Victim Hood, Hypocrisy and A Poke In The Chest!

With help from the world press, media and bleeding hearts the Palestinians have been able to win the propaganda war supporting their 'victim hood status.'

Amazing, that after 60 years and billions of aid they still remain victims. In truth, their victim hood, is a by product of their own misguided and corrupt leadership and their own willing follow ship.

The world loves victims and it gives the media and news folks something to write about and wring their pens over. (See 1 below.)
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Buchanan snarls a lot but on this matter I happen to agree it is time to be outspoken. Like (1 below) there is too much hypocrisy associated with claims of black victim hood.(See 2 below.)

Then please watch "THE VOTE PUMP" By Bill Whittle for some revealing information:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u24nH03NccI#! |
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Have no way of verifying but often correct. (See 3 below.)
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Maureen Dowd pokes a finger into President Solyndra's chest. (See 4 below.)
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Humor abounds and runs aground:

# How do they serve alcoholic drinks on Italian cruise ships? - On the rocks

# What vegetables do you get with dinner on Italian cruise ships? - Leeks

# What's the fastest way to get off an Italian cruise ship? - Follow the captain

# When the captain of the ill fated Costa Concordia was asked if he knew where he was going he replied "off course."

# So the captain of the Costa Concordia will soon be in the dock. That's more than can be said for his ship.
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Dick
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1)The Palestinian Narrative of Victimhood
By Michael Curtis

A debatable aspect of modern thought is the thesis that the full truth is unknowable and that the interpretation of historical events and present behavior is a "narrative" reflecting the interests of the group that creates it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the narrative created by the Palestinians and their supporters -- a narrative which is used as the basis of an ideological campaign aimed at condemning the State of Israel and undermining its moral fabric.

The building blocks of this narrative are the "original sin" of the creation of Israel, the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948; the belief in Israeli responsibility for violence and the various wars in the Middle East; the conviction that Israel deliberately created the Palestinian refugee situation by preventing their return to the homeland; and the supposed indignities and injustices done to Palestinians who have become victims of Israeli aggression and colonialism.

All of the elements in this false narrative have become instrumental in the campaign to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and even to call for its elimination. But it is the last point, the concept of Palestinian victimhood, which has fueled international support for the Palestinian cause. It accounts for the obsessive concentration on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by so many who view it as the world's most important and dangerous encounter, disregarding the millions killed or oppressed in other countries today.

The narrative of victimhood uses myths and symbols as well as a controversial interpretation of events and actions. Its language at times becomes wildly extreme. Palestinians are termed the "new Jews" suffering a "new Holocaust." Jews are the new Nazis. Excessive rhetoric and idiosyncratic judgments of this kind are rarely, if ever, applied to the truly despotic and authoritarian regimes in the world that commit crimes against humanity and violations of human rights that are not censured.

The narrative denies Jewish historic national identity. The Palestinians have gone so far in efforts to bolster the argument against Jewish connection to the land as to destroy the archeological evidence of the ancient kingdom of Judea. Nor do they accept the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a Jewish historic site.

The formulation of the Palestinian narrative of victimhood is pernicious in a double-sense. It poisons the attitude to Israel and prevents any kind of accommodation or possible negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians to reach a peaceful settlement of the long conflict. It also reinforces the Palestinians' rejection to take positive action to help resolve their problems and becomes an excuse for the failure to develop an infrastructure for their own society or to take advantage of opportunities to found a sovereign state of their own -- opportunities going back as far as the Peel Commission of 1937.

Equally important is the fact that Israel is the political canary warning of the presence of poisonous political traits that intimate impending danger to the world, particularly to the United States and Western democracies. When Western critics concur in the validity of the Palestinian narrative, they take on the stance of moral relativism. They become appeasers with a mindset that has as its outcome an inability or refusal to defend the West against contemporary threats and the clear and present danger to its culture and way of life. At its worst, this leads to the view that the West is in decline, that the "war on terror" is unwinnable or should not be fought, or that the West is to be eternally found guilty for its past colonial empires and activity.
The world has been through this before. Those who ardently accept the Palestinian narrative of victimhood are like the people who willingly believed the Nazi and Stalinist narratives, equally blind to the realities of those horrific totalitarian regimes. Some of those people were well-meaning, but they were of the kind that Lenin once called "political idiots."

To gain a sense of how events are manipulated to create the Palestinian narrative, it's useful to look at some particular examples. Rachel Corrie, who worked with the International Solidarity Movement, was accidently killed in Gaza in 2003 by an Israeli bulldozer that she was deliberately trying to block. She quickly became a symbol of heroic defiance against Israel. The narrative has penetrated the literary, artistic, and theatrical worlds. In her eight-minute play, "Seven Jewish Children," produced in London in 2009, Caryl Churchill builds the plot around the alleged bad treatment by Israelis of Palestinian babies, evoking the historic blood libel charge against Jews.

The Palestinian narrative has benefited from a fanciful, romantic presentation of the superior virtue of Palestinians, regardless of their actual behavior. In this fairy tale, the Palestinians are seen as the embodiment of "the wretched of the earth," the phrase used by Franz Fanon to justify the Algerian struggle against France.

By proclaiming their lack of human rights and their victimhood, the Palestinians have been able to enlist political, economic, military, diplomatic, and propaganda support from individuals and groups who are sympathetic to those they see as subjugated. They have become the main symbol of the oppressed of the world, to the misfortune of Israel.

