I intend to start my memos with this until more of my memo readers support my effort to raise money for The Wounded Warrior Project so climb aboard! This book is not political though it might sound that way. I have written about raising children from the perspective of some one who believes in Capitalism and approaches life in a Conservative Manner. If that is political so be it!
"A Conservative Capitalist Offers: Eleven Lessons and a Bonus Lesson for Raising America's YouthBorn and Yet To Be Born"
I wrote this book because I believe a strong country must rest on a solid family unit and that Brokaw's "Greatest Generation" has morphed into "A Confused, Dependent and Compromised Generation." I hope this book will provide a guide to alter this trend.
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 About The Author:
After completing his formal education in 1960, Dick Berkowitz began his professional career
as a stockbroker in Atlanta, joining the nation's largest Southeastern Regional NYSE Member
Firm - Courts and Co. becoming a general partner in seven years. Dick subsequently resigned
after Courts merged and he opened an institutional office for Burnham and Company. Twenty
years later, after Drexel Burnham closed its doors, he moved his staff to Oppenheimer in 1990, retiring in 2009
During his business career he served on The President’s Commission on White House
Fellows ’90 – ‘92, The Board of Visitors St John's College ’95 -2001, The Board of Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars '97 - '98, The George Bush for President National
Finance Committee ‘98.
Dick also was a Founding Member Univ of Ga. President’s Club and Chaired Blackburn Park
Master Plan Committee ‘98.
Re-locating to Savannah, where he now lives with Lynn, his wife of 40 years, he continues to manage money for a few clients,
remains active serving on The Board of Visitors of the State of Ga. Museum of Art. He also began The JEA Speaker Series, serves
on The Board of The Savannah Federation Investment Foundation, The Advisory Board of Spine and Sports and more recently
The Board of The Skidaway Island Republican Club - 2012.
Dick Berkowitz also publishes his thoughts on The Middle East, politics and economics which can be found at:www.Dick-Meom.Blogspot.com or Brokerberko.com
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Please Buy My Book - Half The Proceeds Go To "The Wounded Warrior Project!"
You can order a printed book that will be shipped to you. -- The book only costs $10.99.
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E mail from a supporter, dear friend and fellow memo reader: 'I hope you are recuperating nicely and following the doc's instructions. I'm delighted you have a soft copy of your book and I'll stop by tomorrow with a check.
Hope and change fit hand and glove!
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Having Obama negotiate anything with Iran is not optimal! Those pesky options. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
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Is an Obama supporter capable of rethinking? (See 2 below.)
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Going over board with Political Correctness. (See 3 below.)
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Bob Schieffer is tonight's moderator and Michelle Malkin cites 7 instances of former bias. (See 4 below.)
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Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1)The Iran Talks Gambit
Someone seems to be playing politics with national security.
'This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." That's what President Obama was overheard telling then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in March on an open microphone when he thought he was speaking privately. The exchange is worth recalling with the weekend story that the White House has agreed "in principle" to a bilateral meeting with Iran on its nuclear weapons program—after the election.
A White House spokesman immediately denied the New York Times report "that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American elections." But he added that "we continue to work" with other nations "on a diplomatic solution and have said from the outset that we would be prepared to meet bilaterally."
We'll go with the New York Times on this one. Someone senior clearly was bragging about the one-on-one deal, and probably because the source or sources thought it would help Mr. Obama. The timing also is suspicious coming before Monday's foreign-policy debate, and while the White House is on defense about its security failures in Benghazi. The Times's dispatch treated the news as a diplomatic breakthrough that could make Mr. Obama look like a peacemaker and put Mitt Romney on the spot. The safe bet is that something is going on that the President hopes to unveil formally after the election.
As with so much else about Mr. Obama's second-term agenda, the question is why he won't elaborate before November 6. On taxes and spending, Mr. Obama doesn't want to say because he knows more of the same economic policies aren't popular.
As for foreign policy, he's going to be under increasing pressure from around the world to intervene in Syria as that country's rebellion threatens to become a regional war. A top Lebanese security official, a Sunni who supported the Syrian rebels, was assassinated by a bomb on Friday. Turkey has stopped Syrian flights from crossing into its airspace, and the two countries are engaged in cross-border shelling. Taking action on Syria before the election would interfere with Mr. Obama's political narrative that "the tide of war is receding," but after Election Day he'll have more "flexibility."
Regarding Iran, Mr. Obama has offered to hold direct talks with Iran for four years to no avail. It's hard to believe that Ayatollah Khamenei has had a sudden change of heart. Most likely, the bow to diplomacy is another attempt to buy more time so Iran can get still-closer to having a bomb. Iran has already bought four years on Mr. Obama's watch, but Israel is increasingly impatient as evidence builds that Iran may get a bomb next year. Iran may feel now is the time to play the direct talks with America card and keep Mr. Obama on a string.
