
Radicals are sometimes referred to as “liberals in a hurry.” They share goals but not means. Both Mr. Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, expressed early sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose rage at the American social order quickly turned violent and destructive.
But while Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi may pursue their agendas through the traditional process of democratic government, ends still determine means. The radical nature of the goals they pursue does have consequences, the first of which is to divide the nation in an hour when they should have been uniting it.
In a national crisis such as America faced in 2009 when 800,000 of us were losing our jobs every month, traditional leaders would have regarded their first task as one of rallying the country on a common agenda and bringing Americans together. Instead, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi put their radical agenda first — passing a massive health care bill, the most transformative legislation in American history, and passing it over the opposition not only of Republicans but even of Democratic voters in Massachusetts, who elected Republican Scott Brown to cast a vote against it.
Far from pursuing national unity to solve the crisis, Mr. Obama put his goal of transformation in front of everything. In order to achieve the change he wanted, he shut out the congressional Republicans in drafting his revolutionary legislation, and then disregarded the majority of Americans when they rejected his plan, defeating Democrats in special elections in New Jersey and Virginia — states that he had won. His radical goals caused Mr. Obama to squander his political capital on a divisive campaign in the first two years of his administration that has changed and embittered the political landscape, and that has persisted for four years and could continue.
Of the Obama election effort dominated by themes of class envy and conflict, a longtime liberal and Democrat, Mortimer Zuckerman, the publisher of U.S. News & World Report, has said: “It is a dishonest, divisive campaign. It’s discouraging of enterprise. It does the opposite of uniting the country to deal with the current economic crisis.”
Abroad, the story is depressingly similar. The president launched his radical foreign policy initiatives with a speech in June 2009. Speaking in Cairo, now aflame with anti-American protests, he offered the Muslim world “a new beginning.” By this, he meant not a Muslim new beginning but an American change of heart, as though it were our policies that led to the Islamic attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the ravages of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As an anti-war president, Mr. Obama has surrendered Iraq, in whose cause so many young Americans died, to America’s enemy, Iran. This was another gesture of American retreat designed to ingratiate us with those who hate us.
What have these three years of reversing America’s traditional policies wrought? Charles Krauthammer summarized it in a recent column: “The Islamic world is convulsed with an explosion of anti-Americanism. From Tunisia to Lebanon, American schools, businesses and diplomatic facilities set ablaze. A U.S. ambassador and three others murdered in Benghazi. The black flag of Salafism, of which al Qaeda is a prominent element, raised over our embassies in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Sudan.” According to public opinion polls, America’s appeasement of Islamic rage has led to a situation in which America is more hated today in the Muslim world than it was at the height of the war in Iraq.
Like all other radical ideas, Mr. Obama’s foreign policy schemes were based on wishful thinking rather than a realistic appraisal of what the country faces and what its real enemies intend. That is why his policies have failed and a weaker America faces a more dangerous world.
America is a nation that was created by conservatives who designed for it a system of checks and balances to frustrate radical schemes. In his four years as president, Mr. Obama has attempted to circumvent the Founding Fathers’ prudent plans. Now he is asking for a second opportunity. Hopefully, American voters will deny him that opportunity in November and put a check on those radical schemes.
David Horowitz is author most recently of “Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion” (Regney)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3) Obama at the U.N.: Emboldening the Barbarians at the Gate
By Hyatt Seligman
Less than four years after President Obama's first apology tour, the chickens are coming home to roost from the power vacuum created in the Middle East by the "nuanced" decisions of the president's failed foreign policy. His "Cairo outreach" is in flames. And after years of Obama's extending an open hand to Iran's mad mullahs, their President Ahmadinejad just repeated his promise to eliminate Israel as he addressed the United Nations.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/29/mainstream-media-threatening-our-country-future/#ixzz27xY7JtV5
By Hyatt Seligman
Less than four years after President Obama's first apology tour, the chickens are coming home to roost from the power vacuum created in the Middle East by the "nuanced" decisions of the president's failed foreign policy. His "Cairo outreach" is in flames. And after years of Obama's extending an open hand to Iran's mad mullahs, their President Ahmadinejad just repeated his promise to eliminate Israel as he addressed the United Nations.
On the very next day, the president's surreal speech at the U.N. on September 25, 2012 made things worse. Only you would never know it from the mainstream media's reporting. The New York Times story said he made a strong defense of free speech and that he renewed his vow to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The next day, an editorial at the paper applauded the president's strong "push back" against anti-American Muslim violence. If only that were true.
