Wednesday, June 20, 2012

POLITICAL DIGEST 06/21/2012 CONSERVATIVE

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on. In some cases I post things sent to me by readers I might not have posted on my own, to get ideas circulating.

Information on my seven books

“The Kings.” By Louise Imogen Guiney
One of my favorite poems since my teen years. ~Bob. Last stanza:
While Kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is with broken saber
To rise on the last redoubt;
To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting, fighting, fighting,
Die, driven against the wall.

Mitt Romney's in It to Win It. By Ebben Raves
Excerpt: Mitt Romney will beat President Obama in this fall's election, most likely by a substantial margin. There. I said it. I may have a plate full of hat in my future, but I doubt it.
Pundits will give you the usual reasons for a Romney victory, but it all boils down to two things: first, Romney took the time to build an organization and second, and most important, he wants to win. (I remain convinced that its going to be so close that Romney will only win if I personally do everything in my power to help him. I hope you feel that way as well. ~Bob.)

More Icelandic bankers arrested
Iceland’s special prosecutor into the banking crisis has confirmed that raids have taken place today and that arrests have been made. The Central Bank of Iceland is among the institutions under investigation. Special Prosecutor, Olafur Thor Hauksson told Visir is that house searches are taking place in at least three places today as part of investigations into the central bank, MP Bank and Straumur Bank. (Now if WE had done something like this back in 2008, making the banks too scared to bundle underwater mortgages into toxic derivatives, just imagine how much pain we could have saved, not only for Americans but for the whole world. --Don Hank)

Media bias again
A MSNBC host played one small part of a Romney speech, which by itself was used to make it sound like he's never been in many stores shopping, of course implying he's a rich guy with no ties to common people. After a lot of screaming, she played a longer section of that speech, which clearly shows Romney was just making a point about how the private sector is always improving due to competition. In contrast to the gov't agencies that don't have competition. Basically she got caught red-handed doing selective editing to show what she wanted to in order to make him look foolish, when that was totally deceptive. You can see the whole clip below, which they aired the next night after being nailed by assorted groups for false reporting. This is absolutely terrible, and such reporters should have zero credibility. That's not reporting, that's promoting a personal cause, and in a duplicitous way. --Del

Media Bias in action
I listen to NPR on a regular basis, they do have many good programs, and much of the news is reported without bias. That said, they certainly have their biases, and don't hesitate to display them. What got me today was listening to them talk about the Rio conference, which is about climate, global sustainability, etc, etc. The reporter referred to climate change repeatedly and clearly as a known fact and major danger to the planet. Climate change is, to say the very least, a matter of debate. If its supporters were correct, we would have seen far more warming in the last couple of decades than we have. One of the key messages in ClimateGate was one of the major supporters lamenting that this had not occurred and the data needed to be disguised somehow. Its computer models all depend on an interaction whereby a tiny change in CO2 causes a major change in atmospheric humidity, since water molecules are a much better heat trap than CO2. One detail- this interaction is 100% theoretical with zero data to support it. Basically, it's a neat way to make a change in parts per million of CO2 (you know, a percent of a percent of a percent) somehow make the world a lot hotter. As a matter of common sense science, the planet is over 60% water surfaces, and the sun plays the central part in the level of atomospheric humidity. I wouldn't care if the reporter talked about the "hypothetical climate change" or the "warming in theory, or any other way that let listeners know this is a matter of debate, not a matter of 100% settled science. But no, he spoke with utter confidence and certainty. That's media bias, right out there in front of God and everybody, and it's far from the only example one can find without too much trouble. A democracy depends on an informed electorate, and a responsible media is what informs the electorate, by and large. When the media are largely irresponsible, it endangers the democratic process, and therefore the future of the nation. This is not a little problem. Thank heavens for the Internet and the alternate media, but they're still not enough to get through to all the people. Houston, we have a problem. --Del. (Most people assume that their opinions about how adorable their kids are constitute facts, not opinions, while your opinions on your kids are the result of parental blindness. Same thing. ~Bob.)

