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 Brokerberko.com
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More on the Libyan cover-up! (See 1 below.)
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Economic outlook somber at best. (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Sounds and smells like an apology. (See 3 below.)
Also I found it interesting when Obama made his snide and condescending remarks about bayonets, submarines etc. this came from a man who could not pronounce corpsman.
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Even a changed Iranian policy under Romney, should he win, would meet severe resistance, according to Glick. (See 4 below.)
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Romney must learn not to be taken in by appearances. (See 5 below.)
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I maintained from the git go, once Americans saw Obama for what and who he really was, he would fall from grace and the pedestal on which he had been placed. I further maintained he could and would be beaten by his own words, failed actions and policies and still do.
Now Peggy Noonan adds her thoughts. (See 6 below.)
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Obama's recovery -the naked truth. (See 7 below.)
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Obama second term premised on blaming others - no change and less hope! (See 8 below.)
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Sounds and smells like an apology. (See 3 below.)
Also I found it interesting when Obama made his snide and condescending remarks about bayonets, submarines etc. this came from a man who could not pronounce corpsman.
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Even a changed Iranian policy under Romney, should he win, would meet severe resistance, according to Glick. (See 4 below.)
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Romney must learn not to be taken in by appearances. (See 5 below.)
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I maintained from the git go, once Americans saw Obama for what and who he really was, he would fall from grace and the pedestal on which he had been placed. I further maintained he could and would be beaten by his own words, failed actions and policies and still do.
Now Peggy Noonan adds her thoughts. (See 6 below.)
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Obama's recovery -the naked truth. (See 7 below.)
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Obama second term premised on blaming others - no change and less hope! (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1) Anatomy of a Cover-up
9-11 has turned into a nightmare once again. Al Qaida has chosen this day on the calendar for regular attacks on the "Great Satan", aka the United States of America. But this year is particularly troublesome because not only did Americans die in the attacks, but this year our own government decided to lie about it.
2012 being an election year, nothing can be allowed to break the campaigning President from his re-election talking point that Al Qaida has been vanquished into the dark recesses of history. Barak Obama has spent much of the year boasting about his success in defeating Al Qaida and killing their leader, Osama Bid Laden.
If this vanquished foe can reach from their grave on the anniversary of 9-11 and kill an American Ambassador, then the campaign rhetoric about how he, Barack Obama, has kept us safe is blown to bits.
So instead of the truth we have been spoon-fed a first class cover-up. First phase of the cover-up was to mislead America. Rather than call the attack terrorism, we were given a steady stream of official statements intended to make us believe the attack in Benghazi, Libya was merely a demonstration about a YouTube video gone wrong.
Here are some examples of the Obama Administration's cover-up lies.
Starting at the top on September 12th Barack Obama told us this: "Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts...No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."
Read Obama's statement closely and make up your own mind. We don't think he called the attack terrorism, but we publish the whole paragraph so you can make your own determination.
But to put his statement into context, we share some administration comments that came after the September 12th statement.
The next day, September 13th, Obama's spokesman Jay Carney said this: "I think it's important to note with regards to that protest that there are protests taking place in different countries across the world that are responding to the movie that has circulated on the Internet. As Secretary Clinton said today, the United States government had nothing to do with this movie. We reject its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and reprehensible."
It isn't the killing of our Ambassador Carney is calling reprehensible, it is this YouTube video.
Then on September 14th Hillary Clinton said this: We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with." Again the focus is on the video.
Later that day Carney said at a news briefing: "I have seen that report, and the story is absolutely wrong. We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent. That report is false."
But the most damning evidence of a cover-up is when Susan Rice, America's Ambassador to the UN made the rounds of the major Sunday shows saying: "Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video.... We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned."
Only the Obama Administration saw it this way. We had more honesty from Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, president of Libya's General National Congress. He told us just the opposite on September 16th: "The way these perpetrators acted and moved, and their choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, this leaves us with no doubt that this was preplanned, predetermined."
You get the picture. As late as September 25th, Barack Obama was not willing to call the Benghazi attack terrorism, pure and simple, instead he was still saying: "We are still doing an investigation."
Obama definitely doesn't want to be pinned down, and is currently trying to re-write history, but we think any dispassionate review of the statements and the timeline shows Obama and his people are engaged in a cover-up. Why? Obama is desperate to retain power and the presidency.
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©2012 Floyd and Mary Beth Brown. The Browns are bestselling authors and speakers. To comment on this column, e-mail browns@caglecartoons.com. Together they write a national weekly column distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Floyd is also president of the Western Center for Journalism.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Obama’s Inflated Jobs Claim
In 1987, “the market was spooked by concerns over international trade and government debt, which then became known as the twin deficits" — the budget deficit and the trade deficit, Schiff writes an economic commentary.
The deficits together totaled 6.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) then.
Flash forward to now: the deficits add up to 13 percent of GDP. “But today's investors are largely untroubled,” Schiff says.
The Federal Reserve’s massive easing program has made investors immune to worries over the deficits, he maintains. But ultimately, the joy ride will end.
