Saturday, January 18, 2014

Obama Masticates Or Blows More Smoke?

Obama did what he does best yesterday regarding his solution to  complaints about the NSA  snooping etc.- he masticated.

He began by walking us through government intelligence starting with  Paul Revere. When it came to concluding what to do he gave the appearance of doing something but, in my opinion, it all amounts to sound and fury.

Granted Obama's problem is of Solomonic proportions because he had to balance between protecting the nation versus protecting our personal freedoms. Of course, when campaigning for the presidency Obama was hell bent to blame GW and was all for protecting personal freedom. Subsequently he embraced most of what GW installed but made the job somewhat more difficult by downplaying the word terrorist and doing what he could to change the mindset of those responsible for national security.  Obama also swore to close Guantanamo, which remains open, so instead he is slowly emptying it of its patrons.  Perhaps bin Laden's chauffeur is next because 'bin' no longer has need of such since he rests at the bottom with Davey!

If I understand what Obama is going to do, he proposes adding another layer of decision making regarding granting warrants which sounds good but will accomplish little and possibly gum  up the existing approach. Then, he wants some external institution to collect and store what the NSA harvests but like the joke I often tell - John Henry don't want the ball, ie. Ma Bell does not want to hide all this stuff underneath her skirt.

As noted previously, when Obama ran for the presidency he was quick to criticize GW, but now that he stands in the same shoes he is hard pressed to reach a solution that is particularly credible and since he is no longer trusted his job becomes even more difficult and whatever his decisions they are more suspect.

Obama dug his own grave and  has no one to blame but himself and, over time,  we are likely to suffer for elevating him to the land's highest office more than we have already. (See 1 and 1a below.)
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My friend, John Fund, calls Sen. Coburn a mensch!  He will be sorely missed.  Is Reid's empirical control of the Senate having implications beyond what we can currently measure or is Coburn leaving because of his prostate cancer? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Several op ed pieces worth pondering:  (See 3,3a and 3b below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama Defends Spy Programs, Reins In Some Aspects

