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Hillary's "Reset Button" not working? (See 1 below.)
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Response to my LTE from a fellow memo reader regarding what I posted in last memo and which will probably not be published because I get one a month and already had one in February. You decide.
"A critical missing fact and observation purposely ignored by liberals and the main stream media is that during America's period of slavery, the negro was denied schooling and education! WHY? Because education would allow and likely enable the negro to persue freedom! That very same behind the scenes tactic has been an effective and unspoken objective of the federal government's corrupt control of the nations schools for the last 40 plus years. Peanut farmer Carter's gift of the Department of Education to the teacher's unions in 1978 cemented the poor quality of our children's present day education.
In recent tests of 34 industrial nations, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math! Obama wouldn't touch this!
The effect has been most devastating to the blacks and other minorities which, if you haven't noticed, constitute a majority or a huge portion of Obama's voting base.
Now comes Obama clamoring for federal funded“pre-school” education when roughly only 75% of the uneducated children graduate from our high schools today! Hooray! Let's kiss up to the teachers unions etal!" (See 2 below.)
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Leading from behind is bad enough leading after they are dead is worse. You decide. (See 3 below)
AND SO "OBAMASCARE' GOES. (SEE 3A BELOW.)
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Just in case you missed Hannity interview with Dr. Carson. Must see:
Just in case you missed Hannity interview with Dr. Carson. Must see:
"Hannity" Special: Saving America With Dr. Benjamin Carson
Sean Hannity hosts an hour-long special featuring Dr. Benjamin Carson and a panel of journalists and experts.
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Dick
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1Bear Bombers Over Guam
Russian nuclear bombers circle Guam
)BY:
Two Russian nuclear-armed bombers circled the western Pacific island of Guam this week in the latest sign of Moscow’s growing strategic assertiveness toward the United States.
The Russian Tu-95 Bear-H strategic bombers were equipped with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and were followed by U.S. jets as they circumnavigated Guam on Feb. 12 local time—hours before President Barack Obama’s state of the union address.
Air Force Capt. Kim Bender, a spokeswoman for the Pacific Air Force in Hawaii, confirmed the incident to the Washington Free Beacon and said Air Force F-15 jets based on Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, “scrambled and responded to the aircraft.”
“The Tu-95s were intercepted and left the area in a northbound direction. No further actions occurred,” she said. Bender said no other details would be released “for operational security reasons.”
The bomber incident was considered highly unusual. Russian strategic bombers are not known to have conducted such operations in the past into the south Pacific from bomber bases in the Russian Far East, which is thousands of miles away and over water.
John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador and former State Department international security undersecretary, said the Russian bomber flights appear to be part of an increasingly threatening strategic posture in response to Obama administration anti-nuclear policies.
“Every day brings new evidence that Obama’s ideological obsession with dismantling our nuclear deterrent is dangerous,” Bolton said. “Our national security is in danger of slipping off the national agenda even as the threats grow.”
Defense officials said the bombers tracked over Guam were likely equipped with six Kh-55 or Kh-55SM cruise missiles that can hit targets up to 1,800 miles away with either a high-explosive warhead or a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead.
The F-15s that intercepted the bombers were based at Kadena Air Base, Japan, and were deployed to Guam for the ongoing annual Exercise Guahan Shield 2013.
Two U.S. B-2 strategic bombers were deployed to Guam in late January and last fall advanced F-22 fighter bombers were temporarily stationed on the island. Three nuclear-powered attack submarines and the Global Hawk long-range drone also are based in Guam.
About 200 Marines currently are training on the island. Earlier news reports stated that Japanese and Australian military jets joined U.S. jets in the Guam exercises.
Guam is one of the key strategic U.S. military bases under the Obama administration’s new “pivot” to Asia policy. As a result, it is a target of China and North Korea. Both have missiles capable of hitting the island, located about 1,700 miles east of the Philippines in the Mariana island chain.
This week’s bomber flights are a sign the Russians are targeting the island as well, one defense official said.
Guam also plays a key role in the Pentagon’s semi-secret strategy called the Air-Sea Battle Concept designed to counter what the Pentagon calls China’s anti-access and area denial weapons—precision guided missiles, submarines, anti-satellite weapons, and other special war fighting capabilities designed to prevent the U.S. military from defending allies or keeping sea lanes open in the region.
Defense officials disclosed the incident to the Free Beacon and said the Russian bomber flights appeared to be a strategic message from Moscow timed to the president’s state of the union speech.
“They were sending a message to Washington during the state of the union speech,” one official said.
