Support Wounded Warriors and Waiting for Godot!

Though the words Conservative and Capitalist are in the title, the booklet is non-political in nature.

If you find my memo efforts  of interest and maybe even challenging , whether you agree or not, then please support my effort to raise money for The Wounded Warrior project and buy my book expressing my thoughts on raising children.

Please make your  check for $10.99/copy to Paul laFlamme for a soft cover version and deduct half the cost as a donation to The Wounded Warrior Project. (Add $2.50 for postage and handling.)

If you want a pdf version you can download the cost is $5.99.  

Click on WWW.Brokerberko.com

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McCann suggests Obama finally stirred the hornet's nest.  (See 1 below.)

Maybe there is hope for America after all in view of the fact an increasing number of Americans seem to have discovered Romney is not the ogre described by Obama.  (See 1a  below.)

But then neither is Obama the messiah according to this Washington writer. (See1b below.)

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Unemployment and layoffs. It ain't over til it is over and Malkin sees more in the offing. Alas, I lamentably agree. (See 2 below.)
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They may appear benign but according to Pipes this radical, who took his life,  lived in Texas. (See 3 below.)
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Obama's early voting strategy seems not to have held water. (See 4 below.)
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Every time America flirts with a radical it may take time but we seem to be able to return to our senses.  Wil we do so again? Next week will provide the answer.

We  rejected the hatred of Ford and Father Coughlin, we rejected  Sen. McCarthy and Gov. Wallace, we rejected the Klan and David Duke and now are we willing to reject the extremism of Obama?

Yes, there is salvation in rejection but the price we pay for flirtation gets costlier and costlier and more dangerous.

Why don't we learn from the past?  Why can't we detect a fraud and snake oil dispenser?
Why do we constantly let our guard down? I wish I had the answer.

The only comfort is that the world at large is guilty of the same amnesia!
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Obama the has been according to Bret Stephens.  (See 5 below.)

Bill McGurn - waiting for Godot! (See 5a below.)
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Walter Williams and the black and white standards of four more Obama years?  (See 6 below.)
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George Friedman's election perspective.  (See 7 below.)
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Happy HolloweenObama style:http://youtu.be/fHNBr3PZQaE

HIDDEN CAM PRANK!!Halloween, Obama-Style!

By stevencrowder| 1 video

Watch

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Dick
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1)The Miscalculation of the American Left
By Steve McCann

As the 2012 election season winds down to a merciful end, the Obama re-election cabal is in a state of shock and panic at the very real prospect that they and their anointed "messiah" look headed for a monumental defeat.  Such a defeat may well change the political landscape in the United States for many years to come, thanks to Barack Obama.

The American left, the Obama campaign team, the Democratic establishment, and much of the mainstream media are stunned and surprised by the depth of reaction to the exposure of a vapid Barack Obama during the three presidential debates.  Revealed to the world was a man who could not live up to the well-crafted image of one of the most adept, well-liked, and intelligent politicians in American history.  Once deflated, this image could never be rebuilt.  Obama's performance was indicative of an unprepared and unqualified president unable to defend his four years in office or present a cogent plan for the next four.  

Further, the Euro-socialist policies eagerly pursued by the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress, which in the hallowed halls of academia and liberal think-tanks always succeed, not only have failed miserably to rescue the economy, but are being soundly rejected by the majority of the populace.  They, unlike the insulated elites, are experiencing the real-life consequences of these actions, in a global and domestic landscape of turmoil, indecision, and uncertainty.

As the members of the American left look to the horizon, they are beginning to focus on the very real prospect that what they have strived to achieve over the past fifty-plus years has begun to unravel.  In great part, this is because they chose as the face of the movement someone whose only qualifications were skin color, an ability to read a speech and live up to a celebrity persona, and a studiously ignored youth and young adulthood steeped in 1960s radicalism.  The left relied solely on image rather than substance, and because of racial guilt as well as presenting Barack Obama as a "moderate" bent on hope and change, they succeeded in winning the presidency and control of Congress.

The left had assumed since the president had garnered over 69 million votes in the 2008 election (53% of the votes cast) that the American people had given him and his party a free hand to transform the country.  Never mind that the votes Mr. Obama received accounted for only 30% of the voting-age population in the country, and forget that many voted for him thinking he was the moderate he proclaimed to be during his campaign for president.

It is apparent that the Progressives; their figurehead, Barack Obama; the leaders of the Democratic Party; and the so-called intellectuals on the left  have little or no understanding of why the Euro-socialist utopia they envision will never be accepted by the American people.  Had these elites gotten beyond their own sense of superiority and God-given right to lead, they would have understood that the basic nature of the American society is unlike that of any nation in the world.

Throughout the history of mankind, strong centralized governments have dominated those societies whose makeup was primarily of a single ethnic group and who had little or no history of independence or popular uprisings (e.g., Russia, China, various Arab countries).  So too for modern-day Marxism or socialism -- those nations in today's world living under various manifestations of socialism mostly are similarly formulated.  A docile and willing public is essential for the acceptance of an authoritarian government.

In 1782, a French immigrant to the United States, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur, in his notable essays, "Letters from an American Farmer," wrote of his newly adopted country:

What then is the American, this new man?  He is either a European or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country...Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.

The population of the country has increased nearly a hundredfold since those words were first written 230 years ago.  The "new race of men" now includes those from all corners of the world, and their labor and posterity have in fact caused great changes, for the better, in the world.  It has become a source of pride in American families to trace their ancestry and celebrate the courage and determination of their forefathers -- be it that they came on the Mayflower, by steerage to Ellis Island, or through the suffering and perseverance inherent in forced servitude.

These pioneers injected into a uniquely American character a fierce desire to be independent and free, to be the final arbiter of one's success or failure.  There resides deep within the soul of this country a profound mistrust of a powerful central government; this trust stems from the firsthand experience of these immigrants, voluntary and involuntary, from whom virtually all Americans today descend. 

Over the past sixty-seven years, as the United States became the wealthiest and most powerful country on the face of the earth, another trait unique to the American people came to the fore: a genuine sense of generosity and fair play.  All were willing to accept the notion that the individual (and the government to a much smaller degree) should help those in need and give the downtrodden a leg up.  

Unfortunately, this characteristic has been exploited by those on the left who desire to transform the country into a socialist utopia (governed by them, of course).  The stratagem used was to foster guilt for one's success, substitute government for individual charity, and declare as rights those things that only government can insure.  As long as the future of the nation did not appear to be in real jeopardy, and as long as the nation could, on the surface, afford this spending, many simply chose to drop out of active participation in governance, while others, in smaller numbers, chose to accept the largess.  

While far too many have succumbed to a dependence on government largess, this does not mean that the basic character of the American people, as instilled by those Americans' forbears, has changed to become amenable to a massive central government controlling all aspects of their lives while jeopardizing the futures of their children and grandchildren.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party have, by unbridled spending and headlong drive to control the day-to-day activities of all Americans, at last awakened those who chose to sit on the sidelines and merely observe while assuming that the country was too big and rich to fail.  

Now, even many of the least involved citizens have begun to realize that the nation has embarked on a path that will bankrupt the country.   It is now apparent to a majority that the survival of a great nation depends in its ability to remain master of its destiny and that that capability is now in question.

In this election, the people are rising to the challenge of overcoming what the left has attempted to achieve over the past fifty years.  This is something never anticipated by them, Barack Obama, and the Democrats.  The legacy left to Americans by their forbears will not be betrayed; it is, after all, who we are.

