Sunday, February 24, 2013

Our Unmitigated Liar! Scar Tissue! More Hagel Hits!

When you do not drink Liberal Kool Aid you get targeted as an Uncle Tom or worse as a bigot.  Happened to Thomas, to Bork and the list is endless.  Now it's Carson time.  (See 1 below.)
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2)  PC'ism reaches down into the pickle barrel. (See 2 below.)
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Obama is an unmitigated liar and he truly does not care.  (See 3 below.)
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Conservatives have lost center stage for three reasons. I have discussed these three reasons for years and now , it seems, others are coming around to embrace them as well.

Liberals, with help from the media, and a dumbed down electorate hooked on entitlements is the stuff solid scar tissue is made of and I can speak to that because I have plenty after knee surgery.It has restricted my mobility. (See 4 below.)

It is only a matter of time before what Obama has fostered upon America will implode and thus time is on the side of Conservatives but at what cost to our fragile Republic? (See 4a below.)

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Does Obama love the enemy and hate America? Yes, if liberals are capable of removing the blinders , be objective regarding what he does not what he says and are willing to connect the dots of those with whom he formed his earliest associations. (See 5 below.)
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Is Iran's Khamenei , calling in his chit?  (See 6 below._)
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More Hagel hits!  (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1) NOW MEDIA MATTERS TARGETS BEN CARSON

Claims Obama critic is using his race to bolster career




By Garth Kant

The article, “Ben Carson’s Moment,” contains just a few original paragraphs and a slew of links to articles and videos.
Carson, the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, struck a chord with many Americans when he delivered a devastating critique of Obamacare at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, with President Obama seated a few feet away.
Though he already was the youngest head of a major division at Johns Hopkins, the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins and the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, it was the prayer breakfast speech that catapulted him into headlines.
According to the Atlantic, he “voiced concern about the national debt and argued the case for a flat tax, using the Bible’s injunction to tithe a set percentage, and for health-savings accounts, a medical option that has gained currency among conservatives. Crucially, he delivered this speech from a podium just feet from President Obama.”
Media Matters chose to focus on the surgeon’s race.
“After Carson used a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in front of President Obama to trumpet conservative arguments about economics and health care, News Corp. properties rushed to anoint him as the newest political ‘star.’ Fox News and Fox Business hosted Carson eight times in the days following his speech, and he has been praised by Fox personalities as a courageous leader who is ‘saving America’ and by the Wall Street Journal in an editorial headlined, ‘Ben Carson For President,’” Media Matters wrote.
The article contains clips of conservatives supportive of Carson. But it begins with a number of quotes questioning why a black would be conservative.
MSNBC commentator Joy Reid said: “Right now, first of all, there is a huge boom in it there is a big career advancement in it. If you want to be Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, any brown or black person who is willing to say conservative stuff, this is your moment. You can make a lot of money, get a lot of attention, get a lot of love from the right, because they really do need brown and black faces to start saying this script.
“But the problem is in order to fit in as a minority conservative, you really almost have to be even further to the right than typical conservatives. You have to mouth verbatim all of the party’s beliefs, because if you stray one bit, you are held in suspicion. So Rubio is caught in that matrix.”
The Atlantic’s David A. Graham also focused on race, writing “it’s impossible to pretend there’s no racial dimension involved in a successful black conservative castigating the liberal black president.”
“Black conservatives remain fascinating to Americans of all political persuasions and ethnicities; look no further than Herman Cain’s presidential campaign,” he said. “And in the age of Obama – when many on the right feel that any criticism of the president is liable to draw undeserved claims of racism – a champion for the cause who can sidestep that retort is sure to be welcomed.”
Tweets posted by Media Matters echo the sentiment.
  • “Righties love them some Ben Carson now”
  • “Today, if you’re a racist, you’re almost certainly a Republican. Did you forget all of those “Don’t Re-Nig in 2012″ bumper stickers?”
  • “But in the end a man known for his medical skills and brought in to speak at a (supposedly) religious event could not resist the spotlight, but had to grasp the opportunity to bash the president. In essence, I believe he sold out his profession and his faith for the chance to become a political “hero”. I hope he enjoys it, his 15 minutes are ticking.”
  • “Apparently in the right-wing parallel dimension, anybody who in any possible way does anything negative towards the president is worthy of a rock star reception. It really is sad that after 8 years of insisting you couldn’t question the president, that they’ve now managed to make ‘hating on the president’ an industry in and of itself.”
President Bush awarded Carson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2008. He made medical history in 1987 by becoming the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins who had been joined at the back of the head. He’s written more than 100 neurosurgical publications, four best-selling books and has 38 honorary doctorate degrees.
The liberal backlash isn’t limited to Carson. When Herman Cain joined Fox News, tweets by liberals targeted his race:
  • “uncle tom is now a fox news contributer. makes sense. smh. did i say uncle tom? i meant herman coon. oops…cain, herman cain.”
  • “So the buffoon Herman Cain is over there palling around with the likes of fox news! Birds of a feather! Ole Uncle Tom acting S.O.B.”
This is not the first time Media Matters has gone after a prominent black conservative.
It refers to former Congressman Allen West as “widely known for using slanderous, AM radio-style hate rants against Democrats.” “CBS ought to know better than to treat reckless name-callers (and freshman Congressmen) like West as a important voices in American politics.”
The website wants the media to go after U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “…the public would be better served if the media reported that one justice on the Supreme Court has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be out of the court’s mainstream: Justice Clarence Thomas. Indeed, perhaps the media should be asking how progressive a new nominee has to be in order to counterbalance Thomas.”
Economist and columnist Thomas Sowell is accused of “a diatribe laden with falsehoods that mimics the tone most often employed by scores of anti-immigrant nativists, Sowell relies on agitprop from that same lobby to broadcast a flawed economic argument against immigration.”
Media Matters posted a clip of commentator Star Parker with the headline “In Kitchen Sink Attack, Star Parker Blames ‘Minimum Wage,’ Obama’s Call For Taxes On Rich, ‘Liberals’ For Poverty.”
Media Matters calls out former GOP party chief Michael Steele. “If you were a reporter, and you were typing up RNC chairman Michael Steele’s call for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s resignation over a racially insensitive remark, would you maybe find room to mention that just a few days ago, Steele used the phrase ‘honest injun’”?
And, the website ran a clip of former presidential candidate Alan Keyes titled “Alan Keyes’ unhinged rant on Fox News: Obama ‘has made himself the focus of evil, the focus of child-killing policy.’”
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2)