The bomber flights also coincided with growing tensions between China and Japan over the Senkaku islands. A Chinese warship recently increased tensions between Beijing and Tokyo by using targeting radar against a Japanese warship.
The U.S. military has said it would defend Japan in any military confrontation with China over the Senkakus. The bomber flights appear to signal Russian support for China in the dispute.
Meanwhile, Obama on Wednesday telephoned Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to reiterate U.S. nuclear assurances to its ally following North Korea’s third detonation of an underground nuclear device.
A White House statement said the president told Abe, who visits Washington next week, that the United States “remains steadfast in its defense commitments to Japan, including the extended deterrence offered by the U.S. nuclear umbrella.”
“It shows that the Russians, like the Chinese, are not just going to sit idly by and watch the United States ‘pivot’ or ‘re-balance’ its forces toward Asia,” said former State Department security official Mark Groombridge.
“One could argue the Russians were poking a bit of fun at the Obama Administration, seeing how they flew these long-range bombers close to Guam on the same day as the state of the union address,” he said.
“But the broader implications are more profound,” said Groombridge, now with the private strategic intelligence firm LIGNET. “The Russians are clearly sending a signal that they consider the Pacific an area of vital national strategic interest and that they still have at least some power projection capabilities to counterbalance against any possible increase in U.S. military assets in the region.”
Airspace violations by Russian Su-27 jets triggered intercepts by Japanese fighters near Japan’s Hokkaido Island last week. The Feb. 7. incident prompted protests from Tokyo and took place near disputed territory claimed by both countries since the end of World War II.
The Russian air incursion around Guam was the third threatening strategic bomber incident since June. On July 4th, two Bear H’s operated at the closest point to the United States that a Russian bomber has flown since the Soviet Union routinely conducted such flights.
The July bomber flights near California followed an earlier incident in June when two Bear H’s ran up against the air defense zone near Alaska as part of large-scale strategic exercises that Moscow said involved simulated attacks on U.S. missile defense bases. The Pentagon operates missile defense bases in Alaska and California.
Those flights triggered the scrambling of U.S. and Canadian interceptor jets as well.
The bomber flights near Alaska violated a provision of the 2010 New START arms treaty that requires advance notification of exercises involving strategic nuclear bombers.
Military spokesmen sought to play down the June and July incidents as non-threatening, apparently reflecting the Obama administration’s conciliatory “reset” policy toward Russia that seeks better relations by tamping down criticism of Moscow, despite growing anti-U.S. sentiments and policies from the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey questioned his Russian counterpart, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, during a meeting at the Pentagon July 12th.
The latest Russian nuclear saber rattling through bomber flights comes as the Obama administration is planning a new round of strategic arms reduction talks with Russia. State Department arms official Rose Gottemoeller was recently in Moscow for arms discussions.
The president was expected to announce plans to cut U.S. nuclear forces by an additional one-third in a new round of arms reduction efforts with Moscow.
However, the president did not announce the plans and said only during his state of the union speech that he plans further arms cuts.
“Building Guam as a strategic hub has played a critical role in balancing U.S. security interests in responding to and cooperating with China as well as in shaping China’s perceptions and conduct,” wrote Government Accountability Office analyst Shirley A. Kan in a September 2012 report.
“Since 2000, the U.S. military has been building up forward-deployed forces on the westernmost U.S. territory of Guam to increase U.S. presence, deterrence, and power projection for potential responses to crises and disasters, counter-terrorism, and contingencies in support of South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, or elsewhere in Asia.”
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2)The Welfare State and Manhood
By William J. Meisler
There is no question that the recent decision of the Obama administration to admit women to military combat units represents the crowning achievement of the feminist agenda. By elevating women to the same level as men throughout our defense forces, a fully coed military, just like a college dormitory, has become the law of the land. To exultant feminists, the glass ceiling in the military has at last been removed.
2)The Welfare State and Manhood
By William J. Meisler
There is no question that the recent decision of the Obama administration to admit women to military combat units represents the crowning achievement of the feminist agenda. By elevating women to the same level as men throughout our defense forces, a fully coed military, just like a college dormitory, has become the law of the land. To exultant feminists, the glass ceiling in the military has at last been removed.