1a)America Discovers the Republicans

By J.T. Hatter

Obama decided early in his re-election campaign to destroy his opponent, Mitt Romney.  The Democratic Party's mud-slinging ads, and the mainstream media newscasts, relentlessly painted Romney as an evil conservative who looks down on the 47% of Americans who receive government benefits.  Romney was a wealthy industrialist who outsourced American jobs, a greedy capitalist who murdered a steelworker's wife by taking away her health insurance, a tax-evader, a bad Mormon, and a racist.  Furthermore, he was waging war on women, on the middle class, on Social Security and Medicare, and on the planet.

Obama pumped in huge sums of money, carpet-bombing swing states with negative advertising.  The combined Obama campaign/mainstream media onslaught gave Americans a generally negative opinion of Mitt Romney.

But then something very strange happened.  The polling started to detect a slight trend towards Romney.  Nobody in the Obama camp could understand it.  They couldn't believe it.

Last month, Barack Obama was leading in virtually all of the national polls and was confident of a win on November 6.  This month, the American people are telling the pollsters that they like the Romney/Ryan ticket better.  Romney now has a slight lead.  The Obama camp and news media suddenly find themselves in frenzied, panic-stricken, damage control mode.

Peering through the Muck

What happened to the mainstream media's drumbeat that Obama's re-election was in the bag?  Had the multi-media left-wing disinformation campaign lost its punch?  After enduring weeks of blitzkrieg negative advertising, the American people finally got a peek at the Republicans.  And they liked what they saw.

Kevin "Coach" Collins had this to say:

Have you seen some of those anti-Romney mud-slinging TV spots? If so, you'll be glad to know that Barack Obama's attack ads are not only falling short of their goal of tearing down Romney's character, but according to one survey are actually energizing Republican enthusiasm to vote against Obama.

Despite the torrent of negative attack ads, the American people wanted to see for themselves who Mitt Romney was and what he was all about.  The more people saw, the more they liked the man and his vision for America.  Romney has a five-point plan that is coherent and makes sense.  He comes across as a very decent fellow.

After a stellar first debate in which Romney roundly trounced Obama, making Obama look like a little child wearing Daddy's shoes, followed up by two more debates in which he looked presidential and held his own against the surly, dissembling Obama, many Americans decided that Romney is the man for the job.

Josh Jordan (National Review) wrote a piece titled "Romney's Not-So-Secret weapon: America Actually Likes Him," in which he said:

You might not know it from the day-to-day coverage, but America is warming up to Mitt Romney. A difficult primary left Romney bloodied by his primary opponents, and before he could establish his general-election footing Obama's campaign began a relentless assault on Romney's character with tens of millions of dollars of ads.

Americans might have warmed up sooner if they hadn't had to endure the punishing "day-to-day coverage" by the mainstream media and the Obama attack ads.  Stuart Rothenberg (Roll Call) said it this way:

After spending the summer defining and discrediting Romney in key states and nationally, the Obama campaign now finds itself facing an opponent who, in just 90 minutes, erased much of the image that David Axelrod and David Plouffe created in a series of negative ads over the summer.

Romney's new image and positioning in the race - moderate, reasonable and focused on problem-solving - make him a far more acceptable alternative than he once was, and that has made it easier for voters to focus their attention during the final month of the campaign on the president and his record, which remains mixed.

Barack Hussein Obama has always run his political campaigns to exploit racial, economic, religious, and political divisions.  The main thrust of his current political campaign is to demonize his opponent, not run on his track record.  Obama is playing his Chicago game.  The GPO has just released a graphic showing that Obama's October campaign ads were 73.3% purely negative, compared to 36% for Romney.  But Mitt Romney endured the mud-slinging, the lying, the misrepresentations, the race-baiting, the attacks on his faith and his personal and professional life.  He took it all and endured, smiling the whole time as he waited patiently for his turn.

Dawn's Early Light

Romney is American to the core, and people sense that.  In contrast, Obama is the first anti-American president, a globalist whose goals are to bring the USA into the fold of international socialism and to right the imagined wrongs of an oppressive state.  Romney wants to improve the lives of all people, or at least as many as he can.

Obama callously divided this nation after promising to bring it together and heal its divisions.  Romney actually has a record of uniting disparate groups and working positively with a Massachusetts legislature that was 84% Democrat.  He was a very successful governor in a state that is notoriously hard to govern.  He has a proven, fantastically successful track record in business.  Obama has never held a real job, run a business, made payroll, or ever held an executive position.  Not one.  He scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins and worked on a newsletter.  The rest of his life has been as a community organizer or in politics.  Obama's origins and family history have largely been kept secret from us.  Mitt, Ann, and their five boys look like a living Norman Rockwell painting -- quintessentially American.  You know they believe in America and all it stands for.  Not so with Obama.

Even the New York Times ran a generally favorable piece on Romney entitled "Romney as a Manager: Unhurried and Socratic."

Americans like Mitt Romney.  They trust him.  But most of all, Americans are coming to see --despite the inescapable disinformation to the contrary -- that Romney genuinely loves America and believes in her founding ideals: personal responsibility, limited constitutional government, religious freedom, and the free-enterprise system.  He has demonstrated exceptional understanding and capability in all four areas.  What a refreshing change.

The Ryan Bump

When Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate on August 11, that sealed the deal for many.  But the media and the Democrats vehemently denounced the selection.

Obama has a great deal of personal animosity toward Ryan, who worked diligently to defeat ObamaCare.  The media have echoed these ill feelings.  Michael Tomasky (Daily Beast) wrote that Romney's VP pick of Paul Ryan was a "terrible, stunning choice."  Andrea Mitchell (NBC), a leading Obama spokesman, wasted no time in her attack: "This is a base election. This is not a pick for suburban moms; this is not a pick for women."  Candy Crowley (CNN) claimed that unnamed Republicans felt "trepidation" that the pick "looks a little bit like some sort of ticket death wish."  The media recognized the threat to their ideological standard-bearer and went on the attack -- and, in doing so, even further alienated themselves from the American public.

Paul Ryan was an astonishingly good choice and one that greatly impressed the citizenry.  Most voters considered the choice much better than the one the president had made.  Ladies wholeheartedly approve of Ryan and have been rallying to his side.  Ryan singlehandedly eliminated the so-called gender gap, taking millions of votes away from the Obama camp.

The liberal media largely denied that Ryan shifted the poll numbers at all, but many pollsters recorded a decisive bump soon after the August 11 announcement, especially among independent/undecided voters and in swing states -- where they hurt Obama the most.  Obama enjoyed a 5- to 7-point national lead, but Ryan's pick quickly closed the gap, bringing a surge of much-needed momentum to the conservative camp.  Romney smacked one out of the ball bark with Ryan.  And patriotic conservative Americans cheered.  Romney's picking Ryan -- and Romney's increasing likeability -- changed the political fundamentals, and we now have a tight race.

Decision Time

Americans have had the full measure of Barack Hussein Obama.  He may have 35% or 47% of the vote sewn up.  He will retain his hardcore yellow-dog Democrats and many of those who are dependent on government welfare programs.  But there are those of us who are convinced that the USA cannot survive another four years like the last.  We number at least half of the electorate -- hopefully more.

When decent, honest working people look at Obama, and then look at Romney, there is no hesitation to point to Romney as their choice to lead them into the future.  America's future does not belong to international socialism or to the collectivists who want so desperately to "fundamentally transform" our nation.  This nation's future depends on rediscovering our founding principles and values, fighting to preserve them, and teaching them to our children.  This hard work is necessary in this election and all future elections -- otherwise, we are lost.

Ronald Reagan once said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Despite the massive, mud-slinging, negative campaigning by the Obama administration, and the pervasive mainstream media anti-Romney propaganda, the American people have discovered Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.  And they like them.  The majority of American voters believe that Mitt Romney is the last best hope to save the USA.