“When America's creditors wake up, particularly those foreign governments now shouldering the lion's share of the burden [financing U.S. debt], concerns over our twin deficits will return with a vengeance,” Schiff says.
With the Fed so committed to quantitative easing, stocks might escape a crash, but not the dollar and Treasurys, he notes.
“Black Monday is more likely to occur in the currency and/or bond markets, with safe-haven flows moving into gold, not Treasurys.”
Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report, also expects exploding government debt to cause a crisis, and not just in the United States.
“I think within five to 10 years you have a colossal mess everywhere in the Western world,” he tells CNBC.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2)Obama’s Inflated Jobs Claim
In a new TV ad, President Obama makes an inflated claim to have added 5.2 million new jobs. The total added during his time in office is actually about 325,000.
In the ad, the president says “over 5 million new jobs” while the figure “5.2 million” appears on screen. But that’s a doubly misleading figure.
- Viewers would need to pay close attention to the on-screen graphic to know that the ad refers only to employment gains starting in March 2010, omitting the 4.3 million jobs that were lost in the first year of Obama’s term.
- And there’s no way a viewer would know that the total counts only private-sector jobs, omitting continuing losses in government employment.
According to the most recent employment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy has eked out a net gain of 325,000 jobs since January 2009, when Obama took office. And that’s giving credit for roughly 386,000 jobs that the BLS has announced, on a preliminary basis, that it will be adding to this year’s employment totals next year, as a result of its routine annual “benchmarking” analysis.
Looking only at private-sector jobs, it’s true that the total has risen just under 5.2 million since February 2010 — provided that credit is given for roughly 453,000 private-sector jobs to be added next year through the BLS benchmarking process. But over Obama’s entire term, those private-sector jobs have gone up only 967,000, even counting benchmarking additions.
Other claims in the ad are essentially accurate: Exports are rising; home values have begun to recover; U.S. automakers are making profits, for example.
And viewers can judge for themselves how they feel about the “plan for the next four years” that the president briefly outlines in the ad, which is couched in broad generalities.
But viewers who follow the ad’s invitation to visit an Obama website for further information will find some false and misleading claims. There, the campaign, for example, states that “Mitt Romneycriticized the end of the Iraq war as ‘tragic,’ and has offered no plan withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.”
In fact, as we’ve reported before, Romney did not call the end of the Iraq war “tragic.” He used that word to describe the president’s pace of troop withdrawal, not ending a war. And more important, there is no longer any difference between Romney’s position and Obama’s plan to pull all U.S. combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Romney, whose position has evolved from criticism to unqualified acceptance, said during the final presidential debate on the night before the ad was released: “[W]hen I’m president, we’ll make sure we bring our troops out by the end of 2014.”
– Brooks Jackson
2a)Peter Schiff: Economic Conditions Worse Now than on Black Monday
The economic backdrop that sparked the stock market crash of 1987 is still in place and has grown worse, says Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital.
In 1987, “the market was spooked by concerns over international trade and government debt, which then became known as the twin deficits" — the budget deficit and the trade deficit, Schiff writes an economic commentary.
The deficits together totaled 6.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) then.
Flash forward to now: the deficits add up to 13 percent of GDP. “But today's investors are largely untroubled,” Schiff says.
The Federal Reserve’s massive easing program has made investors immune to worries over the deficits, he maintains. But ultimately, the joy ride will end.
“When America's creditors wake up, particularly those foreign governments now shouldering the lion's share of the burden [financing U.S. debt], concerns over our twin deficits will return with a vengeance,” Schiff says.
With the Fed so committed to quantitative easing, stocks might escape a crash, but not the dollar and Treasurys, he notes.
“Black Monday is more likely to occur in the currency and/or bond markets, with safe-haven flows moving into gold, not Treasurys.”
Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom Boom & Doom Report, also expects exploding government debt to cause a crisis, and not just in the United States.
“I think within five to 10 years you have a colossal mess everywhere in the Western world,” he tells CNBC.
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3)If Not 'Apologizing,' Mr. President, What Would You Call It?
OK, President Obama, if you and your defenders insist on denying that you've repeatedly apologized for America, then let's quit mincing words and acknowledge you've done worse than apologize. That works for me.
We all say Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. But it's all still Denver, Denver, and the mystery that maybe isn't a mystery at all.
3)If Not 'Apologizing,' Mr. President, What Would You Call It?
OK, President Obama, if you and your defenders insist on denying that you've repeatedly apologized for America, then let's quit mincing words and acknowledge you've done worse than apologize. That works for me.
Maybe it is technically inaccurate to attribute the word apology to you, because you would have to identify with America more before you could apology on its behalf. Besides, I suppose we should not be surprised in this Clinton-inspired age of word meaninglessness -- an age in which the simple word "is" no longer feels comfortable in its own skin -- that you would deny you have apologized because you didn't use the precise word "apology" in any of your shameful outings.