President Obama offered a vigorous defense of U.S. signals intelligence gathering Friday, asserting anew that there is no evidence of government abuse of laws when it comes to Americans’ privacy and civil liberties.
Nevertheless, he announced adjustments to some surveillance programs, conceding that new “bulk collection programs” in the future run the risk of disclosing more about citizens’ private lives as technology advances. “I believe we need a new approach,” he said.
Many of the changes Obama ordered on his own, and others he encouraged Congress to consider, would not be immediate and are intended to enhance public confidence about programs he says are effective but were unknown to the public before last year.
“These efforts have prevented multiple attacks and saved innocent lives -- not just here in the United States, but around the globe,” Obama said at the Justice Department after praising the work of the intelligence community.
Lawmakers, security experts and privacy advocates offered mixed reviews after the speech, suggesting that the public debate about the very existence of the phone metadata program had shifted to a complex discussion about modifications, more transparency and annual oversight of laws and practices used by the government to combat terrorism.
Obama said he would alter the National Security Agency’s phone metadata program, which stockpiles information about all phone calls made by and to Americans, by “transitioning” away from archiving such metadata inside the government. That program was secret until disclosed last summer through major newspapers by former federal contractor Edward Snowden.
For now, however, that signals-collection program will continue -- with two procedural adjustments Obama ordered -- while debate continues about how (as an alternative to NSA data-storage) such private-sector communications data would continue to be accessible to the government so it can track plotters and thwart terror attacks. Obama said he was turning to Congress and independent experts to develop practical solutions that might resolve that question, preferably in advance of the law’s reauthorization in late March.
“The reforms I'm proposing today should give the American people greater confidence that their rights are being protected, even as our intelligence and law enforcement agencies maintain the tools they need to keep us safe,” the president said during a 45-minute address.
Senior administration officials confirmed Obama was not proposing changes to other signals-surveillance programs used by NSA and justified under the same section of the law as the metadata phone collection program.
“We’re not addressing any other potential programs with regard to [Section] 215” beyond “bulk telephony metadata,” a senior administration official said, referencing Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act.
A trio of Democratic senators who are members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee said after the speech that they plan to continue pushing for additional reforms in Congress, despite their praise for Obama’s “intent” to end the phone metadata program.
“In particular, we will work to close the [NSA] `back-door searches’ loophole, and ensure that the government does not read Americans’ emails or other communications without a warrant,” Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Mark Udall of Colorado, and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said in a jointly issued statement.
The senators’ mention of a loophole pointed to the NSA’s power to collect the content of electronic communications without a warrant if the target is overseas, not in the United States. Advocates for reform seek to prohibit the NSA from vacuuming up Americans’ phone, email and other electronic data under the guise of working backward through a chain of data from a foreign target.
Obama said he was responsive to concerns about the NSA’s “Section 702” program by directing the attorney general and the director of national intelligence “to institute reforms that place additional restrictions on government's ability to retain, search and use in criminal cases communications between Americans and foreign citizens incidentally collected under Section 702.”
Privacy advocates and civil liberties groups said the president’s desire to overhaul the NSA’s bulk phone data collection program was laudable, but that he should end a program that his own independent signals-intelligence review panel told him had not dismantled a single terrorist plot.
“The right answer here is to stop the bulk collection completely -- not to keep the same bulk data under a different roof,” said Kevin Bankston, policy director for New America’s Open Technology Institute, a nonprofit policy advocacy organization.
“The president should end -- not mend -- the government’s collection and retention of all law-abiding Americans’ data,” the American Civil Liberties Union argued in a statement that otherwise commended Obama’s interest in transparency, outside advocacy and extension of some U.S. surveillance protections to foreign citizens.
Obama started off his speech with a reference to Paul Revere, and continued with two mentions of Snowden, a detailed reference to phone chatter between 9/11 plotters, and closed with terse swipes at the governments of China and Russia for their privacy-rights critiques of the administration.
Obama said he sought to reassure allied heads of state and government that their phone calls are no longer subject to NSA surveillance, unless the United States decides such surveillance is justified by national security concerns. A senior administration official, briefing reporters before Friday’s speech, confirmed that “dozens” of world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, were part of the NSA surveillance of international phone communications, revealed last year by Snowden, who is now living in exile in Russia.
Obama’s no-spying-on-foreign-leaders order does not extend to foreign officials and aides close to heads of state who are deemed friends of the United States, a senior administration official clarified to reporters before the president’s remarks. “We focused on heads of state and government. Frankly, that was the issue that had emerged. We do believe that's a unique category,” the official said. “Having looked at this issue and having reviewed our signals intelligence, we have made determinations to not pursue surveillance on dozens of heads of state and government.”
During his speech, Obama said he was content to pick up his phone to get information from world leaders rather than spy on their communications. “I've made clear to the intelligence community that unless there is a compelling national security purpose, we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies,” he said.
Responding to complaints from private communications companies that turn over customers’ information to the government, Obama said he would increase the transparency of those secret government orders, known as national security letters. He said he wants to terminate the secrecy “within a fixed period,” and wants to permit companies to make public more information about their cooperation with the government

As expected, lawmakers’ reactions to the changes Obama advocated varied, including his recommendations to punt some decisions to Congress.
House Speaker John Boehner suggested the president’s announcements were politically motivated to respond to public anxieties, and risked handcuffing U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
“I look forward to learning more about how the new procedure for accessing data will not put Americans at greater risk,” Boehner said in a statement. “The House will review any legislative reforms proposed by the administration, but we will not erode the operational integrity of critical programs that have helped keep America safe."
Kentucky conservative Sen. Rand Paul, who is mulling a presidential run in 2016, said the final word on NSA surveillance would come from the judicial branch, not the executive or legislative branches.
“This is something that’s going to have to be decided by the Supreme Court,” he said during a CNN interview.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, who attended Obama’s speech, said Congress should amend the provisions of laws used to authorize the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone data, which were enacted as part of the Patriot Act.
“The President has ordered some significant changes, but more are needed,” Leahy said in a statement. “Section 215 must still be amended, legislatively, to ensure it is not used for dragnet surveillance in the future, and we must fight to create an effective, institutional advocate at the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court. I will continue to push for meaningful legislative reforms to our surveillance laws.”
Obama endorsed a number of changes involving the secret FISA Court, which is part of the judiciary and was established by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The president said he wanted the NSA, during a transition phase before its metadata stockpiling may end, to relinquish its sole authority to search the phone data for connections to suspected terrorists. Moving forward, “the database can be queried only after a judicial finding or in the case of a true emergency,” Obama said, adding that he tasked Attorney General Eric Holder to work with the FISA Court to develop a new layer of oversight and approval.
He did not elaborate about the standards his top law enforcement official and the country’s secret intelligence judges would set to permit the intelligence community to execute those searches through phone data.
In the past, NSA said that fewer than 24 intelligence officials possessed the authority to approve such queries.
The president also asked Congress to create a new panel of counsels with classified clearances to advocate for the public interest before the FISA Court, as a way to “offer additional advocacy and outside perspectives on significant issues,” one senior administration official explained.
RCP congressional reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns contributed to this report. 