It was not strong. It was weak -- very weak. It's 1939 again, and our president makes Neville Chamberlain look like the Man of Steel. We need a Churchill or a Reagan now.
The president rightly decried the killing of our ambassador but wrongly omitted the other three victims and the fact that this was pre-meditated murder in an Islamist attack by pro-al-Qaeda terrorists against our Benghazi consulate on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. Nor did he highlight the desecration of our embassies, the raising of the jihadist flag over sovereign American territory, and the rioters' ubiquitous chants in praise of the martyred Islamist terrorist, Osama bin Laden. Obama's omissions evaded the essence of the disaster confronting us: the dramatic spread of anti-American Islamists across North Africa on his watch.
He then said that the nameless "killers" would be "relentlessly" brought to "justice." This isolated boast was sandwiched between startling expressions of "thanks" to the governments of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen for their "steps to secure our diplomatic facilities." He tendered this undeserved gratitude even after the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt openly admitted to The New York Times that he had deliberately delayed protecting our embassy from the rioters who he knew were climbing its walls and burning our American flag. Thank you for nothing.
The president claimed that "merely" putting more guards at our embassies was "insufficient." (If only he had done so in the face of advance warnings!) He said the world must also "declare that this violence and intolerance has no place among our United Nations," as if such platitudes on the eve of Yom Kippur atoned for the apparent substandard security for our diplomats and staff.
In the wake of this carnage, the president nevertheless took pride in the fact that this has been a "season of progress" in the Middle East because new Arab leaders had been elected in fair elections with his help and encouragement. He omitted that they were almost all dictatorial, radical Islamists with contempt for America, Israel, and Western civilization. Imagine President Franklin Roosevelt taking pride in Herr Hitler winning a fair election in 1933 because the "moderate" Fuehrer would lead Germany to democracy. This is progress?
Obama actually implied that the situation was normal. There are always those who reject "human progress" on the road from dictatorship to democracy. "Convulsions" that accompany "transitions" to a "new political order" are to be expected. So the murders of our ambassador and his staff were just "bumps in the road," Mr. President?
Obama adopted the pretext of the Muslim radicals, the very propaganda they used to justify their attacks, as the truth. He made their anger his, and thus ours. He blamed the violence, just as they did, on a single, tiny, private American citizen's "disgusting video" whose message was an "insult" to Islam and to America. He said that all must reject it for our "common humanity." His clear message: focus on the petty scapegoat, not the president himself or his massive failure.
Yes, he did explain that America has a Constitution that protects free speech. He said that words never justify killing. But what good was his mouthing a fancy theory when, in practice, he threw a free American to the Islamic wolves by tarring and feathering him in front of the world? The subtext is clear. He will not defend any American's free speech in the face of Muslim outrage.
He then "honest[ly] address[ed]" the tensions between the Arabs and the West by asserting that "Muslims have suffered the most at the hands of extremism." Tell that to the victims of 9/11 and to thousands more murdered or maimed by Muslim terrorists each year.
He said we need to "marginalize" hatred. He gave examples regarding to whom that should apply. In one he proclaimed that "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." Excuse me! That's a jihadist battle cry, not America's! The right to offend the prophet of any religion, let alone of Islam, is the essence of our liberty and secular Constitution. If we cannot do so, we are subservient to religious law, here sharia. Such pandering makes us second-class citizens to Islam, or dhimmis. This olive branch to Islam was not the president's to give. It was a betrayal of our Constitution, a fundamental abandonment of our core principles.
The president claimed we would do "what we must" to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but jusst not right now. While the time for diplomacy is "not unlimited," he "believes there is still time and space to" negotiate. This feckless bromide was made even in the face of Ahmadinejad's latest vile threat to Israel from the same podium. How much longer before our president "believes" that he "must" do something more than dither? He won't say. On the contrary, he recently told 60 Minutes that Israel's existential worries are just "noise" to him. Why didn't he personally condemn the wannabe Holocaust-maker, Ahmadinejad, or demand a "come to Jesus meeting" at the U.N. with him? Instead, he wasted precious time playing a reality TV celebrity on a talk show rather than performing his job as president, commander-in-chief, leader of the free world, and ally of Israel. Why should Iran take him seriously? Or Israel?