You didn't say you were sorry, either, come to think of it. But what you did do is harshly criticize America, not just to Americans on our soil but to other nations and their leaders on their soil. From the time you became a liberal activist, you've exhibited a grudge against America as originally founded, and since becoming president, you've made clear on numerous occasions that you still harbor that sentiment.
Indeed, it seems rather obvious based on your statements and policies that your principal motivation for running for president was to "fundamentally transform America" -- your words. Perhaps you could remake it into something you could be proud of and truly love.
You showed genuine contempt for America's conduct before you ascended to the presidency and hastened to add that you had nothing to do with it and would change it. In other words, on our behalf -- your fellow Americans -- you've presumptuously expressed contrition and promised repentance under any reasonable construction of language.
From your condemnation of our enhanced interrogation techniques, which you scornfully call "torture" and which gave us the essential intelligence that led to our elimination of Osama bin Laden, to your denunciation of America's attack on Iraq to your promise to close Gitmo, you have done more than distance yourself from your predecessors on policy. You've rendered a guilty verdict against America and painted it as the international outlaw and bully and vowed to turn things around by adopting an entirely new approach to the war on terror. And you've fulfilled that promise, which goes a long way toward explaining how the Fort Hood shooter was able to succeed in his mass murder and we lost four American lives in Benghazi, Libya.
Seeing as you reject the term "apology" to describe your overtures, perhaps you could help us better characterize them. May I suggest "slam, dis, knock, reproach, blame, criticize, condemn, ridicule or denounce"? Let's review:
You scoffed at the idea of American exceptionalism. You want to increase our deference to international bodies that obviously don't have our best interests at heart, and many of whose members reject our values. You have strongly criticized America's record on civil and human rights to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
You said at the G-20 meeting in London that you believed your election would lead to a restoration of America's positive image in the world, thereby implying it had a richly deserved negative image. You said America needs to account for "inadequacies" in its "regulatory system," and you accepted blame and responsibility for the economic crisis having begun in the United States -- "even if" you weren't "president at the time."
You told the Al-Arabiya television network that America "dictates" without knowing "all the factors involved."
At the Summit of the Americas, you sat through Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's 50-minute harangue against the United States without registering a word of protest and then thanked him for not blaming you "for things that happened when" you were "3 months old." You told the French that America failed to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world and that we've been "arrogant," "dismissive" and "derisive."
In Trinidad, you said we'd been "disengaged" and "dictatorial." In Prague, you said America has a moral responsibility to act on arms control because we are the only nation to have used a nuclear weapon. You tried to visit Japan to personally apologize for our bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and when the Japanese rejected your offer as "a non-starter," you sent Ambassador John Roos to do the job the following year.
You apologized to the Communist Chinese for Arizona's immigration law, a law that Mexican President Felipe Calderon condemned in the Rose Garden while you remained silent. In Mumbai, you told Indians that Americans think of India as but a land of call centers that cost Americans jobs.
You told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that Mexicans were here "long before America was even an idea," apparently unaware that Mexico declared its independence in 1810.
But do you ever talk about America's benevolence and philanthropy in the world? Do you ever praise America for liberating other nations and preventing the enslavement of the Western world by communism?
Love and praise for America don't roll off your lips. Censure and disparagement do. If "apology" doesn't fit, please tell us what does.
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4)The limits of US power
By Caroline B. Glick
Monday's US Presidential debate on foreign policy came and went. And we are none the wiser for it. Not surprisingly, at the height of the campaign season, neither US President Barack Obama nor his Republican challenger Governor Mitt Romney was interested in revealing their plans for the next four years.
But from what was said, we can be fairly certain that a second Obama term will involve no departure from his foreign policy in his current term in office.
As far as Iran and its nuclear weapons program is concerned, that policy has involved a combination of occasional tough talk and a relentless attempt to appease the mullahs. While Obama denied the New York Times report from the weekend that he has agreed to carry out new bilateral negotiations with Iran after the presidential elections, his administration has acknowledged that it would be happy to have such talks if they can be arranged.
As for Romney, his statements of support for tougher sanctions, including moving to indict Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the crime of incitement of genocide were certainly welcome. But they were also rather out of date, given the lateness of the hour.
If there was ever much to recommend it, the "sanction Iran into abandoning its nuclear weapons" policy is no longer a relevant option. The timetables are too short.
On the other hand, Romney's identification of Iran as the gravest national security threat facing the US made clear that he understands the severity of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear weapons program. And consequently, if Romney defeats Obama on November 6, it is likely that on January 21, 2013 the US will adopt a different policy towards Iran.
The question for Israel now is whether any of this matters. If Romney is elected and adopts a new policy towards Iran, what if any operational significance will this policy shift have for Israel?
The short answer is very little. To understand why this is the case we need to consider two issues: The time it would take for a new US policy to be implemented; and the time Iran requires to become a nuclear power.
In the aftermath of the September 11 2001 jihadist attacks on the US, then President George W. Bush faced no internal opposition to overthrowing the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The US military and intelligence arms all supported the operation. Congress supported the operation. The American public supported the operation. The UN supported the mission.