1a)Obama's NSA Proposals Fall Far 

Short of Real Change




By 

The White House's tepid plan aims to calm the public, not curtail the government's

 surveillance programs.


The White House promised Friday that it was ending the NSA's most controversial surveillance program "as it currently exists." But make no mistake, it's still going to exist.
In fact, what President Obama has announced will have little operational effect on the National Security Agency's collection of Americans' data. And, significantly, the administration has attempted to dodge some of the biggest decisions, passing the ball to Congress, which will likely do nothing if recent trends hold.
Much of the attention in the run-up to the speech involved the NSA's retention and search of so-called metadata—calling records, including calls made by U.S. citizens, that help the government identify potential terrorist relationships. And the president didn't come close to what privacy advocates have wanted—a sharp culling of the program or its outright termination.
Instead, the goal of Friday's announcement —as it has always been—was to reassure a skittish public both here and abroad that the program is being used responsibly. "This is a capability that needs to be preserved," a senior administration official said.

After Friday, keep in mind how the status quo has, or has not, been altered:
1) The phone metadata still exists.
2) It will be kept, at least in the short-term, by the government until Congress figures out what to do with it. (And don't think the telecom lobby won't play a role in that.)
3) It will be searched.
4) Searches will be approved by a court with a record of being friendly to the government, one without a new privacy advocate.
5) National security letters can still be issued by the FBI without a court order.
6) Much of this activity will remain secret.
The president made two major policy prescriptions. First, he called for the data to be housed somewhere other than within the government. Second, he said before the NSA can search the calling-record database, it should obtain judicial approval.
To the first, the president would not specify where the data will be ultimately stored. He wants the Justice Department and the intelligence community to come up with a proposal within 60 days. The administration is reluctant to force telecom providers to house the data, both because of logistical problems and because the industry wants nothing to do with it. Some have suggested creating a private consortium, but that will take time. And if it proves that there is no better place to keep the data, it well could remain with the U.S. government. (Sounds a little like GITMO.)
To the second of Obama's measures, judicial oversight will come in the form of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which critics say acts as a rubber stamp for government surveillance requests, rather than by more independent-minded federal judges on other courts. The Wall Street Journal last year estimated the Court rejects less than 1 percent of all requests; the chief judge has maintained that it sends back up to 25 percent. Either way, the overwhelming majority of requests are granted unimpeded, particularly when the requests are time-sensitive.
Tellingly, the president rejected a recommendation from an outside panel to establish a "public advocate" inside the Court to represent privacy interests. Instead, he wants an outside group of experts to consult on cutting-edge legal matters, not on day-to-day surveillance requests.
Yes, the FISA review adds an extra step to the process (one that may frustrate counterterror hawks), but it likely will do little to restrain the NSA. (The president is taking one concrete step, limiting searches to two "hops" away from a subject's phone number, not three.)
The president also rejected a recommendation that the so-called national security letters used by the FBI to obtain business records from investigation targets be subject to judicial approval, after the bureau objected to the idea.
Most important, many of the recommendations the president made Friday are perishable. Ultimately Congress will have to determine the data-collection and storage issues and other major elements of the program, including the procedures of the FISA court, when it reauthorizes the NSA program this spring at the end of the 60-day window outlined by the president.
And it's possible Congress could choose to keep it in its current form, officials concede.
Senior administration officials maintain that none of these surveillance programs have been abused—and that they remain a valuable tool in combating national security threats (despite little evidence the metadata program has played a direct role in foiling an attack). It's why President Obama was quick to mention the 9/11 attacks in his remarks Friday. And it's why, in his mind, reform could really only go so far.
As it turned it, it wasn't very far at all.

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2)Senator Tom Coburn, a True Citizen-Politician, to Retire


Washington devotees of business-as-usual won’t miss him, but taxpayers and reporters will. Tom Coburn, the refreshingly principled senator from Oklahoma, has announced he will leave office at the end of 2014 as he battles a recurrence of prostate cancer.
Although he will be leaving office two years before his term is up, Tom Coburn was never going to be one of those who became married to the Beltway. A physician, he made you think he really meant it when he said he’d rather be back home delivering babies — which he indeed continued to do for several years in spite of congressional ethics rules. “Our Founders saw public service and politics as a calling rather than a career,” he said in a written statement announcing his retirement.