Syria, Iran, Russia and China plan joint war games, Iranian news agency says: Largest exercise in Mideast history set to take place within a month; Syrian official denies report
Excerpt: According to the article, the four countries are preparing 90,000 troops, 400 aircraft and 1,000 tanks for the massive joint maneuvers, which are to take place along the Syrian coast within a month. (If true, the logical explanation is these rogue and communist countries are working together for our demise. This could be a case of Iranian psychological warfare. Only time will tell. --GBH. I tend to find it questionable because of the bad PR of working with Syria right now, not that the others don't have as much dissident blood on their hands. It's just not in the news. Maybe their share techniques on putting down dissidents, while Obama watches with envy. ~Bob.)

US supports Israel's exclusion from counterterrorism conference
The exclusion of Israel from the recent conference on counterterrorism is disgraceful and indefensible policy. Excluding arguably the world's foremost authority on the subject is not only absurd and insulting to an ally, it rewards the Turks who commit human rights abuses against their large Kurdish population and who sponsor or abet the terrorist Hamas organization. To exclude Israel and invite Pakistani participation is the height of absurdity. Pakistan’s security forces actively supports the Taliban and the Haqqani network, and others, and certainly harbored bin Laden within sight of its military academy. Elements of their forces attack and kill US soldiers. What could conferees possibly learn from these bad actors? What message does such a policy convey to countries--our allies and those on the fence--that must be appalled by mindless political correctness? Cordially, Larry Greenberg

Strikeout: The Clemens verdict and our senseless national drug hysteria. By Charles P. Pierce
Excerpt: I would like a refund now, please, from the Department of Justice, perhaps something from petty cash, or even some loose AK's like the ones the Department of Justice allowed to come into gun smugglers' possession so they could be tracked into Mexican drug cartels, as though arming some of the world's most dangerous criminals ever made sense beyond the boardrooms in D.C. It didn't, and it made only marginally more sense to pursue Roger Clemens in court, not once, but twice.

Romney advisor, Walid Phares, on the radical Islamist takeover of the Middle East
Excerpt: Walid Phares* is Mitt Romney’s special advisor on foreign policy and national security, which has enraged the terror-linked goons at CAIR. So much so, that they waged a campaign to harass Romney into removing Phares from his team. He did not. team. He did not. *Phares is a Lebanese Christian.

There’s No “O” In Team…..By J Robert Giles
Excerpt: It’s time to bench this showboating diva before he ends our season in training camp. I’m not ready to say that America is in her fourth quarter, staring down the barrel of playoff elimination.

WikiLeaks, meet ObamaLeaks
Excerpt: The difference, of course, is that WikiLeaks releases information that it believes will be embarrassing for the United States, while ObamaLeaks releases information intended to make President Obama look good. But ObamaLeaks has done damage to U.S. national security on a scale of which WikiLeaks only dreams.

60 Illegals From Countries That ‘Promote, Produce, or Protect’ Terrorists Caught Along U.S. Coastlines
Excerpt: The U.S. Border Patrol in fiscal 2011 caught 60 aliens from countries “that have shown a tendency to promote, produce, or protect terrorist organizations or their members” trying to enter the United States through its coastal boundaries, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Saudi man beheaded for witchcraft, sorcery
Excerpt: A Saudi man was beheaded today on charges of sorcery, witchcraft and owning talismans, Arab News reports, quoting the Saudi Interior Ministry.

Seventh Circuit ruling clarifies that illegal aliens aren’t protected
Excerpt: Illegal aliens are not a protected class, according to a recent decision by the Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The case was decided under the country’s leading anti-discrimination law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII prohibits discrimination against employees “because of” their membership in a protected class.

Laffer Throws a Curve at California
Excerpt: Arthur Laffer has proposed a new tax code for California. California is a continuing disaster zone: high unemployment, exodus of high-income people (Laffer was one), massive deficits, and slow economic growth.

Yes, indeed: Top 10 Things President Romney Can Do Now That We Know Old Media Approves of Rescinding Laws by Executive Order
Excerpt: Today, The Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin -- no right-wing hothead, to be sure -- lambasted President Obama's latest cynical power grab by executive fiat: It is ironic that just days before the 40th anniversary of the Watergate burglary we should also witness a jaw-dropping act of constitutional defiance by the current president. Then the issue was whether the president was above the law and could bend and stretch the powers of his office for whatever end he dubbed worthy.