And still, it took the US four weeks to plan and launch Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001. That is, under optimal conditions, the US needed nearly a month to respond to the largest foreign attack on the US mainland since the War of 1812.
Then of course there was Operation Iraqi Freedom which officially began on March 20, 2003 with the US-British ground invasion of Iraq from Kuwait.
Bush and his advisors began seriously considering overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime in the spring of 2002. They met with resistance from the military. They met with a modicum of political opposition in Congress, and more serious opposition in the media. Moreover, they met with harsh opposition from France and Russia and other key players at the UN and in the international community. So too, they met with harsh opposition from senior UN officials.
It took the administration until November 2002 to get the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 1441 which found Iraq in material breach of the ceasefire that ended the 1991 Gulf War. The US and Britain began repositioning ground forces and war materiel in Kuwait ahead of a ground invasion that month. It took more than four months for the Americans and the British to complete the forward deployment of their forces in Kuwait.
During those long months, other parties, unsympathetic to the US, Britain and their aims had ample opportunity to make their own preparations to deny the US and Britain the ability to win the war quickly and easily and so avoid the insurgency that ensued in the absence of a clear victory. So too, the four months the US required to ready for war enabled Iran to plan and begin executing its plan to suck the US into a prolonged proxy war with its surrogates from al Qaida and Hezbollah proteges.
A clear Anglo-American victory would have involved the location, presentation and destruction of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. And this Saddam denied them. By the time US ground forces finally arrived, despite massive telltale signs that such weapons had been in Iraq until very recently, no smoking gun was found.
In the long lead up to the US invasion, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned that satellite data indicated that Iraq was transporting its chemical weapons arsenal to Syria. Sharon's warnings fell on deaf ears. So too, a report by a Syrian journalist that WMD had been transferred to Syria was ignored.
According to a detailed report by Ryan Mauro at PJMedia.com from June 2010, after the fall of Saddam's regime, the Iraq Survey Group charged with assessing the status of Iraq's WMD arsenal, received numerous credible reports that the chemical weapons had been sent to Syria before the invasion. The stream of reports about the pre-invasion transfer of Iraq's WMD to Syria have continued to intermittently surface since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War last year.
In short, at a minimum, the time the US required to mount its operation in Iraq enabled Saddam to prepare the conditions to deny America the ability to achieve a clear victory.
This brings us to Iran. In the event that Romney is elected to the presidency, upon entering office he would face a US military leadership led by General Martin Dempsey that has for four years sought to minimize the danger that Iran's nuclear weapons program poses to the US. Dempsey has personally employed language to indicate that he believes an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear weapons sites would be an illegal act of aggression.
Romney would face intelligence, diplomatic and military establishments that at a minimum have been complicit in massive leaks of Israeli strike options against Iran and that have so far failed to present credible military options for a US strike against Iran's uranium enrichment sites and other nuclear installations.
He would face a hostile media establishment that firmly and enthusiastically supports Obama's policy of relentless appeasement and has sought to discredit as a warmonger and a racist every politician that has tried to make the case that Iran's nuclear weapons program constitutes an unacceptable threat to US national security.
Then too, Romney would face a wounded Democratic base, controlled by politicians who have refused to cooperate with Republicans since 2004. And he would face an electorate that has never heard a cogent case for military action against Iran. (Although, with the good will the American public usually greets its new presidents, this last difficulty would likely be the least of his worries.)
At the UN, Romney would face the same gridlock faced by his two predecessors on Iran. Russia and China would block UN Security Council against the mullocarcy.
As for the Arab world, whereas when Obama came into office in 2009, the Sunni Arab world was united in its opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, today Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt favors Iran more than it favors the US. Arguably only Saudi Arabia would actively support an assault on Iran's nuclear weapons sites. All the other US allies have either switched sides, or like Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain are too weak to offer any open assistance or political support. For its part, Iraq is already acting as Iran's satrapy, allowing Iran to transfer weapons to Bashar Assad's henchmen through its territory.
All of this means that as was the case in Iraq, it would likely take until at least the summer of 2013, if not the fall, before a Romney administration would be in a position to take any military action against Iran's nuclear installations.
And it isn't only US military campaigns that take a long time to organize. It also takes a long time for US administrations to change arm sales policies. For instance, if a hypothetical Romney administration wished to supply Israel with certain weapons systems that would make an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations more successful, it could take months for such deals to be concluded, approved by Congress, and then executed.
This then brings us to the question of where will Iran's nuclear weapons program likely stand by next summer?
In his speech before the UN General Assembly last month Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that by next spring or at the latest next summer Iran will have reached the final stage of uranium enrichment and will be able to acquire sufficient quantities of bomb grade uranium for a nuclear weapon within a few months or even a few weeks.
Netanyahu said that the last opportunity to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons will be before it reaches the final stage of uranium enrichment — that is, by the spring. At that point, a hypothetical Romney administration will have been in office for mere months. A new national security leadership will just be coming into its own.