Finally, he claimed great "progress" as president because the war in Iraq is "over" and the one in Afghanistan will end "on schedule" in 2014. Unfortunately, that does not mean victory, or even leaving honorably and responsibly as promised. Nor does it mean that our enemies will stop waging war against us across the globe simply because Obama quit two battlefields in an ongoing conflict. Equally incredibly, in the wake of a brazen, murderous, al-Qaeda-style attack in Libya, with our embassies still smoldering, and with radical Islamists concentrating political power as never before throughout North Africa with his encouragement, Obama claimed that al-Qaeda has been "weakened." Then he spiked the bin Laden football for the umpteenth time, reminding the world that "[he] is no more." But what about the metastasis of his terror network and his millions of Islamist supporters, Mr. President?
This was truly an "empty chair" speech by a leader desperate to mask his own ineptitude for another forty days until election time. He hid the elephant in the room: that the Islamists and their supporters are gaining dangerous ground in their war against America and Israel. He obfuscated both the scope of America's humiliation and his dereliction of duty. He thanked those who deserve scorn. He offered platitudes instead of resolve. He adopted our enemies' propaganda as his own, scapegoated the weak, and pandered to Muslim extremists. He abandoned our Constitution and left Israel and her Jews twisting in the stormy winds of a monstrous, blustering foe. On the world's center stage, he emboldened the barbarians at the gate.
After 9/11 of '12, the president's fancy speeches can't hide the truth. He owns the disastrous "Arab Spring" now. We are much weaker. Our enemies are much stronger. After almost four years on his dismal path of apologies, appeasement, pandering, retreat, and defeatism from Iraq to Afghanistan to almost all of North Africa, we are flailing and failing. Is Jordan the next domino to fall?
It will only get worse with this president. He's actually guaranteed it. We know, only by accident, what he confided in secret to the Russians. He will be even more "flexible" with our adversaries when he is no longer accountable to the people after re-election to a second term. "Tell Mr. Putin for me, Dmitry," is what he said. Those are his words that he whispered when he thought that we, the people, could not hear him.
Thankfully we did. Now we know that he doesn't trust us. So why should we trust him? After four years, we've heard enough, and we've had enough. Take your flexibility and shove it, Mr. President. You're fired!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)Mainstream media is threatening our country's future
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/29/mainstream-media-threatening-our-country-future/#ixzz27xY7JtV5
Editor's note: The following text is from a speech delivered by Democratic pollster and Fox News contributor Patrick Caddell on September 21. It was delivered at Accuracy in Media's Conference: Obamanation: A Day of Truth. The title of the speech was “The Audacity of Corruption.
” For more on Accuracy in Media, click here.
” For more on Accuracy in Media, click here.
I think we’re at the most dangerous time in our political history in terms of the balance of power in the role that the media plays in whether or not we maintain a free democracy or not. You know, when I first started in politics – and for a long time before that – everyone on both sides, Democrats and Republicans, despised the press commonly, because they were SOBs to everybody. Which is exactly what they should be. They were unrelenting. Whatever the biases were, they were essentially equal-opportunity people.
That changed in 1980.
There are a lot of reasons for it. It changed—an important point in the Dukakis-Bush election, when the press literally was trying to get Dukakis elected by ignoring what was happening in Massachusetts, with a candidate who was running on the platform of “He will do for America what he did for Massachusetts”—while they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
Also the change from evening news emphasis to morning news by the networks is another factor that’s been pointed out to me.
Most recently, what I call the nepotism that exists, where people get jobs—they’re married to people who are in the administration, or in politics, whatever.
But the overwhelming bias has become very real and very dangerous. We have a First Amendment for one reason. We have a First Amendment not because the Founding Fathers liked the press—they hated the press—but they believed, as [Thomas] Jefferson said, that in order to have a free country, in order to be a free people, we needed a free press. That was the job—so there was an implicit bargain in the First Amendment, the press being the only institution, at that time, which was in our process of which there was no checks and balances.
We designed a constitutional system with many checks and balances. The one that had no checks and balances was the press, and that was done under an implicit understanding that, somehow, the press would protect the people from the government and the power by telling—somehow allowing—people to have the truth. That is being abrogated as we speak, and has been for some time. It is now creating the danger that I spoke to.