The Iran leak also underscores how some people in this Administration have been willing to exploit national security for political purposes. The self-serving leaks to the media have been legion and sometimes damaging, notably after the killing of Osama bin Laden.
The blow-by-blow accounts of that raid were so extensive that Robert Gates, who was Defense Secretary at the time, went on the record to denounce them. "Frankly, a week ago Sunday, in the Situation Room, we all agreed that we would not release any operational details from the effort to take out bin Laden," Mr. Gates said, according to a Politico story at the time. "That all fell apart on Monday—the next day."
Then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, added that "We are close to jeopardizing this precious capability that we have, and we can't afford to do that." Mr. Gates and his successor, Leon Panetta, both declined to participate in an NBC News special timed to the anniversary of the raid this May, but the White House was all over the piece.
Now, two weeks before the election, we get another leak designed to make the President look good but which may have unpredictable consequences in the real world. Iran's foreign minister also denied the report of direct talks, but who knows what impact the leak will have on Iran's internal politics or other regional players. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he wasn't aware of any U.S. plans for bilateral talks with Iran.
At last week's debate, Mr. Obama got huffy and said he resented any implication by Mitt Romney that his Administration had played politics with national security with its misleading accounts of what happened in Benghazi. The real question is when has this Administration not tried to exploit national security for political advantage?
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2)Dorothy Rabinowitz: The Unreality of the Past Four Years
The Benghazi fiasco is a brutally illuminating portrait of the Obama White House in crisis mode.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
In the 1967 film "A Guide for the Married Man," a husband, played by a peerless Walter Matthau, is given lessons in ways to cheat on his wife safely. The most essential rule: "Deny! Deny! Deny!"—no matter what. In an instructive scene, he's shown a wife undone by shock, and screaming, with reason: She has just walked in on her husband making love to a glamorous stranger.
"What are you doing," she wails, "who is that woman?"
"What woman, where?" the husband serenely counters, as he and the tart in question get out of bed and calmly dress.
So the scene proceeds, with the distraught wife pointing to the woman she clearly sees before her, while her husband, unruffled, continues to look blankly at her, asking, "What woman?" Confused by her spouse's unblinking assurance, she gives up. Two minutes later she's asking him what he'd like for dinner.
For much of the past four years, the Obama administration's propensity for asserting views of reality wildly at odds with those evident to most rational citizens has looked increasingly like a page from that film script.
All administrations conceal, falsify and tell lies—this is understood—but there's no missing the distinctive quality of the prevaricating issuing from the White House in these four years.
It's a quality on vivid display now in the administration's mesmerizing narrative of the assault on the U.S. consulate in Libya. Here's a memorable picture, its detail brutally illuminating, of Obama and company in crisis mode over their conflicting stories about who knew what when. The resulting costs to truth-telling and sanity, or even the appearance thereof, are clear. Nor can we forget the strong element of farce—think U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on those five Sunday talk shows, reciting with unflagging fervor that official talking point regarding mob violence and a YouTube video. Farce, but no one is laughing.
Team Obama clung to its original story—the attack had come spontaneously at the hands of a mob enraged by that now famous video insulting to the Prophet—long after it was clear that it had been an organized terrorist assault by an al Qaeda affiliate. By Tuesday's debate, we saw a Barack Obama in high dudgeon over suggestions that his office might have deliberately misrepresented the facts. It was, he fumed, an intolerable insult that such charges could have been made about him, the president who had had to receive the bodies of the slain Americans—and who then had to set about getting to the bottom of this murderous terror assault.
Profound and urgent concerns indeed—which, the president neglected to say, had not prevented him from jetting off to his fundraiser in Las Vegas the day after the murders. His administration was not given to politicizing serious matters, the president sternly informed the nation in that second debate: "That's not what we do."
Good to know. Americans might otherwise have gotten the wrong impression in the past four years, not least from Attorney General Eric Holder, who heads the most openly politicized Justice Department in the nation's history. Among his more recent noteworthy pronouncements, this one relevant to the coming election, Mr. Holder declared that photo ID requirements intended to prevent voting fraud were nothing less than a "poll tax." He was referring to an infamous institution from the days of Jim Crow, whose aim was to suppress black voting. Mr. Holder—so famously fastidious about group sensibilities that he has never been able to bring himself to utter any description identifying a terrorist as Muslim—has apparently had no inhibitions about smearing whole segments of the population as racists.