Tom Coburn was a true citizen-politician when first elected to the House in 1994 from a solidly Democratic district in Oklahoma. Although wildly popular back home, Mr. Coburn retired in 2001 after three terms because he feared that he might succumb to “Potomac Fever” if he stayed longer. He has joked that many of his former colleagues are suffering from an addiction. “Power is like morphine,” he writes. “It dulls the senses, impairs judgment, and leads politicians to make choices that damage their own character and the machinery of democracy.”

Coburn helped end the practice of members “earmarking” pork-barrel projects in late-night committee hearings for special interests back home. But so much of Congress’s dysfunction remains. A sore spot with him is that members of Congress frequently don’t have time to read the bills they are voting on. Thus Congress spends more than $150 billion every year on more than 200 programs that are not authorized by law. Making room for all that spending in turn requires Congress to use “one-time” increases — often “emergency spending” measures — year after year. Small wonder that the late Representative James Burke of Massachusetts once told an innocent freshman: “Your problem, son, is that you think this place is on the level.”

Tom Coburn never came to believe Washington was on the level, but he still did a fair bit to correct the lean of the ship of state.

2a) How Harry Reid Is Destroying the Senate

We often hear that Washington is “broken,” that Congress is “gridlocked,” and so on. While such complaints are usually imprecise and sometimes misguided, the sense that Congress is not functioning as intended is correct. Yesterday Senator Jeff Sessions delivered an important speech in which he decried the decline of the Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid. The extent to which the Senate’s traditions have been undermined to the detriment of all Americans is not generally appreciated, but the issue is a vital one. Senator Sessions said:

The Senate is where the great issues of our time are supposed to be examined, reviewed, and discussed before the whole nation. Yet, in the last few years, we have witnessed the dramatic erosion of Senators’ rights and the dismantling of the open legislative process.

We fund the government through massive omnibus bills that no one has had the time to read or analyze. Senators are stripped of their right to offer amendments. Bills are rushed through under threat of panic, crisis, or shutdown. Secret deals rule the day, and millions of Americans are essentially robbed of their ability to participate in the legislative process.

Under the tenure of Majority Leader Reid, the Senate is rapidly losing its historic role as a great deliberative body. 

If this continues, America will have lost something very precious.

One of the tactics by which Majority Leader Reid has suppressed Senators’ rights and blocked open debate has been a technique called “filling the tree.” What this means, basically, is that when a bill comes to the floor, the Leader will use his right of first recognition to fill all of the available amendment slots on a bill and block any other Senator from offering amendments. One man stands in the way of his 99 colleagues. But, not alone really. His power exists only as long as his majority concurs and supports his actions. This prevents the body from working its will, it prevents legislation from being improved, and it prevents Senators from being held accountable by their votes on the great issues of the day. That is, of course, why it’s done.

Our Majority Leader has used this tactic—filling the tree—80 times. To put this in perspective, the six previous Majority Leaders filled the tree 49 times—combined. Senator Reid has filled the tree on 30 more occasions than all of the six previous Majority Leaders did cumulatively over their tenures.

In so doing, the Leader denies the citizens of each state their equal representation in the Senate. Majority Leader Reid, in his effort to protect his conference from casting difficult votes—in order to shield his Majority from accountability—has essentially closed the amendment process. He has shut down one of the most important functions that Senators exercise to represent the interests of their constituents.

Recently, this tactic manifested itself in a dramatic way. To the surprise and shock of many, the December spending agreement contained a provision that cut the lifetime pension payments of current and future military retirees—including wounded warriors—by as much as $120,000. I and other Senators had many ideas for how to fix this problem, but we were blocked from offering them by the Majority Leader. I tried to offer an amendment to replace the cuts by closing a fraud loophole used by illegal immigrants (and cited by the Department of the Treasury) to claim billions in free tax credits. But Reid—and all his conference members save one—stood together to block my amendment.

So I would ask my colleagues: Are you comfortable with this? Do you like having to beg and plead for the right to offer an amendment? Do you believe the Senate should operate according to the power of just one man?
The omnibus bill, though it restores pensions for our heroic wounded warriors, leaves more than 90% of the cuts in place. Shouldn’t we be allowed to offer amendments to provide a fair fix for all of our nation’s veterans?
But blocking amendments is only one of the many abuses that have occurred.