Using Jews as scapegoats supposedly responsible for most of the problems of the world is a trope of traditional anti-Semitism. By tortuous logic, Israel has become the scapegoat for racism, oppression, and colonialism in the contemporary world. Jewish nationalism is identified as imperialist and racist, while Palestinian nationalism is the nationalism of "the oppressed."
The Palestinians face real problems, as does Israel. It is time to state forthrightly that the Palestinian narrative as presently conceived, with its inherent anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, does not lead to equity for the Palestinians or to steps towards peace. Peace between Israel and the Palestinians can be achieved only when the Palestinians abandon their fallacious narrative and are willing to accept the existence and legitimacy of a Jewish state.

Michael Curtis is a distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University and the author of the forthcoming book Should Israel Exist?: A sovereign nation under attack by the international community.
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2)BUCHANAN TO OBAMA
By Patrick J. Buchanan

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the ' 60's on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream. Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks -- with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants. Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated their time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?

Barack talks about new 'ladders of opportunity' for blacks. Let him go to Altoona. And Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for 'deserving' white kids? Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Taiwan Brawly, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago. This needs to be passed around because, this is a message everyone needs to hear and I am tired of being silent!
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3)US anticipates May as tentative date for clash with Iran. Floating SEALs base for Gulf
boats

A hurried decision not to de-commission the USS Ponce helicopter marine carrier after duty in Libya - but to refit it for deployment by May in the Persian Gulf as a floating base for commando teams - was confirmed by the US Pentagon and Navy Sunday, Jan. 29. This transportable floating base will expand the commandos' range in coastal areas and support counter-measure against mines which Iran has threatened to plant in the Strait of Hormuz in reprisal for the US-EU oil embargo. The SEALs will also take on Iran's menacing fleet of military speedboats.

Tehran operates four different kinds of these craft in the Persian Gulf:

1. Small, fast vessels, each armed with a small missile for striking tankers and coastal oil targets around the Gulf region, such as export terminals. Earlier this month, Tehran claimed to have developed stealth cruise missiles capable of disabling aircraft carriers with a single shot.

2. Small, extra-fast boats armed with torpedoes. Iranian publications claim several such boats are capable of stealing up on US aircraft carriers and large warships from several directions without being detected and cause serious damage.

3. Floating bombs for kamikaze missions. These fast boats cannot be deflected after locking in on target, whether on sea or shore, and explode on contact.

Iran used these floating missiles piloted by suicide squads to attack oil tankers in the Gulf in November 1987. Since then, their naval tacticians have upgraded this fleet with the technology gained from the British Bladerunner 51, a model of which Iran purchased some years ago.
Since early January, the Pentagon has reported four cases of harassment by Iranian military boats sailing close to American warships in the Persian Gulf.

4. Boats carrying teams of Iranian marine frogmen trained for secret suicide underwater missions: One member of the boat's three-man crew dives close to the targeted ship and attaches a magnetic bomb to its hull.

Iran has scattered hundreds of speedboats of different types around uninhabited islands off the Iranian mainland, tucking them out of sight in well-hidden inlets and bays. The US commando teams based on the Ponce platform will have the task of ferreting out and destroying this fleet.
The US Defense Department aims to get the Ponce ready for its new mission as a floating commando base with all possible speed. To save time, the US military published one no-bid contract for the engineering work, waiving normal procurement rules on the grounds that any delay presented a "national security risk."

The contract carries pointers to the timeline expected in Washington for a military confrontation to erupt between the United States and Iran, as well as the form it may take, according to military sources.

The target date for deploying the commando platform in the Persian Gulf in four or five months indicates Washington is preparing for military clashes with Iran in the late spring or early summer.

The Iranian administration has expressed determination to respond instantly to any diplomatic or military move or action of an offensive nature against the Islamic Republic. And so confrontation may come earlier than anticipated.

Sunday, the Iranian parliament was due to vote on a motion to cut off oil supplies to Europe in response to the EU embargo declared last week. Tehran has made it clear it has no intention of standing idly until US and European oil sanctions go fully into effect on July 1 and knows that EU nations are not set up to forego 400,000 barrels of oil a day right now.

Saudi Arabia, which pledged to make up the shortfall arising from oil sanctions against Iran, will not have the missing quantities on stream before May – at about the same time as the Ponce and its complement of SEAL commandoes are due to take up position in the Persian Gulf. Tehran may decide not to wait and opt for letting its speedboats loose before then to try and pre-empt American and European plans.
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4)Tension on the Tarmac
By MAUREEN DOWD



WHAT is it with Barack Obama’s penchant for getting in tangles with blond politicians on airport tarmacs?

Usually, tarmacs are for joyous welcomes or teary goodbyes. But No Drama Obama saves his rare tempests for the runway.

In the last primary season, the tension in the relationship between Hillary Clinton, who had expected to glide to the nomination, and the upstart younger senator from Illinois came to a head one day in December 2007 as both were preparing to board their planes in Washington to go to an Iowa debate.

Hillary had sent word that she wanted to talk to Obama. Standing in front of her plane, she apologized to him for the comments of her co-chairman in New Hampshire, Billy Shaheen, who had warned that Republicans would pounce on Obama’s confessions of cocaine and marijuana use.

But given the opening, Obama dived in, telling Clinton that she should intervene to stop the pattern of insinuations and attacks by her supporters, including one by a volunteer in Iowa who had forwarded an e-mail claiming Obama was a Muslim.