In a politically correct world even a pickle can offend



Chelley Martinka, a Rhode Island mom, found a pickle of a problem recently while shopping for, well, pickles.
She noticed that Cains, a popular pickle brand in New England made by Minnesota's own M.A. Gedney Co., had an offering called "midgets." It's a term that's offensive to people born with dwarfism, as well as their families. And Martinka's daughter, now 10 months old, had been diagnosed with the condition soon after birth.
So, she blogged about the issue, made a YouTube video and contacted Gedney, the 132-year-old pickle maker with a national presence and a brand particularly well-known in the Twin Cities. Gedney's CEO, Barry Spector, called her earlier this month and said the company would indeed junk the midget moniker.
"My jaw didn't drop to the floor -- I hope that companies listen to their consumers -- but I was surprised," Martinka told the Star Tribune.
New labels are being designed now, Spector told her, though there's six months; worth of product with the "midget" label in inventory. On Friday, Martinka got an e-mail from Gedney, confirming it has "indeed been proceeding with Mr. Spector's promise," and signing off with the salutation "Have a Dilly of a Day!"
The Internet long ago opened a forum for consumers, and many companies have kept their proverbial ears open.
Hasbro plans to introduce a new Easy-Bake oven this year in gender-neutral colors of black, blue and silver after an online petition launched by a 13-year-old New Jersey girl took the firm to task for offering only pink and purple hues.
And last year, after TV news reports about a hamburger filler dubbed "pink slime" were amplified on the Internet, several major supermarket chains -- including Eden Prairie-based Supervalu -- banned the stuff from their burgers. While food safety experts said the filler posed no risks, consumers rebelled against it in a flurry of e-mails.
'Little people'
Martinka's daughter Adelaide, has achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, which is caused by a genetic mutation. For those who have it, their preferred name is "little people." Martinka, 28, started a blog soon after Adelaide's birth as a discussion and education forum for her daughter's condition.
Martinka, of Cranston, R.I., said she first called Gedney's customer service department in December, registering her complaint about Cain's "midget" pickles. She asked, too, that executives watch her video on YouTube. Martinka, who described herself as a "huge pickle eater," didn't hear anything until late afternoon on Feb. 7, when Spector called.
She wrote on her blog the next day that Spector said "he agreed that in these times [midget] is offensive and he and the company would never want to offend anyone. Because of this, he sent my video to the company's board who voted to ... CHANGE THE LABEL!"
Spector didn't return a phone call from the Star Tribune. But in an e-mail to the Star Tribune Wednesday, Gedney said it's "in the process of updating the name of a few small pickle varieties based on recent consumer feedback. The company is not seeking any attention related to this matter and believes that any publicity should be more appropriately placed on the children and families dealing with Achondroplasia."
Chaska-based Gedney has used the midget appellation in a version of its Del Monte brand of pickles, as well as in one item under the Gedney brand. But with its namesake brand -- a big seller in local supermarkets -- Gedney uses "Babies" and "Mini-Munchers" to describe most of its small pickles.
Martinka had high praise for Gedney on her blog, and said she got a lot of outside support for her efforts. "I think it's great," said Sally Falls, head of the Twin Cities chapter of Little People of America, an advocacy group. "To be honest, we were like, 'Whoa, [Gedney] changed it; there wasn't even a fight.'?"
But Martinka said she's had plenty of comments from people on YouTube who were "furious" with her. One asked if she planned to try to ban the term "black" beans. Another hoped that her daughter would be hit by a bus. She said she shut down the comments section after that.
Gedney is the fourth-largest U.S. branded pickle maker, with about 3 percent of the market, according to SymphonyIRI Group, which tracks sales at conventional grocery stores. The largest by far is Pinnacle Foods, a publicly traded New Jersey firm whose brands include Vlasic and Milwaukee's, both of which have "midget" offerings.
In an e-mailed statement, Pinnacle said it uses "the word [midget] in a technical manner. The United States Department of Agriculture defined the standards for grades and sizes of pickles in the United States. According to the USDA, a 'midget' pickle was the word designation for a pickle with a diameter of 19 mm or less."
Martinka said she plans to eventually take up the midget issue with Pinnacle. "My goal is to educate," she said.
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3)

President Barack "I Didn't Do It" Obama


It’s one thing for a politician to “massage” the truth ... it happens all the time. But it’s quite another for one to so brazenly repeat an easily disprovable lie. 

But, as in the case of President Obama and sequestration, when the fear of being caught in a lie is removed because those charged with being “watchdogs” are active participants, brazenly lying carries no more risk than saying “hello.”

Sequester, automatic across-the-board reductions in the rate of increase in government spending – commonly and lazily called “spending cuts” by the media – was the spawn of the Obama administration. You’d never know it to hear him talk about it. During the campaign the president lied repeatedly about the origin of this monster, but he was the Dr. Frankenstein here.

The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, in a piece not posted to the Internet until a time generally reserved for incriminating government document dumps (5:59 pm Friday), reminded the world, “The automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors...” 

The president approved the plan put forth by his employees and, in direct contrast to his current rhetoric, agreed to a deal with Republicans that “included an agreement that there would be no tax increases in the sequester in exchange for what the president was insisting on: an agreement that the nation’s debt ceiling would be increased for 18 months, so Obama would not have to go through another such negotiation in 2012, when he was running for reelection.”

He has since won re-election, which apparently means any agreement made beforehand is not only no longer valid, but never happened. The media, too busy focusing on the important issues facing the country such as complaining about not getting a picture of the president with Tiger Woods, haven’t bothered to point out any of this.