It is extremely difficult to imagine that a new US administration would be capable of launching a preemptive attack against Iran's nuclear installations at such an early point in its tenure in office. Indeed, it is hard to see how such a new administration would be able to offer Israel any material support for an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations by next spring.
So this leaves us with Israel. Over the past several weeks, there has been a spate of reports indicating that Israel's military and intelligence establishments forced Netanyahu to take a step back from rhetorical brinksmanship on Iran. Our commanders are reportedly dead set against attacking Iran without US support and still insist that Israel can and must trust the Americans to take action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
There is great plausibility to these reports for a number of reasons. The intelligence and military brass have for years suffered from psychological dependence of the US and believe that Israel's most important strategic interest is to ensure US support for the country. Then too, in the event that an Israeli strike takes place against the backdrop of a larger military confrontation with Iran's proxies in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, Israel would likely require rapid resupply of arms to ensure its ability to fend off its enemies.
But when we consider the political realities of the US — in the event that Obama is reelected or in the event that Romney takes the White House — it is clear that Israel will remain the only party with the means — such as they are -- and the will to strike Iran's nuclear installations. Israel is the only country that can prevent this genocidal regime with regional and global ambitions from acquiring the means to carry out its goals.
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5)When Romney Met Kenny
Mitt's Islamist Gamble
by David J. Rusin
Mitt Romney's embrace of Kenny Gamble, an operator of Philadelphia charter schools who doubles as a prominent suit-and-tie Islamist calling himself Luqman Abdul Haqq, raises questions about a potential Romney administration's readiness to identify and steer clear of smooth-talking radicals. The Republican candidate should treat this blunder as a learning opportunity. The lesson: never make the mistake of promoting a Muslim leader without properly vetting him first.
The story begins on May 24, when Romney's desire to push his education policies and reach out to urban voters prompted a visit to West Philadelphia's Universal Bluford Charter School, one of several managed by Gamble's conglomerate, Universal Companies. According to an ABC News report, Romney "had heard about Universal … and asked for an invitation." Gamble claimed as much in a radio interview.
Seated beside Gamble, Romney joined other local figures for a roundtable (video here) in which he discussed ideas for attracting good teachers, involving parents, and boosting achievement. Romney generously praised Gamble, at one point turning to him and saying, "I'd like to get your experience from the front lines and first salute you for the investment you've made, financial and personal, in establishing a pathway for hundreds, thousands of young people to have changed lives." Gamble led Romney on a tour of the facilities as well.
No less disconcerting, the Romney campaign appears not to have done any serious follow-up on Gamble despite drawing criticism from bloggers for the trip to an "Islamist-owned charter school." Thus, Romney compounded the previous error by eagerly dropping Gamble's name multiple times during NBC's Education Nation summit in New York on September 25.
"I saw a school in the inner city of Philadelphia," Romney explained. "And I understand that the school was closed down, that 90 percent of the kids in that school were not reading at grade level. … A guy named Kenny Gamble … put in place a charter school." After recounting his surprise at the art, music, and computer instructors there, Romney touted how Gamble runs it "like a business." He continued: "As I recall, almost 90 percent of the students there now are reading at grade level. And it's the same students." (Note, however, that Universal's education record is very much a mixed bag.)
Wherever Romney originally heard about Gamble and Universal, it probably was not from the websites of Middle East expert Daniel Pipes, Islamist Watch, or Militant Islam Monitor, which for years have documentedGamble's troubling agenda — a history that should make him toxic to any politician knowledgeable about stealth jihad
An African-American music and real estate mogul, Gamble has long been listed — under his alternate name, Luqman Abdul Haqq — as part of the governing council of the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), which is among the most radical U.S. Muslim groups. Its formation was inspired by Jamil al-Amin, aconvicted cop killer and Islamic separatist who dreams of a Shari'a-run state; he enjoys MANA's support to this day and even has phoned into MANA meetings from prison. Gamble's other MANA colleagues have included Luqman Ameen Abdullah, who preached jihad against the U.S. and was shot to death after initiating a gunfight with federal agents in 2009, and Siraj Wahhaj, one of the "unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators" in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Just as several MANA leaders have championed the building ofclosed Islamic communities, Gamble outlined his own "model" for them during an interview on Saudi television. Worse, he is suspected of actually using his enormous South Philadelphia real estate holdings to assemble what has been dubbed a "black Muslim enclave." Confronted in 2007, Gamble responded with a rant portraying segregation as natural. "It's like cats," heinsisted. "They're all cats. But you don't see the lion with the tiger. You don't see the tiger with the panther." Equally alarming are Gamble's intimate ties to the Jawala Scouts(photos here), aptly described as an "Islamic paramilitary boys group" featuring "hand-to-hand combat, firearms training, and survival tactics."
Additional background is available in an Islamist Watch article from 2008, published after Gamble left his fingerprints on that year's election by hosting an Obama office. Alternatively, a simple online search yields plentiful data.