That’s when Hillary got upset and began gesticulating, giving Obama a piece of her mind about what she saw as unfair attacks on his side. Obama gently put his hand on her arm “to chill her out,” as an aide later told me.

But Hillary did not like it, feeling she was being held in place and patronized, even “manhandled,” as her aide put it to a reporter.

On Wednesday, Obama had another bristly tarmac moment with Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, who met Air Force One when the president landed in Phoenix. The toxic dominatrix of illegal immigration, the woman who turned every Latino in her state into a suspect, was flustered and gesticulating at the president as he put his hand on her arm to chill her out. Brewer complained afterward that she had felt “unnerved” and “a little bit threatened” by Obama and that he had walked away while she was in midsentence.

Brewer told Monica Crowley, subbing for Sean Hannity on Fox News, that she had given the president a letter inviting him to join her at the border to discuss enforcement. She said he shot back that her account of a 2010 Oval Office meeting on the topic, published in her book, “Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media and Cynical Politicos to Secure America’s Border,” was distorted.

“He was patronizing,” Brewer wrote about the president in her book, adding: “He’s treating me like the cop he had over for a beer after he bad-mouthed the Cambridge police.” (The president’s recent performances are boosting sales of Brewer’s book and Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”)

With typical Fox balance, Crowley told Governor Brewer that she admired her for “getting in the president’s grill,” adding, “You go, girl.”

The president can be thin-skinned, but the governor can be fat-headed. The Constitution is more threatened by Brewer’s racial profiling than the governor was by the president’s fact-checking. Brewer’s grasp of facts is tenuous, after all: she told The Arizona Republic in 2010 that her father died fighting the Nazis in Germany, when he died a decade after the end of the war, which he spent working at an ammunition factory in Nevada.

Both of Obama’s tarmac tiffs worked in his favor. After his encounter with Hillary, he told advisers that it was the first time he knew he could beat her because he saw fear in her eyes.

After his brouhaha with Brewer, dubbed “the dust-up in the desert,” he became a hero to the Hispanics he had gone West to court. They loved seeing their Cruella de Vil get dressed down.

Everything is breaking Barry’s way, as Mitt and Newt rip into each other in vicious ads and debates like alligators going after house pets.

Romney was tutored in Florida by Brett O’Donnell, a new debate coach. Too bad he can’t find a conviction coach.

O’Donnell manned up Mittens and taught him how to pummel Newt in “moments of strength,” as the Republican strategist Alex Castellanos calls them. The funny thing is that the reason Gingrich soared in South Carolina, before faltering here, was that Republicans are so afraid of debates with the president that they are obsessed with sending forth their toughest adversary for him.

They seem to have forgotten that, while Obama has had dazzling moments of strength in executing Osama and in swashbuckling derring-do against Somali pirates — if not in dealing with Congress — he was no Abe Lincoln in debates. He did not like debating, and Michelle urged him to be more visceral. He often faded onstage because he stubbornly refused to accept debates as alpha combat rather than beta seminars. He disdained anything he saw as superficial politics, from sound bites to macho put-downs.

If Obama continues to resist the gladiatorial subtext, while Romney embraces it, the debates could be more evenly matched than the Republicans dare to dream.
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"The Artist," an An Absolute Must See Movie!

Just came from the silent movie "The Artist." An absolute must see. Fabulous acting.
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Italian Cruise ship captain, Francesco Schettino,
began his new job as a bus driver yesterday.....

Do the two above pictures have a correlation?
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One of my fraternity brothers receives some articulate e mails from his friend and I thought this was worth posting. (See 1 below.)
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This also from a friend and memo reader. Her Marine son just shipped out to Afghanistan. (See 2 below.)
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Gov Brewer's explanation of what happened on the tarmac.  Go Brewer. (See 3 below.)
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President Polarization now officially recorded. (See 4 below.)

Meanhile, Investor's Business Daily editorializes Obama is smothering the recovery with his regulations etc. (See 4a below.)
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America's lumbering high profile fleet 's vulnerability. (See 5 below.)
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Not to be an alarmist but please read this. I don't even own a cell phone. Might be forced to get one. (See 6 below.)
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Dick
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1) OBAMA’S VISION FOR AMERICA
THE NEXT FOUR GREAT YEARS

FIRST, LET’S LOOK AT THE REAL STATE OF THE UNION:
· A FEDERAL DEFICIT WHICH IS FORCING A MASSIVE REDUCTION IN OUR DEFENSE CAPABILITIES…AT A TIME WHEN THERE ARE MORE HOT CONFLICTS AROUND THE WORLD THREATENING OUR SECURITY THAN AT ANY TIME IN OUR HISTORY
· FEDERAL SPENDING OF MONIES WE DON’T HAVE WHICH CONTINUES UNABATED IN ALL OF THE ENTITLEMENT PROGRAMS
· A TAX CODE WHICH DEFIES DEFINITION, PREVENTS FEDERAL REVENUE PROJECTIONS AND LITERALLY OBSTRUCTS TAX COLLECTION
· AN UNYIELDING UNEMPLOYED BASE OF 15 MILLION AMERICANS
· A DECLARED ENEMY NATION – IRAN – WHICH IS SOON TO HAVE ATOMIC BOMBS…IN ABSOLUTE DEFIANCE OF WORLD OPINION AND U.S. POLICY
· A STRATEGIC REGION OF THE WORLD (MIDDLE EAST) WHICH IS ENGAGED IN BLOODY STRUGGLES FOR SELF-DETERMINATION (THE ARAB SPRING) AND WHICH SEEMS TO BE MIGRATING TO ISLAMIST DOMINATION AND A RESULTANT ABROGATION OF ALL UNDERSTANDINGS WITH AMERICA
· A RENEWAL OF TERROR AND MURDER IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN
· AN ALLEGED ALLY (PAKISTAN) WHOSE SECURITY APPARATUS CONTINUALLY SUPPORTS TERRORIST ACTIVITIES AGAINST THE U.S.
· AN AMERICAN ECONOMY WHICH CONTINUES TO WALLOW IN A NON-GROWTH MODE
· AN ALMOST TOTAL LOSS OF DOMESTIC AMERICAN MANUFACTURING FACTORIES…THE BLUE COLLAR IS NOW THE FRAYED COLLAR…OUT OF WORK, OUT OF HOPE AND OUT OF SIGHT
· AN UNSTOPPABLE, RUN-AWAY FREIGHT TRAIN…MEDICAL CARE COSTS…WITH NO PLAN TO BRING IT UNDER CONTROL