Rather than the tough medicine President Obama created to begin, on a miniscule scale, addressing our ballooning government spending, he treats sequester as a Frankenstein’s monster birthed by Republicans. But, as Woodward reminds us, paternity lies firmly at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 

I’m not one who is concerned with sequestration. The federal government is spending $1 trillion more per year now than it did in 2008. That’s an astronomical increase in government in four years. The idea that shaving what amounts to a rounding error off the budget will bring about Armageddon is worthy of mockery. If, that is, we had an honest media doing the job it is supposed to do. 

But we don’t have an honest media, and as such we have a president predicting things that make doomsday preppers seem like mellow pot smokers. 

Should this slight slowing of the increase in future government spending come to pass, Obama told the world, “Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced. FBI agents will be furloughed. Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. Air traffic controllers and airport security will see cutbacks, which means more delays at airports across the country. Thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off. Tens of thousands of parents will have to scramble to find childcare for their kids. Hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings.”

In what seems more like a rejected flashback storyline for “The Walking Dead” TV show, the president of the United States wants the American people to believe a less than 2 percent “cut” in government spending, after increasing it by more than a third in four years, will bring about end times. Criminals will roam the countryside as unattended children consume rancid uninspected meats, airports become bumper-car worlds and everyone dies, uneducated, of cancer. 

Yet Republicans in the House have passed two alternatives to across-the-board cuts, which are collecting dust in the Democrat-controlled Senate. If Democrats really want compromise they simply have to pass their own alternative and hammer out the differences in a conference committee, the way legislation is passed in Congress. But they haven’t, and they won’t.

Democrats, in spite of their panicked protestations, aren’t seeking a “deal;” they’re pre-emptively assigning blame.

The last quarter of 2012 saw the economy shrink .01 percent. If the economy shrinks again in the first quarter of 2013 we will officially be back in a recession. That would be the Obama recession. They can’t have that. The blame, that is, not the recession. That’s why we had the president on Al Sharpton’s radio show saying Republicans would rather harm the economy than “close loopholes” on the rich.

In an attempt to preemptively shift blame, we get the “We’re all gonna die if Republicans don’t stop being so uncooperative” press event we saw from the president last Tuesday.

But since Google exists, anyone – except, it seems, journalists – can find this quote from President Obama in 2011 on this very subject saying, “Already, some in Congress are trying to undo these automatic spending cuts. My message to them is simple: No. I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. There will be no easy off ramps on this one.”

If we were truly facing the Thunderdome-esque future he is now claiming, why would President Obama threaten to veto “ANY EFFORT” to replace the “meat cleaver” with a scalpel just 15 months ago? 

The answer is obvious – he, as Bob Woodward pointed out, is lying. 

There’s an old episode of The Simpsons where Bart becomes famous for causing a disaster on television then looking into the camera and saying, “I didn’t do it.” President Obama is employing this strategy with his economy and sequester. While the audience was in on the joke when Bart did it, we’re the butt of it now. And the throne-sniffing media is only too happy to help.
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4)