Mr. Obama's outrage notwithstanding, the administration's prolonged efforts to muddle the picture of the Benghazi attack raised proper suspicions. The Obama team's instant response—that Republicans were attempting to politicize a tragedy—was entirely characteristic. If ever a story screamed its politicized nature, it was the administration's Scheherazade-like tale, now five weeks old and rolling on, about that Sept. 11 assault. A tale that left little doubt of its motivation: fear of the impact, so close to the election, of a successful terrorist attack—the clear indication that al Qaeda was not, as claimed, on the run.
It didn't hurt, of course, that a crude video like the one insulting to Islam is exactly the kind of fodder to which the Obama ministry is partial: Here was an opportunity for right-minded condemnation of bigotry, and if that bigotry was directed at Muslims, all the more opportune. It would be hard to say which member of the Obama administration most invoked the power and influence of that bit of film, officially to be known, now and forever, as the disgusting and reprehensible video.
More and more clearly, the Obama administration has put its faith in the view that the governed, who must be told what is best for their lives, whether they want it or not (see ObamaCare), can also be told that they have not seen what they've seen, have not heard what their ears clearly told them. When the "if you've got a business, you didn't build that" speech proved to be a political land mine, team Obama instantly charged malicious, out-of-context distortion. The president was only talking about—infrastructure! About government-built roads vital for businesses, transportation, etc.
It isn't likely that Americans who had heard the Obama address failed to understand, rightly, its sneering tone directed at those who believed they had a right to think they were responsible for their own success. Not likely that they didn't notice the icy thrust of those words, "I'm always struck by people who feel, 'Well, it must be because I'm just so smart.'" The president had revealed, with unforgettable clarity, his contempt for faith in individual enterprise—a value Americans of every station hold dear. So clear was this contempt, the Republicans knew enough to make it the Day One theme of their convention—the only good day. Democratic Party representatives meanwhile went forward en masse to charge the Republicans with dishonesty.
In the books yet to be written about this presidency, the Obama administration's exceptional readings of reality will deserve an honored place, and a large one. One that should also acknowledge the fact that, in the end, the American people inevitably recognize the difference between lies and truth, illusion and the real thing.
The most telling example of this capacity—the October surprise that shouldn't have been surprising—came with the first presidential debate. The nation saw a superbly cogent Mitt Romney, speaking to them in terms instantly recognizable, words without artifice that addressed their real lives. Viewers saw the life in him, the play of mind, felt the sense of powerful will—that of a leader. It didn't matter all that much that the president looked most unpresidential, a man lost. What mattered was the other man before them, who had brought home to Americans what they had been missing the past four years.
Not surprisingly, when the debate's effects were clear, Obama squads were again deployed to cry fraud. Mr. Romney, we were told, had done nothing but lie. This would now be the official story. It would have no effect. People had seen what they had seen and that would not be changed, not by an improved, fighting Obama as he was last Tuesday, or by a heroically transformed one on Monday night.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
1a)Obama Administration Doubles Down on Middle East Policy Errors
1a)Obama Administration Doubles Down on Middle East Policy Errors
Barry Rubin - GLORIA
There are two problems with current U.S. policy toward the Middle East: both the analysis and response are not simply wrong, but rather make the situation in the region much worse.
The White House has supported the antisemitic, anti-American Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria; insisted the Brotherhood is moderate; gave untrained, unreliable Libyans control over the U.S. ambassador’s security leading to his death; denied that revolutionary Islamists attacked the U.S. embassy and ambassador in Libya for reasons having nothing to do with a California video; apologized for the video in a way that escalated the crisis elsewhere; wrongly claimed that al-Qaida is finished when it is still strong in several countries; defined the Afghan Taliban, despite its involvement in the September 11 attacks, as a potential partner, etc.
Meanwhile, the Obama Administration responds with a democracy-will-solve-everything approach that the same people ridiculed when President George W. Bush advocated it.
Now the errors are deepened and the lessons of experience once again rejected in Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s latest defense of these wrong-headed policies in a speech given at my first employers, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC.
Her argument is that the United States should ignore violence and extremism while helping to build democracies. The problem is that most of the violence and extremism comes from forces that the Obama Administration supports or groups basically allied with those forces. The violence and extremism are the inevitable outcome, not a declining byproduct, of this process.
Her argument is that the United States should ignore violence and extremism while helping to build democracies. The problem is that most of the violence and extremism comes from forces that the Obama Administration supports or groups basically allied with those forces. The violence and extremism are the inevitable outcome, not a declining byproduct, of this process.
Everything she says lays a basis for disaster:
–The U.S. government must not be deterred by “the violent acts of a small number of extremists.”
The problem is not a “small number” of extremists—implying al-Qaeda–but a large number of them. Extremists now rule in Egypt, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Tunisia, and—despite camouflage—Turkey. They may soon be running Syria.
More than a decade after September 11, the Obama Administration is fighting the last war—the battle against al-Qaida—rather than recognizing that a small group committing periodic terrorist acts is less important than a huge organization taking over entire countries.