SO HOW DOES PRESIDENT OBAMA PLAN TO DEAL WITH THIS MENU OF THREATS TO THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE? HERE ARE THE HIGHLIGHTS OF OBAMA’S STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE…HERE IS HIS GREAT VISION OF THE NEXT FOUR YEARS:

· TAX CODE ADJUSTMENTS TO ENCOURAGE HIGH-TECH MANUFACTURING LIKE SOLYANDRA
· NEW WATCH-DOG AGENCIES TO CHASE CHINESE DVD PIRATES
· A PRESIDENTIAL MANDATE TO ALL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO “STAY IN SCHOOL OR ELSE”!
· FAIRNESS…NOT JOB CREATION TO BE THE DRIVER IN NEW TAX CODE REVISIONS…A MODIFICATION OF THE LENIN/MAO MANIFESTO FOR INCOME REDISTRIBUTION.
· HERE IS OBAMA’S RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION,”WOULD YOU SUPPORT INCREASING THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX IF IT RESULTED IN DECREASED GOVERNMENT REVENUES?” OBAMA SAID “YES…IN THE NAME OF FAIRNESS”.
· HIS SPEECH DID NOT MENTION OBAMA CARE, THE STIMULUS, IRAN, A PROGRAM FOR REAL ECONOMIC GROWTH, REDUCING THE DEFICIT…OTHER THAN TAXING THE RICH…WHO ARE NOT PAYING THEIR “FAIR SHARE”. NO MENTION OF THE FACT THAT IF THE GOVERNMENT CONFISCATED 100% OF INCOME OF THESE FAT CATS IT WOULDN’T AMOUNT TO A DECIMAL POINT IN OUR NATIONAL DEBT!
· IT’S ALL ABOUT FAIRNESS…NOT GROWTH AND NOT SECURITY
· IT’S NOT ABOUT A PRESERVATION OF THE AMERICAN FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM WHICH BUILT THIS NATION
· IT WAS ALL ABOUT GETTING VOTES BY CREATING A TARGET FOR AMERICAN FRUSTRATIONS

THAT IS OBAMA’S GREAT VISION FOR THE NEXT FOUR YEARS! IF THE REPUBLICANS CANNOT BETTER THAT VISION, THEY SHOULD ALL SEEK A CAREER CHANGE!

ABE BERNSTEIN
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2)Obama to the nation: Onward civilian soldiers
By George F. Will

War, said James Madison, is “the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” Randolph Bourne, the radical essayist killed by the influenza unleashed by World War I, warned, “War is the health of the state.” Hence Barack Obama’s State of the Union hymn: Onward civilian soldiers, marching as to war.

Obama, an unfettered executive wielding a swollen state, began and ended his address by celebrating the armed forces. They are not “consumed with personal ambition,” they “work together” and “focus on the mission at hand” and do not “obsess over their differences.” Americans should emulate troops “marching into battle,” who “rise or fall as one unit.”

Well. The armed services’ ethos, although noble, is not a template for civilian society, unless the aspiration is to extinguish politics. People marching in serried ranks, fused into a solid mass by the heat of martial ardor, proceeding in lock step, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders from a commanding officer — this is a recurring dream of progressives eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a free, tumultuous society.

Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands. As a young professor, Woodrow Wilson had lamented that America’s political parties “are like armies without officers.” The most theoretically inclined of progressive politicians, Wilson was the first president to criticize America’s founding. This he did thoroughly, rejecting the Madisonian system of checks and balances — the separation of powers, a crucial component of limited government — because it makes a government that cannot be wielded efficiently by a strong executive.

Franklin Roosevelt agreed. He complained about “the three-horse team of the American system”: “If one horse lies down in the traces or plunges off in another direction, the field will not be plowed.” And progressive plowing takes precedence over constitutional equipoise among the three branches of government. Hence FDR’s attempt to break the Supreme Court to his will by enlarging it.

In his first inaugural address, FDR demanded “broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” He said Americans must “move as a trained and loyal army” with “a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.” The next day, addressing the American Legion, Roosevelt said it was “a mistake to assume that the virtues of war differ essentially from the virtues of peace.” In such a time, dissent is disloyalty.

Yearnings for a command society were common and respectable then. Commonweal, a magazine for liberal Catholics, said that Roosevelt should have “the powers of a virtual dictatorship to reorganize the government.” Walter Lippmann, then America’s preeminent columnist, said: “A mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead.” The New York Daily News, then the nation’s largest-circulation newspaper, cheerfully editorialized: “A lot of us have been asking for a dictator. Now we have one. . . . It is Roosevelt. . . . Dictatorship in crises was ancient Rome’s best era.” The New York Herald Tribune titled an editorial “For Dictatorship if Necessary.”