Three Reasons Conservatives are Losing the Battle for America

By J. Paul Masko, III
 1. The Electorate
The Republicans may as well stop their soul-searching and look at the reality of the Democrat electorate.  In addition to those Republican voters who stayed home on Election Day, the hard-core (so-called) progressives, the inadequate Republican ground game, and those who pay little or no federal tax and are happy to elect those who promise to take larger sums from those who DO pay, there's a more profound and possibly intractable problem.  From my countless discussions with Democrats/liberals, it seems clear that many, many voters - we will never be sure of their numbers - neither hear, nor are interested in hearing, the stance of conservatives or Republicans.  I'm often incredulous at the self-satisfied political ignorance and gullibility of successful, otherwise high-functioning and intellectually curious Democrats.  The range and depth of their ignorance regarding easily ascertainable facts is astounding ("No, President Obama has NOT increased the deficit: that's a lie!  For your information, President Obama has spent less than any President in history!"); and many, in my experience, cite the New York Times as their irrefutable source of information, with phrases like: "The Times didn't mention it so it can't be true or relevant...."
For these people, it really doesn't matter what conservatives or Republicans think or say: they won't hear it!  Republican positions are totally lost - unheard and meaningless - to a growing number of the electorate, including huge swaths of highly-educated and effective leaders in society.  It would be understating the issue to note that the Republican/conservative "brand" has been sullied - but it begins to convey the nature of the problem: it's more accurate to say that the Republican/conservative brand has been effectively nullified for many people.  For a growing number of voters, it doesn't matter what Republicans say: they have bought into the idea - nurtured by the press, educators at every level, and almost the entire entertainment industry - that Republicans are the "bad guys".  Furthermore, and possibly more disturbing, is the fact that this apparently mushrooming group of voters is largely unaware of and unconcerned about their stance.
Imagine trying to discuss the strengths of Judaism with members of the Hitler Youth, or the weaknesses of Mao's Great Leap Forward with a cadre of the Red Guard: would your ideas be heard and rationally considered?  Or suppose you were running for office and these youngsters could vote: would they vote for you? When you discovered that you'd lost their vote and consequently an election, would you then ask yourself, for example, whether the ideas or nature of Judaism were at fault for your inability to persuade them?
That's about the level of it with much of the U.S. electorate: they've totally bought into the liberal stance - which these days includes refusing to hear or even consider ideas of the blacklisted opposition - and there's no indication that they'll be coming back to a more rational stance. 
They proclaim themselves compassionate but really don't care if the "bad guys" are emotionally or physically hurt.  And there's a typical structure to their answers in response to interrogations about their reputed compassion: first the distancing phrase, then the conjunction, and finally the seemingly reasonable explanation.  (A couple typical answers: "Of course nobody would condone such violent behavior but I also don't hear too many people upset about his absence"...or... "We should never turn to violence as an answer but who can blame them for getting upset".)  An example to illustrate the point: although You may recall that a couple Republicans were savagely beaten in apparent political violence in New Orleans after a Republican fund raiser in 2010, I can guarantee you that essentially none of your Democrat friends do.
To call these people "zealots" would be overstating their political energy, but calling them "partisans" is somehow off point. Many of them, but for their political stance, would be considered bright or knowledgeable, as I'm sure were many of the Hitler Youth, the Red Guard and members of like organizations, who were often specially selected for their academic, athletic and social skills.
While some of these people may have limited political knowledge, they all know something really, really well: Republicans and conservatives are bad guys, should not be listened to, and will make everything worse. If you're a Republican or a conservative, it doesn't matter what you say because, if it comes out of your mouth, it's wrong.
When I was young, it was a matter of pride that we'd try to familiarize ourselves with both sides of an argument: my teachers mostly attempted to present alternative views fairly and encouraged us to research opposing political stances independently.  Now educators at every level mostly seem to expect adherence to the liberal/Democrat position, and both challenge (even threaten) those who disagree, and create an environment where alternative views and their proponents are mocked (or worse). 
So Republicans and conservatives, I'd say the same thing to you that I'd say to a Rabbi rejected by the Hitler Youth: if you think that the Democrats heard, digested and rejected your arguments in the last election, you're deluded. Your brand is so soiled that you will not be heard by this generation...short of a calamity on the order of the one that befell the Nazis.  Your misreading of the times and the situation is startling. You look like bewildered youngsters trying to please a psychotic mother, looking for cues in an electorate and media that derides and, in many cases, despises you. In terms of convincing the electorate of the good sense of your positions, there may not be workable solutions: but take a first step by facing the truth: you have allowed the culture to drift for decades, and one feature of the drift is the acceptability of determined mindlessness...including the mindless rejection of you and whatever it is that you proclaim. You still have a substantial choir to whom you preach...but probably a larger counter-choir that not only doesn't hear you but aggressively covers its ears when you speak.
2. Media Bias
The fact is that while there has never been a pure news delivery system, it was much, much cleaner 60 years ago.  One could have argued the case several decades ago that there was such an entity as "news", but it makes no sense to call these groups "news" organizations anymore.  A more sensible approach would be to say that there's hot, warm, cool and cold information, and that the mainstream press and the left are the arbiters of what will be hot, cold, etc.  If the press decides that a particular story does not fit their world-view or plan, the story becomes "cold", is ignored and, to the acolytes, doesn't exist.  Examples would be The New York Times ignoring the Benghazi story or "Fast and Furious" for extended periods; when they finally reported on these, they had lots of ways, as always, to effect their spin: story placement and flow, leaving out facts that might be inconsistent with their world-view, interviewing those with known sympathy to their stance and then editing the interviews for greatest New-York-Times-style impact.  Since so many news organizations and acolytes look to the Times to define worthy/unworthy stories, advance the "proper" spin, etc., much of the country, including many Republicans, believe that they've heard the full story after having read The Times (and The Washington Post).  I've been told several times - although it always amazes me - that a particular event "never happened"...with the explanation that "The Times didn't mention it...."  Because this situation has been in place without effective challenge for so long, it's second-nature to the (so-called) reporters involved in creating and perpetuating it: to most of them, the idea that they have a political slant that finds expression in their news stories would be obviously bogus...not worth wasting a moment pondering.
"What?? Are you claiming that there's a conspiracy among these journalists???"  No: it's group-think!  Imagine the Jewish fellow noted above speaking to a Nazi Youth club and later finding that essentially all of them had a negative reaction to his presentation.  Would that be a conspiracy?  Or how about someone identified as a "Petit Bourgeois" delivering a roundly rejected lecture on the benefits of capitalism to a group of Bolsheviks: although they all found his ideas wrong-headed, would their rejection reflect a conspiracy?  I don't think so.