–”We recognize that these transitions are not America’s to manage, and certainly not ours to win or lose,”
Of course, the United States doesn’t manage these transitions but does—or can—have influence. In Egypt, the Obama Administration began with the pro-Brotherhood Cairo speech (defining Middle Eastern identity as Islamic rather than Arabic; seating Brotherhood leaders in the front row) and then used its influence to push the military out of power in 2011 and encourage the Brotherhood.
In Syria, it backed management by the pro-Brotherhood Turkish regime and the choice of a Brotherhood-dominated exile leadership. In Bahrain, if not stopped by the State Department it would have helped bring to power a new regime likely to have been an Iranian satellite. Thus, inasmuch as the U.S. government has some role it has used it on behalf of America’s enemies. As an ally, Egypt is lost.
– “But we have to stand with those who are working every day to strengthen democratic institutions, defend universal rights, and drive inclusive economic growth. That will produce more capable partners and more durable security over the long term.”
– “But we have to stand with those who are working every day to strengthen democratic institutions, defend universal rights, and drive inclusive economic growth. That will produce more capable partners and more durable security over the long term.”
Yet the Obama Administration has definitely not stood with those people! It has not channeled arms to moderates in Syria but to the Brotherhood and tolerated Saudi weapons’ supplies to Salafists. It has done nothing to protect the rights of women or Christians.
Moderates in Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt—as well as Turkey and Iran—know the Obama Administration has not helped them. The Turkish regime and the new governments emerging from the “Arab Spring” work every day to undermine human rights.
–”We will never prevent every act of violence or terrorism, or achieve perfect security. Our people cannot live in bunkers and do their jobs.”
Yes, perfection is hard. But what does that have to do with sending the ambassador to Libya into a lawless city with no protection?
And of course you can’t achieve even minimal security if you refuse to recognize where unrest and anti-American hatred originate. For example, the Egyptian government knew that there would be a demonstration outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo and must have known the demonstrators would storm the compound. Their security forces did nothing to protect the embassy. Why? Because they want to stir up anti-Americanism and use it to entrench themselves in power, even as the Obama Administration praises the Brotherhood’s regime and sends lots of money.
And of course you can’t achieve even minimal security if you refuse to recognize where unrest and anti-American hatred originate. For example, the Egyptian government knew that there would be a demonstration outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo and must have known the demonstrators would storm the compound. Their security forces did nothing to protect the embassy. Why? Because they want to stir up anti-Americanism and use it to entrench themselves in power, even as the Obama Administration praises the Brotherhood’s regime and sends lots of money.
– ”For the United States, supporting democratic transitions is not a matter of idealism. It is a strategic necessity.”
This is absurd. Are “democratic” regimes always better for American strategic concerns than dictatorships? That’s untrue in Egypt and many other countries in the last half-century. Moreover, that ignores the fact that the Obama Administration has supported transitions in a way strengthening the likelihood of radical, anti-American rule.
– Clinton said there has been a backlash by moderates against extremist groups in Libya and Tunisia. But the backlash is by frightened people who fear with good reason that the extremists are winning.
– ”We stand with the Egyptian people in their quest for universal freedoms and protections….Egypt’s international standing does depend both on peaceful relations with its neighbors and also on the choices it makes at home and whether or not it fulfills its own promises to its own people.”
In fact, Egypt’s people voted 75 percent in parliamentary elections and about 53 percent in presidential balloting for those opposing universal freedoms and protections. And if Obama won’t get tough the Brotherhood regime it knows can repress people at home, and let terrorists stage cross-border attacks against Israel without concern for its international standing.
- “We have, as always, to be clear-eyed about the threat of violent extremism. A year of democratic transition was never going to drain away reservoirs of radicalism built up through decades of dictatorship.”
Drain away? This year has empowered radicals!
An Obama Administration so far from reality subverts U.S. interests and makes the Middle East a more tragic and dangerous place. It is doubling down on their errors and will no doubt continue to do so if it has four more years to continue making costly mistakes. People in the region will pay for these errors in blood and so will some Americans.
1b)What to Do with Sanctions
By Shoshana Bryen
Western Iran-watchers have been pleased these past few weeks to see evidence that international sanctions against the Islamic Republic appear to have precipitated the collapse of local currency and demonstrations in the marketplace. The EU added a new sanctions package last week. Finally, they seem to be saying, we're getting having an impact -- more sanctions, better sanctions, "crippling sanctions" are better than military operations.