J.T. Hatter is the author of Lost in Zombieland: The Rise of President Zero, a political satire on the Obama administration.  J.T. can be reached at jt@jthatter.com

1b)  THE  WASHINGTON POST HITS OBAMAI Too Have Become Disillusioned. By Matt Patterson (columnist - Washington Post, New York Post, San Francisco Examiner) Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job? Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer;" a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions. He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signaturelegislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of histroubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor"; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberal Dom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even ifthey were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard - because of the color of his skin. Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest? Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of theObama phenomenon - affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can patthemselves on the back. Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.  Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is. And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia   despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in theSenate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people – conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed. The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that's when he has his Teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth - it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years. And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly? In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office. “Who cares where Obama was born . . . . . . .. . the problem is where he lives.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Obama's Layoff Bomb

By Michelle Malkin

 In June, a diffident and self-deluded President Obama claimed that "the private sector is doing fine." Last week, the private sector responded: Speak for yourself, buster. Who needs an "October Surprise" when the business headlines are broadcasting the imminent layoff bomb in neon lights?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last Tuesday that employers issued 1,316 "mass layoff actions" (affecting 50 workers or more) in September; more than 122,000 workers were affected overall. USA Today financial reporter Matt Krantz wrote that "(m)uch of the recent layoff activity is connected to what's been the slowest period of earnings growth since the third quarter of 2009." Some necessary restructuring is underway in response to the stagnant European economy. But more and more U.S. businesses are putting the blame — bravely and squarely — right where it belongs: on the obstructionist policies and regulatory schemes of the blame-shifter-in-chief.

Last week, Ohio-based auto parts manufacturer Dana Holding Corp. warned employees of potential layoffs amid "looming concern" about the economy. President and CEO Roger Wood specifically mentioned the walloping burden of "increasing taxes on small businesses" and the need to "offset increased costs that are placed on us through new laws and regulations."

Case in point: Obamacare. The mandate will cost Dana Holding Corp., which employs some 24,500 workers, "approximately $24 million over the next six years in additional U.S. health care expenses." As Ohio Watchdog blogger Maggie Thurber reported, the firm's Toledo area corporate offices laid off seven white-collar employees last Friday; company insiders told her more were on the way. They are not alone.

On Tuesday, Consol Energy issued a federally mandated layoff disclosure announcing its "intent to idle its Miller Creek surface operations near Naugatuck, W.Va." The move will affect the company's Wiley Surface Mine, Wiley Creek Surface Mine, Minway Surface Mine, Minway Preparation Plant and Miller Creek Administration Group, all in Mingo County, W.Va. Despite state approval, cooperation with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and myriad other agencies, and a stellar safety record, Obama's EPA dragged its feet on the permit approval process. The impasse has forced layoffs of 145 Consol Energy employees that will hit at the end of the year. They are not alone.

In August, Robert E. Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation in Ohio, blasted the White House anti-coal agenda for the layoffs and closure of his company's mine. He told Obama water-carrying CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien that "the many regulations that (Obama) and his radical appointees and the U.S. EPA have put on the use of coal, there are dozens of them and collectively by his own energy administration, have closed 175 power plants." As O'Brien barked at her guest about purported environmental objections, Murray explained that "we cannot get permits for these mines. They are delaying the issuance of permits. If you can't get the permit, you can't have the mine. ... I created those jobs, and I put the investment in that mine. And when it came time to lay the people off, I went up personally and talked to every one of them myself to lay them off. It's a human issue."

And it's an innovation issue, too. As I reported in February, Obamacare's impending 2.3 percent medical device excise tax has already wrought havoc on the industry:

Stryker, a maker of artificial hips and knees based in Kalamazoo, Mich., is slashing 5 percent of its global workforce (an estimated 1,000 workers) this coming year to reduce costs related to Obamacare's taxes and mandates.

Covidien, a N.Y.-based surgical supplies manufacturer, recently announced layoffs of 200 American workers and plans to move some of its plant work to Mexico and Costa Rica, in part because of the coming tax hit.

Mass.-based Zoll Medical Corp., which makes defibrillators and employs some 1,800 workers in the U.S. and around the world, says the medical device tax will cost the company between $5 million and $10 million a year.

This July, Indiana's Cook Medical Inc. shelved plans to open five new plants because of the imminent medical device tax hit. They are not alone.

The heads of Koch Industries, Westgate Resorts and ASG Software Solutions have all separately informed their employees of prosperity-undermining Obama economic politics. Left-wing groups have lambasted the executives for exercising their political free speech.

But they have remained silent while the White House corruptocrats bribed federal defense contractors into delaying federally mandated layoff disclosures before the election. In a memo now being investigated on Capitol Hill, Obama promised to cover the legal fees of Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors if they ignored legal requirements to inform workers in advance about so-called sequestration cuts to the military's budget scheduled to kick in next year.

Truth suppression is a time-honored Obama tactic, of course. Remember: The administration and its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill attempted to punish Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and ATT in 2010 for disclosing how the costs of Obamacare taxes were hitting their bottom lines — even though they were simply following SEC disclosure requirements. The White House also tried to silence insurers who dared to inform their customers about how Obamacare was driving up premiums. Not this time.

The administration's bully boys don't have enough whitewash and duct tape to cover up the past, present and future devastation of the president and his economic demolition team.

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3)-A Palestinian in Texas

By Daniel Pipes

On April 14, 2008, Riad Elsolh Hamad, 55, left his family's apartment in Austin, Texas, to get some prescription drugs. The immigrant from Lebanon and middle school computer teacher never returned home. Three days later, the police found his body, bound with tape, floating in nearby Lady Bird Lake, and concluded that "all signs indicate this may have been a suicide."

Riad Hamad, 55, a suicide in Lady Bird Lake, Austin, Texas.

His family indicated that he had been under stress lately and evensuicidal. And with good reason: the Federal Bureau of Investigation along with the Internal Revenue Service had searched his house on February 27, 2008, when the FBI declared him a "person of interest" in a criminal investigation.

Despite this cloud around the dead man, local news outlets reported nothing but kind words and high praise for him. After Hamad's family issued a statement describing Riad as a "peace activist who worked tirelessly on behalf of those less fortunate than him and was loved and admired by many members of the local, as well as international community," the press duly picked up on this moniker and regularly called him a "peace activist"

Television station KVUE quoted Joshua Howell, assistant manager at the office where Hamad had a postal box, recalling him as "always in a good mood. Never upset. Never even heard him say a harsh word about anybody." The principal at the school where he taught sent a letter to students' parents calling Hamad "a longtime and valued" member of the faculty whose "love and passion for education touched us all." At Hamad's memorial service, retired Episcopal Priest Edward M Hartwell praised "his humanitarian work to help the children of Palestine [as] some of the most creative and effective work that I know of."

Hamad himself boasted of his peaceable approach to politics: "All of our work is very transparent. We don't work with any militant group or violent group, or anybody with a militant affiliation."

That was the Riad Hamad praised by family, friends, admirers, and even himself. But Hamad had another side, the one that brought the FBI to search his house, that got him fired from Austin Community College for "making racist slurs and sexist jokes in the classroom," and that made him a foul and unwelcome presence in my life. Thanks to the recent testimony by a former ally of Hamad who has turned against him, several years later, we now know something approaching his full story.

The Summons

Hamad brought himself to my attention in early June 2006 by sending me, via certified mail, a summons to appear in court in Austin. The document bore a scrawled, unkempt handwriting on a form issued by the U.S. District Court, Western District of Texas, informing me that Hamad was suing me and Campus Watch for libel. (Campus Watch being a project of the Middle East Forum, he was effectively suing the Forum.)