Germany: "Radical Salafism is Like a Hard Drug"
Excerpt: In an effort to improve their image, the Salafists have removed from their "information booths" all literature about the role of women in Islam or the supremacy of Islamic Sharia law over democracy. The German translation of the Koran has edited out many of the verses which call on Muslims to make war on non-believers.

Death Threat From Iran Sent To St. Louis Men
Didn't get the memo. Excerpt: Two St. Louis area men said they have received death threats from Iran and they are taking those threats seriously. The said a fatwa, or religious decree, has been put on their heads. The letter was sent to Ali Bahkti and his pastor Mike Salazar.

Obama’s policy strategy: Ignore laws. By Steve Friess
Excerpt: Rather than pushing new laws through a divided Congress to enact his agenda, Obama is relying on federal agencies to ignore, or at least not defend, laws that some of his important supporters — like Hispanic voters and the gay community — don’t like.

Sandra Fluke gets "Woman of Courage" Award. (2:00 pm)
So, we now have a great many female soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who have served in a combat zone, dozens killed in action, a lot who earned Purple Hearts and a few medals for bravery under fire. Naturally, the Left thinks the epitome of female courage is a 30-year-old yuppie college student demanding free birth control. I’m quivering in admiration. ~Bob.

New star of deficit talks is Judd Gregg
Excerpt: Former Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.) is stepping up his role in building Republican support for a broad deficit-reduction plan. Some lawmakers who want to pass a comprehensive deficit-reduction package at the end of this year or in early 2013 say Gregg has more influence within the Senate GOP conference than does former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), the co-chairman of the Simpson-Bowles commission. 

Russian ship carrying helicopters to Syria turns back
Excerpt: A Russian ship carrying attack helicopters to the Syrian government turned back toward home Tuesday after its London-based insurance carrier canceled coverage, following a warning from the British government that the delivery would violate European Union sanctions.

Mitt Romney’s bus tour — and how he gets to 270 electoral votes. By Chris Cillizza
Excerpt: Mitt Romney concludes a five-day bus tour through six swing states with a stop in his homestate of Michigan today, a trip that speaks volumes about how the former Massachusetts governor views his path to 270 electoral votes this fall.

Excerpt: The single biggest mistake in all of health policy is the belief that the best way to make health care accessible is to make it free at the point of delivery. As I explained at the Health Affairs blog the other day, this mistake underlies our entire approach to providing health care to low-income families in this country; it is the basis for the organization of the entire health system in most other developed countries; and it is deeply embedded in the Obama administration’s approach to health reform. In a new book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, I explain why this belief is wrong: The major barrier to care for low-income families is the same in the United States as it is throughout the developed world: the time price of care and other non-price rationing mechanisms are far more important than the money price of care. The burdens of non-price rationing rise as income falls, with the lowest-income families facing the longest waiting times and the largest bureaucratic obstacles to care. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), by lowering the money price of care for almost everybody while doing nothing to change supply, will intensify non-price rationing and may actually make access to care more difficult for our most vulnerable populations.

Federal Disability Insurance Nears Collapse
Excerpt: The pot of money the Social Security Administration is using to cover disability insurance is projected to run dry in 2016. That means more than 9 million out-of-work disabled Americans, plus their spouses and children, who also qualify for benefits, would see their checks shrink 21 percent. (As more and more people qualify as “disabled,” for conditions we didn’t envision, like self-inflicted drug-fried brains, due to the expansion of the entitlement state, all systems are on the verge of collapse. Someone should write a book…. ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Deficits, taxes, and spending are the defining issues of the 2012 campaign. Regulation deserves a seat at the table, too. The federal government spent $3.6 trillion in 2011. But according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), the annual cost of complying with federal regulations has exceeded $1 trillion since around 2005, and none of those costs appear in the federal budget. The federal government actually costs us half again more than most people think it does.

Obama's Real Spending Record
Excerpt: President Obama recently claimed that during his tenure as president federal spending had risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. In reality, spending skyrocketed under both Presidents Bush and Obama, say economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore. Sadly for fiscal conservatives, the biggest surge in government spending came during the last two years of President George W. Bush's eight years in office. A weakened Republican president dealing with a strident Democratic Congress, led by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, saw federal expenditures rise dramatically.