Republicans and conservatives: you are playthings of the mainstream media and they can totally have their way with you, no matter your observations or objections.  And the most interesting part of living in such a one-sided media environment for so long is that the vast majority of Republicans (and many conservatives) will, like obedient puppies, follow the media lead. The bottom line: you Republicans and conservatives are powerless in defining or moving the debate: the mainstream media along with the liberals and Democrats essentially totally define the issues, the responses to the issues, which events to focus on or ignore, etc.  And their chosen topics and slants can be very bizarre indeed.  But you have nothing to do with it!  You're powerless!  Impotent!  The sooner you face this fact, the sooner you might find a productive path ahead.
And one other note about the mainstream media: because you Republicans and conservatives are so impotent and because they identify, define and massage (or ignore) the stories consistent with their world view, it stands to reason that anyone can be tarnished and destroyed by them.  Anyone!: Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, a reincarnated Jesus Christ, and you and any of your colleagues: it's simply a matter of who is picked out and how thoroughly he or she needs to be destroyed.  If the target will cooperate and absent himself or herself, it's often unnecessary - a waste of time and resources - to continue the assault.
Likewise, if the mainstream media and the left decide to ignore a scandal or other situation, for a large percentage of the population - including many who are otherwise well informed and high-functioning - it won't exist: there's essentially nothing that you conservatives and Republicans can do about it.  In related fashion, if the left and mainstream media decide to re-route information or assign blame idiosyncratically, their version will quickly become the accepted explanation for a large percentage of the populace.  It's why George W. Bush is largely to blame for the mortgage crisis, (supposed) global warming, increased violent crime, persistent racism and all manner of other difficulties.  Scapegoats are a beautiful thing for people who don't want to face themselves or grow up and, in a lopsided information system like ours, there is neither a shortage of scapegoats nor a practical limit to the extent of blame that one scapegoat can absorb.  If you think that this plum George Bush-Sarah Palin-scapegoat-era is over, think again.  And, more to the point, you Republicans and conservatives have nothing whatever to say about it.
So stop with the, "If we'd only nominated" somebody, he or she would be "so much less vulnerable" to attacks than the person we nominated; and stop the, "It's such a shame that he keeps opening his mouth and sticking his foot in it...."  If some other person had been nominated, he or she would have been destroyed if he didn't fit the media paradigm: and then you'd be complaining that yet another candidate should have been nominated.  Face it, Republicans and conservatives: you have nothing to say about who gets pilloried in the press and who doesn't, or what the issues will be, and there's essentially nothing you can do to change it: all of that is decided by people who disagree with and often despise you.  So you may as well stop your automatic genuflections to the liberals/Democrats by beating each other up.  (From a distance, though, you have to admit that it must be a gas to be able to call the shots for your opponents...to get them to hop and dance on cue, to self-flagellate, to start fighting with each other or join in the carnage.)
3. Techniques
A third element that makes the position of Republicans and conservatives almost untenable is the range of techniques for destroying them that are accepted by many Americans and the mainstream press.  The most effective and destructive technique is so-called "political correctness", a method of silencing those who disagree with a group or party controlling the political agenda: it's a technique that depends on a constant reinforcing dialogue between the media and compliant citizens.  Political correctness is a capital political concept because: the participants silently acquiesce to its dictates; it's a self-modulating system where groups of people self-monitor and groom each other into conformity; through unspoken or overt threats of censure, it propagates itself; and, among the willing, it inevitably leads to the control of thought.  If we freely restrict our speech to only "allowed" topics, in short order we restrict our thinking as well.  In the end there is no more powerful political tool than thought control, which is why mastery and management of information is a central issue in all totalitarian regimes.  What has required the overt elimination or forced domination of media outlets in most autocratic regimes has been yielded up easily by our group-think media, who now march along in near lockstep while trumpeting their independence.  Political correctness must be a beautiful thing to behold if you're a politician inclined toward domination.
Another technique is the investigation and censure of politicians and groups who don't fit the media or left wing paradigm, while ignoring or manipulating scandalous information on political allies.  When potentially damaging information about left wing allies is ignored by the mainstream media, it simply "doesn't exist" to growing numbers of otherwise well-informed acolytes.  This is why Sarah Palin is regarded as perhaps the most heinous and hated American politician today to a large portion of the population, while Bill Clinton is lionized and his wife may be the brightest woman in the western world.  With enough investigation and diligence, anyone can be destroyed and almost anyone can be elevated.  Again, who is destroyed and who idealized is totally within the control of the mainstream media and the left wing: conservatives and Republicans cannot substantially affect these processes because of the nullification of their brand advanced through the press, the entertainment media and educational institutions. 
Two elements exacerbate this technique for conservatives and Republicans: the fact that the left wing, because it views itself as having an essential and morally-superior "mission", excuses its unscrupulous destructive strategies (like, for example, essentially inventing and repeating false stories until they become part of the political landscape [such as bogus Tea-Party threats toward Congressmen]; attacking family members of antagonists; somehow "discovering" legitimately sealed information and dropping it over the transoms of friendly media; etc.); and the fact that Republicans and conservatives, so inured to being cogs in the left-wing-driven information system, leap in to play their roles of unwitting enablers in the destruction of their own.
A third technique - another favorite of despotic regimes like the Soviets in Eastern Europe - is "selective violence": physically harmful acts meant to both stop a political opponent and send a message to like-minded potential opponents.  This category includes such things as union attacks on Tea Party demonstrations; the arrest, prosecution and imprisonment of the "Coptic Christian" on charges "unrelated" to his film; covert threats toward Chief Justice Roberts by national politicians on the eve of the health care decision; the use of government powers, like repeated, intensive tax audits against political enemies; etc.  It must be a comforting and, unfortunately for the body politic, "liberating" position for politicians and left-wing groups to know that no matter how many or how severe their physical or administrative attacks, these will be ignored by the mainstream press and consequently "not exist" for much of the population.
In a word, we are observing the regression of a culture...one that is moving away from sophistication and proudly stepping backward from civilizing attempts.  We have seen primitive behavior in our own culture and others: when people look to a label or a skin color as all that need be said about a person; when information from trusted sources of information are grossly biased so only one side is heard or even "exists"; and when physical or administrative violence against people is belittled, laughed at or ignored.  It's a cultural regression and, as the unifying, reassuring legal structures and precepts wither, as information sources become untrustworthy, and as physical and administrative violence worsens, it becomes increasingly difficult to reverse.