This morning, just this morning, Gallup released their latest poll on the trust, how much trust [the American people have in the press] —when it comes to reporting the news accurately, fairly, and fully, and [the level of their distrust] it’s the highest in history. For the first time, 60% of the people said they had “Not very much” or “None at all.” Of course there was a partisan break: There were 40% who believed it did, Democrats, 58% believed that it was fair and accurate, Republicans were 26%, independents were
on the trust, how much trust [the American people have in the press] —when it comes to reporting the news accurately, fairly, and fully, and [the level of their distrust] it’s the highest in history. For the first time, 60% of the people said they had “Not very much” or “None at all.” Of course there was a partisan break: There were 40% who believed it did, Democrats, 58% believed that it was fair and accurate, Republicans were 26%, independents were
31%.
So there is this contempt for the media – or this belief—and there are many other polls that show it as well.
I want to just use a few examples, because I think we crossed the line the last few weeks that is terrifying.
A few weeks ago I wrote a piece which was called “The Audacity of Cronyism” in Breitbart, and my talk today is “The Audacity of Corruption.” What I pointed out was, that it was appalling that Valerie Jarrett had a Secret Service detail. A staff member in the White House who is a senior aide and has a full Secret Service detail, even while on vacation, and nobody in the press had asked why. That has become more poignant, as I said, last week, when we discovered that we had an American ambassador, on the anniversary of 9/11, who was without adequate security—while she still has a Secret Service detail assigned to her full-time, at a massive cost, and no one in the media has gone to ask why.
” in Breitbart, and my talk today is “The Audacity of Corruption.” What I pointed out was, that it was appalling that Valerie Jarrett had a Secret Service detail. A staff member in the White House who is a senior aide and has a full Secret Service detail, even while on vacation, and nobody in the press had asked why. That has become more poignant, as I said, last week, when we discovered that we had an American ambassador, on the anniversary of 9/11, who was without adequate security—while she still has a Secret Service detail assigned to her full-time, at a massive cost, and no one in the media has gone to ask why.
The same thing: I raised the question of David Plouffe. David Plouffe, who is the White House’s Senior Adviser—and was Obama’s campaign manager last time, he and [David] Axelrod sort of switched out, Axelrod going back to Chicago for the campaign—and just after it was announced that he was coming, an Iranian front group in Nigeria gave him $100,000 to give two speeches in Nigeria.
Now, let me tell you: There’s nobody that hands—no stranger gives you $100,000 and doesn’t expect something in return, unless you live in a world that I don’t. And no one has raised this in the mainstream media.
He was on with George Stephanopoulos, on ABC, a couple of weeks ago, and they were going through all these questions. No one asked him whatsoever about that. He was not inquired. George Stephanopoulos, a former advisor to Bill Clinton—who every morning, while Rahm Emmanuel was Chief of Staff, had his call with Rahm Emmanuel and James Carville, and the three of them have been doing it for years—and he is held out as a journalist. He has two platforms. I mean, he’s a political hack masquerading as a journalist. But when you don’t ask the questions you need to ask of someone like David Plouffe, who’s going in the White House—when we’re talking about Iran.
I just finished surveys, some of you may have seen, with John McLaughlin this week, with Secure America Now, and found out just how strongly Americans are concerned with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, what’s happening in the Middle East, and cuts in defense spending.
surveys, some of you may have seen, with John McLaughlin this week, with Secure America Now, and found out just how strongly Americans are concerned with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, what’s happening in the Middle East, and cuts in defense spending.
This is not the place for that, but it strikes me as the American people identify, in the polling we’ve done over the last year, Iran as the single greatest danger to the United States. And here’s a man who’s being paid by an already named front group for that—for a terrorist regime, and is not asked about it, or queried about it!
The third thing I would say is that—then there’s of course [National Security Advisor] Tom Donilon, who I know very well from years back, who I caused a little bit of a stir over a few months ago when I said he was the “leaker-in-chief.”
I mean this ridiculous running around—“How did these secrets get out?”—when it is clear he has no credentials for foreign policy; who has been in the White House; who was a political operative for Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and others; who was known to have, in my opinion, to be just the most amoral person I know in politics; and who is using and orchestrating national security. In Mr. [David] Sanger’s book [Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power], as a reviewer at [The New York Times] said, “The hero of this book, and the clear source of it, is Tom Donilon”—but let me just make a point. Neither does—and I would say this to the Congressman—“You know, all the Republicans have to do”—you know, I talk often about the “Corrupt Party” and the “Stupid Party,” but the Stupid Party couldn’t be stupider when it comes to things like this. They could have called Tom Donilon and other people down to the Congress, put them under oath, and asked them if they had leaked.
said, “The hero of this book, and the clear source of it, is Tom Donilon”—but let me just make a point. Neither does—and I would say this to the Congressman—“You know, all the Republicans have to do”—you know, I talk often about the “Corrupt Party” and the “Stupid Party,” but the Stupid Party couldn’t be stupider when it comes to things like this. They could have called Tom Donilon and other people down to the Congress, put them under oath, and asked them if they had leaked.