What makes the Romney-Gamble flirtation so unsettling is the apparent lack of due diligence in determining who does and does not get endorsed by the man who could be the next leader of the free world. Ten minutes on Google should suffice to raise red flags, but did anyone from the campaign bother to look? More disturbing is the possibility that uncomfortable facts turned up but were dismissed as tangential to Gamble's work in education.
"Saluting" somebody like Gamble for one facet of his life while ignoring the rest imparts an aura of respectability to the individual as a whole, easing the path for his less savory projects. This seems to be understood for every group except Muslims. Imagine, for example, a senior figure in a radical Christian organization whose luminaries have been linked to violence and terrorism, a man who has shrugged off charges of constructing a "white Christian enclave" and been involved with a youth movement whose participants march in fatigues and brandish weapons. Regardless of his other accomplishments, would this person be asked to share camera time with a presidential hopeful? The question answers itself.
The role of the media is significant here. Though they would hammer any candidate who bolstered the analogous Christian radical, mainstream news sources that covered Romney's Bluford visit made no mention of the skeletons in Gamble's closet, illustrating that their see-no-evil mentality vis-à-vis Islamism trumps even their instinct to shame Republicans. Indeed, the obvious hypersensitivity and double standards protecting Islamists can foster complacency among politicians of both parties, who assume that they will not be held accountable for palling around with them.
This certainly has been the case in Philadelphia, where Mayor Michael Nutter has suffered no ill effects from having Gamble on his inaugural committee, personally presenting the sign to rename a block in Gamble's honor, and headlining the dedication ceremony for a taxpayer-supported mural that lauds him. Such legitimization has paved the way for Gamble to build his Islamist-tinged empire through massive government assistance, including dirt-cheap property from the city, sweetheart deals with the School Reform Commission when it was chaired by a onetime Universal board member, and regular feedings at public troughs that span the municipal, state, and federal levels.
Rather than provide a "they do it too" excuse for politicians caught befriending Islamists, the Philadelphia establishment's cozy relations with Gamble only underscore the importance of a critical eye and the will to act on it — in other words, real leadership. As radical Muslims aggressively seek similar openings to win undeserved respect and influence governments both nationally and internationally, a president capable of recognizing and shunning them is more vital than ever. Washington's colossal and bipartisan failures in Muslim outreach — most recently seen in the mind-boggling selection of an Islamist to represent the U.S. at a conference on human rights — have done enough damage already.
Islamists have grown adept at hiding in plain sight, so great care must be taken when choosing which Muslims to engage and extol. With luck, airing the embarrassing facts behind his unfortunate promotion of Kenny Gamble / Luqman Abdul Haqq will be the wake-up call that Mitt Romney needs to learn this lesson now and, should he prevail on November 6, be in a better position to succeed where past presidents have faltered.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)When Americans Saw the Real Obama
Why the Denver debate changed everything.
By Peggy Noonan
We all say Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. But it's all still Denver, Denver, and the mystery that maybe isn't a mystery at all.
If Cincinnati and Lake County go for Mitt Romney on Nov. 6 it will be because of what happened in Denver on Oct. 3. If Barack Obama barely scrapes through, if there's a bloody and prolonged recount, it too will be because of Denver.
Nothing echoes out like that debate. It was the moment that allowed Mr. Romney to break through, that allowed dismay with the incumbent to coalesce, that allowed voters to consider the alternative. What the debate did to the president is what the Yankees' 0-4 series against the Tigers did at least momentarily, to the team's relationship with their city. "Dear Yankees, We don't date losers. Signed, New Yorkers" read the Post's headline.
America doesn't date losers either.
Why was the first debate so toxic for the president? Because the one thing he couldn't do if he was going to win the election is let all the pent-up resentment toward him erupt. Americans had gotten used to him as The President. Whatever his policy choices, whatever general direction he seemed to put in place he was The President, a man who had gotten there through natural gifts and what all politicians need, good fortune.
What he couldn't do was present himself, when everyone was looking, as smaller than you thought. Petulant, put upon, above it all, full of himself. He couldn't afford to make himself look less impressive than the challenger in terms of command, grasp of facts, size.
But that's what he did.
And in some utterly new way the president was revealed, exposed. All the people whose job it is to surround and explain him, to act as his buffers and protectors—they weren't there. It was him on the stage, alone with a competitor. He didn't have a teleprompter, and so his failure seemed to underscore the cliché that the prompter is a kind of umbilical cord for him, something that provides nourishment, the thing he needs to sound good. He is not by any means a stupid man but he has become a boring one; he drones, he is predictable, it's never new. The teleprompter adds substance, or at least safety.
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A great and assumed question, the one that's still floating out there, is what exactly happened when Mr. Obama did himself in? What led to it?
Was it the catastrophic execution of an arguably sound strategy? Perhaps the idea was to show the president was so unimpressed by his challenger that he could coolly keep him at bay by not engaging. Maybe Mr. Obama's handlers advised: "The American people aren't impressed by this flip-flopping, outsourcing plutocrat, and you will deepen your bond with the American people, Mr. President, by expressing in your bearing, through your manner and language, how unimpressed you are, too." So he sat back and let Mr. Romney come forward. Mr. But Romney was poised, knowledgable, presidential. It was a mistake to let that come forward!