Obama, aspiring to command civilian life, has said that in reforming health care, he would have preferred an “elegant, academically approved” plan without “legislative fingerprints on it” but “unfortunately” he had to conduct “negotiations with a lot of different people.” His campaign mantra “We can’t wait!” expresses progressivism’s impatience with our constitutional system of concurrent majorities. To enact and execute federal laws under Madison’s institutional architecture requires three, and sometimes more, such majorities. There must be majorities in the House and Senate, each body having distinctive constituencies and electoral rhythms. The law must be affirmed by the president, who has a distinctive electoral base and election schedule. Supermajorities in both houses of Congress are required to override presidential vetoes. And a Supreme Court majority is required to sustain laws against constitutional challenges.

“We can’t wait!” exclaims Obama, who makes recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess, multiplies “czars” to further nullify the Senate’s constitutional prerogative to advise and consent, and creates agencies (e.g., Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board and Dodd-Frank’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) untethered from legislative accountability.

Like other progressive presidents fond of military metaphors, he rejects the patience of politics required by the Constitution he has sworn to uphold.
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3)Gov. Brewer On Her Tarmac Encounter with President Obama
By Elise Cooper

On January 25^th of this year President Obama showed just how unpresidential he is with the confrontation of Governor Jan Brewer (R-AZ). She had every intention to hand him a letter suggesting they meet to discuss Arizona and to welcome him to her state. American Thinker interviewed the Governor about the incident.

The Governor waited on the tarmac as the President approached. Shortly into the conversation, instead of warm wishes, the President brought up her quote about him in her book, Scorpions For Breakfast. She stated in the book,

"But after a few minutes the president's tone got serious -- and condescending.  He proceeded to lecture me about everything he was doing to promote 'comprehensive immigration reform'...he didn't mention the violence on the border, the drug cartels, or the enormous costs being borne by the citizens of states like Arizona...It wasn't long before I realized I was hearing the president's stump speech...His mind seemed made up...He was patronizing...He thinks he can humor me and then get rid of me.  I listened to about ten minutes of this.  Finally, the president's lecture ended and it was my turn...But now I was ready to give him a piece of my mind..." 

 The Governor told American Thinker that she was disappointed that she could not tell the President what she had intended, that "Arizona rose in job growth from 47^th to the top ten, and balanced the budget.  I wanted to explain how we did this by putting a moratorium on rules and regulations to turn the state around.  I was hoping to tell him I was grateful he came to see us. Unfortunately, I did not get to talk with him about any of that.  He turned immediately to my book and told me he didn't like the way he was portrayed in it.  It unnerved me to say the least.  It is my book and my opinion and I have not been challenged on any of the data," including by the President who had over two months to comment on it since its release date.

 Because there are those in his administration who criticize without even reading the document, American Thinker wondered if the Governor asked the President, had he read her book?  The answer she received from him was "I read excerpts." Governor Brewer continued,  "The book is about border security.  He has not come to the border with me and frankly he appeared more concerned with talking about what I said about him in the book and how he was offended.  Its all about him, not our national security."

 Of course some in the media as well as the President are trying to spin it that the Governor was the disrespectful one since she pointed her finger at him.  She described herself as being "animated and I speak with my hands.  I was not disrespectful, he was.  He walked away from me in mid-sentence.  I felt brushed aside." 

 She was obviously not disrespectful when in the hand-written letter of January 25^th, given to the President, she wrote "respectfully," and in her book she states, "I hadn't interrupted the president because I respect the office, and I was determined to show respect."  She commented directly that, "I would always be respectful to the office of the President of the US."

 She should not be concerned about the criticism since it appears that there is a pattern here.  As reported in the Washington Post: President Obama snapped at Congressman Eric Holder (R-VA) during a debt-ceiling discussion and abruptly walked out; and Governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA) noted that he felt accosted by the President regarding a letter he had sent.  He was quoted, "President Obama had personalized this and he was upset.  There was not a word about the oil spill.  He was concerned about looking bad because of the letter." 

 On Friday, January 27^th President Obama on Diane Sawyer's ABC interview, commented about the incident, "Its always good publicity for a Republican to get in an argument with me."  Actually, Mr. President you have it wrong: it's you that likes to get into arguments with Republicans, not so much for the publicity but because you are petty, thin-skinned, and way too sensitive about criticism.  Governor Brewer summarized it best, "The President's feelings were hurt because of what I said in my book.  Instead, he should be thinking about the economy, about jobs, and about border security."  Maybe instead of reading excerpts the President should take the time to read all of her book, Scorpions For Breakfast

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4)The Most Polarizing President Ever

By Peter Wehner

It’s official now. Barack Obama’s ratings are “historically polarized,” according to a new Gallup survey.

Jeffrey Jones of the Gallup organization writes, “The historically high gap between partisans’ job approval ratings of Barack Obama continued during Obama’s third year in office, with an average of 80 percent of Democrats and 12 percent of Republicans approving of the job he was doing… The 68-point gap between partisans’ approval ratings of Obama last year is nine points higher than that for any other president’s third year.” Obama, by the way, holds the record for the most polarized first and second years in office, too. Which means Obama has set a record for polarization every year he’s been in office.