The erosion of the Senate has also been front and center in the budgeting process. We are now in our fifth year without adopting a congressional budget resolution. Instead, taxpayer dollars are spent through a series of backroom deals and last-minute negotiations. Then we face a massive omnibus that is rushed to passage without amendment or meaningful review. The American people have no real ability to know what’s in it or hold us, their elected representatives, accountable. This, of course, is the reason it is done this way.

Now, the House and Senate are considering another catch-all omnibus spending bill—one that will spend more than a trillion dollars—with thousands of items of government spending crammed into a single legislative proposal. This bill will be sped through under threat of a government shutdown, with very little debate, and no ability to amend. It is another “pass it to find out what’s in it” moment.

My staff and I have had less than 48 hours to digest this behemoth, but already we’ve found provisions that would not survive if considered under regular order.

How is the process supposed to work? Each year, Congress is supposed to adopt a budget resolution. Then, based on spending levels contained in the budget resolution, individual committees report out authorization bills based on the expertise and experience of the members serving on those committees. Then, the 12 subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee produce appropriations bill for their area of the budget—such as Defense, or Homeland Security, or Agriculture—which are individually considered, debated, and amended on the Senator floor.

This gives each member—and their constituents—a chance to review and analyze each part of the budget and offer suggestions for saving money, improving efficiency, and better serving taxpayers.

But under the tenure of Majority Leader Reid, the budgeting process has been totally mismanaged. We have ceased consideration of appropriations bills altogether, relying more and more on autopilot resolutions and catch-all behemoth spending packages. In fiscal year 2006, for example, every single appropriations bill was debated, amended, and passed in the Senate. In 2013, none were.

In my first year as a Senator, we passed every appropriation bill as we should—we marked up a bill in committee, debated and amended the bill on the floor, went to conference with the House to settle our disagreements, and then sent a bill to the President for his signature. Over time, however, that’s happened less and less frequently to the point where nowadays, we don’t debate appropriation bills at all.

A more ominous development, however, is how the breakdown of the appropriations process in the Senate is now infecting the House of Representatives, and spreading like the plague. In the first year of their majority, the Republican-led House marked up six appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate. The Senate didn’t consider a single one. Last year, the House passed eight appropriation bills and sent them to the Senate. Again the Senate didn’t act. This year, the futility of the House efforts began to show as the House passed only four bills. But why should they? Why should the House expose their members to politically tough votes when they know the Senate won’t?

All of us, both parties, have a responsibility to stop and reverse these trends. It’s in the national interest. It’s the right thing to do. All of us have a responsibility to return to regular order. All of us owe our constituents an open, deliberative process where the great issues of the day are debated in full and open public view. Each Senator must stand and be counted—not hide under the table.

The democratic process is messy, sometimes contentious, and often difficult. But it is precisely this legislative tug of war, this back and forth, which forges national consensus. While secret deals may keep the trains running on time, they often keep them running in the wrong direction. Secret deals rushed through without public involvement only deepen our divisions, delay progress, increase distrust, and make it harder to achieve the kinds of real reforms the American people have been thirsting for.

Having to cast many votes on tough issues clarifies those issues and the differences. I believe that process, openly conducted, can lay the groundwork for progress. It will clarify facts, and then lead to the finding of common ground. Only through an open legislative process can we create the kind of dialogue, the kind of debate, and ultimately, the kind of change necessary to put this country back on the right track.
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3)A great article by William Murchison on where the liberal philosophy has shot America in the arse!  


The main stream media won't touch this with honesty.


Unless 2014 flushes the toilet in congress and replaces some folks we're done for!



With the 50th anniversary of the war on poverty at hand, the New York Times undertook a guided tour of the vast and murky battlefield, offering a surprising -- for the Times -- admission. To wit, poverty isn't just about what the government does, or doesn't do, for poor people. It's about, in part, how poor people live, voluntarily or otherwise.

The Times didn't make a big deal about what it called "sociological trends (that) help explain why so many children and adults remain poor, even putting the effects of the recession aside." That the story so much as acknowledged the impoverishing effects of family breakdown is the really big deal, given the broad commitment of American liberals to the notion of job-training, better education, minimum-wage hikes and so on as the keys to overthrowing "inequality."