1b)What to Do with Sanctions
By Shoshana Bryen
Western Iran-watchers have been pleased these past few weeks to see evidence that international sanctions against the Islamic Republic appear to have precipitated the collapse of local currency and demonstrations in the marketplace. The EU added a new sanctions package last week. Finally, they seem to be saying, we're getting having an impact -- more sanctions, better sanctions, "crippling sanctions" are better than military operations.
Certainly they are different from military operations.
Sanctions drive up prices, so they have an impact on people who are price-sensitive -- people without government protection. But those whose behavior the international community is trying to modify are much less sensitive to economic or social cost than a) regular people and b) the international community itself.
Fidel and Raúl have never missed a meal or a cigar over the sanctions that have impoverished Cuba since 1962. North Korea's nuclear and missile programs proceed apace, and Kim Jong-un looks quite well-fed, while hunger is widespread among the politically unconnected. Saddam, Uday, and Kusay lived in over-the-top luxury despite more than a decade of international sanctions. Check the bankbooks of the Hamas-approved smugglers in the Gaza Strip.
Dictatorships understand the Western psyche, however. They talk about hungry children, sick people, and bread lines until the West starts to worry more about the suffering we cause than the suffering they cause -- at which point the "international community" creates humanitarian programs for "the people." The Gaza flotilla and Oil for Food are case studies in the moral manipulation of the West. Notice that there is no attempt to manipulate the morality of Bashar Assad -- there are no Aleppo flotillas -- because he is unmanipulatable. But Iran's Foreign Ministry denounced sanctions as "inhumane" and "illegal," and Ban Ki-moon jumped to express concern about sanctions hurting "the people" and driving up the cost of medicine. "Crippling sanctions" will speed up the process of impoverishment long before it causes the mullahs to change their minds about the utility of nuclear weapons.
Will the "international community" hang tough? The U.S. did, once. Let's see how that worked out.
U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq during and after the occupation of Kuwait, beginning with a resolution on 6 August 1990. Six weeks later, the first modification was made to ensure that the food situation in Iraq did not become dire. On 3 April 1991, after the liberation of Kuwait, the U.N. undertook to obtain a comprehensive picture of Saddam's arsenal and required that Iraq permit the inspection of all weapons sites; provide a complete accounting of its missile, chemical, biological, and nuclear-related arsenals; and show evidence of their destruction. By August of 1991, Oil for Food was underway. Everything after that was repetition of the U.N.'s concerns that Saddam wasn't doing what he was required to do -- that is, ensuring that oil would be sold in order to provide humanitarian aid to the civilian population.
Nevertheless, the U.N. estimated that between 1990 and 1995, "half a million children under the age of five died of malnutrition and preventable diseases. Sanctions impose artificial famine. A third of Iraq's surviving children today have stunted growth and nutritional deficiencies that will deform their shortened lives." In 1996, Leslie Stahl questioned then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it."
Worth it to whom? Certainly not to the children.
The sanctions ended only when the U.S. coalition invaded Iraq and deposed Saddam. Which might have been the best rationale for the war, because sanctions hadn't in the least affected Saddam's stonewalling. Read everything Claudia Rosett wrote on the subject to understand how Oil for Food ended up filling the pockets of French, German, and Russian middlemen and government agents, not to mention U.N. officials, and to understand how their creepy greed affected their political choices.
But shades of Iraq, the EU's new round of sanctions based on limiting the financing of sales of exports to and from Iran, includes "exceptions for those involving humanitarian aid, food and medicine purchases and provisions for legitimate trade."
As long as Iran sells oil -- which it still does under waivers to Turkey, India, Malaysia, and China, among others -- the price of chicken doesn't matter. Scientists are still paid, and there are still companies and operators willing to sell equipment to the regime. Sweden opposes the new EU sanctions -- could it be because of the Ericsson telecom deal that would provide the mullahs with more up-to-date technology to track the opposition through their cell phones?
The idea that sanctions need to be "tightened" to prevent the sale of oil needs examination. Aside from the subversion factor -- which appears to be present in just about every case -- China's relationship with Iran is driven in part by China's interest in muting Iranian support for the Muslim Uighurs of China's western provinces. It is driven as well by China's desire to assert itself against the U.S., which also explains its unwillingness to impose sanctions on Syria. China imports more than 55 percent of its oil, a figure that has increased in the past year. Its agreement to stop buying Iranian oil was obtained because the waiver was in the offing. There is no guarantee -- and evidence to the contrary -- that if the U.S. said, "No more waivers; no more oil imports," China could abandon even the pretense of agreement.
While China and Russia have agreed to support a U.S.-backed resolution demanding that Iran stop activities that could be used to make nuclear arms, it contains no enforcement mechanism. And it raises the question of other Chinese military activity in Iran, including the sale of missile technology and assistance to North Korea in shipping weapons to Iran.