Instead you have Eric Holder, who runs the most political Justice Department since John Mitchell—only in John Mitchell’s administration did we have Justice Departments that were so politicized and so corrupted by politics—and he appoints someone who gave two people to do a study on the leaks, sometime in the next century will come out, and one of them is a, was a contributor to Barack Obama when he was a state Senator. That’s a really unbiased source! And the press, of course, won’t look into this.
It will not ask the question. But the Republicans could have called them down. Yes, the president could have extended Executive Privilege, but let him say “I will not answer that question, sir” on the question of “Did you leak these secrets that Dianne Feinstein, the Chairman, the Democratic Chairman, of the Senate Intelligence Committee said were endangering national security and American lives?” As she said when she read Sanger’s book, “My God, every page I turn I learn something that I don’t know!” I mean, these are serious matters but in Washington they’re playful, and the press does not pursue any of them.
when she read Sanger’s book, “My God, every page I turn I learn something that I don’t know!” I mean, these are serious matters but in Washington they’re playful, and the press does not pursue any of them.
Peter Schweizer has done a study talking about corruption. Sixty percent or 80%—it’s closer to 80% I think, now—of the money given under the stimulus to green energy projects—the president and this administration’s great project—has gone to people who are either bundlers or major contributors to Barack Obama.
—it’s closer to 80% I think, now—of the money given under the stimulus to green energy projects—the president and this administration’s great project—has gone to people who are either bundlers or major contributors to Barack Obama.
But nobody says a word.
Of course Republicans don’t raise it because in Washington, they simply want to do it when they get back in power. And, of course, the press doesn’t because they basically have taken themselves out of doing their job.
When we see what happened this week in Libya—and when I said I was more frightened than I’ve ever been, this is true, because I think it’s one thing that, as they did in 2008, when the mainstream press, the mainstream media and all the press, jumped on the Obama bandwagon and made it a moral commitment on their part to help him get elected in a way that has never happened, whatever the biases in the past.
To give you an example of the difference, I’ll just shortly tell you this: In 1980, when [Jimmy] Carter was running for reelection, the press—even though 80% of them, after the election, reporters said they voted for Carter over [Ronald] Reagan, or 70% percent of them, a very high percentage—they believed, so much, that the Carter campaign and the Carter White House had abused the Rose Garden against [Ted] Kennedy that they made a commitment, as they discussed, that they would not serve as the attack dogs on Reagan for the Carter White House because they thought it was unfair and they weren’t to be manipulated.
I totally disagree with their analysis, but that was when you actually had a press corps. Whatever their own personal feelings, they made judgments that were, “We’re not going to be manipulated.”
This press corps serves at the pleasure of this White House and president, led by people like Ezra Klein and JournoList, where
they plot the stories together. The problem here is that no one will name names.
But I want to talk about this Libyan thing, because we crossed some lines here. It’s not about politics. First of all we’ve had nine day of lies over what happened because they can’t dare say it’s a terrorist attack, and the press won’t push this. Yesterday there was not a single piece in The New York Times over the question of Libya.
Twenty American embassies, yesterday, were under attack. None of that is on the national news. None of it is being pressed in the papers.
If a president of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified! It would have been—it should have been the equivalent, for Barack Obama, of George Bush’s “flying over Katrina” moment. But nothing was said at all, and nothing will be said.
It is one thing to bias the news, or have a biased view. It is another thing to specifically decide that you will not tell the American people information they have a right to know, and I choose right now, openly, and this is—if I had more time I’d do all the names for it—but The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the most important papers that influence the networks, ABC, NBC, and, to a lesser extent—because CBS has actually been on this story, partly because the President of Libya appeared on [Bob Schieffer’s “Face the Nation”] and said, on Sunday, while [U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.] Susan Rice was out—the U.N. Ambassador has no portfolio on this matter—lying, said of the Secretary—you know why, notice the Secretary of State wasn’t out there doing this—was on national television, lying and promoting the White House line while the Libyan President, the very same moment, is saying “This is a premeditated attack.”