This turned out to be the second amended complaint; I found myself in good company, as the summons also listed the Center for the Study of Popular Culture (now known as the David Horowitz Freedom Center), David Horowitz personally, the Center for Jewish Community Studies, the State of Texas, Joe Kaufman, Americans Against Hate, MilitantIslamMonitor.org, and an internet provider called CB Accounts. Hamad proceeded to file another three amended complaints and in them he tacked on yet more defendants (Freerepublic LLC, Jim Robinson, Laurence Simon, and Dotster Inc.)

His was a pro se summons, meaning that Hamad, a non-lawyer, had filled it out by himself and was representing himself – i.e., it cost him next to nothing to sue one and all.

Hamad charged each of us with 21 offences: libel and slander, malicious libel, malicious slander, defamation of character, defamation of character with intent to cause mental anguish, libeling and slandering a business name, defamation through fraud of a business name, interference with a business contract, tortious interference with a business contract, conspiracy to interfere with a business contract, interference with interstate commerce, interference with Internet commerce, conspiracy to interfere with Internet commerce, intentional infliction of mental anguish with the intent to injure, invasion of privacy, fraud, negligence, gross negligence, disparagement of a business name, disparagement of business products, and dilution of a business name.

In compensation for this long list of alleged abuses, Hamad demanded from his many defendants US$5 million in compensatory damages, $10 million for his loss of income, and $50 million in exemplary and punitive damages. Nor was that all: he sought a permanent injunction against our calling his business an "Islamic charity" or he personally a "Muslim fundamentalist." He wanted a Department of Justice investigation into us for "criminal and racketeering work as lobbyists for a foreign country [i.e., Israel] without the proper permits and licenses." He also insisted on public apologies by us in ten media outlets chosen by him, as well as payment for his court costs and "any and all other relief that Plaintiff might show that he is entitled to in a jury trial."

Hamad gave insight into his mentality and his motives in the course of his lawsuit. His discovery requests of David Horowitz are particularly colorful, including:

• Document the "Religious affiliation of members of the board of CSPC, its affiliates and editors of Frontpagemag.org."
• Provide a "Blood and urine sample of David Horowitz ... to identify his ethnicity and religious affiliations."
• "Identify any and all staff of the Israeli embassy that David Horowitz and CSPC are associated with, amounts of money paid for their services by the Israeli embassy."
• Answer whether "David Horowitz is a devout Jews [sic] and observes the Sabbath."
• Answer whether "David Horowitz eats pork and violates Jewish traditions."
• Answer whether "David Horowitz is not a Semite and pretends to be Jewish to gain sympathy for his views and make money."

This summons came as a total surprise, as a I had previously never heard of or mentioned Riad Hamad. Sleuthing revealed only the slightest and most indirect connection between us: Hamad had created and headed an organization called the Palestine Children's Welfare Fund (PCWF) and in a January 18, 2004, weblog entry, "Lamyaa Hashim, Supporting Burqas and Suicide Bombers," I had quoted Joe Kaufman who alluded to PCWF as follows:

The site belongs to the medical director for the Palestine Children's Welfare Fund, Rosemary Davis

That's it. I quoted 15 words from someone who mentioned who worked for Hamad's organization. For this glancing reference, my pro-rated share of payments to Hamad would come to my share of at least $65 million, or about a million dollars per word.

What is the PCWF? NGO Monitor analyzed the organization in 2003 and found its primary mission to be "propagating the delegitimization of Israel." As a 2007 summary by NGO Monitor put it, "Gaza-based PCWF openly exploits children's issues for radical politicized agendas that promote the conflict. These activities are entirely inconsistent with its claims to be a humanitarian organization." By way of example, NGO Monitor tells about PCWF's children's drawing contest in which

The judges rewarded, almost without exception, entries that featured fierce and violent hatred of Israel. The winning picture features a fire, in the shape of a map of Israel and the Palestinian Authority, consuming the Star of David with the word "Israel" written inside the flag. Another entry depicted a Palestinian flag dropping flames on an Israeli flag and burning Israelis standing next to it. Such activities serve only to advance a culture of violence and hatred.

In brief, PCWF is as crude and hate-mongering as its leader.

The Lawsuit

Hamad might have been a pro se plaintiff but I could not take the chance of being a pro se defendant and so turned for representation to the law office of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, L.L.P., which specializes in defamation issues. We responded to Hamad with a motion to dismiss on June 29, 2006, citing three grounds:

First, this Court lacks personal jurisdiction over Pipes and MEF. Neither Pennsylvania defendant has had any contact with Texas that would establish either general or specific jurisdiction.

Second, even if the Court had jurisdiction, plaintiff himself admits that his defamation claim is barred by the one-year statute of limitations because any alleged publication occurred "as late as July 2004."

Third, plaintiff has not pled facts sufficient to allege that Pipes and MEF published any defamatory statements about him. Indeed, he cannot do so: Neither defendant has ever written a word about him or engaged in any action that would justify plaintiff's hauling them into a Texas court.

My motion also noted that Hamad is a pro se plaintiff with a history of filing what one judgment against him (Hamad v. Austin Community College) called "patently frivolous" litigation efforts that "repeatedly abuse the legal system."

Judge Sam Sparks of the Western District of Texas slammed Hamad's "unintelligible morass of vitriolic accusations."

Three days before this motion to dismiss, Judge Sam Sparks of the Western District of Texas had already dismissed with prejudice Hamad's case against David Horowitz. On July 25, he dismissed the case against me and later awarded me court costs. For good measure, Sparks called Hamad a litigant with "a history in this Court of filing lawsuits without merit for the purpose of harassment and making outrageous allegations."

Undaunted by his failure to gain any legal traction, Hamad appealed. This prompted Judge Sparks to issue an even more vehement order on September 6 in which he characterized Hamad's complaints as espousing "no legal theory for which recovery can be made against any of the multitude of defendants sued in this case" and dismissed his pleadings on the grounds that they were "not filed for any purpose and simply harass and cause unnecessary delay or needless increase in the cost of litigation." Sparks again granted my motion to dismiss, agreeing with all three of my claims, ruling that the court cannot exercise jurisdiction over the Middle East Forum or myself (because of our lack of connections to Texas); that Hamad filed after the statute of limitations had expired; and that I never made defamatory statements concerning Riad Hamad. He also ordered Hamad to pay me a $1,000 penalty.

For a second time, Hamad responded belligerently, this time going public with his claims against we defendants. Talk about libel! He announced to the world on Sept. 14 (including a comment sent to the Campus Watch website) that we

are engaged in criminal activities and fraud upon the public by collecting donations amounting to tens of millions of dollars. The donations are being used to fund illegal activities in the United States and Israel and with the knowledge of the government of the United States and the judicial branch.

Four days later, Hamad sent out an appeal to his mailing list, stating that "closely linked" websites "are using false information and collection donations … to attack and discredit Arabs, Muslims" and asking for at least one thousand people to call the office for internet crimes belonging to the attorney general of Illinois.

Encouraged by the court's attitude toward Hamad, I requested on Oct. 6 that he be compelled to pay my court costs. On January 17, 2007, Judge Sparks delivered his final judgment and granted my request for fees totaling $12,915. Sparks made clear his intense irritation with Hamad:

Plaintiff Riad Elsolh Hamad first filed this wholly frivolous claim on April 13, 2006. Since that time, his "Petition" has gone through five revisions. None of the five Amended Petitions was authorized by the Federal Rules or leave of this Court, and not one version of Hamad's complaint states any claim for which relief can be granted under any law of the United States or the State of Texas against any defendant. The Court dismissed Hamad's complaint with prejudice in its second incarnation in an Order dated June 26, 2006. Nevertheless, Hamad has continued to file Amended Petitions presenting claims for relief identical to the ones dismissed in the Second Amended Petition. Each Amended Petition merely drags yet another group of defendants into the same unintelligible morass of vitriolic accusations for which no basis in law has ever been established. Moreover, Hamad continues to name dismissed parties as defendants in his repetitive pleadings.