Maybe the president himself didn't think he could possibly be beaten because he's so beloved. Presidents are always given good news, to keep their spirits up. The poll numbers he'd been seeing, the get-out-the-vote reports, the extraordinary Internet effort to connect with every lonely person in America, which is a lot of persons—maybe everything he was hearing left him thinking his position was impregnable.Was it the catastrophic execution of a truly bad strategy? Maybe they assumed the election was already pretty much in the bag, don't sweat it, just be your glitteringly brilliant self and let Duncan the Wonder Horse go out there and turn people off. But nothing was in the bag. The sheer number of people who watched—a historic 70 million—suggests a lot of voters were still making up their minds.
But maybe these questions are all off. Maybe what happened isn't a mystery at all.
That, anyway, is the view expressed this week by a member of the U.S. Senate who served there with Mr Obama and has met with him in the White House. People back home, he said, sometimes wonder what happened with the president in the debate. The senator said, I paraphrase: I sort of have to tell them that it wasn't a miscalculation or a weird moment. I tell them: I know him, and that was him. That guy on the stage, that's the real Obama.
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Which gets us to Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics," published last month. The portrait it contains of Mr. Obama—of a president who is at once over his head, out of his depth and wholly unaware of the fact—hasn't received the attention it deserves. Throughout the book, which is a journalistic history of the president's key economic negotiations with Capitol Hill, Mr. Obama is portrayed as having the appearance and presentation of an academic or intellectual while being strangely clueless in his reading of political situations and dynamics. He is bad at negotiating—in fact doesn't know how. His confidence is consistently greater than his acumen, his arrogance greater than his grasp.
He misread his Republican opponents from day one. If he had been large-spirited and conciliatory he would have effectively undercut them, and kept them from uniting. (If he'd been large-spirited with Mr. Romney, he would have undercut him, too.) Instead he was toughly partisan, he shut them out, and positions hardened. In time Republicans came to think he doesn't really listen, doesn't really hear. So did some Democrats. Business leaders and mighty CEOs felt patronized: After inviting them to meet with him, the president read from a teleprompter and included the press. They felt like "window dressing." One spoke of Obama's surface polish and essential remoteness. In negotiation he did not cajole, seduce, muscle or win sympathy. He instructed. He claimed deep understanding of his adversaries and their motives but was often incorrect. He told staffers that John Boehner, one of 11 children of a small-town bar owner, was a "country club Republican." He was often patronizing, which in the old and accomplished is irritating but in the young and inexperienced is infuriating. "Boehner said he hated going down to the White House to listen to what amounted to presidential lectures," Mr. Woodward writes.
Mr. Obama's was a White House that had—and showed—no respect for Republicans trying to negotiate with Republicans. Through it all he was confident—"Eric, don't call my bluff"—because he believed, as did his staff, that his talents would save the day.
They saved nothing. Washington became immobilized.
Mr. Woodward's portrait of the president is not precisely new—it has been drawn in other ways in other accounts, and has been a staple of D.C. gossip for three years now—but it is vivid and believable. And there's probably a direct line between that portrait and the Obama seen in the first debate. Maybe that's what made it so indelible, and such an arc-changer.
People saw for the first time an Obama they may have heard about on radio or in a newspaper but had never seen.
They didn't see some odd version of the president. They saw the president.
And they didn't like what they saw, and that would linger.
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7)Obama Economic Recovery Is As Bad As It Appears
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In a previously off-the-record interview with the Des Moines Register, President Obama argued that the economic recovery he's overseen isn't as bad as his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, claims.
"In many ways, because of the actions we took early on, we're actually ahead of pace in the typical recovery out of a recession like this," Obama said.
It's a point Obama and his supporters have made on occasion throughout the campaign. Earlier this year, Obama told attendees at a fundraiser about the "extraordinary progress" the economy was making.
His deputy campaign manager recently claimed that Obama created more jobs than Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush had at similar points in their economic recoveries. First Lady Michelle Obama told a local Washington, D.C., radio station that the country was in the midst of a "huge" recovery.
But the data are clear that Obama's economic recovery — which started in June 2009, five months after he was sworn in — has been worse than any recovery since the Great Depression.
Overall economic growth has been slower in this recovery than in any of the previous post-World War II recoveries, according to the Minneapolis Fed, using data from Bureau of Economic Analysis.
In the 12 quarters since the Obama recovery started, real GDP has climbed 6.7%. That's below even the GDP growth rate in the 12 quarters after the 1980 recession ended — despite the fact that there was the intervening deep and prolonged 1981-82 recession.
The picture isn't any better when looking at job growth.
Obama often boasts that the economy has added 5.2 million private-sector jobs in the 31 months since employment bottomed out in February 2010. But that rate of job growth lags every previous recovery as well if, as Obama does, you start counting at the point where jobs bottomed out.
Bush oversaw 5.3 million new private-sector jobs in the 31 months after employment hit bottom in mid-2003. Under Reagan, private-sector jobs climbed 8.2 million during a comparable time period.