Today Show Covered Benefits of MS Patients Riding Horses Same Day O'Donnell Mocked Ann Romney For It. By Noel Sheppard
Excerpt: As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on Monday mocked Ann Romney for riding horses to combat her multiple sclerosis.
Hours earlier, NBC's Today show, in a segment about the recent MS diagnosis of rock star Ozzy Osbourne's son Jack, addressed the benefits of horseback riding for reducing the symptoms of the disease (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Romney: Marco Rubio Being Vetted for Vice President
Excerpt: Contradicting several published reports Tuesday, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney confirmed that his campaign is "thoroughly vetting" U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio as a vice presidential running mate and challenged the sources who said otherwise.

Obama grants Holder request on 'Furious' documents as contempt vote looms
Excerpt: President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against the attorney general by Republicans in the House. (Congress has no more right to these documents than they did to the Nixon tapes. If a president can’t keep administration wrong-doing from Congress and the press, the system will collapse. It’s not like Obama promised this administration would be the “most transparent ever,” did he? ~Bob.)

Excerpt: Obama in 2007 told CNN that Executive Privilege was not a good reason to with hold information from Congress.

Obama 2005: 'The President is not the Attorney General’s client; the people are'
Excerpt: Speaking on the Senate floor during the nomination confirmation of President George W. Bush’s Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales, Obama explained why he opposed the nomination. “The Attorney General’s job is not just to enforce the President’s laws it is to tell the President what the law is. The job is not simply to facilitate the President’s power, it is to speak truth to that power as well,” Obama stated during the hearing.

Judge Napolitano on ‘Fast and Furious’ Documents: Executive Privilege Only Applies If the President Was Personally Involved
Excerpt: “If the attorney general sat down and discussed it with the president, he probably doesn’t want the Congress and the public to know that,” Napolitano said.

Worth Reading: Famous Quotes From Democrats on Executive Privilege
Excerpt: Now that President Obama has claimed “Executive Privilege” in the Fast & Furious scandal, I’m sure the spin from the left is going to come well, fast & furious. Knowing that, I thought I’d publish a few quotes from Democrats when another president claimed Executive Privilege. Here goes:

Another retraction: Holder withdraws claim that Bush’s attorney general knew about gunwalking. By Matthew Boyle
Excerpt; In the wake of President Barack Obama asserting executive privilege to withhold Operation Fast and Furious documents from Congress, the Department of Justice has withdrawn a second statement made to Congress because it was inaccurate. During last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder had alleged that former Attorney General Michael Mukasey knew of gunwalking during the George W. Bush administration.

Obama's War on Domestic Energy Production
Excerpt: Today, the Senate will vote on the fate of one of the most expensive regulations of all time--a regulation that threatens to create an America with no new coal-fired power plants, where existing energy producers might have to close their doors, snuffing out jobs and making electricity dramatically more expensive. Citing mercury pollution and air pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered businesses to install the "Maximum Achievable Control Technology" (MACT) to control emissions from their plants. Known as Utility MACT, this is no ordinary regulation. So stringent are the standards that potentially dozens of coal-fired power plants will close rather than incur the unsustainable costs of compliance.

U.S. Adds Syria to List of Nations Failing to Combat Human Trafficking
Excerpt: The other countries that the report said were falling well short of standards and not making substantial efforts to improve conditions were Algeria, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Kuwait, Libya, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Zimbabwe. (Funny how many of these slave countries have governments that came to power with the support and cheers of American “progressives.” ~Bob.)

Frank Rich: Nuke ’Em: Why negative advertisements are powerful, essential, and sometimes (see “Daisy”) even artistic.
Excerpt: As far back as August 2011, Obama’s political hit men were signaling the inevitable to Politico: The president, “resigned to running for reelection in a glum nation,” had little choice “but to run a slashing, personal campaign aimed at disqualifying his likeliest opponent.” The Bain ad that Obama ran last month was no surprise either: (First, you cannot win, especially against an incumbent if you do not point out why people should vote against him. I pounded my opponent in 1972, when I was the challenger, but always tried to contrast with the positive of how I’d be different. But I never touched the fact that he was separated from his wife and living with a girlfriend around the corner from me. In the next four elections, I ran mostly positive, but was always willing to contrast myself with the opponent’s positions. I think the test of negative ads is are they relevant and are they truthful. Relevant can focus on positions, experience, ability and character. Not on things like race and gender, which, of course, is why the media tries to picture any opposition to Obama’s policies or questions about his experience and character as being race-based. The problem with most negative ads today is that both sides take them beyond facts into speculation and sometimes into fabrication. ~Bob.)