But to the statists or to big-government ideologues and their supporters, the motivation behind the admission of women into combat is the reverse of the feminist's motivation, because the statist knows that for the social welfare state to succeed, it is a question not of women being elevated, but of men being degraded. To the statist, the fundamental purpose of employing women in military combat is to destroy the unique virtues that define manhood
Andreios, the ancient Greek word for "the courageous man," and the Latin word virtus, meaning "courage," both have their roots in the word "man" in their respective languages, indicating that the conception of courage to the ancients was intimately related to a certain type of virtue or behavior which they considered the defining or essential aspect of being a man. Our terms "manliness," "manly virtue," and "manly courage" somewhat approximate the ancient terms. The origin of those ancient words for courage is fitting, since throughout history, courage has always been considered both the epitome of manly behavior or virtue and the essence of a man who has the maturity, autonomy, and self-confidence to face the world based upon his own individual excellence.
Our Constitution was written by and for men who lived lives based upon these traditional views of virtue and manliness. That is why, in order for the entitlement state to succeed, the Constitution must be ignored, violated, and deconstructed repeatedly. Our present constitutional chaos is very reminiscent of the last hundred years of the Roman Republic, which finally ended in the dictatorship of Julius Caesar and the subsequent establishment of the de facto Roman imperial system by Augustus based upon republican institutions which remained in effect, but only de iure. This is very much like what we see in our own times, in which our Constitution remains in effect de iure, while, de facto, much of our government functions in an extra-constitutional fashion. Under such chaotic conditions, a population that has lost its virtue can be easily fooled into believing that they are still a free people, while their liberty and self-reliance are being stolen from them in the name of security and entitlements -- or, as the Roman satirist Juvenal called the latter, "bread and circuses."
This extends into citizens' lives far more deeply than they will readily admit. For example, FDIC insurance is clearly unconstitutional, yet how many Americans these days would support the discontinuation of FDIC insurance on the grounds that it is a threat to the integrity of the Constitution? But a virtuous man would support the removal of the FDIC program to save the Constitution, because that man understands that a necessary part of virtue is the freedom to fail -- the very antithesis of the welfare state. For without the freedom to fail, there is no element of risk, which is fundamental to the development of the courage, virtue, and self-reliance -- all of which underlie what makes a man a man in the sense understood by our founding fathers and many earlier cultures.
Manly virtue historically was not considered a common or even desirable trait in women, whose own female virtues were valued for different social purposes. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the welfare state is more popular among women than men, because many women, when they cannot find the security or support which in the past they received from individual men (such as a husband), will turn to the government for that security and support. Leftists have contrived and supported this state of affairs to the maximum in our increasingly fragmented society.
That is not to say that women cannot display virtues more characteristic of men. Roman historians frequently praised the celebrated matrons who helped build Rome. Esther had the courage to face the Great King of Persia in order to save her people. Many female settlers on the American frontier exhibited what could be called manly virtue. A modern example of a woman displaying manly virtue is Lady Thatcher. But as a rule, societies developed and thrived based upon men and women each displaying the virtues typical of their respective genders in a complimentary fashion. When men no longer play their part, either because they choose not to or because women no longer require them to, women readily turn to the social welfare state, which is more than happy to oblige them.
The purpose and result of the welfare state is to remove both the element of risk in life and the reward that comes to those willing to take that risk. For the welfare state to accomplish its purpose, everyone must be brought down to a level of single sameness as much as possible, submerging the individual to the group, and no one must be allowed to strive to achieve more for himself than is beneficial to the whole group. In the welfare state, there is no place for individual nobility, heroism, courage, or virtue. Since risk, reward, courage, and virtue are essential to manliness, it follows that the presence of such virtue in the male population is a major impediment to the establishment of the welfare state.
Since manliness is the primary obstacle to the establishment of the welfare state, the obvious solution for the statist is to disparage manliness and make men more like women, which is exactly what our educational system and popular culture, both in the hands of the left, have been busy doing: shaming traditional male behavior in young boys, drugging the boys who are allegedly hyperactive, promoting gun control, and encouraging men to show their "feminine side" -- while at the same time insisting that women can do anything men can do and encouraging women to mimic male patterns of behavior, including promiscuity, to the point that now women are to be deployed in combat. Even dodgeball and bullying are threats to the socialist enterprise; both must be suppressed. Better, the progressives think, to encourage state-sponsored false self-esteem or "it takes a village"-type thinking. What better way to discourage individual virtue?
The welfare state is nothing less than an assault on manly virtue. It is no accident that in the welfare-dependent family, the position of father is obsolete. Government entitlement programs simply apply that concept more broadly throughout society.