So now is as good a time as any to remind people one of the core claims made by Barack Obama during his presidential campaign wasn’t simply that he would heal the planet; he would also heal the nation’s political breach. He would elevate the national debate. Reason would prevail over emotion. He would do away with what he called the “50 plus one” style of governing. Obama would “turn the page” on the “old politics” of division and anger. He would end a politics that “breeds division and conflict and cynicism.” He would help us to “rediscover our bonds to each other and … get out of this constant petty bickering that’s come to characterize our politics.” He would “cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past.”

“I will listen to you,” Obama said on a stage in Grant Park on the night of his election, “especially when we disagree.”

His election, he informed us, was a sign we had “chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.” On the day of his inauguration he came to proclaim “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

“The time has come to set aside childish things,” he told us on the day of his inauguration. And to paraphrase the Book of Isaiah, a community organizer shall lead us.

Where Obama has led us, it turns out, is to as much polarization as we have ever seen. Our divisions are deeper than they were. Our common ground is less than we could have imagined. Conflict and discord prevail over unity of purpose. Petty bickering characterizes our politics. Obama has wrapped himself in worn-out ideas and the politics of the past. And we have not even fully engaged in the 2012 presidential campaign, which will make our present disunity look like the land of milk and honey.

Whatever the cause of our divisions – and they are many and complicated – it was Barack Obama who said he would bind up the wounds. This promise was at the centerpiece of his campaign, the heart of his appeal, the meaning behind “hope and change.” And now it lies in ashes.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------4a)The $1.2 Tril Gap: Obama's Subpar Recovery Continues

 

Economy: The latest economic data make it clear that President Obama's policies aren't helping the country get stronger. Rather, they're smothering what should have been a solid recovery.

Real GDP climbed a less-than-expected 2.8% in final quarter of 2011, and just 1.7% for the entire year, down from 3% in 2010. The trend of subpar growth under Obama continues.

To get a better sense of how bad Obama's recovery is, consider this: Under Obama, real GDP has climbed a total of just 6% in the two-and-a-half years since the recession ended in June 2009.

By comparison, real GDP had grown 16% by this point in the Reagan recovery, after the very deep and painful 1981-82 recession.

Had Obama's recovery been as powerful as Reagan's, the economic pie would be $1.2 trillion bigger today.

And had job growth under Obama kept pace with job growth during the Reagan recovery, there would be 10 million — yes 10 million — more people with jobs today.

So what explains the difference between these two recoveries? Obama and his legion of liberal defenders claim the last recession was so deep that we're just now getting back on our feet.

Plus, they claim that a financial crisis invariably causes a slow recovery.

But even that didn't stop a rip-roaring comeback.Neither excuse holds water. First, the 1981-82 recession was almost as long (16 months vs. 18 months), and as deep (unemployment was actually higher, peaking at 10.8% in that earlier recession).

Second, a recent Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta report found: "U.S. history provides no support for linking low employment and high unemployment in the current recovery with the financial crisis of 2007-2008."

Plus, nobody at the time expected the Reagan recovery to be as fast and as powerful as it was.

So what's different? The presidents' policies.

Reagan enacted sweeping and permanent tax cuts, aggressively eliminated or reduced regulations, reined in domestic spending, and championed the private sector.

Obama's approach has been the opposite — a huge increase in regulations; meager, targeted and temporary tax cuts; a massive increase in size and scope of the federal government; and a barrage of invective against businessmen and the wealthy. Obama has bashed Reagan's approach, saying that cutting taxes and regulations "has never worked" to spur growth.

Obama might think the U.S. is "getting stronger," as he put it in his State of the Union speech, and maybe it is, a little. But if he keeps choking it with his misguided policies, it will never be as strong as it could be, or should be.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5) From Christian Science Monitor:

How Iran Could Beat Up On America's Superior Military.

America's defense budget is roughly 90 times bigger than Iran's. But Iran has a well-honed strategy of asymmetric warfare.

By Scott Peterson, Staff writer

ISTANBUL, Turkey--Tehran has stepped up its bellicose warnings of conflict in the Persian Gulf as potentially crippling new European Union and American sanctions have been approved on Iran's oil exports and central bank.

The US defied the warning of a top Iranian general this week and sent the USS Abraham Lincoln – flanked by British and French warships – through the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf. A senior Iranian lawmaker scoffed that the US "did not dare" to send its ship alone, because of the danger posed by the Islamic Republic. If Iran were to close the strategic waterway, as it has threatened to do, the American aircraft carriers "will become the war booty of Iran," he declared.

Such bluster is not all talk. The US may outspend the Islamic Republic nearly 90-to-1 on defense. But Iran, heir to ancient Persia's naval innovation, has a well-honed asymmetric strategy designed to reverse that advantage.

A 2002 US military exercise simulating such a conflict proved devastating to American warships.

Indeed, Iran can cause immense harm, analysts say, without ever directly facing off against far superior conventional US forces. Even a few incidents – like mines laid in the Gulf, or Iran's small-boat swarming tactics against oil tankers or a US Navy ship – could raise fears of insecurity to unacceptably high levels.

It could also have far-reaching economic consequences, including a spike in oil prices, since roughly a third of all seaborne oil shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz – making it the single most important choke point for oil tankers in the world.

"[Iran's] final aim is not to physically close [the strait] for too long, but to drive up shipping insurance and other costs to astronomical heights – which is just as good, in terms of economic damage, as the physical closing of the strait," says a former senior European diplomat who recently finished a six-year tour in Tehran.