Sanctions may have a role to play in slowing Iran's march to nuclear capability, but the history of their application does not lend itself to optimism as to the international community's ability to change or constrain a dictatorship's behavior. The optimism lies largely in the belief that the next round, a bigger round, a better round, a tighter round will be the round that works.
In the real world, where greed and national interest (Iran's and others') rule, it would be wise to gather as much information as possible, support the opposition as much as possible, and never take any option, overt or covert, off the table.
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2)Can a Conscientious Liberal Back Obama?
2)Can a Conscientious Liberal Back Obama?
By Jeff Jacoby
YOU'RE A PASSIONATE and committed liberal. Four years ago, enthralled by Barack Obama's biography and inspired by his oratory, you voted for him with pride. You embraced his promise of hope and change. You were deeply moved by the racial progress he symbolized.
YOU'RE A PASSIONATE and committed liberal. Four years ago, enthralled by Barack Obama's biography and inspired by his oratory, you voted for him with pride. You embraced his promise of hope and change. You were deeply moved by the racial progress he symbolized.
But above all you voted for him because he expressed such enlightened views.
You didn't just want a Democrat back in the White House, you wanted one who would bring progressive clarity to US national policy.
For eight years, you'd fumed at George W. Bush's offenses against the Constitution; now at last, you believed, you were supporting a president for whom civil liberties would be an unshakable priority. A president who wouldn't be beholden to Wall Street and its rivers of cash. Who would prosecute the war on terror without abandoning core American values or trampling basic human rights. Whose administration would function in the sunlight, a jewel of transparency, accountability, and due process.
That was the president you expected. It wasn't the president you got.
"I will make clear that the days of compromising our values are over," Obama had said in 2007 as he campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination. In an address to the Woodrow Wilson Center, he had excoriated Bush's approach to counterterrorism – the excesses of the Patriot Act, the warrantless wiretapping, the indefinite detention of terror suspects – for reflecting a "false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand." In an Obama administration, he vowed, things would be different.
Yet the president you voted for hasn't abandoned Bush's antiterror legacy, not by a long shot. Since Obama took office, warrantless wiretapping of Americans' domestic communications has skyrocketed. According to a new report by the ACLU, "more people were subjected to [electronic] surveillance in the past two years than in the entire previous decade." Instead of repealing the Patriot Act, Obama signed a lawextending it through 2015.
The president who was going to shut the US lockup at Guantanamo is now spending millions of dollars to upgrade it. Far from doing away with trials by military commission, he ordered them resumed. The eloquent progressive who vowed to roll back Bush's post-9/11 wartime excesses has become almost a caricature of what he used to condemn. He meets regularly to review a "kill list" of terrorist suspects and decide who should be targeted for death. He has drastically expanded the drone war that Bush began, raining down missiles on countries where we aren't at war, killing or maiming hundreds of innocent victims in the process. Astonishingly, he has even claimed – and exercised -- the power to order the extrajudicial killing of American citizensterrorist operatives. he believes to be
Neocon hawks may not blink at such things, but conscientious liberals like you were always appalled by them. "We have compromised our most precious values," Obama said as a candidate. Will you compromise your values by voting for him again?
And what about all those other values you counted on Obama to uphold?
On the campaign trail, his top priority was to codify Roe v. Wade. "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act," he declared. Once in office, it dropped from his agenda.
You trusted Obama when he said his administration would be "the most open and transparent in history." Instead it launched an unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowers and leaks, and retreated into a "bubble of non-accountability."
When you voted for Obama in 2008, could you have imagined that he would extend the Bush tax cuts? That he would commit US forces to war in Libya without the congressional approval he himself had said the law required? That he would show so little concern for pro-democracy dissidents and protesters resisting tyranny? That he would expel 1.2 million undocumented immigrants in three years, more than any president since the 1950s? That he would load his administration with so many former lobbyists – after having promised that he wouldn't?
If a Republican president compiled such an atrocious record, you would do everything you could to prevent his reelection. Can you vote in good conscience for a Democrat with such a record?
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Political correctness regarding Islam: America's biggest mistake?
The Jerusalem Post
Communities across the US are starting to pay the price for their apathetic attitude toward the rapid growth of Islam in America. Mosques in America have increased by 74% in the first decade of the new millennium. Even small communities are experiencing the spread of radical Islamic teachings.
Against the backdrop of the Muslim call to prayer five times a day being blasted over loudspeakers in cities like Dearborn, Mi., are the demands by Muslims that their Sharia Law be enforced in Islamic colonies. Some states like Kansas have passed laws against any foreign law taking precedence over any US law.
Several years ago an article in Human Events reported that then would be President Barak Hussein Obama proudly proclaimed back in 2007 that the Muslim call to prayer is “one of the prettiest sounds on earth.” A 2010 Time Magazine poll indicated that nearly 25% of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Certainly, if actions are any indicator–they are speaking loud and clear.
When Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently requested an audience with President Obama while he was in New York at the United Nations, Mr. Obama’s response was that he was unable to meet because of his tight schedule yet Mr. Obama had time to appear on the David Letterman television talk show. This was certainly not the first time President Obama embarrassed Prime Minister Netanyahu by failing to give him the courtesy due to any head of state. Shortly after being elected Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu visited the White House. Instead of being welcomed at the front door he and his staff were ushered in the back door, not served kosher food, and they were not given a special invitation to dine with the President which is a tradition that goes back many decades. This I know to be the absolute truth as I served in senior level positions in four administrations starting with President Nixon. When the leader of the Palestinians, Abu Mazen (a.k.a. Mahmoud Abbas), came to visit Mr. Obama the White House rolled out the red carpet and sent him home with some $400 million dollars in taxpayer funded aid. Quite a contrast, wouldn’t you say?
Muslims are serving in senior level positions on the staffs of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Secretary of Homeland Security. This is reflected throughout the rest of the federal government. For example, Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy Claire Lopez says that since a 2010 directive, thetexts of more than 700 documents and 300 PowerPoint presentations having references to “Islamic extremisms” were purged. Lopez says that the State Department is working to criminalize any criticism of Islam and wants to bring US law into compliance with the Islamic law on slander.
Many of America’s political and religious leaders stand firm against radical Islam and the threat of violence against Israel and Western civilization, the outcome of the upcoming presidential election in November in America will determine how much “we the people” are willing to tolerate radical Islam in America. Political correctness blinds citizens and politicians alike, and it is a tool Muslims could easily use to hijack and colonize American society. America’s future as a free and democratic society hangs in the balance and our future is linked with Israel’s future.
America must remain as “One nation under God”–the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob –for our own survival as well as for the safety and survival of the only other country in the Middle East which shares our values–Israel. We must not allow political correctness to muzzle what we truly believe. Failure to do so could be our undoing.
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The bias of Bob Schieffer: Top 7 moments
By Michelle Malkin • October 22, 2012 10:35 AM
In August, I blasted the Commission on Presidential Debate’s choices of three Beltway lib journo-tools — CNN’s Candy Crowley, PBS’s Jim Lehrer and CBS’s Bob Schieffer. So far, they’ve acted just as expected and predicted. As I noted:
While the debate panel trumpeted the gender diversity of its picks, the chromosomal diversity is far outweighed by the political uniformity, class conformity and geographical homogeneity of the group.
Crowley has lived and worked in D.C. for liberal CNN for a quarter-century. Raddatz worked for liberal National Public Radio for five years before joining ABC News; she has been based in the D.C. bureau for the better part of a decade. Schieffer has been a fixture in the nation’s capital at CBS News, home of the faked Rathergate documents, for three decades. Lehrer, the liberal patriarch of PBS News, is nearly as aged a Beltway monument as the Washington Monument itself.
The presidential debates are the last bastion of “mainstream” media self-delusion in the 21st century. They are a ritual laughingstock for tens of millions of American viewers who have put up with leading, softball questions for Democratic candidates and combative, fili-blustery lectures for Republican candidates campaign cycle after cycle.
Tonight, Schieffer takes the stage. Here is the format and topic order he selected:
America’s role in the world
Our longest war – Afghanistan and Pakistan
Red Lines – Israel and Iran
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – I
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – II
The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World
Our longest war – Afghanistan and Pakistan
Red Lines – Israel and Iran
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – I
The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism – II
The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World
The debate will be held on Monday, October 22 at Lynn University in Boca Raton, FL. The format calls for six 15-minute time segments, each of which will focus on one of the topics listed above. The moderator will open each segment with a question. Each candidate will have two minutes to respond. Following the candidates’ responses, the moderator will use the balance of the 15-minute segment to facilitate a discussion on the topic. All debates start at 9:00 p.m. ET and run for 90 minutes.
Schieffer has steadfastly refused to acknowledge his biases over the years. But his words below speak for themselves. Can he contain himself tonight? Like Crowley, he’s signaled to the media that he will “interject” himself to stop candidate “filibuster[ing]” when necessary. He has already taken the liberty of redefining what the foreign policy debate is about for voters, arguing to the left-wing Daily Beast: “While the third encounter is devoted to foreign policy, ‘what these debates are about are really about character.’” And liberal L.A. Times columnist James Rainey happily predicted that Schieffer will “throw some curves” tonight. Which way will he lean? You be the judge:
1. Schieffer penned a book in 1989 titled “The Acting President: Ronald Reagan and the Supporting Players Who Helped Him Create the Illusion That Held America Spellbound.” Nope, no bias there! Newsbusters reported that 23 years after it was published, Schieffer finally acknowledged that it was “not entirely true.”