4a)Most Pundits Miss The GOP’s Biggest Advantage: Time
by Noah Rothman 

The White House knows it. Congressional Republicans sure know it. Both are vocal about this reality, but the pundit class has not yet caught on. The passing trivialities that dominate the 24-hour news cycle, which seem so imperative in the moment but fade in relevance with predictable alacrity, blur longer-term trends. Some in the pundit class, however, are beginning to catch on. They take history into account and conclude, perhaps reluctantly, that Congressional Republicans have a hand in their ongoing political battles with President Barack Obama. The president, as he has said repeatedly for anyone who cares to listen, is running out of time. Time is, in fact, on the GOP’s side. 
“I’d like to get as much stuff done as quickly as possible,” President Obama told a local San Francisco news station reporter on Wednesday. “Even though I’m just starting my second term, I know that, you know, once we get through this year, then people start looking at the midterms, and after that, they start thinking about presidential elections.”
“Now’s a good time for us to get some things done,” Obama added.
President Obama is nothing if not a voracious student of American political history. He is deeply conscious of how he wants to be seen through the lens of posterity. This is why, months into his first term, Obama took a meeting with presidential scholars and historians – he always wanted to have a historic presidency, and has always managed his political career so as to have the most lasting impact on future generations.
Those close to the president have said on several occasions that Obama, like all presidents entering their second term, has about one year to 18 months to enact serious reforms before the pressures of politics and “succession obsession” dominates the national conversation.
Obama has been working fast with a broad focus: new gun laws one moment, comprehensive immigration reform the next. He flirted with promoting environmental regulations in his State of the Union address, as well as raising the federal minimum wage significantly.
The president is motivated, at least in part, by his legacy. It is unclear whether the massive health care overhaul that Obama signed into law in his first term will serve as a lasting achievement viewed positively by a majority of the electorate. Even before the law has been fully implemented,businesses are already cutting back employees’ hours and health care costs for the currently insured are on the rise. History’s judgment on the Affordable Care Act is presently mixed.
Therefore, it is Obama’s job to usher in meaningful reforms in his second term – the most promising being a reform of the immigration system that leads to citizenship for most of the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants.
But nothing can be done without the consent of Congress – the lower chamber of which is dominated by the opposition party. Presently, really since the tea party’s ascension, budget battles have dominated Washington. Today’s fight over “sequestration” was born in 2011 and is essentially an extension of the same issues that have dominated Washington since the 2010 midterm elections: how best to implement federal spending and debt reduction measures.
Budget tweaks do not a legacy make. Just ask former President Bill Clinton. Budget battles dominated the Clinton presidency for the entirety of his first term and a large part of his second term. He raised income tax rates and is the last president to preside over a balanced budget. But this achievement cannot be said to have defined the Clinton presidency, particularly since both the tax rates and the balanced budget were undone by his immediate successor. Budget battles rarely constitute a legacy achievement.
Obama wants to be able to sign major social reforms into law on the scale of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. However unpopular Johnson was at the close of his first and only full elected term in office, his achievements ensured that the judgment of history would at least be measured if not kind.
The president and his opponents in Congress know he is running out of time. As they always do, exogenous factors will soon interrupt Obama’s pursuit of a domestic legacy achievement. A European debt crisis or an Iranian nuclear breakout could derail Obama’s legislative goals with little warning.
More than just time is on Republicans’ side. Shockingly, public opinion is as well. Despite a headline which employs the misdirection of your average Penn & Teller performance, USA Today, partnering with Pew Research Center, released a poll today that showed Republicans have some leverage on budget issues
“On issues, [the] public is more aligned with Obama than GOP,” read USAT’s headline. And that’s true for every issue that is not dominating the agenda in Washington. In that survey, Pew/USATfound that 70 percent of voters think “major deficit legislation” is “essential for the president and Congress to act on this year.” That total includes 81 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of Democrats, and 70 percent of independents.
What’s more, 76 percent favor a “balanced approach” to resolve the sequestration crisis (as they probably will for the variety of crises that are coming down the pike). Of those, 54 percent say that the “balance” should favor spending cuts. Just 16 percent say that tax hikes should make up the bulk of the deal. Again, the public favors the Republican approach.
Other public polling shows Congressional Republicans will get most of the blame if the sequester goes through, but the average member of Congress cares little for the institution’s overall approval rating. In the absence of a wave of anti-incumbent sentiment, House members are secure in their belief that their actions in February, 2013, will not sink their electoral prospects in November, 2014.
Republicans read the political tea leaves and see a brighter future than virtually all of the pundit class. All, that is, but a select few of prescient writers like National Journal’s Ron Fournier who recently applied a generational perspective to the present set of political circumstances in Washington. His verdict: plenty of opportunity for short-term gains by Obama, but the pursuit of those short-term gains may mean forgoing a legacy achievement.
“If it’s all about politics, bully for Obama. A majority of voters will likely side with the president over Republicans in a budget dispute because of his popularity and the GOP’s pathetic approval ratings,” Fournier writes. “If it’s about governing, the story changes: In any enterprise, the chief executive is ultimately accountable for success and failure.”
“Even if he’s right on the merits, Obama may be on the wrong side of history,” Fournier adds. He recommends that the president and his party rethink their refusal to propose a meaningful debt reduction plan that embraces significant entitlement reforms.
Obama’s endless hectoring of the electorate, lobbying for a cornucopia of progressive dream programs that will never come to pass, masks his own fear that the more narrow goals he hopes to achieve before the spring/summer of 2014 may be unattainable. He rallies the troops to keep the pressure on Congress, but Congress can afford not to listen.
Time is not on the president’s side, as Obama himself has made clear on numerous occasions. Even if the press has not been listening, the GOP has.
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5)Loving the Enemy
By Janice Fiamengo 
Proclaiming himself a conciliator and a moderate with a vision of Americans "stand[ing] with each other" and "paying their fair share," President Barack Obama is in fact one of the most partisan presidents ever to occupy the White House. Fine-sounding words notwithstanding, he is a leftist ideologue and no-holds-barred political fighter whose practice has consistently been to demonize the American equivalents of the hated kulaks (farmers) and petit-bourgeoisie (small business owners) persecuted in the Soviet Union. Obama's enemies include those "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" as well as the presumably benighted bigots who fail to realize that "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." With his anti-American, neo-Marxist outlook shaped by mentors and heroes such as Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, Saul Alinsky, and Jeremiah Wright, Obama is naturally inclined to be suspicious of freedom and to feel sympathy for groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Reflex affinities such as Obama's have a long, bloody history, and anyone wishing to understand the threat posed by the Obama administration to the fabric of America is well advised to place its policies and rhetoric in a comprehensive historical perspective. How is it that an educated person can be attracted to totalitarian ideologies and predisposed to reject the freedoms of the western world? This was, arguably, the central question of the twentieth century, and it has assumed a renewed urgency since 9/11, a time when leftists have applauded terror attacks on the United States and claimed that America's enemies are in fact righteous victims. What is one to make of their seemingly sophisticated arguments justifying atrocity? Can such people really believe, to cite only a few examples, that the 9/11 hijackers were motivated by a longing for social justice? That the Palestinian leadership is committed to peace with Israel? That people are better off in Cuba, with the highest per capita imprisonment rate in the world, than in the United States?