"If you are not sure whether you will get hit, or if you get hit not by conventional force but some wild boat that might float around in the sea – or a mine or two – that will create far more insecurity than a battle line where the strait is closed," he says.

And Iranian harassing tactics are just the start, he adds. Other layers include artillery and rockets stationed at the Strait of Hormuz, Kilo submarines, and mini-submarines from which divers can be sent out to damage ships.

Many options short of full-blown war

Iran's conventional military forces are often aging and of limited capability. Iran spent just $7 billion on defense compared to America's $619 billion defense budget in 2008, the latest year for which Iran's data was available, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute's database.

Iran's strategy of asymmetric warfare recognizes that, since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has little chance of winning any face-to-face military contest with powerful enemies like the United States.

Instead, Iran aims to "exploit enemy vulnerabilities through the used of 'swarming' tactics by well-armed small boats and fast-attack craft, to mount surprise attacks at unexpected times and places" which will "ultimately destroy technologically superior enemy forces," writes Iranian military expert Fariborz Haghshenass in a 2008 study based on published doctrines of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In any future fight, Iran would likely "avoid escalating the conflict in a way that would play to US strengths in waging mid- to high-intensity warfare – by employing discreet tactics such as covert mine-laying, limited submarine options, and occasional mobile shore-based attacks," writes Mr. Haghshenass, in the study for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In fact, Iran has many options short of a direct challenge in the Persian Gulf.

"Iran could seek to create perpetual, low-grade instability in the strait, mostly through asymmetric means, with the objective of making it an aquatic 'no-man's land,' " says Reza Sanati, in an analysis published by the Tehran Bureau/PBS Frontline website. "For Iran, the choice is not 'to close' or 'not to close,' but rather to clog. A major global choke point, once considered safe, would no longer be so."

The US "would be drawn into providing the manpower and bearing the exorbitant cost for removing the impediments," adds Mr. Sanati, while the risk of inadvertently sparking a war would "vastly multiply."

Devastating result for US in war game

Iran's asymmetric focus is no secret. It has sought to enhance deterrence by claiming repeated triumphs during large military exercises, and by fielding new hardware, from super-fast torpedoes and to kamikaze drones.

During the "Great Prophet V" exercise in April 2010, for example, the IRGC Navy trumpeted the launch of a new "ultra-fast" watercraft that it claimed was less detectable by radar. Across the shimmering Gulf waters, Iran fielded 300 boats in a swarming attack, with commandos landing on one of the target warships.

"The Strait of Hormuz belongs to the region and foreigners must not intervene in it," military spokesman Ali Reza Tangsiri said at the time.

That warning echoed the words of a ranking Iranian cleric in 2008 that the "first shot" fired against Iran would turn the Israeli capital Tel Aviv and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf into "the targets that would be set on fire in Iran's crushing response."

More than a decade earlier, in 1997, then-IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei said "Iran will never start any war," but if the US attacked first "we will turn the region into a slaughterhouse for them. There is no greater place than the Persian Gulf to destroy America's might."

Could Iran do it?

It would seem so, in light of a $250 million classified US war game called Millennium Challenge 2002. The gaming scenario hypothetically pitted the Blue Team (representing US warships) against a Red Team that launched a coordinated assault using swarming boats and missiles – the kind of tactics Iran might employ.

In the game, 16 American ships, including an aircraft carrier and most of its strike group, were sunk before the exercise was suspended and the parameters controversially changed to ensure a US victory.

The Red Team commander, Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, told the New York Times in 2008, "The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack.” He said he had been inspired by Marine Corps studies of the natural world, where everything from ant colonies to wolf packs took on larger prey.

"It is not a matter of size or of individual capability, but whether you have the numbers to come from multiple directions in a short period of time," said Van Riper.

(My Note: Lots of high level unhappiness over Van Riper's strategy which embarrassed the U. S. blue team. The story locally was that they claimed he "didn't play fairly."  One report said he was ordered to change his enemy scenario, he refused, and left the war game.  Don't know if that is true or not. He was in retirement and had been invited  to be the Red Team Commander at the time.)

Since then, American naval strategists have worked to overcome the vulnerabilities of conventional warships to swarm tactics. One solution has been a US Navy project to build a “littoral combat ship” (LCS), designed to operate at high speeds and close-to-shore, with shallow draft and capable of launching helicopters, assault boats and submarines. Only two have been built, the project plagued by delays and cost overruns.

The LCS fits Iran's coastal waters and its methods, and is designed "to counter growing potential 'asymmetric' threat of coastal mines, quiet diesel submarines, and the potential to carry explosives and terrorists on small, fast, armed boats," according to the website www.naval-technology.com.

Iranian units given great independence

Iran also appears to have learned from the 2002 US exercise, just as it learned from a 1988 incident during the Tanker War in the Persian Gulf, when US forces sunk or damaged three Iranian warships in a single day, to retaliate for an American ship hitting a mine.

Part of Iran's strategy includes decentralized decisionmaking.

"The entire [IRGC] structure – if you look at how air defense is organized, the land forces, the combination of the Basij [militia] and the [IRGC] – this is all geared toward what they call the Mosaic Strategy, where you have individual military units who have a great deal of independence to decide what they can do without referring back to the center," says the former European diplomat.

Haghshenass explains one way this could play out in the Gulf.

"In the naval arena, speedboats will be taken out of camouflaged coastal or inland hide sites and bunkers, hauled on trailers to coastal release points, and given mission-type orders that will not require them to remain in contact with their chain of command," he writes.