The next fourteen months saw several more rounds of the same: Hamad appealing and all the judges turning down every aspect of every effort of his, culminating with a March 12, 2008, judgment by the 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals slamming Hamad for his "ten year history of filing frivolous suits in this court." The appeals court upped the award to me to $32,944.50 in attorney's fees.

As Gerald Steinberg of NGO Monitor noted, Hamad's lawsuit "was a clear attempt to use the courts and intimidation to prevent independent analysis and exposure of the incitement by anti-Israel NGOs."

The Search

Brandon Darby made the difficult but heroic move from Leftist radical to informant.

By early 2008, however, Hamad had other and larger concerns on his mind. Two weeks before, on February 27, 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service had jointly raided his house. Brandon Darby, a former leftist, anti-Zionist, and longtime friend of Hamad who now works forconservative causes and on behalf of Israel, has explained how this raid came to pass:

Darby, who had helped Hamad raise money and recruit "human shields" against the Israel Defense Forces and himself almost went to the Palestinian territories for that purpose, wanted to create a group, to be called Critical Response, to send medics into war zones such as Lebanon and Darfur to help civilians. Hamad liked this idea, regaling Darby with plans to use the cover of medics to place explosives on motorcycles and booby-trap ambulances in Israel to kill Jews. Hamad also devised a plan using the PCWF to send money to Hamas and Hezbollah. Darby recounted at Breitbart.com:

Hamad had approached me and shared that he had been able to skim off money [from PCWF] that he intended sneak to Palestinian comrades in Israel. I asked him why he needed to sneak anything when he was able to send funds legally. He responded with a detailed analysis of all the ways suicide bombers could get through checkpoints and achieve their goals. I declined and he told me that I had fallen back into my white privilege, but would come back to the revolution soon.

This talk of violence, Darby reports, caused him to rethink his relationship with Hamad. "I couldn't sleep and I debated within myself if I should go to the FBI." Learning from another left-wing activist about Hamad's plans to set up "a fake business to help Hamad funnel money for Palestinians" then nudged Darby to confront Hamad. The two met for coffee. On hearing of Darby's disapproval, "Hamad responded by saying it would be good for white people to get caught in the war on terror and that people would limit what the government could do if the war on terror had whites in Guantanamo instead of just Arabs."

This settled matters. Darby agonizing over his past actions – "wondering if my previous support and efforts for the Palestinian Children's Welfare Fund meant I had blood on my hands" – and resolved to stop Hamad. "I ended up meeting with the FBI. They were kind and gracious. Hamad and the Palestinian Children's Welfare Fund were raided."

The search warrant focused on fraud, not terrorism, as indicated by the supporting financial affidavit:

RIAD ELSOLH HAMAD failed to file his federal income tax returns for the years 1999 through 2003 and 2005, evaded payment of his federal income taxes for the years 1999 through 2006, and is engaged in preparing false documents used to obtain federally subsidized loan from various University of Texas campuses. The affidavit will show that HAMAD earned taxable income from the Austin Independent School District (AISD). HAMAD also runs/operates the Palestinian Children's Welfare Fund (PCWF) which he claims raises money for the children of Palestine. HAMAD sends large amounts of money to the Middle East and/or to charities that forward the funds to the Middle East. The disposition of these funds is unknown at this time, A large amount of these "donated" funds have also been traced into various stock accounts controlled by Riad Hamad and/or his son Abdullah Hamad.

An investigator with the Internal Revenue Service put the last part more bluntly: "Riad Hamad, with the assistance of his son, Abdullah Hamad, his ex-wife, Diana Hamad, and his daughter, Rita Hamad, are using the 'donated funds' for personal use and not paying federal income taxes on these funds."

Lacking a news account, here is how Hamad himself reported the raid on his house: a dozen federal agents, armed with a search warrant based on probable cause to investigate wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering, "searched every nook and cranny" of his apartment and took away "more than forty boxes of papers, files, computers and CDs."

The Suicide

After the raid, Darby recounts,

I heard from Hamad one last time. He called me and said it was "just a matter of time." I asked what he meant. He told me of the raids and said they had taken all of his documents, and that I would know soon. He said he had to go and he did. His body was found in Austin, TX in Lady Bird Lake a few days later. He apparently chose not to face the consequences of his actions.

Even in death, Hamad perpetuated a fraud. First, he wrote a letter to his circle, creating the premise for violence against him (all spellings and ellipses exactly as in the original):

besides the government harassment, the hateful environment from some students at school because I am an Arab and a Muslim...and their racist comments, I have been getting phone calls around midnight by some one saying "where is your camel.." and last...a car was vandalized about two years ago....last night around 1 30 in the morning..someone rang the bell and ran away....and you could hear all the dogs in the neighborhood barking when the person who rang the bell ran away...A real loving environment towards Arabs and Muslims....

(Reflecting back on his lawsuit, one sees the source of his fantasies about harassment, hateful environment, and racism.)

Second, evidence suggests that Hamad staged his death to make it appear that he wanted the honor of being murdered when in fact he checked out on his own. Based in part on the autopsy, a police statementasserted:

When the body was removed from the lake, tape was found around the eyes, and the hands and legs were loosely bound. The bindings of his hands and legs and placement of the tape were consistent with Hamad having done this to himself. Detectives know that Hamad walked from his vehicle to the water on his own based on evidence retrieved from the scene.

At this time, the Austin Police Department does not suspect foul play was involved. Witnesses and family members have confirmed with police that Hamad had extreme stressors in his life. This incident is still an ongoing investigation, but all signs indicate this may have been a suicide. According to the preliminary results from the Medical Examiner's Office there were no signs of trauma to the body or signs of a struggle.

Even Paul Larudee, Hamad's colleague and the last known person to speak to Hamad before his death, says that Hamad "did take his own life but he took it with a view of fueling the speculation that has in fact accompanied his death." Translation: He wanted it to appear like a hit job. Despite his skepticism about Hamad's demise, Larudee insists "I still think he was a hero."

The Conspiracy Theory

The Islamic Center of Greater Austin's Ibrahim Dremali claimed "a barbaric act" killed Hamad.

Palestinian extremists, Islamists, leftists, and assorted conspiracy theorists accepted Hamad's fakery. According to Ibrahim Dremali of the Islamic Center of Greater Austin, who says after an autopsy he washed Hamad's body, which was "cut all from the right shoulder all the way to the stomach, and from the left shoulder all the way to the stomach again, and from the stomach all the way to the bladder, … from all the back of his skull is completely cut, is empty completely, empty. … His wrists were all slit open and cut. … His eyes actually dropped all the way down. … It is a barbaric act. … Like somebody is eating the body. … This is a message for all Muslims." Dremali said it appeared as "something in the jungle, an animal attacking another animal."

Kurt Nimmo, a prominent conspiracy theorist, asked "Is it possible a neocon hit team or as likely a Mossad 'bayonet' team took out the school teacher Riad Hamad?" Radio host Alex Jones and others spoke ominously of Israeli hit teams surveilling Hamad's house. Some even accused "sociopathic FBI informant Brandon Darby" of killing Hamad. A Twitter site (riad_hamad) keeps these theories alive almost five years later.

In contrast to these lurid accounts, the Travis Country medical examiner, David Dolinak, who inspected Hamad's body on the morning of April 17, found nothing alarming. Quite contrary to Dremali's description of the body being variously cut up, the medical examiner reporter found little to report:

IDENTIFYING MARKS AND SCARS:

A 10 inch vertical scar is in the lateral aspect of the right thigh. There are no tattoos.

EVIDENCE OF THERAPY [meaning needle puncture marks, surgical stitches, etc.]

None.