Several years ago, I read a story about a young couple who were told by the wife's obstetrician that the wife needed to be hospitalized to insure the health of the mother and the baby. Because the insurance company would not pay for the hospitalization, the woman was not hospitalized. The result was that the woman nearly lost her life and did lose the baby. The husband was indignant and sued the insurance company.
Whatever the merits of his claims against the insurance company, the truth is that it was the husband, not the insurance company, who was ultimately responsible for his wife's safety and care. He was a healthy young man; he should have found some way to pay for the hospitalization by whatever means, even if it meant working a second job at night or whatever. That is what a virtuous man would have done. What good is suing the insurance company ex post facto? Even if you get a settlement, the baby is still dead. And what if his wife had died?
This story illustrates the consequences of men relinquishing their virtue to a third party -- in this particular instance to an insurance company, but in a broader sense the same considerations apply to the welfare state.
The statist must deconstruct manhood in order to be able to establish the social welfare state. It is the centerpiece of the whole enterprise. There is no better way to deny the special qualities of manliness than by claiming that there are no differences between the sexes, which conveniently also fits the agenda of the statist's fellow-traveler, the feminist. Once manly virtue has been fully relinquished and suppressed, the statist can then mold and manipulate a docile, servile population in whatever way he wishes.
And then America truly will no longer be, as our national anthem states, the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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3)Graham: Obama Knew of Benghazi Threat, Acted 'After Everybody Was Dead'
By Sandy Fitzgerald
President Barack Obama was aware of two IED attacks on the Benghazi consulate in Libya in the months leading up the the Sept. 11 attack that killed U. S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three others, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham claims.
The South Carolina Republican said James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, told him the president was informed of attacks in April and June, Fox News reports.
The June attack blew a hole in the perimeter wall of the Benghazi compound, and the two strikes were reportedly part of dozens of incidents in the region that are considered warning signs of the deadly attacks in September.
Graham criticized Obama for a White House statement saying the president did not talk to Libya's leader until the evening of Sept. 12, a day after the embassy was attacked.
“(He talked) after everybody was dead,” said Graham, suggesting Obama could have made a difference if he'd been involved earlier, but “you got a commander in chief who is absolutely disengaged. You got the secretary of State never talking to the secretary of Defense."
Graham's disclosure came after several Capitol Hill hearings in which several top administration officials, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed they were not aware of the security problems at the Libyan compound.
Clinton said she never saw an Aug. 16 State Department cable warning that the consulate could not sustain a coordinated attack, but outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey said they knew about the warning.
A DNI spokesman said the Obama administration has been cooperative with Congress over the Libya questions. However, White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan, during his confirmation hearings for CIA director, said much of the information about what Obama knew falls under the category of “executive privilege,” a status often used to avoid disclosing information.
On Thursday, Republicans united to stall Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to succeed Panetta, especially over outstanding questions on the Benghazi attack.
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3a)Insurance Pools for 'High-Risk' Patients Running out of Money
A large number of Americans who have been refused health insurance because of preexisting medical conditions received bad news Friday from the Obama administration.
Tens of thousands will be blocked from a program designed to help them because money is running out, the Washington Post reports.
Obama administration officials said new applicants will be shut out of the state-based “high-risk pools” set up under the 2010 health-care law as soon this weekend and no later than March 2, depending on the state.
This will not affect the coverage afforded to approximately 100,000 people who are now enrolled in the high-risk pools.
“We’re being very careful stewards of the money that has been appropriated to us and we wanted to balance our desire to maximize the number of people who can gain from this program while making sure people who are in the program have coverage,” said Gary Cohen, director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.
From its start in summer 2010, the program was thought of as a temporary bridge for those who are uninsured. The plan, however, was for the pools to last until 2014, when Obamacare will prevent insurers from rejecting people who are already sick, enabling them to buy plans through the private market.
Analysts have consistently doubted whether the $5 billion allocated by Congress for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan — as the program is called — would be sufficient.
While only about 135,000 people have gotten coverage, their insurance is proving to be more costly than predicted.
Because of their lack of insurance, many people go untreated, which worsens their medical problems. When they finally do get coverage through a high-risk pool, the care they require costs more than initially expected.
This situation has taught Cohen a hard lesson.
“What we’ve learned through the course of this program is that this is really not a sensible way for the health-care system to be run,” he told The Post.
Of the original $5 billion provided by Congress, less than half remains available for the remainder of 2013 — enough only to provide coverage for those already in the pools, according to administration estimates.
When asked why the Obama administration has not requested additional funds from Congress to keep the program active, Cohen said: “My responsibility is to work with the appropriation we have.”
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