2. In June, Schieffer hosted RNC chair Reince Preibus on his “Face the Nation” program, and lambasted Republicans for focusing on “silly and petty” things — like the $500 million Solyndra bankruptcy. No, really. Preibus held his own. Schieffer showed his true blue colors:
Priebus contrasted the president’s leadership with Governor Scott Walker‘s, an executive who Priebus argued has actually kept his promises. On the other hand, he said that President Obama just loves hearing the sound of his own voice.At this point, Schieffer jumped in to turn the tables on Priebus and the Republican party, pointing to a recent Republican protest of a David Axelrod speech in Boston and Mitt Romney taking reporters to the Solyndra plant as a kind of campaign stunt. This led Schieffer to ask Priebus just how seriously his party is taking this election.“Isn’t that kind of silly and petty when you look at it? This campaign should be, it seems to me, about very serious things and very serious issues.”
Priebus argued that Solyndra is a serious, legitimate issue for Republicans to address, because of how well it represents “political cronyism” under Obama. And as for Axelrod’s speech, Priebus dismissed the whole thing as a stunt to make a point in Romney’s home state, and even found it amusing that “these tough guys from Chicago” were “cry[ing] about it.”
3. Schieffer condemned Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer for defending herself against thin-skinned Obama’s tarmac hissy fit over her book. Remember: It was Obama who stalked off rudely after whining about her book (which he hadn’t read), not Brewer. In Schieffer’s reality bubble, Brewer was the “vulgar” aggressor — and he used the incident to complain inexplicably about “social media.” Via MRC:
A question we’ve never posed and likely no one outside of CBS News has ever considered: ‘We wondered what Bob Schieffer thinks of all of this?’ Yet that’s how CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley on Thursday night cued up Schieffer to take up CBS air time to convey his personal disgust with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer for supposedly failing to show the proper respect to President Barack Obama on the tarmac near Phoenix.‘This is just another sign of the growing incivility and really vulgarity of our modern American politics,’ Schieffer declared, fretting ‘these campaigns have gotten so ugly and so nasty, that they’re now tarnishing the whole system.’ He despaired it demonstrates ‘the coarseness of our culture in this age of social media.’ Then he got personal in condemning Brewer as an historic embarrassment to the nation:
I can never recall a President stepping off Air Force One, which is itself a symbol of the presidency in American democracy, and being subjected to such public rudeness. I think really we’re a better people than this little incident illustrates.
[UPDATE: Schieffer's hometown newspaper, the Washington Post, which is hardly anti-Obama, didn't follow Schieffer's lead and instead held the President the most accountable. 'Heated exchange shows Obama's testy side,' read the headline in the Friday, January 27 newspaper, above the subhead: 'Critics say he's unwilling to be second-guessed — or to see other points of view.']
4. Listen to this testy exchange between conservative talk show host Steve Malzberg and Schieffer, in which Schieffer complains again about the “Internet” for spreading false rumors (pssst…it was the “Internet” that exposed the monumental CBS Rathergate scandal) and stubbornly defends double standards in coverage of Sarah Palin versus Joe Biden.
5. Schieffer moaned in February that it was the GOP that was obsessed with birth control, criticized the party for being “too far to the right,” and falsely stated that Obama had “backed away” from his religious liberty-crushing Obamacare abortion mandate.
6. Schieffer gushes about Obama during the inaugural celebration, compares him to Lincoln:
On Monday’s CBS Early Show, Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer shared his thoughts on Barack Obama’s inauguration and made this comparison: “Well, people just want to be a part of it. It’s like who wouldn’t want to be a part of it if you could have been there when Lincoln gave one of his addresses or something…People really do feel this is a moment in history. And they want to be part of it.”
Earlier, co-host Harry Smith observed: “And there is an amazing feeling here, especially contrast with the feeling of eight years ago.” Schieffer agreed: “Yeah, it really was, because don’t forget, you had that really difficult thing down in Florida. People were not convinced. Some people were not convinced that George Bush really was legitimately-” Smith interjected: “Still not convinced.” Schieffer continued: “-the president. There was a lot of rancor. People had fun, they came up, and — but nothing like the spirit that you see here…There is a real spirit here. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Smith later declared: “They’re here from Canada, California, Colorado, Ohio. They’re from all over the country. Every color of the rainbow. And there really is a sense of togetherness, of unity.” He then concluded the segment by exclaiming: “It really is that sort of a sense of E. Pluribus Unum, right?…Out of many, one.” Schieffer agreed: “It really is.”
7. Schieffer’s fair and balanced assessment of Bill Clinton’s DNC speech on September 5:
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