Drachmail and the New Democrats. By Benjamin Weinthal
Excerpt: For the past few weeks, the gloomy words of the Rolling Stones's 1973 hit "Angie," German Chancellor Angela Merkel's 2005 campaign song, served as a metaphor for her country's disillusionment with the European monetary union.

Saudi Clerics Funnel Cash to Syrian Rebels Through Terror Group. By Jonathan Schanzer, Steven Millerhttp://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/saudi-clerics-funnel-cash-to-syrian-rebels-through-terror-group/
Excerpt: Since President Obama decided not to support the rebels fighting Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a handful of Saudi religious figures have taken matters into their own hands. After the Syrian regime recently massacred over 100 civilians in Houla, a group of well-known Saudi clerics, launched an online campaign to raise funds for the Free Syrian Army.

Friends of WikiLeaks fight for Julian Assange’s human rights
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/327000
Julian Assange, the egomaniac WikiLeaks boss, has been fighting extradition to Sweden for two years while staying at a supporter's house in the UK. Now he is applying to Ecuador for some kind of refugee status. Apparently he REALLY doesn't want to go to Sweden to face the two women who charged him with sexual assault. His supporters are saying he'd lose a year or two there waiting for trial. Funny, he's lost two years trying to avoid it altogether. Innocent until proven guilty, of course, but his actions hardly seem like those of an innocent man eager to face his accusers and clear his name. –Del

Why Obama Will Lose in a Landslide. By Wayne Allyn Root
Excerpt: Most political predictions are made by biased pollsters, pundits, or prognosticators who are either rooting for Republicans or Democrats. I am neither. I am a former Libertarian Vice Presidential nominee, and a well-known Vegas odds maker with one of the most accurate records of predicting political races. But as an odds maker with a pretty remarkable track record of picking political races, I play no favorites. (Just a cheerful note to start the day. --Del)

How Obama Bureaucrats Fueled Western Wildfires. By Michelle Malkin
Excerpt: Bipartisan complaints goaded the White House into signing a Band-Aid fix last week. But it smacks more of election-year gesture politics: Too little, too late, too fake. Ten years ago, the feds had a fleet of 44 firefighting planes. Today, the number is down to nine for the entire country.

Worth Reading: Random Thoughts. By Thomas Sowell
Excerpt: Increasing numbers of people seem to have convinced themselves that they are entitled to a "fair share" of what someone else has earned. Whole nations now seem to think that they should be bailed out from the consequences of their own reckless spending by nations that lived within their means. (I do “Random Thoughts” too, inspired by Sowell and Dunk’s Almanac by my friend, the late Maj. Gene Duncan, USMC ret. It’s just that Sowell thinks better than I do. ~Bob.)

Moral Dystopia. By Maureen Dowd
Excerpt: We hope we would be Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” who dismisses his daughter’s pleas to compromise his ideals and save his life, saying: “When a man takes an oath, Meg, he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then, he needn’t hope to find himself again.” (While this addresses the shameful mess that continues to sully an outstanding university, it touches on the issues of honor, integrity and upholding faithfulness to those things many of us still hold sacred—like the support and defense of the Constitution of the United States. Some may feel my interpretation is a stretch here, but I would disagree. How we address issues like the one noted in the article give clues as to what kind of people we (Americans) are. In the near future we may very well come to a highly volatile point in time that determines who we are—and which way we are truly headed. The negative consequences are frightening. Are we going to collectively agree to uphold a piece of paper—or are we going to turn away from something which has served us all so well collectively? Not all have been served well in the past, but the act of embracing that little piece of paper has ultimately righted wrongs—which it will continue to do, so long as we honor and our commitment to it. That’s opposed to circumventing it for various reasons we shouldn’t accept. As Vince Romano recently noted (in separate correspondence within another forum): “Real leaders will follow our great Constitution. A ruler, on the other hand, will ignore it because it gets in the way of achieving personal agendas.” Embracing the Constitution is critical. It must be honored. Without that honor we stand to retreat towards opposing wolfpack mentalities—which I see happening already. We live in a time where we are failing to uphold (let alone appreciate) the ideals of honor, integrity, self-reliance and commitment. While this article addresses a specific issue, the implications go well beyond the cited aberration. –Greg. (That “Progressives” can look away from FGM, hanging of Gays, the stoning of teen rape victims for “adultery,” the execution of apostates, the on-going ethnic cleansing of Christians, the disfigurement of girls wanting to go to school, and the at-best second class status afforded to women and kuffer in Muslim-ruled countries, out of slavish devotion to political correctness and “multiculturalism,” or the fear of being labeled “Islamophobic,” speaks to the same kind of Moral Dystopia.” ~Bob. )