Jamie Glazov responds to such questions in United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and
Terror (2009)  brilliant investigation that not only extensively documents leftists' support for brutal regimes, but also diagnoses their worldview as a psycho-social syndrome of pathological dimensions. Leftist hatred, Glazov demonstrates, has less to do with specific political programs or economic systems than with a deep-rooted disenchantment with democratic freedoms and a corresponding "negative identification" with violence.
The objective evidence for leftists' love of tyrants is substantial, and Glazov presents it convincingly with a blend of facts, anecdotes, and analysis. We learn, for example, about the massive effort on the part of western Communists to repress, distort, and recast the horrors of Stalinist Russia, including the purges that killed millions and the forced famine in the Ukraine that brought the peasantry to its knees. New York Times reporter Walter Duranty turned the reality of Ukrainian starvation into a cheerful tale of abundance, lying so aggressively in favor of Stalin's policies that when the Manchester Guardian's Malcolm Muggeridge tried to report the truth-that peasant were dying en masse-he was mocked and derided, ultimately losing his job.
When leftists turned their attention to other bloody Communist regimes in Cuba, North Vietnam, China, and Nicaragua, many high-profile members of the western intelligentsia were eager to travel there to report on the miraculous gains that had supposedly been achieved. Susan Sontag wrote of Castro's Cuba with fanatical admiration, denying the dictator's atrocities and downplaying limitations on freedom, even going so far as to claim that "No Cuban writer has been or is in jail," and that "the great majority of Cubans feel vastly freer today than they ever did before the revolution." Making his pilgrimage to Hanoi in 1970, Noam Chomsky accepted as gospel all the nonsense his North Vietnamese hosts told him about the regime, as did Gunter Grass after a tour of a model Nicaraguan prison, which led him to enthuse that there was no room in the new regime for revenge-this in a country that had executed 8,000 political enemies and jailed 20,000 in the first three years of the revolution. (Hollywood's Oliver Stone, with his glorification of Stalin and denunciation of the U.S. as "an Orwellian state," is a current exemplar of this suicidal distemper.)
After the collapse of Communism, it has been déjà vu all over again with radical Islam. Immediately following the terrorist assault of 9/11, a jubilant chorus of university professors and progressives across North America refused to express horror for the attacks; instead, they blamed America, with Ward Churchill calling those who had died "little Eichmanns" and Nation columnist Katha Pollitt lecturing patriots who wanted to fly an American flag that it stood for "jingoism and vengeance and war." Hundreds of so-called anti-war demonstrations were organized almost immediately to express solidarity with the Taliban regime that had harbored the attackers and to paint the United States as a warmonger. Since then, droves of leftist lawyers have worked to obtain release for the terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay and to strike down legislation intended to help the United States guard itself against future attacks. Even when Islamists testify in court that their terror quests are inspired by Koranic injunctions to kill infidels, leftists insist that they are (justly) resisting American oppression. Western feminists routinely defend Islamic misogyny-wife beating, honor killing, genital mutilation, the burqa-and will not admit that women live better lives in the western democracies. And leftist gays march in anti-Israel rallies, joining with Muslim queer-bashers to denounce the only country in the Middle East where homosexuals can live securely.  
How to understand such blindness, such moral lunacy, such self-destructive fantasy? The heart of United in Hate is its analysis of the psychological mechanisms that drive the left's embrace of terror and repression. This is the most fascinating aspect of the book, balancing its riveting survey of progressive misalliance. Glazov argues that underlying the progressive's disdain for his own culture and his support for its enemies is a deep-rooted alienation from modern democratic life. Feeling that his society has somehow betrayed him by failing to supply him with meaning and purpose, the "believer," as Glazov aptly dubs him, turns away from it with fury, magnifying its failings and projecting his longing for fulfillment onto a utopian order. Because he rejects the perilous satisfactions and anxieties of individual freedom, he "craves a fairy-tale world where no individuality exists, and where human estrangement is thus impossible."
With his swollen sense of grievance, the believer identifies with all others supposedly wronged by his society and imagines those who attack his country to be attacking the same injustices that anger him. But his outrage on behalf of his country's ostensible victims is really a displaced form of his own disillusionment and hunger for collective belonging. Guilt is often a powerful motivator also, for the believer is frequently a member of a privileged class and therefore feels shame "that he is not a genuine victim." By identifying with the oppressed, he feels "a sense of atonement" for his high caste. As he agonizes over those his own society has putatively harmed, he minimizes or outright denies the suffering of those who are really victimized by the regimes he adulates; their pain and deaths do not count for him, for they stand in the way of the realization of utopia. His greatest longing is to subsume his identity into the totalitarian entity, to experience power and purpose through it. This deep-seated craving explains the two most disturbing facets of the believer's behavior: his willingness to die for the cause-think of those leftists who wanted to serve as human shields for Saddam Hussein-and the fact that his greatest support for a totalitarian regime tends to occur when its (thrilling) violence is at its height.
Glazov's emphasis on the pathological element of the believer's mindset is effectively supported by his book's roll call of blind allegiances and feverish denials. There is no other way to explain how people so fully formed by western culture and so uniquely equipped to appreciate all that it offers -- elite intellectuals and rebel thinkers such as Susan Sontag and Michel Foucault -- could actively seek its destruction. Their fanatical commitment is rightly approached as a mental disorder with a specific etiology and symptoms.
The question raised by the book is a disturbing and salutary one: how is one to counter such an illness, colluded in so widely by the intelligentsia and possessing a fascination for so many? Springing from needs and desires that seem to develop with particular vehemence in societies that are most free, the believer's disorder is by its nature irrational, seemingly immune to proofs and argument. It reminds us of the vulnerability of democracy and the necessity for conservatives to counter leftist delusions with inspirational ideas, images, and stories of freedom. Despite our best efforts, it may take nothing less than a national catastrophe to awaken the general populace to the utopian peril. In the meanwhile, we have no choice but to pursue the truth as winsomely and tirelessly as we can, to confront leftist ideologues with the results of their utopian blueprints, and to write and read powerful books like United in Hate.

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6)Obama and Netanyahu aid Khamenei’s campaign for Iran’s next president

The Obama administration was unmoved by the IAEA finding that Iran had installed 180 advanced centrifuges had been installed at Natanz. Indeed, the White House said Thursday, Feb. 21 that “a diplomatic solution is still possible” for resolving nuclear issues with Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency report came out the next day: The new IR-1m centrifuges installed in Natanz were said to enrich uranium three times faster than the outdated machines used at Natanz until now, considerably shortening Tehran’s path to a nuclear bomb. The IAEA also noted faster than expected progress in setting up the Arak plant for producing plutonium.
These findings mean that the red line drawn by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu before the UN General Assembly last September - when he said Iran must not be permitted to stock 250 kilos of near weapons-grade uranium of 20 percent purity – is approaching faster than the “late-spring-early summer” deadline he set for stopping Iran before it can build a nuclear bomb.
Yet, in the response to the IAEA finding of Thursday, Netanyahu’s office said only, that the report's findings "prove that Iran continues to advance quickly to the red line" and "Iran is closer than ever to achieving enrichment for a nuclear bomb."
Administration sources report that the US is continuing to push Iran for one-on-one talks after the six powers face Iran in Kazakhstan on Feb. 26 – even though a secret round a couple of months ago was a flop. Gary Samore, the Obama aide who set it up, has since quit the White House and moved over to Harvard University.
Yet Barack Obama stands by diplomatic engagement and “increased pressure” (sanctions) as the sole means of preventing Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon.  