"More parents," the Times story notes, "are raising a child alone, with more infants born out of wedlock. High incarceration rates, especially among black men, keep many families apart. About 30 percent of single mothers live in poverty."
So what? So everything -- razor-sharp and hard to grasp as the question may be to grasp. If the poor are always with us, never in modern times has the culture afforded them so few props and protections as those available today. The Times has brilliant company in asking readers to think about the consequences of letting -- or encouraging -- the culture to fall apart.

Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute has written on the topic with particular wisdom and with particularly painful insight. Two years ago, in "Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010," Murray took aim at the cultural factors that inform poverty and dysfunction. Of America at the time of the Kennedy assassination, he writes: "Marriage was nearly universal and divorce was rare across all races." The Americans of that time knew enough and understood enough to put the cultivation of virtue at the apex of their civic aspirations. Upon virtue depended liberty. With dedication to an overarching standard of behavior went acknowledgement of supernatural religion as the source of good.

This was before the uproars and disruptions that followed, the consequence of which was the exaltation of individual appetites over any cultural factors that restrained those appetites -- the longing for divorce, let's say; hostility or indifference toward "the products of conception," also known as unborn babies; the shrugging-off of responsibility for children actually born. Government actually conspired to satisfy these appetites by, among other things, authorizing no-fault divorce and daring defenders of unborn life to try and stop a woman bent on having an abortion. Pure grants of taxpayer money -- Aid to Families with Dependent Children comes to mind, a poverty-war artillery piece that overheated and blew up -- encouraged the very opposite of initiative. A client of government not always but too often comes to enjoy that status. And, in consequence, remains poor.

No human problem is older, or more tenacious, than poverty. Or more complex. Ages before Lyndon Johnson, haggard beggars squatted or slept in the streets of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The great mistake of "war on poverty" programs, except being tools to win votes, was the assumption that poverty equates to too little money. We may be learning that poverty of mind and of spirit can be as damaging a factor as an empty wallet or an overdue mortgage.

Murray's point about the family and its modern deterioration is urgent. "No matter what the outcome being examined," he writes -- including bad behavior, school problems and sexual attitudes -- "the family structure that produces the best outcomes for children, on average, are two biological parents who remain married."

No television Bible-swatter is talking here; a sociologist speaks -- an observer of behaviors, a sorter-outer of competing human claims. He isn't pleased by what he sees; and neither should the rest of us be. Fifty years into the all-out assault on economic dejection, the battlefield is distinguished mostly by shell holes. A few more birds sing now -- barely enough to be heard.

3a)"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive"
Subject:  COINCIDENCE?

Nothing new, but interesting how all this fits together.     
COINCIDENCE?  

Any one of these 'coincidences' when taken singularly appear to not mean much, but when taken as a whole, a computer would blow a main circuit if you asked it to calculate the odds that they have occurred by chance alone.  Sit back, get a favorite beverage, and then read and ponder the Obama-related 'coincidences', then super-impose the bigger picture of most recent events i.e. Fast and furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the NSA revelations ... then pray for our country.

Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama�s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing�which eventually just happened to require demolition.
Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and just happened to hire Michelle LaVaughan Robinson (later Mrs. Obama), who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernardine Dohrn also just happened to work, and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.

Bernardine Dohrn just happened to be married to William Ayers, with whom she just happened to have hidden from the FBI at a San Francisco marina, along with Donald Warden, who just happened to change his name to Khalid al-Mansour, and Warden/al-Mansour just happened to be a mentor of Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and a close associate of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and al-Mansour just happened to be financial adviser to a Saudi Prince, who just happened to donate cash to Harvard, for which Obama just happened to get a critical letter of recommendation from Percy Sutton, who just happened to have been the attorney for Malcolm X, who just happened to know Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, who just happened to be a close friend of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., who just happened to meet Malcolm X when he traveled to Kenya.

Obama, Sr. just happened to have his education at the University of Hawaii paid for by the Laubach Literacy Institute, which just happened to have been supported by Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who just happened to be a friend of Malcolm X, who just happened to have been associated with the Nation of Islam, which was later headed by Louis Farrakhan, who just happens to live very close to Obama's Chicago mansion, which also just happens to be located very close to the residence of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who just happen to have been occasional baby-sitters for Malia and Natasha Obama, whose parents just happened to have no concern exposing their daughters to bomb-making communists.