From The Patriot Post
The Obama administration will now stop the deportation of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens and will also issue them work permits. This allows them to focus on what's really important: illegally voting for Obama in November. --NewsBusted's Jodi Miller

President Obama is going to let certain illegal immigrants stay in this country. But there is an age requirement. You have to be old enough to vote by November. --comedian Jay Leno

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) Could've Sworn the Dems Passed a Budget...
Unbelievable. ~Bob.

Excerpt: As most of us in the news biz know, true investigative reporting is an extreme rarity, basically non-existent. To get a scoop that way, you would have to do some real work. That’s for college kids — or used to be. Most scoops arrive in much simpler fashion — by phone. Someone has something to leak. In this case that someone is an intelligence official with an axe to grind — exactly the kind of person you don’t want in your foxhole.

The Obama Outrages: Government as Black Swan: Transforming America, one “unexpected” incident after another. By Jeff Durstewitz
Excerpt: Incidents of government overreaching have come so “fast and furious” over the past several years that the most recent one seems largely to have gotten lost in the blur.
But if you live in or near farm country, as I do in upstate New York, you may have been amazed to see that the federal government, in the guise of its Department of Labor, recently set about abolishing the family farm.

In my former life, I walked in all kinds of Marxist moccasins over many miles and for many years, and I know for a fact that Marxism, no matter how disguised, always begins its way to power by preaching the need to change — a society, a country, a group of countries, the whole world. Of course, people everywhere want their leaders to do a better job than their predecessors did. But “change” is also the very quintessence of Marxism, which is built upon the dialectical materialist tenet that “quantitative changes generate qualitative transformations.” (Translation for the media savvy: If you say it often enough, it becomes the truth.)

Forget Gold, Buy Twinkies and Bullets: Cause Ding Dongs are lame. By Sunny
Excerpt: Why hedge the coming economic collapse with GOLD when you can do it with Twinkies? With tens of millions of people out of work, utterly stagnant economic growth, and increasing government intervention …, many Americans are worried about what to do if and when an economic collapse occurs. All the experts on TV and in the papers are saying inflation and other dire consequences are imminent, and they seem to have some evidence to back it up.

We Are All Catholics! By Burt Prelutsky
Excerpt: Even though Obama promised to be a post-racial president, we all knew that to be a lie as soon as he appointed Eric Holder to be his Attorney General. Knowing what I did about Mr. Holder, it was my assumption that the only reason he got the job was because Al Sharpton had already turned it down. That being said, I was recently taken aback when I saw a video that Obama has produced for his re-election campaign. In it, he launched what he called “African Americans for Obama,” essentially beseeching blacks to keep in mind he shares their pigmentation.

With this prez, who needs Congress? By Rich Lowry
Excerpt: Next time, Congress shouldn’t bother. In another chapter in a long-running battle, it voted in December 2010 on the DREAM Act granting amnesty to illegal immigrants brought here as children. The lawmakers appeared to believe that they were entrusted with determining whether or not the legislation became law. How quaint.

The Euro and us Europe’s woes a warning. By John Bolton
Excerpt: Because New Democracy didn’t win a majority, it will have to partner with the Socialist Party, whose policies are largely responsible for Greece’s parlous economic condition. Syriza rejected Samaris’ call for a “government of national salvation,” thus positioning itself to replace him should he fail. France’s results are even more depressing.

Right-wing party in Belgium protests against Islamists
Excerpt: The protesters chanted slogans such as: "Non-integrated Muslims out," and "No to Islamic facism." "Some of them demand separate hours for men and women in swimming pools, while others does not attend history or gymnastics classes," Belgium People's Party leader Mischael Modrikamen said. "People who came to Belgium should accept our values ... Those who do not respect this country's values should be deported." (There is a difference between immigrants, who come to your country to join its culture, adopt its values, learn its language and participate in the economic and political life of the nation, and colonizers, who come to live as parasites off your culture while working to replace it with the failed, oppressive culture of their homeland. I support immigration, I oppose colonization. ~Bob.)