EVIDENCE OF INJURY:

None. …

BODY CAVITIES:

The organs are normally developed and are in their normal locations. The diaphragms are intact. There is no fluid accumulation in the pleural cavities or the pericardial sac. There is

no fluid accumulation in the peritoneal cavity. There are no pleural adhesions or abdominal adhesions.

HEAD:

There is no subscalp blood extravasation. The calvarium is intact. The dura is intact. There is no epidural or subdural blood. …

MUSCULOSKELETAL SYSTEM:

No fractures of the clavicles, sternum, ribs, vertebrae, pelvis or extremities are detected.

Dolinak concluded that he saw "No evidence of traumatic injury," that Hamad "died as the result of drowning."

Conclusion

Hamad died as a he lived, in a miasma of hate and duplicity. Darby informs me that "Riad publicly claimed to be a Christian but when he died it became evident that he had been lying and was actually a Muslim." We, the victims of his lurid and manic lawsuits never saw a dime of the money he owed us. His embezzlement and skipping on taxes having caught up with him, he perpetrated his final and grandest fraud – a pretend-murder. Not surprisingly, his venomous Palestine Children's Welfare Fund is now defunct, reduced to a homepage plaintively stating that "PCWF website coming again soon to carry on some of the great work of Riad Hamad."

Some observations about Hamad: First, the lofty praise for this wretch would make one think him a decent man, pointing to how political sympathy creates blinders. Second, even as he lived in the civilized quiet of Austin, Texas, Hamad contaminated his adopted home by importing political nihilism from the Middle East. Third, I may be out nearly $33,000 in court costs, but it was not all lost; Hamad's legal assault inspired me to expose this malign excrescence of anti-Zionism. Finally, if one truly is judged by the quality of one's opponents, we who defend Israel are thriving.

Most Muslim immigrants are law-abiding and constructive citizens in the West. But Hamad's case fits into a persistent pattern of immigrants who bring with them the bad habits imbued by the tyrannical politics and radical ideologies. Combining Islamic supremacism with nihilist disdain, they despise all that is non-Muslim, import a mélange of extremist ideas, and feel free of moral constraints. Consequently, they engage disproportionately in antisocial behavior, criminal activities, and terrorism. Reluctantly, I concluded almost a decade ago that "Muslim visitors and immigrants must undergo additional background checks." I reiterate this now, lest more Riad Hamads be allowed in.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum. © All rights reserved by Daniel Pipes, 2012.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4)Obama’s Early Voting Strategy Flops?

By Alana Goodman

President Obama is so invested in his campaign’s early voting strategy that he became the first sitting president to cast a ballot before election day. In case you missed the subtlety of the First Lady telling you to “vote early” on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the president has started doing his stump speech in front of a giant, fluorescent “Vote Early” sign. It’s basically his campaign motto. 

And it’s not working. According to Gallup’s latest, Romney leads Obama among voters who have already cast their ballots: 

Romney currently leads Obama 52% to 45% among voters who say they have already cast their ballots. However, that is comparable to Romney’s 51% to 46% lead among all likely voters in Gallup’s Oct. 22-28 tracking polling. At the same time, the race is tied at 49% among those who have not yet voted but still intend to vote early, suggesting these voters could cause the race to tighten. However, Romney leads 51% to 45% among the much larger group of voters who plan to vote on Election Day, Nov. 6. 

The early voting race might tighten, but Romney still has a solid lead. Assuming Gallup’s 49%-49% split among early voters who haven’t cast a ballot yet, there would be no way for Obama to overtake Romney at this point.

Note that in 2008, Obama crushed John McCain in early voting, 58 percent to 40 percent:

The Obama campaign has some practice in this arena. With significantly more resources at its disposal than rival John McCain in 2008, it made banking early votes a top priority and deployed some smart campaign tactics to that end. Of those who cast early ballots in 2008, 58 percent favored Obama, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken just before Election Day, versus McCain’s 40 percent. 

The Gallup poll is national, and the Obama campaign will probably argue it’s the early voters in swing states that matter. But signs aren’t good for Obama in Ohio early voting, either, at least compared to his 2008 record. At Politico, Adrian Gray writes:

I have always been a believer in data telling me the full story. Truth is, nobody knows what will happen on Election Day. But here is what we do know: 220,000 fewer Democrats have voted early in Ohio compared with 2008. And 30,000 more Republicans have cast their ballots compared with four years ago. That is a 250,000-vote net increase for a state Obama won by 260,000 votes in 2008. 

Could it be that Obama’s get-out-the-vote efforts aren’t as unbeatable as we’re told?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Barack Obama and Other Has-Beens

Yesterday's man of destiny is today's peddler of spent ideas.

By Bret Stephens

On the eve of the U.S. presidential election four years ago, educated people nearly everywhere understood that China was the country of the future, green was the energy of the future, and Barack Obama was a man of destiny. How quaint it all seems now.

In a remarkable piece of investigative journalism last week in the New York Times, reporter David Barboza identified assets worth $2.7 billion belonging to various members of the family of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, including his 90-year-old mother, a retired schoolteacher named Yang Zhiyun.

"The details of how Ms. Yang, a widow, accumulated such wealth are not known, or even if she was aware of the holdings in her name," Mr. Barboza reports. "But it happened after her son was elevated to China's ruling elite, first in 1998 as vice prime minister and then five years later as prime minister."

Enlarge Image

The president at the Democratic National Convention, August 2008.

The Times report would be interesting were it about any leading Chinese official. But Mr. Wen is in a category unto himself, having spent his political career cultivating the image of a kindly old man—"Grandpa Wen"—with a humble background, a common touch, a scientific mind and an uncorrupted soul. In March he was instrumental in firing disgraced Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai, another fabulously wealthy servant of the proletariat. The prime minister is supposed to embody the moral fiber of the Communist Party.

Perhaps he does. Perhaps he's even the best of the bunch: In February, Bloomberg reported that "the net worth of the 70 richest delegates in China's National People's Congress . . . rose to 565.8 billion yuan ($89.8 billion) in 2011, a gain of $11.5 billion from 2010." That averages out to more than $1 billion per delegate, and we're not even talking about the senior party leadership.

All this is good to know as a reminder that China, so recently extolled as the very model of technocratic know-how, turns out to be a country heavily populated at the top by rent-seekers and kleptocrats. Should that be surprising? Not if you think that nothing else can come from the lucrative crossroads where politically directed capital and politically connected individuals meet.

This brings us to Al Gore.

Earlier this month the Washington Post's Carol Leonnig reported that the former vice president's wealth is today estimated at $100 million, up from less than $2 million when he left government service on a salary of $181,400. How did he make this kind of money? It wasn't his share of the Nobel Peace Prize. Nor was it the book and movie proceeds from "An Inconvenient Truth."

Instead, as Ms. Leonnig reports, "Fourteen green-tech firms in which Gore invested received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks, part of President Obama's historic push to seed a U.S. renewable-energy industry with public money."

That's nice work if you can get it—at least if you're on the investment-management end of the deal. But what if you're on the worker-bee end?

The Post story mentions one of the beneficiaries of Mr. Gore's investment acumen, Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls, JCI -1.36% which won a $299 million award from the federal government in 2009 to make electric-car batteries. Here's how that worked out:

"The company has dramatically scaled back, after executives concluded demand for electric cars was far lower than the administration forecast. The factory outfitted with stimulus funds is nearly idle, and plans to build a second plant have been postponed."

And so to Barack Obama.

When the history of this administration is written, maybe someone will note the dissonance between the president's hip persona and his retro ideology. Here was a man who promised a "transformative" presidency. Yet when transformation came, it amounted to a two-pronged attempt to impose, from one side, a version of European social democracy by way of ObamaCare, and from the other side a version of Chinese state-directed "capitalism" by way of the stimulus.