What's more, Obama's recovery has reclaimed only about half the jobs lost during the recession. That's a far cry from prior recoveries, which saw the number of jobs exceed the previous peak by this point.
In fact, had job growth under Obama kept pace with the previous worst recovery since World War II, there would be nearly 6 million more people with jobs today.
To be fair, the president uses a qualifier in his quote, comparing his recovery to others "out of a recession like this."
In the past, Obama has argued that recoveries from a financial crisis like the one that caused 2007-09 recession are invariably slow and painful.
In June, for example, Obama said that "this was not your normal recession."
He added that "throughout history, it has typically taken countries up to 10 years to recover from financial crises of this magnitude. Today, the economies of many European countries still aren't growing. And their unemployment rate averages around 11%."
Obama points to the work of economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who say that recoveries from financial crises tend to be protracted. Recently, the two wrotethat "if one compares U.S. output per capita and employment performance with those of other countries that suffered systemic financial crises in 2007-08, the U.S. performance is better than average."
But the claim that financial crises always produce slow recoveries isn't set in stone.
In fact, an October 2011 paper by the Atlanta Fed concluded that "U.S. history provides no support for linking low employment and high unemployment in the current recovery with the financial crisis of 2007—2008."
And a November 2011 paper by economists at Rutgers University and the Cleveland Fed concluded that while recessions tied to financial crises tend to be deeper than average, the recoveries also tend to be stronger than average.
Study co-author Michael Bardo noted that, based on these findings, "the slow recovery that we are experiencing from the recession that ended in July 2009 is an exception to the historical pattern.
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8)
The President Sends His Non-Regrets
A revealing interview about his priorities in 2009—and 2013.
President Obama doesn't give many interviews these days outside Comedy Central, so it caused a stir Wednesday when editors at the Des Moines Register managed to pin him down and even elicit some news. Specifically, Mr. Obama said he wants to pursue immigration reform in a second term, as well as a budget "grand bargain" with Republicans that includes tax reform.
This will come as a surprise to voters reading the President's just-released 20-page brochure on his second-term agenda, which makes little or no mention of these priorities. Perhaps that's why the White House first demanded that the interview be off the record, making the transcript public only after the Register editor objected in a public blog post.
But the larger reason to be skeptical concerns Mr. Obama's answer to another Register question: Whether he regrets pursuing ObamaCare and other liberal social priorities in his first two years rather than focusing on the economy.
"Absolutely not," Mr. Obama told the Iowa journalists. "Remember the context. First of all, Mitch McConnell has imposed an ironclad filibuster from the first day I was in office. And that's not speculation."
Whoaaaa there, big fella. Mr. McConnell was then and still is the Senate MinorityLeader, and in 2009 he had all of 40 votes. Mr. Obama could have pursued any agenda he wanted, and the Des Moines editors wanted to know why he didn't focus on the economy first. Yet Mr. Obama's instinctive reaction is to blame Republican obstructionism that never happened.
Zuma Press
In those first days of progressive wine and roses, Mr. Obama managed to peel off three Republican votes for his stimulus blowout in February 2009. He got five Republicans for the trial-bar gift known as the Lilly Ledbetter bill and nine for an expansion of the state children's health program, both in January. That was some ferocious filibuster.
By spring 2009, when Minnesota's Al Franken was seated, the White House had 60 votes and a GOP-only filibuster wasn't even possible. "We have the votes. F-- 'em," declared then-Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, according to the first-100-days chapters of Bob Woodward's new book.
The President is also missing the larger import of the Register's question. As Mr. Obama likes to remind voters now, in 2009 the economy had suffered a financial heart attack and needed to be nurtured back to health. That required careful management and attention to reviving consumer and business confidence.
Yet rather than work with both parties to fashion a growth agenda, he went all-in for a Keynesian spending blowout and subcontracted the details to House Democrats. And rather than wait to see how strongly—and even whether—the economy then recovered, he dove headlong into fighting to pass 40 years of pent-up liberal social policy.
It wasn't merely ObamaCare. The President also tried to impose a cap-and-tax on carbon energy production, end secret ballots for unions via card check, while promising to raise taxes in 2011 until he was stopped when voters elected a GOP House in 2010.
Mr. Obama likes to say he inherited "the most severe economic emergency we've had since the Great Depression," but then he claims that it didn't matter that he staged a two-year fight to remake one-sixth of the economy and threatened to remake another four-sixths.
If recessions following financial crises really are worse than normal, as the President also told the Iowa editors, then why didn't he take special care to postpone legislation that would add new costs to business, undermine confidence and thus weaken the recovery?
Mr. Obama didn't really answer the Register's question, so we will. He didn't focus on the economy because he didn't and still doesn't understand how the private economy works. He doesn't understand that incentives matter, or how government policies and regulation can sabotage growth. He really believes that government is the engine of economic prosperity.
Anyone who thinks the second term will be different should consult Mr. Emanuel's incisive counsel above.
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