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has put the US president on the spot,according to intelligence sources: He is calling in a debt. He respected Obama’s request to refrain from spoiling his campaign for reelection in November and held back from delivering the “October surprise” widely predicted by US media.
Now, Tehran faces a presidential election in June and Khamenei wants to be sure that the US doesn’t upset his plans. His foremost aspiration is to block the path of the retiring president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s in-law to the presidency and replace him with a nondescript, uncharismatic figure handpicked by himself who is also a competent administrator and qualified to haul Iran out of its economic morass. Not all of Iran’s troubles are caused by sanctions; Ahmadinejad’s reign has seen plenty of dysfunction and corruption.
Extreme violence is already bedeviling the Iranian campaign up to and including threats of assassination. The supreme ruler is bidding the Obama administration for some peace on quiet on the diplomatic front.
According to sources, Iran’s stormy election campaign will hold Tehran back from any real diplomatic breakthrough or progress toward definitive nuclear weaponization until a new president is elected and forms a government, some time in the fall.
At the same time, the ayatollah is playing a complex double game by keeping diplomatic tensions high and avoiding any real dialogue with Washington. Indeed, he may even welcome tougher sanctions and military threats for boosting his candidate for president and letting Ahmadinejad’s candidate in for punishment at the hands of the suffering Iranian voter.
Hence, the crossed signals from Washington, Europe, Israel and the IAEA. On the one hand, alarm over Tehran’s rapid advance toward a nuclear weapon capability, while on the other, insistence on doing nothing substantial beyond futile palaver to stop it. All four are playing into the ayatollah’s hands.

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7Chuck Hagel's Greatest Hits
By Deroy Murdock


)Lined up side by side, statements by the defense secretary nominee on Jews and Israel sound highly disturbing indeed. Will leave any objective reader dumb- founded.
Give him the gong! 
 "Let the Jews pay for it.”

Are these words anti-Semitic?
The U.S. Senate should consider this and many other disturbing statements by Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary. Nebraska’s former Republican senator has said and done truly troubling things regarding Jews and Israel.
  Hagel tried to close USO’s Haifa retreat when he ran the United Service Organizations from 1987 to 1990. The facility was highly popular among U.S. sailors, 45,000 of whom visited the Israeli port in 1990, the Associated Press reports.
“Chuck Hagel said the Haifa port is costing the U.S. too much [and] that if the Jews wanted one, the Jews should do the fundraising,” an unnamed supporter of the outpost told theWashington Free Beacon.
“He said to me, ‘Let the Jews pay for it.’” recalled Marsha Halteman, of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which backed USO Haifa. “I told him at the time that I found his comments to be anti-Semitic,” Halteman said. “He was playing into that dual loyalty thing.”
  Hagel alone among U.S. senators abandoned Russia’s Jews. As David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, told the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin: “The first AJC encounter with Senator Hagel I recall was when we sought his support, in 1999, for a Senate letter to then–Russian president Boris Yeltsin urging action against rising anti-Semitism. We were unsuccessful. On June 20, 1999, we published the letter as a full-page ad in The New York Times with 99 Senate signatories. Only Senator Hagel’s name was absent.”


  Hagel was one of only four senators who refused to sign a Senate letter supporting Israel during Yasser Arafat’s terrorist Intifada in 2000.
  “The State Department has become adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister’s office,” Hagel reportedly remarked in a speech at Rutgers University in March 2007.
 “Like many other data points emerging since Hagel’s nomination,” John Podhoretzobserved in February 15’s New York Post, “this one emits a faint but distinct odor of a classic anti-Semitic stereotype — Jews as secret marionetteers, pulling the strings of unsuspecting Gentiles.
  “The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here” on Capitol Hill, Hagel told Aaron David Miller in 2008.
  That year, Hagel praised Miller’s book about the Middle East.
“If you want to read something that is very, very enlightening, this guy he’s getting tremendous reviews on it,” Hagel said. “He’s Jewish. He worked in the State Department, worked for Baker, worked for Albright, I think he’s worked for four secretaries of state, different Democrats, Republicans.”
“‘He’s Jewish,’” wrote Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. “Isn’t there something creepy and disquieting about that interjection? . . . Why does Hagel call attention to the religion of the American diplomat whose book he’s praising? . . . Wouldn’t it be good to have a secretary of defense whose first thought isn’t the religious affiliation of Americans who participate in foreign policy debates?”
  “I’m a United States senator,” Hagel declared in 2008. “I’m not an Israeli senator.”
“We believe that when Senator Hagel said that he was not an ‘Israeli Senator,’ that he was a U.S. Senator, he strongly implied that some of his colleagues have a greater loyalty to Israel than to the United States,” stated Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, named after the late and legendary Nazi hunter. “That crosses the line.”
• Prominent Jewish Nebraskans have felt Hagel’s cold shoulder.
“During his last year in office, we knew he was not going to run again, he never returned any of our calls,” Jewish activist Gary Javitch told the Algemeiner website on December 21. “I have always gotten callbacks, even as a turn-down.”
“He was not the most responsive politician in Nebraska to me personally at the Jewish Press and to the Jewish community as a whole,” said Carol Katzman, the former editor of theOmaha Jewish Press. Nebraska’s representatives otherwise “were all very responsive,” she said. “It didn’t really matter what their party affiliation was, if we were soliciting them for an interview or a greeting ad for Rosh Hashanah or Passover.” However, “Hagel’s office never even responded. . . . We would make repeated calls” that went unanswered, she added. “It was pretty obvious that he and his staff were dismissive.” Katzman concluded: “Hagel was the only one we have had in Nebraska who basically showed the Jewish community that he didn’t give a damn about the Jewish community or any of our concerns.”
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