After attending Occidental College and Columbia University, where he just happened to have foreign Muslim roommates, Obama moved to Chicago to work for the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization that just happened to have been founded by Marxist and radical agitator Saul "the Red" Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, who just happened to be the topic of Hillary Rodham Clinton's thesis at Wellesley College, and Obama's $25,000 salary at IAF just happened to be funded by a grant from the Woods Fund, which was founded by the Woods family, whose Sahara Coal company just happened to provide coal to Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO just happened to be Thomas Ayers, whose son William Ayers just happened to serve on the board of the Woods Fund, along with Obama.

Obama also worked on voter registration drives in Chicago in the 1980s and just happened to work with leftist political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist International (SI), through which Obama met Carl Davidson, who just happened to travel to Cuba during the Vietnam War to sabotage the U.S. war effort, and who just happened to be a former member of the SDS and a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which just happened to sponsor a 2002 anti-war rally at which Obama spoke, and which just happened to have been organized by Marilyn Katz, a former SDS activist and later public relations consultant who just happened to be a long-time friend of Obama's political hatchet man, David Axelrod.

Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), whose pastor was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a fiery orator who just happened to preach Marxism and Black Liberation Theology and who delivered anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-American sermons, which Obama just happened never to hear because he just happened to miss church only on the days when Wright was at his "most enthusiastic," and Obama just happened never to notice that Oprah Winfrey left the church because it was too radical, and just happened never to notice that the church gave the vile anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award.

Although no one had ever heard of him at the time, Obama just happened to receive an impossible-to-believe $125,000 advance to write a book about race relations, which he just happened to fail to write while using the cash to vacation in Bali with his wife Michelle, and despite his record of non-writing he just happened to receive a second advance, for $40,000, from another publisher, and he eventually completed a manuscript called Dreams From My Father, which just happened to strongly reflect the writing style of William Ayers, who just happened to trample on an American flag for the cover photograph of the popular Chicago magazine, which Obama just happened never to see even though it appeared on newsstands throughout the city.

Obama was hired by the law firm Miner, Banhill and Galland, which just happened to specialize in negotiating state government contracts to develop low-income housing, and which just happened to deal with now-imprisoned Tony Rezko and his firm Rezar, and with slumlord Valerie Jarrett, and the law firm's Judson Miner just happened to have been a classmate of Bernardine Dohrn, wife of William Ayers.
In 1994 Obama represented ACORN and another plaintiff in a lawsuit against Citibank for denying mortgages to blacks (Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank), and the lawsuit just happened to result in banks being blackmailed into approving subprime loans for poor credit risks, a trend which just happened to spread nationwide, and which just happened to lead to the collapse of the housing bubble, which just happened to help Obama defeat John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In 1996 Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate and joined the "New Party," which just happened to promote Marxism, and Obama was supported by Dr. Quentin Yong, a socialist who just happened to support a government takeover of the health care system.
In late 1999 Obama purportedly engaged in homosexual activities and cocaine-snorting in the back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair, who claims he was contacted in late 2007 by Donald Young, who just happened to be the gay choir director of Obama's Chicago church and who shared information with Sinclair about Obama, and Young just happened to be murdered on December 23, 2007, just weeks after Larry Bland, another gay member of the church, just happened to be murdered, and both murders just happened to have never been solved. In 2008 Sinclair held a press conference to discuss his claims, and just happened to be arrested immediately after the event, based on a warrant issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who just happens to be the son of Joe Biden.

In 2003 Obama and his wife attended a dinner in honor of Rashid Khalidi, who just happened to be a former PLO operative, harsh critic of Israel, and advocate of Palestinian rights, and who Obama claims he does not know, even though the Obamas just happened to have dined more than once at the home of Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and just happened to have used them as occasional baby-sitters. Obama reportedly praised Khalidi at the decidedly anti-Semitic event, which William Ayers just happened to also attend, and the event Obama pretends he never attended was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network, to which Obama just happened to have funneled cash while serving on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers, and one speaker at the dinner remarked that if Palestinians cannot secure a return of their land, Israel "will never see a day of peace," and entertainment at the dinner included a Muslim children's dance whose performances just happened to include simulated beheadings with fake swords, and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags, and Obama allegedly told the audience that "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" and there has been "genocide against the Palestinian people by (the) Israelis," and the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of the event but just happens to refuse to make it public.
In the 2004 Illinois Democrat primary race for the U.S. Senate, front-runner Blair Hull just happened to be forced out of the race after David Axelrod just happened to manage to get Hull's sealed divorce records unsealed, which just happened to enable Obama to win the primary, so he could face popular Republican Jack Ryan, whose sealed child custody records from his divorce just happened to become unsealed, forcing Ryan to withdraw from the race, which just happened to enable the unqualified Obama to waltz into the U.S. Senate, where, after a mere 143 days of work, he just happened to decide he was qualified to run for President of the United States.