Putin worried more about US dollar than euro
Excerpt: But the Russian leader lamented the lack of clarity on the future of the US dollar, which makes for a sizeable share of Russia's reserves, after US elections in November. "If we keep (half of reserves) in dollars and US bonds, we would like to know what will happen with the dollar after the US presidential elections," the Russian leader said. (Me, too. ~Bob.)

JPMorgan Chase Gets $14 Billion Per Year In Government Subsidy: Study
Excerpt: At least some of the billions of dollars that JPMorgan Chase lost gambling on credit derivatives once belonged to you. Last week, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) had the gall to spoil the Senate Banking Committee's gentle grooming of JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon by pointing out that his bank would not still be in existence without taxpayer assistance. (This is a permanent welfare system for banks. It will NOT stop unless we stop electing people who allow this to happen. Welfare for your local dealer is bad enough, but welfare for the rich??? --Don Hank)

Allen West: Obama ‘doesn’t have a vision for the black community’ in America. By Matthew Boyle
Excerpt: We’re here today to talk about economic freedom as opposed to economic dependency. We’re here today to talk about four basic conservative principles and how they can apply to economic revitalization for the black community: That’s limited government, being fiscally responsible, individual industrialism that leads to self-sufficiency and the free market that grows business, and lastly and most importantly, it’s about equality of opportunity which comes from a good education.

Obama bundlers’ foundations bankroll gay marriage, abortion, unions, ACORN, ‘racial justice,’ anti-coal campaigns. By David Martosko
President Barack Obama’s campaign “bundlers” — big-ticket donors who combine their own contributions with those of wealthy friends and family members — include at least 138 individuals who sit on boards of charitable foundations or other grant-giving charities, a Daily Caller analysis shows. And those foundations include many whose grant making focuses on far left-wing causes that mirror Obama’s policymaking decisions.

Krauthammer rips Obama ‘gibberish’ and the biggest ‘decline in U.S. influence’ since World War II. By Jeff Poor
Excerpt: “The second thing I picked up was the subtlety of the gibberish he offered on Europe which was the only thing he can do because the fact that he didn’t have anything to say or to offer is the perfect reflection of the decline of American influence everywhere in the last three-and-a-half years,” Krauthammer said. “I think it’s a bigger decline in U.S. influence in all areas of the world — in the Middle East, in Syria, in Europe, economically and every other way than any three-and-a-half years since the end of the Second World War. This is a president who speaks for the United States so weakly that nobody cares what he says.

Excerpt: Over 120 CIA documents concerning 9/11, Osama bin Laden and counterterrorism were published today for the first time, having been newly declassified and released to the National Security Archive. The documents were released after the NSA pored through the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission and sent Freedom of Information Act requests. The material contains much new information about the hunt before and after 9/11 for bin Laden, the development of the drone campaign in AfPak, and al-Qaida’s relationship with America’s ally, Pakistan. (Hell, I was writing about the “War on Terror” during the Clinton Administration, not that anyone was listening. “The Next Terrorist attack on America” was posted in 2009, but at the end it includes my 1998 column, “America’s war on Terror will be long, slow and cruel.” ~Bob

Weapons Grade Chutzpah: Obama’s Lawyer Demands Info on Super PAC’s Donors. By Bryon Preston
Excerpt: Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads, questioned Mr. Bauer’s motivation, saying that the president’s lawyers only seem to take issue with groups that benefit Republicans. He noted that Mr. Obama’s campaign has embraced Priorities USA Action, a Democratic group. We’re through the looking glass, folks.

Conservatives' Rational Contempt for Academics
Excerpt: Tom Bird, a retired member of the MSU Education faculty made the best point of all: “...There were a lot of very smart people in the College of Education who thought about things in a certain way–many of them were very left. They were dismayed by the sort of people we had as students. We got a lot of kids from the suburbs, and many of them have a Republican sensibility. Some of the teachers actually had contempt for the people they taught–and the students, of course, sensed it.


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Robert A. Hall

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