As a political matter it may have been Mr. Obama's good luck that the bankruptcy of both models became obvious only after he had gotten his way legislatively on both. Yet the president's sagging fortunes have everything to do with his buying into an ideological enthusiasm too late. In a different age, Mr. Obama would have been the guy who went out and bought an Edsel. In this age, Mr. Obama is the guy demanding that you buy an Edsel, too. That car is today called the Volt.

Mr. Obama might still squeak by. He has, in addition to incumbency and a vestige of likability, the benefit of a challenger who only found his stride very late in the campaign. But a second term will mean four years of spent ideas packaged in shopworn rhetoric, to be shoved down the national throat by a president with nothing politically to lose.

Sound appealing?

5a)The Fog of Obama's Non-War

Seven weeks after a U.S. ambassador was murdered and there are still no answers.

By Wiliam McGurn

Mitt Romney had it only half right when he attempted in the second presidential debate to score Barack Obama for his reluctance to concede that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. The real issue is not how long the president took to call the assault on the U.S. consulate an "act of terror"—but that he still has not called it an act of war.

Plainly this is no oversight. On "The Late Show with David Letterman" a week after the attack—late-night television having become our commander in chief's preferred venue for addressing the great public issues—Mr. Letterman asked President Obama directly whether the Benghazi attack was an act of war, one that meant we were at war. Mr. Obama said "no"—and went on to say that terrorists had attacked not only the Benghazi compound but a "variety of our embassies."

There was a reason for that addendum, and, as odd as it may seem, a logic. As anyone who has been part of a White House communications team knows, words are chosen (and un-chosen) for a reason. In President Obama's case, calling a textbook act of war by its rightful name would undermine a foreign policy based on a single idea: He's the man who gets us out of wars, not into them.

Enlarge Image

Associated Press

An empty bullet casing lies on the ground near one of the burned cars at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.

Scour the president's speeches and you will find that war is either something he has ended (Iraq), is ending responsibly (Afghanistan), or is helping us to "turn the page on." In like manner, Mr. Obama suggests that war is something from the George W. Bush era, telling crowds that a vote for Mr. Romney means going "back to a foreign policy that takes us into wars with no plan to get out." As for the president's surrogates who are now on television trying to answer embarrassing questions about why the help that Americans pleaded for in Benghazi never came, the solitary reference to war has been to the "fog of war."

The point is that for all the administration's complaints about opponents "politicizing" Benghazi (this from a White House that leaked politically helpful but nonetheless sensitive details about the raid on bin Laden), the logic of the president's response to Benghazi has been political from the start. Libya was supposed to be the Obama success story, showing how this president achieves our goals abroad without committing American troops or treasure. However ridiculous it might have been to blame the whole thing on a YouTube video, politically the tactic was far preferable to admitting that the president who boasts about getting us out of war in Iraq and Afghanistan might have a whole new one brewing in Libya.

Now those political choices are coming back to bite him. Sooner or later (though perhaps not in time to affect the election), the conflicting stories about Benghazi that we are now hearing from key players will bring down the president's political narrative.

Start with the Central Intelligence Agency, whose spokesman declared in an Oct. 26 statement that "no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need." In Beltwayspeak this means: The buck stopped somewhere between the Pentagon and the White House.

At the Pentagon, meanwhile, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says that because there was not enough real-time information available about the attack, "Gen. [Carter] Ham, and Gen. [Martin] Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation." Mr. Panetta's problem is that a Utah congressman who visited Libya is saying that Gen. Ham told him that forces were in place to move but he never got the order. Adding to the intrigue was the announcement earlier this month that Gen. Ham will be replaced as head of the U.S. Africa Command. On Monday, Gen. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that Gen. Ham's reassignment from the Africa command was not because of Libya.

As for President Obama, just as he told Russia's leaders that he would have more "flexibility" about missile defense after the election, he now tells the American people that he will be freer to speak about Benghazi after Nov. 6, when the results of the investigation are (conveniently) scheduled to be delivered. So long as the only questioners Mr. Obama faced before the election were late-night comics and the incurious national press corps, that might have been the end of it.

Last Friday, however, KUSA-TV reporter Kyle Clark in Denver put it to the president simply and directly in a satellite interview: "Were the Americans under attack at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, denied requests for help during that attack? And is it fair to tell Americans that what happened is under investigation and we'll all find out after the election?" Mr. Obama replied, but he didn't answer the questions.

In light of Benghazi, it's interesting to go back to 2004 and then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission about the greatest failure of Republican and Democratic administrations before that fateful day. "The terrorists were at war with us," she said, "but we were not yet at war with them."

Eleven years after 9/11 and seven weeks after the murder of his ambassador in Benghazi on the 9/11 anniversary, President Obama has yet to heed the lesson.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)Black and White Standards

• 
 
• Walter E. Williams 

The Washington Post (10/25/2012), in giving President Barack Obama an endorsement for another four years, wrote, "Much of the 2012 presidential campaign has dwelt on the past, but the key questions are who could better lead the country during the next four years -- and, most urgently, who is likelier to put the government on a more sound financial footing." The suggestion appears to be that a president is not to be held accountable to his promises and past record and that his past record is no indication of his future behavior. Possibly, the Washington Post people believe that a black president shouldn't be held accountable to his record and campaign promises. Let's look at it.

What about Obama's pledge to cut the deficit in half during his first term in office? Instead, we saw the first trillion-dollar deficit ever, under any president of the United States. Plus, it has been followed by trillion-dollar deficits in every year of his administration. What about Obama's pledge of transparency, in which his legislative proposals would be placed on the Internet days before Congress voted on them so that Americans could inspect them? Obama's major legislative proposal, Obamacare, was enacted in such secrecy and with such speed that even members of Congress did not have time to read it. Remember that it was Rep. Nancy Pelosi who told us, "But we have to pass the (health care) bill so that you can find out what is in it." What about Obama's stimulus packages and promises to get unemployment under control? The Current Employment Statistics program shows that in 2008, the total number of U.S. jobs was more than 138 million, compared with 133.5 million today. As Stanford University economics professor Edward Lazear summed it up, "there hasn't been one day during the entire Obama presidency when as many Americans were working as on the day President Bush left office."

While Obama's national job approval rating is a little less than 50 percent, among blacks his job approval is a whopping 88 percent. I'd like to ask people who approve of Obama's performance, "What has President Obama done during the past four years that you'd like to see more of in the next four years?"

Black support of politicians who have done little or nothing for their ordinary constituents is by no means unusual. Blacks are chief executives of major cities, such as Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, Memphis, Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans, Oakland, Newark, Cleveland and Cincinnati. In most of these cities, the chief of police, the superintendent of schools and other high executives are black. But in these cities, black people, like no other sector of our population, suffer from the highest rates of homicides, assaults, robberies and shootings. Black high-school dropout rates in these cities are the highest in the nation. Even if a black youngster manages to graduate from high school, his reading, writing and computational proficiency is likely to be equivalent to that of a white seventh- or eighth-grader. That's even with school budgets per student being among the highest in the nation.

Last year, in reference to President Obama's failed employment policies and high unemployment among blacks, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., who is chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, "If Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House." That's a vision that seems to explain black tolerance for failed politicians -- namely, if it's a black politician whose policies are ineffectual and possibly harmful to the masses of the black community, it's tolerable, but it's entirely unacceptable if the politician is white.

Black people would not accept excuses upon excuses and vote to re-elect decade after decade any white politician, especially a Republican politician, to office who had the failed records of our big-city mayors. What that suggests about black people is not very flattering.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7)U.S. Presidential Elections in Perspective

By George Friedman

The U.S. presidential election will be held a week from today, and if the polls are correct, the outcome will be extraordinarily close. Many say that the country has never been as deeply divided. In discussing the debates last week, I noted how this year's campaign is far from the most bitter and vitriolic. It might therefore be useful also to consider that while the electorate at the moment appears evenly and deeply divided, unlike what many say, that does not reveal deep divisions in our society -- unless our society has always been deeply divided. 