Nobody has asked that question. This morning—take a look at The New York Times this morning, it’s a minor reference. Oh, now we’ve decided that it was a terrorist incident. But this is—that would have changed, that should change the politics.
This is not without accomplices, because the incompetence of the [Mitt] Romney campaign, which I said a week ago is the—my God!—the worst campaign in my lifetime, and the Republican establishment in general’s inability to fight, has allowed these things to happen in part because they don’t do it. But I want to go through two other quick points.
[Mohamed] Morsi and Egypt: The President of Egypt, we find out now, that his whole agenda has been getting the “Blind Sheikh” [Omar Abdel-Rahman], who’s responsible for the bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, out of jail. Prison. I’ve been told specifically, by a member of the intelligence community that the White House and State Department are negotiating that now.
They have now come out and denied it, but [Morsi] comes out, that they ordered—he’s the head of the Muslim Brotherhood! The American people know what they think of the Muslim Brotherhood: They are against them eleven to one, all right? And he’s the president of the Muslim Brotherhood, giving $2 billion to United States.
He tells them—we had advance warning because they had said they were gonna do this, attack our embassy. The president—after the incident, after 48 hours, Mr. Morsi does nothing and says nothing—picks up the phone, calls him, and demands that they call it off.
On Friday—last Friday, a week ago today—there was supposed to be a big demonstration. We thought that would be the big day—no, it disappeared, because Morsi called it off. But no press person has investigated this, just as no press person will go and ask the most obvious questions, when there are really good stories here, good media stories, and good news stories. They are in the tank and this is a frightening thing.
Another example has been the polling, which everyone wants to talk to me about. Look: There is no doubt that Romney is blowing an election he could not lose, and has done everything he can to lose it.
But the bias, the polling, it’s very complicated. Some of it is error, some of it is miscalculation, but some of it is deliberate, in my opinion—to pump up the numbers using the 2008 base to give a sense of momentum to the Obama campaign.
When I have polls that have the preference of Democrats over Republicans higher than it was in 2008, which was a peak Democratic year, I know I am dealing with a poll that shouldn’t be reported. And yet they are being done, and they are being done with that knowledge and with that basis for some people, and the answer, as I said, some of it is incompetence, some of it is they just don’t know, really know, how to handle it, and some of it is on purpose, and it’s purposeful.
But all of it is just to serve a basic point, just as JournoList was—Mr. Klein’s JournoList—but as I said there is no pushback.
We have a political campaign where, to put the best metaphor I can on it, where the referees on the field are sacking the quarterback of one team, tripping up their runners, throwing their bodies in front of blockers, and nobody says anything. The Republicans don’t.
The reason you will lose this battle is for one reason. Despite organizations like Accuracy In Media and others who are pointing this out, and the fact that 60% of the American people are in on the secret here—I mean, they’re no idiots—Republicans and those candidates who are not the candidates of the press refuse to call them out.
If I were the Romney campaign I would’ve been doing this for months! I’d have been looking at individual reporters! I would be telling the American people, “They’re not trying to stop me; they’re trying to stop you! And they are here to do this!” And I would have made the press themselves an issue because, until you do, what happens is, they are given the basic concession of authenticity and accuracy, or that they are credible, by not doing that.
Now too many reporters, too many political people in the Republican Party in this town, want to maintain their relationships with the press. This is how Sarah Palin got handed over to Katie Couric and to ABC before she was ready—because Steve Schmidt and others want to preserve their view, their relationships with the press.
You know, people have their own agendas, and often it’s not winning. But this not-pushing-back is a problem, and they don’t do it. And, you know what this is a different era: The old argument of “You don’t attack someone in the press”—or “You don’t get in a pissing match with someone who buys ink by the barrel”—doesn’t apply anymore. There are too many outlets, too many ways to do it, and the country doesn’t have the confidence in the press that they once had.
But all I want to conclude to this is that we face a fundamental danger here. The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people.
And it is a threat to the very future of this country if we allow this stuff to go on. We have crossed a whole new and frightening slide on the slippery slope this last two weeks, and it needs to be talked about.
Delivered by Patrick Caddell on September 21 at Accuracy in Media's Conference --Obamanation: A Day of Truth.
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Patrick Caddell is a Democratic pollster and Fox News contributor. He served as pollster for President Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Joe Biden and others. He is a Fox News political analyst and co-host of "Campaign Insiders" Sundays on Fox News Channel and Mondays at 10:30 am ET on "FoxNews.com Live."
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