3b)NEW FRONTIERS IN SCANDAL MANAGEMENT


This past summer on the NRO cruise of the Norwegian fjords I shot four videos with Cleta Mitchell to provide a brief tour of the IRS scandals. The videos are posted here (part 1), here (part 2),here (part 3) and here (part 4). All four videos are posted on this Power Line YouTube page as well.
Cleta is the prominent Washington attorney who represents several clients victimized by the criminal misconduct of the IRS over the past four years. She knows what she is talking about.
The charge that Richard Nixon attempted to misuse the IRS for political purposes made its way into the second of the three articles of impeachment against him. Nixon “endeavoured” to misuse the IRS, in the fancy British spelling of the word used in article 2. As I have repeatedly tried to point out (hereherehere and, most recently, here), Nixon’s efforts to misuse the IRS were futile. They went nowhere. Nixon and his henchmen desired that the IRS “screw” the administration’s political opponents, but their efforts were a pathetic failure.
Nixon henchman Jack Caulfield astutely complained that the IRS was a “monstrous bureaucracy…dominated and controlled by Democrats.” As we have come to see, Caulfield was on to something. By contrast with Nixon’s failures to misuse the IRS, the IRS has very effectively “screwed” Obama’s political opponents, and we have yet to learn what the president knew and when he knew it.
Barack Obama could teach Richard Nixon a thing or two, not only about misusing the IRS, but also about scandal management. Yesterday Cleta explained in an indignant Washington Examiner column:
In May, President Obama hurriedly called a White House news conference to stem the outrage about the IRS’s admitted targeting of conservative groups, and emphatically told the nation: “I will not tolerate this kind of behavior in any agency but especially in the IRS, given the power that it has and the reach that it has into all of our lives.” He appointed Attorney General Eric Holder to conduct a criminal investigation into possible wrongdoing — and since then, many of us have wondered, when actually is this investigation going to start?
Last week, we learned that the head of the “probe,” Barbara Bosserman, is a donor to Obama campaigns and the Democratic National Committee. This is, someone who could hardly be trusted to understand what all the fuss is about.
Now we learn that the FBI has “concluded” that there was no actual illegal activity involved in the IRS scandal, conclusions reached without ever speaking to a single conservative or Tea Party organization leader or attorney to learn what actually happened these past four years.
Having represented dozens of groups before the IRS over the years, including many victimized by the IRS in this scandal, one might have thought the FBI might have called me or even one of my clients.
But, to paraphrase the song, if our telephone ain’t ringin,’ I guess it must be the FBI “investigating” the IRS.
Had the FBI bothered to contact or interview me, any of my clients, or anyone who actually could tell the FBI what the IRS did, we could have provided some specific facts about the IRS scandal.
And here are some additional inquiries I would have suggested:
• What did the FBI do in terms of investigating the obvious lies to Congress in 2012 by assorted IRS officials who claimed there was ‘no targeting’ of conservative organizations? Last time I checked, it is a felony to lie to Congress (ask Roger Clemens).
• Did the FBI investigate why Catherine Engelbrecht in Houston was visited by the FBI seven times, was audited by the IRS both personally and in her family business, was visited by OSHA and ATF (twice), all within 18 months of her filing exempt organization applications with the IRS for two conservative groups?
• Did the FBI investigate whether there were illegal political considerations related to the audits of conservative organizations and donors nationwide — and the correlation of that widespread abuse of conservative citizens to the targeting of the conservative organizations?
In short, how can there be any semblance of legitimacy to an investigation when none of the victims were even interviewed?
And what crimes should have been on the radar screen of the FBI in a real investigation, in addition to lying to Congress? How about abuse of power and abuse of the public trust? What about honest services fraud?
As Daniel Henninger explains in his weekly Wall Street Journal column this morning:
Thus, two of the most powerful public institutions in the U.S.—the FBI and the IRS—have concluded no harm, no foul, and the memory hole swallows the Obama administration’s successful kneecapping of the GOP’s most active members just as they prepared to participate in the 2012 presidential campaign. Many—ruined or terrified by the IRS probes—shut down. Mr. Obama won.
Just in case you were wondering.
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