But Iran's retaliation would not likely be limited to the strait.

"This is only one aspect of their deterrent strategy. Threats about Iraq and Afghanistan... there is Hezbollah and Hamas they could activate," says the diplomat, referring to the militant groups active on Israel's borders. "There is a whole array of deterrent strategies they have put into place, and the Strait of Hormuz is just one aspect. [T]hey have made it very clear the last few years that they have this whole portfolio, and will use it all in case of a military attack."

Labyrinth of ports and 'spiritual' superiority

Historically, the fleets of ancient Persia sailed far afield, and in the Mediterranean used "spy ships, disguised as foreign merchantmen and small warships for clandestine operations," notes Haghshenass's analysis. Ancient Persians, during the reign of Xerxes, "invented the concept of naval infantry."

The geography of Iran's southern coastline hasn't changed, and with 10 large ports and 60 small ones – and an endless labyrinth of fishing villages, inlets, and coves – it is ideal for staging the kind of hit-and-run and stealth operations envisioned by the Iranian strategy.

With a daily transit rate of 3,000 boats and ships in the strait, US forces could have trouble differentiating friend from foe, providing Iran with an upper hand.

And Iranian commanders believe they have another advantage, if the rhetoric about the Strait of Hormuz ever turns into a real conflict.

"The IRGC places religious belief at the core of the Iranian concept of asymmetric warfare," writes Haghshenass. "In Iran's concept of asymmetric warfare, the ideological or 'spiritual' superiority of the community of believers is considered as important as any other factor."

That means, he adds, that Iran's Revolutionary Guard believes that "its chain of command extends through Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to God, thereby investing military orders with transcendent moral authority..."
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6) About Eggs Mixed with Water.......
This could save your life

Important Message!!!!
Please take a few minutes & read.
It could save your life!!!!!!!!!
Didn't know if you knew about eggs mixed with water....... so that is why I'm sending this on.
Be Safe!


A MESSAGE FROM THE OFFICE OF ATTORNEY GENERAL
STATE OF MICHIGAN :

SITUATION..

While driving on a rural end of the roadway on Thursday morning, I saw an infant car seat on the side of the road with a blanket draped over it.
For whatever reason, I did not stop, even though I had all kinds of thoughts running through my head. But when I got to my destination, I called the Canton PD and they were going to check it out. But, this is what the Police advised even before they went out there to check....

"There are several things to be aware of ... gangs and thieves are now plotting different ways to get a person (mostly women) to stop their vehicle and get out of the car.

"There is a gang initiation reported by the local Police Department where gangs are placi ng a car seat by the road...with a fake baby in it....waiting for a woman, of course, to stop and check on the abandoned baby.

"Note that the location of this car seat is usually beside a wooded or grassy (field) area and the person -- woman -- will be dragged into the woods, beaten and raped, and usually left for dead. If it's a man, they're usually beaten and robbed and maybe left for dead, too.

DO NOT STOP FOR ANY REASON!!! DIAL 9-1-1 AND REPORT WHAT YOU SAW, BUT DON 'T EVEN SLOW DOWN.

Oh yea, about the EGGS:
"IF YOU ARE DRIVING AT NIGHT AND EGGS ARE THROWN AT YOUR WINDSHIELD, DO NOT STOP TO CHECK YOUR CAR, DO NOT OPERATE THE WIPERS AND DO NOT SPRAY ANY WATERBECAUSE EGGS MIXED WITH WATER BECOME MILKY, AND BLOCK YOUR VISION UP TO 92.5%, AND YOU ARE THEN FORCED TO STOP BESIDE THE ROAD AND BECOME A VICTIM OF THESE CRIMINALS.

THIS IS A NEW TECHNIQUE USED BY GANGS, SO PLEASE INFORM YOUR FRIENDS AN D RELATIVES.

THESE ARE DESPERATE TIMES AND THESE ARE UNSAVORY INDIVIDUALS WHO WILL TAKE DESPERATE MEASURES TO GET WHAT THEY WANT."


WARNING # 3:
Some knew about the red light on cars, but not Dialing 112.
It was about 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and Lauren was driving to visit a friend. An UNMARKED police car pulled up behind her and put his lights on. Lauren's parents have always told her to never pull over for an unmarked car on the side of the road, but rather to wait until they get to a gas station, etc.

Lauren had actually listened to her parents advice, and promptly called, 112 on her cell phone to tell the police dispatcher that she would not pull over right away. She proceeded to tell the dispatcher that there was an unmarked police car with a flashing red light on his rooftop behind her. The dispatcher checked to see if there were police cars where she was and there weren't, and he told her to keep driving, remain calm and that he had back up already on the way.

Ten minutes later 4 cop cars surrounded her and the unmarked car behind her. One policeman went to her side and the others surrounded the car behind. They pulled the guy from the car and tackled him to the ground. The man was a convicted rapist and wanted for other crimes.
I never knew about the 112 Cell Phone feature. I tried it on my AT&T phone & it said, "Dialing Emergency Number."

Especially for a woman alone in a car, you should not pull over for an unmarked car. Apparently police have to respect your right to keep going on to a safe place.

*Speaking to a service representative at Bell Mobility confirmed that112 was a direct link to State trooper info. So, now it's your turn to let your friends know about "Dialing, 112"

You may want to send this to every Man, Woman & Youngster you know; it may well save a life.

This applies to ALL 50 states.
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