Since 1820, the last year an uncontested election was held, most presidential elections have been extremely close. Lyndon B. Johnson received the largest percentage of votes any president has ever had in 1964, taking 61.5 percent of the vote. Three other presidents broke the 60 percent mark: Warren G. Harding in 1920, Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 and Richard Nixon in 1972.

Nine elections saw a candidate win between 55 and 60 percent of the vote: Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. Only Eisenhower broke 55 percent twice. Candidates who received less than 50 percent of the vote won 18 presidential elections. These included Lincoln in his first election, Woodrow Wilson in both elections, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Nixon in his first election and Bill Clinton in both his elections. 

From 1824-2008, 13 elections ended in someone obtaining more than 55 percent but never more than 61 percent of the vote. Eighteen elections ended with the president receiving less than 50 percent of the vote. The remaining 16 elections ended with the winner receiving between 50-55 percent of the vote, in many cases barely above the 50 percent mark -- meaning almost half the country voted for someone else. The United States not only always has had deeply divided elections, but in many cases, minority presidents. Interestingly, of the four presidents who won more than 60 percent of the vote, three are not remembered favorably: Harding, Johnson and Nixon. 

Three observations follow. First, for almost 200 years the electoral process has consistently produced a division in the country never greater than 60-40 and heavily tending toward a much narrower margin. Second, when third parties had a significant impact on the election, winners won five times with 45 percent of the vote or less. Third, in 26 of the U.S. presidential elections, the winner received less than 52 percent of the vote.

Even in the most one-sided elections, nearly 40 percent of voters voted against the winner. The most popular presidents still had 40 percent of votes cast against them. All other elections took place with more than 40 percent opposition. The consistency here is striking. Even in the most extreme cases of national crisis and a weak opponent, it was impossible to rise above just over 60 percent. The built-in opposition of 40 percent, regardless of circumstances or party, has therefore persisted for almost two centuries. But except in the case of the 1860 election, the deep division did not lead to a threat to the regime. On the contrary, the regime has flourished -- again, 1860 excepted -- in spite of these persistent divisions. 

The Politically Indifferent

Why then is the United States so deeply and persistently divided and why does this division rarely lead to unrest, let alone regime change? Let us consider this seeming paradox in light of another fact, namely, that a substantial portion of the electorate doesn't vote at all. This fact frequently is noted, usually as a sign of a decline in civic virtue. But let's consider it another way.

First, let's think of it mechanically. The United States is one of the few countries that has not made Election Day a national holiday or held its presidential elections on a weekend. That means that there is work and school on Election Day in the United States. In the face of the tasks of getting the kids off to school, getting to work, picking up the kids on the way home -- all while fighting traffic -- and then getting dinner on the table, the urgency of exercising the franchise pales. It should therefore be no surprise that older people are more likely to vote. 

Low voter turnout could also indicate alienation from the system. But alienation sufficient to explain low voter turnout should have generated more unrest over two centuries. When genuine alienation was present, as in 1860, voter turnout rose and violence followed. Other than that, unrest hasn't followed presidential elections. To me, that so many people don't vote does not indicate widespread alienation as much as indifference: The outcome of the election is simply less important to many than picking up the kids from piano lessons.

It is equally plausible that low voter turnout indicates voter satisfaction with both candidates. Some have noted that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney sound less different than they portray themselves as being. Some voters might figure there is not much difference between the two and that they can therefore live with either in office.

Another explanation is that some voters feel indifferent to the president and politics in general. They don't abstain because they are alienated from the system but because they understand the system as being designed such that outcomes don't matter. The Founding Fathers' constitutional system leaves the president remarkably weak. In light of this, while politically attentive people might care who is elected, the politically indifferent might have a much shrewder evaluation of the nature of the presidency. 

The Role of Ideologues

The United States always has had ideologues who have viewed political parties as vehicles for expressing ideologies and reshaping the country. While the ideologies have changed since Federalists faced off against Democratic-Republicans, an ideological divide always has separated the two main parties. At the same time, the ranks of the true ideologues -- those who would prefer to lose elections to winning with a platform that ran counter to their principles -- were relatively sparse. The majority of any party was never as ideologically committed as the ideologues. A Whig might have thought of himself as a member of the Whig Party when he thought of himself in political terms at all, but most of the time he did not think of himself as political. Politics were marginal to his identity, and while he might tend to vote Whig, as one moved to less committed elements of the party, Whigs could easily switch sides. 

The four elections in which presidents received 60 percent or more were all ideological and occurred at times of crisis: Johnson in 1964 defeated Barry Goldwater, a highly ideological candidate, in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination; Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon, an anti-Roosevelt ideologue, during the depths of the Depression; Nixon defeated George McGovern, an anti-war ideologue, during the era of the Vietnam War and the anti-war challenge; and Warren G. Harding won in the wake of World War I and the latter debacles of the Wilson administration and its ideology. 

Crisis tends to create the most extreme expressions of hostility to a challenging ideology and creates the broadest coalition possible, 60 percent. Meanwhile, 40 percent remain in opposition to the majority under any circumstances. To put it somewhat differently -- and now we get to the most significant point -- about 40 percent of the voting public cannot be persuaded to shift from their party under any circumstances, while about 20 percent are either persuadable or represent an unrooted voter who shifts from election to election. 

The 60-40 break occurs rarely, when the ideological bent rallies the core and the national crisis allows one party to attract a larger block than normal to halt the less popular ideology. But this is the extreme of American politics; the normal election is much narrower.

This is because the ideologues in the parties fail to draw in the center. The weaker party members remain in their party's orbit and the 20 percent undecided distribute themselves fairly randomly, depending on their degree of indifference, so that the final vote depends on no more than a few percentage points shifting one way or another. 

This is not a sign of massive divisions. Whereas the 60-40 elections are the moments of deepest political tension in which one side draws the center to it almost unanimously, in other elections -- particularly the large number in which the winner receives less that 55 percent of the vote (meaning that a 5 percent shift would change the outcome) -- the election is an election of relative indifference.

This is certainly not how ideologues view the election. For them, it is a struggle between light and darkness. Nor is it how the media and commentators view it. For them, it is always an election full of meaning. In reality, most elections are little remembered and decide little. Seemingly apocalyptic struggles that produce narrow margins do not represent a deeply divided country. The electoral division doesn't translate into passion for most of the voters, but into relative indifference with the recognition that here is another election "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The fact that nearly 50 percent of the public chooses not to vote is our tipoff about the public's view of elections. That segment of the public simply doesn't care much about the outcome. The politically committed regard these people as unenlightened fools. In reality, perhaps these people know that the election really isn't nearly as important as the ideologues, media and professional politicians think it is, so they stay home.

Others vote, of course, but hardly with the intensity of the ideologues. Things the ideologues find outrageously trivial can sway the less committed. Such voters think of politics in a very different way than the ideologues do. They think of it as something that doesn't define their lives or the republic. They think of politicians as fairly indistinguishable, and they are aware that the ideological passions will melt in the face of presidential responsibility. And while they care a bit more than those who stay home, they usually do not care all that much more.

The United States has elected presidents with the narrowest of margins and presidents who had far less than a majority. In many countries, this might reveal deep divisions leading to social unrest. It doesn't mean this in the United States because while the division can be measured, it isn't very deep and by most, it will hardly be remembered. 

The polls say the election will be very close. If that is true, someone will be selected late at night after Ohio makes up its mind. The passionate on the losing side will charge fraud and election stealing. The rest of the country will get up the next day and go back to work just as they did four years ago, and the republic will go on. 

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